Dolly Parton And Paula Deen
Dolly Parton celebrates a birthday today. The internet is a love fest for her, and deservedly so. Miss Parton has given joy to millions, with her singing and acting.
Paula Deen was born on the same day, one year later. While her star did not shine quite as bright as Miss Parton, Mrs. Deen made her contribution to american life. The only problem was a bad boss lawsuit against a company Mrs. Deen invested in. A lawyer got Mrs. Deen to admit, under oath, the she had said the n-word. Paula Deen became a pariah.
Dolly Parton and Paula Deen have a few things in common. Miss Parton is married to Carl Thomas Dean, and her legal name is Mrs. Dean. Both ladies are from the south, the hills of East Tennessee, and the flatland of Albany, Georgia. Both grew up in an era where the n-word was what white people called black people.
What if the story had been different. What if it was a restaurant at Dollywood where the manager was not happy? What if this white woman, who was treated better because she was a white woman, decided to claim racial discrimination in her bad boss lawsuit? (Page 153 of deposition.) What if the disgruntled employee’s lawyer was smarter than Dolly Parton’s lawyer? We might have had tabloids screaming nonstop that Dolly Parton said the n-word.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress, taken at “Annual “Bathing Girl Parade”, Balboa Beach, CA, June 20, 1920.” No one asked these ladies if they ever said the n-word. This is a repost. Other celebrities born on January 19: Robert E. Lee (1807), Edgar Allan Poe (1809), Jean Stapleton (1923), Janis Joplin (1943), and Desi Arnaz Jr.(1953.)
Ta-Nehisi Coates On WTF Podcast
Episode 878 of Marc David Maron’s WTF podcast features Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates. Chamblee54 once wrote about a video featuring Mr. Coates. This seems like a good day to listen to the show, and take notes. This is a repost from 2018.
The show starts with TPC and MDM (Is Ta-Nehisi two words?) discussing the business of writing books. The word black is not heard until 28:33 of the show. At 31 minutes in, TPC is talking about when he moved to New York, and struggled. He mentions that when you lie to other people, you begin to accept yourself as a liar.
At 53 minutes, TPC is talking about sexual harassment, and how he… a man … could never know what a woman experiences. MDM says that he … a white man … could never know what a black man feels, and how books by TPC made MDM realize this. You get the sense that this is what MDM wanted to talk about all along, and that TPC is tired of talking about race. MDM had the prominent black intellectual on the show, and MDM was going to talk about race, whether PBI wanted to, or not.
At 1:02 pm est, the show is over. PG has more respect for TPC now. Most of the show was about fatherhood, writing, and the struggle to succeed. The expressions whiteness, and white supremacy, were not heard. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Many of them were edited while listening to this show. The depression was a different era.
In This McMansion
A popular yard sign begins with “IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE:” There are some opinions expressed in this piece. It should be noted that what follows is merely one person’s opinions. You are free to agree, or disagree, as you see fit.
The ITH yard sign (ITHYS) states: “in this house, we believe: black lives matter, women’s rights are human rights, no human is illegal, science is real, love is love, kindness is everything” The sign is an aesthetic nightmare. You have seven lines of all-caps text. Every sans-serif line is a different size and color. There appear to be multiple fonts used.
ITHYS is annoying. People are too proud of their opinions, and too eager to share them. It does not matter whether you agree or not. Somebody is confronting you with their beliefs. Sometimes, it is worse when you do agree, or partially agree. ITHYS presents bumper sticker arguments, not a respectful discussion of complex issues.
ITHYS is a reminder that we live in a Christian society. This is more than just the widespread acceptance of the Christian doctrines. Christianity is a religion of beliefs and persuation, not practices and contemplation. Even if you move away from the specific doctrines of Christianism, you still accept the primacy of beliefs. It is important to persuade others to accept your beliefs. You see others as a collection of beliefs, rather than a person.
ITHYS begs for satire. Sacred cows need to be ground into hamburgers. I started to write down ideas. Soon, I had In This House Poem. (ITHP) It is embedded above. “In this house we are all God’s children, It is not what you say but how you say it, Don’t need to talk more need to listen more, Clever arguments are not always the truth, Science is the questioning not the trust, Beliefs are your thoughts with an attitude, Hate wins when you fight hate with hate, You are entitled to your opinion.”
The first four words are the same. ITHYS starts off “In this house we believe:”, followed by six beliefs. ITHP says “In this house we are all God’s children.” One is rhetoric, one is acceptance. It doesn’t matter how you read the fine print, you are still one of us. The ITHYS beliefs are presented in all-caps. (One of the rejected lines for ITHP was “Writing in all-caps is shouting.”) In ITHP, the doctrine is less important than your basic humanity. “Beliefs are your thoughts with an attitude.”
On May 1, 1992, Rodney King had seen the policeman who beat him acquitted. Cities coast to coast were in violent upheaval. Despite this, at 7:01 pm, Mr. King stood in front of a camera. “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids? . . . Please, we can get along here. We all can get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out. Let’s try to beat it. Let’s try to beat it.”
