An American Poet: John G. Neihardt

By Michael Hooper

The book Lonesome Dreamer, the Life of John G. Neihardt by Timothy G. Anderson, portrays a man with an incredible zest for life, a love of Native Americans and a quest for literary greatness.

Neihardt was born in an uninsulated house on Jan. 8, 1881, in Sharpsburg, Illinois, to parents Nicholas and Alice Neihardt. His father named him after John Greenleaf Whittier, the American Quaker poet and abolitionist. Neihardt later changed his middle name to Gneisenau.

In the 1900s, John G. Neihardt became a popular author of poetry and western literature, he wrote 25 books, his most famous book is Black Elk Speaks. In his long life, he lived in Kansas, Nebraska, Kansas City, Minnesota, Missouri and Chicago, but seemed most connected to Nebraska and Missouri. He died at the age of 92 in 1973. He was friends with Nebraska authors Willa Cather and Mari Sandoz.

In 1892, Neihardt, a young boy, got sick and had a dream that he was flying, he heard a voice encouraging him to take a leap of faith. He believed the voice was something powerful, almost spiritual, Anderson wrote. A spiritual life became hugely important to him.

Neihardt's father abandoned the family early on, but his mother was a supportive person who encouraged his literary pursuits. They moved to Wayne, Neb., and later to Bancroft, Neb., near the Omaha Indian reservation, where the young boy developed a lifelong interest in Native Americans.

I enjoyed reading about Neihardt in his youth making friends with other intellectuals in his hometown. In Wayne, Neb., he met Reuben Durrin and James Brittain. Durrin was a "a talented amateur sculptor who made his living as a tombstone carver," Anderson wrote. Young Neihardt often listened to Durrin recite poetry from memory, especially Byron and Shakespeare. Durrin's friend Brittain was a lawyer who also owned the opera house. Brittain loved the theater and Shakespeare was his favorite. Neihardt enjoyed discussions of philosophy, art and literature with these educated men.

At 17, Neihardt wrote his first poetry book The Divine Enchantment, about Hindu religion and Vedanta philosophy. He and a friend went to Kansas City, where he was hoping to get the book published but was rejected. 

In KC, they looked for jobs and tried to make a go of it there but eventually ended up broke and got arrested for vagrancy. While living as hobos traveling in the area, some professional hobos encouraged them not to beg for food from rich people, Anderson wrote, but instead stick to the nice little places that maybe need a bit of paint and had flowers.

Eventually, they gathered up enough money to take a train from Kansas City to Omaha and then they walked all the way home to Wayne, Neb., which was 100 miles. The author did not say how they survived on that 100-mile walk, but it's likely they stopped at modest looking houses and met people with middle-to-low incomes who fed them.

Neihardt published poetry and short stories in newspapers and magazines. He worked as a teacher and later as a reporter at the Omaha Daily News. He wasn't a good reporter, often getting scooped by his competitors, so he got fired.

Neihardt was a bit of a curmudgeon stuck with old-fashioned ideas about poetry and American culture, even when he was young, he stuck to archaic language that he so admired In Tennyson‘s poetry. Words like smote, verily, vulpine and metempsychosis are sprinkled throughout his early stories, Anderson wrote. Neihardt wrote about the Omaha Tribe, and often his stories were mournful and melancholy, and he almost always wrote about men. He admired the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, he edited and wrote the introduction to Select Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson in 1907 and was influenced by the Transcendentalist movement. He seemed more connected to God through nature than a church. He felt Americans were overly materialistic and headed in the wrong direction.

Neihardt used rhymes and traditional formats in his poetry and stayed away from free verse.

It takes a certain audacity of a white man to write about the American Indian, but I must say that this man went to great lengths to capture the spirit of the native American, especially Black Elk. Neihardt brought cigarettes to Black Elk and other tribal leaders at Pine Ridge. He participated in pipe smoking rituals with the tribe. He interviewed Black Elk, with the help of interpreters and his daughter who took notes.

One criticism I have of Neihardt is that he moved often. He lived in Minneapolis because he had a steady employment with a Minneapolis newspaper writing about books and literature and later he had a similar job in St. Louis. He lived for a long time in Branson, Missouri, but one time he was moving to St. Louis and most of his papers and archives were lost in a wreck in the move. Toward the end of his life he moved to Columbia, Mo., but he often stayed with friends in Lincoln, Neb.

I think he would’ve been better off financially if he would’ve stayed in one place a little bit longer. It’s funny he seemed to be a fairly popular writer, but by the end of the 1930s and the early 1940s he was struggling financially to come up with money. His Cycle of the West is an epic poem that was written over many years. But it made him little money.

