The Legendary: December 2008

Where's Waldo
By Maxwell Allen

Waldo Grimes knew things that weren’t privy to most folks. He knew aliens landed at Roswell and that Marilyn Monroe was killed by agents of the Kennedys. He knew that for gospel. He also knew man never did land on the moon and that it was all set up by Nixon to turn everyone’s attention away from Vietnam. According to Waldo, one of the people that worked on this scam was a young technician called George Lucas.

Waldo Grimes was a nut job in most people‘s eyes. If he’d lived in New York or LA, he would probably have merged in with the fantasists and conspiracy theorists that were ten to a penny there. The trouble was, Waldo lived in Winter Falls, a small two turd hick town in Northern Oregon. Winter Falls had a population of about two hundred. Occasionally, it had two hundred and three, but that was only if Betty Steenbergen and her two kids came back to live with her husband George. They’d had more cat fights than you could mention and on the day that Waldo walked into the Only Bar in Town, she was on one of her “I’m never going back to that bastard” visits to her mom in Portland.

The Only Bar in Town was named because it was just that. Winter Falls only had one store too and one Post Office and one gas station. It had two churches though, one Lutheran and one Baptist and both had cause to pray for the souls of their congregation. The Only, as most people knew it was a place where most Winter Falls people came together. Owned by a sixty four year old Montana woman called Lily Lee Harper, she had a mouth like an oil rigger on acid, although it also came with the proverbial heart of gold. The day Waldo disappeared, he’d been in The Only, drinking with Jake and Herb Morgan. They were the only ones who tolerated Waldo's ideas.

“You seen those lights in the sky, last week?” Waldo asked. “They were stars, Waldo.” replied Jake. “Stars my ass!“ Waldo retorted, “No stars moved the way they did. I’m telling ya’ we’re being watched.“ Herb stifled a laugh. “I know ya’ll think I’m a wacko, but mark my words. We ain’t being told anything.“ “ Aliens? Hell, what about that moon thing and that letter you sent to the President about 9/11. I wouldn‘t go round talking up your ideas on that one, I mean there’s a lot of folk…” “Damn it, Jake Morgan.” shouted Waldo, slamming his bottle hard on the table. “There’s more to 9/11 than meets the eye.” He leaned in closer and whispered. “The Pentagon jet. It never happened the way they said it did. Government confiscated CCTV from various places and they‘ve disappeared. I‘m not alone. There are many of us out there who believe. “Jesus Waldo, you’re like that guy from the X Files.“ “My agent in Arizona…“ “Your agent!“ “…says that the thing that hit the Pentagon was not Flight 77 at all, but a government missile. Intended to build up pressure for a war.”

“You’re talkin’ through your ass, Waldo. Tell me this then. Where is Flight 77? All those people?” Waldo slipped his hand in his jacket and brought out a black and white photo. “My agent in Arizona took some pictures.“ Jake and Herb looked at the photo Waldo had put down. It showed a man in orange overalls, flanked by two armed guards “It was taken at an air base in New Mexico. That guy there…“ pointing at the man in orange. “then take a look at this.” Waldo brought out a newspaper clipping of the Washington Post dated September 13, 2001. It showed a photo of the aircrew of Flight 77. “See any resemblance?” The brothers looked at the photo, then back at Walter. “There’s a similarity, but…” “No buts! That’s the co-pilot. Plane was taken over by Federal agents, flown to New Mexico and that’s where they’re incarcerated. He has other photos.” “How many?” “He has three more. He sent this to me.” “You seen these photos?” asked Jake. “No. It’s essential that we keep evidence separately, in case the government finds out.” The two brothers laughed out loud.

“Hey, Waldo. I like your new car.” Waldo turned. The woman who had spoken placed a box of groceries on the table. The barkeep lifted the box and took it out the back. Lily Lee Harper was short, carrying a little weight but for her age, she looked fine.

“Car? What car? I ain‘t got no new car.“ “Well you must have some rich folks calling, ‘cause there’s a big black limousine parked outside your place. Blacked out windows too. Didn‘t see no one.” Waldo paled, stood up and walked out without saying a word. He made one visit to the Post Office before he set off home.

