The War Prayer
This content was posted October 25, 2009. … One hundred and twenty five years ago, the United States was involved in a war that did not want to end. This conflict was in the Philippines. Although there had been an official end to the war, guerrillas continued to fight the Americans. The war was a nasty affair, with many atrocities.
The War against the Philippine people was a souvenir of the Spanish American War. There had been a rebellion against Spanish rule in the islands. After the American forces routed the Spanish, the rebellion shifted to the American occupiers. It was a war stumbled into, and difficult to end.
Mark Twain was horrified. He wrote a story, The War Prayer. As Lew Rockwell tells the tale: “Twain wrote “The War Prayer” during the US war on the Philippines. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper’s Bazaar rejected it as “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine.” Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.” Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish “The War Prayer” elsewhere and it remained unpublished until 1923.”
“The story starts in a church. A war has started, and is popular. The troops leave for glory the next day. The preacher has an emotional prayer to send them on their way. Unknown to the minister, there is a visitor. An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting.
With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger motioned to the preacher to step aside. The stranger stepped into the pulpit, and claimed to have a message, sent directly from God. The preacher’s message was for support in time of war, and implied that God and the preacher support the same side in this conflict. There is an unspoken part to a prayer like this. This unspoken part was what the stranger was going to put into words.
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”
This content was posted October 29, 2009. … Mark Twain wrote a lot during the American Genocide in the Philippines. Many of his words could apply today. War has gotten more high tech … for our side … but the bottom line is the same. No matter how fancy the weapons get, the casualties are just as dead. And the investors make money.
The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Updated
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
Woe and death can turn a profit. Warfare needs a wealthy prophet!
Woe and death through war, don’t stop it! It’s war that makes men rich!
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps—
His night is marching on.
Woe and death can make for profit. Buy a bomb and then go drop it!
War’s a racket, but don’t stop it! It’s war that makes men rich!
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”
Our priority is profit. Nobel prizes fail to stop it!
War’s foundation? We’ve co-op’d it! It’s war that makes men rich!
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our god is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom—and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich—
Our god is marching on.
Woe and death can turn a profit. Warfare needs a wealthy prophet!
Woe and death through war, don’t stop it! It’s war that makes men rich!
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Arthur S. Siegel took the social media picture in August 1942. “Interlochen, Michigan. National music camp where 300 or more young musicians study symphonic music for eight weeks each summer. Practice indoors on string instruments” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Elvis Presley And Robert Goulet
This content was published April 30, 2008. … I found a site called Dead or Alive? The concept was to show a list of famous people, whether the lines were flat or wiggling, and the date of the passage. There was one obvious name to check out. DOA supports the notion that Elvis Presley is dead. …
DOA had a list of people who died in the last six months. The Fabulous Moolah, Earl Butz, and Robert Goulet were the surprises. … “It’s part of Elvis Presley lore … the time Elvis filled the screen of his 25-inch RCA TV full of buckshot. Because of Robert Goulet. … Apparently, in the late 50s, when Elvis was in the army and stationed in Germany, his girlfriend at the time, singer Anita Wood, was performing with Robert Goulet and comedian Buddy Hackett. Wood dutifully wrote to Sergeant Presley and, apparently, Goulet added a note to one of her letters, informing Elvis that he was personally “taking care” of Wood (wink, wink). Elvis didn’t appreciate Goulet’s randy sense of humor and carried a grudge the size of Graceland, for years. In 1974, Elvis was relaxing in his swanky penthouse suite at the International Hotel in Vegas when he spotted Goulet on the tube. (The crooner was appearing as a guest co-host on The Mike Douglas Show.) Supposedly, Elvis yelled, “Get that s**t outta my house!” And with that, he aimed and fired.”
Mr. Goulet and Ms. Moolah were part of a phenomenon. These are people who I don’t know if they are dead or alive, until I hear that they have died. Other examples would be Anita Loos and Lowell Thomas. And now, Albert Hofmann, the man who first synthesized LSD. Dr. Hofman was 102, and seemed to have mixed feelings about his discovery. He deplored the excesses, but did not support criminalization. … I had a high school geometry teacher who took part in some of the army LSD experiments. She said a good shot of whiskey would do more for you.
