Post Racial America
It is a cliche among certain pundits that this is not “Post Racial America.” No one seems to know what PRA would look like. PRA might be less noisy, with fewer odors, than the current model. The opinion that we do not live in PRA seems unanimous. After PG heard the denial of PRA one too many times, he began to wonder something. Who said America is Post Racial?
Mr. Google has 119 million answers to the question “who said america is post racial?” The short answer is nobody. The closest thing on the front Google page is an NPR commentary from January 2008. This was the early stages of the BHO run for the White House. The commenter said that the election of a dark skinned POTUS might usher in a post racial era in America.
This piece will not have any fresh opinions about race relations in America. That subject has been worn out elsewhere. If someone finds it to their advantage to denounce “racism”, there will be an audience. The truth is, very few people have ever said that America is Post Racial.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Boston Tea Party Story
For better or worse (it’s ok to curse), the tea party is a part of the scene. The seminal event was the Boston Tea Party in 1775. The first post below is a look at what really happened in Boston harbor. It is tough to discern truth from fable at a distance of 236 years, but we will try. The tea party metaphor gets worked over in another post, would you like a refill?
The second part is a look at the phrase “founding fathers”. This phrase is “liberally” sprinkled into rhetoric of all persuasions. This author sees a square peg being forced into round holes.
In the first year of the Obama regime, America saw the rise of the “Tea Party.” These affairs are usually right wing, and have lots of clever signs. The general idea is that taxes are too high, government is too big, and that the people need to do something.
The namesake event was the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, crowds of people (some dressed as Mohawks) went on board the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver. The crowds threw overboard 342 chests, containing 90,000 pounds of tea. The crowds were unhappy because the East India Company was importing the tea into America, with a 3 pence per pound tax.
A website called listverse plays the contrarian. (spell check suggestions: contraction, contraption) According to them : “American colonists did not protest the Tea Tax with the Boston Tea Party because it raised the price of tea. The American colonists preferred Dutch tea to English tea. The English Parliament placed an embargo on Dutch tea in the colonies, so a huge smuggling profession developed. To combat this, the English government LOWERED the tax on tea so that the English tea would be price competitive with Dutch teas. The colonists (actually some colonists led by the chief smugglers) protested by dumping the tea into Boston Harbor.”
According to Wikipedia, the Dutch tea had been smuggled into the colonies for some time. The Dutch government had given their companies a tax advantage, which allowed them to sell their product cheaper. Finally, the British government cut their taxes, but kept a tax in place. The “Townsend Tax” was to be used to pay governing colonial officials, and make them less dependent on the colonists.
In Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia, the tea boats were turned around, and returned to England with their merchandise. In Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the tea be unloaded. Two of the Governor’s sons were tea dealers, and stood to make a profit from the taxed tea. There are also reports that the smugglers were in the crowd dumping tea into the harbor.
The photogenic tea party movement seems to be destined to stay a while. The question remains, how much does it have to do with the namesake event?
People often try to justify their opinions by saying that the “founding fathers” agree with them. They often are guilty of selective use of history. A good place to start would be to define what we mean by the phrase founding fathers.
The FF word was not used before 1916. A senator from Ohio named Warren Harding used the phrase in the keynote address of the 1916 Republican convention. Mr. Harding was elected President in 1920, and is regarded as perhaps the most corrupt man to ever hold the office.
There are two groups of men who could be considered the founding fathers. (The fathers part is correct. Both groups are 100% male.) The Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which cut the ties to England. Eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution that governs America today. While the Continental Congress was braver than the Constitution writers (We must hang together, or we will hang separately), the Constitution is the document that tells our government how to function. For the purposes of this feature, the men of the Constitutional Convention are the founding fathers.
Before moving on, we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention. Both documents were signed by George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson. George Wythe left the Constitutional Convention without signing the new document. (He needed to take care of his sick wife. Mr. Wythe later supported ratification.) Elbridge Gerry (the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights. Both Mr. Wythe, and Mr. Gerry signed the Declaration of Independence.
The original topic of this discussion was about whether the founding fathers owned slaves. Apparently, PG is not the only person to wonder about this. If you go to google, and type in “did the founding fathers”, the first four answers are owned slaves, believed in G-d, have a death wish, and smoke weed.
