You have found an item located in the Kentuckiana Digital Library.

Blue-Tail Fly, November 11, 1969

Blue-Tail Fly, November 11, 1969 Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- 400dpi TIFF G4 page images Lexington, Ky. : Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- Lexington, Kentucky 2010 2008ua008_1_2 These pages may freely searched and displayed. Permission must be received for subsequent distribution in print or electronically. This is the hi-resolution version of this text. Blue-Tail Fly, November 11, 1969 Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- Lexington, Ky. : Blue-Tail Fly, Inc., 1969- Lexington, Kentucky. 1969-11-11 This electronic text file was created by Optical Character Recognition (OCR). No corrections have been made to the OCR-ed text and no editing has been done to the content of the original document. Encoding has been done through an automated process using the recommendations for Level 1 of the TEI in Libraries Guidelines. Digital page images are linked to the text file. ?inside: the Old Regular Baptist Church; Howard Levy interview; Caudill to Nunn ?contents The Old Regular Baptist Church, page 5 Ethlyn Maggard Caudill to Nunn on stripping in Letcher County, page 6 snaps: Ralph Eugene Meatyard, page 8 interview with Howard Levy, page 10 music: Led Zepplin, page 14 Jack Lyne flicks: Alice's Restaurant, page 15 J.S. Willoughby verse: Wendell Berry, Jonathan Greene, Ellsworth Taylor, page 15 Cover: photo by Ralph Eugene Meatyard The blue-tail fly, a statewide student paper, is published by blue-tail fly, inc. at 210 W. Third Street, Lexington, Kentucky 405 07. Cost per issue is twenty cents; one year's subscription is $2. 00 (a real steal.) We like to think of ourselves as a cross between the newsboys in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and the Sons of the Pioneers. blue-tail fly November 11, 1969 Vol. 1, no. 2 W staff: Guy Mendes, David Holwerk, Jack Lyne, Rick Bell, Gretchen Marcum, Bucky Young, Nick DeMartino, John Filiatreau, Sue Ann Salmon, Howard Mason and Don Pratt. Business gang: John Simon, Jeannie St. Charles, Terry McCarty, Carol Bryant, Maria Chalk, Buck Pennington, Becky Martin and Warren Ford. tidings: Muldraugh: hassle goes on The Meade County power structure continues to grasp at staws in an efforts to repress the GT coffeehouse in Muldraugh. Six people connected with the coffeehouse, including Rev. Terrence Davis of the Louisville Peace Council, were indicted by the county grand jury Oct. 30 on charges of creating a common nuisance and failure to comply with sanitary regulations. Meade County Circuit Judge A. Murray Beard, promptly ordered them held on $ 15 0 0 bond, to be met only with cash or property in Meade County. The common nuisance indictment charges that the six "did willfully, knowingly, and unlawfully suffer, prosure and permit divers idle and evil disposed persons to habitually frequent and assemble in or about a certain building..." On the following day, the same jury cited four more persons associated with the coffeehouse with contempt of court, and Judge Beard ordered them held without bail. According to their lawyer Stuart Lyon of the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union, they were charged with refusing lo testify against themselves. He had advised his clients to take the Fifth Amendment. One soldier was also cited for drinking a beer in the courthouse "sometime in September." As if the legal hassles were not enough, the coffeehouse was firebombed the same day for the second time for the second lime in three weeks. It was not reported to police because, as one soldier put it, "We have no law enforcement here." In reply to the repression, the coffeehouse people issued a statement which said, "We are all ready to go to jail. But the coffeehouse will stay open." Two demonstrations were held in Brandenburg that weekend to protest the actions of the Meade County officials. On Tuesday the 4 th, appeals were heard in two separate Louisville on the excessive bond issue. Even the stalwart conservative U.S. District Court Judge James "Five and Ten" Gordon (five years, $10,000"the maximum for draft resisters) was so dismayed by the $1500 bond that he ordered the prisoners let out on their own recognizance. He noted that "we had people restrained on bonds of $1500 for statute violations that carried $50 fines and thirty days in jail." Kentucky Court of Appeals Judge Sam Steinfield refused the same day to grant temporary relief for the four jailed on contempt charges. He scheduled a hearing for Friday the 7 th, when he could have a full transcript of the grand jury proceedings. But he said that no evidence of error in Judge Beard's behavior had been presented. Another hearing was scheduled for Monday the 10th in Judge Steinfield's court, at which attorneys for the coffeehouse will ask for an injunction to prevent Meade County officials from interfering with the coffeehouse. Tom Jackson, a Vietnam veteran who lives at the coffeehouse with his wife and child, said the officials "are only fighting against themselves. The more they deprive us of our civil liberties, the more they bring in support for our side. Jackson and the other coffeehouse people believe the only enemies in the case are the army brass and the county officials..' "The people of Muldraugh are not our enemies," said Jackson. "Part of our overall plan from the very beginning has been to work with the townspeople"not just those friendly with us, but all the people here." Legal 'hair' suspensions Taking care to point out that improper expulsion or suspension of long-haired students and instructors can result in expensive and embarrassing damage suits, the president of the Kentucky School Board Association then proceeded to outline the "proper" method for such actions at an October 9 meeting in Louisville. F. C. Bryan, an attorney, told 60 representatives of the association's Fifth Region that a student with a "Beatle haircut" can be suspended under state law if his presence constitutes a disruption of the educational process. Apparently, the trick lies in "documented evidence" of the disruptive factors in order to guarantee the student due process of law. Here! Here! As his landmark case, Bryan, of Mount Sterling, cited a 1967 incident in which a long-haired high school student was successfully suspended. The documented evidence he supplied to indicate the student was guilty of disruption is as follows: "It seems as though the football team decided to give this fella a haircut themselves. And the student was injured with the scissors." Among the other disruptive incidents this student was found guilty of was a sign someone placed on the door of the girls' rest room that read, "For Girls and Long-Haired Boys." The story of this "even-principals-can-learn-to-cut-hair-in-three-easy-steps" talk first appeared in the Courier-Journal. Among the letters received in response was one from Mrs. Suzanne Post, chairman of the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union (KCLU). Part of her letter read as follows: "This was either a very poorly reported speech or a very poor speech. "Did the speaker also give as a reason for according due process to students the right to it provided by our Constitution? Did he also mention that if we want to teach our young about our Bill of Rights the place and way to start is in our schools by example? In an interview, Mrs. Post said KCLU "has been most active in trying to get the school boards to implement standards of academic freedom in secondary schools." However, she concedes, there are a lot of difficulties ahead even where the standards are adopted because of "principals who are quite autonomous in their own little enclaves" and because of the reluctance of students to challenge school officials out of justifiable fears that their futures may be ruined as a result. Despite some unsuccessful attempts to enable students to keep their hair"all of it"she is optimistic about future cases because of recent positive precedents set by the Supreme Court. "The KCLU is concerned about young people and their legal problems," she said, "and we want to let them know they have community support when they decide to stand up and exercise their creativity and individuality." 2 November 11,1969 ?Kay Brookshire In loco parentis In loco parentis lives. In fervent anticipation of the traditional spring woman sale, the University of Kentucky's Associated Women Students sponsored its answer to the limming run to the sea, the creampuff evanescence of a Bridal Fair. Marching to the beat of a different drummer, members of the Women's Liberation Movement spoke downstairs in the UK Student Center, providing literature on birth control pills, veneral disease, diaphragms, family planning and inner uteral devices. Upstairs, however, UK coeds weighed the merits of various carat rings, inspected china patterns, and viewed what Bridal Fair promo called "exquisitely regal creations." The fashion show was climaxed by the mock wedding of two UK students, complete with dim lights, romantic music and colored-cellophane, stained-glass windows. Added spice to the jello-pudding afternoon was provided by the appearance of Dean of Students Jack Hall (second from right) as the proud beaming father of the bride, and Associate Dean of Students Betty Jo Palmer (far right) as the melancholy, choked-up mother of the bride. They're with Us, boys and girls, every step of the way. Kentucky plans for Nov. 15th Some 650 Kentuckians, 400 from the Louisville area and another 250 from Lexington, are going to Washington for the November 15 March Against Death. Seven buses"that's all that was available; the bus people said every free bus east of the Rockies is headed for Washington that weekend"will carry demonstrators from Louisville while UK students will be driving cars and U-Haul econoline vans. Because some people can't afford the trip to D.C., a Western Kentucky University student, Steve Tichnor, organized a march on Frankfort, also planned for the 15th. Tichnor, who was a little late in getting information out on the statewide march, is expecting at least 1000 to mass on the capitol steps. The only Kentucky action scheduled for the 13 th and 14 th is in Louisville, where University of Louisville students will distribute anti-war leaflets in shopping areas. Many students will also be speaking to various civic groups that week. UL's homecoming game is scheduled for the 15 th and students plan to pass out leaflets there also. Joe DeCesare, a Marine Corps Vietnam veteran, had planned to sky dive unannounced onto the field at halftime with an American flag in hand and a giant peace symbol on his chute, but the Federal Aviation Agency nixed the idea (he filed a preliminary flight plan) because the stadium is on the approach to Standiford Field. Army tries to kidnap GI FORT LEWIS, Washington (LNS)"The Army's attempts