Chamblee54

K Mart

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on November 20, 2022

Seven Score And Nineteen Years Ago

Posted in History, Holidays, Library of Congress, War by chamblee54 on November 19, 2022









A vicious battle had been fought near Gettysburg, PA.. It is widely considered the turning point of “Mr. Lincoln”s War,” the moment when the Union took the upper hand. It came at a horrible price, and a cemetery was built to hold this price.

The ceremony to dedicate the cemetery was held November 19, 1863. The headline speaker was Senator Edward Everett. The President was an afterthought. After it was over, Mr. Everett reportedly told the President that he said more in two minutes than he did in two hours.

The speech by Mr. Lincoln is an American classic. Schoolchildren are forced to memorize it. There are a few legends, many of which are not true. According to The Lincoln Museum , the speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride would have been too bumpy to write. There is also confusion about what happened to the original text that the President read from.

HT to Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Measured in pixels, the picture of George Custer is 720×666. This is a repost.

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.







RuPaul

Posted in Georgia History, GSU photo archive, Holidays, Library of Congress, Quotes by chamblee54 on November 18, 2022

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November 17, aka yesterday, was the birthday of Rupaul Andre Charles. The following compilation is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress, and “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
PG often does not fit into pigeonholes. Liberal or conservative. Ally or enemy. Racist or whatever. After a while, it becomes apparent that labels are part of the packaging, and usually have little to do with the product inside the box.

Then a facebook friend (a person who PG likes, and respects, in real life) put up a link to a RuPaul interview, Real Talk With RuPaul. The FBF is over RuPaul. PG read the interview, and found many things that he agreed with. Is it possible to be a conservative because you like RuPaul?

The Vulture feature is similar to the WTF podcast that RuPaul did. Chamblee54 wrote about that interview. The Vulture chat is better for bloggers, since it is a copy friendly text affair. When you see quotes, you can include them verbatim.

RuPaul has a talent for snappy sayings, to be remembered for later use. An example would be “I’d rather have an enema than have an Emmy.” Some unkind people say that if you were to give RuPaul an enema, you could bury him in a shoebox.

A persistent theme of RuPaul’s moving lips is “the matrix.” “Because you get to a point where if you’re smart and you’re sensitive, you see how this all works on this planet. It’s like when Dorothy looks behind the curtain. Like, “Wait a minute. You’re the wizard?” And you figure out the hoax. That this is all an illusion. There’s only a few areas you can go. First, you get angry that you’ve been hoaxed and you get bitter. But then, take more steps beyond the bitterness and you realize, “Oh, I get it. Let’s have fun with it. It’s all a joke.”

The Bosslady of “RuPaul’s Drag Race’ is an African American. Duh. In the Vulture piece, there are 4355 words. Racism/racist is not included. Could it be that America’s obsession with other people’s racial attitudes is part of the illusion? “Derogatory slurs are ALWAYS an outward projection of a person’s own poisonous self-loathing.”

RuPaul is not always politically correct. She supports Shirley Q. Liquor. RPDR was instrumental in the rise to fame, (or descent into the abyss), of Sharon Needles. “But if you are trigger-happy and you’re looking for a reason to reinforce your own victimhood, your own perception of yourself as a victim, you’ll look for anything that will reinforce that.”

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Years ago, PG worked with someone who liked to say “and a ru hu hu.” This was shortened to ru, and was usually said very loud. Ru became a greeting.

About this time, Ru Paul was living in Atlanta. Many people remember her (“RuPaul Andre Charles, best known mononymously as RuPaul”) as a spectacular self promoter. Ru Paul would sit in an apartment balcony, and wave at cars passing by. Posters for her band, Wee Wee Pole, were on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Avenue.

One night, Ru Paul was working as a gogo dancer in a club called Weekends. During a break, PG went over to talk to her. The use of ru as a greeting was mentioned. Soon, some people came over, and PG started to leave. Before PG could get away, Ru Paul turned to PG, lifted her index finger, and said “Keep on saying my name.”

Ru Paul went on to become famous. Weekends was torn down, and is the site of the Federal Reserve Bank. PG does not watch much TV, and has never seen an episode of “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” This is a TV show about a TV.

There is a recent controversy about RPDR. It seems that the phrase shemale has been used. Some people are offended by this. The expression is no longer used on the show.

