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Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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 RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
I'm going on a short well deserved vacation to Big Sur in 10 days
You probably already have plans for lodging in Big Sur, Stephen. But if you don't, I highly recommend staying at least a couple of nights at Deetjen's Big Sur Inn. I stayed there in 1996 while taking the coastal highway 1 from San Luis Obispo to Monterey. That is one of the most beautiful drives in the world, and Deetjen's is a great place to stay. It was originally built by a Norwegian immigrant in the 1930s and retains a weathered, rustic ambience. The restaurant, however is spectacular, with great food and classical music playing in the background. And don't miss the book shop dedicated to Henry Miller in Nepenthe. (Actually, it occurs to me that you may know about all this anyway, living in the Bay Area.)
Whereever you stay in Big Sur, you are in one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Truly, the term "God's Country" applies. Have a great time.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 25 2012 0:18:25
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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Thanks Bill, I actually lived in Big Sur for five years. I know all the places you mentioned. I worked at Ventana Restaurant while I studied anthropology in Monterey.
The Henry Miller Library is still there, going strong. A guy I used to work with runs it. I lived in Big Sur while Emil White, Henry Miller's best buddy in Big Sur was alive and visited him at his home which was the library housing the Miller ephemera. He was the founder of the HML and he was one of the characters Miller wrote about in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymous Bosch.
Emil was about 92 when I saw him and he had a voluptuous younger African American woman taking care of him during the day. Emil tried to grab her ass in front of me, she gently slapped his hand away. I thought it was fittingly Millerian.
My family got run out of town by the local sheriff. Had nothing to do with me. I have not been back since except for a drive through on Pacific Coast Highway at night. What strange mix of folks back in the coastal hills and ridges. Everything in humanity passes through Big Sur and if you work at a general store on the cash register while taking phone reservations for cabins you are likely to see all kinds of depraved human behavior. One of my other Big Sur jobs was working in a gas station where my partner manning the pumps was an out of work WashPost photo journalist who has just returned from 6 years in Honduras, Nicaragua and Salvador during the Ollie North days. He opened up my mind one morning by showing me his folio of combat photos that were too serious to publish. The best one was an 8 x 10 glossy of two 13 year old indian girls standing in a dugout canoe wearing full camo uniforms holding M-16's. He said they were getting ready for a night patrol.
And some of the old boys who grew pot in the Big Sur hills thought they were as bad ass as those ladies. But they were not.
There were road side attractions, ex carnival men, burned out acid heads, deadheads, drunks and world class surfers who lived in RV's along the Coast Highway. One guy was named Robot and he could balance a table on his cleft nose and juggle knives while singing Chattanooga Shoe Shine Boy. Poor old traumatized Johnny Ripplewood, a small slight man from Kentucky, former Vietnam sharp shooter who's mind never returned from the green rain jungles even though his alcohol soaked body was in Big Sur. Chopper the ex Hells Angel heroin addict who loved deer rifles and took an intoxicated taxi ride from the Big Sur valley up to the mouth of Palo Colorado canyon to shoot his rifle out over the ocean. Much to the terrified chagrin of the Indian taxi driver from Seaside.
Big Sur, the place Richard Brautigan hitchhiked and called a 90 mile long skid row. The place where perverse Los Angleans drive to attend weekend long seminars on 'swinging'.
Big Sur where everyone is a lost poet from the beat Generation,
The place where **** talks and money walks.
Big Sur where you can get your nature on at the same time you nostalgia trip about Ida Rolf and D.T. Sukuki
Big Sur where every gift shop sells 300 copies of Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road' every summer week and twice that on Memorial Day.
Big Sur where I once ( no thrice!) served Merv Griffin lunch and a silver platter stacked with peeled bananas for desert. Where I was witness to a dinner conversation between Burt Lancaster and Robert Wagner on the topic on Natalie Woods' acting skills.
Where on my day off I caught a leopard shark at the mouth of the Big Sur River and feared the Great Whites off Pt. Sur Lighthouse rock. Where I had the longest ride on a surfboard at Molera Beach and walked through the Eucalyptus grove which is a stopping off sanctuary for migrating Monarch butterfly's.
You mean that Big Sur? I did all that before I was 26, then I really went to some weird places, like Micronesia and China and Spain.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jul. 25 2012 2:19:22
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
You mean that Big Sur?
Yep! That Big Sur. No matter what forms of human life have passed through or stayed on, it is still a place of staggering beauty.
Just to add a footnote to your interesting chronology of experiences and characters encountered, I overnight two or three times a year in San Francisco, on my way out to the Far East or the Pacific on consulting gigs of anywhere from two to four months in Embassies for my old employer, the U.S. State Department. I always make it a point to spend time in City Lights Book Store on Columbus Avenue in SF, as they have a great selection of books on every topic imaginable. But what I really like about going to City Lights, is knowing that Lawrence Ferlinghetti still goes there two or three times a week and maintains an office upstairs. I think he is about 92 years old now. Long after Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, and the others have been gone, Lawrence Ferlinghetti carries on!
