People, entities, and events mentioned in Brautigan Bibliography and Archive are categorized alphabetically in this index. Links to references to a particular topic are provided, as are links links to related information or resources.

Use the links below to access further information about topics of interest.



(1935 - )
Brautigan's first wife. Nickname Ginny, or Ginger. She and Brautigan first met in the Fall of 1956. More . . .

Alder and Brautigan were married 8 June 1957 in Reno, Nevada. More . . . See also the Genealogy page.

Helped Brautigan self-publish his first book of poetry Return of the Rivers in 1957. More . . .

Artist Kenn Davis recounts working with Alder and Brautigan to produce and distribute Return of the Rivers. More . . .

Helped Brautigan self-publish his third book of poetry Lay the Marble Tea in 1959. More . . .

A photograph taken by Alder of Brautigan in San Francisco, California, in 1959.

Daughter, Ianthe, born, 25 March 1960. More . . .

Helped Brautigan self-publish his fourth book of poetry The Octopus Frontier in 1960. More . . .

Alder, Brautigan, and daughter Ianthe camped in Idaho during the Summer of 1961, while Brautigan wrote Trout Fishing in America. More . . .

Alder and Brautigan separated 24 December 1962 and were divorced 17 February 1970 in San Francisco. More . . .

The cause of the separation was, apparently, an affair between Alder and Tony Aste precipitated by Brautigan's frequent late night drinking with friends More . . . (1912- )
An editor whose work with Grove Press and Four Seasons Foundation was significant to enlarging the contemporary American poetry canon. He edited The New American Poetry: 1945-1960 (New York: Grove Press, 1960), an anthology that introduced the Beat, Black Mountain, and New York poets to a wider audience. He also edited Jack Kerouac's Mexico City Blues and the "San Francisco scene" issue of Evergreen Review (issue 2, 1957; edited with Barney Rossett, published in New York, New York, 1957-1973) that contained the first separate printing of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl," one of the two, along with Kerouac's novel On the Road, defining works of the Beat Generation.

The publication of Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems, in 1956, by City Lights Books started one of the most important first amendment battles of the twentieth century. City Lights publisher and owner Lawrence Ferlinghetti and City Lights store manager Shigeyoshi Murao were arrested, charged with publishing and distributing "obscene material." Attorney Al Bendich successfully defended the court case, which was decided in favor of City Lights Books. As a result, Ginsberg and City Lights Books became known world-wide and the court decision set a crucial precedent for subsequent free speech battles. Useful references include Howl on Trial: The Battle for Free Expression (Bill Morgan, editor) and Howl: Fifty Years Later (Jason Shindler, editor).

In addition to Ginsberg, Allen also published work by Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, and Richard Brautigan.

According to Michael McClure:

Editor Donald M. Allen "discovered" Richard—put his faith in Richard, publishing Trout Fishing, then In Watermelon Sugar and The Pill. It was Don who brought together the San Francisco Issue of Evergreen Review in 1957, linking up [Allen] Ginsberg, [Jack] Kerouac, [Robert] Duncan, [Jack] Spicer, [James] Broughton, [William] Everson [Brother Antoninus], [Philip] Lamantia, and me for the literary public eye. And it was Don who edited the major poetry-world shaker, The New American Poetry, in 1960. (Michael McClure 42)

As editor of The Evergreen Review (with Barney Rosset; numbers 1-6 only) and West Coast representative of Grove Press, Allen was the driving force behind Brautigan's early work. He convinced Barney Rossett at Grove Press in New York, New York, to purchase option rights to Brautigan's first three novels, Trout Fishing in America, A Confederate General from Big Sur, and In Watermelon Sugar. After purchase, Grove rejected all but A Confederate General from Big Sur, publishing that novel in 1964. Allen eventually published Trout Fishing in America in 1967 and In Watermelon Sugar in 1968 under the imprint of his own nonprofit press, Four Seasons Foundation. He published Brautigan's major poetry collection, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster, in 1968.

Photographer Erik Weber and Brautigan convinced Allen to use a different photograph for the front cover of Trout Fishing in America. More . . .

Edited, with Robert Creeley, The New Writing in the USA. Included first publication of the chapter "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard" from Brautigan's novel Trout Fishing in America. More . . .

Brautigan dedicated his novel In Watermelon Suger to poet Joanne Kyger, poet Michael McClure, and Allen. More . . .

Recorded a spoken version of Brautigan's "Love Poem" for the record album Listening to Richard Brautigan. More . . .

Allen's comments were included in the essay "Brautigan's Wake," by Peter Manso and Michael McClure, published in Vanity Fair in May 1985, the year after Brautigan's death. More . . .

In addition to Brautigan, Allen worked with many of the important Beat and contemporary poets and writers of the 1960s. His unpublished anthology of the San Francisco Renaissance, circa 1965 is collected at Stanford University Library, Stanford University, Stanford, California. More . . .

Allen's papers, collected at Geisel Library, University of California, San Diego, California, include manuscripts and correspondence with Brautigan as well as other writers and editors. More . . .

Allen's own poetry was included in the November 1959 issue of Jack Spicer's literary magazine, J, along with the first appearance of Brautigan's poems "The Pumpkin Tide," "The Sidney Greenstreet Blues," and "Surprise."

Don Allen's death leaves a very large hole, although one knew it had to come, as obviously it does for all. But for my company and for me he was the one who managed the defining connection again and again, as with Charles Olson, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Douglas Woolf, Richard Brautigan, and a far wider loop of writers than these few can even begin to suggest. For example, he is the crucial editor at Grove Press for John Rechy's City of Night (1963) and it's also Don who publishes in his own "Writing" series Pamela Millward's Mother: A Novel of the Revolution (San Francisco. 1970) and Dale Herd's Early Morning Wind (Bolinas, 1972). I cannot think of another editor of that now past century who so located and prepared the publication of so much one recognizes as bedrock, Frank O'Hara, Federico Garcia Lorca, and on and on and on.

He was, as all who knew him as friend will testify, a wonderfully droll and perceptive ally, a suavely hip and securing host, who in all manner of situation was never seemingly at a loss. I remember going with him into a typical standup cowboy bar late one night as we were driving from Vancouver back to Albuquerque and Don's asking the bartender, when finally we got his attention, what kind of vermouth he used in his martinis. Likewise, thinking of martinis, I remember Don's suggesting we stop as we were again driving together up to see Bill Eastlake in Cuba, NM by way of a back road through Jemez Springs. It was late spring and there was a fresh fall of snow under the pines, some of which Don then scooped up for the martinis he poured for us from his fabulous silver flask.

His style was always a dear and abiding pleasure. It was certainly there the first time we met in the early fifties, when I'd come begging to New Directions where he was an editor, hoping for some sort of job. There wasn't any but as I was leaving, Don said something like, But you should at least have a book, and reaching his hand behind him, be it said, without looking, he got and handed me Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales.

Thanks to his generous invitation, I worked with him in the editing of several anthologies of those years, New American Story (Grove, 1965) and The New Writing in the USA (Penguin, 1967). The last is one of my own favorites, just that it gave us chance to use a variety of so-called genre, not just one at a time. The first has a notable absence for which I was responsible and which still makes me wince. Don had suggested we include something from Richard Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, but for whatever reason, I was feeling depressed and very serious, and so didn't get it. When I did it was just too late.

Most recently I heard of Don from dear mutual friends Ellen Tallman and Robin Blaser, both of whom had known him since proverbial school days. His pleasantly teasing and provocative charms did not in the least lessen with age. In fact, he grew if anything more wry and engaging than ever. I know that his "editorial" intelligence never flagged as witness his edition with Ben Friedlander of Olson's Collected Prose (University of California Press, 1997). Finally, it's Don's New American Poetry, which brings us all into the world, and that work is still in print after very nearly fifty years. Some things—like Don Allen—are forever.
—Robert Creeley
Providence, Rhode Island
September 19, 2004

READ Creeley's obituary at The Empty Mirror website.

"Donald Allen, 92, Book Editor of Bold New Voices in Poetry, Dies"
Wolfgang Saxon
The New York Times 9 September 2004

Donald Merriam Allen, a poetry editor whose 1960 anthology of the era's contemporary and avant-garde poets remains a milestone in American letters, died on Aug. 29 in San Francisco. He was 92.

His death was announced by his friend and executor, Michael Williams.

Mr. Allen started compiling his landmark collection in 1958 as an editor at Grove Press. In "The New American Poetry: 1945-1960" he presented a new generation. It offered a sampler of 44 young voices arranged in five overlapping groupings, and was one of the first countercultural collections of American verse. The difference between the older traditional voices and the new was described by Robert Lowell as the difference between the "cooked" and the "raw."

There were the Black Mountain poets like Charles Olson, Robert Duncan and Robert Creeley; the San Francsico renaissance voices of James Broughton, Madeline Gleason and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; the beat generation of Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso; the New York poets like John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara; and a fifth group of younger names without geographical definition, including Philip Whalen and Stuart Z. Perkoff.

Mr. Allen's handiwork caused a literary stir and upset the poetry establishment in particular. It spotlighted some large new talents culled from small magazines and lent a degree of respectability even to fringe lyricists from San Francisco and its environs.

What united them, Harvey Shapiro noted in his review in The New York Times in 1960, was their disdain for traditional great English and American poetry and poets. More disapprovingly, the critic John Simon wrote, "Mr. Allen's anthology divides all gall into five parts."

But the work endured and was reissued most recently by the University of California Press, where it remains in print. In 1975 Mr. Allen edited, with Warren Tallman, an updated companion volume to the 1960 anthology, "The Poetics of the New American Poetry" (Grove).