His wife Mona was an extraordinary woman who was an artist and sculptress who worked under the sculptor Auguste Rodin in Paris. She read one of Neihardt’s books and wrote him a letter; through correspondence they fell in love with one another and actually were betrothed before they had actually met. When she came to Omaha, he met her at the train station and they were married the next day. They remained married for nearly 50 years. They had four children and 10 grandchildren.

Toward the end of his life, Neihardt looked like he might fall into obscurity, but suddenly his 1932 book Black Elk speaks was republished in paperback by Bison Press of the University of Nebraska and it hit at a perfectly good time in the 1960s when young people were interested in the American Indian and the injustices against them. Black Elk and his visions seemed attractive. I remember reading Black Elk Speaks many years ago, and found it to be very mystical and hallucinatory, full of dreamscapes, wisdom, hardships and great sorrow.

I think Anderson's book is worth reading, the prose is vivid and easy to read, there is no doubt you feel Neihardt was determined to be a successful writer, even though his journey was full of hardships, financial difficulties and criticism, especially from critics who felt his poetry was not modern enough. Yet he captures moods and feelings very well. Here is an example:

L'envoi

Seek not for me within a tomb;

You shall not find me in the clay!
I pierce a little wall of gloom
To mingle with the Day!

I brothered with the things that pass,
Poor giddy Joy and puckered Grief;
I go to brother with the Grass
And with the sunning Leaf.

Not Death can sheathe me in a shroud;
A joy-sword whetted keen with pain,
I join the armies of the Cloud,
The Lightning and the Rain.

O subtle in the sap athrill,
Athletic in the glad uplift,
A portion of the Cosmic Will,
I pierce the planet-drift.

My God and I shall interknit
As rain and Ocean, breath and Air;
And O, the luring thought of it
Is prayer!

AI and The Jason Arday Tragedy

Jason Arday

By Michael Hooper

The Jason Arday tragedy points out several lessons for writers and artists who use AI without attribution. You are likely to get caught, especially under the scrutiny of AI detection tools.

Critics of Cambridge professor Jason Arday's work ran one of his letters through four leading AI detection tools. Three tools found his work was largely generated by AI, according to this youtube video.

The top five AI detection tools are GPTZero, Winston AI, Copyleaks, Originality.ai, and Pangram, according to a recent Google search.

Jason Arday had become the youngest black professor at Cambridge University three years ago. Immediately after his arrival, several critics questioned the authenticity of his work. A reporter contacted him about claims of plagiarism, and Arday called the police on him. Cambridge University originally defended him. The university reversed course in early August 2026, launching an independent inquiry into his hiring process after discovering he had misrepresented his academic credentials and honorary appointments. Arday resigned. Several days later he was found dead.

It's a tragedy that Jason Arday, 41, is gone. His family said he had been relentlessly persecuted by the press and he couldn’t take it anymore.

 "A young man has been lynched by the media," said one of his friends, Professor Kehinde Andrews in this video. He said there were some 188 articles written in the span of nine days. The social media coverage and the press put a tremendous amount of pressure on him. After Arday resigned, he was worried about supporting his family, with two children, one going to college; he couldn't leave the house. He had lost weight and was depressed. He couldn't see a way forward, Andrews said.

"If he was white, not black, he would still be alive today," Andrews says. 

In the same video  Albie Amankona said there were several other cases of plagerism in the UK, including at Cambridge, that did not attract near the coverage that Jason Arday received. Some of the commentators were vicious in their comments and bullied him to death, Amankona said.

American Nathan Cofnas, Arday's chief critic, is a "race realist" who believed Arday's work contained plagiarism. Cofnas has subsequently been suspended by Ghent University. 

Arday's story raises questions about racism, white guilt, enabling mediocrity, press coverage and the future of AI in the academic world.

Arday said he was diagnosed with autism and global development delay, and he publicly stated that he was non-verbal until age 11 and could not read or write until he was 18. He also claimed that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days and that he had raised millions of dollars for charity.

Cambridge was impressed with his credentials. The intellectual elite wanted a token black professor. They wanted to believe his story, a man who had overcame huge disadvantages and earned a PhD. They should have looked deeper into his writings about education. At a minimum they would have found grammatical errors that were hard to overlook, one critic called it "poor scholarship."

