The War for Palestine
Palestine was created by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison
What’s happening there today could happen to all of us
It’s in Ohio, stupid
“Saloons, mud, no law, sanitation, guns, and other problems led the town’s concerned citizens to draw up in July 1875 the incorporation papers,” per a 1989 document entitled “Our Town — How it Began,” which I find tucked inside one of the neatly organized manilla folders in a filing cabinet in the local history section of the East Palestine Memorial Library on Market Street. As in nearly the entire continental vastness of 19th-century America, settlers predated the law here in East Palestine (pronounced East Pal-e-steen), Ohio, just as America existed prior to the establishment of law. East Palestine was “laid out on a 640-acre plot of land originally owned by John Taggart, who had bought the land through a federal office in Steubenville,” with the future town then “designated as Section 25 of Township No. 8 in Range No. 1.” Thomas Jefferson signed “the original parchment document” in 1804. “Then in …
The Bullshit Artist
Plenty of writers are full of shit. Then there is James Wakefield Burke.
The unlikely tale of how J.W. and I collaborated with Johnny Cash on what became a Disney movie about Davy Crockett.
Those Elvis tapes are fake, though.
Of all the authors I have known, James Wakefield Burke (1906-1989) was the most memorable. He was not a great writer, or even a good one. But J.W., as he was known, was a quintessentially American type: the bullshit artist.
I met him in 1985, when I was 23 years old and finishing graduate studies at Yale and researching what became my narrative poem, The Alamo. The only source for some of the books I needed for my research was Eakin Press, a small publishing company in Austin. During a trip to Austin to visit my family one Christmas, the founder and publisher of the press, Ed Eakin, with whom I had corresponded, arranged for me to dine at a Mexican restaurant with him and an author named J.W. Burke. “He’s a bit of a character,” Ed Eakin warned me in advance. Indeed, J.W. turned out to be a bald fellow in his seventies in a fire-engine red suit and white shoes in a style that might be …
Accordion Lessons
At the age of 15, it dawned on me that the accordion isn’t cool
The Beatles killed the accordion, but their songs sound better on the instrument than the Stones
My accordion unplugged, at FireAid
I started accordion lessons in about 1977. I was 12 years old and really into rock & roll. My love for this genre was not considered when I chose to pick up the accordion. A friend of mine started taking lessons and played the instrument for me and I thought it was cool. So I signed up with his teacher.
Mr. Matlejan would visit my house once a week for half-hour lessons. I learned old Croatian folk songs. I also learned to read sheet music. I would rehearse between lessons and worked my way up to a bigger accordion.
I had started on a smaller beginner’s accordion, with only two rows of left-hand bass keys. As my abilities progressed, my parents then bought me a used, bigger accordion. It was white, mother of pearl plastic with black keys
Looking back, I was living two musical lives. One was on my accordion, which fit in well with my family of Croatian-speaking aunts, uncles, and …
