Saturday, April 24, 2010

How to tell a story on this blog.

Circle "E" brand western boot. Circle E boots I thought Joe Erwin might be interested.

My wife says; “ everything that Ernie says is based on the truth, then he embellishes, exaggerates, changes things that don’t fit, and in the end he tells a great story that leads you to believe that something happened, but you are not sure what”. Just like that last sentence, that isn’t what she said at all, but I’ve heard her say something much like that statement, until in my mind, it becomes what she said. That is how “twice told tales” are passed down. Ancestors, become more heroic, battles become bigger, villains become more ruthless, and common thieves like Black Bart, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and others become, not common thieves, but adventurers bigger than life itself.

Today, people ride into the South Fork of the Eel canyon, wiggle around a little bit, find a place to drive themselves a stake, put up “No trespassing by God, this is my Land” signs on every edge of “Their Land”, then they make themselves comfortable, and start to look around them. They can’t help but love this wonderful place. They become curious about our history, and start to study. Soon, they read a story or two about some event, they take the story quite literally. They haven't heard all umpteen versions, like some of the people with residential seniority, but they feel that they need to express their outrage and horror.

They pass judgment with very little information, when it's probably more fun to learn most of the stories before passing judgment anyway. I was raised knowing that a good story was in the person telling it, and everybody's version was at least a little bit different, so it paid to just listen to the story, know that it was based on the truth, and wait for the next story, or the next telling. Black Bart may be one mans hero, and another mans common thief. Same with the early pioneers. Some were made out to be far better than they deserved, and some were made out to be far worse than they really were. The one thing that I found out in talking to the Old-Timers. You believed what they said, and the way that they said it. Most of them would admonish you that what they were telling you was the truth, and other people would tell you a different story, but theirs was the only true version. They would go so far as to point out that other people were “damn liars”.

So, I was raised listening to stories, leading them in the direction of things that I wanted to know, but I was always smart enough not to question the story teller, or I wouldn't get to hear any more “tall tales”.

When oral history is passed down from generation to generation, great becomes greater, big becomes bigger, small become smaller, until you end up with stories about giants, and wee people, and knights in shining armor killing maiden-stealing-dragons.

Evey telling of the tale is like telling somebody about a dream that you had. We all know that a dream makes no sense whatsoever, but when we try to tell somebody about it, we add continuity, we leave out the part that might embarrass us, and we add a few things here and there to make the dream sound better. After all, we are the only one that knows about the dream, so we tell our own story our own way.

I guess what I'm getting around to saying, is when you tell a story here, tell it your way. We want to hear YOUR version of the story, the way that you tell it, or the way that you heard it. Too many people won't tell their stories today because everybody is so quick to judge. The rules of this blog is that spelling doesn't count that much. Punctuation doesn't count that much. Colloquialisms are okay. For the readers, the rules are to be good listeners and DON'T interrupt, like my cousins did. They didn't get to hear half as many good stories as me.

After all, you might to hear a good story!

I heard that Joe Erwin has a cousin Naoma that knows some history about the Circle “E” ranch up panther gap way. As usual, I'm not bashful about asking questions. So, I would like to ask Naoma if she has ever found any arrowheads or Indian artifact on the ranch, and does she knows who were the first white settlers there.





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176 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am partly offended and only partly because Ernie has other cousins and surly wasn't talking about me. I do not interrupt people when they are talking. My dad would have kicked a mud hole into me for that infraction. The only times I can recall interrupting someone is when they want to tell me about a dream they had last night.

Oregon

Ernie Branscomb said...

Well, it wasn't you, and not necessarily a cousin. I have lots of cousins, that way nobody necessarily has to take the blame.

Ernie Branscomb said...

In fact, I always liked the way that you told a story. I remember that time that you was telling a girl that you liked to sing. She wanted to hear you sing, and you said: "Nope! It has to be a darn good song before I'll sing, and I just haven't heard any songs good enough lately"

Rose said...

ROFL

Idaho said...

Ernie,i s it true that when you were a kid you could drive your wagons across the river on the backs of the salmon?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Well Idaho, that's not quite true, but it comes close. My family tells a story about a bad winter where the pigs weren't getting enough to eat. My Great Grandfather Branscomb took the wagon down to the creek, parked it across the riffle and loaded it with soretail salmon. He cooked them in a whale rendering cauldron about three feet in diameter that was used to scald hogs for hair revoval during butchering.

I'd bet it was a long time getting the fish taste out of the hogs. But they fattened right up on the swill that Grampa stewed up for them.

Anonymous said...

Idaho, I ain't Ernie and never saw the salmon so thick they would hold up a wagon but old Bill B. told me when he was a kid they did take a wagon into the river and fill it with salmon using pitch forks. They used the salmon for fertilizer in their garden.
I do remember Ernie and I getting knocked down by salmon when we walked in the water. I don't remember what we were doing at the time though.

Oregon

Ernie Branscomb said...

We were poaching salmon, that's what outlaws did when we were kids. There wasn't a kid that I knew, back in the '50's, that hadn't caught an illegal salmon or two.

Salmon were much more abundant then. Even though the salmon don't spawn in the Eel River like they once did, I don't feel guilty. We didn't harm the spawning runs. The outlaws today are killing the river.. nuff said.

Robin Shelley said...

I know Oregon doesn't interrupt people when they are talking & I know he doesn't like to be interrupted when he is talking. I know this because he's told me many times & also because of the disgusted look he gives me every time I interrupt him. He doesn't seem to understand that I am hanging on his every word & get so excited over his stories that I just can't wait to jump in with my own comments or memories. Kind of like I do here. Anyway... I hope ya'll won't look at it as a reflection on my parents. I'm an embarrassment to them & to Oregon -ha, ha!

Anonymous said...

Dang!! The stories are getting thicker here than the old salmon runs.
I don't know how to tell a story like Ernie and Robin do. If my reckalections are good to listen to it is because they are true tales, not stories.

Oregon

\ said...

Our heritage of stories of dragons, wee people, giants, etc. should be understood as metaphors. They are meaningful in that way. To confuse them with history, and to take them literally, is ignorance.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Suzy, Suzy, Suzy. What we have here is a failure to communicate. All that we have left of history is “metaphors”. My point EXACTLY. Only a fool would believe the stories handed down for six or more generations, but fools do, then they make judgments about the early settlers based on one or two, possible tall tales.

Some historians use only “empirical evidence”, which means evidence from someone that saw history with their own eyes. As many tellers of tales will tell you some people are “damn liars”. I have read things from people, about themselves, that a little research will prove wrong, or at least cast a shadow of doubt on what they say. The “Giants, Wee People, and dragons” are stories based on some “truth”, then passed down through the centuries until we have legends of old, that our minds will not grasp.

Someone became “King Arthur and Guinevere”, because people of old wanted to believe that their ancestors were like that. Some people call them "legends", I just call it "Bullshistory".

\ said...

-failure to communicate? No Ernie, I understand perfectly what your view is, but i strongly disagree with it.

Ben said...

Ernie... Have you noyiced that hen an anthropologist recorded oral histories 100 years ago the stories have become "truth", but when we record an oral history today it is considered suspect... Weird.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Suzy disagrees with Ernie, Episode #397

J2Bad said...

I hate to do it, but someone has to speak up for the historians, since so many of the stories people tell are about what historians claim to believe. Sorry to disappoint anyone who likes the idea of disagreeing with historians more than the reality. Historians from 100 years ago might have believed that what anthropologists recorded back then was the truth, but you'd be hard-pressed to find one like that today. What historians really like is stories, and the more the better, so by all means keep spinning them.

\ said...

Suzy disagrees with Ernie, Episode #397

My friends say that i am very very patient Ernie, most ppl would have left you in the dust after disagreement 38 or 39... So yes, i agree Ernie, yes we disagree a lot. But you may have noticed that i don't ever object with any of the old bullshit history or old timer bs philosophies that you and some others here ramble on about, i rather enjoy the colorful names and happenings from 'back then' and how it can take me to another place and time and everything. It stimulates my imagination but i don't look for any "truth" to it. I find that it's good entertainment etc., but the bottom line is that it's just some "bullshit history". Which is cewl, don't misunderstand me, and a lot of the old pictures are cewl too, and as i said, i like most of these bullshistories that you relate (as stories) and so like J2bad said, keep spinnin'. But, it's when you start taking your self and your "history" too seriously, when you get almost religious about it and talk about it as though these old colorful tales could or should portray the "TRUTH", that's when what you say becomes suspect. As long as when you are rattling off your old statistics and so forth and so on about something that someone told you or you saw in an old brown newspaper clipping or in so and so's obituary and what not and wherefore about the number of this and that or what year that person did this or this person said this thing or murdered or married this or that person etc. and you are calling it bullshithistory i'm fine with it. I sorta see them as a kind of interesting little fragments of a larger multi-dimensional puzzle . . . but when one proclaims to have the "truth" of history, when all they actually have is no more truth than any other "historian" has, when all they have is merely one more collection of dates names times places etc, well, i am sorry but that is not EVEN close to the real truth of history and i'm afraid that's where Suzy must object.

Anonymous said...

i couldn't read thru all the BS,but my Daddy used to live out west of Covelo,where the Black Butte&Eel come together.he said the Salmon were so thick,the water would turn Black if you threw bait in!!!

Bad Gnome said...

When you go up in the Elk Mountains to fast and gather medecine, it is very important to leave offerings, tobacco is good, to the little people whose territory you are in. Medecine people take a companion to guard them as they are quite vulnerable on these journeys. There is quite a warning paragraph in Medecine Trails by Mavis McCovey, pg. 284.
It is a spiritual neccessity to both be aware of the little ones, their trails and nests for medecine people, like Mavis. The last portion of her book is very interdimensional, the writings of Casteneda came to mind.
Suzy once stated that we don't know the "Soul" of the Indians. There is more Indian soul in that Medecine Trails than any book I have read (to the degree that one can communicate "soul" through a book).

ps. there were also stories of Giants, and Water "Dragons" in her book.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Suzy, you are making me crazy. I just read everything that you said, and I can't find anything that I disagree with. All I want is peoples stories as they know and believe them. I'm not going to completely accept them as infallible. All I want is their version. And, of course I'm going to believe MY stories. Don't you believe yours??? My objection was to the things that people say about other people on the face value of somebodies "story". We all know that History cannot be 100% correct, and even when it is, we don't know the whole story, so what I object to is people judging others, based on bullshit that they don't know much about.

So what do you “strongly disagree with”? Are you sure that you are not my wife?

Ernie Branscomb said...

Bad Gnome
Thank-you for writing. You offer great wisdom. We know that the old stories about Wee People, Giants and Water Dragons were based on "Great Truth". The Indian people orally passed these stories down to us today. As each telling of the story is told, the teller adds their own “beauty” to the story. It takes a person of great knowledge and wisdom to understand these stories. It takes one that has heard more stories than most other people, to see the REAL truth in these stories, and those are the people that we look to to protect and guide us. Disagreeing with the story does no one any good, because the stories are all based on a distant past truth.

spyrock said...

i think what susie is saying is like that young lama in 2012 whose teacher is pouring tea into a full cup that continues to overflow that she already knows what she knows and there isn't any room to learn anything new as the teacher says if you want wisdom be like an empty cup. thats why it usually feels like spilt milk and this is a paper towel mopping it up.