The Atlantic reported that Jason Arday's primary plagiarism allegations centered on text overlap between his 2015 Ph.D. dissertation (Liverpool John Moores University) and a 2009 doctoral thesis from Brunel University titled A study of student teachers' perceptions and understanding of pupil behaviour and its management by Paula Zwozdiak-Myers. The Atlantic said Over 100 passages in Arday's dissertation—particularly segments discussing student teaching and methodology—were found to closely track or reproduce text from Zwozdiak-Myers' 2009 work, including a mirrored error in an apostrophe within a shared title phrase

There is no doubt Jason Arday's story got out of hand in the media, but how do you control that? Reporters in the UK are known for their ruthless and cruel tactics in creating a story. Princess Diana suffered dearly because of the British press' relentless coverage of her affairs.

Nevertheless, the lesson is clear here. Lies imprison a man, truth sets him free.

I wish Jason Arday had the courage to face his critics, clear up what he did wrong, straighten the record and move on with his life. Surely he could have salvaged some kind of career.

AI

I used Google and Google AI to verify facts and background in this article. 

In my early days of journalism, 1988-89, there was no Google. About that time, Stauffer Communications launched Stauffer Gold, a computer library program that held local stories in memory. The search-engine tool was available at The Grand Island Independent, then owned by Stauffer Communications of Topeka. I remember my friend Terry Krepel, staying up late in the office of The Independent downloading stories into Stauffer Gold.

For further research we used old clip files, but if I wanted more information, I went to local libraries. Libraries have old city maps and local history books. I depended on maps from the Sanborn Map Co., to help me find the original locations of businesses, going back to 1900 and earlier in some cities.

My journalism professors taught me to cite my sources. I probably overdid it with the, she said, he said business, but I wanted to make sure the source was clear.

Going forward colleges and universities need to review PhD candidate material with the help of AI detection tools. If there are red flags, the academic advisor needs to ask the candidate to address these issues. This should be policy regardless of race or background.

I tried some of the AI detection tools listed above. The easiest to use so far is https://originality.ai/

I ran this article through originality.ai and it said, "AI use appears to be 15% or less," in my article. The areas cited as AI generated include The Atlantic quote, which I attributed to the magazine.

Flow: The Highest State of Consciousness

Forest

Art and Story by Michael Hooper

For years I’ve been on a quest to achieve the highest state of consciousness. 

The highest state of consciousness is a creative, efficient, and highly productive place. It’s where you are focused and intent upon accomplishing a certain task or goal. You forget about time and feel as if you are on a mission from God. 

Artists, writers, scientists, creative people are always looking for ways to achieve flow. They might call it something else like working at the top of my potential, in the zone, or maximizing my resources or orchestrating a giant event.

Flow is the greatest of you. Flow brings out the best in you.

How do you achieve the highest state of consciousness?

The shortest and fastest way to achieve flow state is by getting started. Do the work. Sit down at your desk, write down two or three steps to achieve your goal and then accomplish them. Ignore all distractions. Silence the noise, stay focused. "I work until I'm there. Gotta show up to the page," says Skyler Troughton, author of books of poetry and a trilogy.

It is in the work that you will get illuminating ideas. I have found that while researching and writing a story, a second idea will come to me or even a third idea. Ideas pour out of me while doing the work.

Another technique for getting into the flow is to use stream of consciousness writing, popularized by 20th Century writers like James Joyce, William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.

In The Principles of Psychology in 1890, William James wrote, "consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits ... it is nothing joined; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let's call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life."

A person deeply into stream of consciousness writing might dash off 1,000 words in quick order. They write down the first thing that comes to mind and continue writing every thought. The stream might be filled with a bunch of random thoughts, such as, "I must do laundry, the sky is gray, my trailer is falling apart, I wish I knew a good plumber, my book needs my attention, dammit, I'm going to make a cup of coffee and get started writing, oh shit, I forgot to feed the cats. There is no cat food, oh my fucking God."

Some writers want much more control or agency, and write only deliberately and precisely well-thought-out sentences that have been rehearsed. The stream of consciousness writer let's it flow.

I write compulsively every day, starting with a diary entry. Yet rarely am I writing stream of consciousness, but I do enjoy this exercise and have had success creating poems and prose using this method.

Ernest Hemingway ended each day in the middle of sentence. He used this trick so he would never face a blank page or wonder how to continue.

Sleep on your idea. Your subconscious will continue working on the idea while you sleep. In the morning you may have an epiphany about your project.

Psychedelics may enhance or alter your universe, helping you to see things or ideas that you had never seen before or thought of before. Advocates believe psychedelics enhance the level of your consciousness and connect you with the universe at a different level

Michael Pollan, author of A World Appears, says psychedelics have the ability to re-animate a world gone quiet and still. Psychedelics soften our resistance to various forms of magical thinking. Under the influence of psychedelics, we are more likely to attribute consciousness to other entities, both living and nonliving, including plants.

