July 2023 Full Moon Edition

Titillation

Isn’t it interesting – maybe even appropriate – that good ol’ rock ‘n’ roll has from it’s inception been closely paired in the public imagination with juvenile delinquency?

The first nationally distributed song of that genre was Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley and His Comets. It was the theme song to the Blackboard Jungle, where Glenn Ford tried riding herd on all those badass kids like Sidney Poitier, Vic Morrow, and Jamie Farr. Kids not in actuality but actors good at playing delinquents.

Frank Zappa said in a mid-Sixties interview that when he was a kid sitting in the theater watching that film, “Bill Haley was playing the Teenage National Anthem…they have made a movie about us, therefore we exist.”

We existed as a market – the youth market – to be exploited, and the titillation that attended our association with delinquency lent an aura of excitement to the scale of the sales effort. Love it, hate it, matter not, we’ve got your attention. You were part of the brand. Rock on!

Revelation

Attention is what’s missing for society’s underrepresented people, and there are traditionally none who are more blatantly ignored than women, from the simplest to the most spectacularly accomplished among them. It’s a travesty that only now is beginning to be redressed.

I am immensely proud to advise that my awesome spouse, Lucretia Weems, has published This Wild Life: Heroines in the History of Botany 1650-1850, which reveals the amazing exploits of seven forgotten women who made critically important contributions to the field of plant exploration and categorization long before the term Botany existed.

These are stories of courageous people whose curiosity and undaunted nature achieved significant scientific results from rip-roaring adventures at a time when such things were inappropriately unladylike and largely unacknowledged if not completely ignored.

It’s beautifully illustrated and a great read about women who made a difference yet are virtually unknown. Lucretia’s book is doing something about righting that undeserved obscurity and she’s done it with elan. You can find your very own copy HERE.

Complication

High Street in my hometown of Ashland, Oregon is a daily look at the conundrum of life in America. Ours is a prosperous little town, mostly retirees from white collar careers in the Bay Area with substantial income from pensions and investments, successful products of our free enterprise system, just the way it’s supposed to be.

One door up from High is my attractive home, which I rent for a hefty fee from a former judge and his realtor spouse who have done well for themselves. There are layers upon layers of prosperity and ample places of comfort about as the price of housing emphatically suggests. You need to have some serious bucks to buy a home or even rent one in Ashland today, thanks to the California economy come here to rest.

Within a literal stone’s throw from my home are a half-dozen or more very pricey bungalows sitting empty ninety percent of the time. They are vacation rentals or second homes for people who drop in occasionally for something to do. Meanwhile, all day and night, the town’s homeless population walks past them on High Street, heading for the church a couple of blocks away that offers food, medical care, and sometimes shelter. It’s a quintessentially contemporary American scene. Sadly!