Little Harbor

Mugabe

“Champion of human rights, you have shown exemplary devotion to social justice throughout your quarter century of public life. Your gentle firmness in the face of anger, and your intellectual approach to matters which inflame the emotions of others, are hallmarks of your quiet integrity. We salute you for your enduring and effective translation of moral ethic into a strong, popular voice for freedom.”

- Citation for the Honorary Doctor of Laws degree awarded His Excellency Robert Gabriel Mugabe, The University of Massachusetts at Amherst, October 1, 1986

I didn’t write that, I think Jim Leheny did, with Joe Duffey, the then chancellor of the university. I’m pretty sure I chatted with Jim about the citation and offered up an adjective or two. We were both reading up on Mugabe in preparation for his UMass visit.

For my dubious part, I shortly after wrote this about His Excellency Robert Mugabe:

“Those who filled Bowker Auditorium heard a gracious and inspiring statementof poltical beliefs, encouraged by the livesof Americans Crispus Attucks, Frederick Douglas and W.E. B. Dubois. Those who attended a press conference later heard a firm statement of Zimbabwe national policy against apartheid and for national sovereignty. And those who had the opportunity to meet him personally came away moved by , in Joseph Duffey’s words, Mugabe’s “great depth and eloquence.”

In his speech Mugabe criticized the white South African regime, which was still four years from its dismantling, with words that ring in full irony now:

“ . . . precisely because it flouts all norms of decency and civilized conduct in the treatment of the population it misgoverns and in its relations with its neighbors , should long ago have attracted both the opprobrium and active opposition of all mankind. You cannot engage constructively with it at all.”

I shook Robert Mugabe’s hand that day. For us he seemed a first ember of true liberation for southern Africa, a leader of his own people, not to mention a friend of the iconic Nelson Mandela. When Mugabe was given his honorary doctorate, in fact, one of the two students who hooded him was Makaziwe (Maki) Mandela, Nelson’s then 33-year-old daughter, who was a graduate student in sociology and women’s studies at UMass.

Today, Nelson Mandela has gone from distinguished political prisoner to distinguished former head of state. Maki Mandela is head of a pre-apartheid South African firm, The Industrial Development Corporation, a self-financing, national finance firm that promotes economic growth and sustainable industrial development in South Africa. And UMass has rescinded the honorary degree.

Zimbabwe, of course, is in economic, social, and political ruins. Robert Mugabe reigns as a tyrant, a violent paranoid narcissist. As Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu said this weekend to an Australian television station, Mugabe "mutated into something quite unbelievable. He has really turned into a kind of Frankenstein for his people." Nelson Mandela himself finally broke his silence and noted “the tragic failure of leadership in Zimbabwe.”

“Exemplary devotion to social justice,” indeed. One never knows.

zimbabwe

Big six

Why haven't I written about what it was like to be in LA as the Celtics obliterated the Lakers? Same reason that I haven't written about what it was like to be in a field in La Jolla watching Molly graduate from college.

Gloatfulness is a sin.

But I did have this song in my head all weekend. Couldn't get rid of it. Didn't try too hard, either.

I thought I knew my rock and roll. "If you knew your trigonometry like you know song lyrics, you might be able to make something of yourself," an old Xaverian brother once told me on a ski trip.

Evidently, I know nothing bout neither, except that if you know how far the lifeguard stand is from the top of the mountain, and you know the height of the lifeguard stand, trig can tell you the height of the mountain without you having to move.

Mainly, I didn't know that the greatest rock and roll song and video of all time--containing its whole past and foreseeing its whole future, like a Delphic orb protecting all of its goddesses and gods, humors and spirits--was performed by a band called Ted Lyons and His Cubs in a 1965 Indian movie I'd never heard of.

I kid you not, as we used to say.

(thanks to Natasha Vargas Cooper for this one).

Turn it up and click.

caution: there is a gratuitous slur within that stands out like a wrong note in a brilliant musical piece; it is what it is.

