We wrote our own vows, read from Sandburg, Saint-Exupéry, and Gibran, and sang songs by Jacques Brel and John Lennon.
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We visited the library at least once a week. I especially loved the Montclair (Oakland CA) branch which is contained in the cutest little house, in a lovely tree lined street.
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Thank heavens I was born into a family that encouraged reading. I did the flashlight under the covers thing from early on. In the summers mom would take us to the public library every week or two and each time we checked out the maximum number of books allowable, 19 as I recall. It was then that I discovered the Oz books, the Dr. Doolittle stories, and a British series with a group of siblings, two boys and two girls, that solved mysteries, can’t even remember author or titles. Titles that stick in my mind were Cyrano the Crow, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (can’t leave Dr. Suess out). Oh, I see you can buy a used copy of Blueberries for Sal on Amazon for a penny!

One year when we went on vacation I ‘discovered’ comic books and the folks bought me a couple at every stop along the drive. Batman was my first <3, and Superman, aaaaand Millie the Model. Designed a few outfits at the paper doll level because of that.

Went through a pretty persistent science fiction phase. As far as authors, all the usual suspects plus many obscure ones. I loved the fact that here were some original and creative thinkers. Just couldn’t get into murder mysteries cause I didn’t give a rip whodunnit. Still don’t. It filters my TV watching even now.

Along about the early 70s I came across an oversize, soft cover book called, simply, Shelter, that had tiny print and was rich in illustrations about worldwide handmade houses. I pored over it absorbing every detail. Ever since I’m a sucker for picture books about the woodbutcher’s craft and other sorts of free form buildings.

This falls under a heading of what I came to think of as Hippie Literature. It was when I discovered Trout Fishing in America by Richard Brautigan, the poetry of e. e. cummings and Rod McKuen’s Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows. My favorite author forever and ever has been and remains Tom Robbins of Another Roadside Attraction fame. There was The Electric Acid Kool-Aid Test by Tom Wolfe and can’t leave out Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. For the sake of full disclosure I’d better include the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comics.

The would be homesteader in me would devour non fiction, especially that taught skills, The Foxfire Books, the Whole Earth Catalogue, cookbooks of the time like the Vegetarian Epicure. In later life it turned out that a boyfriend of mine had been a contributor of recipes to the Tassajara Bread Book. Speaking of skills, dare I include the Joy of Sex? I still have tons of old copies of The Mother Earth News magazine. The Great American Hippie Dream of living in a cabin in the woods used to be strong in this one.

This is, of course, the merest scratch of the surface. What a rich life I’ve had because of reading. I’m very thankful.

David Brin's "Uplift" universe thrilled me from the start. It had everything: great mysteries, epic scale, very alien aliens, clever humor, and immense personal depth. Startide Rising is still a favorite to this day.
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Asshole bosses often don’t realize they’re assholes because they’ve been assholes all their life.

Like a frog who doesn’t grok that he or she is slowly parboiling in a pot of hot water, asshole bosses have usually been considered assholes since infancy. Consequently, most assholes develop early defenses to assure themselves that asshole behavior is normal. The hostility that people display toward their young asshole behavior simply becomes the way of the world.

Therefore, dedicated asshole bosses are hard to call out.

First, asshole bosses are somebody’s boss so nobody’s going to challenge. When, on occasion, some underling or colleague hurls the anal epithet, an asshole boss will report or fire the hurler or shrug off the incident on the basis of the above-mentioned early asshole conditioning. ‘Twas ever thus, they must tell themselves as they forge ahead. However, I remember one boss whose back-end behavior surpassed all others.

I had taken a year off from college to work with a fledgling outfit called the Students for a Democratic Society. By day, I joined my SDS cadre in South Philly to campaign for civil rights and against poverty.

By night, I worked as a copy boy on the midnight shift at the Philadelphia Bulletin. It was a romantic job and — despite my humble job description —I wore a trench coat to work in the chilly Philly autumn nights. After work, four am, I’d stand on the catwalk above the giant presses, lean on the rail and feel the roar rising from a line of printing presses so long it disappeared into the press room’s inky mist.

