Visiting the Woodshop on Steamboat Island amidst hayfever and national holidays, Dave and Wm. Lenker exchange spontaneous musical freeverse tales of Pennsylvania, Agana Harbour (Guam), Jericho Beach (Vancouver), and Lake Crescent (Washington) while wounded Samson howls along.

https://archive.org/download/Postcard53HowlingAtLandAndSea/Postcard-53-Howling-at-Land-and-Sea.mp3

Weigh anchor for: Howling at Land and Sea – Postcard #53 (128k mp3, 17:51, 16MB)

Note: Photo by DaveO on Pender Island, Art’ed up by Bread the Producer

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In a collection of transitory reminiscences, Dave O rolls on from rainy North Van by taxi down venerable Granville St. down the spine of to YVR with indigenous dioramas. Then travels by plane to Gatwick Airport, continuing via train to Victoria Station, then by another taxi to Piccadilly Circus passing notable London sites along the way. And recapping visits to New York neighbourhoods, San Jose developments, importance of stimulating road literature, podcast faves, outstanding Vancouver activities, worthy podcasts, street music, thoughts on going with the flow, healthy breakfasts and provocative TV in London.

https://daveostory.com/wp-content/uploads/audio/postcards/postcard-bonus-taxi-flashbacks-towards-gatwick.mp3

Flag a ride for: Taxi Flashbacks Towards Gatwick – Postcard bonus (.mp3, 58:08, 47MB)

Music:

Topical Recap:

Vancouver Conundrums:

From theTyee.ca

Mayor Sam Sullivan called former provincial attorney general Geoff Plant’s report “very impressive” and his fellow NPA councillors joined in the praise. The minority Vison/COPE faction continued to worry the project could criminalize poverty and called Plant’s work a waste of time and money.

The Civil City project passed last year calls for the elimination of homelessness, the open drug market and aggressive panhandling, starting with 50 per cent reductions in all three by 2010.

Vancouver Activities:

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From a Lougheed skyscraper comes an improvisational reading with guitars – first more ocean-inspired works from Tristan Corbière, Victor Hugo and Dave Olson into a freeform spoken word account of trip down the Pacific Coast highway to a haunted roadhouse with sequoias growing an inch a day.

https://archive.org/download/Postcard52SkyscraperStoriesAboutOceansForests/Postcard-52-Skyscraper-Stories-about-Oceans-Forests.mp3

Roust yerself for: Skyscraper Stories about Oceans and Forests – Postcard #52 (112k mp3, 19:46, 16MB)

Appendix

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Stamp your envelope for: Letters from Russia on Santa Cruz Free Radio (.mp3, 57:07, 26MB)

DJ Snailmail and DJ Anon discuss Letters from Russia with writer Dave Thorvald Olson on the “WriteNow! The Art & Action of Letterwriting” show, Dec. 2007 on Santa Cruz Free Radio – low-power unlicensed station – also streaming live.

Thanks to DJ Snailmail for invite and Bread the Producer for capture.

Transcription: “Letters from Russia” discussion on “Write Now!” radio show – interview transcription

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Starting at the Steamboat Island Woodshed, Dave rambles salty original freeverse with Wm. Lenker on banjo and traces personal poetic lineage winding through French impressionalist/symbolist and Brittany sea-coaster Tristan Corbière (prefaced by Victor Hugo).

Then – as sleet, slush and hail beats down on the Mosquito Creek studio skylight – rolls into the beat American 50s and 60s with John Sinclair‘s chronicle Brilliant Corners, Jack Kerouac riding trains from Atop an Underwood, and Gary Snyder arriving from sea from The Backcountry ~ fortified with jazz, joints and hot sake.

https://archive.org/download/Postcard51BanjoSeaShantiesBeatTrainRambles/Postcard-51-Banjo-Sea-Shanties-Beat-Train-Rambles.mp3

Hunker down for: Banjo Sea Shanties and Beat Train Rambles – Postcard #51 (28:10, 23MB, 112k mp3)

Appendix

Nods to Cosmo‘s Spacely’s Sprockets (see also Clubside Breakfast Time)

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An aural montage of past new years’ evenings featuring Dave O reading from Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” next to crackling cabin woodstove on Pender Island (note scratching dog and someone with a stuffy nose), followed by a latenight freeverse message to Napoleon, a languid tale recorded in a garage about a bewildering New Years Eve in Japan, and finally a poetic nugget of memory and hope for the future.

