MAGGIE'S FARM ~

I had to let a week go by to soak up the good soap of Bob Dylan's appearance at the Grammy Awards on February 13, 2011. It's always a surprise when he wants to show up.

With opening acts by Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers, these multistring instrument virtuosos — part hillbilly (but not)/part good craze wonder — were the ideal decoration for Dylan performing one more rendition of one of his classic tunes from the 60s. The very tune he used once upon a time (Newport '65) to shake up another sedate audience who were expecting a folk musician and instead they got themselves a rock 'n' roller.

During this same night, on the same stage, Mick Jagger would flaunt in high-strut, a song for Solomon Burke. A great number. Burke was also, invisibly, all over Dylan's "Maggie's Farm", since he covered it in 1965 on the flip-side of his hit "Tonight's the Night". This release by Burke was even prior to Dylan releasing the song as a single. Back in the golden age of 45s. Back when one or two songs were quite enough, played over and over and over again.

On this night Dylan stepped forth past a fire line set-up of these hillbilly musicians — caps and beards and grins, strings and bows perched at-ready — blasting behind him with the greatest of glee as he took a stance, reminiscent of maybe Al Jolson, a song a poem a plea of heralding disgust and revenge. Maybe even with some courtesy of forgiveness. At the closing he went to play his harmonica and heard it was backwards, flipped it in hand with wicked charm, and finished one more time on earth.

In the audience Neil Young and some others gave the act a standing ovation.

MAGGIE'S FARM

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
No, I aint gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
Well, I wake up in the morning
Fold my hands and pray for rain
I got a head full of ideas
That are drivin' me insane
It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
No, I aint gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you're havin' a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother more.

I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more
No, I aint gonna work for Maggie's pa no more
Well, he puts his cigar
Out in your face just for kicks
His bedroom window
It is made out of bricks
The National Guard stands around his door
Ah, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's pa no more.

I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more
No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more
Well, when she talks to all the servants
About man and God and law
Everybody says
She's the brains behind pa
She's sixty-eight, but she says she's fifty-four
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's ma no more.

I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
I aint gonna work on Maggie's farm no more
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They say sing while you slave and I just get bored
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

zooomr.com

albania : popartmachine.com

EARTH ~

Warm day and we shot out of the house for the first time in months. Been burrowed in the woods.

Went wayward and visited one art museum, floating through an exhibit on Tibetan modern art, plus some favorites like Remington's painting "Shotgun Hospitality" — three Indians in blankets, one white settler, all holding rifles. Knowing how to hold rifles.

Bookstore, cafe, walked around. I took photographs.

Got back to Brattleboro before 8 and went to catch Carson in a band opening for a country swing sort of ensemble from North Carolina we were drawn to: Woody Pines.

The lead singer looked and acted quite a bit like Buddy Holly. It wasn't just the glasses, there was a genuine storyteller's demeanor and appeal to all parts of his playing — a cross blend of country-swing, traditional (fine Hank Williams cover) and their own material. Three guys on gorgeous stand-up bass, mandolin, guitars, hearty kazoo, and nicely torqued neck harp playing.

Many young women showed up, slinky and sisterly, dancing with each other on the dance floor. A sure sign things were heating up.

Sweetheart and I watched like two cats curled up, heads swaying. We bought the band's CD because it was the right thing to do. They said thank you, we did too.

Drove home with a moon as big as our house.

Go see Woody Pines if they hit your town. They've got a great story about having their van breakdown 30 miles south of Memphis on Highway 61. Last seen, they were carrying all their instruments with them down the highway.

FUNNY THINGS: while on stage, between songs, the friendly mandolin player for Woody Pines asked down to the dance floor, "Whatever happened to Howard Dean?" Referring to Vermont's former governor who some feel went off the deep-end while running for President. For some reason none of the young people at the concert had any of idea what the musician was asking. He waited and smiled and then asked, "You do know who Howard Dean is. Right?" No reply.


WOODY PINES has a lead singer by the name of "Woody Pines" who looks, somewhat sounds, and has all the get-up-and-go of Buddy Holly. Uncanny. I told him so later. He said, "Oh, yeah, the glasses", touching them for a moment and seeming a little rattled by my observation. I said, "No, not just that; it's your sound." He's young and turned away from me back to the young. Bob Dylan once wrote about seeing Buddy Holly when Dylan was a squirt, unknown, and he stood up front right at the stage edge near his hero's feet. He claims Holly looked straight down at him. It was as if he were bequeathed by the heart of rock 'n' roll. Watching Woody Pines I felt like I was seeing their great grandchild.

