Stacey Abrams And Raphael Warnock Got Caught
News came out that the New Georgia Project had settled an ethics complaint with the State of Georgia. NGP, the signature non-profit creation of Stacey Abrams, was accused of spending millions of dollars supporting her run for Governor in 2018. This is not surprising to people that have been paying attention to @staceyabrams.
“Abrams founded the New Georgia Project in 2014 as an offshoot of another nonprofit called Third Sector Development. … Raphael Warnock chaired the organization for more than two years, from when it first became an independent 501(c)3 in 2017 to January of 2020.”
Chamblee54 wrote two posts about the problems with NGP. 112118 102622 These articles are based on a 2015 story in Creative Loafing, The New Georgia Problem. When Ms. Abrams emerged in 2018 as a Gubernatorial candidate/media sensation, her work with NGP was usually mentioned. It turns out that NGP had a LOT of problems. To be fair, Ms. Abrams was mostly a fundraiser. She had little to do with the day to day operations of NGP.
Atlanta Magazine also ran a 2015 story about the problems at NGP. “William Perry, founder of Georgia Ethics Watchdog, believes the lawmaker should make her financial records from her voter registration work public, especially now that more than a year has passed since the 2014 election. One issue that concerns Perry is the lawmaker’s potential ability to use different funding sources—which include a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, a 501(c)(4) advocacy group, a political PAC, and personal campaign funds—to further the cause of voting registration.
Apparently, the money goes both ways here. Just as money intended for political campaigns can go for voter registration, money intended for voter registration can be diverted to promote a candidate. In the words of William Perry, “It gives cause to worry when there’s someone stirring so many pots. In a perfect world, anything you’re doing that would influence a campaign or an election should be disclosed. It’s a glaring example of what makes people sick about politics.”
Atlanta Magazine had another amusing item in 2015. “Nsé Ufot, executive director for New Georgia Project, declined to share a copy of Third Sector Development’s latest financial records. “Our 990 [form] will be publicly available in the coming months,” she told us in an email. When asked about her latest fundraising effort, Abrams declined to comment.”
Ms. Ufot was mentioned in 2023. “The move comes as the group’s tax filings indicate that its former executive director — who was hand-picked by Abrams in 2014 but fired last year without notice — owes the organization thousands of dollars in “non-work-related” reimbursements. The former director, Nsé Ufot, who left the group last year after heading it for eight years, denies owing money and calls the allegation “a fucking lie.”
In 2018, Voter Suppression® … and implied racism … was the central issue of the Abrams campaign. In the earlier investigation of NGP, spokesman Raphael Warnock was eager to cry racism. ”Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock, the senior pastor at First Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and a spokesperson for NGP, said that many people of color in Georgia saw the tactics as part of a long history of voter suppression. “This narrative of voter suppression is one that communities of color understand and understand deeply, and it will backfire on those trying to suppress votes.”
“But there is an aggressive subpoena that, Abrams says, “essentially demands every document we have ever produced.” She calls it a “fishing expedition” meant to “suppress our efforts.” A spokesperson for the New Georgia Project, the Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock of Ebenezer Baptist Church, was a little more explicit. “I see this move by the secretary of state as the latest effort in voter suppression in the state of Georgia.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Martha McMillan Roberts took the featured photograph in March 1941. “Good Humor man comes to trailer camp on Saturday afternoon. These children are sons of torpedo plant workers in Alexandria VA”
Drinking From A Firehose
This is a repost from January 2020. Many of the youtube links no longer work. Sam Harris continues to get mixed up in controversy. … “You’re drinking from a firehose of bullshit.” Someone is talking. They are full of confidence. The speech gets faster, and faster. They have lots of data points that support their point of view. You suspect there is something wrong with what they are saying. The logic just follows too quickly. If you stop to think about point one, you will miss points two through eleven. It is persuasion, by intellectual bullying.
Sometimes, a good phrase used to support a not-so-good cause. The FOB quote is from Sam Harris. He was on the Joe Rogan Experience, talking with Abby Martin. (The opening clip is from this compilation.) Mr. Harris says the Iraqi casualties, after Operation Iraqi Freedom, were around 200,000. Ms. Martin says the casualties are closer to 2,000,000. Either figure is too high. Mr. Harris displays a certain heartlessness in his argument.
