Pay your parking meters

Friday, October 09, 2015

Politics is described as “an organized” activity, a group of people gathering behind a common cause to achieve power.

This week proved the long-standing assumption that people seeking power often compromise their own beliefs, abandoning principle in order to advance their personal agenda.

On national level, political wizards operate behind the curtains to develop schemes that will lure naïve people into supporting questionable schemes, shaping myths out of papier-mâché so that masses of people will flock to the ballot box on their behalf.

This is no less true locally. Reformers wave flags that draw groups of well-meaning people to their cause, and then when achieving power, cease all pretense at being reformers.

They become the very thing they rallied against, often leaving the landscape littered with the remains of those who once championed their causes.

This is a lesson learned once more this week, leaving a host of disillusioned people to wonder whose cause to rally for, or to abandon the whole field – seeing politics as simply too ruthless and corrupt for ordinary people to engage in.

Wandering through this field of victims, I wonder how we ever get things done, and whether there are ever any good guys and gals when it comes to pursuit of power.

Or do people start out good, and then get perverted by the system they seek to reform?

Power is addictive and seductive. We get there and then we discovered the perks, and then we become the perpetrators of the political crimes we were so bent against when we started our reform movement.

Those who still retain faith or realize they’ve been duped, suddenly give up, abandoning the field of conflict so that no one stands in the way of the power grab.

Honest people feel the hurt deep in the bones, suddenly realizing that they have encountered a cancer for which they have no cure.

They become the walking dead, stumbling around leaderless, seeing everything as corrupt because they flags they followed proved to be the disguise for something they thought they fought again.

It is sad. It is reality. It is the reason why people do not believe in causes after the causes after proved false.

Bob Dylan put it best when he said we can’t trust leaders and must always pay parking meters.

A quarter for your thoughts?

Herschel Silverman: A spiritual man

  

September 20, 2015

Hersch Silverman is dead.

For me, he’s the last of the Beat poets, and the one I knew best.

I saw him last at a reading in the Hoboken Museum. He seemed frail, even a bit lost, although still capable – his reading as vibrant as ever.

I met him for the first time in the mid-1980s when we published him in Scrap Paper Review. This was after I had met Ginsberg, although Hersch seemed warmer to me, and less remote.

I often saw him at poetry readings, and he was always sending me chap books of his work.

When I got to Bayonne finally as a reporter, I managed to do several stories on him, but often also saw him on the street.

He treated the Hudson Bergen Light Rail as if it had been built for him personally, allowing him to walk down two blocks from his house to the station and reach New York City in a way that was much more of a struggle in the past.

Sometimes, he would pass the newspaper office when we were still located on 21st Street. He commented on my stories in the newspaper as if he thought I was superman for writing so many.

He was as big a fan of me as I was of him.

I loved the idea that I had become connected with The Beats personally, and loved the fact that he was a survivor.

He had a candy store across from the Bayonne High School years earlier, but never stopped caring about those who went to school there, especially the poets. He set up a scholarship fund for poets, and would go to the school each May to meet with the kids, to listen to their poetry and read some of his.

I remember going to his house to do a story on him. His wife had passed away, and though he had kids, he seemed very isolated. His home was a time warp, a flash back to the Beat era, post world war, when so many veterans had built their hopes on the GI Bill.

I vaguely recall he was a veteran.

He said he once brought Ginsberg to Bayonne, taking a tour of the industrial city. Ginsberg was very impressed with St. Henry’s Church, as if it reminded him of the great churches of Europe. For a time, Gregory Corso stayed with Hersch, but often wandered off, apparently in search of drink.

I remember how grateful Hersch was when I did a full issue of Scrap Paper Review dedicated just to him in the late 1980s, something that bonded us.

I remember how happy he looked at the Poetry Club in New York when they paid tribute to him back in 2010, and how he performed some of his poetry upstairs in the private apartment with a guitarist.

This was a man of peace, someone who thought the best of people, and who lived beyond the realm of politics. He shared a lot of this with Ginsberg, although there was something deeper in his soul that I could feel at each meeting, as if he was seeing me for the first time, and yet saw me also as a dear friend.

Hersch left a mark on this world that will never fade, partly because he invested his time and energy into people, who carry his memory with us, and who treasured each moment as if this was the most important moment in our lives.