\ said...

Suzy once stated that we don't know the "Soul" of the Indians.

River --i never "stated" that, and you shouldn't say that i did, that's what Ernie's always harping about --how shit gets distorted by the retelling.
ps Castenada is just flat out lies. As for Mavis Trail, i haven't read her accounts, and but if i do i'll let you gnow what i make of it.

spyrock said...

now that i've prefaced my remarks knowing that many people will not agree or believe what i have to say, i will say what i have to say.
i am here because of the ancestors. they brought me to this blog and within the words i write are things they want remembered. for me, this has been the year of the ancestor spirits. i have learned a great deal about my ancestors from various sides of my family that i never knew before. this knowledge has changed the way i view the past changed, the way i see the present and changed the way i see the future. this is a fact. you can hit it with a hammer.
the fact of the matter is that anything is possible. you can drive your car over a school of salmon. you can dream that impossible dream. i have seen walmart salmon on both sides of the stinson beach causeway right in front of the old ranch. it didn't seem fair to me to catch them that way. i was taught the right way to fish. but if i had listened like an empty cup, i would have had a belly full of salmon that night.

\ said...

i think what susie is saying is ....

-no Trainrock that's not what i'm saying, try again. And like your guy that you rocked to at the Filmore or Avalon or wherever it was said, "you can take all the tea in china, wrap it up in a brown bag for me, sail it out into the middle of the ocean, and drop it smack dab in the middle of the deep blue sea" ie you can shove your "lama wisdom" --i'll take love.

\ said...

Ernie, my blessings and love go out to one who must be even more patient than Suzy --your wife Janis.
xo

\ said...

eeeeep! ---shoulda been "sail it all around the seven oceans". and furthermore in case y'all don't gnow, seven is a mystical number, which means you can smoke it with datura and everything will be alright.

\ said...

Don't you believe yours???

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

\ said...

but of course if one's cup is full then there isn't any room for the datura so....

\ said...

T'rock, your tea trick story is pretty good --but hey, if you really wanta fuck with someone don't just crudely pour the tea so that it overflows, that just makes you out to be the fool, not the tea drinker. You see what i'm saying, the way you tell the story the idiot is the one pouring and the wise one is the one just sitting there watching that fool make a big mess, if it was me i'd leave too and let you or the lame lama or whomever wipe up the spill. I mean sheeeesh anybody can see that that's not a very sophisticated way to behave ... so what Suzy'd do, instead, is that after you make sure that the tea is boiling hot, put the cup in front of him and then pour the piping hot tea right up to the very very brim of the cup, then watch and see what the sucker does with it. It's a good way to teach someone about balance as wall as about patience. Once i had this dude over for dinner and afterword i pulled out a full bag of cookies, opened it and put it on the table. Even before i could blink he'd eaten three of them, so i decided to have some fun and watch him ... the dude sat there and ate the whole mothereffin bag while i watched and i didn't take even one! sheeeesh i wish i woulda had a secret video phonecam running, LOL!

\ said...

--history's in the blood not on the blog..

\ said...

i'm going for over 100 comments, see if we can top Joe,

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with (hash) oil; my cup runneth over.
psalm 23=5

\ said...

what I object to is people judging others, based on bullshit that they don't know much about... So what do you “strongly disagree with”?

Hmmm... OK Sancho, maybe we agree on more than i thought we did... so but what do you think about these idiots who claim that everything is all one, you know the ppl i'm talking about, they usually smell like patchuli oil and have a leaflet about windmill power. They are sooooooo dumb how could everything be all one? just take a look around, there's the empty glass, there's the other dirty dishes, the toothpick, the cat, etc. ie there's thousands of things not just one. Okay but i'll admit that what they mean is that all of these things are just part of the one BIG thing, or some such nonsense, LOL can you believe it? But it's the "truth" that that idea has sold a lot of books, i just saw someone on Oprah last week who was spouting off about that very concept, he had a new book out of course... called Life Without Time or some shit, i dunno...
But i think you are maybe down to earth enough to realize if there's an object to behold that there must be a subject to behold it, right? That's what the nincompoops always neglect to see -the subject. It's soooooo simple, the subject that perceives what they claim is all one is right behind their eyes, and that makes two, the subject and the object, sheeeesh, It's not brain surgery, you know. If an object falls in the forest and there's no subject there to hear it then, uh, hey i just had an epiphany, wow! i guess we all must be one after all. We're all just the sound of one tree falling... if you can hear me, clap your hand. because you are me and i am you and the walrus is Paul, right? i almost had it there for a moment, Suzy saw oneness but now i've lost it again oh shit, i didn't think of the walrus, how does he fit into the oneness concept, but still that doesn't matter cuz once you glimpse something on Oprah or wherever that is true you don't forget it so easily... Sooooo this is my quest, to reach for that star, no matter how hopeless, no matter how far, to dream the impossible dream of oneness --until i wake up.

Anonymous said...

Who is Oprah?

Oregon

\ said...

-wow man, anybody who's never heard of Oprah is really really my kinda person, a rare treasure to behold and one of a, sad-to-say, dying breed. LUV u Oregon, but to answer the question, she's a big billionaire super star ultra famous tv personality and she has a popular daytime show on channel 7 with all kinds of boring guests and all. She's a household name internationally. Only folks who are completely isolated from pop culture haven't heard of her which is why i call you a rare treasure. I can't think of her last name off hand cuz everybody just calls her Oprah. It's something like Oprah Washington, or Oprah Walrus or... Maybe River can fall us in, he'd know that kinda factoid. i have a lot more i could tell you about her like her losing 70 lbs, that was really exciting, and then there's her spiritual awakening, and how she came out of the closet on her show and crying told us all about how she's a lesbian and all... and her bout with a bear in a hotel in Hawaii, and her ex-husband who kidnapped their son, and, i'd tell you the whole truth of her story but this dang blog comment window is acting really really strange this morning and erasing everyother word Suzy trys to type wtf!? --get it together google you drive a poor blogger crazy with your complications sometimes and another. i don't even bother to type in the word verification correctly the first time anymore cuz i know it'll say its wrong anyway and probably ask for my password twice too, sheeesh! --the trials Lord Google puts on one's path.

Bad Gnome said...

Ok, ms. blahg blahg... if it was not a statement about the "soul" of the Indian, it was a question you left hanging. Excuse me for not remembering your exact quote. But it was a comment that you left here...one of your pithy ones that never gets a response (as opposed to the pissy ones that do). Whilst we were prattling on about some of the sparse outer details of some or other Indians, you commented something to the effect...but what about the Soul of the Indians?
There are about 14 versions of what you said being passed along to future generations, so if there is a better version, let's have it.

Ernie...YOU need to read the Mavis Book. Her "stories" are experiences that people have, not handed down stories. Experiences in modern times. Your hammer will get very frustrated though.

I, after the first few years, view the Carlos Casteneda series as shamanic fiction. Some of Mavis descriptions of astral doings are quite similar. I would love to hear what you think after you read it.

If I mistated the "soul" comment, ming afsus...it is a little Uzbeki phrase I learned from my Dell techie recently...means very sorry.

You don't need a River to tell you Oprah's last name, it is Winco...that is how she got so rich...that and her line of Obra's...for women who can't get into Victoria's Secret bras.

gabby haze said...

i have been trying to get into Victoria's bra for years.

Anonymous said...

Gabby!!!

gabby haze said...

well, i can't help it, when you get older, your senses start to go...
like my ol' pal charlie weaver once said on hollywood squares... often
your sense of decency is the first to go.

Anonymous said...

Suzy, you are right again. I am a Treasure and one of a dying breed. Oprah does not sound like something I would want to know, watch or learn about.

Oregon

\ said...

It takes one that has heard more stories than most other people, to see the REAL truth in these stories, and those are the people that we look to to protect and guide us. Disagreeing with the story does no one any good, because the stories are all based on a distant past truth.

-Ernie, that one would be Suzy, i've heard it all... believe me. And i am the one who can protect and guide y'all. But first i must disagree, Ernie, with your last sentence about "disagreeing does no one any good". Because imho it's important to defend the real truth from what is merely something somebody imagined, and so i am here to dispute what you said about the wee people. They are definitely still here today, alive and well in the forests of soHum, i know this from personal encounters and it's a fact of NOW and not just something "based on a past truth" like you imagine. See what i'm sayin'? But it's not easy to decipher the real from the imaginary unless one has a sharp eye for that kinda thing. One major problem is sloppiness in gathering facts, and just sloppiness in general. A good historian like Suzy detests sloppy research! And the fact is, before a person can be guided they need to clean up their act and kick any sloppy ppl out of their range of influence, that is to say they need to get rid of any bumfucks who are spilling tea all over the dang place. Sheeeesh, there's more than one cup you know, if the first one gets full, don't just keep pouring, get another cup. Folks need to realize, there's more than one cup in the cupboard.

Anonymous said...

Isn't there an old story passed down about that... vaguely recollect..Ol' Mother Cupboard?

\ said...

Whilst we were prattling on about some of the sparse outer details of some or other Indians, you commented something to the effect...but what about the Soul of the Indians?
There are about 14 versions of what you said being passed along to future generations, so if there is a better version, let's have it.


-see that's a good example of sloppy research, he imagines i said something and then he asks for a better version of it. If you really want a better version of it you should've imagined a better version to begin with, duh! Contrary to common belief, the imagination is very very precise and can be extended infinitely in all 34 directions. If you want to know about the indian sole try walking a mile or two in a pair of mockasins.

And Gabby, before you make a complete fool out of your other self once again by showing everyone how ignorent you are --yes Suzy likes sloppiness when it comes to sex, there's always an exception to every rule and sloppy sex is exceptional! So post us a link to a picture of your crude self here and i'll get back2ya. btw, what kinda tea do you like?

\ said...

Suzy's no motherhubber, not as long as i got me a Gabby to put a bone in my cupboard ;)

gabby said...

Infinitea, not even an Obra cup can hold it.

olmanriver said...

Ignowrants aren't gabby's bailiwick.

Ever since he read that Medecine Trails book he is obsessed with shamanic nameshifting on the blogs. Some people see him as a luminous egg ...others as an old fella going down the hall with his gown untied in the back...talk about embarassing!

My great grandpappy, Guggla Khan, used to say you should never criticize an Indian til you have walked a mile, or two, in his moccasins. That way you're miles away where he can't hear you... and you got his moccasins.

\ said...

omg! that's a BIG tea you got there Gabby. But size isn't everything, and Suzy doesn't need you to go on forever, even a tea party has its climax (some call it non-duality).

\ said...

--that's what i was trying to explain to Ernie, you can steal somebodies moccasins but what good are they if you ain't got no dang sole?

Anonymous said...

Teas!

\ said...

-exactly, there is no one tea, its all tease.

olmanriver said...

Funny you should say that!

