#NationalDayofPrayer
Thursday was the #NationalDayofPrayer. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Good Morning G-d. Please give me the slack I need to make it through this busy life. I had a birthday recently, and am getting older. Please give me less pain, both above and below the neck. Thank you for letting me get this far. Thank you for the gift of sobriety, and the memory of inebrience. The gift of moderation would have been helpful. Help me to overcome body chemistry telling me to be unhappy. If this doesn’t work, help me hide it better.
Please tell Christians to make less noise, joyful or otherwise. Help me to forgive Christians for their good intentions. Give Christians the gift of humility. Let us know that a real man keeps control of his temper. Please tell those praying today that it is better to listen than to talk.
Please find a happy medium for Atlanta water. Let us have neither drought nor flood. It would help if the developers would move to North Carolina, and the politicians would develop a conscience.
G-d, please try to get along better with Allah. This is important. Maybe if you and her got along better, then all those religious crazies would hate each other less. Help white people and black people get along better. Please be good to the people who have already lived, and are now deceased. Please understand that I am not in a hurry to join them.
Help Mr. Trump with the mess this country is in. Help Israel get along with her neighbors, and live within her borders. Help the world solve the carbon dioxide problem.
Thank you for the birds that sing. Thank you for dogs, and dog owners who clean up. Thank you for earth, air, fire, and water. Thank you for people who enjoy this prayer. Help those who are offended to get over it. Namaste, amen, all my relations, Good Bye.
Always Take Sides
“… always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.” This meme, illustrated by the gnomic face of Elie Wiesel, turns up on facebook a lot. (Elie Wiesel is pronounced like Elly Mae Clampett) Some find it inspiring. Others think it is simplistic and manipulative.
There are two questions. Did Mr. Wiesel say that? What was the context? The quote appears in the acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize. The next sentence is “Sometimes we must interfere.” We immediately go from the absolute always, to the conditional sometimes. That is progress, even if it does not fit on a bumper sticker.
“Elie Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania, in 1928. … In May 1944, Wiesel was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp along with his parents and his sisters. Wiesel and his father were slave laborers at Auschwitz. His father died in January 1945 during a forced march to another camp, Buchenwald, and his mother and younger sister were murdered as well. After the war, Wiesel moved to France, where he worked as a journalist.”
The Israel-Palestine problem was just as vexing in 1986 as today. Here is what Mr. Wiesel said in his speech. “More people are oppressed than free. And then, too, there are the Palestinians to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore. Violence and terrorism are not the answer. Something must be done about their suffering, and soon. I trust Israel, for I have faith in the Jewish people. Let Israel be given a chance, let hatred and danger be removed from her horizons, and there will be peace in and around the Holy Land.”
Who is the oppressor in the Middle East, and who is the victim? Many sides can make a case for their cause. Who is the better at persuasion? Who is better at playing the shady game of influence, and money. Often, more noise encourages the tormentor. The answer to age old conflicts is seldom found in bumper stickers, or facebook memes.
“… to whose plight I am sensitive but whose methods I deplore.” “Always take sides” means that you pick one side in a conflict, and use the tools of rhetoric to promote that cause. It can be tough to tell the good guys from the bad guys. Human suffering is human suffering. Simplistic rhetoric is *never* the answer.
In 1986, the Iran-Iraq war was raging. Hundreds of thousands of men died. Many said the war was allowed to go on intentionally. Allegedly, if Iran and Iraq were not fighting each other, they would be fighting Israel. The United States was allied with Iraq, while making arms deals with Iran. Israeli dealers participated in the United States-Iran arms trading. The profits from those deals went to supply terrorists in Central America. “Sometimes we must interfere.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
May 6, 2020
May 6 is a day in spring, with 35% of the year gone by. It has it’s fair share of history, some of which did not turn out well. In 1861, the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States. In 1937, a German zeppelin named “Hindenburg” exploded while trying to land in New Jersey. In 1940, Bob Hope did his first show for the USO, somewhere in California.
Roger Bannister ran the first sub four minute mile, on May 6, 1954. The current record is 3:43.13 by Hicham El Guerrouj on July 7, 1999, with a party with Prince to celebrate. Since most track meets now use 1500 meters, the mile record is obsolete.
On this day, Georgia executed two notable prisoners. In 2003, Carl Isaacs was put to death. Mr. Isaacs was the ringleader in the 1973 Alday family killing, in Donalsonville GA. Five years later, in 2008, William Earl Lynd was poisoned by the state. This was the first condemned man to die after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that execution by poisoning was constitutional.
