Help me travel and get a cool book.
By Administrator | September 12, 2008
Want to help me travel and get a cool book for $10? Here is how:
I know lots of people are struggling right now and you guys have heard me tell about my finances. In a nutshell, here they are: I graduate in December. I would like to travel for a while and blog about it along the way. Since I’ve had some problems with financial aid and it’s expensive to live in Hawaii and tourism (which I work in) is drastically down (and so I’m not earning much), it’s not looking good in terms of travel. Even a vagabond needs an initial poke of cash to jump from Hawaii to the next destination.
I’ve been in the process of getting rid of my stuff through giving it to friends, selling it, or putting it at the free store. The thing is, I’ve still got a lot of books that I haven’t been able to bring myself to give away or sell for the pennies that I’ve been offered for them at the local used book store. These are cool books. There is beat poetry, African, Chinese, and Indonesian art books, classic fiction, science fiction, first editions, collectible old books, and just really cool stuff. Time is running short and I need to start getting rid of these, I can’t fool myself any longer, I won’t be getting around to reading them…not with my busy semester and travel ahead.
So here it is.
$10 to me gets you a cool book and goes into my travel kitty. Trust me, there are adventures to come once I have satisfied my desire to get a degree. This is your chance to be a part of it…and get a cool book that you’d have a hard time getting for $10 (and that includes shipping).
Topics: All, Travel, Adventures, vagabonding, books | No Comments »
Lost in the Trees by Karen Talbot
By Administrator | September 1, 2008
Lost in the Trees: Karen Talbot
In 2002 when I was fresh to Hawaii, I was managing the Polynesian Beach Hostel in Waikiki and I fell in love with a beautiful English girl named Karen. It’s no coincidence that I named the love interest in Slackville Road the same name. Karen was troubled and I was troubled, but several years later she sent me this picture that I remember her working on as she sat on the hostel’s catwalks. I like to think the tortured faces in it are hers and my own as we struggled through our individual difficulties.
Topics: All, Art, cool stuff not books | No Comments »
Yellow Chinese Hat
By Administrator | August 20, 2008
Yellow Chinese Hat
I made a lot of friends on my travels in Asia in 2001. Many of them I met in the gritty little town of Xi’an. This particular group inspired the story below. When we went to see the Terra Cotta Warriors we decided it would be funny if we all bought these silk Chinese Hats and walked around like a tourist group. Now you can own my hat. I wonder if anyone else kept theirs. (btw- I’m the bearded bum on the bottom left).
The American
(This story had to be told from Genghis Kane’s perspective,
he related the bulk of it to me over the several days I stayed in Xi’An)Genghis Kane’s Café’ was small but clean. Kane himself was Mongolian and spoke English with a slight Chinese accent. He had put up pictures on the walls of all the places in the world he wanted to go. The walls were starting to run out of room. So many places, and Kane wanted to see them all.
He carried a couple of Singhas across the room to where the group of six travelers had pushed two of his small tables together. He put one beer in front of a blond girl and the other in front of a slightly fat man with sandy brown hair.
“Cheers,” the man said, giving himself away as an Englishman.
“Cheers,” the girl was English too.
“You are all from England?” He asked, hoping that this wasn’t so boring a group as that.
“No,” this came from the short dark haired man at the end of the table. He was either American or Canadian.
“But most of us are from England,” from the second girl with the large breasts and straight black hair.
“So who is from where?” Kane asked with the engaging smile of the perfect host. He loved running a traveler café’. It was like going someplace new everyday, meeting the inhabitants of far off lands. Becoming a bigger person as the world became more understandable.
“The four of us are from England,” the blond girl indicated herself, the girl with large breasts, the fat man, and a tall man who kept himself slightly separated from the rest of the group. “Chris is from America and Sasha is German.” Sasha had a slight frown on his effeminate face; he was distracted by his own thoughts and looked up at the mention of his name.
“And all of you are traveling together?” Kane knew it wasn’t true. It was rare that a group of more than one nationality went anyplace.
“No, Kay and I are together. Chris is in the same dorm as us. Johnny,” she indicated the tall Englishman, “ is traveling by himself and Keith and Sasha are also traveling together.”
It was about like he expected except for the fat man and the German being traveling companions. Maybe they were a homosexual couple. Kane looked at them with more interest, noting with disappointment that their chairs were further apart than intimacy would indicate.
“We met in Beijing and have been going the same direction. It’s convenient but I travel by myself,” Sasha explained.
