Left Coast Cowboys

I’m late, but you didn’t think I’d let this day slip by without mention — a day that would have been Johnny Cash’s 78th birthday. I heard fans are paying homage by wearing black, but there has only ever been one and never will be another Man in Black. It’s sad that there is a perception among kids today that Johnny Cash was a Country singer. Yes, he was, but then so much more.

From June 7, 1969 to March 31, 1971, The Johnny Cash Show aired on ABC. I can’t even draw an equivalent with any other show today. It was a show that everyone from young kids (my brother and myself), our babysitters (who were tuning in, turning on and dropping out) and my father (a military officer) all planned our week around.  You never knew who would show up as a guest on Johnny Cash’s show — everyone from Louis Armstrong to Bob Dylan to Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young. Many young singers say they got their first serious airplay when Johnny Cash went to bat for them and had them on the show. The range of music covered was astounding. Judy Collins came on and sang two Jacques Brel songs. Eric Clapton, Carl Perkins and Johnny traded guitar licks with Eric coming out behind in my humble opinion. (I write more extensively about The Johnny Cash Show and include that clip here.)

Kids today. I don't think they understand how influential and generous Johnny Cash was in fostering new artists.

For an idea of Johnny Cash’s wide-ranging influence on musicians, you’d have to have read the tribute issue of Rolling Stone in the week after he died. Artists as diverse as Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Bono, Wyclef Jean and various rappers listed him as an important influence. It’s not that they aspired to be Country singers, but that they all recognized in Johnny Cash a singer of unparalleled integrity: he sang his truth as he knew it. (Rolling Stone Online has a sampling of remembrances here.)

He was also the old style American Christian I wish we had more of. He recognized his frailties, once saying, “Some people know just how to go straight to Heaven. I’m someone who has to get there one half mile a day.” He had a strong faith, but never waved it in anyone’s face or forced it on anyone. He just lived it. And that was inspiration enough. When he sang, with the voice of an Old Testament Prophet, you just had to sit up and listen. Rick Rubin, his last producer and a Jew, tells how Johnny once asked if he could take his hand and pray with him. It became a ritual with the two of them, even during telephone conversations. Rubin says he felt blessed to be so honored by a man of faith and included in that faith, even if it wasn’t his own.

If any of the Old Testament Prophets had had a recording contract, they would have sounded like Johnny Cash.

It’s also worth remembering, that at a time when established stars like Frank Sinatra, etc., were ignoring the turmoil of the Sixties, Johnny Cash was visiting college campuses — and being embraced by students who were also listening to The Byrds, The Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix. “The Man in Black” and “What is Truth?” came out of his concern that the issues being protested by Sixties youth weren’t being given proper attention.

Then there are Native Americans, who at that time, before the American Indian Movement, had no real voice in America. Johnny was embraced as one of their own, even though it turned out he was mistaken in thinking he had Cherokee blood. Didn’t matter. He was the first major star to foster the career of Native American singer Buffy Saint-Marie, he made a movie about The Trail of Tears, his wrote the immortal Ballad of Ira Hayes and he gave many concerts to enthusiastic Native audiences.

Of course, his work and concerts in prisons are the stuff of legend. Based on that, I’ve heard some call Johnny “the original Punk”. But he wasn’t — at least if you define a Punk as a nihilistic criminal. Johnny’s lyrics always packed an Old Testament wallop. In a Johnny Cash song, you could break the law, but you paid the price. You might “shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die” but then you’d have to acknowledge “I know I had it comin’, I know I can’t be free”. You could “be in the arms of your best friend’s wife” but then you’d get hung and your paramour would have to “walk these hills in a long black veil”. There was no free lunch and no Gangsta Life in Johnny Cash’s world. And he stood up as the premier example of a man who’d had to pay for his sins.

This attitude is probably one of the reasons no less an authority than Bob Dylan said of Cash: “Johnny was and is the North Star; you could guide your ship by him.”

And did we mention the music? Kick ass!

Thanks, Johnny, and Happy Birthday up in Heaven. There will never be another like you.