When you talk to a plant, it hears you, if you show it affection with good growing conditions, the plant responds with thriving growth, trying to please you with its best display.

Caffeine may help a person achieve flow. It's a stimulant, two cups of coffee, and I'm good.

Cannabis may help some people achieve flow. Cannabis slows down some people, who procrastinate while high. I've met those rare exceptions of people who get amped up after consuming cannabis and dive deeper into their project.

You don't have to use drugs to reach your highest and best consciousness. In fact, you might perform better without them.

I believe consciousness is a decentralized system of nerves, muscles, cells, memory, blood flow throughout the body, all contributing to intuition, sentience, thought, self and feeling. This is an idea developed by Pollan in his book.

Self-awareness is a key ingredient for achieving flow, says Dane Broussard, a longtime business leader and CEO. He often comes up with his best ideas while working. Sometimes he generates ideas while running.

I once was riding my bicycle at night on a highway, stars were abundant, not much traffic, I was approaching a tight curve, I was afraid of getting caught at the curve with two cars coming and going. So I pulled into a driveway. And sure enough, two cars from different directions entered the curve at the same time, which would have squeezed me out had I been there. My sight, my body, my brain, the stars told me to pull into that driveway. Saved my life.

Pay attention to your instincts, your inner wildness, which is sensing all around you and in you. Your inner voice will say Yes or No. Listen carefully.

An artist can get into the flow state by simply turning off all sound, music, distractions, picking up a pencil and drawing. As you draw, your left brain gives up trying to control everything and assigns the task to the right brain. It is in this right brain where you achieve intuitive consciousness, spatial awareness, a sense of proportion and color and its complements.

For my painting Forest, I rode my bicycle into the forest, riding on a bumpy trail with my Surly mountain bike. I took pictures looking directly into the forest. I drew a picture and painted furiously to capture the different shades of green. This painting reminds me of my moments sitting quietly on the road in the forest, listening and watching everything from the ants on the ground to the squirrels in the trees, the light trickling in from the canopy above.

I believe I touched flow while painting Forest and writing this article, but I only had that moment for a short time, maybe two or three days and then it was gone. I'm left with a revealing memory.

The Beats in Kansas

William Burroughs As A Young Man, by Michael Hooper

By Michael Hooper

LAWRENCE, Kan. -- The biggest names in the Beat movement are William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg.

They left a legacy of creative works with followers of the Beat movement throughout America, Europe, Asia and Kansas. Newcomers often experience the Beats for the first time with On The Road by Jack Kerouac, Naked Lunch by William Burroughs and Howl by Allen Ginsberg.

The Beat movement started in the 1940s and took off in the 1950s as a rebellion against conformity; it evolved into the hippie movement and counter culture movement of the 1960s and 70s. The Beat movement's ideas of anti-war, civil rights, eastern spiritualist and pro-legalization of marijuana were picked up by other movements. 

The death of James Grauerholz, 73, of Lawrence, in early 2026 has left the William Burroughs literary estate in transition. Grauerholz was the longtime business manager for Burroughs and his literary executor after his death in 1997. In 2014, I met Grauerholz at the Lawrence Arts Center for the debut of a biography of William Burroughs by Barry Miles. 

Grauerholz and Burroughs photo ©Jon Blumb, 1995

Miles, a longtime friend of Burroughs, credited Grauerholz for much of the research for Call Me Burroughs: A Life. This article contains information from that 635-page book, plus interviews with friends of Burroughs in Lawrence.

William Seward Burroughs II was born in St. Louis, attended Harvard University, studying English and anthropology. He traveled with other Beat writers to Mexico, Morocco, Paris, New York, wrote multiple books and is considered one of the greatest American writers.

In 1951, Burroughs shot and killed his common-law wife, Joan Vollmer, in a tragic, drunken accident, while attempting a "William Tell act" at a party in Mexico City. He spent time in jail in Mexico, but fled the country while awaiting trail. Burroughs later said that the trauma of her death and the resulting guilt were the primary catalysts for his entire literary career.

Burroughs had been living in New York, but got addicted to heroin again in the late 1970s.

It was Grauerholz who convinced Burroughs to move to Lawrence in 1981. He could get methadone in nearby Kansas City on a regular basis. 

Burroughs once said he moved to Lawrence so that he could go shooting and keep cats.

William Burroughs on the banks of the Wakarusa photo ©Jon Blumb, 1994

In 1983 Burroughs bought a bungalow at 1927 Learnard in southeast Lawrence for $28,000. It was on an acre of wooded ground on a quiet street. The house was built in 1929 from a Sears Roebuck kit.