I read about this on the Huffington Post. I'm curious as to whether the main stream media will pick it up. It is just frivolous enough in the face of larger issues that they might.

I copied the transcript directly from the White House website.

I believe there is now a new level of disorder in the President's thinking, speaking, and reasoning. Seriously.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Madam President, it is a pleasure to welcome you back to the Oval Office. We have just had a very constructive dialogue. First, I want to tell you how proud I am to be the President of a nation that -- in which there's a lot of Philippine-Americans. They love America and they love their heritage. And I reminded the President that I am reminded of the great talent of the -- of our Philippine-Americans when I eat dinner at the White House. (Laughter.)

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Yes.

PRESIDENT BUSH: And the chef is a great person and a really good cook, by the way, Madam President.

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Thank you.

PRESIDENT BUSH: We talked about our friendship, our bilateral relations, and we spent some time on foreign policy.

First, I expressed our deep condolences to those who suffered as a result of the typhoon. And I know there's some families that are hurting. Some are wondering whether or not their loved ones will, you know, reappear. We, the American people, care about the human suffering that's taking place, and we send our prayers.

Secondly, I informed the President -- Secretary Gates informed the President, through me, that the United States will move the USS Ronald Reagan, a large aircraft carrier, to help with the assistance, along with other U.S. Navy assets. We're happy to do it. We want to help our friends in a time of need.

We talked about, you know, food, and I assured the President we'll continue to help. We helped with rice in the past. And, you know, I'm proud of my country. We give a lot of food aid, and this is a time where America needs to step up, and we will, Madam President.

We talked about our mutual desire to advance how important it is to move forward the bilateral and multilateral trade agendas. I'm a -- I believe trade is beneficial to both our countries. I'm hopeful we can get a Doha Round done, and we strategized together about how we can move the process.

I congratulated the President on her strong stand on counterterrorism -- more than strong stand -- effective stand on counterterrorism, as well as laying out a vision for peace. The President has been very strong in having a carrots-and-sticks approach -- "sticks," of course, say we're not going to allow for people to terrorize our citizens; the "carrot" approach is that there's peace available.

We talked about Burma, the area, the region. The President has been a very strong leader when it comes to the freedom agenda and human dignity.

And so, all in all, we had a very constructive talk. I'm proud you're here.

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Thank you.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Thanks for coming.

PRESIDENT ARROYO: Thank you, thank you. Mr. President, with your permission, I'd like to address our countrymen in my own native language. (Speaks in Tagalog.)

PRESIDENT BUSH: I couldn't have said it better myself. (Laughter.)

One of the best things about living in LA is having become friends with the Candaele brothers, Kelly and Kerry. I was thinking of this on Sunday as I stood in Kerry‘s patio in Venice, talking to Billy Bragg about Woody Guthrie.

Billy Bragg just finished a second album, working with Woody’s daughter Nora, putting melodies to Woody Guthrie lyrics for which there is no known music or recording. And Billy Bragg was the right man for the task, I’ll tell you that. Just listen to this song from Mermaid Avenue (Guthrie’s Brooklyn street address). The video is home-made by some artist somewhere, who had a friend who wanted to buy one of his paintings, which cover his every wall, so he just filmed his entire apartment quickly, is of to say, “just pick one,” as in the background the Guthrie-Bragg (with the ever ethereal Natalie Merchant creeping in) song captures something of Woody and Billy’s romantic and edgy three-chord, story-telling souls.

I think it’s brilliant.

I know more than most--though not as much as Kerry or Kelly--about Woody Guthrie, so that came in handy. Billy was there because he and Kerry connected over a project Kerry is working on, writing and directing a film on Beethoven’s Ninth symphony. And Billy Bragg just finished re-writing the lyrics to Ode to Joy, because of some long story involving buskers, kids, the London Philharmonic and the Queen. To hear Bragg describe his meeting with the Queen is worth deciding not to get another beer during.

Billy Bragg: “I said to the Queen: ‘I started off trying to be Bob Dylan, but I ended up being Friedrich Schiller.’”

