Citizenship Test
Atlantic Magazine online has a bit of amusement, Are You Smart Enough to Be a Citizen? Take Our Quiz. It is sponsored by Shell Oil, Prudential Insurance, and something called box. PG took the test.
It is thirteen questions, multiple choice. Some are the standards, like “6. How does a bill become a law?”. Some are creative, like the multiple choices for ” iconic American structures”. It would be interesting to see how many people answered Hoover Dam for a picture of the Gateway Arch. What this has to do with qualifying for voting and jury duty is a good question. (PG missed the Gateway Arch. He looked at the 20 available choices, and did not see the correct answer. Maybe the test of citizenship is looking carefully over long lists of options.)
Question 8 is strange. Pictures of the Supreme Court justices are shown, and the respondent is asked to match the picture with the name. Pictures of the Supremes are seldom shown. Even a fairly well informed person might have trouble telling Stephen Breyer from Anthony Kennedy. If you confuse Clarence Thomas for Ruth Bader Ginsburg, you automatically fail.
PG scored 58, meaning citizens attained, with distinction. The scoring is weird. You get one point for every election you voted in over the last 10 years. Georgia’s tradition of runoff elections got PG 5 extra points. 6 of the 9 Supremes were named correctly. The “civic text” question, and the “references” question, were passed without a hitch. It is good to know that Rosie the Riveter was not a 1984 Ronald Reagan campaign ad.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
A Summer Memory
It is 3:15 am in a midtown office building. PG is spending his dinner break in an unused cubicle, almost out of speaker range for the break room tv. A flourescent light fixture is hard at work, playing an essential role in the drama to follow.
Thirty seven years ago, Truman Capote spoke in Athens GA. Before taking questions, he read “A Christmas Memory.” There was a line, with the words oh, and carnage, that got a big laugh.
Wednesday afternoon had been the first time to turn on the window AC unit. Outside, it was over ninety, with the Georgia humidity doubling the effect. The next two months will be miserable.
During this early morning dinner, after the first day of summer megaheat, PG is reading “A Christmas Memory”. An old lady, and the seven year old cousin she calls Buddy, are going to make fruitcakes. They need to buy supplies.
The previous summer, someone gave Buddy a penny for every 25 flies he killed. “Oh, the carnage of August: the flies that flew to heaven”. It is now 3:28. In two minutes, it will be time to go back to work. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The fruitcake lady was the aunt of Truman Capote.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s
Breakfast at Tiffany’s (the book, not the movie) was on the shelf at the Chamblee library. It is a short little thing, just like the author, Truman Capote. It is a 55 year old book, with the action taking place 70 years ago. It is a fun way to kill time waiting on the train.
The action takes place in New York City, in 1943. This is wartime. A telegram arrives, informing Holly Golightly that her beloved brother has died in action. The narrator, probably based on Truman Capote, is having problems with his draft board. A google search for the military record of Mr. Capote proved, pardon the expression, fruitless. Apparently, Mr. Capote escaped military duty during that conflict. In a war with major need for combat troops, being queer is not a good excuse.
The book is fun to read, even if it does have some issues. The central figure is Holly Golightly, a “cafe society celebrity.” Her zaniness makes for good story telling, but can seem a bit forced. There is an old saying, “Sooner or later you would have to kill her”. None of the men supporting her lifestyle seem to get close enough for that to be an issue.
Mr. Capote is at the peak of his creative powers here. The story is a page turner, with zingy quotes throughout. At some point after finishing this story, Mr. Capote became famous for being famous. A life of TV appearances, society lunch, and substance abuse followed. Were more stories like BAT drowned by the Justerini & Brooks downpour? We will never know.
There is one jaw dropping moment. A side character in BAT is Mag Wildwood, a model who stutters. She elopes with an heir, who many thought was going to marry Miss Golightly. When the marriage is announced, the full name of Mag Wildwood is in the story. Miss Margaret Thatcher Fitzhue Wildwood. This was twenty plus years before the iron lady took over England.
PG has never seen the movie. It seems a bit different from the book. The Capote charactar is given a name, and played by George Peppard. Doc Golightly, the husband of young Holly, is played by Buddy Ebsen. This was in 1961, just before the Beverly Hillbillies. Mickey Rooney plays a Japanese photographer, who lived in the same building as Truman and Holly.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
The Eleven Rules
You have probably heard about “The speech Bill Gates gave at a High School”. PG saw an image on facebook, and the BS detector went off. When did he make the speech? What high school, in what location? Was this the same speech we heard about a few years ago, when Microsoft was being sued for antitrust violations? Are these questions fair? Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!