“How long have you been on holiday?” He asked. He could almost guess. No more than two weeks except for Sasha who had a sort vacant look about him that those who are far from home for extended periods tend to share. Read the rest of this entry »Topics: All, Adventures, Art, vagabonding, personal stuff | No Comments »
Star and Her Sister
By Administrator | August 15, 2008
Star and Her Sister
This is a 25” x 18” oil pastel on wood painting that I did early in 2008. It’s a picture of a woman named Star that I met in a remote village in Laos in 2001. Star had been sold by the village to Thai men about 20 years earlier but she was smart and went on to earn quite a lot of money. This was her first trip back to the village. She knew that the villagers would not accept charity from her so she broke a taboo by walking through a spirit gate and then was ‘forced’ to make amends by throwing a big fiesta where she handed out silver coins and cooked many pigs. This is her wearing an important robe the villagers gave her and posing with a young girl she said reminded her of herself before she was taken away.Topics: All, Art | No Comments »
One Copper Soldier
By Administrator | August 1, 2008
I’ve been carrying this little guy around with me everywhere for the past 32 years. He doesn’t have any particular significance, he’s not particularly well made. He’s just small enough to be convenient to keep. I was given him when I was five years old by my first best friend and first love, Kris Rafferty. It was one of those little gifts little kids give each other, probably was from her Dad’s chess set or something, certainly not the usual five year old girl toy. That’s it. I haven’t seen Kris in years and years though I think our parents are still friends. Funny to think about those times, we were poor compared to the Raffertys and my brother and I used to go rummage through their garbage on the day after Christmas and would usually find better things that they were throwing away than we had gotten under the tree. There was a whole gang of us, my brother, Kris’s sister Pam, Casey and Carey- the weird girls who had just come back from where they had been living in Southeast Asia with their military dad, Tim Kesterson, my brother’s best friend who I sometimes would hunt and skin lizards with, and all the wacky neighbors that lived near the National Forest in Big Bear Lake in the 1970’s. Hard to believe now, but our neighbor had a mountain lion that he kept on a chain in his unfenced front yard. We used to stand just beyond where it might reach us and taunt it. Enough of that though, this little guy can be yours forTopics: All, cool stuff not books | No Comments »
Gift from a Tiger Hunter
By Administrator | July 15, 2008
Johnny’s Gift
This is a personal experience actually. The card says “ What is hunting? Whether hunting for bullfrogs of wood, coarse voiced and everyday or whether hunting for tigers of glass, mystical and invisible. To hunt is to find, to gaze upon, to exchange a small part of ourselves and then leave and let be! Happy hunting, Johnny.” The bullfrog, the tiger, and the card came to me after traveling for quite a while with my frind Johnny. It is one of the most well felt gifts I have ever received. Here is the story which is born of the events that inspired the gifts…The Tiger Hunters
I looked through the candlelight and saw the hand reaching out from under mosquito netting. The half bottle of Jack Daniels it held was causing strange amber shadows to flicker in the room. Lightly, I lifted my own netting, captured the proffered bottle, and lifted it to my lips.
“Thanks Mate.” The whiskey was better than good. It was magnificent. The first decent drink we’d had in more than a month. It’s hard to find good whiskey in China and when we saw the dusty bottle in the duty free shop as we crossed into Laos, $12 American didn’t seem too much to pay for a fifth. Lao whiskey was about a tenth of the cost, but it tasted like rubbing alcohol with a couple of cigarette butts.
“Chris, do you think there are tigers in Laos?” Johnny asked me in a low whisper.
The room was stiflingly hot. We hid under our mosquito netting, passing the bottle back and forth as the single candle lit the tiny room. The village of Maung Singh was deep in slumber five hours after the mandatory blackout that occurred each evening at 6 PM. The swampy rice paddies surrounding the guesthouse were alive with splashings and croakings however, and sometimes the startlingly loud voice of a gecko lizard would come from within the room itself in a sort of birdsong “gehhhhh-kooooo”.
“Tigers? Sure, I bet there are some tigers here still. They probably come out at night and eat anything foolish enough to go outside the city limits. They probably are out there waiting right now.” I couldn’t tell whether the Englishman across the room was making a joke or whether he were actually as concerned about tigers as he sounded. I really had no idea if there were tigers in Laos, but I doubted it. “Yeah, seems like I read about some villager getting eaten around here not too long ago…maybe we should shut the window.”