I’ve decided Michael Pollan is the most interesting man in America today. He’s the man who’s making us take a closer look at our place in the food chain. If you haven’t read his two most famous books, In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma, you may have seen him in the documentary Food, Inc. That’s the polemic against big agribusiness that had Sonoma near revolution this summer.

I haven’t read his earlier work, The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World. Now I don’t have to. Because I’ve just seen the excellent documentary version of it. And I think Michael Pollan is even more thought provoking to see and hear than he is to read (and he’s a pretty good read.) In short, The Botany of Desire looks at the world from the viewpoint of plants, specifically four very successful plants: apples, tulips, Marijuana and potatoes. The conceit is to examine the symbiotic relationship between these plants and humans. But consider that relationship as you would the symbiosis between, say shark and lamprey. Each animal is an active participant in the exchange, each giving and taking to make the symbiosis mutually beneficial. So the premise is: think about what these four plants have ACTIVELY done to force us to nurture and spread them. For instance, consider the apple. It was a bitter fruit growing wild in a small area of Kazakhstan. What did the apple do, in its own evolution, to become so attractive to humans that we spread it across the globe to become, arguably, the most successful, widespread and popular fruit in the world? And how about Marijuana? It has evolved to mimic a human brain chemical that is linked with blissful, relaxing forgetting. Something so attractive to us that we’ve made it a rival for the apple as world’s most successful plant. It’s a fascinating point of view, backed up with lots of science and some spectacular cinematography. Along the way, Pollan also makes us think about how we change ecologies and the destiny of plants by our choices.

X-treme Symbiosis. Somehow our plants have convinced me to turn John the Baptist loose with a flamethrower on their invasive non-native enemies. Die, Star Thistle, Die!

I bring this all up by way of saying I certainly know Pollan’s theories well. I’ve been workin’ for the plant since I got to Sonoma. With a few blunders along the way (we’ll gloss over that mustard we mistakenly planted in the vineyard) most of our “landscaping” has been weeding out invasive non-native plants to let our native species reestablish themselves. In fact, at this point, our plants have a whole crew working for them, including me and John the Baptist. I haven’t yet determined when their end of the symbiotic relationship kicks in. We do have Miner’s Lettuce coming up, which is edible, and millions of mushrooms, which are probably not. All I probably should ask, as in Pollan’s case of the tulip, is that they provide beauty. However, the many pest eating birds and insects they seem to be attracting are worth their weight in the Monsanto chemicals we don’t need to buy. From vineyard to vegetable garden, we haven’t had a pest to contend with and no significant loss of any part of any crop.

Flocks of swallows patrol our vineyards providing effective, chemical-free pest control.

In a show of symbiotic support, the land is providing me with Vitamin C-packed Miners Lettuce.

Well, that’s not exactly true. While my plants are working hard for the money, certain critters seem to be taking more than fair advantage of this symbiosis we’re supposed to be having here. Any bulbs or large seeds I plant are dug up and chomped down overnight. I’m blaming some ground squirrels and foxes I’ve seen lurking around the vegetable patch. I’m a little bitter about the foxes, especially since we’ve thrown more than a few culled grape clusters on the ground for them. It’s not really fair for them to go after my melons and cucumbers as dessert. If I only had evidence that the foxes were cleaning out some of the ground squirrels, I’d happily set aside melons for them. But, no, the foxes don’t seem to be holding up their end of our symbiosis.

So I’ve called in reinforcements.

Meet Hudson Hawk...

and his wife, Kitty, AKA The Redtailed Avengers.

They can eat their weight in garden varmints every day. Now that’s the symbiosis Michael Pollan and I are talkin’ about!

End note: Check out the website for the documentary here. Then put this one in your Netflix queue immediately.

We have a great group of English and Scottish friends with whom we usually celebrate what we call the Trifecta of the High Holy Holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter. In fact, we have so much fun on these occasions, we’ve been searching for years for other suitably hallowed events on which to gather. Finally, someone recommended Burns Night, a traditional Scottish festivity celebrating national poet Robert Burns. Our schedules didn’t let us get together until a week after the official date, but everything else was planned according to tradition.

