Bob is lured by Druids to honor the Solstice Sunrise / Here comes the Sun (du dn du du) / Sitting Bull in Canada

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My pal from the USA state shaped like the palm of a right-hand mitten sent me some stuff about John Sinclair, who is something of a legend thereabouts for his many public achievements in Attempted Freedom in the late 1960s, and his efforts to Create Utopia Locally, also a lot of hot music (the MC5). My pal met Sinclair once.

How famous was John Sinclair? Well, John Lennon and Yoko Ono came to Ann Arbor to sing a song Lennon wrote demanding Sinclair's release from prison.

Here is a redacted transcript of my reply.

Redact. Redact. I love redacting stuff.

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Getting sentenced to ten years for giving (not even selling) two joints to a narc, well I am guessing this would make a feller a little edgy and paranoid about smiling strangers.

I really have always admired the guy. Well -- it was the times. King John and the Sheriff of Nottingham had us all by the shorthairs, and Sinclair decided he'd be Robin Hood and gathered a merry band of White Panthers around him to thwart the evil schemes of the capitalist warmonger oppressors.

I've never been seduced by a single pitch from a conservative, but there really must be something wrong with my head, all my life -- documented at least to age 14 (when I transferred on the bus three times to go visit the commune of the Young Peoples Socialist League) -- I have been a total sucker for the pamphlets and Siren Songs of the Utopian Left. They promise me Justice, Brotherhood, Peace, and a gazillion times better music between speeches. I mean, it's just not much of a choice between a day with Rage Against the Machine, or a day listening to Kate Smith. Or MC5 vs. Perry Como.

And I like their art, with the sweat and bulging muscles of honest industrial workers of both genders and all races welding a Better Future for All. The last vestiges of New Deal post office art and Soviet propaganda art.

Here Comes The Sun
George Harrison

Complimentary "Here Comes The Sun" ringtone

Here comes the sun (du dn du du)
Here comes the sun
And I say
Its alright

Little darling
Its been a long cold lonely winter
Little darling
It seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun
Here comes the sun
And I say
Its alright

Little darling
The smiles returning to the faces
Little darling
It seems like years since it's been here

Here comes the sun (du dn du du)
Here comes the sun
And I say
Its alright

Sun, sun, sun, here it comes (four times)

Little darling
I see the ice is slowly melting
Little darling
It seems like years since it's been clear

Here comes the sun (du dn du du)
Here comes the sun
Its alright

Here comes the sun (du du du du)
Here comes the sun
Its alright
Its alright

U.S. Naval Observatory
Astronomical Applications Department

Sun and Moon Data for One Day

The following information is provided for Amherst, Hampshire County, Massachusetts (longitude W72.5, latitude N42.4):

Friday
20 June 2008 Eastern Daylight Time

SUN
Begin civil twilight 4:38 a.m.
Sunrise 5:13 a.m.
Sun transit 12:52 p.m.
Sunset 8:30 p.m.
End civil twilight 9:05 p.m.

In a couple of hours I'm giving myself a little treat, gonna drive to U-Mass and check out the scene at their retro neolithic astronomical stone circle, the Sunwheel
for Summer Solstice Sunrise. Over the years the Solstice Sunrise has become a draw for the neighborhood's neo-Druids, Wiccans, etc., but the High Priestess of the whole shindig is a woman professor of astronomy who designed the Sunwheel and saw to its construction. My guess is there should be about 100-200 people (some in Druid regalia) welcoming the Sun at the start of the longest day of the year.

Buzz is that the same hawk or eagle or falcon or giant black raven perches on the same big stone at every Solstice Sunrise. I'll let you know, maybe even bring back photos. Jeez I hope they don't do a human sacrifice, but I'm pretty sure I'm too old and scrawny to be selected as the victim.

They'll also have a later shindig for Solstice Sunset, but that's just for wussies who can't hack waking up for the dawn. (Neither can I, this is how I've always seen the dawn, staying up all night.)

... I'm having a big jones to want to travel. I may ride the feeling out until it passes ... Or I may pack the backpack and run off to some screwy place. Tonight my thoughts are full of Fort Walsh, Saskatchewan. (But VIA has discontinued the southern train line that passed near there, I'd have to do the last day on a bus.)

Oh, okay, after they wiped out Custer, Sitting Bull and his tribe figured they might be in a little trouble with the federal authorities, and skeedaddled north over the border to Saskatchewan. The Canadians and British really wanted to send them back to the US, but Sitting Bull showed the Mounties the medal his grandfather got from King George for fighting on the Brit side in the War of 1812.

Canada gave them sanctuary and some extra vittles for about five years, and never forced them back, they went back and surrendered on their own.

B