Notes for the video I put together from my poem and from old photos of a jazz musical I did in 1953 . . .
This ‘90’s poem evokes my ‘50’s time when I was intensely discovering and attempting to play and write jazz tunes. Our predominant small town music was pop ballads and western music. For this video I used existent photographs I have of the performance of Club Progressions, the musical I wrote and produced with many friends’ help on April 30, 1953 in my senior year at Roswell Senior High School. Richard Olson, teacher, took the photographs of the stage. I took most of the photographs of the combo and high school performers, band members, fellow students.
I wrote the “progressive jazz” pieces and Arthur Gaddis, English teacher, was kind enough to write lyrics. Our combo was Lyman Lea tenor sax, Sal Gonzales drums and me piano. Cast was Cornelia Magee, Jeannine Hooper and Louis Gonzales, principal singers, with Jeannine leading dance numbers. Oliver Owen and Bill Taylor were the romantic and character leads, respectively. Dancers were Jeddie McEvoy, Nene Ackerman and Jeanie Shomp. Club gatherers, who served as a chorus, were Floyd Hardimon, Priscilla Trout, Louis Gonzales. Carmelita Shultz, Don Dye, Ardith Jernigan, Jerry Yowell and Betty Boellner. Bruce Hood, who also effected the art work, was club waiter. Stage manager was Dorris Drew. Bennie Farmer and John Lankford stage crew. Many thanks and love from me to you now all almost 70 years after.
Larry Goodell, Placitas, New Mexico, July 5, 2021.
Cast and crew CLUB PROGRESSIONS, 1953, photo by Richard Olsen
Choose a Boston Butt Pork Roast (I used a 3.7 pound roast). Trim obvious fat. Put in large pot with some olive oil.
Brown on all sides pretty high heat.
Pour in chicken stock to barely cover.
Turn boil down to a medium simmer. Add a cup or cup and a quarter of hot Chimayo, New Mexico red chile powder. (Available at T & T in bags in Bernalillo – medium, hot and extra hot.)
Add some chopped garlic cloves (or some Placitas garlic oil.) Add a teaspoon of ground cumin, teaspoon of oregano, half teaspoon of salt (chicken stock has salt in it). Add half a teaspoon of coriander powder and a teaspoon of basil. You might want to add more of any of these now or later.
Cover pot and set to medium simmer for about an hour and a half (just making sure meat is well cooked)
Remove just the meat and pull it apart. Return the pulled pork to the chile and cook for another 10 minutes or so.
Put some of the cooked chile in a bowl and thoroughly stir in up a half cup of flour and add that while stirring to the chile. Make sure no flour lumps. Continue cooking for another 10 or more minutes.
Taste for salt and heat. It may seem hotter at end of cooking than it will be when served. Serve in a bowl topped with grated extra sharp cheddar if you like. Some sour cream on top is delicious. And also use it to make enchiladas or smothered burritos.
This recipe is originally from Frances Perea in Placitas. So this is a bit of a memorial to her. I have no idea how close this is to the original but I’ve been fixing it for years. Love and happy healthy eating to all!
Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico / February 28, 2021.
Children dressed as jaguars dancing directed by choreographer and dancer Lindsay Mayo in Santa Fe, 1998, as I read the intro and poem on the side of the stage!
Introduction
Too many of us & not enough of them Spotted cats endangered from poaching from our slashing & burning. Recovery of bald eagle whooping crane habitat protection is supreme. Too many of us & not enough of them. Recovery is supreme. Recovery of the earth and her ills healed. Man, woman shrinking, earth staying the same blossoming into itself is my dream. Habitat protection is supreme bald eagle whooping crane — the spotted cats endangered because of poaching slashing & burning. Too many of us & not enough of them. But man, woman shrinking our absurd population earth staying the same blossoming into itself is supreme. Oh glorious spotted cats! Too many of us & not enough of them.
JAGUAR SEEN IN NEW MEXICO
Spot eye creep pounce
float feet cat sleep
ponder pool eye see
rock balance act taut
step steep growl meow
wonder weak way win
dash leap jump bristle
power gnash slash eat!
spot eye creep bounce
slide float walk seek out
flash sun spot coat
spotted flash sun coat
gone here there where
spot creep pounce out
gone where what when
why hey wow power
Jag- uar what power
Jag- uar beau- ty dreams out this hour
beau- ty beams out this hour Jag- uar
beau- ty streams out this hour
sun spot coat spotted flash coat fur gone
out this hour beau- ty Jag- uar Jag- uar Jag- uar Jag- uar
poems from a few years having to do with old friend Wayne Jones (1939-2020)
by Larry Goodell
Evie and Wayne: Dawn and Evening Twenty-Five Years Marriage /7Apr1990
East creates west. West keeps dropping off into the ocean. West floats back to the East and becomes East. East decides to go West. East meets West. West courts East. East Decides To stay. The arroyo is so nice after the rain, the tall cottonwoods the rain splats, the mud. And the West, howling at the sunset, so affectionate. East meets West and all the other directions come for dinner over and over the sun throws over the upside-down landscape of the clinging stars the outlines of real people from real directions revolving, staying, complaining, living, straying, teaching, groping with problems groping with the changing anatomy of the Earth, the Earth coming up to meet them again and provide them home, married, to work, the East becomes the West the West becomes diversity of the rhythms of change, the same damn thing changed, transfigured, transmogrified into daily marriage to joy marriage to change, over and over the age over and over the age silvers the light in the arroyo, aurora it’s simply dawn and evening evening and dawn.
November 15, 2009 for Steve Spalding and for Wayne Jones birthday celebration in Placitas reaching beyond 70
You have reached the vantage point where you can see all humanity. George Bush is now in Rectum Alley. Chinch-mouth Cheney is in daughter-pushing land, chipping off the old block. There’s a little hope in the vista we can build upon — as the multi-conglomerate maggots continue to gnaw away at our souls. But we can triumph by spitting democracy right back in their capitalist faces. Yes, an eternal note: all of us are created equal and thus speech ascends into freedom. Love pulverizes all with more love, like water dissolving, air breathing, blood warming, plants digesting, animals coming near to be fed. Life, the back bone of life. The creative dance of seeing through the haze to a distant galaxy that before Hubble we thought was only part of us — Welcome Andromeda! How we’ve expanded into ourselves! In our lifetime our borders have been stretched out and back so much that we can find humility. Not even a cog on a wheel, but a bump on the cog. Not even a bump but a bit of a bump. Not even a bit but a nano particle: human consciousness shrinks to where it’s at, and the world seems bigger. Seeing things clearly in every birth of a day. /from Foxhole Prayers in GROUNDED, duende press 2020
Have We Been Here? We Have Been Here /for Wayne Jones, at 80
Have we been here we have been here you and me and many others some came and left. Some came with spangles on left with mud on their boots. Many came and left. Remember the Vietnam War remember the Vietnam Vets as you are who came here lived here left remember marching down Central young people, we were younger some pregnant women marching the business people looking at us as we walked and when we danced danced in the bar to loud and louder bands some quieter or just a country fiddler or Ginsberg in a crowd dancing, chanting, people doing uncommon things the matching and uncoupling of people the handmade day to day activities embroidering blue work shirts long dresses, belly dancing, marriages love, remember love? drumming, ignorant chanting lighting stars on the forehead out of mind ritual guided drugs
shouting in canyons, marriages by the creek or next to red rock canyons rock groups from Taos Santa Fe Albuquerque, thr0ngs for New Years arts fairs, locally designed booths a casita almost a hermitage renting houses or squatting turning a place into a magnet for others much to surprise and confusion and some elder dislike of residents – so many could build unique dwellings – didn’t yours have a sloping floor? a commune, hell, just living together not me but I observed – doing farming, what’s new from California, New York, beads leather diets changing sweats, food stamps Tarot, I Ching, peyote poetry readings, photography, art even on basement walls, volleyball, most of all the music, live music groups fire station concerts 4th of July local real dancers dancing, we got hitched up had our own spring-fed swimming pool – we did all kinds of things, handmade stuff up from the ground – and everything turned over into the commerce of growth and we weathered, stayed or some of us, many were here anyway, we were all new and yet long time here as time robs of youth, the spirit stays stays on year after year
festival after festival, dance after dance plan after plan, job to job, place to place within a place, this place of little places, we come and we go in a village, and some died many died and we’re living now families of families changing growing up generations generating and children from tiny to teen to adult as different unwanted unneeded wars come and go and we’re stuck here with the gangster wealthy gone mad as we weather another political storm with still our integral spirit singing the song of the Earth the Fathering Sun the urgency of the local informed by the local it presses on to celebration do you hear that music which is this music the heart beat of memory in this circle of love and cooperation to get things done the theater we had is the theater we are. Have we been here we have been here you and me and many others some came and left many came and left, many stayed and here we are we have been here and here we are. /2019 11 26 from COMMONS, duende press 2020
“If music be the food of love, play on; give me excess of it . . .” – William Shakespeare in Twelfth Night
Note: the header for this blog is from a photograph by Wayne. Many photographs by Wayne are in this album on Facebook of Thunderbird Bar pictures and comments.
