Tag Archives: city lights

Beat Sushi, Japan Cottage Musings

Poets, Passports, Postcards in the Cascadia Consulate

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Burning sage, sharing global postal arrivals, variety of historic & alt passports, dropping needle on Ginsberg’s Howl, digressions on reconciliation, exhaustion & <3 for pals & family. 

Poets, Passports, Postcards in the Cascadia Consulate

Feeling weary, burning sage and obviously *not at his best* Dave meanders through topics including (not necessarily in this order):

Passports galore! From CCCP, Yugoslavia, USA, Albania, Romania and *alt* passports from The Matinee Band https://thematineemusic.com and Cascadia Bioregion https://cascasdiabioregion.org / with my *important photo choosing process* {and yes this dear old grain storehouse is the Setouchi Consulate of Cascadia}. Come get your passport stamped (just not right now). 

Membership for the Beat Museum (join/participate/visit http://kerouac.com) Leading to riffs about Jack Kerouac Alley, City Lights bookstore (http://citylights.com) and my photo tour of the North Beach, San Francisco environs.

First spins of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl on red vinyl (thanks ScurvyDawg) along with ephemera and riffs about the “6 Poets at 6 Gallery” (legendary reading) and how you can do something like that, i.e.: 1) make a poster and postcard, 2) invite folks, 3) pass a hat for wine. 

And *Loads* of postcards and packets from:

* Sri Lanka (see Rasika’s YouTube channel @CeylonRelation)

* Powell River, BC; Olympia (Greece, not Washington); Kentucky

* Estonia with items from Aqaba, Jordan (maybe you’ve heard from Lawrence of Arabia)

Musing about phone calls with Uncle Mark, buddies Scales in Montreal and Kemp in Vancouver, and pal Cam’s 50th birthday (I made a video with ukulele)

And even:

* Being good papa and hubby (so lucky! hot dinner and bath)

* Visitor Ted (mountain guide) and a new book case so filled with wonder! 

* Gord Downie’s Secret Path and final days

* First Nations reconciliation & shame of residential school (poem)

* DownieWenjack foundation (donate)

* Indian Residential School Survivor’s Society (donate)

* Brother on Diego Garcia and flashback to Ghandruk, Annapurna district, Nepal

* Miracle of Death” and being weak and making art through the transition

* Larry’s Dark Star Ranch and not knowing whether a particular beast is an Elk or a Deer (indeed! we collectively know so little)

Other rambling meanderings about feeling a bit exhausted from this year of house renovation, firewood (first fire and making firestarters) and getting adorable son Ichiro into school, plus so many medical appointments and endless paperwork to get properly settled. Whew.

How to find my address: tip = anywhere/everywhere.

Yes I do send a lot of postcards. You can join the club if that’s of interest ($5 gets you a piece of handmade art each month) https://daveostory.com/shop 

Plus thanks for Banghi and Maddog for holding books and records (support book stores and humans)

So much, so little, such nothing and everything and anything. Settle in. 

Fondy, daveo, Tsuchida Cottage

PS tips of how to improve lighting and sound welcome (memo: there is no natural light in the barn, i want to make well-lit 2 camera videos with quality sound with as minimal processing (moving stuff and files around) as possible. hit me up with ideas

Helpful Quests, Libraries / Museums / Archives

Support: The Beat Museum

+ Beat Support +

Many of you likely noticed the campaign to help the venerable San Francisco institution City Lights bookstore “keep the lights on” and hooray, they rocketed past the $300,000 goal thanks to many small donations from around the world. Now, there’s a few other neighbours in the North Beach area to shine a light on, specifically “the Beat Museum” – an eclectic grassroots archive of artifacts from Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder and well… dozens of other luminaries who have influenced counter-culture, literature and music.

THE NORTH BEACH OF THE BEAT GENERATION IS IN GRAVE DANGER

To pitch in, you can buy a membership – especially handy if you live in the San Francisco area as it offers unlimited admission – those of us *anywhere else* can dig discounts on purchases (including mail order), exclusive content/interviews/events, and a membership card – I’m a sucker for membership cards!

Did you see a big North Beach neighbourhood round-up diary post I shared recently? Included a photo essay of many items on display including Allen Ginsberg’s typewriter (along with many other typewriters), Jack Kerouac’s jacket, Gary Snyder’s bits and pieces from Japan and so much more.

+ Their bookstore has a variety of rare additions, one-offs, special treats (I picked up a first edition of Allen Ginsberg’s Indian Journal on my visit).

So to recap, do one or several of the following:

* Go check out their website to see their mission and the big hearted folks running the show

* Purchase a membership (various levels/prices)

* Maybe buy yourself a little something nice, or a gift for someone else

* Kick them down some extra cash

* Sign up for their newsletter for campaigns & updates

* Spread the word to keep the goodness rolling

You got any questions or thoughts? Let me know.