Donald Allen was born in Muscatine, Iowa, the son of a doctor. He graduated in 1934 from the University of Iowa, from which he also received an M.A. in English literature a year later. After postgraduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley, he moved to New York. He was an editor at Grove from 1950 to 1970, both in New York and later on the West Coast, where he was co-editor of Grove's Evergreen Review.

He translated four plays by Eugene Ionesco (Grove, 1958), and his versions of "The Bald Soprano" and "The Lesson" continue to be staged. He edited selections of writings by O'Hara, Olson, Kerouac, Mr. Creeley, Edward Dorn, Jack Spicer and others.

To promote his favorite writers he founded and managed two literary presses, Grey Fox and Four Seasons Foundation, which published the new poetry along with books on philosophy and Buddhism and gay and lesbian literature.

Mr. Allen is survived by a sister, Kathryn Payne of Charlottesville, Va.

"Donald M. Allen, Poetry Editor, Dies at 92"
The Washington Post 6 September 2004, B07

Donald M. Allen, 92, a poetry editor who celebrated the Beat writers, edited Jack Kerouac and published an acclaimed anthology of American poetry, died Aug. 29 in San Francisco after suffering from pneumonia.

Mr. Allen, a native of Cherokee, Iowa, had a lifelong interest in literature. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in English literature from the University of Iowa and taught English for many years.

He first made a name for himself as an editor at Grove Press in New York, where he published the acclaimed anthology "The New American Poetry 1945-1960." The collection introduced writers from the Beat Generation and the New York and Black Mountain schools.

"I think Donald was the best editor for poetry of the last few decades. He put certain poets on the map and put a more experimental, avant-garde poetry on the map," said Marjorie Perloff, author and professor emeritus at Stanford University, where some of Mr. Allen's manuscripts and correspondence are housed.

Mr. Allen edited Kerouac's "Mexico City Blues" and "the "San Francisco scene" issue of Evergreen Review (issue 2, 1957; edited with Barney Rossett, published in New York, New York, 1957-1973) which contained the first separate printing of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl."

He also founded two influential literary presses, Grey Fox Press and Four Seasons Foundation, which published Kerouac, Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Frank O'Hara, Robert Duncan, Philip Whalen, Philip Lamantia, Lew Welch and Joanne Kyger.

The presses also published works on philosophy and Buddhism and seminal gay titles. Mr. Allen also edited novelist and poet Richard Brautigan's first four books.

Survivors include a sister. (1932-1991)
Founder, along with Claude Hayward, of the Communication Company, a member of the Undergroud Press Syndicate (UPS), in early January 1967 as a fluid newspaper for the people in the Haight-Ashbury District, the center for San Francisco's psychedelic culture.

The Communication Company printed broadsides, flyers, and handbills for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, the Human Be-In, the The Invisible Circus, the Diggers, and other organizations, individuals, and events. Anderson often added his own perspective and comments to Communications Company publications, forming a running commentary on the evolving Haight-Ashbury scene. More . . . MUCH more . . .

In his mid-thirties, Anderson, a novelist and poet, was attracted to San Francisco's Beat literary scene and then to its emerging psychedelic culture. Looking for a way to get involved, Anderson decided to start a printing business. A fan of Marshall McLuhan, Anderson decided his business should be instantaneous, current, and immediately disposable.

Peck describes the history of the Communication Company in his book Uncovering the Sixties: The Life & Times of the Underground Press. Peck says Anderson had written for the Oracle, an underground newspaper centered in Haight-Ashbury, but felt it too elitist. He founded the Communication Company to function as a daily Oracle and add "perspective to the [San Francisco] Chronicle's fantasies" (Peck 46-47). More . . .

Co-founder Claude Hayward provides some interesting commentary about the Communications Company and its relationship with Brautigan. More . . .

By May 1967, Anderson had grown less enchanted with the Diggers and the psychedelic scene. The Diggers and Anderson's partners demanded the use of the Communication Company Gestetner machines for their own purposes. When the Communications Company offices moved to 742 Arguello Street in the Richmond District without any public announcement, business dropped by half and Anderson was effectively removed as the head of the company. By June he was completely barred from the company and its printing machines. Anderson left San Francisco and traveled to New York and Florida looking for other opportunities.

On 15 August 1967, Anderson published a six-page article in the underground press titled "Hippie Siamese Twins Split" in which he announced the final split between himself and the Diggers. Anderson also outlined plans for a new Communications Company which he planned to start when he returned to San Francisco (Perry 230).

Anderson never succeeded in starting another Communication Company and turned to editing Paul William's rock magazine Crawdaddy (the first U. S. rock magazine, founded in 1966) for some months. Williams, an editor and writer, was the literary executor of the Philip K. Dick estate and was largely responsible for the commercially successful posthumous publication of Dick's science fiction work. The Diggers put Anderson's original Gestetner machines at the service of Free City Publications which used them in very innovative ways to turn out publications that impressed even the Gestetner Company.

Anderson retired to Mendocino and Sonoma counties in Northern California where he worked occassionaly as a typographer (Charles Perry 296). He died in April 1991 in Homer, Georgia, where he lived with relatives.

Anderson led the organization for Bedrock One, a "rockdance-environment happening." More . . .

Anderson was also a science fiction novelist. His works include:

• Ten Years to Doomsday
  New York: Pyramid Books, 1964
  Front cover illustration by Ed Emsh
• The Butterfly Kid
  New York: Pyramid Books, 1967
  Bright psychedelic front cover illustration by Gary Morrow with the teaser, "The hippies had a new kick—from Outer Space!"; back cover photograph of Anderson
  A comic, surrealistic science fiction novel set in New York City's Greenwich Village; Anderson and his "sidekick" Michael Kurland save the world from blue Crustacea whose plan of conquest involves using a pill that actualizes the fantasies of the people of Greenwich Village. This novel was the first of a trilogy written with other authors, each of whom appears in the other's book. Other titles:
  • The Unicorn Girl
    with Michael Kurland; New York: Pyramid Books, 1969
    A woman wanders into Haight-Ashbury looking for someone to help her find her missing unicorn
  • The Probability Pad
    with Tim A. Waters; New York: Pyramid Books, 1970
    Enlists the aid of Anderson and Kurland in the investigation of strange happenings in a Manhattan apartment building and they find themselves being transported through time and fiction

LEARN more about Michael Kurland at his website.

Other books by Anderson:

• Fox and Hare: The Story of A Friday Night
  Glen Ellen, CA: Entwhistle, 1980), illustrated by Charles Stevenson
  About a group of hippies and their escapades with drugs and sex during a single night in New York City's East Village in the 1960s
• Everything Free
  A novel about the Haight-Ashbury district

Anderson also published works under the pseudonym, John Valentine.

The Chester Anderson Papers (ca. 1963-1980) are archived in the Bancroft Library Manuscript Collection at the University of California at Berkeley, California. Includes records of the Communication Company (January-September 1967), broadsides, flyers, and handbills printed for the Diggers, the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, San Francicso Mime Troupe, the Human Be-In, the Invisible Circus, as well as items printed for other organizations, individuals, and events. Includes a copy of a letter, dated 9 February 1967, written by Anderson to his friend, Thurlonius Benjamin Weed in Florida, discussing his move to San Francisco, his work, and his involvement in the Haight-Ashbury community. Also, includes edited typescripts of Puppies (Entwhistle Books, 1979) and Fox & Hare (Entwhistle Books, 1980). Organized in May 1966 by Ronnie G. Davis to encourage bypassing city-sponsored art and recognizing community-based artists and people of color who were being ignored. Davis, founder of the San Francisco Mime Troupe encouraged such activities as part of his personal opposition to foundational support for the arts. Members included Mime Troupers and other progressive artists who worked in a broad range of social issues. Circumventing official art presentations, ALF planned street fairs featuring the Mime Troupe, live music, puppet shows, and participatory activities.

Brautigan allegedly attended an October 1966 meeting of ALF, where the Diggers, a community action group, was formed. More . . .

The Diggers Archives website provides information about "The Artists' Liberation Front and the Formation of the Sixties Counterculture."

LEARN more about ALF at The Diggers Archives website.

Reg E. (Reggae) Williams maintains a website focusing on The Straight Theater. Information available there includes photographs of the 1966 Artists' Liberation Front Street Fair .

VIEW photographs at The Straight Theater website.
The Beats, short for Beatniks, rejected middle class American values in favor of more radical politics, bebop jazz, and experimental literature during the mid-1950s. Writers, artists, musicians, intellectuals, they centered themselves in New York and San Francisco. In San Francisco, the Beats made the North Beach area their headquarters. They gathered in coffee shops and bars, reading their defiant poetry, talking, and listening to black jazz musicians. Many critics argue the San Francisco contingent did more to define the Beat Movement, especially with regards to literature. It was in San Francisco, on October 13, 1955, at the Six Gallery on Fillmore Street that six San Francisco poets, Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Phillip Walen, Philip Lamantia, and Michael McClure (then just a teenager), read their poetry and, according to Jack Kerouac, the Beat generation novelist, started the San Francisco poetry renaissance. Most of the credit went to Ginsberg, whose epic poem "Howl" became one of the two defining works of the Beat Generation, along with Kerouac's novel On the Road. Another central writer was William S. Burroughs.

The term "Beat" originated in a autumn 1948 conversation between Jack Kerouac (author, later, in 1957, of On the Road) and John Clellan Holmes, where they tried to characterize themselves and others like them: individuals driven by a skeptical wariness, a furious urgency, and a voracious appetite. Kerouac used the phrase "beat generation," a slang term meaning beaten-down or exhausted.

