White Rabbit

This is a 'junk sculpture' by Patrick Amiot which stands in front of his house on Florence Avenue in Sebastopol. He has persuaded many of his neighbors to put sculptures in front of their homes, mostly turn of the century frame bungalows with big porches, which makes a drive, or better yet, a walk down Florence a real treat, and also something of a time travel experience.  I am putting a picture of Patrick Amiot's own personal vehicle in extras....

The white rabbit sculpture is one of my favorites on Florence Avenue, and it never fails to remind me not only of Alice but of Grace Slick singing about her (and other things) in 'White Rabbit' with the Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock...or anywhere. I think we wore out the record and still have a CD hidden amongst the hundreds of others arranged in no apparent order in our library.

My father went to college with Jorma Kaukonen, father of the Jefferson Airplane singer of the same name. He had a funny story that had something to do with getting repeated summonses from the Hearst women's gym. He politely answered several explaining that he wasn't, in fact, a woman and then ignoring them since even in those pre computer days they obviously had assigned him the wrong gender and were unable to correct the record. When they wouldn't stop sending these annoying missives, he finally stormed into the gym sending ladies in various stages of undress into a state of panic. In answer to their demands to know what the hell he thought was doing there, he said "I'M JORMA KAUKONEN! "  This was in 1930 when things were certainly quite different from now....

Grace Slick singing 'White Rabbit' with the Jefferson Airplane in about 1967 at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco.