The Last World War One Veteran
Tomorrow is veteran’s day. It began as Armistice Day. On this day in 1918, World War I ended. On the eleventh hour, of the eleventh day, of the eleventh month, the cease fire took effect.
World War I was a ghastly bloodbath. Millions of people died. No one is quite sure what it was about. The effects of “The Great War” are with us today.
It is said that the German Kaiser was horrible, and had to be defeated. He was replaced by communism and the third reich. In the middle east, the Ottoman empire collapsed, and the British and French took over the territories. The British drew boundaries between Iran and Iraq, and administered a mandate over Palestine. The French tried to get revenge on the Germans. The Germans then had to get back at the French. World War II was the result. (This is vastly over simplified.)
Apparently, there is one United States veteran of World War I who is still alive. Frank Buckles lives in Charles Town, WV. On February 1, 2010, he celebrated his 109th birthday.
Mr. Buckles lied about his age to join the army. He was an ambulance driver in France, and after the Armistice escorted German POWs home. In 1942, he worked for an American shipping company in Manila, and was captured by the Japanese. He spent the next three years as a prisoner. Mr. Buckles was married in 1953, and bought a farm in West Virginia. “I never got in a hurry.”
Frank Buckles died February 27, 2011. This is a repost. The picture of Mr. Buckles is from Wikipedia. All other pictures are from The Library of Congress. This was written like Kurt Vonnegut. Mr. Vonnegut was born November 11, 1922.
The “Desiderata” Story
There was a poem , of unknown origin, found in a Baltimore church in 1692. It was revived by a Lawyer, who lived in Terre Haute, IN. He liked to read it his friends, and his lips were moving. The attorney , Max Ehrmann, copyrighted this poem in 1927. Another persistent rumor has it that the manuscript was in an ambulance Mr. Ehrmann was following. How the accident victim came to possess this document is a mystery.
Mr. Ehrmann ( the poet laureate of Terre Haute ) wrote in his diary “I should like, if I could, to leave a humble gift — a bit of chaste prose that had caught up some noble moods”. The poem is ” Desiderata “, and is a favorite of gift shops the world over.
In 1956, Rev. Frederick Kates became the rector of Old St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore, MD. He had found a copy of “Desiderata”, without the copyright notice. He printed a handout for his congregation on church stationary. At the top of the page was the notation “Old St. Paul’s Church, Baltimore A.C. 1692”. As the sixties devolved, the poem became famous.
“Desiderata” was the text of a recording made by Les Crane, who found the poem on a poster. He thought the text was in the public domain, when in fact it is copyrighted. Mr. Crane was taken to court, and forced to pay the owners of the copyright . The matter has been in court on other occasions. It seems that Mr. Ehrmann used “Desiderata” in a Christmas greeting, without citing the copyright. Later,during World War II, Ehrmann allowed a friend – Army psychiatrist Dr. Merrill Moore – to hand out more than 1,000 copies of the poem to his soldier-patients, without the copyright.
PG admits to confusion on this issue. Don’t copyrights expire, get renewed, and then expire again? If a work was written in 1927, doesn’t it go into the public domain 83 years later. The wikipedia article about copyrights is long and confusing. Remember, we are dealing with a legal concept as it relates to a poem written by a lawyer.
A site called fleurdelis says the matter depends on your point of view and place of residence. ( Shcredo says flatly that “Desiderata” is public domain. The link is no longer available. The url advises “Beware your Beliefs – They could bring Great Happiness”) ( Robinsweb tells of being forced to remove “Desiderata” from her site because of a complaint by the copyright owner.) If you want to be inspired, click on the videos embedded in this post.
In 1972, the National Lampoon produced a new translation, Deteriorata. This is a repost.Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These are Union Soldiers from the War Between the States. They were not concerned with Epistemic Circularity.
Black And White Girls Rock
There is a show, Black Girls Rock. The idea is to showcase talented young ladies of color. The show is on BET, or Black Entertainment Television. A twitter hashtag, #blackgirlsrock, followed. Then, mysteriously, #whitegirlsrock appeared.