Her Majesty,the Queen of England: “That’s very nice.”

But now Kerry Candaele and Billy Bragg are together creating a multi-cultural Beetovenaninthalicious extavaganza of Ode to folk, classical and everything in between Joy in Los Angeles in August. Be there. Donate.

After we left Kerry's place, as if life isn't interesting and risky enough, we went to an opening-night trapeze school demonstration on the Santa Monica Pier while all around us Angelenos with earphones murmured about the Lakers fourth-quarter comeback in vain against the Celtics.

Whew.

And tonight? The three of us sat on the couch in the living room. I knew we were in trouble when I saw Inglewood’s own Paul Pierce during the national anthem. He looked like his sphincter was taut tight against his Adam’s Apple.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

Though we almost got them, if Pierce had but just 12 points in the game -- that can’t be too much to ask -- the Celts would be up three-nil, as they say in Ireland.

But they’re not.

A bad night and tomorrow in the office for the LA-Celtic alle menschen werden bruder, I’ll tell you that.

Next post, from Jackson Browne to Jackshit: a little musical catching up.

And just in case the Following the Ninth page didn't open in your browser, here is the Youtube-quality version of the trailer. It's a little more than five minutes, but well worth it.

The son had a geometry study session so I figured I'd watch at
Sonny's until the tutor left, then go home and watch the tape with the family.

A great time. Sonny's is rockin. Green shamrock t-shirts with
"Beat LA" on the front and "Wilshire Boulevard--We love it!" on the
back.

At the half. Down by a bit, but the Celtics still seem to have a
better overall game from everyone.

Then. Silence. Paul Pierce is down. Fireman's carry, wheelchair.

LIke Jim McKay's fresh ghost declaring one more "Agony of Defeat."

The skis of a nascent champion pinwheeling down the slope.

Paul is Taken Down from the Cross

I suddenly don't want to be in the bar anymore. The
fun is gone. The series might as well be over. I tell someone, I'll come back after the game and pay my tab, it would take too long right now. I can't stay here.

I walk home, 13 blocks. Trying to remember who was the third guy who went down in that Pats last preseason game, they carted off Tippett, Varis, and someone else. I think about Robert Edwards.

I think maybe not stopping at the house. Keep walking 12 blocks to the beach.

Bruce Dern in Coming Home. Leave my clothes on the lifeguard stand.

Bo Jackson. Darius Miles, Joe Theisman. Bob Windsor. Eight bells. Barbaro. Wonder if
they've shot Pierce yet.

I get to the house. Son and Wife are on the couch. Paul Pierce is
bringing the ball up the court.

I'm thinking, Superman flew backwards.

Christopher Loyd's DeLorian pulled up in from of Causeway Street.

Someone broke the rule. Turned back time and changed everything.

Billy, who had just turned the TV on, says, "Perkins is in the locker
room with a bad knee or something.

I'm thinking, that wasn't Pierce? Am I losing my mind? Did I just almost
throw myself in front of the number two Wilshire Avenue bus for Kendrick
Perkins?

Do they think I'm nuts at Sonny's? Did they take away me half pint of
Guinness?

Anyway, within minutes, replays.

Paul Pierce emerging like Alexander the Great from his tent at Hyphasis.

I'm thinking Willis Reed. Kellen Winslow Sr. Schilling's bloody sock.

The rest of the game was truly wonderful to watch, even when both teams couldn't hit a thing.

Returned to Sonny's to pay tab at 9:30. Got distracted by happy friends.

___________________________________________________________________________________

So I was looking for a video to post with this entry and, given all the thinking I'm doing about basketball, the Old 70s Cheech and Chong Basketball Jones popped into my head. Lo and behold there is an origanal video cartoon that came out back in the day. I watched it.

I have no idea what to make of it.

It bugs me greatly as a relic from a time I thought I remembered better. It was drawn, produced, and found funny by some wide swatch of the population in the 1970s, certainly including me. Gulp. And it has a East LA looks at Compton perspective to it, at the same time. And it's unflinching satire. It belongs in some museum of American history, but I don't know where.  

