I hate carnival rides. I hate nausea and disorientation and losing all my pocket change. If I want to spin or shake or fly around through the air, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
As I stroll the fairgrounds, I sometimes find myself distracted by women, especially those who lack obvious facial tattoos. But giving in to such distractions raises an unavoidable issue: My wife. Being married means getting elbowed in the rib cage every time my head turns. If I want sore ribs, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
I’m not thrilled by dime-toss games anymore. At one particular fair several years ago, my dead-eyelob shot won about a half-dozen of those cheap, paper-thin, beer-label drinking glasses. They were all broken within a month. If I want broken glass, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
No, there’s only one thing about the Kern County Fair that interests me: Greasy food, spicy food, tangy food, sugary food. In general, food.
This is the one time of year when I try to justify dietary irresponsibility, the one time (well, except for Thanksgiving and six or eight other occasions) when I pretend I still have the metabolism of a 14-year-old.
Corn dogs on the main promenade, slathered with mustard. Mini-taco platters at the Mexican village, buried under an inch-thick layer of salsa. Egg rolls. Cinnamon rolls.
And, on the way back to the car, right after the annual family-of-four-in-the-photo-booth thing, the obligatory bag of caramel corn.
I don’t eat this way all the time.
Really. I wouldn’t be able to see the space bar on my keyboard if I were totally without shame.
But this is the fair: I can go back to eating responsibly next month. Fair food, to me, makes the whole two-week affair worthwhile.
What better enticements does the fair offer? Not all that much.
Let’s see: I enjoy going into the exhibition halls and watching pitchpersons with wireless headset mikes trying to sell non-stick pans and never-dull cutlery. (Warning: Never allow yourself to actually appear interested or you may become part of the presentation. I was once forced to comment publicly on the dust-attracting prowess of the Wonder Broom. Wow! It’s really amazing!)
I enjoy watching the joy-terror on the face of my pre-schooler as he circles around in a tiny helicopter at the breakneck speed of 3 mph. Even at this age, like his older sister before him, he is trying to perfect the art of appearing nonchalant while privately wondering about the credentials of the carny-in-charge.
I enjoy hearing the shrieks cascade down from the bungee jumping attraction, though I am smart enough to keep my distance. For one thing, I don’t want to get caught up in any dares. For another, I understand rudimentary intestinal chemistry: Eight beers plus a cone of soft-serve plus an order of nachos, churned violently, equals ... well, you get the picture.
That’s the beauty of the fair. You get to see things you don’t normally get to see (and probably wouldn’t otherwise care to see). Bodies flying through the air. Rows of stuffed Garfields. Rows of Metallica posters. Packs of fairgoers who actually own Metallica posters. Those L.A. deejays, Mark & Brian. People willing to stick objects up their nose in order to impress Mark & Brian.
I’m not normally interested in calf roping or steer wrestling, and I seem to be able to get through the entire year without viewing 90-pound zucchinis or sitting through cheerleading competitions. But I usually end up doing so during the fair’s run, if only because you might as well do something while the digestion process works its magic.
I should note that I’m very proud of my digestive system. But I’m no super-human: I have to draw the line somewhere.
A guy can’t process a chili burger in just any old place. That’s why I steer clear of the calf-birthing area. I have come to realize that the livestock pens are generally not goodplaces to enjoy fair cuisine. Nothing personal, kids: I have only the greatest admiration for the 4-H Club. I’ll support your endeavors 100 percent, as long as I can do so upwind.
Here, for the record, I would like to state my appreciation for farmers and ranchers, as well as 4-H’ers, carnies, metal-heads, deejays and the people who sell those white, 3-foot-long inflatable space shuttles.
Speaking of which, have you see people trying to lug those things around during the fair? Yikes. If I want a massive, white, inflatable thing smacking me in the face, I’ll drive my car into a ditch.
I wrote this in September 2000. My kids don't like to hang around me at the fair anymore, except for the time it takes to ask for and receive money. I have long since given up on trying to cram all four family members into a single photo booth.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Blowing in from the west, a twangy memory of the past
The first song I ever learned on the guitar, back in my Petaluma parks and rec summer class, lo, those many years ago, was a response to Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee.”
