Booster
This is a repost from 2022. In just two years, stories about “getting the jab” feel like ancient history. … It started out as another slack sunday. Only problem is, things never did pick up. After a while, all I wanted to go was lie down. After a few hours of this, I took my temperature. It was 102.4. Getting tested for covid was one thing to do. As soon as I made the appointment, I began to feel better.
There was a long night of tossing, and turning, but never getting REM sleep. I called the periodontist, to cancel my appointment, and went to the testing site. I was done in under fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, my temperature was going down, and I had considerably more energy.
The email from the test-folks came at 11:35 am, Tuesday. I was negative. I was thinking how I would have felt if I had been poz, but had not had the booster. While I have numerous doubts regarding the efficiency of the pfizervax, it would be better for PR purposes to have had it. It is a game.
Today’s announcement on monoclonal antibodies is typical. The FDA is pulling a EUA on two MA treatments. When I asked google to find me that link, one of the results was this: “…COVID-19 patients … receive a monoclonal antibody treatment, which has been shown to reduce COVID-19-related hospitalization or deaths … However, UC Davis Health infectious disease experts are warning patients that the monoclonal antibody treatment is not a replacement for the COVID-19 vaccine.” I thought a vaccine was something you got when before you were infected. A vaccine is not a post-infection treatment, regardless of the medical advice available on twitter.
I find a Walgreens near me. The next appointment is in a half hour. The WG website wants you to set up an account for your reservation. When the registerbot asks me my race, I reply unknown. Non-compliance is often meaningless, but it helps me feel less ovine.
The book I am taking with me to WG is Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski. Hank Chinaski was a drunken rebel in his day, which ended in 1994. He would be 102 today. When you google his name, one of the suggested searches: “Was Charles Bukowski a nihilist?”
I get to WG, and my appointment is not on the list. A nice young man finds it in a computer. I return to my seat and my book. CB is negotiating a movie deal. He goes to a screening of somebody’s movie, and Werner Herzog is sitting at the bar. The fly on the wall got drunk from the fumes.
After a few minutes, I am called into a small room. The same helpful young man, who found my appointment in a computer, was to administer the dose. No, we do not aspirate. There is very little chance of the shot going into the blood stream. I did not taste anything metallic after the shot, so I suppose it went into the muscle, and not a vein.
After you get the shot, you are requested to sit down for fifteen minutes. It is bad manners to die on site. There is a sign on the pharmacy counter, “Select Narcotics in the Time Delay Safe.” Being a well-trained consumer, I look at all that merchandise, begging me to take it home. When I got the first two shots, it was in a sci-fi office building. They did not have merchandise to tempt you.
My supply of an OTC substance is running low. I find it at WG, but the price seems a bit steep. I decide to forego convenience, and make a trip to Walmart. The commodity was $20 cheaper at Walmart. Pictures today are from “The Georgia State University Library.”
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Rahsaan Roland Kirk
There have been eleven presidential transfers of power in my life. Nine of them were in January.I typically ignore them. I go out with Mr. Crook in office, and come home to President Thief.
The best exception was August 8, 1974. Richard Nixon was finally undone, and forced to resign. After watching Tricky Dick’s next to last television speech, I got in my Datsun, and drove to the Great Southeast Music Hall. The entertainment that night was Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
The Music Hall was the sort of place we don’t seem to have anymore. The auditorium was a bunch of bench backs on ground level, with pillows everywhere. It was a space in a shopping center, occupied by an office depot in later years. To get there from Brookhaven, you drove on a dirt road, where Sidney Marcus Boulevard is today.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk was not modest. He was the modern miracle of the tenor saxophone. He would play three saxophones at once, getting sounds that you do not get from a single instrument. At one point, the band had been playing for five minutes. Rahsaan had been holding the same note the entire time, without stopping to breathe.
Mr. Kirk played two ninety minute sets that night. He talked about twenty minutes out of every set. Of that twenty minutes, maybe thirty seconds would be fit for family broadcasting. Mr. Kirk…who was blind…said he did not want to see us anyway, because we were too ugly. He said that Stevie Wonder wanted to make a lot of money, so he could have an operation and see again.
The next day, Mr. Nixon got in a helicopter and left Washington. The Music Hall stayed open a few more years. Sidney Marcus Boulevard was paved. Rahsaan Roland Kirk had a stroke in 1975. He struggled to be able to perform again. On December 5, 1977, a second stroke ended his career. He was 41 years old. This feature is an encore presentation. The pictures used today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Great Speckled Bird
One day in the eighth grade, PG had a sore spot in his eye. They called it a stye. One afternoon, he got out of school, walked to Lenox Square, saw a doctor, and got some eye drops.
When he 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. PG asked what the newspaper was. Mostly politics, he said. PG 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 fifty, 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 PG 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. PG went looking for that first copy. He needed to be patient, for the GSU server took it’s time. Finally, the copy he asked for came up. It was mostly politics.
