Because The Night - Patti Smith, Me, and a Dogcatcher in Kansas

June, 1979 and the living is easy

Patti Smith was last in my town, Santa Cruz, as she was fine-tuning her fine art edition of “Woolgathering” with Arion Press, where I was editor-at-large at the time.

What a dream to work with her vision, and to contemplate my long and poignant history with her as a wandering fan.

Because Patti really does get around, and so do I.

My Patti performance history begins in Kansas— not Max's Kansas City nightclub in New York City, but the 100-degree-in-the-shade state of Kansas in June of 1979.

That summer, I had traveled to the University of Kansas in Lawrence, by Greyhound bus, for what I thought was going to be an epoch moment in women's liberation.

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government..."

—Valerie Solanas

I was both “thrill-seeking and civic-minded”— those were my words to live by.

I was on my way to the National Women'…