Holmes used the term in his novel, Go (New York: Scribner's, 1952), as a label for his life and that of some of his friends like Kerouac, Neal Cassady (model for Kerouac's character Dean Moriarity), and Allen Ginsberg.

Gilbert Millstein, who reviewed the novel in The New York Times, commissioned Holmes to write an article for the New York Times Magazine about the distinctive features of the generation Holmes described in his novel. Holme's article "This Is the Beat Generation" (New York Times Magazine Nov. 16, 1952: 10, 19, 20, 22), which attracted more attention than the novel, credited Kerouac with coining the term and then provided a definition.

More than mere weariness, it implies the feeling of having been used, of being raw. It involves a sort of nakedness of mind, and, ultimately, of soul; a feeling of being reduced to the bedrock of consciousness. In short, it means being undramatically pushed up against the wall of oneself. (10) . . . Beneath the excess and conformity, there is something other than detachment. There are the stirrings of a quest. What the hipster is looking for in his "coolness" (withdrawal) or "flipness" (ectasy) is, after all, a feeling of somewhereness, not just another diversion (22).

Despite later claims by Kerouac that "Beat" could also carry connotations of and in fact came from "beatitude," the Beats' alienation from society led the media to conflate "Beat" with "outlaw" and produce the "Beat hipster" image. In late June 1958, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen combined the term "Beat" with the name of the new Russian satellite orbiting the Earth, Sputnik, and came up with "beatnik" to signify the "far out" lifestyle of these young, rebellious people who wore scruffy, generally all black jeans and turtleneck shirts and affected indifference to the values and traditions held by "normal" people (Barry Silesky 80-81). Barney Hoskyns, however, says the term "beatniks" was orignally coined by black jazz musicians as a pejorative term for the white hangers-on around the jazz music scene (Barney Hoskyns 37).

LEARN about more the Beats at the Literary Kicks website.

LEARN more about the Beats at The Wild Bohemian Home Page.

LEARN more about the Beats at Bruce Hodder's blog, Angel Head. A San Francisco literary magazine, published 1959-1987 but suspended 1961-1969, cooperatively edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, John Kelly, William Margolis, and Allen Ginsberg. The idea of the magazine was to "convey the sense of radical openness and free exchange they felt was at the heart of literary San Francisco" (Barry Silesky 101). The first issue, published 9 May 1959, promised an alternative to the mass culture diet. The title, Beatitude, came from the blessings by Christ at the Sermon on the Mount and, as claimed by Jack Kerouac, the root of the term "Beat." The editors announced the magazine would be mimeographed, nothing fancy, easily accessible. It would be

A weekly miscellany of poetry and other jazz designed to extol beauty and promote the beatific life among the various mendicants, neo-existentialists, christs, poets, painters, musicians, and other inhabitants and observers of North Beach, San Francisco, California, United States of America [edited on a] kick or miss basis by a few hardy types who sneak out of alleys near Grant Avenue. (Barry Silesky 101)

Begun in May 1959, by Ginsberg, Kaufman, and Kelly at Cassandra's Coffee House, the first issues were published at The Bread and Wine Mission on upper Grant Avenue, at the corner of Grant and Greenwich Street, the coffeehouse mission of Pierre Delattre, who remembered walking down the street, collecting poems for issues of the magazine (Delattre 36). More . . .

City Lights Books took over the publication beginning with issue #17, the only issue edited by Ferlinghetti and the one in which Brautigan's "Night," "Dive Bombing the Lower Emotions," and "Nine Crows: Two Out of Sequence" were first published under the heading "Some Montana Poems/1973." More . . .

In his book Ginsberg: A Biography (New York: HarperPerennial, 1989) Barry Miles says Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky were on the "bored of directors" (262).

Brautigan's poem "The Whorehouse at the Top of Mount Rainer" was first published in Beatitude (1) and reprinted in Beatitude Anthology. More . . .

Four Brautigan poems first published in Beatitude (4) and reprinted in Beatitude Anthology

• "The American Submarine." More . . .
• "A Postcard from the Bridge." More . . .
• "That Girl." More . . .

Brautigan's poem "The Sink" was first published in Beatitude (4). More . . .

Brautigan's poem "Swandragons" was first published in Beatitude (9) and reprinted in Beatitude Anthology. More . . .

Warren French gives special attention to Beatitude in his book, The San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, 1955-1960. More . . . "A rockdance-environment happening benefit for the Communication Company in honor of the c. i. a." The happening was held 5 March 1967 at California Hall, a large building owned by the German-American Association, two blocks from the Civic Center, 625 Polk Street, San Francisco.

A detailed mimeographed announcement (8.5" x 11" printed both sides in black ink on green paper) regarding the event was issued by the Communication Company. It first challenged the uniqueness and evolution of other, similiar events and said:

[W]e are going to prove that the rock dance can & ought to be a genuine Art Form. . . .

We [the event organizers, led by Chester Anderson, co-founder of the Communication Company] intend to evolve the art of the rock dance to the point that we can get any audience HIGH, any kind of high we choose, without the aid of narcotics or other chemical copouts. We feel that a rock dance should change your life, & we intend to see that it does.

To this end we are embarked upon an evolutionary process. We have, so far, three dances planned: Bedrock One, Bedrock Two and Bedrock Three. (We are nothing if not orderly.) The first will be better than sex, the second will be better than the first, and we expect to have to flee the city after the third.

Handbills (7" x 10") advertising this event were also produced by the Communication Company. They featured a photograph of interracial hands grasping a naked female torso on the front and a listing of events and performers on the back. Printed both sides in black ink on brown paper.

A poster (19.5" x 13.5"), also printed by the Communication Company, featured an illustration by Robert Crumb of a boy in overalls with a light bulb screwed into the top of his head. Printings in black ink on green paper and purple ink on white paper are reported. Other variants no doubt exist. Claude Hayward, co-founder of the Communication Company, verifies Crumb's creation of this poster. More . . .

Another poster (50 x 35 cm) featured a psychedelic illustration, with the text in whorls forming part of the background. Printed in shades of purple on beige poster paper.

Bedrock One was produced for the Communication Company by the Experimental Theatre Co-Op, L.A.M.F. and was directed by Anderson. Music was provided by the Steve Miller Blues Band, Dino Valente, and The Orkus'tra

Each damned good, each the best of its kind, each able to provide light shows for the blind.

Lights were provided by the Lysergic Power and Light Company

An experimental company with wild ideas & tons of equipment.

Opening and Closing Ceremonies were provided by The Radha Krishna Temple

To, among other things, tune the audience & make it receptive to whats [sic] about to happen, make it spiritually ready for love, and then, at the close, to prepare it for the outside world again. Any rock dance that isn't a religious event is a stone drag.

Floor Happenings were provided by the S. F. Mime Troupe, The Committee, Alan Dienstag and the Pack, The S.F. League for Sexual Freedom, and the Diggers (although their name was marked out on this announcement).

Staging theatrical productions on the dance floor, not just among the audience, but involving the audience. These groovy people will happen to you.

Poets included Richard Brautigan and The Caped Crusaders

Providing words to match the rest of the entertainment (if that's the word for it).

Hosts were Warren Hinkle III, editor of Ramparts, and Mark Comfort

noted Oakland Black Power hero, veteran of a million illegal & unconstitutional busts, who knows where it's at, & where we're at, & habitually tells it like it is.

(29 July 1908-27 May 1994; Read his obituary)
Father of Richard Brautigan. Born in Winlock, Washington. Worked as a laborer, lastly at plywood factories, Northwest Wood and Ware and Washington Door. World War II veteran. Died, age 85, in Tacoma, Washington.

Married Lulu Mary Keho (known as Mary Lou) 18 July 1927 in Tacoma. Bernard was twenty seven. Mary Lou was twenty three. They were legally separated on 25 November 1938 but had been separated in fact long before, possibly as early as 1934, before the birth of their son, Richard, on 30 January 1935. Mary Lou said, "I left him [Bernard] with everything I owned in a paper sack. I didn't even know that I was pregnant" (Ianthe Brautigan 160). They divorced on 17 January 1948, in Tacoma.

While most accounts agree that Mary Lou and Bernard separated prior to Richard Brautigan's birth, there is less agreement regarding who knew she was pregnant and when. More . . .

Allegedly went to stepbrother, Edward Dixon, after leaving Bernard. More . . .

Allegedly met his son, Richard, only twice. More . . .

Denied any knowledge of his son, Richard Brautigan in a UPI news feed following Brautigan's death. Also includes information about Bernard's relationship with other members of the Brautigan family. More . . .

"Brautigan's Suicide Rekindles Bad Feelings," an article by Mark Barabak in the San Francisco Chronicle. More . . .

"Bernard Brautigan," an article in the Detroit Free Press. More . . .

See also the Genealogy page. (25 March 1960- )
Daughter of Richard Brautigan and Virgina Alder. Born in San Francisco, California. Married Paul Swensen, a film director, 5 September 1981 in Santa Rosa, California. Her name comes from Greek ion for "violet" and anthos for "flower." Brautigan dedicated his novel A Confederate General from Big Sur to Ianthe.

Author of You Can't Catch Death, a memoir of the life and death of her father. Reviews and more . . .

