This all played out so recently that for once I don't have to appeal to the fact that I'm twice as old as Gandalf and half as pretty. What the press refuses to acknowledge (and what the neo-Fascist Christian Dominionists savagely deny) is that there *IS* a liberal Christianity alive and well in this country. Two colleagues of mine from SIUC went on to become ministers (in different but amicable churches.)
I will also point out again, for the many who deny with fundamentalist fervor the manifest fact that the American Civil Rights movement emerged from, and was driven by the churches. Secularists participated, but only on the sidelines. The main show -- the philosophy, the argument, the faith -- came from the churches. For some reason folks don't like to recall that it was the *Reverend* Doctor Martin Luther King. (Or that it is the *Reverend* Raphael Warnock who just defended his seat in the US Senate.)
I'll also mention (again) Whitehead's "definition" of religion: Religion is what we do with our solitariness.
I missed your previous iteration of Whitehead's definition of religion so this time, it really landed. It just seems to me that back in MLK's day, there was more of a separation of church and state in America. Sure, there were encroachments. The Pledge of Allegiance, for instance. Their insufferable insistence that the only "true" religion was Christianity. Like I said, though, different times.
Abortion galvanized the fundies. They put aside their narcissism of small differences (Freud's concept) and banded together to overturn Roe v Wade. I can't help but to remember the old chestnut that goes, "When the gods are antic, they grant you your prayers." The world went and changed in the fifty years they've been waging their war. This is going to backfire on them, big time.
Dec 7, 2022·edited Dec 13, 2022Liked by Stacey Eskelin
So, I've read Jann Wenner's autobiography and now I'm reading Joe Hagan's biography of him. The reason I mention them is that at the time Wenner was starting to chronicle the rock scene and other elements of American culture and politics in the 60s from his perch in San Francisco, your dad was a big player in the "song poem" biz, the locus of which was in LA. And the reason I mention all of that is because there is a book - and a movie based on the book - in this crazy juxtaposition, particularly given your father's religious background and I suppose the insights or personal revelations that must have come to him and that impelled his fall from grace, and ultimately his fall onto that LA expressway. Mainstream religion is one thing, and the religion of American capitalism that places your dad's business and Wenner's on the same thread is another, with both producing people who pluck it to play the tune of the American dream all the way to the bank, and many more who are strangled by it.
MY GOD. How on earth do you know all this stuff, especially about my dad? That brain of yours must have crytpo-sized servers of RAM. It's a very impressive instrument.
I'll be curious to know what you think of Sticky Fingers. Those two lads have since fallen out, haven't they? Wenner is a prickly, complicated man who never fully reconciled himself to his homosexuality. If he'd asked me to write his biography, I would have hot-footed it out of there so fast.
Re: my dad. One of his more famous quotes: "I spell Rodd with two d's because "God" only has one."
All that talent (great vid, BTW), but he never stood a chance. The musician Gotye is about to release a beautiful two-album project featuring Rodd's music. We've been in contact. I'm both dreading and looking forward to it.
Give up the dread! It's bad for the mind's heart and the body's brain. Whatever Goyte comes out with is going to be interesting and, who knows, thrilling!
Wikipedia has a short bio about your father that I thought you might have written. And some of his stuff is on YouTube which is where I found the song whose link I inserted. So, those things, along with what you said in your last post, and in one that you cross referenced, was all I had to go by.
I don't know whether you tap into Facebook but my last longish post there touches on memory. It aroused a few of my small circle of readers - most of them old like me - more than my usual stuff. I suppose that is because we all have a trove of stuff in our decades-old minds and we have time to reflect within with full awareness of our mortality. Care must be taken with this process because whether we like to admit it or not, we are constantly editing the mass of fragments reposed in our grey matter and assembling them into fictions of one sort or another.
This is why I like writing for the stage, I suppose. It is self-evidently a place for dream-making. It's four or five dimensions (I add time and emotion to the usual three) where one can manipulate the comings and goings and fragmentary scenes in an almost symphonic way. The theatre is divorced from the demand for the kind of realism that movies attempt. That is how i get to see your father and Wenner in one "kind of" place where both men, both talented beyond the ken of most, both involved in con games but who pursue vastly different strategies , one that ends in "success" American-style, and one that proves disastrous, their courses set in the fractured, complicated nests of their viperous childhoods.
When I wrote in FB about Wenner's autobiography I called it astoundingly superficial. It is. He wrote it at least partly because he did not like the warts and all picture painted by Joe Hagan. A real rock star would have been happy with what Hagan wrote, but Wenner wanted nought but hagiography. So he stitched his memories of the past into something that might get him through the pearly gates. And him a Jew, for God's sake.
Wenner (is he still alive? I can't remember) is a deeply complicated man. Gay, but not willing to be openly gay. Probably held some pretty unsavory opinions. The guy was a walking contradiction for sure.
