Len Anderson (1944 -- 2024)

Len Anderson

LEN ANDERSON (1944 -- 2024)

 

Len Anderson passed away in his own bed on Mattison Lane in Santa Cruz early Tuesday morning, January 30, tended by his wife, Elke Maus.

 

Len earned a PhD in physics from UC Berkeley, worked in experimental high-energy physics at Berkeley and in Europe, then switched to industry where he designed sensors for paper-making machines. 

Moving to Santa Cruz in the early 90s, Len developed his talents as a poet, co-founding Poetry Santa Cruz and Hummingbird Press, organizations which sponsored poetry readings, encouraged and published the work of local poets including three books by Len himself: Affection for the Unknowable (2003), Invented by the Night (2011) and The Way Home (2019).

In 1992, Len laid down a memorable mark on the poetry scene with his clever parody of Allen Ginzberg's Howl, the infamous anthem of San Francisco's Beat Generation. Len called his work BEEP crafting it as an anthem of the "BEEP Generation", in which he caricatures the behavior of the programmers and entrepreneurs of Silicon Valley whose efforts gave birth to today's personal computers.

BEEP's opening line

A large part of Len's work deals poetically with spiritual and metaphysical themes. Like myself, Len was for a long time a practicing Roman Catholic.

 

Invented by the Night    p 28

And next, Len imagines for us a back-alley encounter between Science and Mysticism:

 

The Way Home   p 42

 

Modern quantum physics, consciousness and mysticism are not so easy to comprehend. These regions of experience are subtle, obscure, elusive and call out for a correspondingly subtle and sophisticated courtship. One example:

 

Invented by the Night   p 48

 

 Philosophically Len Anderson was a passionate agnostic who flirted playfully in public with the boundaries of human knowledge (as per the title of his first book Affection for the Unknowable). And in Len's books and readings he shamelessly reveals himself as a faithful lover of the Great Mystery. For his wife Elke,  his friends and community, and for fellow seekers after the Mysteries, the death of Len Anderson has left a big hole in the fabric of being.

Affection for the Unknowable   p 11

Invented by the Night   p 68

 

 

August O'Connor (1951 - 2023)

August O'Connor in meadow with big bodhran.

 AUGUST O'CONNOR (1951--2023)

Born in Southern California in 1951, the middle girl between two brothers, Raleigh and Greg, August O'Connor early experienced a love of animals, drama and mystery. She raised pet rats and played with snakes. And face-painted, dressed in leotard, rabbit skins, leather aviator helmet and shaking a coyote-skull rattle, she entertained her high school classmates as "Animal Woman: Protector of all speechless creatures." She starred in student plays, performed in an all-girl band and, starting as a freshman, she edited her high school's literary magazine.

 

After graduation, while living in Claremont, she met and married Bill O'Connor. Shortly afterwards they moved to Capitola where they attended St. John's Episcopal Church before moving to San Francisco to work at Grace Cathedral.

For eight years at the Cathedral, August O'Connor served as assistant verger, supporting Bishop Swing in ceremony, designing vestments and providing counseling, For six years she worked as chaplain at San Francisco General Hospital during the rise of the AIDS epidemic.

In recorded conversation with San Francisco social historian Lynne Gerber about her AIDS and other work, August recalled: "Lots of different lives but there is a chaplaincy thread running though it. The thread is love, I'd say, the thread is willingness to love. And to be loved, you know, because when you open your heart to someone, you might not be loved, you know." August's motto, painted on her gate post, is: "Every blessing on all beings."

 

August has worked in every aspect of the visual arts from large oil paintings to cartoons. In the 70s she was Art Director of Good Times, Santa Cruz's largest weekly newspaper. She designed logos for several businesses including Zoccoli's Deli and Pink Godzilla; producing signs, murals and window displays for numerous local shops. She also fashioned necklaces, earrings, bracelets, Celtic knot tattoo designs and unusual hand-hammered copper sculptures based on double spirals which she called "Buddha-mind roller coasters."

 

After leaving Grace Cathedral, August and her friend Nick Gardner began attending Native American sweat lodge ceremonies in Marin and Shasta counties under the direction of Karuk medicine man, Charlie "Red Hawk" Thom. When she moved back to Capitola, August mentored under medicine man Indio, eventually running her own sweat lodge events when Indio became ill. August's sweat ceremonies, carried out with Nick Gardner on the beach a few miles south of Pigeon Point lighthouse, drew a wide variety of attendees primarily from the nearby University in Santa Cruz. Also with Nick Gardner, she enjoyed many trips into the wilderness which she loved. 

 

In her home in Capitola, on one city lot, August put together a voluptuous Mediterranean garden crowned by an orchard of olive, apple, plum, lemon, loquat and persimmon trees. In addition to wild profusions of flowers, the garden produced food – lettuce, tomatoes, beans and potatoes as well as fruit from its trees. August's garden was a haven for bees, butterflies, bats and small mammals and had been officially certified as Wildlife Habitat #29951 by the National Wildlife Foundation.

 

August was a splendid chef, could create a tasty meal out of most anything. At San Francisco gatherings, she garnered admiration for her party specialty: chocolate truffles. Her turmeric toast made an unusual breakfast treat and August's mushroom omelettes were arguably the best in the known universe.

 

August sang and played guitar and bodhran (Irish frame drum). With flute-and-whistle player Kim Fulton-Bennett, they formed the Celtic duo Dobhran (Gaelic for "otter") which played at weddings, wineries, coffee shops and private parties and they also recorded a few instrumental CDs. Dobhran has performed at numerous Scottish and Irish festivals in Santa Cruz and Ben Lomond. A familiar presence at local Irish music sessions, August recently started a new group called Blarney with Kim, Nick Herbert and Matt Johnson, which has performed on stage, at private parties and most recently at an Irish wake in Boulder Creek.

