AUGUST DOGS SING ~

"august dogs sing"
august 2014
music compiled by bob arnold

BLACK PANTHERS 1968 ~

BLACK PANTHERS 1968

Howard L. Bingham

Ammo Books, 2009

~

essays by 

Howard L. Bingham, Tessa Hicks, Mar Hollingsworth,

 Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Bernard Kinsey, Gilbert Moore

"On the steps of the Capitol, Bobby Seale read a statement, an executive mandate: "The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense calls upon the American people in general, and black people in particular, to take careful note of the racist California Legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless at the very same time that racist police agencies throughout the country are intensifying the terror, brutality, murder, and repression of black people and at the same time that the American government is waging a racist war of genocide in Vietnam." 

May 2, 1967

 

Nearly a half century later substitute "California" for Ferguson - St. Louis, MO. and

 "Vietnam" with Iraq or Afghanistan 

— we haven't learned our lesson.

http://www.blackpanther.org/

This book can still be found, very reasonably priced at $20, shrink wrapped and stunning hardback, showcasing Bingham's portrait of the Panthers in their prime.

MALCOLM COWLEY ~

Malcolm Cowley
The Long Voyage
Selected Letters 1915-1987
edited by Hans Bak
Harvard, 2013

Behind every great man there is, these days, perhaps a woman, or another man. And vice-versa. Behind every great book there has been a great editor, and Malcolm Cowley was one of the greatest in 20th century American literature. His banner list of writers include Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Kerouac, Tillie Olsen, and John Cheever for starters. And on the Kerouac front, Cowley not only brought On the Road forth from where he worked at Viking, he went back to Kerouac after Viking initially rejected the book and impressed upon his colleagues to have another look.
 There's your editor.

AMIS TO LARKIN ~

Kingsley Amis & Philip Larkin

The Odd Couple

by Richard Bradford

The Robson Press

RURAL LIFE AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD (BERKSHIRES) ~

Summertime

Thinking over the past week, which then takes me further back, as it always does —


Robin Williams could have been capable of striving deeply into acting and the cinema world but my hunch is he couldn't control his vices, so the comedy masqueraded much of his madness. He was as mad as depressed. If you watch him in his earlier films, you see deep potential and scale. Then he got lazy with fame, fortune and needing the audience to respond to him. Thus the standup and the constant tv work on talk shows where he couldn't resist but to go into his scheme, which I loved of course, since it was channeling my own humor and madness but I'll let him do it for me. With that relief, I can stick to the real world. We use our comedians and they know it. The two rarest ones: Keaton and Chaplin made more than comedy. It was drama. I feel terrible for Williams since he had powerhouse abilities and now he's sunk by his own hand. Hunter Thompson raising a big revolver at his kitchen stool, son and family in the other room, blows his brains out. No warning. Another one who worked masterpieces, gone. In the meantime we have the likes of Kissinger and the whole Bush family moving around us doing just fine. Accepted or ignored in a benign way. We lose the Masters. It's always been this way. Thompson and Williams ended up believing, somehow, that they were shunned.


Now look at the comedians of old — George Burns, Milton Berle, Sid Cesar, Bob Hope, Jonathan Winters, Joan Rivers, Lucille Ball, Jerry Lewis, Don Rickles, Carol Burnett, many many more, all lived and some are still living, deep into old age. What did they have, despite the comedy, the tragedy, the acceptance and the shunning? They have and had a classical bent. Very different from the 60s icons and troubled souls, although Dylan may get there. They all had a poise and an elegance for style and demeanor, and an almost balance with patience and timing, and they listened as well as any wild animal since they drew their work from the public and privacy of life. They took care of business.

Susan and I have just put down one half of the chapel roof, or is it a garage or is it a small barn, that may one day also become part bookshop, or even a lending library? You dream when you build if you're really building. Build in a routine and you're sure to get a routine. Today we take a rare lunch break since the work has driven us ravenous. We'll go out and start on the other side of the roof so we can finish it all by tomorrow afternoon and then take off Sunday and travel, frolic, hike, search out the bookshops, byways, even strangers, and say "hello." We give ourselves, if we're lucky, one day off a week.

Yesterday -

Changed horses at the last minute yesterday morning - 4AM - and took the new Tacoma pickup, which I call the Bronco.  We were gone by 5 and in the Berkshires, southern level, Stockbridge town to be exact (where Alice's Restaurant was, sung by Arlo Guthrie, I ate there once upon a leafy time), where I used to see Norman Rockwell cross the quiet streets very early in the morning on my way as a teenager to work the family lumberyards with a roving manager. I was his roving sidekick. 5 lumberyards, one a day for us, quite a mutt & jeff team. Rockwell with his pipe, debonair hat, and the New York Times under his arm. That's what he was walking for. A classic gentleman. It's 7:30 and chilly when we arrive in the town.

