David Bowie
It was a strange week to be a David Bowie fan. On Friday, I was looking for a rerun to post, and was reminded that January 8 was his birthday. (Along with Elvis and Shirley Bassey) I put up a piece about Mr. Bowie, and fashioned a poem out of his song titles. Aquarian Drunkard reissued a collection of the “best and most interesting Bowie oddities”. A new album was released, with a lot of comments about how strange it was. Strange is something Bowie fans turn to face.
On Monday, I woke up. Go on the internet. MSN news says that David Bowie has died. This is surprising. I know what people are going to talk about for a few days.
I typically download the new wtf podcast on Monday. The show is “supported” by Columbia records, presenting David Bowie’s new album “Blackstar.” Marc Maron gushes on about how ” DAVID BOWIE I LOVE DAVID BOWIE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?” The single is called “Lazarus.”
The timing of the whole thing is bizarre. Was this planned? To release a puzzling new work on your sixty ninth birthday, and then die two days later. With the master media manipulator involved, prior planning cannot be ruled out. Or was it just a parting shot of synchronicity? We will never know.
In what might be a new move for celebrity deaths, sex scandal rumors emerged. A lady named Lori Maddox claims that Mr. Bowie “devirginized” her. Miss Maddox was underage at the time. Some people think that this incident makes Mr. Bowie a terrible person, whose artistic output should be ignored. One made the inevitable comment “As someone who sees White stars get a pass for things that celebrities of color get crucified for.”
I learned a long time ago to separate the performer from the performance. I also apply this rule to David Robert Jones. (David Bowie was a stage name. The legal name was never changed.) In 1976, there was an interview, where the artist said “Don’t believe anything you hear me say.” While the creative/marketing genius can be enjoyed, there was always a bit of coldness behind the mask. Some press reports say that this softened as the years went by. In the end David Bowie was human. Ziggy Stardust was a character played by an actor. Does it matter that they were a Cracked Actor?
It is ironic that David Bowie played Andy Warhol in Basquiat. Both combined creation of art, and the marketing of art product, into a seamless unit. The two did not have a good first meeting. “Remember, David Bowie was not a big star. He was just some guy off the street as far as Andy Warhol was concerned. They found a common ground in David’s shoes. David was wearing yellow Mary Janes and Andy had been a shoe illustrator, which David knew so they began talking about shoes.” UPDATE I got to see Basquiat. Andy Warhol’s wig, worn by David Bowie, gave an outstanding performance.
This would have been in 1971. Mr. Bowie discusses his adventures in between songs of this show. There is another story from that first tour: “I think that must’ve been part of the Mercury Records publicity tour in early 1971, Gus. Ted Vigodsky, if I remember correctly, brought Bowie by The Great Speckled Bird’s offices on North Avenue where Moe Slotin and I met him. Bowie was dressed in an ill-fitting gingham dress and looked something like a gaunt, poverty-stricken woman in one of those Walker Evans photos from the Depression. He informed Moe and me that he was gonna be the next big star in rock-n-roll. It took all of our will power not to laugh in his face. This was before anyone in America had heard of him and he had no records out yet (“Space Oddity,” a hit in England in 1969, was not released in the USA until 1973). Six months later Moe and I realized we had completely underestimated him. I had forgotten Charlie had called you about interviewing him.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
David Bowie is 74 today. Elvis is ageless. Betsy DeVos is unemployed. This Bowie tribute is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
A webpage called CaptainsDead had a download of a David Bowie concert. (Here is another edition.) Most Bowie live recordings are pretty dull. While the Thin White Duke is renowned for his concerts, they tend to be live events, that depend on staging and costumes as much as music. This show, from 1974, is different. Focusing on material from “Diamond Dogs”, the sound he produces comes close to matching the studio sound.
The next move for Bowie in 1974 was the “white soul” sound of “Young Americans”. He is moving in that direction in this show, even while he lingers in the glitter apocalypse. This tour included a stop at the Fox Theater, the first Atlanta show for Mr.Bowie. On the way to Florida for the next show, the truck with the sets and costumes crashed into a swamp full of rattlesnakes. The show in Tampa was performed in street clothes.
Maybe it is time for a Chamblee54 tribute to David Bowie. It is six am, and PG has stumbled into a job. The time and energy required to write new material is not always available.
The first album by David Bowie that PG heard about was “Hunky Dory”. At the time, Mr. Bowie had generated some buzz by admitting that he fancies blokes, or some uber british expression for being queer. In time, this would be seen as more publicity stunt than brave confession. The RCA debut got some good reviews, but not much else.