NEW YORK - Roger Clemens apologized yesterday for unspecified mistakes in his personal life but denied having an affair with a 15-year-old.

and thanks to Edge of the American West

Patty Larkin by Dave at Flicker

We Saw Patty Larkin and Peter Mulvey last night at McCabe's.

Patty seems to us to be an old friend. Back in the late 70s, I remember her song "Dodge Dart" on WSAR in Cambridge (I owned four Darts over the course of a decade, maybe five, depending whether one counts moving an engine from one to the next) .

Peter Mulvey is someone we knew about through references by Chris Smither, but we just never got around to him. That is, until last night, and now, just on the basis of the story of “Dynamite Bill,” we will go out of our way to spend as many evenings in life with him as we can, which is a musical attitude, a thing, we hold for a bunch of singer-songwriters. The “thing” can be described as where we pay brilliant musicians/poets about $20-$35 a year to let us stalk them when they come to town, learn their songs, talk about them when they are not around, pry for personal information on them via the internet, imitate them when we're alone in our rooms, distort their voices and their melodies with others on our laptops, make huge assumptions about their lives from random stretches of lyric, steal their heartbreaks and make them entirely into our own as if they just happened for us and our needs, as well as talk and email about them with our friends behind their backs. And our new best friend is now Peter Mulvey.

Mulvey

Our more familiar friend Patty is a brilliant guitarist and an honest, innovative songwriter. She has a wonderful wit. For years she had a wayward attraction to men of dubious intent ( e.g. “Johnny was a Pyro,” “I Told Him My Dog Wouldn‘t Run”), but now she is settled down on Cape Cod with a woman partner (e.g. the suggestive and sexy "Cover Me--I'm Goin' In" on the latest album) and two kids, who have enriched her soul without, thank God, affecting the ethereal, haunted trajectory of her recent music. On the other side of 55, she seems consciously creating things transcendent. There was an unmistakable sense of “offering up” in her McCabe’s show, which works well, in fact, for an artist whose charm has always rested on not taking herself too seriously.

On her website, she writes:

True, it was a little awkward for us in the beginning of the show. I, in my single years, like many men (and women, I suppose) had a certain attraction to Redheads With Very Low Expectations of Men, and there has always been somewhere out there Patty Larkin, who was that and could also play a slide guitar, and well, you never know. But now there she was, Friday night, pretty much telling me she was happy, perhaps permanently so, with another woman, but I relaxed and got over it, and, after a few songs, so did she, and we’re fine now.

And of course I’m not going to tell you the story of Dynamite Bill. You’re going to have to seek out Peter Mulvey for that.

Peter Mulvey - Black Rabbit

As referred to earier in this blog, I lived for a couple of different spells in the Pioneer Valley of western Massachusetts, and I have special places in my heart for the place and for a lot of people who live there and thereabouts. But there was only one Buddy Rubbish, and he deserved a great obituary. Some anonymous writer for the Greenfield Recorder was up to the task:

Louis G. Roscher(1952 - 2008)

[ Originally published on: Saturday, April 19, 2008 ]

''Life does not cease to be funny when people die just as it does not cease to be serious when people laugh'' -- George Bernard Shaw

Lou Roscher -- known by the stage name ''Buddy Rubbish'' throughout the known world (and some parts of New Jersey) -- radio disc jockey, comedy impresario, and stage performer, died (or use your own euphemism) from complications after emergency heart surgery on Friday, April 11. He was 56 (roughly 8 dog years). Since Buddy had perfect timing, he must have known something we don't know. A vast circle of friends, fans and irate creditors are mourning his passing. In retrospect, he would likely be extremely annoyed at not having written his own obituary.