Here at the "history home", as it is starting to be called, gabby makes a fine cup of tea for everyone to start their day. He makes whatever kind you want, but he has a special process of using a coffee percolator. We have a saying here at the "home"... "You haven't lived until you had gabby drip teas for you".

Akashtick Record said...

Suzy once stated that we don't know the "Soul" of the Indians.:

"....That may be a start but it hardly scratches the surface of the real story of the make up of the soul of these people. What's called for to obtain some true insight is a deeper look into the psychology of those involved. March 2, 2010 10:08 AM"

sloppy or ?

\ said...

-you see, Suzy was right. You lied. I never said, "the soul of the Indians".

spyrock said...

For Shaunna Oteka McCovey, a renowned author, attorney, and advocate, her drive and determination has led to her being awarded one of Humboldt State University’s (HSU) Distinguished Alumni for 2010.
this is the modern version of a yurok medicine woman.
ben is the one who first mentioned medicine trails which truly is a good book and sort of grows on ya.

looks like i primed the well with my version of 3 cups of tea. and her cup was overflowing. that's sort of what i was seeing. nice of her to put it into bible words for us.
i guess suzy went to billie jack's school for hippie babies. when young posner asks her name she answers "up" and like a gentleman he asks what's your last name. "yours" she said. "up yours"
trainrock? i think you meant railcar, that weed they grow inside the old abandoned rail cars scattered along the eel.
someones been eating all your railroad cookies.
better wake up from your castenada dream, its the last train to spyrock. foo.

Slop is for pigs said...

"Soul of these people"="Soul of the Indians"...your pants are on fire...go run outside right now!

Ernie Branscomb said...

Suzy and OMR are having a feud over who said what over the soul of Indians. If I were to arrange a duel, what would the choice of weapons be?

\ said...

"Soul of these people"="Soul of the Indians"

Sorry but they do NOT equate. But your false equation is useful anyway as a good example of what Ernie means when he talks of how things retold get distorted so that the original meaning is lost. When i said "the soul of these people" i was speaking of the people as human beings, that they happened to be indians is beside the point. Do you see what i mean? When you said, "Suzy once stated that we don't know the "Soul" of the Indians" you changed the context as well as the words and thereby you totally changed the meaning of what i said and misrepresented me. I hope you take the time to see my point here because your misrepresenting what i said is in essence implying a whole different connotation to my philosophy of the soul. I don't perceive the soul to have racial or societal boundaries. The words, "soul of the indian" suggest that the indian people have a soul that is somehow separate from other human souls. That is a total misrepresentation of my view of it. Say whatever you want to about the "soul of the indians" but please don't attribute it to me. OK?

Again, when you changed what i said, you altered the meaning of the communication. And i wouldn't object necessarily, cuz like Ernie is always saying, irritating as it may be these type of distortions through retelling are an inevitable part of storytelling, except that you made it personal by attributing this misquote to me. It is understandable how you mistook what i said, but now i hope that you can grasp the distinction that i am pointing out and respect the words i say for what they are, not what you want to change them to in order to appropriate my name to your specific needs.

omr said...

Well then I misread the original post about the Horror that I took it from, where I thought your comment was referring to the Indians. It wasn't so much an agenda on my part to use your words for my purposes. Thank you for understanding how I could get it wrong as your original comment about the soul of the people followed two references on your part to Indian baskets and flint locations.
Miscommunication happens all the time, I will try and be less sloppy,on this blog.


I would never win a duel of words with Suz, so I propose a duel using feather boas at 1 pace.

\ said...

River, i find you to be a man of integrity with a reverent attitude towards all life which i admire. Thank you, i accept your apology.

As for Ernie's suggestion, i want to make myself absolutely clear once and for all on this, and you may quote me --Suzy believes in non-duelity.

\ said...

life which i admire

omgosh! those dang dangling whichamacallits! They may cause more misunderstanding than anything. i hope Suzy doesn't start WW3 with one.
But in case anybody misunderstands, let me rephrase:

... reverent attitude towards all life, and that reference is something that Suzy admires.

So please, i did NOT mean he had a reference for life which Suzy admires. Although logically that would be true too, it is not nearly as inclusive.

olmanriver said...

Good lessons in refer madness.

Jerry Rohde had a nice short piece in the last Humboldt Historian and what stuck was his comment about how important it is to choose the right words as a historian. Having the gift of gab, that is a good one for me.
And we do see sooooo much misunderstanding when people think someone is saying something, but that perception is in their head, and they go off on their own internal strawdog projection and rebuttal. Without all the visual cues we get from face to face dialogue, words are tricky.

Thanks for your integrity in correcting a comment elsewhere about the Yukis and their reasons for not wanting to talk to dogs. From what I have heard, you don't want any dealings with the yellow dogs with red eyes.

And I teatotally want to agree with what I thought you said, though maybe you didn't mean it this way, when you stated, in no uncertain terms, that your unequivocal position, the one no one should be unclear about, unless they are not reading your correctly, is that that peace and huggles is best.

gabby haze said...

O Mr., O Mr., OlMr!
That was the Coastal Yukis you was talking about. Snicker.

\ said...

peace and huggles is best.

yeah, could be, i haven't read it in a long while now. Some ppl would argue that calvin and hobbs is better, and my gramps thinks dagwood and blondie is best. My auntie likes Logos and Eros and Suzy myself is kinda fonda yin and yang, which i have tattooed on my ass (sorry no link).

\ said...

danger, you don't wanna mess with this

Joe Blow said...

Suzy, for what it's worth, I just read this complete thread, why I don't know . . . then I realized I had just acquired a certain degree of respect for you. I guess Ernie Branscomb is good for something.

\ said...

for what it's worth,

-it's not worth much, because you are being so danged general. If you could be more specific about what exactly it is that Suzy expressed that made you have that change of opinion (forgive my using the 'o' word Joe, i know how offensive that is to you sometimes, but you know Suzy --i just can't help pulling a fellow's leg) ... change of opinion or change of heart, or view, or definition, or ... i can't find the word but you get the jist, i want to know what it was i said, or what attitude or quality of communication it was that gained your respect,(?). So if you could tell us a more detailed critique it'd be of more worth. Thank you Joe.

Joe said...

This is a quite remarkable thread.

Does anyone here remember a fellow named Carlo Mazzone?

Joe said...

Ernie: It is interesting about the Circle E western wear place that sells cowboy boots in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. I imagine it is pretty close to "Dolly World." They sell some good boots and a lot of not great boots. I see they do not sell my favorite brand, Stewart, made in Tucson, AZ. Ernie, would you like me to send you a good pair of Stewarts? If so, let me know your size. Maybe I already asked you that.

On to the other question. The one about indian artifacts. The only one I ever found was a beautiful green arrowhead that I identified as jade. I found it near my grandparents' home. I wish I still had it. I don't know what became of it. It was with a rock collection I gave to my son when he was young. I think we just moved to many times, and it probably got lost or left in a basement somewhere.

Joe said...

Sorry for typo:

"to" should be "too"

Joe Blow said...

Suzy, "danged general" -- I guess that's where I lose most people. I tend to look at the big picture. Gives me a better understanding of the intent behind all the words.

Maybe it was always there and I just didn't spot it -- it being a serious side of you. Which suggests some mutual commonality. In my case that generally produces a change of heart.

gabby haze said...

A guy went to a psychiatrist. "Doc," he said, "I keep having these alternating recurring dreams. First I'm a teepee, then I'm a wigwam, then I'm a teepee, and then I'm a wigwam. It's driving me crazy. What's wrong with me?"

The doctor replied, "It's very simple. You're two tents."

\ said...

Gabby, the dude could build himself a log cabin but first he'd needa real axe.

\ said...

Joe -thanks for making that clear. I hear what you're saying. You have a knack for seeing the big picture and so you don't easily get lost in the details. That's a great quality of mind because you are able to grasp the totality of a complex image all-at-once and are thus not one to be fooled by those who manipulate statistics to fit their agenda. I call it intuition. Sometimes one's first impression is right, but not always, sometimes intuition needs to be exposed more to the thing at hand. In this case, Suzy :) Classically intuition is considered a feminine quality, but of course that is a narrow and limited view. Men are often very receptive. I feel that your pointing to the heart, "a change of heart", is very much to the point. Intuition is, in a way of speaking, knowing with the heart, rather than knowing with the mind. I think even Ernie ia able to see the value in that. But the challenge for an intuitive is that others so often cannot make that intuitive leap that you can and so it takes an extreme amount of patience to delineate the larger image to others piece by piece so that they can make sense of it. I have seen you display that kind of patience at times, Joe. And i realliz how it can be frustrating at times when folks ignore or distrust the bridges one makes in order for them to follow your train of thought. Personally i've found that sometimes rather than trying harder, one simply has to try more.
Thanks again, for perusing the thread and adding your thoughts.

Joe said...

Suzy, Joe, Ernie, and all: Thank you for putting together a very interesting thread that digs into questions about knowledge and how one knows what one knows and what others claim to know. It seems that the discourse is taking place at several levels at once, ranging from personal and private subjective knowledge to public and verifiable objective knowledge. In my opinion, all of these levels of cognition and communication have validity and merit. There is some value, though, in recognition of what kind of knowledge one is dealing with. I like very much Ernie's approach to the telling and hearing of stories. There is merit in hearing each story from each source. The narrative itself becomes the objective evidence that can be compared with information from the same and other sources. But one learns to hold knowledge gently and to avoid influencing the telling. Knowledge and understanding are fragile and can be (perhaps, must be) revised in the light of additional information, be it objective or personal and intuitive. Just believing something changes its relation to reality. I think we are all honest people, seeking truth, and "someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection--the lovers, the dreamers, and me." (Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog)

Robin Shelley said...

Now we're not ones to go 'round spreading rumors.
Why, really we're just not the gossipy kind.
Oh, you'll never hear one of us repeating gossip
so you'd better be sure and listen close the first time!
-as sung by The Honeys on "Hee Haw"

Ernie Branscomb said...

"I like very much Ernie's approach to the telling and hearing of stories. There is merit in hearing each story from each source. The narrative itself becomes the objective evidence that can be compared with information from the same and other sources. But one learns to hold knowledge gently and to avoid influencing the telling. Knowledge and understanding are fragile and can be (perhaps, must be) revised in the light of additional information, be it objective or personal and intuitive. Just believing something changes its relation to reality. I think we are all honest people, seeking truth,""

It sounds to me like Joe not only "gets it" He already knew it. I wish that I had said it as well.
Thanks Joe

Ernie

\ said...

believing something changes its relation to reality.

-did you hear that on Oprah? Where can i buy the book?

Anonymous said...

Nice writin' Joe. You are a breath of fresh air

Idaho said...

Nice Robin song!

Shouldn't go without mention.

Joe Blow said...

Joseph says:
I think we are all honest people, seeking truth
And there lies the crux of the matter: “I think.” ... and so I am?

