Who Is Telling The Truth?
This is a repost from 2020. A grand jury presented its findings in the death of Breonna Taylor. Unlike many of the current shouters, I listened to the presentation by Attorney General Daniel Cameron. While his report is not guaranteed to be 100% accurate, it did make two important points.
The police did knock, and announce themselves. Breonna Taylor was not asleep in bed. Ms. Taylor was standing in the hall. If Ms. Taylor had indeed been in bed, she might not have been hit by gunfire. Again, this assumes that the authorities are telling the truth.
The Tatum Report is a youtube channel. Officer Tatum has a investigative report about the Taylor shooting. I have been skeptical about this report. It turns out the Louisville Courier-Journal published excerpts from the same report August 25. UPDATE: Here is the 39 page report.
I was looking at a facebook discussion. Someone said that a body was found in a vehicle rented by Breonna Taylor. This seemed a bit far fetched. I googled it. This came up. This story is from a CBS affiliated TV station, not a youtube channel.
“The documents also alleged that back in 2016, the body of Fernandez Bowman was found in a car rented by Breonna Taylor. When LMPD detectives arrived at Taylor’s home to question her, (Jamarcus) Glover was there. Taylor told the detectives she did not know Bowman, that she had been dating Glover for several months and that she had let him drive the rental car. She also gave detectives her phone number, which was a number that Glover was still using as recently as February of this year, according to the documents. That homicide victim was the brother of Damarius Bowman, one of Glover’s “associates” who has been arrested with Glover numerous times, the report stated.”
WKYT mentions these documents appearing in the Courier-Journal. Another source has a .pdf of another Courier-Journal article, which will be used as a source of quotes below. For some reason, the cached Courier-Journal story does not include the “body in the rented car” item.
Before going further, we should note a few things. This was a preliminary report, that was leaked to the press. It is not guaranteed to be accurate or true. There are some recordings of phone calls made from jail. While this may technically be legal, it strikes some people as improper. Last, there were some other allegations in the report. There is camera footage, and documentary evidence. Many allegations of criminal behavior are made about Breonna Taylor. If the police officers had gone to trial, these allegations would have been brought up in court.
The .pdf has another version of the “body in the rented car” story. “The 39-page report says Taylor began dating Glover, known as “Chop,” in 2016, and in December that year, she let him borrow a car she rented. The next day, the body of Fernandez “Rambo” Bowman, 27, was found inside the vehicle. When police came to interview Taylor about it, Glover was at her apartment and she said she let Glover use the car. She said she did not know the victim, who was Demarius Bowman’s brother.”
“The Courier Journal confirmed that account through evidence filed in the case of the man charged in Bowman’s slaying — Quenton Se’Ville Hall, 38. It shows that Taylor rented the vehicle on Dec. 1, 2016. Fernandez Bowman was shot, allegedly by Hall, while driving the car, which crashed into a telephone pole, a fence and a house. Neither Taylor nor Glover was charged in Bowman’s death.”
This document has selections from recorded jail phone calls. After reading the 39 page report, I realized that these quotes were heavily edited. The real conversations are not as sensational. If you want to see some of the jailhouse phone calls, read the 39 page report. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Tomorrow Is Another Day
PG managed to miss the Decatur Book Festival this year. One friend made it. This is a repost.
“This program was followed, after another walk through the vendor area back to the public library’s auditorium, by a staged reading of a short play, Tommorrow Is Another Day. The setting: the apartment of Atlanta novelist Margaret Mitchell and her husband John Marsh, on a morning in December 1939, two days before the movie version of Mitchell’s famous book premiers in Atlanta’s Lowe’s Theater. Mitchell’s African-American housekeeper of many years has almost finished reading Mitchell’s book, and Mitchell asks for her housekeeper’s opinion of it. What the Mitchell’s housekeeper tells Mitchell and her husband made for compelling theater!”
The play is fiction. From what this slack blogger has read about Peggy Marsh, she probably did not give books to her household help. It is possible that the cleaning lady did not know how to read. The playwrite, Addae Moon, had to use dramatic license to tell his side of the story.
“…the 43-year-old black writer found he liked some things about the 79-year-old novel. Not everything, of course. “I got frustrated with it. I had to put it down because I got angry.” But he’d pick it up later and keep going. “I totally understand Margaret’s desire to tell your point of view and your truth, but I also can understand what it feels like to be the victim of someone else’s truth…. It’s easy to be critical of the movie, which is more cartoonish, but, to me, the book is so much more complex.”