Grauerholz helped Burroughs edit several books and articles over the years. He also introduced Burroughs to his friends.

One of Grauerholz’s friends is Wayne Propst. Miles wrote that Propst took Burroughs out to visit the Propst farm home when Burroughs was thinking of getting a place in Lawrence. Burroughs said, "I’ll bet you five dollars I can hit that stalk over there," pointing at a small dried ragweed stalk about 20 feet away. Propst said, "I'm in." Burroughs drew his pistol, focused, and then fired. The stalk fell in two parts. Burroughs turned to Propst and said pay up with his fingers. Propst was a little surprised that this famous writer would expect him to pay up but said "oh yeah," and handed over the five dollars.

I purchased a painting from Wayne Propst displayed at the Cider Gallery in 2018. We consummated the deal at the Bourgeois Pig. Propst recently celebrated his 80th birthday and still is producing art.

Michael Hooper with Wayne Propst and his art at the Cider Gallery

Burroughs was famous and attracted all kinds of characters. Propst said one time a drunken Indian showed up at the Burroughs house, saying he had heard this is where the party is. Burroughs said no, the party is at a house down the street. What Burroughs didn't tell him was the occupant of that house is a sheriff's deputy.

Grauerholz introduced Bill Rich to Burroughs. Miles wrote, "Rich was a major force in the punk and post punk scene in Lawrence, managing and producing and playing with local bands." He edited and published music magazine Talk Talk in 1979-81, interviewing Iggy Pop, Billy Idol and William Burroughs. Rich became one of Burroughs' assistants, driving him around and cooking meals, Miles wrote. Rich is still alive living in Lawrence.

Chris Stein, William Burroughs, Bill Rich by James Grauerholz

"I know this picture," wrote Bill Rich. "I believe it was Chris Stein's camera held by James Grauerholz. Blondie had played at Starlight (in KC) the night before. Debbie Harry was inside the house with Ira Silverberg as they both disliked guns." I asked Chris Stein by Instagram if I could publish his photo, he replied, "Of course, no problem." Chris Stein is a founding member and guitar player with Blondie.

Lawrence-based photographer Jon Blumb, 69, met Burroughs around 1986 when Burroughs needed photographs of his art. Blumb took numerous photos of his art and of Burroughs himself. Blumb created a significant photo archive of Burroughs from 1986 to 1997, and created a portfolio titled William S. Burroughs in Prints. Burroughs died at age 83 in 1997.

Blumb said Burroughs would shoot a wooden board and then paint it. Or he might paint it first and then shoot it. He shot spray cans that would blow up, with paint exploding onto an object.

Burroughs was highly productive and his art gained in popularity.

"It was well received," Blumb said in an interview with me. "The people of Lawrence were nice to him. He was well regarded. It was a great idea that James moved him here."

Grauerholz established the Nova Foundation to preserve and share his and Burroughs' legacy. The board of directors of the Nova Foundation is currently making an inventory of the Burroughs and Grauerholz estates, including manuscripts, letters, books, art and photographs. Blumb is taking photographs of Burroughs' art for the inventory. Once up and running, the archive will be available to scholars seeking to do research. The author also was a prodigious photographer so there are numerous photos of different periods of his life.

Blumb said he could see this archive as a great resource for graduate students of literature, art, history and American studies.

Blumb said there is a new movie out about the Beats called Nova '78, about the Nova Convention in NYC, which included Burroughs along with Patti Smith, Frank Zappa and Allen Ginsberg. They collided in an explosion of ideas, art and rebellion, said imbd.com. The film can be viewed at https://watch.plex.tv/movie/nova-78

One of Grauerholz's last projects, maybe his Mona Lisa, was an anthology of his work as a musician titled James Grauerholz: Life's Too Good To Keep. His talent as a musician took backstage to his commitment to the art and artists around him. As Burroughs' Business Manager Grauerholz toured the world celebrating writers, musicians, and artists. This record is a collection of Grauerholz's musical expression over three decades. 

https://jamesgrauerholz.bandcamp.com/album/lifes-too-good-to-keep

I met Ginsberg in the early 1990s at a bookstore in Lincoln, Neb. He took an interest in my regional reporting work, seemed genuinely sincere and kind, drew a flower and signed my book that he had authored. I wonder what he would say today, now that 40 states have legal medical marijuana and 24 states have legal recreational marijuana. We have much to thank for the efforts of Ginsberg and others who pushed for legalization decades before it happened.

Another person in Lawrence who became friends with Burroughs is Jim McCrary. In an email to me, he said, he has a letter from Ginsberg to him in Lawrence in the late 60's "where we talked about starting a legalize marijuana group."

