Pat Halley

Note for web version: regular, bold and italic types are reproduced as in original.

It is appropriate to note at any time that humanity has lived over 99% of its existence in primitive society. Without even the benefit of laws, our ancestors were able to rest their arses on logs and cook over open fires. Without encyclopedias people raised cattle, made, cheese, drank wine. It is even thought by some anthropologists that uncivilized people made love and made music without the religious benefits of stereophonic machines!

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While not nearly as exciting as a riot, and perhaps lacking the dignity of a well-executed bank robbery, the Fifth Estate’s 10^th anniversary party was still a hell-raising triumph of communal insanity.

Fifth Estate 10^th anniversary revelers boogie while Ted Lucas and Bill Hidgeson play (photo Millard Berry). The Fifth Estate’s sadly depleted coffers received a much-needed boost from the benefit; with total receipts of $704 and costs of $354 ($194 for beer, $80 for the hall, $60 for leaflets and mailings and $20 for incidentals) we came out ahead about $350, a sum which should keep our heads above water for at least a couple more issues. Many thanks again to all who took part, hope to see you at the next one.

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Except for the contemptuous throwing of animal entrails, blood, and a decomposed lamb’s head all over Wayne State University President George Gullen’s office, February 19 was a typical day at the school.

Secretaries were processing records while tender-bellied professors busily tried to seem important. The faceless administrators like Gullen would occasionally leave their 12^th floor cocktail lounge to flirt with their secretaries or sign some orders that a petty aide had drawn up.

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“Madness cometh sometime of the passions of the soul.”

-- Bartholomew of England

“Zounds! Bethumped by words!”

-- Richard II

The critics are raving about it. Sold out shows and long lines testify to a growing public obsession with it; indeed, everything having to do with the film version of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” is having mind-boggling repercussions.

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It’s not easy being a fool. All the fools on television and in Hollywood make competition stiff but it has been worse. From the sixth to the tenth century, for nearly four hundred years, the Catholic church and the European nobility declared total war on theatrical activities, and wherever these feudal forces attained power it was at the expense of fools, pagans and local shamans.

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a review of

Street Magic. Edward Claflin in collaboration with Jeff Sheridan, Doubleday/Dolphin Books, 1977

By far the most dominant feature of American streets is that hardly anything happens. The routines of commerce and work continue like clock-work, dangerous beasts are extinct, and vivid characters have perished as has literature since World War One.

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Reality, grown so thick with itself, became a fungus years ago with inbred spores and long reaching strands that have become the vampiric architecture of experience on every street in town. Thriving on dampened spirits in the totally human swamp, the fungus is the protective covering for the swamp, made to keep the animal from moving around in it as it slowly consumes its hosts leaving lifeless automatons where biological entities once thrived.

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