BEAT NEWS

A long time coming, ‘On The Road’ the movie has flashed through the cinema screens and is due out on DVD at the end of this month. Caught one screening but as yet not able to study in detail. So first impressions: much better than I expected. I liked the main players –  Sam Riley as Sal Paradise (Kerouac) and Garrett Hedlund as Dean Moriarty (Neal Cassady). They have style and guts and are the best portrayals of these two beat characters to date. In many ways the film is a companion piece to ‘The Motorcycle Diaries’, director Walter Salles’ previous film on Che Guevara. As in that film you have two main male characters off on the adventure of a lifetime. There’s lots of road travel and stunning landscapes. One character is quite bookish, the other is obsessed with girls (and guys). There’s loads of cafes, restaurants and bars shot lovingly in warm tones and the movie is full of great cars and period details. If I knew nothing about The Beats i don’t know how much I would grasp. Vigo Mortenson turns up as William Burroughs but who he you might wonder if you didn’t know. As you are probably aware, the version of On The Road that was first published was heavily censored. It is only in recent years that the full uncut scroll version of the book has been generally available. The film seems to stem from that as there is lots of sex and drugs in this. Its a long ride (perhaps overlong) with a lot to take in. The film is beautifully shot but perhaps it has too much of a rosy glow and not enough stark grittiness. Look forward to a second viewing. See more here on the film’s website.

There is a good Wikipedia entry on the long history of attempts to make this movie. I was unaware that Kerouac wrote a letter to Brando suggesting he play Dean Moriarty with Kerouac playing himself. Now that would have been a stunner. I knew Coppola had held the rights since 1979 but didn’t know he had Ethan Hawke and Brad Pitt initially lined up for it. Apparently, as preparation for the film, Salles made a documentary Searching for On the Road, in which he took the same road trip as the lead character in the novel and talked to Beat poets who knew Kerouac. That would be great to see. The movie got mixed reviews although most were unanimous in praising Hedlund’s full-on performance.

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As chance would have it, just received a rental of ‘Gang of Souls: A Generation of Beat Poets’, directed in 1989 by Maria Beatty. The whole film consists simply of interviews and readings by the following: William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso,  Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, Anne Waldman, John Giorno, Richard Hell, Marianne Faithfull,Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins and Jim Carroll

The filming is largely very unflattering to the individuals concerned. The lighting is harsh and many of the participants do not look at their best. The editing is very basic. But the film is still of real interest. Its rare to see Corso, Di Prima and Ed Sanders and Jim Carroll (of ‘The Basketball Diaries’ fame). Richard Hell looks and sounds great but Lydia Lunch, Anne Waldman and John Giorno just make me wince. Its stretching the term Beat Poets to include  Marianne Faithfull but what the hell.

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Left: Sketch for Presspop figurine, designed by Archer Prewitt, sculpted by Kei Hinotani.

A new biography of Allen Ginsberg by Steve Finbow has recently been published by Reaktion Books in their series ‘Critical Lives’. [see Previous Post review of Charles Bukowski bio in the same series]

Finbow, who is apparently an ‘Extraordinary Senior Lecturer’ at North-West University in South Africa, has fashioned a fast-paced highly condensed chronological narrative of Ginsberg’s Life and Works in some 200pp.

An achievement in itself given the vast ocean of material that Ginsberg himself produced – not only his poems but also his journals, correspondence, photos etc – documenting himself and his colleagues in intense detail. Add to that another oceanic outpouring of writings about GInsberg which includes several extensive biographies by Barry Miles, Michael Schumacher and Bill Morgan that Finbow fulsomely acknowledges.

Its an exhausting read. Ginsberg was a restless spirit, constantly working and travelling the globe, lecturing and weaving a vast network of contacts. Finbow does an efficient job of documentation with a list of referenced sources and an extensive bibliography and the book serves a useful role of providing a introductory overview of his extraordinary life. From the books intro:

‘Ed Sanders writes that it ‘might be interesting to do a Total Biography of Ginsberg….perhaps a day-to-day bio, maybe 25,000 pages long’….in the belief that sometimes ‘an eight-hundred-page biography is nothing more than dead conjecture’ [a quote from Don DeLillo], I offer you one a quarter of that size in the hope of re-animating, for a time, a complicated, passionate and ebullient life.’

The book is a useful complement to two others:

‘Screaming With Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg by Graham Caveney [Broadway Books/New York. 1999] provides a shorter skate through AG’s achievements and adventures accompanied by a wealth of great images.

‘The Poetry and Life of Allen Ginsberg: A Narrative Poem’ by Edward Sanders [ The Overlook Press. Woodstock. 2000] is what it says – a remarkable book-length documentary poem. I love this book.

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Whilst researching the above, came across this copy of The ‘Naked Lens: An Illustrated History of Beat Cinema’ by Jack Sargeant [Creation Books. 1997] A revised edition (2009) is now available from Soft Skull Press. Its a true cult classic containing much undocumented material and original interviews.

The book was launched with a showcase of Beat movies, selected by Jack, as part of a brilliant Lewes Live Literature event ‘The Savage God’, organised by Mark Hewitt, which ran from June 26th to July 10th 1999. I was asked to give an introductory talk on Sunday July 4th appropriately. Jack was present and, as I recall, talked about each film before it was shown.

The programme which ran through afternoon and evening featured the Robert Frank film ‘Pull My Daisy’, a Ginsberg documentary, Peter Whitehead’s famous ‘Wholly Communion’ about the 1965 Albert Hall poetry event, two of the legendary short films of Anthony Balch featuring William Burroughs, and the cult movie ‘Chappaqua’ by Conrad Rooks which was fascinating.

