Racists Got Racist
This content was published January 21, 2023. … The story below is a repost from 2015. Looking back from 2023, this piece feels quaint. It appeared on Gawker. The G-blog has been through tough times, but continues to hang in there. Today’s headline: Drake Brags About Exclusive Toilet Access
“#blacklivesmatter took a dairy inclusive turn this weekend. New York City was the scene when #BlackLivesMatter Protesters Hit Whites Where It Truly Hurts: Brunch “… a group of about three dozen demonstrators … hitting such quiche-and-mimosa joints … When they arrived, they began reading the names of black Americans killed by police to diners. … As is to be expected when such a sacred institution is so callously attacked, the protests sparked lots of fervent tweeting. … End Cultural Marxism @genophilia It’s fine for blacks to loot, rob, rape and kill whites, but if whites complain about it, now that’s racist. #blackbrunchnyc #ferguson”
The original chamblee54 post has more text, which is not necessary for today’s edition. The gawker original features the type of purple prose that is less fashionable today: “It’s hard to imagine a funnier needling tactic. People are reacting viscerally to the idea that diners were targeted as racists simply for enjoying a Sunday morning meal—and if they had been subject to any discomfort beyond five awkward minutes, they’d have a legitimate complaint. But it’s just brunch, and as soon as you complain about it, you get to the heart of the issue: while some people are out there wondering whether a trigger-happy cop might decide to gun them down today, you just want to finish your capers and lox in peace.” Pictures for this bit of social justice nostalgia are from Georgia State University Library The social media picture was taken July 2, 1942. Governor Eugene Talmadge Experiment Station; Griffin, Georgia; SHEEP ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Lost Atlanta
This content was posted January 25, 2024. … Lost Atlanta is a coffee table book. The content is the buildings, and institutions, that no longer exist. Atlanta has a long love affair with the wrecking ball. General Sherman was a minor player.
I am a native, and know a few things about the city. While looking through LA, I began to take notes of things I did not know. The names behind the Ferry Roads is one. Plantation owner James Power established Power’s Ferry in 1835. Hardy Pace established his ferry in the 1850s. The fare was 62 cents for a full wagon, 50 cents for an empty wagon, 12 cents for a man and a horse, and 4 cents per head of cattle. The last ferry to cease operations was the Campbellton Ferry, in south Fulton county. The Campbellton Ferry ceased operations in 1958.
Wheat Street Baptist Church is a prominent Atlanta institution. If you look for Wheat Street on google, all you see is Old Wheat Street. It turns out that Wheat Street was renamed Auburn Avenue. “Originally called Wheat Street, the road was renamed in 1893 at the request of white petitioners who believed Auburn Avenue had a more cosmopolitan sound.”
Bald Hill, aka Leggett’s Hill, was leveled in 1958 to make way for the East Expressway, later known as I-20. On July 22, 1864, the Battle of Atlanta was fought there. After the unpleasantness, Frederick Koch bought farm land on the site. His house was at 382 Moreland Avenue. The house was demolished in 1953. South of I-20, 1400 McPherson Avenue has a monument. Maj. Gen. James B. McPherson was killed at that location.
The outfield wall at Ponce De Leon park was covered with advertising. One sign was for Southern Bread. The picture had a “Southern Colonel”… apparently the only type of officer in the CSA … saying “I’d even go North for Southern Bread.” This ad was also painted on the side of a building on Tenth Street, just off Peachtree. The late Jim Henson produced a tv ad for Southern Bread.
Jacobs Drug Store was a prominent chain at one time. It was founded by Joseph Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs had a store in the Norcross building, on Peachtree Street at Marietta Street. In 1886, the soda fountain mixed John Pemberton’s patent medicine with carbonated soda water. The rest is history.
There are a few notes, which do not justify a paragraph. The Governor’s Mansion was at 250 The Prado, in Ansley Park, until a new GM was built on West Paces Ferry road. The Henry Grady hotel did not have a thirteenth floor, but went from 12 to 14. This did not stop the building from being demolished, to make way for the Peachtree Plaza hotel.
When Laurent DeGive built his grand opera house at Peachtree and Houston (Now JW Dobbs,) people were horrified. The central business district was south of five points. The area north, where the opera house went up, was residential. In 1932, the opera house was renovated, and opened as the Loew’s Grand. In 1939, it hosted the world premiere of “Gone With The Wind.” On the other side of Houston Street was the Paramount Theater, and across Peachtree was the Coca Cola sign. The GP building occupies the site today. … Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
The social media picture was taken April 29, 1957. “Loew’s Grand Theater” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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
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
Podcasts 2025 Part One
I did a few posts about podcasts a while back. 100620 101420 120920 120321 Looking over these posts told me about a few shows that I had forgotten, and needed to catch up on. With podcasts, it is better to catch up than to mustard.
