Thursday, May 11, 2017

From Veterans For Peace- Stop Endless War! Build For Peace!-Head To Washington



 
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May 29 and 30, 2017, Washington DC
Veterans voices are needed today more than ever to demand a foreign policy oriented towards peace instead of endless war and to remind people of the full and true cost of war.

Help Veterans travel to the nation's capitol to remember all who have died in war and to demand an end to endless war.
Monday Memorial Day May 29th: Vietnam Memorial Wall

Veterans For Peace we will gather it's members and supporters from across the nation for a solemn and respectful occasion to deliver letters at the Vietnam Memorial Wall and to remember all combatants and civilians who died in Vietnam and all wars. We will mourn the tragic and preventable loss of life and the need to abolish war in the name of those who have died and for the sake of all those who live today.

Tuesday May 30th Rally at Lafayette Park

Veterans For Peace is calling all Veterans and Peace activists to join us for a Rally at Lafayette Park were we will boldly and loudly demand an end to war, an end to the assault on our planet, an end to abuse and oppression of all people and to stand for peace and justice at home and abroad.

We know that not everyone can travel to Washington DC but YOU CAN HELP other veterans attend!

We are attempting to raise $20,000 in order to make our expenses and to help subsidize the travel and lodging for a number of veterans who would otherwise not be able to afford to come and grieve or to raise their voices to War No More.
You contribution no matter how small or large will help us make a difference.
As veterans who took an oath to defend the Constitution “against all enemies foreign and domestic” We cannot stand by and let this happen.
More Information on VFP's Memorial Day Action "Stop Endless War! Build For Peace!"

Veterans For Peace is a 501c3 nonprofit veterans organization. Your donation well help us make this a significant stand for Peace. Please give what you can and share this with your family and friends.

Veterans For Peace appreciates your generous donations.
We also encourage you to join our ranks.

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THIS SUNDAY@CCB-Mothers Out Front: "The March -Toward Intergenerational Climate Justice"-In Boston

Community Church of Boston
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This Sunday, May 14th at 11am:

Community Church of Boston

"The March Toward Intergenerational Climate Justice"
with Mothers Out Front

Mothers have historically played a uniquely powerful role in bringing about societal change. Celebrate Mother’s Day with Mothers Out Front: Mobilizing for a Livable Climate, a grassroots movement leveraging the social capital of motherhood to secure climate justice for all children. Nina Dillon is a founding member of the Mothers Out Front organizing team in Cambridge and will be joined by one or two partners-in-activism.

Music by Sue Kranz

Please join us for a friendly lunch after the program.

565 Boylston St., 2nd Floor, Copley Square, Boston, 617-266-6710

All Programs are held on the second floor in the Lothrop Auditorium.

Handicap accessible.

CCB is located near the Orange line-Back Bay or the Green line-Copley T Stops.
On Street Parking and at Back Bay Parking Garage, 500 Boylston Street.
==============================================

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5/13 Pena A Celebration of International Workers' Resistance!-In Boston

Charlie Welch
To  act-ma@act-ma.org  
*5/13 Pena A Celebration of International Workers' Resistance!*

This May1st millions of workers, families and supporters throughout the
globe commemorated and celebrated International *Workers' Day!*
Many focused on migrant workers’ rights including, their vulnerability
and risk of deportation as well as to arbitrary change of policy or the
whim or a stroke of the pen from a government official. Furthermore,
there are workers who are victims of racial, gender, gender orientation
and age bias disparities. Moreover, in the USNA women still do not
receive "equal pay for equal work."

*Workers' Resistance is clearly present! You can see it, hear and feel
it! It is here and everywhere!*

*Sat. May 13th starting at 7 PM**
*

**

*Encuentro 5*

*9A Hamilton Place (near Park St.)
*

Refreshments Provided $5 Suggested Donation (no one turned away)

Come and add your voice to music, poetry, dance and fun while you learn!