It has been a long time since PG read GWTW. It is tough to imagine it from the perspective of a contemporary Black man. GWTW was written by a White woman, of a byegone era. There are many sides to the story. This post will try to tell a few. The rest of it is a double repost from a few years ago. If that does not satisfy your lust for trivia, you can check out the Margaret Mitchell page at find-a-death.com. (It is full of errors, like calling her “Maggie”.) Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
As we started to discuss the other day, PG is reading I Remember Margaret Mitchell by Yolande Gwin. It starts with August 11, 1949. Margaret Mitchell, known to her friends as Peggy Marsh, went to to see “A Canterbury Tale” at the Peachtree Art Theater. She left her apartment on Piedmont Avenue, accompanied by her husband John. They parked across the street, and Mrs. Marsh was struck by a taxi, driven by Hugh D. Gravitt. She died August 16, 1949.
This story contradicts what PG heard about the accident. The other story is that Mrs. Marsh had been at the Atlanta Women’s Club, having cocktails, where her husband met her. In this account, Mrs. Marsh was bombed, and never knew what hit her. (One mile south west, and fifty five years later, PG had an encounter with a speeding taxi.)
On page 23, another myth is challenged. The traditional story is that if you asked Margaret Mitchell if she based Scarlet O’Hara on herself, she would look horrified. “Scarlet O’Hara was a hussy”. This view is challenged by an Atlanta native, who went to a party, and saw that Margaret Mitchell was the life of the party. “Scarlet O’Hara is certainly the personification of Margaret Mitchell”.
Margaret Mitchell was a reporter for the Atlanta Journal. She married John Marsh on July 4, 1925, and injured her ankle in 1926. Every day Mr. Marsh brought home books to his bedridden wife. One day, he brought home a writing pad, and said “You have read everything I’ve brought you so now you write a book.”
The couple lived in a small apartment on Crescent Avenue, across from a mural of a southern colonel. (I would even go north for Southern Bread) They moved out of “the dump”, in 1932, to an apartment at 4 17th Street. When Peggy sold a few books, and John’s career at Georgia Power prospered, they moved to the Della Manta. This was at the corner of Piedmont and South Prado, across from her beloved Piedmont Driving Club.
Mrs. Marsh wrote and wrote, preferring a typewriter to a writing pad. Each chapter was kept in a manila envelope, which were piled up all over the place. Some chapters were re written sixty times. In 1935, Harold Latham, of MacMillan Publishers, was in the south looking for talent. He persuaded Mrs. Marsh to let him look at her book, and would not give it back to her.
The title of her book was borrowed from a poem by Ernest Dawson, Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae Sub Regno Cynarae . The line of the poem was “I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, (spell check suggestion: Canary) in my fashion; I forgot much Cynara, Gone With The Wind!”
The book became a runaway best seller. Macy’s of New York helped by ordering 50,000 copies. The idea was to offer GWTW as a loss leader, as Gimbels was doing. Federal price controls ruled this to be illegal, and Macy’s returned 35,000 copies to the publisher.
The first printing of GWTW has a mistake on the back page. The book was published June 30, 1936. The first edition says, on back of the title page, “Published May 1939”.
David Selznick bought the rights to GWTW, and you probably know the rest of that story. Shortly before the premiere of GWTW, someone at the Piedmont Driving Club pulled a chair out from under Mrs. Marsh. She had not started to stand up. Mrs. Marsh crashed hard on the floor, and hurt her back. This would require two rounds of back surgery.
Celestine Sibley tells a story about the Atlanta Women’s Press Club. Miss Sibley moved to Atlanta in 1941, and went to her first AWPC meeting, at the Henry Grady Hotel. “A plump little woman in a funny Carmen Miranda style hat” noticed the newcomer, and started to talk to her. In the early days of the war, there were blackouts, to save the city from German bombers. The plump little woman was an air raid warden in the area around Piedmont Park. Finally, Miss Sibley said she had to go catch the Piedmont-Morningside bus. Peggy Marsh said she had a car, and could take her home.
PG is reading I Remember Margaret Mitchell by Yolande Gwin. It is a collection of memories of Peggy Marsh, who wrote “Gone with the Wind”. ( If you didn’t know that, just close this window, and go look for your “friends” on facebook.)
Yolande Gwin was for many years the society editor of the Atlanta Constitution. She wrote a review of GWTW in 1936, before it’s publication. Mrs. Marsh sent her a letter of appreciation… “I never dreamed you were going to give me so much space. I thought, as the resume of the story was so long. that you’d just give an introductory paragraph and let me ride. And I’d have ridden, just as happy as a n—-r at a hog killing. But all that space, so long a story. so completely flattering a story – well. I’m still blushing about the ankles, as Jurgen once remarked … And oh, Yolande. how nice of you to refer to me as a “young author!” Me, who have passed the broiling stage and the frying stage and am rapidly approaching the roasting and baking stage. “
There is probably going to be a second post about I Remember Margaret Mitchell. Chamblee54 is not responsible for GWTW junkies who overdose on Margaret Mitchell trivia. This post is about fact checking, google, and how a couple of simple questions can turn into an all afternoon goose chase.
