Magic Trip: Ken Kesey's Search for a Kool Place

This movie has both sufficient narrative coherence and trippy footage to give the viewer balanced doses of history and immediacy – which makes it a rousing success. From forty hours of footage shot on the Bus, interlaced with clips from the era, editors Alex Gibney and Alison Ellwood take a shot at making sense of what cameras and tape recorders preserved, knowing that what was in the heads of the participants is well beyond what pictures and sounds are able to convey. And they hit the mark, more often than not.

Starting with Kesey, they dissect 1963, 64, 65. We meet the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes a Great Notion, then we see him participating in Stanford's LSD experiments. With visuals culled from Kesey's journals, we get the flavor of that "supervised" trip, even as we shake our heads at the stark conditions under which a person is assumed to behave "normally" before he slips the bonds of external control. Even as he's reveling in a universe unsuspected, the clinicians are asking dull meaningless questions and diligently noting his replies on their clipboards.

The Merry Band of Pranksters opened the way for hippies without being members of that tribe. They were a pretty straight bunch, except they had these drug experiences that blew the lid off the world they were accustomed to, and that lid never fit back on again. What they were, fundamentally, was Americans. Try to imagine Furthur (or Further if you prefer - the bus including its name was repainted many times) anywhere else on this planet, and you know the bus would be confiscated and its crew in jail before they got a mile down the road.

One of the more effective devices the editors employ is to contrast TV clips in black and white, with footage from the Trip in wild vivid color – as good a metaphor as one could hope to find, for the difference between the status quo and these pioneers. Even Timothy Leary's International Federation for Internal Freedom (IFIF) in New York is a black-and-white spot, until the invasion of the Merry Pranksters. And no, he doesn't appreciate his retreat being colorized in anarchic fashion. Richard Alpert (soon to become Ram Dass) hangs out with the Day-Glo visitation while Leary makes himself unavailable.

The voice-overs, culled from the recordings on the bus and ten years later, work with visuals of that unimaginable Trip to immerse us. Gretchen and Jane are matter-of-fact in their recollections of how the world appeared to them – "I was so happy in the pond slime – and it was happy with me," "I was in a dark place and just wanted to be alone with my thoughts" – the effect is both comical and grounding: these people are not insane, they are tripping. They know the difference. But their behavior reinforces the truth: that watching and listening to someone trip, is to know nothing.

The star is Neal Cassady. To see his restless antics and hear his mile-a-minute patter is to recognize the creative catalyst for Kerouac and Kesey both. Cassady is unchained – he does whatever he wants to. The son of a Denver bum mesmerizes all comers: Beats, women, Pranksters, even the cops who just wave him on his way. One can't help noticing that he's up while everyone else slumbers. That isn't just the speed – he's more awake anyway, a man with his fingers jammed in the great socket of life, continuously buzzed.

My only quibble is the editors' detour into the media scare tactics that demonize LSD and its psychedelic cousins. To be sure, some people cracked up – when all the closet doors in the mind fly open, not everyone is happy to see what they've stuffed in there. But in the context of this film, the scolding seems both petty and tangential.

Go see the movie – it's quite a trip. As the Pranksters painted on Further in Phoenix in 1964, "A Vote for Barry is a Vote for Fun!"

A Little Art & Rhyme

Sometimes we have to stretch and do things we're not so good at - just for the fun of them, and to see what we're capable of.

At the urging of a friend, I took part in Art House Co-op's Sketchbook Project.
I chose a theme from their list, and they mailed me a chapbook in which to do my art.

I never claimed to be skilled at drawing but I certainly had a good time!
The whole book is here -
Fishing in the Cosmic Dancehttps://www.sketchbookproject.com/library/5190
So enjoy! I sure did!

Karmafornia Review

Review of Karmafornia, a novel by NC Weil

by Lorine Kritzer Pergament

From the image of an Indian bedspread print on the cover through the trials and tribulations of the twenty-something main characters, Weil gives us descriptive details of a culturally and politically volatile Berkeley during the late seventies interspersed with national and local current events to weave a colorful and compelling story.

