From a piece by San Francisco Digger Emmett Grogan, as printed in the August 1968 issue of The Realist:

[T]he amount of anxiety, fear, trembling, nervousness that I put out, I know determines people’s reactions to me, whether it’s trust, friendliness despite appearance.

So then, what if all the people who had that insight were able to begin combining forces, totally neutralizing all negative affect, totally letting it drop into the void, hence transforming all that energy into conversion of consciousness to friendly nature—you’d then have autonomous communities rising as they do in San Francisco which involve kids living together and inviting other people in to join them for an evening or longer—it means the amassing of people together as in giant human Be-ins: not so much to demonstrate their force to others but to demonstrate their tranquility and quietness and presence to others, and to themselves; to reinforce the awareness, to exchange Upaya, skillful means, trade secrets of communication-forming proposals—proposition not opposition—proposals for a new society based on new consciousness, and then putting them into operation on a small scale, mutually, into operation as an example, rather than waiting for pie in the sky, rather than waiting for pie in the future, rather than waiting for Utopia to come through revolution.

Practicing on the basis of what’s known already, so we have the development of free stores in San Francisco, free food in the parks, the Diggers’ extensions of energy, the anonymity of most of the Digger people, the Communication Companies or the Free City news services which mimeograph and print the daily news for the people so they get it fast, etc.

Where there’s going to be a rally, where there’s going to be music, where there’s going to be free food, where you can get sleep, where you can get jobs, where you can go out into the country free so you can straighten your head out or freak out among true friends—so you can decontrol yourself of the city conditioning, calm yourself for a while and return to tribal-mammal origins in the original ecology for which we are fit, which is not the noisy, metallic city, as Leary has pointed out very radically and wisely: “Put all the metal underground, back where it belongs.” If there’s going to be bridges and buildings and machinery, then don’t let that displace the living, organic material which is our natural friendly life form.

Obviously the surface of the planet has got to be replanted back to some sort of living delight, instead of dead vibrations. Get to work. You are the Free City planners.

So there is an autonomous idea of what Utopia is, ecologically, as something to work for, and concretely possible toward that sense. Goodman’s suggestion: applying immediate social welfare ideals and principles—pay people to live in the country—like people on New York welfare. Give them the same money, and say: “You don’t have to live in New York, you can live out of New York.” That’ll depopulate New York, remove the pressure on New York, straighten many heads out, calm everybody down to some extent. Have a healthier life—the “underprivileged,” they’ll get in the groove of being way out in the country and walking with clouds and stars, and talking with trees. And also save all the giant bureaucracy costs of the city.

But the only thing that will allow each of us to create his or her Utopia is praxis—and the pooling of our resources to free each of us to pursue our individual activities and strengthen the autonomous boundaries of our free cities of the now.

Click on image to enlarge.

About this document:
Pretty self-explanatory. Published sometime in the second half of 1966.

Text
Money Is An Unnecessary Evil

It is addicting.

It is a temptation to the weak (most of the violent crimes of our city in some way involve money).

It can be hoarded, blocking the free flow of energy and the giant energy-hoards of Montgomery Street will soon give rise to a sudden and thus explosive release of this trapped energy, causing much pain and chaos.

As part of the city’s campaign to stem the causes of violence the San Francisco Diggers announce a 30 day period beginning now during which all responsible citizens are asked to turn in their money. No questions will be asked.

Bring money to your local Digger for free distribution to all. The Diggers will then liberate its energy according to the style of whoever receives it.

[fingerprint]

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

These broadsides were handed out on the street; some ended up being posted in windows.

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Virginia Aste, Black Rock Cafe, Pahoa, Hawaii, Mother’s Day, 2008. Photo by Susan Kay Anderson

“Freedom?”: Richard Brautigan’s first wife, VIRGINIA ASTE, speaks in a new interview

Interview by Susan Kay Anderson

Edited with Introduction by Mike Daily, with biographical information contributed by John F. Barber, Richard Brautigan scholar

Less-than-revered by his Beat peers (Ginsberg gave him the ungainly nickname “Bunthorne,” Burroughs once observed him—drunk—crawling along the floor of a hotel after a reading event, Ferlinghetti said he “was all the novelist the hippies needed” because “[i]t was a nonliterate age”), Richard Brautigan became internationally famous in the late ’60s for writing simple-yet-surreal poems, short stories and novels that made readers marvel and burst out laughing. Brautigan’s personal life, however, was no laughing matter. Severe alcoholism—drinking a bottle of brandy and two fifths of whiskey a day during binges, according to friend Don Carpenter—and depression over declining book sales led to Brautigan’s suicide in September 1984. He was 49.

Brautigan began writing Trout Fishing in America in 1961 on a camping trip he took with his first wife, maiden name Virginia Alder, and their one-year-old daughter, Ianthe. Married in 1957 and separated in 1962, they officially divorced in 1970. Before the separation, Virginia Alder had become involved with one of Brautigan’s drinking buddies, Tony Aste, with whom she later had three children (the first in 1965, the second in 1968, the third in 1969). There is no known record that she and Tony Aste ever wed, though she took his last name. Virginia Aste eventually moved to Hawaii in 1975, without Tony, who remained, living in Bodega Bay, California, and then San Francisco, where he died in 1996.