When PG saw page four, he 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 young PG, 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, PG 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. PG was not quite hip enough to make it. He 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. PG 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. This repost has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Obituary Mambo
Andrew Sullivan had an uplifting feature, the other day, about obituaries. As is his custom, he found an article at another site, threw out a juicy quote, and moved on. It is up to Chamblee54 to provide more detail, and put up pictures for the text averse. These pictures today are from the Pleasant Hill Baptist Church cemetery. This is a repost. Many of the links are dead.
It is a common practice to look at the obituaries (aka “Irish sports page”) first thing in the morning. If the reader is not included, then the day can proceed as normal. This custom does not take into account the possibility that you have died, and your family it too cheap to purchase a notice.
The article in question is Ten things you don’t know about the obit biz It starts off by saying that the family members are usually happy to help the obit scribe. They have stories about the recently deceased, like ” Eddie “Bozo” Miller boasted of regularly drinking a dozen martinis before lunch, yet he lived to age eighty-nine.”
Newspapers take different approaches to obituaries. Some assign rookies, or use the death beat as punishment for troublemakers. Others give the job to their best writer. The paid notices are usually written by family members, with the help of the undertaker.
Of course, there is the occasional oddball. Alana Baranick, obituary writer for Cleveland’s The Plain Dealer and lead author of Life on the Death Beat: A Handbook for Obituary Writers , likes to visit every municipality in the United States named Cleveland.
One oft repeated saying is that obituaries are about life, not death. As the source puts it: “The British “quality” newspapers — The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, and The Independent, substantiate the old chestnut about obituaries being about life, not death. These papers rarely mention the cause of death, focusing instead on presenting a vivid account of a lived life. American papers have an unhealthy fixation on death. It’s common for “complications of chronic pulmonary disease” or “bile duct cancer” to show up in the story’s lede, never to resurface.”
Only one obituary has won a Pulitzer prize. ” Leonard Warren, a Metropolitan Opera baritone, dropped dead mid-performance in 1960. Sanche de Gramont (who changed his name to Ted Morgan), a young rewrite man at the New York Herald Tribune, banged out the obit in under an hour and won a 1961 Pulitzer in the Local Reporting, Edition Time, category.”
There is an The International Association of Obituarists The headquarters is in Dallas TX, presumably near a grassy knoll. They have an annual convention, which is said to be a lively affair. The 2005 conference was in Bath, England. The 2007 conference was in Alfred NY. There is also the Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
IAO was founded by Carolyn Gilbert, the lady who puts the bitch in obituary. Ms. Gilbert collaborates on a page, Remembering The Passed. RTP has a series of podcasts. They require an apple app to listen, which is too much work for PG.
Death is a part of life. Every language has a word for it, and English has a number of slang expressions. An incomplete list would include : ““passed on”, “are no more”, “have ceased to be”, “expired and gone to meet their Maker”, “are bereft of life”, “have ceased to be”, “rest in peace”, “push up daisies”, “whose metabolic processes are now history”, “are off the twig”, “have kicked the bucket”, “shuffled off their mortal coil”, “run down the curtain” or “joined the Choir Invisible”
Columbia Journalism Review (Motto: Strong Press, Strong Democracy) has a feature about Obit. “Krishna Andavolu is the managing editor of Obit an online magazine intended for those interested in obituaries, epitaphs, elegies, postludes, retrospectives, grave rubbings, widow’s weeds, and other such memorabilia of expiration. Part eulogistic clearinghouse, part cultural review, Obit purports to examine life through the prism of death. Founded in 2007 by a wealthy New Jersey architect who sensed an exploitable niche after seeing a middle-aged woman distraught over the death of Captain Kangaroo, the site is a locus for enlightened morbidity.”
OM is worth a visit. The top story features a picture of Betty Ford, who survived Breast Cancer, Alcoholism, and The White House, to die at 93. The site has an ad from Newlymaid.com, with the creative suggestion to Trade In Your Old Bridesmaid Dress & Get a New Little Black Dress.
OM has a popular feature called Died on the same day. Grim reaper recruits on January 5 include Bolesław IV the Curly, High Duke of Poland (1173), Calvin Coolidge (1933), George Washington Carver (1943), Sonny Bono (1998).
No google search is complete without someone trying to make money. Obituaries Professionally Written says ” … we believe in honoring a life with respect, dignity and integrity. When needed, euphemism is used liberally. “
OPW content provider Larken Bradley says “”Obituary writing is an honor, a privilege, and great fun … I can’t think of anything I’d rather be doing.”… After she dies she expects her obit headline will read, “Obituary Writer, Six Feet Under.”
PG was going to repost an old favorite, Obituary Mambo. When you recycle something this often, it is a good idea to check the links. For OM, many do not work.
The story begins with a story at the digital home of Andrew Sullivan. This fine facility is now in paywall purgatory. When you click on the old link, you see a cartoon of a French borderguard, and the message “THIS CONNECTION IS UNTRUSTED You have asked Firefox to connect securely to andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com, but we can’t confirm that your connection is secure. …” The browser has this reaction to several of the links in the original story.
