BonniBlog
Monday, June 23, 2003
This is the Writings section of my web page www.barrelhousebonni.com
PEACE IS PATRIOTIC: Peaceful Patriot: my 1980 book on Vietnam noncombatant US Army medic Tom Bennett is back in style, as the thorny questions of the 1960s return to us today. The official description of the book follows:
Peaceful Patriot : The Story of Tom Bennett is the biography of a Morgantown, WV conscientious objector who served in the US Army as a medic during the Vietnam War. Active in WVU student organizations, Scouts, church and civic clubs, Tom considered many views of what it means to be an American, when he made the decision to serve in the military without a weapon. To him, patriotism meant both loyalty to our country , exercise of rights and responsibilities, and healthy questioning of those in power. He was awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor, nominated by his fellow soldiers.
The book was written by Bonni McKeown, a Hampshire County, WV citizen activist, poet, musician and business woman, who interviewed over 100 of Tom’s family, friends, Army buddies, fellow students, West Virginia University officials, and townspeople. The first printing was published in 1980 by Mountain State Press in Charleston WV, the second by McKeown herself. The book is appreciated by veterans, peace people, and all who are serious about democracy. Individual copies of Peaceful Patriot retail for $12 plus $3 postage, available by writing a check for $15 to:
Bonni McKeown, P.O. Box M, Capon Springs WV 26823.
Thomas W. Bennett’s 14th Army Infantry history website shows both his personal and military history:
http://1-14th.com/bennett.html
CHICAGO HAIKUS, MAY 2003
by Barrelhouse Bonni
Beggars
Slowing traffic on the sidewalk
They want something from you.
Do you owe it?
North Side Ghetto
Apartment building trashy.
Lotta kids live here.
Down the block, small neat green lawns.
Gray Uncle Jimmy Declares
He has lost his pubic hairs.
Just wants to talk
I don’t believe him.
Washington Street El Station, Underground
Sunday 9 a.m.
Small silent crowd
Waiting for the light in the tunnel.
WISE WORDS FROM STREET ARTIST John Mathews
June 2002
If you go to the street market on Sunday afternoons on Canal and Roosevelt Streets in Chicago, you can have your portrait drawn in only five minutes by a unique artist , John Mathews. Making wide circles with both hands as if to fix the form in his mind and then on the paper, he starts by drawing a person’s head, then your neck, your nose and mouth and finally the eyes. Often his portraits have a serious look in their eyes that reflects his own.
Born in Newhart, Arkansas, Mathews has been drawing for 55 of his 60 years. His parents were farmers, and he helped them grow cotton, beans, corns, sorghum and rice. His father was also a mechanic and his mother played gospel music on the piano. In school, teachers scolded young John for drawing too much and not paying enough attention to his lessons.
“I’m a country boy,” he says, noting that a lot of people in Chicago came here from rural places. Like many African Americans, he found times tough in the south and headed here to try to make his way. He has done carpentry, maintenance and line assembly work, including making addressograph machines. Now he’s working full time at street art, carrying his drawing pad and charcoal pencils everywhere he goes. “You can’t care where you go, otherwise you won’t have a place to work.” Sometimes he sits on the El and draws fellow passengers, and more often at not, if they have the $8 cash he charges, they’ll buy their portrait.
Selling art was easier before the street market on Maxwell Street, which operated every day to some extent, was torn down during the last two years. John often set up his easel along Maxwell Street, especially on weekends, and draw people while they shopped and listen to the blues musicians play along the street. The Canal Street market is only on Sundays and is more tightly regulated, John noted.
Mathews served in the U.S. Army infantry in Vietnam. “I didn’t like being hired to kill,” he sums up the experience.
He said he started drawing instant portraits “when I started drawing portraits of myself. I had to draw myself to find my self in me. Then I can start drawing other people. All the hate that gets stored in me, I have to get it out. Art—or anything else that you do—can be a healer, or a killer, depending if you do it the right way. “
He advises those seized with a passion for a form of art , “Don’t be afraid of it, just get control of it. I stand facing reality right here.”