These days, the answer is easy to find. Snopes is a friend of Mr. Google. The authoritative word is “misappropriated”. Bill Gates did not make a speech to a high school. Nor did Kurt Vonnegut. The eleven rules came from a newspaper column written by Charles J. Sykes. The column was published in the San Diego Union Tribune on September 19, 1996. The fourteen rules in that column were taken from a book, 50 Rules Kids Won’t Learn in School: Real-World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education.
“Charles J. Sykes is senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and a talk show host at WTMJ radio in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” “The Institute is guided by a belief that competitive free markets, limited government, private initiative, and personal responsibility are essential to our democratic way of life.” Mr. Sykes is probably not a liberal.
The eleven rules have been floating from one email address to another since the Clinton administration. Ann Landers has printed them several times. They have been the rest of the story for Paul Harvey. “The prize for misattribution, however, has to go to the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, which published the list twice in the space of three weeks in mid-2000, the first time crediting it to “Duluth state Rep. Brooks Coleman of Duluth,” and the second time to Bill Gates.” The footnotes say “Brack, Elliott. “Legislator Offers Teens No-Nonsense Advice.” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 14 June 2000 (p. J3).” and ” “Advice from the Experts.” The Atlanta Journal and Constitution. 2 July 2000 (p. R1).”
The book has fifty rules. The column has fourteen. These are the three rules left out of the emails.
Rule No. 12: Smoking does not make you look cool. It makes you look moronic. Next time you’re out cruising, watch an 11-year-old with a butt in his mouth. That’s what you look like to anyone over 20. Ditto for “expressing yourself” with purple hair and/or pierced body parts.
Rule No. 13: You are not immortal. (See Rule No. 12.) If you are under the impression that living fast, dying young and leaving a beautiful corpse is romantic, you obviously haven’t seen one of your peers at room temperature lately.
Rule No. 14: Enjoy this while you can. Sure parents are a pain, school’s a bother, and life is depressing. But someday you’ll realize how wonderful it was to be a kid. Maybe you should start now.
Maybe someone should take a critical look at these rules. If you get tired, and think this is negative, then you are free to skip ahead and look at the pictures, from The Library of Congress. The LOC is part of the big government in Washington. It is an very valuable resource. 
Rule No. 1: Life is not fair. Get used to it. The average teen-ager uses the phrase “It’s not fair” 8.6 times a day. You got it from your parents, who said it so often you decided they must be the most idealistic generation ever.
No argument here. This is a catch 22 whenever you find a contradiction in the rest of the rules.
Rule No. 2: The real world won’t care as much about your self-esteem as much as your school does. It’ll expect you to accomplish something before you feel good about yourself. This may come as a shock. Usually, when inflated self-esteem meets reality, kids complain that it’s not fair. (See Rule No. 1)
If you start to feel good about yourself, don’t worry. Between the church, radio talk shows, and back stabbing co workers, someone is sure to bring you down.
Rule No. 3: Sorry, you won’t make $40,000 a year right out of high school. And you won’t be a vice president or have a car phone either. You may even have to wear a uniform that doesn’t have a Gap label.
Conservative rules for living do not age well. Today, everybody eating solid food has a cell phone.
Rule No. 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait ’til you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you feel about it.
This is the rule that set off the BS detector. In the “real world”, it is not what you produce that counts. It is how well you kiss ass. If the boss is impressed by you, you can screw up from now until bankruptcy. Ditto if you are a minority, and the company is recovering from a lawsuit. LINF
Rule No. 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it opportunity. They weren’t embarrassed making minimum wage either. They would have been embarrassed to sit around talking about Kurt Cobain all weekend.
Your grandparents had a different word for your dark skinned co worker.
Rule No. 6: It’s not your parents’ fault. If you screw up, you are responsible. This is the flip side of “It’s my life,” and “You’re not the boss of me,” and other eloquent proclamations of your generation. When you turn 18, it’s on your dime. Don’t whine about it, or you’ll sound like a baby boomer.