 

Friends have described August's character variously as "playful dignity", as "innocent sophistication", as "kaleidoscopic life force",  as "remarkable, unique, eccentric",  and as "a tempestuous whirlwind." She herself explained "My life/is one kiss/with life."

 

She was hospitalized recently in Santa Cruz for a serious infection. And, on March 24, a week after St. Patrick's Day, early in the morning at age 72, this former chaplain, artist, musician, sweat lodge leader, gardener, beautiful and loving woman, August (Augie) O'Connor, passed away peacefully in her sleep.

Says Nick Herbert: "August came from a larger place and shared some of that with the rest of us."

Said one good friend: "August filled pages; she was a tome."

Added another: "August was an Irish rose."

I LIKE MY HANDS
https://quantumtantra.blogspot.com/2023/07/i-like-my-hands.html

Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919 - 2021)

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

 I first came to San Francisco from Ohio in the early sixties and was immediately attracted to the wonders of North Beach, dining upstairs family-style at the Basque Hotel or at the old Spaghetti Factory on Grant Avenue, witnessing the antics of would-be beatniks at the Coexistence Bagel Shop and especially browsing and buying books at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore which was, and still is, the epicenter of San Francisco's vibrant literary scene. Scanning my bookshelf, I spot half a dozen or so of the City Lights published Pocket Poets paperbacks including Allen Ginsberg's Howl, of course, which anyone who wanted to seem cool had to flaunt, but also other Pocket Poet books, Kaddish, Planet News and The Fall of America by the same woolly-bearded prophet. Other of my Pocket Poets include Kenneth Patchen's Love Poems and Kora in Hell by William Carlos Williams. Somewhere in my piles of books is buried Ferlinghetti's own A Coney Island of the Mind, Pocket Poet book #1, which has sold more than one million copies. Eat your hearts out, poets!

[Erratum: Actually, Nick, Pictures of the Gone World was Pocket Poets #1. Coney Island was published by New Directions.]

Despite many visits to City Lights and other Bay Area poetry venues I never met Ferlinghetti but yesterday on Facebook I received an elegy from Neeli Cherkovski who knew him quite well, which I am taking the liberty of posting here. Farewell, grand old soul.

MY FRIEND LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI (1919 - 2021)

Ferlinghetti and I
Would go to the Surf Theater
Way out by Yokohama
He was an aggressive
Driver, his old Volkswagen
Bug had several dents.

Driving through the Stockton
Tunnel he'd proclaim,
"We're leaving the Casbah"
And he would chuckle
As he turned left on Van Ness
Leaving North Beach
And City Lights Books.

We saw a movie set in Paris.
The title escapes me, but
Lawrences's excitement
Over the sights, Notre Dame
In a side view, the Seine
Head-on, Apollinaire's shadow
On Boulevard St. Germaine.

"I should go for a visit," he said
"Like Henry Miller did."

Two days later we headed
To Bixby Canyon, he said
I could carve my name on
The outhouse wall alongside
Kerouac and Ginsberg.

We read from "Leaves
Of Grass" that night by
A campfire. "He's like
An older brother."
Lawrence said of Whitman.

A year later
He wrote from
Paris, "I'm bringing you
A new beret, made right
Here."

San Francisco, Paris,
Big Sur, an open
Heart who would
Never grow old,
Who would be an
Ancient bard, who
Would hold a lantern
In the dark.

He wrote
The dog
Trots freely
In the street" and
Told anyone
Who would listen
The secret meaning
Of Goya's greatest scenes.

Neeli Cherkovski

 

Philippa Meyering (1930 - 2019)

PHILIPPA MEYERING (1930 - 2019)

My life and Philippa's life intersected only briefly. We were married for two years (1967-1969). But those few years were exciting times and she was an exciting woman. So with a few stories of our brief times together I will try to sketch a necessarily partial picture of this remarkable lady.

Philippa (Phyl) was born and raised in southern California, became a member of Alpha Chi Omega sorority at UC Berkeley, where she met and married R. Meyering, a Theater Arts major, and birthed two daughters, Marcia and Cathy. Later, in Los Trancos Woods (LTW), CA, she married A. Mixon, a former Navy SEAL, and birthed her third daughter Diana.

During the late sixties, I was a physics graduate student at Stanford, living in a house in Los Trancos Woods with a Stanford medical student, Bill Ross. In those days, Los Trancos Woods was a haphazard rural area in the hills behind Stanford, populated with a mix of eccentric characters. Philippa was our close neighbor and Bill and I often socialized with her and her three daughters.

Phyl was associated with the Stanford Genetics Department and presided over a salon at her home which featured Stanford professors and others sharing their thoughts about human potential, parapsychology and psychedelics -- topics that still fascinate people today.

Phyl drank beer and wine in moderation, smoked menthol cigarettes, attended Native American pow-wows, liked to read biographies and enjoyed a wide variety of friends. Her favorite charities were Amnesty International and ASPCA.

Her oldest daughter, Marcia, writing from Kimberley, British Columbia, reminds me that her mother drew comfort and inspiration from water: from creeks, rivers, lakes and especially the ocean. Phyl's house in LTW, was perched on the edge of Los Trancos Creek and during California's rainy winters, this watercourse echoed like a bowling alley as boulders bounced down stream just a few feet from her bedroom window. She loved camping outdoors, near the frog pond in upper LTW, or nights on the beach near Pescadero. Her favorite part of the San Francisco zoo was the otter pool. When we were living in Monmouth, Illinois, we often visited the Mississippi River, just a few miles west, observing the shipping barges, the fishermen at their work, and conversing with people at the bait shops.

