Hughes & Harte, Booksellers

                                                       Where some things happen.
                                                          


Paperbacks Unlimited
(29 April 2011 - Massive additions & corrections)

Recently I received an email from my longtime friend Fred Hughes who with the late Charles Harte was an owner of Paperbacks Unlimited in Ferndale, Michigan. Fred reminded me that Kenny Cockrel (see my previous blog-post), his former law partners Justin Ravits (R.I.P.) and Ted Spearman, and General Gordon Baker, Jr (see links below) were frequent visitors and customers of Paperbacks Unlimited. Charles Bukowski read from his work on October 31, 1974. Elmore Leonard and Joyce Carol Oates (among others) had book signings there. There is a photograph of Oates’ late, (first) husband Raymond Smith in front of the Ferndale store (see the The New Yorker link below).

   I began shopping at Paperbacks Unlimited when I was in grade school in Highland Park, Michigan. The store was then located in a small house on the corners of Woodward and Davidson avenues. I remember the first book that I bought there in 1953/54; it was the The Official Rule Book of the National Stock Car Racing Association. I wanted to be a race car driver then; I had become captivated by the stock car races that were shown on television at that time - Fred Wolf announced the proceedings from The Motor City Speedway.

   Mr Martin Fern, his wife Rose, and his sister Rose Beckerman owned Paperbacks Unlimited then. Mrs Rose Beckerman ran the cash register from 1942, commencing with the death of her husband, until she was 89 years. She died in retirement at the age of 92. Their business began under the trade style "Highland Park News" as a corner newsstand located at Woodward and Manchester streets in 1918. The Beckerman/Fern families were of Russian Jewish origin. Emma Goldman was once a house guest of the Beckerman's. Sometime later the store moved next door to a commercial building next to its previous location. Upstairs above the new location in Highland Park was the famous jazz society, The New World Stage, that was founded by jazz greats Donald Byrd and Kenny Burrell. When I was in high school at Highland Park, some friends and I peeked in on The New World Stage one night and heard a bit of Bird’s tune, the wonderful "Blues for Alice". The store soon moved further north on Woodward avenue to a much larger space near Sears on the diagonal from the historic Ford Motor Company’s Model T plant.

   Fred Hughes and Charles Harte purchased the bookstore from Mrs Beckman in 1973. The store had moved again further north on Woodward ave. south of Nine Mile Rd. to Ferndale, Michigan. I didn’t really know Fred or Charles then - I did have a big crush on Fred’s sister in high school though. My involvement with Fred and Charles began like this.

   One very warm Sunday in 1968/9, I decided to walk from the Jefferies Projects (student housing) near the Wayne State Universty campus to Paperbacks Unlimited in Highland Park (8.3 miles one way). On my way I ran into Lawrence Powers on Cass Ave. Powers had just joined the philosophy faculty at Wayne State U., having just left Cornell University’s graduate program. That hot Sunday morning Larry was faced with a dilemma: whether to use the limited electrical power available to him to use his fan or whether to employ his reading lamp instead. I don’t know which way he went in this but I feel I need to relate a couple of items about this very smart man.

   The first item is related directly to my walk that morning and to Paperbacks Unlimited. That Sunday in 1968/69 I walked to Paperbacks and found on the store’s shelf E. D. Klemke’s collection of papers by various hands, Essays on Frege. At that time the Gottlob Frege industry was just getting started. I had studied Frege in Prof Richard L. Cartwright’s renowned three quarter course: Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy. So I was very excited about getting my hands on the Frege essays that had just been published.

   (i) I had taken Larry Powers’ Wittgenstein course. Wittgenstein was a big item at Cornell and Powers had studied with the Wittgensteinians Norman Malcolm and Max Black. In Powers’ class we were discussing Gustav Bergmann’s Fregean notions of subject and predicate (function-like notions) and Powers said something like ”It’s ludicrous to reckon a predicate (function) as a kind of hook, hooking itself onto its subject, as it were. Max Black writes in his “Frege on Functions” (included in Klemke), “There is no good use for the idea of a function as a kind of ghostly grappling hook.” [240] I had underlined Black’s sentence in my Klemke.

