Just when you thought it was safe to look at fhb again...

... there's another "Bewitched statue" post:

The Associated Press

July 30, 2005

A man arrested in this city while protesting a new statue that pays tribute to the 1960s TV show "Bewitched" turned down a deal to dismiss the charges and demanded a trial.

Richard Sorrel, 65, of Peabody was charged with disorderly conduct after he joined a group of protesters at the statue's unveiling in downtown Salem on June 15.

Sorrel and others said it crass and inappropriate to put a statue that honors a sitcom near the site of the courthouse where 20 people were wrongly condemned to die during the Salem Witch Trials of 1692.

On Friday, Salem District Court Judge Robert Cornetta denied a motion by Sorrel's attorney, Astrid afKlinteberg, to dismiss the charges against Sorrel, The Salem News reported. After the hearing, Cornetta offered Sorrel a five-month general continuance, which would end the case with a dismissal if Sorrel stayed out of trouble for five months.

Sorrel refused.

"I want a trial, sir," he said.

That trial is set for Nov. 10.

The statue in downtown Salem, donated by the TV Land cable channel, portrays "Bewitched" star Elizabeth Montgomery straddling a broom.

Police said Sorrel was elbowing through a crowd and creating a violent situation at the protest. afKlinteberg said Sorrell was just trying to move near cameras covering the event with a sign he was holding, which read "Elizabeth Who? Is she from Salem?"

Sorrel was the only person arrested at the statue's unveiling.

Thanks, Peg!

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow

Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize; Bollingen; National Book Award winner, Stanley Kunitz is 100 today.

The Round

Light splashed this morning
on the shell-pink anemones
swaying on their tall stems;
down blue-spiked veronica
light flowed in rivulets
over the humps of the honeybees;
this morning I saw light kiss
the silk of the roses
in their second flowering,
my late bloomers
flushed with their brandy.
A curious gladness shook me.
So I have shut the doors of my house,
so I have trudged downstairs to my cell,
so I am sitting in semi-dark
hunched over my desk
with nothing for a view
to tempt me
but a bloated compost heap,
steamy old stinkpile,
under my window;
and I pick my notebook up
and I start to read aloud
the still-wet words I scribbled
on the blotted page:
"Light splashed . . ."

I can scarcely wait till tomorrow
when a new life begins for me,
as it does each day,
as it does each day.

Photo and poem from "The Wild Braid: A Poet Reflects on a Century in the Garden," a book I especially commend to the attention of people who think they don't like poetry.

American Life in Poetry: Column 018

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Every reader of this column has at one time felt the frightening and paralyzing powerlessness of being a small child, unable to find a way to repair the world. Here the California poet, Dan Gerber, steps into memory to capture such a moment.

The Rain Poured Down

My mother weeping
in the dark hallway, in the arms of a man,
not my father,
as I sat at the top of the stairs unnoticed--
my mother weeping and pleading for what I didn't know
then and can still only imagine--
for things to be somehow other than they were,
not knowing what I would change,
for, or to, or why,
only that my mother was weeping
in the arms of a man not me,
and the rain brought down the winter sky
and hid me in the walls that looked on,
indifferent to my mother's weeping,
or mine,
in the rain that brought down the dark afternoon.

Dan Gerber's most recent book is "Trying to Catch the Horses" (Michigan State University Press, 1999). "The Rain Poured Down" copyright (c) 2005 by Dan Gerber and reprinted by permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

Today is July 26th

American Life in Poetry: Column 017

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Nearly all of us spend too much of our lives thinking about what has happened, or worrying about what's coming next. Very little can be done about the past and worry is a waste of time. Here the Kentucky poet Wendell Berry gives himself over to nature.

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.


Reprinted from "Collected Works" (North Point Press, 1985) by permission of the author. Wendell Berry's most recent book is "Given: Poems" (Shoemaker and Hoard, 2005). Poem copyright (c) 1985 by Wendell Berry. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. For information on permissions and usage, or to download a PDF version of the column, visit www.americanlifeinpoetry.org.

