By Caron Schwartz
It’s been a Proustian week – full of sensations evoking the past.
It started at the Underground Book Fair at the Jack Kerouac House. No longer on the road, Kerouac spent the last two years of his life with his wife and mother in a mid-century tract home in St. Pete. As I perched on a wobbly backyard chair listening to indie authors ply their trade, I was back in 1980s Boulder, Colo. Beat poet Andy Clausen reading his latest in a neighbor’s backyard. Allen Ginsburg holding court at the Trident, the beatnik crowd’s favorite cafe. My buddy Kay and I driving her tiny Ford Fiesta to the airport to pick up poet Ann Waldman, with Allen in the back seat asking if we knew where we were going.
Reverie over, I walked through the house where poet Tim Huff and I recognized each other from a reading he had done with Ani Crane. Ani and I met in Tai Chi and connected over her friendship with my BFF from high school, Meryl Ann Butler. Those days with Meryl! Walking into our tiny downtown Glen Cove discussing music, makeup, and boys. We witnessed each other’s short-lived first marriages, but our paths diverged. When we friended on Facebook we discovered a friend in common – Ani.
Each walk into our tiny downtown Gulfport is a walk into my childhood. When I first glimpse Boca Ciega Bay, I can feel the wind in my hair as I rode my bike to Crescent Beach, the salt in the air, the sun glinting on the Long Island Sound.
I’ve spent the past few months as Marlene Shaw’s treasurer during her campaign for Gulfport City Council. Talk about reflecting on the past! There’s a photo – long lost to history – of 16-year-old me and high-school senior Robert Goldstone canvassing for Eugene McCarthy when he sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968. McCarthy was a guest lecturer while I attended the University of Colorado; of course I sat in the front row.
When on March 11, Gulfport elected City Councilmember Marlene Shaw and Mayor Karen Love, forming an all-woman City Council, we made history. But as I joined the jubilant celebration I was totally in the present.