"I worked with James and WSB for a decade and saw Willliam on almost a daily basis," McCrary wrote. "Traveled with him to NYC to visit his friend Paul Bowles in the 90's and to LA for the opening of his show at LA Museum of Art (met David Hockney and some kid named Leo who came with my buddy S. Clay Wilson.  Leo's father was a distributor of Zap Comics in SF....Leo was actually Leo DiCaprio but we had no idea. Nor did William."

Paul Bowles, Burroughs, McCrary

McCrary said Kansas City and Wichita were more Beat than Lawrence in the early days.

"Wichita in late 50's and 60's was home to counter culture far more advanced, if you can call it that," McCrary wrote in an email to me.  "Was a lot going on.......jazz clubs,  beat bars, a place called The Beanery and a place called The Black Out were notable. Writers like Charlie Plymell,  Mike McClure, Allen Ginsberg came through. There was a big hot rod scene as well...pre beat influence.  KC of course had the jazz scene wrapped up in prewar US for sure and leftovers of that scene were alive and well in 60's.  Ginsberg's poem Entering KC High ends with him going into a queer nightclub bar on Main Street of KC. Was quite a publication to come out of Lawrence promoting a drug fueled trip by a queer poet to Kansas."

McCrary said he came to Lawrence in 1965, said he "Met up with crowd around Abington Bookstore which included John Fowler, George Kimball, Rob Rusk, Lee Chapman (her brother was in band The Blue Things at the time) and S Clay Wilson who came down from Lincoln, Neb.  High times indeed."

McCrary said, "There had been a 'beat' coffee shop in Lawrence for a while and there was a basement venue called The Firey Furnance where poets like Bob Creeley read by candlelight.  Allen Ginsberg did come and do his thing at the Union chanting East Indian mantras. Nobody I knew called themselves beat.  This was before summer of love so no hippies either. People were "freaks", "heads" as in pot heads or "stoned."

"Eventually Lawrence became hippy center for parts of Midwest," McCrary wrote.  "All that went on. Not the laid back literary beat stuff...but maybe some influence.   I don't think the shared living commune stuff was influenced by the Beats so much.  Sure, use of drugs and hippies took that further than beats due to fact that drugs were more and better. The Beats were a lot more egocentric and nothing wrong with that......    Here in Lawrence the hippy thing took a turn towards outlaw lifestyle in a sense for a while and then a lot of that turned into alternate lifestyle business like leather shops, head shops, candle shops, veggie food shops, jewelry shops, Army surplus shops, stained glass shops and cafes and restaurants all of which in early 70's started a change in Lawrence from a ag based downtown to something else."

One thing locals miss is the energy associated with Grauerholz and Burroughs, the two created and attracted all kinds of interesting people. 

In July 1996, the show, Points of Entry: William S. Burroughs and the Arts, a solo Burroughs show, with 150 of his artworks was displayed at the Los Angeles Museum. The show came to the University of Kansas Spencer Museum of Arts Oct. 26. That show was combined with the Nova Convention Revisited: William S. Burroughs and the Arts.

Deborah Harry, Chris Stein, Michael Stipe, Patti Smith, John Giorno and Philip Glass -- all came to Lawrence for this big event. My friend Jonathan Hummer said he met several of these stars when he working at the Eldridge Hotel at the time of the show.

Robert Ruden, a longtime drug addict/Menninger patient who lived in Topeka until he died in 2015, said he went to Lawrence for the Nova Convention; Ruden was at the Eldridge Hotel, when Michael Stipe "was carrying on about the artistic process. I told him to shut the fuck up. I'm trying to have a conversation with my Uncle Stanley (Grinstein)."

Some critics say the Beats were misogynistic, women cleaned up after the men, who were always out partying and running around. The modern American man who is fully conscious is supportive of women's rights. So in a way the Beats are outdated. Yet, I have to believe the Beats' adventurous spirit as a rebellion against conformity is still alive today. 

The people protesting President Donald Trump's war in Iran and his ICE agents locking up and deporting immigrants is very much a part of the rebellion against conformity, against hate.

The Beats of Kansas are alive but getting older yet still attracting young people, when they get themselves a copy of On The Road, Naked Lunch or Howl. Naked Lunch is a wicked yet funny read. Howl is still relevant today, Ginsberg's line -- "Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money!" -- reminds me of the algorithms of Wall Street. Moloch is the modern money machine.

The Beats. The founders left behind a huge archive of hilarity, absurdity, profundity, hedonism, artistic expression, wanderlust and tragedy.

Is a Plant Conscious?

