Children, Churches and Daddies

The Unreligious, Non-Family-Oriented Literary and Art Magazine

ISSN 1068-5154

june 1997, v92

California Informed of Perot’s new Party

SACRAMENTO, Calif (Reuter) - Supporters of billionaire Ross Perot notified the California secretary of state of their intention to form a new political party, officials said.

“We are filing formal notice with you that a new political body has been organized,’’ Michael Farris, state secretary and treasurer of the Reform Party, wrote in a letter to California Secretary of State Bill Jones.

Perot, a 65-year-old billionaire businessman, announced he planned to form a third political party.

Perot backers must gather enough petition signatures or register enough voters to get on the 1996 presidential ballot early in California, Maine and Ohio.

The party will be ineligible to participate in the November, 1996 general election unless it selects its candidates at the state-sanctioned March primary.

Perot’s new “Independence Party’’ will be called the “Reform Party’’ in states such as California where there is a name conflict.

To qualify as an official political party in California, the new organization must register 89,007 voters with the party or file a petition signed by 890,064 registered voters.

There are six qualified political parties in California and 12 other political bodies are attempting to qualify as recognized political parties for the March primary election.

Perot said Monday that his party would likely decide on a candidate for the 1996 presidential election by spring.

Group Advises on Non-Surgical Abortions

By Adam Entous

SAN FRANCISCO, March 31 (Reuter) - The largest U.S. association of abortion providers, in a bid to expand the range of women’s choices and access to abortions, advised doctors in the use of the controversial drug methotrexate as an alternative to surgery to end pregnancies.

The National Abortion Federation said it presented research about the drug to physicians at a conference in San Francisco for their use in clinical practice with their patients.

“Medical abortion is here,’’ said federation Executive Director Vicki Saporta. “We’re hoping that some new doctors will decide to perform them.’’

She said the number of abortions in the United States would not increase with the availability of methotrexate and estimated that only about 25 percent of women would chose non-surgical abortion methods once they become widely available.

“There will be additional doctors who now don’t perform surgical abortions who will offer medical abortion procedures,’’ Saporta said. “But I don’t think that you’re going to find it in every OB/GYN’s (obstetrician/gynecologist) office across the country.’’

The drug methotrexate has not been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for abortions.

It has, however, long been used to treat cancer. It became widely known for its abortive properties when Dr. Richard Hausknecht went public more than a year ago in New York, saying he used it in his private practice for abortions.

The drug is similar to the French drug mifepristone, commonly known as RU-486, which allows a woman to abort about 10 days after taking the medication.

The president of Advances in Health Technology, granted the exclusive license of mifepristone, told reporters at the conference that the FDA’s review of the drug was continuing.

“We hope the drug will be available later this year,’’ company President Susan Allen told reporters.

Security at the National Abortion Federation conference, attended by over 600 abortion doctors and clinic administrators, was tight.

A lone activist marched in protest on Sunday.

Abortion-rights groups predict a fierce battle with abortion foes over non-surgical abortions.

But many believe medical abortions would reduce the risk of violence at abortion clinics because the drugs could be administered at any doctor’s office, anywhere.

“It’s going to spread the targets out,’’ said Hausknecht, who is an associate clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York.

The methotrexate procedure involves patients taking two drugs: methotrexate and misoprostol. Methotrexate stops the embryos’ cells from dividing and multiplying and misoprostol triggers uterine contractions to expel the embryo.

Last week, Planned Parenthood of New York City said it hoped to offer drug-induced abortions with methotrexate by June.

Only women who have gone no more than 56 days since the first day of their last menstrual cycle would be eligible for the procedure, Planned Parenthood said.

“It will not replace surgical abortions,’’ Saporta said of non-surgical methods. “What it does is provide women with additonal choice and we certainly hope it will expand access to abortions around the country.’’

New York’s Guardian Angels Looking For a Home

By Ellen Wulfhorst

NEW YORK (Reuter) - The Guardian Angels need an angel of their own.

The cadre of red-bereted teen-agers, once a familiar sight in New York’s streets and subways, has shrunk to just a shadow of its former size. In their heyday there were some 1,000 Angels, but just 150 remain.

Now the Angels are growing only overseas, including recently opened branches in Tokyo and Moscow.

It has always been a struggle for the volunteer street patrol to survive on charitable donations in New York. But now they are about to lose their rent-free storefront headquarters and they want to raise enough money to buy their own building.

“We have to have our own space,” said Curtis Sliwa, who founded the group 16 years ago. “We can’t have a meeting on a subway platforms or a street corner.”

A recent benefit raised a disappointing $2,000 for the Angels, who now are considering licensing their logo to market security items such as whistles, locks and alarms. But it will take at least $150,000 to make a down payment and renovations even on an unwanted, rundown building, Sliwa said. The group must vacate its present offices by Jan. 1, when the space will be converted to housing for homeless families.

But the 41-year-old Sliwa - the oldest Angel in New York - is nonetheless optimistic. “We’re hearty. We know how to operate on a spartan budget,” he said. “We don’t require luxury, just four walls, a desk and a telephone.”

The Angels’ difficult straits are a far cry from their heyday, when they were drawing hundreds of recruits and many city residents welcomed their reassuring presence. The Rev. Dale Hansen, a Lutheran minister who several years invited the Guardian Angels to help clean up his crime-ridden neighborhood known as Hell’s Kitchen, thinks the novelty has worn off.

“In the early years, the publicity gave everybody a high,” he said. “The boys got enormous satisfaction out of being recognized. That’s not there in the same intensity it was.”

Others say the Guardian Angels were done in by their own admission that they faked some of their reported acts of bravery. Sliwa confessed three years ago to staging some exploits, including his own kidnapping, for publicity.

New York’s remaining Angels make up three subway patrols and foot patrols in the Times Square theater district, trying largely to deter crime but at times making citizen’s arrests.

As the years have passed and the Angels have faded from view, their once stormy relations with police have calmed. Police officials now concede the Angels, once attacked as vigilantes, can at times provide invaluable help.

Sliwa blames the risks of being an Guardian Angel for the decline in numbers. From memory, he can recite a list of members he says were killed or injured in the line of duty.

“It’s like a wartime occupation, it’s very dangerous,” he said. But he believes the Angels will have a second chance with a permanent home that will attract new members and provide space to train fresh recruits.

“It’s always been ups and downs in terms of members,” Sliwa said. “I don’t think it’s a Draconian situation.”

As they lose their current home, the Guardian Angels will be missed, said Hansen, whose St. Luke’s church is right next door. “I don’t think the neighborhood is going to revert to what it was,” he said. “But it’s just comforting to a lot of folks to see the boys around, walking the streets.”

Disease Killing Fla. Manatees

Authorities say a mysterious disease is killing the endangered manatee, Florida’s gentle, whiskered marine mammals. 86 manatees have turned up dead in southwest Florida. Marine mammal experts say they died from pneumonia, but what is causing the pneumonia has eluded researchers. The federal government has assembled a team of experts to help, and a virologist from the Netherlands also has joined the effort. The manatee has hovered on the edge of extinction for years because of human pressure on the thinning population. The last survey of Florida’s manatee population indicated about 2,600 remain.

Away On Business: Healthy Airport Food?

By Michael Conlon

CHICAGO (Reuter) - Finding a healthy meal at an airport is nearly impossible at some places around the country - just ask the flight attendants at Southwest Airlines.

A public interest group that did just that found that 85 percent of the attendants said there was no such thing as healthy airport fare, and 93 percent of them brown bag it when they go to work, in part because of health concerns.

That information comes from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a Washington-based group supported by about 65,000 members.

In addition to talking to the flight attendants, the group hired people to tour airports and report on the food being sold, and also asked major airlines about their in-flight menus.

David Wasser, spokesman for the group, said a fairly strict standard was used to measure the results - 10 to 15 percent of calories from fat, a level that is basically vegetarian. He said the group felt that would provide an indicator of quality and choice, even though most consumers don’t seek out non-meat meals exclusively.

“We found a wide variety,’’ said Wasser. “The airports that were the best were those that tried to bring in local restauranters - Los Angeles, for example,’’ he said. “Those that relied on national vendors were the worst.

“Vancouver and Pittsburgh also had excellent selections - steamed vegetables, for example,’’ he said.

“Atlanta on the other hand seemd to offer only a choice between a small hot dog and a large one,’’ he added.

The group’s airport food list from best to least desirable:

Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Vancouver, Seattle, Albuquerque, Chicago O’Hare, Boston, Salt Lake City, New York Laguardia, San Francisco, New York JFK, Denver, Oakland, Miami, St. Louis, Phoenix, Memphis, Dallas and Atlanta.

“There’s obviously a lack of communication between consumers and the people who run airport concessions,’’ Wasser said. “Even people in a hurry don’t want just a hot dog and fries.’’

Based on menu information provided by several airlines, the group rated United as tops, largely because it offers a vegetarian steak and pasta and a vegetarian ravioli with 3 percent to 9 percent fat on some flights where meals are served, as well as a 16 percent fat mixed-grain dish.

The others in order in the survey were TWA, Continental, American and Northwest.

This assumes, of course, that a meal or snack is offered - something that is increasingly rare in the air, especially on regional hops.

Wasser said there is debate in the medical community about the ideal ratio of fat to calories. The U.S. diet gets about 40 percent of calories from fat. Some experts say it should be

closer to 30 percent, he said.

“Others, like us, would like to see 10 to 15 percent,’’ he said.

“We were looking for 10 percent (in the survey) because we feel this is best for heart disease, colon cancer and prostate cancer - it’s similar to the traditional Japanese diet,’’ he said.

Business travelers: Question, complaint or pet peeve? Send them to Away on Business, c/o Reuters, Room 1170, 311 S. Wacker Dr., Chicago 60606. Or via Internet E-mail Mike.Conlon@Reuters.com - we cannot promise personal replies but will try to address letters as space permits.

Gay Rights Debate Focuses On Maine

By Allan Dowd

PORTLAND, Maine, Nov 5 (Reuter) - In the first test of an anti-gay rights referendum in an eastern state, Maine voters will decide on Tuesday whether to bar communities from granting civil rights and other protections to homosexuals.

The measure promoted by two conservative groups is opposed by civil rights advocates and Maine’s business community, who claim it will promote bigotry and have unintended consequences.

Supporters argue that the referendum is needed to prohibit gay men and lesbians from obtaining “special rights.’’ It would strike down local gay-rights ordinances adopted by Portland and a small island community.

A recent poll by WCSH-TV in Portland indicated opponents held a slight lead but private surveys have painted the race as a dead heat.

The question does not specifically mention homosexuals, but the target is evident in its supporters’ campaign. TV ads warn that school children could be forced to learn the “homosexual lifestyle’’ if the measure fails.

“This referendum will protect families and working Mainers against a militant, aggressive (homosexual) agenda,’’ Carolyn Cosby, chairwoman of Concerned Maine Families, said in a recent television debate.

Opponents contend the measure will lead to increased discrimination, strike down the state’s hate crime laws and hamper economic development by giving Maine a political black eye.

“The last thing we need is a national story that says ‘Maine discriminates’ or ‘Maine legalises discrimination,’’’ said Gov. Angus King, who has campaigned against the measure for Maine Won’t Discriminate.

Maine Won’t Discriminate has raised over $1 million, 10 times the amount that the measure’s supporters have raised.

Maine is the first eastern U.S. state to vote on an anti- gay rights referendum. Colorado approved an anti-gay rights amendment in 1992. Oregon defeated initiatives in 1992 and 1994 as did Idaho in 1994.

The U.S. Supreme Court is currently debating whether the Colorado amendment violates the right to equal protection. Lower courts have already ruled it is unconstitutional.

The authors of Maine’s initiative contend it avoids the legal weaknesses of Colorado’s measure because its wording does not specifically target homosexuals and because it is a law rather than a constitutional amendment.

Some constitutional experts discount that theory, noting that the measure’s supporters have made their intent clear by making the issue sexual preference the focus of their campaign.

“It seems to me a court could and probably would take into account the purpose as well as the effect of such a proposal,’’ Richard Maiman, professor of political science at the University of Southern Maine, told a radio interviewer.

Opponents of the Maine initiative have vowed a court fight if it is approved Tuesday.

The campaign has also featured a feud between Concerned Maine Families and another pro referendum group,The Coalition to End Special Rights.

The groups claim the split is over campaign strategy, but observers believe it is largely a personality clash between their leaders.

The Maine legislature has debated statewide gay rights protection several times in the past 20 years, approving a bill in 1994 only to have it vetoed by then-governor John McKernan.

The Maine referendum would not bar legislators from approving a state gay rights law in the future, but both opponents and supporters have acknowledged a “yes’’ vote on Tuesday would make lawmakers unlikely to do so.

Study Finds American Elderly Live Longer

BOSTON, Nov 1 (Reuter) - Americans may be more likely to die before age 65 than their counterparts in Japan, Sweden, France and England, but once they turn 80, their life expectancy is higher than those in some other countries.

In a study to be published in The New England Journal of Medicine, researchers Kenneth Manton and James Vaupel of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, uncovered the trend using data from 1987.

They found that while World Health Organisation statistics show Americans under the age of 65 have a higher mortality rate than citizens of many European countries and Japan, half the U.S. men who made it to age 80 survived to age 86.

In Japan, which has the lowest survival rates among the very old, half the 80-year-olds could expect to live to age 84.5. Americans over 80 also tended to live slightly longer than their counterparts in England, Sweden and France, the reserchers found.

There may be several reasons for the trend, including:

+ A lack of health insurance in people under 65 may lead to less-robust Americans dying younger. Thus the robust ones, whose health costs are covered by Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, are more likely to thrive with age.

+ More older Americans may be sensitive to the benefits of preventive medicine.

+ Elderly Americans, in a country that spends over 12 percent of its gross national product on health care, seem to get better care than older people in the other countries, which spend five to eight percent.

+ Older Americans are more likely to be immigrants who often are more healthy than family members left behind.

+ Well-educated people tend to be healthier, and older Americans may be better educated that the elderly in other countries.