There are two basic questions: Was Yolande Gwin married, and did she work for the Journal or the Constitution? As for the first, the expression Ms. sounds like a mosquito with a speech impediment, and is not appropriate for use with an society page writer. The trouble is, Miss or Mrs. depends on the marital status of the woman. After an hour or so of looking up google results, PG cannot find out whether or not Yolande Gwin was married. Sometimes, the correct answer is “I don’t know”.
As for the second, an obituary for the lady says that she wrote for the Journal-Constitution for fifty years. The fact is, the Journal and Constitution were separate papers until they were combined in 1982. (Cox Enterprises bought the Constitution in 1950. This made the Journal and the Constitution sister papers, rather than competitors.) As for who Yolande Gwin wrote for, there are contradictory stories on the internet. A google book about rural electrification says that Yolande Gwin wrote for the Constitution. The Atlanta History Center says the Yolande Gwin wrote for the Journal. They have a picture of the lady, with a ghastly AHC watermark across her face.
Another google book, The last linotype: the story of Georgia and its newspapers since World War II By Millard B. Grimes confirms that Yolande Gwin worked for the Constitution. “”One day I was sitting there looking at a blank sheet of paper; I didn’t have any news. And that’s when I happened to remember kidding Peggy (Margaret Mitchell) about writing the “Great American Novel.” so I called her up and said, ‘How about that Great American Novel. have you ever finished it? I need some news.’ She said, ‘You won’t believe it, but Macmillan has taken it.’ And I said, ‘Goody, goody. Grand.’ And I put a piece in the column (written under the name Sally Forth) about it, never expecting it to be what it was, you know.” The dale was February 9, 1936.”
The Soho Press Book Of 80s Short Fiction
The Soho Press Book of 80s Short Fiction turned up in the Dekalb Library system, and has provided some cheap thrills. One negative review catalogs a few of the charms.”Beware. Raw, graphic sexual content. I had intended this as a reading group choice. It was a pre-order so I had no forewarning or list of titles (“Sodomy” would have given me pause). Cover listed Raymond Carver, Mary Gaitskill, Amy Hempel, Jamaica Kincaid. Book arrived with cover detached.”
Weird Fucks Lynne Tillman is the first story. A young lady has an eventful summer. She takes up with a married man, whose wife dries her hair in the oven. Is this what happened to Sylvia Plath?
So Much Water So Close To Home Raymond Carver was a delight. I had listened to several of Mr. Carver’s stories read on youtube, but never read the text. SMWCTH is a tasteful story. Just-plain-folks go camping, and see too much.
Sodomy Gary Indiana jerks us off back into a New York state of mind. A man is talking about two of his late seventies boyfriends. One is a terrific fuck, but not much else. The other is a confused, off-and-on emotional connection. Mr. Indiana talks about 1978 as being “before the war.”
The Angel Patrick McGrath is the story of Harry Talboys, an eccentric old man who estivated in lower Manhattan. The old man lived his days in a gin fueled haze, while telling tales of his former glory. Eventually, the young man who wrote the story couldn’t take anymore of the old geezer.
River Of Names Dorothy Allison is tough to read. It’s about a lifestyle that I am blessedly unfamiliar with. A hyper productive South Carolina family gets through life, sometimes. RON opens up with one of the sisters taking a pail of soiled rags out to the fire. This scene involves the sense of smell.
Secretary Mary Gaitskill “A young woman, recently released from a mental hospital, gets a job as a secretary to a demanding lawyer, where their employer-employee relationship turns into a sexual, sadomasochistic one.” This is where the tales get funky. There is a connection to a movie and the description of the movie sounds different from the story … there’s no mental hospital discharge in the story. The young lady seems to be just a helpless young lady, who lives with her helpful parents. She gets a job in a law firm. The lawyer turns out to be a terrible person, who likes to beat her. She has a curious relationship with the whole thing … it’s a disturbing tale.
Wrong Dennis Cooper If Secretary wasn’t fucked up enough, the next story is by Dennis Cooper. Some guy lives in lower Manhattan during the seventies, and goes around killing people. Until he gets killed himself, and then goes on a deceased person monolog.
Debbie’s Barium Swallow Laurie Weeks makes william burroughs look like dick, jane, and sally. “There’s a guy named Benny lymphoma tracking … God or whatever Satan daddy lifts my skirt like he does at the slightest whim … what words can Debbie use for this secret procedure … she crawls and shakes with fever in the toxic dirt crawling one knee before the other … bitching from 34th Street to 35th a node shaped lip traveling from … your job in the … Hospital’s authoritative smoothing fekade” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
091122
This is my 911 story. I repeat it every year at this time. Every year I say this will be the last time. This year is a mess. We are destroying the village to save it. The action part of 091101 was over by 11 am. This quagmire drags on and on. Nobody knows how things will turn out.
