Ramparts to Vortex. Whats that?

Ramparts, the Realist, the Berkeley Barb… if you hadn’t heard of these publications, or best yet, read them in minute detail, you were short of reading material for a sound mind… Big Brother AS a holding company as well as Big Brother AND the Holding Company. the politics and the music were essential underpinnings of the universe. Learning about the Litton Corporation (and Ross Perot) or listening to Janis at Monterey.. it all opened the eyes of a teenager in the late sixties.

Its what I am, and what I have become.. it shapes my thinking to a degree but then the life experiences do as well .. I see the world as a dangerous place for my children, and when I see other peoples children dying in Iraq (or Afghanistan, or Blacksburg) I hurt for them, a palpable pain born of parenting, pacifism and disdain for illegitimate government..

Not to mention, Joan Baez, Richard Fariña, Paul Krassner, Max Scherr , Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King JR… All of these people told me to question, to rise above.. to demand that our government live up to its ideals..

The ideals are great and demand tending, and whether we have gone astray yet again by being mislead by a too cooperative media or simply have been lax in our duty to a better world for our children, we have to stand up for those ideals again.
We have a broken system and it needs to be rebuilt, from the ground up, using the tools given us by the men who created the first modern democracy.. the Constitution AND the Declaration of Independence..

So where are we now, where do we look for leadership.. are there any politicians that can be trusted to look to the better, to tend the needs of humanity and democracy… There have been some, but its hard to see them now.. I think of Tom McCall..

Governor Tom McCall was a realist, a conservationist and a man of his word, those of you who don’t know about this man need to learn a lot more, including about the state sponsored rock festival at McIvar Park near Portland in 1970, which i attended.. it was meaningful in ways undreamed of at the time.. and yet its merely a legend.. lost in the mist of time..

“the 1970 Oregon rock festival Vortex I:
A Biodegradable Festival of Life,
the only state-sponsored event of its kind in U.S. history”

From Wikipedia:

McCall’s two terms as Oregon’s governor were notable for many
achievements in the environmental sphere, including the country’s first “bottle bill”, the cleanup of the Willamette River, passage of a law to maintain Oswald West’s legacy of public ownership
of the state’s beaches, and the first statewide land-use planning system, which introduced the urban growth boundary around the state’s cities.

McCall is well known for a comment that he made in a 1971 interview with CBS News’s Terry Drinkwater, in which he said: “ Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven’s sake, don’t move here to live.”

This was a man whose ideas time had come, and whose time is still,
perhaps even more so now, with us. He worked within the system,
changed things and made strides toward a better world..
something we all should strive for.
We need leaders like Tom McCall Now...

Tom McCall Park on the water front in Portland

Does this date me, does it make me a hopeless dreamer.. I hope not, i prefer to think that our leaders will arise from the generation now in school, those with the kind of ideals this country was founded upon, combined with understanding and humanity… and the clarity of thought to remember that freedom taken from one, steals freedom from all of us..

Stay tuned

Richard and Mimi Fariña

The album that I have listened to for 30 years, was sadly , the second and final album Richard & Mimi Farina made, although Mimi went on to record with her sister Joan Baez, and create collections of recordings of Richard and herself. Reflections in a Crystal Wind is a rare insight into the folk scene of the middle sixties. The duo venture into an electrified folk-rock sound something that was just about to enter the light of day at Dylan’s infamous Newport electric debut, at which he included members of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band in part of his set, so drums and electric guitars on Reflections in a Crystal Wind
was radical enough without Richards hard-edged and satirical lyrics. The names of the songs themselves evoke their nature.

The album is divided about half and half between the electric social commentary songs, and the lilting folk instrumentals with Richard on the dulcimer, and Mimi on guitar.

Richard’s lyrics–poetically modern and satirical–were taking on an unabashed bent toward critical radicalism, he said things in a straightforward manner, that others hid behind metaphor. He worked for an advertising agency for a while, and these lyrics probably came from that experience, and were a precursor…

They’ll buy you a suit of clothes
and pay to get another nose
so no one will turn you away.
You’ll wear a tie and hope to die
if anymore you try to fly
from people with nothing to say.
So cut your hair and never stare
at people who ain’t aware
that every morning they wake up dead.
Take off your boots and find your roots
and join the ranks of young recruits
who have a collectivized head. .

Sadly Richard died in a motorcycle accident at the age of 30, cutting this creative life tragically short.

Video of Richard and Mimi playing “Bold Marauder” on Pete Seeger’s Rainbow Quest