Part of the religion of beliefs is persuading other people to agree with you. You get into semantics, rhetoric, and using logic as a weapon. People confuse presenting a clever argument with speaking the truth. Ideas become more important than people. Not everyone feels this is the best way to live. “You are entitled to your opinion.”
ITHP is just eight ideas. We do not mention many important issues. Black lives matter. People disagree about the existence of God. And much, much more. Many of those issues are complicated. An alternative yard sign says: “simplistic platitudes, trite tautologies, and semantically overloaded aphorisms are poor substitutes for respectful and rational discussions about complex issues”
An amazon review has the final word today. juleskywalker “Don’t buy! So CHEAP it didn’t last 3 weeks! This sign is so cheap, that after only 3 weeks outside, one side has almost entirely peeled off, and the other side isn’t much better. It’s not from the sun either, since it’s the north facing side that is pictured. For comparison, we’ve had a BLM sign next to it for the same time period, and that one looks brand new.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The Sausage Vat Murder
The case of Adolph Luetgert is mostly forgotten today. In its day, the story was a sensation. “Adolph Louis Luetgert (December 27, 1845-July 7, 1899) was a German-American charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in acid in one of his sausage vats at the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company in 1897. … After the news of the trial became public, rumors spread that Luetgert had actually turned his wife into sausage and sold the “sausage” to unknowing consumers.”
Is it possible to explain what is in sausages without making it erotic? A twitter thread got PG thinking about a sausage story he read in 1989. The Fairy was in Gaily, Gaily, by Ben Hecht. The story originally appeared in Playboy. “In a 1962 article for Playboy collected in his rollicking 1963 memoir Gaily, Gaily — the legendary Chicago reporter Ben Hecht recalls a murder case that sounds suspiciously similar to the Adolph Luetgert case. Hecht describes an story that apparently occurred sometime during the five years after he began working as a reporter in Chicago in 1910. He writes: “Fred Ludwig, a popular North Shore butcher, went on trial before Judge Sabath for the murder of his wife. The wedding band with its romantic inscription had turned up in one of the sausages manufactured by Ludwig and sold to one of his customers, Claude Charlus, a well-known financier and epicure.” In the Hecht story, Mr. Charlus was the bf of Mr. Ludwig. When it was time to execute Mr. Ludwig, young Mr. Hecht went to a whorehouse, to borrow a makeup kit. Mr. Ludwig painted his face before he went to the gallows.
“Adolph Luetgert (originally Adolph Ludwig Lütgert) came to New York in around 1865 or 1866 when he was about twenty years old.” … “He married his first wife, Caroline Roepke, sometime between 1870 and 1872. She died on November 17, 1877. He married his second wife Louise Bicknese, two months after Caroline’s death, on January 18, 1878. Luetgert had six children—two with Caroline and four with Louise. Only three of his children survived past the age of 2.”
“Louisa Bicknese was an attractive young woman who was ten years younger than her husband. She was a former servant from the Fox River Valley who met her new husband by chance. He was immediately taken with her, entranced by her diminutive stature and tiny frame. She was less than five feet tall and looked almost child-like next to her burly husband. … As a wedding gift, he gave her a unique, heavy gold ring. Inside of it, he had gotten her new initials inscribed, reading “L.L.”. Little did he know at the time that this ring would prove to be his undoing.”
After a while, the couple started to bicker. “Despite his coarse appearance (one writer vividly describes him as a “Falstaffian” figure with “a face of suet, pig eyes, and a large untidy moustache that was a perfect host for beer foam”), Adolph was something of an womanizer. … Claiming that he needed to keep a round-the-clock eye on his factory, he had taken to spending his nights in a little room beside his office, equipped with a bed that he frequently shared with his twenty-two-year-old housemaid, Mary Siemering, Louisa’s own cousin. … He was also conducting a surreptitious courtship of a wealthy widow, Mrs. Christina Feld, sending her amorous letters in which he rhapsodized about their rosy future.” (During the murder trial, “Mrs. Christina Feldt, … testified that Luetgert often expressed his hatred for his wife and intimated that he would get rid of her.”)
“At around 10:15 on the evening of Saturday, May 1, Louisa was seated in the kitchen, chatting with her twelve-year-old son Louis, who had attended the circus that evening. The boy was excitedly describing some of the wonders he had seen—a giant named “Monsieur Goliath” and a strongman who juggled cannon balls—when Luetgert appeared and told his son to go bed. Precisely what happened between the two adults after Louis retired to his room is unclear. Only one fact is beyond dispute. After the boy bid goodnight to his mother at about 10:30 P.M., she was left alone in the company of her husband.” … “Mrs. Luetgert wore only a light house wrapper and slippers, although the night was cold and rainy. It never was shown that she had taken with her any of her belongings.”
“When questioned by his sons, Luetgert told them that their mother had gone out the previous evening to visit her sister. After several days though, she did not come back. Finally, Diedrich Bicknese, Louisa’s brother, went to the police. The investigation fell on Captain Herman Schuettler, … “an honest but occasionally brutal detective”.