Mystic Garden

Art and Story By Michael Hooper

Michael Pollan, author of "A World Appears," provides some background in the history on science and its observations about the existence of matter and the existence of the mind.

Descartes rightly observed that there is nothing of which we can be more certain than the reality of our first person experience. There are two different types of things, stuff going on in the mental world and the physical world.

Sentience is the ability to feel, perceive and experience subjectivities. It’s the ability to sense fear, pleasure and pain. A subjectivity is the quality of existing in someone's mind rather than the external world.

The author is asking us to use our own conscious to imagine what it is like for a plant, to have a conscious, to sense threats and opportunities for survival. He cites scientific articles in which authors wrote what it's like to be a bat and what it's like to be a plant. Imagine flying at night as a bat -- it seems terrifying to me -- but quite natural to the bat which uses sonar to sense what's around them. Can we ask the same question, what it's like to be a plant -- deciding whether or not to extend its roots and its reach after a rain.

The author is looking for a way to connect with plants at a deeper level, he turns to psychedelic mushrooms.

On page 7, the author says a consistent and curious aspect of psychedelics is their ability to reanimate a world gone quiet and still.

In a study, before taking mushrooms, 26% of participants believe plants to be conscious but afterwards the figure climbed to 61% of participants who believed plants to be conscious.

Pollan says that in the afternoon after ingesting magic mushrooms, he said he felt that the plants "returned my gaze and gave me the distinct impression that they wished me well." He felt sure that these plants exhibited an elemental sense of being alive and aware. Sting, the musician, has publicly talked about using psychedelic mushrooms in his garden, to gain insight and inspire creativity.

I took psychedelic mushrooms one time. I was 21 years old and working in Yellowstone Park. My friend Mike Sessa had a half ounce of mushrooms in a bag and we ate most of them in the lobby of our dorm rooms at Yellowstone Park. There was a level of animation going on in the sense that my awareness became keener, the feeling of camaraderie and brotherhood with Mike became higher, more elevated. We were laughing at each other‘s jokes, we carried on like this until a friend of mine came to me and said she wanted to be alone with me.

We went to my room and she took her top off and I started laughing for some reason and she put her clothes back on and said you’re weird and left, I don’t know what was wrong with me? I should’ve been more accommodating.

Later I found my friend, Mike Sessa. We went outside, still high on these mushrooms, and laid down on the pavement and looked up at the night sky. The stars were glowing and pulsating light. He said something, we started laughing at each other, laughing at the universe.

My experience taking psychedelic mushrooms was great, but I never felt the need to do it again.

The author says that after he came down from his high on mushrooms, he began to doubt whether plants had any conscious at all. We are more willing to ascribe conscious to animals because they have a nervous systems like we do, he says. Plants lack anything that we would recognize as eyes yet they do exhibit behaviors of seeing light and shadow. They communicate using their own electrical and chemical signaling methods that operate at a dramatically slower pace of time than animals. These plants have thousands of these command centers, the modules that integrate incoming information, then decide what to do in response. 

I planted three plants in Puerto Rico. Shortly after we planted the pomegranate tree, one of its branches wrapped itself around the stake nearby so that it could hold itself up against the northeast winds. It must’ve sensed that there was a wooden stake nearby and was able to caress its arm around it. Another flowering plant I accidentally hit it with the weed-eater and cut off its top and tore its bark. I kept watering it and somehow it repaired the bark with new bark and grew new leaves somehow it healed itself. Intelligence is described as the ability to solve a problem. Well, I saw a plant solve its problem, it used intelligence to repair itself and continue growing.

If two unrelated plants are grown in the same pot, they will compete for this nutrients by attempting to colonize as much as the soil as possible whereas related plants will cooperate and share the pot together, suggesting that plants can recognize their own kin according to the author page 23.

Charles Darwin believed that the “brain" of a plant is actually in its root. Roots about to encounter an impenetrable obstacle or a toxic substance change course before they make contact with it, they will seek out a buried pipe through which water is flowing. I know this because the roots found my sewer line and destroyed the clay pipe over the years, forcing me to spend $4000 to put in a new sewer line.

The author suggests that intelligent behavior emerges from a distributed network of cells exchanging signals. This is not so far different from most animals. There is no command post rather one finds a leaderless network, the singular self that we experience as real or imagine to be located somewhere behind our eyes deep inside our brain actually has no physical address in our gray matter, page 31.

A bean plant will find a pole to attach itself to and wind itself around to go up. Somehow it senses the pipe, seeks it out and curls around it, perhaps using echo location to pinpoint the pole, the author suggests.

