I met Don Becker when he was in his forties and I was in my late teens trying to revolutionize the Denver spoken word scene three or four times a week as Henry Alarmclock. Kids even younger than me liked his stuff: “Don Becker was the first one to make me think poetry readings were […]
Month: May 2018
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Pop Psy Ops & Fake News
Broadcast news is increasingly paid for, less and less objective. More people are turning to the social media landscape, a new Wild West where memes compete for attention, to get a reliable sense of the times. Truth and lies are equally abundant, obviating their former distinction. A common motif in this territory is unexpected drastic […]
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Not the kind of animals you think
Time is speeding up. American cultural configuration has evolved to the degree that old-style counter cultural behaviors no longer have cultural impact outside the microcosm. I met a lot of creative writers and musicians at the weekly variety show I hosted in Denver a few years ago. Some of the younger ones had no apparent […]
Having kicked off in the late sixties on the East Coast, with bands like the Stooges, the stateside punk wave came to San Francisco late, circa 1976. One of the standouts was a band called Crime, one member of which, Johnny Strike, relocated for a good spell to Tangier, Morocco, and has distinguished himself as […]
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Passage and healing with entheogens
An entheogen (meaning, literally, “generator of the divine within”) is a psychoactive substance – including peyote, psilocybin (mushrooms), uncured tobacco, cannabis, ayahuasca, Salvia divinorum (diviner’s sage), Tabernathe iboga, Ipomocea tricolor, and Amanita muscaria – used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context for healing, transcendence, and revelation in a ritualized context for thousands of years. […]
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High along the Silk Road
The theme of this year’s Mother’s High Tea was Tea Along the Silk Road. I assembled and helped hang collapsible red paper lantern shells on either side of the central plaque in the main room, unloading boxes and arranging chairs and tables with a team of volunteers while event founder Susan Squibb got her notes […]