The next year produced “Ziggy Stardust”, a concept album. At about this time he did a tour of the United States, with costumes and onstage antics that generated even more publicity. More and more people started listening, some in spite of his outrageous image, and quite a few more because of it. He broke up his band, the spiders from mars, and announced his retirement. The band, according to reports, learned about this while standing on stage behind him. Mr. Bowie, for all his genius, is not always a nice man.
In 1974 there was an album, “Diamond Dogs”, about the decadent urban life in the scifi future. A stage show based on this album…the source of the download mentioned above…marked a return to the concert stage. The next year gave us “Young Americans”, and the year after that “Station to Station”. Every year was a different sound and vision.
Meanwhile, the artist was not doing so good as a human being. According to all reports, he was doing mountains of cocaine. (There is a story of going to meet the parents of Ava Cherry, one of his girlfriends. He shows up at 3am, and does coke on the dining room table.) There was an interview in Playboy (or maybe it was Rolling Stone ) where the first thing he says is, don’t believe anything I say. He went on to say that he admired Adolf Hitler. Have we mentioned the physical appearance of David Bowie in 1975? He looked like he was dead, and nobody bothered to tell him. (By contrast, in recent photo collections of rock stars, Mr. Bowie looks pretty good for a man who is 69 yo.)
This was the era of Rocky Horror show. At one point, Riff Raff sings (Tim O’Brien wrote the show, and gave himself some darn good lines) Frank n furter, it’s all over, your mission is a failure, your lifestyle’s too extreme.I’m your new commander you now are my prisoner we return to transylvania prepare the transit beam While this may not have been directed at David Bowie, he took the hint.
We interrupt this David Bowie tribute with an emergency announcement. A person, reputed to be an entertainer, was seen using the n word on facebook. The screen shots have disappeared, and all we have is the word of the accuser. More details will be available as soon as anyone is interested.
David Bowie saw himself at a dead end, and possibly a dead life. He moved into a little apartment in West Berlin, on top of a garage. Brian Eno offered his assistance, and a series of electronic albums was the result. The next few years saw rock and roll, dance music, and finally, crap. PG bought a Bowie album in 1984, the first time he saw it on sale, and was immensely disappointed. The last David Bowie album that PG got was a free cd that was given to people buying a magazine.
Around 1981, MTV was born, and radio was suddenly obsolete. A visual artiste like David Bowie was a natural for video. Unfortunately, many of these videos are not available for embedding in blogs. Ashes to Ashes was a staple of early MTV. Boys Keep Swinging , off the “Lodger” album, is a return to the gender bender Bowie of younger days.
David Bowie continued to do tours, and PG got to see two of the shows. In 1987, something called the “Glass Spider Tour” came to the Omni. (In a later interview, it turns out Mr. Bowie was extremely unhappy during this tour, and close to suicide at some points.) The Glass Spider was this mass of lighting effects that hovered over the stage, and was used to best advantage during “Scary Monsters”. The show featured Peter Frampton on guitar, and had a pack of dancers. (One apparent female took her drag off during the finale.) A good time was had by all.
In 1990, another retirement tour came to the Omni. This one had movies projected on a screen behind the stage, and featured guitar hero Adrian Bellew. The night had the feel of a contractual obligation. David Bowie is too professional to give a bad show, but this one did not have the fire of “Glass Spider”. PG had a new set of contact lenses, and his eyes were painfully dry most of the night.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk
There have been eleven presidential transfers of power in PG’s life. Nine of them were in January. PG typically ignores them. He goes out with Mr. Crook in office, and comes home to President Thief.
The best exception was in August, 1974. Richard Nixon was finally undone and forced to resign. After watching Tricky Dick’s next to last television speech, PG got in his 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, and 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”.
I’m A Believer
JoemyG-d has been running videos of number one hits lately. Today, the numero uno is from 1966. It is by the Monkees, called “I’m a Believer”.
PG always liked the Monkees. They were the twelve year old’s band when he was twelve years old. There was an article in the Saturday Evening Post about the “Pre Fab Four”, and a classmate of PG said that he was disillusioned. Certainly no one was confused about the made for tv nature of the band. The rumors…which turned out to be true…said that the Monkees did not play the instruments on their debut album. Still, a seventh grader is easily amused, and the show was fun to watch.
“I’m a Believer” was written by Neil Diamond, aka the Jewish Elvis. Mr. Diamond played guitar on the Monkees version of IAB. (Michael Nesmith does a convincing imitation in the video. It is not known if he was wearing the green hat.)
