Patrick Jenkinson

I suppose I should put some kind of explanation here, just in case this does end up making it's way to the outside world. Not that I hold out much hope for that, but at this point there isn't much else for me to do. I wish I could tell you exactly how I ended up in this awful place. I really do. The last coherent memory I have is driving home at night down Route 81 with my wife Catherine in the passenger seat and my eight year old son Benjamin asleep in the back. After that there is this blur of impressions. Something about a road closure, a vague sense of nervousness, and then boom, I'm in this awful cell. First thing I thought when I opened my eyes was that I'd been arrested for something and was in jail. However, while I've never actually been taken into custody, I'm pretty sure even the poorest lockups require some kind of bed to sit on and a toilet. All I have are a few awful smelling rags and a corner. The more I look at this place the weirder it seems. Th...

Not every tribe of the first people made their way into the history books. While some of our cousins traded and warred with the white man when he arrived on our shores, some of fell back into the wilderness, far beyond the reach of his colonies. Centuries later, when the sprawl of the big cities pushed too close for comfort, we simply and quietly merged in with the rest of the population. I hear stories that there are still some of us living our native way of life deep within the forests of the northern U.S. and Canada, where the endless timber is still enough to conceal them from even the electric eyes floating in orbit. I, however, was born to one of the tribes that came in out of the cold on its own about sixty years ago. We are called the Kowayanna (koh-I-ann-a). While my parents were born and raised in urban America, my grandparents were of the last generation to spend enough of their lives in the old ways that the traditions still stayed with them. My grandfather died before I wa...

The song "Gloria" holds the rare distinction of entering the canon of essential rock songs on two separate occasions. The original version by Them is a stripped-to-the bones torrent of raw sexual passion that paved the way for punk rock, and Patti Smith's version adds layers of depth to the song while maintaining its raw, primal, power. Like much of the punk music it would influence, Them's "Gloria" is built on three chords, intermixed with a couple of open strums (when the strings of the guitar are struck without any of the frets being pressed), and, like the music of the punk bands that would follow in its footsteps, the song is a showcase for the amount of expressive power that a simplistic chord structure can produce.  There are no introductory elements, slow build-ups, or any delayed additions of instrumentation in the opening of Them's "Gloria", save the introduction of a barely audible two note organ part in the back of the mix on the so...