Chamblee54

The path journal from last week, Losing IQ Points, was published this morning. The walk today happened. 36 minutes, some dizziness, and the knowledge that the heat was coming. The show was “Star Witness: Paul Skalnik, the Jailhouse Informant Who Sent Innocent Men to Death Row” on Gone South. Paul Skalnik was a cop, conman, and jailhouse snitch. Pinellas County FL used his services a lot, sending men to death row in questionable cases. At one point, the show mentioned that Mr. Skalnik had been sent to prison for grand theft. Right after that, there was a commercial for Chumba Casino. A story about grand theft, sponsored by grand theft.
0718-0840 – The walk today was different. I walked up to the MARTA underpass on Peachtree Road, and took the long way home. It took 40:00 to do 1.31 miles, with no problems whatsoever from the feet. The first podcast was Drabblecast 510 – Storage Spaces on The Drabblecast. DC is a delight when it appears, and this was one of the good stories. A kid makes friends with a man in his building. Mr. Denison hooks hard drives up to a cut in his arm. The kid proceeds to steal a data card out of his dad’s camera. He bites down hard on the card, and sees pictures from last summer’s vacation. The next show was Manuel’s Tavern (Interview w/ Megan Maloof) on Archive Atlanta. Manuel’s tavern is an Atlanta institution, currently managed by Manuel’s granddaughter. The episode was a tad boring, with few quirky details to remember.
The walk today was hot. I did 44 minutes, with minimal foot problems. The first show was Min Jin Lee Reads “Testing” at The New Yorker: The Writer’s Voice. A young man in Korea is taking scholastic tests, with unsatisfactory results. A girl wants to be his gf. He wants to wait until after they are accepted at the schools they want. After the second test score is bad, he breaks up with her. After a couple of laps, “Testing” became unlistenable. The second story was Riverwalk on Criminal. Zac Brettler is a troubled teenager in London. He makes friends with shady mentors.
Zac’s parents “Rachelle and Matthew check Zac’s bank account. They had saved checks from his grandparents over the years, and money he’d gotten from his bar mitzvah and put it in a savings account. They’d given it all to him after he turned 18. It was about 18,000 pounds. · He had kind of blown through that money, it turns out, pretending that he was the Son of an oligarch, paying for meals, doing this and that kind of here and there to seem credibly like a rich person. And in the days before he died, Zac, in his bank account, had only 4 pounds. He was close to empty.” This is the first indication that Zac is Jewish.
0720-0818 – The walk went well. I started early, and saw the early sunlight floating through the mist in the leaves. The show was Episode 317: Literally Knitler (with Jessica the ’80s Baby) on Blocked and Reported. The guest was Jessica the 80’s Baby, who is a researcher for the show. JT8B lives in a lot of cool (and not so cool) places, out of a London base. “Do they eat dogs in Vietnam? · Uh they do, but only in the north. I was living in the south. And people in the south are quite proud of the fact that they don’t eat dogs.” The show covered wokeness in the knitting community, which is about as interesting as it sounds. The accent did not help.
Today’s walk happened. There was mild dizziness, and I quit soon after the 36 minute buzzer. The show today was Dolly Parton: How the Country Icon Nearly Became the Subject of Her Own Murder Ballad on Disgraceland. Disgraceland is about entertainers who behave badly. In Dolly’s case, they had to rely on outsiders for the dirty deeds.
Did Dolly really write “Jolene” and “I will always love you” on the same day? In an appearance on @BobbyBonesShow, the conversation went like this: “you wrote the song how long ago · in 1972 I think I wrote it at the same time I wrote Jolene. It was a good writing day.” A few years later, Dolly said to TED speaker Adam Grant, “Well I don’t really know if they were written in the same night. When we found an old tape, they were on the same cassette. That could have been a few days apart.”
0722-1059 – There was no walk on the path today. The lawn needed attention. Cutting a white trash lawn is enough exercise for one morning. My feet had no problems at all, which is normal. When the dizziness has been at its worst, the feet never have a problem with cutting the lawn.
0723-0900 – Today’s walk lasted 51:15. On the first lap, some dizziness was noticed, and my intuition told me that this might be a bad day. Fortunately, the voice in my head is often full of shit. The show was Hillbilly Heist: David Ghantt and the $17 Million Loomis Fargo Robbery on Gone South. Another bank robbery goes bad due to human stupidity. At one point, David Scott Ghantt takes two surveillance videos, but leaves a third behind.
This was followed by a break, and a commercial for Chumba Casino. Online gamers have lots of money to spend on podcast advertising. Once, there was a show about Hunter S. Thompson. HST kicked his own bucket in 2005, long before the advent of cell phone clip joints. It is fun to speculate. OTOH, online gambling is the sort of capitalist fuckery that HST despised. OTOH, those digital gangsters have lots of money, and might have been able to buy HST off. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in July 1942. “Rupert, Idaho. Former CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp now under FSA (Farm Security Administration) management.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah