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Here is a glimpse into his first year, which was clearly bright with promise:
5/30/2010
Pinky's 95th Birthday
Pinky liked to explain that he was born on the "Real Memorial Day" - May 30. He would have been 95 years old today.
Here is a glimpse into his first year, which was clearly bright with promise:
Here is a glimpse into his first year, which was clearly bright with promise:
2/28/2010
Anti-War Activist Tired
The Bremerton Sun – Friday February 16, 1973:
Figure In 41/2-Year Obscenity Battle Wants It Ended
“The Gratefull Society: Bombs, Bullets, Battleships and Bull----.”
If that alliteration doesn’t ring a bell with you, chances are you’ve come to Kitsap County within the last four years.
Four to five years ago, it was big news here when Edison “Pinky” Fisk, middle-aged anti-war activist, displayed the eight-word expression on a poster in a downtown Bremerton demonstration—and got himself arrested.
On Sept. 20, 1968, Bremerton police made the pinch and the matter began dragging through the courts. It’s still dragging.
The world has changed a lot since that day. The Vietnam War has ended for this country. Anti-war activism has largely disappeared, as have the weekly Friday anti-war vigils in front of the Army recruiting station at Sixth Street and Pacific Avenue at one of which Fisk displayed his sign and went to jail.
The recruiting station isn’t even there any more, having moved elsewhere.
Fisk has undergone a few changes, too. He swore off activism a couple of years ago, deciding the war was a symptom, not the basic problem, and there wasn’t anything he could do about the basic problem.
He sold his Tiger Lake waterfront home, split the money with his wife and then the two split in a divorce. Fisk spent some time growing organic vegetables at the Unitarian Fellowship in East Bremerton, one of his favorite haunts during his activist days, but he’s even fallen out with the Unitarians, and now grows his vegetables in Tracyton, where he lives in a trailer.
And it could very well be that the word “bull----“ , has even changed—in its degree of offensiveness to local residents in an increasingly X-rated world.
But the court case in which Fisk was convicted of disturbing the peace for displaying that word hasn’t changed much. The conviction still calls for the defendant to serve 30 days in jail and pay a $300 fine, just like it did on July 2, 1969, when Judge Oluf Johnsen upheld in his superior court Fisk’s November, 1968, conviction in a lower court.
But the entire matter has gotten stuck, and Fisk is trying to push it along.
He has a $300 appeal bond posted, and he’d like to get his money back, he said.
Fisk’s lawyer, Charles Talbot of Seattle, appealed the conviction, and the State Court of Appeals sent it back to the local level, saying there had been no findings of fact or conclusions of law filed on which they could base a decision.
Give us some, the court told Bremerton’s prosecutor, Gary Sexton, and the local court.
That was on May 13, 1971, and the matter has gone no further.
Talbot made a tentative approach to Sexton by letter on Nov. 3, 1971, about getting it settled, and sent Fisk a hand-written memo last April 14, saying he would do something about it in “about three weeks.”
Nothing was done, however, and Fisk now says he can’t even locate Talbot. He’s in an inactive status, the State Bar Association says, which means he can’t practice law, so apparently things have changed a bit for him too.
Sexton says nothing is holding up further action, and he’s waiting for Fisk or his lawyer to take some. Asked if he thinks the delay has weakened his chance of keeping the case alive should Fisk move for dismissal, Sexton said quite the opposite is true.
In the intervening years, Supreme Court decisions in the area of obscenity have grown more stringent, improving his chances, the assistant city attorney said.
Fisk says he doesn’t want to spend any more money on the thing if he doesn’t have to, so wants Sexton to take the next step. Fisk has called Judge Johnsen to ask him to help, but “he doesn’t want to talk to me about it, in case he has to hear the case again.”
Has he thought of hiring a new lawyer? He made a tentative effort, but he happened to choose a former associate of Sexton’s, who was prevented by bar ethics from entering the case.
Anyway, he says, “I don’t want to spend any more of my money to make the God-damn legal system work. I’ve learned you have to push the law to make it go, but I think this has been pushed far enough.”
So the case remains high-centered, and in the meantime, Fisk grows his organic vegetables, and puts in stints as a union electrician.
Ironically, many of his electrical jobs are with his old nemisis – the military. He’s recently done work in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard’s meteorology lab, and just last Friday was laid off a job in the new PSNS pump testing shop, when the work ran out.
Has his anti-war past kept him out of work at all?