EARTH ~

FROM THE ZURAU APHORISMS

1

The true path is along a rope, not a rope suspended way up in the air, but rather only just over the ground. It seems more like a tripwire than a tightrope.



6

The decisive moment of human development is continually at hand. This is why those movements of revolutionary thought that declare everything preceding to be an irrelevance are correct — because as yet nothing has happened.



11/12

The variety of views that one may have, say, of an apple the view of the small boy who has to crane is neck for a glimpse of the apple on the table, and the view of the master of the house who picks up the apple and hands it to a guest.



20

Leopards break into the temple and drink all the sacrificial vessels dry; it keeps happening; in the end, it can be calculated in advance and is incorporated into the ritual.



22

You are the exercise, the task. No student far and wide.



30

Goodness is in a certain sense comfortless.



35

There is no possessing, only an existing, only an existing that yearns for its final breath, for asphyxiation.



36

Earlier, I didn't understand why I got no answer to my question, today I don't understand how I presumed to ask a question. But then I didn't presume, I only asked.



41

The disproportion of the world seems fortunately to be merely numerical.



42

To let one's hate — and disgust-filled head slump onto one's chest.



48

Belief in progress doesn't mean belief in progress that has already occurred. That would not require belief.



52

In the struggle between yourself and the world, hold the world's coat.



62

The fact that the only world is a constructed world takes away hope and gives us certainty.



69

Theoretically there is no consummate possibility of felicity: to believe in the indestructible in oneself, and then not to go looking for it.



77

Dealings with people bring about self-scrutiny.



78

The spirit only becomes free at the point where it ceases to be invoked as a support.



90

Two alternatives: either to make oneself infinitesimally small, or to be so. The former is perfection and hence inaction; the latter a beginning and therefore action.



93

No psychology ever again!



95

Evil is sometimes like a tool in your hand, recognized or unrecognized, you are able, if you have the will to do it, to set it aside, without being opposed.



96

The joys of this life are not its joys, but our fear of climbing into a higher life; the torments of this life are not its torments, but our self-torment on account of this fear.

Schocken Books

WITH ME ~

Björk & PJ Harvey at the 1994 Brit Awards

EARTH ~

AT THE COUNTRY WEDDING



They don’t tinkle

Champagne glasses

With their spoons here

And only the old folks

Are sitting down.

A country western group

Has lugged its equipment upstairs,

And later today and into the evening

This young married couple

Will learn the sweet

And rotten joys

From the masters of it —

Dancing fathers and mothers,

Lonesome aunts and yodeling uncles.

But for the moment

Paper plates are heaped with

Homemade ham, biscuits and beans

And all a few people want

Is a kiss,

So tapping on the side

Of a beer bottle with a knife

Quiets the whole grange hall down

Into love.







© Bob Arnold
from Where Rivers Meet
(Mad River Press)


photo © bob arnold

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November 17—The Dow Closes Up 10437

Nothing grows in this pasture of starlight, not crow

nor bluejay lingers on the spot where a man was beaten

we could make a map, undertake a series of calculations,

“do something big for America,” consider

the greatest happiness for the greatest number,

a foundation for laws, a justice,

carve a little space on the sidewalk, pour concrete

10 books wide, tell the story

from pulpit to press, from parable to ordinance,

bless the weeds and honeysuckle fronting the fence.

THE BEST BASKETBALL PLAYER, EVER ~

BILL RUSSELL


ON & OFF

THE COURT




Bill Russell receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom 15 February 2011

“Bill Russell, the man, is someone who stood up for the rights and dignity of all men.’’ He marched with King; he stood by Ali. When a restaurant refused to serve the black Celtics, he refused to play in the scheduled game. He endured insults and vandalism, but he kept on focusing on making the teammates who he loved better players, and made possible the success of so many who would follow. I hope that one day, in the streets of Boston, children will look up at a statue built not only to Bill Russell the player, but Bill Russell the man.’’