to stifle growing GI dissent have now extended to kidnapping. Steve Gilbert, one of the founders of FT A (the Ft. Knox underground paper) and an active GI organizer, came perilously close to being shanghied to Korea this week. Only the strategic presence of a group of vocal civilians prevented him from being unwillingly shipped overseas. Gilbert refused orders to report to Korea last spring and went AWOL from Ft. Knox instead, spending his time travelling around the country building the GI movement. He returned to the Army early in October "because that's where our fight is now." Two hours after he turned himself in to military authorities at Ft. Knox (where the Army had promised they would court-martial him) he was shipped to Ft. Lewis Washington, and placed in the stockade. On Oct. 24 he was told he was going to Korea, and was put on the passenger list for the 1.00 a.m. flight. He managed a phone call to his lawyer, who then protested through the proper channels and was assured that Gilbert would not be shipped. Nevertheless, Gilbert's name was not withdrawn from the passenger list. That night, Gilbert was taken under armed guard and held in confinement until half an hour before his scheduled departure. The Army tried to process him separately and slip him onto the plane secretly. But the Army lost the day. A group of civilians from the Shelter Half Coffee House spotted Gilbert and raised an ear-splitting ruckus, screaming and yelling for the GI to be set free. (The coffee house organizers had been tipped off by Gilbert's lawyer that he would be boarding the plane.) The Army hustled Gilbert, fist raised, into a van. The captive soldier was whisked away by his Army abductors and that particular plane left for Korea without him. Gilbert's refusal to fight in Korea stems from a recognition of what U.S. presence there is all about. "I won't allow myself to be used by giant corporations," he says, "which want to make a lot of money in war-torn countries." The evergrowing war in Korea involves the same U.S. interests which brought half a million troops to Vietnam. Gilbert understands this, and states, "It's about time this country was run by the people and not just a few big shots." Gilbert is still in the Ft. Lewis Stockade, and is liable to be kidnapped again at any time. His lawyer and other civilians are forbidden to see him. The Army would love to get Steve Gilbert alone in Korea, away from his civilian lawyer and the American press. It's much easier to court-martial him there, and the Korean stockade is even more brutal than those here in the states. Most important, it would separate him from the fast-growing GI movement here. blue-tail fly 'Land that I loveV Covington commissioners, eight days after the Moratorium, unanimously passed a resolution supporting the Nixon administration's international military policy. The move was taken despite the protests of members of Kentuckians for Peace, who October 15 led a march of about 500 from the courthouse steps in Covington to a mass rally of 2500 in downtown Cincinnati. Covington Attorney Pat Flannery, who is seeking election to the commission, read into the record of the meeting the number of war dead, and two local religious leaders attacked the "corrupted" authority of the national administration. But the doves got their biggest boost when super-patriot (I'm for American right or wrong.") Commissioner Ray Wehrman tried to sing "God Bless America." He couldn't remember the second line. Flannery offered to give him a little help. Moratorium in Vietnam by Hugo Hill SAIGON (LNS)"GI's and American civilians in South Vietnam joined in the Oct. 15 anti-war protests. The police-state atmosphere discouraged mass actions, but the small-scale actions were significant nonetheless. GI's of the "Americal Division," forced to go on patrol on Moratorium Day, wore balck armbands in solidarity with the stateside demonstrations. They said they wanted all GI's out of Vietnam now. The soldiers defied strict Army regulations against "partisan political" activities. At the same time, a group of twenty American civilians delivered an anti-war statement to the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. The statement, to be conveyed to Nixon, said: "As millions of Americans today express their opposition to the war in Vietnam, we who work here wish to add our voices to theirs. We know the sufferings of the Vietnamese. We say this war must stop. We call for the immediate withdrawal of all American troops." The message was signed by 32 Americans, most of whom have been in Vietnam for more than a year. Colonial Governor Ellsworth Bunker, uptight about a possible sit-in, refused to allow the group into the Embassy. He consented, however, to receive four representatives. While the four people were inside rapping with Bunker, the others stood outside, heads bowed in silent mourning for the war dead. As if to remind the demonstrators what their homeland is like, the Embassy sent out -a "Hungarian freedom-fighter" to heckle them. His bill-of-fare consisted of "Go back to Russia!" and "Do you think you could get away with this in Peking?" Homesickness was widespread. But Bunker got the message: revolt in the Mother Country is spreading among the press-ganged GI's and civilian camp-followers. These cracks in the overseas colonial establishment are a small but embarrassing third front. Woodstock Revisited by Jon Wiener LOS ANGELES (LNS)"Remember Woodstock? Remember how the radical press attacked this biggest rock festival in the history of the world (4 5 0,0 0 0 people) 'because it was a business that was going to make a profit of one million dollars by selling us our own music? Remember how so many kids came they couldn't collect tickets, and a quarter of a million people got in for free? And remember how the promoters announced that they lost SI million, and how everyone called that a victory for the people? Well, the promoters rnide plenty of money, it turns out; exactly how much is difficult to say. Their wailing "we lost a million" was part of a clever and, up to now successful attempt to fool the public and undermine the radicals' attack on their operation. The true story has been uncovered by the show-biz newspaper. Variety. The Woodstock promoters"Joel Rose-man, John Roberts, Michael Lang and Artie Kornfeld"claimed to be $1.3 million in debt at the end of the festival. Then -they started trying to buy each other out, and it was reported that Albert Grossman, manager of Dylan, Janis Jop-lin, and The Band, among others, was offering $1 million for one-fourth of the business. Albert Grossman is the most successful money-maker in rock music; he doesn't make mistakes. Why, Variety asked, would Grossman offer $1 million to acquire a debt of $ 1.3 million? The answer was that there was no debt, that the promoters' report of their expenses was filled with lies. The promoters sold $1.4 million in mail-order tickets; they claim that their expenses were $2.7 million. They say they spent $600,000 on emergency helicopters, food and medicine, which makes them seem pretty generous. But their eight helicopters cost $500 an hour; for three ten-hour days, that's only $120,000, which leaves $480,000 for food and medicine. And half the helicopters were hired before-hand to ferry the performers around; this raises the food and medicine cost to $550,000. But, as everyone who was there, has testified, virtually the only source of food and medicine was the Hog Farm. The promoters' claimed emergency costs were a half-million dollar lie. They claim they paid the talent $250,000. But simply adding up what they say they paid the individual acts gives the figure $150,000. Some had argued that "the performers don't make the money on these things"; Woodstock's list of who got what disproves that idea, and provides a financial ranking of the popularity of the various rock groups. The most expensive group was the Jimi Hendrix Experience"they took home $18,000 for their set. Next was Blood, Sweat and Tears"$ 15,0 0 0 . Creedence Clearwater Revival and Joan Baez got $10,000 each; The Band, Jefferson Airplane, and Janis Joplin got $ 7,5 0 0 each. From there on down, the list reads; Sly and the Family Stone, $7,000; Canned Heat, $6,500; The Who, $6,250; Richie Havens, $6,000; Arlo Guthrie, $5,000; Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, $5,000; Ravi Shankar, $4,500; Johnny Winter, $3,750; Ten Years After, $3,250; Country Joe, $2,500; the Grateful Dead, $2,500; and down through other groups to Quill, $375. Woodstock claims production costs exclusive of talent were $2.25 million. The Isle of Wight festival cost $50,000 to produce, which is probably closer to the true figure for Woodstock. There are two particularly interesting figures in Woodstock's budget: $16,000 to charter a plane for the Hog Farm, and $10,000 for "Yippee Headquarters." The policing and relief work done by these two groups were cheap considering the services they provided for the promoters. The final unreported source of income for Woodstock is the royalties from the feature-length film "Woodstock," which will open across the nation at Christmas time. Warner's, according to Variety, is certain it will be their biggest moneymaker of the season. All of this adds up to what many had suspected all along; The Woodstock rock festival was not a victory for "the people," it was a victory for the businessman-promoters, men who make a profit by exploiting youth culture. The stars of rock have helped perpetuate business dominance of pop music, turning their music into a commodity to be sold to whoever has the money"at the same time that these same stars claim to be part of a political movement that opposes exploitation. Joan Baez insisted at her last New York concert that no one be allowed in for less than two dollars"if you want to hear her sing about not paying her income taxes because they go for war, you have to pay for it. And Dylan, who was crucial to the recent development of the protest song, demanded $85,000 for his Isle of Wight appearance"which turned out to be more than $7,000 a song. We don't need any more multi-day rock festivals with expensive tickets""festivals of love" that turn out to be festivals of profit for the promoters. Instead, we need free concerts, and lot of them"free music in all the parks every week. Contributions of low-priced admissions could cover the expenses of the bands"they have to eat too. But the junior assistant west coast promo man, and his profit-minded counterparts across the country, have got to go. The music is ours, not theirs. 43 more shopping days Roger F. Berkshire, 19-year-old freshman at University of Kentucky Northern Community College, was arrested October 24 by Covington police and charged with possession of marijuana. About 30 small packages of the weed were found, police said, in a softdrink cooler in the trunk of the youth's car. The car was parked outside his Covington home. Berkshire told police he had grown the marijuana, as yet uncured, on a vac/ it lot and intended to give it as Christmas gifts to his friends. 