JRE #1419 – Daryl Davis washed up on the digital shore yesterday. Mr. Davis is a black man, who somehow befriended KKK members, and showed them the error of their ways. Here is an npr segment, How One Man Convinced 200 Ku Klux Klan Members To Give Up Their Robes.
Yesterday’s appearance came at an synchronistic time for Mr. Rogan. Last week, Bernie Sanders tweeted a clip from Mr. Rogan, along with a comment. “I think I’ll probably vote for Bernie…” Joe Rogan There was a reaction. @CNN “Bernie Sanders is facing a backlash from some Democrats after his campaign trumpeted an endorsement from comedian Joe Rogan, a popular podcast and YouTube talk show host with a history of making racist, homophobic and transphobic comments”
As Rogan listeners know, Joe is all over the place. The Sanders quote is from JRE #1415 – Bari Weiss. During that show, Ms. Weiss unleashed an FOB in support of Israel. This contrasts with Abby Martin, and other JRE guests, who severely criticize Israel.
The Davis show was an FOB. There were history lectures, that leave discerning heads shaking. (The term white supremacist was first used in 1896.) The firehose kept gushing, until there was one comment that could be easily checked out. “President Warren G. Harding was sworn into the ku klux klan in the green room of the White House”
Warren Gamaliel Harding is known, with some justification, as one of our worst Presidents. “One aspect of the Harding administration that is not well known is his attitude about race. In the years after World War I, America was engulfed in race hatred. The Ku Klux Klan had a revival. “In a speech on October 26, 1921, given in segregated Birmingham, Alabama Harding advocated civil rights for African Americans; the first President to openly advocate black political, educational, and economic equality during the 20th century.” Mr. Harding supported an anti lynching bill, which a Democratic filibuster kept from passing.” (This 2012 quote is based on a wikipedia article, that has been edited.)
“Not only was Harding’s alleged membership in the KKK never mentioned in the contemporary records of anybody who knew him, his public opposition to anti-Catholic agitation and his vehement support for anti-lynching laws, make him seem like an unlikely recruit. In fact, the only evidence that Harding was a Klansman comes from the deathbed confession of a former Grand Wizard, who may have made the whole thing up to get even with Harding for the late President’s anti-racist public stance.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Hollywood’s Eve Part One
Lilianne O’Likk: “I have a problem with objectivity. I always think it’s a pose. Why would I be moved to spend five or six years of my life on a subject that I was neutral about? With this book, I clocked my subjectivity from the start. Cold-eyed subjectivity is what you need to write a good book. I’m extremely tough on Eve. The fact that I love her doesn’t mean I’m going to be soft on her.”
This quote is from “Lili Anolik on Eve Babitz …” It is one of the podcasts I found yesterday, while writing a book report on Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. Hardcover, by Lili Anolik. The book is all over the place. This book report will follow suit.
A primer is in order. Eve Babitz was a groupie. A pretty young lady in California, who partied with many famous people. Eve wrote a few books. One, Slow Days Fast Company, is pretty good. After the eighties hit, and she joined AA, a slow decline set in. In 1997, she set herself on fire, and nearly died. The next twenty four years were spent processing all that input. Chamblee54 wrote book reports on SDFC and I Used To Be Charming, a collection of magazine articles written by Eve.
“The adjective scale goes descriptive, comparative, superlative … good better best … i am not sure which one is applies to normal.” This thought came up in a chat conversation, and is a good way to start this appreciation of Hollywood’s Eve … I am not sure how this is going to work, which is another Babitz Bestie. Eve … I would say EB for the middle-nameless Eve, but Eve is only one letter longer. We should be grateful that Sol and Mae did not have a son named Steve . … maybe i should just listen to the podcasts I found with Lili Anolik, dig dirt on google, and finish this post later. I can always find something in the archive for chamblee54.
I am validating my admiration for Lili Anolik. First, it is pronounced Ann-o-lick … vaguely suggestive, but not anal ick. (Maybe Eve thought Lili was Miss Anal-Ick when she decided to answer the phone calls, and they bonded over the analickiness.) I found a bunch of podcasts that she did while self promoting. Lili Anolik on … was only 10 minutes long. It provided the tasteful quote above.