I was at work, and someone called out that someone had run a plane into the World Trade Center. I didn’t think much of it, until I heard that the second tower had been hit, then the Pentagon, then the towers collapsed, then a plane crashed in Pennsylvania.
I focused on my job most of the day. There was always drama at that facility, and concentrating on my production duties helped to keep me saner. This was roughly the halfway point of my seven year tenure at this place.
One of the other workers was a bully for Jesus. He was a hateful loudmouth. After the extent of the damage became known, he shouted “They are doing this for Allah,” and prayed at his desk. The spectacle of the BFJ praying made me want to puke.
I became alienated from Jesus during these years. Once, I had once been tolerant of Christians and Jesus, as one would be with an eccentric relative. I began to loath the entire affair. I hear of others who found comfort in religion during this difficult time. That option simply was not available for me.
Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. “This item is part of a collection of images of downtown Atlanta streets that were taken before the viaduct construction of 1927 – 1929. Some of the covered streets became part of Underground Atlanta.”
Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest 2022 Part Two
Part Two of the 2022 chamblee54 report on The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is here. (BALL wear LIT uhn) Parts one and three are there. Pictures for this affair are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
It was a dark and stormy night, made darker still by the melancholy that gripped the drainpipes of my soul in a plumber’s wrench of despair that opened the u-trap of my consciousness to remove the last, great greaseball of hope. Jim Anderson, Flushing, MI
I stood transfixed at the eerie sight before me, so strange, so odd, so peculiar, so weird, so bizarre, so eldritch—Gods, mine ocular ducts weren’t meant to witness such blasphemous heresy—so indescribable, beyond all possible descriptions, at least in any kind of adjectival way!
Gabriel Burch, Edmond, OK
Even though the heavy snow forecast threatened transportation problems at the mountain pass leading to the social engagement of the season, every invited member of the party had RSVPed in the affirmative, for the single reason that the Donner family chef was nationally recognized for his all-vegan menu. John Hardi, Falls Church, VA
Clear, plump jellyfish lay scattered across the beach, like so many discarded breast implants.
Sara Corris, Brooklyn, NY
The trees sighed with pleasure as the wind caressed their limbs, the lake lapped contentedly at the shore, the grass waved cheerily to all and sundry, and the moon smiled benignly between the playful clouds while George buried his latest victim. Nick Waites, Bishop, Auckland, UK
“The clouds resembled an endless roll of runaway toilet paper that unspooled itself into a massive fluffy pile, the sound of the lightning banged like hundreds of inadvertently dropped toilet seats, and the rain quickly flooded the street and spilled over the curb like a toilet clogged with who-knows-what,” reported eyewitness to the sudden storm and flash flood, Steve Talbot of Steve’s Plumbing. Mark Meiches, Dallas, TX
The pallid North Dakota winter coughed its phlegmy wind in my face, spattering my face with its icy spittle. Andrea Dumas, West Fargo, ND
I’m very very good and I know this because momma told me and all her bridge friends that I was an angel she got when the stork dropped me from the sky and she says I’m such a good girl so if you want to be with a real honest to goodness angel tonight come on down to the corner of Bitcoin and Pussycat Way for a very special time with an angel who accepts American Express.
Sharon Durken, Port Wing, WI
When Big Rita was on parade in a tight skirt, moving like a burlap bag full of bobcats, the men in town sat up and took notice, knowing the hunt was on, for she had run the gamut from wealthy philanthropists to dopeheads and bikers, though, until today, she had maintained a shred of dignity by always rebuffing English professors. John Hardi, Falls Church, VA
Intellectual Bulimia
One of the touted TED talks in the weekly email is Color blind or color brave? It is by Mellody Hobson, a POC in the investment business. It is the standard call to talk more about race. Talk, talk, talk, and talk some more. The word listen is not used.
At the 3:13 mark, Mrs. Hobson makes a remarkable statement. “Now I know there are people out there who will say that the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity, right?” (Yes, this is a TED talk.) It is possible that someone has said that. There are also people who say the earth is flat.
PG asked Mr. Google about this. The top two results are about the TED talk. The third result is an article in Forbes magazine, Racism In America Is Over. It is written by John McWhorter, one of the “black guys at Bloggingheads.tv.” Dr. McWhorter does say racism is over, sort of. The problems that remain are a lot worse. Too much food for thought, for a population with intellectual bulimia.
There is a quote in the Forbes article that is pure gold. “When decrying racism opens no door and teaches no skill, it becomes a schoolroom tattletale affair. It is unworthy of all of us: “He’s just a racist” intoned like “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah!””