“Can tigers climb to the second floor?” It sounded like a joke, but English blokes are so damn weird to Americans with their high sounding accents and strange cultural traditions, it wouldn’t surprise me if Johnny were actually concerned about a tiger coming through the window. “Shhhh, mate did you hear that? I think I heard a tiger outside?”
“Here,” I handed the bottle under the netting, ”You better drink this…it’ll help keep em away.”
“Right! Good Show!” Johnny gulped from the bottle “Hey…did you hear it that time?”
I actually had heard the noise that time…it sounded near and it sounded like…a bullfrog. Maybe it was a tiger though…
“Come on. Let’s go see if we can spot the tiger.” I stepped out of the netting in my boxer shorts and slipped my feet into my boots.” If there’s no tiger we can always catch us a frog.” Funny how a bit of the Southern accent came out when I was pretending to be doing something stupid. Or when I was doing something stupid.
“Frogs? What are you talking about frogs? Those noises are from a tiger…or maybe a few of them…Right! Let’s go check it out.” Johnny donned his tiger hunting uniform of boxers and boots and we unlocked the door with the tiny skeleton key. Johnny carried the protective bottle of JD and I carried the thin candle.
An uncontrollable giggle escaped from Johnny and we were trying to keep from waking the other people sleeping in the guesthouse. We tiptoed down the corridor and struggled to keep from laughing as the wooden staircase made noises like some exaggerated Alfred Hitchcock movie set.
Stepping outside we looked to the left and the right. Both directions showed dark fields covered with water and loud tigers huffing and puffing into the humid night.
“Which way?” I decided to leave it to Johnny.
“This way. Follow me.” Johnny stepped into the six-inch mud to the left, then stopped to remove his boots and put them on the guesthouse doorstep. “These boots are too loud, they’ll scare off all the tigers.”
I pulled my boots off too. “Hey, I just remembered something..wait here” Barefoot the stairs made less noise. I stepped back into the room and grabbed one of the half dozen joints I’d rolled earlier after buying about an ounce of Lao weed from a 90 year old Yao tribeswoman who was selling hand made bracelets, opium, and giant bags of weed. It cost an amazing 70 cents and had us both stoned enough to be drunkenly hunting tigers in our underwear.
Back down the steps and bringing the light to the doorway I found that Johnny had stepped off into the muck a good twenty feet and was creeping further despite the immense dark. “ Come on mate…blow out that candle and the stars soon light the way.” I lit the joint and blew out the candle.
“Here…trade me that bottle for this” I handed the joint to my partner and received the quarter full bottle in return. Hitting and swigging we continued further into the ooze with the stars gradually lighting the way.
The noise nearly always stopped as we neared it.
“Tigers are smart,” I said, “ They want to lure us away from civilization.”
“Crap…that’s the end of the whiskey,” Johnny hurled the empty bottle out into the dark. It made the expected splash in the expected direction and seconds later a second splash, much closer accompanied by a deep grunt in the opposite direction.
We turned, seeing the large four-legged shape approaching us. It’s large body moving with grace through the mud. We stepped towards the guesthouse and broke into a run, side by side, feeling the pulse pound in our heads, hoping that the beast would allow us to make it back to the safety of our room. Leaving our boots at the front door and tracking mud up the stairs and through the corridor until, finally, we were behind the closed door, locking it, and breathing heavily.
Lighting another joint, Johnny also lit a candle. We were covered in filthy mud with our boxers simply another gray brown patch on our bodies. We looked at each other and began to laugh. We shared stories about the terrible tiger until the false dawn when looking out the window; we realized the horrible truth of our situation.
“It seems that it wasn’t a tiger”, Johnny said blandly.
“Nor a bullfrog,” I replied.
Neither of us felt a need to say more as we looked at the footprints leading into the pigpen outside the window.~
Topics: All, Travel, Adventures, Art, Ethnography and Anthro, cool stuff not books, Carvings, personal stuff | No Comments »
(probably not true) stories of my grandparents
By Administrator | June 30, 2008
We all thought we knew who he was. I mean he was Grand-Daddy. He came and went. He brought great presents. He liked to go to Vegas and gamble. He made sure everyone in the family had what they needed. Mostly he did that through Ganny, his wife. Her real name was Marjorie, but everyone called her Margie, or Marge. She was the dragon lady of the family, but of course, she had secrets of her own. They did a great job of convincing all of us that we were just another normal sort of family. We weren’t though. None of us were normal. Even today, none of us are normal. We learn that more just about every day, but maybe I should start at the beginning of what I know.
I’m sure some of this is wrong. I’m sure some of it is still shrouded in the mystery Ganny and Grand-Daddy wrapped it in. But this is as close to the truth as I’ve been able to come.
……………………………………………………………………………………………..
In 1916, two children were born to two high ranking Masons. John Dewey Phillips of Anaconda, Montana and Walter Leigh Walker of San Luis Obispo, California were both the sons of prominent men. Phillip’s father, James Phillips, Jr., former president of Nevada Consolidated Copper Company and one of the principals of the Anaconda Copper Mine had helped to found Consolidated Coppermines Company in 1912. One of the largest mineral collectives ever formed.“The first thing Howard wants you to do Bob, is to find out everything about JohnWest and his wife. Don’t do anything with the information. Just bring it back to me.”
R.W. “Bob” Walker looked at Noah Dietrich. “Yes sir.” He said without a smile, even though friends would have been surprised to see him without one. He was six foot one, young, and excited to be working for THE Howard Hughes.
When he had opened his private detective firm two years earlier, he hadn’t even dreamed that Howard Hughes would become one of his clients. In fact, he hadn’t really expected any clients.
“Mr. Dietrich,” he ventured with his customary smile showing now, “ Is there anything specific I should be looking for?”
“No, Bob. He wants to know everything. That’s the way Mr. Hughes is. Now get to work and have a full report ready for me in four days.” Dietrich was the most powerful man RW had ever met. He was the right hand man of the most powerful man in America.
RW was the son of a displaced Texan. Born in the oil fields of Taft, California he grew up playing cards with roughnecks and watching millionaires made and destroyed. Named Risdom Walter Walker, he was called RW by friends and family. Somewhere along the way a wildcatter assumed the R stood for Robert and started calling him Bob. The name stuck. He didn’t complain. He’d never liked the name Risdom anyway. On the advice of his father he enrolled in UCLA where he got a degree in geology, the whole time working in the oil fields of Southern California. He developed the reputation of a tough man with brains. A rare combination anywhere, but not as rare in the oilfields as most places.
At the age of 22 he was working as a geologist for UnoCal when he hit his first gusher. It didn’t make him a millionaire, but it definitely gave him enough to do what he had always dreamed of. Despite the protests of his father, that was when he abandoned the oilfields and followed his own dream. To become a detective. He had grown up hearing the stories of his Grandpa Walter’s exploits in the Texas Rangers. He’d watched every serial in the picture houses having to do with crime fighters through the 20’s and 30’s. He’d earned his Dick Tracy badge through the comic book correspondence course by the time he was twelve. And now at the age of 22 he had the means to do it.
Walker Investigation was nothing but a small office in the heart of Long Beach. Before Noah Dietrich walked in he had barely covered his rent chasing the lost pensions of widows and spying on usually innocent spouses suspected of infidelity. He’d wavered between going back to the oilfields or enlisting in the army to fight the Nazi’s. Dietrich’s appearance put him back on track. His first real case.
Real in the sense that Noah Dietrich had just dropped ten grand on his desk. It was more than he’d made in the two years since he’d hung his shingle.
“Mr. Dietrich, I’ll have a full report for you by Monday.” Dietrich smiled and dropped another $500 on the desk. “I have a feeling that you will Bob. You might be just the man we are looking for.” With that titillating comment he was gone. The temptation to join his pals at the bowling alley for league night called him, but stronger was the call of the money in front of him. If he came through on this for Howard Hughes, his future was golden like everything else that Hughes touched.
A trip to the Long Beach Public Library and it’s newspaper index was all it took to get the basics. John West was a millionaire attorney who’s star was on the rise. He’d handled cases for top Hollywood producers and executives and never lost a case. He was either the best attorney on the planet or he was crooked. RW figured it was the latter, otherwise, why would Hughes be interested? It was all routine until he started browsing the society pages to find out something about Mrs. West.
Marjorie Grace Phillips was the granddaughter of James Phillips who had put together the largest mining conglomerate in the history of the United States in Anaconda, Montana. The Consolidated Copper Company turned small fortunes to huge ones. Huge enough that her father, John Dewey Phillips had been poisoned. A tee totaler and devout protestant, Phillips had been on the verge of selling his controlling stock in CCC and turning on the stockholders in favor of the United Mine Workers to demand shorter days, greater safety, and better wages. It was shortly after meeting with the union in Idaho that he met with his board of directors for a luncheon and shortly died to tomaine poisoning. Curiously, he was the only victim. His distraught widow signed the paperwork brought to her by her attorneys without reading it, and unknowingly traded controlling interest for a miner’s pension. The murder happened only weeks after her youngest daughter and sister had died of cat scratch fever.