~ President Barack Obama







proxy.espn.go.com
boston globe

HELLBOUND ~

AP—Fort Wayne, Indiana

Nudged by Big Brother Bob, one of our fair residents, George Kalamaras, ventured out in the arctic cold this evening to see one of his favorite bands in rock & blues history. It had been 38 years since George had first seen Savoy Brown in Indiana at the Hammond Civic Center, where they headlined an incredible show with Status Quo and the original Spirit, featuring Randy California and Ed Cassidy. While not the original line-up of Savoy Brown this evening, the band still featured legendary guitarist Kim Simmonds and a solid band.

According to an anonymous source, dog-tired from a grueling week, and in the midst of preparing for another next week, Kalamaras flirted with the idea of not attending tonight’s show. However, Bob Arnold of Longhouse Publishers provided George with the necessary nudge, full of unabashed Leo fire, to kindle enthusiasm at the end of a tiring week. This nudge, coupled with the revelation from George’s wife Mary Ann that smoking is banned in bars in Fort Wayne, and fueled by chai tea at a local Indian restaurant, was enough to allow Kalamaras to break free of the chains of his otherwise cozy hermit-cave.

It is no secret that the Fort Wayne poet prefers quiet and solitude. He’d been torn whether to attend the concert of one of his favorite bands. Part of the complexity involved not returning home from campus until 7:00 p.m., needing to make dinner for his beloved beagle, Bootsie, and a promise to his wife to have dinner with her following her Friday evening class, in which she teaches poetry to a community group of adolescents each Friday evening at the Three Rivers Institute of Afrikan Art and Culture. It is reported that Kalamaras did not care to engage a bizarre juggling act just to listen to music on a blustery night in the Midwest.

However, our sources reveal that Kalamaras realized, when Arnold suggested going and leaving early, that he could indeed break the mold and could actually do something similar—that is, do the opposite. He could honor his commitments and attend the show late. Thus, fueled with spicy Indian tea, Kalamaras arrived at the 9 p.m. show at 11:00 and caught nearly an hour of an amazing set (at the reduced rate of $10 from the original asking price of $23), which had 63-year-old Kim Simmonds on his knees at one point perhaps 30 feet in front of Kalamaras during an 18-minute version of “Hellbound Train,” in which Simmonds played a glistening white flying-v guitar. Earlier, as Kalamaras traversed the parking lot on his way into the show, he heard the melodious funk of “Wang Dang Doodle” and knew he’d made the right decision to attend, especially when he walked in the door and saw Simmonds wailing on a sunburst Gibson hollow-body 335.

When Kalamaras had phoned the bar earlier in the evening, they’d promised that the band would play until 1:00 a.m., but according to an aging hippie who befriended Kalamaras after the show, the band apparently started early and thus ended a little early.

Still, an hour with the legendary blues band was enough to send Kalamaras into sheer ecstasy. His new friend even gave George a playlist, distributed by the band, after George approached the man following the show, asking what he’d missed. The man’s friend, seemingly stoned out of his mind, had been crying out for “Louisiana Blues” over and over near the end of the show, so George figured he could trust those dudes as they knew the older material. He was about to ask another freak, who left before he could, since George noticed he had a poster that Kim Simmonds had signed for him from an early Savoy Brown show in L.A. in the 60s featuring Delaney and Bonnie, as well as The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, a little-known band that is another favorite of Kalamaras (featuring Aynsley Dunbar of John Mayall fame).

Regardless, the two freaks befriended Kalamaras, although alcohol fumes from their breath nearly caused the poet to faint. Part of their bond was that Kalamaras had seen the band 38 years before, and one of the freaks had seen them 40 years earlier in Fort Wayne. Kalamaras had apparently missed “Poor Girl” and “Looking In,” both from the Looking In lp, his all-time favorite of the band, as well as “Train to Nowhere,” from another favorite, Blue Matter. Kalamaras, in seeing the playlist, was secretly relieved to see that the band did not feature other songs he would have kicked himself for missing, particularly tunes from Raw Sienna, A Step Further, Getting to the Point, Blue Matter, Shake Down (the first Savoy Brown lp, long out of print), and Looking In, although Kalamaras was fortunate to catch “Leavin’ Again” from the latter.

Kalamaras was delayed in arriving at the show, as he got lost on an old county road on this windy night, searching for the bar. One bonus was that he got to hear “Badge” on the car radio as he was back-tracking to find the bar, with George Harrison’s amazing bridge, and that set the mood for George to sink into his rock roots.

