John Lennon's Jukebox Reveals Much About the Early Beatles

This UK doumentary is a fascinating find--anyone with just a passing interest in the Beatles will learn much about the group's influences

Happy Holidays and Some Updates

Happy Holidays Everyone!

The site is about to reinvent itself.. We have some wonderful things to announce for 2010! So please stay tuned..Meanwhile--under All the Buzz check out award winning writer Brad Auerbach's guide to a Beatles themed gift giving for this years' Holiday Season!

Reflections on The 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing: One Giant Leap to Nowhere?

The 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing was a good time for those of us of a certain age to reminisce. We looked at that silvery orb in the sky that night
a bit differently. But we also looked at ourselves with new eyes too.
Norman Cousins, who addressed a Congressional hearing about what going to the moon meant, where he said, 'The significance of Apollo was not so much that man set foot on the moon but that he set eye on the Earth.’

We certainly had the wonderful photos to prove that the earth was indeed a tiny blue fragile looking planet set against a sky of infinite blackness. But after 1969 not much else happened. We still found ourselves in too deep in the VietNam war. Nixon did not change his policies as a result. The so called technological "victory" over the Soviet Union did not much to change the determination to confront their eastern bloc neighbors if they showed any signs of breaking free of their communist yoke.
Schools just added Neil Armstrong to the list of great American explorers who made history. Probably the best outcome was the use made by politicians to make us believe in ourselves as capable of solving enormously intractable problems such as world hunger. How many of us heard that phrase--"if we can go to the moon..then.."
and stopped listening to it after it was repeated too many times and issues such as radically unequal education and housing persisted.

The moon project was then dropped. I heard from one commentator recently all the technology was sort of placed in deep freeze, the teams of engineers that were assembled the variety of resources supporting a manned landing all were dissolved as if the entire enterprise had been nothing but a show. Funding for NASA sank like a stone. As Tom Wolfe wrote in the New York Times the moon landing was "one giant leap to nowhere"

As Wolfe writes the funding for NASA went "from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3 billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher, Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program was really all about. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the only meaningful life we know of.

Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.

As a result, the space program has been killing time for 40 years with a series of orbital projects ... Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission, the International Space Station and the space shuttle. These programs have required a courage and engineering brilliance comparable to the manned programs that preceded them. But their purpose has been mainly to keep the lights on at the Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center — by removing manned flight from the heavens and bringing it very much down to earth."

But even had Werner Von Braun had better credentials to be the kind of Captain Kirk like visionary for the new age of space exploration it is doubtful that any air would have pumped back into the space program. If a venture is conceived as a PR victory it stays a PR victory. Kennedy's words we "choose to go to the moon not because it is easy but because it is hard"--an appeal to man's never ending search for challenge--rings hollow today--the reason --we have ignored doing some easy things because it is too hard to do the hard work of organize a vision around our common humanity--our essential brother and sisterhood. Without that vision the people indeed do perish as do missions however brave and magnficent as the moon landing.

Salinger--Overly Protective Literary Parent or Litigious Recluse? You Decide

In a strange legal twist, J.D. Salinger the author of (arguably) the most read book by babyboom generation The Catcher in the Rye has now successfully challenged an effort to censor a So called sequel to the book. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) explains
that the new work is entitled 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, and "depicts Holden as Mr. C., an irascible 76-year-old still spouting the same vitriol about "godamn phonies" and nursing the same distrust of the world around him. But this is not a sequel penned by Mr. Salinger, now 90, whose last published work appeared in June 1965. And if the author, a Swedish publisher named Fredrik Colting, is to be believed, it is not a sequel to the original. Rather, he maintains that the book is "literary commentary on 'Catcher' and the relationship between Holden and Salinger." To that end, a fictive Salinger makes an appearance as a character in "60 Years Later."

The judge ruled in Salinger's favor --disagreeing with the defense position that the Swedish author was attempting a work of literary criticism and upholding Salinger's attorneys who argued that Holden's character was "copyrightable."