Of course, that meant a haggis. Most of us don’t think of Scotland as exactly the epicenter of grand cuisine and some people would cite the haggis for that reputation — unless they bring up deep fried Mars Bars. Haggis, as you may or may not know, is a pudding of sorts, involving lambs lungs, other offal, oats and all steamed in a sheep’s stomach. Our Scottish friend Jan assured us it was “lovely and spicy”, but since we couldn’t imagine anything Scottish being spicy as we would know it, we didn’t have a clue what to expect. As time ticked closer to our Burns Night, Andy and Rob began to get worried and plotted to bring proper British bangers to the feast. Just in case some of us lost our nerve when faced with a haggis.

You know a Burns Night is going to be special when you are greeted at the door by a handsome Scotsman in a kilt bearing a haggis. Shown here: Scotch Andrew and Wee Andrew.

We needn’t have bothered, as the English would say. The haggis? Absolutely fabulous. The nearest I can describe it was a bit like a proper British black or white pudding (which is a sausage). But the oats in it give it a wonderful texture. The spices? Well, I would say more savory than spicy as in Mexican or Indian spicy. But perfectly wonderful. The traditional sides of “neeps and tatties” just added to the homey, warm flavor of the meal.

Here, two Englishman stare in amazement as a true Scot carves the haggis while his wife reads Robert Burns "Address to a Haggis": "Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o' the puddin-race!"

Of course, any meal that features aged single malt Scotch at every course has got to be a winner. Then there was the dessert which was a sort of trifle, heavily featuring cream, more Scotch and oats. In fact those oats, with their cholesterol reducing properties, were probably counteracting all the cream, organ meat and alcohol that we were consuming. Hooray for oats!

Haggis (which was wonderful) with the traditional sides: neeps (turnips or rutabagas) and tatties (potatoes). Yum.

And the Scotch. Did I mention the Scotch? Lots of single malt and a special 30 year old Scotch.

But don't worry about our cholesterol. There were oats in EVERYTHING. Even the trifle which included oats and brown sugar caramelized in the broiler. Can we say Yum again?

And Scotch Andrew’s kilt outfit? Now we’ve made it mandatory for all occasions. In fact, Andy and Rob are feeling miffed that England doesn’t really have a national costume. What would they wear? Bowler hats? Skinhead outfits? Renaissance Faire Morris Dancer tights? They’ve settle on the idea of Celtic robes and woad daubed faces. Coming soon: Midsommer Eve Druid Style.

In conclusion, I’m allowing no more jokes about Scottish food. If all they could offer were haggis, neeps and tatties, they’ve secured respect.

And you don't want to disagree. We still don't know what a Scotsman wears under his kilt, but they do carry daggers in those Sporrans.

Read Burns’ “Address to a Haggis” here (with translation because you’ll never understand the Scots). So let’s end with the traditional Selkirk Grace by the esteemed Rabbie Burns:

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit.

For other pictures of our Burns Night, click here.

Illustration of Huck Finn by E. W. Kemble from 1884 first edition

The announcement of J.D. Salinger’s death has me thinking about my favorite alienated, wandering adolescent searching for truth in a corrupt world. I’m not talking about Holden Caulfield. Caulfield is just a snarky, overprivileged preppie starring in what is surely one of the most overrated novels in the American canon. Nope, the real Great American Boy-Hero, maybe the Greatest American Hero Ever, is Huckleberry Finn.

On the surface, there are some parallels between both books and both heroes. Don’t be fooled and don’t accept third rate when the real deal is available. Both Holden and Huck are fleeing a structured society that they feel doesn’t represent them. Both embark on adventures. Holden has flunked out of prep school and takes off to his home city of New York for a lost weekend mostly on the fringes. Huck escapes a virtuous widow’s attempts to “sivilize” him. But he embarks on a rip-roaring raft adventure down the Mississippi River. If we just want to compare the two books on the basis of story, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn wins hands-down.