When Laura and her boyfriend Walt are trapped in a snowstorm on their way to Berkeley where Laura is to begin graduate school, they take LSD and “fly together,” becoming mentally and spiritually one. But when they arrive, Laura becomes attracted to Cob, a student in her program, and he convinces her to become a fruitarian and get off the pill to make herself more physically appealing. Outlandish as this may sound in light of the fact that Laura is an independent woman, Cob is convincing, and Laura complies. So begins the love and sex triangle that sets the theme for this rip-roaring book that culminates in a surprise ending.

If you want to reminisce about Berkeley during the period of the Jonestown massacres, the shooting of Harvey Milk, the Dead Kennedys and “Box of Rain” with a hefty dose of drugs and sex, or if you just want a good read about that period, the tightly written and thought-provoking Karmafornia will engross you.

Lorine Kritzer Pergament's stories have appeared in "Bridges" and "Penn-Union," and she was a winner in the 2008 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest. Her story "Smell the Roses on Your Own Time," will be included in "Amazing Graces," Richard Peabody's anthology of Washington area women writers in December, 2011. Lorine also writes book reviews and is a member of the Women's National Book Association's Great Group Reads panel.

Long's Peak




30 years ago Fred and I hiked Long's Peak in Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park. You can't do that any more.
These days, you have to CLIMB.







So Saturday, with son Heinz, I did. At 3:30 am we got the last parking space in the lot at the trail head. Headlamps on, we hiked up the trail.


The sign says it's 7.5 miles - which would apply if it was a hike. But the last 2 miles are rock scrambling:





Boulderfield (just what it sounds like);
(From Boulderfield on it is not a hike. Rocks tip and slide, thousands of boots have polished footholds, and from the Keyhole, it's mostly hands-and-feet climbing.)






through the Keyhole (pictured here on the approach from Boulderfield - a climb up tippy slabs of rock. Up there, the wind is fierce - but past the Keyhole you can put away your windbreaker.)









then The Ledges (from here you look up at Keyboard of the Winds, a craggy distraction from groping along the route from one "fried egg" mark on the rock to the next);








followed by the Trough which still has some snow/ice in it from heavy late storms (Just 2 days ago RMNP took down the sign requiring ice gear to summit); (Fred and I remembered the Trough as a high-altitude-gain plod, one foot in front of the other up a steep trail. Now it's clogged with rock-fall and gravel which make it slippery and dangerous both to step on and for anyone below.





There's a lot of below.
At the top of the Trough were some tricky rock climbing moves - I wished I were roped in. But Heinz, an experienced climber, gave me a hand negotiating the scary part, so I made it.
This is the view from up there.

Then one negotiates The Narrows, a series of moves on a steep exposed massif.





Now we're looking up at the Homestretch - a climb of another 150 feet will get us on top.










Heinz and I have arrived!



Long's is the tallest point for miles, 14,255 according to the USGS benchmark.
It's also a fearsome peak - you would not want to be there in rain, wind or a thunderstorm. In fact, you wouldn't want to be anywhere above timberline on this rocky mountain in bad weather.






But we saw plenty of wildlife: a herd of elk, marmots everywhere, pikas (an alpine rodent resembling a chinchilla), ravens, swifts, other small birds and even a ptarmigan. The marmots were plentiful and we wondered what they eat on the rocky summit of Long's - but there they were.

Scrabble Time!

OK, now it's summer and the Fun & Games promised have not made an appearance.
But July, at least for me, has been the month when I turn to the fresh calendar page and see not a deluge of busyness but inviting pools - visits from friends, a picnic, a long weekend fishing.
So, on with today's game:

The letters were coming my way, and I put down JESTINGS (good for 92) to get things going with a bang.



