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STOP PRESS

News of what sounds like a really great documentary on Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Entitled Ferlinghetti: A Rebirth of Wonder’, directed by Christopher Felver. Read article here and see trailer here. Thanks to BIGFUG for the tip-off.

A complete list of all Previous Posts on Beat Culture, including my original interviews with William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg can be found summarised here.

THE HISTORY OF THE BEATS

CHARLES & RAY EAMES

This post is triggered by viewing a great documentary ‘Eames: The Architect and the Painter’. produced and written by Jason Cohen and released in 2011.

Its a great tribute to and celebration of the energy, ingenuity and creativity of Charles & Ray Eames and the highly talented team they assembled in their studio at 901 West Washington Blvd, Venice, California to realise a wide range of creative projects over a 40-year time span.

In a sense it follows on from the Previous Posts about the history of Polaroid and the genius of their contemporary Edwin Land. Also links to my post on Significant Others – a study of creative artists who also share a personal relationship.

Charles was principally an architect and Ray was a painter but their collaborations spilled out into numerous forms of creative enterprise principally centred on design and communication. Their best known work were the Eames chairs and other pieces of furniture –  40-50 in all, in production for more than five decades. These iconic items exemplify their approach to industrial design – the best for the most for the least.

 

The funding from this hugely successful enterprise enabled them to establish their studio and branch out into other fields – principally architecture, film making and major corporate communication projects including exhibitions and pavilions for World Fairs.

Charles was fascinated by the process of design – he believed there was no good design without restrictions and rules – and by the wonders of everyday life and the world that science was revealing. He relied on his partner Ray, to whom he was intensely bonded, for her exquisite taste. She collected hundreds and thousands of objects that caught her eye and is described as ‘Queen of all Pack Rats’. They lived together in a house that Ray had designed and lived surrounded by their own aesthetic.

The Eames’ multimedia approach, which included extensive model making and documentation on film and in photos, and the huge range of projects they undertook, meant their studio was constantly buzzing with individual designers and artists working closely together to realise the Eames’ visions.

One of their great achievements is the short film ‘Powers of Ten’ which was hugely influential and remains to this day a masterpiece of scientific communication in its elegance and brevity. They made more than 100 films, an oeuvre which the film director Paul Schrader considers their own genre.

Charles was handsome, charismatic, brilliant yet laid back and cool. His business dealings were remarkable. There were no contracts with his major clients. Everything was done on a handshake. Plus there were no budgets. Eames just said he did not know how much it would cost and his clients went for it, such was his reputation.

This film is a beautiful and inspiring tribute to the Eames whose achievements still resonate today.

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This is a still from the 1953 film ‘A Communications Primer’ – an early attempt to present communication theory, made to encourage the breaking down of barriers of thinking between disciplines and to discourage thinking of communications in a limited way. Music composed by Elmer Bernstein.

EAMESDESIGNS

A Virtual Encyclopaedia of all things Eames

This is a fabulous website

 

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THE GENERALIST library contains a number of books on the Eames, all of which are highly recommended.

This is the  5th Printing (1987) of a 56pp catalogue,originally published in 1973 -  a survey of the furniture of Charles Eames held in the Design Collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Here is an extract from the Introduction.

‘Charles Eames has contributed at least three of the major chair designs of the twentieth century.

‘His work has influenced furniture design in virtually every country, and his mastery of advanced technology has set new standards of both design and production. The first of his chairs, executed in collaboration with the architect Eero Saarinen (1910-1961) emerged from a 1940 Museum of Modern Art competition. Since then furniture by Eames has been mass-produced in quantities that must now be counted by the millions.’

‘An Eames Primer’ [Thames & Hudson. 2001] is a fabulous book by Eames Demetrios, one of Charles & Ray’s grandsons, who is a multimedia designer, filmmaker and director of the Eames Office in Santa Monica.

It aims (and succeeds) in its purpose of ‘giving the reader an understanding of the key projects, themes and ideas, and arcs of the lives and works of Charles and Ray Eames.’

‘Charles and Ray were design revolutionaries whose slogan was “innovate as a last resort.” They often sought the universal in the specific. Charles saw their work as an extension of his architecture, and Ray saw it as an extension of her painting. They eschewed self-expression for its own sake, but the work they created as husband-and-wife collaborators speaks with a single voice. And yet these pairings are intended not as paradoxes, but rather as dimensions of the same way of looking at the world. I believe Charles and Ray consistently drew from this deeper well. This explains the seamless connections in all their work because, as important as any of the objects they created are, the philosophy behind them is even more important.’

 

‘The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention’  [Harry N. Abrams.1997] was published to accompany an international travelling exhibition organised by the Library of Congress and the Vitra Design Museum. It includes signature essays from a variety of authors, accompanied by a wealth of visual material. The Eames Collection at the Library of Congress contains almost a million items which, writes James H Billington. ‘reveals the Eamses as important American innovators, thinkers, and entrepeneurs who operated beyond the traditional boundaries of design.’

 

 

This is the ‘Powers of Ten’ book produced by Tony and Philip and Phylis Morrison published by the Scientific American Library in 1973. It is based on the ‘brief and beautiful’ film  produced by the Eames Office - ‘Powers of Ten: A Film Dealing with the Relative Size of Things in the Universe and the Effect of Adding Another Zero.’

A journey through the universe in 42 steps from the largest known dimension to the smallest. Flipbook produced by Optical Toys of Putney, Vermont.

POWERS OF TEN

An Eames Office website

This book has always fascinated me.

Its a documentation of an exhibition the Eames Office did for IBM - conceived in 1968 and assembled and exhibited in 1971 in the old IBM World Trade building, where it was on view until 1975.

