Van Gogh – Art Detective
by
John Presco
6:03 A.M. 5/25/21…
I just read an episode of The Streets of San Francisco was filmed at the Anchor brewery that was owned by William Buck, who allegedly found rare books – in Carson City?!! I don’t buy it, nor does the author of an article on William – who claims he learned ancient Sanskrit – in Carson City!!! Was William a suicide that got caught up in a great deception? They say he went bankrupt. I wonder if he was funding other Beat Enterprises, and thus – the coverup!
Under the Crown | Pop Culture Facts on Anchor Bottle Steam Caps (anchorbrewing.com)
I began another novel where Irene (Rena) visits Anchor. It was going to be written in the Black Mask style. The statues of Ron Boise were put on the roof of Anchor. I found a photograph of The Thunder Machine taken inside Anchor in 1964 – while it was still owned by William Buck – who might have been Ron’s secret patron. There are no photographs of Buck, or, an account of how he died – so young! The law firm of Morris & Buck will forever be linked to Ken Kesey, Ron Boise, Christine Rosamond, Garth Benton, and the ex-governor of California. Did Garth know Ron? No longer will Robert Buck be able to hide behind the mental illness of my sister and I. With the appearance of Van Gogh’s sister’s letters, the joy of luring my daughter away from her mad father…is at an end!
This is the most amazing case of Art Synchronicity that I have ever been on. Van Gogh is my new Spirit Guide who is helping heal the hurt from my muse – and family. I will refrain from lengthy commentary so my readers can make their own connections – and assumptions – that I may save for my autobiography….’Capturing Beauty’.
Two days ago, Spooky Noodles came up with the name for the basement of the University of Oregon Library. My novel ‘The Gideon Computer’ is now writing itself. Or, is there a alien?
‘The Bridge’
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
ART HEALS
The Crouching Tiger of Synchronicity | Rosamond Press
(43) Terminator star Arnold Schwarzenegger in a 1977 TV role MURDER SCENE – YouTube
As the stars get to work solving the murder, Arnold heads off to his other gig, posing for an art class. One of the art students sketching Arnold, we fear, may become his next victim. The actress who plays her has the unique distinction of having played three different doctors on Star Trek.
Since this blog is about pop culture, we might as well have a pop-culture trivia contest:
Can you name her?
Can you name the three doctors she played?
Extra credit: Two of the doctors were in the original Star Trek series. Can you name the episodes?
According to the publisher’s preface to the 2012 republication of Buck’s translations of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Buck was in 1955 inspired by reading a 19th-century translation of Bhagavad Gita, in a state library in Carson City, Nevada. He discovered that a proposed 11-volume Indian publication of Mahabharata was at risk for lack of funds, and subsidized it. He began to study Sanskrit, and to make his own translations. He later wrote:
My method in writing both Mahabharata and Ramayana was to begin with a literal translation from which to extract the story, and then to tell that story in an interesting way which would preserve the spirit and flavor of the original.[5]
Buck’s translations have been praised by Levi Asher[6][Note 1] and others.[7]
In 1961, he was sued for paternity by Jane Hammer Buck, who had lived with Buck “as husband and wife” in Bolinas, California, for six years. She stated that William acknowledged paternity of the boy, Paul Buck, who was born in San Francisco in 1958,[8] but was seeking monthly child support payments.[2]
1977: Arnold Schwarzenegger at Anchor in Streets of SF
Fans of 1970s TV will undoubtedly remember The Streets of San Francisco, starring Karl Malden as San Francisco Detective Lieutenant Mike Stone. For the episode called Dead Lift—first aired on May 5, 1977—Richard Hatch, who replaced Michael Douglas for the show’s fifth and final season, plays Malden’s sidekick.
The episode opens with the murder (no surprise) of a young woman by a sensitive bodybuilder named Joe, played by (spoiler alert) an aspiring young Austrian actor named Arnold Schwarzenegger. We soon learn that Joe works at a local brewery, which brings us to the Emmy-Award-worthy performance, if we do say so ourselves, by Anchor Brewing!
Buck began translating the Mahabharata in 1955, the year Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl, and his production seems to reflect a nascent Beat sensibility. This can be seen in the fresh and bright language, in phrases like “you are the god of thieves and writers”, in the idea that the entire Mahabharata must be proclaimed in a single burst of breath, and in the idea that Ganesha must completely understand the story as he is writing it down. I don’t know if Jack Kerouac ever read William Buck’s translations, but he would have approved.
After spending some time in Mexico, he returned to Southern California. In 1963 he moved to Northern California living—mostly outdoors, usually in the converted bread truck where he kept his welding equipment—first in Tiburon and then in the areas around Santa Cruz and Big Sur. He had several shows in the Bay Area and one in Los Angeles. The notoriety surrounding his 1964 obscenity trial led to further shows and exhibits. In Santa Cruz he got to know several members of the group around Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters. After spending most of 1965 in France, he returned to the United States and moved to La Honda for a time, long enough to take charge of sneaking Kesey into Mexico in his attempt to avoid jail on a marijuana conviction.8
In an unpublished manuscript describing the escape, Kesey had this to say: “He’s right. Boise almost always is. Even to the point of being certain. . . .[I]t’s the mixture of this high, flat sound of old-hand consistency combined with the lecherous etched face and the demonic glitter staring from between thin-lipped eyes and a grin that puts Boise in a tiny knot of what might be Perfect Pranksters.”—for Kesey, the ultimate compliment.
- Chapter Two
The Heart Is A Lonely Brewer
As Irene stood of the Anchor brewery looking up at the art deco tower, she thought she saw Howard Roarke standing at the top. Her evangelical boss, Kaylene, insisted she rad The Fountain Head because Born Again Christians need to get in touch with the Prosperity Jesus and what he has in store for all his chosen ones. He wants his followers to have – BIG BUCKS!
But, then she spotted a man in a black cape looking down on her. Then, she saw King Kong – King of The City of Big Bucks! His huge hand was reaching down to grab her. Irene – fainted there on the sidewalk! When she comes to, she is being carried past these giant copper vats to the nurses room. Here workers were brought, the fortunate ones that managed to be revived after falling in the steaming tanks of hops. There was a church nearby, and too many times a priest came rushing to administer last rights. This was all kept a secret, because….beer was a deadly killer. And San Franciscans were….
BIG BEER LOVERS
Amazon.com : perfect daughters
Under the Crown | Pop Culture Facts on Anchor Bottle Steam Caps (anchorbrewing.com)
Sexy and Scandalous Scrap Metal: Ron Boise’s Legendary Kamasutra Sculptures | Dangerous Minds
William Buck
Posted on November 29, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press
Here is William Buck, the son of Frank Buck, who translated two books that Ram Dass endorses. This might be the spiritual base that Beryl Buck wanted applied to her establishment of the Buck Foundation that should give me a grant for my Bohemian newspaper, Royal Rosamond Press.
“I believe he was a very early bohemian in the San Francisco scene. His wife, Jane Hamner Buck also died young as did his father. Frank Buck,jr.”
The Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Mystique of William Buck (litkicks.com)
| William Benson Buck | |
| Birthdate: | 1934 |
| Birthplace: | California, United States |
| Death: | 1970 (35-36) Marin County, California, United States |
| Place of Burial: | Vacaville, Solano County, California, United States |
|---|---|
| Immediate Family: | Son of Frank Henry Buck, Jr. and Eva M Buck Brother of Carol F Buck Half brother of Christian Brevoort Zabriskie Buck and Edward Zabriskie Buck |
| Managed by: | Private User |
| Last Updated: | June 30, 2018 |
William Buck (translator)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to navigationJump to search
William Benson Buck (April 20, 1934 – August 26, 1970)[1] was an American writer who produced novelized translations into English of the Sanskrit epic poems Mahabharata and Ramayana. A translation of Harivamsa was unfinished at his death.
