The Bumper Sticker Anthology – Part IV – Howl If You Heart City Lights Bookstore

Howl if you heart City Lights Bookstore.  The first thing that comes to mind when I think about this one is that we were scheduled to go to California two summers before we actually went.  Christopher’s accidental fall off his Segway, requiring immediate surgery at Boston’s Children’s Hospital caused us to cancel our flights and reservations the night before we were to leave.  So instead of strolling around San Francisco in early June of 2007, I was spending the night in his hospital room at Children’s.  The plan had been to fly to California and drive back across country.  We had looked for a Westphalia to buy while we were there but decided to just rent an SUV to drive back.  In the end it didn’t really matter obviously as we cancelled the trip.  So two summers later we decided to give it another try, only this time we’d just be there for 10 days – fly into San Francisco, spend a few days, and then take two days to drive down the coast – through the Big Sur area – to Los Angeles and spend some time with Rick’s son, Jason. 

Our first full day in San Francisco we spent riding the trolleys, visiting Chinatown, Coit Tower, Vesuvios Bar and City Lights Bookstore, famous hangout of the beats.  Rick left one of his books there, The Beat Handbook, 100 Days of Kerouactions.  A reverse shoplifting or guerilla marketing kind of thing.  A year later he was offered the opportunity to review Helen Weaver’s book about Kerouac for City Lights and he asked them if they’d carry it.  They declined.  But little did they know that they did in fact carry it for some period of time.  Probably ended up in the trash but who knows, maybe some person bought it and City Lights sold it to them, not quite understanding their snafu with the inventory as he/she checked the book out. 

It’s a cool little bookshop, more polished and sterile now I suspect than at the time Ferlinghetti first co-founded it and Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Cassady hung out there.  I bought a couple poetry books, a t-shirt, and the bumper sticker.  The reference to Howl was kind of a double entendre for us as just before we left Maine we’d volunteered with the Wolf Inquiry Project to go out into the woods in western Maine in the middle of the night and howl like a wolf and record any responses we got.  And of course, the obvious reference to Ginsberg’s poem. 

That had been my first, and so far only, trip to CA so I’m a little sad to no longer have a bumper sticker on my car in memory of the trip

Perhaps I’ll order one from their website for the new Forester though that’s not quite the same.  

The Bumper Sticker Anthology - Part II - Everyone's an Artist

My friend Mark Miller gave me this one.  “Everyone's an Artist” it proclaims.  It meant a lot to me that it came from Mark who is a master guitar player.  We became dear friends in late 2004 just as the first relationship I’d been in since my husband’s death a few years prior was ending.  Mark and I decided to be friends.  A very good decision for so many reasons.  I love Mark dearly as a friend but I knew from the start that I had to be free to make an immediate exit whenever he'd start up his neurotic Mark bullshit, and I didn't hesitate to do so.  But when Mark was being his true self, he was such a beautiful and sensitive person and a joy to be around.  It often involved him having a guitar in hand, taking us on soft and elegant musical journeys while we talked.  His guitar wept . . . and then danced with ecstasy . . . beautiful . . . soothing . . .   He would finish a gig at 1:00, be completely wired and needing to stay up until 4 or 5.  The schedule worked well for me at the time as I had become an incurable insomniac, staying up that late with or without him, especially on the weekends.  

And I can't think of Mark without thinking of Tom whom I met shortly after Mark and whom I dated for about 5 minutes - another very good decision for so many reasons.  I introduced the two of them and we would spend evenings at my camp on Cobbossee Stream, them playing their guitars, with bullfrogs and peepers screaming in the background. Betty and others joining us at times. Starry nights with a campfire crackling.  The music and friendship was very healing and rejuvenating for me. 

My friend Maya left a djembe at my camp after spending a weekend once, and Mark encouraged me to beat on it.  Solo nights at my camp I'd thump away on it, wildly at times, and gently for hours.  I think it called in some critters and scared away others.  Being a positive person I chose to believe the loons and tree frogs were voicing their approval, not screeching at me to stop.  And during that beautiful summer Mark gave me the bumper sticker, “Everyone's an Artist” it declared. . . . Mark at his sweetest.  

The Bumper Sticker Anthology - Part I - Evergreen Sudbury School

I love bumper stickers.  My car windows suffer the consequences.  When it was time to trade in my car earlier this year it broke my heart to bid goodbye to my old friend, and the stickers.  The car had served me well but it needed substantial work.  It came at as good a time as possible.  I could afford a new car, but it felt like saying goodbye to an old friend who held many sweet memories within the bumper stickers it wore.
 
One of my oldest stickers was from the little school in Hallowell where all three of my sons attended at one time or another.  “Self directed learning in a democratic setting” was their motto - a beautiful place that every child should experience at least for a while.  The kids ran the school through Business School Meeting, dealing with issues of budgets, hiring staff, purchasing supplies; and Judicial School Meeting, dealing with disciplinary issues.  They chose what to study and when to study it within availability of the staff, their mentors. 

“Who are you?” the school asks, and the kids answer, with books . . .  often choosing to start off looking for their intellectual side in their search for themselves.  And art - working with clay Jared created elaborate scenes of a forest with cowboys sitting around a campfire , their horses, nearby.  The landscape and inhabitants changed daily for weeks. 

And then comes the music, heard incessantly with the thump of the bass reverberating through the walls until the other kids convene a Judicial School Meeting to air their grievance and consensus is reached that bass free zones would be honored - democracy in its truest form.  Later however, the musicians prevail in their motion before the Business School Meeting to purchase a school guitar that could actually be tuned and some of them are never to be seen again, though heard softly practicing with sweet and not so sweet melodies emanating gently from the music room.   Well at least not until the winter comes with a bountiful snow and they're free to bring their sleds and snowboards to school and enjoy a full day of, hmmmm, let's call it phys ed, the conditioning of public school still tugging at them.  Snow always leads to forts and elaborate tunnels which inevitably lead to snow ball fights - and the teachers (ooops, mentors) are right out there with them.

Winter wears on and long conversation abound about the philosophy behind the movie Fight Club, (the book is better cry out the avid readers) or moral and ethical issues surrounding the new video game one of them wants to bring to school, Grand Theft Auto.  

As spring nears my oldest, who's never been good at fractions, understands them intimately within hours as he decides he's going to learn how to sew in order to design his own clothes; he's always had his own style but he takes unique to a new level, and my husband cringes when he appears for church decked out in his new outfit and hairstyle.  Yes he says, I realize people will see me as a freak but when they meet me one on one they'll see I'm not scary or weird and maybe it will help them overcome preconceived judgments about people.

hmmm, how can I argue with that logic.  Damn school. 

So goodbye Evergreen Sudbury School, self directed learning in a democratic setting.  You'll always be in my heart, if not on my car.