The main part of the exhibition was this History Wall showing the development of computing. This consisted of six cases or panels – 8ft wide and 3ft deep, stretching from floor to ceiling – one for every decade from 1890 to 1950. In each panel, text, documents and objects were arranged chronologically but also three-dimensionally, producing a ‘hypertext’ feel.

This is a revised edition published by Harvard University Press in 1990.

INSPIRATIONS: RODRIGUEZ/AI WEI WEI/JACK GILBERT

This beautiful and remarkable music documentary about the singer/songwriter Rodriguez is genuinely uplifting. HIs two albums recorded in the 1970s did nothing in the Western marketplace but in South Africa under the apartheid regime, the album ‘Sugar Man’ was considered a stone cold classic and sold some half a million copies. Nothing was known of Rodriguez himself and the film documents the search that began to find out the truth about this extraordinary songwriter. Its fantastical.

This wonderful little book of memorable quotes from the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei – culled from his numerous videos and posts on His blog and Twitter – encourages us to accept the challenges of life and to use our time on this earth to stand up for human rights and a better life for all. Weiwei is the most important artist of our time who has developed the art of the brief phrase as cultural statement. This little book consciously sits in a continuum from Confucius to Mao to now. Here are a few Weiwei-isms to give a taste and flavour of the whole.

My favourite Word ? It’s “act”.

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It became like a symbolic thing, to be “an artist.” After Duchamp, I realised that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.'

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Life is never guaranteed to be safe, so we better use it while we are still in good condition.

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My current situation is, I always want to find a new possibility. China is in a changing stage, and that puts me in a very difficult situation, because anytime a new condition is announced there is a lot of struggle between the new and the old. So the Establishment really became extremely nervous because they are refusing to meet very basic human rights or values. I don’t know how long I can still struggle in China, but I will try my best. because this is a land I am very familiar with, and we have been in the same kind of struggle for generations. I think its a time for change.'

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‘Weiwei-Isms’ is edited by Larry Warsh and published in 2013 by Princeton University Press to coincide with the exhibition of Weiwei’s Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads. See: ww.zodiacheads.com/

For more on Weiwei see Previous Post: Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry

The great American poet Jack Gilbert died recently.

Here he is in action. His work is powerful and moving.

NY Times obituary

ANARCHISM1: MUTUALISM RULES

 James C. Scott is a political science and anthropology professor at Yale University According to a recent New York Times profile: ‘He is the official founder of Yale’s agrarian studies program, as well as an unofficial founder of the field of “resistance studies,” in which his book “Weapons of the Weak” (1985), a study of peasant resistance based on fieldwork in a Malaysian village, is a kind of Bible.’ Now 76, he continues to teach and write while in his spare time he runs a 46-acre farm in Durham, Connecticut and keeps bees.

‘Two Cheers for Anarchism’ says Scott was ‘born of disillusionment and dashed hope in revolutionary change.’ In the 60s, he writes, there was ‘a romance with the peasant wars of national liberation’ which many believed offered ‘utopian possibilities’. Bear in mind, he says, that the peasantry are the largest class in world history.

In fact what happened Scott says is that ’virtually every major successful revolution ended by creating a state more powerful than the one it overthrew’. He quotes the example of Mao’s Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), which led to the death of what Scoot says is ‘unlikely to be less than 35 million people’.

A ‘crude’ Marxist, Scott found himself initially drawn to anarchist thinking as perhaps a fresh way of examining old problems. In order to understand it, he taught a course at Yale which allowed him to read all the anarchist classics and the histories of the anarchist movements.

Twenty years later this slim book is Scott’s attempt to make the case for what he calls ‘a sort of anarchist squint’ at the world.

His book is not  offering an ‘elaborately worked out argument for anarchism that would amount to a consistent political philosophy’ nor an examination of Anarchist movements.

It is rather a collection of essays he calls ‘fragments’ – a ‘series of apercus that seem to add up to an endorsement of much that anarchist thinkers have had to say’ about the State, Revolution and Equality.

The ‘fragments’ often or mainly begin with a personal experience or anecdote providing a telling example of a larger theme.

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‘Mutualism, as a variety of anarchism, goes back to P.J. Proudhon in France and Josiah Warren in the U.S.  It favors, to the extent possible, an evolutionary approach to creating a new society.  It emphasizes the importance of peaceful activity in building alternative social institutions within the existing society, and strengthening those institutions until they finally replace the existing statist system.  As Paul Goodman put it, "A free society cannot be the substitution of a 'new order' for the old order; it is the extension of spheres of free action until they make up most of the social life.". Source: www.mutualist.org

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Scott is interested in Proudhon’s idea of ‘mutuality’ – cooperation without hierarchy or state rule – and in the ‘anarchist tolerance for confusion and improvisation’ and in its ‘confidence in spontaneous cooperation’

He follows the lead of British anarchist Colin Ward [See Previous post] in showing that this mutuality is ubiquitous in our societies.

He extols a populist anarchism that believes in the possibilities of autonomy and self-organisation and the encouragement of diversity and complexity.

He is at pains to distance himself from many other varieties of anarchism – the utopian scientism of the early 20th Century and the modern sort of libertarianism ‘that tolerates (or even encourages) great differences in wealth, property and status.’ This, Scott says, ‘make a mockery of freedom….Democracy is a   cruel hoax without equality.’

More controversial is Scott’s views that ‘episodes of structural change occur only when mass disruption and open defiance threatens established institutions.’ This is certainly true in the case of the civil rights movement for example.