3 ?DDT suit initiated NKW YORK (LNS)-A $30 billion damage suit was filed Oct. 14 in Federal Court in an attempt to attack those responsible for DDT poisoning and related ecological crimes. The suit, filed by Mrs. Carol Y anna-cone, names eight companies, the principal manufacturers and distributors of DDT, the insecticide. The defendants are: Montrose Chemical, Baldwin Montrose Chemical, Chris-Craft Industries, Stauffer Chemical, Allied Chemical, Diamond Shamrock, Olin Chemical and Lebanon Chemical. The suit cites the direct damage done by DDT as well as anti-trust violations by the corporations, who have fixed prices and crushed competition. Mrs. Yannacone, whose husband, Victor, is associated with the Environmental Defense Fund, filed the suit "on behalf of all the people of the United States, not only of this generation but of those generations yet unborn, all of whom are equitable owners of the natural resources of the United States...entitled to the full benefit, use and enjoyment of the environment and natural resources without damage of degradation from the illegal acts and conduct of the defendants in furthering the production, distribution and use of the broad-spectrum, persistant chemical biocide DDT." Seale bound in Chicago CHICAGO (LNS)-Bobby Seale, the national leader of a militant political group dedicated to the liberation of black people, has been gagged and strapped to his chair in an ultra-modern courtroom in the city of Chicago. If it weren't Bobby Seale, if presiding Judge Julius J. Hoffman didn't have the the power of the state on his side, one might see it all as a tableau from the Theater of Cruelty. But Bobby Seale's situation is more than symbolic. It is real, and there is only one word to describe it"slavery. Seale is a black man in chains whose fate is now determined by the masters in their mansions. Seale's ordeal is a reasoned, if cruel response to his position as leader of the Black Panther Party. When he arrives at the courtroom at 10 AM each day, he has already undergone 6 hours of har-rassment by jailers, marshals and other pigs. They go to his solitary cell and wake him up at 4 am"one hour earlier than any other prisoner"and make him stand in place for one hour. From 5 to 7, he stands in a small room with hundreds of . other prisoners waiting to be transferred to various courthouses. From 7 to 8 he waits in still another room. Some time before he and his chair are carried into the wood-panelled courtroom, a team of marshals go to work on him. His boots are loosened and his legs are bound with heavy leather straps to the legs of a folding chair. His wrists, wound several times with leather, are buckled to the arms of the chair. Several layers of gauze, adhesive tape, and cloth are wound around his mouth and tied at the back of his head. A similar gag is wound vertically around his jaw and tied at the top of his head. The type of gauze used resembles that used by football players to hold a trick knee in place. As time passes the gauze tightens up. They have tried to stuff rags in Bobby's mouth but he successfully resisted this particular device. On Thursday Oct. 30, despite all this, Bobby continued to make his plea for bis right to defend himself"including the right to cross-examine witnesses. He has spoken out in the courtroom only to make this legal point, and only when his name is mentioned or when the defense attorneys have completed their cross-examination. The press, the judge and the prosecution have attempted to portray Seale as a wildman engaging in "disruption" and "outbursts". It is clear, however, that there would be no shouting if the judge would allow Seale to defend himself, or postpone the trial until Seale's lawyer, Charles R. Garry, recovers from an operation. In a note smuggled into the courtroom and given to Jerry Rubin who later released it, Seale wrote, in part: Section 198, title 42 of the United States Government Code says that a black man cannot be discriminated against in any court in any legal defense matter. Why am I handcuffed, shackled to a chair, and gagged in Judge Hoffman's United States District of Illinois courtroom? I am sure the masses of Americans, especially Black People, are intelligent enough to see the injustice from the very beginning of this trial as a railroading operation of U.S. imperialism abroad and domestic imperialism"fascism"here at home. We should know that racism plus capitalism breeds fascism; but, we see how the newspapers and especially the TV and radio news media try to say or imply that the reason I was shackled and gagged was because of what this pig Judge calls "outbursts" or "interrupting the court proceedings." The masses of working people, (the employed and unemployed Black and poor oppressed people), can see further than that. And those who cannot and/or those who are confused about it all can now see the real reasons fascism is showing its head more openly; because a man stands up and speaks in behalf of his constitutional rights to be represented by legal counsel of his choosing and if not that, then the constitutional right to defend himself by being his own lawyer until his ill lawyer, who is most effective in proving his innocence, can come to defend him. To say that I made outbursts is erroneous, incorrect, and a lie misleading the American people. I have sat for hours and listened to testimony, most of which is lies, directed against the other seven defendants. The only times I've stood up and demanded my right to legal defense are when a witness says my name. Then I stand up and say "I object on the grounds that my lawyer Charles R. Garry is not here. I've been denied his services and I have also been denied the right to defend myself, so I object to this witness testifying against me." And then the Judge starts telling me that I have a lawyer, one that he, the Judge, has chosen and not me. That lawyer is Kunstler whom I do not desire at all to defend me in these proceedings. I know and have witnessed myself the lies that the pig U.S. government prosecuting attorneys are saying against me with their CIA-FBI-COPS et al, witnesses. Charles R. Garry is three times as good as Kunstler and Weinglass although they are very good lawyers and they will tell you themselves that they respect Charles R. Garry. Kunstler is profound in all of his legal techniques and is one of the lawyers for the New York 21 brothers and sisters. But this trial is an attempt to keep me locked up and the other seven defendants too, forever. The Government doesn't want Charles R. Garry here. They are happy that Garry isn't here. He is nearly 60 years old and he has law on the top of his head that will make a judge's head and any government prosecuting attorney's head swim. Garry knows, from being the Chief Counsel for the Black Panther Party, the intricate political repression against the party as it's related directly to the oppression of black America, historically and presently; he knows how to bring this out legally in the courtroom. And the Pigs don't want him there to defend me. After this story was set, Bobby Seale was finally unbound and continued trying to defend himself. Hoffman then declared Seale's a mistrial and sentenced Seale to four years imprisonment for contempt of court. GI's are 'sick' of war Spock to speak After a bit of a hassle, Dr. Benjamin Spock, whose conviction for conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance was recently overturned, will indeed speak in Louisville. Dr. Spock will speak at 8 p.m., Friday, December 5, at the Atherton High School Auditorium. Tickets can be obtained by sending a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union, 809 Center Building, Louisville, Ky. 40202. The price is $ 1.5 0 for students and $2.00 for adults. Dr. Spock originally was to have spoken at the First Christian Church. The KCLU, which is sponsoring the talk, had obtained the permission of the church's minister and planning committee for using the facilities. However, the church board called an emergency meeting when it learned of the decision and voted to rescind the church's approval. The board's vote caused a great deal of embarrassment for some members of the congregation and sent the KCLU into a frantic search for a suitable facility. But it appears that everything is all set now. A statement adopted by a group of about 35 Ft. Knox GIs at a recent meeting at the Muldraugh coffeehouse: "We GIs are sick. We are sick of the war." The logical cure: all GIs sick of the war will go on sick call at 8 :30 a.m., Nov. 13, the start of this month's Moratorium. This movement is sponsored by Fun, Travel, Adventure (FTA), Ft. Knox's underground newspaper. Although the plans originated at Ft. Knox, they will be nationwide in scope. GIs at about 45 Army bases are being asked to join in, and spokesmen say the response has been encouraging. The sick-call protest is not illegal and is being supported by the National Mora-troiura Committee. Besides supporting the immediate withdrawal of all troops from Vietnam, other demands include the freeing of Gls imprisoned for protesting Army practices, support for the women's liberation movement and amnesty for GIs in exile from the U.S. military machine. The blue-tail fly needs help with circulation; we need people to help us distribute the paper to as many campuses as possible. It sells for 20y and the seller keeps a dime. Contact us at 210 W Third, Lexington, Ky. 40507 if you can help out. ^iiiititiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiniUiiiifHmuHHiiiiiitiiiiiiHHnniHiHiiiiniiiiiiiiHiiiiii we have: a nice selection of pipes Central Kentucky's only black light room (wow Zap Comics (all numbers) cerebral posters selected articles of clothing we do not have: rebel flag posters umbrellas zodiac commode seats and other bopper stuff the store 157 S. Lime 1-6 usually ^lllllllillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllH UK STUDENT ACTIVITIES BOARD presents pacific gas & electric and motherlode "WHEN I DIE' NOVEMBER 22 8 p.m. MEMORIAL COLISEUM ADVANCE TICKETS $2. 00 AND $2. 