Recounted various stories and observations about her father

• The separation of Brautigan's parents before his birth. More . . .
• Brautigan said he met his father only twice. More . . .
• Brautigan's early life in Tacoma, Washington. More . . .
• Brautigan's abuse as a child. More . . .
• Brautigan's story of being abandoned in Great Falls, Montana. More . . .
• Brautigan's childhood in Eugene, Oregon. More . . .
• Brautigan remarks concerning his mother. More . . .
• Brautigan learning his true surname prior to graduation from high school. More . . .
• Brautigan remembered by his classmates. More . . .
• Brautigan writing in high school. More . . .
• Brautigan's work after graduate from high school. More . . .
• Brautigan broke a window in the Eugene, Oregon Police Station, Dec. 1955. More . . .
• Brautigan receiving electric shock treatments while confined in the Oregon State Hospital. More . . .
• Different family impressions of Brautigan's stay in the State Hospital; Brautigan's remark about his release. More . . .
• The "lost" manuscript for Brautigan's novel, God of the Martians. More . . .
• The start of Brautigan's life in San Francisco in 1956. More . . .
• Her parent's apartment after their marriage. More . . .
• Her parent's separation. More . . .
• Brautigan's Geary Street apartment in San Francisco. More . . .
• The success of Brautigan's record album, "Listening to Richard Brautigan."More . . .

Recorded Brautigan's "Love Poem" for inclusion on his record album, "Listening to Richard Brautigan." More . . .

Controls all literary rights to Brautigan's work and estate. More . . .

Made a 30-minute movie, with husband Paul Swenson, of Brautigan's So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away. More . . . and More . . .

Gave permission for production of "The Brautigan Basement Tapes" (1998) More . . . and "BBT '99 The Brautigan Basement Tapes" (1999) More . . .

Various comments from and about Ianthe in reviews of her book, You Can't Catch Death. More . . . See also reviews of her book in conjunction with Brautigan's An Unfortunate Woman. More . . .

Related a story about Brautigan as part of the limited release of his novel, Trout Fishing in America. More . . .

Related a story, at the 50th Anniversary of City Lights Books, about Brautigan. More . . .

Appeared on the front cover of Brautigan's first collected works, with Brautigan and Michaela Clark LeGrand. More . . .

A photograph of Ianthe and Brautigan in front of his Montana ranch barn. More . . .

***A photograph of Ianthe as a young girl with father, Richard Brautigan, in San Francisco.

See also Genealogy page. Adopted name for William Everson, a San Francisco Bay-area poet, printer, and small-press operator. Everson, with Kermit Sheets and Adrian Wilson, all conscientious objectors in a camp in Waldport, Oregon, during World War II, published poetry books as Untide Press, a reaction against the camp's newspaper, The Tide. After their release in 1947, all three moved to San Francisco and pursued individual interests. Everson printed programs and posters for The Interplayers, a theater group, and established The Equinox Press in Berkeley, California. In 1958, he moved to Oakland, California, renamed his press Albertus Magnus, and himself Brother Antoninus. Kermit Sheets founded Centaur Press in San Francisco in 1949. He commissioned Adrian Wilson to print Glen Coffield's The Night is Where you Fly, illustrated by Lee Mullican (Alastair Johnston 6).

Included, with Brautigan and others, in The San Francisco Poets, edited by David Meltzer, 1971. More . . .

Reprinted in Meltzer's Golden Gate: Interviews with 5 San Francisco Poets, 1976. More . . .

Reprinted in Meltzer's San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets, 2001. More . . . Film-maker and poet, known for his film The Bed that featured celebrities on a bed. Broughton filmed Brautigan but did not use the sequence in the final version of the film.

Contributed a poem, along with Brautigan and others, to Poetry Folio: 1964, a collection of poetry printed as broadsides, 1964. More . . . and More . . .

Work included, along with Brautigan's "Psalm," in Winter 1958 issue of San Francisco Review. More . . .
(1931-1995) Novelist and friend of Brautigan. He was deeply troubled by Brautigan's suicide in 1984 and took his own life in a similar manner eleven years later in the face of mounting medical problems. Carpenter and Brautigan were good, long-time friends. Brautigan dedicated Revenge of the Lawn to Carpenter.

Participated, with Brautigan, in the Creative Arts Conference. More . . .

Reviewed Brautigan's Tokyo-Montana Express. More . . .

Brautigan wrote promotional blurbs for Carpenter's novel The Class of '49. More . . . and his novel Getting Off. More . . .

Carpenter's comments were included in the essay "Brautigan's Wake," by Peter Manso and Michael McClure, published in Vanity Fair in May 1985, the year after Brautigan's death. More . . .

Quoted in various obituaries following Brautigan's death

• "Brautigan-Obit." More . . .
• "Friends Find Author Brautigan Dead at his Home in California" More . . .
• "Brautigan-Obit." More . . .
• "Brautigan-Obit." More . . .
• "My Brautigan: A Portrait from Memory." More . . .
• "A Weekend of Memories of Brautigan." More . . .

Carpenter's own death prompted writers to connect him with Brautigan. More . . .

LEARN more about Don Carpenter at a website maintained by Chris Cefalu. City Lights Booksellers and Publishers, located at 261 Columbus Avenue at Broadway in San Francisco, was the country's first all paperback book store. Founded as City Lights Pocket Books in June 1953 by Peter D. Martin, son of assassinated Italian anarchist Carlo Tresca and sociology instructor at San Francisco State University, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a former English instructor at San Francisco State College. Each contributed $500.00 to the venture. It was Martin's idea to open an all-paperback bookstore. This was just prior to publishers producing inexpensive paperback books. The only ones available at the time were the Pocket and Avon series sold in drugstores and the British Penguin series. Martin hoped to finance his pop-culture magazine, City Lights, through the sale of paperback books, magazines, and newspapers. His magazine editorial offices were located on the second floor. Both the magazine and the bookstore were named for the 1931 Charles Chaplin film which portrayed the little, subjective man against the world. City Lights lasted only five issues, but notably published the first film criticism by Pauline Kael.

Martin departed for New York within a year of founding City Lights Books and Shigeyoshi Murao became manager. In January 1955 Ferlinghetti purchased the bookstore from Martin. He wanted to use the bookstore to finance publishing avant-garde literature and poetry. Inspired by the livres de poche, pocket books, he had seen in France, Ferlinghetti decided to call his venture "Pocket Poets" (Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Nancy Peters 163 and Barry Silesky 57-59).

The article "City Lights and the Counterculture: 1961-1974; And the Beat Goes On" (Heidi Benson, Jane Ganahl, Jesse Hamlin, and James Sullivan San Francisco Chronicle 9 June 2003: D1, D4-D7) is Chapter Two of a celebration of the 50th anniversary of City Lights Books. Features testimonials from several people regarding their association with or relationship to the bookstore. One, author Herb Gold says:

Richard Brautigan used to be here a lot. He used to describe himself as the "Gestetner Rabbi" because he was producing his poetry on the Gestetner mimeograph machine. He would come into City Lights and sell to people who were presumably there to buy City Lights books. I used to see Brautigan curtsy. It was very odd. When people would ask him to sign a book, or when he met a young woman he liked, instead of bowing, he would curtsy. It was a funny gesture, to see this tall "Confederate General" curtsy. (D5)

Daughter, Ianthe Brautigan says:

When I was a little girl, 3 or 4, we'd go in to City Lights and my father would check to see if any of his poetry pamphlets had sold. It'd be a little bit of cash, and then we could go do something else. When I think about going to other bookstores then, I think about "Jonathan Livingston Seagull." My dad, I remember him leafing through that and saying "I don't understand. Why are people buying this?" (D5)

City Lights Books formed the backdrop for the famous photograph "The Last Gathering of the Beats" by Larry Keenan. More . . .

City Lights Books records, correspondence, and other papers. More . . .

READ this article at the San Francisco Chronicle website.

LEARN more about City Lights Booksellers and Publishers at the City Lights website. (1941-29 April 2004)
Noted San Francisco poet and founder and editer of the legendary The San Francisco Oracle, a psychedelic-hued underground newspaper published in Haight-Ashbury throughout the late 1960s.

The San Francisco Oracle was printed by the Howard Quinn Co., at 298 Alabama Street, along with the San Francisco Bay Guardian, the Black Panther paper, the Berkeley Barb, and other underground and alternative newspapers of the era.

With its graphics and experimental multiple color printing, especially on its front covers, The San Francisco Oracle created a revolution in newspaper printing. In its first issue, The Oracle called itself "a Living Journal, reflective of our involvement in our environment." Part of this reflection would come through the merging of the word "with photography and illustration in an organic form of graphic communication" (The San Francisco Oracle September 9, 1966: 2).

The San Francisco Oracle, though Cohen's leadership, also created a revolution in thinking about current culture and the war in Vietnam.

Cohen, Allen, ed. The San Francisco Oracle Facsimile Edition. Berkeley, CA: Regent Press, 1991.
Facsimile reproduction, including original colors, of the entire run of the psychedelic newspaper of the Haight-Ashbury district from 3 September 1966-February 1968. Includes the pre-Oracle P.O. Frisco and Issues 1-12 of The Oracle.

Cohen also helped originate the Human Be-In.

Cohen discusses the founding of The San Francsico Oracle in an essay archived at the "Rockument" website.

READ Cohen's essay at the Rockument website.

Cohen wrote a tribute to Brautigan titled "Richard Brautigan—A Rememberance." The tribute is available online in the "Allen Cohen Poetry" portion of the S.F. Heart website.

READ Cohen's tribute to Brautigan at the S. F. Heart website. Founding member (along with Peter Berg and Emmett Grogan) of the Diggers, a group of civic anarchists active in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district 1966-1968 who tried to achieve social change through street theater, leaderless events, and services to the needy (Keith Abbott 35). Named after a seventeenth-century English communist religious sect, the Diggers evolved from a desire to combine theater and politics.

Cohon moved to San Francisco in August 1964 to pursue a graduate degree in creative writing at San Francisco State College. He quickly became involved with the Actors Workshop, founded by Herb Blau and Jules Irving, who left San Francisco soon after Cohon's arrival to start the Lincoln Center in New York, New York. Seeking more involvement and recognition, he joined The San Francisco Mime Troupe.