This content was published April 25, 2008. … John McCain has done it again. He condemned an ad by North Carolina Republicans, and gave the ad a lot of publicity in the bargain. What a deal. … The ad shows Jeremiah Wright screaming, and says that Barack Obama enabled his screaming for twenty years. We all knew this. It gets creepy at this point. It seems as though Richard Moore and Beverly Perdue are Democrats running for North Carolina Governor, and they have endorsed Mr. Obama. This makes them “Too Extreme for North Carolina”.
When I heard this ad (on radio, without the visuals) it made me sick, and more than a bit sad. This ad is mean and sleazy. It says more about the party that runs it than it does about the two candidates for governor. This ad is the kind of pointless negative advertising that makes people replulsed by politics. Ads like this make me dread elections. Mr. McCain is correct in denouncing it. … What has been the interesting is the reaction of talk radio. Laura Ingraham was having convulsions…we can’t have fun trashing people, and we won’t support you later because of this. You took our toy away. WAAAAAAA.
Mike Gallagher said there was nothing wrong with the ad, that it was the truth. (2026 Disclosure: The Gallagher and Ingraham quotes are from memory, and do not have a link.) Just because it is the truth doesn’t mean you have to say it, or make it any less distasteful. I get the impression that many conservatives are amused by this sort of guilt by association ad. And they wonder why many people think they are a bunch of jerks. Two wrongs do not make a right. Somebody needs to be the better person, not merely the loudest or most aggresive.
North Carolina Republicans would be doing themselves a favor to take down the ad. It says more about them than it does the Democratic Candidates. It also is giving name recognition to the two Democrats. Someday politicians will learn to be smart and quit offending voters. I am not holding my breath. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in April 1941. “ Mother and children at home. Chicago, Illinois” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
S-Town
This content was published March 31, 2017. … The first time I had to pause S-Town was some time in #1. There is a break in the weirdness for a Blue Apron commercial. For some reason, this struck me as funny … a yuppie food delivery outfit, advertising on a show about Shit Town, Alabama.
S-Town is an NPR podcast. An earnest young reporter leaves his wife behind in New Yuck and goes to Alabama. Supposedly, there has been a murder in Bibb County, Alabama. John B. McLemore lives in the county, and is showing the reporter around. The southern accents, and southern gothic atmosphere, are no doubt amusing to the latte sipping trendsters who binge listen.
The second time I had to pause the show is at 8:11 of episode #2. There is a conversation. “It is racist, and non-nonsensical, and has multiple uses of a terrible word.” Let the hand wringing begin. After a minute or so of this … the man is saying something about paying taxes to support young ladies on welfare … the reporter mentions that his girlfriend is black. This rantlette has little to do with the rest of the story. It may have been included as a bit of picturesque racism, for the pearl clutching enjoyment of the listening audience.
John B. McLemore is a piece of work. He is a horologist, skilled at repairing antique clocks. He built a hedge maze on his land, with 64 gates to change the course at will. John B. has a lot of opinions, which he generously shares in profanity seasoned offerings. John B. is forty nine years old, single, and lives with his aging mother. There is an assumption about men like this, which is covered, in a bit more detail than required, in episode #6.
SPOILER ALERT The second show ends with news of a suicide. John, the rural eccentric, killed himself. There are five more episodes to the story, so this is not the end of the story. The next pause-the-show moment is at 36:11 of episode #5. John is dead. Some cousins appear out of nowhere. People start to fight over John’s assets. It is getting ugly. Rita, the Florida cousin, wants John’s nipple ring. She can’t understand how someone can do an autopsy, “you’ve cut him from neck to private, and you can’t get a nipple ring off? Cut his nipple off, he’s dead.”