And of course if you’re seeking unique Beat literature related content, I have dozens of podcasts, various essays, scrapbooks, maps, and so on for you to peruse.

Fondly, dave

PS shared respectfully knowing lots of folks are in tough financial situations and there’s lots of requests rolling around for various dire situations – in spirit of solidarity, safety, and abundance.

Field Notes, Libraries / Museums / Archives, Typewriters

Exhibit: Beat Museum & environs / SF, 2018 / feat. Allen’s Organ, Jack’s Jacket, Gary’s Japa-cap and Beat Typewriters

Gallery 5 Comments

Along a ramble…

Along the wanders, I found myself in San Francisco, really mostly in Pacifica, one of my favourite hideaways and just south of the city… but anyway, ventured into SF proper to (finally) get some time at the Beat Museum and wow, what a great job these folks are doing. As such, a few notes and artifacts from the museum and history dripping neighbourhood for your amusement and my memory.

Inadequate backgrounder…

Now I could go on and on about the importance of *the Beats* connecting literary traditions, sparking countercultures leading to the revolutionary “pranksters“ to the *hippies* (for lack of a better term), punks (no I’m not talking mohawks here), indie-making artists of all medium, everything… while also looking back to Whitman, cummings (sic), WCW, Wolfe, Twain, Thoreau, Dostoevsky… you get the general gist.  Or what I’m trying to see is wide-thinking, free-roaming, do it yourself souls sharing empathy for others, breaking conventions to find out who you really are and then manifesting the distilled results t into one’s own life which infuses your own soul, then effectuates inspiration in others – also (critically) this ain’t always pretty, rarely is. That’s not the point.

Work in progress…

Anyhow, the Beat Museum was (maybe is) undergoing some construction as the building needs an earthquake-resistant upgrade, – I’ve shared some various fundraising campaigns and podcast riffs about their history over the years in this archive maybe you’ve come across and supported their noble efforts… but anyway, the building was surrounded by scaffolding in a bit of commotion and for a guy like me has easily sensory overload it, it could easily be intense but I stepped in and disappeared for an afternoon amongst the curated exhibits.

This is not some fancy-pants museum, this is a grassroots effort with everything done by intention and in an attentive spirit. I took some crappy snapshots along the way just to remember for my own memory as i wander far and wide and sometimes the twist and turns get a little too quick for me to process real time in my noggin.

Artifacts and abstractions…

note: There is a little mini-theatre room looping a film (was it “Pull My Daisy? It’s all a bit hazy now a few countries later), which pleased me for the visual abstraction of Beat life as well as regrouping in a small / dark / cozy room.

Notable artifacts include:

“referee shirt” Neal Cassady famously wore while driving Furthur, the Merry Prankster bus

a plaid wool jacket Kerouac wore (I’ve had one just like it)

Continue reading Exhibit: Beat Museum & environs / SF, 2018 / feat. Allen’s Organ, Jack’s Jacket, Gary’s Japa-cap and Beat Typewriters →

Writing Life

Gary Snyder: Interview with Junior Burke / Naropa Institute

interesting interview about politics, nature, culture and his contemporaries, by noted poet and personal hero, Gary Snyder

Gary Snyder: Interview with Junior Burke

Re: Self-sufficiency

Can you change the oil in your car yourself? Do you know how to change the oil filter? Do you have a tool kit available? Do you have a tool kit that has several types of pliers, Phillips screwdrivers and slotted screwdrivers? And there is a lot else. To be a self-sufficient human being at this point in history means you need to know a few things, and you can’t always — especially if you are not rich — rely on calling up somebody to come and fix it for you and charge you a lot of money. I am not talking about knowing how to grow your own food or how to cast lead to make your own bullets or something like that, although that would be relevant at times; but just what everybody has to know. My older son, Kai, who lives up in Portland, is forty-three now… He grew up on the farm in the country, or whatever we call it, and he said to me just a couple years ago: “You know, almost none of my friends my age understand what I am talking about when I say I have got to do this with my engine, or I am going to tune up my weed-whacker, or I have got to do some more plumbing, or I have got to get a proper snake for the drain. They never learned anything about fixing thing, or about tools.” Everybody lives in a house, okay? So everybody should be able to do something with their house.

## Continue reading Gary Snyder: Interview with Junior Burke / Naropa Institute →

Writing Life

Ferlighetti: I never wrote Beat poetry (etc) via SF Gate (for LF’s 90th birthday)

Ferlinghetti: I never wrote Beat poetry. Wide-open poetry (is) what Neruda told me in Cuba “I love your wide-open poetry’ 

##

Catching up with Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Heidi Benson, Chronicle Staff Writer , Published Thursday, March 19, 2009

Excerpt:

Q: When you were named San Francisco’s first poet laureate in 1998, you spoke of the damage to the culture caused by the yawning gap between the city’s rich and poor. Have your worst fears been borne out?