Review of Poker Academy

What sets PA apart is its artificial intelligence. Once a user enters his or her name under which to play (more than one can be entered if a user wants to test several styles of play), the computer will track how every hand was played. If a showdown was involved, it will record the cards played and bets made.

Once it's honed in on a player's quirks, it goes for the weaknesses. "Only a few games currently employ the kind of adaptive artificial intelligence found in Poker Academy," said Hector Munoz-Avila, assistant professor of computer senses and engineering at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pa.

Full article

Link to Poker Academy

A very crazy thing

Today is the anniversary of the day when Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965

Some newspaper articles claim that Alan Lomax got in a fistfight with Dylan's manager Albert Grossman over Dylan's set, feeling it an offense to traditional folk. The two did have a fistfight, but it was over Lomax's introduction to the Paul Butterfield Band, not about Dylan.

Nick Gravenites: In July of 1965, the Butterfield Band was going to play the Newport Folk Festival. After the festival, they were going to record in New York. So Paul, of course, was very excited and ready to go. When Butterfield’s band was introduced, it was almost an insulting introduction by Alan Lomax. I mean, he insulted them onstage. It was something like, "Well, they’ve got this band from Chicago. Some people feel that white people can’t play the blues, and some people feel they can—you make up your own mind. Here they are." It was like—why didn’t you just say "fuck you" while you’re at it?

Michael Bloomfield: Alan Lomax, the great folklorist and musicologist, gave us some sort of introduction that I didn’t even hear, but Albert found it offensive. And Albert went upside his head. The next thing we knew, right in the middle of our show, Lomax and Grossman were kicking ass on the floor in the middle of thousands of people at the Newport Folk Festival. Tearing each others’ clothes off. We had to pull ’em apart. We figured, "Albert, man, now there’s a manager!" We used to call him "Cumulus Nimbus"—he was such a vague guy. It was so hard to understand what he was saying. The Gray Cloud. (via "If you love these blues")

The other legendary story is that Pete Seeger looked for an axe to cut the sound cable during Dylan's set. Seeger has always denied the charge. According to an interview published in Gadfly magazine, Seeger claims he said to the person doing the sound, "Clean up that sound so we can understand the words," and they shouted back, "No, this is the way they want it." I said, "Goddamn it, if I had an ax, I'd cut the cable." (via BobDylan.com)

Theories on the crowd reaction to Dylan's set include...

1) The sound mix was so muddy that people boo'd. See above.

2) The booing was directed at emcee Peter Yarrow, who upset the crowd when he warned them that Dylan's set would be held at the standard length given to all Newport performers. Bruce Jackson's article, where that theory is propounded and includes a transcript of Yarrow's left-handed introduction of Dylan can be found here.

3) The band - which was essentially an unrehearsed pickup band - was terrible.

4) There was no booing at all.

Dylan at a press conference later that year in Berkeley, California, said of Newport, "I did a very crazy thing."

The Women Men Don't See

Maudie followed the same trail I did from Iggy's site to "about," and apparently had about the same level of enthusiasm that I had seeing that that the reviewers-that-is over there decided to break their "best" into "The Top Ten..." and "Top Ten Women" poker bloggers. It's nice she's #2 on the distaff list, but #2 what? And if you tossed "Poker Perspectives" into the "Top Ten" list, does that mean it places #12?

"Pfui," as Nero Wolfe would say.

Maudie's closing injunction that, "I am a poker player. I'm a poker blogger. If I am ever lauded or reviled for either, I wish my gender to be irrelevant." reminded me of Alice Sheldon who, if you're a science fiction reader, you know better as James Tiptree, Jr. For reasons she never made entirely clear, Sheldon adopted the male pseudonym and successfully concealed her identity until the late `70s. Her claim that, "I was tired of always being the first woman in some damn profession..." is a bit disingenuous, considering there were several well-known women sf writers - Kate Wilhelm and Ursula LeGuin come to mind - already at work when Sheldon started her career in the late `60s .