On my thirtieth birthday I decided to spend the night meditating in the hills behind my house in Los Trancos Woods, but before I could reach my destination I encountered a large dead deer on the road that had been recently hit by a car.  I returned home, dropped my pack, drove back to the spot and loaded the still warm body into my station wagon. Bill Ross and I hung the deer from our basement ceiling and immediately phoned Philippa. Using kitchen cleavers and Bill's medical scalpels the three of us carefully dissected the animal, wrapped its parts in tin foil, and stored the meat in Phyl's freezer. So instead of solitary meditation, I spent that night slaughtering a large animal with my roommate and my wife-to-be.

One of the highlights of the West Coast hippie scene was the Trips Festival, January 22, 1966, at the Longshoreman's Hall on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf. Organized by Ken Kesey and Stewart Brand, it was the largest gathering of "acid test graduates" to date. Thousands of colorfully-costumed freaks in colorful states of consciousness showed up to experience the light shows, the strobe lights and trampolines, and the chaotic music and performance art. Phyl and I decided to go as "squares". by dressing as if we were going to the opera: from the outside we looked like two flamboyantly ordinary beings mingling with a circus of freaks. After digging the scene, we wandered over to the corner where cups of Kool-Aid were being served out of big garbage cans, Our hosts seemed a bit reluctant to serve us but eventually relented. We both figured that in such a large public gathering, they would never dare to put LSD in the Kool-Aid. On this matter we were mistaken. But the dose seemed fairly weak so this square couple played in the shallow end of the pool and did not go back for seconds.

When I got my PhD, I married Phyl and took my first job, as a physics professor at Monmouth College in Illinois, just a few miles west of Peoria, legendarily the most typical of typical Midwest towns. (Will it play in Peoria?). In its unapologetic ordinariness, Peoria did not disappoint. We enrolled the kids in the local schools and assumed our roles as "that crazy couple from California", lionized by some, disliked by others, and tried to fit into an environment (it was only going to last one academic year) that in its own way was as bizarre for Phyl and me as the Trips Festival. I became one faculty member with whom students shared their drug stories, and Phyl collected her own circle of admirers, including (ha, ha!) becoming the confidant of the college president's wife.

Besides driving to the Mississippi River and going to estate auctions (which featured the classic tobacco-style auctioneer/showman) we sometimes amused ourselves and the girls by going to Monmouth's pizza parlor and reading to each other from the National Enquirer.

After our nine-month stint in the Midwest, Phyl and I returned to California, got divorced, connected only sporadically, then more often, and then kept in contact by phone when she moved to Happy Camp, CA, an isolated town on the Klamath River near the Oregon border.

I last talked to Phyl in late December; when only a few days later Marcia informed me that Philippa had perished on the morning of January 4, while her house in Happy Camp burned to the ground.

Philippa is survived by 3 daughters, 11 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren.

Hail and farewell, loving mom, intimate companion, dear first mate.

My Cat

Onyx when I first acquired him (2007)

About ten years ago I decided that I needed another cat in my life. So I contacted my friend Lois whom I had met bottling wine at Ahlgren Vineyard who operated a cat rescue and adoption center on Two Bar Road, close to my home a few miles north of Boulder Creek. After lunch in her kitchen she showed me through her cat barn which contained about a dozen animals, some in cages and some running free. Most of the cats had been given to Lois to care for and to find homes, but one of them, a scraggy black tom cat, had just walked out of the woods on his own. He was a problem cat, attacking the other cats and of somewhat unpredictable behavior. Lois had named him "Onyx" and said that I would be doing her a favor by taking him off of her hands. I liked him immediately. So Onyx moved into my ashram and we began our little dance of domesticity and wildness.

Onyx at the computer editing videos.

One of the most noticeable things about this cat was the sound he made -- like a squeaking door hinge. "MYRRKK!". Which drew comments like "When is your cat going to learn to meow?". Not too many people got to hear his squawk, because Onyx was mainly a one-man cat and would run into one of his hiding places whenever anyone new would visit. Usually I wouldn't see Onyx first, I'd hear him: "MYRRKK!" was how he'd announce his presence. And I'd turn my head towards that squeaky sound to see him crawling out of the bushes or hidden in my high-up sleeping loft.

Nick and Onyx: it's obvious who's boss here.

Onyx was mainly a nocturnal animal, kept the house mouse-free, and seemed to have a good nightly relationship with the raccoons and skunks that share space with us humans. Four-legged animals, I believe, have more in common with other four-legged animals than they do with the two-leggers. I remember hiking one afternoon in the creek bed of Arana Gulch in Santa Cruz and coming across a large dark four-legged creature "talking" to a smaller black-and-white four-legger in the grass. Upon becoming aware of my presence, the large animal ran across the creek, jumped onto the bank and disappeared into the forest. It was some sort of cougar or mountain lion. The small animal just sat there; I guessed it to be a large skunk. It was unafraid as I drew closer and turned out to be a big long-haired domestic cat, who casually turned her back on me and walked slowly back into the bushes. I had interrupted a tete a tete between two friendly felines gossiping about their very dissimilar lives.

Onyx posing as an LOL cat

Onyx is famous! I made him into an LOL cat and sent his picture to the original I Can Has Cheezeburger funny-cat-meme site which is one of the main purposes of the Internet.