50 ON SALE AT: STUDENT CENTER CENTRAL INFORMATION DESK, BARNEY MILLER'S, HYMSON'S AT TURFLAND AND DAWAHARE'S IN GARDENSIDE 4 November 11,1969 ?The Old Regular 1 Baptist Church Si -^m_ ii II by Ethlyn Maggard Setting: About a mile up in a hollow in an Appalacian neighborhood. There a family lives in an unpainted framed house. The house is situated against the hillside. A barn and chicken house are nearby. At the mouth of the hollow, a small, simple white church stands. The Slone family attends this church. One warm Sunday morning at six o'clock, the sun shone brightly on the tin roof of the Slone family home. The birds were singing their pretty songs, the roosters were crowing, and the cow was mooing. Mrs. James Slone awoke to these sounds every morning. She never used an alarm clock. She got up unhesitatingly this morning for it was meeting time at the Old Regular Baptist Church that she had been brought up to believe in. Only three years ago, she had been baptized in a hole of water near the church. Since the services are held in the Old Regular Baptist Churches only once a month, members of one Church commute to the services of other Old Regular Baptist Churches the other Sundays. For the members of the home church, it is customary to prepare dinner for visiting brethren. Thus Mrs. Slone began scurrying about in the kitchen to get breakfast ready and served. She rattled the pots and pans louder than usual so as to awake her three teen-age daughters whose bedroom wall joined the kitchen wall. They would soon have to be getting up to wash the dishes and tidy up the house. Meanwhile, Mr. Slone, who slept only ten minutes later than Mrs. This essay was originally written as an assignment for a sociology class at Alice Lloyd College in Pippa Passes, where Miss Maggard--a native of the mountains--is a student. brae-tail fly Slone, was getting up to go to the barn to feed and water the stock. He then came back to the house to wash. He interrupted Mrs. Slone to fix the milk bucket. She was putting her delicious homemade biscuits into the two large pans that she used to bake them in. Her family was a big biscuit eater, and on Sunday mornings when they usually had fried chicken, they ate even more biscuits. Mrs. Slone began singing "Amazing Grace. " Soon Mr. Slone had returned with the milk, and again Mrs. Slone had to stop cooking to carefully strain the milk and put it away. Mr. Slone then went out to let out the chickens which he fed big ears of corn he had planted last year. He began to sing too, when he heard his wife singing her long, lonesome version of 'Amazing Grace, " typical of the way all songs are sung in the Old Regular Baptist Church. In the two adjoining bedrooms, their teen-age daughters and son were awake. They lay, however, until their mother called them to the good breakfast of fried chicken, biscuits, gravy, and milk or coffee. All the family except Mrs. Slone sat down to the breakfast, but never said a blessing. Old Regular Baptists don't usually say blessings before meals. Mrs. Slone was still standing when the chicken was being passed. She had waited to put the second pan of biscuits in the oven. Billy, their only son at home, was sixteen. He hurriedly ate his breakfast. He knew he had to take the cow to the pasture and then he was free for the day until time for the night milking. The rest of the family finished eating soon afterward. Mrs. Slone gave orders to her daughters about dinner. The children seldom went to church. The Old Regular Baptist Church offers little to nothing to make young people want to attend. There lies a large gap between the church and the young. Short hair Schley Cox for girls, make-up, and jewelry are not to be worn by members of the church. Thus, the young people of Old Regular Baptist, who do not wish to be different from the young people with whom they go to school, stay home and cook dinner for their parents and any guests they may bring home with them. Mrs. Slone laid out her husband's clothes for him. His Sunday outfit consists of a neatly ironed white shirt and gray pants; he wore no coat or tie. While there were members of the church who did, Mr. Slone felt that too many people were abandoning the beliefs of the old hardliners. One of his married sons had bought him a wrist watch for his birthday, but Mr. Slone refused to wear it and gave it to his son instead. After she had dressed, Mrs. Slone went into the kitchen to give her daughters last minute orders about preparing dinner. All of her daughters could cook almost as well as she, but they sometimes had difficulty in the time they prepared their meals. They would sometimes have bread done long before the time for serving. But, on the whole, their cooking was sufficient enough, not only to keep them from being ashamed of it, but to make them proud of it. Any mountain girl was supposed to be a good cook, and guest were often the parents of good looking sons. The girls were concerned about what they would tell them their cooking was like. Thus, the parents were reasonably assured of bringing guests home to a well-cooked and well-prepared dinner. When Mr. and Mrs. Slone left the house they carried no Bible. They would not need one at the services because the services are very simple and are designed for the illiterate. In the church there is no Bible reading. The language used in the sermons is very plain. Yes, there are as many continued on page 13 S ?Hon. Louie B. Nunn Governor of Kentucky-Frankfort, Kentucky-Dear Governor Nunn: As a conservationist I am grateful to you for your action and concern in purchasing and conserving Lilly's Wood in Letcher County, and for your intervention to prevent the damming of the upper reaches of the Red River Gorge. Your record on these matters has encouraged me to believe that you may feel a similar desire to help prevent the needless destruction by Bethlehem Steel Corporation of a large territory of eastern Kentucky. Bethlehem owns approximately 40, 000 acres in Letcher, Knott, Floyd, and Pike counties, According to reliable information its Board of Directors decided several years ago that it would not engage in strip mining because the damage to the land and adverse criticism resulting from strip mining outweighed any economic advantages derived from it. This was the policy of the company until the summer of this year. In this year officials of the company residing in Kentucky persuaded the Board to alter its previous decision and resort to strip mining. Again, it is my information that the Board authorized stripping with a good deal of hesitation. Most of this land has already been deep mined or is scheduled for deep mining by existing or projected subterranean operations. The coal is of high quality metal-lurigical grade and subterranean operations will recover all of it except a small band in the outcrop. Bethelhem plans to clear-cut and strip mine the outcrop on three levels. This will, of course, totally destroy the forest and turn the land into a massive ruin totally bereft of any ecological system. If the best reclamation procedures are followed and are highly successful, it will eventually be covered with fescue arid some pines and locust trees. As you may be aware, this land lies in the heart of the Cumberlands, the oldest surviving mixed mesophitic forest in the world. The timber has been cut off, but the stand of second growth hardwoods is excellent and is growing rapidly. The land is beautiful, the natural beauty is improving yearly, and, if preserved, the timber will constitute an important attraction tho to furniture and other wood using industries in the years to come. 6 November 11,1969 ?A number of conservation organizations have protested Bethlehem's determination to destroy this land. The enclosed copy of a letter from Dr. Elvis J. Stahr of the National Audubon Society to Mr. S.S. Cort, President of Bethlehem Steel, is illustrative of their concern. President Nixon has-recently expressed deep concern for the growing damage to our environment, including the land, air and water. If Bethelhem strip mines according to its plan it will have done tremendous damage to the environment in a large area of Kentucky. The forests will be uprooted and destroyed. The creeks will be silted with mud. Natural beauty will turn into man-made ugliness. Practically all the benefits from the operation will leave Kentucky and, as usual, we will keep the problems. Very few Bethlehem share holders live in this state. I urge you to call upon Bethelhem to abstain from this act of greed. The corporation's original intent to preserve the land was laudable and the company should be encouraged to return to it. It is probable that a request from your office to this effect would have a strongly persuasive influence with the company's directors. If the company is determined to destroy the land for this tiny outcrop of coal and to ignore the wishes and welfare of Kentuckians, I urge you to call a public hearing at which conservationists can be heard as well as coal company officials. The whole problem of what is happening to our land and what will happen as a result of the proposed stripping should be aired. Representatives of the National Audubon Society, the Sierra Club, the Garden Clubs of America, the Isaac Walton Leageu, the Soil Conservation Society of America, the Natural Resources Commission of the Council of the Southern Mountains and similar groups should be invited to attend and participate. A decision to tear up a large area of this state and to disrupt its streams and wild life should not be made in secrecy and without public participation. Hoping you will concur in the foregoing, I am Very truly yours, Harry M. Caudill blue-tail fly ? ?snaps: Ralph Eugene Meatyard A businessman five and one-half days a week, Ralph Eugene Meatyard photographs on weekends, following his demon around backyard and garage, into abandoned houses, up and down the back roads of central Kentucky, with some of his handsome family usually in tow for use as models, his car trunk full of props --ghoulish masks, artificial flowers, dismembered dolls, maybe a rubber chicken or a dead possum to hang on a flowering tree like an ornament. By 1960, after 10 years of making pictures, he broke through to something all his own, and since then his reputation has grown steadily. James Baker Hall ?You kike Basterd, Your not interested in war crimes being committed by Viet Congs. Your only interested in yourself getting out of the draft so you could make a lot of money as a dermatologist. You evil cocksuckers are a known rare of money hungry bas-terds which would pimp for their sisters and get a nigger to pay %'l for a short time. I seen it. Thats why 6.000,000 of you were gassed like rats by Kiehman We hope your found guilty. Anonymous Carbondale, Pennsylvania interview: In June of 1967, Captain Howard B. Levy, an Army doctor at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, was court-martialed and sentenced to three years hard labor; his crime--refusing to give medical training to Green Berets. The case drew widespread publicity and, as indicated by the letters above, caused considerable controversy. With time off for good behavior, Dr. Levy was released from Leavenworth in August. Since then he has been working with both an activist health organization in New York and the GI coffeehouse movement. He was interviewed last week in Louisville before going to Muldraugh to speak at the coffeehouse there. btf: What was it that led you to take your stand against training Special Forces personnel? Levy: I had begun by training the Special Forces for about