Summer of 1969, A Memoir: Part 2, Goodbye and Hello

Many songs seem emblematic or emotionally reminiscent of the 60s, but for me, none is more so than Goodbye and Hello, by Tim Buckley and Larry Becket, with its marriage of folk lyricism to Kurt Weill, Wiemar theatricality. O the new children dance — — — I am youngAll around the balloons — — — I […]

Summer of 1969, a Memoir: Part 1, Why Don’t We Sing This Song All Together

John “Jack” Niflot (Gift of Duke Devlin)/The Museum at Bethel Woods/Via Reuters

Ann-Margaret was dancing down the middle of Sepulveda Boulevard. We were watching her from an overpass above. We were 17 and 19, and we had just walked out of Los Angeles International Airport. We had worked the first part of the summer to afford this first ever trip on our own — a three-week odyssey up […]

from FOOTNOTE 1 — “Minnie”

(The following is the Excerpt from The Twentieth Century Passes, a memoir of my father’s life) By the time I was born, three of my grandparents were already dead. They had died young, in their early 60s, just before and after the birth of my sister ten years before me. My parents had had me, […]

from FOOTNOTE 1 — “Route 66: The American Road”

(News came two days ago that Martin Millner, along with George Maharis, one of the two stars of the legendary television series Route 66, has died, at 83. As a young boy, my own introduction to the adventure of road travel and the romance of the route came from the series and the experience of […]

From FOOTNOTE 1: “Place … traveling”

(I thought I might offer here, complete, one of my ten works of poetry, essay, creative nonfiction and documentary journalism in the inaugural issue of Footnote. When I travel, every moment is a flight in the weightlessness of the journey, against the gravity of destinations and origins and belonging.) Place traveling It’s a road, behind and before. I […]