Opinions, those things that Ernie's so fond of, knowledge, information, ideas, thoughts, stories, fables – all the things of the mind have what value to truth? If you are looking for the truth you have only to see who you “are.” What you hold in your mind is merely your dream. Stories are nothing more than someone's modified dreams. Dreams or the subjective knowledge and understanding you hold in your mind are the antithesis of truth. While Ernie's stories and blog conversations regarding his stories are interesting and informative, like many dreams can be, it is Ernie the person that “IS” the truth. It is that “truth” that interests and is of value to me. Not his truths or dreams he so eloquently verbalizes.

Oh yeah! I just gave you that connection.

\ said...

While Ernie's stories and blog conversations regarding his stories are interesting and informative, like many dreams can be, it is Ernie the person that “IS” the truth.

-wise words from Joe. i wish more folks could see that it's not my stories... but it is Suzy the person who IS the truth. Totally.

-consciousness IS, if it didn't exist, it couldn't have discovered itself,
s

Ernie Branscomb said...

"...it is Ernie the person that “IS” the truth."

Wow!... Quick, somebody hit me with a hammer, I may be real and tangible also.

I find that a mighty pleasent way to say that my stoies might be suspect.

\ said...

ATTN, E.L. Branscomb, we here at the blog commentators union have found your blog guilty of the infraction of being not up to snuff. Unless you can prove to us your innocence we will have no choice but to pronounce sentence. (after sentence after sentence) And that' a long time even if it IS only dream time.

Blog Commenteer Central Committee
Suzy Blah Blah co-coordinator,
-i type therefore Suzy IS

Anonymous said...

I am writing in for Suzy who is suffering a broken computer after our public blog prosecutor hit her laptop with a hammer in his attempt at defending Ernie's position at our pretrial gathering here in downtown Blogosphere. He was trying to prove that Ernie's stories were real and not just a dream. He says that Suzy says to tell Ernie that he should do likewise --hit his own computer screen, RIGHT NOW, with a hammer or else his suspect stories as well as all these suspect comments will be on trial along with his not up to snuff blog due to lack of any substantial evidence proving his innocence.

Ty Pritten
suzy blog affairs sub-committee co-ordinance director in charge of reality

Joe Blow said...

Ernie, what is "real and tangible" but the "truth"?

I find that a mighty pleasent way to say that my stoies might be suspect.

That's the point. They "are" your stories - they're not mine or anyone else's. Not to say they couldn't be. You didn't expect everyone to accept what you say as the god's gospel truth now did you?

To say your stories are "suspect" is NOT saying you (Ernie) are "suspect." But then, that's my dream. So, beware!

spyrock said...

-consciousness IS, if it didn't exist, it couldn't have discovered itself,
s

this really sounds like a oneness statement to me. because if what ernie says is his dream and what i say is my dream then your only reality is you. one not two. so you don't have to LISTEN to anyone else because we don't really exist.
which is exactly what you do.

wholeness is only experienced through diversity.
so LISTEN foo.

Anonymous said...

Personality is not identity.

gabby haze said...

Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream
When I write you on the blog
When I write you and all you log
Whenever I write you, all I have to do is
Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam, dream, dream, dream

I can make you whine, irritate you fine
Anytime night or day
Only trouble is, gee whiz
I'm dreamin' my life away

Drea-ea-ea-ea-eam

Anonymous said...

"When I read you and all you log"... better line.

Cheeky Smartaxe said...

Some Anonymous isn't going to kill this thread... not while we are trying to reach 100 comments like Joseph did.

Here at the home, we have a lottery goin' on about, well, the burning question no Juan will touch, the precise location of that tatoo. Is it on the right side or the left side, or in the middle?

The first yin yang link I clicked on said this:
"YIN YANG: A Chinese Tao picture of universal harmony and the unity between complimentary opposites: light/dark, male/female, etc. Yin is the dark, passive, negative female principle. Yang is the light, active, positive principle. Since the holistic balance between Yin and Yang is dynamic and constantly changing, it illustrates the consensus process, the vision of global unity, and the blending of opposing energies at the heart of Holistic Health.
Since it represent monism (all is one) and pantheism (all is God), it opposes Christianity, which shows us that there is only one God (monotheism), and only in Christ can we be one. See The Tao"

Good ol' internet research !

\ said...

there is TWO Everly Brothers, that is my belief. Maybe i'm wrong and there's only one. i dunno. maybe the world is a mirror and yin is yang and Don is Phil. i dunno.

Ida Noe said...

Maybe it is all illusory shapeshifting and Two is One, ONe is Two, except when it appears not to be.

Which cheek, Madame Blah Blah?

Uh oh, the word veryflyer served me up some rahshish, I better go outside and see how strong it is.

\ said...

-the illusion is all that's real. Dig it, when they say they got reality they don't got nothing but a security blanket.

one x one = one
but
one + one = two

See, they can't fool me, the "one" crowd is just trying trick you, sell books to you, get you to watch Oprah and buy the products advertised there. Trying to manipulate us with there advanced arithmetic. Multiplication huh, we know better. There is no one dream, and there definitely is no one reality.
Once i heard of this guy, ol timer, Ernie probably knows his name and his great grandmothers size underwear. Anyway he built half the buildings in Garberville, and he only used one nail at the end of a 2x4 rather than two. It's a true part of the bullshistory, wish i could remember the name. He was trying to save money in nails, i guess, or maybe he believed in the superiority of the "one". That's why they wobble during an earthquake. Another idiot, or was he?
v = "sumsola"
2nd try = "nowth"

\ said...

-the tao is an old oriental trick of hand and mind. They say, "from the one comes the two, and from the two comes the three, and from the three comes the ten thousand illusionary things". If you think about it, (which not many do) what they're saying is that it's all an illusion. Except zero, which doesn't count cuz it's no thing. That's your tao in a nutshell, No Thing, hahaha. more baloney to ruminate rather that cultivating the radishes.

\ said...

Okay, i got the mirror out and i'm gonna find out once and for all what's with the yin and yangs placement. Stay tuned. I think Ernie should start a tattoo thread and we could find out what everybody's ass tattoo is, that'd say a lot about this gang. A Lot.

\ said...

-i got the mirror out and yin is the red, and yang is blue, but if i change the message to compensate the mirrors reversal then ... eeeee it's easier to just say it's all "one". Then rather than yin and yang you could just get you a purple circle, with a message under it saying, "it's all one and it's all purple", that was the wisdom that Tim Leary taught in his first phase, (1000 trips) so it's cewl, and it'll also make explanations easier later. But after 2000 trips he started seeing paisley, I wonder if they have any paisley at the tattoo shop? Purple paisley tattoos, yeah!!

\ said...

-some will tell ya that wholeness is the same as oneness. Hahahaha, then they say to listen, yes, hello, i'm listening anything else? i didn't think so.

eating my double dip,
s

\ said...

-once i was surfing and i thought Suzy and the wave were one, LOL, course any fool with the least bit of consciousness could tell you different. I was younger then.

\ said...

ninety nine

olmanriver said...

I wish I felt this young again... hundred.

Which is a one and two nothin's...

spyrock said...

eating my double dip,
s

is that when you dip your chip and take a bite and dip what's left of the chip back into the dip and keeping doing that until it's all gone.
with nary a thought about anyone else wanting to partake of the same dip without your taste buds foaming all over it. splain yourself please.

\ said...

-there's only one DIP, hahaha, but there's (at least) two omr's, nuff said.

n. frences said...

be nice to your multiple blog personality people! now you don't want to fawn all over them, but if you befriend them, and listen, you might just find they say the darndest things, and tell it just like it isn't.

i rest my lower case.

Corndog on a Half-Shell said...

I wanna know which cheek has the tattoo Suzy?!

gabby haze said...

two omr's two buttocks, one butt?

Anonymous said...

Hate to interrupt gabby's guttersniping... butt... the Redway beach will have the best sandy beach in years. It is astounding how high the river came up during this last storm. A friend of mine in Piercy said that it came up as high on his marker rock as any previous winter storm.
So....with cooler waters and weather, perhaps a great year for riverplay.

\ said...

-when you get to the pearly gates and the Lord asks ye, "Gabby, what do you understand, oneness or rocky road?"
You can't lie dude, he knows all. If you tell the big man that you had earmuffs in Michigan but lost them forever when you got to California he's just gonna laugh. Listen to Suzy, she knows better, take your nose outa that plate of beans and make peace with ,,, you know who i mean Gabby, your other 'self' cuz we're all said to be one, see, so don't be grabbin at it like that and then talkin' at me sideways as some other or other, they'll call you spiritually greedy, tryin to be two or three or twenty in one, better to chill, pull your old sorry self together, there's hope but don't forget --times a passin by right NOW Gabby, time and the ... river. But, oh that's right you ARE the river, but who the fuck is Suzy? And what's with this tattoo fascination? Does it have something to do with God's ass? Be careful your thoughts in blogconfession booth Gabby. You may think you're the two man but when you find out there's just one, that it's all one ... river, what then?

"I looked upon the two mountains and beheld the two headed janIS beast"
St. Marie Agnus Mary Allawishes

\ said...

JanUS is the hammer.

\ said...

-if you follow the tales, the seasons can reverse and the dry is the wet and the top is down there, but i wish i hadda river ,,,

spyrock said...

my first passion in this world were the old cowboy movies. i would sit and watch them for hours. working my uncles rodeo on friday night under the lights. milking cows by hand early in the morning and late at night. feeding the horses and the cows, the chickens, pigs, whatever. counting raleigh coupons while aunt daisy listened to patsy cline on the radio. roping everything in sight, swinging on ropes in barns, taking salt to the mountain cattle in nellie bell the jeep seeing the ocean view off mount tam.
in westerns it was common practice to have a sidekick. gabby hayes, jingles, slim pickens, and others made us laugh for years. festus was a more modern version. uncle delbert seemed to be a lot like festus to people when he got older, the only suit he had was the one he got married in in the 30's if you could get him to wear it at all. these people had teeth missing, chewin baccy drippin down their chin, ends of fingers missing, limps from being kicked and bucked off a million times, they were real people.
so when river reveals his multiple personalities such as the one who fights against the current and is constantly swimming up stream or the one who is going with the flow and floating merrily, dreamily downstream, i think he really is the ferryman gabby getting us across the river to wherever we want to go with his sense of humor.
he probably hasn't had this much attention "since his mule kicked out his two front teeth."

olmanriver said...

Much obliged Spyrock, you seem to have a deep and clear insight into the situation here.
Gabby aint been right since that mule kick, much less able to have a little picture like some of you... here at Ernie's dating site for seniors.

Suz is worried about my demental health and I appreciate that too.
Those old cowboys in the films didn't have sidechicks, there was probably a reason for that. A man will laugh at your foibles, a gal will try and correct 'em. Oh well. LOL.

gabby has a hard time with his meds, either too little, too much... last night he was leaning forward in his rocker, almost off it, raving "I am gonna spank her all the way to the finish line"...I don't know who he was referring to...he gets like that of an evening.

It is a bit embarrassing to be associated with him, as he is envious of me and spiteful...but I understand where it is coming from...me being such a perfessional historian with footnotes, and only two typos a paragraph.

Gotta go, he is watching Sky King and Penny, and expects his Nabisco Wafers and milk to be served.

