Pumpkinalia:

A Pumpkin Prose Rhapsody

He walks on long vine-like legs, clad in pinstripes, hatless in holiday garb, his orange countenance, his serrated smile (a pumpkin for a head) relates him stylistically to the scarecrow, with rags and ribbon blowing in the autumn air.

Or he rides a midnight steed and might hurl his melon in a grinning lapse of judgement- grinning, spinning in a fiery arc of orange and pumpkin seeds, with a hyena laugh that issues from who knows where, for Jack’s lantern has no larynx. He is hollow on Halloween. His is a silly sacrifice, a trick on the gods, as if to say “we’ve something luminous, precious afire for thee, come see, come see…”

Pumpkins of various sizes, by twos and threes on doorsteps, are gaping and leering like Three Stooges, smirking and scowling like Little Rascals. The dramatis personae of Pumkinalia lacks depth, of not variety and novelty.

Yes, bewitched and bewildered, he sits on a table top, resting on newspaper, amid spattered guts, as with nip and tuck, and the practiced art of carving, he arrives at his present state. Hacked from the spinning vine, trucked to the city, then carved by your ever-loving mom, voila’: Mr Jack O’Lantern, at your service.

I’m pondering pumpkinology, wondering what exactly animates the fad for faces on this inert and wonderful plant form. What gives it legs? How does it come to be that a vegetable goes from simple and seedy to sprite? What pumpkinetic forces, what pumpkinomics are involved?

Walking with an old friend (and near to the season) I brought up the subject of Halloween and asked about the old days in Takoma, where he’s from. I tried to be subtle. “About pumpkins…they don’t pop out of the ground orange, do they?”

I was almost sorry I asked. He looked positively shocked at my ignorance. And then, instead of waxing favorably on pumpkin lore, he changed the subject to the harvest time he remembered, of cucumbers and squashes, and pickles and preserves, all stocked in the old root cellar in the country home in which he grew up.

I didn’t realize that he was outlining Jack O’Lantern’s family tree- or vine, more properly.

The botanical genus is cucurbitaceae. It includes the vines of squashes and cucumbers, watermelon, edible gourds; these are the pumpkin kith and kin.

The thought of the old root cellar reminded me of the basement of my grandmother’s house, with its coal chute, and dusty photos in giant frames of our dour-looking nineteenth- century relatives. The place was probably haunted, the coal chute a relic of an earlier era. Spooky.

But a family get-together of Pumpkin’s root-cellar relations would be quite lively, I think, with the fat watermelon and the cool cucumber, sweet honeydew melon and pickles…That pumpkin party would be chill with a dill.

I assume the prolific zucchini would be included among Pumpkin’s pictures on the mantle, and there would hardly be room for all the squashes with their sad complexions, brave and gnarly, and, to the human eye “mis-shapen”-but no doubt beloved amongst the Cucurbits.

A book of symbols I have at hand calls the pumpkin “stupid”- reports that pumpkins symbolize a lack of brains. Yes, if the pumpkins and squashes and pickles ran around on cartoon legs hither and thither, I would agree: that would be silly. But folklore is both kind and cruel, and just now the pumpkin is the Lord of Gourds. His admittedly day-old dignity is sufficient to command some respect, though he be leering and sputtering, spitting wax from a weak candle, or illuminated only by a cheap electric bulb.

Jack Pumpkinhead, a character in L Frank Baum’s Marvelous Land of Oz, when asked about his native intelligence, responded quite reasonably that “it is all in the seeds”.

In Jack I found a very good example of a pumpkin’s adaptation to the needs of the folk. Oz fans know he was little more than a body of hickory sticks with a big ol’ pumpkin for a head, and a very winsome expression indeed.

Magic dust brought him to life, Jack Pumpkinhead, and, according to Baum, he may be found idly snapping seeds outside the door to his cozy pumpkin house. Periodically he must replace his pumpkin head. He selects a new one from his very own pumpkin patch, grown for the purpose, and he fashions his own face before putting it on.

We see there is something inherently good in the pumpkin species, which the author has picked up on.

I tried to find out more about pumpkins from books,but the nature-magic of pumpkins was inadequately discussed in the various encyclopedias and guides. I learned that the lucky pumpkins rest comfortably on shingles so as not to spoil their shiny skins.