There are a lot more results. PG is getting tired of looking. If you want to see for yourself, google “the election of Barack Obama meant that it was the end of racial discrimination for all eternity.” Except for a rogue title editor at Forbes, almost nobody has said that. This is a repost. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Religion And Perfume
Religion and perfume have several things in common. They are both fun to smell, but dangerous to swallow. A tasteful drop behind the ear is pleasant. Too much, and you will run from the room gasping for breath. Both are cheap products, sold in a fancy bottle, at a steep markup.
Before easy access to water, people did not bathe every day. To cover up the aroma of human existence, many used fragrances. This too is similar to the function of religion.
Perfume has been considered a feminine product. In a clever marketing move, a masculine scent was called cologne, and sold to men. Religion is gross to many people, so it is sold as faith.
Smell is a driving force in animal behavior. Ants used smell to communicate, and perform feats in numbers which would be impossible as individuals. Smells go directly to the brain, without filtering and processing like sounds, sights, and tastes. Religion is the emotional equivalent of odors. This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Tiki Torch
This is a repost from 2017. There was a wild weekend in Charlottesville VA. You probably heard about it. The media… corporate, social, anti social … is not known for restraint. The click bait happy datamongers go crazy when a racial conflict emerges. Social media swarms with virtue signalling, as the insecure/insincere masses leap at the opportunity to be seen “on the right side of history.”
The tiki torch boys enjoy bad press, and see it as as proof that they are cool. People see negative reaction as an affirmation of their virtue. One example is this purple prose headline: Procter & Gamble Release an Ad About ‘the Talk,’ and White People Respond With the Wettest, Saltiest, Stupidest White Tears Ever. A soap company decides that the hardships faced by black people are a good marketing gimmick. It is assumed that some white people will not like it, and will make stupid comments on facebook. It is all part of the game.
The white people parade friday night was breathlessly reported. The alt-right children were routinely labelled nazis. The original nazis almost conquered Europe, killed twenty million Soviets, and were one of the fiercest war machines ever created. The star performer saturday flunked out of the US Army because he could not meet their standards. Why do people routinely label these obnoxious children nazis? The Germans had standards.
Let’s do a bit of speculation. What if the tiki torch parade had been ignored? Let the idiots have their parade. Surround them with law enforcement, and keep antifa away. Repeat this on Saturday. Keep the alt right far away from antifa. Have a media blackout… don’t give these clowns, both alt right and antifa, the attention that they crave. Let the counter protesters have their sign waving party. When the rally is over, James Fields will get in his Dodge Challenger and drive back to Ohio. Everyone can go back home, eat hamburgers, and be happy. White idiots will get less attention.
Which brings us to Donald Trump. The democrats made racism a campaign issue. The slimy crookedness of DJT was ignored, and replaced by screaming racist, racist. When he won, anything perceived as racist is suddenly his fault. The black people feel more alienated than before. The lingering liberals blame anything they don’t like on the bottle blonde butthead. People are blaming the tiki torch antics, of the slobbering mob, on Donald Trump. Critical thinking is called for.
America loves to talk about police brutality. The police had a slow day Saturday. Deputies shoot, kill man who lunged at them with knife, official says. A non African American, Hispanic, man, Eduardo Navarrete, was beamed out on meth. He lunged at police with a knife, with fatal results. This was the only officer involved shooting reported on Saturday.
The role played by antifa, or anti fascism, is uncertain. Apparently, they wanted to give the alt right a fight. Since this makes the alt right seem virtuous, the offer the fight was accepted. When you wrestle with a pig, you get dirty, and the hog has a good time. The alt right is taking the blame for this mess, along with DJT, the police, and, of course, racism. Antifa is getting a free ride. If antifa had not been there on saturday, the alt right would have had to fight with themselves. Maybe antifa, whoever they are, and whoever is funding them, needs to be held accountable.
This too shall pass away. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” The spell check suggestion for antifa is Tiffany.
QAnon Woke Up
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DOJ pushes back against Eastman effort to reclaim his cellphone
Attacker Used Hola Free VPN as Denial of Service Botnet
QAnon Woke Up the Real Deep State An open letter to QAnon, “stop the steal,” and …
18 Famous Musicians Who Went from Rich to Bankrupt
Incelmatics on the C-Realm Podcast 562: Broken Monogamy
No Monkey Business with Monkey Pox in NYC By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D.
How breastfeeding actually works is awe-inspiring … marvel at this miraculous process.
man upset over cold McDonald’s fries arrested after police learn he’s wanted for murder
Hardcore History lost episode: Dan Carlin on Richard Nixon
Weighing the pros and cons of Beto O’Rourke dropping an f-bomb on a heckler
Notes of Debates on the Articles of Confederation, Continued July 30. 1776.
Notes of Debates on the Articles of Confederation, Continued July. 26.
The Roads Not Taken … explores role of Russian history in Ukranian war.
‘I just swallowed a bee’: Ontario Premier Doug Ford creates buzz after insect episode
Whistling Jack Smith – I was Kaiser Bill’s Batman (1967)
Rules for covering DeSantis visit to Pittsburgh pose ethical quandary, experts say
How the 1968 Psychedelic Film Head Destroyed the Monkees & Became a Cult Classic
Meet Mercury, the Atlanta Rapper-Skateboarder Who Keeps It Extreme
More Black men are dying in Portland homicides than anyone else
The Espionage Act Gets An Instant Makeover – law reviled by liberalism ten minutes ago …
immune supplements bought on Amazon found to have labels that don’t match contents
Anne Heche Was Working On Sex Trafficking Film Before Death
“I’m Trans, But Regret My Penis Inversion Surgery” : MtoF Detrans Speaks Out
Justice Department under pressure to explain raid on Trump’s estate
Ask Not What They’re Doing to Trump — Ask What Trump Did For You
Украинские бойцы “перестали стесняться” на поле боя – Арестович Виолетта Орлова
logistics ~ Linda Faye ~ walton county ~ the shovel raid ~ trump
Mike Sammes ~ doghouse roses ~ townes van zandt ~ lagrade ~ anne heche ~ griftart
#odyl ~ smashburger ~ swallowed a bee ~ country ass town ~ thirteen lives
repost ~ deauthentication ~ disengage ~ ar 15 ~ repost
naps ~ paxlovid ~ sylvia plath ~ gaza ~ @glossitis
@chamblee54 @glossitis I am reading a story, “Weird Fucks.”There is a lady who dries her hair in the oven. Maybe that is what Sylvia Plath was doing. ~ @OptimoPrincipi 1) The Corinth Canal is one of history’s greatest engineering feats. The 4-mile canal cuts through the Isthmus of Corinth allowing ships fast access between the Ionian and Aegean Sea. Though opened in 1893, it was actually a Roman superstar that first broke ground on the project. ~ “Slaves rather weaken than strengthen the State, and there is therefore some difference between them and Sheep. Sheep will never make any Insurrections.” Dr. Franklin. ~ @ChicagoCritter Dash cam footage of hit & run in the Jackson Park Highlands neighborhood that occurred at about 5 a.m this morning. #chicago #chicagosscanner ~ @chamblee54 @kittypurrzog @helenlewis Marx said Religion is the opiate of the people Today, “Politics is the amphetamine of the people” ~ so much water so close to home ~ When news broke that Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate had been raided by the FBI on August 8, people on one side of the Left/Right social construct were jubilant. People on the other side were outraged. I didn’t feel much of anything. I care roughly as much about Donald Trump’s well-being as he cared about mine. ~ @chamblee54 I tried to post a quote from this on facebook. “Posts that look like spam according to our Community Guidelines are blocked on Facebook and can’t be edited.” ~ @TrentTelenko Alright folks, let’s strap in for the most important logistical thread🧵of the Russo-Ukrainian War. This thread is about how much artillery ammunition the Russian Army has left over from the Cold War and what shape it is in. It’s going to be a ride. ~ pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” ~ selah
The Funeral Of Elvis
This is a repost. PG was going to write about some depressing subject. People that are not kind to each other. People in Israel and people in Gaza just don’t seem to get along. Somebody driving a “faded red F-150 pickup truck” in Livonia MI was mean to a little girl. (HT to Neo Prodigy.) Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
There is a saying, “if a story seems too bad to be true, it probably isn’t”. PG tried to google that phrase, and got confused. Then he seemed to remember reading it in a column by Molly Ivins. Another google adventure, and there was this video. Miss Ivins, who met her maker January 31, 2007, was promoting a book. She sat down with a bald headed man to talk about it. PG could only listen to 24:30 of this video before being seized with the urge to write a story. There is a transcript, which makes “borrowing” so much easier. This film has 34 minutes to go, which just might yield another story.
Molly Ivins was a Texas woman. These days there is a lot of talk about Texas, with Governor Big Hair aiming to be the next POTUS under indictment. Mr. Perry claims that his record as Texas Governor qualifies him to have his finger on the nuclear trigger. Miss Ivins repeats something that PG has heard before… “in our state we have the weak governor system, so that really not a great deal is required of the governor, not necessarily to know much or do much. And we’ve had a lot of governors who did neither. “ It makes you wonder how much of that “economic miracle” is because of hair spray.