Two turns later I put down FUNKIER, for 97.
Fred made ZAP, ZA, AG and PE for 49.
I made COX, OF and XU for 47 plus an aesthetic point for landing the X on the double word square.
At some point my letter luck was annoying Fred, so in the corner he ODd multiple times, his way of asking for an end to it. I gave him a sad point for that.
At the end I had tray-dump potential but could never pull out the word.
Letters: AINUSD & blank. The only place to put it was across the N on the right edge.
Even with the blank I couldn't get a word out of it, which would have propelled me beyond 500, in the rarefied air where I have not yet climbed.
Had to settle for 465, and Fred was happy to have 313.
So if you see the word I couldn't find for that final flourish, add your comment!

Gong Bath Review

Sounds like the newest literary mag, doesn't it? But a gong bath is actually a sonic/ vibrational experience. When I read an article about it in the Denver Post a couple of weeks ago I knew Fred and I had to go. It was held in a large high-ceiling yoga studio with hardwood floors, and the pair of gongs (38" in diameter apiece) were set up in the center. Blankets and mats set edge to edge filled the room, and when people settled under their covers it looked like a giant slumber party.
Preparations took awhile but finally Richard Rudis spoke briefly about what we could expect, and what we should not busy our minds thinking about during the gong bath: Expect vibrations, a connection between physical and transcendental selves, calming, healing, clarity. Don't worry about the mechanics: how sounds and vibrations are being produced, the characteristics of the bells, bowls and gongs. Make sure not to place your feet where they will be in line with the head of anyone in the next row (in order to prevent purged energy from passing into someone else).
Then Rudis struck a small bell three times to signal the beginning, played a bowl to deepen the vibration, then proceeded to play the pair of gongs. Since I didn't watch him I can't tell you how he produced the tides, clouds, blizzards of sound - but I felt the results.
At first, the air in my lungs vibrated, then my muscles and bones. These waves increased and diminished with the intensity of sound for a while, then quite abruptly I felt them cease, and my spirit, clear and clean, captured my awareness.
The gonging is not melodic or musical, it is cascading sound, rising and fading in power. Sometimes I could hear hissing (as if he was using a brush against the gong surface) or a patting sound, but most of the time I heard not muffled hammers striking the metal but only the vibrations resulting from that contact. Sound traveling to walls and back, through people, between gongs, added to the wave complexity. A deaf person would have essentially the same experience as a hearing person, because it's physical not aural.
To conclude (after 90 minutes), he played the bowl again, then the small bell three times. Speaking quietly in the dimly-lit room while we settled back into our accustomed selves, he suggested taking a hot epsom salts bath followed by a cool pore-closing rinse, and drinking plenty of water. He talked about sacred sound, differentiating it from music and from dogma.

The next morning son Heinz and I took a high-altitude hike up Twin Sisters (we'll be climbing Long's Peak later this summer so we're getting in shape for the distance and altitude), and were surprised by my looseness, ease of motion, lightness and energy. We hiked about 4 miles from 8700 ft to 11,400 in 2 hours, then after a snack and rest at the summit, hiked back to the car in another hour and a half. Arriving at the bottom, I wasn't even tired. My shoulders, which have been tight as guitar strings for weeks if not months, are quite relaxed.























So if you have the opportunity to be in a room where a gong bath is taking place, do it!

Mavis Staples and Dr. John & The Lower 911 at Denver Botanic Gardens

Mavis Staples wows the crowd. She got us dancing, and when she did her final number, "I'll Take You There" she had us all singing back.




And since I was down in front boogeying, she shook my hand!
Her tight band: Guitar Rick Holmstrom, Bass Jeff Tweedy, Drums Stephen Hodges, and backup singers Vicki Randle and Mavis' sister Yvonne Staples.



During intermission there was time to wander the Botanic Gardens - pools, flowers and sculptures.







But no show is complete without the parking ticket - in the Highly Specialized No Parking Zone!
Ever see a sign quite this specific?
And somehow I overlooked it.

At least the car wasn't towed away...