IAB is part of the rock tradition of misunderstood lyrics. PG thought that Mickey said he “needed sunshine on my brain”. PG did not learn the truth for many years. One afternoon, he heard a band on the radio do IAB, and the lyrics were understood. What the song really said was, “when I needed sunshine I got rain. “
This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. The video in the original post is no longer on youtube, but there was no shortage of replacements. The video used today is one PG remembers from the TV show.
The other video, with unfortunate sound, is from the second year of “The Monkees”. PG did not like Mickey Dolenz with frizzy hair, and quit watching the show. 13 is a year older than 12. The fall of 1967 found PG as an eighth grader, or “subbie”, at a grungy high school.
The other video has the word believer in the title. (The middle of the word believer is LIE.) One afternoon, the disc jockey at WQXI said he was tired of playing that stupid song by the Monkees. Before long, the Monkees were replaced by the Partridge Family.
From The Heart Of Atlanta To Tyler Perry
There is an old saying, what goes around comes around. When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. The thing is, it is not always obvious what is payback for what. Moreton Rolleston Jr. filed a lawsuit to have the Civil Rights Act declared unconstitutional. Forty years later, a Black man, built a mansion on the site of Mr. Rolleston’s home. The fact that this Black man earned his money by playing Black women, in movies, is icing on the cake.
When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, Moreton Rolleston, Jr. owned the Heart of Atlanta Motel. He filed a lawsuit, trying to have the law overturned by the courts. The case went to the Supreme Court, which upheld the law.
The legal justification of the Civil Rights Act was a law giving the U.S. Government the right to regulate interstate commerce. Mr. Rolleston argued that this use of the commerce clause went too far. “‘The argument that this law was passed to relieve a burden on interstate commerce is so much hogwash. It was intended to regulate the acts of individuals.’ If the commerce clause can be stretched that far, declared Rolleston, ‘Congress can regulate every facet of life.'” (PG supports all citizens having the right to housing, education, etc. He also wonders if we are on a slippery slope. The government keeps taking more and more freedom away.) (The link for the quote no longer works.)
In 1969, Tyler Perry was born. From humble beginnings, he has been incredibly successful. His signature character is a woman named Madea.
In 1985, Mr. Rolleston was involved in a real estate deal that went sour. He was sued. In 2003, Mr. Rolleston was evicted from his Buckhead home. In 2005, the property was sold to Tyler Perry. Mr. Rolleston sued Mr. Perry, claiming that 2035 Garraux Road was still his property.
Mr. Rolleston , was disbarred in 2007. The Veteran’s History Project shows his race as “Unspecified.” Moreton Mountford Rolleston, Jr., born December 30, 1917, died August 29, 2013.
HT Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.. This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
Fruitcake
December 27 is National Fruitcake Day PG sees a chance for some text to put between pictures. He would be nutty as a fruitcake to turn down this chance. This is a repost.
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 Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian and Mediterranean 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 and then let the covered fruitcakes 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 November 3, 2006.
The urban dictionary has nine 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 him/her 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!”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Senate Runoff
You can’t make this up. The control of the US Senate has come down to runoff elections in Georgia. There are two seats being contested. The four candidates include a Jew, a Black minister, a blonde, and a white man. None of the four candidates deserves your vote.
One way to look at this mess is by the candidates. David Perdue is the elected incumbent. He survived the primary/runoff/general obstacle course to get elected in 2014. Very few people can remember what Sen. Perdue did before he went into politics. He is a conservative republican, which means saying rude things about Nancy Pelosi.
Sen. Perdue might be the least offensive candidate in this runoff. Sen. Perdue thinks that being loyal to President Trump, and his efforts to overturn the Presidential election, will pay off. If Sen. Perdue wins his race, then the republicans will control one more seat in the senate, and be assured of a majority. This is a powerful reason to vote against him.
Jon Ossoff is the democrat challenger running against Sen. Perdue. Mr. Ossoff (the candidate with a normal title) was unknown before running for the GA06 seat in 2017. That was another bizarre race. The incumbent resigned to take a job in the Trump administration. Tom Price would be brought down by scandal, but not before leaving the GA06 post. A special election was called.
The democrat challenger for GA06 was Mr. Ossoff. He took in oodles of out-of-state money, and ran a hideous campaign. One of his attack points against republican candidate Karen Handel … another awesomely yuckky performer … involved a travel allowance. Mr. Ossoff managed to lose to Ms. Handel. He is the only candidate, in the last eleven years, to lose a major race to Ms. Handel.
Normally, there is only one senate election. This year, there are two. Republican Johnny Isakson retired in December 2019. Kelly Loeffler was appointed to replace him, until a special election could be held. The “winner” of this will serve two years.
Kelly Loeffler was not well known when she was appointed to the senate. Apparently, Sen. Loeffler has a lot of money, and was generous to the republican party. Many say that she bought her appointment. Sen. Loeffler has made some unsightly financial transactions while serving.
The democrat challenger is Reverend Raphael Warnock. As you may have guessed from his title, Rev. Warnock is a Baptist minister. If you go to youtube, and search “Raphael Warnock sermons”, you can see dozens of videos. Rev. Warnock has a big mouth. It is an occupational hazard. The man says incredibly offensive things. There are too many of them to be explained away.
“America needs to repent for its worship of whiteness.” In 2016, Rev. Warnock was talking about Donald Trump. A popular democrat attack point was to call Mr. Trump, and anyone who supported him, racist. This method of attack has led to a great deal of racial hatred, and division, in America. Hating people, because of their racial attitudes, is seen as being morally righteous. This cynical practice poisons America with racially based hatred.
Nobody is really sure what whiteness is. Whiteness is a racially based insult. If you don’t like something, you can say it is whiteness. Since white people are perceived as having power, trash talking whiteness is seen as punching up. This toxic practice of denouncing 72% of Americans, for whatever agenda is convenient, is what Rev. Warnock supports.
The nauseating reality is that Georgians have to choose between a professional jesus-worshiper, and Senator Barbie. The US Senate is at stake. Picture today are from The Library of Congress.
Flannery O’Connor
With one day before it was due, PG finished reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor , by Brad Gooch. The author is a professor of English at William Patterson University in New Jersey. He spares no citations. You can see where he gets his information. This is a repost.
Chamblee54 has written before about Miss O’Connor , and repeated the post a year later. There is a radio broadcast of a Flannery O’Connor lecture. (The Georgia accent of Miss O’Connor is much commented on in the book. To PG, it is just another lady speaking.)
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born March 25, 1925 in Savannah GA. The local legend is that she was conceived in the shadow of St. John the Baptist Cathedral, a massive facility on Lafayette Square. Her family did leave nearby, and her first school was just a few steps away. This is also a metaphor for the role of the Catholic Church in her life. Mary Flannery was intensely Catholic, and immersed in the scholarship of the church. This learning was a large part of her life. How she got from daily mass, to writing stories about Southern Grotesque, is one mystery at the heart of Flannery O’Connor.
Ed O’Connor doted on his daughter, but had to take a job in Atlanta to earn a living. His wife Regina and daughter Mary Flannery moved with him, to a house behind Christ The King Cathedral. Mr. O’Connor’s health was already fading, and Mother and Daughter moved in with family in Milledgeville. Ed O’Connor died, of Lupus Erythematosus, on February 1, 1941.
Mary Flannery went to college in Milledgeville, and on to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She dealt with cold weather, went to Mass every day, and wrote. She was invited to live at an artists colony called Yaddo, in upstate New York. She lived for a while with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald in Connecticut, all while working on her first novel, “Wise Blood”. In 1950, she was going home to Milledgeville for Christmas, and had been feeling poorly. She went to the hometown doctor, who thought at first that the problem was rheumatoid arthritis. The illness of Flannery O’Connor was Lupus Erythematosus.
Miss O’Connor spent much of that winter in hospitals, until drugs were found that could help. She moved, with her mother, to a family farm outside Milledgeville, which she renamed Andalusia. She entered a phase of her life, with the Lupus in relative remission, and the drugs firing her creative fires, where she wrote the short stories that made her famous.
Another thing happened when she was recuperating. Flannery was reading the Florida “Market Bulletin”, and saw an ad for “peafowl”, at sixty five dollars a pair. She ordered a pair, and they soon arrived via Railway Express. This was the start of the peacocks at Andalusia, a part of the legend.
During this period of farm life and writing, Flannery had several friends and correspondents. There was the “Bible Salesmen”, Erik Langkjaer, who was probably the closest thing Flannery had to a boyfriend. Another was Betty Hester, who exchanged hundreds of letters with Miss O’Connor. This took place under the stern eye of Regina O’Connor, the no nonsense mother-caregiver of Flannery. (Mr. Gooch says that Betty Hester committed suicide in 1998. That would be consistent with PG stumbling onto an estate sale of Miss Hester in that time frame.)
The book of short stories came out, and Flannery O’Connor became famous. She was also dependent on crutches, and living with a stern mother. There were lectures out of town, and a few diverse personalities who became her friends. She went to Mass every day, and collected books by Catholic scholars. Flannery was excited by the changes in the church started by Pope John XXIII, and in some ways could be considered a liberal. (She supported Civil Rights, in severe contrast to her mother.)
