Update 11-2-10

Hi,

I really like technology.  Because of it and the electioneering this weekend, I've gotten phone calls from Barrack Obama, Warren Beatty, Jerry Brown, Susan Sarandon, Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbara Boxer, and Martin Sheen.
    Meanwhile, in a different kind of near reality, two neat stories from some people we went to high school with.  Also, two related poems.  And, in between, a public service announcement.
    I hope all this doesn't push our length limit, as happened again last week.  Some people had to go searching in their spam folders.  Remember, you can always ask for another copy if yours doesn't turn up.
    And Booker Gibson's birthday remembrances will continue next week.

From Robert Fiveson:  Tales of being in the presence of great folkies -- how about a Founding Father?
    When I was a lad in Canada, my mom was a full-on beatnik. I was a Red Diaper Baby (Google it).  My family was very affiliated with an organization that had a summer camp called Naivelt (New World).  A group who used to play there regularly was The Weavers... featuring Pete Seeger.  In fact, I was once chastened by him as I was sitting in the front row and eating sunflower seeds that I was spitting all over the stage -- it was a really informal venue.
    Many years later, I was running a film operation out of the Library of Congress.  As part of a multi-part TV series on human communication, I was doing a show on music -- in this case, workers' songs.  I snagged Pete Seeger to appear, sing, and comment, and I volunteered to pick him up on his way from the Smithsonian to Capital Hill.  That's where my offices were and where the set was pre-lit. In the car, I mentioned the last time I had seen him.
    Now, here was a Federal employee in a suit telling him I knew him from a Communist summer camp outside Toronto.  His head literally snapped around, and wide-eyed, he asked, "You were there!?"  I said, "Yes," and he smiled and said in a conspiratorial way, "You and I go waaay back!"
    P.S.  One of my few regrets in life is that my mom never lived long enough to hear this story.

From Ryki Zuckerman, partly in response to a note Zelda White Nichols sent last week:  Zelda, of course I remember you.  Have you forgotten that we e-mailed back and forth for a little while within the last decade --or, okay, maybe earlier?
    The woman we knew in Lynbook was Bea Adler.  You sent me her e-mail address years ago, and I corresponded with her briefly.  She was living in Alaska then.
    As for Dylan, you might be forgetting that you had never gone into New York City on your own, and I said I would be happy to take you in -- on the bus and subway!  I'd been dragging into New York that way since I was 14.  I also said I'd take you to the Folklore Center on Macdougal Street, the place run by the lecherous Izzy Young.  As we walked down the street to get there, coming towards us was Joan Baez -- talk about beautiful hair flowing in the wind.  She went in, and when we got inside, I heard Izzy talking shop with someone in the back room -- Dylan.  We got both his and Baez's autographs.
    That album cover shows Dylan with Suze Rotolo.  She published a memoir recently, The Freewheelin' Time, about her relationship with Dylan and about life in the 60s.  She has been friends with my older sister for 50 years.  They met at Camp Kinderland, the one in the Catskills, in New York, not the one Robert Fiveson's grandmother owned in Canada.
    Zelda, also, thank you for your kind remarks about my hair.   Herewith are two poems about hair.

Before Ryki's poems, that public service note about an Alumni Association meeting change, from Emily Kleinman Schreiber:  Many of you may not know that our November meeting date had to be changed to the 18th because the 11th is Veteran's Day, and the schools are closed.  Hopefully, I'll see some of you on Thursday, the 18th.

Now, Ryki's poems:

hairspray

never has the mist graced my tresses,
never have i tinted or colored,
nor teased nor in any way
bullied my hair.

it flies on the wind freely
and strangles my mouth at will,
of which it has its own.

it helps itself to generous dollops of soup
when i bend forward,
and disgraces me with
"bride of frankenstein" imitations
when i remove my beret.

as the years start
whispering taunts in my ear,
my hair takes note
of passing ladies of the helmet,
whose coiffures are fixed as the sun,
and boast no planets
circling, nor stray strands.

come white or silver,
or gray invasion,
i'll let the hues prevail,
and doubt i'll ever spritz on lacquer:
the lanker, the better -- it's pure.
for see, i'm sworn to the moon, not the sun.
swing free, mes cheveux, flow,
move the mythic tides of eternal youth.

----------------

who to blame it on

blame it on veronica lake
she of  long blond cascading hair
one eye obscured
who ensnared a man
to love her
in "i married a witch,"
who endangered women
emulating her sexy spunk,
when, helping the war effort
working in factories,
they nearly lost body parts
when their hair got caught
in machines;
veronica, who strutted across the small
black-and-white screen
in my parent's den
ensnaring my young impressionable brain
with indelible image of females
with very long hair.
i grew mine til it would grow no more,
a length that inspired
other girls on line behind me at school
to braid it and play with it.
i grew mine thinking strength
grew with it,
me, samson and delilah, both.
i grew mine, not blond,
but obscuring one witch.

The South '65 e-mail addresses:  reunionclass65.blogspot.com

The South '65 photo site:  picasaweb.google.com/SouthHS65


Rich