Buck was born in Washington, D.C., one of six children of U.S. Congressman Frank H. Buck. He had a sister and four half-siblings. He was a member of the wealthy Buck family of Marin County, California. His great-grandfather was Leonard W. Buck, a politician and businessman.[2] His father died in Washington, D.C. in 1942 while still in office.[3] His mother, Eva Benson Buck, was born to Swedish parents and was Buck’s second wife. After her husband’s death, she moved back to Vacaville, California with William and his younger sister Carol Franc Buck, who grew up at the family’s mansion at 225 Buck Ave.[4]
According to the publisher’s preface to the 2012 republication of Buck’s translations of Mahabharata and Ramayana, Buck was in 1955 inspired by reading a 19th-century translation of Bhagavad Gita, in a state library in Carson City, Nevada. He discovered that a proposed 11-volume Indian publication of Mahabharata was at risk for lack of funds, and subsidized it. He began to study Sanskrit, and to make his own translations. He later wrote:
My method in writing both Mahabharata and Ramayana was to begin with a literal translation from which to extract the story, and then to tell that story in an interesting way which would preserve the spirit and flavor of the original.[5]
Buck’s translations have been praised by Levi Asher[6][Note 1] and others.[7]
In 1961, he was sued for paternity by Jane Hammer Buck, who had lived with Buck “as husband and wife” in Bolinas, California, for six years. She stated that William acknowledged paternity of the boy, Paul Buck, who was born in San Francisco in 1958,[8] but was seeking monthly child support payments.[2]
Publications[edit]
I recently heard about a British Library project to reassemble and digitize a 17th century illustrated edition of the Ramayana, a classical Hindu epic. This sounds pretty cool, and it reminded me of a different edition of the Ramayana that I once owned myself.
This was just a cheap pocket paperback, a novelization of the great poem, published alongside a similar edition of the other great Hindu epic, the Mahabharata. These two books, the life work of a young American translator named William Buck, were designed to be accessible and enjoyable versions of their extremely long and complex originals. Of course the great epic poems had to be condensed and simplified to fit into these forms, but the popular paperbacks provide a rich reading experience that must capture at least some of the significance of their gigantic counterparts.
William Buck’s Mahabharata is the one I read all the way through and remember most vividly, because it’s a colorful, wise and beautiful long tale that begins with the household altercation that resulted in an elephant head being placed on the body of a boy named Ganesha, the son of Shiva, who is noted (in the story that surrounds the story) as the scribe who is writing the text:
Listen —
For three years Vuasa composed the Mahabharata in his mind, and when it was finished, he summoned Ganesha to be his scribe.
Shiva’s son came and asked, “Why call me?”
Vyasa replied, “Do you not remove all obstacles and barriers? You are the god of thieves and writers. Write down my book as I tell it to you.”
Ganesha swished his trunk around. “OM! But there are books and books. Is yours a very good one?”
“Yes.”
Ganesha laughed, and his huge belly shook. “Well just let me get rid of all these things …” He set down the conch shell and the lotus, the discus and axe that he held in his four hands. “… and I shall write for you; but if once you stop the story, I will leave and never return.”
Vyasa said, “On this condition: if you don’t understand what I mean, you must write no more until you do.”
“Done! The very day I was born I made my first mistake, and by that path I have sought wisdom ever since.”
Buck began translating the Mahabharata in 1955, the year Allen Ginsberg wrote Howl, and his production seems to reflect a nascent Beat sensibility. This can be seen in the fresh and bright language, in phrases like “you are the god of thieves and writers”, in the idea that the entire Mahabharata must be proclaimed in a single burst of breath, and in the idea that Ganesha must completely understand the story as he is writing it down. I don’t know if Jack Kerouac ever read William Buck’s translations, but he would have approved.
The Mahabharata is a morality tale about a war that was fought between two family clans in the north India region between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Its most well-known scene is that of the apparition of Krishna in a chariot occupied by Arjuna, a heroic soldier who suffers a Hamlet-like moment of hesitation before going into battle. This scene provides the setting for the Bhagavad Gita, the most famous section of the work. The rest of the tale, as told by William Buck, is the legend of the family that fought this war. It includes creation myths, encounters with nature, romantic confusions and sexual escapades, journeys into forests, cosmic games of dice.
I can’t remember where I obtained my own copies of these paperbacks, but I know I read them while I was studying philosophy and religion in college in the 1980s, and that I recognized the secondhand paperbacks as relics from the Summer of Love, clearly designed to appeal to hippies who listened to Ravi Shankar and George Harrison and to fit into bookshelves alongside Trout Fishing in America, Catch-22, Slaughterhouse Five, Steal This Book, Soul on Ice, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Child’s Garden of Grass, The Joy of Sex, The Tao of Physics, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Siddhartha. The strange and short life story of William Buck seemed to add to the sense of a hippie mystique.