Most of the time, I sat in the city room, checking the teletype machines for dispatches. You’d sit there, minding your own business. First one, then a second, and a third machine clattered into action, cranking out wire service news copy — UPI, AP, Reuters. The machines would fall silent as quickly as they begun. Then I’d tear off the wire story and deliver it to the city desk.

The night editor of the city desk was the asshole. That’s why he wasn’t a day editor. Nobody wanted him around the day shift, and he enjoyed his midnight monarchy. With none of the big shots around, this guy could crown himself king of the newsroom. And he could drink. And drink he did.

A gruff, grizzled guy, older than his years, Frank Elossa lurked behind a perpetual two-day shadow and a stiff head of iron-gray hair. His venous nose telegraphed a love for whiskey. Frank didn’t need to be drunk to be mean. The guy was an all-night son of a bitch.

He loved to humiliate young reporters who worked the night shift. They would approach the city desk and slide their copy across. They’d stand before his desk, waiting for the required acknowledgment. When he was good and goddamn ready, he’d slur “wait a minute, wait a minute.” This prevented the hapless reporter from returning to the sanctuary of his desk and its Underwood.

The editor would heft the reporter’s stack of typed copy sheets, smell it, launch into a fake round of coughing and throw the stack of copy sheets back at the reporter. He’d swivel in his chair, lean over the open bottom desk drawer, and take a fake-surreptitious shot from his fifth of bourbon.

Over his shoulder, Elossa would growl, “if you’re still here when I turn around, I’ll throw this bottle at your head.” Laughter, while the reporter scrambled to collect his article, ease it back onto the city desk and retreat. This happened more than once.

I would traipse between these two worlds: the walkup flat where I lived with my SDS pals and my midnight Bulletin beehive full of young guys like me named Jimmy Six and Joey Sabbatelli. There were no women on the night shift.

For no apparent reason, no one took me aside, I was promoted to night obituary reporter. Now, night obituary reporter sounds like a crap job but — dreary though the job may have been — when the paper was printed and folded and bundled and thrown out of the trucks onto the morning front porches, grieving people would read my words about their loved ones and I had better get it right. I swelled with pride but, while writing up the deceased, I was still expected to leap from my desk at the clatter of the teletype machine.

One rainy October night, the AP, UPI, and Reuters machines all leapt into action. Sabbatelli, Jimmy Six and I all descended on the copy unfolding beneath the clattering keys.

 

UPI URGENT

FLASH Martin Luther King Jr. Awarded Nobel Peace Prize

OSLO (Oct 14) — The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, the 35-year-old American Negro leader, today was awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize for his ‘‘consistent support’’ of nonviolence in the Negro campaign for civil rights.

 

I tore off the copy sheet. A Negro had won the Nobel Prize! I was astounded, excited to be a part of a historical moment that had leapt across the wires into this cavernous, midnight newsroom.

“Mr Elossa, Mr Elossa,” I shouted. “Martin Luther King just won the Nobel Prize. Look at this!”

Elossa rose out of his chair. He was swaying with the booze, his eyes glazed. He read the copy. “That son of a bitch again!” He paused, struggling to focus on the type. “Goddammit, I’m sick of this son of a bitch.” He crumpled up the wire and threw it in the wastebasket but missed. The paper rolled out from under the copy desk.

Frank Elossa sat back down and, when he bent over to pull the cork on the bourbon, two copy boys and one night obituary reporter snatched the ball of paper.

Just after three am, the two copy boys kept watch over the dozing city desk editor while the night obituary reporter — visible through the newsroom glass — snuck into the main office, smoothed out the King cable and placed it directly in the center of the editorial table for the day shift editors to find in the morning.

# # #

Charles Degelman, Los Angeles

I remember the fact that I wasn't chosen to give a speech at my own graduation through the lens of my mother's indignation.
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The point of all this sad history is to reflect on what happened this weekend, when my 20-year old son asked me to help him with his ballot, and I said "sure."
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