The answer, to the obvious question, is an obvious answer. Yes, many of the founding fathers owned slaves. A name by name rundown of the 39 signatories of the Constitution was not done for this blogpost. There is this revealing comment at wiki answers about the prevalence of slave ownership. “John Adams, his second cousin Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine were the only men who are traditionally known as founding fathers who did not own slaves. Benjamin Franklin was indeed a founder of the Abolitionist Society, but he owned two slaves, named King and George. Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette routinely ran ads for sale or purchase of slaves.
Patrick Henry is another founding father who owned slaves, although his speeches would make one think otherwise. Despite his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, he had up to 70 slaves at a time, apologizing a few times along the way, saying he knew it was wrong, that he was accountable to his God, and citing the “general inconvenience of living without them.”
Patrick Henry was a star of the Revolution, but not present at the Constitutional Convention. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was in Europe during the convention. Mr. Jefferson not only owned slaves, he took one to be his mistress and kidsmama.
One of the more controversial features of the Constitution is the 3/5 rule. Here are the original words “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In other words, a slave was only considered to be 60% of a person.
That seems rather harsh. The truth is, it was a compromise. The agricultural southern states did not want to give up their slaves. The northern states did not want to give up Congressional representation. This was the first of many compromises made about slavery, ending with the War between the States. This webpage goes into more detail about the nature of slavery at the start of the U.S.A.
The research for this feature turned up a rather cynical document called The myth of the “Founding Fathers” . It is written by Adolph Nixon. (The original post is no longer available. Here is a partial substitute.) He asks : “most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they’re wiser than you are?”
Mr. Nixon reviews the 39 white men who signed the Constitution. He does not follow the rule, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all. Of the 39, 12 were specified as slave owners, with many tagged as “slave breeders”.
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have served America well. However it was intended, it was written so that it could be amended, and to grow with the young republic. It has on occasion been ignored. (When was the last time Congress declared war?) However fine a document it is, it was created by men. These were men of their time, who could not have foreseen the changes that America has gone through. Those who talk the most about founding fathers often know the least.
A big thank you goes to wikipedia Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This repost was written like H. P. Lovecraft.
How Do You Take Your Coffee?
It was a saturday. They are different when you work the rest of the week. Between laundry, buying stuff, unclogging pipes, and writing bad poetry, PG found time to take two internet quizzes.
The first one, The How Gay Are You Test, was an artificial joke. “Put your fabulousness on test and find out just how gay you are by answering those few questions! We dare you! Cher is… Who? ~ Goddess of Pop ~ Meh!” (Spell check suggestion: fabulousness – nebulousness, fatuousness)
The designers of this test might have been on drugs. When you click on the possible answer, it dances around, and blinks off and on. You have to click it several times to select, and then half the time it doesn’t take. When you try to get your results, the test makes you fill in the missing questions. You click on it a few more times, and eventually it is selected.
The gayness test can be copied in it’s entirety, unlike the other test, Which Punk Icon Are You? Punk icon is a buzzfeed thing. It has snappy graphics, and is mostly uncopiable. You do have the thrilling option of selecting buzzfeed as an answer to the question, “What’s the least punk thing you can think of?” The questions are in all caps, which PG finds vaguely immoral.
This is going to be a short post. The text averse can go ahead and skip to the pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. One result was “13% gay! This makes you not really gay. We’re sorry… In any case, you can get yourself a Gay Pack and develop your gayness further! ” The other was Patti Smith.
Snowjam Blame Racism
It could have been predicted. Atlanta made the national news this week, and did not look good. We all know this, and many have opinions as to the nature of the problem. Now, Slate magazine has their hypothesis, What Does Racism Have to Do With Gridlock?
Now, in this part of the world, race usually has something to do with just about anything. The lack of preparation, the skepticism about the warnings, and the disaster that ensued are all, to this author, subordinate to “the question of race.” The rest of America is amused.
“Exhibit A” is the failure of the T-SPLOST referendum. What the author fails to mention is that T-SPLOST was opposed by the local NAACP. They were upset because there were no plans for a rail line to South DeKalb county. T-SPLOST was opposed by many people, with a wide variety of labels.
T-SPLOST was a horribly flawed proposal. Two weeks before the referendum, the staff of Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed objected to being blamed for the problems with T-SPLOST, and wrote a tacky newspaper article. Wednesday morning, as Atlanta struggled to recover, Mr. Reed was widely quoted as saying “I’m not going to get into the blame game.”
Black people are a part of the political power structure, especially on the local and county level. Thirty percent of the voters statewide are Black, with majorities in many local areas. If the Black community does not work together with the White community, there are going to be problems. Whose fault is this? There is plenty of blame to go around for everyone.
The story quotes another piece on income inequality, saying that Atlanta leads the nation in this problem. Here is a case where you make your statistics tell whatever story you want them to tell. It says that this is the City of Atlanta, which has less than ten percent of the metro population. It also does not mention the large, affluent Black middle class. Black is no longer synonymous with poor.
To repeat the obvious, yes race was involved. But to *blame* this disaster on racism is not going to help. Finger pointing, and refusal to accept responsibility, is not going to accomplish anything. This is a time to work together. Blaming a disaster on racism is not going to help. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Adolph Hitler Had Ugly Feet
PG listened to a radio show featuring John Lukacs, discussing his book The Hitler of History. The book has a lot of footnotes, and probably is not much fun to read.
LAMB (Brian Lamb, the host): All right. Here’s another one I wrote down. He was a thigh slapper.
Mr. LUKACS: Oh, well, that’s a very minor thing, but it has something to do with something very interesting. There is a photograph of Hitler that’s reproduced everywhere in history books. He’s dancing a jig. When the news comes to him that the French had surrendered, capitulated, that picture is fake. Long story behind this. There was a film strip with somebody faked up, you know, and so it gives the impression–makes him ridiculous, makes him jump up and, you know–no, he did not do this. He had a habit occasionally when he was very enthusiastic, very …slapping his thigh, you know. He didn’t do this very often. But that thigh s–slapping, through editing, through racing of the film, became a jig, and this enters many history books that Hitler couldn’t control himself, he was dancing a jig at this news. Not true. …
LAMB: How tall was he?
Mr. LUKACS: He was about–I can’t tell you exactly–I think 5’8″ or something like–5’9″. I tell you something that’s not in the book. I knew two people–don’t ask me who they were–who knew him rather intimately, two women. I knew other people who knew him, but they are very intelligent women. One of them’s a scholar, the other’s not, and don’t ask me their names. Both of them said, `You know, he had very ugly feet.’ This was news to me, a kind of feminine instinct. Independent of each other, they told me that.
There are some other things. Mr. Hitler never allowed himself to be photographed wearing glasses. Mr. Lukacs thinks the Winston Churchill had a great understanding of Adolph Hitler, which kept the allies from losing the war. Pictures for this post are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Great Speckled Bird
One day in the eighth grade, PG had a sore spot in his eye. They called it a stye. One afternoon, he got out of school, walked to Lenox Square, saw a doctor, and got some eye drops.
When he left the doctor’s office, there was a man, standing in front of Rich’s on the sidewalk, selling a newspaper. He had blond hair down past his shoulders. PG asked what the newspaper was. Mostly politics, he said. PG gave him fifteen cents for a copy of “The Great Speckled Bird”.
The Bird was an underground newspaper. It was so bad, it needed to be buried. If you are under fifty, you have probably never seen one. These papers flourished for a while. The Bird was published from 1968 to 1976. The April 26, 1968 edition was volume one, number four. This was what PG bought that day.
The Georgia State University Library has a digital collection. Included in it are copies of The Great Speckled Bird. Included in this collection is edition Number Four. PG went looking for that first copy. He needed to be patient, for the GSU server took it’s time. Finally, the copy he asked for came up. It was mostly politics.
When PG saw page four, he knew it was the edition from forty four years ago. “Sergeant Pepper’s Vietnam Report” was the story of a young man sent to Nam. It had a paragraph that impressed young PG, and is reproduced here. The rest of the article is not that great, which is typical of most underground newspaper writing.
