Bob Dylan wrote ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll at Joan Baez’s house in Carmel that is about to be declared a Landmark. Christine Rosamond Benton lived next door to Bob Dylan in Woodland Hills. They babysat each other’s children. Christine’s sister-in-law, Mary Ann Tharaldsen, was married to Thomas Pynchon, and was good friends of Richard and Mimi Farina. Lawrence Chazen sent movers to Christine’s house to get his antique furniture back. There was a court settlement. The world famous artist ‘Rosamond’ did not pay Larry what she owed him.

My wife did a life-size painting of Mimi. Here is Mimi and her sister Joan singing the Anthem of Our Love Generation.

Here is the most insane dialogue I ever read. It is pure Kafka. It involves Larry Chazen and Mattie Aikens in some matter. There is talk about a “black dummy”. Chazen tried to become the Special Executor of Rosamond’s legacy. This kicked off a ten year legal battle that wasted tens of thousands of dollars. How much did this bullshit cost?

“This juvenile behavior will stop, now!

Click to access 2608.pdf

I am in touch with the Aikens family and intend to immortalize them. Michael Harkins sent me the news clipping about Mattie. Michael was a very good friend of Jim Morrison and Michael MccLure. He married Bruce Perlowin’s ex-wife, did investigative work for him, and, Bill Lindhart, Carl Chessman’s gumshoe. Michael was very good friends of the Stackpole family. Wanda Harkin’s Oakland home should be a Landmark. Perlowin lived here after getting out of the Fed lockup.

I will compare my mother Rosemary with Mattie. There is a Glass Ceiling here. These mothers gave birth to a Legacy that produced a mountain of legal papers. Joan was in the Selma March. This is a Civil Rights story. This is a Civil Legacy story. This is a important chapter in Cultural History.

Christine and Mary Ann are wearing the same dress made by my first girlfriend, Marilyn Reed. Before our wedding, we spent the night in Marilyn’s bed. Mary Ann and I lived in a Victorian in Oakland. She lived with Thomas on College Avenue in Oakland.

Jon Presco

https://rosamondpress.com/2016/03/04/oakland-tommy/

https://rosamondpress.com/2016/02/12/marilyn-reed-queen-of-boho-chic-2/

Zantzinger was convicted of manslaughter on August 28, 1963, and was not tried by a jury of peers but by a panel of three judges. The sentence was handed down on the same day that Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington. Bob Dylan, 22 at that time, was one of the celebrities at the march and on the journey home to New York he read about the conviction of Zantzinger and decided to write a protest song about the case. According to a 1991 Washington Postreport, Dylan wrote the song in Manhattan, sitting in an all-night cafe.^[1] A recent radio documentary on the song said rather that he wrote it both in New York and at the home of his then-lover, Joan Baez, in Carmel. According to Nancy Carlin, a friend of Baez who visited, “He would stand in this cubbyhole, beautiful view across the hills, and peck type on an old typewriter… there was an old piano up at Joan’s… and peck piano playing… up until noon he would drink black coffee then switch over to red wine, quit about five or six.”^[8] He recorded it on October 23, 1963, when the trial was still relatively fresh news, and incorporated it into his live repertoire immediately, before releasing the studio version on January 13, 1964

Here is a site that keeps us abreast of where Thomas Pynchon – was!

https://nadarballoon.wordpress.com/category/thomas-pynchon/page/12/

JAMES E. AIKENS James Aikens passed away on July 7, 2004, after a fight against cancer. James was born in Columbia, Mississippi, March 25, 1935, to the late Walter and Mattie Aikens. He is survived by six sons, Darryl Sr., Kevin, Paul (Lisa), Laurence (Schwanzetta), Timothy and Emerald; two daughters, Rhonda and Sadonna (Anthony); thirteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren; four brothers, Wilbert (Bettye), Lee (Bertha), Charles and Rickie (Sandra); and four sisters, Billie Jean, Sarah, Sandra and Antoinette. His brother John preceded him in death. James excelled in baseball, basketball, and was a star softball player who was sought after by numerous championship clubs because of his outstanding hitting ability. He was once compared to Willie Mayes as a hitter. James came to Oakland with his family in the winter of 1950, attending McClymonds High School and Westlake Jr. High. Services Viewing will be from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., and Quiet Hour from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., on Wednesday, July 14, 2004, at Fouche’s Hudson Funeral Home, 3665 Telegraph Avenue, Oakland, CA 94609 – See more at: http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/eastbaytimes/obituary.aspx?n=james-aikens&pid=2415472&fhid=3513#sthash.3sUJZlH7.dpuf

Tom attends Richard Fariña’s and Mimi Baez’s wedding

“Having no driver’s license, Pynchon traveled from Mexico (with a stop of unknown duration in Los Angeles or thereabouts) by bus.  He arrived at the Western Greyhound Station in Pacific Grove, a few miles outside of Carmel, in the third week of August [1963].  Mimi and Richard had arranged for him to stay in a guest cottage that one of their friends, Colleen Creedon, had behind her house in the Carmel Highlands.  Pynchon and Fariña spent a couple of afternoons catching up, drinking, trading thoughts on books they had read (both liked Oakley Hall’s literary Western Warlock), and discussing Farina’s novel.”  (pages 178-179)

http://www.vulture.com/2013/08/thomas-pynchon-bleeding-edge.html

 

 