Now the town is summer-tourist crazy, bustling, loud, way too much traffic storming through for a town its size. Susan used the bathroom she likes from the fanciful Red Lion Inn (50 years ago my father was flagged down for a speeding ticket right at this corner, four kids in the backseat) while I got the bicycles out from the back of the short pickup. They fit like sardines, but they fit. And we rode for a good hour around all the side street neighborhoods with good homes, none too fancy, and then a deeper ride through the back gardens of Austin Riggs, the expensive mental institution. James Taylor was stationed there when I was that boy passing through. The rumor at the time was his heroin addiction, who knows? When he got out he played a concert, large as jesus, up the road in Lenox and I was there for Sweet Baby James.

By 9 we were at the used book shop we love, and its owner a real tireless book lover out of Manhattan long ago, in her 70s, with a classic eye and so many books I need to be there almost all of a day. So we were. The owner says, and she has a sweet way of saying it, "I love you visiting, but you take my best books." I smile back to this Londoner (native home) and say, "Well, I can't very well take your worse books." She laughs and agrees. Susan worked finding books and I also asked her to just sit out in the sun and partake there. No complaints. I worked the premises. Good stuff. Nuts in the cheeks. Winter fuel. It will also appease us from any appetite to head back down to the Berkshires in a week to a library book sale we hardly ever miss in Lenox. This year we'll miss it, having spent our wad here, and work instead in buttoning up the chapel construction. I have stone work to get to.

So while I'm finishing up, Susan in the sun, and this place is off the beaten track 5 miles from a tar road, the outer Berkshires, I see a very old fellow and know who it is instantaneously, hobbled horribly and being helped from his silver Honda by his male companion, a good and patient man, holding the old fellow up, with his cane, soft comfortable shoes, who looks at me square in the face as I approach and I look at him squarely and say, "A lovely day." Meaning the sun. He seems to agree with a nod and goes back to figuring out how to cross the earth. And I mean he's in very very rough shape moving. Susan, sitting in the sun, was surprised the man was in such bad condition yet had the wherewithal to have immediate attention onto her when he got himself, with help, out of the car. He was going to get inside the tiny book packed building and get plunked down into a comfortable wooden chair up front near the checkout counter and his friend was going to bring him a box of old postcards and John Ashbery was going to wheeze a bit and catch his breath looking over this postcard collection. I've been reading him all my life. We're nothing alike but he's my sort of man of letters. And I felt fortunate to have been with him for a moment today.

Susan later asked before we left, "Don't you want to say something to him?" I do but I shouldn't. He's at a point in life of just getting from one place to another is a dog-team effort. Leave him be to relax.

We drove home the three hours through the old roots and tangled roads of back lots and farmlands. I love the drive back to my old home place. . .in the Berkshires, and I can see it's only a matter of time my other home place, Vermont, will also be overrun.

"summertime" photo 2014  © bob arnold

Ashbery is very frail, and also edging toward 90 years of age (b. 1927), and I mean he should have been carried from the car and into the used book hamlet (which is his familiar, well welcomed by the owner etc) but there is a admirable determination on his part to get from point A to point B with his cane. I couldn't help myself to be right there, in my own familiar (the rural setting) with a man who meant a great deal to me since the age of 15 when I was discovering his poetry, art essays, and translations goodness sakes the same time I was discovering Ted Enslin, Cid Corman, James Koller, Janine Pommy Vega, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac and Hayden Carruth. Here is, essentially, the genius of the NY School, Frank O'Hara, a pal, later Ted Berrigan, all the guys. The guys that helped save my young life. I'll regret I didn't say something more than "hello" which I at least did, eye to eye, because I am capable of also regretting that I bothered him if I did go ahead and make the plunge. Better to be moderate, since I'm often anything but with an endurance and at least a wish at taking on the day.