   (ii) Powers has become well known for his comments on Robert Stalnaker’s 1972 paper, “Propositions”, published in the 1976 Oberlin Colloquium volume, Issues in the Philosophy of Language. Powers suggests that Stalnaker’s theory of possible- worlds and “the whole idea of possible worlds (perhaps distributed in space, like raisins in a pudding) seems ludicrous.” [p. 95] So it seems that Arguments from Ludicrousness were highly regarded by at least one Cornell professor and his student.

   In 1973 I had a front desk job with City National Bank near Wayne State University, on Woodward Ave. and Alexandrine St. I knew Charles Harte by sight, since he and Fred were employees of the bookstore; he was a tall Irishman with a beard, Irish tongue and wit, and known to take a drink now and then. Charles came into the bank one afternoon. Sat down at my desk. He handed me a check for $5,000 and insisted that I cash it for him. Since he didn’t have an account with the bank, I refused to cash the check. I received an ear-full of his insults from Irish tongue and he left the bank.

   I should mention that one of Kenny Cockrel’s clients, Haywood Brown, attempted to rob my branch office. This was the Shaft/Superfly period in which long outer coats and high heeled shoes were the thing. One afternoon Mr Brown came into the branch in the get-up that I have described, but with a rifle hidden under his long outer coat. He made the mistake of going directly to our head teller who directed him to get in line. This rebuff caused Mr Brown to deviate from his robbery plan; he panicked and fled the premises. A gun fight with the police ensued outside the branch. Mr Brown and his partner in crime had been robbing dope houses in Detroit, an occupation perhaps more dangerous, at the time, than robbing banks.

   I was told later by Charles that on that day he and Fred were purchasing Paperbacks Unlimited from the Fern/Beckerman family and the un-cashed check represented an integral financial part of the transaction.

   My friends, Bill Bush and Jim Murphy come directly to mind, and I spent many hours in the back room of Fred’s and Charles’ bookstore discussing literature, politics, women, horse racing, while 'disgusting' each other. Refreshments were available in copious quantities. Wednesday nights were officially set aside for our meetings, but a quorum seemed to be present on most nights. Paperbacks Unlimited was our City Lights, our Shakespeare and Company, and much else besides. This way of life is to be missed and is something that Amazon.com doesn’t provide.

   Charles Harte died in 1993 at the age of 51. Charles' wife, Marguerite, requested that Fred Hughes fly to Dublin and lead a small service attended by Charles' closest Irish friends. Fred Hughes writes:

I was the only participant from 'across the drink'. We went up into the hills, what the locals referred to as mountains, to scatter Charles' ashes at the source of the Liffy, the river that bisects Dublin. Charles' wife, Marguerite, had pointed out to me a passage from Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy that Charles wanted read at his ceremony. The assembled mourners listened as I read the Behan passage and I added a few words of my own. Marguerite scattered the ashes of our dear and sorely missed friend into the rivulets that would form the river. In a moment they vanished downstream to fulfill their destiny and we said goodbye.

Our friend Fred Hughes remains with us.

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/rbwstudy.html

http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/gen.html

http://www.speakersforanewamerica.com/gendraft.html

http://urbanplacesandspaces.blogspot.com/2005/08/war-of-attrition.html

 http://www.newyorker.com/online/2010/12/13/101213_slideshow_oates#slide=1

“I THINK CONTINUALLY OF THOSE WHO WERE TRULY GREAT.”

“I think continually of those who were truly great.”

This first line from Stephen Spender’s poem has been with me since I studied it many years ago. Spender’s sentence has been paired in my thoughts with those who were truly great and those who are still with us today. Among those who were truly great is Kenneth Vern Cockrel, Sr. 

   I count among my greats who are with us today the music-poets Bill Harris and John Sinclair and the labor organizer and freedom fighter General Gordon Baker. In what follows, I shall attend to Kenny V.Cockrel, Sr.

Kenneth V. Cockrel, Sr. (November 5, 1938 - April 25, 1989)

   My earliest recollection of Kenny Cockrel concerns an occasion in 1962 (or thereabouts) when we were paying a social call on the Jones sisters. At the time Kenny was driving a sports car, a Triumph TR-#??. He lent me his car to drive one of the sisters home. Before my opportunity to drive Kenny’s fabulous sports car my driving experience had been limited to American models. As I recall, I had a very difficult time getting underway in the TR-?? - lights, ignition, gears were not immediately forthcoming to my touch.