"..literary critique in the form of a novel is not unheard of. Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea" retells "Jane Eyre" from the point of view of Bertha, the madwoman in the attic. Rita Copeland, a comparative literature professor at the University of Pennsylvania, calls it "a deep exploration of the political, social and racial issues that underlie Charlotte Brontë's novel. Of course Rhys' book is a great novel, but it's also an important 'reading' of 'Jane Eyre,' of the Caribbean side of the story in Brontë's novel and of the European relationship to the West Indies."

The ruling seems bizarre and will likely be overturned on appeal--(if of course Mr Colting has the funds to appeal) since there is no question that Salinger owns Caulfied in the way that Shakespeare owns Macbeth and Hamlet--only that author could have created the actual character and only his rendering is authentic. Colting has not disguised the fact that he is writing the story not Salinger. But the counter logic would suggest that since no one but Disney can market Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck in the verbal realm--Salinger's rights are akin to those of Disneys. But we are hitting here the limits of the legal imagination that can make a distinction between marketable Mickey Mouse and not so marketable Holden Caulfield.

But the more important lesson from this is perhaps the way that Salinger sees himself at this point in time. The WSJ characterizes his posture well:

"Mr. Salinger is notorious for his protection of his creations. He has denied movie directors the rights to option "Catcher" and turned down licensing deals that could have turned Holden Caulfield into a mass-marketing bonanza. We should add he bitterly fought British author Ian Hamilton from publishing his biography."

According to the WSJ "60 Years Later" mostly centers on Mr. C. (70% of the book is devoted to him) and includes only a few snippets of the Salinger character; the climax of the interaction is sketched out in one of the final chapters. Without Mr. C., the book could not exist. Without Salinger, it still paints a vivid portrait of how Holden stayed huddled in his cocoon and remained a boy in a man's body."

Is Holden really Salinger? I guess we will have to read the book to find out...

Boomers Receive another Call to Service

Harvard University's Business Guru, Rosabeth Moss Kanter issues a new blast of encouragement to boomers to dedicate their "retirement years" to service--

World, get ready! The Baby Boomers are becoming the Senior Boomers, and they want to change you again.

The generation that marched in Washington in the 1960s is marching into elementary schools, high schools, hospitals, and homeless shelters seeking opportunities to serve. Activists in civil rights and women's movements four decades ago now want to eradicate diseases, transform education, reform health care, or alleviate global poverty.

She contrasts the last generation's choices--Gerry Ford and let us add George Bush--with those of the boomer crowd:

Post-career options for healthy adults once ran the gamut from A to B & B. They could choose athletics (as in golf), like former President Gerald Ford and countless former CEOs, or run a Bed-and-Breakfast, the choices of former Senator George McGovern. Today's mature boomers aspire to be Bills: to start a foundation and champion social causes like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates. Among leading edge boomers, 50-59 years old, who say they will never retire, nearly two-thirds are interested in public purpose work.
For a nation still reeling from the economic meltdown, this is a huge opportunity. The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act recently signed by President Obama, includes provisions encouraging boomers to embrace service careers for their next life stage.

We should add for realism purposes--that the two Bills can well afford the choices they made--since they continue to earn income as they move through the more morally uplifting worlds of philanthropy--many of us not so blessed with the skills and talents they share may have to engage in more mundane activities. But it would be interesting to hear from you dear reader as to what choices are on your mind right now.

A 1966 Liverpool Meeting Remembered

Dylan met with some Liverpool kids when on a historic European tour in May 1966--one of the children whom he was photographed with--Chris Hockenhall describes in a blog why he made this short film for the BBC. Chris remembers the day (despite being 10 years old) so well for two main reasons--"On the morning of 14 May 1966 I had been doing some extra school maths work (not my decision) with my aunt but my concentration was nil as I literally counted the minutes away to when I could get back home for the BBC showing of the Cup Final." The final was between his own team Everton and Sheffield Wednesday. Everton won the cup that year despite being two goals down at one point.