How Long Gone is two over-the-hill potheads talking trash, until their guest appears. The babblethon at the start is going to last longer than the first podcast. At 22:47, they send Lili a “zoomie”. I listened to about ten minutes of Lili talking about what shoes her husband … a New York Dermatologist … wears. Listening to this pablum is too much work, even for art.
I thought it would be cool to include a link to Dr. Anolik. When googling “Lili Anolik husband”, the first result is When You’re Married to a Dermatologist, All You Need Is Eye Cream. When the pothead podcast opens, they are hustling Soft Services Buffing Bar, a skin care product. One of the young men cannot afford to use SSBB on his XXL butt. Product promotion is a lifestyle choice.
Fortunately, a third podcast had some solid information. The Eve story has a clear beginning, middle, and end. When Lili connected with her, Eve was a mess. The next passage is a google-docs-transcript from podcast number three. It has been edited for easier reading, not accuracy. Just like Eve.
“I finally did get to her, she was living in, it wasn’t squalor, it was so much more extreme. It felt almost like she was a cave dweller. I mean the level of filth, and the darkness of that apartment, and the stench of that apartment, was so extreme, it was just despair…. it was madness, she smelled like madness. I mean it was beyond anything I’ve ever experienced in my life and if I went into that apartment, I don’t think I’m a squeamish person, but I would have to walk around the block like four or five times before I call a cab or Uber.” …
Lili mentioned the Eve aroma in the book, but not in such graphic terms. The book was published in 2019, and created in the years before that. Eve died December 17, 2021. She had Huntington’s Disease, which may have been a factor in the squalor that Lili saw. At some point before her death, Eve went into assisted living.
This is a repost from 2023, which was a more simple time than today. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The Hollywood’s Eve series is available. two three four
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.
M.K. Gandhi And Truth
I identify as human @pixfiber “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” · Mohandas K. Gandhi. This item appeared in my twitter feed on January 6. Being an unreconstructed pedant, I went to the Gandhi Wikiquote. “Truth” had too many search results, so I went to “just.” I found a doozy: “I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.” Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97 This is a repost.
Harijan was another word for the untouchable caste in India. “… Gandhi conducted an intensive crusade against untouchability …” “Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it.”
Archive.org has much of Harijan available online, including the quote above. The quote is in a tsunami of text. Gandhiji was trained as a lawyer, and could crank out a word count. His positions are well thought out and complicated. This material is more complicated than the motivational Mahatma we are familiar with.
If don’t mind wading through a pile of results, a search for “truth” on the Gandhi Wikiquotes will yield some good thoughts. Bear in mind that these quotes are without context. If you are willing to do the work, and google the source, you might find that the meaning of these thoughts is different from what you might think. The first three quotes in this list are from An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments With Truth By: M. K. Gandhi.
“A man of truth must also be a man of care.” Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.” Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” p. 453
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285 (context below)
“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation.”
“Generalisation”, Harijan (6 July 1940).
“If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. There must be a conquest — [audience claps] — please, please, please. That will interfere with my speech, and that will interfere with your understanding also. I want to capture your hearts and don’t want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying, and I think, I shall have finished my work.”
Speech in New Delhi to the Inter-Asian Relations Conference (2 April 1947)
“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.” Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.” Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry)
“It is no use trying to fight these forces [of materialism] without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Vol 46, p. 203
Wikiquotes has a lively section devoted to quotes that are Disputed and Misattributed. One Disputed entry is especially festive: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “The earliest attribution of this to Gandhi … is in a T-shirt advertisement in Mother Jones, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 1983), p. 46”
Several much loved Gandhisms have a shaky history. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” “God has no religion.” “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Young India supplied one of the quotes above. Here is page 1285. “Some Posers: — ‘A well wisher’ sends these lines for my meditation: ‘The Bible can be read in 566 languages. In how many can the Upanishads and the Gita? How many leper asylums and institutions for the depressed and the distressed have the missionaries? How many have you?’ It is usual for me to receive such posers. ‘A well wisher’ deserves an answer, I have great regard for the missionaries for their zeal and self-sacrifice. But I have not hesitated to point out to them that both are often misplaced. What though the Bible were translated in every tongue in the world? Is a patent medicine better than the Upanishads for being advertised in more languages than the Upanishads? An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. The Bible was a greater power when the early fathers preached it than it is today. ‘A well wisher’ has little conception of the way truth works, if he thinks that the translation of the Bible in more languages than the Upanishads is any test of its superiority. Truth has to be lived if it is to fructify. But if it is any satisfaction to ‘A well wisher’ to have my answer I may gladly tell him that the Upanishads and the Gita have been translated into far fewer languages than the Bible. I have never been curious enough to know in how many languages they are translated.”