Today, 75-year-old Virginia Aste is a political activist working as a substitute teacher in one of the most violent school districts in Hawaii. Susan Kay Anderson, a fellow educator at the school, recently met Virginia Aste and interviewed her about her early life and travels with Brautigan.

“Virginia Aste is not a ‘little old lady type,’” Anderson reports. “She is almost six feet tall and wears glasses, well-fitting outfits and interesting jewelry. Her gaze never wavers. She laughs easily and speaks in a measured, self-paced, quiet tone. She is quite funny and self-effacing, able to laugh at herself.”

“Much of Brautigan’s past has remained shrouded in mystery for so long as to become mythology,” says John F. Barber, curator of the comprehensive, multi-media online resource Brautigan Bibliography and Archive. “Virginia’s comments and insights [in this new interview] are important because they help us better understand the stories behind Brautigan, his life and his writings.”

Like a Waterfall

Arthur: What were the ’60s like?

Virginia Aste: The ’60s were a lot like the ’50s, a continuation of [the '50s], except for ‘68 and ‘69. Then, everything changed. For example, I took Lamaze [childbirth classes] for Ianthe’s birth. They didn’t know what I was talking about in the hospital. They gave me some pillows and helped me lie on my side. That was that.

The change came with the music. There were concerts every day—really, really good concerts every two weeks or so. Groups from New York came. The concerts were in Golden Gate Park.

At that time there was the Cow Palace, a big stadium—George Wallace was to speak. All I remember was the atmosphere of hostility and women there. This [Cow Palace] was a place where women burned their bras; where riots happened. It was a feeling of a mob and impeding violence and we just had to leave. We had gotten Ianthe a new raincoat from her dad. Ianthe’s raincoat pocket caught on a car as we were leaving and she started to cry. It was no real riot that time, but it felt like it could’ve been. What we were witnessing was a lot of yelling and Wallace was yelling back. He was ranting. It was an awful ending to an awful day.

For a year, there were free concerts every other week. It was wild. Of course, there were precursors to this, pre-’60s. I purchased a Rudi Gernreich bra—it was see-through—and took off my shirt during a party. We saw how many people could crowd into a phone booth at a time.

In one house where we lived, there was something wrong with the plumbing so the water ran and ran. It was like a waterfall. We turned it stronger and then back again or we just got water.

We moved out of North Beach and out of Haight-Ashbury. There was a lot of alcohol and pot use. There was the Ice Cream Store where bikers and bus drivers took pills—early speed, the chicken egg-producing drug, methedrine, cheaper than heroin. It was the time of the Alphonse Mucha art style on concert posters: big bicycle wheels on bikes, elongated figures riding, and the skulls and roses of the Grateful Dead.

Richard admired the Diggers. Our whole thing was a proletarian idea that you take care of everybody. I remember baking bread in coffee cans. I did. We had everything available to us at the free store. We never had any money. I don’t remember paying for anything for a while. This was the last half of the ’60s.

Read the rest of this entry »

Click on each image to enlarge.

About these documents:
Pretty self-explanatory.

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

Click on image to enlarge.

About this document:
Pretty self-explanatory: “We come to Haight-Ashbury, where many of us gather together, to start a flow of love.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

Click on each image to enlarge.

About these documents:
By late March 1967 the Diggers and their allies in the Haight were being overwhelmed by the influx of newcomers to their neighborhood, many of them runaway youths attracted to the district by mainstream news accounts that had exaggerated the availability of Free: free food, free housing, free music, etc. When they spoke about it, the more authoritarian part of San Francisco’s Establishment—the police and the mayor’s office, the mainstream press—reacted with horror, fear and threats regarding the incoming hippie invasion, rather than dealing with the logistics of the impending housing crisis. “Trip Without a Ticket” was the name of the Diggers’ free store. “To the Free World,” summing up the fears and suspicions of the Diggers and associates, is a prime bit of Diggers analysis; it was probably written by com/co’s Chester Anderson.

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

About these documents:
By late March 1967 the Diggers and their allies in the Haight were being overwhelmed by the influx of newcomers to their neighborhood, many of them runaway youths attracted to the district by mainstream news accounts that had exaggerated the availability of Free: free food, free housing, free music, etc. When they spoke about it, this is how the more authoritarian (or: “uptite”) part of the Establishment—the police, the mayor’s office, the mainstream press—reacted. These broadsides reprinted the press coverage, with commentary in handwriting, probably from Com/Co’s Chester Anderson. Click on each image to enlarge.

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

About this document:
By late March 1967 the Diggers and their allies in the Haight were being overwhelmed by the influx of newcomers to their neighborhood, many of them runaway youths attracted to San Francisco by mainstream news accounts that had exaggerated the availability of Free: free food, free housing, free music, etc. The Diggers made an appeal to the city’s Episcopal clergy. These broadsides reprint how the meeting was reported on in the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, with a little commentary in handwriting, probably from Chester Anderson. Click on each image to enlarge.