Episode #5 and episode#6 come and go. The town sucks, the town isn’t so bad. John had friends, and possibly lovers, but drove them off. Then, in episode #7, we learn that the local rich family has bought John’s property. The new property owners have a lumber yard, K3 Lumber. KyKenKee, Inc. got it’s name honestly. “In 1980, after having been in business many years as I.L. Burt and Sons, the family decided to change the name. Having named us, Kyle, Keefe and Kendall, she took the first syllables of each name and rearranged them until they fit just right, Ky Ken Kee.”
This is not good enough for Brian Reed. “I did get a chance to ask him, if there is a double entendre with a certain white supremacy group?””I’m assuming you’re one of those left wingers we upset with the election.” “He said he doesn’t have a problem with the name K3.” Mr. Reed does not mention the origin of the name. It might be a joke, that is not a joke. The Burt family probably knew what it was doing. The spell check suggestion for KyKenKee is Yankee.
The show ends with episode#7. Outside of a few upcoming court dates, there is not much left to report. In the end, there are few sympathetic characters in the story. Life in small town Alabama goes on. Meanwhile, in booming Atlanta, the main interstate through the northeast part of town has been shut down indefinitely. We are screwed. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took the social media picture in September 1938. “Coal miner (Italian) takes a drink of wine in front of his home after coming home from work late in the afternoon. “The Patch” Chaplin, West Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
White Privilege Is
This content was published March 13, 2015. … As with so many blogging misadventures, it started with a tweet. @BougieBlackGurl “White privilege is when White people like Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski & Bill Kristol blame Black people for Whites being racist.”
Let us break this down. Since I do not watch tv, this is going to be tough. This has something to do with a handful of OU fratbois. They had the bad judgement to be video recorded singing the n-word, among other delicacies, on a train. Some “White people” went on a tv show, and made a connection between rap music and the fratboi video. When BBG gets her hands on it, we have “…blame Black people for Whites being racist.”
Since when do three talking air heads speak for 254m white people? Ok, so someone with pale skin said something dumb on tv. Now, you have the latest definition of “White privilege.” At what point do the concepts of privilege and racism cease to mean anything?
The seminal tweet was sent out two days ago. By now, it is probably obsolete. In those two days, the national debt increased by an estimated $2.6b. An estimated 13 metric tons of Global Carbon Emissions joined the atmosphere. There are many other issues more important than the singing of idiot fratbois, but not as much fun to talk about.
The figure on the national debt is based on an article at Forbes magazine. The title: Stop And Smell The Roses: Final 2014 Federal Deficit Fell … Big Time. The figure quoted above is based on the lower of the two numbers in this quote. “As the report shows, the actual 2014 deficit was $483 billion, $3 billion less than what the Congressional Budget Office estimated a week ago. For the record, $483 billion is $197 billion below the almost $680 billion deficit recorded in 2013. It’s also $930 billion, that is, close to $1 trillion, less than the largely recession-caused $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009.” As Malcolm X said “”If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress.” Malcolm X will make another appearance in this post.
Bougie Black Girl does not promote herself as a statistician or scientist. “I’m a African American woman who loves to empower Black women” Her twitter product today is mostly concerned with Creflo Dollar, who is certainly a worthy target.
The fun starts at her website. Get Your Malcolm X with a cameo appearance from Martin Luther King Jr. prepaid Mastercard/Visa cards · 30 Light skin Privileges Light Skin Blacks have that Dark Skin Blacks Don’t · UPDATE!!! Two White QVC hosts mock a Black Woman’s natural hair and humiliate her on TV. (Video) … Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library The social media picture was taken January 11, 1956. “Peachtree Street”
©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Slavery And Global Warming
This content was originally posted March 11, 2012. … Have you ever wondered why your ancestors owned other human beings? How can you justify something this cruel? In an NPR interview to promote 1861: The Civil War Awakening, author Adam Goodheart has an answer.
“But I think we think of it differently when we realize that the value of slave property, some $4 billion, enormous amount of money in 1861, represented actually more money than the value of all of the industry and all of the railroads in the entire United States combined. So for Southern planters to simply one day liberate all of that property would have been like asking people today to simply overnight give up their stock portfolios, give up their IRAs.”
Mr. Goodheart compares it to the situation today with fossil fuels. “Many of us recognize that in burning fossil fuels we’re doing something terrible for the planet, we’re doing something terrible for future generations. And yet in order to give this up would mean sort of unraveling so much of the fabric of our daily lives, sacrificing so much, becoming these sort of radical eccentrics riding bicycles everywhere, that we continue somewhat guiltily to participate in the system. And that’s something that I use as a comparison to slavery, that many Americans in the North, and even I believe sort of secretly in the South, felt a sense of guilt, felt a sense of shame, that knew that the slave system was wrong but were simply addicted to slavery and couldn’t give it up. “
When the economic pressure is there, people will find a way to justify their actions. Slavery was justified in a number of ways. Today, there are people who deny the ill effects of using fossil fuels, and they have an eager audience. The payback for the environmental horror is in the future. This is similar to the way people today are paying … with racial turmoil … for slavery. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken August 24, 1951. ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Why Did The Cow Cross The Road?
Why did the cow cross the road? The chicken was on vacation.
Knock knock. who’s there? boo. boo who?. Don’t cry it’s only a joke…
It’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
A man walks up to a horse and says, “Why the long face?”
Two pretzels were walking down the street. one was a salted.
“He who laughs last thinks slowest.”
“Raise your hand if you’re here.”
Two nuns walk into a bar; the third one ducks.
Q: What did the radio say when it was dropped? A: “Ow. That hertz.”
What did the ranch say to the refrigerator door? “Close the door, I’m dressing”
Why don’t blind people skydive? It scares the heck out of their dogs…
What did the fish say when it ran into a wall? dam.
“I see.” said the blind man as he peed into the wind… “It’s all coming back to me now.”
What’s the last thing to go through a bug’s mind when it hits the windshield? Its butt.
You can tuna guitar, but you can’t tuna fish.
What do a duck and a bicycle have in common? They both have wheels… except the duck.
What’s brown and sounds like a bell? DUNGGGGG.
What’s brown and sticky? A stick
When people ask the mortician what he does for a living, he says he is a “boxer”.
What did the shy pebble say?… I wish I was a little boulder! .
What do you call an arrogant criminal falling out of a tower? Condescending.
Two guys walk into a bar… you would think the second guy woulda ducked.
A woman walks into a bar holding a duck. Bartender says, “What’s with the pig?”
Woman says, “It’s a duck.” Bartender says, “I was talking to the duck.”
Why do flamingos always lift one leg when they’re standing?
Cause if they lifted both, they’d fall over!
Q: How many Surrealists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: To get to the other side.
Did you get a haircut? Actually, I got them all cut.
One mushroom said to another mushroom, “Hey – you’re one Fungi!”
What do you call an arrogant criminal falling out of a tower? Condescending.
A dyslexic man walked into a bra …
Q: What do you call a midget, psychic, prison escapee? A: A small medium at-large.
A mule walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Hey, buddy, why the long face?”
“Because my dad is a jackass.”
I have one about the roof but its over your head.
Shall I tell you the one about the skunk? Never mind, it stinks!
There’s nothing like a good joke… and that was nothing like a good joke.
A rabbi, nun, lawyer, mime, and horse all walk into a bar.
The bartender says, “What is this, some kind of joke?”
When’s the best time to eat reindeer meat? …. When you’re hungry.
These stories are borrowed from 22 WORDS. Visit @22Words at your own risk. Pictures are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The featured photograph was taken August 3, 1954. “Fred Hand family” This is a repost.
BVD
This content was originally posted March 22, 2013. … Spencer Tracy’s second rule for acting is to not trip over the props. This might be a problem for Jon Hamm. In a bit of slow news day genius, his show leaked the information that the actor has been requested to wear underwear on the set. A rep for Mr. Hamm said: “It is ridiculous and not really funny at all. I’d appreciate you taking the high road and not resorting to something childish like this that’s been blogged about 1,000 times.”