Onyx asleep on the couch

Onyx mostly slept alone but often would sleep with me for a while before finding his own spot or going out hunting and socializing with the wildlife. When it was cold I could sometimes coax him to sleep under the covers. In the summer I like to sleep in my tree house and Onyx would sometimes climb up and share my space, looking at the stars with me and listening to the night noises. Wherever we slept, I knew that, near dawn I would hear hear his "MYRRKK!" and soon 15 pounds of cat would land on my chest, signaling "Time for breakfast!".

Onyx, a recent portrait

In recent weeks, Onyx has quit sleeping in the tree house, has been eating less and less, losing weight, spending more and more time alone in the woods, sometimes off for a day and a night. When he makes his sound and appears on the deck, he seems skinny but strong, affectionate and suffering no pain. He visits with me for a while, then hastens off on his own. Having kept lots of cats, I can recognize when one of them is saying "Good bye." Haven't seen him since.

Love this well ere it perish.

Roaring Twenties Topless Duet

Betsy on stage (circa 1970)

Today is the 13th anniversary of my wife Betsy's death.

I first met Betsy in San Francisco when she was living on Stanyan Street, studying and teaching modern dance at Ann Halprin's Dancer's Workshop on Divisadero St. While searching for something else in my files this morning I ran across some excerpts from Betsy's Journals concerning those days (during the reign of Herb Caen), when Betsy performed "The Topless Duet".

10/28/82

Lying in bed this morning,  I thought about Maude Meehan's suggestion to write about my topless dancing career. Some opening lines drifted into my head.

Eight of us shared the job, four men and four women. We were part of a dance class taught by AA Leath. He was the guy who scored the gig. We performed in pairs and on alternating nights, the Topless Man-Woman Duet at the Roaring Twenties in San Francisco's North Beach. On the marquee on Kearney St we were listed underneath the Topless Girl in the Swing. She was the feature. Every night, at 10, 11, midnight and 1 AM she climbed aboard a pink-cushioned swing hung 2 stories high in a wide stairwell and arched her back for all to enjoy.

"Come on down tonight," AA said, "See what you think of it." Twenty-five bucks a shot, 4 performances a nite. That amounted to about 30 minutes of dancing for $100. Never in a whole decade's career had I ever dreamed of getting paid like that. It was tempting but terrifying. Nevertheless, at 9:30 that night I found myself bound for North Beach in my bouncy little Citroen.

A big place, the Roaring Twenties, with lots of red plush decor. A long bar off to one side, tables all around the swing's staircase and up to the stage. On stage, a young and sprightly rock band. the manager points me to the dressing rooms upstairs. There's two of them, one for the girl-on-the-swing, the stripper and the topless waitresses and the other for the duet contingent. I open the door to find AA stretching and muttering in his usual fashion and with a southern drawl about getting in touch with some psychological phenomenon. Susan, his partner for the evening, was busy wrapping up in the several yards of chiffon which, atop a G-string, comprised her costume.

It was the Winter before the Summer of Love, 1967, and lots of us were driven by the idea that the Beautiful People could make a difference wherever we found ourselves. AA had that in mind for the clientele of the Roaring Twenties. "We'll show them that they can love their bodies". Sounded intriguing, but looking at AA in his G-string there in the dressing room didn't have me convinced.

I went downstairs, found Jim and Nancy sitting at the bar. They were also in AA's class and considering topless employment. the Girl on the Swing was waving goodbye to three tables of men from this week's convention. We ordered 7-Ups and waited, eager but figgety. the topless waitresses moved about, adorned in high heels, tights, miniskirts and pert aprons. Above the waist they were wearing a sheath of numbness.

The band leader announces The Duet and moves his musicians into a lively number. AA and Susan approach the stage through the audience, from opposite sides of the club, each clothed in chiffon. once on stage there is a lot of self-conscious shedding of chiffon. Reduced to G-strings and each other, the dance of seduction begins. I sit entranced, wondering what it would be like to be in Susan's place, all-but-naked, on stage.  It is dark out here in the audience and the stage lighting is soft enough to be kindly. They seem protected by each other and the movement, which shifts from modern-dancey to Fillmoresque and never leaves the realm of self-consciousness. I look at the tables of convention men and a collection of couples watching. They are looking but they don't seem to SEE. AA and Susan skirt each other, do-se-do, retreat and occasionally touch...

More on Roaring Twenties piece. What I remember about what it was like to perform the duet:

i remember that the band, whose name I can't now recall, who eventually was successful enuf to cut a record, played a piece with the lyrics "GI Joe, come back home. You'll have the best old time you've ever known," Real upbeat.

I remember going to buy my G-string downtown at the dance wear store. What a fuss over absolutely nothing! Well, practically nothing.

The commute to North Beach was by cable car.

Children picking up our bones

Will never know that these were once

As quick as foxes on the hill. 

                ---Wallace Stevens

Don Joyce (1944 - 2015)

Don Joyce: Over the Edge at KPFA FM, Berkeley

On July 22, Don Joyce died of heart failure at the age of 71. Don was a member of the Contra-Costa-county-based experimental music group Negativland (a loose translation of "Contra Costa") and hosted Berkeley's after-midnight radio show Over the Edge on KPFA FM. Don invented the concept of "receptacle radio" in which listeners would phone in and immediately be plugged into and out of the ongoing sound collage of live guests, sound "carts" and live electronic effects at Don's discretion. The resulting mix was a radio show that was ultra-bizarre even by Berkeley standards of strangeness. Over the Edge puzzled and stimulated Bay Area listeners for 34 years.

One of Don's many on-air alter egos was Crosley Bendix, Director of Stylistic Premonitions, Universal Media Netweb, who describes here the properties of a new primary color named "squant" after its discoverer  Dr Wohat Squant.