A couple of years later, PG spent the summer working at the Lenox Square Theater. The number two screen was a long skinny room. If you stood in the right place, you could hear the electric door openers of the Colonial Grocery store upstairs. The Bird salesmen were a feature at the mall that summer, which not everyone appreciated. This was the year of the second, and last, Atlanta Pop Festival. PG was not quite hip enough to make it. He was back in the city, taking tickets for “Fellini Satyricon”. The Bird was printing 26 pages an issue, with lots of ads, pictures, and the distinctive graphics of the era.
Stories about hippies, and the Bird, can be found at The Strip Project.
Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” .
This is a repost, written like H.P. Lovecraft.
It’s All Our Faults
The link on facebook was a call to action. Anne Hathaway’s Reason For Leaving Acting Makes Me So Sad And It’s All Our Faults. This was puzzling to PG. He has little idea who Anne Hathaway is. It is a stretch to say that her career choice is his fault.
The linked article told a story. It seems that compared to another actor, Miss Hathaway is not very cool. After a year with two big roles, she only had a cameo last year. “Well, anyway, Hathaway listened and opted to step back, as one sometimes does when faced with thousands of people tell you that you suck in every possible way. In an interview with the Huffington Post, this brief response made me sad: [HuffPo:] You were very much part of our lives in 2012, but we didn’t see you much in 2013. I think people miss you. Hathaway: My impression is that people needed a break from me.”
The seminal feature, in a facility called The Gross Gloss, did have a link to the quoted HuffPo feature. Miss Hathaway has not left acting. The HuffPo piece was written to promote a new film of Miss Hathaway. “I met Hathaway and first time director Kate Barker-Froyland here in Park City, Utah to discuss their new Sundance film, which had been five years in the making…”
The “needed a break from me” quote is included in the HuffPo. After “me,” the bracketed word [laughs] appears. Someone does not get the joke.
Later in the Gloss piece, there is a curious quote: “However, what really bums me out: in the past year, Hathaway was voted more annoying than Chris Brown.” This is based on a “poll,” Star magazine’s 20 Most Hated Celebrities in Hollywood.
There is good news in all of this. For those who say America is irredeemably racist, it is comforting to know that the top nineteen spots in the poll were taken by People With Out Color. Number twenty is Chris Brown. The fact that an African American can only be number twenty, on a list of the most hated celebrities, is an indication of racial progress. Taking Star magazine seriously is not as encouraging.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Christmas Bliss
Christmas Bliss is the latest offering from Mary K. Andrews. CB is the continuing adventures of Weezie Foley and BeBe Loudermilk, BFF ladies in Savannah GA. The story is a page turner, and you will finish it before you want to. It is a book about South Georgia, where part of the story is a blizzard.
One of the ladies is about to have a baby. The other one is about to get married. Yes, there is a bit of confusion in that formula. Add previous marriage complications, well meaning family and friends, and New York City into the mix, and you have a very entertaining story.
Parts of the story are a bit over the top. The trip to New York is full of adventure, but really did not need to happen. The story of the previous husband is just not believable. The reality quota is helped by the baby shower from hell. That comes off as being just a bit too accurate. The reader goes along with it, and it is a good ride.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. The event is a fashion show, at “Mendel College for Fabric Knowledge.” The show was held April 21, 1969.