I learned, too, that pumpkins like about one hundred days of weather- especially sun. They like laying in the hot sun, day in and day out, doing nothing but growing plump and round as they deepen in color. Moonlight is required as well, and moist nights, and a wide field. The mystery includes darkness, and various microbial and morbid destinies involving compost and rot.

Your sunny outsides depend upon a bacterial underground, with carbons and nitrates and manure maybe, and dead leaves, and somebody’s old lunch and who knows what all, Mr Pumpkin?

Old barns and basements, root cellars and sheds, scarecrows and fence posts catch the first sight of you. Those are a few of your favorite things, Mr Jack O’Lantern.

Out of the darkness of the cold ground, nurtured by nature and mothered by mulch, yes, your shiny orange brightness has something to do with dark forces, microscopic and moonlit, where the chemical components go on unabated, until the breathing earth heaves ever so slightly to put forth the little sprig of a vine.

Equally strange and miraculous are the daytime phenomena. Out of the green vine with its climbing tendrils spears a yellow flower, which drops to the ground; other yellow flowers attract the pollinating bees, and so from the striated vine that twines the plant to earth, in the late summer of heat and sun, comes the orange product, nature’s brand, at last blended with the autumn colors of the changing leaves.

Tillers of the soil await the hundred days and nights of Pumpkin-tide, until at last the time is right. Jack O’Lantern, you have arrived- the grandest gourd in all of Nature.

Rotund, no pot contains you. Heaped up, you roll lazily off the wagons and it takes a village- and a forklift- to bring you up properly, that is, to champion-size, to be judged according to the competitive standards of the august World Pumpkin Confederation.

I can easily visualize my friend Jack Pumpkinhead, with his polka dot shirt, big buttons, and red vest, straightening his tie, off to see this Pumpkin Jamboree.

Let’s do a pumpkin call, a shout out, shall we?

Hey Frosty! Hey Funny Face! Hey Big Autumn! Hey Jack Pot! Hey Jumpin’ Jack! Hey Casper! Hey Baby Boo! Hey Munchkin! Hey Spooktacular! Hey Big Max! You too, Cinderella, Lumina, the elegant moon- white pumpkin, and you, great Atlantic Giant!

These are the many types of pumpkins, well known to pumpkinographers the world over.

Personified, the pumpkin participates in the old folk tale of Jack of the Lantern who trapped the devil in a tree, and let him down on the condition that he, Jack, would be free from Hell eternally. Unable to gain admittance into Heaven, Jack of the Lantern wanders, and the fire of the pumpkin is the light of his lantern.

So in springtime we sing tra-la tra-la, but by autumn our tune has changed. With the onset of gasping winter it is the fire we attend, and we contain the spirit in a lantern and thus keep body and soul together and shoo away the wandering spooks.

When autumn bonfires once lined the hilltops from an ancient land, and children lay down for warmth in smoking heaps of peat, the tale of Jack O’ Lantern may have had its beginning, centuries ago. Who knows? But even in modern times I see that our fairy tale turns back into a pumpkin before long, and our autumn mysteries are still rooted in the earth.

As my friend Jack says, “It’s all in the seeds.”

james koehneke

San Francisco

(happy halloween!)

*****

post script:

Been searching for a word that rhymes with orange

practically since the day I was bornge

that’s why I look so forlornge

But they say life’s full of roses and thornge!

Or:

There was an arrogant young pumpkin

He really though he was sumpkin’

He put on such airs

At the country fairs

The mean squashes then gave him a thumpkin!

Or:

Like when a pumpkin sees an icicle

he cries

“I’m havin a mid-life crisicle!”

Two nickelodeon theater lobbies

Our nickelodeon closed just recently. Aardvark Books in San Francisco was the site of a nickelodeon ca 1917. Note the ornate pressed tin ceiling. We visited the silent film museum today, a nickelodeon from 1913, in Niles, near Fremont CA.

“The nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. Usually set up in converted storefronts, these small, simple theaters charged five cents for admission and flourished from about 1905 to 1915.” wiki

The historian here gave a really nice talk but he started by asking if I knew what vaudeville was.

You know you’re getting older when you’re really familiar with something that’s a hundred years old.

