Three photographs that trace lost time. Above: tornado damage in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, at Moross and Lakeshore. Several tornadoes blasted the Detroit area on July 2, 1997. People were killed at this site (blown out into Lake St. Clair), which I drove by about two hours before this particular tornado struck. I had checked on a work acquaintance's pet dog in St. Clair Shores and was driving to Grosse Pointe to visit a then brother-in-law in the smallest house in that little city, an inner suburb of Detroit; spent the actual event in a basement while it roared overhead.
The Colonial Inn & Restaurant, Hillsborough, North Carolina. This was a cozy place that served southern-style family meals in a historical setting. 153 West King Street; current structure built in 1838. Presently, it is in limbo. For more, here's a link: http://www.colonialinnhillsborough.org/
The Ivy Room in Durham, North Carolina, closed since the mid-1980s after a forty or so year run. This was another cozy place -- with "Chicken in the Rough." An excellent website called Endangered Durham has a nifty entry on the Ivy Room, with photos; a couple of them can be matched with this shot I took in March of 1986, soon after it closed. For more, please see: http://endangereddurham.blogspot.com/2006/11/ivy-room.html
One of the wonderful aspects of The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show was its mix of history, myth, fantasy and zaniness. Creative thinking. I remember, for instance, the Battle of Gettysburg being played out like a football game on a field that was also mined (if memory serves). Since it was a cartoon, no problem. Rocky & Bullwinkle celebrate their fiftieth anniversary this year, along with the Cuban Revolution and Motown.
Characters that come to mind beside the leads: Mr. Peabody and Sherman; Dudley Do-Right; Natasha and Boris. With them, anything was possible, from fairytales and fables to the Cold War and poetry. Let's not forget time travel via the WABAC Machine. The cleverness and joie de vivre devotailed later with shows like Batman; time travel made its way into Time Tunnel and a heap of other 60s series.
Rocky & Bullwinkle have long since dug their way into conciousness, burrowing deep and only now resurfacing after many many years.
Hey folks, it's the 40th anniversary of the Altamont Speedway Free Festival, immortalized in Gimme Shelter, the 1970 documentary by the Maysles brothers (Albert and David) with Charlotte Zwerin. Just as the Stones were weighed against the Beatles, Altamont was weighed against Woodstock -- the supposed end of the hippie dream in Nixonian America, amid the raging US-Vietnam War. Still, the balance sheet was even at Altamont: four deaths and four births. And the beat went on. Kent State and Jackson State shootings were just around the corner, and Watergate, too.
"Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!": The Rolling Stones in Concert, recorded during the 1969 tour, was released in 1970: it's one of the best concert albums ever released so far as I know. What's more, the 40th anniversary edition now out includes tracks that might have been included in a two-disc set in 1970, before it was decided to stick to a single disc release. It's all there now: bonus tracks, B.B. King, Ike & Tina Turner, and film footage. How cool is that? (As an aside, the record title comes from a similarly titled song by North Carolina bluesman Blind Boy Fuller/Fulton Allen, who died in Durham, North Carolina in 1941).
But the best album by the Rolling Stones was yet to come with Exile on Main St. in 1972. This album has so much to offer that even decades later, I'm still absorbing its richness. Above is a promo, featuring Mick Jagger on piano. More on Exile in due time. Dig it, Jack!
Caught in a grinding war zone and persecuted for your beliefs? What're you gonna do? Where are you gonna go? A bunch of Germans caught in this situation made their way to sanctuary in Pennsylvania, starting in 1683. From Germantown, they spread out into the countryside, farming or developing Utopian societies like Ephrata (pictured above). And so began the Pennsylvania Germans or "Dutch," Anabaptists, Mennonites, Amish, and what have you. In many cases, they still dress as they did way back when. Why? I have no idea. Seems like an arbitrary place to freeze fashion and technological developments. But so it's said -- God works in mysterious ways -- and people even more so.
Haag's Hotel and Restaurant, Shartlesville, Pennsylvania: "Haag's Family Style Pennsylvania Dutch Dinner." All a farmer -- or motorist -- can eat!
The celebrity media zoo is nothing new, certainly, nor are crazy scandals gone public. How many remember the "accidental" shooting of skier Spider Sabich by pop singer Claudine Longet (after her divorce from Andy Williams) in 1976? For some reason -- probably the Tiger Woods circus and Elin Nordegren's whirling Dervish golf club -- the incident came to mind; also that (in 1979) the Rolling Stones recorded a wicked little ditty about it, called "Claudine," after Some Girls (1978). A little too pointed for its day, "Claudine" is now available via YouTube thirty years later, at least for the time being. It's especially sardonic given Claudine's Let's Spend the Night Together album (1972): not exactly a ringing endorsement from Mick and the dudes. It sounds unfinished, but is worth checking out if you're a Stones fan. Incidentally, Ron Wood is in the news thanks to yet another domestic situation.