Less easy to defend are the actions of what is known as the ‘black bloc’ who came to initial prominence in 1999 at the ‘Battle of Seattle’ outside the WTO meeting. They smashed shop windows and skirmished with the police. Scott says that one may ‘deplore’ this strategy but, without the media attention generated by this violence, the ‘anti-globalisation movement would have gone largely unnoticed.’

He quotes Martin Luther King: ‘A riot is the language of the unheard.’ Such riots, he says do get ‘the attention of the elites’ but they risk triggering of an authoritarianism or fascist response rather than leading to reform or revolution.

His book’s first chapter concentrates on acts of disobedience and insubordination. These ‘weapons of the weak’ are lower risk alternatives to open defiance.

In  later ones he contrasts Vernacular Order with Official Order making a strong case for diversity against homogenisation at all levels.  He emphasises the value of play as a basic activity and we need to undertake the urgent tasks of fostering institutions ‘that expand the independence. autonomy and capacities of the citizenry.

The book as a whole is not completely successful. One misses a concluding chapter of sorts at the book’s end. Several of the essays ramble somewhat and appear to make slight points at great length.

Yet one feels that there is a lot of passion behind this writing and a genuine attempt to offer his America audience at least,a different view of anarchism than the media stereotypes.

‘Two Cheers for Anarchism’ by James C. Scott is published by Princeton University Press (2013)

 

NOTES

For those like myself who didn’t know, the book’s title draws from E.M. Forster’s ‘Two Cheers for Democracy’ published in 1962. He wrote: "We may still contrive to raise three cheers for democracy, although at present she only deserves two."

 

There is an interesting piece on Anarchist symbolism in Wikipedia.

‘The first recorded use of the A in a circle by anarchists was by the Federal Council of Spain of the International Workers Association. This was set up by Giuseppe Fanelli in 1868. It predates its adoption by anarchists as it was used as a symbol by others. According to George Woodcock, this symbol was not used by classical anarchists.

‘ In a series of photos of the Spanish Civil War taken by Gerda Taro a small A in a circle is visibly chalked on the helmet of a militiaman.

‘The first documented use was by a small French group, Jeunesse Libertaire ("Libertarian Youth") in 1964. Circolo Sacco e Vanzetti, youth group from Milan, adopted it and in 1968 it became popular throughout Italy. From there it spread rapidly around the world.’

 

 

LINK

 

Time Magazine's Person of the Year, re-imagined as a celebration of the Black Bloc. Image: Occupy Duniya. Source: The Occupied Wall Street Journal.

 

There’s a very punchy piece about Scott’s book by Malcolm Harris in the Los Angeles Review of Books.  Let’s just say he’s not totally approving and calls Scott an ‘Anarchish’

The article also refers to ‘best-selling liberal author Chris Hedges’ and ‘his opportunistic attack on anarchists within Occupy Wall Street. In a piece posted widely around the progressive internet press, Hedges called Black Bloc protesters — a reference to people associated with small-scale property destruction who show up to marches all in black — "the cancer of the Occupy movement," asserting that the movement would be better off turning window breakers over to the police.’

IN ADDITION

By coincidence or not, found this book by Henry Hemming - ‘Together: How Small Groups Achieve Big Things.’ [John Murray. 2011] The book claims that, during the first decade of this new century, there has been a surge of people in Britain joining or forming associations. Hemming sets out to find out why this might be and examine what it is that we get from being a part of an association. These incidentally come in all shapes and sizes from rat breeders and book clubs, to creches and model makers. He quotes Lester Salamon of John Hopkins University who said, in 1999, that  a ‘global associational revolution appears to be underway.’ By the way, the book never mentions the world ‘anarchism’. Mutualism rules!

ANARCHISM 2: CLIFF HARPER/FRANS MASEREEL

Top: ‘Autonomous Terrace’ (1974); Centre: Cover of Issue 1 of ‘Class War Comix’ (1974); Cover of ‘The Education of Desire: The Anarchist Graphic of Cliff Harper’. published by the Annares Co- operative in 1984; Frame from ‘Class War Comix’. [The Generalist Archive']

This second post is a tribute to the talent and commitment of the artist Cliff Harper, the first proper anarchist I ever met. He lived in the Eel Pie Island commune for two years. and produced in the early ‘70s a remarkable six-part ‘Class War Comix’ which are set in a post-revolutionary Britain.

I have the original outline for the series which begins in one of the large communes where 2000 people live in a village of some 300 buildings surrounded by 1500 acres of arable grass and woodland.

Whether it was all published I can’t remember. All I have in the Archive are two copies of Issue One, one of which contains a hand-written letter in red ink that reads:

Dear tired old IT [International Times]: Please review this hopelessly utopian comik. Try and suppress your cynicism for a little while and give it a plug.

I was quite scared of Cliff at that time. He was very very particular and passionate about his work as I recall. He wore big overcoats, big boots, had a beard and pigtail and little round wire glasses. I think he thought us lot at the underground press were a bit nancy.

Strangely and wonderfully Cliff became an incredibly popular illustrator for the mainstream press, particularly The Guardian, and you can find out all about him, his work and current state of affairs on his excellent website. www.agraphia.co.uk

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One of Cliff’s great heroes and a big influence on his work was the woodcut artist Frans Masereel (1889-1972) who produced more than 20 ‘wordless novels’, the most famous being ‘Passionate Journey’ – a novel told in 165 woodcuts. You can get a cheap edition from Dover Books but the nicest edition I have was published in Ladbroke Grove by The Redstone Press in 1987. This wonderful book is one of my all-time favourites.