We knew vaudeville because it was the variety show format of early tv, and the performers were all vaudevillians. Especially Red Skelton and Mickey Rooney and Milton Berle, Jimmy Durante, Ed Sullivan. All the corny jokes, the pantomime and pratfalls, the song and dance- straight from vaudeville a hundred years ago.

It’s interesting to see a cultural memory fade, although internet preserves a history, it’s probably a reach for people of this century to think about entertainment in 1913.

The brilliant cartoons we saw as kids also drew from vaudeville, expanding on themes and jokes and stereotypes of the era. Bugs Bunny was very vaudevillian.

Nickelodeon’s that exist:

A trip to the silent film museum in Niles reminded me of another nickelodeon that almost made it to now: The Blue Church at 28th and Church St.

It took me a minute to remember this one.

“The Rita Theatre was a little neighborhood theatre on the northwest corner of 28th Street and Church Street.”

“A theatre was constructed at 28th and Church Streets in 1916, and was known by the names Rita, New Rita, and the Princess. It was the old type nickelodeon, with piano playing to accompany the silent films.”

Mae Silver ( Foundsf)

The SF Examiner’s Thomas Gladysz provides more details:

“The Searchlight Theatre opened in 1916. Admission at the time was 10 cents for adults, and 5 cents for children. Its August 5th Grand Opening advertisement (reproduced in Tillmany’s book) boasted a “New Theatre, Good Pictures, Latest Music.” The ad went on to state “We are installing one of the latest models of the AMERICAN PHOTOPLAYER, with all the Orchestral effects at a cost of $5000. Be sure to see and hear it.” That was big money during the early silent film era.”

“It opened as the Searchlight Theatre on August 5, 1916, and changed names rapidly the next few years. It was variously known as the Empress Theatre (1918-1927), the Lux Theatre, the De Lux Theatre, the Isis Theatre, the Princess Theatre, the Church Theatre, and, finally the Rita Theatre (1945). That name seemed to stick, but in 1961, entrepreneur Ward Stoopes took it over and ran it for about four years as the Del Mar Theatre.

Never successful as a neighborhhod theatre, its only means of survival seemed to be as an outlet for “ethnic” films, i.e. foreign films WITHOUT English sub-titles, usually German or Russian. Its last days as a film theatre were in May 1965. It became a neighborhood church, painted a bright, bright blue, and known as the ‘Blue Church. It was demolished in October 2009. Condominiums and retail will be built on the site.”

(cinematreasures)

http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=Fairmount_Heights

“I remember all the food lines outside the blue church and how the nuns all in white contrasted so sharply and beautifully with the paint. It was clear it hadn’t always been a church.

I’m going to share this post with Theater Architecture.”

-“I remember the free bread on tables outside on Sundays.”

https://burritojustice.com/2009/10/12/church-st-blues/

on an unrelated note:

Farewell to the wash and dry at Cole and Carl across from The Other Cafe. I was apartment hunting in the bulletin board there 40 years ago and someone told me there was an apartment on Upper Downy St top of Ashbury. Rent was $210 /month for a railroad flat with five rooms and a kitchen with garden backlots. Split it with my best friend. 2 hippies in a five room flat. Now that fateful laundromat is gone forever and so is reasonable rent.

Right across the street was the Other Cafe. Our hangout. Saw Kate Wolf and Nina Gerber, Cheap Suit Serenaders without R Crumb, Ducks Breath, Dana Carvey as John Denver. Jane Dornaker hung out there too. The neighbor in the flat upstairs used to make big pots of gumbo.

http://www.theothercafe.com/

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9B499CCF747A571C

Echo of Vaudeville

The Immaculate Kitchen

I knew a man who longed for contemplation.

He told me he intended to move to a monastery in a remote place. Up north. He pointed with his thumb, up.

He told me contemplation was one of the foundations of deeper spirituality.

It was mysticism. He would go to the remote Catholic monastery and develop a practice of contemplation as a response to this crazy world.

A few years later I saw him again and he was so angry. I said, how was the monastery? Was it in remote mountains by a hot spring? Was it by the sea with seagulls crying above the surf? Did you eat simple meals in silence?

He said “No. When I joined the monastery I found the same politics there I was running from everywhere else. The power struggles. The big egos. The same bullshit was there that is everywhere else.”

He was mad. It was a tremendous letdown.

…

-Are you compassionate? I ask myself.

Are you in your monastery, and is the same shit there that is everywhere else?

