Diary

Monday, March 14 (cont'd)

It's Saturday afternoon.

I stepped in a pothole, walking around in the garden with Brenda, and my back clenched up.

I took some ibuprofen and got in bed..

Brenda and I watched half of The Motorcycle Diaries last night. We'll watch the other half tonight.

It feels like spring outside. Our neighbor is trimming her trees with a chain saw.

Is my book halfway done? It has been ten days. I'm at 21,000 words.

Off my pace.

I can always go past March 21 if I'm not finished. If it's too short.

From: Jack Saunders
To: Jim Musselman, Appleseed Recordings
Subj: Contact

When Granny Brown died, Owen and Balder played "When Sorrow Encompasses Me Around" at her funeral. A mournful dirge.

Not a song two young men are likely to know, nowadays.

Owen, a fiddle player, taught Balder the chords, on guitar.

Owen plays that classic, long-bow fiddle. His first group was the Gillis Brothers, who knew the Stanley Brothers songbook as well as Ralph Stanley, and better than Ralph Jr. Yet Balder calls him the Japanese Bebop Fiddler From Outer Space. On his own time he stretches out.

Balder formed a band called Dread Clampitt. A reggae-bluegrass fusion band. Bluegrass is popular in Jamaica. They play world music, or Americana music. But it's mostly bluegrass. Balder plays mandolin.

I am a writer. A vernacular writer. I speak Colloq, and sometimes I write it, as Martin Joos said.

Vernacular translates of native-born slaves. A slave is an ambassador in bonds, who speaks boldly, as one ought to speak. To his master.

I am writing a book about the relation between, or among roots music, folk art, and vernacular writing. POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT: AN IMMOBILIZED HERO NOVEL. I looked up "When Sorrow Encompasses Me Around" in a search engine and got a hit on your web site for the two-volume Warner Collection. I see where your motto is "sowing the seeds of social justice through music." As an independent record company.

I had a character named Johnny Potsherd. Instead of sowing sherds in Indian sites he sowed self-published pamphlets, vernacular writer business cards, and 1" x 3½" bumper stickers with the url of his web site in state parks, campground latrines, and so forth. Then, it was The Daily Bugle. Then roman-feuilleton.com. Now The Daily Bulletin.

I am writing a book about sowing the seeds of social justice through daily typewriting at The Daily Bulletin. I mention you on entries for March 13 and March 13 (cont'd).

My entire oeuvre has been suppressed, by the five conglomerates that control mainstream publishing. They don't like what I have to say, about them.

An independent publisher, LitVision Press, is bringing out a book of mine in June. Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family. I am looking forward to that. It's been 17 years since another independent publisher, Popular Reality, brought out Forty, my 40th book.

I'm up to 257 now. 258 in progress.

Anyhow, keep up the good work.

From: Jack Saunders
To: Big Chief Visions
Subj: Homegrown Powwow

John Lamar is hosting Potterfest this weekend at a campground on the Chattahoochee River, up by Malone. Brenda and Balder will be at that.

I'll be at your powwow and will bring a covered dish.

I buy my bags of oysters at B&S, or S&R Seafoods, on East Avenue, between Business 98 and Highway 231, on the left, going towards 231, between a wire rope place and a nut and bolt place. They have a sign out front saying, "Oysters, Pool, Fish Fry," or something like that.

Oysters, Darts, Fist Fights?

I ordered 250 more Root Doctor. If they come, I'll have that and some Dread Clampitt CDs. If not, I'll have some pamphlets to sell.

Do I need to bring my own card table and lawn chair?

I'm looking forward to the show. Sorry Brenda and the boys won't be there.

Q: Around the time you and Brenda bought the house in Norcross, you went to a lot of bluegrass festivals, and wrote about attending them, at your web site, The Daily Bugle.

You went to hear Col. Bruce Hampton and the Codetalkers at HarvestFest.

You went to Little Turniptown Overnight Music Jam, in Ellijay, to see Col. Bruce Hampton and the Code Talkers, but they were not there. Nobody was there but a bunch of rough-camping hippies and the band Reggae Cowboys. You and Brenda drove to LaGrange, Georgia, to Hoofer's Gospel Barn, to hear a bluegrass festival hosted by the James King Band. That's where you first dreamed of playing the swinette on stage, at Americana music festivals, selling your books at the record table afterwards.

And now you're doing it. At a folk art festival, Homegrown Powwow.

Q: Yes. At Hoofer's Gospel Barn Owen had a tin that looked like a film can, with Dapper Dan hair pomade on the cover, to promote O Brother, Where Art Thou? Billy Bob Thornton had made the movie Daddy and Them. And John Prine had recorded the CD In Spite of Ourselves, featuring the theme song from Daddy and Them, which he sang with Iris Dement.

I thought my series of 20 novels about a year in the life of an underground writer, a redneck with a web site, would find a home.

It didn't.

20 books in a year was too much for independent publishers. And too outspoken for the conglomerates.

The year began September 1, 2001. Then came September 11. So I was writing about how our government responded to September 11 the whole year.

New York did not want to hear that.

They still don't.

Q: Damn. The record of America's greatest writer's response to his government's response to 9-11, written as it happened. That may be publishable, some day.

A: I doubt it.

I sent Larry a copy. I hope he has it. Because one box of manuscripts I wrote in Georgia got waterlogged, on our back porch, and I threw it out.

It was a sad day.

But the manuscripts were ruined. I don't even know what was in there.

A cardboard box full of soggy paper, with the ink running.

Q: Damn.

A: Easy come, easy go. There's more where that came from. And Larry might have a xeroxed copy. In the archive.