Fifty years ago, the parents of baby boomers said things like this. The younger generation is always going to hell, and somehow they manage to get it together. The baby boomers are the generation who was ordered to go to Vietnam and kill Asians. They said “hell no we won’t go”.
Rule No. 7: Before you were born your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way paying your bills, cleaning up your room and listening to you tell them how idealistic you are. And by the way, before you save the rain forest from the blood-sucking parasites of your parents’ generation, try delousing the closet in your bedroom.
Your parents got to be boring by listening to motivational speeches.
Rule No. 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t. In some schools, they’ll give you as many times as you want to get the right answer. Failing grades have been abolished and class valedictorians scrapped, lest anyone’s feelings be hurt. Effort is as important as results. This, of course, bears not the slightest resemblance to anything in real life. (See Rules 1, 2 and 4.)
Teachers have a tough job. They are an easy target for criticism. Some of this whining is fair, even if life isn’t. Mr. Sykes has written several books lambasting the education system. There is a saying, those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Maybe this could be amended to say: those who can’t teach, whine about education.
Rule No. 9: Life is not divided into semesters, and you don’t get summers off. Not even Easter break. They expect you to show up every day. For eight hours. And you don’t get a new life every 10 weeks. It just goes on and on. While we’re at it, very few jobs are interested in fostering your self-expression or helping you find yourself. Fewer still lead to self-realization. (See Rule No. 1 and Rule No. 2.)
If you are the buddy of management, you sometimes take the afternoon off to play golf with a client. You go to conventions, while someone else works to produce. LINF
Rule No. 10: Television is not real life. Your life is not a sitcom. Your problems will not all be solved in 30 minutes, minus time for commercials. In real life, people actually have to leave the coffee shop to go to jobs. Your friends will not be as perky or pliable as Jennifer Aniston.
Life is not a motivational speech. Those after dinner platitudes are entertaining, and make you feel good about yourself. They have little to do with real life.
Rule No. 11: Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.
One more time, LINF. Regarding Rule No. 14:, this sounds like privilege speaking. If parents are human, they are possibly doing some very dirty things to their kids. This includes abusive religion, alcoholism, drug abuse, and conservative politics. The other kids can be pretty rough. Your preacher says you are going to hell. Since the real world does not care about your self esteem, you may be tempted to end your life. A smarmy list of rules is probably not going to help. This is a repost.
Positive Attitude Prattle
Somewhere along the line, the boss decides you have a “negative attitude”. From that point on, you are not allowed to complain. It is almost as if it were a gimmick to keep you in line.
A lady named Barbara Ehrenreich agrees that there is entirely too much positive attitude required of people. She wrote a book, Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. In one interview, she says “And again, you know, don’t worry about the world. Don’t ask the question about where the cancer comes from. Don’t ask why so many people are not employed, even in good times in our country. And it was the same sort of thing. And that’s when I began to think hey, this kind of operates as a way of quelling discontent, quelling dissent, you know, when you can’t say I’m mad about -whatever. You just have to swallow it and smile.”
Ms. Ehrenreich was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000. She found herself in a pink tsunami of cheerfulness. The pink teddy bears did not do anything for her spirits. The whole culture of happy talk, about a life threatening illness. grossed her out.
At one point, she was given a tote bag. In it were some crayons. I said, “This is really nice, but what’s with the crayons?” And this woman said to me, “Well, that’s in case you want to write down any of your thoughts.” And I said, “I’m a writer. I don’t use crayons.”
The promotional interviews quoted here were conducted in 2009. This was before the Susan G. Komen foundation hired Karen Handel. During the Planned Parenthood meltdown, some unflattering things came out about the SGK foundation. It probably did not help Ms. Ehrenreich’s attitude.
So the book happened. PG has not read it, but has seen a few reviews and interviews. The New York Times has a great review. It says “America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.”
One interview has a stomach churning comment. It should be noted that this is the lady talking, and that there is no confirmation of this. “Yeah. And here’s something that really horrified me that I learned recently and put in the book, is that some breast cancer support groups expel people who go into metastasis and who are clearly going to die. You can’t be in the group because just your presence might bring other people down.” (A google search of the phrase “breast cancer support groups expel people who go into metastasis ” shows little support for this story. Two front page results involve Barbara Ehrenreich interviews. Skepticism should not be limited to positive motivation.)