If so, I tell myself to take the next step.

What is that next step, anyway?

Be compassionate, I remind myself. (You are compassionate, whether you know it or not. It’s a capacity, a potential. It’s available.)

Ask what’s important. Forgive, I say to myself. Be forgiven. (It hurts so bad!)

Put people first- (on a trial and error basis- because I am human.)

****

Once I went to Orr Hot Springs and stayed overnight. It’s in a pocket of a canyon up in the mountains. Lovely.

You bring your own food and they have a kitchen there that is famous. It’s immaculate.

New shiny steel prep areas and refrigerators and a massive oven. You’re supposed to go there and make gourmet vegetarian meals yourself. And stay in the Japanese -style hostel overnight.

So I brought my yogurt and whatnot.

I just made myself yogurt and granola because, what I know about cooking?

So I gathered my stuff after breakfast and left a little drop of my corner-store yogurt on the prep counter.

All around me ex- hippies were making tofu stir fries and baking banana bread. Amazing.

So I left, but when I returned hours later after the kitchen closed and was cleaned and empty and the hippies were soaking in the hot spring, I looked at the counter of the immaculate kitchen and my little drop of yogurt I dripped was still there.

In the immaculate hippy kitchen all had been perfectly cleaned to zen perfection including and/or except my little tiny yogurt mess. It was about the size of a dime, but stood out on the counter like a cymbal dropped during a silent part of a symphony.

For me to, hopefully, return and clean up.

I have to laugh: I’m still suffering. I’ve made a mess. It’s the same shit everywhere. It hurts so bad! It’s as true today as ever.

That’s like my mantra.

There’s a moral here somewhere for me.

****

The life of compassion is not easy. We bring ourselves, and wait a minute, who keeps leaving their coffee cup on the table?

For crying out loud please pick up your coffee cup.

And remember compassion.

And what is important.

I say to myself.

I love you, fellow human beings. Have a nice day, by that I mean a beautiful day of peace and fulfillment.

And the coffee cup? I may or may not pick it up.

Work in progress, let’s say.

***

Everyday Life in an Ancient World

I went to an energy work thing once and the clairvoyant said do you have a thing for the gospels? Because you might have been back there then.

Maybe. I do know that the disciples, of a certain ancient religious order I won’t name, the men and women who belonged to it, did not get along very well.

The women bugged the men, because the women were actually better at it, and the men were in disputes over who should be in charge after the Lord, um, left. And a lot of further details still had to be worked out.

There were two leaders, after the ladies were shown the door.

And one leader was tougher than the nice traditional leader who they called “Beloved” or sometimes just “His Brother.”

“Beloved” was also shown the door- this was during the terrible uprisings in the world at the time.

So in my life, in my work, in my country, I see bitter disputes, and I of course jump right in, and then I stop.

And I look around and wonder.

What?

What do we do now?

****

Back in the days of no comfortable sandals, disputes were resolved in an ambiguous way.

We dined together. Said prayers. Glowered at each other. Muttered from The Sayings, with a certain tone of voice.

Pass the bread. I’ll have some more wine.

But I noticed that the Lord slept so well at night.

He’d get up, yawn and stretch and smile and say:

“Good morning, my beloved brothers and sisters!”

Not sure how he did that. It’s kind of a Miracle, if you really think about it.

So maybe I’ll practice that.

Good morning my beloved brothers and sisters.

Oy. That was weak. But it’s a beginning.

jk

(This is a project, the goal of which I didn’t grasp until I had written this phase, which uses the journalist George Plimpton symbolically as a truth seeker, or truth teller.

Truth tellers are currently under attack in this political era which is charged with highly volatile propaganda.

Plimpton is our Orwell. We should know about him. And he ought to be reclaimed and remembered.

Authenticity, I realize- that is the essay I should have written, as a counterforce to the incessant untruth we are subjected to daily.

***

A note about performance.

I do like speaking these little texts aloud. They speak to me.

In a sense this is a little performance piece. It’s cryptic, I know. Its thought is not fixed, and that is a good thing.

I know, Plimpton doesn’t get to say anything here. He is just in existence.