There have been some changes in the last four years. Some of this is specific to me, so if you get bored you can skip ahead to the links. The gym I went to closed, and I found a replacement. I finally replaced the flip phone with a samsung android. This phone has 128x the storage of the flip phone, and allows me to watch movies. The music players allow me to scroll forward. The ss also has the notes app. When I pause a show, I make a note of where I am in the show. The ss has the unfortunate tendency to start another show without warning, and it is good to know where to start over.
Another game changer was the October 7 incident. Many shows I once enjoyed are now unlistenable due to obnoxious Zionist rhetoric. This quote from 2021 tells the story: Bari Weiss has a dandy show. The first edition that I heard was about Amy Cooper, the “Central Park Karen.” That story has a lot of details that never got widespread circulation. Ms. Weiss is someone that I take a cafeteria approach to. Many of her podcast episodes are excellent. OTOH, some of her opinions about Israel are beyond horrible. Another opinion comes from The Root: “Bari Weiss, a fellow white woman who is in the running for Kareniest Karen who ever Karened in the history of Klanned Karenhood.”
My next chore for today tells a bit about my current habits. Every morning, I walk for a half hour, usually listening to a show. Before leaving, I update my phone. I go to the podcast folder, which I keep on the cloud. Open the list, and see if there are any fresh shows to download.
Today, the first DL is from “Freak Flag Flying”. This is a show I had forgotten, until I saw this post … Freak Flag Flying was a short series, featuring David Crosby. The C in CSNY has a lot of talent. If you don’t believe it, just ask him. Mr. Crosby has some stories to tell, and ranks with Keith Richards for somehow surviving rock and roll. Mr. Crosby got on the tour bus in the sky January 18, 2023.
The next step is plugging the phone into the computer. There are two folders on the screen, podcast-od (cloud) and 001 podcast-ss (phone). Delete all files that I have listened to. Copy the new files into the phone. Move the cloud files into a sub-folder, phone. But your shoes on and go.
This is enough for one day. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in March 1941. “Bar Norfolk, Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Machine
This content was posted December 20, 2019. … Today is the first full day with the machine back. It went down wednesday morning. Thirty six hours later, I got it back. A new hard drive is like having a new machine, except that the documents, on a separate hard drive, are intact. Getting a new machine is always an adventure. Some things don’t work like they did before. I still don’t have everything going like I like, and may never.
It is early morning. Today is the day before solstice, the end of the year. Where does this year end find me, 65 plus years into my life? In some ways, I struggle. In some ways, I am doing well. I woke up, and was able to walk. There was food in the kitchen. The roof over my head does not leak. There is a machine to work, and play, with. The last item has been a part of the game for 20 years now.
Yesterday, I did not pay attention to the news. I heard something about an impeachment, which I have little good to say about. There was another item on facebook. A writer put a comment up on twitter yesterday. The writer follows 666 people, which may be intentional.
@jk_rowling “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill.”
“We’ve watched her dance around it for a while, but JK Rowling has officially spoken her anti-trans stance, as she denies the existence of trans people and actively supports an employee (Maya Forstater) who was fired from her job for her aggressive and public anti-trans stance. I will no longer be engaging with Rowling or her products. Below is a screenshot I personally took from her Twitter profile (i.e. unfaked).”
Maya Forstater was fired from a government job for expressing opinions about trans women. It is not known whether these opinions affected her job performance. If the reader is interested, they can google Maya Forstater, and find out more. One slack blogger is not interested. I am not a Harry Potter fan (a potterhead.) I am not worried about “the fact that the widely beloved author could maintain such problematic beliefs.”
When you set up a new machine, there are unexpected challenges. All the pages looked stretched out. I was getting a headache. Then I looked at the resolution. The monitor is 1920 x 1080. For some reason, the machine was set to 1280 x 1024. This is why everything was stretched out. This was one of the easier problems to resolve.
After dinner, it was time to install GIMP. This is the one program I cannot do without. It was not a smooth process. First, I installed the latest, and greatest, version. I started to install the keyboard shortcuts. Many features had moved. I had to type in every feature to install the new shortcut.
Then I got to edit – fade. This is a feature I use a great deal. It was not included on the LG version. After searching high and low, I decided to uninstall, and try an earlier version. The first one I tried did not have fade. Finally, I went back to the version that I had been using, before the crash.