love to all, continuing, and to Wayne’s family and loved ones and friends . . . from Larry
Unknown singers, parsers of the present laying down words not to befuddle, but to clarify. We heard you, there, young, read by a friend in a small town where everyone gathered was interested. The words, phrases, cadences came like water from a spring brook, read by our old friend as you were there among us. The caught up surprises, the reading new meanings, concordances, a weaving for sure that must have fell from your mouth. Perhaps you were too young and unsure to read it out but our friend let it flow, just the conveyor of your words, as the transcendent levels spread out one after another, as something of nature one can experience in the fullest. When he finished, there was applause from all and congratulations even though a small town, with everyone present just who they are. That your father was such a well known poet we all knew, as something we studied, never quite being lifted off the ground, in fact, dulled as if read in a class by assignment.
I told you you’ve given us fresh thought, the power of youth inspired by your gift of natural flow and layers of freshness like deep breathing as clear as any new dawn to come. I left the group as we all felt he had regained us and pulled into new territories away from our stagnation.
Oh I hope he doesn’t touch a word, oh please don’t tamper with, ruin what is inspired. Thank you, I’m thinking here, roused from my dream, very early morning December 13th, 2020.
Meredith Rice was a painter and visionary, a friend since at least 1967. She lived from 1945 to 2012. See some of her work at 3 Dimensional Poetry. The painting there from her series during her struggles through cancer is illuminating. This beautiful hand written, drawn, assembled booklet, A Child’s Alphabet, Meredith did for the birth of our son Joel who was born in November of 1969. She sent the booklet through the mail to us General Delivery.
Presenting all I can in memory of Meredith Rice. An enlightening talent to us, to so many, as the pursuit to prevent cancer from taking more lives continues. Larry Goodell, Placitas, New Mexico larrynewmex@gmail.com Thank you, Meredith.
original, 2 sheetsvariation using computervariation using computer
Watercolor after a long time. I stopped these and painted sticks long before the show at Very Special Arts on North Fourth Street – where I did readings and showed some of the sticks (painted property markers) along with Jane Sprague works, Jim Burbank works, and Lenore Goodell works . . . an accumulative surprise. I may do more watercolors. 2 sheets side by side.
larry goodell / 7november2019 / placitas, new mexico / usa
Sue Ann Carpenter writes about her acting in Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman in New Mexico: “did this at old town studio in 1970 – directed by geno silva classmate of mine at unm – it was a cool play – great dialogue – we were on stage about one hour just the two of us one act – then we were picked up to take it to don juan playhouse in pojoaque & los alamos.
“nick abdalla sculpture and friend from Albuquerque took photos..