Born and raised on Long Island, Buddy took a circuitous path to his final home in Turners Falls. A natural raconteur, he peddled frozen shrimp on the side of the road, tended bar from Florida to New Hampshire, organized shows, worked at several radio stations, and performed wherever and whenever he could, occasionally leaving common sense by the wayside. Through the decades he hosted comedy and musical events, put on benefits (his generosity is well known), cobbled together video presentations, wrote for a number of publications, played chess with opponents in local clubs and online around the world, and was one of the stalwarts of the Northampton Arts Council's Transperformance series, appearing as everyone from Yogi Berra to Joan Baez.

Though, oddly, never as Madonna.

Buddy (then in the guise of Lou) came to the Pioneer Valley in the late 1970s via the Renaissance Community. Soon after, he and his partner, Virginia Simpson, opened The Separate Entrance, a local watering hole, in South Deerfield. After being mentored in comedy by the mild mannered Ed Vadas, he started The Comedy Crunch, which provided a springboard for many standup comics and musicians. After leaving the Hot-L, The Comedy Crunch moved to the Iron Horse, where it provided the Pioneer Valley with many more years of uproarious and often embarrassing open mic comedy.

In 1984, the comedy/music duo of Buddy Rubbish and Bobby Darling (area musician Joe Lada) began broadcasting the Oldies Show on WRSI, then in Greenfield. Their program was a three-ring circus of entertainment, being unable to fit a fourth ring into the studio due to physical constraints.

Well-versed in popular and esoteric music of the 1950s and 60s, they presented an eclectic mix of well-known and obscure songs, accompanied by pre-recorded and live comedy bits. The centerpiece of the show was the second-floor Drive-Up Window on the alley dubbed ''Memory Lane'' (the name actually written by Buddy's attorney, Sandy Staub). Requests were taken from honking motorists in the alley, and prizes (records, candy, ''genuine Mohawk Dum-dum Arrowheads'' a/k/a, rocks, along with other odd paraphernalia) were lowered down to his grateful and often-inebriated fans. The show ran for many years until Buddy took over the morning show on the station. He later worked on WRNX, WGAM, and WPVQ.

After his illustrious radio career, he returned to bartending in many valley bars and restaurants. While never likely to win the ''employee of the month'' award (see Red Sox below), he was a master behind the bar; making new acquaintances, entertaining patrons, and always ready to dispense a ''generous pour'' when friends stopped by.

It is almost 20 years since Buddy scored an invitation to travel with one-time Yankees manager Stump Merrill and a slew of American ballplayers to teach baseball to the Russians. There is conjecture that this trip led to the ultimate breakup of the Soviet Union.

Buddy went to Woodstock, got there late, and left after one act.

Often overlooked and forgotten (for obvious reasons to those who heard them), Buddy was lead singer for the (thankfully) ephemeral Buddy Rubbish and the Deertones.

Buddy was an important contributor to the seminal cartoon-and-humor magazine Scat, based in Northampton. He hoped to take Scat to a national audience, but his overtures were rebuffed. He later learned that they were never buffed in the first place.

Though raised on the Mets, Buddy became as passionate a Red Sox fan as any Boston Townie. Let it be known that he never let work interfere with his love for the game. He was also an ever-enthusiastic fan of the New England Patriots, describing himself as ''numb'' after the recent Super Bowl loss.

Buddy was an avid herbalist.

One of Buddy's enduring hopes was that his birthday, January 23, 1952, would become a national holiday, or at least a recognizable occasion, like National Petulance Day. He ultimately conceded that at his death he would be satisfied to have all city buses draped in black bunting.

Although Buddy was a talented improvisor, song and comedy writer, and spontaneous wit, his greatest creations were his beloved children: Jackson Louis (8) and Lily Eloise Roscher (6). We would be remiss here to not include his co-producer, Ellen DeBruyn, without whom the production would have been unmanageable.

Buddy¹s parents and sister predeceased him, as did his famous sketch character Billy the Bat.

In lieu of memorial services, raucous celebrations of Buddy's life will be held on May 18 at the Northampton Unitarian Church and the Northampton Center For The Arts.

Donations may be made to Buddy's Kids at any of the 18 PeoplesBank branches in the Valley