It has been reported that Kalamaras is now safely home, seeming to blend in quite easily back into his hermit-cave, ready to light a fire and read a good book—of course, with Bootsie Beagle at his side. We have received reports that he thanks his friend Bob Arnold for encouraging him to attend, and that he has said that he had realized that on some level he knew Bob would encourage him to dig out of his mole-hole and that is likely why he wrote Bob earlier this afternoon regarding his indecisiveness. It is also reported that another good friend, Ray Gonzalez, also encouraged him to attend a month or so back.

Kalamaras reportedly is curious why sometimes he needs a nudge to do some of his favorite things, but he has decided that he has had enough material to ponder this evening and simply wants to crawl back into his mole-hole after being out among 250 drunk people.

~ GEORGE KALAMARAS

SAVOY BROWN & FRIENDS OVER TIME ~

BONUS ~

kim simmonds: troyrecord.com

VALENTINE ~

drawing © bob arnold

HEARTS ~

Billie Holiday

WITH ME ~

Sweet looking Little Willie John (5 ft tall) was actually known for his short temper, drinking problems and would end up on a manslaughter conviction after a fatal knifing at a Seattle show in the mid60s. He served two years in Walla Walla at the Washington State Penitentiary where he died at age 30 of a heart attack. To this day it's in dispute just how the great one died. While on appeal in 1966 for the conviction, and momentarily out of prison, John recorded his last album Nineteen Sixty-Six which wasn't released until 2008. One more Bermuda Triangle moment in the music industry. Forty years didn't dim a thing ~ the album is pure gold. Born in Arkansas and raised in the Motor City on auto culture and gospel, Little Willie John cut his first record for the King label in 1955. Peggy Lee made his song "Fever" even more famous in 1958. James Brown would open shows for Little Willie John, known to his mother as William Edward John.

EARTH ~

DOUBLE NEGATIVE


You were standing on the quay

Wondering who was the stranger on the mailboat

While I was on the mailboat

Wondering who was the stranger on the quay

GIRL AT THE SEASIDE


I lean on a lighthouse rock
Where the seagowns flow,
A trawler slips from the dock
Sailing years ago.


Wine, tobacco and seamen
Cloud the green air,
A head of snakes in the rain
Talks away desire.


A sailor kisses me
Tasting of mackerel,
I analyse misery
Till mass bells peal.


I wait for clogs on the cobbles
Dead feet at night,
Only a tempest blows
Darkness on sealight.


I've argued myself here
To the blue cliff-tops:
I'll drop through the sea-air
Till everything stops.



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

from High Island
Richard Murphy
New and Selected poems
Harper & Row 1974

mailboat : good-times.webshots.com
photo © bob arnold

WITH ME ~

Sun Ra

As legend has it, Sun Ra (b. 1914~1993) was captured by aliens in 1952, taken to Saturn, where he was swept a musical mind and dexterity to return to earth and teach us, with "The Arkestra" (his orchestra of mindblowing and ever-changing musicians, including Marshall Allen and John Gilmore)
a cosmic equation.
I'm all for it.

Sun Ra & The Arkestra

bottom photo: Charles Shabacon

A VERY FINE BOOK (OR TWO) ~

Louis Ferrante made his name on New York streets as head man to a crew of hijackers for the Gambino Crime Family. When nabbed, he spent over eight years in some of America's toughest penitentiaries, where he read his first book and learned the writing trade. Unlocked, his memoir, was published from Harper Collins in 2009.

Les Miserables


In the early '90s, I was indicted by the FBI, Secret Service, and Nassau Country Prosecutor's Office, charged with heading my own crew in the Gambino Crime Family. After several years of court proceedings, I pled guilty. I'd serve my federal sentence first, followed by my state sentence.

At the beginning of my sentence my mind was mobbed up. I lived and breathed mafia life, the only life I knew. But something mysterious happened to me while serving my time. During a trip through solitary confinement, I began to think, and suddenly had regrets about the life I'd lived. With plenty of questions about the purpose of life and no one around to answer them, I turned to books. For me, it was a monumental discovery, opening up a new world to me. I'd finally found an escape from the hell of prison. I fell in love with reading, began to see things differently, and left the mob.

I was locked away with my books for over six years when at last the Federal Bureau of Prisons handed me over to the New York State penal system where I was to serve another two years. Before being sent to an upstate prison, I was locked up for several months in Long Island's Nassau County Hail. The joint was a real shit hoe. Dark, dirty, and damp. Mice and cockroaches. Rapists and molesters everywhere — creeps I didn't see much of in the feds.

