The Last Beatnik Movie
Posted on December 1, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
It was Angie who bid me to call Beatrice Blair to see if we could use her empty lot for celebrations. It was the Fourth of July about ten years ago when this lovely Black Woman called to me on the grass of McKenzie Meadows. She was with family and friends. She asked me to call Beatrice, understanding I had some clout. I called, but she was not open to this, then. I’m going to call her and see if she wants to get water for our community garden. I’m going to write the Mayor and Governor and see if they will buy this land for a Children’s Park, named after Kenny Reed. I want to see if Cloverleaf Loop can be named after Beatrice Blair. Angie passed two years ago. She called me “Mr. John!”
Jill Nice and I have been working on a movie script about our garden. Kenny and Izzy were in a documenary about the making of Animal House. I read poems with Izzy who was in Animal House.
John Presco
Katherine Wilson
Posted on May 11, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press
BEST DOCUMENTARY BY A PACIFIC NORTHWEST FILMMAKER
The untold story of how the Merry Pranksters from Ken Kesey to Curtis Salgado and the Robert Cray Band helped create the Hollywood Blockbuster and Eugene movie icon, “Animal House.”
Producer:
Katherine Wilson, Rocky Manos (Ex), Brett Wright, (Assoc.)
http://ww.eugenefilmfest.org/?film=animal-house-blues w
Katherine Wilson invited me to her home to talk about what I was going through with my sister’s death. My story brought her to tears. She told me this was going on because most people want to be connected with something “Immortal”. To have your name alongside a famous person meant you would live forever, too. This explains why Patrice Hanson would do anything to get herself and OUR minor child in Christine Rosamond Benton’s biography – and movie! Katherine was working on Ken Kesey’s story about the Pendleton Round Up.
I thought I had a family until I was kept away from the business meeting Vicki Presco held in OUR sister’s home the day – before the funeral! A book and movie deal was discussed. An offer was made to purchase the entire estate, and pay off the creditors. My two nieces would not be getting monies from the book and movie. How about the sale of prints?
Katherine’ insight helped me immensely. I call upon it quite often. The understanding she gave me more than likely stopped me from taking another drink.
Thank you!
Jon Presco
Katherine Wilson
Jazz and Poetry at Moe’s in Springfield
Posted on October 1, 2016 by Royal Rosamond Press
The owner of Moe’s asked me, and my friends, to do a night of poetry reading, only. I had read my poems at the Granary four years ago, with Kenny Reed backing me up. His wife, Marilyn sang there, as did her daughter, Nisha. Because there was so much going on in the world, I was blogging like crazy. I found no time to write poems, so I turned two of my blogs into poems and read them while Stone Cold Jazz played in the background.
The Baby-faced Rose is about the woman I interviewed at Black Lives Matter rally. Ding Dong is about Krysta Albert defaming Black Miss Oregon. She got me in a world of trouble with the Choir.
The Friggen Eye of God is about a glowing eyeball.
With no hope of ever seeing Belle Burch again, I wrote a poem she inspired. In Ken Kesey Square I told her she reminded me of Botticelli’s ‘Venus in a Half Shell’. I was not a labeled a “stalker” a sexual deviant, a sub-human, at the time. I still owned – human qualities. I sent this poem to Marilyn in a e-mail two days after I beheld Belle.
Here is Nisha, Marilyn’s daughter reading Rena’s poem.
I was confused by the FB message from the Director of the Inspirational Sounds Gospel Choir that forbid me to mention them and their “friends” in the controversy about the director of the Festival of Eugene using racist language. I was so proud of this choir when they stood up for Soromundi, a Lesbian choir, and held their event elsewhere, after the church they practice in, refused to have anything to do with a group of Lesbians, I took this video and had a spiritual experience that bid me to post on Kathy Vrzak’s facebook.
“WHITE SILENCE IS VIOLENCE”
lhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/18/naacp-convention-black-lives-matter-cincinnati
Turn down the sound on the Kesey Square video, and behold her, there, surrounded by the poor and homeless. It is Lucia, who is called Mimi for reasons unknown. If only I were young again! I was young again. Like a thief, she stole my old age away. Is this a crime?
Belle asks me what my blog is about. I tell her;
“I am a poet and artist, and a Bohemian. And I’m writing the history of them; why they should survive; and not be persecuted.”
“We can talk! What is your phone number?”