One Thursday night in 1987, I participated in one of Don Joyce's after-hours radio romps called The Quantum Church along with Berkeley physicist Dan Ruderman and numerous live anonymous voices and sound effects channeled "out of the ether" through Don's radio "receptacles". The description for that ancient bit of experimental wireless anarchy reads: "Two quantum mechanics and a radio science show host decide to seek out the Quantum Church, a sub-atomic religious cult formed by a renegade physicist inside the Black Hole Tube of Transreality."

Don Joyce was a genius in the area of audio improvisation. I knew Don scarcely at all, but I do know this: that our world is poorer now by one exceedingly strange and beautiful life form.

Obituary here by Don's friends at Negativland.

Adios, Don Joyce

Tom Herbert (1938 - 2015)

Tom Herbert was born on June 13, 1938 in Pittsburgh, PA and died on the same day in 2015 in Vienna, VA from complications following a stroke. He was the second-oldest of 5 children: Nick, Tom, Marilyn, Donald ("Duke") and Nancy who all grew up together in the Linden neighborhood of Columbus, OH, which was then populated mainly by immigrants from Italy, Ireland and Eastern Europe. Our Father spoke Ukrainian; Mom spoke Slovak. And both grew up in coal mining towns in Pennsylvania and Ohio, migrating North to Lorain, Ohio where some of the family found work in the steel mills along Lake Erie.

Thomas Anthony Herbert (1938 - 2015)

Tom was younger than Nick but stronger so we two were physically an even match to wrestle, box, sled, skate and explore the woods and creeks within easy reach of our neighborhood. Tom and I both went to grade school at St Augustine Catholic school (where Mom ran the cafeteria) and both completed high school at St Charles Borromeo Preparatory School. Tom was fond of animals and of water -- in our back yard he raised rabbits, chickens and ducks in addition to the obligatory dogs and cats. Not only did Tom work as a lifeguard at our local Morningside pool, but he also organized special events at the pool including water ballets. Tom also bought a kayak which he piloted on the Olentangy and Scioto rivers -- and he imagined that someday he would follow the route Huck Finn took down the Mississippi on his raft. The floor of our boy's bedroom was covered with a big linoleum map of the USA, so we could rehearse Tom's future trip down the big river using bottle caps for boats.

Tom, Nick and Duke Herbert at Betsy's Memorial Celebration

Both Tom and I obtained Bachelor's Degrees from Ohio State University, Tom in Electrical Engineering and Nick in Physics. For the next stage in his life, Nick made a move to California -- our parents gave me the family station wagon as a graduation present. Tom and I decided to use this opportunity to explore the country we had only seen printed on a floor mat. So we packed camping gear in the car and embarked on a long road trip. In those days (1960), the US was relatively uncrowded and on the few occasions we could not find a campground we just set up camp near the road and were never bothered. We explored Colorado, Utah, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and large parts of California together. Tom was a congenial companion and good camping buddy -- no matter what hardships we endured he would always see its humorous side. And, yes the two Ohio boys finally got to experience the mighty Mississippi (near St Louis) and to cool our feet in the Father of Waters.

Tom liked to eat and was especially fond of the Slovak food that Mom put on the table, which included stuffed peppers, stuffed cabbages (holubki), cabbage, nut and prune roll pastries. Tom enjoyed eating this kind of food so much that, unlike his brothers, he actually learned to duplicate Mom's recipes for himself. And in addition to cooking holubki, etc, Tom learned how to make Perfect Spaghetti Sauce which Mom probably learned from Leona Vanelli, her best friend. Mom used to say that Tom preferred a meal of her spaghetti and meatballs over steak.

Tom cooking Perfect Spaghetti Sauce

After our road trip, Tom flew back to Ohio State where he completed his degree, met and married his first wife Dawn and began an engineering career with the Air Force at Wright-Patterson in Dayton, Ohio. Tom and Dawn produced five children: Mark, Julie, Terri, Dan and Joe. After their divorce, Tom met a female physicist who had learned how to turn silicon into gold -- Gail Walters was a brilliant computer chip designer. Their combined careers took them to Colorado, to California's Livermore Valley and finally to their present home in Virginia near Washington, DC. Tom and Gail produced one child Meghan who, when asked what she wanted to do, answered: "Anything but what my parents do."

Tom Herbert and Gail Walters

Tom and Gail on a jet ski.

After leaving Wright-Patterson, Tom took on another government job that was so secret  he could not talk about it. Since this job often involved trips to exotic locations near the equator, I assumed it had something to do with the tracking of military spy satellites. Whatever the nature of his clandestine work, Tom always found time to explore the underwater beauties of these tropical locales in his SCUBA gear. Later Tom, Gail and Meghan would vacation in exotic places like the Caymen Islands that Tom had no doubt reconnoitered on his "business trips"

Tom Herbert in SCUBA gear

Becalmed?

Tom Herbert worked hard, played hard (and often underwater) raised two fine families, was possessed of a contagious cheerfulness. I do not know whether he believed in reincarnation, but I'd like to think that in his next life Tom might come back as a smart, sexy, good-hearted dolphin.

Tom embraces his alter ego

Bon voyage, wonderful Tom. I will miss you, little brother.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015)

Sir Terry being knighted by Queen Elizabeth: Feb 18, 2009

Sir Terry Pratchett died today at 66 with a cat in his lap, surrounded by his family. He was the author of more than 40 books about Discworld, a far funnier place than Larry Niven's classic Ringworld. (Ringworld is serious physics--held together by gravity and engineering; Discworld is serious parody, held together by magic -- and by Pratchett's unique brand of levity.) Although Pratchett's work  is consistently amusing, I also always feel a bit wiser after reading his stuff. I never met the man, but my nephew, Mark Herbert, while attending a science fiction convention in Memphis, TN, found himself at a party drinking beer and singing songs with Pratchett from the repertoire of Steeleye Span, Terry's favorite music group.