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The sheriff’s office at Tillamook County was brought in three days later. They never had much call to visit Winter Falls before, as nothing much ever happened there. Waldo’s disappearance had everyone scratching their heads. Nothing had been touched in Waldo’s place although it would have been hard to discover if anything had been stolen. The place was always in a mess anyhow, most people testified to that, but there was no sign of Waldo. “Where’s Waldo” became the most popular headline in the county’s newspapers. “Sure as hell, I don’t know.” said Lily Lee. “Aliens took him.” said Herb Morgan. The woman in the Post Office said he came in and posted something on the afternoon he vanished. “Seemed a little quiet.” she commented. The black car was mentioned, but no one could trace it. Waldo Grimes simply vanished and when Betty Steenbergen came back three days later and announced she was pregnant, his disappearance became yesterday’s news.

*********************************

The mail clerk who opened Waldo‘s letter and photo at the Washington Post never did show the contents to the editor. As a covert agent of the government he quietly filed it away in his briefcase and took it to the offices of the FBI during his lunch break. They filed it away in a folder they called the X Files.

They like to think they have a sense of humor.

Morningstar By Jim Parks

Picture this.

A couple of uptight bureaucrats - you know the kind, good gray men with seniority, white shirts and ties, training, civil service status - have come to inspect the dwellings and sanitary facilities at an "open land" commune in sixties California. As they approach the gate to the 31-acre property in the redwoods situated in the middle of apple orchards near Sonoma County's Russian River, they are met by a committee - most of whom are stark naked. In fact, one man who never missed these confrontations was a tall black giant, his afro and ebony skin glistening in the California sun, white teeth glittering as he beamed at the officials with a huge grin, a nude white woman under each arm. Tied around his abnormally large male member there was always a pink ribbon done up in a fancy bow.

These confrontations persisted for years and they always began the same way. "Who is in charge here?" the bureaucrat, building inspector, health code enforcement officer or sheriff's department investigator would inquire. No one seemed to be able to give a clear answer to the question. Now, it was a fair question, but it seemed it was always very difficult to answer. It was like the scene in the Vietnam war movie "Apocalypse Now," an adaptation of a Joseph Conrad story that had nothing to do with Vietnam and everything to do with authority and power relationships. "Hey, soldier, do you know who's in command here?" The reply, cheeky and matter of fact and succinct, "Yeah." The character had nothing further to say. Just, "Yeah." They were in the middle of a firefight at a bridge head and he knew who was in charge there. "Yeah."

Vietnam. California. Berkeley. Communes. Universities, the military, corporations, powerful institutions of any kind. You name it. People just kept on doing things to let the The Man know HE was no longer necessarily the one in charge. The critics panned it, the politicians and pundits now deride it, but one thing is for certain, the era of free love, peace, social experimentation, alternative lifestyles - all these things that shook the American culture to its roots - just kept challenging that central concept in ways too numerous to define. Dominance ranking, as the sociologists call it and measure it by such factors as disposable income and leisure time, was sliding and tipping disastrously, rather like an elegant sterling tea service on a gleaming teak table in a salon in a bounding, rolling yacht on an ocean in a snotty blow. The Man kept asking the same question and he kept getting the same answer. Do you know who's in charge here? "Yeah."

So this was a daily scene at the socially experimental Morningstar Ranch, a counterculture enclave that flourished near Occidental, California, situated in the apple orchards and redwood groves of Sonoma County's Russian River country, the neighborhood where the apples are grown, Luther Burbank developed the seedless grape, and some of the finest California varietal vintages are produced. What was really proven?

Quite a lot, really.

Mostly, it was about power relations - who has it, who doesn't, and why. Lou Gottlieb owned the ranch after he bought it from John Henry Beecher, grandson of Harriet Beecher Stowe, the abolitionist author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, whom President Abraham Lincoln claimed was "the little lady who started all the trouble." Mr. Beecher lost his property when he lost his position as a teacher at San Francisco State University because he refused to sign a "loyalty" oath. After amassing thousands of dollars in fines and court- ordered fees to bulldoze buildings ruled improperly constructed on his own property, Lou Gottlieb deeded the property to God. All this controversy wound up in the U.S. Ninth Circuit District Court of Appeals, which ruled that if God was named owner of real property on a quit claim deed, then there would be no recourse for the collection of property taxes. Therefore, God has no property rights in the state of California.

It was a typical joke for the wise-cracking Gottlieb, who earned a Ph.D. in musicology at UC Berkeley and fronted the folk song trio, "The Limelighters" playing upright double bass on the weekly television program "Hootenany" after he arranged many of The Kingston Trio's hit songs.