Monetization of obituaries seems to have run aground. Links to Obit Magazine give you a page of fine print HTML. The International Association of Obituarists is not on the internet. The NPR interview with Carolyn Gilbert, founder of the IAO, is still up. Presumably, she is still putting the bitch back in obituary. Maybe the 2005 convention in Bath, England was too much.
Another link gave this result: “Welcome to http://www.obituarywriters.com ! Our new web site, powered by EarthLink Web Hosting, is currently under construction.” In its place is The Society of Professional Obituary Writers, “Proudly powered by Weebly.”
SPOW hosted a contest in 2011 and 2012. “Each year, The Society of Professional Obituary Writers holds a competition to honor excellence in obituary writing. Obituaries are submitted by reporters and editors from all over the world, and blind-judged by a panel of our members. Winners receive trophies, known as the Grimmies, and are feted at the annual conference.” Grimmies were given for Best Obit, and Best Body of Work.
2022 UPDATE SPOW is holding on. “Membership is temporarily closed. We’ll be accepting new members after the pandemic ends.” The most recent ObitCon was in 2019. SPOW has a podcast, Immortalized, and is active on twitter, @obituarywriters.
War Between The States
Last week, this slack blogger found a tweet. The tweet said that Abraham Lincoln and John Kennedy fought the Federal Reserve, and both were killed. I did a little research, and found something that questions the conventional wisdom about the War Between the States. This is a repost from 2017.
Before getting to the quote, a disclaimer is in order. 100777.com is a sketchy website. What is says cannot be taken as literal truth. However, the statement about WBTS does raise some questions.
“One point should be made here: The Rothschild bank financed the North and the Paris branch of the same bank financed the South, which is the real reason the Civil War was ignited and allowed to follow its long, and bloody course.”
Maybe it was not the Rothschild Bank that financed WBTS. Somebody did. War is a profitable enterprise. People are going to egg on the combatants, knowing that there is money to be made. Someone encouraged the southern states to secede. Others encouraged the north to take a hard line on slavery, knowing that it would lead to a profitable war. Was slavery the reason for this war, or the excuse? Follow the money.
Rhett Butler was a central character in Gone With The Wind. He was a blockade runner, bringing in supplies to the south. He said this: “I told you once before that there were two times for making big money, one in the up-building of a country and the other in its destruction. Slow money on the up-building, fast money in the crack-up. Remember my words.”
It should be noted that slavery was a big money operation. “But I think we think of it differently when we realize that the value of slave property, some $4 billion, enormous amount of money in 1861, represented actually more money than the value of all of the industry and all of the railroads in the entire United States combined. So for Southern planters to simply one day liberate all of that property would have been like asking people today to simply overnight give up their stock portfolios.”
When the thirteen colonies declared independence, they were not creating a union. The idea was to kick out the British. The concept of a federal union, made up of more-or-less independent states, was fairly new. States had conquered other states, and formed empires, for a long time. A federal union of states was a new, and controversial, idea. Many European states wanted to see this federal union fail. These states encouraged the south to secede. Some people say the War Between the States began the day the British left.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library “… a collection of images of downtown Atlanta streets that were taken before the viaduct construction of 1927 – 1929. Later, some of the covered streets became part of Underground Atlanta.”
Georgia On My Mind
“Georgia On My Mind” turned up of facebook this morning. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost from 2020.
Youtube turned up the original “© Written in 1930 by Hoagy Carmichael (music) and Stuart Gorrell (lyrics) © Gorrell wrote the lyrics for Hoagy’s sister, Georgia Carmichael. However, the lyrics of the song are ambiguous enough to refer either to the state or to a woman named “Georgia”. Carmichael’s 1965 autobiography, “Sometimes I Wonder”, records the origin: a friend, saxophonist and bandleader Frankie Trumbauer, suggested: “Why don’t you write a song called ‘Georgia’? Nobody lost much writing about the South.” Thus, the song is universally believed to have been written about the state.”
National Anthems has a story about GOOM. “STUART GRAHAM STEVEN GORRELL (1901-1963) and HOAGLAND HOWARD CARMICHAEL (1899-1981), wrote the song in 1930 almost as a lark … Hoagy Carmichael went to Indiana University, and one of his best college chums was Stuart Gorrell. Hoagy Carmichael was going to be a lawyer and Stuart Gorrell, when not hanging around the local “jazz joint” (called The Book Nook!) had promised someone that he would eventually be a success in the world of business.” The link no longer works.
“The two of them were together at a party in New York and Hoagy Carmichael played what he had of the “Georgia” music line for Stuart Gorrell and some friends. After the party broke up, the two of them went back to a friend’s apartment and worked on the tune throughout the night. Stuart Gorrell wrote what he thought would be a good lyric line on the back of a post card, (now displayed in the Carmichael Room at Indiana University) and showed it to Hoagy Carmichael. One can still plainly see the few, but important, changes that Hoagy Carmichael made on that small piece of cardboard to Stuart Gorrell’s lyrical scratchings. The song was improved upon, and the lyrics written, in that boozy early morning, and recorded in September 1930 by a band that included Hoagy Carmichael’s great friend, Bix Beiderbecke – a recording session that proved to be Bix’s last.”