Every edition I have ever seen of these books (I lost my first pair, which looked like the ones pictured above, but was able to purchase new editions of Buck’s Mahabharata and Ramayana on Amazon) contains the same short introductory story, which relates that William Buck was a 22-year-old in Carson City, Nevada when he discovered an ancient Bhagavad Gita in a library. He became a Sanskrit expert in order to translate these books, struggled to find original texts to translate, toiled to nearly insane dimensions to untangle the obscure narratives and characters encapsulated within, and died in 1970 at the age of 37 while working on a third epic, the Harivamsa. That is the only information about William Buck I have ever been able to find.
I’ve tried hard to find more information about William Buck. What did he look like? (No photograph, as far as I know, has ever accompanied the books.) How did he get such a cool name, and why did he die so young? The biggest question of all is this: how did a 22-year-old in Nevada manage to learn Sanskrit, and how did a non-professional translator manage to do such a great job with these two impossible texts?
Other readers must have asked the same question, because a Google search brings up several admiring mentions of William Buck, all containing the same sparse facts listed above and none beyond. It reminds me of an old joke about Homer: “Did you hear the news? They discovered that Homer did not write The Oddysey and The Iliad. It was a different Greek blind poet with the same name.” The joke, of course, is that we know nothing about Homer except that he was a Greek blind poet who wrote The Oddysey and The Iliad.
Today, one might say “Did you hear the news? William Buck did not translate the Mahabharata and Ramayana. It was a different 22-year-old in Carson City, Nevada with the same name.” Indeed, the name of William Buck seems to rise to epic proportions itself. The Mahabharata, like many great epics, is a tale within a tale within a tale. The mysterious William Buck has always felt to me like a character in the story that surrounds the story that surrounds the story — scribbling madly like Ganesha but never failing to understand.4016 Responses to “The Mahabharata, the Ramayana and the Mystique of William Buck”by Gary Sides on Thursday, April 3, 2014 10:59 am
William Buck was a very wealthy man. He once owned the Anchor Steam Brewery, but I believe sold it to Fritz Maytag in the early 1960’s. His family, the Bucks, were early fruit dealers in California who sold out to Pacific Fruit in 1933. His mother, Eva B Buck died in 1990 and is buried beside her son William Buck at the Vacaville Elmira Cemetery. I believe he was a very early bohemian in the San Francisco scene. His wife, Jane Hamner Buck also died young as did his father. Frank Buck,jr.
Under the Crown: Anchor in Pop Culture
FEBRUARY 1, 2017Posted by Anchor Brewing at 12:56 am | Category: Beer Backgrounds, Craft Beer History, San Francisco1
Anchor historian Dave Burkhart brings us interesting tales of Anchor’s past, guided by the factoids printed on the underside of Anchor Steam Beer crowns
Under every Anchor Steam® Beer crown (we brewers call bottle caps crowns) is a little piece of Anchor lore. Each represents anywhere from ounces to tons of research, and there are over 200 different crowns in all—start collecting them now! In the Under the Crown blog series, I’ll offer a brief elaboration on each UTC (Under The Crown—another industry term) factoid.
Anchor Brewing has been a part of pop culture for many decades. Here are a few examples.
1977: Arnold Schwarzenegger at Anchor in Streets of SF
Fans of 1970s TV will undoubtedly remember The Streets of San Francisco, starring Karl Malden as San Francisco Detective Lieutenant Mike Stone. For the episode called Dead Lift—first aired on May 5, 1977—Richard Hatch, who replaced Michael Douglas for the show’s fifth and final season, plays Malden’s sidekick.
The episode opens with the murder (no surprise) of a young woman by a sensitive bodybuilder named Joe, played by (spoiler alert) an aspiring young Austrian actor named Arnold Schwarzenegger. We soon learn that Joe works at a local brewery, which brings us to the Emmy-Award-worthy performance, if we do say so ourselves, by Anchor Brewing!
![Dead_Lift_01.Fritz_and_Arnold[1]](https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Dead_Lift_01.Fritz_and_Arnold1.png)
The brewery scene opens with a cameo by Fritz Maytag, serving as inspector on the bottling line (cue Laverne and Shirley theme song-ha!). Arnold walks briskly past him, carrying on one shoulder what we are supposed to believe is a full keg of beer. Arnold obviously works too hard and fast for his fellow employees. When the foreman fires him for his buffness and enthusiasm, Arnold goes ballistic, hurling 15.5-gallon “golden gate” kegs around the warehouse.