Music:

https://archive.org/download/Postcard50PoeticGhostsOfNewYearsPast/Postcard-50-Poetic-Ghosts-of-New-Years-Past.mp3

Come for a visit with the Poetic Ghosts of New Years Past – Postcards #50 (.mp3, 22:25, 18MB)

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Wrapping up the White Poppies for Remembrance series with a narrative late-night wander through Westminster, London, DaveO meanders past military monuments, victory squares, cenotaphs, palaces, royal parks, war museum, war chambers, riot fences, war protesters, churches, parliament and finishing at St. James park for a sitdown under a weeping willow to consider monarchy, individual rights and responsibilities, and the role of class division in waging war as London’s sirens, trains, and Big Ben fill the night.

https://archive.org/download/Postcard49MeanderingPastMonumentsRemembrance/Postcard-49-Meandering-Past-Monuments-Remembrance.mp3

Care for a stroll? Meandering Past Monuments of Remembrance – Postcards #49 (192k mp3, 34:19, 28MB)

Jerry Garcia Band (with John Kahn), acoustic, Oregon State Penitentiary, Lonesome Prison Blues, Salem OR 050582 via archive.org

New Riders of the Purple Sage w/ Robert Hunter, April 8, 2006, Venue: Mystic Theater, Petaluma, CA

Pete Stone – Golden Frontier via KEXP Song of the Day

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Bonus notes (to add links):

Back home on the North Vancouver porch, Dave reads from Clay Mcleod’s essay Why I Don’t Wear a Poppy while sending peace and resistance towards the decent lieutenant Magnum in Iraq and the Philippines along with earnest comrades at arms and peaceful strangers in war torn lands. Plus he admonishes the Canadian Legion for blocking the sale of white poppies while banjo-ist Wm. Lenker sings from the woodshed and The Grateful Dead leave this Brokedown Palace… on my hands and my knees, I will roll roll roll…

https://archive.org/download/Postcard48PeaceToSolidersAndStrangers/Postcard-48-Peace-to-Soliders-and-Strangers.mp3

Sit for a spell with Peace to Soldiers and Strangers – Postcard #48 (.mp3, 16:58, 13MB)

Thanks to:

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Bonus:

Canadian Legion hassling the Peace Pledge Union folks about selling White Poppies

Be sure to order white poppies early (shipped across the Atlantic) and read the loquacious discourse on this most critical of topics. Make no mistake, the way to honour ultimate sacrifice is to ensure no such future bloodshed is required from man’s inability to get along. And we (all of us) have a right to respect the fallen in a manner which suits our conscience and not a method prescribed by the Legion or anyone else.

Here’s Peace Pledge’s quick overview:

Last year The Royal Canadian Legion through it legal representative demanded that Canadian groups stop distribution them and that the PPU stop making white poppies available in Canada, or else. That was the gist, though expressed in more formal language. According to the RCL’s legal representatives, the white poppy infringes the Legion’s poppy trademark. The PPU replied at length; our central point was that we disagreed with their argument. We have not heard from them since but the Canadian shop at the centre of this complaint regrettably had to acquiesce. You can read more about this at http://tinyurl.com/2mc7pq where you can also find out about the white poppy project and the PPU.

Following the legal threats both the promoters in Canada and Canadians who bought the poppy from us hoped that white poppies would again be available in Canada this year.

White poppies in any quantity are available from us for dispatch anywhere in the world including Canada.

A story about Iraqi resistance fighters and their personal motivations by a young writer called Waiting in Baghdad is the crux of the next White Poppies for Remembrance episode – read from the homeporch with a Welsh mining lantern and firetrucks rolling past. Written by Chris K, a player on a dave-coached in-line hockey team in Olympia Washington in 2002.

https://archive.org/download/Postcard47WaitingResistingInBaghdad/Postcard-47-Waiting-Resisting-in-Baghdad.mp3

Hunker down for: Waiting (and Resisting) in Baghdad – Postcard #47 (22:16, 21MB, .mp3)

Music:

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Taking a Remembrance Day respite to enjoy a conscious discussion with ‘Trigger’ at Vancouver’s New Amsterdam Cafe, Dave O listens to the consequences and conditions of space, in tangible and gestalt senses, and reviews the paradigm shifts of Vancouver’s downtown Eastside ‘four corners’ – once one of the grandest intersections in the British Empire.

Later, he wanders and reads Walt Whitman (When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d) and Gord Downie (from Coke Machine Glow) to bring it ’round home for this part #7 of the White Poppies for Remembrance series.

https://archive.org/download/Postcard46MetaPhysicalConditionsOfTheEnvironment/Postcard-46-Meta-Physical-Conditions-of-the-Environment.mp3

Cross the street for: (Meta)Physical Conditions of the Environment – Postcard #46 (18:47, 26MB, 128k mp3)

Music by:

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