A: When I arrived in the city, the citizens seemed to have an island, considering San Francisco a kind of offshore republic, founded by gold miners and gold diggers, cast-off seamen and vagabonds, railroad barons and rogue adventurers and ladies of fortune. What with the electronic revolution and the Information Age, we have joined the rest of the world.

Oldies such as myself talk about the good old days with nostalgia since that was when they were young and beautiful (and full of testosterone).

 

Q: You served as a ship’s commander in the Pacific during World War II. What’s the most important thing you learned in the Navy?

A: In four years at sea, I learned that the sea is a monster and can turn on you at any time. Seeing Nagasaki made me an instant pacifist.

Q: How have the concerns of poets changed since you began writing?

A: In the social revolution of the 1960s, the chant was “Be here now.” Today with television, e-mail and especially cell phones, it’s “Be somewhere else now.”

Q: Your favorite 19th century American poet?

A: Walt Whitman, of course. He gave voice to the people and articulated an American populist consciousness.

Q: Why do you prefer the term wide-open poetry to Beat poetry?

A: I never wrote “Beat” poetry. Wide-open poetry refers to what Pablo Neruda told me in Cuba in 1950 at the beginning of the Fidelista revolution: Neruda said, “I love your wide-open poetry.”

 

He was either referring to the wide-ranging content of my poetry, or, in a different mode, to the poetry of the Beats. Wide-open poetry also refers to the “open form” typography of a poem on the page. (A term borrowed from the gestural painting of the Abstract Expressionists.)

Q: Can writing be taught?

A: It has to be taut.

Q: Is texting poetry?

A: It can be.

Q: You’ve always been an activist, as well as an artist. What do you advise activists who are complacent now that a new, seemingly more enlightened administration is in charge?

A: The dictatorial reign of George the Second almost destroyed our civil liberties as well as our economy.

We shall now see whether an “enlightened” administration can defeat Washington, D.C.,’s culture of corruption. The press has given socialism a bad name, falsely equating it with Soviet Communism. What is needed today is a form of civil libertarian socialism in which all democratic civil rights are fully protected.

What with shrinking energy resources and radical climate change, a worldwide planned economy is needed. Why won’t any politician even whisper it?

Q: In the upcoming film of “Howl,” James Franco will play Allen Ginsberg. Who is playing you?

A: Charlie Chaplin.

Q: Who is the love of your life?

A: Life itself is the love of my life.

Q: What’s the secret of your beautiful skin?

A: Genetics.

Writing Life

Kerouac & Snyder at Mavericks via Mill Valley Historical Society

Wanna travel in Kerouac’s steps without all the mountain-y work? The house he and Gary Snyder lived in (as detailed in Dharma Bums) is gone but the folks around suggest the ghosts are there, hanging out, waiting for a yabyum.

Keep reading…

The Mill Valley Historical Society 
Original link broken | Archived Link paste follows for educational and historical use

Jack Kerouac – A Homestead Headlines Article by Chuck Oldenburg, March, 2002

Now and then, strangers knock on Maverick’s door at 370 Montford. They want to see where Jack Kerouac used to live. The house is on Homestead’s open space land which Maverick maintains. He has lived there since 1966.

A 1916 map shows that Anton S. Perry owned the 1.07 acre lot at 370 Montford. He lived in the existing house and milked cows twice a day on the Dias ranch across the valley. In the 1930’s, Tony also worked part-time maintaining Three Groves and Stolte Grove just as Maverick does today. Tony built a shack up the hill near the back of the lot close to Pixie Trail.

In 1956, the old Perry house was occupied by Locke McCorckle, a poet/carpenter. He and his family lived frugally, considering themselves refugees from American consumerism. Locke’s brother-in-law, also a carpenter, converted the shack into a habitable cabin. Locke invited Gary Snyder to stay there. Gary named it Marin-An.

Gary and Locke were beat generation poets and writers who hung out with Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Kenneth Rexroth, William Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Gregory Corso and Jack Kerouac.

In the spring of 1956, Gary invited Jack to join him at Marin-An for rent-free peaceful living. They both took Buddhism seriously. Jack Kerouac describes the site and his experiences there in “The Dharma Bums.” Poetry readings, meditations, serious discussions and co-educational picnics and parties, always with lots of wine and sometimes with nudity. Gary left on May 15, 1956 for a monastery in Japan. His going away party, which lasted three days, was pretty wild. It is described in “The Dharma Bums.”

Jack wrote “The Scripture of the Golden Eternity ” before he left Marin-An on June 18, 1956 to take a fire lookout job in northwest Washington. In December 1956, “On the Road” was accepted for publication, almost six years after he wrote it. In 1957 he wrote “The Dharma Bums.”

The cabin was condemned in 1961 as a fire hazard and demolished. Maverick rehabilitated the house to accommodate his family. In the early 1970’s, the property became part of Homestead’s open space. Some consider it a sacred site with ghosts of the beat generation and Jack Kerouac.