Woody Guthrie, “The Naked Ape,” and Swimming Pool Sex

There was a comedian (I think it was George Carlin) who said “If you nail two things together that have never been nailed together before, some schmuck, somewhere, will buy it.”  This hammering process, in the context of reminiscing, has been my “thread approach” this week.  I see no reason to change that now – this one is three things nailed together, that shouldn’t be, probably.  [And, by the way, Emily, you are not to read this post!  – I am sure that will stop her.]

In 1974, I think it was, there was a huge Rolling Stone article about Bob Dylan and his admiration of Woody Guthrie.  Dylan found Woody in a sanitorium in New York when the latter was dying from Huntington’s Chorea.  He would visit him daily, play his guitar and sing him songs.  This magazine (in those days it was more like a newspaper – remember that?) article was the inspiration for a road trip.  My best friend in College and I decided we were going to Okemah, Oklahoma that fateful July to find Woody Guthrie’s grave.  At the time, there was a news story about how the city of Okemah would not let a group of musicians (a large group of different acts who had produced two albums covering Guthrie’s music) build a library in honor of Guthrie.  For some reason, it sounded like a place we wanted to go to.

The semester before we went on our road trip, I had read a book by Desmond Morris called The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s study of the Human Animal. Morris speculated in the book that the reason we humans were hairless (relatively speaking) apes was that we spent a large amount of time in water once we had climbed down from trees.  We evolved to make life in the water more efficient.  This digression becomes salient, later.

Getting to Okemah was not difficult.  We found a police officer sitting on a chair on the porch of the Police Station.  He told us where the cemetary was and where the former home of Woody Guthrie was.  We asked him why the people of Okemah did not want to have the Library built that was meant to honor Guthrie.  He said something to the effect of “We didn’t want any library honoring a shiftless and communist guitar picker built here.”  We said thank you, and quickly departed, before anyone could cue up banjo music or make requests of us to make animal sounds.

What ‘jobs’ have you filled?

Just a little exercise in sharing your skills, experience, and revealing possible secrets — not that I truly expect anyone here to say they worked as a prostitute or gigolo, or that they paid their way their school by pushing drugs.  Although, that would be kinda fun stuff.  🙂

So where have you worked, what skills have you mastered, what tasks drove you batty, what helped pay the bills and what did you do to bring home the bacon?  We could have some ‘ah-ha’ moments, some smiles and get to know something new about one another!

You know what else?  If you’re working on your resume or your Curriculum Vitae who better than your blogger friends to help ‘flesh’ it out!?

fnord

The Joan Baez Thread & Is the Community of the Internet UnAmerican?

 

 

As some of you may know, I obsess over our blog statistics.  I love statistics, which is a sign that I need a life, I understand that…  We have had tons of referrals to our blog because of a 07-31-09 thread about Joan returning to the Newport Jazz Festival.  That thread garnered fewer than 20 comments if I am remembering correctly.  But there have been days that the Joan Baez thread beat all other sources of referrals by a huge margin.  I think I have discovered the reason why.  But first, a hippy digression.

In 1970, when I was 16 years old, my two best friends and I went to the Twin Drive-In theater in Wichita, KS to see Woodstock the movie.  I think the drive-in was where the mall on Harry street is now, but I am not sure of that.  Any way, as my two friends and I lucked out on that summer night, there were a couple of girls parked next to us, who had offered to let us smoke some of their supplies which made the music sound much better than it already did.  Joan sang at least one song in the movie acapella and I distinctly recall thinking, ‘if there are real angels, they can’t sound better than that!’  A good time was had by all and we got home safely. 

I have wondered why we have so many searches and hits regarding Joan Baez keep showing up in our Blog Stats.  I think I know the reason why.  In the Google searches of Joan Baez images we are number twelve in the list.  The image I used is the one above of a mature, but still hot, IMHO, Baez.  I did not take the photo, I do not own it, nor do I have any proprietary rights for it.  [as an aside: Joan is 68 years old – she was born 01-09-41].  Because our image is so near the top, other blogs use our image – for example – http://roland.blogspot.com/2009/10/joan-baez-how-sweet-sound.html – the aforementioned blog is part of the Miami Herold if I understood correctly. 

Recapping:  Our blog has profitted in terms of hits from an image we do not own, is disseminated by people we don’t know, but whom help us keep our numbers up.  This is not the “work hard, produce a better product, and the world will beat a path to your door” mantra the conservatives like to believe still exists.

Is the blogosphere UnAmerican and UnRepublican?  You be the judge.

iggydonnelly

Tuesday, 10/20/09, Public Square

It’s nice to have friends!  🙂

Our weather is beautiful!  I appreciate it even more because of those long dreary cool days last week.

Any topics you’d like to toss around, ideas you want to chew on?

fnord