This was an issue when Tallulah Bankhead was making “Lifeboat”. Other performers complained about the thespian not wearing panties. Director Alfred Hitchcock wondered if this was a matter for wardrobe, or a matter for hairdressing.
This concern about foundation garments, conveniently arising during the pre-easter shopping season, made me wonder when men started to wear drawers. Could this be the result of manufacturers inventing demand for a product? Wikipedia says the loincloth is thousands of years old. A footnote, about the invention of the jockstrap, led to an English article, A brief history of pants: Why men’s smalls have always been a subject of concern.
“In 1935, the first Jockey briefs went on sale in Chicago. Designed by an “apparel engineer” called Arthur Kneibler (working at the time for Coopers Inc), the arrival of the first underpants denuded of any legs and featuring a Y-shaped opening has been compared with the 1913 invention of the bra, or the 1959 debut of tights. … Coopers, now known as Jockey International, sent its “Mascul-line” plane to make special deliveries of “masculine support” briefs to retailers across the United States. When the Jockeys arrived in Britain in 1938, they sold at the rate of 3,000 per week.”
One popular brand of underwear is the BVD. This was originally made by Bradley, Voorhees & Day, hence the name. BVDs are not named for Bovine Viral Diarrhea. Pictures today are from Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. The social media picture was taken April 30, 1951. “War Bond luncheon” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Fifteen Minutes
This content was posted February 22, 2025. … Andy Warhol is quoted as saying that “in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” If a celebrity is getting tiresome, people will wonder when their fifteen minutes will be up. After hearing about fifteen minutes my entire life, I began to wonder if Drella really said that. If you can’t be cynical about Andy Warhol …
Wikipedia is a good place to start. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” … appeared in the program for a 1968 exhibition of his work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Photographer Nat Finkelstein claimed credit for the expression, stating that he was photographing Warhol in 1966 for a proposed book. A crowd gathered trying to get into the pictures and Warhol supposedly remarked that everyone wants to be famous, to which Finkelstein replied, “Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.” Nat Finkelstein was a sketchy character, in the Warhol tradition. His version is suspect. The Swedish museum part is real.
“Andy Warhol’s first European museum solo show took place at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from February through March 1968. Pontus Hultén curated the exhibition together with Olle Granath. The exhibition came with a catalogue that was, like the show, named ‘Andy Warhol’. Kasper König, who worked for the Moderna Museet as an intern of sorts in New York, developed a basic concept for the book. … After Warhol had given his approval to this first proposal, König proceeded to create a dummy. … When König returned his dummy to the Factory, Warhol scrutinized it carefully but made only a small number of changes. Contrary to what Warhol wanted to be popular belief, those who produced input at the Factory were carefully monitored. … The final edits on the dummy were made in Stockholm by Olle Granath. He compiled a small selection of Warhol quotes and aphorisms from a stack of books and clippings collected by Hultén and placed them in the book as an introduction before the image sections.”
““Sometime in the autumn of 1967, Pontus Hultén called and asked me if I (Olle Granath) could help him and the Moderna Museet to organize an Andy Warhol exhibition that was due to open in February…. An important part of the exhibition was the production of a book. It was not supposed to be an analytical catalog of Warhol’s work, but a book that conveyed his aesthetics without heavy texts. … One day, Pontus brought me a box, almost the size of a Brillo box, and told me that it contained everything written by and about Andy Warhol (today the equivalent would probably be two truck loads). My job was to read it all and present a proposal for a manuscript with Swedish translations. After a couple of nights of reading and taking notes I delivered a script to Pontus and awaited his reaction with great anticipation. ‘Excellent,’ Pontus said when he called me, ‘but there is a quotation missing.’ ‘Which one?’ I said. ‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,’ Pontus replied. ‘If it is in the material I would have spotted it,’ I told him. The line went quiet for a moment, and then I heard Pontus say, ‘If he didn’t say it, he could very well have said it. Let’s put it in.’ So we did, and thus Warhol’s perhaps most famous quotation became a fact.”