“As for the second question, too, I must own that the missionaries have founded many leper asylums and the like. I have founded none. But I stand unmoved. I am not competing with the missionaries or any body else in such matters. I am trying humbly to serve humanity as God leads me. The founding of leper asylums etc. is only one of the ways, and perhaps not the best, of serving humanity. But even such noble service loses much of its nobility when conversion is the motive behind it. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. But let me not be misunderstood. The missionaries that selflessly work away in such asylums command my respect. I am ashamed to have to confess that Hindus have become so callous as to care little for the waifs and strays of India, let alone the world.”
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi. one two three Pictures are from Library of Congress.
Al Gore Stood Up
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What to know about cardiac catheterization vs angiogram by Angela Ryan Lee, MD …
Jimmy Carter vs. Donald Trump | Robert Wright, Derek Davison, and Daniel Bessner
20 Years Before Jan. 6, Al Gore Stood Up to His Own Party. Mike Pence Was Watching.
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mame · elon musk · adhesion · easy rider · eraserhead
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trying to get used to working in bed on the machine. I don’t know if I will ever be comfortable doing this · the act of creation can be metafored into a healing gardne. i try to be careful with the fertilizer you must use in such a gardnea I enjoy making something out of nothing. Google does not always cooperate. When I confirmed that yes, I wante to search for gardne and not garden, they made me click a box saying that i am not a robot. so gurgle told me about a gardne family in new york, which is a name ending in a vowel. New York had the highest population of Gardne families in 1840. Use census records and voter lists to see where families with the Gardne surname lived. Within · Russell Lee took the featured photograph in March 1942. “Hamburger stand. Imperial County Fair, California · this is the first monday morning post of 2025. Happy January Sixth. The featured picture: “Hamburger stand. Imperial County Fair, California” Photographer: Russell Lee March 1942 · Don’t Don’t get hot and flustered Use a bit of mustard · You’re a hot dog But you better not try to hurt her Frank Furter · American Estrangement Saïd Sayrafiezadeh Buckyboy 1.0 out of 5 stars b o r i n g Reviewed in the United States on August 31, 2021 Not a single story was finished- he can’t write that good · The Best American Short Stories 2019 (The Best American Series ®) Hardcover – October 1, 2019 by Anthony Doerr (Editor), Heidi Pitlor (Editor) · Lao Tan 1.0 out of 5 stars The WORST Short Stories Ever Reviewed in the United States on September 1, 2020 Verified Purchase If these are supposed to be the best of 2019, I wouldn’t want to see the worst. No fault of the individual writers…they all have serious issues and cannot put two and two together…HOWEVER, the Editor, Anthony Doerr, carries the blame. For him to screen and choose these writings he needs to find another job. Perhaps this is what Millennials find fascinating…if so, it boggles the mind. · This is a repost from January 9, 2021.. This was three days after the January 6 incident. In thirteen days, Donald J. Trump will be inaugurated. This election was not contested. … · Union soldier from the War Between the States. · yesterday was the anniversary of January 6. The last election was not in doubt, unlike the 2020 national election and the 2018 Georgia election. Would January 6 have happened if Stacey had not challenged the 2018 election? · “imposed war” (jang-e taḥmili) jang-e taḥmili · This is a book report on two story collections. Here is one review: If these are supposed to be the best of 2019, I wouldn’t want to see the worst. No fault of the individual writers…they all have serious issues and cannot put two and two together … · The featured image:The Krystal, Lee Street, SW, 1958. · repost. · Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library · Is there a difference between God and Man? If so, where do you draw the boundary? If you are bored by this type of conversation, then you can always enjoy the pictures. They are from the GSU library. The featured photograph is a 1958 Krystal restaurant, on Lee Street in SW Atlanta. · the Tower Theater, previously the Erlanger Opera House, was located at 583 Peachtree Street. It was originally constructed in 1790. In the 1950’s the theater was turned into a Cinerama, and the name changed to Martin Cinerama. The theater would also be known as Atlanta Theater, and Columbia Theater. The building was razed in 