In 1966, Cohon, Berg, Grogan, and other members of the Mime Troupe formed the Diggers. In 1967, they started calling themselves the Free City Collective (Charles Perry 216). Later that year and early the next both the Diggers and the Free City Collective disintegrated from internal political dissent and pressure from established political structures within San Francisco.

Cohon changed his last name to Coyote and became a film actor. He is known for his character Keys, the sympathetic scientist in the movie E. T. In 1976 Governor Brown appointed Coyote and poet Gary Snyder to the California Arts Commission (Perry 296).

Coyote, Peter. Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle. Washington, DC: Counterpoint, 1998.
A memoir of Coyote's [Peter Cohon] journey through the heart of the counterculture in San Francisco. Provides portraits of the countercultural stars as well as those who left no marks. Good information on the Mime Troupe, the Diggers, and Haight-Ashbury.
Noted as one of the original founders of the Diggers. More . . .

Work included, with Brautigan and others, in The Digger Papers, 1967. More . . .

Led a commune called "Olema" from 1968-1970. More . . .

Criticized Time magazine for, in their coining of the word hippie, trivializing those seeking alternatives to Time's official reality. More . . .

Described Brautigan at the Invisible Circus organization meeting. More . . .

Commented on Brautigan's activities during The Invisible Circus; "linking participants in a prototypical World Wide Web." More . . .

Remembered by Claude Hayward as courting the Hells Angels motorcycle club. More . . .

Coyote's comments were included in the essay "Brautigan's Wake," by Peter Manso and Michael McClure, published in Vanity Fair in May 1985, the year after Brautigan's death. More . . .

The Official Peter Coyote Web Site features a biography, a bibliography, a filography, and archives of information related to Peter Coyote.

LEARN more about Peter Coyote at his website.

READ an interview with Peter Coyote at The Diggers Archive website.

In an interview published in the French magazine Liberation, Coyote talks about his connection with and provides good background information about the Diggers.

READ this interview with Coyote at the Liberation web site. A publishing company started by Chester Anderson and Claude Hayward in early January 1967 as a fluid newspaper for the people in the Haight-Ashbury District, the center for San Francisco's psychedelic culture.

Hayward was an advertising manager for the Sunday Rampart, a tabloid newspaper published by the San Francisco-based Ramparts magazine. Anderson, a novelist and poet, was attracted to San Francisco's Beat literary scene and then to its emerging psychedelic culture. Looking for a way to get involved, Anderson decided to start a newspaper. A fan of Marshall McLuhan, Anderson decided his newspaper should be instantaneous, current, and immediately disposable.

A letter from Chester Anderson explains some of the details.

As Anderson noted in his letter, he and Hayward shared an apartment at 406 Duboce Avenune. With royalty checks from Anderson's novel and Hayward's Ramparts connections, they bought a Gestetner 366 silk-screen stencil duplicator (a mimeograph machine) and a Gestefax justified electronic stencil cutter. These machines facilitated the electronic production of stencils which could then be run through a mimeograph machine, producing any number of copies. Art, photographs, and other graphics could be easily and cheaply reproduced making it possible to produce stunning documents. With paper, colored ink, and an IBM typewriter borrowed from Ramparts, Anderson and Hayward were in business.

Anderson and Hayward introduced themselves as the Communication Company at The Human Be-In, held 14 January 1967, with a printed sheet outlining their policy ("Love is communication."), their plans and hopes ("to provide a quick & inexpensive printing service for the hip community" and "to print anything the Diggers want printed," among others). They also planned to print community news, "to function as a Haight-Ashbury propaganda ministry," and to publish literature originating in the community. They asked for reporters and advertising. Within three days the Communication Company was swamped with both (Keith Abbott 35 and Charles Perry 129).

VIEW a larger image of this broadside.

The Communication Company published everything they promised in their inaugural publication, as well as most of the Diggers' public communications about their philosophy and activities.

According to Abe Peck,

A Com/Co leaflet could be a poem by Richard Brautigan, a notice that four hundred pounds of fresh perch would be available at 4:00 P.M. on the corner of Oak and Ashbury, or a Jerimand [defending or attacking the vision of a new social order that was the center of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury hippie district.] (Peck 47).

Peck describes the history of the Communication Company in his book Uncovering the Sixties: The Life & Times of the Underground Press. Peck says Anderson had written for the Oracle, an underground newspaper centered in Haight-Ashbury, but felt it too elitist. He founded the Communication Company to function as a daily Oracle and add "perspective to the [San Francisco] Chronicle's fantasies" (Peck 46-47). More . . .

Photojournalist Gene Anthony gives a slightly different story. He says:

The Communications [sic] Company was the work of several writers including Richard Brautigan, Michael McClure, Lenore Kandel, Emmett Grogan, Peter Berg, and others. Communications were mimeographed on 8" x 11" sheets alerting hippies to events and free services. (Anthony 29)

In either case, the Communication Company printed broadsides, flyers, and handbills for the San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, the Human Be-In, the The Invisible Circus, the Diggers, and other organizations, individuals, and events. Anderson often added his own perspective and comments to Communications Company publications, forming a running commentary on the evolving Haight-Ashbury scene.

Printed promotional poster for Digger poetry reading, featuring Brautigan, for the Spring Mobilization Against the War, April 1967. More . . .

For these reasons, the Communication Company was well-connected to the events and people of the Haight-Ashbury district, including Richard Brautigan. Hayward says,

By June 1967 the Communications Company offices were moved to 742 Arguello Street in the Richmond District without any public announcement, business dropped by half, and the company was effectively taken over by the Diggers who put the original Gestetner machines at the service of Free City Publications which used them in very innovative ways to turn out publications that impressed even the Gestetner Company. The machines were also used to print materials for the San Francisco Black Panthers and allegedly were given to them.

LEARN more about Free City Communiques at the Digger Archives website.

In addition to broadsides, newsletters, manifestos, and comic books alerting people to free events and services, the Communication Company also published literary works which were distributed freely on the streets of San Francisco. Five of Brautigan's poems were first published by the Communication Company. They included: "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace," "The Beautiful Poem," "Flowers for Those You Love," "Love Poem," and "Karma Repair Kit: Items 1-4," all collected first in All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace and later in The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster.

Another notable work was The Life and Loves of Cleopatra by artist and author Maurice Lacy. Vaughn Marlowe, a bookstore owner in Venice, California, during the mid-1960s, introduced Lacy to Claude Hayward, a meeting that resulted in publication of Lacy's work by the Communication Company. According to Marlowe,


Harland, Cisco. The Hippie Papers—A History of the Communication Company. Sudbury, MA : Water Row Books, 1992.
Harland lived in Haight-Ashbury from "about March of 1966 to June of 1968" and delivered daily flyers and other publications printed by the Communication Company. He saved copies of the materials he delivered and presents them here as a wonderful bibliographic history of the Communication Company and Haight-Ashbury.

READ the Communication Company Bibliography at The Digger Archives website.

LEARN more about the Communication Company at The Digger Archives website. Artist and filmmaker; friend of Brautigan.

Ianthe Brautigan recounted seeing Conner's step-ladder artwork in Brautigan's Geary Street apartment. More . . . Keith Abbott mentioned the same step-ladder in his novel Rhino Ritz. More . . .

His work included, along with Brautigan's "Banners of My Own Choosing," in Now Now (2 1965). More . . .

Recorded Brautigan's "Love Poem" for inclusion on his record album, "Listening to Richard Brautigan." More . . .

His work included, along with three chapters of Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America, in the first issue of City Lights Journal (1963). More . . .

Associated with the poem "The Birth of Digger Batman." More . . .

Reportedly worked with Brautigan on a screenplay. The project was never completed. More . . .

Letters from Brautigan. More . . . (1926-2005)
Writer, poet, and long-time friend of Brautigan. Creeley taught at the State University of New York, Buffalo, where he was associated with the Electronic Poetry Center.

Part of a rich mix of poets, artists, and writers flourishing in the San Francisco area when Brautigan first located there. More . . .

Participated, with Brautigan and others, in the Creative Arts Conferences. More . . .

Contacted by Barry Miles regarding a planned Apple Records spoken word recording project that eventually became "Listening to Richard Brautigan," Brautigan's one record album. More . . . and More . . .

Edited, with Donald M. Allen, The New Writing in the USA. Included first publication of the chapter "The Cleveland Wrecking Yard" from Brautigan's novel Trout Fishing in America. More . . .

Wrote an obituary for Allen following his death in 2004. More . . .

Introduced Brautigan and read his own work at a poetry reading in New York, New York. More . . .

Described some details of Brautigan's childhood in an obituary, "The Gentle on the Mind Number" written for Brautigan. More . . .

Wrote a promotional blurb for the Touchstone edition of Brautigan's Loading Mercury with a Pitchfork. More . . .

His work included, with six poems by Brautigan in CoEvolution Quarterly (Winter 1975)

• "We Are In A Kitchen" More . . .
• "January 4 3" More . . .
• "A Penny Smooth As A Star" More . . .
• "Fuck Me Like Fried Potatoes" More . . .
• "Seconds" More . . .
• "Autobiography (When the Moon Shines Like a Dead Garage)" More . . .

His work included in Blue Suede Shoes (.424 1973), edited by Keith Abbott, with three poems by Brautigan: "Montana Inventory," "Oak," and "Ben." More . . .

His work included, with three poems by Brautigan: "Night," "Dive Bombing the Lower Emotions," and "Nine Crows: Two Out of Sequence" in City Lights Anthology.

"The Gentle on the Mind Number," a tribute for Brautigan. More . . .