“Hoagy Carmichael went on to write many more songs, some of them hits, and Stuart Gorrell kept his promise and became a Vice President at Chase Bank. Stuart Gorrell never tried to write another song lyric, but ‘Georgia on my Mind’ became a hit after World War II and Hoagy Carmichael, true to his word – although Stuart Gorrell was not legally credited as the lyricist by the music publisher – always sent Stuart Gorrell a cheque for what would have been his share of royalty. The royalty income from that song is substantial and, after Stuart Gorrell died, the income put his daughter through college.”
Mr. Gorrell wrote a letter to the Bremen (Indiana) Enquirer, August 3, 1961. “This accompanied his response to his home town’s Teen Hop patrons choosing the song as their theme song. … “Georgia on my mind” was composed more than a quarter of a century ago on a cold and stormy evening in 1930 in New York City. Hoagy Carmichael and I, in a third floor apartment overlooking 52nd street, with cold feet and warm hearts, looked out the window and, not liking what we saw, turned our thoughts to the pleasant southland. Thus was born a hauntingly sweet song. My mother, who died in Bremen in 1942, once asked a very penetrating question about the song. I had sent her a copy of the sheet music and, after reading the words over several times, she wondered aloud: “What is Georgia? A girl—or state? What do you think? Hoagy and I just love every one of you Bremen Teen Hoppers for honoring out tune by making it your theme song. Sincerely, Stuart Gorrell”
Milo Yiannopoulos Today
This is a repost from 2017. If you ask google what Milo Yiannopoulos is doing today, you see that he is an intern for Marjorie Taylor Greene. In 2021, LifeSiteNews reported “Milo Yiannopoulos, the gay man whose conservative messaging and willingness to speak the truth sparked riots on university campuses may well trigger more outrage now that he describes himself as “Ex-Gay” and “sodomy free,” and is leading a daily consecration to St. Joseph online.” Google does not have a search result for the “daily consecration to St. Joseph online.”
Milo Yiannopoulos is getting attention again. It seems as though the the editor’s notes for his book have been leaked to the press. Many of the comments are unkind. If you have ever wanted to see bad writing dissected and disemboweled, this is the time. PuffHo, which knows a thing or two about recycling free product, has a helpful list of some of the zingers. “Can you really prove a causality between [Black Lives Matter] and crime rate?” “DELETE UGH.” .
Milo did not actually write Dangerous. Miloproduct is produced by a crew of interns. One of these drones got in trouble: Milo Yiannopoulos Speaks Out About ‘Bonkers’ Former Intern Arrested for Murdering Dad. Who gets the copyright credit for Dangerous? It might be a good trivia question.
@DALIAMALEK “… Look at the witty editor that worked to normalize white supremacy” Some people think Milo’s book was cancelled for being politically incorrect. Actually, the deal was trashed after Milo opened his mouth once too often, and became too controversial.
Simon & Schuster is not opposed to selling bad books to make money. In 1981, S&S published HOW TO STAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS— AND WIN! This tome was written by Roy Cohn. The NYT review notes “Despite his reputation as a playboy bachelor, Mr. Cohn believes that a marriage should be ”kept intact” if there are children.”
Chamblee54 has written about whatshisname one two three four five six seven times. The pictures are usually better than the text. In one episode, Bill Maher said “Stop looking at the distractions and the clown show and look at what matters.” Then, without a trace of embarrassment, Mr. Maher introduced Milo, who is both distraction, and clown show.
The first time chamblee54 wrote about Milo had a prophetic quote. “This is the first time many have heard of Milo Yiannopoulos. Unfortunately, it probably will not be the last. He authored a piece at Breitbart, where he said “… Only by totally ignoring people’s feelings can we end the left’s culture of grievance, offense, and victimhood. …”
Many of the naysayers are calling Milo, and his product, racist. This is a reflex action to many SJW, who seldom miss an opportunity to scream racism. The ironic thing is that Milo talks loudly, and often, about his fondness for black men. On page 96, Milo says “”I love black people. Indeed, I love black people so much that my Grindr profile once said “No Whites.” I’d considered “Coloreds Only Served in Rear,” but that was a little too edgy, and Grindr once deleted my profile once for writing: “Don’t contact me if you’re under seven inches or you know who your dad is.”
Hopefully, Milo’s fifteen minutes will be over soon. There will always someone else to call racist. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
More Tales Of The City
This is a repost from 2017. It was a simpler time. Looking back six years, we had it pretty good in 2017. Our biggest problem was an orange haired idiot in the White House. In three years we would melt down over Covid. In five years Russia would invade Ukraine. In six years, Israel would crank up the lawn mower. In these six years, the national debt has gone from $20t to $34t. That is a $14t increase in six years. By comparison, the total debt in 2011 was $14t. America has borrowed more in the last six years, than it did in 235 years previously. … So much for today’s fantasy. This repost is a book report of More Tales Of The City, another fantasy from a more innocent time. MTOTC took place in the San Francisco of 1977. Talk about not knowing when you had it good. … Whales of the city is about books four and six of the Tales of the City series. In this report, your humble scribe realizes that he has yard sale copies of books two and three, but does not know if he read them. He soon learns that he had not read those two books.
