Blues for Mai Cramer



Quotes

On invading Iraq
"To me, it's really scary. War really opens up a can of worms for us. You don't know where it will go next, whether it could lead to a third world war or what. My son is 13, my daughter is 8. It worries me to think about what's ahead for them. I don't know how you solve these things, but there have to be other ways than war, fighting and all this craziness."
Cindy Morrow, Republican, shoe store manager, Scottsdale, Ariz., quoted in The New York Times

The Reader
After-hours edition of Subterranean Homepage News
(Why"The Reader"?)

---

August 3, 2002

Heartfelt thanks for all the kind words from readers, bloggers, colleagues and friends when my mom died.

It was 37 years and 10 days ago today... It's 5:10 a.m., first light, nobody stirring but the woodpecker and me.

As I type that, the bird chorus begins. The woodpecker seems to be the alarm clock.

Later today, Joe and I are going to the Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan will play for the first time in 37 years. It will be my first return there since July 25, 1965, too.

That summer of 1965, I turned 18. I had just finished my freshman year in college, and came home to a boring summer job on the College Fashion Board at Shepard's, a Providence department store. (People who know me now either don't believe this or thnk it's hilariously out of character, but it was true. I sent everybody to the men's department to buy blue jeans.)

I had been turned onto Dylan in high school. I had discovered that the way out of my limited world was the debate team, where wins earned trips to national tournaments in faraway cities. Entire hotels full of bright kids opened new worlds. I was 15 and on my own (I'd won in original oratory) in Pittsburgh, in May of 1963, when Alan Clement picked me up in the elevator.

He wore long hair, boots and jeans, and lived with his debate coach in Greenwich Village. We stayed up all night talking about the meaning of life, and made out in the stairway.

January 1964

Alan and I met again in January of '64, in Washington, at a debate tournament, and my debate partner hooked up with his debate partner. When National Airlines went on strike, we cashed in our tickets and took a bus to New York City.

Alan took us to the Village and there, in the back room of the Night Owl Cafe, was Bob Dylan. His girlfriend Yvette borrowed my hairbrush. I don't remember much else, just a big round wooden table under a naked lightbulb, and conversations with older men whom I now realize were very stoned and hitting on me in beatnik ways. ("Look into my eyes... What do you see?" "Uh... nothing.")

Frantic parents were not amused.

Dylan was a catalyst for a nice girl from a nice family with a head full of ideas I thought nobody else had. ( "It is not he or she or them or it that you belong to.")

His music was the soundtrack to my homework. The songs opened me, taught me. As quickly as I absorbed them, there was another album, and he had changed too. There was a dialog between Dylan and those of us of a certain age changing along with him in realtime.

If it weren't for Dylan, I'd be a suburban housewife now.

Thanks, Bob. See ya later today.
Link •

Patterns start early. Since I'm in the Wayback Machine, here's a critical detail.

I skipped a grade, and am playing catchup. When all my friends turned 16 and could drive, I was too young; they turned 21 and could drink, I was too young. Last year, when others could take a buyout, I was still too young.

I loved kindergarten. I fell in love with finger-painting. When we finished our simple word and number exercises, we could paint until the class moved onto another project. I would race through the assignments so I could get back to my easel, where the smell of paint and its bright colors meant fun and excitement.

Just as I'd figured out how to paint most of the time, the principal called my mom, and said I was obviously ready for first grade, since I completed my work so quickly.

I couldn't articulate that I was a highly motivated painter, not a whiz kid.

The next day I was led to a real classroom with kids firmly planted at rows of desks, and not an easel in sight.

Ever since, I've been trying to get back to an easel, but I've never again been able to finish my work in time.
Link •

Read all about it: The National Labor Relations Board has added 11 new additional unfair labor practice charges against The Providence Journal, bringing the total to 65. You can't read about it anywhere but on the Providence Newspaper Guild site. (The company's trial in February on the first 46 of these charges is documented at a subsite, journalontrial.org; the judge's decision is expected next month.)

Belo, of Texas, bought the paper 5 years ago, and we haven't had a contract since our last one expired at the end of 1999.
Link •

Women's Rights Treaty Sent to Senate (Washington Post)
July 31, 2002; Page A20 Senate Democrats sent a U.N. treaty on women's rights drafted 23 years ago and already approved by 170 countries to the full Senate for ratification yesterday, rejecting appeals from the Bush administration that the treaty needed more review.

With two Republicans joining Democrats, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 12 to 7 to advance the treaty -- the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women -- for a full Senate vote. Republicans Gordon Smith of Oregon and Lincoln D. Chafee of Rhode Island joined the panel's 10 Democrats.
Link •

Hear from a 4-listener radio station: Over on my projo blog, there's cool email from Bernie Larivee of Rhode island's own Eargazm radio, with his idea of how artists' royalties should be structured for net radio stations of various sizes and intents.
Link •