“Frank Bialk, a night watchman at the plant … saw both Luetgert and Louisa at the plant together. Apparently, Luetgert sent him out on an errand that evening and gave him the rest of the night off.” There is another version of the Bialk story. “Frank Bialk … testified … Luetgert instructed him to bring down two barrels of caustic potash and place them in the boiler room, and that Luetgert then poured the contents of both barrels in one of the vats. The watchman was instructed to keep up steam all night and at 10 p. m. he was sent by Luetgert to the drug store after some nerve medicine.”
“The police also made a shocking discovery; they came across bills that stated that Luetgert bought arsenic and potash the day before the murder. … the detective was convinced that Luetgert had killed his wife, boiled her in acid and then disposed of her in a factory furnace.”
“… Luetgert’s night watchman, Frank Bialk, approached the police and told them that, on the night Mrs. Luetgert disappeared, his boss had been acting suspiciously, busying himself with one of the large steam-vats down in the factory basement. Following up on this tip, investigators checked out the vat, which—despite having been cleaned two weeks earlier—still contained a residue of a thick, greasy fluid, reddish-brown in color and giving off a nauseous stink. When the fetid slime was drained from the vat, the detectives discovered tiny pieces of bone along with two gold rings, one of them a wedding band engraved with the initials “L. L.” More bone fragments, as well as a false tooth, a hairpin, a charred corset stay, and various scraps of cloth turned up in a nearby ash heap.”
Luetgert was arrested, and charged with the crime. “On October 18, the case was submitted to the jury and after deliberating for sixty-six hours they failed to agree, nine favoring a conviction and three voting in favor of an acquittal. On November 29, 1897, the second trial began. … The trial resulted in a conviction and on May 5 Luetgert was sent to the Joliet State prison for life.”
“July 27, 1899, Luetgert left his cell and returned shortly afterward with his breakfast in a pail, but just as he was about to eat it, he dropped dead from heart disease.”
“… Frank Pratt … asked Luetgert if he wanted his “hand read.” The latter consented and Pratt told Luetgert that he possessed a violent temper and at times was not responsible for his actions. Pratt stated that Luetgert then virtually admitted that he killed his wife when he was possessed of the devil. … It is said that Luetgert also made similar admissions to a fellow prisoner.” Pictures for this true crime story are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
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gasp ~ loury ~ 915 cornish ln ~ iraq ~ hasbara
robert white ~ kkk ~ icj ~ wtf history ~ hezbollah
iron bars ~ bob wright ~ gaza ~ pjvogt ~ fani willis ~ grayzone
@MrEricAngelo ~ emojipedia ~ racist ~ gaza ~ Richard Nixon
Rahsaan Roland Kirk ~ Rahsaan Roland Kirk ~ Mr. Kirk ~ mvp ~ discord
katt williams wanda smith ~ katt williams ~ mahmoodod ~ mehdi hasan ~ @davidsheen
@davidsheen Channel 13 journalist Zvi Yehezkeli admits Israel purposefully and premeditatedly murdered the family of Al Jazeera Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh: “Generally we know the target. For example, today there was a target: the family of an Al Jazeera reporter. In general, we know.” ~ this is another monday morning reader. It is worth what you are paying for it. The picture shown here: “Sliding the present concrete slab to the well opening. Safe well demonstration near La Plata, Maryland. Charles County” The picture was made in July, 1941. The photographer was John Collier Jr. ~ Obituaries Professionally Written says ” … we believe in honoring a life with respect, dignity and integrity. When needed, euphemism is used liberally.” OPW content provider Larken Bradley expects her obit headline will read, “Obituary Writer, Six Feet Under.” ~ The Great Speckled Bird was a newspaper in Atlanta a long time ago. The undated picture is Ponce De Leon Avenue, looking up to the Georgian Terrace Hotel on Peachtree Street. It is from the Georgia State University Library. ~ The Great Speckled Bird was an underground newspaper. Vol.3 no 26 June 29, 1970 was especially memorable. On page 17, there was a bit of eyeroll inducing polemic. The first paragraph is the one that matters. “What is Gay Liberation? It is people telling the truth; it is me telling you the truth NOW, homosexuality is the CAPACITY to love someone of the same sex. Forget all the crap about causes (no one knows and we don’t care), “cures” (there aren’t any, thank god), and “problems.”The only problem is society’s anti-homosexual propaganda and the oppression it has produced. ~ v. 1 no. 4 (April 26, 1968) ~ Dear Wheeler You provide the prose poems I’ll provide the war ~ I’ll Furnish The War ~ This is a repost. ~ “This kind of clotted nonsense could only be generally circulated and generally believed in England, where newspapers claiming to be conservative and reliable are the most utterly untrustworthy of any on earth. In apology for these newspapers it may be said that their untrustworthiness is not always to intention but more frequently to ignorance and prejudice.” W.R. Hearst ~ Important question: Was the “woman in the black dress” attacked by #Hamas or #IDF ? It is ok to say “We don’t know” ~ The Vietnam war was hated by millions of Americans. That had little to do with the FBI’s hatred of MLK. When were you born? I was 13 when MLK was killed, and very few people in 1968 said it was because of Vietnam ~ @FAurellius When Millard Fillmore was Prez, Utah applied for statehood, creating a county called Millard, and the city called Fillmore, they made it the state Capitol, when statehood was rejected, they moved it back to SLC ~ Atlanta GA ~ bathtubs ~ Millard Fillmore’s birthday was last week. President MF is known for installing a bathtub in the White House, a controversial move in his time. A decision, in 1860, to install bathtubs in the US Capitol is considered a forgotten cause of the War Between the States. The pictures are from Library of Congress picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” ~ there is this man on youtube. in addition to talking about guitar, he speaks of depression, and how he has never kissed a girl, much less fucked one … i look at these and think of how there is a dick going to waste, and how could i meet him and show him what he can do with that pecker ~ On August 8, 1974, Richard Nixon announced his intention to resign from office. After seeing this, I drove to the Great Southeast Music Hall, and saw two sets featuring Rahsaan Roland Kirk. ~ I don’t believe the words you say, but I believe the way you say them ~ fun fact: I was writing a blog post about TFOM. I googled “George Floyd autopsy report” and got a lot of “stuff” I made the same request to duckduckgo. The first result was the autopsy report. ~ @SHARON_NEEDLES As someone who has work, lived, and breathed night life for a quarter of a century, I’m pissed at the lack of dancing from younger queers. Seeing you wedged in a corner illuminated by your phone isn’t what I fought for.. ~ pictures for this King day compilation are from The Library of Congress ~ selah
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
There have been eleven presidential transfers of power in my life. Nine of them were in January.I typically ignore them. I go out with Mr. Crook in office, and come home to President Thief.