(photo by Nancy Wong, via Wiki)

***

The Day I Met George Plimpton:

-Artificial Intelligence and Real. The Journalists of Participation

1. The Machines are Listening

(George Plimpton was a prominent journalist, a founder of the New Journalism, participatory journalism, and founding editor of Paris Review. I met him briefly in 1993 when I worked at a little used bookstore in San Francisco. We exchanged a few sentences.)

Disclaimer:

In this era of contentious dialogue, I wish to assure others that I write to you, but not at you, and my assertions are mainly addressed to myself. When I say “you” I really mean “me” and vice versa, with the exception that when I say “me” I also mean “me”.

I promise to not presume anything whatsoever about who you are, or what you know or do not know, or how you should think.

***

End of an Age of Reason:

When a person from a Totalitarian State comes to the US and points out that the indicators for that to come into being are here, that’s a problem.

Here she is, listen:

-“This is Putin’s tactic to silence media: first, compromat. Next, journalists start falling out of the windows or they are hit by bricks on the back of their heads in the street. Foreign journalists are not allowed to enter (happening in the US today.) This is what the hybrid war is: the war of narratives. Journalists and writers tell stories. Politics are all about stories. Independent media tells stories unwanted by tyrants. Tyrants kill stories and story tellers. Before our narrative is flipped, protest. We must gain sanity and dignity back before it is too late.”

-author, Zarina Zabrisky

***

Now, what was I saying about George Plimpton, an originator of a school of journalism, and a link to the inner lives of writers?

And what, if anything, does this have to do with “fake news”? And journalists being the “Enemy of the People”?

I have to admit something first, about reading.

I do a reading-like activity, that is, I read, I walk away. I re-read, I think about what I read. then, I’m forgetful, I have to recall what the writer was saying, all the connections she’s curated in the text, so I start over again with a meditation on the implications the world of its prose.

Then, before long, I’m on page one hundred. I’m already fulfilled and stimulated. I’ve spent quality time. I’ll get there, eventually, slowly slowly slowly.

Occasionally I read a book multiple times.

And often I don’t get past p. 39.

It’s sad but it’s also ok.

So you can pretty much take anything I write with a grain of salt. I’m not knowledgeable.

I was recently yelled at online. Can’t you read?

Umm.

It’s ok.

I say “it’s ok” often to assure you, (and by you I mean me) that the process, the living of the little life of a thought process has a way of its own, and if allowed to move, it will be. It’s not about expectations or goals.

I’m a child of the sixties: You do your thing and I’ll do mine.

***

This kind of reading which I’m describing changes the body of your thinking, I feel.

How could thoughts have a body?

They have form. That’s all I’m saying. And, if you’re alive, they have movement. Your thought can move.

I know it sounds weird but just try moving the arms of your thought. See what you can reach with the hands of your thought process all the way to your fingertips.

You can reach a very long way. For example, my thoughts reach all the way to Yosemite right now. Look, Bridal Veil Falls!

That’s right. Now reach down to the toes of your thoughts. There’s some crusty old opinions down there. I’m just speaking for myself now. Yikes.

Some scholars run thought/marathons. Some practice walking-thought meditations. They are professionals, though.

They challenge their thought. Their thought fires back. They and their thought talk quietly, weighing, considering, figuring.

Some thoughts are in the boxing ring. Some run like mad down a football field. Oh no, wrong direction!

It’s fine.

The idea is to not remain fixed. Rigidity is a problem. It can be reversed- until it’s too late. We won’t know if it’s too late -until it actually IS too late.

***

A sign of rigidity is the feeling that your most worn-out thought is precious. Your thought has turned to stone.

Your thought is so stonelike that a fine artist like Vija Celmans could take that thought and make of it a brass mold, as she did with stones she found on the beach, and repaint every feature of it so it looks exactly like the original thought and display it in a museum and then laugh and admit, as she did on a spontaneous appraisal of one of her painted simile stones, that “it looks like a turd!” (In a recent New Yorker profile of the artist.)

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/02/vija-celmins-surface-matters

And sometimes you wonder that people don’t understand your thought, but they really just don’t want to break the news to you that your thought is dead. Look, they poke it with a stick.

See? Nothing. It ain’t moving.

It’s ok.

The painted stones and skies and waves of a Vija Celmans are amazing- but you know what I’m saying. Her stones report her experience in a unique way that involves what is. And that involves truthfulness.