Robert Silverberg, another well-known sf writer, penned an introduction to one of Tiptree's collections, which became somewhat infamous in the community as Silverberg, who should have known better, spent much of the introduction making the case that only a male could have written these stories. Shortly thereafter Sheldon outed herself, as curious fans had determinedly tracked the mysterious Tiptree to a P.O. box in Washington, D.C. and were hot on her trail. Silverberg, it should be noted, was extremely gracious about the whole thing when the truth came out, saying that Sheldon had fooled him completely and had "called into question the entire notion of what is 'masculine' and 'feminine' in fiction."

Hang in there. I'll get to my point eventually. Ironically, one of the stories in that collection was titled, "The Women Men Don't See," which if you haven't read, I'll forgo spoilers and tell you to go find and read. And that finally brings me to my point. If Maudie took up the screen name of RockHard69 (or maybe BeefJerkie72O, in honor of Jethro Clampett), and went into an online game, I'd put money down that her playing style couldn't be defined as "masculine" or "feminine." I'd even put money down that there's more women than any of us suspect playing online under "RockHard-like" pseudos. But frankly, I don't spent a lot of time wondering about my opponents' gender, whether its a RockHard or a TiffanyBlow. I just want their money.

And, to extend my point, there's nothing particularly feminine about Maudie's writing either. Sometimes the subject matter could be argued as of feminine interests - I'd frankly wonder if Iggy, for example, started raving on the benefits of his "comfort flannel," - but Maudie's writing is just simply good writing; which is why I read it. If there's a masculine/feminine aspect to me about poker blogging, it's that I like to go to Maudie's and Felicia's blogs to get some relief from the testosterone-infused poker blogs, where you're too often as likely to get a story about binge drinking, pole dancers and crack ho's as card stories. Not that I have anything against booze, pole dancers, crack ho's or the like, it just gets tiring to wade through the same old stuff. And that's where my comment about "where the heck are Maudie and Felicia?" came from. Glaser offered a pretty good spectrum of poker blogs with Iggy, Otis, Pauly, and the Poker Prof. But he could have done better, I think. And the "About" split of "Top 10 Poker Blogs" and "Best Poker Blogs by Women" is insulting to both poker bloggers and to women.

And finally, I agree with Maudie. The idea of women-only poker events is ludicrous. It's like telling Phil Ivey that they've decided to have a "people of color"-only WSOP event because of concern that since he's often the only African-American at the table it must make him feel nervous.

I got the horse right here...

Given, as I noted in this post, that no matter how far in cheek tongue is placed, there's always the chance of being taken seriously, I thought I should clarify something...

I'm showing my age, but the personality Iggy projects on G&P always reminds me of a character from one of my favorite writers, Damon Runyon.

My father had a liking for the horses, and I spent more time than my mother liked at tracks in Maine, New York, and California. As I was too young to bet (except when I could talk my Dad into putting a couple of bucks down for me), I also spent a lot of time hanging with the bookies, touts, and other general lowlifes that congregate wherever the Sport of Kings is being played out.

I loved `em. I loved their stories, I loved their shilling of whatever crackpot betting system each was flogging to the unwary and to the optimistic. I even loved them when one took my life savings - which I think was all of five bucks at the time - in three-card monte... and then showed me how he had done it. But he never gave me back my money, so I'd remember. And I do.

Most of all, they were a bunch of likeable conmen who make me smile when I think about them now. They might take your money, but they'd often make you laugh even when you both knew they were doing it. And they might stake you when you were broke, and might even buy a kid an ice cream cone every now and then. And if you were one of their own, they'd take care of you without a thought if you needed help.

Dour character that I can sometimes be, few things make me smile regularly anymore. Peg does, of course. Most of the kids in my extended family can; my niece in all but blood, Lizzie, did yesterday. My cats, Bob Dylan, the hawk J.D.s who are back at 8 Reeds Ferry Way are a few of the things that still make me regularly smile... and so does Guinness & Poker. In the Fred Universe, "likeable con artist," is a compliment.