The best exception was August 8, 1974. Richard Nixon was finally undone, and forced to resign. After watching Tricky Dick’s next to last television speech, I got in my Datsun, and drove to the Great Southeast Music Hall. The entertainment that night was Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
The Music Hall was the sort of place we don’t seem to have anymore. The auditorium was a bunch of bench backs on ground level, with pillows everywhere. It was a space in a shopping center, occupied by an office depot in later years. To get there from Brookhaven, you drove on a dirt road, where Sidney Marcus Boulevard is today.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk was not modest. He was the modern miracle of the tenor saxophone. He would play three saxophones at once, getting sounds that you do not get from a single instrument. At one point, the band had been playing for five minutes. Rahsaan had been holding the same note the entire time, without stopping to breathe.
Mr. Kirk played two ninety minute sets that night. He talked about twenty minutes out of every set. Of that twenty minutes, maybe thirty seconds would be fit for family broadcasting. Mr. Kirk…who was blind…said he did not want to see us anyway, because we were too ugly. He said that Stevie Wonder wanted to make a lot of money, so he could have an operation and see again.
The next day, Mr. Nixon got in a helicopter and left Washington. The Music Hall stayed open a few more years. Sidney Marcus Boulevard was paved. Rahsaan Roland Kirk had a stroke in 1975. He struggled to be able to perform again. On December 5, 1977, a second stroke ended his career. He was 41 years old. This feature is an encore presentation. The pictures used today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Millard Fillmore’s Birthday
On January 7, 1800, Millard Fillmore was born. He had no middle name, so his initials were MF. He was POTUS number thirteen, serving July 9, 1850 – March 4, 1853. A member of the Whig party, Mr. Fillmore became President after the death of Zachary Taylor. This is the only death of a serving President not connected to the zero factor.
Whenever a President dies in office, there are conspiracty theries. In the case of Zachary Taylor, the body was exhumed in 1991. The investigation found that Mr. Taylor “had no more arsenic in him than you or I walking around in the environment today.”
“The details about how and why President Taylor died are still in dispute today. The president attended a ceremony at the site of the Washington Monument on July 4th on a reportedly hot summer day. He fell ill soon after with a stomach ailment after drinking iced drinks and eating a bowl of cherries. His doctors gave him relief medication that included opium and later bled the president. Taylor died five days later at the age of 65.
Officially, he died from cholera morbus, and today, the prevalent theory is that Taylor suffered from gastroenteritis, an illness exacerbated by poor sanitary conditions in Washington. There are other theories, including one where Taylor was poisoned by people who supported the South’s pro-slavery position. (In recent years, Taylor’s body was exhumed and a small, non-lethal amount of arsenic was found in samples taken from his corpse.) It was Taylor’s unexpected opposition to the expansion of slavery (he was from the South and was the last president to own slaves) that had caused an immediate crisis in 1850.”
Some naysayers claim that Millard Fillmore was the one to poison the President, but they are not taken seriously. Millard Fillmore served what was left of Mr. Taylor’s term. He is little known today, which makes one wonder why he was included in the history series American Douchebag. Which is not to say that Mr. Fillmore is completely forgotten.
@EdDarrell Happy Birthday Millard Fillmore! Born January 7, 1800. Fillmore as a young man? @fillmoremillard Thank you Ed! I was a handsome devil, wasn’t I? #Fillmore2016 @EdDarrell One story holds that when Fillmore toured England and Europe Queen Victoria said said was the handsomest man she ever met.
At one time, Johnny Carson thought jokes about Millard Fillmore were funny. A youtube search does not reveal any of these jokes. During a writers guild strike, Mr. Carson wrote his own monolog. “… astrology would no longer be used at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Employed instead, he said, would be “a channeler speaking through the spirit of Millard Fillmore.”