Rapist Arrested After Second Test Matches DNA

NEW YORK, April 8 (Reuter) - A Long Island man who was released from jail in 1992 after DNA tests cleared him of a rape conviction was arrested and arraigned and charged with another rape, Suffolk County prosecutors said.

This time around, however, the man’s DNA was found on the victim’s clothing, said Suffolk County Distric Attorney James Catterson.

The man, Kerry Kotler, released in 1992 after spending 11 years in jail, was arrested on Monday for the August 12, 1995 rape and kidnap of a 20-year old woman in Suffolk Country, Long Island.

He was held on a $20,000 bond.

Kotler, 38, was represented in the first case by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, the two high profile experts in DNA evidence who worked on the O.J. Simpson case.

Simpson was found not-guilty for the murder of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ronald Goldman in 1995.

This time, Suffolk County prosecutors said Kotler followed the 20-year old woman home from a bar, forced her off the road, drove her to a secluded area and raped her.

The victim got a partial licence plate of Kotler’s car, which later was discovered to be registered to his girlfriend. Police also found dog hairs from Kotler’s car similar to hairs on the victim’s dress.

In the first case, he was arrested and jailed in connection with the rape of a East Farmingdale mother of three in 1978.

Pope Said Women Should Not Be Copies of Men

VATICAN CITY, Dec 6 (Reuter) - Pope John Paul said on Wednesday women should not try to be carbon copies of men and sharply criticised women who worked and saw motherhood as a drain on their freedom.

“In recent times, some currents of the feminist movement, aiming to encourage the emancipation of women, have tried to make her like men in all respects,’’ the Pontiff said.

“But the divine will...while wishing woman to be equal to man in dignity and value, at the same time clearly affirms her diversity and special nature.

“A woman’s identity cannot consist of being a copy of man, since she has qualities and prerogatives of her own.’’

Chief among those was motherhood.

“In some cases, the need for women to work to provide for the growing demands of the family, and an erroneous concept of freedom, which sees in the bringing up of children an obstacle to autonomy and the possiblity for a woman to affirm herself, have clouded the meaning of motherhood for the development of the feminine personality,’’ the 75-year-old Pope said.

A woman had significant possiblities in the expression of “her innate vocation to be a mother,’’ he added in remarks to his weekly general audience at the Vatican.

The Pope, known for his conservative nature, has recently encouraged women to enter politics and has defended what he says are the legitimate rights of the feminist movement as too many women are still the victim of injustice and prejudice.

He has, however, confirmed the Roman Catholic Church’s absolute ban on women priests.

China’s Researchers Revive Ancient Ant Wine Recipe

BEIJING (Reuter) - A Chinese medical research centre has revived an ancient imperial wine recipe using the healing properties of ants, the Economic Daily said.

The Nanjing Jinling Ant Research Healing Center in eastern Jiangsu province developed Chinese Ant-King Wine on the basis of an ancient recipe and modern discoveries concerning the medicinal qualities of ants, the newspaper said.

It said the wine is effective in treating rheumatism, strengthening muscles and bones, boosting the immune system and preventing senility.

New Male Contraceptive as Good as Pill

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuter) - A contraceptive injection for men has proved to be as effective as birth control pills for women, scientists said after worldwide trials.

The new contraceptive, a weekly injection tested on 400 men, was hailed as a major breakthrough. Doctors are now working on a daily pill version that could be taken in combination with less frequent injections.

“It is very significant. It is really for the first time showing the world that permanent contraception for men really works,’’ said Dr. Fred Wu of Manchester University in central England, one of 15 international centers to test it.

The contraceptive secretes the male hormone testosterone into the body to reduce the sperm count to negligible levels.

The World Health Organization said the new method was as effective as the female pill in preventing pregnancy. Side-effects are minimal and Wu said it worked better than a condom.

Initial tests showed the sperm counts in 60 percent of men could be reduced to zero by weekly testosterone injections. Later trials showed it could be effective in a further 38.6 percent of men.

“The importance of a new male contraceptive which is reversible is to increase the options for men so that they can play a more active role in family planning,’’ Wu said.

Asked if the researchers were effectively removing a barrier to disease, Wu told BBC Radio: “What we are trying to do is to provide couples in stable relationships with a form of contraception which does not interfere with the sexual act.’’

The contraceptive was initially administered by a weekly injection into the buttocks.

“We are now well on the way to testing more practical formulations which can achieve the same target,’’ Wu said.

“For example we are using a daily pill which is combined with long-acting injections three or four times a year as well as skin patches and implants,’’ he added.

But he warned against undue optimism, saying it could take up to eight years before a better technique of administering the drug is perfected.

“It now depends on whether the drug companies think they can produce it profitably in the long term,’’ Wu said.

College Student Prints $82,000

BESSEMER, Ala, Dec 6 (Reuter) - An ambitious Alabama technical student who put his knowledge of graphic arts and printing to the test wound up with $82,000 in counterfeit money, the Secret Service said.

Kenneth Enrico Dent, 24, is accused of printing the phoney money while enrolled at Bessemer State Technical College. He finished his course there on Nov. 16 and was arrested five days later when he tried to use a counterfeit check.

Authorities said the man used an offset printing press at the college to print $100, $50, $20 and $10 bills. The school is not being held accountable, however.

College spokesman Charles Murray said school officials were unsure whether Dent actually used the institution’s presses. He said students are a allowed to do outside work, but must get approval first.

Murray added that Dent was not enrolled for the current academic period at the college, located outside Birmingham.

The Secret Service said agents seized $82,000 in bogus cash at Dent’s apartment, along with the plates and negatives he allegedly used to make the money.

Dent, of Hueytown, Ala., was free on bond. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $30,000 in fines if convicted.

Condom Use Stretches Rubber Prices

COONOOR, India (Reuter) - Increasing condom use to counter AIDS and curb population growth has sent Indian rubber prices soaring during the peak tapping season, trade and industry sources said.

Latex, the milk tapped from the rubber tree, had previously been processed into sheet rubber for use mostly by tiremakers.

But the sources said most planters were now tapping latex to produce more remunerative concentrates used to make condoms, gloves, balloons and other items.

Indian rubber prices hit $1.40 per kilogram Oct. 12, an all-time high for the peak season, and have remained at that level against an average $1 per kilogram a year ago. A kilogram is 2.2 pounds.

Cops Under The Gun For Strip Poker

MINNEAPOLIS, Dec 4 (Reuter) - When they weren’t chasing fare-beaters or other crooks, some Minneapolis transit cops apparently used their computer to play strip poker, a newspaper said.

Metropolitan Council Transit Operations officials said they removed the adult game “Strip Poker II” from the department’s computer network last week following a complaint about the transit police from a female worker.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press, which obtained a copy of the game, said the first names of two female employees were attached to computer-generated female figures used in the game.

“These kinds of things are not acceptable. The message they convey is clearly sexual harassment that is not going to be tolerated,” said Richard Johnson, associate regional administrator of the agency that runs the bus system in Minneapolis and St. Paul.

prose

Karuna

Charles Chaim Wax

I saw Mary yesterday. Love is so strange, as one of my students said - unusual, uncommon, exceptional, deviant, off-center, remarkable, exotic, screwy - yet all these single words, somehow, don’t completely re-create the emotion. Mary loves me, I can tell, in her own way, in the way a seventy-four year old woman loves a forty-five year old man.

It happened like this. As soon as she saw me come through the door into the lobby of our building, she smiled. I smiled.

“Steve, do you know how to work the dryer?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“They changed the price to sixty cents.”

“Oh,” I gasped.

Then her voice changed - so soft, seductive (?), yearning, “Can you help me?”

I stared at her. The face once must have been lovely but now I could only see the paleness, the immense creases, the wrinkles, the crevices, the hollow cheeks, the bent shoulders, the unsteady hobble. My heart, my heart . . . so . . . so all the young beautiful women in my classes . . . this . . . this . . . without doubt . . . but I would never live to see this thing because by the time each would revolve into such age I would be long, long in my coffin. THERE . . . I THOUGHT IT. That’s why I didn’t like to see Mary and I hated myself for not liking to see her. I gave her so much pleasure. I always made sure to say, “Oh, I adore those green earrings you’re wearing today.” Or, “You look so charming with the red lipstick.” Little chit-chats which re-created a bit of delight for her - the memory of possibility when now little existed but to try and go to the supermarket. That was the big event of her day. She would say, “I have to go out. Who can stay in the house the whole day? Going is not so bad but coming home . . . ahh.” Mary had arthritis. The bones in her joints screeched when she bent her knees to take a step.

I followed her into the laundry room. Another old woman was waiting for me.

Mary smiled, “I brought Steve to rescue us.”

Both women were short. I looked down at the tops of their heads. Mary had thin gray hair with patches of baldness here and there. The other woman wore a plastic blonde wig. Her face was puffy but not as wrinkled as Mary’s.

I walked to the dryer and studied the coin mechanism. The woman wearing the blonde wig gave me two quarters and one dime. “Ah,” I sighed. “It goes like this. In the left side you put one quarter on top of the other and the dime goes just to the right.” I plopped the coins in and pushed the small metal arm. The coins engaged the starting mechanism and the dryer started.

Mary exclaimed, “Such a man.”

Then they both looked at each other. There was an awkward silence but it lasted only seconds.

The woman with the blonde wig sighed, “It takes a man.” I was not clear what the word “It” referred to. Takes a man to do what? I didn’t ask.

Mary murmured, “I’ll walk you to the elevator, Steve.”

“Thank you so much.” She smiled when I said that.

As we slowly walked she went on, “I do a lot for her - shopping, clean a little, but I can’t do it all.” Then she reached out and caressed my arm with her thin twisted fingers and giggled, “My hero.”

Her voice like a little girl who had eaten too many cookies in secret and been found out. The sound, if I had not seen the wrinkled face from which it cam - just like a child, six, seven, no more - the same. Filled with joy. Because of me?

Ronald MacKinnon Thompson

BORN AGAIN

Act One

The preacher finishes his sermon and pauses. He glares at his little congregation for a moment before speaking.

“The great Reverend Granger Lineweber has honored U8 by accepting my invitation. This will be your chance to be brought to the Lord by one of His finest Apostles.”

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, BOOM

Thirteen year old Roscoe Wheatley shakes his head and thinks, Here we go again.

(Roscoe is skinny, cowlicks leave his hair always in disarray, no matter how hard he tries to beat it down with brush and comb. His Florida tan makes him look healthier than he really i8. He suffers from dreadful attacks of asthma.)

As they leave the church, Aunt Molly grabs his arm and says, “This will be your chance to be Saved. You must not continue to refuse. What if something happened and you weren’t saved?”

(Aunt Molly is in her late forties, but to Roscoe she is old. Her hair is done up in a no-nonsense bun, she is slightly overweight, her face is unremarkably kind.)

Tonight is the first of The Great Lineweber’s revival meetings.

“But Roscoe,” Aunt Molly says, “You promised me you would go up to the altar at the next revival meeting.”

“I don’t want to. I’d feel foolish. I’m afraid.”

Aunt Molly continues her pleading,

Roscoe thinks, After all, she is taking care of me, spending her little income on me. She’s all I have.

Who knows where my mother is? he asks himself, or what man she’s with now? And my father has been so long gone I scarcely remember him.

Roscoe’s face contorts with anguish and tears. He controls himself and says, “O.K., I’ll do it--but I don’t want to.”

Maybe Aunt Molly is right, Roscoe thinks. After all I nearly died twice in the hospital with asthma. I don’t want to go to Hell.

Roscoe has seen the little church many times but now he feels the need to study it again. He pulls his hand away from Aunt Molly’s grasp, puts his hands on his hips and glowers at the church.

Not much of a church, he thinks, comparing it in his mind with the large brick Methodist church nearby, two story, columns, a golden cross, stained glass, and air-conditioning.

This little church is built of unadorned concrete blocks. A cheap wooden cross. Plain glass windows. No air-conditioning.

Only recently a devout carpenter-member of the congregation had built screens for the windows. They kept out the flocks of Florida mosquitoes, but nothing could keep out the little gnats that, when the wind was right, swarmed in to buzz around and bite the Faithful.

Aunt Molly grabs Roscoe by the arm again and says, “What are you gawking at? Time to go in.”

ACT TWO

THE EVANGELIST: (He is tall and thin, his features bold and stern. Perspiration adorns his forehead, but he does not remove his black coat or loosen his narrow black tie)

He holds both arms straight out, palms up offering the congregation the benevolence of God’s Will though His Representative on this poor planet.

Roscoe whispers, “He looks like Abraham Lincoln.”

Aunt Molly replies by holding her forefinger over her lips .

The Evangelist drops his arms to his sides and for a rigid moment looks up and over the heads of the congregation. Then he closes his eyes and clasps his hands before him in long-moments of silent prayer.

He opens his eyes, raises his right hand with his fist clinched and glares with a fiercely determined air and speaks.

His voice begins with the whisper of a creeping cat and ends with the bellow of a charging lion.

“Look into yourselves, you young sinners. Now is the time to meet your Lord, time to be Born Again. Come - Come up to the altar Come now! Or be forever Damned! Our Lord is impatient. He will not wait. Now! Now! Now you must be Saved - or risk Eternal Damnation!”

Roscoe resists Aunt Molly’s tug at his arm. She takes a firm grip, and walks him to the altar.

Two other boys are waiting to be Saved, one about seventeen and the other perhaps nearer twenty, but to Roscoe both are men.

I’m not old enough for this, he thinks.

The Evangelist places his hands on the head of the older boy and prays aloud. Although his voice is piercing, it is also reassuring, promising the Great Love of our Lord.

In a few minutes the boy stands, throws up his arms and shrieks, “I’m saved! I’ve found the Lord. Hallelujah!”

The Evangelist echoes, “Hallelujah,” a brief smile of triumph on his face.

A few more minutes of prayer and laying-on-of-hands, the other boy is Saved and leaves.

Fifteen minutes go by... Thirty minutes go by.

Roscoe remains on his knees on the hard wooden bench. His legs ache from kneeling and he starts to wheeze.

Hope I’m not going to have an asthma attack.

The prayer resounds in waves around him, louder and louder, more and more intense, wave upon wave of passion and piety.