It was Jesse Colin Young’s “Hippie from Olema,” an amusing retort sung to the tune of Haggard’s redneck anthem of conserva tive pride. Where Haggard had written, “We don’t grow our hair out long and shaggy,” the leader of the Youngbloods had written, “We don’t spill our oil out in the ocean.” I was subsisting on a steady sugar diet of AM radio pop at the time, but even I picked up on the serious cultural disconnect in evidence.
So when Amanda Eichstaedt e-mailed me a couple of months ago to ask about Bakersfield music, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the small irony attached to her return address: Olema. Yes, a resident of the original Hippieville, 20 miles through the west Marin backcountry from the stomping grounds of my bewildered youth, was writing to inquire about Merle Haggard and friends.
Eichstaedt and collaborator Mike Varley co-host an every-other-Thursday-evening program on KWMR, a charming, appealingly eclectic radio station in Point Reyes, just over the hill from Olema. The show is called “Bakersfield and Beyond,” and it’s worth bookmarking on your computer. (Go to kwmr.org and click on the cow icon to get streaming live audio of the two-hour show.)
Fans of Buck and Merle will find something to like here, but that’s not what makes “Bakersfield and Beyond” a great show. Eichstaedt and Varley may have come late to the Bakersfield Sound party, but they’ve managed to locate and restore a story line that, with a very few notable exceptions, petered out sometime in the mid-1970s.
The story line is this: A unique new genre of distinctly American music, born of folk, blues, Western swing and rockabilly, spiced with sweat, sunburn and a double helping of class resentment, finds a place in the broader popular consciousness. The Bakersfield Sound starts out as the music of independence and rebellion but, like so many other cultural insurgencies, it gradually evolves into a copy of the mainstream product, so indistinguishable it ceases to exist except in memory. Buck Owens himself lamented its passing.
But “Bakersfield and Beyond” reminds us that the spirit of that music is still kicking around — in expected places, like Austin, Texas, and L.A., but also in unexpected places like Calgary, Alberta, where singer-songwriter Tim Hus presses on the best traditions of Billy Mize and Tommy Collins.
And, thank God, in Bakersfield, too: Eichstaedt and Varley served up some Big House last Thursday (“Louisiana in the Rain”), as well as Fatt Katt and Von Zippers (“Rockin’ and Rollin’ Tonight”). Another local, Bruce Theissen, aka Dr. BLT, is a regular call-in guest; his astonishing, barely recognizable rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” a few weeks ago was lonely enough to have made Johnny Cash cry. No, seriously.
In November 2008, Eichstaedt, who already had an interview show on KWMR, was asked to cover the station’s Thursday night slot for four shows. She knew Varley through bicycling — Varley owns the local bike shop, and she is chairwoman of the board of the League of American Bicyclists, a national cycling advocacy group.
She knew their musical tastes were similar and vast, so she asked him to sit in with her. They pulled out some Dave Alvin and some John Doe & the Sadies — familiar names to anyone who frequents Bakersfield’s Fishlips club — along with Vancouver-based Neko Case, who toured with Haggard two years ago. Research helped them realize those performers had a lot in common with the Bakersfield Sound.
They didn’t know much about Bakersfield music, however, and they readily admitted it to their listening audience on that first broadcast. Was there really even such a thing? “Immediately we got a call from a friend who could not believe that, a) we did not know what the Bakersfield Sound was, and, b) we would actually admit it on the air,” Eichstaedt wrote in a recent e-mail.
In the eight months since their debut, they’re uncovered quite a few of Bakersfield’s musical progeny. But they’ve also fallen in love with Rose Maddox, Little Jimmy Dickens, Wanda Jackson and Ferlin Husky, in addition to Buck and Merle.
Depending on how you define the Bakersfield Sound, they might now know more about the genre now than any living man or woman, including those who lived it. Not that they would ever make such a boast: They are properly humble and self-deprecating about their new-found expertise. And now that they’ve actually visited Mecca — last month they caught Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women at Fishlips and Buddy Owens and the Buckaroos at the Crystal Palace — they may qualify for Ph.D’s in honky tonk.
Meanwhile, in Bakersfield, the city’s lone country station plays Nashville hits, and half the dial is given over to hip-hop. Son Volt? Rosie Flores? Who are they? To a far greater extent than we might want to admit, Bakersfield has lost an important part of its musical identity. Fortunately, others have found pleasing remnants of it. Even a couple of bike-riding hippies from Olema.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or www.stubblebuzz.com.