Joan Baez’s old Monterey home on historic resource list By Larry Parsons Monterey Herald POSTED:   03/25/2009 07:49:05 AM PDT UPDATED:   06/24/2009 03:58:05 PM PDT This could make a fan of American folk music feel as old as diamonds and rust. Monterey County supervisors Tuesday approved an application by a couple who own a Carmel Valley home built in the early 1960s by folk music icon Joan Baez for placement on the county’s Register of Historic Resources. Baez owned the hillside home off Miramonte Road, eight miles up the valley from Highway 1, from 1964 to 1968. That was during a particularly productive period of her career when she was a crystal-voiced leader in civil rights, anti-war and folk music movements. “I was a fan, absolutely. I was back in school in the ’60s and listened to Joan Baez,” said Roger Blattberg, a Virginia custom-home builder who bought the five-acre former Baez home and grounds about two years ago for $1.8 million. Blattberg has never met Baez, who lives in Woodside, but he said she occasionally drops by to take a look at her old homestead, which has gone through several owners over the years. Blattberg and his wife, Anne, want to renovate the home and studio to restore them as closely as possible to their original condition. Over the years, there have been additions and other changes to the home. “There are appendages stuck on in haphazard ways,” he said. During the time Baez lived in Carmel Valley, she was romantically linked to Bob Dylan and used part of her income from a string of folk music albums that were essential listening for many ’60s travelers to start an Institute for Study of Nonviolence in the valley.

http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11992441

Her Carmel Valley neighbors, at first, were leery of Baez’s institute, fearing an onslaught of “hippies and free-love subversives.” But she reopened it quietly in December 1965 after a brief closure because of the outcry.

The historic resource designation will make it easier for Blattberg to remodel the home in keeping with the style and construction techniques from nearly 50 years ago. Without the incentives, it could be easier to tear down the home and start anew.

“The house was nicely designed for the site. There are a lot of attractive features,” he said. “I have no desire to see it torn down.”

Longtime residents, he said, keep him mindful of the home’s roots in 20th century American history.

“There is a legacy there,” he said. “A lot of old-time residents talk about what happened at the house.”

Inclusion on the county register doesn’t make a historic building a public site in any way, said Meg Clovis, county cultural affairs manager. It requires owners of listed properties to follow state rules for historic buildings and to secure permission for any building changes from the county Historic Resources Review Board.

Clovis said she was excited by the Blattbergs’ application.

“We don’t have many resources from modern times. Most of our buildings (on the register) are over 100 years old,” she said.

Blattberg said he believes people “who remember back then” will appreciate the effort to preserve Baez’s former home, which features a free-flowing roof line.

“There is a larger meaning than just suiting our needs,” he said.

A call Tuesday to Baez’s personal business office in Menlo Park wasn’t returned.

http://joanchandosbaez.tumblr.com/

SAN FRANCISCO — At first glance, Bruce Perlowin seems rather mousy–slight, bespectacled, soft-spoken, with a scraggly beard and tangled hair tied back in a ponytail–sort of a leftover flower child from the ’60s.

He talks about the love-ins, about “everyone sitting around in the sun, getting to know each other, listening to the band playing.” He says that his great dream was “to raise the consciousness of the planet”–through yoga and “smoking a little pot.”

But when you ask Perlowin, 34, about what he used to do for a living–before federal lawmen caught up with him and he was sentenced to from 10 to 15 years in prison–he makes it clear that the dream got sidetracked, and on a grand scale.

Fleet of 90 Vessels

He talks about the fleet of 90 vessels–including fishing boats, speed boats and even a converted minesweeper–that he used to haul about 340,000 pounds of marijuana into California over a five-year period, with sales totaling $120 million.

He tells how he hired a research firm in Berkeley to learn how other major drug dealers had operated, “finding out what mistakes they had made” and seeking out the “weak spots” in law enforcement so he could set up his own counterintelligence system.

He mentions the hilltop surveillance centers overlooking San Francisco Bay, crammed with sophisticated electronic gear used to monitor the Coast Guard, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Customs agents and local police.

He brags a little about the 1,000-foot pier he bought in the bay, safely under the radar shadow cast by the Richmond Bridge, where he set up a dummy boat-building works to cover massive offloadings of marijuana–“right under their noses.”

Money Laundering

He describes an elaborate “money-laundering” scheme–involving a Las Vegas casino, a Luxembourg Trust, a Panamanian corporation and a bank in the Grand Cayman Islands–that he used to process the vast flow of small-denomination “street bills” generated by his illicit business.

And he reminisces–a bit sadly–about the $3-million mansion that he built in a lovely canyon in rural Mendocino County; complete with bullet-proof walls lined with steel, a stairway that could be electrified to repel invaders and a complex communications center that tied him to the disparate operations of his international drug-smuggling ring.

“I was the biggest in California–one of the biggest anywhere,” Perlowin said. “Nobody else came close to the scale we were operating on.”

Federal officials don’t dispute the point.

“He’s for real,” said Asst. U.S. Atty. James Lassart, head of the federal task force in San Francisco that put Perlowin behind bars.

‘What He Says Is True’

“When you first meet him, you think he’s kind of flaky,” Lassart said. “But after you get to know him, you realize what he says is true. We’ve corroborated it.

“He’s a very intelligent man. Very organized. He ran a very heady operation–the biggest we’ve ever seen.”

Perlowin–who has been spending most of his time recently at the federal penitentiary in Texarkana, Tex., where he has been serving concurrent sentences after pleading guilty to racketeering, income tax evasion, currency violations, smuggling and engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise–is currently in the San Francisco County Jail.

Prosecutors here are trying to get him to testify before a federal grand jury about some of his more than 200 associates in the smuggling operation.