(letter to John Phillips, 16 august 2014)

20th CENTURY WOMAN ~

 

 

Lorna Gibb

The Extraordinary Life of Rebecca West

Counterpoint 2014

MARGARET WALKER ~

Margaret Walker
Fields Watered With Blood
Critical essays on Margaret Walker
ed. Maryemma Graham
The University of Georgia Press

GARY SOTO ~

Gary Soto
What Poets Are Like
Sasquatch Books

VINCENT SOBOLEFF IN TLINGIT COUNTRY ~

A Russian Photographer in Plingit Country

Vincent Soboleff in Alaska

by Sergei Kan

University of Oklahoma, 2013

http://www.oupress.com/ECommerce/Book/Detail/1738/a%20russian%20american%20photographer%20in%20tlingit%20country

CLAES OLDENBURG ~

edited by Achim Huchdorfer, Maartje Oldenburg,

Barbara Schroder

Museum of Modern Art, 2013

 

START WITH THE TREE II ~

Get the first sheet plumb, straight and right and then move down the line using the spruce strapping for fastening.

Yep, ugly steel roofing for the siding. Not to worry I have a plan after we re-paint it all. The sheets go up quickly, tighten down and button up by screws, and it's nasty stuff cutting through for windows but windows are worth any work. These two I found years ago at a church rummage sale $1 each.

The usual bracing, wood scaffolding and interior of the chapel garage and outer base stone foundation. We had to hand fill in two feet of dirt, bark, leaf fill before we got to the finish surface of a loose stone base.

Steel walls now all on, windows open, blue blue blue.

The look to the front of the house yard from inside the big bay garage.
I like to look through my buildings from one side of the building to the other
side and into the yard. Fuller world.

The dream hatched and started — a lean-to bay garage for the pick up truck. Sawmill'd spruce has been delivered by CJ in Halifax, Vermont, stickered up and drying but I begin cutting on rafters just a day after the lumber is delivered and unloaded by CJ and I talking about old times.

Counting how many more rafters to go. All attached to the upper wall studs and then a 2 x 6 support plate underneath. Bottom half is western spruce lumber which is nothing like it used to be; the lean-to and all the upper rafters will be local spruce cut off a hillside in West Leyden, Massachusetts.

Friend wood-frog has been with me ever since I started the job and I watch out he doesn't get harmed. 
You can see he also watches me.








Just the first strokes to completing a notch, pencil scratches and messages








The lean-to almost complete — just a few more angle braces to knock in and get measured exactly — a truck has to fit in here and the doors have to open.

Keep the back wall open for the lush sight of ferns

photos 2014  © bob & susan arnold

JOAN CHASE ~

Joan Chase

During the Reign of the Queen of Persia

New York Review of Books Classics

This stunning and persistent series continues to throw up surprises on each visit to the bookshop or library — the two places that are disappearing before our eyes! — imagine that.
All the titles are re-discovered gems from the gold digger's pan. Keep digging.

RURAL LIFE AND THE NEIGHBORHOOD (FORDING) ~

The covered bridge is out for awhile. . .okay.

But this oldest bridge in the world is in service.


__________________________________________

We were up in the village the other day, by fording the river,  carrying our bicycles over on my shoulder and using a stone walkway to see how things were going at the covered bridge, plus to get a feel of the village (a little desolate), and to visit with our oldest friend in the valley 75 years long in the village and pretty distraught at what is happening to the covered bridge. A bridge she has lived beside since the age of ten. Tears rushing to her eyes that she bats back with that old yankee determination. Once upon a time her father bought up most of the houses in the village as a gift to our friend's mother, who loved the trees. The huge maples and elms. It was a long time ago.

She spends most of the visit wanting to know the latest news, and because of things, she has a way now of elegantly and smoothly wading into a private pool of her own and gazing at my wife with such a look of love that one could say it's only with those not of this world. And then she looks over to me. I've been with those having started to leave this world and I wasn't aware of then what I am aware of now. It lasts a good long minute of the gazer soaking in an aesthetic unknown to all of us caught up in our daily routine and better health. They are in a nether world, and they do see things. They come from places and a time and memories that are invaluable. If we're really paying attention, they're showing us what we're missing.

Viewing the Selectboard meetings of late, which remains a grand testimony to the democratic voice, I got to view an old neighbor of mine I haven't seen in a decade, fight for the very good cause of recycling. He came well prepared, was polite and spoke his piece and everyone else was polite. Maybe something will come of it. I liked it that this old neighbor then sat through the discussion on the Green River covered bridge since he once drove over this bridge for years and years and certainly a bit of his life is threaded and tied up in those old darkened beams.

It shouldn't be lost on anyone that there are a lot of bright, experienced and knowledgeable people attending these meetings on the covered bridge — all walks of life. Construction workers, large machinery operators, the fire chief, town road commissioner, surveyors, loggers, secretaries, teachers, physicians, businessmen, farm stock, manual workers, carpenters, and they all have many thoughts in their heads on what might be the most productive move to make on the restoration of this covered bridge.