1995. · gsu · I am so inexplicably bored to tears by that tedious conversation. The only way either side can prove their point is to die. The pictures are nice. Further proof that there isn’t any god, only the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche. Thanks for sharing. · N04-135_01 Tower Theatre [Peachtree Street; Billy Graham; Souls in Conflict; All Seats Free], 1954 · God is a concept by which we measure our pain, yeah Pain, yeah · The oldest written joke is a fart joke from 1900 BCE. Found on a Sumerian clay tablet, it reads: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” · the granite for the North Avenue Presbyterian Church was donated by the Venable Brothers. Sam Venable was a key player in the 1915 resurgence of the KKK. Pictures today are from “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” · The featured photograph was taken September 1863. “Culpeper, Virginia. William H. French and Staff” · The featured photograph was taken September 1863. “Culpeper, Virginia. William H. French and Staff” · This is a detail taken from a group photograph taken in September 1863. The caption: “Culpeper, Virginia. William H. French and Staff” · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress · selah
A Book About Woodstock
This is a repost from 2011. … I read The Road to Woodstock, by Micheal Lang, ghostwritten by Holly George-Warren. Mr. Lang was one the the producers of the Woodstock music and arts festival in 1969. Mr. Lang was a Brooklyn kid, who got turned onto the counterculture in 1959. When he decided that college was not for him, he did what Jews do … he moved to Miami. Before long, he owned a head shop, and was promoting a rock festival. The Miami Pop Festival, in 1968, featuring Jimi Hendrix and a big rainstorm, was sort of a success.
Micheal Lang was back in New York soon. Mr. Lang met Artie Kornfield, who was in the recording business. They started to talk about ventures, and had an idea for a recording studio in Upstate New York. They met some guys with capital, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman. The four of them became Woodstock Ventures. A music festival in the country got started.
Fast forward to 2010. I am in a waiting room at the Department of Labor. A book is a handy companion in a waiting room. I brought a notepad along. … I am reading a memoir about the Woodstock festival, and it is a gold mine of trivia. Did anyone know that Joan Baez was pregnant? Jim Morrison would not appear because he was afraid of an on stage assassination. The promoters kept Pete Tomnsend up until 8am to convince him to play.
I got my business done at the DOL, and the festival on Yasgur’s farm went off. There was a lot of chaos and ignorance, but good will saw the thing through. The first act to perform was Richie Havens. He was playing an acoustic set while the electric PA was set up, and was not allowed to leave the stage. Finally he ran out of material, and just started to say the word Freedom and jam. This is what appeared in the movie. … I saw Richie Havens in 1974, at a nightclub in Atlanta called Richards. Havens played a Guild guitar, which he strummed, hard, across the front of the instrument. He would wear holes in the front of his guitar, which apparently did not last for more than a show or two. The crowd … this was the second show of the evening, starting at 2am … kept yelling for Freedom.
In Woodstock, the town of Walkill kicked out the festival, and, with a few weeks to go, they met Max Yasgur. Max rented the farm to 50k. Bethel approved the festival July 21, one day after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The festival was August 15-17. … Back to the dairy farm. The story is familiar by now…it was a free concert, they ran out of food, and tie dye was perfected. Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage during the Who, and Pete Townsend hit him upside the head with a guitar. Stephen Stills did not need a laxative. After Jimi Hendrix played the final set, the crowds went home, and the workers wanted to get paid. A series of meetings took place to settle the business end of the festival. Lang and Kornfield were bought out, and Roberts and Rosenman owned the franchise.
The Woodstock festival was a milestone of sorts. Richard Nixon was new to the Presidency, and the war in Vietnam was going strong. The moratorium in the fall of 1969 was the high water mark of the anti war movement. Soon, the government started to withdraw troops, and look for “peace with honor.” Promoters found festival sites with sturdy gates. And so on and so forth. The sixties were too beautiful to live, and too profitable to die.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The featured photograph was taken September 1863.
“Culpeper, Virginia. William H. French and Staff”.