   Ken Cockrel was at least 6’6” tall and very slender. He didn’t walk exactly, he glided. His smile was captivating in the way that a full stop is at the terminus of a brilliant sentence. Kenneth Vern Cockrel, Sr. was our Cicero, our brilliant lawyer, orator, and statesman. When I was a student at Wayne State University in the early 1960s Kenny was, I believe, finishing his law degree at Wayne’s Law School. He could be seen gliding about the campus, through the Student Center (the “Stupid Center” as we called McKinsey Hall then), “Hey Ray! What’s happening?” “Hey Kenny...”

   I was married to Maria Bohdanowicz in 1965. My wife has a unique, Ukrainian way of pronouncing “Maria”. Kenny was one of the few people I knew who pronounced “Maria” correctly. There were two buildings in the Jefferies public housing projects on Canfield street, west of the Wayne State University campus, that were devoted to student housing. Maria and I along with Kenny Cockrel and his wife and our friend Jim Murphy and his wife lived in the Jefferies Projects. Jim Murphy and   I worked weekends at the Fort Street Main Post Office.

   Kenny Cockrel held forth at Vern’s Bar that was located at Woodward and Forrest streets. The bar was our hang. The law students had a table; ‘philosophers’ and the literary crowd had tables . . . . Many Fridays Jim and I would be found at Vern’s getting drunk in preparation for our weekend on Uncle Sam’s plantation, the US Post Office. Ken Cockrel, the orator was the man at Vern’s. I can’t recall him sitting in Vern’s; he had a table but he was usually standing, maybe with one foot on his chair, emphasizing his 6’6” frame, and getting ready run a topic down - “Maria, Ray! What’s happening?” “Kenny, hey.”

“And we testifying
and swinging!” Jo thinks,
“Letting our notes anoint
as we blow the blue demons
right on out the joint.” [1]

Sunday, July 25, 1967. “Motor City’s Burning”.

I’m on the Trumbull Ave. DSR bus. It’s Sunday afternoon. I’m on my way home to the Jeffries Housing Projects. The beginning of in-terminal police-car and fire-truck sirens. The north-bound bus that I’m on stops and the south-bound bus stops; the divers discuss “the situation”—“Twelfth street’s impassable, detour ahead, . . . ”. I walk two blocks from the Trumbull bus stop to the projects. It’s my nap-time when I get home from my two days on the Post Office plantation. But I couldn’t sleep—sirens, sirens all around.

   That evening the sky lit up. A Famous Furniture warehouse in our neighborhood was ablaze. A Cadillac convertible with its top down was hauling away a stereo-console in the back seat. The anthem for this tragic event was of course John Lee Hooker’s “The Motor City’s Burning”. Like most historical events—especially American history-wise—the narratives are written according to the needs of the ‘winners’ and losers—reported not exactly in black and white; rather according to white or black.

   I was surprised to discover that there are two different lyrics to John Lee Hooker’s “The Motor City’s Burning”. In the recording that I have of John Lee Hooker’s, the stanza:

"It started on 12th Clair Mount (sic) that morning 

It made the, the pig cops all jump and shout

                    ..........

It made the, the pigs in the street go freak out"

is edited and the words “pig cops” and “pigs” are excised. In another stanza the locution “Black Panther Snipers” appears. In the recorded version, “Black Panther” is excised.

   Our country’s penchant for both cultural and historical revisionism and amnesia is well known throughout most of the rest of the world. An interesting mystery for me is the following. There was also a version by the MC5 (the Motor City Five), a music group that the writer and political activist John Sinclair managed. In the MC5 live recording, the excised bits noted above appear.

Law & Order—Democracy Abroad

Moving up the social ladder, from the US Post Office to the next rung, US Banking Industry (say), one may become perceptually blind to certain socio-economic-cultural forces that are (still) pervasively in play. In Victorian times the less able, less bright, sons of the well-to-do were assigned or consigned to the clergy. In our era the less able, less bright, sons and daughters (progress here) were assigned to the banking industry. The banking industry is supposed to be a Federally chartered and regulated industry. This industry has perhaps always been a conduit for greed, unjust enrichment, and power by the ruling-class in these United States of America.