…So, that day I met George Plimpton-

Oh, wait. I’ll finish this later. I have to go and serve my community. For pay. I’m not Mother Teresa.

jk

9/9/19

Continuing: I forgot to bring the robots!

The Day I Met George Plimpton: Artificial Intelligence -and the Human Kind part 2

Mr Plimpton came into our little unruly bookstore one clear Saturday night, with his lovely wife on his arm. Dapper couple, looked like they had just stepped off of a yacht. Beaming smiling, they looked around and George Plimpton said

“This is marvelous!”

2. Canticles of Computerware

Who is authentic, anymore?

Here in San Francisco, Andy Warhol was at the museum, not far from Vija Celmans.

I say Andy, because that’s what we have of Andy. His work is him, I feel.

We live in his Age. His imagery has leveraged stock, both financially and politically.

Poster screen art, huge. Larger than life, superseding everyday life in every way an image of limited dimension may.

The familiar, blown up, large. An engineering feat, everything looking exactly like everything. Now live and in color. So familiar I took no selfie.

Seen it a hundred times.

We live in an age of facsimile. In fact, last week I got in an argument with one. My fault. I strayed from the path of righteousness, and ended up talking to a troll.

Note to self: stay out of comment threads, dummy. They’ll eat you alive, insult your mother, trash your town -all from the comfort of a system of tubes and towers.

A sociopathic technology- That’s an amazing idea.

But back to Andy.

There’s Elvis. There, a revolver. And Marilyn. And listen, Velvet Underground. And there, Andy himself, with that holding-my breath -as-long -I can-look of his.

(Hey Andy, the robots are coming. They’re already here, the bots and algorithms. They’re facsimilizing people now.-soon everyone will BE one for 15 minutes.)

-Oh, and now, here, Donald.

Andy Warhol Talks about Donald Trump throughout the Mid-1980s

Donald, with his multicolored hair, always a new dye, sometimes hair the color of straw, yellow over pink, white, all fading into neutral nothingness; the agony of the blank wall and a forgotten frame.

Stencil psychedelic hair, a troubling wave of a combover, the effect of disharmony, of tints clashing on a color wheel. What is meant to be a wave of optimism is really an advertising for detergent.

Donald is so Andy! Andy as adjective.

A walking silkscreen cut- out collage of presidential detritus over time, including an authentic flag pin, and a lot of spilled ink. Thumbs up.

Hunter S Thompson used to cry out at the pathology of power in American society.

“How long, Lord?” the American Jeremiah, crying in the wilderness.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/nov/01/ralph-steadman-interview-hunter-s-thompson-illustrator-retrospective-exhibition

A mass of blue opaque, the ubiquitous suit of a US President: the ever- present red tie, bled-through silkscreen at the edges, red and blue of Donald Trump oddly reminiscent of the flag pants of Jerry Garcia.

And now, thanks to a 3D printer and a ton of cable television social media, he’s pretty much everywhere.

Endless repetition. Slight variation.

He’s the most famous man the world!

Andy Andy Andy! What have you done?

(Could a machine do this?)

***

I work with a man from Tibet. He says Trump imagery reminds him of gigantic Mao propaganda.

When a person from a Totalitarian State sees the signs here, it’s a problem.

Journalists are under attack, writers.

Formerly writers like Plimpton, Joan Didion, Hunter S Thompson, Warren Hinckle flipped the script.

They left a trail: of authenticity.

https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews

***

What is authenticity?

“…This is marvelous!”

Mr Plimpton, gazing about in approval at a little community space of books and filled with music.

“What is that marvelous music? Isn’t that wonderful, dear?” he said to his wife, also smiling.

Oh. Bluegrass music. That’s so funny to me now.

“We will have to come back.”

The many authors he brought to public attention are right over his shoulder on the shelves there. The many interviews in Paris review, authors explaining, explicating the craft. Back to Kerouac, Pound, Gertrude Stein. Mr Plimpton reaches back as an influence and editor to the time of Joyce and Fitzgerald, practically.

“Darling we’ll have to come back.”

Before the bookstore closes, and the book burnings begin, I savor this moment.

jk

9/10

A little Epilogue to my piece about Plimpton.

Trump called journalists “the fake news”. What is authenticity? Plimpton, on participatory journalism.

With Hemingway in Cuba and Bernstein in NY. And Edie and Andy Warhol too.