Bring your favorite workers/protest songs and stories to share.

http:// www.encuentro5.org/home/

Este primero de mayo millones de trabajadores, familias y partidarios
mundiales conmemoraron y celebraron el *Día Internacional de los
Trabajadores! *Muchos se centraron en los derechos de los trabajadores
migrantes, incluyendo su vulnerabilidad y riesgo de deportación, así
como el cambio arbitrario de política o el capricho o un empujón de la
pluma de un funcionario del gobierno. Además, hay trabajadores que son
víctimas de disparidades raciales, de género, de orientación de género y
de sesgo de edad. Y, en la USNA, las mujeres todavía no reciben "salario
igual por trabajo igual".
¡La Resistencia de los Trabajadores está claramente presente! ¡Se ve,
se oye y se siente! Aquí y en todas partes.
¡Ven y añade tu voz a la música, la poesía, la danza y la diversión
mientras te informas! Traiga a sus canciones de trabajadores favoritos,
canciones de protesta e historias para compartir.
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Exploring Class and Classism 5/17-In Boston

Anne Phillips
To  act-ma@act-ma.org  
Exploring Class & Classism
Wednesday, May 17th
5:30 - 9:00 pm

BEST Hospitality Training Center (Dudley Square)
http://www.classism.org/events/exploring-class-and-classism-3/

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
As the political climate has shifted, we must learn how to work better
across class, and to lift up the voices of working-class and
low-income people who stand to be most affected by the actions of the
new administration.

In this workshop, participants will explore:

* How class identities affect our lives, our work and our
relationships
* How race intersects with class
* How we can become more inclusive with others from different
class backgrounds than ourselves and why that's important
* How we can build community with people from all class
backgrounds

If you have been thinking about bringing Class Action to your
workplace, group or religious community, this is an opportunity not to
miss. Group discounts are available.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Class Action creates a safe and participatory way to explore
challenging issues that we need to explore to build a more whole
community."
-Recent workshop participant
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Class Action has spent 13 years developing creative ways of asking
questions, sharing personal experiences and helping people to engage
with issues of class in a meaningful way. Our popular education
workshops are highly interactive, engaging and focused on learning
from one another in the room.

Register Here: http://www.classism.org/events/exploring-class-and-classism-3/

Cost: $5-$40 based on ability to pay (Space is limited)
No credit card? Register by replying to this email and pay at the
door.

If you are unable to pay the suggested minimum $5, please contact us
to learn more about scholarships.workshops@classism.org

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Facilitators

Denise Moorehead - Born into a lower-middle-class family, Denise
Moorehead was raised in
Western Massachusetts as an only child for 11 years. Her parents, both
"strivers" increased their educational and earning power
in conjunction with opportunities previously unavailable to
African-Americans thanks to the civil rights movement. They were able
to offer Denise dance and instrument lessons, summer camp, French camp
and more. As a young child, she was often in the company of
upper-middle-class children in these settings and working class and
lower middle children in her neighborhood. Her parents prepared her to
fit in with all groups. Today, Denise is a marketing, communications
and training strategist working with nonprofits and small businesses
as the principal of Moorehead Creative Solutions. She recently
cofounded UU Class Conversations, which provides training and
organizing support to Unitarian Universalist congregations and
organizations working to make the denomination more class-inclusive.

Joanie Parker - Joanie grew up in Pittsburgh, the hometown of her
parents, with a
father who was raised owning class and a mother raised working class.
Throughout her life, she was always trying to figure out why some
people were left out and others weren't in society. She decided
to become an elementary school teacher to provide an environment where
children could feel good about themselves. From there she was trained
as a machine operator and worked in a factory for 10 years and was
very involved with her union. Over the past 30 years, she has worked
in the labor movement and has been actively involved in work to end
racism. Currently, she is coordinating a Mentoring Program through the
Women's Institute for Leadership Development (WILD). She is also
committed to working with individuals and groups on the effects of our
class backgrounds and how we can actively work to end classism.
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Film screening fundraiser: CUBA: AN AFRICAN ODYSSEY, 5/16 in Somerville. Ma

H via Act-MA
To  act-ma@act-ma.org  
CUBA: AN AFRICAN ODYSSEY
Fundraiser film showing for the 3 Drowned Black Girls tour
Tuesday May 16th, 7-9pm
@ Parts and Crafts, 577 Somerville Ave, Somerville, MA
Wheelchair Accessible
$10 entry, includes vegan Cuban food

FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1480329892039823/

"Cuba: An African Odyssey" is a documentary about the Cuban Revolution's
role in giving support and solidarity to African independence struggles
in Angola, South Africa and elsewhere. During a time when Africans were
fighting to end colonial domination of their land by the U.S. and
Europe, Cuba stood on the side of African people.

Door fee includes yummy vegan Cuban food for dinner!