Thanks for the concern over and understanding of the habits of old fellas.

Idaho said...

Ferryman over the river schticks?

\ said...

-Janis had a fairy but that's another story, Big Brother was her 'kick and laid down a fun-key bridge across the depths.

rive and let rive said...

. "Mitchell also accused her contemporaries Janis Joplin and Grace Slick of sleeping with "their whole bands and falling down drunk".. gettin' a little hammered I guess.

\ said...

--she does that river thing, and California that's pretty cewl, and she's jazzy and she has good phrases but --i don't think she should have phrased that. It shows her insecurity. Janis and Bob are genius's. Joni is very good, but that's all. Very good is not enough, the other's went over the top. That's what it takes. We couldn't do without hearing Bob or Janis again, but Joni is dispensable. And now we see that she's also a jealous bitch. Good words though, she's probably worthy of some sort of blue ribbon or gold medal or something. Grace Slick slept with --? --whatever.

\ said...

pink

Rivenclaff said...

I love em all, I actually thought it was too catty and chatty a comment and was disappointed in Joni.
I shouldn'ta commented, as that is gossip after gossip and pretty soon it will solidify into oral history versions , and talk shows, and autobiographies.
I was so shocked to see her dish the dirt that I had to share.

Idaho said...

This came to me in an email. ?

'More history...
They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken & sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "Piss Poor". But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot. They "Didn’t have a pot to Piss in" & were the lowest of the low.'

spyrock said...

sad to see joni speak ill of janis and others. i used to see janis all the time back in 66 and 67 and if she had any lovers they were never with her. she was a shy loner off stage. she used to drink coffee until 4 in the morning at the coffeshop by the bus stop in san rafael. a practice i would copy later in my life. the thing people don't realize is that everyone in those days thought of the bands as just regular people. music was just a piece of that puzzle. but no doubt, it started in san francisco and there has always been jealousy and petty quarrels betweeen the sf groups and the los angeles groups since the summer of love when everyone from los angeles finally showed up. so everyone in their old age is trying to rewrite history and their place in all of it. and my theory from what i saw was that there was so much going on that those musicians missed because they were working all the time the way they act these days is not surprising at all.
the fact is that stephen stills stood in my ususal spot by the speakers at the avalon when he was first there with buffalo springfield, watching everything that john kay of steppinwolf and others did. the first time jimi hendrix played at the filmore he was acting more like the black musicians of the day like otis redding and dressed that way. he look like a typical musician until san francisco hippified him. neil young was so drunk he fell off the stage at my school and his joni mitchell contempt for his band mates crosby, stills, and nash was very apparent. joni certainly had her share of lovers, graham nash, james taylor, and jackson browne.
her bitch is that she sees her self as a real musician like my friend down the street lee michaels who could pick up and play any insturment except the drums. but like lee, joni has faded away down her frozen river.
she probably thinks the sixties was about her, don't she. well, you sold out like all the others a very long time ago. we were all golden, not just uen rock stars. the sixties was not about you, it was about all of us.

\ said...

-there's a lot of misunderstanding when it comes to the 60s music scene, peeps like Joni and sPy like to tell us about who is best and who stood in front of what amplifier but these are trivial details of what really went down. It wasn't about the music or the lifestyle or who stood where or "us"... no that was superficially the story but very few special peeps like me know the real meaning of the 60s. Now looking back you can thank your lucky charms that luckily, a very select few peeps, were able to grasp what it really really was all about under the tie-dyes and funny dancing --yes, it was all about NUMBERS. One times one is one but one plus one is two, that's your starting point. Haight crossed Ashbury, not many realize the significance of the cross. It wasn't just a coincidence. There was a overall design, but it was hidden from the vulgar hip potsmoking concertgoer. Crosby Stills and Nash were threatened by the FBI for their threeness, then the group got young, but Young was too surly, the CIA got involved and they eventually brought Crosby down after he wouldn't co-operate. Joni didn't have a clue, but Dylan was scared, he always was scared of everything but this really had him thinkin'. He always made sure he had a band behind him after the JFK assassination, nobody wanted to be a loner. The beatles had four but that was the wrong number to have and look at their downfall, eventually John had to be taken out too. Three was big then and so the best bands had three players like Cream and Jimi, or else better yet they had three in their name. Blue Cheer had three lead singers and the Byrds came out with a song "turn turn turn" not one but three turns. They were partly correct but by jumping to three they overlooked two. Today there is a song that stands out as telling the true story of what went down, if you listen between the lines you can hear the mystic wisdom that came out of the hippie psychedelic movement... the rest is just hair. for those who have ears to hear, here is
the answer

Idaho said...

I saw them sing this live back in 69 or 70 and I did not get the deeper sigsnifficance until you pointed it out.... it was working on my psyche like a capsule of time released wisdom, except I don't do capsules.

\ said...

--capsules contain GMOs and are dangerous for the species, but, yes 3DN is by far the most important band of the era as far as the future of the human race goes. The message was genetically arranged to be time released. They, like Suzy, were at least 50years ahead of their time. I tuned into them when i found out through synchronicitic events what it is their name actually means. Wow! what a cold night that was, the coldest in recorded Humboldt herstory ... "well i never been to Spain..." but Suzy now knows who the fourth is.

Joe said...

Many of us in that era (late 60s and early 70s) had illusions of understanding and intimations of immortality. The love of haight did not take long to sour. When Big Brother had a most remarkable lead singer and Jimi smashed hell out of his guitar at Monterey Pop and we beat out a rhythm all night on garbage cans and people picked us up hitch hiking and played wonderful music without even telling us who they were--those were strange and wonderful times. Surreal times. But were they more surreal than 3DN opening for The Beach Boys at the Brookfield Zoo concert in 1983? Or hearing Neil Young live wafting through the redwoods from his own deck up on Starwood Drive in Woodside? Life is plenty strange. You bet it is. It is what it is, and if you understand it, you are better at understanding things than I am.

spyrock said...

Today there is a song that stands out as telling the true story of what went down, if you listen between the lines you can hear the mystic wisdom that came out of the hippie psychedelic movement... the rest is just hair. foo

i'm not sure what a 70's pop group has to do with what happened in san francisco in the 60's. do wop bands like these guys were a dime a dozen back in the american band stand days.
but i did see them in sacramento around 73 or 74 and they are still playing live in chico may 8th 2010.
nice try but you're just proving my point as 3 dog night inspite of their name was as commercial as they come. all those musicians sold out to the man. only the dead was true to their school as long as they could get away with it because its real hard playing on acid 3 nights a week. all these hippie babies think 70's music was the 60's because that's what their parents were playing while they were locked in their cribs back then.
real hippies didn't listen to pop radio stations even in june of 69 when that song came out. they were listening to underground radio stations foo. if you sing like paul williams or barry manilow you can grow your hair as long as you like, you will still be just a pop music star. that window of energy was there from 66 to 67 and it was gone. i've never seen anyone do justice to it by putting it into words. because you had to experience it to understand the feeling. so the real question is "are you experienced?" not do you have experience or your parents told you about the experience. ARE YOU EXPERIENCED?

Idaho said...

Is that a three dog nightie?

I haven't been to Spain either, but I kinda like the music..say the women are insane!

\ said...

playing on acid 3 nights a week.

--yes, i do understand it, Joseph, the mystic significance, but spY entirely missed my point, it was about the numbers, duh!, i wasn't talking at all about the music or what year Spy got his first lay or last haircut etc. it was not about his experience trying to listen to some bands when he was a kid, (he needs to learn to listen to what Suzy says now) it was about something serious, not just about his shenanigan's drinking coffee with Janis Mitchell or something, it was about the world at large and the way things are, the reality, ie... it was about the NUMBERology that created the era.

Idaho, --Suzy's never been there but we got as far as Redding, haha, Now, the blue of her nighty is actually the gnostic blue of the reverse santa. As the mushroom morphed in the straight world to santa and materialism and all that, so to balance the universe we with the help of the nature people countered with Her... she signify's for those who have eyes to hear, the gnostic mushroom, ie the living Christ, upside down upon the cross as was Odin for nine days to gain the runes... the hanged man, the northern star, the north gate, even Joni heard of her, marginally, it is the same blue that Barry Manilow's suit was on the 60s or was it 70s. whatever, special. (The old kinda cameras and tv screen they had back inna day, back in the 60s and 70s caused the blue, but only a few, excluding his manager knew the effect it had on the future culture) It has very much significance too. As does george Harresson's secret side visit to indonesia in 82, or 68, something like that, i'll check the exact stat on Google and get back to ya. And, you'll notice it was 3 nights they played a week on acid --the number 3 pops up again. Three dogs, three little pigs, --you know what comes next, right?
And so now it's time to digest the fact that it's not all about 'one' as some fools on Oprah will tell you, it's about TWO the black and the white, yep, no one is dead, this is what we call living SOUL singing about real life down here on the streets where the scrubbed whitey oneness Oprah crowd can be seen for what kinda emperor's clothes fools they are.

Anonymous said...

My brain is going blue screen.

Idaho said...

In the midwest 3DogNight was underground, sad to say, we were kind of far from the volcano of creative music coming out of California. I started to list the groups I heard first on the Cleveland underground station and I started to sound like one of the TV music commercial channels Motown had the most airtime on AM with Detroit so close, but our version of underground was kinda whitebread. I remembered that I had seen 3 Dog Night with Hoyt Axton, and it wasn't a very good concert, but then I wasn't impressed by Vanilla Fudge or Iron Butterfly either...

I love your music scene stories spyrock.

spyrock said...

i love your writing joe as i love suzies. suz is hung up on not oneness and what i am doing is trying to relate quantum physics in a way she can "grok". i think suzie thinks she has a good idea of what oneness is and doesn't want any part of it. but if she or anyone esle can explain quantum physics to me i am all ears. this anti oneness issue or everythings black or white is the same thing as ernie's hittin it with a hammer. the only difference being, ernie only needs one hammer, she needs two, a black hammer and a white hammer. of course, its hard for me to compete with obsessions like these so i just stick out nails and see if they can hit it.
as far as the haight goes, there was a vortex of energy in san francisco from the spring of 66 until the diggers death of the hippie parade in 68. we first noticed it as a manaquin in the window of the soon to be opened psychedelic shop with xmas tree lights all over it in a quantum or random fashion. this vortex was especially strong from just the other side of masonic all the way down haight to hippie hill in golden gate park which was just on the other side of stanyan street. this vortex caused a shift in consiousness in whomever entered it or who met anyone who had.
after awhile, when everyone and their brother had descended on the place, it soured just like you said. it was there and then it was gone. it didn't have anything to do with joni mitchell 3 dog night or all the people who made money off the energy that vortex created. and as far as muscial performances go, there was nothing professional about those days, i'm sure you could see better concerts anywhere anytime.
i didn't go there to be a hippie, i was going to college and lived in the haight from 1965 to 1969. i used to go to the avalon to see my highschool band friend greg who played drums for quicksilver. i had already played drums for 10 years by then.
i was the first person michelle and john phillips saw as they got out of their limo and climbed the stairs upto the avalon ballroom like two kids going to the funhouse for the first time in the fall of 66. " As the closing act of the first Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967, the band performed dismally. John and Michelle Phillips and Lou Adler organized the festival, and according to interviews with the members of the group, they were all so caught up in the festival they never got around to rehearsing. That, combined with Doherty's last minute arrival from Canada, resulted in the mediocre performance.[7]"
the beach boys put on quite a show when i saw them but dennis wilson was in a whole different dimension than the rest of them and i believe he had drowned the year before they played at your chicago zoo soo that may have made a difference in our experience of them. and yes, i loved neil young when he went on his own and did his own thing. i only recently made it up to woodside. we recently spent the weekend in po tolla valley with the people behind the man who wrote 3 cups of tea. so as you can see, i understand what susie has been saying but i'm still going to put out nails and see if she can hit it with maxwell's black and white hammers.