Before he was a Hobbit, Elijah Wood was a Huck Finn. Unfortunately, a sterilized, Disneyfied one with none of Twain's bite.

Both books are written in the vernacular of the day and of the hero’s age group, and both books have been banned for it. But Holden’s whiney Fifties preppyisms sounded dated when I first read them a few short decades after the publication date. More than a hundred years later, Huck’s dialogue still sounds fresh, even if we flinch at his repeated, and authentic, use of the N word. But where I find Holden’s profanities and slang true to the character, they don’t serve much more purpose than authenticity and perhaps shock value. While Huck’s language is also authentic to time and place, I think Twain had something else in mind in having Huck refer to his good friend and companion as “Nigger Jim”. Huck is a product of a society that is inherently racist (in fact the novel takes place before the Civil War). Worse yet, he’s Poor White Trash, with a drunken, illiterate father who rails about how a Black professor is allowed to vote “jes like me” (even though he admits he, himself, was too drunk to make it to the polls). How much stronger the counterpoint when Huck begins to value Jim as an exceptional human being and turn his back on the racism that he has been taught at home, in school and in church. I can’t imagine how hard it would be for an African American teen to sit in a class and listen to that word bandied about. But it doesn’t take far into the book before Twain, who was an ardent abolitionist and tireless campaigner against racism, makes a stronger case than he could have with a character who was as saintly and sweet-spoken as Uncle Tom’s Little Eva.

Don’t agree with me? Russell Baker does:

“The people whom Huck and Jim encounter on the Mississippi are drunkards, murderers, bullies, swindlers, lynchers, thieves, liars, frauds, child abusers, numbskulls, hypocrites, windbags and traders in human flesh. All are white. The one man of honor in this phantasmagoria is ‘Nigger Jim,’ as Twain called him to emphasize the irony of a society in which the only true gentleman was held beneath contempt.”

According to his own daughter, Salinger became a bitter, truly weird old man. I feel sure Holden, had he been allowed to grow up fictionally, would have too.

In spite of the mad professor hair, Twain became funnier and more socially active as he aged. I think Huck would have as well. Although perhaps with not the same mastery of grammar and irony.

But my big beef with Holden Caulfield? Well, what exactly do we learn from him and his adventures? That he’s not as much of a “catcher” as his wiser little sister? That, from the perspective of the mental facility where he ends up, he really kind of misses his “secret slob” prep school roommate Stradlater? That life’s a bitch and then you graduate?

You get just a bit more from Huck Finn.

Instead of snarking and sneering at everything in a vain attempt to create a veneer of sophistication, Huck cheerfully admits that he’s ignorant and “unsivilized”. But as he sees, over and over, how Polite Society, the Law, and the Church uphold things that Huck knows in his gut are not fair, he boldly decides to reject racism, violence and inequality. Society tells him helping Jim is stealing property, but Huck decides he’ll risk it and “I’ll just go to Hell.” Mark Twain in his lecture notes explains it better than I can:

“A sound heart is a surer guide than an ill-trained conscience,”[Huckberry Finn is] “…a book of mine where a sound heart and a deformed conscience come into collision and conscience suffers defeat.”

Take that Holden Caulfield. Who’s the phony now?

I’m usually hesitant to recommend works of art based on the likability of the artist. Some truly great Art and Literature have been created by some truly odious human beings. But I can’t help contrasting Salinger and Twain.

You have to believe that Holden Caulfield, had he been allowed to grow up fictionally, would have ended up not unlike Salinger, living in an isolated cabin, drinking his own urine and obsessing over inappropriate relationships with teen girls. Twain, on the other hand, became a great humanitarian, speaking out loud and strong against institutionalized racism, segregation and lynching. Then he put his money where his mouth was, paying for at least two African-Americans to attend college. Besides Twain would be the best dinner party companion ever. He said everything witty that Oscar Wilde didn’t say first.

Huck Finn might not have become as adept with words, but I’m sure he would have grown up to be just as entertaining. And I’ll bet you a corncob pipe, in his off hours from rafting and adventuring (the end of the book finds him taking off for the West), he would have been as much the humanitarian as Twain. He’s already gotten off to a good start when the novel ends.