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

About this document:
Author unknown.

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

About this document:
Idea-rich early announcement broadside (there will be more) for an event that happened on either April 2, 1967 or April 9, 1967. Author is anonymous, as most of the best Diggers documents are, but one would guess that Peter Berg, Lenore Kandel and (perhaps?) Peter Coyote and Emmett Grogan had something to do with the specific text laid down here. The concept of “life-acting” is made explicit; street theater is made literal; life becomes play.

About this series:
Arthur Magazine is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

About this document:
Another wisdom broadside from an anonymous pen; best guess is it’s Chester Anderson.

About this series:
Arthur is proud to present scans of essential documents produced by and about the San Francisco Diggers, who were in many ways the epicentral actors in the Haight-Ashbury during the epic, wildly imaginative period from late ‘66 through ‘67. The Diggers’ ideas and activities are essential counter-cultural history, sure, but they are also especially relevant to the current era, for reasons that should be obvious to the gentle Arthur reader.

Most of the documents that we are presenting are broadsides originally published on a Gestetner machine owned and operated in the Haight by the novelist/poet Chester Anderson and his protege/sidekick Claude Hayward, who used the name “Communication Company,” or more commonly, “Com/Co.” According to Claude, these broadsides were then “handed out on the street, page by page, super hot media, because the reader trusted the source, which was another freaky looking hippie who had handed it to him/her.”

Previously posted Diggers Papers:
http://www.arthurmag.com/contributors/diggers

Donate
You can be a patron of this series by making a tax-deductible donation to Arthur Magazine via our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas: info here

photo: Gordon Peters

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Lenore Kandel – ‘The Love Book’ author – dies

Julian Guthrie, Chronicle Staff Writer

Thursday, October 22, 2009

Lenore Kandel hung out with Beat poets and was immortalized by Jack Kerouac, wrote a book of love poetry banned as obscene and seized by police, and believed in communal living, anarchic street theater, belly dancing, and all things beautiful.

Ms. Kandel, a lyric poet and one of the shining lights of San Francisco’s famous counterculture of the ’60s, died on Oct. 18 in San Francisco. She was 77 and had been diagnosed with lung cancer two weeks earlier.

“I met Lenore in 1965 at a citywide meeting of artists opposed to the war in Vietnam,” said actor Peter Coyote. “Lenore was physically beautiful and physically commanding. She had this voluptuous plumpness about her and an absolute serenity.”

Coyote, Ms. Kandel and her then-boyfriend Bill Fritsch – a poet and Hell’s Angel – became fast friends.

“She was working as a belly dancer and would sew these beaded curtains to make money on the side,” said Coyote, a founder of the Diggers, an anarchistic group supplying free food, housing and medical aid to the needy in San Francisco. “We would sit around and smoke dope and talk about philosophy and art. She was an enlightened person, a great being.”

Born in New York City on Jan. 14, 1932, to Russian and Mongol parents, Ms. Kandel was educated in a one-room schoolhouse in Bucks County, Pa., where she lived with her grandmother. She began writing poetry as a child, attended college in New York and moved to San Francisco around 1960, toward the end of the Beat era. Once here, she became the girlfriend of poet Lew Welch and friends with the movement’s seminal figures, including Gary Snyder, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg.

In “Big Sur,” Kerouac’s 1962 novel, Ms. Kandel is portrayed as Romana Swartz, a “big Rumanian monster beauty” and Welch as Dave Wain.

By the mid-1960s, Ms. Kandel was a key figure in the burgeoning hippie scene in the Haight-Ashbury. Her book of poetry “The Love Book,” published in 1966, was deemed pornographic and the famed Psychedelic Shop on Haight Street where it was sold was raided by the police. Copies were confiscated on the grounds that their display and sale “excited lewd thoughts” and the store’s owners were arrested.

” ‘The Love Book’ was extremely graphic sexually,” said Gerald Nicosia, a Kerouac biographer and Beat generation chronicler. “She showed this openness to sexuality, this freedom of lifestyle. With ‘The Love Book,’ she became a cause celebre. But Lenore was a true lyric poet. Her language was as beautiful as anything being written.”

Ms. Kandel wrote another book of poetry, “Word Alchemy,” published in 1967. The same year, she was the only woman to speak onstage at the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park.

“She went from the Beat community to the Diggers, to being a major player at the Human Be-In,” said the poet and Beat documentarian who goes by the name of Kush. “She was a very deep poet, and she was committed to radical values and transforming culture.”

Longtime friend Vicki Pollack, also a member of the Diggers, met Kandel in 1968.

“I saw her read from ‘Word Alchemy,’ which is her most beautiful work,” Pollack said. “It changed the way I saw poetry. She became for me a rock star.”

In recent years, Ms. Kandel – who had suffered grievous spinal injuries in a motorcycle crash aboard Fritsch’s Harley – was confined to her small apartment on Folsom Street. She continued to write, her friends say, and to find joy in everyday encounters.

“She was in a lot of pain because of her back,” said Pollack. “But she got enjoyment out of anything and everything. Lenore had what I call the gift of happiness.”

A private memorial service is being planned.