\ said...

--so you still don't get what it was all about back then? It's far from being black n white my friend, that's YOUR view, flat. I hate to inform you and the Diggers, Airplane, Oprah crowd but --The Two can be psychedelic like you and your garage twerps never imagined =
it's the majick time way back in the VERY BEGINNING if you know what i mean It's where you and i came from, it's divine, it's what some my call the a Truth or, the first hammer, it far from a black n white decal of the hippie shop on haight st. my friend, some cheap newsprint yinyang that was torn from the berkley blurb, no, it's time now to be moving into another dimension and showing you you're origins ... it's red becomes blue time.
Tell me Idaho, who's winning the bet?

\ said...

--and while your playing old tunes of 3DN and catching up on the old days i am forging forward with my new tattoo, it is going yet one step beyond the beyond, not something as simple as a red and blue yin yang is this, but an original Tim Leary Sandoz acid paisley tattoo like you've never scene ... it will knock you out.

Idahoo said...

Sorry it is a 3 dog+ day...you are losing me with all this high math and handbag talk, me and my friends have more important stuff to do.

\ said...

there was a vortex of energy in san francisco

-LOL! see what i mean? Spy is an idiot to say such nonsense, but well fit for the Oprah gang and oneness, i encourage him to right a book about all this jive BS, maybe he can make a buck just like Jerry and the other fools. Now, as for the music, i am very well steeped in the old lps listening to the old stuff extensively from my dads collection when i was a preteen in the 90s. That's mostly what i was forced to listen to growing up isolated here in back to the land SoHum having no alternative but the neighbors mtv. So i researched the 60s music and let me tell you --NOTHING any good except Janis came out of SF and she was actually from Texas. The others were all amateur garage bands that couldn't play or sing --dead airplane qsilver fish etc. all horrible. The good music all came from Los Angeles, (you may note the SF bias against the southern city's far superior music) and the east coast and overseas. Dylan invented the 60s, then when he got famos the non-talented ripoffs in SF like Jerry Garcia and County Jim took a bunch of bad acid and tried to crib his style. Spy was in college and he and his roommates between eating chips and dip and cramming for finals were apparently impressed, not knowing any better. But like i said, i studied the stuff extensively and unlike Spy's prejudiced view mine is not biased. I have a clear objective point of reference whereas his is purely subjective and twisted. Nuff said, you get the idea. The SF scene sucked and was made up of phony opportunist ripoff non-talent copiers. All the good 60s music came from LA, the east coast, and overseas. The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Three Dog Night, these are the professionals who along with innovators like Dylan and Costello created the music we all love and cherish. SFs still hold a grudge cuz they didn't make the grade and now have a stick up there ass. I can detail more about the influences, down through Queen, Boston, Jim Brown, Barry Manilow, and Brian Springsteen who followed adding style, professionalism, and savy lyrics to the mix, if need be. I did a lot of research of the era. But yes being objective, fair, and open minded, i do have to admit that some good stuff came out of SF later when the crazyness of the 60s and 70s wore off and some folks could see and hear straight. All and all it was a great time and creative surge, unfortunately SF missed the boat and floundered in a bad dope ignorant kid idea of the real thing.

\ said...

-i'll fill in the details of some of the other mis-informed opinions, like Quantum void, being in two places at once, oneness, etc., that he gets from the Oprah show etc. when i have more time.

Anonymous said...

Geezer baiter!

Joe said...

Got any grapes?

Idaho said...

A few years back I saw a multi-part series, the inside report with revealing bios of all those musicians in Laurel Canyon in the sixties. It was a remarkable read, I noted that many of our musical heroes were the offspring of military and intelligence agency fathers.

I don't think Barry Manilow was part of that crowd. Joni was there.

Joe said...

So this duck walks into a bar and climbs up on the bar stool.

The barkeep comes over and is a little startled to see the duck, but he says "Welcome, pilgrim. I haven't seen you around here before. What's yer pleasure?"

The duck says "Grapes. I'd like some grapes please."

"Sorry," says the Saloon man. "This is a bar, not a green grocer."

The duck looks disappointed, climbs down off the stool, and disappears out the door.

Next day, the duck shows up again.
Same thing happens. The bartender asks what he wants, and the duck says, "Got any grapes?"

"No, dammit! I don't have any grapes." The duck leaves.

Next day the duck arrives as usual and asks "Got any grapes?" The bartender is getting what you might call "pissed off." He says, "Look, duck, I'm warning you. If you keep coming around here looking for grapes, I'm going to nail your bill to the bar. How would that be?" The duck leaves and walks out under the swinging doors grumbling under his breath.

The next day is Saturday, and it is a beautiful sunny Garberville day. But the duck waddles into the bar and with a little jump and a rustle his feathers, lands on the bar stool.

"Got any nails?" says the duck.

The puzzled bartender says, "No. This ain't no hardware store."

Duck says, "Got any grapes?"

Anonymous said...

(Don’t Go Back to) San Francisco
NYT



By MICHAEL WALKER
Published: June 9, 2007

Los Angeles
Skip to next paragraph
John Van Hamersveld

SHAKE the stems and seeds out of the Persian rug and put some flowers in your hair: the Summer of Love is 40 years old. The patchouli-scented commemoration has fixated on San Francisco, the Summer of Love’s blissful nexus. What wretched Midwestern longhair-in-waiting in the summer of ’67 could resist the siren of Scott McKenzie’s Top 5 hit, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”? Untold VW microbuses from Ann Arbor to Amherst chugged west on little more than the song’s purple-hazy promise: the tribes were gathering, and they were gathering in San Francisco.

But as a lasting cultural artifact, San Francisco’s Summer of Love can’t hold a stick of incense to the rafter-shaking sounds coming out that same year from a Los Angeles neighborhood 370 miles south, above the Sunset Strip. If we measure ’60s pop-cultural landmarks by the epoch-producing music they generate — and, from Liverpool to Woodstock, we do — then Laurel Canyon was the more evolved and influential destination that summer.

Laurel Canyon had been filling up with the baby boom’s brightest musical lights since 1965, when members of the Byrds, Los Angeles’s seminal folk-rockers, moved in, just as their version of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man” was a triumphant, worldwide smash. Soon, it seemed, every musician of note in Los Angeles had moved next door: members of the Mamas and the Papas, the Doors, the Seeds, the Turtles and Love were later joined by Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Frank Zappa, Carole King and untold transient rock royalty from the Beatles to the Rolling Stones.

By the summer of ’67, the Laurel Canyon mafia had defined the budding West Coast counterculture with an avalanche of generation-unifying songs that blended the last vestiges of the folk-music revival with the impudent exuberance of the British Invasion.

Laurel Canyon and Los Angeles were home to the murderers’ row of rock: alongside the Byrds — “America’s Beatles” according to the not entirely undeserved hype — lived Buffalo Springfield, from whose ranks would come Stephen Stills, Neil Young and Richie Furay. The Mamas and the Papas, Laurel Canyon’s house band, had already recorded a string of landmark hits starting with “California Dreamin’.” The revolutionary flower-punk of Love produced the blistering “Seven and Seven Is,” a slap to the face masquerading as a hit single. The Turtles bounced the Beatles’ “Penny Lane” from No. 1 with “Happy Together,” and a couple of months later, The Doors’ “Light My Fire,” with brooding couplets that juxtaposed sexual longing and funeral pyres, rode the charts for weeks during the putatively flower-strewn summer.

Part One

Anonymous said...

Part two
San Francisco’s music scene developed under conditions vastly different from those in Los Angeles. Unstructured gigs at the city’s acid-drenched ballrooms encouraged epic jams of the sort perfected by the Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, and the Jefferson Airplane, along with a naïve anticommercialism — hit singles were for the hacks in Laurel Canyon. The irony is that San Francisco’s bands are remembered today chiefly for the few times they made commercially successful music, as with Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 “Surrealistic Pillow” album and its Top 10 singles “Somebody to Love” and “White Rabbit.”

Where San Francisco’s music scene was administered by a handful of show-business novices, Los Angeles was home to Capitol Records, the Beatles’ label, as well as the world’s finest recording studios, producers and engineers. Laurel Canyon’s proximity to this infrastructure — the unsparing proving ground of the Sunset Strip’s clubs was a five-minute hitchhike away — instilled in the musicians a professionalism that stiffened the spine of the material they wrote and performed.

In the end, 1967’s most prescient generational temperature-taking can be found in yet another Los Angeles song that hit the Top 10 just before the Summer of Love took off. Buffalo Springfield’s chilling “For What It’s Worth,” inspired by Stephen Stills’s eyewitness account of police officers brutalizing longhairs on the Sunset Strip, questioned the motives of both the establishment and the self-congratulating counterculture. Given the turmoil that lay just around the corner in 1968, the paranoia of “For What It’s Worth” strikes deep and true: “there’s a man with a gun over there,” it turned out, would have as much to do with the baby boom generation as would wearing flowers in your hair.

The Summer of Love will forever be entwined with San Francisco. But the rock critic Robert Christgau predicted in 1967 that “the real music would come from Los Angeles.” And he was right. The songs that came out of the Haight that summer now seem fixed in amber, as temporal as a Fillmore poster, while the music from Los Angeles and Laurel Canyon soldiers on, impervious to age and ridicule.

Even the Summer of Love’s anthem, Scott McKenzie’s “San Francisco,” was written and recorded in Los Angeles. The song was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas expressly as a come-on for the Monterey International Pop Music Festival, which Mr. Phillips and Lou Adler, the Los Angeles record producer, were organizing. The lyrics vividly imagine a hippie-sanctified San Francisco, but the flowers in the title are literally from Los Angeles: Mr. McKenzie recorded the song while wearing garlands of wildflowers plucked in Laurel Canyon.