More Tales Of The City, book two of TOTC, is the subject of today’s book report. It begins with Micheal Tolliver’s Valentines Day Resolutions for 1977. “3. I will stop expecting to meet Jan-Michael Vincent at the tubs. 4. I will inhale poppers only through the mouth.” Cruise ship people wonder why Michael wore a T shirt advertising Crisco.
MTOTC occupies a totally different world from the 1988 scenery of Sure of You, book six. Consuming these stories out of sequence can lead to some head scratching. Either Armistead Maupin could see the future, and had a perverted sense of humor, or synchronicity is real. SPOILER ALERT Things in various parts of TOTC will be discussed below. If you are spoiler sensitive, you can just skip over the text, and look at the pictures. These images are courtesy of The Library of Congress.
The end of MTOTC shows Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton bemoaning the departure of Burke Andrew. Mary Ann met Burke on a cruise ship. They had their moment, and Burke got a job in New York. Micheal goes back to his southern queen roots, and quotes Scarlett O’Hara… tomorrow is another day. Fast forward four books/eleven years. Burke is a married New York hotshot. He gets Mary Ann to leave San Francisco, finally, and move on to national stardom in the Big Apple.
86 is an expression meaning get out of here. On page 86 of MTOTC, we see this 1977 comment: “There are – and this is conservatively speaking – one hundred and twenty thousand practicing homosexuals within the city limits of San Francisco. … Those one hundred and twenty thousand homosexuals are going to grow old together, Arch. ….Think of it! The first gay nursing home in the history of the world!” The Arch mentioned in this sales pitch is Archibald Anson Gidde. He will die in book six. The obituary will use a euphemism.
A lot of those 120K P.H. were going to die between book two and book six. One of them is Dr. Jon Fielding, an on-and-off bf of Michael Tolliver. The two re-connect on the same cruise ship that facilitated Mary Ann’s romance. On page 109, Michael is fantasizing about having a decadent funeral. Jon listens appreciatively, then says “Don’t die, O.K.? Not until I’m through with you.” In less than five years, Jon will be through with Micheal, and everything else.
MTOTC is a fun book. It is not a documentary. A few of the plot twists will stretch your credibility. It is escapism, and is set in a more innocent era… back when things were still fun. Before we go, we need a couple of one star comments. Robert S. Marrinon “While Tales of the City had redeeming love and touching stories, “More Tales of the City” was simply filthy. I can see why it sold for one cent.” Rozanne “I can’t believe I read another book by this guy. He’s pretty awful.”
German Pastry Christmas
“Merry Christmas! As the wars about the public celebration of Christmas become filled with pettiness and hostility on all sides, be not dismayed. Your celebration of Christmas depends solely on you and nobody else. I heard the story of Oswald Goulter years ago and it reminds me of that simple fact. I am responsible for how I embrace the gift of Christmas.
Oswald Goulter served as an agri-missionary to China. On his way back to the USA for furlough during World War II. His sponsor mission agency gave him a ticket to get home by boat. When Oswald arrived in the port of India, New Delhi, he found boats filled with Jews, housed there to protect their lives from Nazi Germany. The Jewish boats couldn’t land anywhere. They were not accepted or welcome anywhere at the time.
Oswald went to see them and said, “Merry Christmas!” “We’re Jewish,” they responded. “I know, I know. But what would you like for Christmas. Merry Christmas!” “Don’t you understand? We are JEWISH.” “Merry Christmas. What do you want?” To get rid of this nuisance, they said, “How about some German pastry? That sure would be grand.” Oswald scoured the city until he found a bakery that made German pastry. Oswald sold his ticket for home to get money to purchase some pastry. He went back to the boat and shared it with them. As he spoke about this experience later in one of his supporting churches, a very prim member of the congregation stood and asked, “Why did you do that? They were Jewish. They don’t even believe in Jesus.””I know,” Oswald replied, “but I do.”
Allen Hunt sent an email, which featured the pastry story. Dr. Hunt was a “megachurch pastor,” with a radio show. I sent a reply: “Allen do you have any proof that Oswald Goulter existed? This story seems a bit far fetched. I googled Oswald Goulter, and all I see is the same story told over and over. … There are hundreds of real, verifiable Christmas stories out there. This one seems a bit fishy.”
“Oswald John Goulter was born in 1890. One of a family of eight, he grew up in the small village of Irrewillipe some fourteen kilometres from Colac in south-‐western Victoria (Australia.) Nominally Baptist, the family attended a small Wesleyan church some five kilometres away at Barongarook.” His nickname was OJ. He died in March, 1985, in Santa Clara, California. He was interviewed in 1971 as part of a project involving missionaries to China. “Mr. Goulter portrays the disruption in Chinese life in the area of Lu-chou (Hofei) in Anhwei province during the years 1922 to 1951. He tells how the Communists were able to take advantage of the disorder caused by warlords and bandits and the Japanese invasion to drive the nationalists from power.”