![Dead_Lift_02.Arnold_Carries_Keg[1]](https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Dead_Lift_02.Arnold_Carries_Keg1.png)
![Dead_Lift_03.Arnold_Gets_Fired[1]](https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Dead_Lift_03.Arnold_Gets_Fired1.png)
As the stars get to work solving the murder, Arnold heads off to his other gig, posing for an art class. One of the art students sketching Arnold, we fear, may become his next victim. The actress who plays her has the unique distinction of having played three different doctors on Star Trek.
Since this blog is about pop culture, we might as well have a pop-culture trivia contest:
Can you name her?
Can you name the three doctors she played?
Extra credit: Two of the doctors were in the original Star Trek series. Can you name the episodes?
1966: Janis Joplin/Big Brother photo shoot at Anchor
![Joplin_01-Janis-Joplin-Big-Brother-at-Anchor-1966-Photo-Bill-Brach[1]](https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Joplin_01-Janis-Joplin-Big-Brother-at-Anchor-1966-Photo-Bill-Brach1.jpg)
Visiting Anchor Brewing? Be sure and have a look to your right as you enter our taproom. On the wall you’ll see rare photos by Bill Brach, hailed by rock-and-roll historian Hank Harrison as “one of the most brilliant photographers to emerge from the Haight-Ashbury experience.” They forever freeze an important moment in the tale of Chet Helms (1942 –2005), Big Brother & the Holding Company, Janis Joplin (1943–1970), and Anchor Brewing.
Chester Leo Helms came to San Francisco after dropping out of the University of Texas in 1961. In 1965, the same year Fritz Maytag bought Anchor, Big Brother & the Holding Company got its start, jamming in the basement of the old Haight-Ashbury mansion where Chet and many others made their bohemian home.
![Joplin_02-Big-Brother-and-the-Holding-Company-First-Record-Front[1]](https://www.anchorbrewing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Joplin_02-Big-Brother-and-the-Holding-Company-First-Record-Front1.png)
In 1966, as Big Brother’s manager, Chet invited his friend Janis Joplin to return to San Francisco to join the band. His Family Dog Productions sponsored their first concert together, June 10, 1966, at the Avalon Ballroom.
Photographer Bill Brach reminisces: “Chet said, ‘Bill, I am bringing this girl singer out from Texas to join the band and I want you to photograph them.’ I said, ‘Chet, you already have the best band in town—why do you want to add a new singer?’ Anyway, I took the band to do some photos at the Anchor Steam Brewery on Eighth Street, because it was a great place. Later, Chet told me, ‘Bill, I can’t use any of the photos because there isn’t one picture that doesn’t have a glass of beer in it!’”
In an old Anchor scrapbook is a picture of Janis and Big Brother at the bar of our old brewery on Eighth Street. No one at Anchor knew that it was Bill Brach who had taken that photo—and more at the brewery—until a friend of Bill’s contacted me about them. Bill was kind enough to show us the rest, from which Fritz Maytag and I selected four. Bill printed them and signed them for us. We framed them, and they’ve been in the taproom ever since (no, they are not for sale).
These rare photos evoke a marvelous era in San Francisco rock—and brewing—history. The band members (so young), relaxing by the potbelly stove in the old taproom are (left to right) Janis Joplin, Dave Getz, Peter Albin, James Gurley, and Sam Andrew.
Trivia questions:
What was Janis Joplin’s middle name?
Where was Janis Joplin born?
For what event did she return there and when?
1966: Ron Boise sculpture installed on Anchor’s roof
Ironically, unlike Janis Joplin and Arnold Schwarzenegger, Coloradoan Ron Boise (born Ronald Lee Bosse) was already famous in San Francisco by the time of his Anchor factoid– 1966. He was a sculptor of human figures and musical instruments in scrap metal—usually from old car bumpers and fenders. Although not the defendant, Ron and his art were the talk of the town in a widely publicized 1964 obscenity trial.
On April 6, SFPD and a police photographer arrived at the Vorpal Gallery, then located in North Beach in the alley between Vesuvio Café and City Lights Bookstore. They were there to take pictures of some of the Ron Boise sculptures on display.