This event is a fundraiser for KUNDE SPEAKS, a national speaking tour of
the 3 Drowned Blagk Girls campaign, coming to Boston on June 6th. The
purpose of this powerful speaking tour is to win justice and reparations
for the families of Dominique Battle, Laniya Miller, and Ashaunti
Butler, 3 teenage black girls murdered by Pinellas County Sheriffs
Department (more info see www.threedrownedblackgirls.org)

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Wednesday, May 10, 2017

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over, Really Over

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- When The Music’s Over, Really Over


Classic Rock: 1968: various artists, Time-Life Music, 1987

 Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Stepphenwolf-like mushroom-headed band getting ready to belt out some serious rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night once the "high" wears off, a little.

"That Mustang Sally is a real piece of work," the Prince of Love (a. k. a . Josh Breslin from out of Olde Saco, Maine) thought to himself as he sat in the back of the bus, the magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus that he had been “on” since the summer of love, last summer, the summer of 1967, the summer of his high school graduation, as the bus headed to their spring encampment down at Big Sur. Yes, Sally, (a. k. a. Susan Sharpe, Michigan Class of 1959, and a couple of other degrees to boot) sure had Captain Crunch (a. k. a. Robert Hutchins, Columbia, Class of 1958), the “owner” and all-around mentor of one and all, except to Sally, of course, over a barrel. See, Captain was the wizard king of the “on the bus” scene but he was nuts about Sally and went blind every time she took a new lover. Sally, in her way, was true to the Captain too, except that she liked to “play the field” a little. Yes, she had the Captain over a barrel alright, and she made him like it.

Sally’s specialty was befriending younger, usually younger, guys although she never thought to give me a tumble but that may have been out of respect for Butterfly Swirl who was my first "bus" love and who had flown the coop last fall to go back to Carlsbad High and her golden-haired surfer boy. And inside that specialty Sally was really friendly toward young rock and rock musicians. Right now she was “dating” Jimmy Jakes, the drummer from the new rage band at the Fillmore West, the Magic Mushrooms. And making the Captain like it. Ya, she is some piece of work.

But the Captain, if you can believe this, is just a little less mad at this Jimmy affair than Sally thinks because Jimmy’s Mushrooms not only make the room jump for the “acid freaks” that every San Francisco night group has to cater to but have a political message too. A hard political message about youth waking up and learning about how those who came to America in the old days just raped the land, raped anything they could get their hands on and then moved on, and that their progeny were still doing. Their best song, which the Captain loved enough to keep playing over and over on the bus’s amped up stereo system, Mickey Mouse Monster, was deep into that message. The Captain, when he wasn’t stoned, angry at Sally, or just cynical that day started this whole bus thing just to search for a ‘new world” and he was still searching.

Funny that the Captain would grant “absolution” to Sally for Jimmy over a simple song but Jimmy, in addition, actually talked politics, real world politics to the Captain. Stuff like how music could be the driving force of the revolution, and that John Lennon should be the head of it, and everybody should go back to the land for a while, all kinds of wild ideas like that. Ideas that for “acid” rock guys were too profound, especially when the high wore off. But the Captain listened, sometimes attentively and sometimes with a smirk. Except when that smirk turned to a big-time frown, when the Captain noticed that Sally was now hovering around a guy playing an electric flute. Ya, Sally had the Captain over a barrel, no question.
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The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer of Love-This Land IS Your Land- With Folk Troubadour Woody Guthrie In Mind

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer of Love-This Land IS Your Land- With Folk Troubadour Woody Guthrie In Mind         

          
      







By Bradley Fox

Back in 2014, the summer of 2014 to hone in on the time frame of the story to be told, Josh Breslin the then recently retired old-time alternative newspaper and small journal writer for publications like Arise Folk and Mountain Music Gazette who hailed from Olde Saco, Maine was sitting with his friend Sam Lowell from Carver down in cranberry bog country out in Concord in the field behind the Old Manse where the Greater Boston Folk Society was holding its annual tribute to folksinger Woody Guthrie he had thought about all the connections that he, they had to Woody Guthrie from back in the 1960s folk minute revival and before. He mentioned that orphan thought to Sam whom he queried on the subject, wanted to know his personal take on when he first heard Woody. And as well to Laura Perkins, Sam’s long-time companion who had been sitting between them and whom Josh had an on-going half flame going back who knows how far but who had made it clear to Josh on more than one occasion that she was true blue to Sam although she had thanked him for the attention compliment. Sam was aware of Josh’s interest but also of Laura’s position and so he and Josh got along, had in any case been back and forth with some many collective wives and girlfriends that attracted both of them since they had similar tastes going back to ex-surfer girl Butterfly Swirl that they just took it in stride.  Here is what Sam had to say:   