Not much, Fisk says. He had some long dry spells for a while, and “A lot of my fellow workers think I’m a direct disciple of Mao Tse-tung, but we get along.”
Figure In 41/2-Year Obscenity Battle Wants It Ended
BY TRAVIS BAKER
“The Gratefull Society: Bombs, Bullets, Battleships and Bull----.”
If that alliteration doesn’t ring a bell with you, chances are you’ve come to Kitsap County within the last four years.
Four to five years ago, it was big news here when Edison “Pinky” Fisk, middle-aged anti-war activist, displayed the eight-word expression on a poster in a downtown Bremerton demonstration—and got himself arrested.
On Sept. 20, 1968, Bremerton police made the pinch and the matter began dragging through the courts. It’s still dragging.
The world has changed a lot since that day. The Vietnam War has ended for this country. Anti-war activism has largely disappeared, as have the weekly Friday anti-war vigils in front of the Army recruiting station at Sixth Street and Pacific Avenue at one of which Fisk displayed his sign and went to jail.
The recruiting station isn’t even there any more, having moved elsewhere.
Fisk has undergone a few changes, too. He swore off activism a couple of years ago, deciding the war was a symptom, not the basic problem, and there wasn’t anything he could do about the basic problem.
He sold his Tiger Lake waterfront home, split the money with his wife and then the two split in a divorce. Fisk spent some time growing organic vegetables at the Unitarian Fellowship in East Bremerton, one of his favorite haunts during his activist days, but he’s even fallen out with the Unitarians, and now grows his vegetables in Tracyton, where he lives in a trailer.
And it could very well be that the word “bull----“ , has even changed—in its degree of offensiveness to local residents in an increasingly X-rated world.
But the court case in which Fisk was convicted of disturbing the peace for displaying that word hasn’t changed much. The conviction still calls for the defendant to serve 30 days in jail and pay a $300 fine, just like it did on July 2, 1969, when Judge Oluf Johnsen upheld in his superior court Fisk’s November, 1968, conviction in a lower court.
But the entire matter has gotten stuck, and Fisk is trying to push it along.
He has a $300 appeal bond posted, and he’d like to get his money back, he said.
Fisk’s lawyer, Charles Talbot of Seattle, appealed the conviction, and the State Court of Appeals sent it back to the local level, saying there had been no findings of fact or conclusions of law filed on which they could base a decision.
Give us some, the court told Bremerton’s prosecutor, Gary Sexton, and the local court.
That was on May 13, 1971, and the matter has gone no further.
Talbot made a tentative approach to Sexton by letter on Nov. 3, 1971, about getting it settled, and sent Fisk a hand-written memo last April 14, saying he would do something about it in “about three weeks.”
Nothing was done, however, and Fisk now says he can’t even locate Talbot. He’s in an inactive status, the State Bar Association says, which means he can’t practice law, so apparently things have changed a bit for him too.
Sexton says nothing is holding up further action, and he’s waiting for Fisk or his lawyer to take some. Asked if he thinks the delay has weakened his chance of keeping the case alive should Fisk move for dismissal, Sexton said quite the opposite is true.
In the intervening years, Supreme Court decisions in the area of obscenity have grown more stringent, improving his chances, the assistant city attorney said.
Fisk says he doesn’t want to spend any more money on the thing if he doesn’t have to, so wants Sexton to take the next step. Fisk has called Judge Johnsen to ask him to help, but “he doesn’t want to talk to me about it, in case he has to hear the case again.”
Has he thought of hiring a new lawyer? He made a tentative effort, but he happened to choose a former associate of Sexton’s, who was prevented by bar ethics from entering the case.
Anyway, he says, “I don’t want to spend any more of my money to make the God-damn legal system work. I’ve learned you have to push the law to make it go, but I think this has been pushed far enough.”
So the case remains high-centered, and in the meantime, Fisk grows his organic vegetables, and puts in stints as a union electrician.
Ironically, many of his electrical jobs are with his old nemisis – the military. He’s recently done work in Puget Sound Naval Shipyard’s meteorology lab, and just last Friday was laid off a job in the new PSNS pump testing shop, when the work ran out.
Has his anti-war past kept him out of work at all?
Not much, Fisk says. He had some long dry spells for a while, and “A lot of my fellow workers think I’m a direct disciple of Mao Tse-tung, but we get along.”