By the way, I am now doing a State Department gig at our Embassy in the Federated States of Micronesia, in the Western Pacific. Will be here until September 5. If you ever had the desire to visit a Pacific volcanic island with lush rainforest, you would be welcome to come out and stay with me. The Embassy has put me up in a very nice house, and your only cost would be airfare. Just bring one of your guitars to play. I brought a beater just to keep up.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 25 2012 2:51:42
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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I am in Kolonia. I was out here on a couple of official visits 20 years ago, when I was a career Foreign Service Officer in Washington, assigned to the State Department office that handled the Freely Associated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau. It has been an interesting experience to return, although not much has changed. (For that I am actually thankful!)
Do you remember the Village Hotel and its restaurant/bar, "The Tatooed Irishman," run by a couple named Bob and Patti Arther? Both it, and they, are still here. They still serve great eggs benedict for Sunday brunch.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 25 2012 3:32:18
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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Been to Pohnpei diving a few times. Somehow we started out with Phoenix, the people with pink boats. At the time we were the only gaijin customers amid a uniformly Japanese clientele.
The guys who ran Phoenix had watched too many Japanese WW II movies. They had crew cuts, wore steel rimmed glasses and held their cigarettes between thumb and forefinger, palm inward, while squinting speculatively through the smoke at the inscrutable Americans. It was entertaining to be with a bunch of Roi Rats among properly behaving Japanese.
Roi Rats are residents of the northernmost island of Kwajalein Atoll, where the big radars are. When I arrived there in July 1991 it was the end of the era of the old time Rats, who were a pretty wild ass bunch.
We knew some of the waitresses at the Joy Cafe, and went to Little Mike's on Saturday night, like half the population of Pohnpei.
See this earlier post on the Foro for an account of our exploits:
http://tinyurl.com/cc96xqw
One of these days I need to head back to Kwajalein for a while, then take the Island Hopper, stopping off for a few days each in Kosrae, Pohnpei, Chuuk and Guam, then on to Yap and Palau, then the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia. I miss the islands and Southeast Asia.
So many places, so little time....
RNJ
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Date Jul. 25 2012 17:52:47
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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I think we got taken out to Black Coral by some friends in 20' skiff, but I remember the Japanese tourist divers milling around the launching docks in Kolonia Town. When I was there the Japanese tourist market was happening, but not as much as I heard after I left. I have some thoughts on that I won't air in public, but Japan left a mark on Micronesia not and exactly a good one. I heard stories.
When I was on Ponape I was a student at CCM and I was enrolled in anthropology, geology, biology, and had the luck to take classes with this splendid English Lit. teacher called Bernie Mullins. The reason my sister and I have fixated on Joy Restaurant is because we would go there for boxed lunch after classes, Joy lunch was fried reef fish, canned corn, a mound of steamed rice and fresh sashimi. To a hungry student it was awful good. It was informative to have the volcanic features of the island everywhere around you for instant reference in geology. To look around and see that the island was so geologically young and have a teacher show you why, so engaging. Too bad I did not like the geology professor, I would have stayed longer an done more study. He was an erratic mean alcoholic, brilliant but personally caustic. He spent his nights in that bar Richard mentioned and shook so bad could barely hold chalk before 11 am. Such is expat life I suppose.
The geology teacher arranged for our class to conduct some survey work for the FSM government, a modest but super interesting project mapping a burial site on the interior of the island. There are archeological features hidden in the jungle under centuries of fauna and loggers discover them when they are out cutting trees. Our 'site', far inland, was a low lying structure made of the octagonal basalt logs that come from the coast areas by Sokehs. Carbon dating charcoal fragments from a midden pile, an ohm or oven, determined it to be about 1100 years old if I remember right. We cleared the vines and debris from it for a few weekends and then used compasses and long metric tapes measures to chart its details and location to be added to a greater survey map of features on the whole island.
After having done that work our trip out to Nan Madol was even more interesting because we had seen how the basalt logs were used for building. Prior to going out to Nan Madol I was also given a lot of oral history and local lore by Bob Arther, who Bill mentioned. His son was a local historian who was not actually Ponapean, but evidently highly respected by all. I don't know if Bob and Patty would remember too much about me, but they would never forget my family and extended family and friends that lived there much, much longer than I did.
But if they do remember me, tell them yes the eggs Benedict is good. But I have never forgotten the coconut crab dinner, so buttery and delicious. They would know my sister Ingrid better, and I'm sure they are still in touch my extended family members.