Just thought I should clarify that. I mean, Iggy's got enough problems being a dwarf housewife.

Local dwarf makes good

Apparently desperate for subject matter, Mark Glaser from the heretofore respectable Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, has written a very readable, fact-filled article on poker blogging and poker bloggers, including our very own Blogfather, Pauly, Otis and the Poker Prof.

Highly recommended. I think that what I like most about the article is that Glaser successfully captures the personalities of each blogger - Iggy as a likeable con artist; the hyperactive Pauly; and Otis and the Prof figuring out how to make a couple of bucks from doing what they already like to do.

And quibbles:

- 10 points deducted (I'm reading the latest Harry Potter) from Glaser for using the word, "Gonzo," a term that should have been retired with HST.

- With all due respect to the above gentlemen, where the heck are Maudie and Felicia?

Today in history

via "The Writer's Almanac", and some independent rico-ga'ing research

On July 20 1875 (it says here. Other sources say 1874) the largest recorded swarm of locusts in American history descended upon the Great Plains. It was a swarm about 1,800 miles long, 110 miles wide, from Canada down to Texas.

When it came to swarms, the Rocky Mountain locust - scourge of the 1870s - still stands today as the undisputed champion of the world. Between 1873 and 1877, Melanophus spretus caused $200 million in crop damage in Colorado, Nebraska and other states, chowing down on everything green and plenty else.

Its sky-blackening swarms hold a place in The Guinness Book of World Records under the heading ``greatest concentration of animals.''

``A swarm of Rocky Mountain locusts that flew over Nebraska on July 20-30, 1874, covered an area estimated at 198,000 square miles (almost twice the size of Colorado),'' the entry reads. ``The swarm must have contained at least 12.5 trillion insects with a total weight of 27.5 million tons.''

The last living Rocky Mountain locust was seen in 1902. One theory suggests that Melanophus spretus was inadvertently - although they would have happily done it consciously - eradicated by farmers digging up their breeding grounds to plant crops. There are stories of plows bringing up thousands of eggs.

``Western agriculture and the Rocky Mountain locust collided in time and space,'' Jeffrey Lockwood, a University of Wyoming entomologist says. ``Through one of the most spectacular coincidences in agricultural history, early agriculture basically destroyed the permanent breeding ground of the locusts.''

Plowing and irrigation, along with the decimation of Indian, bison and beaver populations, all contributed to the ultimate extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust, according to Lockwood.

Today, North America is the only continent in the world without a locust.

RIP James Doohan

James Doohan, 'Star Trek's' Scotty, died at 5:30 a.m. today at his Redmond, Washington, home with his wife of 28 years, Wende, at his side. Doohan was 85.

From the CNN obituary...

When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."

"I took his advice," said Doohan, "and since then everything's been just lovely."

In the "life imitates art" category...

By The Associated Press

SYDNEY, Australia (AP) - A movie fan had his nose bitten off outside an Australian cinema in an argument over the quality of the violent new Bruce Willis movie "Sin City," police said.

The 19-year-old victim underwent surgery to reattach the tip of his nose following the brawl Sunday night outside a movie theater in Bathurst, 125 miles west of Sydney.

Bathurst police Inspector Cameron Lindsay said the victim and his attacker got into a fight over the merits of the film, an adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel about a wicked metropolis filled with tough guys and gorgeous dames. The movie has been praised by critics for its dark, computer-generated imagery and criticized for its nonstop violence.

Police were still hunting for the attacker.

"There's been an argument, apparently over how good the movie was, and then an altercation," Lindsay said.

Today in history

via "The Writer's Almanac"

It was on this day in 1954, the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out, The Fellowship of the Ring. It was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, which came out in 1937. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his own amusement and didn't expect it to sell well. It's the story of a small, human-like creature with hairy feet named Bilbo, who goes on an adventure through Middle Earth and comes back with a magical ring.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, "I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands. I smoke a pipe, like good, plain food, detest French cooking ... I am fond of mushrooms, have a very simple sense of humor ... go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."