PG has only one trans person friend. Sashia is the first person that PG heard use the expression shemale. PG does not know if Sashia still uses this expression. It has been a while since PG learned this expression, and ideas about language do change. Spell check suggestion for Sashia: Hashish.

The use of offensive language is to be avoided. If you know something is going to hurt people, then you should avoid saying it. There is a good possibility that Ru Paul knew what she was doing, and just didn’t care. The problem comes when you haven’t received the latest update from the language authorities. Keeping up with with is cool to say can be a full time job. Is it still ok to say ru?

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RuPaul is no stranger to attention being thought strange. The latest bit of publicity… there is no bad publicity, and they spell the name right … is an article in the eyeball grabbing HuffPo, RuPaul Responds To Controversy Over The Word ‘Tranny’. (Spell check suggestion: Granny) PG gave into temptation, and clicked on the link. It seems as though there was an appearance on the WTF podcast. Why settle for a sensational sample, when you can hear the entire show?

If you have an hour and twenty four minutes to spare, listen to this show. If you like, you can skip the first thirteen minutes, which is host Mark Maron talking about himself. The show is highly entertaining. A theme is that the world is the matrix, a fake construction. Some people look behind the curtain and see the wizard. Some people believe the matrix is reality. You should already know which side RuPaul takes. He was not born blonde.

The quote about the T-word comes toward the end of the show. PG has mixed feelings about the whole affair, and does not completely agree with RuPaul. However, this human being is entitled to an opinion. Even if he wasn’t, he is going to share it anyway. RuPaul does not suffer from false modesty.

For a show that gets attention about language, it is a bit strange at times. While describing his career trajectory, RuPaul says he went through a phase of “gender f-word.” The show is called WTF. Twice a week, the host says fuck a dozen times in the first sixty seconds. And RuPaul said “gender f-word.”

Even more amazingly, RuPaul said that things were “n-word rigged”. RuPaul did break down and say the ultimate dirty word. When his mother saw his act on television, she said “N****** you crazy.”

RuPaul has had quite a career. He mentions that he has been sober for fifteen years, and had some therapy to get there. This was not the case when he lived in Atlanta. Many stories from those days are in the show. The bs detector went off a couple of times. PG saw the Now Explosion, and did not remember seeing a tall black guy.

This is a rich seventy five minutes. Like saying that Madonna is a curator, that most fashion designers don’t know how to sew. The part that is getting the attention is towards the end of the show, and is just a small part. It is all part of the matrix.

This feature is a repost. Some of the pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Other pictures are from The Library of Congress. The images are of women, training to be bus drivers and taxi drivers. This was in Washington DC, November 1942. The photographer was Andreas Feininger, working for the Office of War Information. The picture of a dipstick demonstration is #8d36666.

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Worms Delight Part Three

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on November 17, 2022

Line Mining The Sonnets

Posted in Library of Congress, Quotes, Undogegorized by chamblee54 on November 16, 2022


Find the sonnets of Shakespeare. Copy them into a word document. Read each one, and isolate the lines that resonate. Match up the lines by rhyme. Compile villanelles when appropriate. Retrofit rhymes onto others, pair them into couplets. Incorporate them into sonnets and octrains. Since the lines are already iambic pentameter, there should be minimal metric revision.

It became obvious that hearing them read would work better. A lovely source turned up. Earlier this year, Sir Patrick Stewart read a sonnet a day. The actor sat down, put his glasses on, opened his book, and read a sonnet for the camera. There were little comments, about the poems, scattered throughout the videos. With the aid of Sir Patrick, I began to get a sense for the iambic feng shui. In my own craft, I have long struggled with meter. Maybe this will help.

Everything is lower case in my graphic poems. There is no punctuation. It soon became apparent that commas were essential to the pacing of the sonnets. As for the capital letters, it is likely that Mr. Shakespeare capitalized. This was a few hundred years before e. e. cummings.

How do we know for sure? The original manuscripts are not available. “None of Shakespeare’s original manuscripts have survived, due perhaps to the fact that they were written, many of them hastily, strictly for stage performance. Not so much as a couplet written in Shakespeare’s own hand has ever been proven to exist.” There is speculation as to the true authorship of these pieces.

“Shakespeare’s sonnets were first published together in 1609 as a quarto, athough they were probably written much earlier. The sonnets, far more popular today than the epic poems, are still published both individually and as a group.” How did these sonnets get from the desk, to the printed page?