Ponape was something else, a few wrecked Japanese fighter planes still rusted away here and there to fire your imagination. Funky markets, the thrill of the supply ship coming once every two or three weeks. Kapinga village! The long canoes with outboard motors. Brown kids ambling down the dirt streets, walking home a fat little tuna holding it by the crescent tail. The tuna so fresh its colors still bright as they were in the ocean.
Such an island of contradictions, at once paradise, but with a lot of real social and health problems. Fascinating place. There is so much layered into my life from my short time there. I am happy to hear that not a lot has changed.
Bill if you come through SF early September and have time to meet I would love to hear all your stories and news about the island over a copa at Mario's or Specs on Columbus Ave. Jernigan you should come too, and bring your Romanillos.
_____________________________
https://www.stephenfaulkguitars.com
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Date Jul. 26 2012 5:22:05
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: estebanana
I think we got taken out to Black Coral by some friends in 20' skiff, but I remember the Japanese tourist divers milling around the launching docks in Kolonia Town. When I was there the Japanese tourist market was happening, but not as much as I heard after I left. I have some thoughts on that I won't air in public, but Japan left a mark on Micronesia not and exactly a good one. I heard stories.
We Americans tend to think of Japanese imperialist actions before and during WW II as the actions of "Japan." So does the rest of Asia and Oceania. But my Japanese girlfriend referred to those responsible as "the militarists".
On one side she was descended from a samurai family who, uncharacteristically, supported the revolution of the Meiji Restoration, which broke the power of the samurai and began a modernizing trend in the country.
On another side she was descended from merchants who became wealthy after the Restoration. One of her grandfathers was a distinguished physicist who studied in America. He opined publicly that if Japan attacked the USA, they would lose the war. He was imprisoned by the militarists, and died in jail.
Diving for a week in Chuuk (Truk) with my regular buddy Don H., we were guided by Gradvin Aisek, the owner of Blue Lagoon Dive Shop. Gradvin's father Kimiuo started the tourist diving business in Micronesia. Kimiou lived through the latter stages of the Japanese occupation, and the resultant starvation conditions after the big U.S. raid wiped out the Japanese Imperial Navy headquarters at Chuuk. Their supply chain cut off, the Japanese military monopolized the food supply. A sizable fraction of the native population starved to death.
We saw a handful of older Japanese tourists, but no Japanese divers. We were told they were survivors of the big raid, or relatives of those killed in it.
At the end of the week, Don and I went into town to buy souvenirs. Knowing we were avid photographers, Gradvin hauled out a photo of himself on the deck of a sunken ship, holding a human skull. Don immediately tried to buy it. Gradvin demurred. Don asked, "Well, what are you going to do with it?"
"Maybe show it to a Japanese tourist," Gradvin replied.
I met similar attitudes toward the Japanese throughout Oceania and Asia. But according to my girlfriend, many Japanese were horrified to learn after the war of the actions of "the militarists." Her mother was the first woman to earn a PhD from Tokyo University. Her mother lived through the fire bombing of Tokyo, which killed more people than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined. Her mother told me she was a member of a generation "disillusioned with Japan."
RNJ
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Date Jul. 26 2012 16:08:53
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Richard Jernigan
Posts: 3430
Joined: Jan. 20 2004
From: Austin, Texas USA
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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estebanana
I didn't mean to minimize the enormities committed by Japanese colonists and military forces throughout the Far East. They were pervasive and horrific, based in a racism more comprehensive even than in the American South. The abuses you cite for Pohnpei occurred throughout Micronesia, and in Southeast Asia as well.
My point was that not everyone in Japan was equally to blame. Some, in my perception a small minority, actually opposed the military dictatorship, often at considerable cost to themselves and their families. Others, I can't say how many, just kept their heads down out of fear. A large part of the population enthusiastically supported the atrocities of colonization and war.
My father was on MacArthur's staff during the early days of the Occupation. He told many stories of violent resistance among the general population, despite the immense U.S. military presence.
One of my father's friends, a 3-star general, told the following. Taking off in his assigned multi-engine transport, a Japanese man ran in from the side of the runway and threw himself into the propellor of one of the engines. The takeoff was aborted. Seeing a group of people gathered around the remains on the runway, the general went to investigate, accompanied by his interpreter.
The family of the suicide was gathered around the mangled pieces of the corpse. A Shinto priest was conducting a ceremony. The priest paused and the head of the family turned to address the general. He said that his son suffered a disability that disqualified him from military service, yet he felt he could not continue to live as long as the feet of conquerors were on the sacred soil of Japan.
My girlfriend steadfastly refused to believe the Emperor had any responsibility for the atrocities of colonization or for the war. In her view he was just a figurehead, insulated from the details. Yet in the 1990s, as members of the wartime Imperial Household passed away and their private diaries were published, it became clear that Hirohito was an instigator of the war, and that he prolonged it long after it was obvious that Japan had lost, and some of his most prominent advisors counseled surrender.