The Hobbit sold pretty well, partly because C.S. Lewis gave it a big review when it came out. And so Tolkien's publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien decided the new book would be about Bilbo's nephew Frodo, but for a long time he had no idea what sort of adventure. Finally, he decided it would be about the magical ring, though the ring had not been such an important part of The Hobbit.

Tolkien spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor at Oxford. He had to write in his spare time, usually at night, sitting by the stove in the study in his house.

He was well into his first draft by the time World War II broke out in 1939. He hadn't set out to write an allegory, but once the war began, he started to draw parallels between the war and the events in his novel: the land of evil in The Lord of the Rings, Mordor, was set east of Middle Earth, just as the enemies of England were to the east.

The book became more and more complicated as he went along. It was taking much longer to finish than he'd planned. He went through long stretches where he didn't write anything. He thought about giving up the whole thing. He wanted to make sure all the details were right, the geography, the language, the mythology of Middle Earth. He made elaborate charts to keep track of the events of the story. His son Christopher also drew a detailed map of Middle Earth.

Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished writing The Lord of the Rings. He typed the final copy himself sitting on a bed in his attic, typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. The publisher printed just 3,500 copies, but it turned out to be incredibly popular. It went into a second printing in just six weeks. Today more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.

Illegitimi non carborundum*

I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; -- Ulysses, Afred Lord Tennyson

*Translation

Thanks Jill!

The hammer falls

I didn't play in the the WPBT 'Charlie' Tournament last night, a charity tournament in honor of a poker player blogger friend, Charlie Tuttle, but was pleased to read that over 140 people did, including Wil Wheaton.

It was the night of the Hammer, according to Maudie's report (Maudie came in 5th, by the way. Congrats, but how come you've disabled permalinks?). To see the absolute, bestest hammer hand ever, go here (courtesy of Al).

Attack of the bluffing bots

Info gleaned from various places on last week's World Poker Robot Championships...

pokerprobot won $100,000 in the "Amateur Robot Poker Tournament" and in an exhibition match beat the the University of Alberta's Poki-X Bot.

The "PokerProbot" link will take you to the owner's - Hilton Givens, a 37-year-old car salesman from Indiana according to the L.A. Times - grammatically-challenged site, where a free download verson, "PokerProBot Statistics," is being offered to the first 50 people who sign up (it says here). PokerProBot currently only works with PartyPoker. I've downloaded the software, and am thinking about asking for a challenge match with a certain little dwarf who likes to flog PP.

Last Friday the Unabomber (Real name, Phil Laak. Poker players have more nicknames than superheroes) took on PokerProbot, and finally beat the bot after three hours and 300-odd hands. "It would for sure make money online," Laak said in an L.A. Times interview. At least in the simpler versions of Texas hold 'em with betting limits, "bots are better than the average person."

From "The Writer's Almanac"

with Garrison Keillor

MONDAY, 18 JULY, 2005
Listen (RealAudio) | How to listen

Poem: "Having Children" by Barbara Tanner Angell, from The Long Turn Toward Light. © Cleveland State University Poetry Center. Reprinted with permission.

Having Children

A siren goes by,
the scream cuts through me
even though my child is home.
For a moment I think...

Where am I?
In the middle of the night
a cry, dreamed
or heard, a wave washes
over the body of my child.
I have let her drown

or fall. She has fallen
from a high balcony
and I have let it happen.
Negligence. I feel
as if I'm plummeting...

Oh let this be a dream.
I'll be better next time.
I'll watch, I'll watch, I'll watch.

It was on this day in 1925, the first edition of Mein Kampf, by Adolf Hitler, was published.

And today, the 18th of July, is believed to be the anniversary of the fire that burned Rome in 64 AD, while the emperor Nero supposedly played his fiddle. In fact, he wasn't in Rome. He was away at his holiday villa on the coast, and when he heard about the fire, he rushed back to the capital and took charge of the operations.