Sonnet LIV ends with “When that shall vade, my verse distills your truth.” @SirPatStew commented on the word vade, just as I was ready to take a google break. A site, Shakespeare’s Words, appeared. Vade seems to be the same word as fade. And no, this blog was not named for Sonnet 54.

1609 not only saw the publication of the sonnets, but the production of the King James Bible. There are legends that Mr. Shakespeare was involved in this project. “Because, if you count 46 words from the beginning of Psalm 46 and 46 words from the ending of the psalm (not counting the “Selahs”), you arrive at these two words: “shake” and “spear.” … Shakespeare would have been 46 years old in 1610, when scholars were finalizing the translations for publication the following year.”

Some Bible scholars are not fond of this story. “Nevertheless, just like the idiotic claim that King James was a sodomite, the story will undoubtedly be repeated ad nauseum no matter how thoroughly it has been discredited.” Less debunkable is this: “William Shakespeare is an anagram of ‘Here was I, like a psalm.'” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

The Burning Of Atlanta

Posted in Georgia History, History, Library of Congress, War by chamblee54 on November 15, 2022

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Around this time 157 years ago, Atlanta was on fire. General Sherman was preparing for his March to the sea, and wanted to destroy anything of value in the city. The fire is reported as being on 11-15 of November, depending on what source you use.

The November fire was the second great fire in Atlanta that year. On September 2, the city was conquered by the Union Army. The fleeing Confederates blew up a munitions depot, and set a large part of the city on fire. This is the fire Scarlet O’Hara flees, in “Gone With The Wind”.

After a series of bloody battles, the city was shelled by Yankee forces for forty days. There were many civilian casualties. General Sherman was tired of the war, angry at Atlanta, and ready for action. This is despite the fact that many in Atlanta were opposed to secession.

Click here to hear a lecture by Marc Wortman at the Atlanta History Center. Mr Wortman is the author of “The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta”. The hour of talk is fascinating. This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress

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About this time every year, there is a post about the burning of Atlanta. One of the sources is a lecture by Marc Wortman. If you have an hour to spare, this talk is worth your time. One of the stories told is the tale of Mr. Luckie.

“According to folklore, two stories abound as to how Luckie Street was named. The first is that its moniker came from one of Atlanta’s oldest families. The other, probably closer to the truth, regales the life of Solomon “Sam” Luckie. Luckie, as it turns out, wasn’t so lucky after all. When General William Tecumseh Sherman first came marching through Atlanta in 1864, Luckie, a free Black man who made his living as a barber, was leaning against a gas lamp post in downtown talking to a group of businessmen. A burst from a cannon shell wounded him; he survived, but later died from his injuries. Folklore suggests that he may have been one of the first casualties of the assault on Atlanta. Luckie Street, an extension of Auburn Avenue, was later named in his memory.”

Marc Wortman wrote a book, The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta. The one star review, and comments to that review, are unusually detailed. Here is a selection.

“…People forget – or were never taught in school – that most Confederate soldiers descended from Revolutionary War patriots or were up-country poor sons of farmers. Many Confederate soldiers were relatively recent new arrivals to the U.S., semi-literate dirt poor immigrants from Ireland and Scotland who’d never had the chance to own even an acre of their own land in Europe. In the mix were well-educated, elite merchant business owning French Huguenot refugees of the Catholic Bourbon genocide of Protestants. These immigrants had nowhere else to go, 9 times out of 10 never owned a slave, and fought for the CSA to keep what little they’d hardscrabble carved out over a decade of arrival into the U.S.”

The War Between The States continues to be a source of controversy. After the Charleston church killings, many comments were made about the Confederate battle flag. (If you can’t talk about gun control or mental health, you talk about a symbol.) This led to discussions about the war itself. There were ritual denunciations of slavery, assumed to be the sole cause of the conflict.

The notion of autonomous states in a federal union was novel when the United States Constitution was written. The debate over federalism versus states rights continues to this day. States that want to legalize marijuana may be the next battleground. (Few are expecting secession over bong rights.) Many in the CSA saw the Union as being a conquering army, and fought to defend their homes. While slavery was certainly a factor in the creation of the CSA, it was not the only Casus belli. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.

