A pig for president? Been there, done that

As one of the original Yippies, Judy Albert Gumbo traveled to Chicago in 1968 to help in the Yippies campaign: to run a pig named Pigasus for president. At the time, she emails, “I was met by Chicago cops with billy clubs and tear gas, and National Guard with fixed bayonets.”

As the Chicago Tribune described it at the time, “Seven leaders of the Youth International Party (Yippies) and their presidential candidate ... were arrested yesterday when they took the pig to the Civic Center plaza.” The protesters had arrived with the pig on a leash. They were arrested for “basically cruelty to an animal,” the Tribune said later. The pig was taken away and brought to animal control. That incident, 50 years ago, was said to have begun the riots and police mayhem that arose from the Democratic presidential convention.

Recently, when Albert Gumbo, who lives in Berkeley, went to Chicago to speak at a re-enactment produced by Illinois Humanities as part of Chicago’s commemoration of its 1968 riots, “my way was paid.” She says she knows that “the Yippies with whom I protested — Stew Albert, Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and Phil Ochs — would appreciate the irony.”

Albert Gumbo, one of three witnesses who testified in a performance set in a courtroom, believes today’s issues are as serious as those of 1968, and “satire and irreverent humor is still a winning strategy.”

“Right about now,” in this time that John McCain and Aretha Franklin have been so respectfully and lovingly honored, Laura Jacoby, 45, is “wondering if you actually must die to lie in state and have people say how much they admire you.”

Last Tuesday night’s performance of “The War of the Roses” at Cal Shakes was canceled, a decision reached at about 6 p.m., an hour before the performance was to start. (A cast member had a medical emergency; it was early in the run, so understudies weren’t yet fully prepared.) It’s unusual to cancel a performance, but what was remarkable was the efficiency with which the company notified ticket holders. A few had already arrived for a preshow picnic; they ate, then listened to the Grove talk that precedes performances.

Emails were sent to all ticket holders, notices were posted via social media. Any available office staff “hopped on the phone and made calls,” said the company’s Susie Falk. Ticket holder Regan McMahon, who received both an email and a phone message (and went to the movies instead), plans to attend the Sept. 12 makeup performance.

In early August at San Quentin State Prison, members of the Benedict XVI Institute Schola and Teaching Choir performed a prison concert of Gregorian chants. That visit inspired 25 of the inmates to form a Schola in the prison.

And on Aug. 25, those 25 prisoners and 25 more observers — with members of the Benedict XVI Teaching Choir — participated in the first traditional Latin Mass at the prison in generations. “None of the 25 men in the Schola had ever sung in Latin,” said Rebekah Wu, musical director of the Teaching Choir. Among them were experienced musicians, said Wu, and people moved by religious fervor.

The Benedict XVI Institute is directed by Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, who said he could see the prisoners, “who, humanly speaking, are in a dire situation ... be lifted up to God.”

PUBLIC EAVESDROPPING “I’m a professional respecter of women.” High school sophomore to his classmates, overheard in Sonoma by Leslie McLean

Like most people of a certain age, Swami Benjami found himself recently “all wired up at the Kaiser Oakland procedure suite for that exciting internal digestive portrait that those of us over 50 must have.”

Undressed and into a hospital gown, he was attached to an IV and was waiting his turn when he needed to use the facilities, a not-surprising result of the preparation process. A nurse had shown him how to ring for her, so he pressed a bedside button and waited.

After a delay, “a voice crackled out of the wall behind me: ‘How can I help you?’ ” Swami asked if he could be “unhooked for my urgent errand,” but the voice “answered ‘you’ve dialed the wrong number.’ ”

“My, how times have changed,” Joel Kuechle says. “From Bimbo’s Girl in a Fishbowl to the headless man in a fishtank . ... Shudder.”