Texas politics makes about as much sense as Georgia politics. For a lady, with a way with words, it is a gold mine. “the need you have for descriptive terms for stupid when you write about Texas politics is practically infinite. Now I’m not claiming that our state Legislature is dumber than the average state Legislature, but it tends to be dumb in such an outstanding way. It’s, again, that Texas quality of exaggeration and being slightly larger than life. And there are a fair number of people in the Texas Legislature of whom it could fairly be said, `If dumb was dirt, they would cover about an acre.’ And I’m not necessarily opposed to that. I’m–agree with an old state senator who always said that, `If you took all the fools out of the Legislature, it would not be a representative body anymore.'”
We could go through this conversation for a long time, but you probably want to skip ahead and look at pictures. There is one story in this transcript that is too good not to borrow. For some reason, Molly Ivins went to work for The New York Times, aka the gray lady. In August of 1977, she was in the right place at the right time.
Mr. LAMB: And how long did you spend with The New York Times as a reporter?
Ms. IVINS: Six years with The New York Times. Some of it in New York as a political reporter at City Hall in Albany and then later as bureau chief out in the Rocky Mountains.
Mr. LAMB: Would you take a little time and tell us about reporting on the funeral of Elvis Presley?
Ms. IVINS: Oh, now there is something that when I’ve been standing in the checkout line at the grocery store and if I really need to impress people, I just let fall that I covered Elvis’ funeral. And, boy, people just practically draw back with awe. It may yet turn out to be my greatest claim to fame.
I was sitting in The New York City Times one day when I noticed a whole no–knot of editors up around the desk having a–a great scrum of concern, you could tell. It looked sort of like an anthill that had just been stepped on. And it turns out–The New York Times has a large obituary desk, and they prepare obituaries for anybody of prominence who might croak. But it turns out–you may recall that Elvis Presley died untimely and they were completely unprepared.
Now this is an enormous news organization. They have rock music critics and classical music critics and opera critics, but they didn’t have anybody who knew about Elvis Presley’s kind of music. So they’re lookin’ across a whole acre of reporters, and you could see them decide, `Ah-ha, Ivins. She talks funny. She’ll know about Mr. Presley.’
So I wound up writing Elvis’ obituary for The New York Times. I had to refer to him throughout as Mr. Presley. It was agonizing. That’s the style at The New York Times–Mr. Presley. Give me a break. And the next day they sold more newspapers than they did after John Kennedy was assassinated, so that even the editors of The New York Times, who had not quite, you know, been culturally aton–tuned to Elvis, decided that we should send someone to report on the funeral. And I drew that assignment. What a scene it was.
Mr. LAMB: You–you say in the book that you got in the cab and you said, `Take me to Graceland.’ The cabbie peels out of the airport doing 80 and then turns full around to the backseat and drawls, `Ain’t it a shame Elvis had to die while the Shriners are in town?’
Ms. IVINS: That’s exactly what he said. `Shame Elvis had to die while the Shriners are in town.’ And I kind of raised by eyebrows. And sure enough, I realized what he–what he meant after I had been there for awhile because, you know, Shriners in convention–I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a whole lot of Shriners in convention, but they were having a huge national convention that very week in Memphis. And they tend to wear their little red fezzes, and sometimes they drink too much and they march around the hotel hallways tooting on New Year’s Eve horns and riding those funny little tricycles and generally cutting up and having a good time. That’s your Shriners in convention, always something very edifying and enjoyable to watch. But they–every–every hotel room in Memphis was occupied with celebrating Shriners, and then Elvis dies and all these tens of thousands of grieving, hysterical Elvis Presley fans descend on the town.
So you got a whole bunch of sobbing, hysterical Elvis fans, you got a whole bunch of cavorting Shriners. And on top of that they were holding a cheerleading camp. And the cheerleading camp–I don’t know if your memory–with the ethos of the cheerleading camp, but the deal is that every school sends its team–team of cheerleaders to cheerleading camp.
And your effort there at the camp is to win the spirit stick, which looks, to the uninitiated eye, a whole lot like a broom handle painted red, white and blue. But it is the spirit stick. And should your team win it for three days running, you get to keep it. But that has never happened. And the way you earn the spirit stick is you show most spirit. You cheer for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You cheer when the pizza man brings the pizza. You do handsprings end over end down the hallway to the bathroom. I tell you, those young people will throw–show an amount of spirit that would just astonish you in an effort to win that stick.
So here I was for an entire week, dealing with these three groups of people: the young cheerleaders trying to win the spirit stick, the cavorting Shriners and the grieving, hysterical Elvis fans. And I want to assure you that The New York Times is not the kind of newspaper that will let you write about that kind of rich human comedy.
Mr. LAMB: Why?
Ms. IVINS: Because The New York Times, at least in my day, was a very stuffy, pompous newspaper.
Mr. LAMB: What about today?
Ms. IVINS: A little bit better, little bit better than it was.