Think "There's A Meeting Here Tonight" and "It Takes A Worried Man (To Sing A Worried Song)." Gottlieb had a concert grand he put in a hen house at the Morningstar Ranch. There, he played Brahms and other classical works. He meditated, did yoga and clowned while his sidekick, another musician named Ramón Sender Barayón, the son of Ramón J. Sender, the exiled Spanish novelist, played it straight. Sender was literally born amid the sound of machine guns during "Red October," within close proximity of the opening battles of the Spanish Civil War, in 1934. His father, a native of Aragon, was a co-founder of Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista, or P.O.U.M., the Trotskyist militia whose ranks were filled with international volunteers, including such literary luminaries as George Orwell, author of 1984. One of Spain's great modern novelists, Sr. Sender wrote the novel Mr. Witt Among The Rebels, for which he won the prestigious Spanish National Prize for Literature in 1936. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970 for the body of his other work, including some which have been translated. They are Pro Patria, Seven Red Sundays Counterattack In Spain, Chronicle Of Dawn, The Sphere, Dark Wedding, and The Affable Hangman.

The Stalinist government of the Soviet Union controlled the funds and the supplies of the Republican effort to resist the Fascist forces commanded by Generalissimo Francisco Franco. During that conflict, the P.O.U.M. brigades found it increasingly difficult to find the means to resist the fascists. At one point, the Stalinists actually attacked the P.O.U.M. troops. One night at the height of the war, a death squad jerked Ramon's mother Amparo out of a jail cell and frog marched her to a cemetery in her home town of Zamora in the province of Castile. There, paid fascist firing squad of assassins cut her down where she stood before a wall and buried her in a squalid grave after the local priest refused her absolution. Sender, Sr., was able to get his two children, Ramón and Andrea, out of Spain. They eventually arrived in New York in 1939, stateless, homeless refugees because the senior Sender was on the run in Mexico, dodging the Stalinist operatives who were still hunting down and killing supporters of Leon Trotsky, as they had killed Trotsky himself in Mexico City in 1940. Indeed, he considered the truth of the demise of his wife so sensitive that he took the secret to the grave in 1982 when he succumbed to a heart attack after a long career publishing his novels and teaching in various universities.

It was only through meticulous research that Ramon Sender Barayón, his son, was able to piece together the truth of his mother's execution. He wrote A Death In Zamora and published it to respectable reviews in 2003.

Today, forty years after the open land experiment at Morningstar Ranch with Lou Gottlieb and such leading lights of the hippie movement as the Diggers, Sender sits in a bay window in a house high on a crazy hill on a sunny San Francisco street where fog comes pouring over a mountain on certain days. He roughs the tangled fur of his wiggly little dog, "Ricky Ricardo." Asked how to lead and govern several hundred free spirits through gentle suggestion at the height of the psychedelic revolution, the Summer of Love, he readily responds, with no hesitation, "Buy a cow." Buy a cow?

"Buy a cow." Why buy a cow? Near exasperation, Ramón Sender Barayón peers over the top of his half lens reading glasses and speaks very slowly, with the voice of experience, with exaggerated patience. Because twice a day that cow needs to be milked. Everyone will come to watch or to get some milk or to socialize - or whatever. All you need to do to get their attention is to make sure the cow is doing fine, that everyone gets some milk, and you can communicate with them with no problem. Here sits one of the earlist experimenters with electronic keyboards, or MOOG synthesizers, one of the organizers of the San Francisco Trips Festival of 1966, a joint venture composed of himself, Stewart Brand, Lou Gottlieb, Phil Graham, The Grateful Dead, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Big Brother and the Holding Company and many other bands as well as the signature light shows that later became the standard for rock concerts - all staged at the ILWU Longshoreman's Hall, all staged over a three-day period in January of 1966.

He is very obviously a Spaniard. You can see it in the flowing gray hair, the bushy eyebrows, the heavy beard, the exaggerated gestures when he speaks. He insists that if I ever suddenly find myself situated on prime property in a garden state suddenly overrun by the homeless, helpless, naked and nameless, I should buy a cow. It's the first lesson, he told me. Well, it's a start.