The Evangelist prays. The Evangelist’s wife prays. The Minister and his wife both pray. Aunt Molly prays. All pray aloud. Louder, and louder, tears and wails and cries of retribution.

THE EVANGELIST: “Oh Lord, Oh Lord. I bring this lamb unto you.”

Pounded on the table

Hard as they were able

Boom, boom, BOOM

THE EVANGELIST’S WIFE: (She is medium height, medium weight and her face is medium fair. Though it is Monday night, she is wearing her Sunday-Best. At best, this is just a plain, threadbare, grey woolen dress, too warm for this Florida summer night. The neck of the dress is modestly high, the hem modestly low.)

She prays aloud, “Bring him unto Jesus, unto Jesus. Praise be His Name. Hallowed is His Name.

She clasps her hands and bows her head.

Then I had religion

Then I had a vision

Boomlay, boomlay, BOOM

THE LOCAL PREACHER: (the sanctity of his expression makes it difficult to judge his age-somewhere between twenty and forty. Like the Evangelist, he has on black trousers and a narrow black tie, but he has removed his coat. The back of his shirt is dark with sweat. His medium-brown hair has fallen wet and matted over his forehead.)

He prays loud and long, “Yea, though you are not born again. Hell and damnation await you. Await you. Await you. Now must you meet the Lord. Now must you be Born Again. Or forever burn in Hell!”

Hear how the demons chuckle and Yell

Cutting his hands off down in hell

Mumbo-Jumbo will hoo-doo you

Skinny, little thirteen-year old Roscoe, between wheezes, begins to cry. He bawls aloud. He tries to stand. His legs are asleep from kneeling on the hard wooden bench.

He can not stand. He falls.

The Evangelist springs over the rail, gathers Roscoe up in his arms, and cries, “Praise the Lord. This boy is Saved. He is Washed-in-the-Blood-of-the-Lamb.”

He raises Roscoe triumphantly over his head and shouts, “We cry out to You, Oh Lord. Forgive them their sins. Give them the Joy of Rebirth. The Promise, Oh Lord of Everlasting Life!”

Roscoe thinks, Gosh, I hope he doesn’t drop me.

Sunday, Aunt Molly is up early, dressed in her Sunday best. Ready and proud to take her Born Again nephew to Church.

From the kitchen the aroma of bacon frying, and home-made biscuits, hot and fresh.

“Get up, Roscoe, it’s getting late, don’t want to be late for Church.”

Roscoe mumbles, half awake, and turns his head into the pillow.

“Come on, get up,” Aunt Molly repeats, “Almost time for Church.”

Roscoe sits straight up in bed, puts his hands over his ears, and then throws his arms out to the sides and yells, “I’m not going to Church, not this morning or any other morning. Never! Never again!”

philosophy monthly

Unabomber’s

Manifesto

part two of four

On the other hand the pursuit of sex and love (for example) is not a surrogate activity, because most people, even if their existence were otherwise satisfactory, would feel deprived if they passed their lives without ever having a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. (But pursuit of an excessive amount of sex, more than one really needs, can be a surrogate activity.)

40. In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence, and most of all, simple OBEDIENCE. If one has those, society takes care of one from cradle to grave. (Yes, there is an underclass that cannot take physical necessities for granted, but we are speaking here of mainstream society.) Thus it is not surprising that modern society is full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work, athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation, climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical satisfaction, and social activism when it addresses issues that are not important for the activist personally, as in the case of white activists who work for the rights of nonwhite minorities. These are not always pure surrogate activities, since for many people they may be motiv ated in part by needs other than the need to have some goal to pursue. Scientific work may be motivated in part by a drive for prestige, artistic creation by a need to express feelings, militant social activism by hostility. But for most people who pursue them, these activities are in large part surrogate activities. For example, the majority of scientists will probably agree that the “fulfillment” they get from their work is more important than the money and prestige they earn.

41. For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than the pursuit of real goals ( that is, goals that people would want to attain even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled). One indication of this is the fact that, in many or most cases, people who are deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest. Thus the money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long-distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment from these activities than they do from the “mundane” business of satisfying their biological needs, but that it is because in our society the effort needed to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs AUTONOMOUSLY but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities. have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their surrogate activities.

AUTONOMY

42. Autonomy as a part of the power process may not be necessary for every individual. But most people need a greater or lesser degree of autonomy in working toward their goals. Their efforts must be undertaken on their own initiative and must be under their own direction and control. Yet most people do not have to exert this initiative, direction and control as single individuals. It is usually enough to act as a member of a SMALL group. Thus if half a dozen people discuss a goal among themselves and make a successful joint effort to attain that goal, their need for the power process will be served. But if they work under rigid orders handed down from above that leave them no room for autonomous decision and initiative, then their need for the power process will not be served. The same is true when decisions are made on a collective bases if the group making the collective decision is so large that the role of each individual is insignificant

43. It is true that some individuals seem to have little need for autonomy. Either their drive for power is weak or they satisfy it by identifying themselves with some powerful organization to which they belong. And then there are unthinking, animal types who seem to be satisfied with a purely physical sense of power(the good combat soldier, who gets his sense of power by developing fighting skills that he is quite content to use in blind obedience to his superiors).

44. But for most people it is through the power process-having a goal, making an AUTONOMOUS effort and attaining t the goal-that self-esteem, self-confidence and a sense of power are acquired. When one does not have adequate opportunity to go throughout the power process the consequences are (depending on the individual and on the way the power process is disrupted) boredom, demoralization, low self-esteem, inferiority feelings, defeatism, depression, anxiety, guilt, frustration, hostility, spouse or child abuse, insatiable hedonism, abnormal sexual behavior, sleep disorders, eating disorders, etc.

SOURCES OF SOCIAL PROBLEMS

45. Any of the foregoing symptoms can occur in any society, but in modern industrial society they are present on a massive scale. We aren’t the first to mention that the world today seems to be going crazy. This sort of thing is not normal for human societies. There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is. It is true that not all was sweetness and light in primitive societies. Abuse of women and common among the Australian aborigines, transexuality was fairly common among some of the American Indian tribes. But is does appear that GENERALLY SPEAKING the kinds of problems that we have listed in the preceding paragraph were far less common among primitive peoples than they are in modern society.

46. We attribute the social and psychological problems of modern society to the fact that that society requires people to live under conditions radically different from those under which the human race evolved and to behave in ways that conflict with the patterns of behavior that the human race developed while living under the earlier conditions. It is clear from what we have already written that we consider lack of opportunity to properly experience the power process as the most important of the abnormal conditions to which modern society subjects people. But it is not the only one. Before dealing with disruption of the power process as a source of social problems we will discuss some of the other sources.

47. Among the abnormal conditions present in modern industrial society are excessive density of population, isolation of man from nature, excessive rapidity of social change and the break-down of natural small-scale communities such as the extended family, the village or the tribe.

48. It is well known that crowding increases stress and aggression. The degree of crowding that exists today and the isolation of man from nature are consequences of technological progress. All pre-industrial societies were predominantly rural. The industrial Revolution vastly increased the size of cities and the proportion of the population that lives in them, and modern agricultural technology has made it possible for the Earth to support a far denser population than it ever did before. (Also, technology exacerbates the effects of crowding because it puts increased disruptive powers in people’s hands. For example, a variety of noise-making devices: power mowers, radios, motorcycles, etc. If the use of these devices is unrestricted, people who want peace and quiet are frustrated by the noise. If their use is restricted, people who use the devices are frustrated by the regulations... But if these machines had never been invented there would have been no conflict and no frustration generated by them.)

49. For primitive societies the natural world (which usually changes only slowly) provided a stable framework and therefore a sense of security. In the modern world it is human society that dominates nature rather than the other way around, and modern society changes very rapidly owing to technological change. Thus there is no stable framework.

50. The conservatives are fools: They whine about the decay of traditional values, yet they enthusiastically support technological progress and economic growth. Apparently it never occurs to them that you can’t make rapid, drastic changes in the technology and the economy of a society with out causing rapid changes in all other aspects of the society as well, and that such rapid changes inevitably break down traditional values.

51.The breakdown of traditional values to some extent implies the breakdown of the bonds that hold together traditional small-scale social groups. The disintegration of small-scale social groups is also promoted by the fact that modern conditions often require or tempt individuals to move to new locations, separating themselves from their communities. Beyond that, a technological society HAS TO weaken family ties and local communities if it is to function efficiently. In modern society an individual’s loyalty must be first to the system and only secondarily to a small-scale community, because if the internal loyalties of small-scale small-scale communities were stronger than loyalty to the system, such communities would pursue their own advantage at the expense of the system.

52. Suppose that a public official or a corporation executive appoints his cousin, his friend or his co-religionist to a position rather than appointing the person best qualified for the job. He has permitted personal loyalty to supersede his loyalty to the system, and that is “nepotism” or “discrimination,” both of which are terrible sins in modern society. Would-be industrial societies that have done a poor job of subordinating personal or local loyalties to loyalty to the system are usually very inefficient. (Look at Latin America.) Thus an advanced industrial society can tolerate only those small-scale communities that are emasculated, tamed and made into tools of the system.

53. Crowding, rapid change and the breakdown of communities have been widely recognized as sources of social problems. but we do not believe they are enough to account for the extent of the problems that are seen today.

54. A few pre-industrial cities were very large and crowded, yet their inhabitants do not seem to have suffered from psychological problems to the same extent as modern man. In America today there still are uncrowded rural areas, and we find there the same problems as in urban areas, though the problems tend to be less acute in the rural areas. Thus crowding does not seem to be the decisive factor.

55. On the growing edge of the American frontier during the 19th century, the mobility of the population probably broke down extended families and small-scale social groups to at least the same extent as these are broken down today. In fact, many nuclear families lived by choice in such isolation, having no neighbors within several miles, that they belonged to no community at all, yet they do not seem to have developed problems as a result.

56.Furthermore, change in American frontier society was very rapid and deep. A man might be born and raised in a log cabin, outside the reach of law and order and fed largely on wild meat; and by the time he arrived at old age he might be working at a regular job and living in an ordered community with effective law enforcement. This was a deeper change that that which typically occurs in the life of a modern individual, yet it does not seem to have led to psychological problems. In fact, 19th century American society had an optimistic and self-confident tone, quite unlike that of today’s society.

57. The difference, we argue, is that modern man has the sense (largely justified) that change is IMPOSED on him, whereas the 19th century frontiersman had the sense (also largely justified) that he created change himself, by his own choice. Thus a pioneer settled on a piece of land of his own choosing and made it into a farm through his own effort. In those days an entire county might have only a couple of hundred inhabitants and was a far more isolated and autonomous entity than a modern county is. Hence the pioneer farmer participated as a member of a relatively small group in the creation of a new, ordered community. One may well question whether the creation of this community was an improvement, but at any rate it satisfied the pioneer’s need for the power process.

58. It would be possible to give other examples of societies in which there has been rapid change and/or lack of close community ties without he kind of massive behavioral aberration that is seen in today’s industrial society. We contend that the most important cause of social and psychological problems in modern society is the fact that people have insufficient opportunity to go through the power process in a normal way. We don’t mean to say that modern society is the only one in which the power process has been disrupted. Probably most if not all civilized societies have interfered with the power ‘ process to a greater or lesser extent. But in modern industrial society the problem has become particularly acute. Leftism, at least in its recent (mid-to-late -20th century) form, is in part a symptom of deprivation with respect to the power process.

DISRUPTION OF THE POWER PROCESS IN MODERN SOCIETY

59. We divide human drives into three groups: (1) those drives that can be satisfied with minimal effort; (2) those that can be satisfied but only at the cost of serious effort; (3) those that cannot be adequately satisfied no matter how much effort one makes. The power process is the process of satisfying the drives of the second group. The more drives there are in the third group, the more there is frustration, anger, eventually defeatism, depression, etc.

60. In modern industrial society natural human drives tend to be pushed into the first and third groups, and the second group tends to consist increasingly of artificially created drives.

61. In primitive societies, physical necessities generally fall into group 2: They can be obtained, but only at the cost of serious effort. But modern society tends to guaranty the physical necessities to everyone in exchange for only minimal effort, hence physical needs are pushed into group 1. (There may be disagreement about whether the effort needed to hold a job is “minimal”; but usually, in lower- to middle-level jobs, whatever effort is required is merely that of obedience. You sit or stand where you are told to sit or stand and do what you are told to do in the way you are told to do it. Seldom do you have to exert yourself seriously, and in any case you have hardly any autonomy in work, so that the need for the power process is not well served.)

62. Social needs, such as sex, love and status, often remain in group 2 in modern society, depending on the situation of the individual. But, except for people who have a particularly strong drive for status, the effort required to fulfill the social drives is insufficient to satisfy adequately the need for the power process.

63. So certain artificial needs have been created that fall into group 2, hence serve the need for the power process. Advertising and marketing techniques have been developed that make many people feel they need things that their grandparents never desired or even dreamed of. It requires serious effort to earn enough money to satisfy these artificial needs, hence they fall into group 2. (But see paragraphs 80-82.) Modern man must satisfy his need for the power process largely through pursuit of the artificial needs created by the advertising and marketing industry [11], and through surrogate activities.

64. It seems that for many people, maybe the majority, these artificial forms of the power process are insufficient. A theme that appears repeatedly in the writings of the social critics of the second half of the 20th century is the sense of purposelessness that afflicts many people in modern society. (This purposelessness is often called by other names such as “anomic” or “middle-class vacuity.”) We suggest that the so-called “identity crisis” is actually a search for a sense of purpose, often for commitment to a suitable surrogate activity. It may be that existentialism is in large part a response to the purposelessness of modern life. [12] Very widespread in modern society is the search for “fulfillment.” But we think that for the majority of people an activity whose main goal is fulfillment (that is, a surrogate activity) does not bring completely satisfactory fulfillment. In other words, it does not fully satisfy the need for the power process. (See paragraph 41.) That need can be fully satisfied only through activities that have some external goal, such as physical necessities, sex, love, status, revenge, etc.