The rest of this holiday post is recycled. It was inspired by Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, a fine blog. MFB is published today, six years after the original post. As you may have guessed, it is named for Millard Fillmore. MF was POTUS (and many POTUS are MF) between 1850 and 1853. The last whig to serve as POTUS (history does not record whether he wore one), Mr. Fillmore helped delay the War Between the States for ten years.
After he left office, Mr. Fillmore visited Atlanta GA in 1854, becoming the first POTUS to do so. A road in San Francisco was named Fillmore Street, and loaned the name to a famous concert hall. Johnny Carson made him a punch line to many jokes. And, there is the bathtub.
In 1917, with America mixed up in a European war, H.L. Mencken published a column in the New York Evening Mail. He claimed that the bathtub had been invented in 1842, and was a controversial device. (The first model was made of mahogany lined with lead.) President Millard Fillmore installed a bathtub in the White House in 1850, and greatly increased the acceptance of the invention. The story was a lie, but was believed without question by the (unwashed) public. Bathtubs were installed in the US Capitol in 1860. This may have been a factor in the Georgia’s decision to leave the Union.
Recently someone found a letter, written by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederate States of America. In 1860, the election of Abraham Lincoln was seen by many as a disaster. Mr. Stephens disagreed: “I know the man [Lincoln] well, he is not a bad man. He will make as good a President as Fillmore did and better too in my opinion.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” This is a repost.
I’ll Furnish The War
This is a repost. The telegram incident was included in Citizen Kane … “You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” – WR Hearst, January 25, 1898 It is part of the Hearst legend. “Frederic Sackrider Remington, the famous artist who brought to life American images of the west, was hired by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst to illustrate the revolution erupting in Cuba. He wrote back to Hearst one day in January 1897: “Everything is quiet. There is no trouble. There will be no war. I wish to return.” Hearst sent back a note: “Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.” Chamblee54 readers should know where this is going to go.
Mr. Remington was sent to Cuba, along with correspondent Richard Harding Davis, to cover the rebellion against the Spanish colonial government. At the time of this purported exchange, the conflict between Spain, and the Cuban rebels, was rather lively. This is at odds with the initial comment by Mr. Remington. One item which modern observers will find odd is the fact that Mr. Remington drew pictures. He was not a photographer. Apparently, in 1897 journalism, a hand drawing was acceptable evidence of a conflict.
Not likely sent: The Remington-Hearst “telegrams” is a thorough debunking of this legend. The source of the legend is “James Creelman, On the Great Highway: The Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent. (Boston: Lothrop Publishing, 1901), 177-178.” “Creelman does not … describe how or when he learned about the supposed Remington-Hearst exchange. In any case, it had to have been second-hand because Creelman was in Europe in early 1897, as the Journal’s “special commissioner” on the Continent.”
“It is improbable that such an exchange of telegrams would have been cleared by Spanish censors in Havana. So strict were the censors that dispatches from American correspondents reporting the war in Cuba often were taken by ship to Florida and transmitted from there.”
… correspondence of Richard Harding Davis — the war correspondent with whom Remington traveled on the assignment to Cuba — contains no reference to Remington’s wanting to leave because “there will be no war.” Rather, Davis in his letters gave several other reasons for Remington’s departure, including the artist’s reluctance to travel through Spanish lines to reach the Cuban insurgents. … Davis’ letters show that he had little regard for the rotund, slow-moving Remington, whom he called “a large blundering bear.”
The purported Remington-Hearst exchange, moreover, appears not to have been particularly important or newsworthy at the time … the anecdote seems to have provoked almost no discussion or controversy until a correspondent for the Times of London mentioned it in a dispatch from New York in 1907. He wrote: “Is the Press of the United States going insane? . . . A letter from William Randolph Hearst is in existence and was printed in a magazine not long ago. It was to an artist he had sent to Cuba, and who reported no likelihood of war. —You provide the pictures, I’ll provide the war.'”
“Hearst, indignant about the report, replied in a letter to the Times. He described as “frankly false” and “ingeniously idiotic” the claim “that there was a letter in existence from Mr. W. R. Hearst in which Mr. Hearst said to a correspondent in Cuba: —You provide the pictures and I will provide the war,’ and the intimation that Mr. Hearst was chiefly responsible for the Spanish war. … “This kind of clotted nonsense could only be generally circulated and generally believed in England, where newspapers claiming to be conservative and reliable are the most utterly untrustworthy of any on earth. In apology for these newspapers it may be said that their untrustworthiness is not always to intention but more frequently to ignorance and prejudice.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Great Speckled Bird
One day in the eighth grade, PG had a sore spot in his eye. They called it a stye. One afternoon, he got out of school, walked to Lenox Square, saw a doctor, and got some eye drops.
When he left the doctor’s office, there was a man, standing in front of Rich’s on the sidewalk, selling a newspaper. He had blond hair down past his shoulders. PG asked what the newspaper was. Mostly politics, he said. PG gave him fifteen cents for a copy of “The Great Speckled Bird”.