Mr. LAMB: And…
Ms. IVINS: Has–has–it has a tendency, recidivist tendencies, though. You–you will notice if you read The Times, it–it collapses into pomposity and stuffiness with some regularity.
Mr. LAMB: Why did you leave it?
Ms. IVINS: Well, I–I actually got into trouble at The New York City Times for describing a community chu–chicken killing out West as a gang pluck. Abe Rosenthal was then the editor of the Times and he was not amused.
Mr. LAMB: Did–but did they let it go? Did they let it…
Ms. IVINS: Oh, no. It never made it in the paper. Good heavens, no. Such a thing would never get in The Times in my day.
POSTSCRIPT PG found some pictures, marked up the text, and was ready to post the story. He decided to listen to a bit more of the discussion between Molly Ivins and the bald headed man. When he got to this point, it became apparent that he could listen to Molly Ivins talk, or he could post his story, but he could not do both at the same time.
Ms. IVINS: Oh, well, of course, I’m gonna make fun of it. I mean, Berkeley, California, if you are from Texas, is just hilarious.
Mr. LAMB: Why?
Ms. IVINS: Well, of course, it is just the absolute center of liberalism and political correctness. And it is a veritable hotbed of people, of–bless their hearts, who all think alike, in a liberal way. And, of course, I’m sometimes called a liberal myself, and you would think I would have felt right at home there. But I just am so used to–I’m so used to Texas that I found the culture at Berkeley hysterical.
Doghouse Roses
There is a synchronicity to writing about Doghouse Roses in the downstairs parking lot at Walmart. DR is a collection of stories, written by Steve Earle. PG was only vaguely aware of Mr. Earle when he stumbled onto DR at the Friends-of-the-Library table. It turns out that Mr. Earle is a country music star, prison veteran, drug addict, seven time bridegroom, and a great American. It is possible that some of the DR tales are autobiographical.
The title story kicks off the collection. A terminally addicted former country star is being driven home by his wife. On their way out of LA, they go to the hood to buy some rock. While there, the dealer is wasted by an angry handgun. The story, like most of DR, is entertaining, and sort of believable.
Some high minded types read to become a better person, in one way or another. To PG, education/inspiration/motivation are all well and good, but not nearly as important as entertainment. If DR has any life lessons, they are well hidden. PG just wants to pass the time, until the nurse comes to the waiting room, and calls his name.
Over the weekend, PG read a 22k word essay by James Baldwin. If PG is brave enough, there might be a blog post forthcoming. Mr. Baldwin is not fun to read. “But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.” After wading through 22306 words of this, PG has done his duty reading for the summer.
Getting back to DR, the third story is about a drug runner in Mexico. “The American” displays a knowledge for some subtleties of life in Mexico. He crashes his plane, and just barely makes it back home. “The American” is in two more of the DR stories. We don’t know if he is based on a real person, or the result of Mr. Earle’s well lubricated imagination.
Since this was a used book purchase, there is no need to take DR back to the library. DR is 207 skinny pages. There is still room on the shelf. Pictures today are from ” The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. “
One History Of Religion
I was a southern baptist all my life. Arguably, I became a baptist when my mother converted in 1938, but really didn’t get with the program until I was born in 1954. The story is that Daddy called the choir director at six in the morning to sign me up.
First Baptist in Atlanta was a big church on Peachtree street, about a mile north of downtown. (A few years ago, they sold the land to a developer, and moved to the suburbs. I was working a block away when they tore down the building, and got some chips of brick as a souvenir.) I sang in the “cherub” choir. This was quite an experience when we performed in front of a full house. I have good memories of Sunday school, vacation bible school, and the choir program.
One thing I did not like, even at that young age, was the preacher. He was a greasy haired man who shouted a lot, and had a mean streak. Years later, I heard persistent rumors that he was gay. (I should note that this is not Charles Stanley. It is the man who preceded him.) One Sunday, we were watching him preach, and he shouted, “this is the word of G-d”. He then waved a Bible in the air, and slammed it into the pulpit. I thought, if that is the word of G-d, maybe he shouldn’t slam it down like that.
In 1962, mom and dad decided to move to a church closer to home. I liked Briarcliff Baptist. About this time, I first heard about being “saved from sin”, and thought it was a pretty cool idea. I also was in the cub scouts, and since their meetings were the same day as choir practice, I quit the choir. I attended church regularly the next few years, but never did join the church, and get baptized. The custom of pressuring children to make a “commitment of faith”, and get baptized, reflects poorly on Jesus. There are some other family issues that came up about this time. They are too personal to get into here, but they affected my attitude towards the church.
After a while, I was 17 years old, and working in a restaurant that was open until 1am on Saturday night. I decided one Sunday that I didn’t want to get up for church. I have only been back to that building once in the intervening 50 years. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Chamblee54 
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