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Hank Chinaski Lives
In the next quarter century, the surplus grew, thanks to Bukowski’s nearly graphomaniacal fecundity. “I usually write ten or fifteen [poems] at once,” he said, and he imagined the act of writing as a kind of entranced combat with the typewriter, as in his poem “cool black air”: “now I sit down to it and I bang it, I don’t use the light / touch, I bang it.”
As could have been predicted, it started with a post at Dangerous Minds. The feature was about the late Charles Bukowski, who was called Hank by those who knew him. The writer/drunk had always been a bit of a fascination to PG. Out of the millions of useless drunks feeding the urinals of planet earth, at least one will turn out to have had literary merit.
A trip to Google city is made, and quotes from the bard are found, along with the wikipedia page. All of this leads to a New Yorker piece about the gentleman. After nine paragraphs, and two poems, there is the phrase that set off PG…graphomaniacal fecundity.(spell check suggestion:nymphomaniac)
As best as we can figure, g.f. means that Hank wrote a lot of stuff. This is a good thing. PG operates on the notion that if you keep your quantity up, the quality will take care of itself. Hank seems to agree, spitting out product “like hot turds the morning after a good beer drunk.” He seemed to take pride in doing what Truman Capote said about Jack Kerouac…he doesn’t write, he types.
If you google the phrase graphomaniacal fecundity, you can choose from 71 results. The top six apparently quote the article in New Yorker. A blogspot facility called poemanias quotes the paragraph from the New Yorker, with the title “On Bukowski’s afterlife”, while Fourhourhardon reprints the entire thing. Neither provide a link back to the original.
Goliath and Petey Luvs Blog take the same copy-paste approach. The first tries to get you to pay for more reading material. This forum also does the control A-C-V approach, but yields this comment : “He was a contemporary of the Beats, but not quite one of them because he was darker and not as willing to smoke a joint and sing Phil Ochs songs on the lower east side.” The truth is, Hank hated marijuana, and had the classic alcoholic attitude about it. So it goes. Keep and share copies the complete New Yorker feature, but has some other thumbsuckers about Mr. Bukowski.
It is a truism that new media borrows content from old media. Stories, told orally from genration to generation, are compiled into books, which are then made into movies. Plastic panels try to look like wood. The newest new media that old fogey PG knows about is twitter. People tell little stories in 140 characters or less, which go around the world in seconds. With this abundance of media, there are not always enough messages to feed the beast.
On twitter, there are people producing twitter feeds from dead authors. Maybe these wordmongers went to a place with internet access. Kurt Vonnegut (three hours ago) “Busy, busy, busy”. Mark Twain (three hours ago) “Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint”. Brautigan’s Ghost (twenty two hours ago) “I cannot say to the one I love, “Hi, flower-wonderful bird-love sweet.”
The deceased content maker best suited to twitter might be Conway Twitty. One slow day two years ago, Yahoo asked peeps Do you think Conway Twitty would have used Twitter? ~ He gave them the idea ~ I think Twitty would tweet, Twitter would be Conway’s, way of of communicating to the world, Twitty would be tweeting his little Twitty head off, ~ I better send out a Twitty Tweet ~ Cute, but a serious answer, probably. A media hound, he’d want to get his name plastered everywhere. ~ If he did that would have made him a ‘Twitty Twitter” ~ Who cares, he’s a twit anyway”.
There are four Twitty Twitter feeds. @ConwayTwitty (Oct. 21,2009) “The Conway Twitty Musical is getting great reviews in Branson!!! . @TwittyTweats (January 12, 2012) “In Twitty City, it never snows. All the men wear gold medallions and blazers. And the women never cry. Unless you hold them.” @Conway_Twitty (February 20, 2012) “My cock is an amphibious assault vehicle” @conwaytwittier (April 28, 2012). “@JasonIsbell How’s the English weather treating your hair? I had the hardest time keeping my pompadour in tiptop shape there.” @twittybirdmoda is written in Japanese.
The original concept for this post was to spotlight twitter feeds borrowing material from Charles Bukowski. Hank is the beer bard of Los Angeles. He is a hero to many. Out of the millions of worthless drunks populating bars, at least one could write poems. It gives you hope for mankind.