Three strikes and the Phillips were out. The capitalists warmly suggested that California would be a better place for her and her two remaining children. They’d already bought the train tickets. A kind gesture.
And that was the reason that John West met Margie when he brought three pin stripe suits to Phillips Laundry and Pressing in Long Beach in 1936. At 20, Margie was a Cinderella beauty, scrubbing clothes and ironing suits. Deposed from her position as Queen of the Copper Mines, her mother had none the less, raised her children as if they were royalty. In demeanor if not in dollars.
West forgot about his suits and quickly began a whirlwind romance with the girl. Seven months later they were married. It was a Hollywood story in a paperback binding. The paperback being the society pages of the LA Times.
As RW read the stories, his eyes continually drifted to the pictures of the beautiful Mrs. West. He’d seen them before, and had the same reaction. The difference was that now, he was somehow involved with her.
“Excuse me Miss. I know this sounds like a stupid question and it probably is, but could you tell me….is it better to use a heavy ball or a lighter one?”
The women with Margie giggled but she didn’t even smile. “It’s not a stupid question at all. A heavier ball is harder to control but has more impact on the pins. Haven’t you ever bowled before?”
He’d never bowled at Roxy Lanes before, but he’d been bowling all his life. RW was one of the best bowlers in his league, but he couldn’t let Mrs. Marjorie West know that. The big man tried to hold the ball awkwardly with his third finger in the hole instead of the middle.
“No Ma’am.” He said.” But there is a big bowling tournament next month and I’m hoping to get good enough to pay for my mother’s surgery. I’d really appreciate it if you could tell me what I’m doing wrong.”
The socialites were giggling madly. Some of them breaking into outright laughter. Margie shushed them. “What’s wrong with your mother? “ she asked and then thought better of it, becoming embarrassed “ I mean, nevermind, I’m glad to help you if only to get away from these cackling hens.” Her friends giggled even more as she moved to the big man’s lane.
Two hours later when the socialites urged her to leave with them, she motioned towards her driver, still sitting in the gallery. “ I’ve got James to get me home. I certainly can’t leave now or poor Bob’s mother will never get her surgery.” She was amazed at the progress he was making, but more she was enjoying his raw wit and good company. She was glad to see the girls go, but still somewhat worried about what they would say to their husbands. She banished the thought. Edith Murray had been sleeping with everyone in Whittaker and it hadn’t made it back to her husband. She was sure she would be alright.
She hardly noticed the personal questions he asked because she was so intent upon improving his quickly improving game.
“John is the most honest man I know” she answered, “but Bob, you have to be careful with twisting your wrist like that. I think that is where your biggest flaw lies.” It was midnight when she left with James, feeling good that she had helped this roughneck improve to the point where he might actually win his tournament.
As she left, she turned to him while scribbling her number on a card. “Bob, would you please let me know how you do in the tournament? I’d love to know how this investment in my time turns out.” She handed it to him under the disapproving eye of James. It was exciting for her, she felt like a young single girl again.
It was worse for RW. He had gotten all the information he could want. Howard Hughes would get his report. Margie had given him more than enough to satisfy Hughes. There was one thing he would leave out however. RW was in love.
As it turned out, so was Howard Hughes. Again. John West had invited him out on his yacht for his third anniversary party. After carefully looking over the guest list, Hughes decided it wouldn’t be too dangerous to attend. At least on a boat there was no chance that he would run into anyone not on the list. He was slowly becoming a recluse. Terrified of the people he didn’t know and what they might think of him. Rather than disregard their opinions, he had more and more been sequestering himself from the company of anyone he didn’t already know.
West’s anniversary party was a huge hit. Many of the richest men in America attended and among them was Howard Hughes. Mrs. West was a huge fan of aviation and flattered Hughes with her questions. She was also, in Hughes and quite a few other men’s opinions, one of the most beautiful creatures on the planet. Hughes had dated most of Hollywood’s beauties and had several of them ‘on retainer’ as he paid huge expenses to maintain them in such a way that they were satisfied with the attention he didn’t usually pay to them.
Mrs. West, however, was unavailable. That made her even more desirable.
Topics: All, stories | No Comments »
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