2/08/2010
Robert Fulghum Remembers Pinky
Pinky listening to Robert Fulghum
--------------------------------------------------
A couple of days before our Gathering to Remember Pinky,
I found this message on my answering machine ~ kwf
Kay, this is Robert Fulghum calling from Moab, Utah.
I just got word today about Pinky’s death, and thank you for letting me know.
I don’t have any stories that… (he laughs) – I started to say, that I wouldn’t tell in public – but all I have in my mind is great laughs and great fun with him.
He really had a great run, and when he was younger and I was younger we had some of the wildest, craziest times I’ve ever had.
I wish I was around... I was there, and I wish I had more to offer, but all I can say is I have great memories of a really great human being.
Thanks much. Bye.
[-- December 3, 2009, 4:50 pm]
--------------------------------------------------------
.JPG)
Robert Fulghum listening to Pinky
Kitsap Unitarian Universalist Fellowship meeting
Olympic College, Bremerton, Washington
Spring 2006
12/28/2009
Male Stupidity Celebration
Here I stand
With my pecker in my hand,
Helplessly pursuing
my own undoing
by spraying the seed of the
human weed
on every egg and ova I can find.
O Dong, O Dick,
You colossal ultra-prick
Bomb of concentrated frustration,
Fuse lit in anticipation,
A bead of sweat upon your brow,
Seeking that slippery place
Of friction and agitation,
To find that celebration
and relieve that tense sensation.
Letting go, without reservation,
A tremendous ejaculation.
O John, O Jock,
You grand super-cock,
You throbbing, burning volcano
Looming over the Earth
Erupting
Shooting your liquid fire
Over the land
A million sperm with each spasm,
rolling, squirming, swimming
Inexorably toward the
Womb Sea.
© Edison S. Fisk, 2009. All rights reserved.
With my pecker in my hand,
Helplessly pursuing
my own undoing
by spraying the seed of the
human weed
on every egg and ova I can find.
O Dong, O Dick,
You colossal ultra-prick
Bomb of concentrated frustration,
Fuse lit in anticipation,
A bead of sweat upon your brow,
Seeking that slippery place
Of friction and agitation,
To find that celebration
and relieve that tense sensation.
Letting go, without reservation,
A tremendous ejaculation.
O John, O Jock,
You grand super-cock,
You throbbing, burning volcano
Looming over the Earth
Erupting
Shooting your liquid fire
Over the land
A million sperm with each spasm,
rolling, squirming, swimming
Inexorably toward the
Womb Sea.
© Edison S. Fisk, 2009. All rights reserved.
11/30/2009
Edison S. Fisk, A Citizen of the Century
CITIZENS OF THE CENTURY
(A Community Celebration Honoring Kitsap Elders)
Bremerton, Washington
April 8, 2000
EDISON S. FISK
Born May 30, 1915, in Seattle, WA
Kitsap resident since 1970
Career: Electrician
The following excerpts are quoted from The Bremerton Sun, July 15, 1955; articles in full are on file at the Museum and on microfiche at Kitsap Library:
To some, he is Kitsap County’s original anti-war activist.
To others, he is the renegade anti-establishment Buffalo Party candidate who went after the late Henry M. Jackson’s U.S. Senate seat in 1970.
To still others, he is the maker of the most famous protest sign in Bremerton’s history.
…(D)uring the Vietnam War, Fisk’s name often appeared in the pages of The Sun.
It all began in 1965, when the outspoken Fisk began writing letters to the editor—more than 100 in all—blasting the Vietnam War effort. As a result, his name became well known in Kitsap County, if not well loved.
By 1968, Fisk’s name began to appear regularly in the news columns. That was after he began taking part in anti-war protests in downtown Bremerton and at Olympic College.
“We had good, fundamentalist ministers throwing eggs at us.” …
His notoriety skyrocketed when he paraded in front of Bremerton’s Army recruiting office displaying a sign saying: “The Grateful Society: Bombs, Bullets, Battleships and Bullshit.”
Although such a sign would hardly raise an eyebrow today, it was bad enough in those days to get Fisk arrested for disorderly conduct.
And, because the word “bullshit” was banned in the pages of The Sun then, news stories about the sign replaced the word with dots and an explanation describing it as an “eight-letter alliterative vulgarity.”
Fisk eventually was found guilty of the disorderly conduct charge and sentenced to 30 days in jail and a $300 fine… The sentence was dropped five years later after Bremerton city officials delayed in complying with a court order stemming from an appeal of the case…in 1972 (Fisk) burned all of his protest signs in a symbolic renunciation of public protest as a means of social change.