Some songs, no, let’s go a little wider, some music sticks with you from an early age which even fifty years later you can sing the words out to chapter and verse. Like those church hymns like Mary, Queen of the May, Oh, Jehovah On High, and Amazing Grace that you were forced to sit through with your little Sunday best Robert Hall white suit first bought by poor but proud parents for first communion when that time came  complete with white matching tie on or if you were a girl your best frilly dress on, also so white and first communion bought, when you would have rather been outside playing, or maybe doing anything else but sitting in that forlorn pew, before you got that good dose of religion drilled into by Sunday schoolteachers, parents, hell and brimstone reverends which had made the hymns make sense.


Like as well the bits of music you picked up in school from silly children’s songs in elementary school (Farmer In The Dell, Old MacDonald, Ring Around Something) to that latter time in junior high school when you got your first dose of the survey of the American and world songbook once a week for the school year when you learned about Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, classic guys, Stephen Foster and a lot on stuff by guys named Traditional and Anonymous. Or more pleasantly your coming of age music, maybe like me that 1950s classic age of rock and roll when a certain musician named Berry, first name Chuck, black as night out of Saint Lou with a golden guitar in hand and some kind of backbeat that made you, two left feet you, want to get up and dance, told Mr. Beethoven, you know the classical music guy, and his ilk, Mozart, Brahms, Liszt, to move on over there was a new sheriff in town, was certain songs were associated with certain rites of passage, mainly about boy-girl things.


One such song from my youth, and maybe yours too, was Woody Guthrie surrogate “national anthem,” This Land is Your Land. (Surrogate in response to Irving Berlin’s God Bless America in the throes of the Great Depression that came through America, came through his Oklahoma like a blazing dust ball wind causing westward treks to do re mi California in search of the Promise Land). Although I had immersed myself in the folk minute scene of the early 1960s as it passed through the coffeehouses and clubs of Harvard Square that is not where I first heard or learned the song (and where the song had gotten full program play complete with folk DJs on the radio telling you the genesis of a lot of the music if you had the luck to find them when you flipped the dial on your transistor radio or the air was just right some vagabond Sunday night and for a time on television, after the scene had been established in the underground and some producer learned about it from his grandkids, via the Hootenanny show, which indicated by that time like with the just previous “beat” scene which scared the wits of square Ike American that you were close to the death-knell of the folk moment).

No, for that one song the time and place was in seventh grade in junior high school, down at Myles Standish in Carver where I grew up, when Mr. Dasher would each week in Music Appreciation class teach us a song and then the next week expect us to be able to sing it without looking at a paper. He was kind of a nut for this kind of thing, for making us learn songs from difference genres (except the loathed, his loathed, our to die for, rock and roll which he thought, erroneously and wastefully he could wean us from with this wholesome twaddle) like Some Enchanted Evening from South Pacific, Stephen Foster’s My Old Kentucky Home, or Irving Berlin’s Easter Parade and stuff like that. So that is where I learned it.


Mr. Dasher might have mentioned some information about the songwriter or other details on these things but I did not really pick up on Woody Guthrie’s importance to the American songbook until I got to that folk minute I mentioned where everybody revered him (including most prominently Bob Dylan who sat at his knee, literally as he lay wasting away from genetic diseases in Brooklyn Hospital, Pete Seeger, the transmission belt from the old interest in roots music to the then new interest centered on making current event political protest songs from ban the bomb to killing the Mister James Crow South, and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott who as an acolyte made a nice career out of continued worshipping at that shrine) not so much for that song but for the million other songs that he produced seemingly at the drop of a hat before that dreaded Huntington’s disease got the better of him.

He spoke in simple language and simpler melody of dust bowl refugees of course, being one himself, talked of outlaws and legends of outlaws being a man of the West growing up on such tales right around the time Oklahoma was heading toward tranquil statehood and oil gushers, talked of the sorrow-filled deportees and refugees working under the hot sun for some gringo Mister, spoke of the whole fellahin world if it came right down to it. Spoke, for pay, of the great man-made marvels like dams and bridge spans of the West and how those marvels tamed the wilds. Spoke too of peace and war (that tempered by his support for the American communists, and their line which came to depend more and more on the machinations of Uncle Joe Stalin and his Commissariat of Foreign Affairs), and great battles in the Jarama Valley fought to the bitter end by heroic fellow American Abraham Lincoln Battalion International Brigaders in civil war Spain during the time when it counted. Hell, wrote kids’ stuff too just like that Old MacDonald stuff we learned in school.     