I no longer cover Bayonne, so I did not have a chance to see him on the street as I often did when I still worked there. But I am glad for those chance encounters, knowing that his spirit will continue to walk those streets and ride the light rail, and when I do walk there, I will encounter it, just as I encounter him in my grateful memories.

Talent show

Wednesday, August 19, 2015

I could see the hurt in her eyes behind her glasses.

Even though she walked away with a prize, it wasn’t the prize she deserved. I knew it down deep and so did most of the audience that had attended the talent show that night.

She is the reason I had being a judge in anything, especially with something so subjective as talent.

In the past, I always did journalism contests at a distance, able to read a story or examine a photograph without having to look the author or photographer in the eye afterwards.

Even in those cases that I later encountered the contestant, I could generally live with the result since I always felt that I had judged fairly.

This was not the case on this night in Bayonne. I had marked this girl high, but failed to argue enough with the other judges as to why she deserved first place instead of the third place award she ended up with.

I’m not sure why I agreed to become one of the judges. One or the organizers asked me during a conversation with someone else, and when a nod is as good as a wink, I said, “Why not.”

And suddenly, I was on the billboard along with a school board candidate, the one time lead guitarist for Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show, and actor, Tammy Blanchard.

After years of trying to wrangle an interview with Blanchard, I finally managed to get a story into our Bayonne magazine. But this was a phone interview. The only other time I had actually seen her in person was during a high school graduation when she gave out a scholarship to one of the students.

So I was a bit disappointed when she had to cancel to attend an audition in New York, though we did get a former director in her place.

Sitting next to George Cummings of Dr. Hook fame was a history lesson of local music, and a flash back to a time when pop music wasn’t so corporate controlled. He even sang me the dirty lyrics to his band’s biggest hit, “The Cover of the Rolling Stone,” and it was all I could do to keep from laughing when we were supposed to look serious and judge-like.

The acts varied widely, although nearly all of them involved singing. This is likely why the one dance act managed to stand out and get awarded.

The musical acts varied, not only in style, but in era, and this proved somewhat of a problem since all of the judges were of a particular era, and some of the contestants – such as this girl – were two and a half generations later.

She performed one of Adele’s more difficult songs, and struggled through the beginning slightly, only to finally pull it together at the end.

Other acts included Frank Sinatra songs, Elvis songs, Motown songs, and perhaps because the judges were of an age that related best to these many of these acts scored higher over all.

Some of the scheduled acts did not show, and so apparently to give the audience their money’s worth, organizers allowed some acts to go on again.

This only confused the judging, especially in regards to this particular girl – who came back with a rendition of “Over the Rainbow” so powerful, it nearly made me cry.

But some of the judges felt the second performance should not figure in the final judgment and so discounted it – although in one or two other cases, previous performers came back as solo acts and got credit anyway.

The other problem with the younger performers is that they sang along with the professionally released recording, and so some judges could not tell which voice was which, and assumed that the quality they heard best came form the recording and not the performer.

This was not the case with the girl who sang Adele and later Judy Garland songs.

Judging became a confusion of what to include and not, and how to determine tie scores. I just handed in my numbers and went off to find the men’s room while the others figured out who got what.

And I tried desperately not to look around to see that girl for fear I would have to look her in the eye.

But I did see her later and how hurt she looked when the organizers announced that she had won third prize.

It is one of those moments you remember forever because you know she will feel the sting of it long after the event has become insignificant, a sting that may someday derail a potential career, although I hope (mostly for my own sake) it will inspire her to try harder, to spite us.

Ah, Carol

February 12, 1974

She sits on my leg, her thighs tight against me as if I was a horse.

She talks to Pauly as she moves forward and then back, then forward again.

She doesn’t let on that she feels me react, as the seam of her genes presses against my manhood.

I am almost ready to explode.

This is not fair, nor is it supposed to be.

She doesn’t even talk to me, just moves forward and back, speaking only to Pauly who seems not to see what is going on.

I want to rip her jeans off and plunge deep into her. But I’m scared she might stop.

I am the lantern she rubs until the genie appears, and I would grant her any wish if only she would grant one wish for me.

I die inside each time I see her and with every touch she gives, yet I have never kissed her, except only in my mind.

And a times like this, between the movement forward and back, I want more than a kiss,

But she keeps on moving, back and forward, back and forward, until I release, and then, I hear her sigh.