The Bird was an underground newspaper. It was so bad, it needed to be buried. If you are under fifty, you have probably never seen one. These papers flourished for a while. The Bird was published from 1968 to 1976. v. 1 no. 4 (April 26, 1968) was what PG bought that day.
The GSU Library has a digital collection. Included in it are copies of The Great Speckled Bird. Included in this collection is edition number four. PG went looking for that first copy. He needed to be patient, for the GSU server took it’s time. Finally, the copy he asked for came up. It was mostly politics.
When PG saw page four, he knew it was the edition from 1968. “Sergeant Pepper’s Vietnam Report” was the story of a young man sent to Nam. It had a paragraph that impressed young PG, and is reproduced here. The rest of the article is not that great, which is typical of most underground newspaper writing.
A couple of years later, PG spent the summer working at the Lenox Square Theater. The number two screen was a long skinny room. If you stood in the right place, you could hear the electric door openers of the Colonial Grocery store upstairs. The Bird salesmen were a feature at the mall that summer, which not everyone appreciated. This was the year of the second, and last, Atlanta Pop Festival. PG was not quite hip enough to make it. He was back in the city, taking tickets for “Fellini Satyricon”. The Bird was printing 26 pages an issue, with lots of ads, pictures, and the distinctive graphics of the era.
Vol.3 no 26 June 29, 1970 was especially memorable. On page 17, there was a bit of eyeroll inducing polemic. PG was easy to impress. The first paragraph is the one that matters. “What is Gay Liberation? It is people telling the truth; it is me telling you the truth NOW, homosexuality is the CAPACITY to love someone of the same sex. Forget all the crap about causes (no one knows and we don’t care), “cures” (there aren’t any, thank god), and “problems.” The only problem is society’s anti-homosexual propaganda and the oppression it has produced.”
Stories about hippies, and the Bird, can be found at The Strip Project. This repost has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Obituary Mambo
Andrew Sullivan had an uplifting feature, the other day, about obituaries. As is his custom, he found an article at another site, threw out a juicy quote, and moved on. It is up to Chamblee54 to provide more detail, and put up pictures for the text averse. These pictures today are from the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church cemetery. This is a repost. Many of the links are dead.
It is a common practice to look at the obituaries (aka “Irish sports page”) first thing in the morning. If the reader is not included, then the day can proceed as normal. This custom does not take into account the possibility that you have died, and your family it too cheap to purchase a notice.
The article in question is Ten things you don’t know about the obit biz It starts off by saying that the family members are usually happy to help the obit scribe. They have stories about the recently deceased, like ” Eddie “Bozo” Miller boasted of regularly drinking a dozen martinis before lunch, yet he lived to age eighty-nine.”
Newspapers take different approaches to obituaries. Some assign rookies, or use the death beat as punishment for troublemakers. Others give the job to their best writer. The paid notices are usually written by family members, with the help of the undertaker.
Of course, there is the occasional oddball. Alana Baranick, obituary writer for Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer and lead author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers , likes to visit every municipality in the United States named Cleveland.
One oft repeated saying is that obituaries are about life, not death. As the source puts it: “The British “quality” newspapers — The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Independent, substantiate the old chestnut about obituaries being about life, not death. These papers rarely mention the cause of death, focusing instead on presenting a vivid account of a lived life. American papers have an unhealthy fixation on death. It’s common for “complications of chronic pulmonary disease” or “bile duct cancer” to show up in the story’s lede, never to resurface.”
Only one obituary has won a Pulitzer prize. ” Leonard Warren, a Metropolitan Opera baritone, dropped dead mid-performance in 1960. Sanche de Gramont (who changed his name to Ted Morgan), a young rewrite man at the New York Herald Tribune, banged out the obit in under an hour and won a 1961 Pulitzer in the Local Reporting, Edition Time, category.”
There is an The International Association of Obituarists The headquarters is in Dallas TX, presumably near a grassy knoll. They have an annual convention, which is said to be a lively affair. The 2005 conference was in Bath, England. The 2007 conference was in Alfred NY. There is also the Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
IAO was founded by Carolyn Gilbert, the lady who puts the bitch in obituary. Ms. Gilbert collaborates on a page, Remembering The Passed. RTP has a series of podcasts. They require an apple app to listen, which is too much work for PG.
Death is a part of life. Every language has a word for it, and English has a number of slang expressions. An incomplete list would include : ““passed on”, “are no more”, “have ceased to be”, “expired and gone to meet their Maker”, “are bereft of life”, “have ceased to be”, “rest in peace”, “push up daisies”, “whose metabolic processes are now history”, “are off the twig”, “have kicked the bucket”, “shuffled off their mortal coil”, “run down the curtain” or “joined the Choir Invisible”
Columbia Journalism Review (Motto: Strong Press, Strong Democracy) has a feature about Obit. “Krishna Andavolu is the managing editor of Obit an online magazine intended for those interested in obituaries, epitaphs, elegies, postludes, retrospectives, grave rubbings, widow’s weeds, and other such memorabilia of expiration. Part eulogistic clearinghouse, part cultural review, Obit purports to examine life through the prism of death. Founded in 2007 by a wealthy New Jersey architect who sensed an exploitable niche after seeing a middle-aged woman distraught over the death of Captain Kangaroo, the site is a locus for enlightened morbidity.”
