Sometime around 1973, I found myself sitting in a restaurant in Washington, DC, more precisely a health food restaurant called Food For Thought. I was listening to the song “Cecilia” by Simon and Garfunkel (1970 # 4 hit) and falling in love with the waitress as she moved to the beat up and down the aisle. For however long it took me to eat a banana, walnut, apple, yogurt, and granola salad, with honey, of course, I was in love. I never got to know the waitress’s name, but for 42 years she has danced up and down the aisle of my memory just as she did on that wooden floor in a place called Food For Thought, and she forever will be remembered as Cecilia. That was a great afternoon, and it was all real, especially the food.
Monsanto has its claws down my throat as they sue the state of Vermont. With Governor Peter Shumlin’s signature, Vermont became the first state in the country to require foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to carry a label. The effective date is July 1, 2016, but whether it goes into effect depends on defeating legal and constitutional challenges, and there are many challenges by Monsanto. Currently, 29 states have bills in the works, with Oregon gearing up for a GMO-labeling initiative that will appear on the ballot this November, and Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association keep on suing. While there has been speculation Starbucks was part of this suit, the company has stated those allegations are completely false.
Donald Trump has thrown his wiggy-ness into the presidential race, and it’s not the first time wigs have been involved. Back In 1834, political opponents of President Andrew Jackson organized a new party to contest his Democrats nationally and in the states. Guided by their most prominent leader, Henry Clay, they called themselves Whigs (nothing to do with wigs, by the way) and disparagingly referred to Andrew Jackson as King Andrew. The Whigs were immediately laughed at by Jacksonian Democrats as a party devoted to the interests of wealth and aristocracy, but they won the presidential elections in 1840 and 1848. However, by 1852, the popular issue of the day was slavery, and the Whigs fell out of favor. The “cotton” Whigs moved to the Democratic Party, and the “conscience” Whigs formed the new Republican Party.
Rock History: On June 2, 1956, in Santa Cruz, California, there was a dance party, and 200 teenagers packed the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium on that Saturday night to dance to the music of Chuck Higgins and his orchestra, a Los Angeles group with a regional hit record called “Pachuko Hop” (catch this rocker on YouTube). The Santa Cruz police entered the auditorium just past midnight, and according to Lieutenant Richard Overton, found the crowd dancing suggestively, presumably triggered by the “provocative rhythms of an all-Negro band,” and shut down the dance. The next day, June 3, 1956, the city authorities announced a total ban on rock and roll at public gatherings, calling the music “detrimental to both the health and morals of our youth and community.”
There’s more on “Pachuko Hop” and Chuck Higgins, morality, lack of morality, music, and other wigged-out things on the shores of Rambling Harbor. Come on in.
***and remember there is a podcast under just the spoken.