Indeed, all good stories have a beginning. The middle of this story is another thing entirely. Some would say the demise of the ranch through the intervention of the bureaucracy and the court orders to bulldoze the property was the end of the story. But that's not true. The end, obviously, is nowhere in sight. At least, not from where Ramón Sender Barayón and Señor Ricky Ricardo sit looking out that bay window on that crazy hill in San Francisco. The people who lived at Morningstar Ranch scattered like seeds before a whirlwind. Many of them perished on the streets from where they had come. There are many horror stories involving the retribution of gang wars, political assassination, drug overdoses and outright death by exposure and disease. Others have thrived in places far and wide, most of them "on the land" at other communes in the west. Sender continues to chronicle all that in an evolving e-book he calls "Home Free Home."

Very interesting reading, it may be found in "The Digger Archives" at: http://www.diggers.org/home_free.htm

The Diggers were an almost mythical commune of people who tended to the needs of the burned out hippies during the Summer of Love. They gleaned produce and scored fish and meat from vendors who were willing to share. They printed instant newspapers on an old multilith in the back of a newspaper delivery van and distributed them to people hungry for information. And they gardened. Morningstar was one of the places where they maintained thriving gardens, the produce of which they hauled into San Francisco to feed starving hippies from everywhere who had arrived without a clue as to what they would do next, where their next meal was coming from, or where to go when their luck ran out.

What were some of the lessons learned? First of all, what of the revolutionary idea propagated by Lou Gottlieb, an ex-member of the American Communist Party, that all should work in harmony in "removing the Territorial Imperative from the human heart"? Lou Gottlieb called it LATWNID, or "land access to which no one is denied." Ramón Sender remembers events this way. There were many fits and starts, legal hassles and emotional public meetings. "Anyway, the fact is that from the first get-go we terrified a whole lot of people."

Why? Because, according to one popular definition of the concept by Robert Ardrey, the playwright turned anthropologist, who proposed the notion of human territorial aggression in "The Territorial Imperative," published in the 1960s, humans, like animals, are compelled by instinct to possess and defend territory they believe belongs exclusively to them...Territory enhances an animal's prestige and improves chances for survival. It was his idea that this dynamic drives human aggression.

Gottlieb sought an experimental solution to this thing of human aggression. He saw it as a problem, and that generated a lot of fear, according to his sidekick, Ramón Sender. The fears all that generated in the minds of the neighbors fell along several well-worn lines. First, they saw the free land movement "...corrupting our children, which I would rephrase (as) 'offering the younger generation an alternative to the Consensus Reality rat race.'"

Secondly, hippies running around naked, gardening, meditating and making babies they saw as "lowering real estate values." Parenthetically, according to Sender, "...actually it's the value of the dollar decreasing..." Neighbors perceived "an increase of crime in the area, including mostly burglary and trespassing." They suspected "Cultivation of illegal substances such as marijuana, and probably some of the more paranoid thought we were cooking meth." They feared "The spread of sexually transmitted diseased into the population, along with hepatitis. "'Dirty Hippies' was considered one word."

What lesson did Ramon Sender learn when Gottlieb deeded the property to God? Actually, he was the one who instigated the move. A woman friend of his interrupted his morning meditation to tell him about Lou's problems with the law, the magnitude of his legal fees and court costs. "Tell him to deed Morningstar to God," Sender replied. "And within a few weeks that's what he did." Later, he learned that John Henry Beecher had already deeded the property to The Goddess "because he was a member of the Catholic lay order of the Third Order of St. Dominic which occasionally met on the property. "They consecrated the ranch to the Holy Mother and named it after her, 'Morning Star.'" Many people had seen a mysterious vision, the figure of the "Divine Mother" strolling through the trees from time to time, he recalls.

Ironically, that may have offered a legal avenue to certification as a tax-exempt and religious enclave community, according to Sender. "...Lou discovered unfortunately too late to help with the appeal of the deed to God, that under Islamic law, it is possible to deed real property to Allah. It's caled a 'waqf.'...Whether Islamic law could have any standing in an American court would be interesting to research, but it seems to me that it could be argued that, under the First Amendment, Lou could, if he converted to Islam, make a waqf of Morning Star to Allah." Finally, did the ultimate defeat of the community because of non-compliance with building codes spell success for the principles of freedom?