65. Moreover, where goals are pursued through earning money, climbing the status ladder or functioning as part of the system in some other way, most people are not in a position to pursue their goals AUTONOMOUSLY. Most workers are someone else’s employee as, as we pointed out in paragraph 61, must spend their days doing what they are told to do in the way they are told to do it. Even most people who are in business for themselves have only limited autonomy. It is a chronic complaint of small-business persons and entrepreneurs that their hands are tied by excessive government regulation. Some of these regulations are doubtless unnecessary, but for the most part government regulations are essential and inevitable parts of our extremely complex society. A large portion of small business today operates on the franchise system. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal a few years ago that many of the franchise-granting companies require applicants for franchises to take a personality test that is designed to EXCLUDE those who have creativity and initiative, because such persons are not sufficiently docile to go along obediently with the franchise system. This excludes from small business many of the people who most need autonomy.

66. Today people live more by virtue of what the system does FOR them or TO them than by virtue of what they do for themselves. And what they do for themselves is done more and more along channels laid down by the system. Opportunities tend to be those that the system provides, the opportunities must be exploited in accord with the rules and regulations [13], and techniques prescribed by experts must be followed if there is to be a chance of success.

67. Thus the power process is disrupted in our society through a deficiency of real goals and a deficiency of autonomy in pursuit of goals. But it is also disrupted because of those human drives that fall into group 3: the drives that one cannot adequately satisfy no matter how much effort one makes. One of these drives is the need for security. Our lives depend on decisions made by other people; we have no control over these decisions and usually we do not even know the people who make them. (“We live in a world in which relatively few people - maybe 500 or 1,00 - make the important decisions” - Philip B. Heymann of Harvard Law School, quoted by Anthony Lewis, New York Times, April 21, 1995.) Our lives depend on whether safety standards at a nuclear power plant are properly maintained; on how much pesticide is allowed to get into our food or how much pollution into our air; on how skillful (or incompetent) our doctor is; whether we lose or get a job may depend on decisions made by government economists or corporation executives; and so forth. Most individuals are not in a position to secure themselves against these threats to more [than] a very limited extent. The individual’s search for security is therefore frustrated, which leads to a sense of powerlessness.

68. It may be objected that primitive man is physically less secure than modern man, as is shown by his shorter life expectancy; hence modern man suffers from less, not more than the amount of insecurity that is normal for human beings. but psychological security does not closely correspond with physical security. What makes us FEEL secure is not so much objective security as a sense of confidence in our ability to take care of ourselves. Primitive man, threatened by a fierce animal or by hunger, can fight in self-defense or travel in search of food. He has no certainty of success in these efforts, but he is by no means helpless against the things that threaten him. The modern individual on the other hand is threatened by many things against which he is helpless; nuclear accidents, carcinogens in food, environmental pollution, war, increasing taxes, invasion of his privacy by large organizations, nation-wide social or economic phenomena that may disrupt his way of life.

69. It is true that primitive man is powerless against some of the things that threaten him; disease for example. But he can accept the risk of disease stoically. It is part of the nature of things, it is no one’s fault, unless is the fault of some imaginary, impersonal demon. But threats to the modern individual tend to be MAN-MADE. They are not the results of chance but are IMPOSED on him by other persons whose decisions he, as an individual, is unable to influence. Consequently he feels frustrated, humiliated and angry.

70. Thus primitive man for the most part has his security in his own hands (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) whereas the security of modern man is in the hands of persons or organizations that are too remote or too large for him to be able personally to influence them. So modern man’s drive for security tends to fall into groups 1 and 3; in some areas (food, shelter, etc.) his security is assured at the cost of only trivial effort, whereas in other areas he CANNOT attain security. (The foregoing greatly simplifies the real situation, but it does indicate in a rough, general way how the condition of modern man differs from that of primitive man.)

71. People have many transitory drives or impulses that are necessary frustrated in modern life, hence fall into group 3. One may become angry, but modern society cannot permit fighting. In many situations it does not even permit verbal aggression. When going somewhere one may be in a hurry, or one may be in a mood to travel slowly, but one generally has no choice but to move with the flow of traffic and obey the traffic signals. One may want to do one’s work in a different way, but usually one can work only according to the rules laid down by one’s employer. In many other ways as well, modern man is strapped down by a network of rules and regulations (explicit or implicit) that frustrate many of his impulses and thus interfere with the power process. Most of these regulations cannot be disposed with, because the are necessary for the functioning of industrial society.

72. Modern society is in certain respects extremely permissive. In matters that are irrelevant to the functioning of the system we can generally do what we please. We can believe in any religion we like (as long as it does not encourage behavior that is dangerous to the system). We can go to bed with anyone we like (as long as we practice “safe sex”). We can do anything we like as long as it is UNIMPORTANT. But in all IMPORTANT matters the system tends increasingly to regulate our behavior.

73. Behavior is regulated not only through explicit rules and not only by the government. Control is often exercised through indirect coercion or through psychological pressure or manipulation, and by organizations other than the government, or by the system as a whole. Most large organizations use some form of propaganda [14] to manipulate public attitudes or behavior. Propaganda is not limited to “commercials” and advertisements, and sometimes it is not even consciously intended as propaganda by the people who make it. For instance, the content of entertainment programming is a powerful form of propaganda. An example of indirect coercion: There is no law that says we have to go to work every day and follow our employer’s orders. Legally there is nothing to prevent us from going to live in the wild like primitive people or from going into business for ourselves. But in practice there is very little wild country left, and there is room in the economy for only a limited number of small business owners. Hence most of us can survive only as someone else’s employee.

74. We suggest that modern man’s obsession with longevity, and with maintaining physical vigor and sexual attractiveness to an advanced age, is a symptom of unfulfillment resulting from deprivation with respect to the power process. The “mid-life crisis” also is such a symptom. So is the lack of interest in having children that is fairly common in modern society but almost unheard-of in primitive societies.

75. In primitive societies life is a succession of stages. The needs and purposes of one stage having been fulfilled, there is no particular reluctance about passing on to the next stage. A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won’t discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of “fulfillment.” We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process - with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. Many modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way. It is not the primitive man, who has used his body daily for practical purposes, who fears the deterioration of age, but the modern man, who has never had a practical use for his body beyond walking from his car to his house. It is the man whose need for the power process has been satisfied during his life who is best prepared to accept the end of that life.

76. In response to the arguments of this section someone will say, “Society must find a way to give people the opportunity to go through the power process.” For such people the value of the opportunity is destroyed by the very fact that society gives it to them. What they need is to find or make their own opportunities. As long as the system GIVES them their opportunities it still has them on a leash. To attain autonomy they must get off that leash.

HOW SOME PEOPLE ADJUST

77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people differ so greatly in their response to modern society.

78. First, there doubtless are differences in the strength of the drive for power. Individuals with a weak drive for power may have relatively little need to go through the power process, or at least relatively little need for autonomy in the power process. These are docile types who would have been happy as plantation darkies in the Old South. (We don’t mean to sneer at “plantation darkies” of the Old South. To their credit, most of the slaves were NOT content with their servitude. We do sneer at people who ARE content with servitude.)

79. Some people may have some exceptional drive, in pursuing which they satisfy their need for the power process. For example, those who have an unusually strong drive for social status may spend their whole lives climbing the status ladder without ever getting bored with that game.

80. People vary in their susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. Some people are so susceptible that, even if they make a great deal of money, they cannot satisfy their constant craving for the shiny new toys that the marketing industry dangles before their eyes. So they always feel hard-pressed financially even if their income is large, and their cravings are frustrated.

81. Some people have low susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques. These are the people who aren’t interested in money. Material acquisition does not serve their need for the power process.

82. People who have medium susceptibility to advertising and marketing techniques are able to earn enough money to satisfy their craving for goods and services, but only at the cost of serious effort (putting in overtime, taking a second job, earning promotions, etc.) Thus material acquisition serves their need for the power process. But it does not necessarily follow that their need is fully satisfied. They may have insufficient autonomy in the power process (their work may consist of following orders) and some of their drives may be frustrated (e.g., security, aggression). (We are guilty of oversimplification in paragraphs 80-82 because we have assumed that the desire for material acquisition is entirely a creation of the advertising and marketing industry. Of course it’s not that simple.

83. Some people partly satisfy their need for power by identifying themselves with a powerful organization or mass movement. An individual lacking goals or power joins a movement or an organization, adopts its goals as his own, then works toward these goals. When some of the goals are attained, the individual, even though his personal efforts have played only an insignificant part in the attainment of the goals, feels (through his identification with the movement or organization) as if he had gone through the power process. This phenomenon was exploited by the fascists, nazis and communists. Our society uses it, too, though less crudely. Example: Manuel Noriega was an irritant to the U.S. (goal: punish Noriega). The U.S. invaded Panama (effort) and punished Noriega (attainment of goal). The U.S. went through the power process and many Americans, because of their identification with the U.S., experienced the power process vicariously. Hence the widespread public approval of the Panama invasion; it gave people a sense of power. [15] We see the same phenomenon in armies, corporations, political parties, humanitarian organizations, religious or ideological movements. In particular, leftist movements tend to attract people who are seeking to satisfy their need for power. But for most people identification with a large organization or a mass movement does not fully satisfy the need for power.

84. Another way in which people satisfy their need for the power process is through surrogate activities. As we explained in paragraphs 38-40, a surrogate activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp collecting. Some people are more “other-directed” than others, and therefore will more readily attack importance to a surrogate activity simply because the people around them treat it as important or because society tells them it is important. That is why some people get very serious about essentially trivial activities such as sports, or bridge, or chess, or arcane scholarly pursuits, whereas others who are more clear-sighted never see these things as anything but the surrogate activities that they are, and consequently never attach enough importance to them to satisfy their need for the power process in that way. It only remains to point out that in many cases a person’s way of earning a living is also a surrogate activity. Not a PURE surrogate activity, since part of the motive for the activity is to gain the physical necessities and (for some people) social status and the luxuries that advertising makes them want. But many people put into their work far more effort than is necessary to earn whatever money and status they require, and this extra effort constitutes a surrogate activity. This extra effort, together with the emotional investment that accompanies it, is one of the most potent forces acting toward the continual development and perfecting of the system, with negative consequences for individual freedom (see paragraph 131). Especially, for the most creative scientists and engineers, work tends to be largely a surrogate activity. This point is so important that is deserves a separate discussion, which we shall give in a moment (paragraphs 87-92).

85. In this section we have explained how many people in modern society do satisfy their need for the power process to a greater or lesser extent. But we think that for the majority of people the need for the power process is not fully satisfied. In the first place, those who have an insatiable drive for status, or who get firmly “hooked” or a surrogate activity, or who identify strongly enough with a movement or organization to satisfy their need for power in that way, are exceptional personalities. Others are not fully satisfied with surrogate activities or by identification with an organization (see paragraphs 41, 64). In the second place, too much control is imposed by the system through explicit regulation or through socialization, which results in a deficiency of autonomy, and in frustration due to the impossibility of attaining certain goals and the necessity of restraining too many impulses.

86. But even if most people in industrial-technological society were well satisfied, we (FC) would still be opposed to that form of society, because (among other reasons) we consider it demeaning to fulfill one’s need for the power process through surrogate activities or through identification with an organization, rather then through pursuit of real goals.

THE MOTIVES OF SCIENTISTS

87. Science and technology provide the most important examples of surrogate activities. Some scientists claim that they are motivated by “curiosity,” that notion is simply absurd. Most scientists work on highly specialized problem that are not the object of any normal curiosity. For example, is an astronomer, a mathematician or an entomologist curious about the properties of isopropyltrimethylmethane? Of course not. Only a chemist is curious about such a thing, and he is curious about it only because chemistry is his surrogate activity. Is the chemist curious about the appropriate classification of a new species of beetle? No. That question is of interest only to the entomologist, and he is interested in it only because entomology is his surrogate activity. If the chemist and the entomologist had to exert themselves seriously to obtain the physical necessities, and if that effort exercised their abilities in an interesting way but in some nonscientific pursuit, then they couldn’t giver a damn about isopropyltrimethylmethane or the classification of beetles. Suppose that lack of funds for postgraduate education had led the chemist to become an insurance broker instead of a chemist. In that case he would have been very interested in insurance matters but would have cared nothing about isopropyltrimethylmethane. In any case it is not normal to put into the satisfaction of mere curiosity the amount of time and effort that scientists put into their work. The “curiosity” explanation for the scientists’ motive just doesn’t stand up.

88. The “benefit of humanity” explanation doesn’t work any better. Some scientific work has no conceivable relation to the welfare of the human race - most of archaeology or comparative linguistics for example. Some other areas of science present obviously dangerous possibilities. Yet scientists in these areas are just as enthusiastic about their work as those who develop vaccines or study air pollution. Consider the case of Dr. Edward Teller, who had an obvious emotional involvement in promoting nuclear power plants. Did this involvement stem from a desire to benefit humanity? If so, then why didn’t Dr. Teller get emotional about other “humanitarian” causes? If he was such a humanitarian then why did he help to develop the H-bomb? As with many other scientific achievements, it is very much open to question whether nuclear power plants actually do benefit humanity. Does the cheap electricity outweigh the accumulating waste and risk of accidents? Dr. Teller saw only one side of the question. Clearly his emotional involvement with nuclear power arose not from a desire to “benefit humanity” but from a personal fulfillment he got from his work and from seeing it put to practical use.

89. The same is true of scientists generally. With possible rare exceptions, their motive is neither curiosity nor a desire to benefit humanity but the need to go through the power process: to have a goal (a scientific problem to solve), to make an effort (research) and to attain the goal (solution of the problem.) Science is a surrogate activity because scientists work mainly for the fulfillment they get out of the work itself.

90. Of course, it’s not that simple. Other motives do play a role for many scientists. Money and status for example. Some scientists may be persons of the type who have an insatiable drive for status (see paragraph 79) and this may provide much of the motivation for their work. No doubt the majority of scientists, like the majority of the general population, are more or less susceptible to advertising and marketing techniques and need money to satisfy their craving for goods and services. Thus science is not a PURE surrogate activity. But it is in large part a surrogate activity.

91. Also, science and technology constitute a mass power movement, and many scientists gratify their need for power through identification with this mass movement (see paragraph 83).

92. Thus science marches on blindly, without regard to the real welfare of the human race or to any other standard, obedient only to the psychological needs of the scientists and of the government officials and corporation executives who provide the funds for research.

THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

93. We are going to argue that industrial-technological society cannot be reformed in such a way as to prevent it from progressively narrowing the sphere of human freedom. But because “freedom” is a word that can be interpreted in many ways, we must first make clear what kind of freedom we are concerned with.

94. By “freedom” we mean the opportunity to go through the power process, with real goals not the artificial goals of surrogate activities, and without interference, manipulation or supervision from anyone, especially from any large organization. Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one’s existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one’s environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one’s own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness (see paragraph 72).

95. It is said that we live in a free society because we have a certain number of constitutionally guaranteed rights. But these are not as important as they seem. The degree of personal freedom that exists in a society is determined more by the economic and technological structure of the society than by its laws or its form of government. [16] Most of the Indian nations of New England were monarchies, and many of the cities of the Italian Renaissance were controlled by dictators. But in reading about these societies one gets the impression that they allowed far more personal freedom than out society does. In part this was because they lacked efficient mechanisms for enforcing the ruler’s will: There were no modern, well-organized police forces, no rapid long-distance communications, no surveillance cameras, no dossiers of information about the lives of average citizens. Hence it was relatively easy to evade control.

Continued in the next issue...

prose

The World’s Greatest Saxophone Player

Mark Blickley

I’m Eric Tesler. I’m here because Doctor Wandaplatt says I have to be here. And because I know this group therapy session is good for me. As Doctor Wandaplatt says, the time has come for me to take the bull by the tail and face the situation.

I was in a coma for nearly five and a half years. A little over a year ago I snapped out of it. Doctor Wandaplatt says these bones are going to heal, but that my mental health is kind of shaky.

But so’s yours, right? Or else why would you be here, too, right? I’m supposed to tell you what happened to me, how I got here. That’ll be kind of easy. I spent five and a half years doing nothing but thinking about what happened.

This past year I talked to lots of people who helped me piece together the events leading up to my appearance in this hospital room. I understand what happened. I’m not sure why it happened. I don’t even know where to begin except for this typically gray, late Autumn afternoon in Rantoul, Illinois when I was twelve years old.

Now when I say it was a typical Sunday afternoon, I mean that all over town television sets were screaming out half-time scores and town fathers were critiquing football games from bar stools while their kids were in the streets pretending to be the Chicago Bears.

It was after a particularly vicious tackle on me by the Levitzki brothers that I flung down my helmet, threw off my makeshift shoulder pads, kicked Wayne Levitzki in the nuts, and trotted off into my living room where my father was lying on the couch, watching a game on TV. I stood in front of the set, blocking his view, and said, “Father, I don’t want to play football. I want to take music lesson!”

My father propped himself up on the couch, angling his way past me and yells, “For Chrissakes, can’t you call me Dad or Pop or Old Man? What’s wrong with you? Go outside and play some ball and don’t go botherin’ me again about music lessons.”

Then he launched into his, “When I was your age, I was playing half-back and defensive tackle, and damned hard, too. ‘Cept for Iggy Bolton, I was the best.”

Just as he finished that sentence my mother walked into the room. At the time she was a chain-smoking woman of thirty-seven. My mother was famous for two things. One was an enormous capacity for migraine headaches. The other was her punctuating of each sentence with a cough - which isn’t all that surprising when you consider she smoked five and a half packs of cigarettes a day.

Anyway, she walked in because she heard my plea for music lessons and was pretty sick of my whining about it. You see, I’m cursed with a photographic memory and I’ll never forget what she said:

“C’mon, Eric, give me a break. I can just imagine you honking a horn around here (cough). I’d be dead in a week (cough). I hear enough car horns from the street to last me a lifetime (cough).”

Now mind you, I never said anything about playing a horn. I didn’t know what kind of instrument I wanted to play. I just wanted to play something.

But after she told me this she starts gagging real bad. My father instinctively reached out and slapped her on the back without taking his eyes off the game.

At this time I was reading the book that was to influence me more than any other book I’d ever read. It was entitled: Beauty Knows No Pain and subtitled Biographies of Obscure Musicians Who Overcame Personal Handicaps in Pursuit of Their Art.

I remember the characters in that book as clearly as if they were my next door neighbors. I was inspired by an oboe player with asthma, a drummer with metal hooks, a midget conductor, a hare-lipped flutist, a pianist with six fingers on one hand and a seventy-two year old woman who learned to play the tuba after undergoing surgery for the removal of a lung.

My father once caught me reading Beauty Knows No Pain. I was stretched out on my bed, totally absorbed in the chapter about Maestro Arnold, the midget conductor, when my door slams opened. I panicked and tossed the book under my bed.

“Caught you,” laughed my father. “What are you tryin’ to hide from your old man?” he asked.

“Nothing, Father. You just scared me, that’s all.”

But as father approached me, grinning, he pointed under my bed. “You got somethin’ under there you don’t want me to see?”

“No, Father.”

He groped under the bed until his hand latched onto the book. Then he slapped me on the shoulder with his other hand as he pulled the book out and said “Don’t worry. I won’t tell your Ma. Us men gotta know when to stick together. When I was your age, I useta keep these playin’ cards from Japan with pictures of these gorgeous . . .”

He held the book up, frowned, and then flung it at me. “What’s this shit?”

“It’s just a library book, father.”

“Then why were you hiding it?”

“Because I knew it would upset you.”

“I ain’t buyin’ that. What are you usin’ this book for?”

“To learn,” I whispered.

“This book been exciting you, boy?”

“Yes, father.”

“When I was fourteen, this ain’t the kinda books excited me. Where’s the broads?”

“It does have an incredible story of a woman who learned . . . “

He grabbed me off the bed and dragged me into the hall.

“You’re weird,” he screamed at me. “I’m showin’ this to your Ma!”

My mother was sitting on the living room couch, coughing, as she stripped her colorful nails with a cotton swab and a bottle of polish remover. Father held the book out to her as she crushed a cigarette butt into the ashtray.

“You wanna see the stuff your son is reading?”

Mother took the book, looked it over, and put it down. She put the bottle of remover on her lap as she continued to work on her nails. I told her it was the best book I ever read.

My father became enraged. “I’m tellin’ ya, the kid don’t use both hands to turn the pages. Look at them rings under his eyes.”

Mother said, “That’s because he won’t eat his vegetables (cough).”

I thought I heard an ally so I told her all about the musician characters. She was quite interested in, or more accurately put, obsessed with the tuba player. She lighted a cigarette and kept badgering how the woman had lost her lung. I told her I didn’t remember. She asked me if I was telling the truth.

“Who cares about that old broad,” my father screamed. “Midget conductors! Whatta role model.”

Just then mother had a coughing fit. Her cigarette dropped out of her mouth and onto her lap, igniting the highly flammable nail polish remover. Flames roared up. My father and I reacted quickly and with seasoned teamwork. We successfully extinguished the fire. Mother came away with only minor burns, a scorched eyebrow, and some singed bangs.

You know, the more I thought of what these musicians had to go through to learn their craft, the more I would plead with my parents to buy me musical instruction.

Because they wouldn’t let me have music lessons, I devised a unique system of creating music. It’s the nearest I could come to musical composition.

You see, I’d take my two transistor radios, plug an earphone into each one, stick an earplug in each ear, and then tune into two different stations at the same time. One station might be playing classical, the other jazz or rock. I was always flipping the selector dials, making different match-ups. And when the two musical forms would meet inside my head, I would create a new sound that no one else could here but me.

I knew my father would rather roast in hell than have any son of his taking music lessons, so I concentrated my campaign on my mother. My mother was never a demonstrative woman when it came to showing affection. In fact, the only thing she ever puckered her lips for was a cigarette. But I knew she loved me when she finally agreed to give me the money she had been secretly saving for a chest X-ray.

It wasn’t difficult finding a music instructor. Rantoul boasted only one such man, Professor Theodore Bindt.

Professor Bindt was a tall skinny man of fifty-two, permanently bent over as a result of constipation cramps. These cramps were due to his daily staple of fried chicken. You see, the Professor’s music studio was located above a Chicken Lickin’ franchise.

Bindt was a bachelor who didn’t know how to cook, so he depended on his business neighbor for meals. It seems convenience always won out over cramps. Besides, after nine years on such a diet, he craved the grease.

At one time I thought he had self-destructive impulses because of this diet, but now I think it was just money. Inflationary times always cause men like Bindt hardship.

“Zee little brats” - that’s what he called them, would happily sacrifice their music lessons to the family budget. I’m sure these sacrifices made the dollar and fifty-six cent three piece Lickin’ Special with fries and a bun a necessity.

By the time I was ready to seek out the Professor things had gotten so bad he was forced to hock most of this instruments. I remember his studio containing trombones minus the slides, pianos without brass pedals or benches, cellos without their bows, and the electric guitars - which Bindt claimed was the only thing “zee little bastards vonted to play” were missing amplifiers.

The first thing that struck me about the Professor was his teeth. When he gave me his professional smile I noticed his teeth were the same color as the yellowed newspaper clipping taped to the wall behind his desk. After freeing myself from his desperate handshake I glanced at the clipping.

Underneath this picture of a kid taking a check form a fat man the caption read - Teddy Bindt, child prodigy, wins Rantoul’s Annual John Philip Sousa Memorial Award.

I was impressed.

Professor Bindt stood up and bent over me. “So, you vont to be a musician, eh son? Vise choice. I could tell by your bearing you have zee sensitivity for a creative instrument. Are you zinking of becoming a pianist?”

I told him I wasn’t exactly sure what instrument I wanted to play.

Professor Bindt clutched his stomach during a particularly fierce attach of cramps and looked around his studio. “You don’t own an instrument?”

If I’d have owned an instrument, I wouldn’t be in this room right now.

Bindt’s sister, who’s a big fan of mine, sent me the Professor’s journals four months ago. She thought they would help encourage my recovery. Obviously she hadn’t read them.

According to his journal, on the day I arrived in his studio, Bindt was in the midst of his most severe financial crisis. He had no money and no working instruments. When I told him I didn’t own an instrument, Bindt spotted a saxophone in one piece and lunged for it. And when he handed it to me he knew it was missing a reed.

A reed is a thin piece of cane attached to the mouthpiece. It’s set in vibration by the breath and is the sound producing agent for the instrument. In other words, no sound comes out of a saxophone without using a reed. If a sax has a mouthpiece, it looks like a complete instrument.

The Professor ran out of reeds because he had the nasty habit of using them as toothpicks to dislodge annoying bits of chicken that stuck in his teeth.

Anyway, I’m standing there caressing this big beautiful brass thing. I’m instantly hooked on the saxophone. Professor Bindt tells me the saxophone is one of this most expensive instruments. He says that my rental fees will be higher, but they can go towards purchasing it.

I immediately agreed.

Then Professor Bindt explained the romantic history of the saxophone - that it was invented by Aldolphe Sax in 1846 and how it is one of the few instruments that has no exotic forbear. “A complete original,” Bindt says.

A complete original.

I stood there hugging this saxophone like it was my first girlfriend. Then I carefully brought its neck to my lips, bit into the mouthpiece and blew.

Silence. I blew harder. Nothing, except the sound of me exhaling and the rumbling of my teacher’s stomach.

“What’s the matter, Professor Bindt? Is it broken or am I doing something wrong?”

Professor Bindt wrapped an arm around my shoulder. “No, no, zere’s nozing wrong. Listen, Eric, anyone can pick up an instrument and create noise. If you step on a dog’s tail, you vill create noise. But you, you’re special. I sense it. Together vee shall transcend musical tradition. Ve’ll bypass creating music for zee ear and concentrate strictly on creating music for zee soul! You must never forget zat every great musician who has achieved historical immortality is not remembered by his technical expertise, but for his soul!”

I wasn’t exactly sure what he was talking about so I kept staring at the yellow newspaper clipping while gently running my fingers over the saxophone keys.

“Vot do your parents zink of you taking music lessons?”

I told him they’re not too interested. I explained that my mother had given me the money for instruction, but she said that I was on my own.

Bindt clapped his hands in joy. “Vonderful! Vonderful! No outside interference.” I asked him again why no sound came out of my saxophone.

“You veren’t using your imagination, son. You tried to take zee short cut from here” - he pointed to my throat - “to here” - he pointed to the sax mouthpiece - “instead of having zee music travel from here” - he traced a line from my heart to my forehead - “and zen to here” - his finger traced the length of the saxophone.

“You were being artistically lazy, but vee shall overcome zat.”

“I’m not a lazy person, Professor. I’ll work very hard.”

Bindt squatted by my chair and put his arm around my shoulder. “It is not zat kind of laziness, my boy. It is ignorance of zee spirit of creation. You must tame zis spirit, put it on a leash, before you can qualify as an artist.”

I want you people to understand that I was lonely and Bindt was the first adult I’d ever met who genuinely seemed to care about me. I trusted him because I needed someone to trust. It’s that simple. I needed to love and trust this man. I was convinced that some cosmic force led me to pursue music lessons just so I would establish contact with this caring genius.

Despite the ridicule of family and friends, I kept to a strict daily schedule of six soundless hours of practice in addition to Professor’s Bindt’s instruction four times a week.

No one at home said anything about my mute instrument. My father was ashamed of his sax-toting son and was too angry for words. My mother thought that her X-ray money was put to good use. There were no more whines form her son or his new toy.

God, I loved my saxophone! With Professor’s guidance I entered a trance-like state whenever my lips touched the mouthpiece. I can’t describe the joy I got from playing my sax. My eyes would automatically close and I’d just drift.

Not only could I hear this rich music, but I’d see such incredible colors and visions. And the smells! Oh, the smells. It was beyond joy. Sometimes I’d capture this penetrating sorrow, but that, too, was exquisite and always left me refreshed.

I had tapped that special place Professor Bindt assured me I’d find. I know it sounds strange but the vibrations inside my instrument shook spirit and released these . . . these . . .

Gershwin once said he had more tunes in his head than he could put down on paper in a hundred years. With Professor Bindt’s revolutionary approach, a musician didn’t need a hundred years to complete his vision. Music isn’t marks on a paper or grooves on a CD or even the noise from the instrument. It’s here. Inside your head.