two or three months, and then found out what they are really all about, from a medical point of view. I knew what Special Forces was all about and I had my suspicions when I started to train them, but the normal reaction for most physicians if they're asked to give someone medical training, is to give it. And I did give it, and gradually learned from them what their mission was all about, specifically with regard to their medical training, and I finally decided I wasn't going to do it anymore. And what I did originally was nothing very heroic, I just didn't train them. They'd hand around my office and I just wouldn't train them. That's what most of the physicians were doing, perhaps for other reasons, though. After that, the thing gradually escalated over the course of six months and it culminated in me being given a direct order to train these guys. At that point I just said 'no'. btf: What were the Special Forces using the medical training for? Levy: Their basic mission is to militarize villages in Vietnam. The way they would do it would 10 be to send a medic in to treat some sick children, women or elderly people, and in the course of treating them over a period of several weeks or months, they would win the confidence of the people in the village. At that point, once they'd won over their allegiance, they could then proceed to militarize the village, which is really what their mission was all about anyhow. They were using medicine as kind of a public relations ploy. . . some of the Special Forces corpsmen may have had humanitarian motives, but it's sort of like the Peace Corps: most of the Peace Corps volunteers I've met have been humanitarian, their mission, however, is counter-insurgency. And I think that, when looked at from the proper perspective, if they are humanitarian, it's a form of misguided humanitarianism. Some of the Special Forces corpsmen may have been humanitarian, their mission certainly wasn't. btf: What was your existence in the Army like prior to the controversy? Levy: My attitude at the time--and I realize now that it was a mistake--was that I didn't hassle with the Army. I kind of rationalized my existence in Columbia, South Carolina, by doing civil rights work. It was the tail-end of the civil rights movement and I was doing voter registration in the black community. I put in my seven hours or so on the post, with the intention of getting off the post and doing what was essentially pretty moderate civil rights work. So I didn't go in with the intention of organizing in the Army because back in 1965 there wasn't anybody organizing in the army. btf: Were you just out of school at the time? Levy: No, I had finished my training. I had interned for a year and then had taken a three-year residency in dermatology. btf: Wasn't the pressure put on you because of your civil rights work? Weren't there others who weren't training Special Forces? November 11,1969 ?Dr. Howard B. Levy Levy: There was actually no medic training program at Ft. Jackson. The founder of the Special Forces medics program-made a tour of Ft. Jackson and he said he thought the program was lax, in fact, not there. Most of the guys were not training them, not for political reasons but because they were lazy and didn't want to be bothered with them. And they didn't think it was possible to train them anyway. Six months to a year after I was court-martialed, another doctor adamantly and openly refused to train them and he was never given a direct order to train them and was never court-martialed. Originally, my commanding officer intended to give me an article 15--a non-judicial form of punishment which could have amounted to something less than a jail sentence. . . restriction on post, a fine, a reprimand. . .and the papers were all written up for it. At that point my commanding officer, Colonel Fancy, was visited by Military Intelligence and they plopped a G-2 dossier on his desk. 180 pages on me. After reading it he dertermined I was a communist and then dropped the article 15 and proceeded with the court-martial, I don't know what was in the dossier, but I do know who complied it: Agent West, and Agent West lives in Newberry County, South Carolina, where I was doing my voter registration work. And we've alleged, and I think we're going to prove (in a review before a Pennsylvania district court in the next few months), that Agent West has had very close ties with racists in Newberry County, including the Klan. btf: Were you sent straight to Leavenworth once you were court-martialed? Levy: No, I spent six months at Ft. Jackson. And the Army, in their infinite wisdom, made a series of mistakes from that point on. In the beginning they had me in solitary confinement, lights on 24 hours a day, no mail, nothing. After about a week or two of that, we finally got out a press release; threw it across the blue-tail fly front page of the New York Times.. .and the \'W: Army panicked. They were reeling from aH r^m the bad publicity, so then they opened the ss^l&S floodgates wide--they gave xne my mail, books, magazines, unlimited visitors and an incoming m telephone. That was a mistake--because we then proceeded to organize. The six months I spent at Ft. Jackson were the most profitable months I spent in South Carolina. For example, we organized the first ACLU chapter in the state. . . we got the students at the University of South Carolina involved in relating to GI's. . . we related to GI's who came to visit me often and they later, after I was transferred to Leavenworth, organized the first pray-in on a military post--one of the early manifestations of organized GI dissent. . . and I was in communication with Freddie Gardner and Donna Mickleson, who organized in Columbia, South Carolina, the first GI coffeehouse. So there was a lot of stuff going on, and much -of it was centered around my cell, they were cell meetings. We'd have 20 people in there at times. Well, the army got tired of that after about six months and transferred me to Leavenworth. . . I was treated very well at Leavenworth, because I was an officer still--technically--and they segregate the officers and our living accomodations were considerably better than that of the general inmate population. They harrassed me, though, as they did many of the political prisoners, in other ways. For instance, they wouldn't let me work as a physician . . . they wouldn't let me teach up in the education department. . . they wouldn't let any political prisoners work on the prison magazine or for the radio station. One political prisoner asked about that and was told the reason he couldn't was because he had committed a heinous offense, the heinous offense being that he had refused to serve in Vietnam. At the same time, one other prisoner, a professional man, a dentist from New York, was teaching up there and he had been convicted of having sodomized a Boy Scout troop, which was not a heinous offense by the Army's criteria. One other guy who was working 11 ?up there had been convicted of raping his pre-adolescent daughter, which was also not a heinous offense. btf: Have you experienced any harassment since you you've been out? Levy: Only from the military. Whenever I'm in a military town I'm followed. We went down to Ft. Dix in Wrightstown, New Jersey, and we hadn't been off the interstate for ten seconds when a military car started following us. btf: What were your thoughts on the recent Green Beret murder case? Levy: Well, as I was saying two years ago when I was so rudely interrupted... my initial reaction was to try to figure out why they tried to bust a whole command in Vietnam. That's unprecedented. There have been Special Forces men who have b been court-martialed for murder in Vietnam. There's a fellow by the name of Captain John McCarthy who was convicted of murdering a Cambodian nationalist, who was also probably a Russian agent. And it's a very, very similar type of a situation to what happened this time. But in that case, only one man was court-martialed and the publicity was nil. Sometimes they have to court-martial a guy, because someone screws up somewhere along the line, the wrong people know about it, and there's going to be adverse publicity, locally for example, in this case, the government of Saigon, and they have to find a scapegoat to cover their tracks. So they pick out a guy like McCarthy and they use him as a scapegoat. . . in this recent instance they didn't use just one scapegoat, they busted a whole command, eight people, seven of whom are high-ranking officers, and that's unprecedented. You have to assume there was something else behind that. My tentative theory was that there are a lot of people in the regular army who are worried about the Special Forces; they were hostile to the Special Forces all along. They are hostile to it because it's another competitive service that's relatively independent of the regular army. . .the regular army now recognizes that the United States is going to involved in counter-insurgency, that they have to re-tool and learn how to fight those kinds of wars. Because if they don't do that, sometime in the future, it would not be inconceivable that you would have a new branch of the service, the Special Forces. At the time Billy Mitchell was talking about the use of airplanes, the regular army was also very upset and ultimately court-martialed him. There are some parallels here. They were very much concerned that an air force might develop, and you don't want an air force because it'll get some of the bread, it'll get some of the influence and power. I think much the same thing may be behind the bringing of charges against the Special Forces. btf: The incident in question then, is just an ordinary incident over there? evy: It's an everyday incident in Vietnam. And most of the time nobody's punished; it's only when something goes awry that someone is punished, and then it's just a scapegoat and not a whole command. One could speculate that General Abrams leaped upon this thing in an effort to discredit the whole Special Forces program. But one doesn't know, because the case never came to trial. It never came to trial because some influential Congressmen like Mendel Rivers of South Carolina, Senator Hollings of South^Carolina and Senator Strom Thurmond of Soxith Carolina told Nixon "You better not court-martial these boys".... and the threat was John Beckman undoubtably made to the effect that "Look, if you court-martial these people you can forget about your ABM missile. " btf: What part is the GI movement playing in the anti-war movement as a whole? Levy: 1 think it's playing the pivotal role.. .for the longest time, after the Pentagon march, there wasn't a whole lot happening in the anti-war movement, except in one place, and that was the military. . .the peace movement wasn't paying much attention to it and hasn't up until the last few months. Nixon knows you can't win a war without an army