Would Not Shut Up
This content was originally published January 16, 2017. … Java Monkey was destroyed by a fire in November 2018. The poetry series “Java Speaks” is unhoused for live shows. A virtual version continues Every Sunday Night. … Java Monkey Speaks finished with a bit of snark last night. “Gabriel,” had been sitting next to a jerk. The loudmouth was boasting about how enlightened he was, by talking over poets. The fact that it was a warm evening, and the patio was open, made it worse.
“Gabriel” did not get to hear the performers. He was not pleased, and did what poets do. He wrote about the man who would not shut up.
Performance … on stage, or in the audience … is a tiny percentage of the spoken word experience. Most of your time is spent listening to other performers. When one person speaks, the other people listen. Many of the poets are terrific, and if you don’t listen, you miss out. We don’t need to talk more. We need to listen more. This is true for the rest of the world.
One problem is that listening is seen as passive, while speech is active. Our culture values action. Many people cannot keep their mouth shut. The patio dude did not seem to get this. The fact that there is a room next door, designed for conversation, did not seem to occur to this man.
Last summer, I went to JMS. It was the sunday after Philando Castile and Alton Sterling died. I had a conversation with “Gabriel” after this evening. “One of the other white men felt the same way. He opened his poem by saying that it was not his struggle, and it was not appropriate for him to speak. (Those were not the exact words.) I spoke to him at intermission. “Gabriel” said to think about this … what if you were a black person, coming to read on a night with much black pain. You looked in the audience, and there were no white people to listen?”
Read your smutty poem is one result of that evening. java monkey speaks black white mix, americas bad week two black men, shot dead by police best thing for , white man to do is be there listen, not your struggle not appropriate, read your smutty poem shut up.
One issue is the limited amount of time available for speakers. JMS has an 11 pm curfew. Towards the end of the evening, performers should go up, read their piece, and sit down. When you are on stage, you are not aware of how long you are up there. I was a couple of spots before “Gabriel,” and was wondering if he would get to perform. “Gabriel” wrote his poem in anger, after the patio performance. The poem will be better with editing.
At the end of the night, things seemed to work out. “Gabriel” and I got to speak before 11pm. There will be other times where not everyone will get to speak, because someone else did not know how to listen. (And not just at Java Monkey). The white savior complex is alive, well, and annoying. It is not known whether the patio dude impressed the lady. … Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken May 9, 1968. “Florida Steel Company workers” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Invisible Pink Unicorn
This content was published January 29, 2009. … An Atlanta blogger recently posted “a random list: music artists I can’t stand.” The list: Nickelback, M.I.A., U2, Matchbox Twenty/Rob Thomas, Gwen Stefani, Fergie/Black Eyed Peas, Old Dirty Bastard/Big Baby Jesus, Norah Jones, Bob Dylan/Jacob Dylan/The Wallflowers, Linda Perry/4 Non-Blondes, Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, Sonic Youth, Kid Rock, T-Pain, Jack Johnson, KATY PERRY, TV on the Radio, Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam.
The random list makes me feel like an old fogie. This might not be a bad thing. To begin with, I have never heard several of the acts. There is Kid Rock, who got in a fight in a Buford Highway Waffle House. Or Katy Perry, who kissed a girl before she got talking about Jesus. … It is encouraging to see the vastly overrated U2 on the list. Or puzzling to see that not everyone thinks Bob Dylan is fabulous. … But the main reason the list made me feel old was the length of time since I felt hip. When you are an observer, it can be easier to not like something, than to appreciate it.
I had a friend years ago, who we will call Geronimo. He had a lot of influence over my thinking. There were things he liked. Of course, the list of things he did not like, and would ridicule, was even longer. One day, Geronimo started to rant about Jeff Beck. As it turned out, I liked Jeff Beck, and let my pal know it. Eventually, I learned to think for myself.
This was the early seventies. For many like Geronimo, disco was the anti christ. Meanwhile, I started to hang out downtown. One night I was dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the dance floor. I liked it, and enjoyed the music that so many of my friends hated. … The process of learning to appreciate music was a long journey, and is probably still not complete. There was even the time when I stood outside a stadium listening to Black Sabbath … another bane of the 1972 music snob. … Music went into the mtv era, and radio got more and more specialized. I got older and more decrepit, and caught myself enjoying Lawrence Welk.
This content was published January 28, 2009. … There has been talk lately about The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM was originally created in response to the Kansas State Board of Education. The KSBE ruled that alternatives to evolution needed to be taught in public schools, including some contraption known as intelligent design. There was talk about whirlwinds rampaging through warehouses and creating jet engines. … FSM soon appeared, in all it’s meatball glory. FSM is a satire religion, in the footsteps of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Bertrand Russell wrote of an Interplanetary Teapot, which will provide the beverage for the spaghetti supper.