The important thing though is that almost everybody covered Woody then, wrote poems and songs about him (Dylan a classic Song to Woody well worth reading and hearing on one of his earliest records), affected his easy ah shucks mannerisms, sat at his feet in order to learn the simple way, three chords mostly, recycled the same melody on many songs so it was not that aspect of the song that grabbed you but the sentiment, that he gave to entertain the people, that vast fellahin world mentioned previously (although in the 1960s folk minute Second Coming it was not the downtrodden and afflicted who found solace but the young, mainly college students in big tent cities and sheltered college campuses who were looking for authenticity, for roots).                 

It was not until sometime later that I began to understand the drift of his early life, the life of a nomadic troubadour singing and writing his way across the land for nickels and dimes and for the pure hell of it (although not all of the iterant hobo legend holds up since he had a brother who ran a radio station in California and that platform gave him a very helpful leg up which singing in the Okie/Arkie “from hunger” migrant stoop labor camps never could have done). That laconic style is what the serious folk singers were trying to emulate, that “keep on moving” rolling stone gathers no moss thing that Woody perfected as he headed out of the played-out dustbowl Oklahoma night, wrote plenty of good dustbowl ballads about that too, evoking the ghost of Tom Joad in John Steinbeck’s’ The Grapes Of Wrath as he went along. Yeah, you could almost see old Tom, beaten down in the dustbowl looking for a new start out in the frontier’s end Pacific, mixing it up with braceros-drivers, straw bosses, railroad “bulls,” in Woody and making quick work of it too.      

 Yeah, Woody wrote of the hard life of the generations drifting West to scratch out some kind of existence on the land, tame that West a bit. Wrote too of political things going on, the need for working people to unionize, the need to take care of the desperate Mexico braceros brought in to bring in the harvest and then abused and left hanging, spoke too of truth to power about some men robbing you with a gun others with a fountain pen, about the beauty of America if only the robber barons, the greedy, the spirit-destroyers, the forever night-takers would let it be. Wrote too about the wide continent from New York Harbor to the painted deserts, to the fruitful orchards, all the way to the California line, no further if you did not have the do-re-mi called America and how this land was ours, the whole fellahin bunch of us, if we knew how to keep it. No wonder I remembered that song chapter and verse.             



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Exclusion Redux-On The 75th Anniversary Of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order Rounding Up Japanese-Americans For The Concentration Camps

Exclusion Redux-On The 75th Anniversary Of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Executive Order Rounding Up Japanese-Americans For The Concentration Camps



And just in case you think today's arguments are new here's a little government propaganda piece...





By Frank Jackman
   

History is sometimes a mischievous muse. It was 75 years ago that another President of the United States (POTUS in tweet speak), a wild man left-wing Democratic to hear the American-Firsters of that day tell it signed an executive rounding up another minority of the myriad that have passed through this country. And 75 years later … (hey you know) 
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Tuesday, May 09, 2017

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -The Heart Of The San Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -The Heart Of The San Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967



Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.

It wasn’t my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had only “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill one day when he was looking for dope. Before that I had traveled all through the great western blue-pink night, as my North Adamsville corner boy friend, Peter Paul Markin, would say from Ames, Iowa where I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus).

I brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although now she is going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it. It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high–end New York college for women, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a. Phil Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay) married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown from me.

It was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackman) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the they being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.

Here is the “skinny.” The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.] So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric kool-aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception. And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception. 

Saturday night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Ya, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say hot, edgy, be-hop.) Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject, it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so. She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing skirts were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.

And the “groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement and, being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around he just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster yellow bus to make the one mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of kool-aid. The Prince and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use kool-aid for the toast. Well, we shall see. And they shall see.

And they “saw,” or rather saw once the acid (LSD) kicked in about an hour later, more or less. Now what you “see” on an acid trip is a very individual thing, moreover other than that powerful rush existential moment that you find yourself living in it defies description, literary niceness description, especially from a couple of kids on their “wedding night.” So what is left? Well, some observations by “father” Far-Out Phil, now a veteran acid-eater, as I hovered over my new-found “family” to insured that they made a safe landing.