In 1958, Flannery O’Connor went to Europe, including a trip to the Springs at Lourdes. Her cousin Katie Semmes (the daughter of Captain John Flannery, CSA) pushed Flannery hard to go to the springs, to see if it would help the Lupus. Flannery was reluctant…” I am one of those people who could die for his religion sooner than take a bath for it“. When the day for the visit came, Flannery took a token dip in the waters. Her condition did improve, briefly. (It is worth speculating here about the nature of Flannery’s belief, which was apparently more intellectual than emotional. Could it be that, if she was more persuaded by the mystical, emotional side of the church, and taken the healing waters more seriously, that she might have been cured?)
At some point in this story, her second novel came out, and the illness blossomed. Much of 1964 was spent in hospitals, and she got worse and worse. On August 3, 1964, Mary Flannery O’Connor died.
PG remembers the first time the name Flannery O’Connor sank in. He was visiting some friends, in a little house across from the federal prison.
Rick(?) was the buddy of a character known as Harry Bowers. PG was never sure what Harry’s real name was. One night, Rick was talking about Southern Gothic writers, and he said that Flannery O’Connor was just plain weird. ”Who else would have a bible salesman show up at a farm, take the girl up into a hayloft, unscrew her wooden leg and leave her there? Weird.”
Flannery O’Connor was recently the subject of a biography written by Brad Gooch. The book is getting a bit of publicity. Apparently, the Milledgeville resident was a piece of work.
PG read some reviews of this biography, and found a collection of short stories at the library. The book included ” Good Country People”, the tale about the bible salesman. Apparently, this story was inspired by a real life incident. (Miss O’Connor had lupus the last fifteen years of her life. She used crutches.) And yes, it is weird. Not like hollywood , but in the way of rural Georgia.
Some of the reviews try to deal with her attitudes about Black people. On a certain level, she is a racist. She uses the n word freely, and her black characters are not inspiring people. The thing is, the white characters are hardly any better, and in some cases much worse. In one story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a black lady is the hero.
The stories are well crafted, with vivid descriptions of people and places. The reader floats along with the flow of the story, until he realizes that Grandma has made a mistake on a road trip. The house she got her son to look for is in Tennessee, not Georgia. She makes him drive the family car into a ditch. Some drifting killers come by. Grandma asks one if he prays, while his partner is shooting her grandchildren. Weird.
In another story, a drifter happens upon a pair of women in the country. The daughter is thirty years old, is deaf, and has never spoken a word. The drifter teaches her to say bird and sugarpie. The mother gives him fifteen dollars for a honeymoon, if he will marry her. He takes the fifteen dollars and leaves her asleep in a roadside diner.
There was a yard sale one Saturday afternoon. It was in a house off Lavista Road, between Briarcliff and Cheshire Bridge. The house had apparently not been painted in the last forty years. Thousands and thousands of paperback books were on the shelves. The lady taking the money said that the lady who lived there was the friend, and correspondent of, the “Milledgeville writer” Flannery O’Connor. This is apparently Betty Hester, who is mentioned in many of the biography reviews.
PG told the estate sale lady that she should be careful how she said that. There used to be a large mental hospital in Milledgeville, and the name is synonymous in Georgia with mental illness. The estate sale lady had never heard that.
UPDATE: PG sometimes reads poems at an open mic event. His stage name is Manly Pointer. This is the bible salesman in “Good Country People.” This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” It was written like James Joyce. An earlier edition of this post had comments.
Fr. J. December 10, 2009 at 3:00 pm I am glad you take an interest in Flannery, but to say baldly that she is a racist is to very much misunderstand her. For another view on Flannery and race, you might want to read her short story, “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”
chamblee54 December 10, 2009 at 3:17 pm “On a certain level, she is a racist.” That is not the same as “baldly” labeling her a racist. (And I have a full head of hair, thank you). As a native Georgian, I am aware of the many layers of nuance in race relations. I feel that the paragraph on race in the above feature is accurate.
