Brianland

the Best in Kerouac & the Beats, Adventure, Politics, Music, Movies, Poetry & other Lifejoys

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The Chad Allan Story

April 30th, 2022 · 27 Comments · Music, Poetry, Real-life Adventure Tales

The Chad Allan Story . When I was in grade 7 at St. John’s Ravenscourt school, a teacher, Bernie Beare, told me I could write well.  I didn’t know what-the-hell good that was gonna be, but apparently it was something I could do. So I started to focus on it, and pay attention in English […]

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Finding Kesey

January 29th, 2017 · 13 Comments · Hitchhiker's Guide to Jack Kerouac, Kerouac and The Beats, Merry Pranksters, Weird Things About Me

Finding Kesey . Following the November 2016 election I knew it was time to get my own house in order.  A year had been lost to a losing campaign, added to five years of On The Road domino-tumbling madness that had passed since my mother had passed in 2011, and there was a lot of […]

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Gary Hart rally 1984 Washington Square

September 11th, 2016 · 12 Comments · New York City, Politics, Real-life Adventure Tales

How Rock Concerts Led To Politics . For most of ’80s I lived in Phyllis & Eddie Condon’s palatial apartment on Washington Square North.  The NYU Program Board from where I ran the concerts was in the Loeb Student Center on Washington Square South — about a 3-minute walk away — if you didn’t dawdle […]

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Don’t be Denied — “Young Neil” book review

October 5th, 2014 · 22 Comments · Music

  I’ve been waiting for this book for a long time! As a teenager in Winnipeg in the ’70s, Neil was a god to us. We drove the 500 miles to Minneapolis during grade 12 at Kelvin to see him for the first time — and to our great dumb-luck fortune, it was the Rust […]

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A Force of Nature — Enid E. Hassett

September 20th, 2011 · 40 Comments · Weird Things About Me

. Condolences, memories, and tributes to Enid have been coming in from — Indonesia, Vietnam, Nepal, Oman, Switzerland, Austria, England, Mexico . . . Los Angeles, Palm Springs, San Francisco, Lake Tahoe, Portland, Eugene, Seattle, the Olympic Peninsula, Missoula Montana, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Rochester Minnesota, Rochester New York, Phoenix, Dallas, Austin, Louisville, Detroit, Key […]

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A Song of Enid, I Sing

August 28th, 2011 · 36 Comments · Poetry, Weird Things About Me

Her father was an engineer on the CPR, so the whole family got to travel all over North America, when virtually no one in their town ever went more than a few miles from home. They had 5 sons, followed by 4 daughters, Enid being the first. They owned the first (and for a long time […]

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