Brautigan refers to Creeley in his poem "Sit Comma and Creeley Comma," first published in The Octopus Frontier and then collected in The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. More . . .

Correspondence included in the James Koller Papers. More . . .

Associated with poet David Bromige. More . . .

LEARN more about the Electronic Poetry Center at its website.

A web page focusing on Robert Creeley is maintained by the Electronic Poetry Center.

LEARN more about Robert Creeley at the Electronic Poetry Center website.

The English Department at SUNY Buffalo maintains a website devoted to Robert Creeley.

LEARN more about Robert Creeley theSUNY Buffalo website.
(1943 - )
Illustrator of Zap Comix; creator of the characters Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural, and The Keep on Truckin' Guy, now all recognized as cultural icons. Crumb moved to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in 1966.

His apartment was furnished from the street and contained some nice vintage radios (Charles Plymell 293)

Crumb quickly established himself as a cartoonist. Claude Haywood, co-founder of the Communication Company, says,

Charles Plymell said Crumb and Don Donahue, an underground comic entrepreneur, came to his apartment for help printing Crumb's sketches. Plymell printed the first issues of Zap using an old Multilith press in his bedroom. The method he devised for printing multiple colors became "the standard for many comics to follow" (Plymell 293). The first issues sold for twenty-five cents. Plymell's name was listed on the back cover as the printer.

Crumb's graphic sexual and violent depictions of uptight, middle class America were popular among the hippies gathering in the Haight, and his Zap Comix series was both financially successful and highly influential.

Crumb illustrated the front cover of "Cheap Thrills," a record released in 1968 by Big Brother and the Holding Company, a San Francisco band featuring female vocalist Janis Joplin. This brought him exposure to a national audience for the first time.

In Zap #1, published in 1968 by Plymell (print run of 5,000 copies stated but probably, more realistically, only 1,500 were printed), Crumb introduced a big-footed character with his foot out saying "Keep On Truckin.'" The "Keep on Truckin' Guy" became a popular image of the hippie counter-culture. Crumb never registered a copyright for this character and in 1977 a federal judge ruled that Crumb had let the image fall into the public domain, making it impossible for Crumb to collect any further royalty payments. This setback, and a large back taxes bill from the Internal Revenue Service prompted Crumb to leave the United States. He lived in Paris until he paid his tax bill. In the mid-1980s he was recognized as a cult hero. His work was shown in New York galleries and museums and Crumb was featured in magazine articles. In the late-1980s he moved permanently to France.

Included, along with Brautigan, in a group of "63 strange people" who tell what they read in CoEvolution Quarterly (21 Mar. 1979). More . . .

Illustrated the front cover of Earth (Jan. 1971) which featured the first publication of Brautigan's "Homage to Rudi Gernreich/1965." More . . .

Created a poster for Bedrock One, the Communication Company sponsored rockdance environment. More . . .

Claude Hayward talks about an opportunity to publish work by Robert Crumb. More . . .

Crumb's legacy also endures through his string band music group, "R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenaders."

LEARN more about Crumb's unique music group.

Terry Zwigoff created a documentary film titled "Crumb" in 1995.

LEARN more about this film at the Sony Pictures website.

READ the Crumb Biography at the Comic Art and Graffix Gallery website.

VIEW examples of Robert Crumb's artwork at the The Crumb Museum website.

VIEW a photograph by Baron Wolman of Crumb at the Photography Baron Wolman website.
A San Francisco painter working in the surrealistic mode, often with overtones of satire, Davis has devoted his career to painting his interpretations of the American obsessions, passions and foibles peculiar to his own time and place. Davis met Brautigan

in late 1956 or March, April, or May of 1957. I had transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute from San Francisco City College. I had had possible two one-man shows by that time. I was living in North Beach. One day an artist friend by the name of Mike Nathan called and said, "Hey, I have a new studio." It was a storefront of Green Street, in North Beach. I got there about ten in the morning. Mike was there talking to a man and a woman. The man was tall, lanky, blond, and acted very aloof. The woman was his girlfriend. Mike introduced us. The man was Richard Brautigan. He recognized my name from a painting of mine he had seen somewhere. We started talking about painters and writers and realized we had a lot in common. We spent the rest of the day together, drinking wine and talking, and agreed to meet again the next. (Davis, Kenn. Telephone interview. 16 and 17 April 2002.)

Davis introduced Brautigan to The Cleveland Wrecking Yard in San Francisco and that experience became a chapter in Trout Fishing in America. More . . .

As for fishing stories, the first time Dick and I went trout fishing, in the Sierras, we caught our limit early in the morning, ate the fish, buried the bones deep, then caught our limit again, which we ate for dinner. We did this for several days, often having to eat trout when we didn't particularly feel hungry. I was never the fisherman that Dick was; he was one of the best I ever saw or met.

Davis created, at Brautigan's invitation, the cover art for The Galilee Hitch-Hiker and Lay the Marble Tea. Davis also helped Brautigan design the interior of Lay the Marble Tea. (Davis, Kenn. Letter to John F. Barber. 9 June 2004.) More . . .
Of his work on the front cover of The Galilee Hitch-Hiker, Davis said,

Dick called and said "Ron Loewinsohn wants to put out a chapbook of my poetry" and asked me to work on the cover. Dick wanted something funky. I suggested a photograph but he said no. So I read the contents and some of the poems sparked an interest with their mention of a ferris wheel and a carnival. I drew a quick sketch of a carnival and ferris wheel. Dick liked it. So did Ron. I wanted to clean it up, make it better but they both said no, they liked the rough look. (Davis, Kenn. Telephone interview. 16 and 17 April 2002.) More . . .

After that Dick preferred to use photography for his covers, starting with The Octopus Frontier. At that time I admit I was a bit disappointed, not [to] say hurt, but it was his choice. We often discussed the cost of doing covers in color, with me painting an original, but the expense in those days always stopped us. (Davis, Kenn. Letter to John F. Barber. 9 June 2004.)

Davis painted an original portrait of Brautigan (32" X 20", oil on linen) in the fall of 1958. The portrait, typical of Davis' surreal style, exhibited in several San Francisco Art Galleries during the 1960s, shows a young, clean-shaven Brautigan. More . . .
Davis helped Brautigan when his daughter, Ianthe, was born. More . . .

Outside his friendship with Brautigan, Davis is the Edgar Award winning author of the Carver Bascomb detective series published by Fawcett (Random House) from 1970 to 1990:

• The Forza Trap (Avon 1979, ISBN 0871255820)
• Dead to Rights (1981, ISBN 0380782952)
• Words Can Kill (1984, ISBN 0449126676)
• Melting Point (1986, ISBN 0449129012)
• As October Dies (Fawcett 1987, ISBN 0449130975)
• Njinsky Is Dead (1987, ISBN 0449130967)
• Acts of Homicide (Fawcett 1989, ISBN 0449133516)
• The Blood of Poets (1990, ISBN 0449133524)

His novel, The Dark Side (written with John Stanley, 1976, ISBN B000CDYBSC) won the 1976 Edgar Award for Best Paperback. A second book written with Stanely was titled Bogart '48 (1980, ISBN 0440108535). Davis won an Edgar Award again, in 1984, again for Best Paperback, with Words Can Kill. He created the cover art for Robert Bloch's book Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep (Robert Bloch, John Stanley, Kenn Davis, 1987, ISBN 0940064022) and three of John Stanley's Creature Feature books. For twenty years he worked as an artist for The San Francisco Chronicle. A nondenominational street priest who ran an experimental coffeehouse mission called on upper Grant Avenue, at the corner of Grant and Greenwich Street, in San Francisco's North Beach area, during the late 1950s and early 1960s. A graduate of the Chicago Divinity School, Delattre served coffee, spaghetti, bread, and wine nightly to around three hundred people who came to the mission to listen to music, participate in poetry readings, and talk. He said some of his beatnik friends "jokingly (and I think lovingly)" called his mission "The Bread and Wine Mission" and the name stuck. Delattre reveled in his mission among the beats,

My "mission" at best meant encouraging the growth of a loving community through nightly drumming, chanting, dancing, feasting. (Delattre 36)

Delattre's mission was a center for discussion of and participation in the evolving literary scene during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Brautigan read his poetry at these meetings, along with Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, and Ebbe Borregaard (Ellingham and Killian 144-145).

Articles in Time, Newsweek, and The New York Times brought Delattre notoriety as "The Beatnik Priest" (Delattre 59).

Brautigan and the Dharma Committee, a group of writers and poets, met at Delattre's mission. More . . . and More . . .

Noted the inspiration for Trout Fishing in America, Brautigan's first successful novel. More . . .

Delattre included a vignettte of Brautigan, his fishing abilities, his thoughts about writing, and his inspiration to write Trout Fishing in America from immediate experience rather than memory of the past in his memoir, Episodes. More . . .

Delattre's memoir, Episodes, reviewed. More . . .

Delattre was also an editor of Beatitude, a San Francisco magazine (published 1959-1987 but suspended 1961-1969) which published many of the early Beat poems, as well as some by Brautigan. Because of his close connections with the North Beach Beat community, collecting poetry for the magazine was easy: "I had only to walk down the street and gather poems in my shirt" (Delattre 36). A group of civic anarchists active in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district 1966-1968 who tried to achieve social change through street theater, leaderless events, and services to the needy (Keith Abbott 35). Named after a seventeenth-century English communist religous sect, the Diggers evolved from a desire to combine theater and politics.

Peter Cohon (Coyote), Peter Berg, Emmett Grogan, and other members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe formed the Diggers in 1966. In 1967, they started calling themselves the Free City Collective (Charles Perry 216). By late 1967-early 1968, both the Diggers and the Free City Collective disintegrated from internal political dissent and pressure from established political structures within San Francisco.