Names
Alan Burnett~Bill Gaddy~Bill Medlock~Bill Meneely~Blaze Mills~Buddy Conine
Calvin Bunn~Danny Fields~David Chewning~David Hadden~Charlie Hall~Dwight Dunaway
Freeman Waldrop~Gary Hunton~Gene Haynes~Gene Holloway~Gibson Higgins~Glenn Krause
Greg Scott~Harold King~Hawk~Jerry Pyschka~Jim Anderson~Jim Woodward~Joe Kenney
Joe Vickery~John Harllee~Jon Gordon~King Thackston~Larry Jackson~Layton Gregory
Lee Mullis~Les Friessen~Mac Wilson~Manfred Ibis~Mark Keenum~Mark Rosen
Martin Isganitus~Michael Dollins~Micheal Mason~Moon Moore~O’Gene Donohue
Purl Sudds~Ron Davis~Sam Mitchell~Skeeter Smith~Steve Bedworth~Stuart Davis
Ti Barfield~Tom Aderhold~Tom Selman~Tom Williams~Trion~Winston Morriss
Letters To Myself
Three years ago, PG saw a writers prompt. The suggestion was to write a letter to yourself when you were fourteen years old. A few days later, another one said to write a letter to yourself in twenty years. The result was Letter To Fourteen Year Old PG , and Letter To Seventy Eight Year Old PG. These two letters are reproduced here. They still read as though it were 2012, and an election is eminent. Out of a spirit of doing things the unconventional way, the letter to the seventy eight year old will come first. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
There was a suggestion at WordPress to write a letter to yourself as a fourteen year old, and another letter to yourself in twenty years. PG thought this was a cool idea. If the trackback went up on the WordPress site, then it might generate some traffic for this blog. It might even get the attention of Freshly Pressed , which has never featured Chamblee54.
It is like General Halftrack and the Pentagon. The Daily Post did not post a link to friday’s letter. The traffic went below one hundred hits on saturday. Now it is sunday, the clocks are set back an hour, and it is trying to rain. The letter to a seventy eight year old PG is a good idea, so here it goes. Once again, it is in first person.
Ok, so you are twenty years older. Or maybe you are not. The three main older people in this life were Mom, Dad, and Gran. They all died when they were seventy five, except for Mom, who made it to seventy six. Seventy eight might be pushing things a bit, considering the way things sometimes feel at fifty eight. The idea is to write this letter, and not worry about whether the destination will have an internet connection. You will change planes in Atlanta either way.
This is the sunday before the Presidential election, aka the day when a dictatorship doesn’t sound so bad. People in Georgia have their votes stolen from them by the electoral college, so we don’t have to choose between a war criminal and a liar.
There is a saying about holding your nose when you vote. The neighborhood precinct is the cafetorium of a school. Unless you are blocking the memory, you might recall going to classes in that building. Tuesday will not be the first time I have held my nose in that cafetorium.
This is the first year of the City of Brookhaven. I find myself choosing people on the basis of personalities, rather than issues. When it comes to the so called issues, the candidates seem to say the same things. This is true for the State House race, which is the other choice I will have. The repub is just plain gross. Mr. Bahhumbug has a bright future if he doesn’t get caught again.
There is no telling what the election choices will be in 2032. Assuming that the electoral college continues to facilitate the two party duopoly, you probably won’t have much of a choice. The takeover by the moneylenders should be complete by that point.
Since we are doing this in twenty year cycles, lets look back to some other elections. The first time I got to vote was 1972. Tricky Dick was a thief, and a war criminal, but George McGovern was a dummy. The problem for Tricky Dick was the second term syndrome. Most Presidents who are reelected for a second full term have horrible problems. While Mr. Nixon’s second term was not as bad as those of Abraham Lincoln or William McKinley, he did have his problems.
In 1992, it looked like Daddy Bush was sailing to victory. He won a war, and the Democratic candidate was Slick Willie Clinton. (From Tricky Dick to Slick Willie, Bebe Rebozo to Monica Lewinsky.) Ross Perot threw a monkey wrench in the electoral works by running as a third party candidate. This is a feature of the duopoly… when one party wins too many times, something strange happens.
It happened in 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran as a third party candidate, and Woodrow Wilson got elected. Within a year, the Federal Reserve Bank was set up. After the re-election of Mr. Wilson, we got mixed up in World War One. We can ignore the elections of 1932 and 1952.
There is one more election that should be discussed here, even though it is not part of the twenty year cycle. I was listening to a chat before the 2000 election. One person thought it was important to vote for Al Gore. This had been a dull election. George W. Bush was sort of an unknown quality, while Al Gore was not a terribly inspiring figure.
That is not how things turned out. W was allowed to serve, after Mr. Gore won the popular vote. Seven months after the inauguration, 911 kick started the twenty first century. The response of W was to start two self destructive wars. With the help of the demoze, there was a tax cut before the start of the second war. The economy may never recover.