   Detroit, Michigan in 1967 was a crucible (not a melting pot!) consisting of a political structure that was exemplified by brutal enforcement by the Detroit Police Department— the Big Four vice squad and STRESS. This enforcement was visited on an economically disenfranchised black population. The disconnection between the Hooker and the MC5 lyrics reveal a cleansed historical record on the one hand and a more accurate account of the issues contributing to the July 25, 1967 “disturbance” or riots. “The Motor City’s Burning” lyrics (unexpurgated version) describe quite accurately the police versus a black community dynamic. Unless one lived in a poor black neighborhood in Detroit, one could not understand police brutality in the Motor City—the level of police force devoted to Paradise Valley, Hastings Street, and 12th Street was intense and ruthless. Black representation in the Detroit Police Department at the time of the riots was quite small; and given the way things were organized, greater black participation wouldn’t have mattered much in 1967 anyway. [2]

   In spite of an increase in the number of black police officers in the Detroit Police Department today, police tactics apparently haven’t changed that much. The Department remains under Federal Department of Justice ’supervision’ regarding numerous civil rights violations. Also, elimination of residency requirements for police officers contributes to Wyatt Earp-type behavior patterns. Here we go full circle, back to Belle Isle 1943 and 12th Street 1967. This is not a blanket indictment or condemnation of the Police Department.

   Ken Cockerel, Sr., Gordon General Baker, John Sinclair, John Lee Hooker, and Motor City Five (MC5) are for me the other side of the prevalent revisionist or eliminative narrative history of the time of Detroit’s troubles.

   The next time I recall being with Kenny Cockrel was a day or two after the the 1967 Detroit Riots began, July 26 or 27, 1967. We both lived in the Jefferies Housing Projects with our wives and young children. Kenny and I were on the Projects’ playground dis- cussing without any particular insights the riot situation. After ’order had been restored’ later in that year, I remember being out late one evening with a friend. When we walked into Vern’s Bar, we received a warm Kenny Cockrel ”What’s happening?” greeting.

In the late 1960s, I began, what I couldn’t have imagined at the time, my career in banking. A bump in the road of my banking career occasioned my next, and as it turned out my final, meeting with Kenny Cockrel.

   I was employed by a trifling commercial bank as the manager of commercial lending. I

reported to the trifling bank’s trifling president. One evening my wife and I along with the trifling president and his wife attended a charity concert at the Fisher Theatre featuring the Divine One, Miss Sarah Vaughan. After the concert, we all stopped at the St. Regis Hotel for drinks. The trifling bank president - let designate him as ”Mr. T’ - and I were discussing certain bank personnel matters. During this discussion Mr. T began to criticize my performance in front of our wives. I was certainly taken aback by Mr. T’s unjust and inappropriate criticism. But this context occasioned a flash of insight and opportunity in me. My reply to Mr. T’s ill-chosen words were ”You’re nuts!” In my mind this was my chance to free myself from this trifling monster and his trifling bank. In my life such flashes of insight have been rare indeed. Mr. T jumped up from his seat, while I sprang up from mine. My wife queried Mr. T, ”I don’t suppose you want a ride to your car?”

   The following day I went to see Mr. T in his office to see if I still had a job - I hoped I did not, since I wanted out of that trick-bag. Mr. T asked me to resign etc. I told him I’d think about it. I left Mr. T and later in the day I went to see my friend Kenny Cockrel, Esq. He asked me if he could be of service  and indeed he rendered a great service to me.

   A few days later as my lawyer Kenny Cockrel meet with Mr. T. and the trifling bank’s lawyer. A satisfactory financial settlement was negotiated for me.

   By this time, the mid-1980s, Kenny Cockrel, Esq. was a cultural hero - a brilliant lawyer, a brilliant public speaker, and brilliant politician. When he glided through the trifling bank - he was given a tour by the trifling Mr. T -, all of the employees were captivated by this brilliant intellectual giant and civil rights lawyer - our Cicero. It was reported to me that Mr. T was quite up-tight and very nervous. 

   This was the last time that I was in the company of this brilliant man and advocate for the defenseless citizens of the city of Detroit.