The author quotes another scientist who says plants can be rendered unconscious by using the same anesthetics that put animals out; these drugs induce a state of unresponsiveness. A Venus fly trap won’t snap shut when an insect crosses its threshold under the influence of this drug, this suggests that consciousness has something to do not with chemistry, but with physics and appear to shut down the action potentials.

Whether or not plants sleep is a very difficult question?

The ability to imagine the impossible is the great gift of conscious, but also leads to all this puzzlement and existential angst, page 72.

Pollan says, What we do have in common with plants is the need to reduce uncertainty to head off surprise by inferring the state of the world through our senses and then acting as best we can to avoid becoming hungry, cold or dead, page 75.

The author says that consciousness will likely be a hybrid enterprise informed by the values of Empiricism, experiment, philosophy, imagination, and the arts, the indigenous, Buddhism and other spiritual traditions, personal experience, and yes, altered states of consciousness too. In the end, he said plants are sentient beings.

 

With a projection of the human mind onto a pretty woodland scene, Pollan wrote, "now I felt sure I was sharing this reality with countless other minds. None of them human."

In Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1836 essay, Nature, he wrote:

"The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable. I am not alone and unacknowledged. They nod to me, and I to them." 

Transcending the Mundane With Art

Mystic Hills of Vieques, PR

Art and story by Michael Hooper

When you find yourself doing the same, dull thing day after day, you probably need to shake things up. Art can make a routine encounter interesting. I often find myself doing the same bicycle ride to the Sunken Gardens at Gage Park. Next time, I arrived with art supplies and painted its colorful flowers, stone walk and pond.

I love gardens. I painted a vase of flowers at the Medici Fountain in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, where I met a bohemian from San Francisco. Years later, we still text each other once a week. 

Sitting on a hillside, I was drawing and painting the mystic hills above Esperanza, Vieques, PR. The view captured my soul, beauty never felt so good.

In the woods of northern Minnesota, I was sitting on a road, drawing and painting the light against the forest.

Water Cress Lane, Ponto Lake, MN

These are the moments that no matter what the outcome, the journey of connecting with nature is the reward, a memory worth documenting in art. Through the act of creation we transcend the mundane, elevating our authenticity, climbing to a higher level of productivity, a place where angels sing. Pavel Noga drew a picture of cats and people eating pizza in a park in Barcelona, in my diary; the drawing brings back that delightful night we conducted an art show with our collections of postcards, slept in the park and shared breakfast in the morning. 

When I seriously began studying oil painting in 2019, I studied the nine levels of value from light to dark. I progressed slowly. I embraced a thought from David Bowie, "If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area."  He advised artists to "always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being in. When you don't feel your feet touching the bottom, that is exactly where you can produce something exciting." I feel there is a lot of truth in Bowie's words. I challenge myself to get better with each painting.

In 2024 I took an oil painting class with Barbara Waterman-Peters. I enjoyed learning how the finest painters in history used oil to paint their masterpieces. 

Barbara taught me how to reduce my palette to the essentials, including a dark yellow, a bright yellow, a dark red, a bright red and a dark blue and a light blue, along with titanium white, which we should use only sparingly. We painted in this grayscale, the underpainting, then added color, It was so educational and useful to train the eye to look for values and develop representational paintings of real objects, bowls, coffee cups and a cow's skull.

I learned to sit close to the subject and draw without the aide of photographs, trusting my eyes to see the composition. I love real life, I want to bring it alive with the same exhilaration that I feel in front of my subject, I immerse myself into this special moment: I sit next to the Seine in Paris and paint the river passing by. It is such a thrill, I cried, painting the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris.

I spend a lot of time mixing paint and preparing the brush for a specific brush stroke, making sure I get the right value and applying that stroke with deliberate care and accuracy, and then leaving it alone and moving onto the next brush stroke. 

Under Barbara Waterman-Peters, I studied John Singer Sargent and fell in love with his work and style and feel he is worthy of emulating his portrait work, landscapes, and watercolors.

More than anything I have loved the magnificent extravagance in painting at all these beautiful places, including the Flint Hills of Kansas. I make some connection to nature as I set up easel, chair and painting supplies and work for two hours looking at a field of grass with hills in the background while a hummingbird checks me out. 

I felt that connection to nature recently as I painted on a hill near my home in Vieques, PR.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, co-founder of the Transcendentalism movement in the 1800s in Concord, Mass., believed nature is a living symbol of the human mind and a gateway to spiritual truth.

I may be done painting the following painting, but I still feel connected to the place. It's high on a hill, overlooking the ocean, small town and horses on the trail. It feels like a gateway to a mystic land.

Horses on the Trail, Vieques, PR

A view of Esperanza, Vieques, PR