And therein lies the difference. For all Holden’s whining, his Upper East Side anguish can’t compare to the travails of poor Huck: drunken abusive father, poverty, society’s scorn. Yet, Huck is relentlessly upbeat. And better yet, he’s a doer. When he figures out that he can’t agree with his Society’s values, he actively rejects them and works to give a man his freedom. Were Holden around today, the only action I can see him taking is perhaps writing a bitter, venemous blog. Today, he would grow up to be a reclusive Rush Limbaugh. Flask of urine next to his keyboard. Maybe with a few well-thumbed back copies of Teen Magazine.

My choice is clear. Sorry, Holden fans. I’ll take my Teen Angst with a side of river rafting and likability, please.

There, I’m just going to say it: I got an F in Spanish 1B this Fall Term. Now I’m going to explain. With more enthusiasm than foresight, I signed up for both HTML Programming and Spanish 1B last fall, completely ignoring the fact that Fall Term runs right through grape harvest and winemaking season. By midterm, it was clear I wasn’t going to make it through the courses. I’d had missed too many classes when called away by “winemaking emergencies”.

No problem. City College of San Francisco is nothing if not wired. You can manage the whole administrative side of your enrollment on-line. So I fired up the website after harvest one day and withdrew from HTML Programming. No such luck with Spanish. The little “withdraw” option button that was supposed to be there wasn’t. I tried on and off for a week or so to withdraw, but the button never appeared. Not at any time. Not in any browser.

Finally, I emailed the professor, told him of my issue and asked if he could withdraw me from the course. “Sorry” was the answer. “You’ve missed by one day the window to take a Withdraw. Now I’ll have to give you an F. Unless you come in and take the Final.”

Well, let’s see. A ton or so of grapes potentially rotting on the vine? Or an F in Community College? The decision was made easier when I was told I could see the Dean of Students and petition for a retroactive Withdraw. Little did I know that our Governator’s severe budget cuts to California colleges have ensured that the Dean seems to have no regular office hours any more. Maybe we don’t even have a Dean. Maybe he’s been replaced with an iPhone App. In any case, he’s uninterested in my plight. He’s not answering my phone calls and emails.

So, I let it drop. Really, it’s not as if that F will keep me from graduate school. As for learning Spanish, I signed up to retake the course this Spring Term. No harm, no foul.

Lucy promises to make me really hit the books hard this semester.

Until Andy made a joke in front of my mother about my big failing grade. Mom, who proudly watched me make my way through years of school with mostly As, is ready to bring the whole California system of higher education crashing down over this. Her daughter with an F? Unacceptable! Worse yet, she’s worrying herself sick about it.

“You need to be concerned about this F. What if they find out about it? You know they can find out anything on the Internets. I bet I could just look up your name and that F would be there.”

“Well, Mom. Who are “they”? My friends? They’re already laughing about it. Future employers? I’m self employed and I won’t fire myself. My seasonal vineyard workers? They already know my Spanish is crap.”

“Well, it’s on your permanent record now. Someone could find out about it and publish it.”

“Okay, when Barack calls me to defend the next endangered Democratic Senate seat, I’ll practice full disclosure. I’ll tell him all about the F. And about the sex tape I didn’t make. There will be no surprises at the Oval office. We’ll take a page out of George Bush’s playbook. I’ll chalk it up to youthful hijinks. And I’ll say I’ve found Jesus now.”

But still Mom’s got me worried. I mean, this has screwed up my grade point average, which I should tell you — modestly [blushes] — was 4.0 before this unfortunate incident. In fact, it should be noted that I had As in both courses at Midterm before I dropped out. I swear on a stack of Bibles, I’m not smoking or taking drugs. Just in case you thought I’d suddenly become a juvenile delinquent a few decades too late.

In fact, I’m headed to my first class tonight in do-over Spanish 1B. I promise to study hard. Don’t judge me harshly InterWebs.

Even Oscar's pitching in to keep the family from any more shame.