   Kenny Cockrel’s many achievements are noted in John Sinclair’s fine memorial tribute, the link to which I have supplied below. Other links direct the reader to sites featuring Kenny himself.

   Kenny Cockrel was, like many of the people who we knew at Wayne State University, a jazz person, one who loved jazz. His memorial service featured some of Detroit’s fine musicians. A link to a discussion of Kenneth V. Cockrel, Sr.’s life will be found below.

[1] From Bill Harris’s poem, "Body and Soul (Take 2)"

[2] "Ken Cockrel Sr. was a firebrand lawyer who spearheaded - (with the City Council's current outside council Bill Goodman) - the dismantling of a particularly brutal group within the police department, STRESS. S.T.R.E.S.S. "Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets" was an attempt by the police to put a halt to crime in the neighborhoods, but what it turned out to be was a Gestapo style thug patrols that beat blacks folks up for fun. A good idea gone bad."

http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=7523

http://www.daahp.wayne.edu/biographiesDisplay.php?id=101

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Race_Riot_(1943)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1967_Detroit_riot

http://abj.matrix.msu.edu/videofull.php?id=29-DF-147

http://johnsinclair.us/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=861:in-memory-of-kenneth-v-cockrel&catid=20:features&Itemid=111

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?

Site=C4&Date=20080918&Category=NEWS&ArtNo=809180805&Ref=PH

http://abj.matrix.msu.edu/videofull.php?id=29-DF-15

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/rbwstudy.html

"My Favorite Things"

Geoff Dyer has published a new collection of his occasional writings - Otherwise Known as the Human Condition. In this collection are some of his writings on photography, literature, travel, and music. My reading imagination was impressed by his 1994 piece on John Coltrane and his recordings of "My Favorite Things" (pps. 230 - 235); his 1998 homage to Don Cherry - "Cherry Street" (pps. 264 - 266); and his 1989 piece on David Murray (pps. 264 - 266). One of my favorite writers writing about some of my favorite musicians - it's time to listen to some music.

Coming Soon - "I think continually of those who are truly great."

I'm working on a rather long Detroit post that needs to flow, but has so far resisted the author's recreative purposes. We'll (the author and I) persist with our efforts.

It's interesting that the Democratic Party, which has been involved in a Republican-Compromise-In for the past couple of years, has began a "Republicans! Republicans! Danger! Republicans" chant for money to finance their do-nothing re-election campaigns. And President Obama has resumed his pre-election progressive chanting. There's nothing short of the usual profanities that I can think of as an anti-chant-chant. This sort of entertainment (viz., politics) is to be resisted. I'll try to resist.

Until "Coming soon" flows....

Peter Smith & Robert Paul Wolff - Guardians & The Guardian

The humane philosophers Prof Peter Smith of Cambridge University and Robert Paul Wolff, Emeritus Prof of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst deserve our appreciation for a number of important items - their books, appreciation of serious music, and especially these days for their blogs, Logic Matters and The Philosopher's Stone, respectively; the links to each is to be found on my sidebar. I won't go into at this moment why they have been important to me except to say that Prof Wolff's book In Defense of Anarchy  has had a lasting influence on my thinking and Prof Smith's writings (his books and blog) on philosophy, logic, and chamber music CDs and recitals have given me a great deal of pleasure while teaching me a great deal about his subjects, especially logic, philosophy of maths, and Gödel's Theorems.
   Prof Wolff's fascinating autobiography is to be found on his blog at this link http://www.box.net/shared/n72u3p7pyj along with a tutorial on Marx. Prof Wolff was for many years the chair of the African-American Studies Department at U. Mass. He is also the author of an important book on Kant.
   For the last three years or so my daily routine has started with Logic Matters followed by the online Guardian edition. It's a shame that here in the America of the racialist Republican party, the religious right, and the spineless Democratic party with its Republican, Wall Street beholden leader President Obama, one must resort to the British press to get the news about the absurd political situation that America finds itself in. These last words are occasioned by my return to philosophical anarchism - one TV, one vote - in Prof Wolff's sense. I'm also returned to Karl Kraus's dictum - When faced with the lesser of two evils, choose neither. Kraus is also noted for the remark, A politician is a person who never wants to know who he/she is.
   Prof Smith retires this year. I certainly hope that he continues to blog. We can learn from these two humane retirees.     

