Hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude watch

A choice quote from the NY Times'

'The Poem That Changed America: "Howl" Fifty Years Later'

" 'Howl' still helps young people realize their actual ambitions... not to become a poor poet living in a dump but maybe to become a physical therapist when you are expected to become a lawyer, or maybe to become a lawyer when everybody expects you to fail at everything."

One day in the Carter Era, my high school Western Civ teacher was standing around with my friends. He turned to each one of them in turn saying, "Yale for you." "For you, Georgetown." When he got to me, he said, "have you considered the Navy?"

That same year, I must have been cutting class and hiding out in one of the used book stores downtown one afternoon, when I found a thin book with a strange, foul-mouthed, fiery poem, barely comprehensible to an Idaho kid. I bought it, read it, and as you see, here I am.

Years after that, Allen Ginsberg came to Boise for a reading. Wish I'd gone up and shaken his hand.