There is another story about Mr. Goulter. After the communist takeover, Mr. Goulter and his wife, Irene, were taken into custody. Mr. Goulter was beaten repeatedly, but refused to renounce his faith. Finally he was released (or, in some versions, escaped). This imprisonment is generally agreed to for three years. If he left in 1951, that would be consistent with the time line of the communist takeover. In the Hunt version of the story, Oswald Goulter left during World War 2.
This does not answer the question of why Mr. Goulter would go to India, before America. It also does not account for the appearance of the Jews in India, six years after the end of World War 2. It should also be noted that India was in chaos, with the independence and the partition. Would they have Jews hiding in the city? There is a book, Scattered Seed: The Story of the Oswald Goulters, Missionaries in China 1922-51. I do not know if it discusses German pastries.
UPDATE This story is a repost, with pictures from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. Allen Hunt left the megachurch, and became a Catholic. The radio show, which had live broadcasts from Chick-fil-a restaurants, is long gone. Dr. Hunt has a book, Confessions of a Mega-Church Pastor, about his experience as a Catholic. Mr. Hunt is currently making $175k annually as a “senior consultant” at Dynamic Catholic Institute.
Another story about OJ Goulter has this:”Back in Shanghai, Goulter sought to gain a permit to return to Hofei and to figure out how he could transport the numerous bales of clothing (which had arrived on the freighter) to the mission station. In the meantime he was aware of local groups that were desperately in need of clothing. Shanghai was full of refugees. Among them were some Jews fleeing from the horrors of Nazi Germany. They had only the summer clothes they were dressed in. Gaining access to his bales of clothing, Goulter was able to fit them out with warm clothes. This incident is possible the basis for unusual story told about Goulter (see following).” After this paragraph, the pastry story is shown, under the headline “True or False?”
After receiving the original email, I received a snide email from Allen Hunt, which was lost in a hard drive crash. The good news: some people in OJ Goulter’s family saw my story, and made some lovely comments. These comments are shown below.
Lindsay goulter said, on February 26, 2010 at 3:26 am
Hi oswald goulter was my great uncle.Born in Auss. If you would like to know more about him please reply to my e/mail. lindsay g
Teena Anderson said, on October 30, 2010 at 10:02 pm
Oswald Goulter is my grandfather. He was a missionary to China for 30 years. His story is told in the book Scattered Seed by Wilfred Powell. Oswald and Irene had 3 daughters, Lovena, Doris (who is still living!) and Jean. Doris and Jean were born in China. Jean was my mother-she spoke excellent chinese with a Hefei accent. I am the eldest grandchild. They lost a baby boy born in China and buried him in the mountains of Kuling, where the missionaries would go for the summer. My husband, Hugh Anderson (Presbyterian minister) and I have taught in China with the Amity Foundation. Our first summer of teaching we traveled to Hefei and met Rev. Zhu who helped Oswald after he had been confined in the internment camps. They were great friends. Rev. Zhu’s son is now a Disciple of Christ minister here in the United States. Teena Anderson, Medford, Oregon.
Miaohua Jiang said, on January 19, 2011 at 11:06 pm
The book by Wilfred E. Powell titled Scattered Seed came in mail yesterday. I searched in the book for any evidence that this story might actually happened. Unfortunately, the story as it is stated never happened. At least it did not happen in India. The sabbatical year was between 1936 and 1937. The family did take the western route going through Europe to return to US. They arrived in US in September 1936. Christmas of 1936 was their first Christmas in US in many many years. They were not able to return to China because of Japenese invasion until late 1937. Mr. Goulter did help refugees in Shanghai around Christmas time 1937. The book did mention that Shanghai also had ships with Jewish refugees. So, the story could have happened in Shanghai, China, instead of India. It did not involve boat tickets. Mr. Goulter had clothings shipped from Los Angeles to Shanghai. Also Mr. Goulter was interned by Japenese for many years, not communists.
Miaohua Jiang said, on January 1, 2011 at 10:13 pm
Doris is visting us this new year’s day of 2011!
Miaohua Jiang said, on January 4, 2011 at 2:23 pm
This is what I got from my conversation with Doris, O.J.’s second daughter. According to Doris, Mr. Goulter did not like his first name. Chinese people would simply call him Gou Shee-Sang (Mr. Gou). Doris was born in Hefei in 1924. Her mother homeschooled the girls. By the time she was 10, they felt it was time for girls to have a more formal education in Shanghai. Before they left for Shanghai, they travelled for a year to Europe, going through possibly the Hongkong – India route. So, it was around 1934 – a time Jews were forced to escape Germany. So, the story is credible. The girls stayed in Shanghai until 3 month before Pearl Harbor was attacked when American government ordered evacuation of women and children. Mr. Goulter stayed behind and was imprisoned by invading Japenese because of his British citizenship. I am ordering this book and hopefully when Doris visits again next time I will have a chance to verify a few more details with her. Amazingly, after leaving Hefei for more than 75 years, she can still speak the local dialect and sing local children songs forgotten even by the local people.