The saxophone supplied a structure. It channeled my musical energies. I may have played without a reed, but Professor Bindt taught me all the fingering and breathing techniques any saxophonist needs to be accomplished on the instrument.

Look, anyone can play an instrument. Only a select few can compose, can create art. The Professor’s teachings didn’t limit me to the sounds a saxophone could make. When my saxophone took off, it wasn’t an instrument, but instrumental in producing a music no single woodwind, or even orchestra, could reproduce. It was energy and love and anger.

when I was seventeen, Professor Bindt died. My last meeting with him is forever burned in my memory. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon. I walked up to his studio for my lesson. He wasn’t there. That was quite unusual, but I knew he was probably downstairs at Chicken Lickin, having a snack.

I remember shielding my eyes as I looked through the Chicken Lickin’ window, trying to spot the Professor. When I couldn’t locate him, I went inside. I surveyed the entire restaurant. Professor Bindt wasn’t there.

I spotted Lickin’s manager. “Excuse me, has Professor Bindt been here today? I have a four o’clock appointment. He’s never been late. I’m worried.”

This skinny guy in a shiny red jacket tells me that I have a right to worry. He said that the night before, Professor was eating his dinner at the table he always eats at when he sort of squealed and collapsed.

I grabbed the manager by the lapels. “What happened? Where is he?!”

The Chickin’ Lickin’ chief pleaded with me to calm down. Then he tells me that he thought Bindt had choked on a chicken bone or something, but that nobody had heard him gag.

“Where is my Professor!” I shouted.

By now the entire restaurant had turned in our direction. I released my grip on him. He recovered his breath and told me he had called an ambulance. As far as he knew, Bindt was at Rantoul General.

When I walked into the hospital room, I saw a Doctor fidgeting with some life support equipment attached to the sleeping Professor. When the Doctor asked me if I was a member of his family, I told him I was the sick man’s son. He then informed me that Bindt had suffered heart failure and had been slipping in and out of consciousness for sixteen hours.

My saxophone was slung over my shoulder. I caressed it as I looked down on my ghostly white mentor.

“I think it’s important you’re seeing him now,” said the Doctor. He stared at my saxophone and asked if I played. When I nodded he told me that he had played sax in his medical school band. He said he was a real big fan of Bird’s.

“Bird? What birds?”

“Bird. Charlie Parker. You know, Bird. The greatest sax player who ever lived, with the possible exception of Red Gorky, Junior. After your visit please report to Nurse Pinkley at the reception desk to fill out the proper forms, okay?” Then the Doctor patted me on the arm and left me alone with my spiritual father.

I leaned over my comatose instructor and pleased with him to lie. “Don’t die, Professor. Please don’t die.”

I held out a small paper bag I had brought with me. “I guess you can’t hear me, Professor. But I brought you a gift. It’s soup. Chicken soup. Want some? C’mon, Professor Bindt, eat some soup. Please?”

Bindt didn’t respond so I removed the container from the bag and waved the soup underneath his nose. His eyes popped open.

“Atta boy, Professor.” I began feeding him with a plastic spoon. Most of the soup spilled down Bindt’s chin, but his eyes were wide with anticipation.

“Can you speak, Professor Bindt?” He moved his mouth but all you could hear were groans. “Take it easy, Professor. Maybe you shouldn’t try to speak. Save your strength.”

Bindt began clenching and unclenching his fist while his mouth moved stupidly. And then I heard a hoarse whisper, “Wrong . . . wrong.”

“What’s that? What did you say, Professor?”

“Wrong,” he choked out.

“Am I doing something wrong?” I asked.

“Me . . . wrong.”

“Yes, Professor?”

“Need . . . money,” he said.

“Don’t worry about money. Just concentrate on getting better.”

Bindt raised his clenched fist. “Me . . . wrong . . . need . . . money.”

“Please don’t make yourself upset. Is there anything you want me to do?”

“Go,” he croaked.

“I’m not leaving you , Professor Bindt. I’ll never leave you.”

“Go,” he insisted.

I hugged Bindt. “As sick as you are you still try to spare me from anything that’s not connected with beauty. I won’t leave.”

He spit chicken soup in my face.

“You don’t like the soup? I’m surprised, Professor. I got it from your favorite deli. I’ll get you whatever you need. Just try to relax.”

“Ears . . . ears . . . “ he whispered.

“What’s that about ears, Professor Bindt? Can’t you hear me?”

“Me bad . . . need money.”

“What’s money got to do with anything? You’re not bad because you don’t have a lot of it. That’s what you’ve always taught me. You’re an artist, a pure artist, and you’ve made me one, too. I love you for that.”

Bindt used his last remaining bit of strength to pull himself up. He glared at me and said, “I confess.” I asked him if he wanted me to get a priest to hear his confession. He shook his head.

“No . . . you . . . you . . .” Professor Bindt let out a death rattle and fell backward with his mouth open.

“Come back! Come back here, Professor Bindt! You can’t leave me! I won’t let you!” I buried my face in his neck and cried. Then I started pounding his chest with my fist, trying to pummel his heart back into motion. “It’s too big to stop beating. Too big. Too big. C’mon, beat. Beat. Beat. Beat.”

I quit pounding on the dead man’s chest. As I reached over to close Bindt’s eyes my saxophone slid off my shoulder and hit the Professor in the face. I put the mouthpiece between Bindt’s lips and positioned his still warm fingers onto the keys. I tried not to cry. I tried to think clearly and responsibly.

I told Professor Bindt that he would remain alive as long as I lived. “I’m dedicating my life to the completion of your vision. I’m dedicating my life to our art.”

And then, the Professor lets loose with a really humongous death rattle. Every bit of gas that was trapped inside that corpse had to have been expelled. It both frightened and excited me. And the smell wasn’t too pleasant, either.

My saxophone was still inside his mouth. This meant my sax had captured Professor Bindt’s final breath! It was no longer a musical instrument, but a monument to his genius and devotion!

“I won’t let you down ever. I swear!”

Strange. I tried to close Bindt’s eyes but they wouldn’t stay shut. Believe me, it’s not like in the movies. They kept popping open. He stared up at me with a mixture of terror and anger that gave me nightmares for years and years.

The autopsy attributed his death to a cholesterol induced stroke. I was devastated. I dropped out of school and drifted around Chicago trying to peddle my sax to the clubs. But no one would listen to me.

To tell you the truth, I almost packed it in. But every time I picked up a phone to call home, I’d remember the Professor, eyes half shut, lips twisted, conducting me with a half-eaten chicken leg.

By the end of my first few weeks in Chicago, I was tired, hungry and broke. I slept on park benches at night. But I did have an interesting artistic experience early on in the Windy City. It was quite late at night and I was sitting on a park bench, gently polishing my saxophone.

A wino staggered by. I shot him a quick look and continued cleaning my sax. I prayed he’d go away. but instead of leaving he stuck his face right up to mine and said, “You gotta use elbow grease, boy. Don’t be lazy.”

I told him to keep moving. Then he says, “They’s a sayin’ round this city that if you rub that thing hard enough, a genie’ll appear.”

I ignored him.

“You don’t believe it?” He extended his hand to me. “Hi, my name’s Eugene, but friends call me Genie.”

I asked him if he was going to make some magic.

“Hell, no, I ain’t making no magic. You’re the one supposed to make magic with that thing.” He points to my saxophone.

I smiled and told him I hope to. Then he asked me if I had any money. When I told him I didn’t, he asked me if I had a song. I shrugged. “Maybe.”

The wino got ticked off. “I said you got a song? Don’t give me this maybe shit.”

“Yes, I have a song, Genie.”

“Good,” he says. “You also got yourself a partner.”

“Why do I need a partner?”

Wino shook his head. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Genie. You’re a genie, right?”

“Damn straight,” he said, “and my magic is in my feets.” And then Genie breaks into an earnest, if somewhat clumsy dance. Without his history of booze, I could easily imagine him a dancer of merit.

After Genie danced his dance, he paused to catch his breath. “How’s that? Did I pass?”

“Pass what?” I asked.

“The audition. Will you take me on as a partner?” I asked him again why did I need a partner? Genie plopped himself down on the bench and offered me a sip of his Thunderbird wine. I declined.

“Look, kid, I make my livin’ dancing. But it’s gettin’ harder and harder to turn some change these days. All those damn hippies been cuttin’ into the action. People losin’ interest in the solo performer. All they wants is the spectacular. The spectacle.”

“So what’s that got to do with me, Genie?”

“Ain’t you got no vision, kid? I need music for my show. We’ll be partners. I can dance to anything. We’ll do a sixty-forty split.”

“With you getting the sixty, huh, Genie?”

“Course. I’ve scouted the best locations. I know which corners are jumpin’ any hour of the day. Besides, I been performin’ in Chicago for nearly thirty years. People know me.”

I was feeling bold. So I asked him if I was paying for his reputation. He told me, “Don’t be so smartass. Maybe you ain’t even any good.”

I grinned. “Maybe.”

“I told you to lay off the maybe crap. Let’s see what you got.”

I explained to Genie that I had already played today, that I haven’t missed a day of practice in years. He just shrugged and said, “I could say the same thing about drinkin’. So what?”

“So listen to this!” I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tore into an imaginative pulsating rhythm. Next thing I know Genie’s snapping his fingers and I heard him say, “I get it, man.”

Boy, he starts dancing like mad. Over the bench, under the bench, on top of the bench. Just kicking and swinging his arms like a man possessed. It ended when he hurled himself against the bench, smashing the wine bottle in his back pocket.

The explosion of broken glass and the wino’s scream jolted me back to reality. What I saw was Genie sprawled out on the bench, whimpering.

“What happened, Eugene? Are you alright?”

“No, I ain’t alright. You broke my bottle!” He held out a handful of wet, broken glass.

I couldn’t believe it. I hugged my saxophone. “You mean I got up that high?”

“To hell with your high! What about mine? I ain’t got nothin’ to drink.”

I pulled a dollar out of my pocket. Genie snatched it out of my hand. “You’re a dangerous man,” he said. “You had me jumpin’ and twitchin’ like a worm with a match underneath it.”

I was delighted with my fiery performance and told him so. “You’re a cruel son-of-a-bitch,” he said, as he walked away, pulling shards of glass from him rump.

I got real good at shoplifting. I managed to survive by sleeping in bus terminals and hustling my sax on the sidewalk.

The breakthrough came one freezing night in the Chicago Greyhound Bus Terminal. I was having a restless night - no matter what I did I couldn’t get comfortable. Professor Bindt always maintained that great musicians needed plenty of sleep. He’d say, “you can’t perform for zee gods if you’re denied zee sweet embrace of Morpheus.”

Since I was unable to sleep, I took a stroll on the upper platform where they kept the buses. I was hoping the exhaust fumes would make me drowsy.

A chartered bus pulled in and unloaded a group of yawning musicians carrying expensive instrument cases that filled the air with the obnoxious smell of fresh leather. These musicians were followed by a short, fat man in a three-piece suit.

He was scribbling something into this book and growling at the bus driver, demanding to know if the driver’s superiors “were aware how rudely their employees treat the manager of the Monk’s Corner Ridiculously Juiced Jazz Ensemble.”

When I heard who he was, I ran downstairs and squatted on the curb outside the Greyhound building and began playing my sax.

I heard a band member say, “Check out the Road Runner dude.” Another guy asked me if I was gigging for the Lung Association. Then someone else laughed, “Beautiful, Jim, beautiful.” But I was just warming up, saving my best stuff for the manager.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and tapped out a rhythm with my shoe. When the band manager noticed his men crowding around the sidewalk, he shouted at them to “get your butts over to the hotel.”

As the crowd broke up, he caught a glimpse of me sitting on the icy sidewalk playing my sax. He reached over and shook me. “Hey, kid, watcha doin’?”

I couldn’t believe it! It was the first time I’d ever been interrupted during a performance.

He asked me if I was serious. I said yeah. Then he asked me how long I’d been at it. I told him I’d been playing for years but was having a rough time.

He laughed and said, “No wonder.” Then he stared at the tip of my saxophone and wit this smirk asked me, “You ever notice anything a bit peculiar ‘bout your style?”

I jumped into my familiar defense. I told him I hear symphonies in my head. I explained that the only value my heart has is as a metronome.

He shrugged and said, “Yeah, I know watcha mean.” Then he ripped a piece of paper out of his book and scribbled out an address and handed it to me. “I tell you what. we got a gig over at this club on the South Side. Stop by tomorrow night at nine and we’ll see how your act goes over.”

“It’s not an act,” I insisted. “It’s my life!”

“Yeah, yeah, gotcha kid. Clean yourself up. And why don’t you practice up your leads a bit. We can’t have you blowing any clams ‘cause this is a class gig.” Then he laughed, slapped me on the back, and disappeared inside a taxi.

At ten to nine I managed to stagger into the Jicama Jazz Emporium. What a place! I squinted through thick clouds of smoke and saw two men in tuxedos making their way towards me. They grabbed me by my shoulders and lifted me three feet off the ground.

“Hey, wait a minute! Let me down! I’m a musician! Let go of me! How dare you! I’m an artist!”

One of the men kicked the saxophone out of my hands. It crashed to the floor. A couple of musicians at the bar recognized me and came to my rescue.

I dropped to my knees, opened the case and examined my sax. There was no damage. When I thought about what this guy had done I threw a downfield block that sent him crashing into the bar. I wanted to kill him! I was dragged away by some musicians before the man could get up and avenge himself. The crowd was applauding me.

I was taken backstage to Mr. Hackersby, the band’s manager. “That’s some ballsy thing ya did, kid. Them Godzillas had it coming.”

I told Mr. Hackersby that I didn’t care what people did to me, but when they started abusing my saxophone I wouldn’t permit that. I told him life would be nothing more than exertion and excretion if my sax was ruined.

Hackersby said there were other saxophones to be had, that my life was certainly more important than an instrument. I explained that this saxophone represented a legacy - the immortality of a departed master survived through the fellowship of my lungs and this hallowed brass.

Hackersby shook his head and agreed that my sax was, “the hollowest damn brass,” he ever saw. Then he said, “if you can put half the effort into playing your sax as you can defending it, you’ll be a smash.” He pushed out of the wings.