Ironically, my father must have known of the plot for Prime Minister Tojo to be tried and hung for war crimes, while covering up the Emperor's involvement. MacArthur wanted Hirohito as puppet.
My father went to his grave without breaking his oath of secrecy, not even to my mother. The only comment I ever heard was when we were discussing Manchester's biography of MacArthur. He said, "Of course there were things that went on during the Occupation that Manchester didn't know about." But he would go no further. He passed away in 1994, before the new English language histories came out.
Of course the Japanese consider the atomic bombing of two cities and the fire bombing of Tokyo as great atrocities committed by America, while we see these acts as less violent than an invasion of Japan would have been.
When William Casey, then Director of the CIA was found to be negotiating to buy a mansion in Washington, DC that the Japanese wanted for their embassy, the State Department asked him to back off. Casey, reciting a WW II slogan said, "Tell them to 'Remember Pearl Harbor'."
Two of my uncles were there aboard ships during the surprise attack.
RNJ
Big Sur 1972. Black Harley was behind the girl who took the picture.
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Date Jul. 26 2012 19:51:06
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BarkellWH
Posts: 3458
Joined: Jul. 12 2009
From: Washington, DC
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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Stephen and Richard,
As I am about 12 to 14 time zones ahead of both of you, I just completed holding my Friday morning Embassy staff meeting and have had time to read your interesting comments on Micronesia, the Japanese, WWII, etc. Great stuff!
If you will indulge me, I will add a few comments and observations, in no particular order of importance.
Something that is rarely acknowledged is that during the 1930s, the Japanese colonists in Micronesia brought with them, and implemented, good agricultural techniques, particularly terraced farming. Unfortunately, the Micronesians did not continue the practice on their own, and former terraced farms are now covered in rainforest and vegetation.
Just to add to what both of you have said regarding Japanese militarism, undoubtedly the militarists set the agenda, but the Emperor and a large majority of the population enthusiastically supported it. As Richard pointed out, scholarship during the last 20 years reveals that the Emperor was heavily involved in the planning and encouragement of Japanese Imperial conquests. And like Germany, like Austria (the Anschluss), like Vichy France, there were far more Japanese citizens who supported the conquests and war effort than cared to admit it after the war.
MacArthur's decision to allow the Emperor to remain on the throne was, and will always be, a controversial decision. If you had polled the American people after the war, I'm sure that 95 percent would have said he should be hanged. (The remaining 5 percent probably would have been pacifists!) And for his part in the Japanese conquests and atrocities, he probably deserved to hang. But, in my opinion, MacArthur was absolutely correct in his decision. It was important, not so much because Hirohito became a puppet, but because to have removed the Emperor would have resulted in the complete breakdown of the society. He was the glue that kept it together and allowed the U.S. occupation to succeed as well as it did.
I have always been amused by those who criticize the U.S. for dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saying that Japan was ready to surrender. There is no evidence to substantiate that claim. All the evidence supports the view that the Japanese expected the U.S. to invade the home islands, and their strategy was to make the invasion so difficult that eventually the U.S. would have to come to terms (an armistice, if you will) without a Japanese surrender. Even after the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the War Party was, to a man, arguing for continuing the fighting. It was only after Nagasaki that the emperor was convinced that the situation was hopeless.
It all makes for interesting history. Stephen, when my scheduled departure firms up and I have a hard itinerary, I'll see if there is time to get together in SF. If not, perhaps another time. I like your idea of Richard joining us. I had the great good fortune to meet and have dinner with Richard last year in Texas, where I was involved in providing and injecting foreign policy scenarios into a U.S. Army command post exercise at Fort Hood. I think the three of us would have a wonderful evening together, over dinner and a bottle (or two) of wine.
Cheers,
Bill
_____________________________
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear, "A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East."
--Rudyard Kipling
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Date Jul. 26 2012 23:49:00
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El Kiko
Posts: 2697
Joined: Jun. 7 2010
From: The South Ireland
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RE: Video Tour of a 7 String Guitar (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
Japan is always our sworn enemy
Who is 'Our" ? I dont think they are my enemy ,.......and here on a flamenco site its not the best place to start this ....
@estebanana ...........vituperous....good word but does not appear in Oxford or Cambridge dictionaries....
However it does appear .......vituperative........as an adjective...........Definition: abusive
Synonyms: calumniating, castigating, censorious, contumelious, defamatory, derisive, disparaging, insolent, insulting, invective, libelous, maligning, obloquious, offensive, opprobrious, reproachful, reviling, rude, sarcastic, scathing, scolding, scurrilous, sharp-tongued, slanderous, traducing, upbraiding, vilifying
So not sure if the word really exists but its a good word and i will try to work it into everyday speech without appearing to be contumelious or opprobrious ....OK...?
_____________________________
Don't trust Atoms.....they make up everything.
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Date Jul. 27 2012 17:00:41
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