Inspired by the Kama Sutra, there was no question that the sculptures were erotic. But were they art? Were they obscene? Sure it was San Francisco in the ’60s, but those burning questions would be answered not in Golden Gate Park or Haight-Ashbury, but rather in a San Francisco courtroom.
The groundbreaking “dirty art” trial made headlines in the summer of 1964, and the not-guilty verdict “freed” the Vorpal Gallery’s owners and the sculptures that had been seized as evidence. It also vindicated a pioneering artist.
Less than two years later, Fritz Maytag purchased a dramatic, 12-foot-tall Boise sculpture of a nude couple and had it mounted atop our brewery. At that time, we were located on Eighth Street, a stone’s throw from the James Lick Freeway. Prudish commuters complained, of course. Fritz’s defense was eloquently straightforward: “That freeway gets pretty monotonous,” he noted. “We thought we’d put up something to say hello.”
Tragically, the promising young sculptor Ron Boise died shortly thereafter, at just thirty-four years of age.
Our naked man and woman moved to Mariposa Street with us in the late ’70s and have since retired to warmer climes.
Trivia questions:
Another, more famous, obscenity trial took place in the summer of 1964. Who was on trial? Where? What was the verdict?
Was that person also tried in San Francisco? For what crime? When? The verdict?
Fritz Maytag wasn’t the only one who bought a Boise in the 1960s. Acid-Tester and Grateful Dead mentor ___ _____ bought one of Boise’s interactive sculptures, a “Thunder Machine.”
Next time you pick up a 6-pack of Anchor Steam Beer, be sure to check out what fun facts are under the crown! Share what you find with us on social media and tag @AnchorBrewing and #DrinkSteam for a chance to be re-posted! Use our handy Beer Finder to locate a brew near you!
SEXY AND SCANDALOUS SCRAP METAL: RON BOISE’S LEGENDARY KAMASUTRA SCULPTURES07.06.201308:59 pmTopics:ArtSexTags:Ron Boise
Ron Boise’s infamous Kama Sutra sculptures from the early 1960’s look almost quaint now. A series of eleven small (the tallest was a foot high) sculptures depicting sexual positions from the ancient Hindu text on sexual behavior, the Kama Sutra, were formed out of scrap sheet metal taken from wrecked cars. And that’s when the prudish shit storm began.
Boise grew up in Colorado and Montana, where he learned to weld from his father, before moving to California. In addition to being a self-taught sculptor, Boise was one of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters and even used old tools, car parts, bucksaws and old scraps of metal to create the always-locked front gate on Kesey’s La Honda, California property, on the far side of the rickety bridge that spanned La Honda Creek.
Boise himself lived and traveled in an old telephone company service van which he painted wild psychedelic colors and modified to become a mobile studio and camper.
In 1964 Boise’s Kama Sutra series was shown at the two-year-old Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco, then located in the alley behind Vesuvio Cafe and a few steps from City Lights Bookstore. (Still open, it is now located in the San Francisco Civic Center at 444 Market Street.) Art professor Richard H. Grooms described the pieces:
His sculpture was extremely sensual and the rendering of flesh and texture of the sheet metal made you forget they were scraps of metal at all. He had a sensitive line in his work that made all the metal personages seem to have a personality all their own. They became like real people, but without the idea they were portraits.https://aff0b2aedc6428351e5bc407775b8185.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Strange Forbidden PlacesStrange Forbidden PlacesPauseNext video1:00 / 3:02SettingsFull-screenThe sight of fewer than a dozen small, charming depictions of a man and a woman engaged in various heterosexual activities was enough to completely freak out the upright citizens of San Francisco. San Francisco police raided the gallery, confiscated almost all of the sculptures, and arrested gallery owner Muldoon Elder for offering “lewd objects for sale.” An obscenity trial ensued, where expert art historians Walter Horn and Catherine Caldwell and philosopher Alan Watts testified in defense of Boise’s work. Watts’ statement was reprinted in The Evergreen Review in June 1965:
Ron Boise is a sculptor who is doing something which I call ‘pushing the line back’ – in the same way as great modern writers, such as Henry Miller, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce have been pushing the line back in literature. We haven’t seen much of it in sculpture – or in painting…
Here we see an extraordinary example of getting away with murder but in a fantastically good way. But it’s not actually getting away with murder; it’s something much worse than that; it’s getting away with love…Very rarely, unless we are familiar with Hindu sculpture or Tibetan painting can we see anything like this done with superb mastery.