OM is worth a visit. The top story features a picture of Betty Ford, who survived Breast Cancer, Alcoholism, and The White House, to die at 93. The site has an ad from Newlymaid.com, with the creative suggestion to Trade In Your Old Bridesmaid Dress & Get a New Little Black Dress.
OM has a popular feature called Died on the same day. Grim reaper recruits on January 5 include Bolesław IV the Curly, High Duke of Poland (1173), Calvin Coolidge (1933), George Washington Carver (1943), Sonny Bono (1998).
No google search is complete without someone trying to make money. Obituaries Professionally Written says ” … we believe in honoring a life with respect, dignity and integrity. When needed, euphemism is used liberally. “
OPW content provider Larken Bradley says “”Obituary writing is an honor, a privilege, and great fun … I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.”… After she dies she expects her obit headline will read, “Obituary Writer, Six Feet Under.”
PG was going to repost an old favorite, Obituary Mambo. When you recycle something this often, it is a good idea to check the links. For OM, many do not work.
The story begins with a story at the digital home of Andrew Sullivan. This fine facility is now in paywall purgatory. When you click on the old link, you see a cartoon of a French borderguard, and the message “THIS CONNECTION IS UNTRUSTED You have asked Firefox to connect securely to andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com, but we can’t confirm that your connection is secure. …” The browser has this reaction to several of the links in the original story.
Monetization of obituaries seems to have run aground. Links to Obit Magazine give you a page of fine print HTML. The International Association of Obituarists is not on the internet. The NPR interview with Carolyn Gilbert, founder of the IAO, is still up. Presumably, she is still putting the bitch back in obituary. Maybe the 2005 convention in Bath, England was too much.
Another link gave this result: “Welcome to http://www.obituarywriters.com ! Our new web site, powered by EarthLink Web Hosting, is currently under construction.” In its place is The Society of Professional Obituary Writers, “Proudly powered by Weebly.”
SPOW hosted a contest in 2011 and 2012. “Each year, The Society of Professional Obituary Writers holds a competition to honor excellence in obituary writing. Obituaries are submitted by reporters and editors from all over the world, and blind-judged by a panel of our members. Winners receive trophies, known as the Grimmies, and are feted at the annual conference.” Grimmies were given for Best Obit, and Best Body of Work.
2022 UPDATE SPOW is holding on. “Membership is temporarily closed. We’ll be accepting new members after the pandemic ends.” The most recent ObitCon was in 2019. SPOW has a podcast, Immortalized, and is active on twitter, @obituarywriters.
Democracy In Between
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penny pritzger ~ repost. ~ Salvatore Phillip Bono ~ gimp fonts ~ arial/helvetica
picture ~ the shards ~ Coleman Cruz Hughes ~ #1781 ~ beau
calamus ~ herusalem ~ beau ~ beau of the fifth column ~ jfk
harry hay ~ joe pyne ~ @drvolts ~ aidan maese-czeropski ~ yosephhaddad
Conversations I Am Tired Of Having ~ this is the first monday morning reader of 2024. Russell Lee took the picture shown in Rupert ID, July 1942. ” Japanese-Americans eating supper in the community mess hall” ~ “You should learn from the mistakes of others, because you will not have time to make them all yourself.” Alfred E. Neuman The spell check suggestion for Neuman is Humane. ~ At the end of the day, Lake Superior State University slays once again, leaving a lasting impact on the linguistic world with the release of their 2024 Banished Words List 1. Hack 2. Impact 3. At the end of the day 4. Rizz 5. Slay 6. Iconic 7. Cringe-worthy 8. Obsessed 9. Side hustle 10. Wait for it ~ Lake Superior State University’s 2024 Banished Words List 1. Hack 2. Impact 3. At the end of the day 4. Rizz 5. Slay 6. Iconic 7. Cringe-worthy 8. Obsessed 9. Side hustle 10. Wait for it ~ @zora Joke a Syrian friend in Germany told me: -An Arab, a Turk and an Albanian are in a car. Who’s driving? -die Polizei ~ Coleman Hughes is a pro-Israel content provider. If you go to @coldxman, you have the option of paying $7.00 a month for his tweets. Jack Delano took the picture in October 1940. “Mr. Lawrence J. Brown, Aroostook potato farmer operates a small seed foundation unit in Eagle Lake, Maine. His three sons and one hired man do all the work. The little boy on the left picked fourteen barrels of potatoes before lunch.” The infant seen here is in the right side of the picture. ~ Lior Haiat 🇮🇱 @LiorHaiat “Israel rejects with disgust the blood libel spread by South Africa in its application to the International Court of Justice (ICJ). South Africa’s claim lacks both a factual and a legal basis, and constitutes a despicable and contemptuous exploitation of the Court. South Africa is cooperating with a terrorist organization that is calling for the destruction of the State of Israel. The Hamas terrorist organization – which is committing war crimes, crimes against humanity and sought to commit genocide on 7 October – is responsible for the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by using them as human shields and stealing humanitarian aid from them. …” I thought this was just some random whacko, until I saw “Israel Foreign Ministry and Israel ישראל 🇮🇱” at the bottom. This is an official government response! ~ Joe Pyne was an abrasive TV host. Harry Hay was a seminal figure in several “radical” communities. There is a wikipedia urban legend that Mr. Hay