Chicago Chronicles : The Grim Pianoless City
June 2002
Chicago is a 24 hour city; you can catch most trains and buses any time. Whether you would want to, that's another story. It's been a tough place for a long time. A street near here, in Wicker Park on the near north side, bears the honorary name of the writer Nelson Algren, author of the grim novel Man with the Golden Arm, about a heroin addict. I started reading a book of his short stories, which I would never read back home, to validate the grimness. Some of the stories describe bars just a few blocks from here, on Division Street. This used to be a Polish neighborhood One of the bartenders at Phyllis's Music Room was telling me some stories about the polka places that used to be here. People used music and alcohol to cope with the grimness.
My landlady, Marshia, who has been here in this neighborhood for 20 years, said the bars used to be after-work stops for blue collar guys, open mainly from 4 to 9 p.m. But now the guys are working longer hours, or maybe they have to get home and babysit so their wives can go to work, or there arent as many jobs, and the bars are full of young people who come out late at night. The music is loud and obnoxious. The mayor's office wants to discourage the bars; it isnt renewing liquor licenses. Despite the obnoxious noise, Marshia's city-planner brain tells her this is a mistake, for the bars and their patrons populate the street, which is mostly an asset to the safety of others who are out at night.
I like the bars, especially the small square-blocked windows. They remind me of the places that my sister and I used to walk by on our way to school in Philadelphia. From time to time I nurse illusions that maybe one or two of them might harbor a barrelhouse piano player. That era is long gone. Defying this era of electronica, I dream of bringing it back. There is nothing like the percussion and resonance of a real, old fashioned, honky tonk upright. There are enough different kinds of people in Chicago, I reason, to form a group of aficionados who would support it. There are certainly piano bars, which cater to cabaret songs or pop requests. The barrelhouse blues bars would of course have to open and close early, to accommodate old fogeys of my generation and above. There is an old piano at Phyllis's. It has not been played for 20 years and most of the keys don't work. Like the piano at the Lighthouse in Berryville VA., which I tried in vain to get the owner to tune, this piano is merely furniture.
There is one wonderful blues place that keeps their real piano tuned: Rosa's Lounge, on Armitage St. Rosa and her son Tony have a beautiful baby grand at the club, which has been played by such weighty Chicago bluesmen as Pinetop Perkins and Detroit Junior., and the Japanese master Ariyo. When I went to my first pro jam there Thursday, and told Tony I wanted to play the piano, he anxiously inquired, “Can you play?” I nodded. Not satisfied, he stared into my eyes and said, “But do you play good?” I smiled unflinchingly and said, “Yes. I play good.” My fingers were twitching; I could not wait to get my hands on the piano. My evenings at Rosa’s would prove rewarding. Out of them grew lessons with Ariyo and on-stage jams with guitarist Jimmy Burns, Eddie and Larry Taylor, and harmonica ace Sugar Blue.
There are other pianos, frustratingly, in blues clubs such as Blue Chicago Store and BLUES on Halsted that no one is allowed to play. Strangely, they are not kept locked, but if you try to open and play one, the bartendresses come running out to yell at you. The piano at BLUES is worse than Phyllis's--hardly any of the keys play at all. At BLUES the waitress who apprehended me recited a story that famous blues piano player Sunnyland Slim, who died in the late 1980s, was the last guy to play there, apparently the owner had somehow retired his the piano and didnt want anyone else to play there ever again. Later, Earwig Records president Michael Franks, a dedicated blues preservationist, told me that Sunnyland himself quit playing the piano, complaining that the owner would never keep it tuned!
Then I found out more; it gets worse. What a lot of people didnt know is that one of Sunnyland Slim's admirers, my Augusta teachers, Ann Rabson, who plays and sings solo and with Saffire the Uppity Blues Women, once found a generous and experienced piano technician who offered to rebuild the piano at B.L.U.E.S. for free. Ann and the technician wanted Sunnyland to have a decent instrument to play. “ The club owners REFUSED!” Ann emailed me. “ They said that tourists wanted to hear Sunnyland playing a funky piano! Can you imagine the amazing lack of respect - ^#&*$!!!!”
Moral of story: Hey, folks, let’s drop the race & class baloney. Just because blues came from the low down side of town, that doesn’t mean the musicians don’t know how it’s supposed to sound when it’s in tune! Just because folks can play broken down pianos…or drive broken down cars or live in broken-down neighborhoods… doesn’t mean that they aren’t deserving of something better. If we can just listen to each other…and not be greedy…we can all have what we need.