The front page of a google search for “charles bukowski on twitter” yields eight feeds. The original plan was to ignore any that were not updated in 2012. An exception will be for @hank_bukowski (Yeah it’s good to be back). (January 25, 2009) “Yesterday I met Adolf H. in hell. He is fuckin stupid.” “too lazzy these days, too drunk to twitter”.
With the 2012-only rule in effect, we are left with three Bukowski thieves. @BukowskiDiz (May 1) “Curiosidades sobre Charles Bukowski http://migre.me/8UhRf“. @bukquotes (May 8) “all the mules and drunken ladies gone the bad novels march…”. ~ “I always read when I shit and the worse the book the better the bowel movement.” @bukowski_lives (one hour ago) “Basically, that’s why I wrote: to save my ass, to save my ass from the madhouse, from the streets, from myself.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a double repost.
Odor In The Court
Someone collected some courtroom transcripts, and issued them in book form. The result was Disorder in the Court: Great Fractured Moments in Courtroom History. You might have seen these on facebook already. If this is the case, you can go to the amazon one star comments at the end. If those are boring, you can look at the pictures, from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. If none of that is amusing, then you can watch television.
These samples are typically chats between a witness and an attorney. To make this easier to read, these labels have been dropped. It is fairly obvious which one is the attorney, and which one id the witness. Some of these people might be in the witness protection program. Some need to be in the attorney protection program.
What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning? ~ He said, ‘Where am I, Cathy?’ ~ And why did that upset you? ~ My name is Susan!
What gear were you in at the moment of the impact? ~ Gucci sweats and Reeboks.
Are you sexually active? ~ No, I just lie there.
What is your date of birth? ~ July 18th. ~ What year? ~ Every year.
How old is your son, the one living with you? ~ Thirty-eight or thirty-five, I can’t remember which. ~ How long has he lived with you? ~ Forty-five years.
This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all? ~ Yes. ~ And in what ways does it affect your memory? ~ I forget.. ~ You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
Now doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn’t know about it until the next morning? ~ Did you actually pass the bar exam?
The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he? ~ He’s 20, much like your IQ.
Were you present when your picture was taken? ~ Are you shitting me?
So the date of conception (of the baby) was August 8th? ~ Yes. ~
And what were you doing at that time? ~ Getting laid
She had three children , right? ~ Yes. ~ How many were boys? ~ None. ~ Were there any girls? ~
Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
How was your first marriage terminated? ~ By death.. ~
And by whose death was it terminated? ~ Take a guess.
Can you describe the individual? ~ He was about medium height and had a beard ~
Was this a male or a female? ~ Unless the Circus was in town I’m going with male.
Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice which I sent to your attorney? ~ No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
Doctor, how many of your autopsies have you performed on dead people? ~
All of them. The live ones put up too much of a fight.
ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to? ~ Oral…
Do you recall the time that you examined the body? ~ The autopsy started around 8:30 PM ~
And Mr. Denton was dead at the time? ~ If not, he was by the time I finished.
Are you qualified to give a urine sample? ~ Are you qualified to ask that question?
Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? ~ No. ~ Did you check for blood pressure? ~ No. ~ Did you check for breathing? ~ No.. ~ So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? ~ No. ~ How can you be so sure, Doctor? ~ Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar. ~ I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless? ~ Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law.
Now, the book has been published. There were 47 reviews. In the best Amazon tradition, 6 of them were one star haters. These often provide the best insight into the true nature of a book. Apparently, the exchanges that made facebook were the only funny ones to be found.
Foul language warning February 20, 2010 Photoman “esib” (Sandusky, Ohio) I only got four pages into the first chapter when I encountered foul language. I did not expect or want to read such tripe. Glad I got my copy at the library to review first. It’s going straight back to the library. Perhaps we should place warnings on books like they do for TV and movies.
Terrible August 5, 2012 Nicki Not funny. Dry. Waste of time & money purchasing this book. Will not even donate. I am an avid reader and I think this possibly is the worst book I have ever read. It was chore that I loathed.
Not so HOT !!! February 28, 2009 Mort Lasnik (REAL NAME) Read the entire book, It was not as funny or as good as the bits of it that I got in e-mail from friends. Some of it was darn right boreing !!!
Don’t buy the kindle version May 5, 2013 C Long (Hong Kong) Don’t buy the kindle version. Lots of pages are missing. I would rate it zero star if i could. I want my money back
Esoteric
The must include word in a monday morning writing contest is PEDANTIC (adjective). This key word is rendered, as always, in all caps. Keyboard communicators have the same opinion of all caps writers that sidewalk based pedestrians have of street preachers. Even if you agree with the message, the medium is too tacky for words.