We did s Opera in the Square. We had music accompanying us. The muses were, and still are, with us!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2016
“My name is Mimi. I make a living making lilies and roses.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_boh%C3%A8me
Marcello is painting while Rodolfo gazes out of the window. They complain of the cold. In order to keep warm, they burn the manuscript of Rodolfo’s drama. Colline, the philosopher, enters shivering and disgruntled at not having been able to pawn some books. Schaunard, the musician of the group, arrives with food, wine and cigars. He explains the source of his riches: a job with an eccentric English gentleman, who ordered him to play his violin to a parrot until it died. The others hardly listen to his tale as they set up the table to eat and drink. Schaunard interrupts, telling them that they must save the food for the days ahead: tonight they will all celebrate his good fortune by dining at Cafe Momus, and he will pay.
Kenny Reed Passed Away
Posted on December 5, 2019 by Royal Rosamond Press
Kenny Reed, Rick Cobian, and myself, put on a Obama Inauguration at the One World Café when our great President won his first term in office. Kenny and I read poetry together in the basement of the Granary. There was a blank wall behind this amazing man and drummer, so we put one of my late sister’s print on it. We are beginning to fill in the empty spaces that were left behind.
John
Posted Dec 1, 2019 at 7:00 AM Updated Dec 1, 2019 at 10:48 AM
Kenny Reed lived for jazz, and after his Nov. 21 death the drummer is being remembered for his impact on local musicians.
Music touched local jazz drummer Kenny Reed at an early age, and he shared its power as a performer and a teacher for the rest of his life.
Reed, 72, died Nov. 21 from kidney failure at a Eugene hospital after more than 30 years in Oregon, much of which was spent in area clubs where he defined himself as a local music icon. Though Reed was too weak to play very much over the past decade, he remained a local jazz fixture until his death.
“He lived for jazz, and to be a mentor and a teacher to others,” said Reed’s wife, Marilyn Calkins Reed.
Reed was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on Oct. 7, 1947. It was there he had his earliest musical performances singing gospel songs with his five sisters in a traveling a cappella group called The Reed Singers, Calkins Reed said.
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jazz jam for all
March 24, 2014
Reed proved so dynamic and extroverted, his family believed he would be — and encouraged him to be — a preacher. But Reed found the music of John Coltrane and Miles Davis by the time he was a teenager, and his fate was set.
“He heard ‘A Love Supreme’ and it changed his mind,” Calkins Reed said.
Reed lived in New York City and Los Angeles and served in the U.S. Army as part of the 82nd Airborne Division before his car broke down one day in Junction City. That was in 1984, and Reed soon after met his first wife — by whom he had two children — before settling into a life in Oregon.
Public memorial jam for local jazz drummer Kenny Reed
Memorial
What: Public memorial jam for local jazz drummer Kenny Reed, local musicians and Reed’s longtime musical partners have been invited to jam together in his honor
Where: The Jazz Station, 124 W. Broadway
When: 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday
Cost: Asking $10 at the door, funds go the memorial fund to help funeral expenses
He’d been playing the drums with jazz bands across the country before that mishap landed him in Oregon, and pretty soon he was playing local gigs.
“Being Kenny, he looked for the nearest club and hopped on a bus and found The Embers,” Calkins Reed said. “That was the first place he played.”
Reed’s Eugene band was Stone Cold Jazz, but the man was known for pulling musicians on stage with them and forming new groups on the spot.
“He’s taken a lot of younger musicians under his wing and mentored them,” said Eric Richardson, president of the Eugene Springfield NAACP and a sometimes-partner in Reed’s local gigs. “He’s just known as someone who was really into sharing with younger musicians and passing that torch.”
One of his students, Alex Huber, said his education under Reed revealed to him the soul of an American art form, one born of history, cooperation and the freedom of expression.
“Kenny taught me to use the high hat as a musical instrument rather than just as a timekeeper. It was all those tasty little touches that made his drumming unique,” Huber said. “He taught me jazz form and how to solo. He always reminded me that a solo isn’t just about showing off your chops, it’s to tell a story.”
Reed represented hard bop jazz, a genre that emerged in the mid-50s by incorporating blues, gospel and other traditional sounds, according to Richardson. Reed’s gospel background and a love for drummers such as Elvin Jones, who played with Coltrane in the 1960s, defined his passion.
“His family background was being raised in the church and with gospel singing,” Richardson said. “He was rooted in the African American experience.”
Richardson said Reed’s penchant for personal style went beyond the pristine suits he famously wore.
“When he dealt with younger kids it was always about being correct, dressing nice and giving yourself some dignity,” Richardson said. “It was about giving yourself some dignity and giving the music and the agency of performing and appreciating the music dignity.”