Here are a few Pratchett quotes for your edification.

If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another where the best fruit is.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

I mean, I wouldn't pay more than a couple of quid to see me, and I'm me.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It's called living.

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death, JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.


Sir Terry Pratchett has brought joy to millions of souls. He will be missed.

Duke Herbert (1943-2014)

Donald "Duke" Herbert (1943 - 2014)

Donald Lee Herbert, 71, died June 22, 2014 in his home in West Glacier, Montana.

He was married to Jette Andersen, who predeceased him.

He is survived by his only son, Paul Herbert, who lives in Idaho.

Donald was raised in Columbus, Ohio as the fourth of five children. Donald often played the family clown and kept us all amused. He was interested in sports (specializing in pole-vaulting at McKinley High School) and body building. Spoofing Donald's extreme macho deeds, our next-door neighbor Jimmy dubbed him "Duke" (after John Wayne) by which name he was henceforth known to his

Duke graduates from Parris Island

family and old friends. At age 17 Duke got a big eagle tattooed on his bicep and joined the United States Marine Corps where he graduated from Parris Island at the top of his class. His intent was to fly fighter jets but his less-than-perfect eyesight landed him in the ground crew instead -- a post which taught him a lot of electronics that he was able to use in civilian life. Because they would not let him fly a jet, Duke did not re-enlist in the Marines.

While stationed in Santa Ana, California, Don met his wife and soul mate, Jette Andersen. Jette was a lively stewardess from Denmark where Duke often traveled to party with Jette's family but never learned to speak Danish. Duke married Jette and they moved to the small mountain town of Julian, California where Duke serviced microwave relay towers in the desert for Pacific Telephone. He lived in Ramona, California for eight years and then moved to Escondido, California where he and Jette remained until his retirement in 2002. Duke worked as a microwave radio technician for Pacific Bell. He was a pioneer in modern communication technology (at a time when telephony was transiting from analog to digital) and loved doing his job.

Upon retirement, Duke and his wife moved to West Glacier, Montana. Duke had purchased the property in the mid-1960s while cutting trails in Glacier National Park prior to meeting his wife. There they built their dream home where they enjoyed their final years. While in the Marines, Duke and his buddies frequently hunted elk for food and sport in that same area of Montana. After retirement, Duke hunted elk there only with his camera and often photographed whole families of elk and other Montana wildlife right outside his bedroom window. (See The Babies Are Here.)

For a time Duke worked as a bartender in a California beach town. He had a great gift for making friends wherever he went. When I went to Duke and Jette's wedding, what impressed me most was the great variety of men and women who attended, ranging from officers, corporate executives, Marine grunts, hot babes and low-lifes, this odd-ball assortment of human beings having one thing in common, that they were all friends of Duke's. He was humorous, easy-going and cut his own path through life's jungle not giving a damn what other people might think. Despite his doggedly independent life style, he made a lot of friends: Duke's theme song could well have been Frank Sinatra's "I Did It My Way."

Duke loved life and lived it to its fullest. Adios, little brother. I will miss you.

Tom, Nick and Duke Herbert, Camp Campbell 2002

Ode to Bruce Eisner (1948-2013)

Bruce Eisner (1948-2013)

ODE TO BRUCE EISNER (1948-2013)

You wanna play around with nitrous. Nick?
Or do you want the real thing?
The big D?
Betsy and Heinz:
braver than me
My mother and my father
were braver than me.

Experience Big D:
Not LSD, not ketamine, not nitrous oxide
But the Real Thing.

The Real Thing:
Bruce Eisner just got it:
the Real Thing:
the Big D.

Not just fucking around
With sex: with the little death
with flesh, touch and ecstasy
with the dissolving of boundaries
between human beings.

Not just experimenting 
With drugs: with the terror, the ego dissolution
With the colors, the visions 
The mergings with others.
None of that
None of that kid stuff.
Are you brave enough
to experience the Big D?

None of that kid stuff
Sex, drugs and quantum physics--
the partial dissolvings
into the natural world.
The recreational explorations
The playful dissolutions:
wordless, scary, inexplicable.
But always coming home.

None of that kid stuff
Are you willing to experience
Big D?

Big D:
Total disengagement
from this habitual universe --
The end of the affair
The last goodbye
The final dissolution.

Are you willing and ready
to take the quantum leap?
Big D:
No more kid stuff

No more kid stuff, my friend.
This is the Real Thing.
You want Reality?
This is it.

JAMES P. HOGAN (1941-2010)

photo by Reno De Caro

James P. Hogan was a successful science fiction writer whose plots feature hard science extrapolated into the past or future. Like Robert Heinlein, Hogan could spin a good yarn. Tho big and burly as a wrestler, Jim was a softie at heart--a true romantic: many of his stories mine the perennial theme of a smart, warm and handsome couple bravely struggling against the power of the evil establishment, in the manner of Bogart and Bacall, Mulder and Scully, Nick and Nora Charles, Romeo and Juliet. Except in Hogan's tales, one or both of his protagonists is likely to have a PhD after her name. Hogan is most famous for his "Giants" series of novels which hypothesize an extraterrestrial origin for mankind.

Jim Hogan lived on a farm in Sligo, the birthplace of another famous Irishman, William Butler Yeats. When not working at his computer, Jim kept himself in shape, he said, by hauling rocks around his farm. He'd heard all the gloom and doom scenarios, but, cheerful and optimistic, Jim was placing his bet on mankind to prevail, as it had done so often in the past, against the Ice Age, against the Viking and Mongol hordes, against the Black Death. Against the gloomers, James P. Hogan laughingly cast his vote for human freedom and for limitless human possibility.