So, it is good form to write a last paragraph to these things. It is an act of optimism to assume you will be here in twenty years. Living in the WMD age, the idea of thermonuclear catastrophe has always been present. The possibility of man making the planet unlivable is also very real. Maybe a dependable source of non destructive energy will be found in the next twenty years, to go with a dependable source of water for Atlanta. The future has always been dim, but continues to happen.
WordPress has this feature, the Daily Post. The idea is to get people to post more to their blog. PG already puts up material almost every day, but is generally open to new ideas. Today, the “daily prompt” is “Write a letter to your 14-year-old self.” It doesn’t say what part of your fifteenth year this should be, so PG is going for the weekend before the Presidential election. Yes, Forty Four years ago PG was fourteen. This will be written in first person.
Hey. It was suggested that I write a letter to myself when I was fourteen. The idea was to get people to write more. The thing is, I am already writing all the time. I post something to my “blog” every day. This can be suggestion number one… you don’t have to be part of a group effort to achieve something. Sometimes, you can do very well on your own. For a socially retarded person like me/you, that is not always an option.
December 31, 1988, was my last day as a beer drinker. Growing up in a teetotaling Baptist household, I never learned how to drink in good taste. When I did pick up the habit, I drank more than I should. After a while, I decided it was time to quit. I did it on my own, without going to AA. I never made a promise not to drink, I just did. That may be the one thing I have gotten right in my life. If I had not quit drinking when I did, there is a good chance I would not be here today.
I mentioned writing a blog. This is a one man operation, putting up stories and pictures in a magazine format. People look at it on machines that run through phone lines. There is more to it than that, but you will see this in about thirty years.
The 1968 Presidential election is on tuesday. This was between Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace. People said it was the worst choice they could remember. You will hear that phrase every four years, and it is always the truth. It is more truth than either candidate says. Every four years, the choices get worse. This year, the incumbent President was half white, half African, and that the Republican challenger is a Mormon. Neither one is very impressive.
There was a state senator running for Governor two years ago named Jimmy Carter. You voted for him in the seventh grade straw poll. Well, smiling Jimmy was elected Governor in 1970. When his four years was over, he ran for President, and won.
You are in ninth grade now, and it is a bit better than eighth. Cross Keys is a stinky, dangerous place. They closed down Lynwood Park High before you were in the eighth grade, and the first year was wild. This is the first time you have to deal with Black people, but it will not be the last. Sometimes you get along with them, and sometimes you don’t. It is a part of life.
Puberty has not kicked in yet, and you are wondering if it ever will. Eventually, your body will grow some hair, but not nearly as much as most other men. After a while, you will learn to enjoy your body.
It is difficult to make and keep friends. It was true in 1968, and it is true forty four years later. After a while, you get used to being by yourself, but do wish you could have more close relationships. Well, it is better than having no friends at all, and there are people in that boat.
There is a war going on, and you think it is going to go on until you are old enough to fight. The good news is that the troops will come home from Vietnam in 1973. President Nixon dragged the war out as long as he could, and finally made a deal with the communists.
Advice from an old person is usually ignored by the young, so I will not even try. Even with all the disappointments, it is good to be alive in 2012. There were a few close calls. I somehow wonder how, and why, I made it this far. Some would not be happy with this life, and there are days when I am not. This is the only choice. There is speculation about other lives, but this is the only one to be certain of. Even though it might not be what some would want, this is a good life.
One more thing about living and dying before we go. You are still going to church. That lasts a couple of more years, and then you have the rest of your life. Don’t worry about the stuff they teach at church about life after death. It isn’t the truth. People will use religion as another reason to hate you. Deal with it as best you can. Just try to make yourself happier, don’t hurt anyone unless you have to, and things will be either all right, or not all right.
Fifty Seven Years
Fifty seven 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.
In Georgia, PG was nine years old. He 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 PG 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 PG walked home. His mother and brother were crying. He 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”.
Esoteric and Pedantic
Obviously,there is something to be said for wanting to speak up, but not having anything to say. To prove that, I am going to talk about a word…esoteric. According to Wiktionary , esoteric is :”1. Having to do with concepts that are highly theoretical and without obvious practical application. 2. Understood only by a chosen few or an inner circle. 3. Confidential; private.”
The “E word” plays a role in a story from 10th grade English. We were discussing a story, “The Rocking Horse Winner”, by D.H. Lawrence. The story was, well, boring and obscure, just like most of what I have seen by Mr. Lawrence.