Rhetoric Abuse
ditto what Gus says, except change the exclamation mark to an r ~ I heard someone say yesterday that some people don’t believe in Christmas. My thought was that Christmas is not something that you believe, it is something that you do ~ Tom Robbins said that love was like dope, and not chicken soup. It was meant to be passed around and shared. It was not made by your mother, by herself, and intended to be consumed because it was good for you. He said it better. ~ Don’t forget the Blakes and the Burkharts ~ Home churched here, with a blessed coffee sacrament. The idea of a ritual is sweet. The thought of driving down to 9MD, in the rain, is horrible. ~ I thought only dead people could win a Darwin ~ your welcome it was a fine evening when you drive past a prison to get somewhere, that makes you realize that not all destinations are the same ~ “Really, now? You peacefully barged your way into a fashion show in the same town in which Forest Whitaker peacefully attempted to buy yogurt with actual money. Guess who fared better?” The “same town” here is New York City. You can find examples of any kind of behavior in that city. You might as well say on the same continent. This type of rhetoric abuse makes the author lose credibility. ~ The checkout lines at Aldi are too long ~ black in white mans world ~ 1- “For us to demand teachable moments is a denominator of our own privilege.” amen. Kindness should be the key word in such discussions. Facebook does not lend itself to kindness. Please be aware that what people say here is not the same thing as how they deal with people in real life. 2- Can we call a moratorium on the phrase “people of color”? It lumps too many people, with too many different experiences, into one unit. Find another label. please. ~ unlike the blog update ~ Thank you Sam for that link. It made me think. It also should include people who you misunderstand, or who don’t agree with you. Social justice is not an exact science. ~ It is helpful to say things directly to a person, rather than indulging in faerie antiracist gossip (FAG). You just might have misunderstood what the person meant. Also, even if you did understand the person correctly, and even if you are in the right… two very big ifs … why do you need to spread the poison? ~ if you don’t like what I say, just skip over it and look at the pictures ~ wake up daily avoid evil church don’t get caught pay the bills avoid loud people tie your shoes question the motivator listen breathe listen to breath quiet hater jesus consume breathe produce ~ didn’t Paul Revere get the credit for something someone else did? ~ do any therapists make house calls? ~ The last thing you hear in this video…the time of the gentleman is expired. ~ I was working on a project, and took a look at fb. I saw a link to the darwin awards. I was going to read the post, google it to see if it was legitimate, and spend an hour of valuable time on it. Then I realized that the time would be better spent on my project. Maybe that is the hidden message of the darwin awards. ~ those dead guys are actually pretty responsive ~ Do you think they will make a movie out of your book? ~ 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. ~ The word sex is spelled out in the picture ~ Do you have a copy of the picture without the text? While I appreciate the concept, the labeling takes away from the overall beauty of the image. ~ Maybe it was hollowed out to hide his stash ~ 1-The original three drug protocol, for executions, the Kentucky protocol, was also haphazardly arrived at. It seems to be the case in this Ohio execution. 2- The drugs used in executions are manufactured by European companies. These companies do not want their products used for executions. 3- When SCOTUS ruled that “lethal injection” (I prefer to say poisoned) was constitutional, they approved the Kentucky protocol. While IANAL, it seems to me that what Ohio did was illegal. ~ I’m so dizzy My head is spinning. Like a whirlpool, it’s never ending. ~ Many of us might agree with the thought. However, many of us are older, and our eyes do not work as well as they once did. The small print caption is not agreeable to these men. ~ Pictures, for this collection of facebook comments, are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ Selah
The Narco State Rag
This feature was written July 13, 2010. The situation in Afghanistan is little better. If we leave, the country falls into chaos. If we stay, we spend money we don’t have. It is a bitch.
Some people euphemize bitch by saying that something is a bear. Across the frontier from Afghanistan, the Russian bear is dealing with a heroin epidemic. Some say the United States suckered the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan in 1979. The disastrous war that followed led to the fall of the Soviet Union. We are still dealing with the karma.
Tom Dispatch has an audio feature about Afghanistan, and the many unanswered questions about our war there. We invaded Afghanistan to get revenge for 911, and looked for a reason later.
At the 3:06 mark on the tape, when Tom makes a comment Afghanistan being a narco state. PG had a flash of understanding about the reason behind this war. This may even have been powerful enough to ignore the reports about a terror strike in September 2001, and let 911 happen.
The rumors of CIA involvement in drug trafficking are wide spread and long term. When planes went to Central America in the eighties to bring arms to the contras, they came back to the United States loaded with cocaine. There are stories of collusion with the government in Cuba. There are many, many more stories about connections between the US government and the drug trade.
When the Taliban took over Afghanistan, they cracked down on the poppy farmers. Much of the raw opium for heroin/morphine/opium is grown in Afghanistan. This was not a pleasing for the CIA.
Could it be that the real reason for our involvement in Afghanistan is to ensure the flow of narcotics into the hungry world? This would be a big cash cow for the CIA, although not enough to justify the amounts of money being spent on the conflict.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
More Death Penalty Drug Problems
The state of Ohio conducted an experiment. The idea was to execute Dennis McGuire. Since the agents of death used previously were not available, the state used “an injection of midazolam, a sedative, and hydromorphone, a morphine derivative.”
