The Sixties | The Sixties

Dec.22.2012 TP's Muse Board When I was nine, and my sister seven, we shared a bedroom in the attic of a Victorian house, in New England. We loved that pink triangular room, and the imaginary line that equally divided her side and mine, and it was not lost on us, that we were far removed from our extended paternal...	Aug.23.2012 New Normal? Are You Kidding Me? Talk about the "New Normal", I turned sixteen out west in 1968 surrounded by colorful fashions, music that stirred the highest emotions, confused young men in camouflage and fights for the rights of minority groups like Indians, African Americans, Farm Workers, Drug Users, Pimps and Prostitutes. No...
Apr.12.2011 The Game of the Name Here's yet another bit of memoir, just published at The Nervous Breakdown: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/jpsmith/2011/04/the-game-of-the-name/	Aug.14.2010 BECOMING JIMI HENDRIX, early years biography, out August 31 After a year of researching, writing, finding rare photos for licensing and agonizing over being completely honest about the life of the greatest electric guitarist who ever lived, I'm pleased to tell you that on August 31, Da Capo/Perseus releases in stores in the US and UK the early years...
Aug.05.2010 The Dawn of the Civil Rights Era Well, that's the title I gave it. But Benj DeMott, at "First of the Month," liked "Distance Learning" better. You can read it and make your own choice at: http://www.firstofthemonth.org/archives/2010/07/distance_learni.html	Mar.16.2009 Dr. Martin Bax and U.K's AMBIT Magazine - #2 In an interview with 3AM, a British publication, Dr. Bax is asked about AMBIT’s anti-establishment reputation which has, indeed, caused controversy. AMBIT, by the way, is one of Britain's leading literary magazines and Martin, a physician, has edited the publication for over 40 years. Martin...
Feb.04.2009 How I Became a Writer (7.) Third year, Penn replaced numerical grades with adjectives. That made it nearly impossible to flunk out. I failed Tax. I received "Excellent" in Fed. Courts. I was mediocre everywhere else. My main interest was extra-curricula. I had a skill. I wanted to make a contribution. I volunteered...	Nov.24.2008 Book Review: Stories Done: Writings on the 1960s and Its Discontents by Mikal Gilmore When cartoonist Walt Kelly said, in 1952, "We have met the enemy and he is us," he probably had no idea how applicable it would become throughout the years to follow. Yet for the people who shaped the 1960s and for whom by the 1970s "most of the significant components of the 1960s...
Nov.09.2008 The Hungry I You may find it strange that I find it strange that after some thirty-odd years of writing I’ve finally found that I can write out of my own life. It didn’t happen on purpose, it wasn’t something I’d planned, but when I began working on a new project—a novel based on an unproduced screenplay I’d...	Jan.07.2008 Beauty is Sheer Masochism While thumbing through Forensics for Dummies in search of a suitable demise for an arrogant psychiatrist in my new novel, I compiled a list of distinctly unpleasant experiences that might befall my victim should he ingest a lethal dose of say, strychnine: pain, lockjaw, twitching of the muscles,...