… (H)e feels anti-nuclear protesters (as of 1955) are well-intentioned but “naïve.”
“They’ve got to get beyond that “war is hell” thing,” he said. “A good portion of (jobs in the United States) are war-oriented. What are all those people going to do for a living if we disarm—unless we change our economic policies?”
… “I’ll talk to anybody who will listen,” he said.
Another article on file at the Museum or on microfiche at Kitsap Library is from The Sun, January 18, 1993, headlined Pinky Fisk recalls King’s old idea.
[Excerpt: "Notes from the guests of honor," Kitsap County Historical Society, April 8, 2000, pp. 25-26]
* * * * *
HISTORICAL SOCIETY: Contributions of a lifetime
By Terri Gleich, For The Sun
Published Sunday, April 9, 2000
Kitsap 'Citizens of the Century' get together to remember
http://m.kitsapsun.com/news/2000/Apr/09/historical-society-contributions-of-a-lifetime/
11/29/2009
Edison 'Pinky' Fisk 1915-2009
'Pinky' Fisk, a Passionate Protester and 'Gentle Soul,' Passes at 94
Kitsap County lost one of its “characters” last week.
Edison “Pinky” Fisk, who gained local notoriety in the late 1960s in Bremerton as an antiwar protester, died at 94 on Friday the 13th, a notion he would probably find humorous, said his wife, Kay Wilson Fisk.
Those who knew him spoke of his complexity. He had a gruff exterior and the “vocabulary of a longshoreman,” according to Wilson Fisk. He worked as an electrician and had no formal education beyond high school.
On the flip side was a man who played the flute, wrote poetry and, according to his friend Kitsap pianist Dr. Irene Bowling, was in his heart a “marshmallow.”
“It grieved him to the point of tears to see the injustices and cruelties of the world,” Bowling wrote in an e-mail.
Wilson Fisk characterized the contradiction between the impressions he could leave and relationships he made by saying, “He could rub people the wrong way, but he was really a gentle soul.”
Read more:
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/nov/20/pinky-a-passionate-protester-and-gentle-soul-at/
Kitsap County lost one of its “characters” last week.
Edison “Pinky” Fisk, who gained local notoriety in the late 1960s in Bremerton as an antiwar protester, died at 94 on Friday the 13th, a notion he would probably find humorous, said his wife, Kay Wilson Fisk.
Those who knew him spoke of his complexity. He had a gruff exterior and the “vocabulary of a longshoreman,” according to Wilson Fisk. He worked as an electrician and had no formal education beyond high school.
On the flip side was a man who played the flute, wrote poetry and, according to his friend Kitsap pianist Dr. Irene Bowling, was in his heart a “marshmallow.”
“It grieved him to the point of tears to see the injustices and cruelties of the world,” Bowling wrote in an e-mail.
Wilson Fisk characterized the contradiction between the impressions he could leave and relationships he made by saying, “He could rub people the wrong way, but he was really a gentle soul.”
By Steven Gardner for The Kitsap Sun - November 20, 2009
Read more:
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2009/nov/20/pinky-a-passionate-protester-and-gentle-soul-at/
10/04/2009
Patriotism
A culture which postpones rather than
Stimulates sexual experience in young
Adults is a culture most prone to progress.
Uncle Sam!
I am going to Fuck you to a standstill.
It is apparent the laws prohibiting
Obscenity and pornography have played an
Important role in the creativity and
Excellence of our system and our society.
Uncle Sam!
I am going to Fuck you to a standstill.
These laws have played an important part
In our people coming so far and achieving
So much.
Uncle Sam!
I am going to Fuck you to a standstill.
Edison S. "Pinky" Fisk
© Edison S. Fisk, 2009. All rights reserved.
Stimulates sexual experience in young
Adults is a culture most prone to progress.
Uncle Sam!
I am going to Fuck you to a standstill.
It is apparent the laws prohibiting
Obscenity and pornography have played an
Important role in the creativity and
Excellence of our system and our society.
Uncle Sam!
I am going to Fuck you to a standstill.
These laws have played an important part
In our people coming so far and achieving
So much.
Uncle Sam!
I am going to Fuck you to a standstill.
Edison S. "Pinky" Fisk
© Edison S. Fisk, 2009. All rights reserved.
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