Title: The Village Square
Subtitle: the column of lasting insignificance
Author: John Wilcock
Date: 1966
Notes: Fifth Estate #4, February 12-March 1, 1966

Here and There and Where

Surprising how many people still don’t realize how important and far-reaching is Madelyn Murray’s suit to Tax the Churches and how, when it reaches the Supreme Court, it might change the entire real estate tax structure of this country. Being a tough determined woman she’ll almost certainly fight the case all the way—and win. In a recent letter she told me that she keeps reading about all the people who are collecting money in her name, but she never sees any of it. Her ONLY address is Madelyn Murray O’Hair, P. O. Box 2117, Austin, Texas 78767. Baltimore assault case against her has been dropped...

Australia, changing to dollar (decimal) currency next month, is issuing $10 bills bearing a portrait of a convicted forger (Francis Greenway, shipped to that country in 1814) who later became a respected architect...

John Gruen’s book on the lower East Side is finished and being edited (Shorecrest will publish)...

“Appeal to Reason” (15 Cents from Steve Wagner, 29411 Twelfth Ave. S. W., Federal Way, Seattle, Washington 98003), an occasional broadsheet from our commonsense representative in the northwest...

Woman’s Wear Daily quotes Philadelphia retailer that imported bargains are getting ‘too expensive” and if they can’t provide a 55 per cent markup, forget it...

Vicestooge HH has lost even more respect than did Adlai...

Thoughtful (and cautionary) article on LSD by a trio of NY doctors appears in current New England Journal of Medicine. Among other quotes: “The phenomenon of return of symptoms is not understood. Among the suggested explanations are...permanent brain damage, gradual release of stored drug, conditioned response and learned reaction to anxiety.”...

Rubber stamp, “Don’t Buy War Toys,” $3 from Telemachus Graphics, 19 Agassiz Street, Cambridge, Mass. 02140...

Germany’s Wolf Vostall, a prolific Happenings artist, still turning out streams of pamphlets and Happenings books since returning to Hamburg. Latest is pudgy, fist-sized “24 Stunden” containing photos, pull-outs and a small plastic bag of flour. Happenings, temporarily dormant, are currently in the ‘being documented” stage. Current issue of Tulane Drama Review ($2 from Tulane University, New Orleans, La. 70118) is devoted entirely to the subject with pictures, interviews, scripts and commentary by Michael Kirby (author of another book on the subject) in which he makes the absolutely correct evaluation that theatre is still the most backward of the arts, still clings nervously to tradition and formal structure that other arts have abandoned...

Monocle’s latest, “Vietnam Speakout” by Lou Myers and Ken Burrows, is a series of fatuous, inaccurate predictions from the idiots who are running this war...

Will Edie Sedgwick make the Bob Dylan movie or will she accept the nibbles from Hollywood? Even she doesn’t know yet...But she’ll be with Andy Warhol when the latter’s wild group, “The Velvet Underground,” open at the projected new “discotheque” in a former airplane hangar out on Long Island. As well as dancing and devilry there’ll be 11 movie screens around the walls and ceiling, all showing different programs...

Al Aronowitz, former Post feature writer (both Sateve and NY) now manages pop groups, one of which, the Forty Fingers (14-year-olds), played for an all-night party to open Mickey Ruskin’s “Kansas City” bar last week. Now the art crowd have a new place to play—and to dance when Mickey gets a music license...

Most revealing sign of the hip, international scene most admen frequent these days is the combined diary/reference book, “The Madison Avenue Handbook” (Peter Glenn Publications, $5.95) containing national and international phone numbers and addresses, multilingual dates, and typical characteristics of some zodiac signs (to handle clients better)...

Why should only the rich and privileged have tax-deductible foundations asks the poor, underprivileged Hal Kapplow who invites applicants for grants to apply to the Hal Kapplow Foundation (290 West 11th Street, NYC 10014) without undue optimism...

Woman or fortress, both allow approaches via but one route, fulfill their destiny by provoking siege...

Topes are becoming obsolete in Mexico. They’re the metal highway studs that slow down approaching cars at entrance to most towns...Panache: clean-cut appearance, new writers, poetry, fiction, imaginative idea to precede title page with opening of story (65 Cents from 55 East 87 Street, NYC 10028)...

ASPCA’s clinical research laboratory studying rising incidence of hallucinogenic neurosis among cats and dogs turned on by experimenting pet lovers...

Ice hockey: 100-proof excitement in patches, long stretches of boredom, ritualistic sweeping, melting, refreezing of ice has poetic content, NY Rangers must be only team’ consistently booed by own supporters...

Guidelines ($2 from 550 Roosevelt Way, San Francisco 94114) lists about 150 offbeat magazines even though it doesn’t give much info about them...

Miles, peripatetic distributor of offbeat stuff in London, friend to poets, and, well, Our Man in Britain, now has his own bookstore, Indica Books & Gallery (6 Mason’s Yard, Duke Street, St. James, London S.W. 1) and is interested in distributing publications from small American presses. Also wants art galleries to put him on their mailing lists and will send his rare book catalog out to anybody who requests it...

Igor Cassini’s “Status” won’t make it; there aren’t enough snobs who can read...

Defending a couple of street musicians, William Brown and Gene Williams, who can often be seen strumming washtub bass and tin can at 49th Street and Seventh Avenue, ACLU lawyer Alan Levine told a court that the disorderly conduct statute under which they were charged was being used to impose a “dulling conformity” upon the city. Both were acquitted...

When you get bored with other indoor games you’ll find Sylvia Schur’s “Complete Blender Cook Book” (Simon & Schuster, $3.50) is lots of fun...

Dick Higgins’ Something Else Press (160 Fifth Avenue) has become the major avante garde publisher almost without anybody noticing. Latest two items, both hardcover: Al Hansen’s “A Primer of Happenings & Time/Space Art” (about which more later)and “The Four Suits,” one of whose chapters (by Tomas Schmit) contains the advice: “Please Shut This Book! and be angry!”...