It was Jesse Colin Young’s “Hippie from Olema,” an amusing retort sung to the tune of Haggard’s redneck anthem of conserva tive pride. Where Haggard had written, “We don’t grow our hair out long and shaggy,” the leader of the Youngbloods had written, “We don’t spill our oil out in the ocean.” I was subsisting on a steady sugar diet of AM radio pop at the time, but even I picked up on the serious cultural disconnect in evidence.
So when Amanda Eichstaedt e-mailed me a couple of months ago to ask about Bakersfield music, I couldn’t help but be distracted by the small irony attached to her return address: Olema. Yes, a resident of the original Hippieville, 20 miles through the west Marin backcountry from the stomping grounds of my bewildered youth, was writing to inquire about Merle Haggard and friends.
Eichstaedt and collaborator Mike Varley co-host an every-other-Thursday-evening program on KWMR, a charming, appealingly eclectic radio station in Point Reyes, just over the hill from Olema. The show is called “Bakersfield and Beyond,” and it’s worth bookmarking on your computer. (Go to kwmr.org and click on the cow icon to get streaming live audio of the two-hour show.)
Fans of Buck and Merle will find something to like here, but that’s not what makes “Bakersfield and Beyond” a great show. Eichstaedt and Varley may have come late to the Bakersfield Sound party, but they’ve managed to locate and restore a story line that, with a very few notable exceptions, petered out sometime in the mid-1970s.
The story line is this: A unique new genre of distinctly American music, born of folk, blues, Western swing and rockabilly, spiced with sweat, sunburn and a double helping of class resentment, finds a place in the broader popular consciousness. The Bakersfield Sound starts out as the music of independence and rebellion but, like so many other cultural insurgencies, it gradually evolves into a copy of the mainstream product, so indistinguishable it ceases to exist except in memory. Buck Owens himself lamented its passing.
But “Bakersfield and Beyond” reminds us that the spirit of that music is still kicking around — in expected places, like Austin, Texas, and L.A., but also in unexpected places like Calgary, Alberta, where singer-songwriter Tim Hus presses on the best traditions of Billy Mize and Tommy Collins.
And, thank God, in Bakersfield, too: Eichstaedt and Varley served up some Big House last Thursday (“Louisiana in the Rain”), as well as Fatt Katt and Von Zippers (“Rockin’ and Rollin’ Tonight”). Another local, Bruce Theissen, aka Dr. BLT, is a regular call-in guest; his astonishing, barely recognizable rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” a few weeks ago was lonely enough to have made Johnny Cash cry. No, seriously.
In November 2008, Eichstaedt, who already had an interview show on KWMR, was asked to cover the station’s Thursday night slot for four shows. She knew Varley through bicycling — Varley owns the local bike shop, and she is chairwoman of the board of the League of American Bicyclists, a national cycling advocacy group.
She knew their musical tastes were similar and vast, so she asked him to sit in with her. They pulled out some Dave Alvin and some John Doe & the Sadies — familiar names to anyone who frequents Bakersfield’s Fishlips club — along with Vancouver-based Neko Case, who toured with Haggard two years ago. Research helped them realize those performers had a lot in common with the Bakersfield Sound.
They didn’t know much about Bakersfield music, however, and they readily admitted it to their listening audience on that first broadcast. Was there really even such a thing? “Immediately we got a call from a friend who could not believe that, a) we did not know what the Bakersfield Sound was, and, b) we would actually admit it on the air,” Eichstaedt wrote in a recent e-mail.
In the eight months since their debut, they’re uncovered quite a few of Bakersfield’s musical progeny. But they’ve also fallen in love with Rose Maddox, Little Jimmy Dickens, Wanda Jackson and Ferlin Husky, in addition to Buck and Merle.
Depending on how you define the Bakersfield Sound, they might now know more about the genre now than any living man or woman, including those who lived it. Not that they would ever make such a boast: They are properly humble and self-deprecating about their new-found expertise. And now that they’ve actually visited Mecca — last month they caught Dave Alvin and the Guilty Women at Fishlips and Buddy Owens and the Buckaroos at the Crystal Palace — they may qualify for Ph.D’s in honky tonk.
Meanwhile, in Bakersfield, the city’s lone country station plays Nashville hits, and half the dial is given over to hip-hop. Son Volt? Rosie Flores? Who are they? To a far greater extent than we might want to admit, Bakersfield has lost an important part of its musical identity. Fortunately, others have found pleasing remnants of it. Even a couple of bike-riding hippies from Olema.