The writing contest prefers that you use third definition option of this key word. Today, the preferred usage of pedantic is UNIMAGINATIVE; PEDESTRIAN. It is again presented in all caps, with a fig leaf semi colon keeping the peace. This must be an archaic dictionary at work. Today, the unimaginative thing to do is hop in the car, and burn fossil fuels to get where you are going. The enlightened method would be to walk, or to be a pedestrian.
This post is named esoteric, in honor of pedantic’s bff word. (Spell check suggestion: antiseptic’s buff) No one ever accused esoteric of being unimaginative or pedestrian. In tenth grade, PG had a drill sergeant english teacher. One day, the class was discussing “The rocking horse winner,” by D.H. Lawrence. It is a terrible piece of work. One young lady asked the teacher why anyone would write something so esoteric. The teacher had never heard of esoteric, and was enchanted.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The first time these pictures were used, they illustrate a poem, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. It was foisted upon the unsuspecting public by a facility known as Cyber Recovery. This is not pedestrian, this is runner… you will want to run away.
Atlanta Rising
Atlanta Rising: The Invention of an International City 1946-1996 is on the shelf at the Chamblee library. It is a history of Atlanta in the modern era, written by former fishwrapper scribe Frederick Allen.
The story begins in 1948. AR is weighted more to the older part of the story. The main text is 248 pages. On page 124, Ivan Allen has just built a controversial roadblock on Peyton Road, which would be in 1962. The further along in the story, the fewer details are included. The first big story is when Georgia had two governors. This is one of the best descriptions of the two Governors controversy around, and does not mention Ben Fortson’s wheelchair cushion.
The mayor at the start of the story is William B. Hartsfield. “Willie B” was a leader in creating the Atlanta Airport, and in building it into the powerhouse it is today. He was mayor until 1961, when Ivan Allen Jr. moved into the office.
AR has many moments of unintentional irony. When you read a book 18 years after it was written, and fifty years after the events in the book, you see things that could not have been imagined before. In 1960, many of the political-business elite thought it was time for Mr. Hartsfield to retire. Among his shortcomings was an indifference to sports. Mr. Hartsfield thought that a new stadium would be too great a drain on the city’s taxpayers. Fifty four years, and three stadiums later, the new power elite is apparently going to build another stadium. Atlanta Stadium cost eighteen million dollars. The Blank bowl will cost over a billion.
One of the big stories here is civil rights. Atlanta came out of that struggle looking pretty good. It was a combination of image conscious businessmen, enlightened black leadership, and a huge helping of dumb luck. In 1961, the city was under federal pressure to integrate the schools. The state was firm in opposition, and the city wasn’t crazy about the idea anyway. Then, another federal court ordered the integration of the University of Georgia. Since the people would not stand for messing with their beloved University, the state laws forbidding integration were quietly repealed. The city schools were integrated with a minimum of fuss. (The book tells this story much better than a slack blogger.)
The controversy about the 1956 model state flag was going full steam when AR was written. The book has some legislative records, which for some reason never made it into the fishwrapper. There is no clear cut answer as to why the legislature changed the state flag. It was mentioned that at the national political conventions, you could not have a written sign, but you could wave a state flag. This controversy provided a diversion from gold dome crookedness, and hopefully has been laid to rest.
A man named Lester Maddox sold fried chicken, and ran for public office. AR describes Lester as looking a bit like an angry chicken. Through a series of constitutional convulsions, Lester was elected Governor in 1966. The state survived his tenure. In the seventies, when Jimmy Carter was running for President, Lester said a lot of rude things about Jimmy, helping the smiling peanut farmer get elected. In another turn of fate, Lester Maddox died June 25, 2003. This was two days after the eternal departure of Maynard Jackson, the first black Mayor of Atlanta.
The book ends with the 1996 Olympics looming over the city. Billy Payne led a smart campaign to secure the games for Atlanta. One of his moves was to keep Jimmy Carter and Ted Turner out of the action. After the 1980 boycott, and the Goodwill Games, neither person was popular with the I.O.C. The book was published before the games were played. It was a blast.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Life Insurance Is Too Morbid
Tom Clancy gave an interview to Don Swaim in 1986. Mr. Clancy sold insurance before his writing career took off. “I never do life insurance. It is too morbid. I do fire and casualty”
1986 was a curious time in history. America was in the middle of an arms buildup. Research was producing space age weapons. These weapons would not be used in combat for several years.