FSM is often used as a substitute for the G word, or God. In the struggle for hearts and minds, God has an advantage over FSM. The G word is a marketing dream. It is short, and easy to say. Almost everyone has heard someone say God. While people mean different things when they say God, almost everyone knows about the general concept. … FSM has seven syllables. Spaghetti is notoriously tough to spell, and has a silent letter. OTOH, no one says FSM got an underaged virgin pregnant. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “The MacDuffey family. Irwinville Farms, Georgia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Great Speckled Bird
This content was published January 10, 2024. … One day in the eighth grade, I had a sore spot in my eye. They called it a stye. One afternoon, I got out of school, walked to Lenox Square, saw a doctor, and got some eye drops.
When I 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. I asked what the newspaper was. Mostly politics, he said. I 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 sixty, 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 I 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. I went looking for that first copy. I needed to be patient, for the GSU server took its time. Finally, the copy I asked for came up. It was mostly politics.
When I saw page four, I 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 me, 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, I 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. I was not quite hip enough to make it. I 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. I 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. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library The social media picture: Georgian Terrace Hotel. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Blind Into Caracas
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This is the last monday morning reader of 2025. One of the pictures shows a man brushing snow off a vehicle, in front of the Georgia State Capitol. This is an example of hell freezing over · This is the last monday morning reader of 2025. The picture below is Ponce De Leon Avenue in 1960. The plan at the time was to run a highway through at that location. Fortunately, that highway was not built · At the start of this short video, Billy Powell is wearing a Richards t-shirt · The 2021 skirmish between Israel and Gaza was code named “Operation Wall Guardian.” A wall guardian would have been useful on October 7 · This may work, or it may not we will just see · Celebrating five decades of linguistic commentary, Lake Superior State University (LSSU) presents the 50th annual Banished Words List. The winners this year: 6-7 (six seven), Demure, Cooked, Massive, Incentivize, Full stop, Perfect, Gift/gifted (as a verb), My Bad, Reach Out. In addition to the top ten, LSSU adds five “Repeat Offenders”: Absolutely, At the End of the Day, Awesome, Game Changer, Hot Water Heater · Lake Superior State University (LSSU) presents the 2026 Banished Words List: 6-7 (six seven), Demure, Cooked, Massive, Incentivize, Full stop, Perfect, Gift/gifted (as a verb), My Bad, Reach Out · @FuentesUpdates If you like weed, FUCK YOU! … when I saw this it had 420 comments · On January 2, 1971, David Crosby and friends were recording “If I Could Only Remember My Name” in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Governor elect Jimmy Carter was preparing for his term as Governor of Georgia · The Franklin quote was from a conversation, that was recorded by a third party in his diary. Years later, the lady Mr. Franklin was talking to said “I have no recollection of any such conversations,” · Auden addressed a verse of his largely unpublished “Ode to the New Year (1939)” to Isherwood: “May your life in the States become better, May the shadow of grief disappear, But—God!—if you ever turn heter, I won’t wish you a Happy New Year.” · This post started by asking whether there is a division between God and Man. It ended by noting that North Avenue Presbyterian Church was built using granite donated by Sam Venable … one of the founders of the modern KKK · Matthew 15:11 Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur Rothstein took the social media picture January 1, 1939. “Street cornerCarrier Mills, Illinois” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
National Plagiarism Week
This content was posted January 30, 2009. … It is National Plagiarism Week! Here for the first act at chamblee54, we give blame/credit to Father Tony. As he puts it: A pathologist sent me this list: Washington Post’s “Mensa Invitational” which once again asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house,
which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
2. Ignoranus: A person who is both stupid and an asshole.
3. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund,
which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
4. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
5. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
The bozone layer, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
6. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
7.Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
8.Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
9. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right?
And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day,
consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
National Plagiarism Week is no longer observed. Some killjoy replaced it with Plagiarism Prevention Day, which will be celebrated February 19, 2026 Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken in 1958. “The Krystal, Lee Street, SW. “ ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Tortured Struggle
This content was published January 9, 2025. … 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.
This content was published January 10, 2025. … 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?
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. The GSU library has a picture of the marquee at the Tower Theater, during a 1954 Billy Graham Crusade. 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.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Perro
It’s the first day of the new year. One feature of a new year is the Banished Words List from Lake Superior State University. I decided to celebrate by crafting a poem out of the words. Two words that were not banished, but could have been, were included to rhyme. · 6-7 Reach Out Perfect Gift, My Bad Demure Game Changer Slop, Absolutely Cooked Massive Grift, Gifted Incentivize Full Stop.
About 1730, I decided to go out and walk. I decided to listen to the rest of Freak Flag Flying podcast, episode #7. FFF is a show where David Crosby talks about things. I had about 10 minutes left on #7, then I immediately turned on #8, the last episode of the series. They are talking about If I Could Only Remember My Name, a “solo” album released in 1971. One of the prime songs on that album is “Laughing.” FFF played a demo that Cros did in 1968, which was “interesting”. A few minutes later, they played the version on IICORMN, which is magical.
