Barrett Deems

Rob Hardy posted a video of Joe Morello, which brought back pleasant memories.

As a teen, I idolized Joe Morello, Buddy Rich, Max Roach, Elvin Jones, Art Blakey. But I never met any of them. I did meet Barrett Deems, though. Barrett was billed as the fastest drummer on earth, although I think several jazz drummers from the 40s and 50s laid claim to that title.

Here are two clips of Barrett Deems. This one is from a movie entitled "Rhythm Inn" circa 1951:



Deems was showing off a little bit.

This one is from a Louis Armstrong tribute concert 30-some years later (1984):



The bass player is Arvell Shaw. Nice.

I met Deems near the end of his career. He was playing in a quintet lead by Jack Teagarden. Deems was 50 years old, which seemed ancient to me at the time. The group played a concert in my little home town mainly because Teagarden was there to visit the Conn band instrument company. He was a Conn spokesman and came to town now and then to pick up a new trombone and have his picture taken for Conn's advertising.

As it turned out, my mother knew the piano player, Don Ewell. She had sung with him when they were both members of an Army Air Corps big band during WWII. So we got to go backstage and meet the band. I cared only about meeting the drummer. He was about as bored as I was excited, but he was nice. Didn't get an autograph or a souvenir drum stick, but that's OK.

Another Buckthorn Assault

Story in the Star-Tribune this morning * about restoring the flora on some islands in Lake of the Isles. A photo accompanying the story showed a worker hauling away pieces of buckthorn to be burned. The story went on to say that the two islands, which were man-made as a result of dredging a swamp to make the lake, are being re-planted. Out go the "invasive" plants and in will come unspecified "desirable" plants.

Well.

First, there are no islands to 'restore' because they aren't real islands in the first place. They are sculpture.

And just what are these desirable plants? Mums and peonies? When this was a swamp, the native plants were probably some scrubby grasses, some random pin oaks, a few sumac bushes. Whatever. The point is that what was growing here 50 or 100 or 500 years ago is most likely not what the restorers will be planting come spring. Why not go all the way back to the ice age? Cover the whole business in a 50' deep sheet of ice and call it restoration. After all, the ice was here first!

Or...just leave the buckthorn. It's growing there quite nicely and (I contend) naturally right now, so by leaving it we are showing our reverence for the natural order, our reticence to intervene. (Which of course is pure poppycock because that's what humans do -- they alter the landscape.) And the buckthorn leaves and branches and berries could be harvested twice a year to be converted to biofuel. It's green!

Or...I'll bet buckthorn could be used for those plant sculptures -- what are they called? .... topiary! The islands could be filled with whimsical or historical references to Minneapolis. Prince in a cape. Killebrew and his home run swing. Hubert H. Humphrey stabbing the air with his finger. People riding bikes around the lake.

I'm sure the results of the park board's efforts will be lovely and pleasing. It's a pretty neighborhood on a nice lake in a decent city. Nothing wrong with that. But call it what it is: a construction project, not restoration or preservation or rehabilitation.

* The story has not yet appeared on the Star-Tribune web site, so there's no link from this post to the whole story. Sorry, not my fault.

Objectivists and On-Base Percentage

George Oppen was a contemporary of Carl Rakosi. They were part of a loose confederation of poets in the middle of the 20th century who called themselves Objectivists.

Gregory Luce, a.k.a Enchilada, had a post on his blog about Oppen. It’s funny; Oppen was published by, among other imprints, Black Sparrow Press. I have a shelf of Black Sparrow books**, including a volume of Rakosi’s poems, but until Luce mentioned Oppen, I had never read anything by him.

With Luce’s gentle prodding, I tracked down Oppen’s last published collection (Primitive, Black Sparrow Press, 1978). It’s on inter-library loan from the Minneapolis Central Library, so I have to read it quickly (no renewals!), which is a challenge. For me, his stuff isn’t readily approachable. One of the Objectivist principles is the primacy of structure. I have needed some extra time to decipher the structure in some of his work and to see how it affects the meaning and tone of the poem. (Oh god, this is sounding like a sophomore English assignment.)

So, it is serious business, reading George Oppen. But he was a serious guy. He even stopped writing poems for a decade or so because he wanted to effect radical political change and did not think poetry could advance that cause. (Apostate!)

At the same time as I’m trying to appreciate Oppen’s work, Major League Baseball started spring training. Now there’s an interesting juxtaposition. Spring training is not serious business. There’s as much horseplay, goofing around, and golf as there is working on the game. I like spring training for just that combination of work and play, of seriousness and silliness, and of course the optimism (usually unjustified) that infuses every camp. I tried to imagine what George Oppen would write if he left his dour world view behind for a day or two and hung out at spring training.

First, a short example of Oppen’s work. This from Primitive:

Waking Who Knows

the great open

doors of the tall

buildings and the grid

of the streets the seed

is a place the stone
is a place mind

will burn the world down alone
and transparent

will burn the world down tho the starlight is
part of ourselves

--------

Cool.

So, let’s go from images of the apocalypse to, say, Fort Myers, where the Twins are enjoying the rigors (rigors?) of spring training. This is my presumptuous attempt to turn George Oppen into Donald Hall.

Covering First

pitchers practice fielding
the bunt

trying to decide whether to cover
first or first to
toss that little toss to

the first baseman
has to make sure the
runner will

step on the bag not the foot

these men laugh and sweat
runs run
hard to first

but do not do anything
stupid

old coach pitches
batting practice
he’s smoking

a cigar

* Black Sparrow published, among many others, Joyce Carol Oates, Charles Bukowski, Sherril Jaffe, and Ed Dorn.

Where to Live (or not)

This is the 100th post!** It is longer than normal, has more pictures, has more links, and is certainly not as literate or funny as some previous posts. So be it. Is there some protocol or tradition for celebrating the 100th post? I think I'll try one of the bottle-fermented French Canadian ales my wife gave me.


Ed, chief mechanic, driver, navigator, and music director of The Old Blue Bus, may be moving from his long-time home in Virginia. He's travelled a lot and lived in many different places, so it is a bit presumptuous of me to jump in with advice or information. Rob Hardy also had some recent posts about legendary sandwiches he has eaten in far-flung places, which reminded me of Tommy's subs in Columbus, where I lived for a few years. I miss Tommy's. So Ed and Rob got me to thinkin' -- what is it about a place (in addition to sandwiches) that would make one choose to live there?

So, here are thumbnail sketches of everywhere I've lived as an adult and why I would or wouldn't want to live there again.

Elkhart, Indiana: Aack. The small town of my youth has turned into a smelly thicket of marginal industries, poverty, and congestion. I tend not to like zoning laws or city planners or similar means of telling other people what they can or cannot do on their own property, but Elkhart is a damning example of unregulated, too-rapid, helter-skelter growth. It is just plain ugly. The photo on the left is the courts building where I used to work. Inspiring, yes?

You can still get great pizza at the Vesuvius restaurant, and parts of the St. Joseph river above the dam are still lovely. The Bonneyville Mill park in Bristol is a treat. But the pizza, the park, and the river cannot overcome the utter dreariness of the rest of the city.

Preference rating for Elkhart: 0 out of 5


Bloomington, Indiana: Meh. I recently visited the campus of my alma mater (IUB, as it's sometimes known) and was struck by the way cars have taken over. Obviously, the campus (even with all those damned cars) is one of Bloomington's assets. The photo on the left is the IU auditorium with the Showalter fountain in front. A very nice focal point for the campus.

Another attractive feature is the hilly, forested countryside surrounding the town. The glaciers stopped short (the furthest southern advance was where Martinsville is now, just north of Bloomington), so the landscape of southern Indiana wasn't scraped flat. The woods and streams and lakes (even the man-made Lake Monroe) are beautiful.

I was the drummer in a crummy rock band that played at bars and VFW clubs in the little towns around Bloomington: Linton, Loogootee, Oolitic, Bedford. That was fun. The legendary bar - Nick's - is still operating. It's right around the corner from the place where Hoagy Charmichael wrote his most famous tunes. Interesting clash of cultures -- the rarefied academic air of the big IU campus vs. the tough, self-reliant limestone workers. I think there was a movie about that.

Preference rating for Bloomington: 3 out of 5


South Bend, Indiana: If you are a college football fan, this is the place. You've got the College Football Hall of Fame and of course the legendary Notre Dame stadium (see photo). If you are not a college football fan, don't give South Bend a second thought as a place to live. It's OK, but if you have the luxury of choosing just about anywhere, this town shouldn't make the short list.

Peter Theodosius was the program director in the St. Joe County jail when I was a grant writer and erstwhile administrator in the probation department. We became friends. Peter's dad ran a bakery a few blocks from the courthouse, so Peter would show up many mornings with some delectable snacks, and we would often wander down to the bakery for an afternoon break -- coffee and Greek pastry. Mmmmm... Peter died of leukemia the year after I left South Bend. He was about 28 years old. That was hard.

And there's the Studebaker museum, which at one time displayed a picture of my great grandfather, George Milburn. He worked at a rival company -- The Milburn Wagon Works -- which was founded by his uncle, also named George Milburn. The owner's daughter Anna (my grandpa's niece) married into the Studebaker family. Milburn sold his wagon business to Studebaker and moved to Toledo, where he built a large automobile factory and made electric cars with some success in the early part of the 20th century.

Preference rating for South Bend: 2.5 of 5


Champaign, Illinois: God, it's flat! The plains can be quite beautiful, but I only recall the howling relentless winter winds and the unrelieved landscape. Damn, people, where are the mountains (or even just a few hills to break up the monotony)? Where are the lakes, the streams, the woods? Why in bloody hell did somebody choose to put the state's big land grant college here?

There was a little bar on Green Street that used to feature fish sandwiches for lunch on Fridays. The proprietors would cover the pool tables with plywood, set out the mayo, mustard, and tartar sauce, and do a very brisk and noisy business. Word was that the fish fillets were tank-raised catfish from Louisiana, which put some people off, but I liked 'em!

The only other highlight I can think of is Assembly Hall, where the Illini play their home basketball games. I'm not a big college hoops fan, but the building is architecturally unique. It's made of two huge cement bowls, one inverted on the other. Where they meet, the lateral forces are contained by heavy steel cable wound around the circumference. It's a brilliantly simple way to hold up the roof, making internal supports unnecessary. The effect is striking, both inside and out. How come more arenas aren't built this way?

Preference rating for Champaign: 2.5 of 5


Columbus, Ohio: I liked living in Columbus. Tommy's pizza and subs, a little bagel place called "Easy Living," the Clippers minor league ballpark, German Village, Marzetti's Studio 35 Cinema.

Every city should have a Studio 35. An old movie theatre playing first-run, second-run, independent, and foreign films. The unique twist is a little bar/restaurant in the back. One can get a beer and a burger, sit in a booth, and watch the movie through a plate glass window separating the restaurant from the theatre proper. Brilliant idea! I lived just blocks from Studio 35 and considered myself fortunate.

And the countryside around Columbus is attractive -- the Hocking Hills and some reservoirs on the Olentangy and Scioto rivers are great in summer and fall.

Preference rating for Columbus: 4 of 5


St. Paul, Minnesota: I lived briefly on the East Side, which had a bad reputation. At the time, Payne Avenue was known for its seedy bars, strip joints, and porn shops. The big draw was a place called The Payne Reliever, which drew crowds, but not the kind of crowds the Chamber of Commerce prefers. Payne Avenue and the rest of the East Side have undergone something of a transformation. That's good, I guess.

St. Paul really is a lovely, lively city, having pushed itself hard to shine as brightly as its cross-river rival, Minneapolis. But you can have the fancy hockey arena, the glitzy science museum, and the classic state capitol building. I'd live in St. Paul for just two reasons: Cossetta Italian deli and the Ordway Theatre. The Ordway, pictured above, is on Rice Park, which is surrounded by beautiful buildings -- Landmark Center (the old federal courts building), the venerable St. Paul Hotel, and the main public library. These buildings make Rice Park one of the prettiest urban settings I've seen.

Preference rating for St. Paul: 4 of 5

Minneapolis, Minnesota: No two ways about it, I like Minneapolis. I liked living there and working there and I like to hang out there. I like the stuff I'm supposed to like -- the Guthrie Theatre, the Minneapolis Instutute of Arts, the Walker, the Weisman, the fantastic lakes and the parkway linking them together. The river. I like to prowl the skyway system. I like the distinct neighborhoods. I like the public transit system, which is even better now than when I lived there.

And there are some hidden gems in Minneapolis that make it even more interesting. Ted Cook's 19th hole barbecue joint reminds me of the famous tiny rib places near the University of Chicago or in Berkely. Good stuff cheap. The International Design Center -- a pretentious name for a furniture store -- has beautiful, high-quality stuff and reasonable prices. The public golf courses are excellent. Stub and Herbs deli. The Northern Clay Center. The Electric Fetus record store. The annual summer Fringe Festival is a lot of fun.

And of course, to top it all off, the Twins will open the 2010 season in a new downtown ballpark.

Ok, that's probably enough for you to get the idea. Yeah, there's that annoying thing called winter, but even so, Minneapolis tops my list.

Preference rating for Minneapolis: 4.75 of 5


Northfield, Minnesota: Nice little college town just 35 miles from Minneapolis/St. Paul. What could be better? All the charm and ease of a small town with ready access to the delights of the Twin Cities. It's nice. People are nice. The hidden gem is probably Chapati, the excellent Indian restaurant, which one would not expect to find in a little town. City planners have made some bad decisions in recent decades, resulting in a proliferation of cheap suburban-style development, including a commercial strip on the south edge of town that is painfully bleak. Makes me sad.

Still, it's a nice little town, which reminds me of the opening lines of a Greg Brown song, Speed Trap Boogie:

It's a nice little town
It's a clean little town
It's a nice little, clean little, happy little, friendly little
town for miles around.

Preference rating for Northfield: 4.5 of 5

Whew!

** Blogger's counting mechanisms are contradictory. According to the archives on the right sidebar, this is the 97th post. But according to the counter in the "manage posts" section of Blogger, the one before this was number 99 and this one is number 99. I haven't conducted a manual count because I don't care. This is post number 100.

Fidel, meet Livan

Sign Fidel!

The Twins have a penchant for signing over-the-hill pitchers. Fidel would be a great clubhouse guy and could keep Gardy supplied with the finest cigars. Just don't put his locker next to that other old new guy from Cuba.

Facts: Retention of

Uno: The human trachea is lined with pseudostratified superciliated columnar epithelium with goblet cells. This I learned from Dr. Rafalko in introductory human anatomy, circa 1967. I believe it was Dr. Rafalko's single favorite anatomical fact. He stressed over and over that this would be a test question. Why the quirky professor attached such importance to this arcane fact is still a mystery to me.

Superciliated means that even the cilia have cilia!

Dos: In the decade before construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began, Brooklyn was the fastest growing city in the US of A -- adding about 130,000 residents between 1860 and 1870. This fact was included in the entertaining but somewhat annoying spiel of a tour guide. My youngest son and I had come to New York mostly to see a game at legendary Yankee Stadium. The next day, before heading to Philadelphia, we took a little tour of Manhattan, from Central Park to the Battery to the Staten Island Ferry to the Brooklyn Bridge. Out of the roughly four hours of almost non-stop patter by our guide (who was from Queens), I remember almost nothing except the population growth of Brooklyn. Inexplicable.

Tres: John Prine once upon a time cast himself as a rebellious, outlaw-type singer-songwriter. The refrain of his song "Illegal Smile," about smokin' dope, goes "Won't you please tell the man I didn't kill anyone, I'm just tryin' to have me some fun." That was back in the early 1970's. I don't think he has that edge any more.

On a 1975 album called Common Sense, Prine recorded "Come Back To Us Barbara Lewis (Hare Krishna Beauregard)." I memorized the lyrics to that song and can recite them today. In the intervening decades, I have memorized dozens, maybe hundreds, of songs -- for a while. But these have faded or gotten jumbled. Why is it that this stupid song of Prine's is fixed so well in my addled brain? Strange.

Quatro: "Impact" makes a lousy verb. OK, so that's an opinion and not strictly speaking a fact. It's my blog, so I can include an opnion in a post that is concerned with facts. Can't I?

Anyway, to make an obvious but no less interesting point: memory is a tricky thing, made even more slippery because the line between fact and opinion isn't always clear. Just ask Roger Clemens.

Here's a poem by Richard Brautigan that touches on this phenomenon. From "Lay the Marble Tea"

Hansel and Gretel

I have always wanted to write a poem about Hansel
and Gretel going through the forest, leaving behind
them pieces of apple pie to form sort of a bridge between
dream and reality, and being followed by those gentle
birds that embrace both illusions like violins eating
pieces of apple pie.

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

Mmmmm...pie.

Lee Mellon, meet Ferris Buelller

Next to Trout Fishing in America, I think A Confederate General from Big Sur is probably Brautigan's best-known book. Lee Mellon is the title character. Brautigan casts himself as Jesse, the narrator and a friend of Lee Mellon's.

I'm trying to figure out why I like Lee Mellon. He does some mean things (in one of the early chapters, he assaults and robs a stranger who is giving him a ride); he is perpetually desperate for sex (preferably with a prostitute); and he just isn't very smart sometimes (wasting their last bullet in an ill-concieved attempt at shooting a rabbit to be roasted for dinner).

The engaging side of Lee Mellon is that he is the most cockeyed of optimists, a grinning grandiose spinner of yarns and teller of lies. In one gin-soaked afternoon, he and an acquaintance build a rickety, dangerous, dirt-floored, low-ceilinged hut which barely clings to a seaside bluff in Big Sur. Mellon, inviting Jesse to join him there, describes the place as a virtual paradise. Jesse has just broken up with Cynthia and is in a funk. Mellon writes from Big Sur:

"Cheer up, smarts! You've still got old Lee Mellon and a cabin waiting for you down here at Big Sur. A good cabin. It's on a cliff high over the Pacific. It has a stove and three glass walls. You can lie in bed in the morning and watch the sea otters making it. Very educational. It's the greatest place in the world."

And, after another morose reply from Jesse:

"I've got a garden that grows all year round! A 30:30 Winchester for deer, a .22 for rabbits and quail. I've got some fishing tackle and The Journal of Albion Moonlight. We can make it OK. What do you want, a fur-lined box of Kleenex to absorb the sour of your true love Cynthia, the Ketchikan and/or Battle Mountain cookie? Come to the party and hurry down to Big Sur and don't forget to bring some whiskey. I need whiskey!"

And Mellon loves to needle his buddy Jesse in a good-natured way, which sometimes exhasperates Jesse but usually just draws a bemused grin. Near the end of the book, Mellon suggests that he and Jesse and their new girlfriends hike down to the ocean, get a little high, and watch the waves.

"I like the way [the waves] crack like eggs against the grand grill of North America. You like that, huh? You're supposed to be literary."

Mellon is also protective and solicitous of a character named Roy Earle, who pops up unexpectedly and is a mess of paranoia, hyperactvity, and hallucination. In one episode, Roy Earle starts a fire at the Big Sur encampment, whch Jesse and and Lee struggle to put out. Jesse says, "I thought Lee Mellon was going to slug him, but all Lee Mellon did was tell him to sit down and cover his eyes with his hands." Mellon and Earle are kindred spirits in a way, so Mellon just knows how to calm Roy Earle down. "He's a nut, so you just have to treat him like a nut." For the rest of that evening, Jesse addresses Lee Mellon as "Dr. Jung."

Lee Mellon is the kind of character Brautigan clearly admires. Untroubled, crazy-like-a-fox, lazy, hipster doofus. Mellon brags about reading "The Russians" but unlike many of Brautigan's contemporaries, he actually has.

Mellon was the Ferris Bueller of the 1960's. Self-absorbed, charismatic, zany, and a true friend.