Reach Robert Price at rprice@bakersfield.com or www.stubblebuzz.com.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
The day the president gave a speech to the nation's children from her classroom
Cynthia Mostoller has always believed in bringing history to life. Through the years, she has brought in professional historians, designed Revolutionary War-era newspapers, held birthday celebrations for important but neglected women, and led rousing in-class renditions of American folk songs like “Yankee Doodle.”
Mostoller, an eighth-grade history teacher at Alice Deal Junior High in northwest Washington, D.C., doesn’t have many students falling asleep in class. She certainly didn’t have any students snoozing when President Bush the First addressed the nation’s students from her classroom in 1991, and she doesn’t expect to have any snoozing on Tuesday, when President Obama addresses kids on a similar topic — the importance of education.
This week, via e-mail, I asked Mostoller about those rare occasions when presidents give speeches addressed directly to children.
First, it bears noting that this is a teacher who takes her calling seriously. For years, as the Washington Post noted in 2005, Mostoller has trained other teachers, and used a curriculum she created herself to present U.S. history from Colonial times through 1900.
Her personal connections have helped create unusual and fascinating opportunities for her students. One day in 2005, for example, some of her students led the pledge of allegiance at the National Archives when President George W. Bush dedicated the renovated rotunda that displays the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hers is a unique American story. Born on a farm in Ohio, she married right out of high school and immediately started spending her days shopping and cooking for farmhands. But she went back to school, got her degree in history from the University of Akron, and in 1985 took on a life-changing trip to the nation’s capital. In Washington for a conference, she stopped in at the school district office to ask about teaching in the D.C. school system.
As she was preparing to go home, the principal of Deal Junior High called and offered her a job. A history teacher had died two days before classes were to begin.
Mostoller is lukewarm about using the Internet for studies of history and skeptical about such things as “standards” and “critical thinking” because, as she told the Post for the first of the newspaper’s 2005 profiles on educational innovators, they “don’t mean anything to the kids.”
Back in October 1991, when President George H.W. Bush spoke to America’s schoolchildren via live TV hookup, he was speaking from her classroom.
“You know, all over America, thousands of schools do succeed, even against tough odds, even against all odds,” Bush said that day. “Kids from all over the District of Columbia petition to get into Alice Deal School here because parents know this school works. It works because of teachers like the one standing over here, Ms. Mostoller, ... decided at the age of 25 that she wanted to teach.
“She was standing in a supermarket checkout line when she saw a magazine ad about college. She went back to school, worked her way through in seven years, waiting tables to pay tuition. She made it, and so can you,” Bush said.
I asked Mostoller what she remembered about Bush’s 1991 speech, what she thought the impact of Obama’s speech might be, and her opinion of the protests about his address.
“I spent some time going through my video of the 1991 visit as well as the newspaper clippings and photographs of the (Bush) event,” she wrote back on Saturday.
“His message that day was the same as the one I expect President Obama to make on Tuesday: Go to bed early, get to school on time, complete your assignments as best as you can, and work toward a rewarding future. Seems like the good, old-fashioned midwestern values I grew up with in Ohio.”
Mostoller expressed disappointment and bafflement at the way some conservatives are portraying Obama’s speech.
“I don’t understand the partisan controversy behind this,” she wrote. “Every president, every year, should start the school year with a message of hope and inspiration. Who better than the one person we elected to advocate for our best interests?”
Partisan politics — and that’s what’s behind this current controversy — has no place in the classroom. It didn’t when Bush chose Mostoller’s classroom for his 1991 pep talk.
“My students in 1991 were much less concerned about his political affiliation than they were having the opportunity to meet the president and be on TV,” she wrote. “The hate-mongers and political pundits looking for trouble where there is none need to give it a rest. Public education is one of the pillars of our free society. We support it with tax dollars because we appreciate its inherent value. We should worry when the president is not interested in promoting education.”
So it’s come to this? People fear a president’s interest in public education so much they’ll pull their kids out of class?
“(Addressing the importance of education) seems like a no-brainer and I regret very much that the few rabble-rousers out there with hurtful agendas have been given so much attention,” Mostoller wrote.
“There were a lot of wonderful kids sitting in my room that day — and many have gone on to be successful adults.