Sam, the seasick sailor

Friday, July 24, 2015

I had to put Sam, the cat, down last week.

I don’t know exactly how old he was became he came into the house as an adult in 2008.

But he occupied my front porch for years prior to that, a more or less permanent resident who wandered off only to seek a meal from one of our more generous neighbors.

From the start, he was the sickliest cat anyone could imagine. He drooled constantly, and had a constant crust around his mouth and eyes.

This made his friendliness somewhat uncomfortable since he loved sitting in my lap, and would often stick that stinking face into my face, the stench of which nearly made me ill.

When he got too bad, we would take a moist rag and wipe away the crust and drool, a cleanup that lasted almost a whole day before he reverted to his usual form.

Other cats loved Sam, especially wild kittens, who often took refuge with him during cold days in order to keep warm.

He became their godfather, and had no real enemies in the world. Opossums, raccoons, skunks, even most dogs generally passed him by, and he made no hostile advances at them.

He had the vacant stare of an innocent right to the moment the vet injected him in the end, something that made him feel very human to me.

For a time, he shared our porch with a cat we called “Crazy,” who got his name for acts that seemed odd such as sleeping on top of cars and such. Crazy was scared of thunder and lightning, and so I often sat with him and Sam on the front porch to comfort them during summer squalls.

In the spring of 2008, Crazy took ill, and we brought him into the house for a time, but we could not save him. This made me fear for Sam and so we brought him in as well, took him to the vet and got a regiment of medicine to help deal with the drooling and nearly constant upper respiratory diseases he suffered.

In those says, he refused to leave the kitchen, living his life day and night on the kitchen table. When I brought in a soft chair, he took up residences on that. Later, he discovered the bedroom and adopted that as his new abode.

This is not to say that he didn’t have quirks. He tended to sleep beside me at night, waking me up with his combination of purrs and snorkeling. In the morning, he let out a wail to wake me up so I could feed him, and generally knew when he ought to get fed at night, wailing until I put a dish down in front of him.

In 2010, he started to stagger. He could not keep his balance. We thought he’d had a stroke. But when we took him to the vet, we learned that he had suffered a severe inner ear infection that affected his perception. He was perpetually sea sick, and apparently saw everything in duplicate. Medicine eventually cleared this up, but left him with the nick name of Seasick Sam.

A few weeks ago, he came down with the same condition, and we got him to the vet who repeated the regiment of medicine. Still he struggled to get off the bed and to feed, but bravely did both. Then one morning, something happened and he suffered a real stroke. The progress he had made over the previous few days vanished, he could not even stand up, although still purred when petted.

But he wasn’t going to recover easily or soon, and would need to be carried everywhere if he wanted to eat or pee, and we realized this was not quality life, and keeping him alive largely left him to suffer, even though technically he wasn’t in pain.

Sam was a special cat because he was indeed innocent, and had made no enemies in life, and so mercifully, we put him to sleep, hoping we might meet again in some other world where there is no pain.

Carpetbaggers strike again

Thursday, July 09, 2015

The rain comes in waves, first heavy, then light, and then for a moment, it only trickles on the awning like impatient fingers waiting for the next wave.

The stock market in China crashed yesterday, and mysteriously, during a downturn in our own, computers failed in New York forcing the market to halt for three and a half hours – allowing people to catch their breath before taking the next plunge.

Someone on the radio compared China’s fall to New York 1929. But that person must have had to eat his words when China recovered (the government leaping in to buy stocks to keep everything stable.)

We live in precarious times, drenched with a new wave of political correctness as busybodies (mostly liberals) bask in recent victories, and thus leap to create even more social change, unaware that like the rain or the sea, change comes in waves, and there is always a backlash.

Some comedians refuse to perform on college campuses because the political correctness has become so pervasive, a batch of do-good self-righteous liberal types that think they own the moral high ground and have a right to tell other people how to live their lives.

On top of this has been the discussion about the Confederate Flag and the outrage through the nation over its use in a recent murder of people in a black church in South Carolina.

Like the carpetbaggers that descended on The South after the Civil War, morally pumped up left wing bigots attack a whole culture, determined to once and for all stamp out the revolution that the Civil War failed to accomplish.

As with all tyranny, this move to “educate” The South is doomed to create even more bad feelings because it is being imported from the very places the South has come to hate.