The summer after 10th grade I worked in a movie theater. The ushers wore ghastly yellow uniforms, and saw the movies over and over. When I started, the Lenox Square 2 theater was showing “Women in Love”, based on a novel my D.H. Lawrence. Glenda Jackson copped an oscar for her portrayal of Gudrun Brangwen, and young Larry Kramer was one of the screenwriters. It did not improve my opinion of D.H. Lawrence. If the censors had not touched “Lady Chatterly’s Lover” D.H. Lawrence would be forgotten today.
Back to 10th grade english. We were discussing this wretched story, and a girl raised her hand. Why would any author would write something so esoteric? The teacher had never heard of this word before, and was amazed to hear it.
The Lenox Square 2 theater was a long, slender thing with a small screen. This was in 1970. The multiplex concept had not matured. LS2 was under a grocery store. When their automatic door openers operated, you could hear the motors in the theater below. The movies the rest of the summer were Fellini Satyricon, The Christine Jorgenson Story, and The Landlord.
Back to esoteric…or did I ever go away? Before you can understand esoteric, you must plumb the depths of pedantic. “1. Like a pedant, overly concerned with formal rules and trivial points of learning. 2. Being showy of one’s knowledge, often in a boring manner. 3. Often used to describe a person who emphasizes his/her knowledge through the use of vocabulary; ostentatious in one’s learning. 4. Being finicky or picky with language.”
Pedantic is an adjective that describes itself. The technical term for this is autological. Here is a poem using autological words. This repost. Pictures for this visit to the Nixon era are from “The Special Collections and Archives Georgia State University Library”.
The Burning Of Atlanta
Around this time 156 years ago, Atlanta was on fire. General Sherman was preparing for his March to the sea, and wanted to destroy anything of value in the city. The fire is reported as being on 11-15 of November, depending on what source you use.
The November fire was the second great fire in Atlanta that year. On September 2, the city was conquered by the Union Army. The fleeing Confederates blew up a munitions depot, and set a large part of the city on fire. This is the fire Scarlet O’Hara flees, in “Gone With The Wind”.
After a series of bloody battles, the city was shelled by Yankee forces for forty days. There were many civilian casualties. General Sherman was tired of the war, angry at Atlanta, and ready for action. This is despite the fact that many in Atlanta were opposed to secession.
Click here to hear a lecture by Marc Wortman at the Atlanta History Center. Mr Wortman is the author of “The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta”. The hour of talk is fascinating. This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress
About this time every year, there is a post about the burning of Atlanta. One of the sources is a lecture by Marc Wortman. If you have an hour to spare, this talk is worth your time. One of the stories told is the tale of Mr. Luckie.
“According to folklore, two stories abound as to how Luckie Street was named. The first is that its moniker came from one of Atlanta’s oldest families. The other, probably closer to the truth, regales the life of Solomon “Sam” Luckie. Luckie, as it turns out, wasn’t so lucky after all. When General William Tecumseh Sherman first came marching through Atlanta in 1864, Luckie, a free Black man who made his living as a barber, was leaning against a gas lamp post in downtown talking to a group of businessmen. A burst from a cannon shell wounded him; he survived, but later died from his injuries. Folklore suggests that he may have been one of the first casualties of the assault on Atlanta. Luckie Street, an extension of Auburn Avenue, was later named in his memory.”
Marc Wortman wrote a book, The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta. The one star review, and comments to that review, are unusually detailed. Here is a selection.
“…People forget – or were never taught in school – that most Confederate soldiers descended from Revolutionary War patriots or were up-country poor sons of farmers. Many Confederate soldiers were relatively recent new arrivals to the U.S., semi-literate dirt poor immigrants from Ireland and Scotland who’d never had the chance to own even an acre of their own land in Europe. In the mix were well-educated, elite merchant business owning French Huguenot refugees of the Catholic Bourbon genocide of Protestants. These immigrants had nowhere else to go, 9 times out of 10 never owned a slave, and fought for the CSA to keep what little they’d hardscrabble carved out over a decade of arrival into the U.S.”
The War Between The States continues to be a source of controversy. After the Charleston church killings, many comments were made about the Confederate battle flag. (If you can’t talk about gun control or mental health, you talk about a symbol.) This led to discussions about the war itself. There were ritual denunciations of slavery, assumed to be the sole cause of the conflict.
The notion of autonomous states in a federal union was novel when the United States Constitution was written. The debate over federalism versus states rights continues to this day. States that want to legalize marijuana may be the next battleground. (Few are expecting secession over bong rights.) Many in the CSA saw the Union as being a conquering army, and fought to defend their homes. While slavery was certainly a factor in the creation of the CSA, it was not the only Casus belli. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Chamblee54 
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