and the fact of the matter is, that morale in the army is at an all time low. GIs oppose the war in Vietnam in significant numbers.. . the morale can only be described as lethargic. If a guy is asked to guard a 600-foot perimeter, he may go out 60 feet. These guys ain't going to have their ass shot off in Vietnam. . .and if Nixon continues his policy in Vietnam, kind of a holding policy, he may find that he doesn't have any men to hold with. I'm obviously going to encourage anti-war protests on college campuses; it's of some value, certainly. But if you got 90 per cent of the students on every campus opposing the war in Vietnam, it still ain't going to make it. Because nobody is really worried about militancy on college campuses--not in the sense that power is being threatened. Now if you had 10 per cent of the GIs against the war in an organized way, you better believe they're going to worry about it. btf: What kind of supplementary functions can the campus anti-war movement offer to the GI movement? Levy: There ought to be continual support for the coffeehouse. You ought to be able to raise money for legal fees. That coffeehouse ought to be self-sufficient locally, it shouldn't have to depend on money from New York City or San Francisco, it ought to be raised locally. And that's crucial, because the more money you can raise locally, the more money can be used to set up coffeehouses elsewhere--they're pretty expensive to open up. We have six going now with three more in the works. btf: Aren't several of the coffeehouses involved in hassles right now? Levy: Yeah, but the biggest hassle is right here in Kentucky. College students ought to be able to take part in protests in the town of Muldraugh to protest the harassment these people have, undergone. It's important that you make it clear that you support the GI. It's important continued on page 13 November 11,1969 ?Old Regular I as four and five sermons by preachers in the services. No formal qualification is required of male members to preach. Feelings is the only, requirement. If a man feels like preaching, he may do so providing he is in good standing with the church. Even the singing is of such a nature that no schooling is needed for learning the song being sung. Someone-no special one-reads off the words of the songs one line at a time. Then the congregation joins in. All of the congregation may participate in the singing. In an Old Regular Baptist Church, it is easy to tell the members from the non-members. There is a section called the stand where the members sit. The stand is situated about two steps up from the floor. The pulpit is in the center of the stand. While there is no official rule requiring so, there is a tendency for men to sit on one side of the aisle and women on the other. Before the service began, Mr. and Mrs. Slone were mingling with the crowd that had gathered on the outside. The women embracing, the men shaking hands with one another, the moderator soon called them all to join the service. For a lot of people in the mountains, the church is not a place to go hear the word of God, but to go see and be seen. A lot of men hang on the outside squatting on the ground smoking or spitting their tobacco juice. They can hear the preachers preach very loudly, usually with deep emotion. There are usually a lot of women crying, wiping tears with a handkerchief. Often too, a few women members rise to an emotional sermon telling of the beauty of Heaven, shouting "Praise the Lord, and bless his sweet name. " Mrs. Slone, however, does not shout. She adheres to the principle in the Bible regarding silence for women during church services. It is very common for children to be running in and out of the church. The church has no nursery and those who don't have older children to keep the younger ones home, must take them along. The service is divided into two main parts-the singing and the preaching. The The first preacher is called the opener and he may be anybody who feels like it. He warms the other preachers there to the spirit of preaching. The last preacher is someone who has a good reputation for his preaching. He is said to have wound up the meeting. A simple invitation is given before the closing prayer. Then the members of the home church who have prepared dinner invite visitors to go home with them. Often there are people who live in the vicinity but go home with their neighbors for dinner. Mr. and Mrs. Slone invited the entire congregation in an announcement from their seat. But when they were ready to go home, they invited a preacher and his wife who had traveled from a neighboring county, and several other men and their wives. In the meantime at the Slone's residence, Carolyn, Janice and Ruby were cooking away in their kitchen. In the living room where the aroma of cooked chicken spread evenly over the room, a stereo was playing the latest rock records. The girls would take turns going in to dance by it. Their parents wouldn't allow dancing when they were there. But the girls were really like girls in the cities in their likes and dislikes. They talked about school, their latest flames, and the future. Yes, unlike their elders, the Slone girls did not have the fatalism that had kept progress from their area while the rest of the state and nation prospered. Carolyn was going to go to college. She wanted to be a physical education teacher. She was very active. Even when she wasn't working, she liked to be doing something. She would play basketball with her brother's friends. She talked about college all the time. Ruby was setting the table when she heard the car door slam and rushed to see if it was her parent's guests. She reached over to turn the stereo off. Mr. and Mrs. Slone had walked to church that morning, but rode back home with the preacher and his wife. When they got home, the Slones and their guests sat on their porch to await final preparation for dinner. Mrs. Slone went in to make sure the silverware was in the correct place. According to tradition in the mountains, the men were invited first to dine. They all sat down to a very good meal. There was chicken n'dumplings, chicken gravy, green beans (out of the freezer), corn bread and biscuits, potatoe salad, jello, two kinds of cake and apple pie. Milk, lemonade and coffee were served to drink. The men talked about the service, their crops, and the moon-landing. Actually the preacher was the only one that believed man had landed on the moon. Mr. Slone said he believed all the rain had been caused by the attempts of man to out power God. After the men finished eating, the women, who had been out on the porch talking about their 'ritis pains, their childrens' illnesses, and the service that day, were called to eat. The men were then out on the porch and continued their talks. As the women were eating, Carolyn and Janice were washing the dishes the men had eaten from. Ruby was in the living room rocking the baby of one of the women while she ate. When the women had finished, each asked if she could help wash the dishes Both Mrs. Slone and her daughters refused to let them. But Mrs. Baker, the preacher's wife, insisted on helping anyway. Soon the dishes were all washed and the women and men were together talking. It was getting late in the afternoon. The guests were getting ready to depart. Mr. Baker and his wife thanked Mr. and Mrs. Slone for the dinner and asked them to come visit their church and have dinner with them. After the guests had all left, Mr. Slone changed into his work clothes. Soon he would have to do the night feeding. About three o'clock, Billy had come from a restaurant he had been to with his friend and their girl friends. His friend came home with him. They went into the kitchen to eat some for they had had only cokes at the restaurant. There was plenty of food left. After they had eaten, they and the girls went out to play some basketball. They didn't mind that the girls played with them. They enjoyed their company. Since school was out, Billy's friend called his mother to say he wouldn't be home that night. After several ball games, the Slones and their friend went in the house to wash. Then they sat down to the table of leftovers and ate heartily, laughing and enjoying themselves. Mr. and Mrs. Slone went to the barn to feed the stock. Billy and his friend walked up to the pasture to get the cow. Milking and feeding done, the Slone family sat down for a peaceful evening. The two parents went to their bedroom where they sang hymns and talked about who they saw and what they heard. The younger set was in the living room, playing records, but it was turned down much lower than it had been before their parents had arrived from church. Sometime later, everyone was in bed resting from what had been a typical Sunday of their lives. Levy lip for their morale and it's important for them legally. It's much more difficult for the Army to move against these folks if they know when they do move against them, they're going to have 1, 000 people at the gates and with mass publicity. We had a demonstration in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and it ain't nowhere. If it can be done there, there's no reason why it can't be done here. You don't have to worry about the Pentagon, the Justice Department, other folks are going to take care of that. . . you have to organize where you are. The people in Muldraugh might be hostile at first, but you've got to organize those people. I don't know just how one goes about doing that, but it takes patience. It certainly doesn't do a bit of good to talk about rednecks, imbeciles, pigs--that's not the way to win people over. Those people are not the enemy, it's the people that run the military and the people who run that little town. Note: per Levy's suggestion about financial support--donations can be mailed c/o FT A, Box 336 in Louisville. blue-tail fly 13 ?music: by Jack Lyne Led Zeppelin plays the music. The balling machine from England" Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones"have set upon the states again in the form of their second album, "Led Zeppelin II." Ironically enough, the group's first album has put them in somewhat of a bind. Although roundly criticized for its relative simplicity and use of musical cliches, "Led Zeppelin I" stands as a minor rock masterpiece. At the time of that first recording the group had been together only six weeks. Guitar virtuoso Page assembled the group in late 196 8 when he found himself the lone remaining member of the now-defunct Yardbirds (other Yardbird dropouts include Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton). With a Scandinavian tour still left on the Yardbird ledger, Page plucked Bonham, Jones, and, later, Plant to clean the touring slate. The group clicked so well together that in that skimpy six weeks they turned out a Page-produced album that dripped driving, orgasmic, naked force. "Led Zeppelin I" slowly gathered accolades, sparked by the fine freak work of Page and the raunchy, venemous blues shouting of Plant. Still, the group was faced with trial by fire on stage. In rock's early slumber onstage virtuosity was almost irrelevant. Masses of 50's teeny-boppers screamed their braces out at the mere sight of The Star. The only talent required on stage was the ability of stand there and wink, a skill mastered quite well by such 50's rockos as Frankie Avalon, who, after cutting seven straight bombs for Chancellor Records, sold a million copies of "De-De Dinah," sung while holding his nose. Had audiences really taken the time to listen to his live mumblings they would have done the same. Thankfully, the situation has changed. If a group can't cut it live, they can't cut it at all. Zeppelin came through it well, very well, touring from the early spring to late summer. Plant, his long blond mane cradling an ever-thinning face, bulled through long, pinched, screaming busters, cajoling, then threatining his audiences, running to the edge of the stage to bellow and rant. Page, bedecked in floppy white fedora and acid-flash-red pants, tramped restlessly around stage, his right foot throbbing like a kangaroo's tail, his left hand chording nasty, gutsy phalanxes of sound. Periodically Page and Plant face each other in concert and jerk through various contortions, like some erotic, day-glo C. P. o THE NEW LOOK FOR THE NOW MAN! Over 1,000 in stock to choose from ... Solids, Plaids, Body Shirts. All sizes. 