Some I also call "slam and bangers," and sometimes they're in charge, god forbid, because restoration on a covered bridge is anything but slam and bang or rush to judgment, or 'hurry in a road and while you're at-it, hurry in a new bridge.' There's nothing at all wrong with "slam and banging" in the right place, right tools, right job. However, a covered bridge, a hidden valley aura, homes tucked in and around hill and dale, slipstreams and grassy spurs, is all about patience and surgical cuts and real conversation not to the benefit of our way of life, but to the benefit and continuation of Green River valley's way of life.

It seems lost on some that Green River isn't Guilford which isn't Greenfield. Just as Old Deerfield, Massachusetts isn't Deerfield, Massachusetts even if the former sits in the palm of the hand of the latter. They're two different species, architectures, tones and ways of life, and varied minds and persuasions and mutual respect over decades with the citizenry has made it work. It takes people that understand preserving a landscape and its way of life takes a preservation of the mind amongst all the people. Or else you have trouble.

I watch many good minds at work at these covered bridge meetings that could have easily been the sort of minds and brawn that would have been there to rebuild the first bridge that went down before the covered bridge went up. Yes, there was another bridge there long ago before our current one and it took them no time to build our covered bridge because they needed it and they wanted it and the way it was built shows they most definitely had a preservation of the mind. All without electricity, engines, or gasoline.

Since Green River is not Guilford, and never has been Guilford, but its own hamlet, and we gladly pay our taxes to Guilford and don't at all mind being governed by Guilford, it's up to Guilford to understand you don't change a valley shape, its river, the covered bridge, and a way of life to suit the needs of Route 5 Guilford or Guilford Center Road. That would be arrogance on Guilford's part. It's with hope that Guilford's brain trust understands, with fraternity, we have a treasured pocket in the corner of the town map and we aim to keep it that way. It's going to take work on everyone's part, and it's going to take work and always patience on the villagers' part, and yes the twain will meet if its meant to. This will mean a regular dump truck and plow (like Harvey drove for years) and other service vehicles abiding to the wholesome construction of the valley, its river and the covered bridge. They were all here first. Respect your elders.

There are at least two defined and well-maintained access roads for folks on the west side of the bridge (where I live) when the covered bridge needs repairs and things are closed down. We're fortunate. We're very lucky to have such detours, since one route slides right by the beauty of the Weatherhead Hollow Pond. I've seen it for almost 50 years and I'm not sick of it yet. I also have a business that demands immediate attention and mail order and I've seen no hiccup or reason to complain about the service continued by both UPS and Fed Ex out to my place. They come through. And we get to Holly in West Brattleboro to ship our mail because that's what we have to do. And yes we pay extra on gasoline and it's expensive and none of that at all has to do with the covered bridge being opened or closed.

When the covered bridge is closed it shows us what we're going to miss, and oh what a living lesson that is.

The solution to the covered bridge is to build no new modern bridge at all! Keep the new low load limit on the covered bridge, rehab it to include a modified opening that prevents larger vehicles from passing through it and limit it to passenger cars only. Build the Old Mill bypass after the route is combed over by the engineers for feasibility and there's our heavy traffic road. Money spent will go to landowners (money in local pockets) instead of a mammoth salary raised for a new bridge, whether temporary or permanent, it's all the same nightmare.

[ BA ]




Here are some photographs gathered up over the last week of making the rounds of village life and restoration work around the covered bridge. 

One evening we took a bicycle ride the 2 miles up river to the covered bridge in the village

where work has begun on repairing the west stone wing

 
The large stone removed and new ground being excavated and ready for rebuild.

Close-up of the west concrete abutment and where the next trouble is hidden.

One of the workers excavating by hand under the concrete . . .

. . .and with his Smart Phone taking photographs to best see and locate the trouble.

The bridge was closed for use over two months, now it's at least three months.

A week later. . .now on the east side of the bridge (village proper side).
Note to town: our Fed Ex driver read this sign and surmised the bridge would be closed ONLY 
for one day, "July 28."

Green River Bridge approaching from Green River village.

The crew of Peter Welch laying in the west wing stone wall, using native rock (already there) with a few longer tie-rock delivered by flatbed truck.

A tie stone properly placed.

Man and machine. Look closely — there's long level and string level being used.

You can't come in for awhile.

Back Road Chalkie
for August
speaking the mind of a
backwoods, wily, once upon a time
Oregonian

photos 2014  © bob & susan arnold