Charles Perry, Haight-Ashbury historian, said the Diggers formed when members of the San Francisco Mime Troupe, Emmett Grogan, Peter Berg, Peter Cohon (Coyote), Lenore Kandel, Bill Fritsch, Judy Goldhaft, and others, argued for throwing all the Troupes' energies into the Haight-Ashbury District. It was there, they felt, where they would find the best revolutionary potential (Perry 82).

Photographer Lisa Law said the Diggers formed from people within the Anonymous Artists of America, a group of "disparate people" who discussed and organized resources and events for the artist community (Law 51).

Either way, the Diggers' idealogy was bohemian consensus united with new left politics seen through pyschedelic eyes and put into action with an aggressive manner inherited from their Mime Troupe roots. For the Diggers, theater was revolution (Perry 259) and they became famous for such theatrical events as giving away food and providing lodging to people in the Haight-Ashbury district.

The Communication Company printed many items for the Diggers and the Free City Collective. More . . .

Eventually, the Diggers took over control of the Communication Company. More . . .

Chester Anderson, co-founder, along with Claude Hayward, of the Communication Company grew less enchanted with the Diggers and was eventually forced to step down. More . . .

Brautigan first involved with the Diggers, October 1966. He admired the services they provided to the needy, like free housing and food. More . . .

Reg E. (Reggae) Williams maintains a website focusing on The Straight Theater.

VIEW photographs of a Digger free food event at The Straight Theater website.

Brautigan participated in "The 1st San Francisco Poet's Benefit for the Diggers," January 1967. More . . .

Brautigan participated in the notable Diggers event, The Invisible Circus, held February 1967. More . . . and Even more . . . and an account from a novel by Jennifer Egan.

Peter Coyote describes Brautigan at the organization meeting for the Invisible Circus. More . . .

Michael McClure notes that Brautigan was "the real poet of the Diggers." More . . .

Brautigan, along with the Diggers, met tourists looking for hippies in Haight-Ashbury, April 1967. More . . . Gene Anthony took photographs of Brautigan in this activity. More . . .

Brautigan, with other poets, participated in the Digger poetry reading for Spring Mobilization Against the War, April 1967. More . . .

Brautigan "gave" his poem "All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace" to the Diggers. It was included in The Digger Papers, along with work from other Diggers supporters. More . . .

Brautigan wrote the poem "Death Is A Beautiful Car Parked Only" for Emmett Grogan, one of the Diggers founders. More . . . and More . . .

Brautigan's poem, "Boo, Forever," first published by the Diggers in the October 1967 issue of their Free City News. More . . .

Brautigan participated in the Diggers "Death of Money" march, December 1967 and led a protest march to a Police Station following the arrest of Hells Angel Hairy Harry Kot and Chocolate George. More . . .

Charles Perry writes about the Diggers in his book, The Haight-Ashbury: A History. More . . .

Chalres Perry includes photographs of Diggers in his book, San Franciscio in the Sixties. More . . .

On 5 July 1967 the home birth of Digger, son of Billy "Batman" Jahrmarkt, was celebrated in a poem titled "The Birth of Digger Batman" by poet and novelist Kirby Doyle.

The full text of "The Birth of Digger Batman" and a photograph are maintained at The Digger Archives website.

READ "The Birth of Digger Batman" at The Digger Archives website.

William (Billy "Batman") Joseph Jahrmarkt (22 January 1926-30 January 1972), his wife Joan, and children, Jade, Hassan, Digger, and Caledonia (featured on the cover of Brautigan's Please Plant This Book) were referred to as the Bat People. Jahrmarkt opened the Batman Gallery in a defunct dress shop at 2222 Fillmore Street in San Francisco in November 1960 with financial help from his father. The first exhibition was of work by Bruce Conner. Jahrmarkt also championed young artists like Joan Brown, George Herms, Dean Fleming, George Abend, and Bernice Bin. He was also involved with the Diggers. Because of his involvement with narcotics, Jahrmarkt did not keep his gallery open for regular business hours. Sales were low, and fourteen months after it opened, in February 1962, Jahrmarkt sold the Batman Gallery to San Francisco pyschiatrist Michael Agron.

In the early 1970s the Jahrmarkt family moved to Afghanistan where narcotic drugs were freely available. Jahrmarkt died in Kabul, Afghanistan, 30 January 1972, the day after he dropped his gun and accidently shot himself.

Of Jahrmarkt's death, Ira Cohen, in his poem "From The Moroccan Journal—1987," wrote

And Billy Batman, who made the best hash in the world,
he dropped a loaded pistol in Kabul, shot himself in the balls,
took some heroin and lay down to die.

The entire poem, as it appeared in "From The Moroccan Journal—1987" is available at a website titled Poet's brains prove to be useful! 6 poems by Ira Cohen.

READ Cohen's poem at this website.

Jarmarkt is buried at the British Cemetary (Sherpur Cantonment Cemetary), in Kabul, Afghanistan. A slide show of his gravestone is available online. Use the "back" and "forward" buttons to view other images of Jahrmarkt's gravestone and the cemetary.

VIEW Jahrmarkt's gravestone.

Following Digger's birth the original Mime Troupe portion of the Diggers stopped using the name "Diggers." Instead, they called themselves the "Free City Collective" (Charles Perry 216), or "Free Family" (Peter Coyote 95). The first issue of Free City Newsletter was published 29 September 1967 and included instructions on how to build a firebomb (Perry 242). Both the Diggers and Free City/Family disintegrated in late 1967-early 1968 from internal political dissent and pressure from established political structures within San Francisco.

Several of the Diggers' publications were collected and published in August 1968 as a 24-page pamphlet called The Digger Papers by Paul Krassner, the editor of The Realist.

The Digger Papers included work by Antonin Artaud, Richard, Avedon, Billy Batman [Billy Jahrmarkt], Peter Berg, Wallace Berman, Richard Brautigan, Bryden, William Burroughs, Martin Carey, Neil Cassady, Fidel Castro, Don Cochran, Peter Cohon (Coyote), Gregory Corso, Dangerfield, Kirby Doyle, Bill Fritsch, Allen Ginsberg, Emmett Grogan, Dave Hazelwood, George Hermes, Linn House, Lenore Kandel, Billy Landout, Norman Mailer, Don Martin, Michael McClure, George Metesky, George Montana, Malcolm X, Natural Suzanne, Huey Newton, Pam Parker, Rose-a-Lee, David Simpson, Gary Snyder, Ron Thelin, Rip Torn, Time Inc., Lew Welch, Thomas Weir, Gerard Winstanley, and Anonymous. All contributions were printed anonymously.

The Digger Papers were issued in two versions, each with a different cover. Other than the front cover, all content in the two versions was identical.

The Free version distributed by the Diggers. 40,000 copies printed were in 1967.
The Realist version (issue #81, published Aug. 1968). A 24-page pamphlet published in 1967 by Paul Krassner, the editor of The Realist. This version was sold.

READ The Digger Papers at The Diggers Archive website.

LEARN more about The Digger Papers at The Diggers Archive website.

LEARN about "The Chronology of Digger History" at The Digger Archives website.

LEARN more about The Diggers at The Diggers Archive website. (born 30 September 1881 in Woodville, Illinois; died 19 April 1950 in Portland, Oregon at the Good Samaritan Hospital)
Mother of Lulu Mary Keho, known as Mary Lou, Brautigan's mother. Grandmother to Brautigan. Her mother was Madora Sonora Ashlock (born 20 April 1856 in Collins, Texas; died 17 July 1930 in Tacoma, Washington).

Married (***?***) Michael Joseph Keho(e) (born 1883 or 1884 in Boston, Massachusetts with whom she had two children: Eveline Elaine Keho Fjetland (born 29 January 1910, St. Louis, Missouri; died 31 January 1998 in Tacoma, Washington; Read her obituary) and Mary Lou Keho(e) (born 7 April 1911 in St. Louis, Missouri). Reportedly, Kehoe was committed to a mental hospital in 1913 where he remained until his death in 1930.

Bessie remarried, to Jesse George Dixon (born in Kentucky), a photographer, with whom she had two sons: Jesse Woodrow Dixon (born 21 July 1914 in St. Louis, Missouri; died 8 May 1930 in Tacoma, Washington; Read his obituary) and Edward Martin Dixon (born 29 September 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri; died 11 August 1942 in Sitka, Alaska). Jesse was a photographer; Edward a civilian engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers.

Moved to Tacoma, Washington following the birth of her last child.

Bessie, Bess, "Moonshine Bess" was a bootlegger. She made and sold whiskey during Prohibition, the period from 1920-1933 when laws forbidding the manufacture, transportation, sale, and possession of alcholic beverages were in effect in the United States. A nice connection to her activities is found in the Brautigan story "Revenge of the Lawn." After Prohibition ended, she worked as a cook in Tacoma. She bought a tavern in St. Helens, Oregon, on the Oregon side of the Columbia River, and moved there to manage the business. She sent money home to her children every month (Ianthe Brautigan 160, 192)

Bessie Dixon's obituary. More . . .

See also Genealogy page. (born 29 September 1916 in St. Louis, Missouri; died 11 August 1942 in Sitka, Alaska)
Stepbrother of Lulu Mary Keho, known as Mary Lou, Brautigan's mother, and uncle to Brautigan. Alone and pregnant, Mary Lou went to Edward after leaving Bernard Brautigan, Richard's father (Ianthe Brautigan 195). Edward served as a civilian with Army Corps of Engineers during World War II. He suffered a shrapnel injury to his head during the Japanese attack on Midway Island, 7 December 1941.