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Hard To Believe

Posted in Library of Congress, Weekly Notes by chamblee54 on November 14, 2022


The display of a link on this page does not indicate approval of content.
Somehow I Find It Hard To Believe That Any Of These Things Happened (19 Posts)
“I would like to begin by offering congratulations to Governor Brian Kemp”
Gay and Alcoholic: A Lost Autobiography – Robert Hutton’s Of Those Alone
Swedish engineer creates playable accordion from 2 Commodore 64 computers
ben avery shared an ice cream cone with his dog and grosses out tim dillon
@catholiccom Our office is being haunted by a biblically accurate McDonald’s character
Utah lab not discussing ATL Child Murders progress a year after receiving DNA samples
Pacific volleyball team refuses to play at BYU, cites Duke claim of ‘racist comments’
7 spiritually helpful Catholic practices that any Protestant can also benefit from.
17 Things I Would Do Differently If I Were Fully Convinced I’m Going to Die
The Birthday Boy: Roy Cohn is 52 at 54 Big Apple rogue’s gallery turned out to celebrate …
dr caitlin green (parody) @caitlinmoriah hope you’re all as excited as i am
@marina0swald ~ h061 ~ h062 ~ trump ~ trump
trump ~ n$$$$$ ~ [sic] ~ policing ~ sean carroll
route 66 ~ lesa pamplin ~ SSnoose ~ vatnik ~ happy burrito
grizzlelpc ~ tim dillon recovery ~ r/timdillon ~ my pillow
duchamp archives ~ tom fogerty ~ tao lin ~ nonplussed ~ Bjørn Lomborg
stacey concedes ~ stacey concedes ~ hedley lamarr ~ midterms ~ repost
lesa pamplin ~ fluidmaster adjust ~ usb ~ polls ~ worms delight
fluidmaster 400 series ~ This is a repost from 2017. Politico is still in business. Two weeks ago, they posted an item about Paul Pelosi, which made me take an interest in that story. “Paul Pelosi was able to dial 911 himself after telling the intruder he had to go use the bathroom and then calling from there, where his phone had been charging, according to a person familiar with the situation.” ~ This is a repost from 2014, and the Mike Brown case. ~ @abrahampiper I hope you haven’t heard anyone called a hussy recently. But you know what it means, right? ✨A promiscuous woman✨ A quaint synonym for “slut.”It started out short for “housewife,” though. What happened? (1/…) ~ @abrahampiper (Interestingly, linguist Larry Trask points out, this leaves “Mrs” “in the embarrassing position of being an abbreviation for nothing.”) ~ @RicksRambles A random person just walked up and told me I look like Mr Haney from Green Acres. I’m not sure how I feel about that. ~ @chamblee54 In 1970, the governor could not succeed himself. Lester Maddox had to wait until 1974 to run again. Lester made a spectacle of himself that entire time. By 1974, people were tired of Lester. This is what happened to @staceyabrams ~ Lesa Pamplin is the Godmother of Rachel Richardson, the Duke volleyball player who said someone shouted the n-word at her. The claim has been discredited. Ms. Pamplin tweeted about this claim. In the election, Lesa Pamplin was running for Judge of the judge Tarrant County Criminal Court, in Texas. Ms. Pamplin recieved 45.9% of the vote. Brad Clark won, with 54.1% ~ Claire Hummel @shoomlah Apropos of nothing, Twitter now lets you download an archive of your account on desktop (found under Settings > Your Account > Download an archive of your data) and it’s pretty robust! Gives you a fully searchable/filterable archive of your tweets, complete with images: ~ @chamblee54 Replying to @ggreenwald @staceyabrams started a lot with her 2018 campaign based on voter suppression, followed by a performative refusal to concede ~ yesterday’s problem you can’t grab your dreams with closed hands ~ pictures for this post election celebration are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah

Is It A Lie

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on November 13, 2022

Gloria Marie Steinem And The CIA

Posted in GSU photo archive, History, Undogegorized by chamblee54 on November 13, 2022

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@measure7x “Been struck by how difficult it is to find a full text copy of Gloria Steinem’s CIA pamphlet, ‘A Review of Negro Segregation in the United States.’ Now I see why… Supposedly only 5 (‘known’) copies in the US. Guess some people really don’t want this going around” Sometimes opening twitter is asking for trouble. This tweet sent me on a wild goose chase, looking for information about ARONSITUS. Another thread provided a bit of information.