The white girls tag has not gotten a good response. Most tweets say that the white girl rockers are upset because they are losing privilege, or something like that. The ever correct Huffington Post has a feature, Why I’m Not Here for #WhiteGirlsRock.
PG had a flask of inspiration when he saw a tweet. @ArlingtonDiva LOL!! RT @jujoffer: White folks really made a hashtag called #whitegirlsrock …what’s next, A movie titled ‘400 Years A Slave Owner’? @chamblee54 how do you know it was white people? @ArlingtonDiva The same way you know that I am black.
Do the producers of Black Girls Rock have the craft necessary to promote their show using a false flag twitter attack? Given the anonymous nature of twitter, there is no way to find out. Extra publicity for BGR seems to be the primary result of #whitegirlsrock. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Are My Attitudes About Race Any Of Your Business?
PG was living his life when see saw something on facebook: “And another thing: if you are going to claim NOT to be racist, I feel like you should familiarize yourself with some contemporary writings and definitions of racism, not just what Mirriam Webster says.” The first reaction was to ignore this. If you reply to a comment about racism on facebook, you are asking for trouble. Life is too short to be wasting time on such unpleasantness.
But the thought engine had been kickstarted, and continued to idle in the background. When PG pulled into the Kroger parking lot, the idea hit full force. Maybe whether you are, or are not, a racist, is no one else’s business.
Some people say that a PWOC is not affected by racism. If this is the case, then why should the racial attitudes of a PWOC affect another PWOC? If a person treats you fairly, do you really need to know this person’s attitudes about race?
The fbf does not say what the context of this claim is. Did anyone ask you whether or not you were a racist? If not, are you assuming that they are interested? Maybe someone assumed the listener was interested. Is the proper response to look bored, and say TMI?
PG was filling out a profile once, and was using some questioned borrowed from another blog profile. One of the questions was, are you a racist? “It depends on who is doing the judging”.
The comment mentioned “contemporary writings and definitions of racism”. Who are the people who set themselves up as arbiters about what we should think about race? What are the qualifications? Who asked them what they thought? How do we know that these people are dependable?.
Maybe the answer is to show compassion and kindness to your neighbor, and don’t judge them about their racial attitudes. If you are proud of your racial attitudes, please refrain from boasting. Not everyone is interested in what you think about race.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Inspiration Is For Amateurs
PG was listening to an interview with a fiction writer. Someone said “Inspiration is for amateurs.” PG has always been more impressed by action than beliefs, and this phrase made sense. This repost is a good excuse to post some more pictures from The Library of Congress.
The phrase is from a painter named Chuck Close. His output is expensive, and widely enjoyed. A spinal injury left him paralyzed, but did not stop him from producing. Here is the full quote about inspiration:
“The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who’ll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you’re sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that’s almost never the case.”
A man once made pottery. It was said that the man only worked with passion, and that if he didn’t feel this passion he did not work. When PG heard that, his thought was that if PG worked that way, he would never finish anything. Most of the sticker pictures take a while to finish. PG always gets tired of the picture before it is through. The idea is to go to the studio, start to do stuff, and before long the enthusiasm will return. Any image requires a certain amount of time with the belly pressed against the work table, or the digital equivalent.
The formula for writing is ass plus chair. A teacher once said to not stare at the blank page, waiting for a bolt of lightening. Start to write something, and the ideas will start to sputter out of the pipeline.
It is not enough to have a bright idea. You have to work the problems out. Sometimes, you spend more time finding out what does not work, than what does. You have to do it wrong before you can do it right. Genius is ninety nine percent perspiration and one percent inspiration. If any cliches have been overlooked, please add them to the comments.
One thing that is helpful is to be focused. The internet can be a problem. When you should be thinking about your product, it is very tempting to see the latest on Facebook or Twitter.
Chamblee54 
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