I would imagine that writing for the stage is a liberating experience. There's so much craft that goes into a novel, much of it pretty fusty and hidebound. But writing plays, while requiring just as much craft, you are free to focus almost exclusively on the dialogue and the psychological dynamic. Like skinny dipping, in a weird way: just you and the water; just you and the audience.
Yep, Wenner is alive and has been living with his male partner, Matt Nye, since 1995. He is not a well man, physically, but his redoubtable spirit has enabled him to canonize himself, and THAT, while he's still alive. As for skinny dipping, always do it in front of an audience if you are inclined to reveal, rather than hide your flaws. Shamelessness might be one of those. :)
I know people who make a legitimate effort to sincerely live their faith, and I'm all for that. Who says peace, love, and understanding are bad things, right? For too many, though, religion is a smoke screen for their moral failings. They use it to camouflage their shortcomings, their dishonesty, and their inability to lead a life of integrity.
I detest hypocrisy more than anything in the world (except perhaps the Green Bay Packers), so I have no problem with Schadenfreude when it's appropriate.
Ok I get it. Before I say more, this isn’t about me. I was an anesthetist for 33 years. One of our surgeons heard a priest talking about all the disfigured children in his parish. The fore mentioned surgeon put together a team of us to go to Peru to help these children. The group went for 24 years and performed 6000 free surgeries for VERY poor children. We all took vacation days and paid our own way. Not operation smile. I went 5 or 6 times because of my faith. Many people did more than I did. We do have a remarkable penchant for ignorance and destruction but once in a while, in spite of ourselves we do some good
Good for you for doing the work outside operation Smile. I used to really support it. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador I saw more cleft palates than I could imagine. 10 years ago a friend of mine went to work for the organization's Rome operation. Suffice it to say palatial office ( a literal palace), Mercedes Benz and driver, need I go on?
ALL TRUE. And what a life you've had so far! I'm quite envious. Peru is a bucket list item, but I'm not getting any younger or any richer, so I am beginning to think it will have to remain that way.
Thank you for the good you did and no doubt still do. Truly. Thank you.
To me religion is another example of man’s ability to screw up anything he/she touches. There are religious people I respect and they are not the ones pursuing headlines but are in the trenches doing what they believe in. Best example is Mother Teresa
This all played out so recently that for once I don't have to appeal to the fact that I'm twice as old as Gandalf and half as pretty. What the press refuses to acknowledge (and what the neo-Fascist Christian Dominionists savagely deny) is that there *IS* a liberal Christianity alive and well in this country. Two colleagues of mine from SIUC went on to become ministers (in different but amicable churches.)
I will also point out again, for the many who deny with fundamentalist fervor the manifest fact that the American Civil Rights movement emerged from, and was driven by the churches. Secularists participated, but only on the sidelines. The main show -- the philosophy, the argument, the faith -- came from the churches. For some reason folks don't like to recall that it was the *Reverend* Doctor Martin Luther King. (Or that it is the *Reverend* Raphael Warnock who just defended his seat in the US Senate.)
I'll also mention (again) Whitehead's "definition" of religion: Religion is what we do with our solitariness.
I missed your previous iteration of Whitehead's definition of religion so this time, it really landed. It just seems to me that back in MLK's day, there was more of a separation of church and state in America. Sure, there were encroachments. The Pledge of Allegiance, for instance. Their insufferable insistence that the only "true" religion was Christianity. Like I said, though, different times.
Abortion galvanized the fundies. They put aside their narcissism of small differences (Freud's concept) and banded together to overturn Roe v Wade. I can't help but to remember the old chestnut that goes, "When the gods are antic, they grant you your prayers." The world went and changed in the fifty years they've been waging their war. This is going to backfire on them, big time.
Starting with dwindling numbers of faithful.
So, I've read Jann Wenner's autobiography and now I'm reading Joe Hagan's biography of him. The reason I mention them is that at the time Wenner was starting to chronicle the rock scene and other elements of American culture and politics in the 60s from his perch in San Francisco, your dad was a big player in the "song poem" biz, the locus of which was in LA. And the reason I mention all of that is because there is a book - and a movie based on the book - in this crazy juxtaposition, particularly given your father's religious background and I suppose the insights or personal revelations that must have come to him and that impelled his fall from grace, and ultimately his fall onto that LA expressway. Mainstream religion is one thing, and the religion of American capitalism that places your dad's business and Wenner's on the same thread is another, with both producing people who pluck it to play the tune of the American dream all the way to the bank, and many more who are strangled by it.
Here's your pop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUZfhz4PzhM
MY GOD. How on earth do you know all this stuff, especially about my dad? That brain of yours must have crytpo-sized servers of RAM. It's a very impressive instrument.
I'll be curious to know what you think of Sticky Fingers. Those two lads have since fallen out, haven't they? Wenner is a prickly, complicated man who never fully reconciled himself to his homosexuality. If he'd asked me to write his biography, I would have hot-footed it out of there so fast.
Re: my dad. One of his more famous quotes: "I spell Rodd with two d's because "God" only has one."