“Did his speech in 1991 change the world? Maybe not, but it did introduce public education into the national agenda in a way that hadn’t been done since the space race of the 1960s. Let’s hope Obama’s speech re-invigorates our engagement in education. Our future depends on it.”
Wise words from a teacher who sees the big picture.
Mostoller, an eighth-grade history teacher at Alice Deal Junior High in northwest Washington, D.C., doesn’t have many students falling asleep in class. She certainly didn’t have any students snoozing when President Bush the First addressed the nation’s students from her classroom in 1991, and she doesn’t expect to have any snoozing on Tuesday, when President Obama addresses kids on a similar topic — the importance of education.
This week, via e-mail, I asked Mostoller about those rare occasions when presidents give speeches addressed directly to children.
First, it bears noting that this is a teacher who takes her calling seriously. For years, as the Washington Post noted in 2005, Mostoller has trained other teachers, and used a curriculum she created herself to present U.S. history from Colonial times through 1900.
Her personal connections have helped create unusual and fascinating opportunities for her students. One day in 2005, for example, some of her students led the pledge of allegiance at the National Archives when President George W. Bush dedicated the renovated rotunda that displays the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Hers is a unique American story. Born on a farm in Ohio, she married right out of high school and immediately started spending her days shopping and cooking for farmhands. But she went back to school, got her degree in history from the University of Akron, and in 1985 took on a life-changing trip to the nation’s capital. In Washington for a conference, she stopped in at the school district office to ask about teaching in the D.C. school system.
As she was preparing to go home, the principal of Deal Junior High called and offered her a job. A history teacher had died two days before classes were to begin.
Mostoller is lukewarm about using the Internet for studies of history and skeptical about such things as “standards” and “critical thinking” because, as she told the Post for the first of the newspaper’s 2005 profiles on educational innovators, they “don’t mean anything to the kids.”
Back in October 1991, when President George H.W. Bush spoke to America’s schoolchildren via live TV hookup, he was speaking from her classroom.
“You know, all over America, thousands of schools do succeed, even against tough odds, even against all odds,” Bush said that day. “Kids from all over the District of Columbia petition to get into Alice Deal School here because parents know this school works. It works because of teachers like the one standing over here, Ms. Mostoller, ... decided at the age of 25 that she wanted to teach.
“She was standing in a supermarket checkout line when she saw a magazine ad about college. She went back to school, worked her way through in seven years, waiting tables to pay tuition. She made it, and so can you,” Bush said.
I asked Mostoller what she remembered about Bush’s 1991 speech, what she thought the impact of Obama’s speech might be, and her opinion of the protests about his address.
“I spent some time going through my video of the 1991 visit as well as the newspaper clippings and photographs of the (Bush) event,” she wrote back on Saturday.
“His message that day was the same as the one I expect President Obama to make on Tuesday: Go to bed early, get to school on time, complete your assignments as best as you can, and work toward a rewarding future. Seems like the good, old-fashioned midwestern values I grew up with in Ohio.”
Mostoller expressed disappointment and bafflement at the way some conservatives are portraying Obama’s speech.
“I don’t understand the partisan controversy behind this,” she wrote. “Every president, every year, should start the school year with a message of hope and inspiration. Who better than the one person we elected to advocate for our best interests?”
Partisan politics — and that’s what’s behind this current controversy — has no place in the classroom. It didn’t when Bush chose Mostoller’s classroom for his 1991 pep talk.
“My students in 1991 were much less concerned about his political affiliation than they were having the opportunity to meet the president and be on TV,” she wrote. “The hate-mongers and political pundits looking for trouble where there is none need to give it a rest. Public education is one of the pillars of our free society. We support it with tax dollars because we appreciate its inherent value. We should worry when the president is not interested in promoting education.”
So it’s come to this? People fear a president’s interest in public education so much they’ll pull their kids out of class?
“(Addressing the importance of education) seems like a no-brainer and I regret very much that the few rabble-rousers out there with hurtful agendas have been given so much attention,” Mostoller wrote.
“There were a lot of wonderful kids sitting in my room that day — and many have gone on to be successful adults.
“Did his speech in 1991 change the world? Maybe not, but it did introduce public education into the national agenda in a way that hadn’t been done since the space race of the 1960s. Let’s hope Obama’s speech re-invigorates our engagement in education. Our future depends on it.”
Wise words from a teacher who sees the big picture.
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