Huber said Reed’s sense of style was about much more than looking fresh. For Reed, a snappy suit was another piece of the performance.
“Kenny dressed for the gig. He always said, ‘They see you before they hear you.’ He always looked good, but more importantly, he performed,” Huber said. “He played the song with his face, his body, his soul. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.”https://www.youtube.com/embed/_fyqvmpmjyw?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparent
The music was everything to Reed, and his wife said he wouldn’t have been so eager to marry her if it didn’t mean something to her, too.
“I drove him home one night and the tape I put in the tape deck was Miles Davis, and he said, ‘A woman after my own heart,’” Calkins Reed said. “For a person like him, where that music was his whole life, you needed to be a part of it and love it as much as he did.”
Reed was on dialysis for almost nine years, Calkins Reed said. His deteriorating health sapped the strength he needed to play shows the way he once had, but she said Reed was too stubborn to leave his music or his mentoring alone — he performed less often, but still was playing local gigs this year.
Richardson said his friend had no choice but to endure the pain and play. Over his last years, Richardson said Reed kept making comebacks.
“Kenny really struggled through it with a lot of power,” Richardson said. “In the last several years he was not the same cat who could play a four-hour set like he use to play. But through the last couple years, he had a couple students he was with and he’d go to a gig and play a couple tunes.”
Calkins Reed will host a public memorial for her late husband from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. Sunday at The Jazz Station, 124 W. Broadway. Local musicians and Reed’s longtime musical partners have been invited to jam together in his honor.
“I want him to be remembered as a great musician, a mentor and teacher,” Calkins Reed said. “That was his contribution to this town.”
The Baby-faced Rose of White Privilege
Posted on July 10, 2016by Royal Rosamond Press
The Baby-faced Rose of White Privilege
by
Jon Presco
I chose to capture her image
because of how she looked
innocuous, vulnerable, innocent.
She was a church mouse
with a baby-face
She did not stand out.
I did not understand
that this is the face that launched a thousand ships
There are tanks, battleships, jets,
squad cars, courts of law, and SWAT teams
ready to defend her on a moments notice.
Even predictors leave her alone.
She is an untouchable.
She is the epitome of White Privilege
and tells me so.
I didn’t quite get what that meant
until I heard her say it
She brought tears to my eyes
after I watched the video of her I took.
I saw her as the cutest baby you ever saw.
I saw her as a pre-teen shopping at the mall
with her best friends and parents credit card.
I saw her at that all-white vacation spot.
I saw her straight A report card she got
I saw her letter she was accepted to the University of O
I saw her putting that ring in her nose.
I saw her carefully selecting her hat with the rose.
I saw her setting out in the world
prepared to be someone
You know how that goes!
I saw her studying what that somebody was going to be.
I saw her making adult choices all by herself.
I saw her put her childish things behind her.
I saw her heading to this rally
so she could be seen
and perhaps
heard.
What struck me, was
she was not invisible to me!
I saw her making a stand that would affect her the rest of her life.
I saw her feeling she had found her people
and was with the right crowd.
I saw that she was happy with the choices she had made – thus far.
I saw that she was proud that she cared.
I saw that she had done everything that Philando had done.
The quest to be someone
is not easy.
Why is it only white folks
are allowed to make mistakes?
Being a human being
is hard.
Being true to yourself
begins with understanding what that means.
Philando is her peer.
They are almost identical. But for one thing
the color of their skin
and, armies were sent over there,
battleships pounded the shore,
jets flew over head,
unloading their bombs
and the SWAT team poured out of their urban tanks.
All these things happened so she would feel safe
would feel protected
would know someones got her back.
who dare blame those armed men
wearing camo?
This is the beautiful baby-face that launched a thousand ships
and, she only has eyes for Philando
It is he who she identifies with.
She has empathy for him.
He is her peer.
perhaps they were destined to meet,
one day. Some day
when Justice arrives
for all
and we are all served
the promise of the gods
She had just a small rose on her plain cap.
She wore no makeup.
When did she stop looking in a mirror
while she put on her lipstick.
And that ring in her nose
Her badge of defiance.
Was it enough to get her killed?
Don’t go for your wallet, Hon
Don’t go for your gun
Don’t wear colorful clothing
Don’t have your day in the sun.
The dull baby-face rose
looks like she never gets any attention.
Baby-faced Philando got more attention then he wanted
way more attention
then he deserved!