Upon arrival, I was put in 72-hour lockdown, an isolation cell where every con is monitored to make sure he doesn't have any diseases than can spread around the prison. For a drug addict, it's a place to kick his habit, three days to clean the dope out of his system so he can function like the rest of us normal lunatics.

I was bored and depressed. I needed a book to lift me out of the gloom, but my books had been taken from me along with my few other belongings during the prison transfer. Time drags in jail; without something to read, every day feels like a week.

I was boxed up next to a young junkie who was kicking. He screamed and cried all night long. In the morning, he moaned that he was freezing. From where I lay in my cell, I could see his bare feet shivering. His legs were too long for his bunk; his feet hung off the edge, through the bars.

I asked him if he wanted my socks. He did, and I gave them to him. I've never forgotten how polite he was, his voice stuttering through chattering teeth as he thanked me repeatedly.

By the end of the second day, he had kicked the dope, and we were both released after the third day. Another lost soul I'd never see again. Much more than the violence, loneliness, and isolation, the countless lost souls you encounter is what truly establishes prison as a hell on earth. I often wonder how many of the lives I ran across have ended in tragedy.

After 72-hour lockdown, guards designate you to a tier block where you live along the general population. I anticipated the typical tier block bullshit. Every prison is filled with predators, cons looking to strong-arm some newjack who's visibly afraid and doesn't know the ropes. To overcome them, you have to prove yourself.

Sometimes, I had to prove myself in federal prison, but not usually. Most mobsters serve time in the feds. The mafia is a close-knit society, so I was well known in most fed joints. A mafia welcoming committee generally awaited me wherever I was sent. But there aren't mobsters in country jails, so no one knew me. Here, I was like anyone else.

It was early evening, shortly before lock-in, when I was released onto my tier block. A few gangbangers, probably Crips or Bloods, were playing cards. The chief Big Mouth said, "Yo, little man, come over here, I wanna ask you somethin."

I clenched my fists. "Who the fuck you callin' little man?"

Not the response Big Mouth had expected.

"Shit," he said, shaking his head, "thought you was a newjack."

"I'm down six years, motherfucker!" I jabbed a thumb into my chest. "You're new to me!"

I hated talking this way but knew when to turn it on. These punks were probably serving a county bullet, a ten-month sentence. To them, six years is an eternity; I had instant respect.

A short time later, I was locked in for the night. I tossed and turned, couldn't fall asleep. I was so lost without a book, my trusted means of escape. I wanted to read so desperately that I used the dim light shining in from the corridor to read the graffiti on the cinder blocks. It seemed every con who passed through my cell had scrawled an angry or bitter remark across the walls. I waited the entire night for the bars to open so I could visit the prison library in the morning.

Shortly after chow, the hack on duty gave me a library permit. I walked in, looked around, and was pleasantly surprised. Most prison libraries keep a stock of worn, musty, out-of-print books, usually the discarded leftovers from public libraries or someone's attic. This library had a whole section of classic literature in fair condition. Most of the titles I had already read, but just seeing them on the shelves gave me the same warm feeling as walking into a room and spotting a group of old friends. Dickens, Defoe, and the Bronte sisters. Stendhal, Dumas, and Cervantes. I felt at home, even in this hell.

The first classic I noticed that I hadn't yet read was Les Miserables. I knew what to expect from the author, Victor Hugo, since I'd read his Notre-Dame de Paris. I slid the paperback from the shelf — thick like a solid brick, an unabridged edition, nearly fifteen hundred pages. I liked the cover art, and the spine was wide enough for a small sketch of a street urchin holding a broom. I signed the book out and rushed back to my cell.

When I first discovered books, I was a slow reader and had to keep a dictionary close at hand. By now, I was able to devour a three-hundred page book in one day, seldom breaking to look up a word. Les Mis should've taken me about five days to finish.