“ron givens was an actor in Albuquerque – he was excellent – I think the closed in performance in the small old town theatre was more effective – geno directed it where the audience was in the play – the whole theater was set up like a subway train with visual effects and sounds – ron and i were on the front seat facing the audience – only chairs were the setting – it was very effective – it ran a few weeks
“when nat simmons came to do it in los Alamos it was set outside in the amphitheatre – the play lost a lot of the ambiance – it was good but better inside – i was flattered when steve asked ron and me to perform a portion of it for his class – he was such a great addition to the unm staff anyway. . . ” Sue Ann Carpenter
“Dutchman is a play written by African-American playwright Amiri Baraka, then known as Leroi Jones. Dutchman was first presented at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village, New York City, on March 1964.” (Wikipedia)
Sue Ann Carpenter lives in Roswell, New Mexico. Thank you for this.
/larry goodell / placitas, new mexico
It’ll get out of hand if you hand it over to a cruel hand.
They’re waiting in the shadows to dust your future with disaster.
And then you cough and come down with lung rot.
Or simply die untended with cancer or simply die unattended with cancer.
Healthcare is a right and not a privilege of the privileged
who have no interest in your rights and would assume you have none.
For isn’t it a club as they try to get to the club of the club of the clubs
and more of them make it while the earth of everyone what we used to call the masses
are their debris for their wealth must be strangled out of something
mainly you and me, the cocksie Koch’s are cockless about what’s going on
their think tanks can be run by only so many people – they forget the bees
yes the busy bees of persistence, dedication perseverance passion
insistence millions of little bees the whole alphabet of resistance
for what is right, common sense, commonality, non-party insistence on the good
the eruption of care, yes care for others, not do as thou wilt
but do unto others what you would have them do unto you
or have you forgotten, you stupid you, with all your brains narrowed into conniving
you forget the bees, we bees work together and we butterflies, you forget the butterflies
we’re in flocks and we can move great distances as well as be beautiful at home
you forget the wolves, hey we’re growing in numbers
and we’re good predators for preserving the balance of nature
and you idiot buffoons in your gold-plated pantaloons
forget all the migrating birds, we move openly and mysteriously
great distances following the patterns of nature
have you heard of the patterns of nature, have you even heard of Nature
I didn’t say despoiling I didn’t say poisoning, corrupting, dominating
destroying raping exhausting, misusing, fraking and generally fucking everything up
I said patterns of Nature, Nature undominated but cooperated with
as the Earth itself presents solutions – Nature, Mother Nature, Father Sun
the Moon Magician and the Universe of Stars Galaxies of Higher Powers
cockeyed cockamania corporations of calculated accumulation
massive power of the few, you few are few – watch out for the ants
the ants working everywhere millions and millions, ants here
ants there, ants everywhere crawling up your legs to bite
your you know what and you can’t stop us we’re at the
polls we’re in the voting polls, we’re better known as the populace –
we’re everything you’ve ever not wanted to happen
and sooner or later your manipulating the vote gets overwhelmed with
the rush and flood and tsunami of the popular, who really won the last election?
We more than exist – we sing, we create, we make scientific discoveries
we do business with everybody we’re every color of the rainbow and then some
we’re into the commons and we demand that the billions going into the military be accounted for, heard of public accounting?
Not for greed & war, but for good
and the millions going into our common needs be encouraged in schools, government, roads bridges internet education – and fun
till the commons is again common, and common sense prevails
teachers scientists artists respected
living wage workers’ unions listened to, co-ops building, private business flourishing, green and all color industries prospering
sane laws kicking out assault weapons, national buy back of guns
cutting violence and boosting mental care, law-abiding hunters
and fishers and conservationists valued, women’s voices heard and believed and the addictions to hate & drugs turning into addictions
of compassionate love, we bees we butterflies we birds we wolves
we ants, we native plants, we cooperative humans flowering,
we sunflowers along every road in America, backyards and fields,
not only are we along the roads, we’re in the roads, driving and walking colorful attending, we the engaged populace standing up everywhere
turning away lies and celebrating truth
open minds bound to free speech, and separation of church & state,
every woman and man born equal under law & love
peace of mind and health of mind & body joining hands
joining hands with civility, a new name in our honor – we might as well sing let
freedom ring.
Larry Goodell / Placitas, New Mexico / October 29, 2018