His mother sent him out of the house warning him
giving him lessons on how be invisible,
and what he should do if he is
spotted.
Those loving lessons
were of no avail.
here come a nervous man to his window
with a loaded gun
Young people. Students of life.
I feel for them. I had to walk away.
All the lessons are hard.
But, she was allowed to blend in
into the crowd
where no one knows who she is
where she is – in the world
because no one asks
for her IDENTI-FICATION
I spotted her right off.
The pathos of it all.
This great tragedy
this modern day Western
captured with hand-held cell-phone
taken out of its holster.
Many shots rang out in Texas
over a broken red light
And it wasn’t dark, yet.
The sun was just about to set
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“People are getting killed, and nothing is happening.”
White folks expect Justice to be done
for only them.
Denying Justice to others
is their lily-white privilege
they practice
knowing
without Justice
there can be no Peace.
And when their brand of Peace breaks out
and the reports of the long-rifles
echo in their canyon of lies
they play their favored game
they play
the Baby-faced Victim
with a broken wing
Belushi’s Animal House Car
Posted on April 17, 2014 by Royal Rosamond Press
A funny thing happened to me on the way to the Lane County Historical Society & Museum, I found the car John Belishi drove at the end of the movie ‘Animal House’. It is located inside a vintage warehouse located on Franklin Street a hundred yards from where a convention center is to be built. This building and about twelve homes were under the wrecking ball ten years ago when a company owned by Dubai royalty tried to buy up this property in order to build a hotel apartment complex. Five years ago I was introduced to Jim who owned a home on Brooklyn Street that Dubai and Sid Leiken wanted to buy – and tear down. Jim is an old Bohemian who along with his neighbors, asked a million dollars for his land. This nixed the deal with Dubai.
La Belle Rose
Posted on June 26, 2015by Royal Rosamond Press
La Belle Rose
by
Jon Gregory Presco
Dedicated to my Muse, Belle Burch
Poetry is the Truth
When I was a gifted youth
I do not recall if I studied the artist Sandro Botticelli.
When a man
I wrote my version of ‘The Birth of Venus’
and did a painting of my muse
coming out of the sea.
I must have neglected this great Renaissance Artist,
and his beloved Muse – until now!
But, Since I beheld her, my Belle
and compared her to Simonetta Cattaneo de Candia Vespucci,
do I now behold all the clues of the petals
and the thread
that have brought me through the labyrinth of time,
to adore her once again.
And she recognizes me!
Centuries ago I was buried at her feet
in order to continue my long vigilance,
for she was only asleep.
One day she will awaken, and the City of Flowers
will again bask in her unparelled beauty.
Bella! Mon Belle!
Following the Renaissance of the Miller Brothers
to the top of the hill in the lost city of Fairmount,
I came to the crossroads of time.
When I saw the intersection of Flora and Fairmount,
I knew it would be a matter of days
before I was with my Sleeping Belle, once again,
once upon a time
She is the one I came here for.
After finding the lost tombstone of George Melvin Miller,
the founder of Florence,
I began to see the grand design.
When she came across the piazza de Keasy
while the minstrel sang a song by the Grateful Dead
‘Saint Stephen’
I had my rose at ready.
When I handed it to her
I heard the lovers complain
Where is my Belle Rose!
This is the Renaissance Rose
that my ancestor employed to write his name,
Rosemondt.
When I told Belle what kind of work I do,
I described my painting of a woman coming out of the sea.
Many have asked me who she is. Now, I can say;
“She is Belle, the most beautiful woman in Florence.”
We will go there, soon,
to behold the sea, a shell, and the foam
In 1475
at La Giostra
a jousting tournament was held at the Piazza Santa Croce.
The gallant knight, Giuliano
entered the field bearing a banner
on which was a picture of Simonetta as a helmeted Pallas Athene
Her image was painted by Botticelli himself.
Underneath was the French inscription
La Sans Pareille, meaning “The unparalleled one”.
From then on Simonetta became known
as the most beautiful woman in Florence,
and later
the most beautiful woman of the Renaissance.
Simonetta Vespucci
I salute thee!
Poetry and Jazz at The Granary.
photo by Jon Stinnett James “Izzy” Whetstine, left, and drummer Kenny Reed take a break from filming a documentary on the making of ‘Animal House’ Friday. Whetstine played a janitor responsible for dealing with a dead horse in the movie.  https://www.youtube.com/embed/4mWKqBjRnuo?version=3&rel=1&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&fs=1&hl=en&autohide=2&wmode=transparenthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtd6L1VCEio |
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