While Mr. McGuire did perish, it was not a smooth departure. “After being injected at 10:29 a.m., about four minutes later McGuire started struggling and gasping loudly for air, making snorting and choking sounds which lasted for at least 10 minutes. His chest heaved and his left fist clinched as deep, snorting sounds emanated from his mouth. However, for the last several minutes before he was pronounced dead, he was still.”
Botched executions are an old story. They predate the chemical executions, with grossout stories about hanging and electrocution. The architect of the current method of pharmaceutical elimination, Dr. Jay Chapman, reports “He added that he’s heard reports that in one execution, the IV needle was inserted incorrectly, pointing toward the prisoner’s hand rather than his body. “You have to be an idiot to do that,” said Chapman, who’s a forensic pathologist… He also criticized prison officials for inserting the IV inside the death chamber rather than beforehand. “It seems ridiculous to me to be trying to find a vein when everyone’s inside the chamber, feeling nervous and fiddling around trying to find the vein,” he said. “That’s just ludicrous to me.” These quotes are from an interview, where Dr. Chapman says, of the execution protocol, “It may be time to change it. There are many problems that can arise … given the concerns people are raising with the protocol it should be re-examined.”
Here is the story about the creation of the chemical injection protocol. Ohio is not the first state to stumble blindly into the business of dispatching inmates with an inter venous injection.
In 1977, Oklahoma enacted the first lethal injection statute. Its history illustrates the minimal inquiry legislators conducted before selecting a specific method of lethal injection. Facing the expensive prospect of fixing the state’s broken electric chair, the Oklahoma legislature was looking for a cheaper and more humane way to execute its condemned inmates. State Assembly member Bill Wiseman wanted to introduce a bill in the Oklahoma House of Representatives allowing for lethal injection executions in Oklahoma. In 1976, he approached the Oklahoma Medical Association for help developing a drug protocol, but it refused to get involved based on ethical concerns about the cooperation of medical professionals in the development of execution methods. Wiseman approached Dr. Jay Chapman, the state’s medical examiner, and asked for his help in drafting a lethal injection statute. Despite having “no experience with this sort of thing,” Chapman agreed to help Wiseman. Sitting in Wiseman’s office in the Capitol, Chapman dictated the following lines, which Wiseman jotted down on a yellow legal pad: “An intravenous saline drip shall be started in the prisoner’s arm, into which shall be introduced a lethal injection consisting of an ultra-short-acting barbiturate in combination with a chemical paralytic.” Meanwhile, State Senator Bill Dawson, concerned about the cost of replacing Oklahoma’s broken electric chair, was also interested in introducing a lethal injection bill in the Oklahoma Senate. Senator Dawson consulted with his friend, Dr. Stanley Deutsch, then head of the Oklahoma Medical School’s Anesthesiology Department. After reviewing the language Chapman had composed for Assembly member Wiseman, Deutsch noted, in a letter to Senator Dawson, that anesthetizing condemned inmates would be a “rapidly pleasant way of producing unconsciousness.”
Oklahoma’s state statute copies nearly word-for-word the methods proposed by Chapman and approved in Deutsch’s brief letter, stating that “the punishment of death must be inflicted by continuous, intravenous administration of a lethal quantity of an ultra-short-acting barbiturate” in “combination with a chemical paralytic agent until death is pronounced by a licensed physician according to accepted standards of medical practice.” There is no evidence that Oklahoma state legislators consulted any other medical experts before adopting their lethal injection statute. Human Rights Watch asked Chapman why he chose the two drugs (an ultra-short-acting barbiturate and a paralytic agent) for lethal injection executions. He stated: “I didn’t do any research. I just knew from having been placed under anesthesia myself, what we needed. I wanted to have at least two drugs in doses that would each kill the prisoner … if one didn’t kill him, the other would.” …
In addition to his work on the statute, Chapman developed the original three-drug protocol used by the Oklahoma Department of Corrections. Although Oklahoma’s statute specifies two drugs, Chapman included a third drug, potassium chloride. When Human Rights Watch asked Chapman why he added a third drug to the two drugs specified in the statute, he replied, “Why not?” He went on to explain that, even though the other chemicals, in the dosages called for, would kill the prisoner, “You just wanted to make sure the prisoner was dead at the end, so why not just add a third lethal drug?” He is not sure why he picked potassium chloride. “I didn’t do any research … it’s just common knowledge. Doctors know potassium chloride is lethal. Why does it matter why I chose it?”