It is said that killing becomes more impersonal as weaponry advances. Certainly fighting with swords is more personal than with rifles. (This does not imply that this killing is less horrible.) With “smart bombs” and drones, killing people has become almost antiseptic to the American forces. “Young men of military age” in Pakistan might have a different opinion.
At the time, the perceived threat was from Communism, and the Soviet Union. The question was raised, why would the Soviets start a war with the west? Mr. Clancy talked about the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor, and the German invasion of the Soviet Union. “The decision to go to war … is probably never a completely rational decision.”
About two thirds through the interview, the speed of the tape slows down. It sounds like the talkers are intoxicated. It is during this segment that a vodka shortage in the Soviet Union is discussed.
After the interview, PG looked at facebook. A friend posted a graphic with a reputed quote from Albert Einstein. “I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots”
PG did a bit of research, and left a comment. “I suspect that Dr. Einstein did not say that. Wikiquotes does not have this quote. Whenever you see a quote without a source, you should suspect it. Also, what is the context? If a comment is true, it does not need a famous name at the end.” Two minutes later, Carrie Williams said “Thanks Debbie Downer”.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
Your Life On Text
An all caps graphic washes up on the digital shores from time to time. The author, and copyright status, are not known. It was not written here. Reading it can be a chore, even though it looks cool. It is also selfish… the only opinion that matters is the individual reading it. It doesn’t have a good beat, but you can dance to it. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
This is your life.
Do what you love, and do it often.
If you don’t like something, change it.
If you don’t like your job, quit.
If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV.
If you are looking for the love of your life, stop:
They will be waiting for you when you start doing things you love.
Stop over analyzing, life is simple
All emotions are beautiful.
When you eat, appreciate every last bite.
Open your mind, arms, and heart to new things and people,
We are united in our differences.
Ask the next person you see what their passion is,
And share your inspiring dream with them.
Travel often, getting lost will help you find yourself.
Some opportunities only come once, seize them.
Life is about the people you meet, and the things you create with them
So go out and start creating.
Life is short. Live your dream, and wear your passion.
“Do you have to be a poet? If you don’t have to be a poet, be a prose writer. You’ll get further faster. Poetry — there’s probably more poetry published today than any time in the history of the world. Nevertheless, there is this — people think they have this blindness when they see a line in the typography of poetry, and it just blocks them. So if you can say the same thing in prose, you’ll probably be better off” Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Yellow Rain
Thursday was the annual yellow rain. The pollen was pouring out of the trees, and a storm rolled in from Alabama to wash it away. PG stayed inside, listening to podcasts while editing pictures from The Library of Congress. (This is the source of tonight’s pictures.) This usually lasts until he hears something that distracts him, and makes him want to hear more. Tonight, it was a chat with Charlotte Chandler.
The real name of Miss Chandler is Lyn Erhard. She writes celebrity biographies, mostly pulled from interview transcripts. Most of the subjects of these books are deceased by the time of publication. Some naysayers claim that these interviews are fictitious. The linked article refers to a book Miss Chandler wrote about Marlene Dietrich, who was notoriously reclusive in her latter years.
Some say that you should never let petty concerns about truth interfere with the enjoyment of a good story. People with this attitude should enjoy this file of Miss Chandler reading from her book about Marlene Dietrich. Allegedly, the chanteuse had a private meeting in the oval office with John Kennedy.
In the early seventies, a hotel opened in Colony Square called the Fairmount. There was a supper club there, where people would pay large sums to see live entertainment. Marlene Dietrich performed there. “I have never been so disappointed in my life. She did the same songs that she had done for the last forty years. At the end of the show, somebody had to help her step down from the stage.”
Maybe PG should have stuck with stories presented as fiction. With made up stories, you don’t have to worry if it is true, or not. Tonight’s entertainment featured a story, The Suicide Witch, on the Pseudopod podcast. The witch is a young lady, who is preparing a girl for a fake funeral. The plan is for her to join her bf after the psuedo burial. Sometimes things go according to plan.
Chamblee54 
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