Yasser
This is a repost from 2010. There are thousands of stories like this in West Asia. … There is a story in a New York Times “blog” about a man, Yasser, who died in a bombing, in Baghdad, the other day. With all the talk about “the surge winning the war”, this is a sad story. It would be a sad story without the happy talk about victory.
Yasser_____ ( use of his last name would endanger his family) worked for a London news service. His Shiite family moved out of a mixed neighborhood during the civil war, only to move back after things calmed down a bit. The blog story tells a few things about him…he was brave, friendly, and useless in the kitchen… This was another human being. And now he is a statistic.
There is a sense in America that the wars are a game. The lower price of gas, and spreading democracy to Babylon, make it all worthwhile. Arabs and Persians are seen as somehow less than human, as towelheads and terrorists. These people are human, and have paid a fierce price for our experiment.
HT to Iraqimojo for the story. … In a digital miracle, the story from Iraqi Mojo is available in 2025. There is an ironic comment: said… “Thank you Mojo for linking to Stephen Farrell’s fine post about his friend and fellow journalist, Yasser. It was very moving and tells us of the price paid by those who risk their lives to bring us the news. The list of journalists murdered by Al Qaida and their fellow terrorists from Daniel Pearl beheaded in Pakistan in early 2002 to Yasser is a tragically long one and reminds us of why Al Qaida and its allies must be defeated.” David All 1/27/10, 4:35 PM
A lot has happened in the last fifteen years. Recently, the government in Syria was overthrown. As with all such events, it is tough to know exactly what happened. It is highly likely that the forces currently in control of Syria had American support. It is also all but certain that these forces have strong ties to Al Qaida. There is a revolving door between enemy and ally, and vice versa.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The featured photograph was taken by Jack Delano in September 1941. “Merrymakers at the World’s Fair in Tunbridge, Vermont”
The Tortured Struggle
X does not like linking to a post. I write a description, and leave a link in the comments. Yesterday, it looked like this: “Is there a difference between God and Man? If so, where do you draw the boundary? If you are bored by this type of conversation, then you can always enjoy the pictures. They are from the GSU library. The featured photograph is a 1958 Krystal restaurant, on Lee Street in SW Atlanta.”
Facebook had a response: “I am so inexplicably bored to tears by that tedious conversation. The only way either side can prove their point is to die. The pictures are nice. Further proof that there isn’t any god, only the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche. Thanks for sharing.”
My smartass reaction was that “the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche” was a good description of God. Or, to quote someone more popular than Jesus, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” But I didn’t want to start trouble, so I clicked “Like,” and went on my way.
One person who talked about that tortured struggle was Billy Graham. One of the photographs yesterday was the marquee at the Tower Theater, for a 1954 Billy Graham Crusade. Sixteen years later, a Shea Stadium crusade featured Anita Bryant.
The Tower theater is now a parking lot. “The Tower Theater, previously the Erlanger Opera House, was located at 583 Peachtree Street. It was originally constructed in 1790. In the 1950’s the theater was turned into a Cinerama, and the name changed to Martin Cinerama. The theater would also be known as Atlanta Theater, and Columbia Theater. The building was razed in 1995.”
The Erlanger Opera House was probably not built in 1790. I decided to do some checking up, and began by seeing when the North Avenue Presbyterian Church was built next door. This is where the investigation took a curious turn. “The church was constructed from Stone Mountain granite donated by charter members whose family owned the mountain and were in the granite quarry business. It was occupied for the first time for the Thanksgiving service in 1900.”
“The building program was helped immeasurably by the generosity of the Merssrs. William H. and Samuel H. Venable, who donated the granite out of which the building was constructed.” · “William Hoyt Venable (1852-1905) and Samuel Hoyt Venable (1856-1939) were involved with the Stone Mountain quarrying industry. The Venable brothers were the sole owners of Stone Mountain and much surrounding land which they purchased in 1887 at a claimed cost of $350,000.”
“James Venable (1901-1993) was the Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Klan from 1963 to 1987, “which he organized as one of several rival Klan factions nationally.” (NY Times) Venable had but continued the family tradition. As a 13 year old, he attended the 1915 Klan resurgence and rally on top of Stone Mountain. He was with his uncle, Sam Venable, who, as one of the owners of Stone Mountain, also became the secretary of the Klan.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.”