In recent years I’ve picked up the following:

‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’ by Oscar Wilde, illustrated by Masreel and published by the Journeyman Press [London/Nyack, NY. 1979/1980]

‘The Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegl’ by Charles de Coster [Pantheon Books. 1965]. This is a hardback first edition. Its the story of the 16th-century fight by seven Lowland provinces against the might of Spain, the roots of a struggle that would eventually lead  to the establishment of Belgium as an independent country. This book, first published in 1869, is considered the first great work of Belgian literature and bears comparison to Don Quixote and Panatgruel.

Like de Coster [1827-1879) Masreel was Flemish and his outstanding 100 woodcuts for this work are a wonderful enhancement to the text. Romain Rolland said of them that  Masereel: ‘had allied within him the two opposing elements which are so characteristic of Tyl Ulenspiegl: the enormous buffoonery and the dark demons of the soul: violence and melancholy.’

THE GENERALIST 2012

88,359 UNIQUE VISITORS

125,667 PAGE LOADS

 

Latest figures show a dramatic rise in visitor numbers – up 33,000 from 2011 – and page loads – up almost 50,000 from 2011.

 

Thanks to all my readers worldwide. Please spread the word. Hoping to hit 100,000+ in the year ahead.

 

INSIDE DOPE: COFFEE SHOPS/US STATES LEGALISE POT/CAMERON’S WAR ON DRUGS/NEW PSYCHEDELIC RESEARCH

Famous after being featured in the hit movie ‘Ocean’s 12’. Source: Flying Pig NL
 

New Dutch government scraps “weed pass”

Source: Radio Netherlands Worldwide/ 20th Nov 2012
 
Dutch Justice minister Ivo Opstelten has announced that the controversial “weed pass” is to be scrapped with immediate effect. In a letter to parliament he also said it would be up to municipalities to determine and enforce the regulations governing coffee shops in their area. 
 
The controversial “weed pass” was introduced in the south of the Netherlands last May. Designed to stop "drug tourists" from Germany, Belgium and France crossing the Dutch border to buy cannabis, the new regulations meant coffee shops in the region became closed clubs only admitting Dutch residents who had to register for a special pass.

It was due to take effect in the rest of the Netherlands at the beginning of 2013 but the introduction of the pass saw an immediate increase in illegal street dealing and other problems in the southern province and the mayors of many Dutch cities and towns had been urging the government to reconsider. The new policy means people will not have to register to buy cannabis. Officially customers will still have to show ID to prove they are Dutch citizens, but the authorities in large cities such as Amsterdam are not expected to enforce this rule.

COMMENT ON THIS STORY:
No need to cancel any more trips to Amsterdam The weed pass or residents only criteria will not apply or be enforced in Amsterdam after 1st January 2013 and is unlikely to be enforced in other large cities like Haarlem, Den Haag and Rotterdam etc, but only Dutch residents can enter coffee shops in areas like Maastricht where the residents criteria remains in place for now. Some areas in the south may keep the old rules if they want to but it does not make any sense for them to really as its an invite for street dealers to move in. Stupid weed pass idea has been a epic failure.

See: Maps on www.coffeshopamsterdam.com
See Previous Post: INSIDE DOPY BY DICK TRACY, which includes a item on a history of the Dutch coffee shops entitled ‘The Dutch Experience’ and 2005 news reports on previous attempts to regulate them.

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Source: thcfinder marijuana blog

In November, the voters in two US States – Colorado and Washington – voted to legalise marijuana for recreational use. An Observer story on this landmark event by Rory Carroll ran under a headline quote: ‘This is the beginning of the end for marijuana prohibition across the world.’

In a 2009 Inside Dope post entitled DRUG LAWS,DRUG WARS, we highlighted a great story from The Atlantic magazine on Colorado’s medical marijuana dispensaries which had been technically legal since 2000. The article said that the number of dispensaries in the state were expected to double to 60 by the end of 2009. According to the 2012 Observer story, there are currently 500. The success of this system emboldened voters to back amendment 64.

To understand the story behind the headlines, it’s useful to read this article by Jonathan P. Caulkins, Angela Hawken and Mark A.R. Kleiman: ‘Semi-legal marijuana in Colorado and Washington: what comes next?
The article explains what the Washington and Colorado laws say:

‘Lots of crucial details remain to be determined, but in outline:

In both states, adults may — according to state but not federal law — possess limited amounts of marijuana, effective immediately.

In both states, there are to be licensed (and taxed) growers and sellers, under rules to take effect later this year.

Sales to minors and possession by minors remain illegal.

Colorado, but not Washington, now allows anyone person over the age of 21 to grow up to six marijuana plants (no more than three of them in the flowering stage) in any “enclosed, locked space,” and to store the marijuana so produced at the growing location. That marijuana can be given away (up to an ounce at a time), but not sold.’

But everything these new state laws allow remains forbidden by federal law. 

‘…the federal government has ample legal authority to shut down the proposed systems of state-licensed production and sale. Once someone formally applies to Colorado or Washington for permission to commit what remains a federal felony, a federal court can enjoin that person from doing any such thing, and such orders are easily enforced. So the federal government could make it impossible to act as a licensed grower or seller in either state.

Further complexities follow. They conclude that:

‘Federal and state authorities share an interest in preventing the development of large interstate sales from Colorado and Washington, and the whole country might gain from learning about the experience of legalization in those two states: as long as the effects of those laws could be mostly contained within those states.

Things will get even more complex if other states decide to join the party.So buckle your seat belts; this could be a rather bumpy ride.’

Their book ‘Marijuana Legalization: What Everyone Needs to Know’ is published by Oxford University Press.