The moment I stepped on stage there were applause and I heard someone yell out, “Atta boy, play like you slay!”

I bowed, put the saxophone to my lips, drew a professionally calculated breath, and vanished into my silent world of misplaced trust.

I learned what really happened that night. It seems the audience was impatient and then shocked when it became clear no music would flow from my saxophone. The crowed, I was told, grew restless and offended. Insults were yelled at me but I was too absorbed in my music to know where I was or who I was with.

Luckily, my absorption coupled with my burlesque exaggerations on the saxophone transformed a hostile crowd into one convulsed with laughter. Hackersby’s gamble paid off.

I must’ve looked pretty stupid out there.

At the conclusion of my set, I was given an ovation. A standing ovation! Since I was ignorant of the laughter during my trance, I blew kisses to the audience and mumbled a thank you to Professor Bindt. I felt that we were both vindicated.

Mr. Hackersby signed me to a contract on the spot. The Monk’s Corner Ridiculously Juiced Jazz Ensemble now had its first touring soloist.

I was euphoric over my success and determined to work harder than ever at perfecting my craft. It was all hard work for me, not fun.

We toured the United States and parts of Canada. Everything was going pretty smoothly. After a grueling gig in a tiny club in Nova Scotia, most of the musicians headed for the seedier parts of the island.

Not me. I went back to my hotel room to practice.

As I inserted my key in the lock, a blanket was thrown over me, my ankles were bound with rope and I was hauled, kicking and screaming, to a car. My abduction ended when I was rolled onto a marble floor.

I sprang up, swinging wildly with my fists. When my eyes made the transition to light, I saw my abductors. They were six members of the band.

I was confused. I asked what they were doing. “You know, guys, what the idea?” They all laughed and Ezra, this bald guy in sunglasses, put his arm around me. He said the guys were grateful for the creative lift I’d given the band and had decided on showing me a good time.

“But you know I can’t miss a day of practice!” Ezra bit down on his mustache and said, “We know, Ric. But why not try loosening up a bit. Relaaaaaaaaaaax.”

I told him I was anything but relaxed. “Where are we?” He grinned and pointed to these scantily dressed women circling the room. Ezra puckered his lips at one of the women and said that we were in the hottest little whorehouse in the Commonwealth.

One of the women, this six foot three blonde in flesh colored leotards crept up behind me and stuck her fingers through the belt loops of my pants and started nibbling on my ear.

I broke out of the Amazon’s grip by using an old football move which resurrected images of my father lying on the couch denying me music lessons, and of Professor Bindt, staring at me with the disgust he usually reserved for discoveries of cold french fries inside his Chicken Lickin’ boxed lunch.

I sprinted out the door and hid inside some bushes by the side of the road. When Ezra found me I was still shaking. He apologized for getting me upset, but he thought if anyone could put a smile on my face, Skyscraper Sally could.

I told him I wasn’t angry. I knew they were acting in my best interests. I also knew I was slightly dull. It wasn’t that I disliked women or anything weird like that. But I explained to Ezra that long ago I asked Professor Bindt if I could cut down on my lessons and spend some time and money on girls.

The Professor sat me down and explained the medieval belief that when a man expends his precious bodily fluid it upsets his internal chemistry and drains him of a large portion of his intellectual and creative energies. Bindt said that women’s purpose on this earth is to zap up a man’s vitality by having him transfer it into her. “It is artistic destruction by injection, if you know vot I mean.”

I knew what he meant.

Ezra pulled me to my feet and walked me back to the hotel.

For six years I toured with the Monk’s Corner Ridiculously Juiced Jazz Ensemble. I loved the traveling and the respect of my peers. After that embarrassing incident in Nova Scotia, the guys never interfered with my privacy or practice sessions.

When I was twenty-three, my life was altered during a gig in Goose Creek, South Carolina. In the audience that night was a debt-ridden millionaire named Tony Pranklin.

He was the innovator of the Pet Stone craze. You people remember that, don’t you? Through greed and neglect, Pranklin squandered the fortune he made from his conception, advertising and marketing of the stones he swore “would bring comfort to millions without the mess and expense of a breathing pet.”

Tony Pranklin was lazy, but he was no fool. He immediately saw the appeal of a silent saxophonist. When he visited me a couple of months ago he told me he had learned to “exploit the universal fear of casting the first stone.”

Pranklin claimed that although my popularity originated through travesty and as the years went by the novelty of a reedless saxophonist might wear off, I would endure because he would promote me as an artist.

Now if this all sounds like a crock, all I can say is Pranklin pulled it off. I became known as the World’s Greatest Saxophone Player - but that comes later.

Pranklin offered Hackersby one hundred and fifty thousand dollars for my contract. I wasn’t happy about the sale, but Pranklin promised me complete artistic freedom and the change to reach an audience of millions.

Pranklin pulled strings and within weeks I popped up on national TV. My father saw me one night on a talk show. He wrote me a letter apologizing for his behavior towards my music lessons. He said that the solo I performed on television reminded him of when he was in the army in ‘43 and saw Woody Herman’s band . . . but that he couldn’t hear anything.

I didn’t know people were laughing at me. I didn’t! I felt I was achieving artistic maturity and touching my listeners. Every time I finished a tune, all I heard was applause. How did I know? How could I know?

Nine months after leaving the Juiced Ensemble I cut a solo album produced by Pranklin. It was called Music for the Disenchanted and released by the Avantgardarama label. Although I heard elegantly textured orchestrations when I played the record, all anyone else heard was the clicking thud of sax keys against the pads and my breathing.

But that didn’t stop Tony Pranklin. He contacted a music critic for Art on Parade and coerced the man to publish a favorable review of my album. I have it here, in my shirt pocket.

I originally kept it out of pride . . . now I keep it for . . . I don’t know. This is it:

‘Eric Tesler may be the most dynamic musical innovator on the scene today. Known throughout the nation because of his prolific television appearances, this is the young man’s first attempt at recording, and he succeeds admirably.

Like any pioneer of creativity, Mr. Tesler has attracted the indignation of some critics. These short-sighted people hate change. I believe these critics would even resist the change of a dollar bill at a grocery store. They claim it is absurd to purchase an album that only offers the sound of an artist inhaling and exhaling.

Let me say this: Music for the Disenchanted may, on a physical level, be just breathing; but as I replay Mr. Tesler’s recording it reminds me of God breathing life into Adam. Eric Tesler breathes life into a fresh musical genre.’

Can you understand how I felt when this came out? I had published proof that what I was doing was valid, don’t you see? I’m not a fraud. I wasn’t lying to myself or public.

In twelve years I never missed a day of practice or a rehearsal. I was oblivious to fame, and oblivious to the huge sums of money regenerating Pranklin’s bank account.

The concert halls grew in size to accommodate The World’s Greatest Saxophone Player! This epithet was dreamed up by Pranklin after he engineered my election to the South Carolina Music Hall of Fame and my winning of the Annual Rantoul John Philip Sousa Memorial Award. This last honor truly touched me.

On my twenty-fifth birthday Pranklin produced my second album, Quarter Century Blues in a Half-Assed World. By this time, Pranklin had learned from his mistakes. Instead of the LP being a solo venture, he hired a backup group. Three of the eleven tracks were my solos. On the remaining tracks, I played with accompaniment. Quarter Century Blues in a Half-Assed World was a huge success. I was told recently that it’s become a collector’s item known as “The Birthday Album”.

My popularity was at its peak. I was such an enormous box office draw that Pranklin was able to book me into Lincoln Center in New York City.

The flight to New York was one of the most exciting afternoons of my life. Immediately after my plane touched down at Kennedy Airport, I made my way to a taxi stand and asked the cab driver to take me to the hippest jazz club in New York. He dropped me off at a place called The Cookery on Eighth Street.

There was a long line of people stretching form the club’s entrance and all around the block. When I told the doorman I didn’t have a reservation, he recognized me and said no problem. He directed me to a stage side table - his table.

Within minutes the house lights dimmed and a tall man with a beard brushed past me. The stage lights reflecting off his silver saxophone blinded me. I was rubbing my eyes when I heard my host announce, “And now, Ladies and Gentlemen, a musical legend, your friend and mine, Red Gorky, Junior.”

There was applause. I squinted up at the stage because the light reflecting form the saxophone made it impossible for me to look directly at the musician.

And then it happened.

Red Gorky, Junior sucked at the air and produced the sweetest, most hauntingly beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. My eyes became moist and I started to shake. For years I hadn’t followed contemporary saxophonists. Professor Bindt insisted it was dangerous to my development.

For the first time in my life I felt terror. Terror that - oh, my God! - my God! - I’d been living a lie for thirteen years.

The music soared out of that man’s saxophone like a celestial conversation between the Creator and the human spirit. I mean, it was a feeling I always experienced whenever I played, but as I looked around the club, I realized it was a feeling not limited to the artist, but shared by his listeners as well.

I mean, when I played one tune it would excite a hundred people a hundred different ways. But you know, never, not once, did anyone ever come close to describing what I felt while I was playing with what they had heard. Sometimes that would bother me. That’s when Pranklin would say, “Your music is much more sophisticated than you realize. And if you ever realize where this sophistication comes from, you’ll probably be ruined at an artist.”

But listening to Red Gorky’s sax, I knew all that mystic mumble jumble about playing for the heart was a bunch of crap. It was the ears! The ears! I’d been trained not to use my ears. I don’t care what the music critics wrote about me. It’s the ears that count!

I got up out of my seat and ran out the door. I was shattered. Fifteen minutes later I was perched on a bar stool sipping a G and T when I heard a high, squeaky voice.

“Pssssssst, psssssssst, are you Eric Tesler?”

I spun around but didn’t see anyone so I went back to my drink.

“Hey, man, you Eric Tesler?” I felt a tug on my pants cuff. I looked down at a smartly dressed midget biting a cigarette. “You Eric Tesler, the world’s greatest saxophone player?”

I cringed at the title. I told him I was Eric Tesler. “Who are you?”

“Just call me a fan,” he said. “Mind if I join you?”

I reached down and lifted him onto a stool. This angered the little guy. “Lemme go, will ya? I ain’t no baby. Wanna smack in the mouth?” I apologized and asked him what he wanted. I suspected it wasn’t an autograph.

The little man grinned, adjusted his tie, and handed me his business card. It read: Turner Arnold, The Entrepreneur of Avenue B. I immediately recognized the name. He was the midget conductor that inspired me when I was young.

“Turner Arnold! You were one of my heroes when I was a kid! I read all about you in Beauty Knows No Pain.”

I expected him to be flattered, but he looked at me with disgust and said, “You did, huh? I’m a musician who overcame my handicap in pursuit of my art, right, kid?”

I nodded. Right. I was excited. This was a great musician! But he just laughed and asked me if I believed everything I read.

Turner Arnold told me the book was written by a second-rate writer who needed cash. Turner Arnold seemed to get pleasure out of telling me that this hack writer lied like a dog about him and everyone else in the book.

I couldn’t believe it!

Turner Arnold said, “Sure, I went to a fancy music school. But that stuff about me finding work after I graduated was pure bull. Nobody wanted me. Nobody. They didn’t even want me at the school but I had enough bucks to get in so they took me. I was always treated like somebody’s joke. But I ain’t here to talk about myself. I been following your career for some time now. I run a pawnshop down on the East Side. I trade mostly in weapons and musical instruments - guess I can’t get it outta my blood. Anyway, I got a present for you.”

He reached inside his jacket and pulled out this cane object that he held up in front of him like someone repelling a vampire with a cross.

I asked him what it was and he called it, “a reeeeeeeeed.”

Turner Arnold said he knew I was playing Lincoln Center later that evening and had hoped to give it to me after the show. Then he explained how to position the reed on to the sax.

I asked him if Red Gorky, Jr. used one and the midget smirked and said, “you’re catching on.” Turner Arnold assured me I couldn’t go wrong if I used the reed at my concert that night.

I put the gift in my shirt pocket and looked at my watch. I was going on in an hour. I opened my wallet to pay for my drink but Turner Arnold insisted on treating me. I thanked him again for the reed and hurried uptown.

Lincoln Center was mobbed. The audience consisted of all types. I was told there was even a balcony filled with senior citizens representing the New Jersey Geriatric League for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. They were bussed in at taxpayers’ expense to show their support for a music form that did not discriminate against their handicap.

At 9:04 p.m. I dragged myself to center stage. I was bombarded with applause. The instant I stepped up to the microphone the crowd fell silent.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, my first number will be a composition I wrote backstage tonight entitled, A Legacy of Laments for Lunatics, Listeners and Lickin’ Liars. In F minor.”

For the first time in my career I didn’t close my eyes and drift into a creative vacuum. I filled my cheeks with air, toyed with the keys, and stared at the audience that had paid eighteen dollars a ticket to watch me.

It was my first appraisal of an audience and it made me sick. I released the air from my cheeks, pulled the saxophone out of my mouth, and disappeared backstage to vomit.

I reappeared on stage to a standing ovation. Muttering curses under my breath, I shook my head and bowed. As I leaned forward, the reed fell out of my shirt pocket and bounced off my shoe. I smiled, picked it up and attached it to my sax.

The ovation lasted nearly five minutes. When it finally died down, I bit into the mouthpiece, took a deep breath and blew as hard as I could.

The initial blast stunned me and the audience. As I manipulated the keys, the raucous sound dissolved into a crisp, blue-tinted rhythm. The audience gasped, but no one was more surprised than me. Employing the technique I forged out of years of silent practice, I made a smooth transition form a natural romantic flow of melody to a series of forceful jazz riffs.

I lost myself in the delightful music - not imagination, MUSIC! I didn’t hear my fans shouting at me to stop. All I heard was the beautiful tunes I was producing. It was incredible! It’ll always be the happiest moment of my life.

A little while ago I received a cassette in the mail from a fan of mine who was at my Lincoln Center performance. His recorder was smashed in the excitement but he saved the tape. It’s the only record I have of my music and my most valuable possession.

I was oblivious to the orchestra section running towards the stage cursing me. The sounds coming out of my saxophone took me far, far away.

But not far enough.