All that talent (great vid, BTW), but he never stood a chance. The musician Gotye is about to release a beautiful two-album project featuring Rodd's music. We've been in contact. I'm both dreading and looking forward to it.
Religion=trauma. Period.
Recommended reading. 50 years sgo Gary Wills nailed it, the scenarios change but the core truths remain. https://www.amazon.com/Bare-Ruined-Choirs-Prophecy-Religion/dp/0809148196
AND bonus points for using one of my favorite Shakespeare metaphors, "Bare Ruined Choirs" [where late the sweet birds sang] as his title.
Give up the dread! It's bad for the mind's heart and the body's brain. Whatever Goyte comes out with is going to be interesting and, who knows, thrilling!
Wikipedia has a short bio about your father that I thought you might have written. And some of his stuff is on YouTube which is where I found the song whose link I inserted. So, those things, along with what you said in your last post, and in one that you cross referenced, was all I had to go by.
I don't know whether you tap into Facebook but my last longish post there touches on memory. It aroused a few of my small circle of readers - most of them old like me - more than my usual stuff. I suppose that is because we all have a trove of stuff in our decades-old minds and we have time to reflect within with full awareness of our mortality. Care must be taken with this process because whether we like to admit it or not, we are constantly editing the mass of fragments reposed in our grey matter and assembling them into fictions of one sort or another.
This is why I like writing for the stage, I suppose. It is self-evidently a place for dream-making. It's four or five dimensions (I add time and emotion to the usual three) where one can manipulate the comings and goings and fragmentary scenes in an almost symphonic way. The theatre is divorced from the demand for the kind of realism that movies attempt. That is how i get to see your father and Wenner in one "kind of" place where both men, both talented beyond the ken of most, both involved in con games but who pursue vastly different strategies , one that ends in "success" American-style, and one that proves disastrous, their courses set in the fractured, complicated nests of their viperous childhoods.
When I wrote in FB about Wenner's autobiography I called it astoundingly superficial. It is. He wrote it at least partly because he did not like the warts and all picture painted by Joe Hagan. A real rock star would have been happy with what Hagan wrote, but Wenner wanted nought but hagiography. So he stitched his memories of the past into something that might get him through the pearly gates. And him a Jew, for God's sake.
Wenner (is he still alive? I can't remember) is a deeply complicated man. Gay, but not willing to be openly gay. Probably held some pretty unsavory opinions. The guy was a walking contradiction for sure.
I would imagine that writing for the stage is a liberating experience. There's so much craft that goes into a novel, much of it pretty fusty and hidebound. But writing plays, while requiring just as much craft, you are free to focus almost exclusively on the dialogue and the psychological dynamic. Like skinny dipping, in a weird way: just you and the water; just you and the audience.
Yep, Wenner is alive and has been living with his male partner, Matt Nye, since 1995. He is not a well man, physically, but his redoubtable spirit has enabled him to canonize himself, and THAT, while he's still alive. As for skinny dipping, always do it in front of an audience if you are inclined to reveal, rather than hide your flaws. Shamelessness might be one of those. :)
I know people who make a legitimate effort to sincerely live their faith, and I'm all for that. Who says peace, love, and understanding are bad things, right? For too many, though, religion is a smoke screen for their moral failings. They use it to camouflage their shortcomings, their dishonesty, and their inability to lead a life of integrity.
I detest hypocrisy more than anything in the world (except perhaps the Green Bay Packers), so I have no problem with Schadenfreude when it's appropriate.
Green Bay Packers = Satan? I'm sure it's true!
Ok I get it. Before I say more, this isn’t about me. I was an anesthetist for 33 years. One of our surgeons heard a priest talking about all the disfigured children in his parish. The fore mentioned surgeon put together a team of us to go to Peru to help these children. The group went for 24 years and performed 6000 free surgeries for VERY poor children. We all took vacation days and paid our own way. Not operation smile. I went 5 or 6 times because of my faith. Many people did more than I did. We do have a remarkable penchant for ignorance and destruction but once in a while, in spite of ourselves we do some good
Good for you for doing the work outside operation Smile. I used to really support it. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Ecuador I saw more cleft palates than I could imagine. 10 years ago a friend of mine went to work for the organization's Rome operation. Suffice it to say palatial office ( a literal palace), Mercedes Benz and driver, need I go on?
Daaaaaamn.
ALL TRUE. And what a life you've had so far! I'm quite envious. Peru is a bucket list item, but I'm not getting any younger or any richer, so I am beginning to think it will have to remain that way.
Thank you for the good you did and no doubt still do. Truly. Thank you.
To me religion is another example of man’s ability to screw up anything he/she touches. There are religious people I respect and they are not the ones pursuing headlines but are in the trenches doing what they believe in. Best example is Mother Teresa
There are dissenting opinions (and damning facts) contradicting the Teresa/saint narrative. I'd love to definitively know what went on there, but here's a preliminary look: https://www.vice.com/en/article/gvzebx/mother-teresa-was-kind-of-a-heartless-bitch
I agree with you, of course. We as humans have a remarkable penchant for ignorance and destruction.