Michael Walker is the author of “Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock ’n’ Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood.”

spyrock said...

ouu, who let the 3 dogs out. joni, is that you. you guys lost the raiders too. hey but don't feel too bad, you still got kobe.

spyrock said...

when i went down to your strip all they had was hullaballo a go go and whiskey a go go with girls dancing in cages. a place called the cheetah that was soooo psychedelic and it was topanga canyon where you had the only cool club. maybe the troubadoor was cool but why were all you la dudes spending all your time kissing pigpens butt when you all came to san francisco in the summer of love. too hot for ya on the strip. someone had to teach you how. ever been to the grand canyon. that's what i'm talkin about.

spyrock said...

why are you guys talking about the color of purple grapes. is this really about the right to be slaves. i know that oprah was in the color purple with prince but i work so i don't have afternoons free to watch her show. i did watch that french dude eckheart tolle because my girlfriend made me but it was on the internet. and that was pretty good about living in the present moment, so like joe says, this is all like water down a ducks back. the bottom line is that i had the time of my life back in those days and i feel very blessed to have lived through those times. i was 18 when i first went to the avalon and i was dancing, painting with dayglo paints on the floor and painting on pretty girls bodies, watching people do their light show and filling in for them while they went to the can. making out behind the benches or right there on the floor of the avalon with a girl i met that night. you could do pretty much anything you wanted to do at the avalon and nobody would say a word to you. we didn't have pigs from l a. to slow us down. i knew at the time that i was having the time of my life.
maybe someday you will have just as much fun as i did. i hope so.
it's sad to see all these people show up with their sour grapes. lets hope some fine cabernet comes from it. cheers.

Joe said...

I've been enjoying your narrative Spyrock. I just kinda muddled through the 60s. I was still sort of lost in the great wide world after leaving the ranch in the 1950s. The family had disintegrated, the ranch was sold, I finished high school down by Modesto under circumstances that very much resembled AMERICAN GRAFFITTI (per Lucas)--dragging Tenth, racing on Paradise Road, and all like that. But I was so homesick for Humboldt that I could not help crying if I heard the song "Home on the Range." I think I already knew that I could never go home. I had no thought of going to college--it really never crossed my mind to consider it possible. The the dean of a college came to our house and told my mother I HAD to go to college and he had worked out a way for me to earn my way. So I went.
Cut to next scene: One of my high school teachers looked me up and recruited me to teach in a one-room school in Arizona. I was 19. I took the job. There were many adventures, and it was my background growing up on the ranch that got me through most of them. NEXT SCENE: In 1962 I went into the army and got stationed in Germany (Heidelberg). I work in a recovery room and ICU and tried to pretend I wasn't in the army by hitchhiking all over Europe and going to little neighborhood gaesthauses [I can't find my lost umlaut]. SCENE V: I came home to a very different country than I had left, got married, went to community college, etc., fell in with a range of folks from other vets (many with 'Nam experience), bikers, intellectuals, hippies, musicians, and hung out in Berkeley and H-A, Taoist communes, and Nepenthe, Stinson Beach, and all like that. So I got divorced and became a social worker and went to graduate school and partied and (someday I'll tell you about dropping acid with the queen bee, and other lovely tales). I lived a bizarre, strange, charmed life. Dropped out and taught at CR until a guy kicked my teeth out. And, yadda, yadda, yadda....
Got remarried, finished school, and went right on with life as if I had never gone nuts for awhile. Remind me to tell you sometime about "Roommate Stan." In 1968 I roomed with a guy who was on the run, whose name was Stan Zimmerman. Last name ring a bell? Yes, indeed, his uncle was Bobby's father. Stan was a brilliant and wild lad, from whom I learned much. EPILOGUE: Nancy and I have been married since 1973 and have three grandchildren. And, BTW, the best concert I ever went to was one in the field house at HSU in, probably 1971, where everything was very mellow and John Lee Hooker performed brilliantly and almost endlessly into the night. You had to be there. Monterrey Pop was okay, too, but not really the same deal. Too big. We were all very impressed, though, with that little dynamo soloist with big bro. Who is that girl? She's terrific! And the best story I have is "30" (Chicago concert, going to jail, getting out, Cloverdale, home to Humboldt, etc).

olmanriver said...

Some fine memories, fellas.
I always wanted to be a hullabaloo go go dancer but I too, had lost my umlaut by then.

Joe said...

Brevity is a virtue.

\ said...

-that's what was so neat about the Dead, their virtuous brevity.

\ said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
\ said...

-in nearby Redding there is a plaque of deep wisdom for you to read as you visit the river. It's a sample of the wisdom that Spy and others who have now awakened learned via Oprah directly from the lips of that "french dude" that Spy told us about. The one who teaches Truth --(oneness). Yep, and now i'm here to say that the good news is, you too can be like the enlightened Spy and can start the program as advertised. To get more wisdom send a check pr money order to Tolle Inc. for the first installment, only $59.99. Spy saw the light, Oprah did too, and so can you! There are books, dvds, workshops, downloads. audios, etc. And don't forget to visit Tolle TV!

spyrock said...

Brevity is a virtue.

cousin ross does that real good. so does oregon but he's become long winded responding to your family's posting.

i do this blogging to practice writing which is one of the things i do for fun.
and for suzie, no i'm not a yoga dude, i can't make my body twist into all those shapes. you must be thinking of my friend yoga bob. he went to the other eckheart warner or est and they held him captive until he wet his pants and he came home and told me that he was enlightened. so just try not to pee for a long time and if you feel something wet down there it means you must be enlightened.
my teacher was from laguna beach, nah, just kidding, idaho was where he was born, i met him on cobb mountain in clear lake. yoga bob had brought him down from cave junction oregon via mount shasta to caretake an old resort. this was before tm moved into hobergs, and bubba free john took over siegler springs or jim jones made everyone drink grape koolaid.
i went to visit him in vegas where he was raising fish in their swimming pool. so my spiritual path or my religion is pondtending. i'm a pondtender. i raise fish and waterlilys. i am known for my blues named panama pacific and i try to breed showa color japanese koi.
it seems joe that we have a very similiar web of experiences and places. most of the names or places you just mentioned i have either been to or known someone close to me who has. so you must be intuitive to cast that net like that. why and when did you do stinson beach?
grace slick used to live in bolinas but she's gone hollywood and lives down there in malibu canyon with joni painting little white rabbits these days.

\ said...

-anonymous, thank you for the comprehensive linked article. At least there is one more intelligent person posting here. It's sad but true that we cannot convince the likes of Spy etc., who follow the simple minded oneness doctrine of Oprah, of the objective truth of Twoness. So we will have to let it be, we tried, we did our best, but he failed. A few of us can see the truth of Twoness so as not to be stuck in the "now" ... So thanks again, Three Dog Night and The Beatles were definitely the superior 60s rock combos.

spyrock said...

i've suspected it but now i know for sure. suzie 3 blahs was a monkeys baby. stephen stills tried out for the monkeys and failed so he formed the buffalo springfield with neil young from canada who was a total dork in those days. i am one of the few people who actually saw the buffalo springfield play live at the avalon ballroom. before and after they played, stephen stills stole my usual spot by the speakers and in awe watched the local san francisco bands play. he had a little notepad in his mind and he was writing down everything they did so he could take it back down to laurel canyon and sell it to lou adler who was the bill graham of hollywood.
jim morrison was way cooler. in the 20 or 25 times i saw the doors in san francisco, jim never acted like he was the star of the band. he was very humble. i don't know where people get the idea that he was on an ego trip. because he acted at the time like he was at the sacred altar of rock and roll in san francisco most of the time with head lowered, he was more like a poet at a local san francisco coffee house like the blue unicorn.
years later, in 1967, i saw him in a small valley town dressed to the
harleys at the legion hall. he was drunk, sexy, and in total black leather. best show i ever saw him do. no head lowered then, he was in alpha monkey mode.
i first saw my ex of 25 years at that doors concert. she had a glow about her and i couldn't take my eyes off her. i didn't know she was preggers with david by larry who had got her best friend preggers at the same time. so they gave larry the choice of going to jail, be a dad or nam. he chose nam. i wound up raising david.
david is totally cool. a skater. a surfer. a dad like me. and an air conditioner repair man like ernie.
imagine being in the womb at a doors concert. that's my boy.

Idaho said...

Some fine examples of how to tell a story here!
Jimi Hendrix, Donovan, Sly and the Family Stone, 3 Dog Nite, Muddy Waters, CSN&Y, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, Chicago, Eagles, Steve Miller, Genesis...these were the groups I saw in that highschool/college period. The midwest was a bit whitebread as far as rock goes ('cept for Motown).
That's part of why I enjoy your "I was there" stories spy.

\ said...

-you were really really fortunate to see the Night back inna day, Zappa called them the mast talented hippie band to come out of California in the 60s.

\ said...

-just got off the phone with my mom who told me she got to see The Night at the Denver Pop Concert where the cops teargunned the crowd down when Jimi appeared overhead in his psychedelic helicopter. Nobody was killed. She still has the ticket stubs and an autograph of August Burns who signed a firecracker for her to commiserate the fateful event.

gabby haze said...

i don't have much time, the nurses will be back to their station any minute. i am busting outa here tonite, destiny has called me to be one of lady gaga's semi-nekkid dancers in cumberbuns. Look for me on tv or utube or peeps mag soon, gotta run!
ps. coincidentally, 3 dog nite lites are very popular at this rest home, all those boomers gone bust in their ole age. not me, if i can find where i put my cumberbun.

\ said...

-Gabby, The Night are doing a gig May 28 in Chico, at the Silver Dollar Fair, btobs.

Idaho said...

Do you think they will have the London Symphony as their back-up band? They were working together in 2002.

"One" was written and recorded first by Harry Nilsson. Wiki sez.

Joe said...

Hey Spyrock, I think I discovered Stinson Beach about 1967, along with Point Reyes, Bolinas, Dillon Beach, etc. Of course, I had know Bodega Bay, Navarro, Elk, Albion, Mendocino, etc., much earlier, partly because Guy Mann, who had a lot of property at Panther Gap (and other places in the coast range) had his home place just north of Bodega Bay, and we visited the Manns there, probably in the 1940s.
But, in 1967 I traded in my first wife's 1964 Ford for a BRG MGB-GT. We were living in Stockton, where I was in school, and I frequently felt the need to get away and just drive to the coast (Big Sur, Stinson, up the coast to Humboldt, etc.). That is what got me to the Monterrey Pop festival. I had no clue as to what was happening, but I was coming back from Nepenthe and ran into traffic, so I just stopped at the fairgrounds and ended up spending the night. I had a little familiarity with some of the groups, having gone to a few concerts in The City. I can track down some of the dates for those concerts because I usually went while in The City for psychology conferences (I was a psych major, and my mentor/professor at UOP was a young guy who was deeply into rock). [It should perhaps be recalled, that psychology at that time was pretty heavily into studying "psychoactive compounds" and "altered states of consciousness"]. Spyrock, did you say you went to SF State? What years?

\ said...

-yes, Nillson was a very wise man, he was adviser to both bands in the 60s. It was he who successfully told them each to jam with the London Symphony, . And then, history was made as the two heavily Nillson influenced bands together created what we now call "the 60s sound". Check it out on youtube. The extra heavy influence, the wa-wa button, the violins, and the backstage messages overdubbed backwards. It all was instigated by The Night and The Beatles with Nillson's input. Unfortunately The Beatles died of drugs, lifestyle, and other stuff, but The Night being from southern CA were a lot tougher. They survived and carried forth the message of the dangers of "oneness" etc., even in the face of Jethro Tolle and the Oprah crowd's oppression. Today i'm happy to say that they are going strong and are by far the most important band of the 60s era music, with The Beatles being mostly dead coming in 2nd. BTW Gabby, 3Dog was the first rock band to where cumber-buns". Col. Parker stole the idea and had The Beatles copy em. But it's all good, we forgive him, although officially he still owes us a lot of money, but it's water under the bridge now and all in all we're glad to be able to say The Night represent us here in CA.