To try this out, I decided to do a poem, using fade. First, I had to create the text. To do this meant clicking on Bookman Old Style, the font I enjoy using. Unfortunately, this font was not on the new hard drive. I found a copy of BOS online, and installed it on the machine. It works for WordPad, but not for GIMP. I decided to use Georgia as a substitute. Finally, I was able to get a photo to look like I want, using fade. At this time, I am ready to post this story, and move on with my day. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in November 1938. “Saloon Omaha, Nebraska ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Listening To Shirley Q. Liquor
This content was published December 23, 2008. … I am almost ready to take back everything I ever said about auto playing music devices. Almost. They are on a lot of blogs now, where the music starts to play when you open the site, whether you want to hear it or not. … I left a comment for Jasmine Cannick. Ms. Cannick has a series, A White Gay’s Guide for Dealing with the Black Community for Dummies. I thoughtfully left a comment, saying that I had learned a lot about “…the black community for dummies”. … I went to the site to see if there was any reaction, and the auto start music player had a monolog by Shirley Q. Liquor. I let the thing play, and got myself an earful. I was starting to get tired of the whole thing after the fifth monolog, but soon the free show was over. Miss Cannick was so thoughtful to play all those comedy things.
This must just be the day for goofy women. Earlier, I found a piece by Ann Coulter. She said that Sarah Palin was the Conservative of the Year. “I assume Palin was chosen because McCain had heard that she was a real conservative and he had always wanted to meet one — no, actually because he needed a conservative on the ticket, but that he had no idea that picking her would send the left into a tailspin of wanton despair.”
Ms. Coulter had another tasteful comment: “Pre-Palin it had been one race — boring old “You kids get off my lawn!” John McCain versus the exciting, new politician Barack Obama, who threw caution to the wind and bravely ran as the Pro-Hope candidate. And then our heroic Sarah bounded out of the Alaska tundra and it became a completely different race. This left the press completely discombobulated and upset. They didn’t know whether to attack Sarah for not having an abortion or go after her husband for not being a sissy.”
This content was published December 31, 2008. … Every year, Lake Superior State University issues a list of words they would like to see eliminated. This year, in one paragraph, they not only described the process, but used a lot of the forbidden phrases. … “It’s that time of year again!” LSSU “maverick” word-watchers, fresh from the holiday “staycation” but without an economic “bailout” even after a “desperate search,” have issued their 34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. This year’s list may be more “green” than any of the previous lists and includes words and phrases that people from “Wall Street to Main Street” say they love “not so much” and wish to have erased from their “carbon footprint.”
This list is also a good excuse for slack bloggers to put up yet another post. Last year, this reporter posted this list. The very next post to come up at APWBWGTTD was our social chair displaying her engagement ring. … So, here we are again. Below is the list from Michigan. If you want more commentary, go here. … Maverick, first dude, Wallstreet-mainstreet,bailout, ____monkey, <3, icon-iconic, Green, carbon footprint/carbon offsetting, game changer, staycation, desperate search, not so much, winner of five nominations, it’s that time of year again.
This content was published December 26, 2008. … Now that the election is over, we can take another look at the war in Babylon. While our media seems to think we are winning, the truth is a tad more complicated. … Abbas Shawazin has a feature about the size ten salute given to our President recently. He offers this * ::||:: * as an emoticon for shoe. Be sure to leave spaces before and after, or you may wind up with a smiley face. Then you will have happy feet!
Mr. Shawazin talks about men with strange sounding names. This is normal for reports coming out of Babylon. There is a video showing a man beating a picture of Saddam Hussein with a shoe. Saddam liked to say “‘I am the one who made the barefoot Iraqis wear shoes.” It is noted that the shoechunker, Muntazer al-Zaidi, was a communist from Sadr City. The residents of Sadr City are known as being tough ghetto guys. Many of them are the core of the Shiite Sadr militia, which is going to be a force to deal with in the future Iraq.
Layla Anwar is an angry young lady. Here is a sample of her prose: ” Get ganged raped and tortured by your “liberators”, have acid thrown at you, be forced to shut up, lose your home, lose your kids, lose your parents, lose your husband, lose your brothers and sisters…But hey, be a lady now ! ” Ms. Anwar does not like “ALL THOSE WHO FAILED TO STAND BY ANTI-ZIONIST, ANTI-IMPERIALIST, IRAQ AND HER PRESIDENT THE MARTYR, HERO SADDAM HUSSEIN, WHO WAS LYNCHED BY NONE OTHER THAN THE AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS AND THEIR SECTARIAN IRANIAN SHIITE DOGS.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media photograph in March 1941. “Boy from North Carolina farm who now works at National Tent and Awning Company. Norfolk, Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Divine Intervention
A strange thing happened on my walk this morning. I was listening to this show about David Foster Wallace. It was a dystopian commentary, about a lot of different things. One of the chief problems is the general f***** up nature of the medical industrial complex.