@marina0swald “a 1967 NYT article quoted gloria steinem as saying “I found them liberal and farsighted and open to an exchange of ideas,” when describing her close work with CIA agents to send americans to disrupt youth festivals in vienna in 1959 and helsinki in 1962” @marina0swald “another report the IRS prepared was on racial segregation in the US. it should be noted that this pamphlet is notoriously hard to find and truly doesn’t appear to be digitized anywhere. only five known copies exist. why? well the contents speak for itself” @marina0swald “published near the height of the civil rights movement, the report states that the reason racism exists is because it’s self-perpetuating, and black people simply imagine they are oppressed. the report has steinem’s name stamped across the top.” @marina0swald is a pen name, and not the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald.

A google search was not helpful. Duckduckgo came through with a handful of results. Whoever wants the document suppressed has done a good job. Even Amazon does not have access.

There is a bit more information about Ms. Steinem and the CIA. If you have a taste for conspiracy theories, there is a two hour radio show from 1986. A transcript is available.

“The first revelations of Gloria Steinem’s relationship to the CIA appeared in the New York Times in 1967, in an article that stated that Steinem had a part in launching a CIA front group which was called the “Independent Research Service.” Just prior to this exposure, Ramparts magazine had disclosed that the organization was CIA-funded. … The purpose of the IRS seems to have been to subvert communist-minded youths on an international basis. The supposedly “Independent” Research Service was, in fact, totally dependent on the CIA. It is believed to have been formed in response to the Communist World Youth festivals occurring throughout the 1950s and 1960s. These festivals were held in communist countries until 1959, when the festival for that year was scheduled to take place in Vienna — neutral territory during the Cold War. The State Department did its best to discourage American youths from attending. Some did go, though, and in the meantime the CIA covertly arranged for the Independent Research Service to organize an anti-communist delegation to attend and disrupt the festivals.” …

“Another fact exhumed by the Red Stockings is the group’s publication of a pamphlet in 1959 called, “A Review of Negro Segregation in the United States.” Steinem’s name is listed on the inside cover, this time as co-director of the Independent Research Service. The pamphlet focuses on the supposed advances made by black people in the U.S. For example: “Beyond the noisy clamor of those who would obstruct justice and fair play, no alert observer can be unaware of the concerted effort to rule out segregation from every aspect of American life.” The reason some discrimination does still occur, according to the research group, is because “it is also self-perpetuating, in that the rejected group, through continued deprivation, is hardened in the very shortcomings, real or imaginary, that are given as the reasons for the discrimination in the first place.” In other words, the oppression of blacks continues not because of white, ruling-class interests, but because black people actually have become inferior. [CN: Here Red Stocking is paraphrasing how they see the IRS pamphlet’s argument.]” This quote cannot be verified. All we have today is a picture of the cover, which might be faked.

When you talk about the CIA, there are conspiracy theories galore. It can be tough to wade through the information. The focus of this story is the pamphlet about “Negro Segregation.” One story sheds a bit of light on the Steinem-CIA-Segregation axis, along with a tasteful picture of Ronald Reagan, Rupert Murdoch, and Roy Cohn. The story does have a credibility gap. When discussing Richard Nixon, the author opines “Petty shit compared to Donald Trump, but it was a different time.”

”A youthful Gloria Steinem had just spent a year and half in India, where, we are told, she befriended Indira Gandhi and the widow of the “revolutionary humanist” M. N. Roy, and had met a researcher who seems to have been a C.I.A. agent or contact. Attractive and progressive, Steinem was hired to run the I.S.I. [sic] and to recruit knowledgeable young Americans who could debate effectively with the Communist organizers of the festival, defending the United States against Communist criticism of segregation and other American failings.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”

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Worms Delight Part Two

Posted in Poem by chamblee54 on November 12, 2022

November 11

Posted in Georgia History, History, Library of Congress, War by chamblee54 on November 11, 2022






Veterans day was originally Armistice Day. On November 11, 1918, at 11 am, Paris time (the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month) a cease fire went into effect for “The great war”. Officials of the major armies agreed to the ceasefire at 5 am (European time). There were an estimated 11,000 casualties in the last six hours of the war.