Taurus is the sign for those whose blood starts to pump May 6. Included are:
Maximilien Robespierre (1758) Sigmund Freud (1856) Rudolph Valentino (1895)
Orson Welles (1915) Willie Mays (1931) Rubin Carter (1937)
Bob Seger (1945) Tony Blair (1953) PG (1954) George Clooney(1961)
To make room for these folks, someone has to die. For May 6 this would mean:
Henry David Thoreau (1862) L. Frank Baum (1919) Marlene Dietrich (1992)
This repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft, has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Why I’m Skeptical
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tara reade ~ karen thinkpiece ~ rogue feminist ~ anna caffeina ~ @carrieprejean1
carrieprejeanboller ~ carrie prejean ~ CA century ~ The Back Pockets ~ irrfan khan
breathing exercise ~ sophistry ~ jake fromm ~ the lost land ~ 50 questions
@BethanyHudsonNC Calling all you MAGA MAMAS! @susantillis will be joining @heytana, @carrieprejean1, and me tonight! #WomenForTrump #NCBoots #LeadRight RSVP now to reserve your spot ~ You might find this show interesting It is about the damage we are doing to the food supply chain. While facebook is posting memes about white women who want to get their hair done, farmers are faced with the prospect of killing thousands of hogs because there is no processing plant to take them. We are destroying the village to save it. ~ @kurteichenwald This is going to be an ugly, angry thread. It’s going to be about rape, written by someone who was violently raped in the early 1980s. Tara Reade is a liar. Im now certain of that beyond a reasonable doubt. Her attention seeking or corrupt performance has demeaned people who../1 ~ Your Mask Is Making You Meaner, Dumber, More Afraid & Less Safe This is an interesting take. I am not sure I agree with it all. There is so, so much information out there. It is tough to discern the truth from the fable. I wear a bandana, not a mask, when I go into a public space. It does not make me feel good. It makes me feel stupid. I tell myself that I am doing it out of support for the other people covering face. ~ @nattysoltesz Hey yinz, I just added two new chapters of my daddy/boy saga to my website – check em out, and if you like, head on over to my Patreon where you can find the whole thing. ~ this poem was presented last night what a weird way to announce unafraid, you never did have a sense of humors, a proud millennial cop lady made, of sugar spice and a few f-boomers, you can’t get away from being a crook, moving from one place to another pays, ’tis never a friend as loyal as a book, this is how to live your life in two days ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Lene Lovich
Lene Lovich was born Lili-Marlene Premilovich in Detroit, Michigan, March 30, 1949. She moved to England as a teenager, and met Les Chappell. He who played guitar in her band, and was her man.
As an art school student, she started to tie her long hair in plaits to keep it out of the clay while studying sculpture. Her recording debut was as part of an audience, when Chuck Berry recorded “My ding a ling”. This may have been the inspiration for “Lucky Number.”
Miss Lovich played in several bands, before winding up on the Stiff label. She put out two albums that became popular in the USA, and did a tour. After a while, she retired from music to raise a family. Miss Lovich has made a slight comeback in recent years.
PG had the privilege of seeing Lene Lovich at the Agora Ballroom, Atlanta GA, in the winter of 1980. The opening act was The Romantics. The show was taped for broadcast on the NBC radio network, and Don Pardo was on hand to introduce the bands.
The Romantics were unknown to the crowd at the Agora that night. They came on stage wearing costumes that looked like the Beatles of 1963. Every song they did was a bit better than the one before, and they got a big round of applause when the set ended.
Don Pardo had quite a career. He was the house announcer on November 22, 1963, and was the voice of NBC when he interrupted a soap opera to announce that John Kennedy had been “cut down with assassin’s bullets”. During his career as a TV announcer, Mr. Pardo could not use profanity. That night at the Agora, he made up for lost time…every other word he said was a cuss word. Dominick George “Don” Pardo, born February 22, 1918, passed away August 18, 2014.
Soon, Lene Lovich (spell check suggestion:lovechild) and her band came on stage. She was not the typical sexpot rock chanteuse… A bit chubby, with her long hair tied in plaits. Wearing a long sleeve black dress, probably stolen from a convent, she provided fantasy for only the kinkiest. Les Chappell was there, with his shaved head, to stop any trouble before it started, and play guitar.