You can follow the progress of events on ColoradoDaily which carried the following news item this week: Grappling over legal marijuana begins in eastern Boulder County
 

This is a great story from Christian Science Monitor which looks in depth into the background of these decisions and the broader picture within the US as a whole: From 'no' to 'yes,' how Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana

‘Since no state had previously legalized marijuana possession, Washington must invent a production system from the ground up

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce of pot for people over 21. But selling marijuana remains illegal for now. The initiative gave the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage.

In Colorado, a 24-member task force began work on pot regulations this week. The state's Department of Revenue must adopt the regulations by July, with sales possible by year's end.’

Source: weedtracker.com

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In the UK in December this year David Cameron rejected the idea of setting up a royal commission to examine the UK’s drug policy on the grounds that the current approach is working. [see video/article here]

Fidel Cano Correa, editor of the Colombian daily El Espectador, responded to Cameron’s remarks by writing this lacerating riposte   In Colombia, David Cameron's stance on drugs looks cynical
He concludes:

‘Where is Great Britain in this debate? Will Cameron let his country be left to one side as major shifts in political and public opinion swirl around his nation? Did he even notice that two US states – Washington and Colorado – voted to legalise marijuana last month? He has a moral responsibility to engage the debate – since we pay the price of his citizens' appetite for drugs.
Precisely 10 years ago this month, a senior British politician said in a debate in the House of Commons: "I ask the Labour government not to return to retribution and war on drugs. That has been tried and we all know that it does not work."
That politician was David Cameron.’

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Two illustrated extracts from a Drug War Timeline entitled The Altered States of America. Published in Mother Jones in 2009

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Source: under the button, reporting the Psychedemia conference held at the University of Pennsylvania in Sept 2012

Have just discovered by chance an excellent piece by a former colleague on the revival of legal research into LSD and other pschedelics.

‘Can LSD cure depression? by Jerome Burne, published in The Telegraph [25th sept 2012] investigates the new research into the medical uses of psychedelics to heal depression and disorders like post-traumatic stress.

‘Here in Britain, much of the drive has come from Amanda Feilding, who set up the Beckley Foundation in Oxford to initiate and fund studies into the effects of psychoactive drugs and other ways of changing consciousness, such as meditation.

Feilding, who is the Countess of Wemyss and March, has long been a controversial figure with some odd ideas; in her twenties she trepanned herself, drilling a hole in her own skull to “increase blood flow”. But since then, she has crossed the boundary into scientific respectability and her dedication has earned her the respect of colleagues.

“None of the work in the UK would have occurred without the Beckley Foundation and particularly Amanda as a collaborator and funder of the programme,” says Professor David Nutt, now a neuropsychopharmacologist at Imperial College London but better known as the former chairman of the government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, who was fired for claiming that alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than Ecstasy and cannabis.’

Jerome Burne points out that, in the 60s, more than 1,000 scientific papers were published ‘looking at ways that psychiatrists could help patients with hallucinogenic chemicals. But then the walls descended, as a new anti-drug culture took hold, particularly in the United States. In the 1970s, the Food and Drug Administration banned the use of LSD and related chemicals. Since then, research in the field has been effectively frozen.’

POLAROID/APPLE: EDWIN LAND/STEVE JOBS

Edwin Land demonstrates his invention of ‘instant photography’ to the press, February 21, 1947; Steve Jobs shows off the new iPad during an Apple event in San Francisco, 2010.

THE GENERALIST loves making interesting connections and believes in meaningful coincidences. Having pencil-marked my way through ‘Inside Apple’ the 2012, a major journalistic investigation into this most secretive of companies by Fortune journalist Adam Lashinsky, I received a review copy of this brand new history of Polaroid by Christopher Bonanos, an editor at New York magazine.

Needless to say, the first is dominated by Steve Jobs, whose dark ghost still haunts the corridors of the company he fashioned in his own complex image, the second by the extraordinary caring obsessive genius of Edwin Land. Steve Jobs has achieved guru status and public prominence but who did Steve Jobs idolise? None other than Edwin Land, his precursor and the man from whom he learnt his promotional wizardry.

The parallels are impossible to ignore, from the gnomic utterances, to the product launches, to the micro-managing and the total dedication to front-end R&D in the service of a technological vision no matter what the cost.

Land and Polaroid captured the imagination of previous generations with instant photography but were unable to engage with the digital industries that destroyed their business. Apple is in the early days of adjusting to Jobs’ death and many wonder whether its possible for the company to match the stellar achievements of their former presiding genius who made it the richest corporation in the world.

According to Lashinsky, Jobs visited Land in 1983 with the then Apple CEO John Scully, who recalled ‘the two bonded over their shared ability to envision changing products before the products had been built.’ 

Jobs later told Playboy: ‘Land was a troublemaker. He dropped out of Harvard and founded Polaroid. Not only was he one of the great inventors of our time but, more important, he saw the intersection of art and science and business and built an organisation to reflect that.’

When Jobs met Land, he had just been fired by Polaroid, a decision Jobs considered ‘one of the dumbest decisions I’ve ever heard of.’ Land subsequently had little to do with the company, avoided any public profile and left instructions that all his personal papers be burnt after his death. Jobs left Apple in 1985 but returned in 1997 to transform it into a world-beater.

Bonanos also references the Playboy interview in which Jobs refers to Land as ‘a national treasure’ but says Land was ‘semi-coaxed into retirement’ rather than fired. He also say Jobs met Land three times when Apple was on the rise and that, by Sculley’s account: ‘the two inventors described to each other a singular experience. Each had imagined a perfect new product whole, already manufactured and sitting before him, and then spent years prodding executives, engineers, and factories to create it with as few compromises as possible.’