was a guest on “The Joe Pyne Show.” Youtube does not have a video of the show. ~ MK Gandhi was trained as a barrister, and could crank out a wordcount. His thoughts were well thought out, and much more complex than the motivational Mahatma on facebook. ~ I enjoy listening to things on the stationary bike. Shows that guarantee enjoyment are best, because turning it off mid ride is trouble. I have learned to be leery of The Writers Voice, the fiction podcast at the New Yorker. While the ones I enjoy are terrific, TWV has a high washout rate. Still, when I was preparing to go to the gym today, I took a chance on Wagner In The Desert by Greg Jackson. ~ WITD was originally published in 2014, which was a very different time from now. In the tale, four young people go to a house in Palm Springs, for a drug fueled vacation. WITD turned out to be a fun story, with enough big word snark to entertain the exercising listener. At one point, the author described himself as having the mental capacity of a rock, or something like that. I laughed loudly, and got a funny look from the yoga mat lady in the front of the room. ~ My time on the bike ended at about 24 minutes, and I paused the show. When I got back to it, I had baked in the sauna, and ate dinner. My mood had changed. While there was no doubt I would finish the story … it was only 17 more minutes … WITD was not as much fun when I got back. ~ A subplot involves meeting a moneyman named Wagner. When the players meet up with Wagner, they are assured of financing, but then they have to give the old bastard the rest of their coke, and listen to his putrid opinions. The story-teller gets turned down by the woman he is chasing, and has to listen to a world weary soliloquy. May I would have been better off to quit the story while I was having fun. ~ “10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People” was a viral post during the Bush administration. This reaction was written during the Obama administration. The pictures are from the deep state, and are better than the text. ~ calamus ~ in 1998 Crazy Owl left the property on Flat Shoals Road. At some time after that, the land was developed. One of the cul-de-sacs was Shawn Wayne Court. Last night, someone was shot dead there. ~ “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness.” is one of Oscar’s greatest hits. Unfortunately, it is not included in his wikiquotes. Google has a bunch of meme-mongers, who paste the quote on pretty pictures, without giving a source. One source says: “The cleric and writer Charles Caleb Colton appears to be the first person to have stated the saying exactly as we know and use it today, in his 1820 work “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words.” Oscar was a man of letters, with most of his work published, available, and scrutinized endlessly. If he really said something, there should be a source. While Oscar may have said this to one of his boyfriends, it does not appear in his work. ~ January 6, 2024, was less eventful than the famous 0106. The high point was reading a report of an accidental homicide, in the same spot that used to host a Friday night sweat lodge ~ Sometimes I get in the mood to be a pedantic as**ole, and debunking quotes is a good excuse. dubious quotes on facebook are the gift that keeps giving ~ “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” – Oscar Wilde. This quote is real. It is found in act two of VERA; OR, THE NIHILISTS. … Prince Paul. When you are as old as I am, Prince, you will understand that there are few things easier than to live badly and to die well. Czare. Easy to die well! A lesson experience cannot have taught you, whatever you may know of a bad life. Prince Paul (shrugging his shoulders). Experience, the name men give to their mistakes. I never commit any. Czare. (bitterly). No; crimes are more in your line. ~ VERA; OR, THE NIHILISTS. A DRAMA IN A PROLOGUE, AND FOUR ACTS. ~ @MichaKobs The circumstances of Gal Abdush’s death raise very serious questions indeed. The first question is the time of death because, according to countless witness accounts, no one actually escaped the NOVA site to the north after 6:00. ~ A few days ago, I wrote about how Rachel Maddow has almost nothing to say about the tragedy in Gaza. In the time since then, facebook has been telling me about new posts at “The Rachel Maddow Show.” Today, her staff continued supporting Genocide Joe, and made an ironic comment. “As House Republicans try to exploit border conditions as an election-year issue, the White House has a compelling reply: “Actions speak louder than words.” … When I try to post this comment to Facebook, the browser keeps crashing ~ Rachel Maddow Watch: “The Rachel Maddow Show” continues to ignore Gaza, and focus on the re-election of Genocide Joe. Today, there was an ironic comment on facebook. “As House Republicans try to exploit border conditions as an election-year issue, the White House has a compelling reply: “Actions speak louder than words.” ~ The Protocols of the Deputies of Netanyahu ~ every sunday night you keep the flame burning, for crappy zoom bomber people to exist, talk to jesus while keeping wicks yearning, onamodapeia until you cease and desist, there is a difference between making good trouble, and just being a useless jerk, living in a nihilist recipe bubble, is guarnateed to never work, you need fourteen lines for a sonnet, whether you put bluebonnet on it, iambic pentameter bomber go away, the poetry police are not going to play, you have a lesson to be learning, remember to keep the flame burning ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress ~ selah
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