We’ve been spending time in Astoria and Portland the past week, helping Sarah and Gordon move into their new place, and we caught a really cool event in Astoria the other night. Gordon called us from work to tell us that Ken Babbs was doing a reading at the coffee shop that shares the lobby of the hotel he works at. Ken Babbs is one of the infamous Merry Pranksters; if you’re not familiar they were the group of revolving around Ken Kesey who are the subject of Tom Wolfe’s “Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,” the movers and shakers of 60s subculture. It was really interesting and a little surreal to meet someone who was a character in a book I’ve read. The readings that he did from his book were great: colorful and captivating. It’s based on his experiences flying helicopters for the USMC in Vietnam, written in 1962 before his days of psychedelic bus trips (but just published recently). It was great to hear something on that time period from a first person perspective, written with a sense of humor and lightness that makes a heavy subject a little more digestable. Astoria seems to get some really cool things in the way of music, speakers, etc. for being a fairly small place.
Also, this came in the mail the other day, and I thought you all might like to see it.
XOXOXO
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