Thou Art That
It started out as a joke comment. Thank God for secular humanism. · You’re welcome. I got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between God and man?
Zen and the art of motorcycle repair says that the division of God and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. I am not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspect that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that God is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true. Let no man bring together what God has rent asunder.
If there is a division between God and man, then where does the boundary lie? Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The featured image:The Krystal, Lee Street, SW, 1958. This is a repost. Is it art?
Short Stories
Saïd Sayrafiezadeh (SIGH-eed say-RAH-fiz-ah-dee) is one of the authors featured at The Writer’s Voice, a podcast from The New Yorker. When I went to the library website for my reading fix, I put his name in the search engine. American Estrangement, a collection of his short stories came up. Another result was The Best American Short Stories 2019 – (The Best American Series ®), featuring a story by SS. With short stories you can go from one book to another, skipping over the ones that don’t catch your fancy. It gave me some waiting room distraction for a while. … Today’s appreciation is a drabble-drone. Six paragraphs, 100 words each, with no control over the process once the word counter starts.
A Beginner’s Guide to Estrangement Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Danush Jamshid, aka Danny McDade, goes to Tehran to see his bio-dad for the first time in fifteen years. Many Tehran buildings have large, optimistic murals, commemorating “The imposed war” (jang-e taḥmili) aka The Iran-Iraq war. This conflict cost over a million lives, and is widely seen as an effort by the West to destroy the Islamic Republic. The fighting was encouraged by the West, with the United States sending weapons to both sides. The idea was to have Iran and Iraq fight each other, rather than fight Israel. The United States has never forgiven Iran for deposing the Shah.
A, S, D, F Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
He has gone from the cafe in a Denver art museum to typing letters in an Aspen gallery. The key word is typing. The owner is an old fogey. Letters must be produced with analog typing, with absolutely no mistakes. The computer sits abandoned, waiting for the next visit from a technician. It is like the lady from Gainesville Blueprint. She insisted that every job be perfect, with no background, and all the lines clearly showing. A job that Shacoh could knock out in a few minutes would take hours. The bosslady was the only one who knew the difference.
Audition Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
A nineteen year old is working for his dad at a construction site. One day, Duncan Dioguardi needs a ride home. 19yo takes him home, and stays to smoke crack. 19yo has dreams of being an actor, unlike Duncan, who lives with his mom in a sketchy neighborhood. 19yo goes back to Duncan’s place one more time. Later, 19yo gets a part in a play few people will see. Seinfeld was on the TV while 19yo and Duncan passed the aluminum foil crack pipe, with his comedies about nothing really. Is this a case of art imitating life without trying?
Bronze Jeffrey Eugenides
“Bronze” is the story of Eugene, a baby gay who takes the train to New York for a decadent 1978 weekend. Stigwood takes Eugene to lots of trashy clubs, and funnels vodka and drugs into his painted lips. Eugene is from a small town, and thinks homoze are supposed to dress like a color blind Liberace. Stigwood has another bf, who has an ex in Texas, dying of some mysterious disease. Finally, the boytoy weekend is over. Eugene takes the train back to college, and talks to the ballerina he asked out. “You are strange, not in a good way.”
Omakase Weike Wang
A man, and his Chinese gf, go to dinner at an uber-expensive sushi restaurant in Harlem. They are both microaggressing at times, which seems to be part of the routine at this type of venue. The chef mentions that he was fired at his last job, and the clueless man insists on finding out why. The chef mentions a dispute with his previous boss, and says that the previous boss was Chinese. This irritates the Chinese gf, who has drank enough saké to let it show. There is an omakase place in West Midtown, charging $100 plus, like I’ll go.
The Great Interruption: A Story of a Famous Story of Old Port William and How It Ceased to Be Told (1935-1978) Wendell Berry
The rip-roaring tale of a small town boy who likes to go for walks. He finds a place on a dirt road, hidden by trees from the main road. One day a vehicle pulled into this spot. Inside the vehicle was a prominent citizen, and a young lady. They were both married to other people. The small town boy climbed a tree, overlooking the vehicle. He then climbed out on a branch, to get a better view. The branch broke, depositing the small town boy on the back of the prominent citizen. The story was supposed to be a secret.
Chamblee54 
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