Once I started, though, I began to slow my pace. I read pages and paragraphs over, sometimes chapters; Hugo's brilliance was something to be absorbed deliberately. I'd read plenty of histories about Napoleonic times, yet Hugo's ability to place me on the battlefield of Waterloo surpassed every historian's attempt to do the same. Hugo pointed out the many coincidences stacked up against Napoleon at Waterloo, and left the reader to contemplate the idea of natural justice, an idea I'd been toying with since discovering books and waking up to the many coincidences that led me to prison. I took note of how Hugo began and ended a chapter, how he created a conflict, and how magnificently he resolved it. I'd flip back and forth, finding where a thought began, tracing its development, and studying its conclusion. While still in federal prison, I began teaching myself how to write, mostly by examining the styles of great authors who've stood the test of time. Les Mis placed Hugo at the top of that list. Everything he knew about writing was stuffed into its pages.

Everything he knew about life, too. Though two hundred years separated Victor Hugo from me, not much had changed with regard to human nature. His characters were remarkably real. I could relate to all of them, particularly, of course, protagonist Jean Valjean, the convict trying to make good on a lost life.

Like Valjean, I escaped from prison. I was no longer in a cell. I was in nineteenth-century Paris. I walked its streets, visited its abbeys, and waded knee-deep through its sewer system. In Nassau County jail, we were locked up eighteen hours a day, and allowed to roam the tier block for the other six hours, with one hour of that time slotted for outdoor recreation. Cooped up for so long, cons normally race from their cells when the bars slide open. But I never left my cell, passing up that small dose of fake freedom for the real freedom Les Mis offered. Each night, I fell asleep with it on my chest. At dawn, I awoke to the little street urchin holding the broom; she swept away my depression. I didn't hear slamming bars, didn't feel cockroaches, or see any mice. I only heard, saw, and felt Hugo's characters and their emotions.

I didn't want the book to end. I stretched it out for as long as I could, about a month. Before placing it in the library's return bin, I flipped through the pages once more, stopping here and there to read a line, which brought to mind a section of the book that stayed with me. I wished Hugo had written a sequel, but some things are so perfect, they're better left alone.

About two years later, I was released from prison. I had served a total of eight and a half years. I had entered prison an aspiring gangster with ambition to rise in the Gambino Family. I returned home a book lover and writer.

Not long after my release, I was dating my future fiancee, a librarian and fellow bibliophile. We were browsing the shelves of a used bookstore, our favorite hobby, when I cam across that familiar spine with the little street urchin. I grabbed the book, and hurried to the register. At home, I placed it on my shelf, like a trophy.

WITH ME ~

Big Mama Thornton & Johnny Ace were a dream team tour.

Both hard drinkers, for awhile they shared the same recording label, Peacock, out of Houston where Thornton settled (and later the Bay region).

Thornton was with Johnny Ace on Christmas Day in 1954, back stage between sets at a Houston show, when the ever present .22 pistol Ace often fooled with appeared. Scolded for carelessly pointing the pistol at two women friends, Ace then held the pistol to his own head claiming it wasn't loaded and jokingly pulled the trigger.

He was buried in his birthplace Memphis at age 25.

Big Mama Thornton would storm the stage for thirty more years.

www.last.fm

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HARMONIPAN

Somehow they made quiet

------------while timber

never touched glass

-------------again and volatility

itself was for trading

-------------gold leaf

and honey

WITH ME ~

The heart & soul sound of Chicago blues, Little Walter played with Muddy Waters live and on recordings long after he had officially left the group. Born in Louisiana in 1930 and dead at age 37 in 1968 due to a blood clot to the heart — although this came about right after one more fight during a break at a nightclub on the Southside of Chicago. The feisty one. His sonic and gristle harp playing and voice had an aura that transfixed lesser blues and rock acts for decades. Little Walter was inducted into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008. About time.

photo: fotolog.com

NEW !

A new booklet from our press!

Head to our bookshop (always open) and get yourself one.

With a painting by Steven LaRose.


http://www.longhousepoetry.com

glow of doorbells

down Keean Street

lighting a path to home

SNOW ~ GETTIN' BY

1972 the deadliest blizzard recorded struck Iran, dumping upwards of 26 feet of snow. Approximately 4,000 people died, and some of the outlying villages had no survivors.







Could be worse!

North Dakota blizzard
March 9, 1966






mighty shoveler : weblogs.wgntv.com
chicago loop: getty
skiers : usnavyjeep.blogspot.com
d.c. : blog.usa.gov
railroad : www.netnebraska.org
walker : wischlist.com
plow : weather.thefuntimesguide.com
iran: emily younker
car : wbuf.noaa.gov car
dakota: wikimedia commons