Teena Anderson said, on October 30, 2010 at 10:09 pm
Oswald Goulter was my grandfather. He was born in Australia. He heard about the Boxer rebellion and felt called to go to China. He came to the U. S. to get more education. He married Irene Goucher (my grandmother) in Oklahoma and they spent 30 years together in China. They had 3 daughters, 2 of whom were born in China. My mother was born in Tsingtao but spent 10 years in Hefei (Lu Chow Fu). She had a great Hefei accent. They also had a baby boy that died and was buried in the Kuling mountains. (Lu Shan) Oswald Goulters life was written by Wildfred Powell in the book Scattered Seed. Our family still have ties to Chinese that were ministered by my grandfather. There are many more accounts of what my grandfather accomplished in China. He loved the Chinese and they loved him. Teena Anderson of Medford, Or.
Lauri Penry said, on March 25, 2012 at 8:27 am
My grandparents (Dr. and Mrs. Paul R. Slater) served as medical missionaries in China with the Goulters. I have heard the story many times of how my grandfather met up with Mr. Goulter, and he wasn’t wearing shoes. So my grandfather gave him his. The next time they crossed each other’s paths, Mr. Goulter was again without shoes. He told my grandfather that he found someone who needed them more than he did. I was just going through some pictures at my parents’ house this weekend, and found one with Mr. Goulter in it. I am in the process of reading Scattered Seed now. My parents were attending Phillips University when Mr. Goulter was a member of the faculty. From what I have always heard about this man, he was exceptional, and a true servant!
John McBride said, on May 10, 2012 at 10:10 am
Oswald Goulter is my grand uncle and he was born in Australia. I had the pleasure of meeting him and Irene in in either 1973/4 when they visited Australia and later in San Jose in 1981. He was quite some bloke who’s achievements were quite incrediable. My grand father was a potato farmer at a place called Irrewillipe, about 100 miles west of Melbourne. One year my brother and I spent our Easter weekend (4 days in Australia) helping dig up the crop. At night, my grandfather read Oswald’s letters to us by kerosene lamp beside the wood stove in the kitchen. As a ten year old, those letters were more exciting to listen to than reading my Superman comics.
Tommy Rotten
This is a repost from 2015. It was a simpler time. … In 1977, Rolling Stone did a piece about a “counterculture writer” named Thomas Eugene Robbins. “Tommy Rotten,” is known for colorful phrasing. It is as if Vladimir Nabokov caught butterflies with psychedelic juice in their wings, and made a lepidopterist stew that allowed him behind the looking glass. … You can tell people that my goal is to write novels that are like a basket of cherry tomatoes—when you bite into a paragraph, you don’t know which way the juice is going to squirt.” Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
Tibetan Peach Pie: A True Account of an Imaginative Life is a TER autobiography. This accounts for the page references. … On page 25, TER was on an Asian honeymoon. A Sing snake crossed their path. A guide invited the snake to dinner. The reptile was prepared with enough red chili paste to give heartburn to the human blowtorch. TER felt as though he had gargled napalm. Later, on page 145, TER would describe “many a hot, sticky summer night, when a restless Richmond felt like the interior of a napalmed watermelon.”
TER is thirteen years old on page 63. He has not joined the church, given his soul to Jesus, and been assured of salvation. These are important items on the Southern Baptist bucket list. At the end of the service, the congregation sings “Just as I am,” and kids are shamed into salvation. The Baptist ritual of pressuring pre pubescent youth into a “commitment of faith” is morally dubious. Yes, this is better than what the Roman Pedophile Church likes to do with little boys, but that’s a technicality. … The man assigned to win the soul of TER was Dr. Peters. “tall, gaunt, and pale, with a weak damp smile and cold damp palms: shaking hands with him was like being forced to grasp the flaccid penis of a hypothermic zombie….more creepy than refrigerated possum slobber.”
At some point TER is on a ship, and editing a newspaper. “…the paper’s adviser, a Roman Catholic chaplain who possessed the purplish physiognomy and perpetually petulant pucker of the overly zealous censor.” Soon TER is in Nebraska, and buys his first automobile, a “1947 Kaiser … looked like the illegitimate child of a sperm whale and a pizza oven.” TER did not specify the gender.
The Fan was the hippie district of Richmond VA, although the 1954 version was considerably tamer than the summer of love variety. TER was reading books about zen. Learning zen, by reading a book, was similar to learning how to swim by reading a magazine. Or telling time by reading a newspaper. As Ben Hecht put it, “Trying to determine what is going on in the world by reading newspapers is like trying to tell the time by watching the second hand of a clock.” … “I’d better shut up now before the woo-woo alarms go off.”