120 S. UPPER ST Downtown KENTs OPEN MONDAY Until 9 p.m. reenactment of the Monitor and Merrimac. True, it's all a little burlesque, but throughout their frantic antics they with skill and elan produced those eeire sounds of delicious violence (You must bite to eat.) In short, Led Zeppelin was for real. It appeared they would be the next of the so-called "super groups." (The "supergroup" tag must be somewhat of an anathema after the hollow disappointment of Blind Faith.) Yet, with all this advance hoopla, "Led Zeppelin II" is somewhat of a disappointment. It is a disappointment only in view of what one might expect from them after seeing their live pyrotechnics and hearing that first chunck of petrified rattlesnake, for the album is still infinitely better than 90% of the shuck heaped on the head market's heads. Several of the cuts from the second album are of similar caliber of "Led Zeppelin I," particularly "Whole Lotta Love," "The Lemon Song," and Ramble On," all sparked by Page's wizardry and Plant's grave-of-mirrors howling. Yet, several of the other six cuts meet the fate of the earlier airship Zeppelin. Part of the difficulty seems to lie in the group's penchant for tempo changes, a little musical trick that has become sadly and erroneously identified with musical professionalism. Zeppelin proved in their first outing they are capable of adapting the tempo change beautifully, especially in "How Many More Times" and "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You," both featuring the blinding solo work of Page, suddenly stilling for the gaping, gasping agonies of Plant, who, in his finer moments, sounds like Kafka's Gregor metamorphosized, with technical assistance on enema by the Marquis De Sade. However, in their second album, the change-tempo trip is as overworked as, say, King Kong's wife. For instance, "Bring It On Home" begins with some fine, sultry, muted harmonica and vocal work by Plant (an obvious steal from "Sonny Boy" Williamson). The Plant promise is never fullfilled, as the middle segment of the cut is a totally incongrous, hard, humping break shattering a mood Plant is never able to recapture. In their first effort Zeppelin used such breaks to build series of tensions, peaking and dipping like some collective Rasputin. However, many of the breaks in "LZ II" seem merely tempo changes for tempo changes sake. Likewise, "Thank You" falls victim to the tempo-change hangup and Plant's quavering, choir-boy vocal. Another cut, "Moby Dick," kicks out hard in its initial stages, pushed hard by Plant and Page, only later to be harpooned by Bonham's barehanded, rather uneventful drum solo. In fact, drummer Bonham and bassist Jones are much more a part of the group sound on this second outing. It seems that such preeminence of the rhythm section has become almost a rock obligation since the ascendance of Cream. Featuring three magnificient soloists, two of them on quite unlikely solo instruments (Bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker), Cream shattered musical shibboleths, and, finally, each other. Since Cream flashed across the scene, it seems many rock groups, like proud mother bluejays, feel obligated to push each member of the band "out front" in the total sound. This worked to near perfection with Bruce and Baker, but most rhythm sections are simply uninteresting to listen to. The tonal range of the instruments is minus zilch, leaving the listener the unenviable delight of hearing over and over well-done, though terribly repetitive, time solos. Led Zepplin There are exceptions, of course, among them Canned Heat's premier rhythm section and the sound of San tana, the latter a six-man aggregation in which three rhythm instruments serve as veritable lead instruments rather than the somewhat mediocre guitar stylings of Carlos San tana. The result in recording is an almost equal emphasis to the volume of each instrument. Such a sound blend can work quite well, as in Traffic's second outing. However, in "Led Zeppelin II" the sound is often murky and bogged. One strains to pick out Page's blood-curdling solos only to hear them blotted out by the very compotent, but, frankly, rather boring work of Jones and Bonham. It's the same quicksand sound that pulled down Jeff Beck's second outing. Obviously, the group was concerned about the sound texture of the recording. Release dates became as inaccurate as body counts, as the group balked at the sound mix three times, sending it back each time for re-channeling. If the resulting mix is supposed to represent some sort of compromise, it is as unsatisfactory as that other recent compromise of August, 1968, Spiro Ag-new (a retired effette intellectual). Still, even with the generally pedestrian music they have written, the muddled sound mix and the endless, often pointless tempo changes, "Led Zeppelin II" still includes some of the better moments in hard rockdom. One can only wonder whether the group will be able to maintain their present level of intensity without a breakdown in audience rapport or bodily functions. It is probably no coincidence that Led Zeppelin and speed have gained popularity simultaneously. Which brings us to a relatively innane aspect of "Led Zeppelin II," the two-page centerfold of the album jacket. While unrelated to the album's content, it seems to reflect the attitude the record industry has taken toward its audience. For those of you not yet bedazzled by the ego-trip jacket, it features a Parthenon-like temple supporting a hugh, golden, phallic, spotlighted Led Zeppelin. In a style that would wrinkle Charlton Heston's cleft chin, the good folks at Atlantic Records have added four stone pillars with the names of each group member prominently embossed. The sado-masochistic madness is completed by a silver tablet on the right side of the deified double fold, with album titles, etc. engraved and then passed down to we, the simple peasant masses. The whole two-page God trip looks like the maddest fantasies of some local 13-year-old president of the Led Zeppelin fan club, auto-hyped in her estatic efforts by the recent special delivery arrival of a lock of hair from each of her four heroes. Hopefully, the group had nothing to do with this condescending crap. If, indeed, it is their design they seem to be aiming their phallic thrusts at the teeny-bop market. More likely, though, the centerfold is the creation of those imaginative young men in the promotion department at Atlantic Records, who have capitalized on the pavlovian responses of the rock audience to drum up over $1,000,000 in in advance sales for "Led Zeppelin II." In the same obsequious, yet condescending, manner Columbia Records has been taking two page ads in music weeklies, heading the trash with the kicker "The Man Can't Bust Our Music." The Columbia ads are filled with those wonderful, free-spending spirits (What did they call them in Reader's Digest, Ethel?), the er, ah, hippies, all in uniform (hair, beads and bells), caressing Columbia albums like proud, new mothers. continued on page 15 Cf CLOTHE 14 November 11,1969 ?verse: City Planning Commission A Great Notion the contrariness of the mad fanner I am done with apologies. If contrariness is my inheritance and destiny, so be it. If it is my mission to go in at exits and come oat at entrances, so be it. I have planted by the stars in defiance of the experts, and tilled somewhat by incantation and by singing, and reaped, as I knew, by luck and Heaven's favor, in spite of the best advice. If I have been caught so often giggling at funerals, that was because I knew the dead were already slipping away, preparing a comeback, and can I help it? And if at weddings I have gritted and gnashed my teeth, it was because I knew where the bridegroom had sunk his manhood, and knew it would not be resurrected in a piece of cake. "Dance" they told me, and I stood still, and then while they stood quiet in line at the sate of the Kingdom, I danced. pray" they said, and I laughed, covering myself in the earth's brightnesses, and then stole off gray flicks: into the midst of a revel, and prayed like an orphan. When they said "I know that my Redeemer liveth," I told them "He's dead." And when they told me "God is dead," I answered "He goes fishing every day in the Kentucky river. I aee Him often." When they asked me would I like to contribute I said no, and when they had collected more then they needed, I gave them as much as I had. When they asked me to join them I wouldn't, and then went off by muself and did more than they would have asked. "Well, then" they said "go and organize the International Brotherhood of Contraries," and I said "Did you finish killing everybody who was against peace?" So be it. Going against men, I have heard at times a deeo harmonv thrumming in the mixture, and when they ask me what I say I don't know. It is not the only or the easiest way to come to the truth. It is one way. Wendell Berry PROGRESS R OGRESS HGRESS BRESS BESS BBS BS Ellsworth Taylor sd. one redneck Mid-West farmer to another while looking at the sun set (speaking in metaphor) Let's shave all those hippy heads ft with their hair make the biggest goddamn tumbleweed ever to blow across the face of this earth then drop it on the Russions tiie t'other exclaimed feeling mighty proud of hisself from Glossary of the Everyday Jonathan Greene Alice's Restaurant by J. S. Willoughby "Woody was involved with unions