"Or do you mean 'spell defeat for the principles of freedom'? I think that's you intended to say," said Ramón. "ABSOLUTELY NOT! Okay, so Morning Star was a disaster in the sense that it could never have become a viable community, at least at that time and place, because it was too close to neighbors and too anarchistic in its basic Digger philosophical thrust to have ever organized itself into a self-supporting enterprise. I personally viewed Morning Star as an alternate society shrine where people came to be healed, just like at Lourdes. Other than live-in staff, there only should've been been visitors who stayed as long as necessary and then moved on, taking their healing and the message with them. And many did just that."

Many a young man or woman who had abandoned their lives somewhere in America and come to the Haight to see what would happen wound up totally zonked on psychdelics or other drugs and were basically wandering around stray and at loose ends, incapable of caring for themselves. The Diggers picked them up, brought them to the ranch, and they spent their first night under a tree sleeping while the condensation dripped on them. In the morning, they found a communal stove in the middle of a meadow where people were preparing some sort of breakfast of oatmeal or soup. As the days went by, they scored canvas or sheet plastic and made a lean-to, then found a way to build a little structure. Some helped out with the gardening. Others went on runs with the Diggers to score food, lumber, anything that could be used to help build the community. At one point the three septic tanks on the 31-acre place were streaming effluent downhill on the surface of the ground. It all served to madden the public officials and the neighbors.

There were issues of public health and safety to consider. But wasn't that exactly the point, according to Gottlieb and Sender, the two seeming radicals who dared to beg the question? At some point, faced with their confrontational style, one had to ask oneself, what, exactly is radical and what is conservative?

Every night an estimated 88,000 people bed down on the streets of Los Angeles. They have no home other than the sidewalks, alleys, public parks, vacant houses and homeless shelters. "If pot's allowed as 'medical marijuana,' then living on the land and building your own simple dwelling should be considered 'medical voluntary poverty' or some-such. And I'd love to find some expert willing to testify to the salubrious effect of not having to pay money to live on some slice of Mother Earth," said Ramón Sender Barayón.

Every so often, he and The Rev. Keenan C. Kelsey. Pastor, Noe Valley Ministry where Ramón retired as the Administrative director of the Ministry and Community Center, submitted a proposal to the San Francisco Mayor and County Board of Supervisors that would allow a triage of homeless by the Social Services Department.

"Proposal: If a person wants to camp out in nature, offer them a 'nature camp' where they can build themselves a lean- to in a hospitable climate (not too cold, not too hot) grow their food, raise some chickens, learn some crafts, and wait for their soul to regenerate. The basic axiom is that Nature is the Greatest Healer." Where would they do this? On part of the sixteen million acres contolled by the Bureau of Land Management or by The State of California. "Lumber, livestock, water, gardening equipment and food stamps would be provided."

The triage would be determined by the Department of Social Services's placement in one of three groups. "Group 1) Willing to be trained and employed. These would remain in the city. "Group 2) Physically or mentally disabled or drug-addicted, These would be placed in treatment centers, but many of the so-called mentally disabled would benefit by being placed in Group 3. "Group 3) Unwilling to be trained but willing to 'return to nature' under minimum supervision, following the time-out center therapeutic concepts of R. D. Lang, et. al...Group 3 Program Participants would be encouraged to build their own living quarters - in the 1960s, on the so-called 'open door hippy enclaves,' we found this to be a very important aspect of the rehabilitation program. The participants would be encouraged to create a self-sufficient homestead.

The basic model somewhat parallels The Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930's. These TOIN Camps (Time Out In Nature Camps), scattered through isolated areas of the state, would also provide on-site volunteer fire fighting teams during the fire season. "Why don't you take your TOIN (Time Out In Nature)?" could become a catch phrase. Under the doctrine of LATWIDN, or, that is, Gottlieb's notion of Land Access To Which Is Denied No One, the core idea is to move people onto the huge amount of land that is not in use.

Nine-tenths of the nation's population lives on about one tenth of its land mass. The people of America are now bottled up as never before, according to Ramón Sender Barayón. At first, people arrived in outlaw fashion by being transported from Europe against their will. Later, the huge amounts of vacant land on the North American continent beckoned when people found it hard to fit in or they were starved out of their villages to make a convenient labor pool in the industrial cities.

Today, the marginal are left to wander the streets until they die.

The Legendary

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Sunday, December 14, 2008

Where's Waldo?

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Fire Opal

Monday, December 1, 2008

Morningstar Ranch

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