The first thing I noticed was that Butterfly Swirl was gyrating like crazy when the female singer in front of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, started up on their acid rock anthem, White Rabbit. Some of Butterfly’s moves had half the guys in the place kind of male hippie “leering” at her (mainly giving her a sly nod of approval, and making a mental note to check her out later when the dope hit her at the high point in another couple of hours or so). (Remember she had on that diaphanous peasant blouse, and also remember that sexual thoughts, leering sexual thoughts or not, did not fade away when under the influence of LSD. In many cases the sexual arousal effect was heightened, particularly when a little high- grade herb was thrown into the mix.) I thought nothing in particular of her actions just then, many guys and girls were gyrating, were being checked-out and were making mental notes of one kind or another. It is only when Butterfly started to “believe” that she was Alice, the Alice of the song and of wonderland, and repeated “I am Alice, I am alive,” about thirteen times that I moved over to her quickly and gave her a battle-scarred veteran’s calming down, a couple of hits off the Columbia Red that I had just coped from some freak.

And where was Prince Love during the trial by fire honeymoon night? Gyrating with none other than Lance Peters, who you may know as Luscious Lois or seven other names, by who was my main honey now that Butterfly has flown my coop. But don’t call her Lance Peters this night because after a tab of acid (beyond her congratulations kool-aid cup earlier) she is now Laura Opal in her constant name-game change run through the alphabet. Prince Love had finally “seen” the virtues of being with older woman like I had learned back in Ames Iowa time, an older voluptuous woman and although she was wearing no Butterfly diaphanous blouse Prince felt electricity running through his veins as they encircled each other on the dance floor. Encircled each other and then, slyly, very slyly, I thought when I heard the story the next day, backed out of the Fillmore to wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury until the dawn. Then to find shelter in some magic bus they thought was the Captain’s but when they were awoken by some tom-toms drumming out to eternity around noontime found out that they were in the “Majestic Moon” tribe’s bus. No hassle, no problem, guest always welcome. Ya, that is the way it was then. When I cornered, although corned may be too strong a word, the Prince later all that he would commit to was that he had been devoured by Mother Earth and had come out on the other side. That, and that he had seen god, god close up. Laura Quirk, if she is still running under that name now, merely stated that she was god. Oh ya, and had seen the now de rigueur stairway to heaven paved with brilliant lights. She certainly knew how to get around her Phil when the deal went down, no question.

And how did the evening end with Butterfly and me, after I “consoled” her with my ready-teddy herbal remedy? After a search for Prince and Lance, a pissed off search for me, we went over into a corner and started staring at one of the strobe lights off the walls putting ourselves into something of a trance-like mood. A short time later, I, formerly nothing but a hard-luck, hard-nosed, world-wide North Adamsville corner boy in good standing started involuntarily yelling, “I am Alice, I am alive,” about ten times. Butterfly though that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and came over to me and handed me a joint, a joint filled with some of that same Columbia Red that settled her down earlier. And I, like Butterfly before me, did calm down. Calmed down enough to see our way “home” to Captain Crunch’s Crash-Pad where we, just for old time’s sake, spend the hours until dawn making love. (I send my apologies to those two thousand guys at the Fillmore who had made notes to check on Butterfly later. Hey, I was not a king hell corner boy back in the North Adamsville be-bop night for nothing. You have to move fast sometimes in this wicked old world, even when the point was to slow the circles down.) Asked later what her “trip” had felt like all Butterfly could utter was her delight in my antics. That, the usual color dream descriptions, and that she had climbed some huge himalaya mountain and once on top climbed a spiraling pole forever and ever. I just chuckled my old corner boy chuckle.

And what of Butterfly and Prince’s comments on their maiden voyage as newlyweds? They pronounced themselves very satisfied with their Fillmore honeymoon night. They then went off for what was suppose to be a few days down to Big Sur where Captain Crunch had some friends, Captain had friends everywhere, everywhere that mattered, who lent them their cabin along the ocean rocks and they had a “real” honeymoon. A few weeks later Prince Love, now a solo prince, came back to the bus. It seems that Butterfly had had her fill of being “on the bus,” although she told the Prince to say thanks to everybody for the dope, sex, and everything but that at heart her heart belonged to her golden-haired surfer boy and his search for the perfect wave.

Well, we all knew not everybody was build for the rigors of being “on the bus” so farewell Kathleen Clarke, farewell. And just then, after hearing this story, I thought that Prince had better keep his Olde Saco eyes off Lannie Rose (yes she has changed her name again) or I might just remember, seriously remember, some of those less savory North Adamsville be-bop corner boy nights. Be forewarned, sweet prince.
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