The edited version of this nonsense ended before a purple paragraph. Purple prose has long been a derogatory phrase for overwrought wordsmithery. It is now the sunday after turkey day, in the year of our satan 2023. As TER liked to say in “Cowgirls,” the state of the world is desperate as usual. TER is either 91 or 87, depending on what mood google is in. We probably will not get another novel out of him. … There is probably a good quote to end this with, but I am too lazy to look for it.
Sixty Years
Sixty years ago, John Kennedy went to the oval office in the sky. The bullets hit Mr. Kennedy at 12:30 pm, CST. He arrived at the hospital at 12:37. He had a faint heartbeat on arrival, but quickly succumbed to his wounds.
I was nine years old. I was in Miss Mckenzie’s fourth grade class. There was going to be an assembly soon, and the class was going to perform. There was a rehearsal in the cafetorium, and some of the kids were acting up. They went back to the class, and I thought they were going to be chewed out about the misbehavior in the cafetorium. Instead, Miss Mckenzie came into the room, and told the kids that President Kennedy had been shot during a parade in Dallas Texas. She did not say anything about his condition. One kid cheered the news.
School let out at the regular time, and I walked home. My mother and brother were crying. I was told that the president had died. The cub scouts meeting that afternoon was canceled.
Later that night, a plane arrived in Washington. The tv cameras showed a gruesome looking man walk up to a microphone. He was introduced as President Lyndon Johnson. This may have been the worst moment of that day. Photographs for this repost today are from “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Fleetwood Mac
I read the autobiography of Mick Fleetwood. If this had been a made up tale of fiction, no one would believe it. Mick is not the manufacturer of enemas, nor the namesake of a Cadillac Model. The possibility does exist that he has used those two products. Pictures for this repost are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library
John Mayall gave his guitar player, Peter Green, some studio time as a birthday present. “The Green God” used a rhythm section from the Bluesbreakers, Mick Fleetwood (drums) and John McVie (bass). At the end of the day, Mr. Green wrote “Fleetwood Mac” on the can holding the tapes.
Before long, Mr. Green started his own band, and named it after the rhythm section. (Does anyone know the bass player and drummer of the Atlanta Rhythm Section?) Fleetwood Mac started as a blues band, and became popular in England. Mr. Fleetwood celebrated by getting together with Jenny Boyd, who became his wife. Miss Boyd is the sister of Patti Boyd, the wife of George Harrison, aka Layla.
The first Fleetwood Mac album in the USA was “Then Play On.” The first show in Atlanta was at the Oglethorpe University gym, and by all accounts was a wild night. I saw the sign advertising the event, but did not attend. Grand Funk Railroad was the opening act.
About the time of “Then Play On”, Peter Green started to get a bit weird. He dropped out of the band, but Jeremy Spencer and Danny Kirwan were still playing guitars. For a little while. Jeremy Spencer took a walk outside a Los Angeles hotel, and got recruited by the Children of G-d. Danny Kirwan had some issues, and decided to leave the band. Bob Welch stopped by for a few years, joined by Christine Perfect McVie, the wife of John.
The band was managed at this time by Clifford Davies, who by all accounts was a nasty piece of work. A man named Bob Weston had joined the band, and lasted until he had an affair with Jenny Fleetwood. Mr. Weston was fired, and a tour canceled. Clifford Davies decided that he owned the name Fleetwood Mac, and hired a group of players to go out and do shows. Fleetwood and the Mcvies were not amused, and Mick Fleetwood took over as the manager of the band.
By 1974, the band was pushing along, and selling about 300,000 copies of each album. On Halloween night 1974, Fleetwood Mac played at the Omni with Jefferson Starship. I was at the Municipal Auditorium that night, seeing Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt.
In late 1974, Mick was looking for a studio. He came to a place, and an album came on the speakers. Mick was impressed by the guitar player. Soon after, Bob Welch felt the need to leave the band, and Mick thought the guitar player he heard at the studio was a good fit. (The band never did auditions, just asked people they liked to join). The guitar player was Lindsay Buckingham, and his girlfriend/musical partner was Stevie Nicks. This was the band that set sales records.
The first album with Buckingham/Nicks, simply titled “Fleetwood Mac”, became a phenomenon. The band was soon headlining in stadiums, and was on every fm radio station in the land. The band went into the studio to record a follow up. The second album took over a year to produce, and saw the McVies and the Fleetwoods get divorced. Buckingham and Nicks split their common law arrangement. Out of the turmoil came “Rumours”, which has sold roughly thirty million copies.
On August 29, 1978, PG got to see Fleetwood Mac at the Omni. Mick Fleetwood was on top of his game, pounding the skins with a glee that could be seen from the cheap seats. Fleetwood was a highlight, standing two meters tall and creating havoc on the drum stand.
Reading the book tells the rest of the story. Fleetwood’s father had died earlier that summer, and Mick was devastated. The band was straining under the pressures of superduper stardom. Mick attempted a reconciliation with his wife, which was a painful failure. There was an affair between Mick and Stevie Nicks at this time. The idea that Mick Fleetwood could perform like he did that night tells you what a trooper he was.
Chamblee54 
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