[Spookily I had just been reading a long review in the LRB by Jackson Lears of Ray Monk’s masterful new biography of Oppenheimer who was ‘brimming with feverish excitement’ when he realised it would be possible to create a nuclear chain reaction. The only BUT was that it would need to use U-235, a rare isotope present in less than 1 per cent of natural uranium. You could not produce the large amount needed to make a bomb, physicist Niels Bohr said, ‘unless you turn the US into one huge factory. Lears comments: ‘This it turned out, was what the government was prepared to do.’]

Bonanos nails the parallels with acute accuracy:

‘When it introduced instant photography in the late 1940s, Polaroid the corporation followed a path that has since become familiar in Silicon Valley…

The most obvious parallel is to Apple Computer, except that Apple's story, so far, has a much happier ending. Both companies specialized in relentless, obsessive refinement of their technologies. Both were estab­lished close to great research universities to attract talent (Polaroid was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where it drew from Harvard and MIT; Apple has Stanford and Berkeley nearby). Both fetishized superior, elegant, covetable product design. And both companies exploded in size and wealth under an in-house visionary-godhead-inventor-genius…

Just as Apple stories almost all lead back to Jobs, Polaroid lore always seems to focus on Land. In his time, he was as public a figure as Jobs was…

At Polaroid's annual shareholders' meetings, Land often got up onstage, deploying every bit of his considerable magnetism, and put the company's next big thing through its paces, sometimes backed by a slide-show to fill in the details, other times with live music between segments.

A generation later, Jobs did the same thing, in a black turtleneck and jeans. Both men were college dropouts; both became as rich as anyone could ever be'; and both insisted that their inventions would change the fundamental nature of human interaction.’

Fuller review of both books in next post.

 

 

 

POLAROID: AN INSTANT HISTORY

‘INSTANT: The Story of Polaroid’ by Christopher Bonanos [Princeton Architectural Press] is a perfectly pitched and elegantly produced illustrated history of a remarkable man and the company he created around himself to realise his visionary ideas.

Bonananos respectfully references two previous works on the subject – ‘Insisting on the Impossible’ Victor McElheny’s 1998 definitive biography of Edwin Land and ‘Land’s Polaroid’, the 1987 personal memoir of former Polaroid exec Peter Wensberg – but his mission is to communicate this intriguing story in an accessible form to the general reader, to the camera enthusiast and – one would guess – to both the generation(s) for whom instant photography was a big thrill and their digital offspring, who never experienced it first-hand but are curious about this cool technology from yesteryear.

Polaroid cameras were the last great innovation of analog photography before the digital tsunami. The ingenuity involved in collapsing all the elements of a  chemical processing photolab into a film package that would develop an image instantly is astounding. For both professionals and amateurs alike, it offered instant gratification but also opened many interesting artistic possibilities.

Land recognised this from the off and the company assembled a marvellous collection of 20,000 pictures work produced by a stellar range of photographic artists. I had no idea that Land had hired Anselm Adams who enthusiastically used the evolving Polaroid systems to capture some of his favourite images. The elderly Walker Evans and Andre Kertesz both enjoyed fruitful final periods of activity when they were given Polaroids to work with. Andy Warhol of course made well-known use of the cameras’ potentials, using his photos as the basis for many of his classic silkscreen canvases. Robert Mapplethorpe explored its erotic potential while David Hockney created his beautiful Polaroid collages. One of the joys this book is to see the breadth, range and beauty of this work.

Alongside this are the beauty of the cameras themselves, particularly the remarkable SX-70, the size of a cigar case, which unfolded like a little tent. Land dictated in great detail the look and feel of the product. He ‘insisted that the panels of the camera body be covered in real leather. Its glass-fibre reinforced plastic frame was heavily chrome-plated giving it the appearance of brushed stainless steel while remaining warm to the touch. Never mind that the the cowhide added several dollars to the production costs, and that natural leather’s irregularities vastly increased the number of factory rejects.’

Land simply said ‘the camera deserves leather.’ All this cost a fortune – at least $600 million. Other insider rumours suggest that Polaroid spent a billion dollars on the camera and another bi8llion on the film.

Land filed his first patent when he was 19, for a polarising filter that he imagined could be used to cut glare from car headlights. That project didn’t get off the ground but polarising filters soon found a ready-market in the war effort for bomb sights and pilot’s goggles. These applications dominated the first twenty years of Land’s business life and enabled him to build a successful company. The photo business was very much a second act that the compnay was rebuilt around.

Land went on to file a total of 535 US Patents in many fields. Bonanos footnotes the fact that in virtually every biographical sketch of Land, that this total is second only to Thomas Edison. In fact, Edison filed 1093 patents but the second place belongs to electrical engineer Elihu Thomas with 700.

[Wikipedia’s List of Prolific Inventors says that Edison’s total was surpassed by a Japanese inventor in 2003. The world’s current champion inventor is now Australian Kia Silverbrook who holds 4,518 US patents and 9,740 internationally.]

Personal accounts of Land recall his obsessive drive and work rate, his piercing gaze, his genius for explaining complicated subjects clearly and infecting others with his enthusiasm. He hated to fire people and employed many women in top positions. Bonanos writes; ‘Land’s control over his company was nearly absolute, and he exercised it to a degree that was compelling and sometimes exhausting.’

Land’s personal vision led him into instant movies – Polavision – but his friend Akio Morita, the Sony genius told him he was too late. Land and Polaroid as a company were aware of the coming digital revolution but were still betting on hard copy and physical media.