In addition to his science fiction, Hogan was a prolific writer of essays on controversial subjects where he would invariably defend the less popular side. On his website he published articles against global warming, in favor of intelligent design, arguments in favor of an Electrical Universe rather than one purely gravitational. Hell, Jim Hogan even questioned the Big Bang! His essays on controversial topics are always well-reasoned, and free from name-calling. Jim Hogan was tough and passionate in debate but he never resorted to insult. One can read the essays of this intelligent, pugnacious Irishman on his site's Bulletin Board, check out his science fiction works or browse his favorite controversial books in the Heretics Bookshelf.

Jim was a maverick, an independent thinker and a champion of the underdog. He was continually rushing to the ramparts to defend unpopular causes and unpopular people, writing letters to the German Embassy, for instance, protesting Germany's imprisonment of writer Ernst Zündel for expressing "forbidden ideas" in print. Jim's favorite slogan, which he claimed to be a famous Irish rallying cry, was: "Now is the time for the futile gesture!"

It was my good fortune to know and share time with James P. Hogan during the last three years of his life.

Jim Hogan was a bold and courageous man holding high principles such as few possess in these fearful and cowardly times. No more fitting eulogy for the Hogan spirit than Shakespeare's:

This was the noblest Roman of them all:
His life was gentle, and the elements
So mix'd in him that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world "This was a man!"

Ave atque vale, James P. Hogan. Farewell, my friend.

Earl Crockett (1938-2010)

I first met Earl Crockett in the 1980s at Esalen where I was doing physics workshops and this man has been an important presence in my life every since, offering good advice, preposterous speculations, reliable companionship on many adventures, good humor and absolutely extraterrestrially enjoyable gourmet meals. Earl's mother was a cook at an outdoor camp and Earl had inherited her skill in preparing and presenting delicious food.

Earl was a successful businessman who specialized in helping other people prudently manage their business affairs. He was a friend of Werner Erhard, the founder of est, and was proud of the fact that he "saved Werner millions of dollars". When government agents raided the home laboratory of legendary psychedelic chemist Sasha Shulgin and fined him $45,000 for doing what they considered bad science, Earl started a fund that raised that much and more to help support and publicize Shulgin's important work. Earl's latest project was to put together a successful business plan for Marini's, a group of family-run candy shops in Santa Cruz.

Earl was an explorer of both inner and outer realms and was not afraid to get his hands dirty. Together with his wife Sheri he travelled to many sites in South America and Mexico where healing and reality-seeking rituals are still being carried out in traditional ways. Following anthropological clues and local legends, Earl identified a Mexican cactus with psychedelic properties formerly unknown to science. One of the high points of Earl's life was his stage appearance with Sasha Shulgin at a Sacred Elixirs conference in San Jose in which Earl described his Indiana-Jones-like adventures in discovering this exotic new cactus following which Sasha described his own adventures in tracking down the cactus's psychoactive chemical components.

Earl was an instrument-qualified small plane pilot and the last time I talked with him was in a Chinese restaurant in Santa Cruz, after we and some friends had attended a physics lecture at UCSC. During the meal, Earl recounted for us in great detail the sensations and feelings of making a nighttime instrument landing at the Oakland airport in dense fog.

On Valentine's Day, 2010, in his home in Santa Cruz, Earl Crockett took his last flight into that all-consuming fog from which none of us ever returns. May Earl's well-practiced instruments guide him into the light.

Adios, old friend.

George Leonard (1923-2010)

I did not know George Leonard well but he was a man that commanded my respect.

I first met George at Arthur Young's Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley sometime in the 70s after he had just completed a marathon run for folks over 50. George was a person who devoted his life to the development of his mind, his body and his heart. And, from what I could see, he succeeded in all three.

I later ran into George many times at Esalen Institute where I was running workshops in quantum physics. George was the best friend of Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy and the instigator of many innovative Esalen programs including his Samarai Games which teach, among other things, personal honor, chivalry and respect for the people we temporarily designate as "enemy"--elements all notably lacking in today's thoroughly barbaric "forever wars".

George Leonard was a southern gentleman (he was born in Atlanta, GA) and, to my mind, George embodied that dignity, courage and courtesy people have attributed to General Robert E. Lee. Among his many books, workshops and personal teachings, George co-founded a school of Aikido in Marin County, CA, where he taught his own interpretation of that elusive martial art.

I was fortunate to study Aikido in Santa Cruz under Linda Holiday Sensei who taught that anger directed towards you is an emotion not to be feared but a lucky source of energy to be transformed in spontaneously creative way that benefits both the source and the recipient of this anger.

George Leonard lived the life of an Aikido master and left for the rest of us an epigram (perhaps it will be etched upon his grave stone) which epitomizes the seemingly paradoxical Aikido view that conflict is an opportunity for learning rather than a burden to be avoided. What George said was this: "Take the hit as a gift."

George Burr Leonard, farewell, Sir. The Earth is bereft of one of its most elegant warriors.

Betsy Rose Rasumny Herbert (1938-2002)

Happy Birthday, Betsy. You would have been 71 today had you not run away with Mr. Death.

Wife of Nick, mother of Khola, Betsy was above all a dancer. And for her, dance meant, not pretty movement, but the practice of being present in the moment. "Take everything that happens as it comes, " said Lao Tzu, "as something to animate, not to appropriate." Betsy lived that maxim to the max, and by her example, taught her friends, me among them, to more fully inhabit this lucky gift of embodiment in human form.

In our semi-rural community along the San Lorenzo River, Betsy was a prime mover in Home Birth, in Home Schooling and, at the end, in Home Death. For Betsy, birthing, teaching, dying and everything in between were all about "learning how to move energy". Her aim was striving to live fully, even as this body-gift was being taken from her.

Here's Betsy's obituary.

And here's one of Betsy's reflections on The Dance:

PICK A PARTNER

Stilling the air charged by previous dancers
Inhaling and lifting, look about,
search for someone to dance with.

Couples waiting to meet:
The old familiar: Will I be chosen?

Who will be my partner?
Will I find a mate?
Can we move together?
Will you share my space?

Grouping, hoping
See me
Hold me
Love me
I'm beautiful
O look, feel, sense
How it is we move together.

This says it all:
What our bodies do together.
Don't leave.

O let's have been connected before forever.
Let's not ever not touch.

James T Culbertson (1912-2004)

For most of his life James T. Culbertson taught mathematics, computer science and philosophy at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, CA, but Culbertson's life-long passion was his struggle to discover how to give consciousness to robots and how to test for the presence of consciousness in beings, such as ourselves, who possess it naturally. His first book The Minds of Robots outlines his SRM (spacetime reductive materialism) model of awareness and his later books develop SRM in more detail. All of Culbertson's books are quirky, repetitive, difficult to grasp and have the feel of texts written by an obsessive genius. For many years my friends Saul-Paul Sirag, Jerry White and I corresponded with Culbertson, invited him to seminars and even spent a delightful few days in a trailer in back of Jim's house in SLO listening as the master expounded his eccentric model of mind. Jim once joked that I was the only one who understood his theory and he put the JTC stamp of approval on my bare-bones outline of SRM in Elemental Mind.

In Jim's model of mind, consciousness arises from causal networks in spacetime. And since most of spacetime is criss-crossed with causal networks, consciousness is ubiquitous. Culbertsonian mind is a species of panpsychism. But most of this universal consciousness doesn't go anywhere; it just sits there in spacetime as isolated bits of experience. No memories, no sense of self, no flow of time. But just as material atoms can be used to build complex structures, so can Culbertson's atoms of awareness be linked into more complex experiences somewhat resembling the kinds of consciousness we humans enjoy. Some of the details of how to build more complex minds out of elemental experiences can be found in Culbertson's Sensations, Memories and the Flow of Time (which JTC fans refer to affectionately as SMATFOT).

At present we are entirely ignorant as to how consciousness becomes present in the material world so Jim's elaborate guess is as good as any. Its complexity and quirkiness may argue against it but SRM has one attractive feature that sets it apart. It offers a mechanical method for testing for the presence and the quality of consciousness in other beings. In Culbertson's model it is possible to create a network of "clear loop links" between the networks that constitute separate minds in such a way that each mind will directly share the experiences of the other.

Thus, using what I have elsewhere called "Jim Links", Culbertson's model has solved in principle the philosophical problem of "Other Minds". Does a cat enjoy an inner experience? Does a blade of grass enjoy photosynthesis? With a Jim Link these questions could be answered directly. As Culbertson once put it, the privacy of inner experiences is a mere biological accident and could in principle be overcome by technological means. Whether Culbertson's theory is viable or not, it sets a high standard for any rival model of mind: does it satisfy the Culbertson Criterion? Can it be tested by constructing mind links between allegedly conscious beings?

A world in which Jim Links exist would surely make possible new forms of both eroticism and interrogation but I suspect that the Opening Up of Inner Space to Direct Exploration will be the most profound event in human history, changing the human species beyond recognition.

Kathleen Flowers (1964-2009)

Kathleen Flowers was a bilingual teacher and acclaimed Santa Cruz poet. I was attracted to her verse by its warmth, beauty and bite. She died of a rare form of cancer on Easter Sunday. Adios, muchacha.

Before Surgery

I hurry up Laurent, steep hill
behind my house, before night
has fully fallen. Above me
the sky is a royal blue
belly slit by a sickle moon.
From this vista, the street lamps
string together the neighborhoods
of this coastal town.

Beyond winding avenues,
the Monterey Bay sleeps,
a black field lying silent.
In the cold deep, sea creatures
are eaten. Their bones,
picked clean, tumble and drift
across the ocean floor.

I like to think the spirit is freed
once the body dies, but it is this body
that allows such beauty, such exquisite
pain. I unzip my jacket, offer this malignancy
to the dark gulls, to the night.

From "Call it Gladness"
by Kathleen Flowers
Photo from poetry reading
at Bookshop Santa Cruz

J. Orlin Grabbe (1947-2008)

For the past several years my favorite spot on the web has been J. Orlin Grabbe's daily updated website. Orlin was fascinated by the edges of society, its dark underbelly, with hidden secrets, lies in the guise of truth, and weirdness of all varieties. Each morning I would pour myself a cup of coffee and delve into Orlin's latest collection of strange and forbidden knowledge ranging from the latest experiments in quantum mechanics to outlandish political and financial manipulations.

J. Orlin Grabbe earned degrees from Berkeley and Harvard in economics, taught at Wharton School of Business at University of Pennsylvania and is the author of "International Financial Markets" a definitive textbook on derivatives and other financial instruments, deemed important enough to be translated into Chinese. Grabbe was by nature a maverick and participated in many libertarian financial operations such as FX Systems, Laissez Faire City, Dodge City and the Digital Monetary Trust. He worked for some time in Dubai, then moved to Costa Rica where he died of a heart attack on March 15, 2008.

Fortunately, some of his buddies continue to add to and maintain his remarkable website where a portion of his writings, including papers on economics, satire and quantum mechanics are archived. Adios, Orlin. I miss you.