Elder was found not guilty. He wrote in 2004:
Thank God the A.C.L.U. defended me at the two-week trial since in 1964 I hardly had a penny to my name to pay for a lawyer and I doubt if the public defender would have been as eloquent as Ephriam Margolin and Marshall Krause were in that courtroom. You’ll have to ask me about the trial sometime, it was a hoot.
During and after the trial, the Kama Sutra sculptures became a rallying point for the local counterculture. Calendars and postcards were sold featuring the sculptures. Hip Pocket Bookstore in Santa Cruz, California proudly displayed one of the original sculptures over the front door. Another sculpture was installed on the roof of the Anchor Steam Beer Factory in San Francisco in full view of the freeway until Fritz Maytag took over the company in 1965 and removed it.
Boise died of the blood disease hemochrotouisis in 1966. He was on his way to Mexico to celebrate a successful show in California, where he sold nearly all of his works. He had told friends that he did not expect to live a long life and wanted to fully enjoy what years he had allotted to him. In a 1968 Martlett magazine article Richard H. Grooms wondered what had happened to Boise’s unsold sculptures after his death. Photographs of the Kama Sutra sculptures that were to accompany Grooms’ article were censored by Martlett’s printers.
Ground Hog Day At Zabriskie Point
Posted on February 4, 2020by Royal Rosamond Press
There is a old photo of the Borox building that was in downtown Eugene. I believe it was part of the Buck Monopoly. My mind is still blown after discovering Henry Brevoort is in John Astor’s family tree – that meets in Oregon. Then, Sir Walter Scott employs my Lee kindred in his Woodstock. I feel like Rip Van Winkle. We could have seen a remake of West Side Story at the Super Bowl, that brings the Jets and the Sharks together – with love – to usher in the Peace and Love of the Woodstock Generation, but, we didn’t.
“The location was named after Christian Brevoort Zabriskie, vice-president and general manager of the Pacific Coast Borax Company in the early 20th century. The company’s twenty-mule teams were used to transport borax from its mining operations in Death Valley.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabriskie_Point_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabriskie_Point
I have been preaching the Bohemian Philosophy in this blog – till I am blue in the face! Now we got Fremont wanting to go to war with Mexico. It’s the same ol merry-ground. We haven’t gotten anywhere. It’s back to Zabriskie Point, one of the worst hippie-radical-like flicks ever made.
I want to premiere my Bohemian Musical at the Buck Institute. I want Halprin to do the choreography. We got to stop dicking around and get back to the traditions that Henry and Washington Irving lay down for us – forever! When you are a Jet….you are a Jet all the way!
Has anyone compared Washington Irving to Bret Harte, who spent time with my Fremont kindred out at Black Point. Yes, some have. But don’t tell Meg Whitman and her staff writers for Quibi, this, because they have already run out of ideas – if they ever had one.
Fitser called me yesterday. They want to help me do a webpage for the California Barrel Company. I think I’m going to promote myself. I want to make money – now – because morons don’t want free ideas. They want to pay other morons millions for a good idea, and, they don’t have even one. The spectacle on the fifty yard line – was the last straw for me!
I had a wonderful conversation with my niece, Shannon Rosamond, yesterday. We are the only family members – speaking to one another! We had an Art Talk.
John Presco
President: Royal Rosamond Press
https://rosamondpress.com/2017/08/03/robert-brevoort-buck-vs-shannon-rosamond/
In 1868, after publishing a series of Spanish legends akin to Washington Irving’s Alhambra, he was named editor of the Overland Monthly. For it he wrote “The Luck of Roaring Camp” and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat.” Following The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Sketches (1870), he found himself world famous. His fame only grew with the poem “Plain Language from Truthful James” (1870), better known as “The Heathen Chinee,” although it attracted national attention in a manner unintended by Harte, who claimed that its satirical story—about two men, Bill Nye and Ah Sin, trying to cheat each other at cards—showed a form of racial equality. Instead, the poem was taken up by opponents of Chinese immigration.
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