getting people together. He was interested in getting people together in numbers. I'm interested in getting people together with themselves. It's the same thing. Arlo Guthrie Alice's Restaurant is a film about American life. It is the odyssey of another American seeker, Arlo Guthrie (played by himself), and it is the story of Alice and Ray Brock (Pat Quinn and James Brod-erick) attempting to find peace and beauty with their young friends through the American tradition of self-reliance and communal living. This division of the action makes the film episodic, but it is precisely because of its episodic character that the film captures the reality of American life: it is through this division that the film achieves its sanity of vision. While Alice and Ray's experiment with communal living in a defrocked episcopalian church in Stockbridge, Mass., is a microcosm of American self-reliance, it is through Arlo's adventures that we see the turbulence of the larger American scene. In the opening scenes he goes off to college to escape the draft. But he is hassled for his long, flowing black hair" first by the Yellow Springs police, who run Arlo's friend, Roger, out of town, then by red-necked restaurant-hanger-ons who throw him out of the restaurant through a rather high, closed window, and finally the College authority who will "believe him this time" but.... So Arlo leaves to go and see Woody, his hospitalized and dying father, himself a former traveler and folk poet, and to seek a more gentle scene. But aside from the warmth and peacefulness he finds in Woody and the Stockbridge church, he finds only an absurd, chaotic, noise-racked world"the world of the teeny-bopper who wants to make it with him because she figures hell be at least an "album," the world of the lady coffeehouse owner who calls him "not much of an entertainer" when he refuses her advances. It is a world where there is little natural response and genuine emotion. Despite this, Arlo's adventures in the great American scene are conducted with compassionate good humor, a humor that achieves grotesque hilariousness in the enactment of episodes taken from the record, Arlo and Roger's arrest for littering, and Arlo's trip through the draft induction center. It is a humor build upon the juxtaposition of Arlo's natural looseness and ease against the up-tightness of American bureaucracy; "But Officer Obie," he comments lightly, "how am I going to pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on?" But America has its darker side as well, portrayed through Alice and Ray's friend Shellev. a not quite ex-iunkie. Shelley enters the picture through a rear door of Bellevue Hospital; he emerges into a world resonant with the noise of jack-hammers and autohorns, curiously pointed up by a sign on the hospital building that reads "hospital: quiet zone." The roar of his motorcycle amidst flashing freeway lights, as he rides to his lonely suicide later in the film, is a clear and awful alternative to. the serenity , posed by the film's music. It is from this noisy, chaotic America that Alice and Ray are attempting to retreat. Their experiment with the defrocked Episcopalian church in Stock-bridge is one Emerson would have approved; using their skills as cook and carpenter, lover and doer, they attempt to create a more harmonious, beautiful -life, a life in which people can live naturally and compassionately with each other, a life with some grace. This is Alice's world and she tends to it vigorously. She cooks soup for Arlo and Ray, puts a blanket on a cold horse, congratulates a winner, operates a restaurant, handles public relations with the town of Stockbridge (Officer Obie), cooks a Thanksgiving and a wedding night dinner, bails people out of jail and confronts the police (Officer Obie, who arrested Arlo for littering and plays himself in the film, and rather sympathetically at that), gets people together with each other and with themselves, makes love herself, and suffers and provides a home for everyone. Alice's presence is the dominant and most beautiful element of the film. She gives naturally of herself rather than harshly demanding. Hers is the peaceful sleep that follows making love, and her warmth and vitality provide a particular alternative to the chaotic greater American scene. But if she is all this in particular, it is through the music and presence of Arlo and Woody Guthrie that we see her in moral perspective, understand her amazing grace. "Woody used to come home all the time. We went to visit him when he couldn't make it home. We didn't compare notes on singing; we used to sing all the time. His friends would come and we'd all sing. It was groovy. I liked all his stuff." Arlo Guthrie THE BOOK MARK books and magazines, 239 N. LIMESTONE paper backs, LEXINGTON Civil War books, Kentucky books, PHONE: 266-6683 '65-'6 9 Playboys (only 25 Few moving pictures depend on music thematically as heavily as does Alice's Restaurant. But music of the kind created by Arlo and his father is a natural element of American culture; it is one of the finest and most beautiful outgrowths of American life. This music provides part of the structural framework of the film, creating a bridge between Alice and Ray and the scenes in Woody Guthrie's hospital room, where Arlo frequently goes to visit and seek support from Woody's quiet, warm eyes. And not only does Alice's Restaurant derive its existence from Arlo's monologue, it derives its notion of value from it as well; Arlo's easy good humor, and, above all, his naturalness and sentimentality, his openness and warmth are what Alice and Ray seek to embody in the defrocked Episcopalian church. But Arlo's music is Woody's music, too. Early on in the picture, as Arlo is hitchhiking back from his college experience, he is dropped off on his way in the vicinity of an evangelical tent meeting. As he watches, the song leader, played by ex-Weaver Lee Hays, strikes up a rendition of "Amazing Grace," a song which the film later finds being sung in the church after the much heralded Thanksgiving dinner. The tawdry aspects of the tent meeting drop away as Lee Hays rhythmically chants each verse while the the ensembled group of worshippers sings out the refrain. The scene suddenly becomes one of great musical beauty and the camera draws away to a long shot of the tent in the night, dwelling lingeringly on the old hymn and Hays' beautiful voice. While the healing offered by the preacher may not be real, the song still has its enchantment. "Seems like Woody's road might a run through here sometime," Arlo comments as the singing dies away. And that, of course, is the point; gongs like "Amazing Grace" are Woody Guthrie, just as Woody's frivolous car-car song, sung by Pete Seeger, is Arlo's "Alice's Restaurant Masacree." The simple, native love of country, the rural sentimentality, the gentleness and human- ity, all the beautiful and tortured America that speaks in Woody Guthrie's music, all that Woody has come to symbolize provides a tradition and source of value for Alice and Ray and the church commune. But the harmony at the church cannot last, indeed, it barely gets into the air. People demand too much of Alice. Ray is not as free as she is, either, and is constantly and belligerently on edge. The ultimate course of things is downward; jealous and maddened by the realization that Shelley is still on junk, Ray creates a confrontation that leads Shelley to his death. Woody dies then, too, and ironically it is into his death that the noisy outside world intrudes, in the person of an inquisitive and obnoxious friend, while in death Shelley's friends bring him what peace they can; snow falls softly and whitely on the cemetary, a girl with a guitar sings of Aging Children, and his friends drop flowers on his crude wooden coffin. Ray and Alice try one more time to begin again and have a second wedding in the church. But as the night wears on Ray becomes drunk and despairing; he confides to his friends that he wants tc sell the church, to get an even bigget place, as though a change of scene will make the difference. Arlo leaves, Alice and Ray following him outside into the morning. "I'll be back," he says. But the light is wan, Ray is dejected. It is winter, the trees are bare, the chalked, weathered, peeling white paint of the church stands out prominently. "If only we could stop bugging each other," Ray mourns, and goes back inside. Alone, Alice stands there on the church steps, still, before the moving camera, but troubled; she remains the bride of life, the strong, American, pioneer woman, but this is not the still peacefulness that follows the communion of body and spirit; that stillness recedes even as the camera draws nearer to her. Whatever harmony there was in the church dies away with Arlo's going. Led Such has been the treatment of the so-called youth revolution by the mass media. The external elements have been ripped out of their moorings and pushed off as saleable commodities. Yet, while these obvious aspects of the movement (life style, language, etc.) were blatantly co-opted and pushed hard as the quintessence of hippdom, the substantive aspects, namely the concern for self-development and the quality of American life, have been conveniently ignored by the exploiters. Controversy doesn't sell, you know, and, well, we've got a business to run, and while I like you people and respect your love of freedom, etc., etc. In this manner the alternate life style has been left to develop as a virtual parasite to the established institutions. Lacking its own viable institutions, the scene Ken Kesey fathered has been prime fodder for exploitation. So, now we're all looking and talking alike again, even if our thoughts travel the same gray circles. In fact, it now requires about as much thought to don hair, bells and beads a' going to the bathroom. This sad exploitation of the movement., this crass rape that dissipates life energies, is just the illness that is so upsettin many of the more concerned hair people sending them in quiet droves to the hills. One clings to the pollyannaish hop that American musical institutions wi! develop and accurately represent what lot of young people are saying, and, mor importantly, feeling. Until that time there remains a very exploited mass represented only as a forlorn group with a penchant for hair, drugs and astrology"the sam trilogy that so fascinated Adolf Hitler. But, hell, lots of folks sure do tap the. feet to this music, so let's all tote da. record, lift dat wallet for de massai record man, cause he's our friend, an. he's, well, heavy, and, ah, Led Zeppelin plays the music. Don't follow leaders, watch the parking meters. blue-tail fly 15 ?LNS 'Under no circumstances will I be affected whatever by it.'"PRESIDENT NIXON support our boys: march for peace Washington, D.C. Frankfort, Ky. Nov. 13-15 Nov. 15

© 1999-2009 Kentucky Virtual Library

• xhtml 1.0 Strict