\ said...

Idaho, this is fantastic! I found the link where Paul confesses to Oprah how The Night took the reins as the new #1 rock band of the late 60s when The Beatles got hooked on drugs. Paul was accused of selling out the band when he joined the Men in Black but that's for another post. At this present time I'm linking to the international Oprah interview. I'm including the whole interview because the context of Nillson and the true beginnings of "the music" is there, but if you're anxious you can skip ahead to part 3 for the good stuff
about how The Beatles were inspired by and a huge fan of 3dognight.

Idaho said...

Plausibly undeniable original research is always a joy to read here. Nothin' butt the truth from Suz again.

Anyone else notice it gets harder and harder to drag ones' cumbersome buns to vintage rock concerts?

spyrock said...

no, my mom and her best friend auntie merle went to san francisco state back in 36. she was living on blythedale in mill valley and riding the ferry to san francisco every day to go to state when it was downtown.
when it was time for me to go to college, however, there were riots at san francisco state and all my relatives said the communists had taken over the school and i couldn't go there which was a drag because my aunt doris lived next to stonestown and i could have stayed with them for free and walked to school except for the fact that my cousin mike was already living in their downstairs apartment. so i had a choice between uc santa cruz and usf. it would have been the first year uc santa cruz was open and i would have had to live in a mobile home on campus. my catholic aunt norma told me i should go to usf but it was seeing a guy wearing a usf sweatshirt on the beach at stinson that looked cool that was the reason i chose usf.
in 66 uop was our big rival in basketball and we lost a last second game when fox and erwin mueller or some goofy lookin guy from uop dunked and they won the league championship. groovy immediately went up to his room on the 2nd floor of the boys dorm and started blasting, "i'm a loser" all these catholic boys started pounding on his door yelling at him to turn it off but, he just kept blasting it until the priests came and made them leave. so totally stoked from the energy of that game, we walked down to hayes to the blue unicorn and some snotty hippie dude took exception to our energy and told us that "we weren't nobody unless we did smack." such was the standing of college sports in our neighborhood in those days.
we left soon after and rode our skateboards all the way from stanyon through golden gate park to the beach.
my mom dropped me off on a foggy september day in 1965 but i lived in the city for several years after i graduated. groovy transfered to berkeley in 68 and started the daring ball bearing skateboard club. we used to do the berkeley clock tower hill, all the paths, the parking lots with the spiral exits. all before anyone knew that skating should be illegal. surfing everyday. riding skateboards every night that we weren't going to some concert. i didn't go to monterey pop because the poster said they wanted some outrageous amount of money. something like $5 when most of the time they were free or $2. plus, it sounded pretty straight to me at the time. you know, commercial.

spyrock said...

Three Dog Night
It refers to being cold. Often when ranchers or cowboys were out on the range they would have to sleep with their dogs to keep warm. A one dog night was a night when he had to share body heat with one dog, two dog night was two dogs and a three dog night was an extremely cold night where he would have to share body heat with three dogs. “how cold was it on your trip?” “It was a three dog night”.

of course, everyone knows that these guys weren't real cowboys. more like midnight cowboys on sunset strip looking for love at the doggie diner. a 3 dog night meant they had hung around the doggie dinner and ate 3 hot dogs before they found someone to sleep with for the night.

that's the rest of the story.

Joe said...

Spyrock: Funny about your references to basketball in the 60s. USF had been so outrageously dominant in the 50s, with Bill Russell (I saw him play for USF against Pacific in Stockton--probably in 1956 or 57).

But, yes, UOP was good while I was in school there. Keith Swaggerty was the immense bull of a center who was averaging about 20 points and 20 rebounds per game. He and forward Bob Krulish came out of high school in Sacramento, along with their coach, Bob Edwards (who later coached UC Berkeley). There was a fast and athletic little guy named David Fox, who played brilliantly at times, but often free-lanced. Art somebody [maybe Daniels?] and Bruce Parsons rounded out the starters. They were pretty good and represented the WCAC several years in a row. Bruce led the nation in free throw percentage on occasion. Of course, those were the years when the regionals were still geographic regionals, and they always ended up playing UCLA (with Lew Alcindor) in the first or 2nd round. They also played UCLA in the preseason, and, I think, lost by about 82-81 one year--the closest anyone came to beating UCLA until someone actually did.

Maybe more about B-ball than anyone wanted to think about....

Ernie Branscomb said...

Joe
I kinda' let your Ram Fishman questions slip by earlier.

Yes, I know Ram. He was instrumental in salvaging Etters Apples. As many of you know apple don't do well without man to fuss over them. They eventually get broken limbs, and heart rot, and slowly die out. Some jokingly call him "Johnny Appleseed". He enjoys the apple-ation, but says that he should more correctly be known as "Johnny Scion", because he works more with scions than seeds. He is often at our store gathering cardboard that he uses to ship his apple saplings all over the world.

The man that you met that was trying to put shoes on an ass was probably Ram Fishman, he is also widely known as a Farrier.

Joe said...

Trying to nail shoes on an ass is a little like playing pin the tail on the donkey, but the latter is quite a bit more fun.

spyrock said...

yes david fox and their big center.
basketball was the big deal at that school although our soccer team was the only team who won a ncaa championship while i was there. our cheerleaders were all boys and they would get in fights in the bathroom with the other teams cheerleaders. the games were great and the warriors used to practice at our gym so everything was swell until we got beat by ucla and alcindor and i used to hate ucla until usf wouldn't offer my daughter a legacy and she went to ucla and after 5 years of going to the rose bowl and pauley pavillion, i love ucla and root for them still. my daughter's partner used to play baseball for uop and we have some close friends who coach at uop so we root for them as well.
so i do have a warm spot in my heart for southern california these days.

Ernie Branscomb said...

Joe
A-pear-ently Ram and Marrisa prefere to do business on the phone. I can't find their email address.

I will probably see him Friday at the farmers market just behind our store, if you want to wait for his email I'll get it for you.

Ram and Marrisa accept phone calls between 9:00am and 5:00pm. Mon-Fri.
Greenmantle Nursery
3010 Ettersburg Road
Garberville CA 95542
(707) 986-7504

Joe said...

Thanks, Ernie. I'll call. If you see Ram, say hey for me, and let him know I will be in touch if I have not already been by the time you see him.

Yes, Spyrock, WCAC had some very decent soccer teams. Both USF and UOP, and maybe Santa Clara too. Pacific had a Latin American
cluster college that recruited a
lot of good players from South
America, and I imagine the Jesuits did pretty well at that too.

Although I had very good treatment
at Pacific, I found UC Davis to be really outstanding. There was so much more depth and breadth and so many outstanding scientists in all aspects of biology. And the emphasis there was so refreshing, with little pretense, and much interdisciplinary collaboration. And the irony was that UC Davis was very inexpensive and UOP was not. I only went to grad school because I was recruited and given a free ride.

UOP was a pretty fair baseball school. I have/had some good friends who played baseball on UOP's best team (under Tom Stubbs).

Since this is a Humboldt blog, I should mention that there was an interesting connection between Humboldt and UOP. There was a guy named Joseph W. Hines who was a circuit riding Methodist minister stationed in Eureka, but responsible for pastoring all the way up the coast to Coos Bay. He was a literate guy, who wrote a book about his time in Humboldt and later, in the San Jose area, where he was raising money to get UOP started. His book is available on line through the Library of Congress. He also started a couple of newspapers in Humboldt County. He seems to have been there while Grant was at Ft. Humboldt.

If you check him out at the Library of Congress, you may also run across his brother, Gustavus Hines, one of the founders of Wilamette University. We refer to them as "The Uncles" along with their other brothers. They were brothers of my 3rd great grandmother. All the brothers came west early, around 1850 or earlier.

The Joseph W. Hines' book is worth reading for his accounts of interactions with the Klamath Indians and getting chased by a grizzly bear up by Prairie Creek.

spyrock said...

yet this is all connected.

Joseph Wilkinson Hines (b. ca. 1824) left New York State in 1853 as a Methodist missionary to Ohio. He later settled in Santa Clara County, California, where he was a prominent Republican and anti-slavery advocate. Touching incidents in the life and labors of a pioneer (1911) is a collection of unrelated papers by Hines: speeches and poems touching such subjects as missionary experiences in Oregon, the history of Santa Clara, Sir George Seymour, Mount Hood, Klamath Indians, woman suffrage, and the University of the Pacific.

you can read this book on line. anyone who doubts the integrity of our early pioneers should check this guy out. thanks for sharing this joe.

Idaho said...

Reading the stories of those amazing pioneers of the ilk you describe is great, thanks for the tip you two.

Joe said...

J.W. Hines came to the west coast in 1953, the same year as Ulysses Grant was posted to Fort Humboldt. It is not clear to me whether they were in the area at the same time. Grant was only there for about a year. Hines left New York by ship, crossed the isthmus of Panama, and took another ship up the west coast, landing in Oregon. There he was able to meet the wagon train on which his brothers and their families came west (see: H.J. Peters, EMOTIONAL WAVES ON THE PRAIRIE SEA: NEW YORK TO OREGON IN '53). The family had left NY before Joseph left, but he had arrived in Oregon before they did. His brother, Gustavus Hines, had first been in Oregon (in what is now the Salem area) from 1839-1846, and had sailed around the world before leading the wagon train in 1853. He wrote books about Oregon and his around the world voyage. These are also available on line. Idaho, I should mention, in passing, that one of the Hines brothers drowned in the Snake River during the 1853 trip by wagon train on the Oregon Trail. The site where he drowned is near where my brother lives in Idaho. Harold J. Peters is my 3rd cousin. His 3rd great grandmother was sister to my 3rd great grandmother, and both were sisters of these Hines brothers that we call "The Uncles." The certainly were remarkable people.

spyrock said...

mark speckman is the football coach at wilamette. he doesn't have any hands. but his team won the state of california high school football championship one year.
i have another ex in salem. voice like an angel. a new hamshire girl. high school pals with aerosmith. had to let her go back to her kind of land.

spyrock said...

i ordered your ancestors book. too hard to read on line. i would rather have it. i went to a catholic university but i was born and raised a methodist. my dad probably wanted me to go to uop but my catholic relatives won out.
he took me up to glide memorial church in san francisco so i would have a place to go to church. he had no idea how that place would change with cecil williams and all that came later., i never went there. the only church i went to was the sunrise service with steve gaskin in sutro park above the cliff house. where sacrament was smoked. however, steve would always bogart that joint and pass it in another direction and like clinton i didn't know how to inhale anyway.

Joe said...

It never occurred to me not to inhale.