The Midway Islands, an island group located in the North Pacific Ocean roughly midway between the Hawaiian Islands and Japan, comprised a land area of two square miles and had no indigenous population. They had been held by the United States since 1867. Construction of a military base was begun there in March 1940 and was completed on 1 August 1941. It included an airstrip and harbor facility. During their attack, the Japanese were unable to capture Midway Island. They lost a major sea battle near Midway in June 1942.

Edward recovered in Hawaii and then spent two weeks in San Francisco before joining the Army engineers working on an airbase in Sitka, Alaska. He died there, 11 August 1942, from a head injury suffered in a construction accident. He was twenty six. Brautigan wrote about attending his Uncle Edward's funeral in Tacoma, Washington in the poem "1942." He also wrote about his uncle in the introduction to the novel June 30th, June 30th, "Farewell, Uncle Edward, and All the Uncle Edwards."

See also Genealogy page. (12 April 1929 - 10 December 1999)
Poet, writer, editor, and friend of Brautigan. Often grouped with the Black Mountain poets, even though his poetry was rooted in working-class politics and wild west myth. Noteable works include Hands Up!, Idaho Out, High West Rendezvous, Abhorrences: A Chronicle of the Eighties, and his most well know, Gunslinger.
Taught creative writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder. About Brautigan, wrote "In Memoriam: Richard Brautigan." With his wife, Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, edited Rolling Stock in which, after Brautigan's death, was published a tribute titled "Richard Brautigan Remembered" (pages 4-6) featuring writing by Robert Creeley, Brad Donovan, Greg Keeler, and Anne Waldman.

Participated with Brautigan and others in the Creative Arts Conference, August 1969. More . . .

Lived near Brautigan's Geary Street apartment in San Francisco. More . . .

Hosted Brautigan at his home in Boulder, Colorado, during Summer 1980. More . . .

Started Wild Dog literary magazine in April 1963. Contributing Editor of July 1965 issue, in which Brautigan's review, "At Sea," of Michael McClure's Ghost Tantras, as well as Brautigan's poems "The Buses" and "Period Piece" appeared. More . . .

Brautigan wrote a promotional blurb for Dorn's Gunslinger. More . . .

"In Memoriam: Richard Brautigan," a eulogy for Brautigan. More . . .

Full text of Dorn's "In Memoriam: Richard Brautigan."

"The Perfect American," an obituary by Jennifer Dunbar Dorn, wife of Edward Dorn. More . . .

"There's only one natural death, and even that's Bedcide: For the post-mortem amusement of Richard Brautigan," a poem written for Brautigan and collected in Abhorrences: A Chronicle of the Eighties. More . . .

Letters from Dorn included in the James Koller Papers. More . . .

Contacted by Barry Miles regarding a planned Apple Records spoken word recording project that eventually became "Listening to Richard Brautigan," Brautigan's one record album. More . . . and More . . .

LEARN more about Dorn at the Centro Magazine website.

READ Dorn's obituary at The Guardian website.
Moved to North Beach 1 September 1967, following separation from husband, Robert Morill. Estes and Morill had lived on Russian Hill after returning to San Francisco following three years traveling in Eastern and Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. They divorced later, in the spring of 1969.

Estes lived at 1427 (now 1429) Kearny Street (apartment #1). Philip Lamantia, Nancy Peters (of City Lights Books), and several other North Beach notables also lived there. The building is included in The Beat Generation in San Francisco: A Literary Tour by Bill Morgan (City Lights Books, 2003, page 16). According to Estes, Morgan's statement that Brautigan painted trout on the toilet seat in her apartment is not accurate.

The Kearny Street apartment building was managed by V. Vale (originally Vale Hamanaka) the former organ player for the first iteration of Blue Cheer, a San Francisco rock band of the era. Rock music legend notes that Hamanaka and Blue Cheer parted company when, after seeing Jimi Hendrix perform at the Monterey Pop Festival, band members Leigh Stephens, Dickie Peterson, and his brother, Jerry, decided to move the band toward a heavy power blues sound. Vale founded the magazine Search & Destroy in 1977 with a $200.00 donation from Allen Ginsburg to document the then current punk music subculture. In 1980 he founded RE/Search Publications which has published a variety of magazines and books focusing on modern primatives and other underground topics. Vale currently works as editor and publisher for his RE/Search imprint and frequently contributes to other publications.

V. Vale recounted Estes as his neighbor, and her meeting Brautigan. More . . .

After settling in North Beach, Estes worked with the Peace and Freedom Party, of which Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a founding member.

Estes met Brautigan in the summer of 1968 when she called him, on the suggestion of poet Bob Dawson, about reading for a North Beach Neighborhood Arts Fair. They became involved and occasionally lived together at the Kearny Street apartment until 1970. Brautigan then became involved with Siew Hwa Beh, a filmmaker and writer. Chinese in ethnic origin, Siew Hwa Beh grew up in Malaysia. Estes and Brautigan remained friends, often meeting for dinner at Enrico's on Broadway.

Estes recounts a story involving Brautigan and cats during the Fall of 1968 More . . .

Estes traveled with Brautigan to New York in 1969 where he signed contracts with his new agent, Helen Brann, and his new publisher, Seymour Lawrence. More . . .

Estes met Donald Allen in the fall of 1969 at a party at his Russian Hill flat on Jones Street. The party was in honor of poet Kay Boyle. Soon after she began working for Allen as a part-time assistant while pursuing graduate studies at University California-Berkeley. Estes worked for Allen on a part-time basis until 1984 when she finished her Ph. D. in Anthropology at University of California Berkeley and began full time academic work in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her degree was based on three years of fieldwork in La Paz. Bolivia, on women and work.

Brautigan wrote and dedicated the poem "All Girls Should Have a Poem" for Estes.

The poem "As the Bruises Fade, the Lightning Aches" was written for or about Estes, as was the story, "Halloween in Denver."

Barry Miles hired Valerie Estes as his assistant during the recording of Brautigan's record album, Listening to Richard Brautigan. Miles and Estes soon started an affair which they tried to keep secret from Brautigan. Miles provides an account in his memoir, In the Sixties. More . . .

Estes read Brautigan's poem "Love Poem" for Brautigan's record album, Listening to Richard Brautigan. More . . .

Listed as "Valerie Morill" and credited as reading "Love Poem" on a slightly different version of Brautigan's record album released by Apple Records. More . . .

A photograph by Edmund Shea of Estes, with Brautigan, was featured on the front cover of Brautigan's record album, Listening to Richard Brautigan. More . . .

Estes delivered the official papers when Brautigan sought divorce from his first wife, Virginia Alder.

From 1984-1990, Estes worked at several academic jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area, including California State Hayward, two "semester abroad" programs she invented and directed for a consortium of schools in the Upper Midwest (primarily Minnesota), "Women and Work" and "Third-World America" (first of their kind in the US); and last as Research Faculty at University of California Berkeley focusing on minorities and education in the Bay Area.

In 1991, Estes returned to Bolivia to collect data for the book that was never written. She also had short-term contract on gender and development with USAID (Agency for International Development, the part of the State Department that works with poor countries). Her "team leader" was a retired diplomat named David Lazar, who helped negotiate the 1977 Panama Canal Treaty. Lazar was among a small group, including Paul Clayton, that helped folksinger Pete Seeger write new lyrics to the tune later recorded as "Gotta Travel On." The song begins

I've laid around and played around this old town too long
Summers almost gone, yes, winter's coming on
I've laid around and played around this old town too long
And I feel like I've gotta travel on.

Estes returned to Washington with Lazar and continued working with USAID-related companies. By 1996, she was in charge of Gender Issues and Anti-Trafficking for USAID in the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Her job was cancelled in 2002 by the Bush Administration, for whom gender issues were not a high priority.

Lazar died in 2002 and Estes continues with her consulting work and contemplates writing memoirs. See Brother Antoninus.
(24 March 1919 - )
Poet, novelist, painter, publisher, owner of City Lights Books. Ferlinghetti was associated with the leading post World War II writers and became a spokesman for a new literary sensibility, as well as a touchstone for literary and political movements in San Francisco.

Met and befriended Brautigan, late 1950s. More . . .

Part of a rich mix of poets, artists, and writers flourishing in the San Francisco area when Brautigan first located there. More . . .

Considered Brautigan a naif, an immature writer. More . . .

Work included, with Brautigan's poem, "Psalm," in San Francisco Review, Spring 1959. More . . .

Work included, with four Brautigan's poems: "The American Submarine," "A Postcard from the Bridge," "That Girl," and "The Sink" in Beatitude, May 1959. More . . .

Edited issue number 17 of Beatitude. More . . .

Edited first issue of City Lights Journal, 1963, in which the first three chapters of Brautigan's Trout Fishing in America were first published. More . . .

Arranged photograph titled "The Last Gathering of Beat Poets & Artists, City Lights Books," by Larry Keenan, March 1965. More . . .

Participated, with Brautigan and others, in a Diggers poetry reading for Spring Mobilization Against the War, April 1967. More . . .

Participated, with others, in Rolling Renaissance: San Francisco Underground Art Celebration: 1945-1968, organized by David Meltzer, June 1968. More . . .

Contacted by Barry Miles regarding a planned Apple Records spoken word recording project that eventually became "Listening to Richard Brautigan," Brautigan's one record album. More . . . and More . . .

Barry Miles recounted traveling to San Francisco to record Ferlinghetti for Zapple Records in 1969. More . . .

Edited, with David Meltzer and Michael McClure, the first issue of Journal for the Protection of All Beings. Third issue, 1969, included Brautigan's poem "Shellfish." More . . .

Included, with Brautigan and others, in The San Francisco Poets, edited by David Meltzer, 1971.