The old saying about winners being the ones that write history has never been truer than it is in regards to what brought about the Civil War. But supposedly college educated morons pump up the rhetoric to say the war was entirely about slavery, when it was really about economics. Northern robber barons, who had already made their money off supplying the slaves to the south, hopped on the anti-slavery bandwagon when it became profitable for them to do so, and so fueled the war. The north had built a new economy based on manufacturing (much of which eventually led to polluting our waterways and creating climate change) and found the south’s cheap labor (slave labor) standing in the way of making their profits.

There was moral justification for doing away with slavery, but it was money that created the war as the north demanded the south dismantle its economy – in other words, get rid of the slaves. This move would have destroyed the south nearly as much as the war did, creating a significant economic disadvantage the north was well aware of.

The south refused – partly because it had no choice but refuse. The entire economy would collapse if they freed the slaves. With new Free states entering the union, the north was poised to outvote the south on every economic issue as well. Rather than be bullied by well-funded industrialists in the north, the south chose to fight.

Lincoln – well known for his position on slavery – did not enter the war to free the slaves, but preserve the union.  Freeing the slaves in the middle of the war was hardly a humanitarian gesture. Lincoln wanted to break the spirit of the South at a critical time and it worked.

For many, the Confederate Flag became a symbol of continued resistance to King George-like tyranny imposed upon the south by a victorious North. In some ways, the righteous liberals in the north are repeating the rape of the South that started with northern carpetbaggers after the conclusion of the Civil War. In other words, we’re just finishing up when we started.

A week after the Stonewall riot

Thursday, July 02, 2015

I can walk this walk from the Heights to Hoboken with my eyes closed, I have done it for so long.

The world changes so completely that I can’t keep track of it, as I could not when I was a kid.

In many ways, I have walked back in time to when the righteous rose up and protested the ill deeds of a racist and homophobic world.

Church burnings, and gay pride mingling into a madness that comes out the other end as something hardly recognizable.

Gay pride week in Manhattan took on new meaning with the Supreme Court ruling against bans on gay marriage.  The celebration that normally took place at the Stone Wall Inn grew into monumental proportions.

This was a moment everybody needed to remember.

This made me think of Maxwell – a gay kid I met for the first time in the summer of 1968 when I spent nearly every waking moment in the Village.

Hank and I were doing our usual singing routine on the streets, pretending like we had somehow transitioned back to 1950s Greenwich Village when Peter, Paul and Mary, Bob Dylan and others did their thing here. Suddenly, this relatively short kid starts singing at us – not folk songs, but show tunes. I remember him singing “Button up your overcoat” as he pranced pixie-like in front of us.

Hank, who moved into the East Village a short time later, because close to Max. But Max always fancied me, and flirted all the time whenever I was around.

He was often at Hank’s apartment the summer of 1969 when I got passes from the Army. He wanted to show me off, and so convinced me more than once to go out drinking with him. He said he knew great places where we could have a lot of fun. By this, he meant all the gay bars along Christopher Street and near Sheridan Square – among which was the Stonewall Inn.

He took me there about a week before the now infamous riot, and pretended like he was my date. I wasn’t completely aware of the game he played with other gay men and didn’t realize that he was showing me off to them to make them jealous. But I do remember the catcalls and other remarks that generally came our way during that walk of fame. Max was more than a little amused. I was not.

Although I vowed not to make the same mistake twice, I agreed to accompany Max again a few weeks later. Everything had changed. The innocence of the first experience had evaporated and there was a sense of militancy among the gay expatriates, and the feeling I got when we wandered back into these bars was similar to one I got a few times when I managed to wander into the Black Panthers headquarters – or even the clubhouse of the Hell’s Angels on the other side of town.

Although there was still a sense of play in the back and forth between Max and those he sought to make jealous, there was also something stronger, a bond that bound them together in a way that I rarely experienced before except in the hospital at Fort Dix where I met wounded veterans returning home from Vietnam.

Max and the others had gone through some common experience that no petty jealousy could overcome, and were part of something much larger than what had existed before – and my default during that visit, I became a member of their society.

Max and I later worked together uptown and had plenty of strange adventures, but I never again felt what I felt on that night, a week or so after the Stonewall Riot.

I’m pretty sure Max did not survive the holocaust of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. But I think of him often, and his face was the first face that came to mind when I heard the Supreme Court decision, and in my head, I heard his voice rising up from the first time I met him, singing “button up your overcoat.”