‘What everyone had missed,’ writes Bonanos, ‘was that the digital revolution was changing the very nature of the photograph. From the very beginning, a photograph has been a physical thing: a glass or metal plate, a negative, a slide, a piece of paper. If you didn’t have that tangible object, you didn’t have a photo… No longer. Today. a photo is not a thing; its a stream of ones and zeroes.’

The end of the grand days of Polaroid was messy but the company still survives in a niche form with Lady Gaga signed up as a Creative Director. Alongside this, The Impossible Project have started producing new Polaroid film for the hundreds of thousands of existing Polaroid owners.

There is so much more in INSTANT that I can’t do full justice to. Suffice it to say, this beautiful and intriguing book will delight Polaroid aficionados and encourage a new generation to explore the mind and ideas of Edwin Land and maybe experiment with what’s left of his grand legacy.

 

[Left]: Giant Polaroid of Lady Gaga taken with the camera below.

The giant 20x24 Polaroid Camera operated by 20x24 Studio in NYC. One of only five in existence, these were built in the 1970s to demonstrate the quality of Polaroid PolarII colour film. Most are still in operation and in high demand from artists and photographers. The huge negative produces same size prints of awesome quality. Full details here: www.20x24studio.com

SEE PREVIOUS POSTS:

PHOTOGRAPHIC FUTURES: The death of film in Japan and the new field of Computational Photography

PHOTOGRAPHIC FUTURES 2: The Impossible Project, Lomographs and the end of Kodachrome

INSIDE APPLE: SECRETIVE AS THE CIA

‘Inside Apple’ by Fortune journalist Adam Lashinsky [John Murray] is a great piece of investigative research into the world’s largest company by market capitalisation (2011) – and the most secretive.

This is not a book about Steve Jobs rather about how the company he created actually works.

Information about all aspects of Apple’s operations is closely guarded. Lashinsky writes: ‘All companies have secrets…the difference is that, at Apple, everything is a secret.’

Job’s paranoia, he tells us ‘built a company that is as secretive as the CIA.’

‘Job’s brutality in dealing with subordinates legitimized a frighteningly hard, bullying and demanding culture at Apple. Under Jobs, a culture of fear and intimidation found roots throughout the organisation.’

A former senior hardware exec told Lashinsky: ‘We have cells like a terrorist organisation. Everything is on a need to know basis.’

Many employees are hired for dummy positions and only have their roles explained after they’ve joined. There are no open doors and many secret rooms with restrictive badge access.

Employees are ‘Scared Silent’. ‘Fear is palpable there’, says Lashinsky, ‘including among partners…no other company has that level of fear.’

Apple’s 35,000 ‘wicked smart’ employees operate under ‘grinding deadline pressure.’

‘Apple’s culture may be cooperative but it isn’t usually nice and it’s almost never relaxed,’ says Lashinsky. ‘You need to be a certain kind of egoless and fanatical person to thrive at Apple.’ which he describes variously as a ‘culture of excellence’ and, for many, a ‘true religion’.

Job waned to run a big company with the ethos of a start-up. He micromanaged all areas of the company, working with a 10-member Executive Team (ET) and fewer than 100 Vice-Presidents. He was disdainful of general management and organised the company along functional lines.

The ET meet every Monday. the emphasis is on speed and clarity  of decision-making. Any matters not settled at one meeting must be settled at the next.

Lashinsky summarises their approach: clear direction, individual accountability, sense of urgency, constant feedback, clarity of mission.

Once a year there is a Top 100 ultra-secret gathering, attended by senior Apple execs, board members (which include Al Gore) and the occasional outside guest.

Apple is an HQ-centric company which favours face-to-face meetings. The company does not have a video-conferencing or conference call culture –probably for security reasons.

Major projects were handled by small teams. All aspects of the project are subject to the same obsessive focus. For Jobs the packaging – how the customer opens the box – was important as is the user experience

One of the men Jobs spent most time with was Jonathan Ive, the legendary Apple designer who heads the Industrial Design Studio – an ultra-secret area. They love taking things to pieces to see how they are made.

Lashinsky informs us that ‘Saying no is a core tenet of Apple product development’ They keep their product lines lean - there are only four versions of the iMac for example – and they develop just three projects a year.

Little is said about Apple’s Chinese manufacturing base, a subject of some controversy – except that the company may have outsourced its production but they control every step of the manufacturing without actually having to own the factory.

The company has huge resources. When they decided to move away from disc drives they made a billion-dollar forward purchase of flash memory. ‘This masterstroke,’ says Lashinsky,’accomplished the trifecta of securing Apple’s supply, locking in the lower price, and hobbling the competition’s access to components.’

In a chapter called ‘Own Your Message’, Lashinsky says that Apple ‘manages its image in a conscious, forceful, yet seemingly casual manner that nevertheless leaves absolutely nothing to chance.’ Curate and Control are the watchwords. Apple PR consists of  simple, clear product messages which are endlessly repeated. ‘Revolutionize’ , said a former Apple marketeer ‘may be the most used word in Apple marketing.’

Apple’s Brand czar is Hiroki Asai who leads a team of more than 200 creatives who have been responsible for ‘all the packaging, retail store graphics, website, on-line store, direct marketing videos and event graphics’ for Apple globally over the last ten years.

Apple own 357 stores in 11 countries which generated an average of $43m in revenue apiece. The one in Times Square is open 24/7.

In 2001, desktop computers and notebooks made up the bulk of the revenue. In 2011, 70% of the revenue ($108 billion) came from iPods (7%), iPads (19%) and iPhones (44%)

Lashinsky ends his book with the speculations of Apple’s future under the new CEO Tim Cooke which suggests that the company may be kinder and gentler in the post-Jobs era.

SEE PREVIOUS POST:

EARTHED; APPLE vs ENRIONMENT