My fans surrounded me and the last thing I heard was a plea to “PLAY WHAT WE PAID FOR!”

The first blow landed on the back of my neck. It caused my teeth to clamp down on the mouthpiece. The follow up blow knocked out three of my teeth, tow of which I swallowed. Blood gushed out of my mouth, splattering the attacking mob.

They pulled me to the floor and kicked my face. All of my ribs were cracked and my leg was broken and still they swarmed over me. Despite this punishment, I hunched over my saxophone, cradling it.

Eventually my arms went limp. That’s when the crowd turned their anger on my instrument. They stomped on my sax until it was nothing more than brass flecks!

But I hurt, Doctor Wandaplatt, and I don’t mean from the bruises covered by these bandages. You say that my injuries could not heal while I was in a coma because my body was using all its resources just to maintain my survival. I wished I never opened my eyes.

You claim that my condition won’t improve until I confront a saxophone. But it’s over! My saxophone was destroyed, Doctor! Will you stop trying to force me to touch one? I told you I want to stop feeling things!

I’ve listened to the other patients, Doctor Wandaplatt. I’ve heard them explain how experiencing a closeness with death clarified some kind of meaning or direction in their lives. Well, it hasn’t happened to me. But they you can’t always trust what you hear, right Doctor?

I’m scared, Doctor Wandaplatt. Real scared. But I’ll get through it on my own, thank you. I’ve always been a solo act.

Nick DiSpoldo, Small Press Review (on “Children, Churches and Daddies,” April 1997) Kuypers is the widely-published poet of particular perspectives and not a little existential rage, but she does not impose her personal or artistic agenda on her magazine. CC+D is a provocative potpourri of news stories, poetry, humor, art and the “dirty underwear” of politics. One piece in this issue is “Crazy,” an interview Kuypers conducted with “Madeline,” a murderess who was found insane, and is confined to West Virginia’s Arronsville Correctional Center. Madeline, whose elevator definitely doesn’t go to the top, killed her boyfriend during sex with an ice pick and a chef’s knife, far surpassing the butchery of Elena Bobbitt. Madeline, herself covered with blood, sat beside her lover’s remains for three days, talking to herself, and that is how the police found her. For effect, Kuypers publishes Madeline’s monologue in different-sized type, and the result is something between a sense of Dali’s surrealism and Kafka-like craziness.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada
I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.

Ed Hamilton, writer #85 (of Children, Churches and Daddies) turned out well. I really enjoyed the humor section, especially the test score answers. And, the cup-holder story is hilarious. I’m not a big fan of poetry - since much of it is so hard to decipher - but I was impressed by the work here, which tends toward the straightforward and unpretentious. As for the fiction, the piece by Anderson is quite perceptive: I liked the way the self-deluding situation of the character is gradually, subtly revealed. (Kuypers’) story is good too: the way it switches narrative perspective via the letter device is a nice touch.

Children, Churches and Daddies.
It speaks for itself.
Write to Scars Publications to submit poetry, prose and artwork to Children, Churches and Daddies literary magazine, or to inquire about having your own chapbook, and maybe a few reviews like these.

Jim Maddocks, GLASGOW, via the Internet I’ll be totally honest, of the material in Issue (either 83 or 86 of Children, Churches and Daddies) the only ones I really took to were Kuypers’. TRYING was so simple but most truths are, aren’t they?

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what is veganism?
A vegan (VEE-gun) is someone who does not consume any animal products. While vegetarians avoid flesh foods, vegans don’t consume dairy or egg products, as well as animal products in clothing and other sources.

why veganism?
This cruelty-free lifestyle provides many benefits, to animals, the environment and to ourselves. The meat and dairy industry abuses billions of animals. Animal agriculture takes an enormous toll on the land. Consumtion of animal products has been linked to heart disease, colon and breast cancer, osteoporosis, diabetes and a host of other conditions.

so what is vegan action?
We can succeed in shifting agriculture away from factory farming, saving millions, or even billions of chickens, cows, pigs, sheep turkeys and other animals from cruelty.
We can free up land to restore to wilderness, pollute less water and air, reduce topsoil reosion, and prevent desertification.
We can improve the health and happiness of millions by preventing numerous occurrences od breast and prostate cancer, osteoporosis, and heart attacks, among other major health problems.

A vegan, cruelty-free lifestyle may be the most important step a person can take towards creatin a more just and compassionate society. Contact us for membership information, t-shirt sales or donations.

vegan action
po box 4353, berkeley, ca 94707-0353
510/704-4444

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C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review (on Children, Churches and Daddies) cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist. I really like (“Writing Your Name”). It’s one of those kind of things where your eye isn’t exactly pulled along, but falls effortlessly down the poem. I liked “knowledge” for its mix of disgust and acceptance. Janet Kuypers does good little movies, by which I mean her stuff provokes moving imagery for me. Color, no dialogue; the voice of the poem is the narrator over the film.

Children, Churches and Daddies no longer distributes free contributor’s copies of issues. In order to receive issues of Children, Churches and Daddies, contact Janet Kuypers at the cc&d e-mail addres. Free electronic subscriptions are available via email. All you need to do is email ccandd@scars.tv... and ask to be added to the free cc+d electronic subscription mailing list. And you can still see issues every month at the Children, Churches and Daddies website, located at http://scars.tv

Mark Blickley, writer The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

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MIT Vegetarian Support Group (VSG)

functions:
* To show the MIT Food Service that there is a large community of vegetarians at MIT (and other health-conscious people) whom they are alienating with current menus, and to give positive suggestions for change.
* To exchange recipes and names of Boston area veg restaurants
* To provide a resource to people seeking communal vegetarian cooking
* To provide an option for vegetarian freshmen

We also have a discussion group for all issues related to vegetarianism, which currently has about 150 members, many of whom are outside the Boston area. The group is focusing more toward outreach and evolving from what it has been in years past. We welcome new members, as well as the opportunity to inform people about the benefits of vegetarianism, to our health, the environment, animal welfare, and a variety of other issues.

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Gary, Editor, The Road Out of Town (on the Children, Churches and Daddies Web Site) I just checked out the site. It looks great.

Dusty Dog Reviews: These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding.

John Sweet, writer (on chapbook designs) Visuals were awesome. They’ve got a nice enigmatic quality to them. Front cover reminds me of the Roman sculptures of angels from way back when. Loved the staggered tire lettering, too. Way cool. (on “Hope Chest in the Attic”) Some excellent writing in “Hope Chest in the Attic.” I thought “Children, Churches and Daddies” and “The Room of the Rape” were particularly powerful pieces.

C Ra McGuirt, Editor, The Penny Dreadful Review: cc&d is obviously a labor of love ... I just have to smile when I go through it. (Janet Kuypers) uses her space and her poets to best effect, and the illos attest to her skill as a graphic artist.

Cheryl Townsend, Editor, Impetus (on Children, Churches and Daddies) The new cc&d looks absolutely amazing. It’s a wonderful lay-out, looks really professional - all you need is the glossy pages. Truly impressive AND the calendar, too. Can’t wait to actually start reading all the stuff inside.. Wanted to just say, it looks good so far!!!

Dusty Dog Reviews: She opens with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.

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Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA
Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Mark Blickley, writer
The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing her book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.

Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book or chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers. We’re only an e-mail away. Write to us.

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Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology
The Solar Energy Research & Education Foundation (SEREF), a non-profit organization based in Washington, D.C., established on Earth Day 1993 the Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST) as its central project. CREST’s three principal projects are to provide:
* on-site training and education workshops on the sustainable development interconnections of energy, economics and environment;
* on-line distance learning/training resources on CREST’s SOLSTICE computer, available from 144 countries through email and the Internet;
* on-disc training and educational resources through the use of interactive multimedia applications on CD-ROM computer discs - showcasing current achievements and future opportunities in sustainable energy development.
The CREST staff also does “on the road” presentations, demonstrations, and workshops showcasing its activities and available resources.
For More Information Please Contact: Deborah Anderson
dja@crest.org or (202) 289-0061

Brian B. Braddock, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) I passed on a copy to my brother who is the director of the St. Camillus AIDS programs. We found (Children, Churches and Daddies’) obvious dedication along this line admirable.

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Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
“Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family.
“Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

want a review like this? contact scars about getting your own book published.

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Paul Weinman, Writer (on 1996 Children, Churches and Daddies) Wonderful new direction (Children, Churches and Daddies has) taken - great articles, etc. (especially those on AIDS). Great stories - all sorts of hot info!

The magazine Children Churches and Daddies is Copyright � through Scars Publications and Design. The rights of the individual pieces remain with the authors. No material may be reprinted without express permission from the author.

Okay, nilla wafer. Listen up and listen good. How to save your life. Submit, or I’ll have to kill you.
Okay, it’s this simple: send me published or unpublished poetry, prose or art work (do not send originals), along with a bio, to us - then sit around and wait... Pretty soon you’ll hear from the happy people at cc&d that says (a) Your work sucks, or (b) This is fancy crap, and we’re gonna print it. It’s that simple!

Okay, butt-munch. Tough guy. This is how to win the editors over.
Hope Chest in the Attic is a 200 page, perfect-bound book of 13 years of poetry, prose and art by Janet Kuypers. It’s a really classy thing, if you know what I mean. We also have a few extra sopies of the 1999 book “Rinse and Repeat”, the 2001 book “Survive and Thrive”, the 2001 books “Torture and Triumph” and “(no so) Warm and Fuzzy”, which all have issues of cc&d crammed into one book. And you can have either one of these things at just five bucks a pop if you just contact us and tell us you saw this ad space. It’s an offer you can’t refuse...

Carlton Press, New York, NY: HOPE CHEST IN THE ATTIC is a collection of well-fashioned, often elegant poems and short prose that deals in many instances, with the most mysterious and awesome of human experiences: love... Janet Kuypers draws from a vast range of experiences and transforms thoughts into lyrical and succinct verse... Recommended as poetic fare that will titillate the palate in its imagery and imaginative creations.
Mark Blickley, writer: The precursor to the magazine title (Children, Churches and Daddies) is very moving. “Scars” is also an excellent prose poem. I never really thought about scars as being a form of nostalgia. But in the poem it also represents courage and warmth. I look forward to finishing the book.

You Have to be Published to be Appreciated.
Do you want to be heard? Contact Children, Churches and Daddies about book and chapbook publishing. These reviews can be yours. Scars Publications, attention J. Kuypers - you can write for yourself or you can write for an audience. It’s your call...

Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, PA: “Hope Chest in the Attic” captures the complexity of human nature and reveals startling yet profound discernments about the travesties that surge through the course of life. This collection of poetry, prose and artwork reflects sensitivity toward feminist issues concerning abuse, sexism and equality. It also probes the emotional torrent that people may experience as a reaction to the delicate topics of death, love and family. “Chain Smoking” depicts the emotional distress that afflicted a friend while he struggled to clarify his sexual ambiguity. Not only does this thought-provoking profile address the plight that homosexuals face in a homophobic society, it also characterizes the essence of friendship. “The room of the rape” is a passionate representation of the suffering rape victims experience. Vivid descriptions, rich symbolism, and candid expressions paint a shocking portrait of victory over the gripping fear that consumes the soul after a painful exploitation.

Dusty Dog Reviews, CA (on knife): These poems document a very complicated internal response to the feminine side of social existence. And as the book proceeds the poems become increasingly psychologically complex and, ultimately, fascinating and genuinely rewarding. Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Dusty Dog Reviews (on Without You): She open with a poem of her own devising, which has that wintry atmosphere demonstrated in the movie version of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. The atmosphere of wintry white and cold, gloriously murderous cold, stark raging cold, numbing and brutalizing cold, appears almost as a character who announces to his audience, “Wisdom occurs only after a laboriously magnificent disappointment.” Alas, that our Dusty Dog for mat cannot do justice to Ms. Kuypers’ very personal layering of her poem across the page.
Children, Churches and Daddies. It speaks for itself.

Debra Purdy Kong, writer, British Columbia, Canada (on Children, Churches and Daddies): I like the magazine a lot. I like the spacious lay-out and the different coloured pages and the variety of writer’s styles. Too many literary magazines read as if everyone graduated from the same course. We need to collect more voices like these and send them everywhere.
Fithian Press, Santa Barbara, CA: Indeed, there’s a healthy balance here between wit and dark vision, romance and reality, just as there’s a good balance between words and graphics. The work shows brave self-exploration, and serves as a reminder of mortality and the fragile beauty of friendship.

Children, Churches and Daddies the unreligious, non-family oriented literary and art magazine Scars Publications and Design ccandd96@scars.tv http://scars.tv Publishers/Designers Of Children, Churches and Daddies magazine cc+d Ezines The Burning mini poem books God Eyes mini poem books The Poetry Wall Calendar The Poetry Box The Poetry Sampler Mom’s Favorite Vase Newsletters Reverberate Music Magazine Down In The Dirt magazine Freedom and Strength Press forum plus assorted chapbooks and books music, poery compact discs live performances of songs and readings Sponsors Of past editions: Poetry Chapbook Contest, Poetry Book Contest Prose Chapbook Contest, Prose Book Contest Poetry Calendar Contest current editions: Editor’s Choice Award (writing and web sites) Collection Volumes Children, Churches and Daddies (founded 1993) has been written and researched by political groups and writers from the United States, Canada, England, India, Italy, Malta, Norway and Turkey. Regular features provide coverage of environmental, political and social issues (via news and philosophy) as well as fiction and poetry, and act as an information and education source. Children, Churches and Daddies is the leading magazine for this combination of information, education and entertainment. Children, Churches and Daddies (ISSN 1068-5154) is published quarterly by Scars Publications and Design. Contact us via e-mail (ccandd96@scars.tv) for subscription rates or prices for annual collection books. To contributors: No racist, sexist or blatantly homophobic material. No originals; if mailed, include SASE & bio. Work sent on disks or through e-mail preferred. Previously published work accepted. Authors always retain rights to their own work. All magazine rights reserved. Reproduction of Children, Churches and Daddies without publisher permission is forbidden. Children, Churches and Daddies copyright through Scars Publications and Design, Children, Churches and Daddies, Janet Kuypers. All rights remain with the authors of the individual pieces. No material may be reprinted without express permission.