Full Writer's Almanac for July 18th

"In the winter it was rightly cold..."

an early review of "No Direction Home," the documentary:

No Direction Home is an astounding piece of filmmaking. Although it focuses on a seemingly compact segment of Dylan's life -- the years between 1961 and 1966 -- it's the most telling portrait yet put to film. Scorsese works best when he's obsessed by his subject -- see Taxi Driver or Raging Bull -- and he's created a compelling portrait of the enigmatic Dylan. Although it runs 3½ hours, No Direction Home goes by in a flash. Working in the documentary format, Scorsese has made his best film in a decade.

No Direction Home

The two-CD chronologically sequenced package contains 28 Bob Dylan tracks -- 26 of them previously unreleased -- comprised of rare private recordings, live concert, television and festival recordings, and 12 alternate takes of songs from his Columbia LP recording sessions in New York and Nashville will arrive in stores August 30th.

This is the companion soundtrack to the two-part feature-length film, "No Direction Home: Bob Dylan," a Martin Scorsese picture. The film will make its U.S. premiere on the Public Broadcasting System's "American Masters Series" over the course of Monday and Tuesday nights, September 26-27th, respectively.

Disc one:
“When I Got Troubles” (1959)
“Rambler, Gambler” (1960)
“This Land Is Your Land” (live at New York’s Carnegie Chapter Hall, 1961)
“Song to Woody” (1961)
“Dink’s Song” (1961)
“I Was Young When I Left Home” (1961)
“Sally Gal” (“The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” outtake, 1962)
“Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” (demo, 1963)
“Man of Constant Sorrow” (1963)
“Blowin’ in the Wind” (live at New York’s Town Hall, 1963)
“Masters of War” (live at New York’s Town Hall, 1963)
“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” (live at New York’s Carnegie Hall, 1963)
“When the Ship Comes In” (live at New York’s Carnegie Hall, 1963)
“Mr. Tambourine Man” (“Bringing It All Back Home” alternate take, 1964)
“Chimes of Freedom” (live at Newport, R.I. Folk Festival, 1964)
“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” (“Bringing It All Back Home” alternate take, 1965)

Disc two:
“She Belongs To Me” (“Bringing It All Back Home” alternate take, 1965)
“Maggie’s Farm” (live at Newport, R.I. Folk Festival, 1965)
“It’s Take a Lot To Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry” (“Highway 61 Revisited” alternate take, 1965)
“Tombstone Blues” (“Highway 61 Revisited” alternate take, 1965)
“Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues” (“Highway 61 Revisited” alternate take, 1965)
“Desolation Row” (“Highway 61 Revisited” alternate take, 1965)
“Highway 61 Revisited” (“Highway 61 Revisited” alternate take, 1965)
“Leopard Skin Pill-Box Hat” (“Blonde on Blonde” alternate take, 1966)
“Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again” (“Blonde on Blonde” alternate take, 1966)
“Visions of Johanna” (“Blonde on Blonde” alternate take, 1965)
“Ballad of a Thin Man” (live at Edinburgh’s ABC Theatre, 1966)
“Like a Rolling Stone” (live at Manchester, England’s Free Trade Hall, 1966)

Archivists and researchers reviewed more than 400 hours of recordings by Bob Dylan in the preparation of "No Direction Home." The two CDs will be packaged with a 60-page color book housed in a slipcase. The book will include separate liner notes written by Andrew Loog Oldham, and Al Kooper who sheds light on the "Highway 61 Revisited" and "Blonde on Blonde" recording sessions in New York and Nashville (for which he played organ and served as musical director). An authoritative track-by-track delineation is also included.

The first feature-length film biography ever produced on the artist, "No Direction Home" is narrated in its entirety by Dylan. In addition to hours of black-and-white and color archival footage and photography, it features exclusive interviews with Joan Baez, photographer John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers, Allen Ginsberg, Tony Glover, Al Kooper, Bruce Langhorne, Paul Nelson, Suze Rotolo, Pete Seeger, Dave Van Ronk, Izzy Young of the Folklore Center, and many others.