This story illustrates the way states went about doing things. “We were getting ready to hang up the phone, and I said, ‘I have but just one question I need to ask you,” Courts said. “Every other state I have spoken to is using 2 grams of sodium pentothal. Why are y’all using five?’ And he started laughing and said, ‘Well, you see, when we did our very first execution, the only thing I had on hand was a 5-gram vial. And rather than do the paperwork on wasting 3 grams, we just gave all five.’”
The Oklahoma plan was copied by the other states looking for a different way to execute the condemned. It became known as the Kentucky Protocol, and was approved for use by SCOTUS. PG is not a lawyer, and does not know if this ruling applies to the Ohio method. The Buckeye state has several executions scheduled in the next two years. No executions are scheduled in Georgia.
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Dharma Bums Part Four
This is part four of the Chamblee54 breakdown of As the title suggests, this is part three of a breakdown on The Dharma Bums, by Jack Kerouac. Parts one, two, and three are already online. Tdb is the 1955-1956 story of Ray Smith (Jack Kerouac) and his friend Japhy Ryder (Gary Snyder.)
Chapter Twentytwo RS is back on the road. He leaves his family in North Carolina, and starts to hitchhike west. He gets a ride to Gainesville, GA. After a night in a cheap hotel, there is a ride with a drunk west of Atlanta. RS decides to buy a bus ticket for El Paso, and get out of “chain gang Georgia.” The bus takes him to West Texas. There is a hike on railroad tracks out of town, and a idyllic camping spot in the hills. RS goes to Juarez, where a queer Mexican boy falls in love with him.
Chapter Twentythree This is the last part of this road trip. RS gets a ride to Las Cruces, where he does some temp work moving a piano. The next ride is with a Texan who brags a lot. This ride goes to Los Angeles. The driver talked a great game. He had fought enough men to form Coxie’s army.
PG’s dad used to talk about Coxie’s army. It seems as though a man named Jacob Coxey led a band of unemployed men to Washington in 1894. There were economic hard times in the land. CA was agitating for government spending, to provide public work jobs for the unemployed. How this caught the imagination of the slogan happy republic is not known to the modern reader.
RS rides freight trains from Los Angeles to San Francisco. On page 161, RS calls JR “Gary.” Apparently, the proofreader missed this.
This chapter by chapter thing is not working. The idea is to use this as a springboard for improvisation, to say whatever comes up. This does not seem to be happening. Tdb is a worthwhile read, the first time. Reading it twice, while taking notes, is not a good idea.
The rest of the story is fairly simple. RS goes to live with JR. They stay in a shack in Corte Madera, CA. It sounds rustic in the book, and may have been in 1956. If you look at a map today, it is just a few miles north of San Francisco. There is no telling what it looks like today.
While in Corte Madera, there are a lot of wild parties. It is the sort of boho thing the rest of America tittered about. Eventually it all ended. RS went up to Washington state to serve as a fire lookout. JR went to Japan. Dwight Eisenhower got reelected. He is not mentioned in tdb, but his buddy Richard Nixon is. We know how that story turned out.
In 1956, PG was two years old. This was the year the Georgia legislature decided to install the stars and bars on the state flag. There was talk of replacing Richard Nixon as Vice President. Jack Kerouac drank too much. Lots of people said so. Noted wildman Neal Cassidy told him to ease up on the booze.
In one of the chapters not to be discussed, RS and JR get into an argument about drinking. JR, like lots of other people, thought that RS was pissing his life away. It turns out they were correct. Whatever his talents as a writer/typist, and friend of famous people, Jack Keruoac was a drunk. When he was 47, it caught up with him. As Alvah Goldbook said, “it all ends in tears anyway.”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”
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