The material came mostly from the first two albums on Stiff records. (At some point in the evening, someone…maybe Lovich, maybe Pardo…said “Be stiff”.) She introduced “Lucky Number” by saying “We have a song that goes ah oh aih oh”. During an instrumental jam in that song, she cried out “We have an American on keyboards”. The American was Thomas Dolby, who would soon go solo. He did not appear to be blinded by science.
The first encore was ” I think we’re alone now”, which had been a hit for Tommy James and the Shondells (spell check suggestions: shoulders, shovelfuls). Soon the night was over. Pictures are from the “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost.
UPDATE: This comment was left on facebook “Those first two albums are GREAT. I probably saw her on this same tour; Dolby was with her. I was a club on South Street in Philly. She looked like a freaked-out Teutonic barmaid, the St. Pauli girl gone goth (before there was goth). Somehow, the sight of her playing sax was hilarious, and the concert was a blast. I bought a recent Thomas Dolby CD a couple months ago. Sucked, as, alas, did Lene’s last one.
Carrie Prejean Boller
Most Of This Is Real appeared on chamblee54 on May 1, 2009. It is about Carrie Prejean, Miss California in the 2009 Miss USA beauty pageant. There was a fuss, after she said marriage should be between a man, and a woman. Public nuisance Perez Hilton was a judge, and had a disruptive hissy fit. Miss Prejean made some noise of her own. The mini-scandal got fifteen minutes of attention.
Finally, Miss Prejean was fired as Miss California. The Miss USA pageant was owned by Donald Trump, and the headlines were predictable: Donald Trump to Miss California: You’re Fired! There were some zesty pictures taken. Miss Prejean filed a lawsuit, settled, and wrote a book: “Still Standing: The Untold Story of My Fight Against Gossip, Hate, and Political Attacks.”
After seeing the 2009 post, PG wondered what happened to Carrie Prejean. A quick Google search turned up an Instagram spot, carrieprejeanboller. “Carrie Prejean Boller Miss CA USA 2009 👸 1RU Miss USA 2009 Author: Still Standing Mother❤💙 Wife of NFL QB Kyle Boller🏈 Trump Campaign Advisory Board Member @womenfortrump20 maga-mamas-moms-night-in-nc-april-30.”
@BethanyHudsonNC Calling all you MAGA MAMAS! @susantillis will be joining @heytana, @carrieprejean1, and me tonight! #WomenForTrump #NCBoots #LeadRight RSVP now to reserve your spot @carrieprejean1 “Can’t wait!!!!”
Kissed and made up! Runner-up Miss USA Carrie Prejean swoons over Trump at rally after she accused the New York Times of ‘twisting’ quotes for ‘hit piece’ on The Donald Fast forward to 2016. Mrs. Boller makes a splashy appearance at a Trump rally. This is despite some unflattering things she said about “The Donald” in her book. ‘They took a little tiny thing from my book and they twisted it. … And if they would have actually read on, I talk very highly of Mr. Trump. I don’t say anything negative about him. … Just below what they quoted, on page 68 [of her book], I said that most of us respect Donald Trump and he’s an amazing businessman and leader. Why didn’t they put that in the piece?”
The NYT piece has some juicy quotes. “His level of involvement in the pageants was unexpected, and his judgments, the contestants said, could be harsh. Carrie Prejean, who was 21 when she participated in the Miss USA contest in 2009 as Miss California, was surprised to find Mr. Trump personally evaluating the women at rehearsal. “We were told to put on our opening number outfits — they were nearly as revealing as our swimsuits — and line up for him onstage.”
“Donald Trump walked out with his entourage and inspected us closer than any general ever inspected a platoon. He would stop in front of a girl, look her up and down, and say, “Hmmm.” Then he would go on and do the same thing to the next girl. He took notes on a little pad as he went along. After he did this, Trump said: “O.K. I want all the girls to come forward.” … It became clear that the point of the whole exercise was for him to divide the room between girls he personally found attractive and those he did not. Many of the girls found the exercise humiliating. Some of the girls were sobbing backstage after he left, devastated to have failed even before the competition really began to impress “The Donald.”
While promoting her book, Miss Prejean appeared on the Larry King show. She did not make a good impression. Miss California USA Executive director Keith Lewis released a statement. “The public is finally getting a glimpse of the real Carrie Prejean who lives in her own delusional world. The childish behavior, her negative attitude, the sarcasm and condescending tone, the disrespect and continual lying she is demonstrating now is only a fraction of what we endured during her reign and after. Anyone who buys her book is supporting a woman who is actually the opposite of everything she claims to be. I sincerely hope she is able to get the psychological help I believe she has shown to clearly need.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Chamblee54 
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