New favorite video

I don't watch a ton of music videos but this one is my current favorite by miles.  Even though I'm an old codger, I find it to be erotic in a surprisingly refreshing way.  Enjoy.

Cassady letter - the plot thickens

It's no surprise that people are coming out of the woodwork to claim ownership of the Cassady letter mentioned in my previous post.  Lots of moola at stake, which brings out the greedy worst of all the players.  You can read about all this in today's SF Chronicle right here.  Be sure to check out the great photos on page two.  I love the picture of "the gang" outside Ferlinghetti's City Lights book store in October 1956.

Neal Cassady letter

Today's Chronicle has a front-page article on the famous "Joan Anderson Letter" written by Neal Cassady in San  Francisco to Jack Kerouac in New York.  The letter is said to have inspired Kerouac's approach to "On the Road."  The letter is to be auctioned off on December 17th with the bidding to start at around $300,000.  (Hold on while I check my checking account balance.)  The article is very interesting and you can read the whole thing right here.  Click bottom right corner of page 1 to move to page 2.  An interesting irony is that the "Joan Anderson Letter" was named for a woman Cassady describes in amorous detail, but who she is or was remains a mystery.  Note the link on page two to an interesting video from the Beat Museum regarding the letter.  The link is functional.

More from Fowler album

More from my great grandma's album.  She was my mother's grandmother.

Here is a photo of my parents, probably taken close to their marriage in 1943.  

And here is another photo of them with my aunt Helen, my father's older sister.

The Fowler album

Sorry I have not posted more recently.  I have been in the throes of scanning photos from a photo album that belonged to my great grandmother, Edith Fowler.  It's been quite a job.  I got the album from my cousin Kris, who with her mother Norma charted out and identified all of the photos.  Norma is my late mother's sister. There are over 250 photos and I have finished scanning them all and am working on making making an index from Kris's charts..that correlates to the file names of my scans.

Some of these photos go back to the early twenties so they are pretty interesting, if not amazing.  I have decided to share some of them with you.  Here is the first, a picture of me as a toddler.  Sure wish I had all that hair now.

In praise of "words"

I had a father who persistently yet gently corrected my grammar and use of the English language.  It sort of annoyed me at the time, but after I got to high school English and college courses that required any sort of writing, I was grateful for his guidance.  Later came law school and then teaching writing to law students.  With such a background, you can see why I came to love the language and all its twists, turns and colloquialisms.  Thus, I was totally taken with this homage to language, which also soundly rejects those who have become self-styled language policemen.  It may not be your cup of tea, but if you love to read and write, you should watch it in its entirety.

Ah, Bertrand....

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

~ Bertrand Russell

 

An apparently widely held opinion:  Republicans and the right wing will fairly and competently run the country based on the needs and desires of the many, not the privileged few.