“Laughing” started as I took my first step into the Ashford Forest Preserve. This is a magic place, a wooded patch across the street from Peachtree-Dekalb airport. AFP used to belong to the airport, and it was illegal to go there … which makes it more fun. I was listening to this exquisite Piece of music, while walking on this path that I had walked on many times before. It could have been a video.
I just went on, until I got to a bench that overlooks a Ravine. I decided to sit down on the bench and meditate. It was a little bit after six o’clock, and there was still some light, on the twelfth day after the solstice. The light is returning.
I was at the 24 minutes into FFF#8, and I made a note of that. The meditation was not as magical as I might have liked, and I ended it early. After putting another layer of clothes on, I tried to turn on FFF#8. The music player had other ideas, and started on something else. After getting mad and cursing, I decided to listen to FFF#8 from the start. Even though it was a full moon, the sky was dark enough to make me find my flashlight. When “Laughing” played, and Joni sang her ethereal harmony, I decided it was time to use the flashlight.
The players at Wally Heider studio called themselves the planet earth rock and roll orchestra, or perro. I found a copy of these files years ago, when I had a dialup connection. The folder was 141mg, and it took all night to download. Today, I downloaded a similar collection in less than a minute. The title : “Jerry Garcia live at Wally Heider’s, San Francisco, CA on 1971-01-02”. This 55 years ago, to the day. The plan now is to listen to the files, and eliminate the ones where they play a note or two and laugh. I may get a usable playlist from all this. Unfortunately, there are three lists, and they all have different names for each track. This may be more brain damage than it is worth. This is not the first time anyone has said that David Crosby is more brain damage than he is worth.
Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken July 30, 1966. “Jimmy Carter with family members in their Plains, Georgia home during Carter’s first campaign for governor” On January 2, 1971, Governor Elect Jimmy Carter was waiting to begin his term as Governor. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Harry Hay And Joe Pyne
This content was originally published January 16, 2021. … Joe Pyne was a notoriously abrasive TV personality. He pioneered many of the things that today’s shock jock hosts do, before his death in 1970. One of his guests was Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. While writing a blog post about Lester, I did a bit of research on Joe Pyne.
Wikipedia had an intriguing comment. “Gay activists Harry Hay and John Burnside—who were a couple from 1962 until Hay’s death in 2002—appeared on Pyne’s show in 1967.[citation needed]” Harry Hay is a seminal figure in certain “radical” communities. Mr. Hay had a sharp tongue, and might have given the combative Pyne a bit of pushback. I decided to look for the video. … 2026 Update: The current Wikipedia entry for Joe Pyne (born Joseph Edward Pine) does not mention the appearance by Harry Hay and John Burnside.
[citation needed] is the key phrase. Youtube has a few dozen videos of the Joe Pyne Show. None of the ones here include Harry Hay. The internet archive has a collection of Pyne tapes, but no Harry Hay. A google search provides many mentions of this interview, but no more details. Many of the references were apparently copied, verbatim, from Wikipedia. 2026 Update: Almost all of the youtube links in the original post no longer work. The internet archive did not archive most of the ones I looked for. If you search for “Joe Pyne” on youtube, you will see more than you need to see.
There is a possibility that Harry Hay was never on the Joe Pyne show. There are other urban legends about Joe Pyne. The most famous involves Frank Zappa. It is helpful to know that Joe Pyne had a rare form of cancer in 1955, and part of his left leg was amputated. In the story, Mr. Pyne asks Mr. Zappa if his long hair makes him a girl. Mr. Zappa replied, does your wooden leg make you a table?
TV Party might have a reason for the missing video. “Most, if not all, of the syndicated Joe Pyne programs still exist on videotape in the archives of Hartwest Productions, Inc. Here’s what Hartwest tells us: “The tapes are 2″ Quads, meaning that they are so ancient that you only get one pass before the oxides flake off. That one pass is fine to make a new digital master, but the cost (including two digital clones) comes to about $600 a show. So far, we have only transferred three shows, with the cost being paid for by people who were either in the show, or who were making a documentary, or who now seem to worship one of the guests (and I mean the last literally).”
The research turned up another story. It is from “Remembering Harry and John” by Mark Thompson, on the occasion of Harry’s 100th anniversary. “I remember the night we were socializing at the San Francisco Art Institute at a gala tribute for James Broughton. Harry (Hay) and James had sparked briefly as Stanford University undergraduates, but didn’t meet again until fifty years later at a faerie gathering. Few people knew that James had fathered a daughter with esteemed film critic Pauline Kael during their bohemian Berkeley days, but Harry was alert to the fact. Kael and Broughton were having their own reunion at the moment when, with typical impudence, Harry interrupted the conversation by loudly asking, “So, who was the mother and who was the father?” The stunned silence was punctured only by the whoosh of Kael’s furious departure.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The men were soldiers in the War Between The States. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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