Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Three Beautiful Things 05/12/20: Guilt and Mark Felt, Face the Weather Underground, Bill Davie Live!

1. I'm shaking it off, but I still have this nagging sense of guilt when I sit in the Vizio room reading a book instead of doing work outside or around the house. I prefer sitting and reading to yard work, gardening, or household chores, but it seems like when I was growing up and when I returned to Kellogg to visit as an adult, I felt pressure not to sit around and read, but to get things done. When I would read instead, guilt crept in.

Well, today, the rain helped me feel all right about sitting and reading all day. I never get any pressure from Debbie to do tasks on any timetable of hers. We pretty much know what needs to be done and we eventually get around to doing it -- but, I have to admit, when I'm sitting here writing or reading, it's easier for me if Debbie is also sitting and reading and knitting at the same time. That age old nagging guilt still creeps in, no matter how much I resist it.

So, on this rainy, chilly Tuesday, I finished reading the book, Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. In this book, Mark Felt tells the story of his long career in the F.B.I. He gives fairly equal treatment to every stage of his career and so, although the title might suggest otherwise, he doesn't give any special attention to his relationship to Bob Woodward (Felt was Deep Throat) nor does he present himself as having brought down the White House, or its president. He does outline his rationale for helping Woodward with the story about what was happening in the Nixon Administration while Woodward and Bernstein were trying to sort it all out. But, in Felt's telling of it, his primary concern is that the with the death of Hoover, the F.B.I.'s independence was eroding, the appointment of L. Patrick Gray as acting director was a political appointment (Nixon and his administration wanted a director they could influence), and morale in the F.B.I. was flagging.

I was most interested, as I finished this book, in exploring Mark Felt's role in ordering unwarranted searches into apartments and other residences of members of groups like the Weather Underground. In Federal Court, after his retirement from the F.B.I., Felt was indicted, found guilty, and fined for having sanctioned these searches and other extralegal investigations into the Weather Underground. About a year later, in 1981, President Ronald Reagan pardoned him.

2. I wanted to look into this part of Mark Felt's story more. With a little bit of searching of the World Wide Web, I found a recording of Felt's August 30, 1976 appearance on CBS's Face the Nation. Felt had not yet been indicted for ordering the extralegal searches of Weather Underground residences and other places, but on this program he was absolutely forthcoming and candid about having ordered them, why he did, and that he hoped legislation would one day be passed to make such law enforcement actions legal.

I was very impressed by the tone of this Face the Nation half hour -- the panel asked direct and tough questions in calm voices and, just as calmly, Mark Felt answered them. He wasn't combative. He wasn't defensive. He spoke with calm conviction about his commitment to the safety of the USA and that he determined that the bombings carried out by the Weather Underground had to be investigated as they were being planned, not after they happened. Not once did he try to dodge the fact that he had given orders that were outside the letter of the law.

So, I still wanted to learn more. With a little bit more searching, I discovered an Academy Award nominated documentary, released in 2002, entitled, The Weather Underground. Debbie and I watched it and learned more about the Weather Underground's stances toward the uses of violence, how and why the Weather Underground eventually collapsed, and saw much evidence of why this group had the full attention of Mark Felt and the F.B.I.

Thus, Debbie and I continued our ongoing project of learning more about the history of those years when we were in our late teens and in our twenties and our attention was on all sorts of personal things going on, but not focused very sharply or deeply on current events.

3. Thankfully, I did not spend every minute of every hour of this wet day digging into the anti-war movement, the violent protests of the Weather Underground, and Mark Felt's and the F.B.I.'s response and their attempts to stop this domestic violence.

After all, it was Tuesday, the day, as Bill Davie sings before his concert begins, "that time forgot".

Yes. Starting at seven, Bill gave another live performance for an hour on Facebook from his upstairs study/studio.

It was a superb hour. Bill sang songs from his latest recording and also took us into the past and sang some golden oldies, including his opening song this evening, a longtime favorite of mine, "Learn to Say Goodbye" and another favorite, "The Wheel". Bill takes requests and he fulfilled some of them and explained how, right now, he just can't perform others, especially songs from his early days that he doesn't really feel any longer.

Twice, Bill put down his guitar and, in commemoration of Gary Snyder's recent 90th birthday, read some Snyder poetry. The Mt. St. Helen's poems Bill read were riveting. They brought to life the majesty of the mountain and the images of the eruption called to mind the many images I have stored in my memory from 40 years ago.  I really enjoyed Bill's reading of Snyder's longish poem, "Walking the New York Bedrock", exploring Snyder's observations decades ago of wandering the streets of Manhattan. The Manhattan poem brought to mind the Brooklyn poet, Walt Whitman, and Snyder's contemporary, Alan Ginsberg.  I loved listening to the poem's varied line lengths, free lines, a catalog of impressions and insights woven together to vivify Manhattan's urban ecosystem, the brilliant detail, the copious variety of sounds, and the poem's exuberant affirmation of the pulsing vitality of New York City. 

I never know if Bill is going to perform songs by other artists he's covered over the years. Tonight he apologized to those who requested "Castles in the Air" and "Country Roads" and others, saying that he just doesn't have it in him these days to perform those any longer, as much as he loves them.

I sat here in Kellogg, wishing inside myself that he might sing one of my favorite of his covers, "Life's a Long Song" by Jethro Tull (Ian Anderson).

And, WOW!, as his next to last song of the night he announced that he would perform a cover.

It was "Life's a Long Song" and I loved hearing him perform it again and I enjoyed the memories of Bill performing in my house in Eugene, of listening to him at Smith Family Books on Willamette during the Eugene Celebration, of going to Henny's in Spokane to hear Bill -- I mean this song called up the long song of my friendship with Bill over the last 43 years and I gladly indulged every image that popped in my mind as he performed this song, of memorable times we've spent together, often with great friends, and more recently with Diane, whether in Eugene, Ashland, La Push, Corvallis, Yachats, Seattle, Spokane, or that memorable weekend on the bank of the Kalama River. 

Time might have forgotten Tuesdays, but I don't! Bill is enjoying these Tuesday evening gigs and it looks like he'll keep performing them for at least as long as the pandemic makes performing live an impossibility for the foreseeable future.

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