At 11:59 am, U.S. army private Henry Gunther became the last soldier to die in World War I.
“According to the Globe and Mail this is the story of the last soldier killed in WW1: On Nov.11, 1918, U.S. army private Henry Gunther stood up during a lull in the machine gun fire and charged the enemy. “The Germans stared in disbelief,” says the Daily Express. “They had been told that morning that the fighting was about to stop; in a few minutes they would stop firing and go home. So why was this American charging at them with his bayonet drawn? They shouted at him to stop and frantically tried to wave him back but… he hadn’t heard anything of the ceasefire.” A German gunner released a five-round burst and the soldier lay dead, at 10:59 a.m. In his recently published Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour, U.S. Military Historian Joseph Persico notes that Private Gunther had previously been a sergeant but was demoted after an Army censor read his letter to a friend back home, urging him to steer clear of the war at all costs. Gunther, who was in no-man’s land when the ceasefire news arrived, had been trying to prove himself worthy of his original rank.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.






Veteran’s Day is a bad day for a cynic. I appreciate living in The United States. Even with all of her flaws, I have a good life here. The role that Veterans have played should be honored. On the other hand, those who profit from war often exploit Veterans, for political mojo. Many of these people did not serve. Those who profit from war, without serving, deserve our scorn.

Veterans are often not treated well after their service. It is estimated that a quarter of the homeless are veterans. The services offered to wounded veterans are shamefully lacking.

Hugh Pharr Quin CSA was my great grandfather. He served with the Georgia State Troops, in the War Between the States. I prefer the USA to the CSA, or whatever would have followed a Confederate victory. The Union army had to prevail, over the various Confederate Armies, for this to happen. Do I dishonor my great grandfather by saying, we are better off that the other side won?

Veterans Day was originally Armistice Day. This was the day, 104 years ago, when the War to End All Wars ended. World War I was a ghastly bloodbath, in which millions died. It affected many of the problems that plague us today. I would be willing to bet that not one person, in ten thousand, knows what World War I was about. And yet, the men who fought in that conflict (I don’t think they had women soldiers then) deserve the same gratitude as those who fought in any other conflict.

The soldier…many of whom are drafted…doesn’t get to choose which war to fight in. The sacrifice of the World War II soldier was just as great as the Vietnam fighter, but the appreciation given was much greater. I grew up during Vietnam, and saw the national mood go from patriotic fight, to dismayed resistance. By the time I was old enough to get drafted, the Paris accords had been signed. For better or worse, there went my chance.





Your Racism

Posted in Georgia History, GSU photo archive, History, Race by chamblee54 on November 10, 2022

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This is a repost from 2014, and the Mike Brown case. … Last night, in anticipation of the Grand Jury presentation, chamblee54 published Freedom Lies Bleeding. “grand jury renders opinion ~ national hissy fit begin again ~ when justice is popularity contest ~ freedom lies bleeding in street”

There was a comment. Anonymous said, on November 25, 2014 at 2:28 pm (Edit) “Thanks Luthor… you’re racism never disappoints!” The name was misspelled. The spell check suggestion is Author.

There is both style, and substance, to consider here. Is Freedom Lies Bleeding racist? Who knows? The definition of racism is growing, in carcinogenic fashion, as we speak. Some say it is systemic institutions of oppression. Some say it is jokes about toothpaste flavor. Maybe the best definition is that racism is anything that you do not like.

The poem was directed at the concept of mob rule. As President Obama said, “We are a nation built on the rule of law, so we have to accept this decision was the grand jury’s to make.”

A few years ago, O.J. Simpson was accused of murder. Many people thought he was guilty. After a long trial, he was found innocent. Should popular opinion have overruled the jury? No, it should not. The jury saw the evidence, and heard the arguments. The people can protest and debate, but they cannot take the place of a jury.

Is a dependence on a system of law and order racism? Anonymous seems to think so. Is they qualified to make this judgment? If racism is anything that you don’t like, then Anonymous is qualified to make the call. Maybe they knows something we don’t.

There is the style of the comment to consider. While Anonymous did not give their name, there was an I.P. address. The IPA is connected to a .edu server. Apparently, this is a workplace computer. Leaving insulting comments from your employer’s computer does not reflect well on the institution.

Anonymous is entitled to an opinion. However, leaving a name calling comment does not speak well for this individual. The six words say more about Anonymous than they do chamblee54. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.

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