"A Good Son" - James Carter Tribute

On Sunday afternoon, 10 April 2011, some of my friends and I attended a tribute to Detroit's own son, James Carter, the brilliant saxophonist, multi-reed musician and band leader. These festivities took place at St. Matthew's/St. Joseph's Episcopal Church on Woodward Ave. in Detroit. The program and dinner were sponsored by the Societie of the Culturally Concerned and St. Matthew's/St. Joseph's and the proceeds are to be used to renovate the church's fine organ. The eminent musician and music educator, Ernest Rogers was the Master of Ceremony. The musician Donald Washington, one of Mr. Carter's primary teachers along with Ernest Rogers, commented on Mr. Carter's dedication to his craft. Both men highlighted Mr. Carter's precociousness, music knowledge, and skill as a reed player.
   Mr. Carter performed brilliantly on the soprano and tenor saxophones. His "Body and Soul" was magnificent. He was ably supported by Gerald Gibbs, piano and organ; Marian Hayden, bass; Leonard King, drums. Mr. Carter's teacher and mentor, Donald Washington performed with Mr. Carter on tenor.
   The poet, playwright, and educator Bill Harris read a very moving poem of his dedicated to the memory of Detroit musician Beans Bowles and evoking with precise poetic language and jazz rhythms the saxophone solo-style of James Carter. Mr. Harris's reading was powerfully musical - fine indeed!
   I urge you to get next to Mr. Carter's music and Mr. Harris's music-poetry.  

The Ryle Style

My interest was in the theory of Meaning—horrid substantive!—and quite soon, I am glad to say, in the theory of its senior partner, Nonsense. ... It was in Russell’s Principles of Mathematics and not his Principia Mathematica, in his Meinong articles and his ”On Denoting” and not his epistemology that I found the pack-ice of logical theory cracking. It was up these cracks that Wittgenstein steered his Tractatus.

Sometime in the glorious mid-sixties, I wrote a ‘brilliant’ paper on Gilbert Ryle’s “The Theory of Meaning” for Professor Helen Cartwright’s Philosophy of Language course at Wayne State University in Detroit, Mi. In that paper I showed Ryle’s arguments to be wrong-headed & c. Or so I believed.

   Scott Soames in his article, “Analytic Philosophy in America” that appears in The Oxford Handbook of American Philosophy captures the spirit of philosophy at Wayne State when he writes:

[T]he philosophy department at Wayne State University, located in downtown Detroit, serving a predominantly lower middle-class and working- class student population. Such was the abundance of available talent, and the enthusiasm of young philosophers entering the profession, that between 1955 and 1970 the philosophy department Wayne acquired a reputation for precision, passion, and fierce analytical argumentation that had few rivals anywhere. Among the prominent philosophers who spent substantial portions of their careers at Wayne were Richard Cartwright, Hector-Neri Castaneda, Edmund Gettier, Keith Lehrer, Michael Mckinsey, George Nakhnikian, Alvin Plantinga, and Robert Sleigh.

The oxygen at Wayne State during the fabulous 1960s was pervasive and invigorating.

   For a great many years, I believed that both Mozart and Ryle were wrong—i. e.,

neither appealed to me; each was too straight forward, too simple. Bach, Haydn and

Beethoven, Russell, Moore, Wittgenstein, and John Wisdom these were my great and exciting models. But my anti-Rylean and anti-Mozartian stances softened a bit with my admiration for Ryle’s famous paper “Categories” and anything by Mozart with a clarinet featured in it. In my later years I have become a Mozart and Ryle enthusiast. I’ll leave Mozart for another time, just saying that with the aforementioned musicians, one knows and feels each one’s music as being without doubt distinctive stylistically. Stylistically the same is true, for me, of Ryle and the aforementioned philosophers. This brings me to Gilbert Ryle’s very stylish paper from ‘The Oxford Review’, No. 1, 1966, entitled “Jane Austen And The Moralists”, a link to which is provided below. This paper of Ryle’s was brought to my attention by Professor Peter Smith of Cambridge University in his blog Logic Matters—the resemblance to my blog’s title is admiringly intentional. My feelings about philosophical ethics run along the same lines as my feelings about aesthetics; both are dreary compared with (say) Jane Austen or Paul Griffiths.