I was about to turn around, and do another lap, when the phone rang. I decided to take a chance, and answer the call. The call was a lady calling from the sleep disorder clinic. Some of the Medicare claims had been rejected. I went back into the house, got my reading glasses, and woke up the computer. I got a new Medicare card last December, and apparently the sleep disorder clinic never got the new Medicare number. It was synchronistic that I would answer this call, and that it would be an illustration of the story I was listening to.
I had a similar experience a while back. I was riding on the exercise bike at the gym, while watching Female Trouble by John Samuel Waters. FT was just so strange. I was being pulled into this narcatonic vortex that JSW induces in people. He will render them mentally incompetent by the facilitation of “Divine intervention.” In this scene, Divine chopped a ladies arm off, and held her prisoner in a giant birdcage. At this point in the procedure, I get a spam risk phone call. I decided what the hell, life is so much fun right now, what’s another spam phone call?
So I answer the call. It’s from Piedmont Care Connect. PCC was this program that my primary doctor wanted to sign me up for. You would pay to have a PCC blood pressure monitor installed in your house. The device would transmit the BP readings to Piedmont heathcare. I was very skeptical of the whole thing. I got even more skeptical when I talked to the people from the program, because they didn’t know what they were doing. I had already told them not to call me again. After I hung up the phone, I learned that Divine was going to prison, for her crimes against hairstyling.
So yesterday went on and on and finally ended. I listened to the last of the story about Dave Wallace. I was pleased to get to the part about gnosticism. I wanted to listen to it again because I thought I might have missed something the last time. Later, I read a piece about Yahweh. (I did not copy the link). It seems that Yahweh was a minor Israeli God, until there was a hostile takeover of the whole system. Yahweh then issued the Ten Commandments, saying that I am the only God. It is very curious that I never heard this. All Christians ever talk about is life after death.
Meanwhile, the gnostics were saying that Yahweh was the demiurge, or the anti-god. If you go by the Old Testament, there may be a grain of truth to this. You don’t really hear much about God in the New Testament, which is mostly about Jesus, the illegitimate son of Yahweh. … The second thing that I find really bizarre about Yahweh is that two of the nicknames for Yahweh are Allah and God. You heard that right … Allah and God are the same thing.
It is now 121225. When I get up and moving … slowly … I turn on the noise machine, to provide background sounds. Inevitably, I will need to turn it off, so I can hear something else. Today, the first turnoff of the day was a 23 second video about how to pronounce bhagavad gita. To pronounce BG, remember that the h should be after the a, instead of before. BAH ga vahd GE tuh. It is similar to saying Bah Humbug. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in August 1942. “Nashville, Tennessee. Welding parts for fuel pumps. Vultee Aircraft Corporation plant” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Slow Service Night
What follows is the story of my wednesday night. On certain wednesdays, a meditation group meets at a house in town. In this group, after sitting, the meditators journal. This is what I came up with: These coca cola pens don’t last very long. I have already retired one, and this one is not long for the world · I hear a lot about mindfulness, and yet don’t really know what it means. Maybe the phrase should be mindemptyness · The world is so bright when I pull the mask off. I turned to my bag, and got out my pen and paper, and never thought to look up to my right. When I did, after a few minutes, I saw Ashley, which was a bit surprising · This coaster is an octogon, with uneven sides. It is one inch squares, four inches wide, with four blocks cut in half in the corners.
I googled mindemptyness, and saw this was not an original thought. Google has several links for ME. Once you brave the popups and cookie alerts, you can find this: “Practice meditation and mindfulness as a means of getting to mindemptyness (ie, the Monkey Mind is calmed)”. You should open the door to your thoughts, but do not serve them tea.
Eventually, it was time to go home, including a stop at Burger King. In the drive through, I dictated the next part of our story: I’m in the Drive-Thru of the Burger King on North Druid Hills Road. I come here on my way home from meditation. This is what I do when I’m in this area. I go by here, or the Taco Bell on Buford Highway, to get junk food. The last time I was in here, I got three Whopper Juniors for $7. This was too much. Tonight, I’m only going to get two. It’s better to get less food than you think need, than more.
I’m listening to this monolog. It’s about David Foster Wallace and Derek Swanson. They are going to talk about gnosticism later on, which is one of the reasons I’m listening to this a second time. I listen to very few stories twice, especially when I have to download the MP4, and run it through a device to extract the MP3 sound, so that I can play it on my device.
It’s such a thrill to go into town these days. I see things that were never there. I’ve heard about this place on Cheshire Bridge Road. It’s a novelty shop, and it’s got this ruby red shoe that you walk through to get in there. I’m not really sure what it was, but it’s across the street from The Colonnade Restaurant, and the now closed Cheshire Motor Inn.
North Druid Hills has always been a busy street. They’ve been tearing it up now because they built a hospital. They’re doing a lot of work on I-85 to get there. It’s a big mess right now. NDH has never been an easy street to drive on. I only come here at night, when I’m not really sure of where I’m going, and I just go through it, and hope for the best, get through, and go on to Buford Highway which is another f***** up road, which is more f***** up now than it’s ever been.
I’ve spent about 5 minutes saying this, and that one car ahead of me hasn’t moved. The device quit taking dictation. I’ve been talking so long, it just put this red notice on the screen, and told me I’d been talking too long. Imagine that. The car that was ahead of me finally pulled off. Am I going to have to wait another 10 minutes? I don’t know why this is taking so long. … The car in front of me has this thing around his license plate saying Phi Beta Sigma. I think that’s one of those black fraternities.
That is it for the drive through narration. BK seemed to be having a slow service night. I eventually got my Whopper Juniors, and went home. I put them in the microwave for 93 seconds, which improved the taste. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Collier Jr. took the social media picture May 14, 1942. “Washington D.C.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Fruitcake
This content was originally posted December 10, 2011. … A facebook friend put these fruitcake facts on the internet. I saw a chance for some snappy text to put between some pictures. I would be nutty as a fruitcake to turn down a chance like this. … Fruitcakes were buried with the dead in Ancient Egypt. It’s true. Ancient Egyptians used to fill the tombs of the dead with all the supplies that they would need to enjoy the afterlife, including food and water. Fruitcake was often put into the tomb of a deceased person because a fruitcake soaked in a natural preservative like alcohol or fruit juice would last a long time. It was thought that the preserved fruitcake would not spoil on the journey to the afterlife. Fruitcake was a staple food of other ancient cultures as well.
Candied fruits are used in fruitcake because using sugar was the only way to preserve the fruit long enough to get it back to Europe from the Middle East. When the Crusaders began carrying exotic fruits back to their European home the fresh fruit would spoil long before they were able to get it home. Ingenious traders began drying the fruits by candying them with sugar which made them an even more delicious treat and preserved them indefinitely. Once the candied fruits were sent to Europe and to other parts of the world they were baked into cakes so that they could be shared with family and friends on special occasions.
Fruitcakes will last for years without spoiling. It’s true. A fruitcake that is properly preserved with an alcohol soaked cheesecloth that is then wrapped in plastic wrap or foil can be kept unrefrigerated for years without spoiling. In the past, before refrigerators came along, families would make fruitcake for holidays and special occasions months in advance of the actual event. The fruitcakes would sit wrapped in an alcohol soaked cloth until the event happened. As long as the cloth was remoistened with alcohol occasionally the cakes not only didn’t spoil, they actually tasted richer and sweeter because they had been soaking in brandy and rum for a couple of months.
To millions of fruitcake consumers, the town of Claxton GA is very special. This south Georgia town, just down the road from Reidsville, is home to Claxton Fruit Cake. The story of the Claxton Fruit Cake company is a sweet one. Savino Tos founded the Claxton Bakery in 1910. He hired Albert Parker in 1927, and sold him the business in 1945. Mr. Parker decided to sell Fruit Cake to America.
No story about fruitcake is complete without mentioning the “Fruitcake Lady.” Marie Rudisill, an aunt of Truman Capote, wrote a book of fruitcake recipes. She became a tv celebrity, before going to the bakery in the sky on November 3, 2006.
The urban dictionary has many listings for fruit cake. The ones for homosexuals and crazy people are there. UD gets creative with this selection: “The act of releasing green chunky diarrhea onto your partners face, then ejaculating on it, then punching them in the nose causing the colors to mix together to form a fruit cake like color.”
If you tire of jokes about fruitcake, you can go to The society for the protection and preservation of fruitcake. (If you click on the “new URL”, you will be invited to join in the green card lottery). There used to be a link on the society page that enables you to buy Fruitcake Mints. “Keep your breath fruitcake fresh with these festive mints!”
December 27 is National Fruitcake Day. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken in November 1970. “Mitchell Motors rooftop” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Chamblee54 
leave a comment