After the game he and some other "similar aged Everton fans" kicked a soccer ball around "on some waste ground on Dublin Street, near the Dock Road" when a curious Bob Dylan came across them and had some photos taken... That night, Chris adds "one of rocks greatest tours played at the Odeon and If I had been a few years older I may well have been there... and what a 24 hours that could have been — except I was oblivious to the evenings events at that time."

I wondered what I would have have made of meeting Mr Dylan at age 10? Why did he want to be photographed with these children? Was he sensing something authentic here--something hard to find in the States? Was he intrigued by the poverty and dour nature of these hard looking Victorian streets? What do the adults now make of Dylan's music? What songs, if any. touch them or speak to their experience? On a more contemporary note--where were their lawyers? Since most probably Barry Feinstein (Dylan's photographer and featured in the video below) failed to gain parental permission to take these under age children's pictures, and most probably did not compensate them for their work-- it seems odd there were no lawsuits filed.
A testament to the positive feelings for Dylan shared by this group?

Here is the little over nine minute video :

Darwin, Lincoln and Us

Angels and Ages: A Short Book About Darwin, Lincoln and Modern Life, is a good read. Smart, well written, non condescending and large visioned. His case that Lincoln and Darwin--born on the exact same day in history --February 12, 1809 (any astrologers listening?) shaped profoundly the late Victorian view of the world--and modern liberalism is well argued. Gopnik--an accomplished New Yorker writer focuses on both mens' use of language and shows how their literary style enabled them to make their arguments resonate beyond the elites. Lincoln found a way to look at history--as a working out of the balance of forces the moral fate of mankind--a Providence that acted without regard to individuals throughout history. Darwin--came more or less to the same conclusion--in terms of our place in the universe using methods 180 degrees different from Lincoln. The interest is not in the profundity of these ideas--ideas that could easily have been dismissed or ignored in the hands of other less accomplished writers--but in the ways they advanced their ideas and gained large and influential followings. Both created a new kind of scientfic based secularism--one that did not so much banish faith--but placed religion on a different less central track in our affairs. What does this have to do with boomers? Some thoughts come to mind--boomers questioned the way that liberal ideas had been handed down to government (in the post JFK era) in the service of flag and country to justify a militaristic set of policies that benefited one group rather than the larger whole. Instead they urged a new foreign and domestic policies --policies based on anti colonialism, pluralism rather than the numbing 50s conformity and freedom of expression. Boomers rebelled against the way the mass media worked hand in hand with governments in the "manufacturing of consent." In doing so they turned to Freud and Marx--(successors at least to Darwin--Lincoln having got lost somewhere in the mix). Freud and Marx back in the sixties needed a bit of spicing up so their latter day interpreters--Marcuse, Fanon, Levi Strauss, O'Brown, Reich)got to work to do battle with the military industrial complex and post colonialism. Since these intellectuals had no real lasting answers to society's ills-it is not surprising that the 60s counter culture movement such as it was --ended up in such a mess.

As the new right gained ascendancy in the post Goldwater years--conservative intellectuals such as William F Buckley seemed to offer some moral spine to what was perceived as directionless social forces. But what was lost in the mix was the moral beliefs articulated by Lincoln--that democracy --government of the people--by the people-- embodied a more important set of values than government as the uncritical friend of the rich and powerful.

Possibly now under Obama--influenced strongly by Lincoln as well as Darwin (note the new Presidents' support of stem cell research, his respect for the science supporting aggressive approaches to combating global warming)can help bring us back to a return to the older version of liberalism. Arguably, Obama's political project is now possible because the right ca no longer use race and gender as a barrier to social progress or employ crude patriotic appeals to support policies that only benefit the rich and powerful. Our victory as boomers was key to this success--but as in all things but particularly politics--there are no lasting victories--and no permanent defeats--we must keep on working for the values we believe in.