   Ryle’s article on Jane Austen exhibits the virtues of his writing style—concision and flair. Another discernible virtue is that of distinctions with differences:

If cacophony had not forbidden, Emma could and I think would have been entitled Influence and Interference. Or it might have been called more generically Solicitude. Jane Austen’s question here was: What makes it sometimes legitimate or even obligatory for one person deliberately to try to modify the course of another persons life, while sometimes such attempts are wrong? Where is the line between Meddling and Helping?

   Ryle, in addition to his distinguished career as an Oxford don and author of the famous and controversal The Concept of Mind, was for many years the editor of the journal Mind—his tenure was justly acknowledged as a success in the tradition of his predecessor G. E. Moore and of his successor Simon Blackburn. The link to Ryle's Jane Austen is below.

http://www.logicmatters.net/resources/pdfs/JaneAusten.pdf

Trying to Keep Up the Flow

I've been working on publishing a few words on the Oxford philosopher Gilbert Ryle in conjunction with words and thoughts on Mozart. My forthcoming reflections on Ryle and Mozart are quite personal, more about me than the aforementioned greats. But like so many of our projects, avoiding one thing often leads to another unavoidable thing.
   On the last day on March, 2011, my son treated me to an evening of musical entertainment by the British rock-guitar virtuoso Jeff Beck. This treat was offered in anticipation of our birthdays in April: Cyril's 45th and his old dad's 70th. One of the tunes on offer by Jeff Beck & The Imelda May Band was the "Rock Around The Clock" (Wikipedia has a very interesting piece on "Clock's" compositional and recording genealogies.) Bill Haley & his Comets had the hit recording of "Rock Around The Clock" which was recorded in 1953. However, the popular success of the recording didn't occur until 1955 when the motion picture "Blackboard Jungle" was released - Bill Haley & his Comets' recording was featured in the film. Until last month I had never heard "Rock Around The Clock" performed live. And I had no reason to believe that I ever would hear it thus.
   It is indeed strange how confluences of events in one's life go unnoticed until a singular moment causes one to notice all of the heretofore unnoticed past events. Bill Haley was born in Highland Park, Michigan - I grew up there. One of the myths that I grew up with was that Haley's family owned the Haley Funeral Home on Hamilton Ave. Since Bill Haley left Highland Park at the age of seven in 1932, his connection with said funeral home was probably quite remote.
   Growing up in the 1950s, my personal music connection with some of the tunes that Bill Haley & his Comets had as part of their spectacular success - "Shake, Rattle and Roll" and "Rock Around The Clock" - came to my teenage music sensibility via Joe Turner's recordings which preceded those of Bill Haley and his Comets.
   Among my first recordings that I owned were the Charlie Christian & Benny Goodman recordings and those of Norman Granz's Jazz at the Philharmonic (1944) featuring Les Paul, Nat King Cole and Illinois Jacquet - I wore these sides, which I still have, out. In 1954-55, Les Paul and his wife had a five minute syndicated TV show called the Les Paul & Mary Ford Show. The musical numbers featured on that show were standards such as "How High The Moon" and "Vaya Con Dios". The latter was the show's theme song. The legendary guitar-man played guitar and provided the then revolutionary electronic effects - reverb, overdubbing, and more - while Mary Ford did the vocals. Les Paul was for me at the time a jazz man inventor.
   Growing up my favorite TV shows were "The Naked City" and "Peter Gunn" - I thought the music featured in the latter was hip. The theme song for "Peter Gunn" was very popular at the time. And I never expected to hear that theme song performed live.
   Confluence moment, 31 March 2011. At the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, Michigan my musical 1950s converged upon me. I heard 'Les Paul & Mary Ford' performed with reverb and overdubbing and I heard the themes from "Blackboard Jungle" and "Peter Gunn". There was much else heard that evening in addition to Jeff Beck's superb guitar-playing, but I'm not exactly 'down' with rock-a-billy and such. The sold-out auditorium consisted of an 'older' crowd.
   It was unexpected and memory provoking.