“The exhibition in Stockholm attracted a relatively small number of visitors, due to the extremely cold winter, but also to the fact that leftist radicalization increasingly drove the Museets public to mistrust anything American or consumerist. There was no space yet for a more complex reading of Warhol’s relation to consumption. The book, however, became very popular: its enormous edition allowed it to be distributed in nightclubs and record stores, not only museums. A timeless update on the latest from New York, it first became a cult object, then a collectors item.”
Did Andy say that? Probably, but not definitely. Andy was shot by Valerie Jean Solanas on June 3, 1968, a few months after the show in Sweden. Andy survived, and had fifteen more minutes. Pictures today are from Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The 1927 pictures were taken at “California Beauty Week, Mark Hopkins Hotel, July 28 to Aug. 2, auspices of San Francisco Chronicle.”
Didion & Babitz Part One
This content was published February 12, 2025. … Didion & Babitz has hit the streets, as anyone who reads instagram knows. Lilianne O’Lick knows how to sell the soap, as well as a dirty story that leaves many readers wanting a bath. This is not my first time with either Eve Babitz or LOL. D&B is the story of Eve Babitz and Joan Didion. … Neither lady had a middle name. Chamblee 54 has written about EB on several occasions. 123021 032622 010523 This is not the case with JD. I once had a paperback copy of The White Album … I never got past the abandoned gas station being the authentic west.
“Finishing Didion and Babitz has become a Herculean effort on my part. Lili Anolik clearly hates Joan Didion and continually criticizes and condemns her. This book should be called Loving Eve Babitz, Wench, Whore and Failed “Artist”. Anolik seems to fashion herself as a therapist, making some drastic, others ridiculous, excuses for Babit’s tawdry behavior. … This seemed to be an exercise in “look at my big word vocabulary. I’m going to repeat what I just said using big words that no one ever uses just to impress you. “ From an Amazon one-star review, “Loving Eve Loathing Joan,” by NFox.
(“The seventies in LA weren’t a decade under themselves but an extension of the previous decade: the Sixties the flower child, the seventies the juvenile delinquent that the flower child—a Bad Seed all along—grew into.” p. 124) The sixties were special, too beautiful to live, too profitable to die. Being a kid in Georgia was just one way to see it all. I had little notion of what was going on then in California, and by the time I started to get hip, California had Mansoned its way into a permanent Altamont. EB was playing the game, and the players.
Carrie White was a celebrity hairburner, who wrote a book Upper Cut: Highlights of My Hollywood Life. She is probably not the same Carrie White as the telekinetic teenager at the center of “Carrie” but one cannot be too certain. The CW in D&B went to Hollywood High with EB, and was in the glamour sorority that EB missed out on. CW remained close to Rosalind Frank, who was the fairest of them all in High School. Alas, life after graduation did not work out, and Miss Frank died an early, drug related death. This untimely demise got EB busy writing.
Page 168 sees the first appearance of Bret Easton Ellis, who simply had to be in this book. The first time I heard of EB was on the BEE podcast, which later had an appearance by LOL promoting her first book about EB. BEE idolized JD, and was a close friend of JD’s daughter Quintana Roo Dunne. It is rather poignant that BEE enters this narrative as part of a discussion about JG Dunn’s apparent taste for male company. John Gregory Dunne is the husband of JD, and the younger brother of Dominick John Dunne, … another bicoastal fudge packer.
I was trolling google, looking for dirt on JD … there is a small mountain of dirt on EB … and I stumbled onto a bit of clickbait, “It’s Time To Retire Joan Didion’s Most Famous Line.” The line is “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” I had probably heard it before. I process a lot of commodity wisdom these days. It goes in one eye and out the other … assuming that useless knowledge leaves the head the same way it gets in. Which brings us to page 211, where LOL ends a chapter with JDMFL.
There is a line about EB, whose inclusion in this feature is required by law: “In every young man’s life there is an Eve Babitz. It’s usually Eve Babitz.” Credit/blame for this tidbit is usually given to Earl McGrath. When “Eve’s Hollywood” came out, the line was on the blurb page, written by “anonymous.” EH “came out” in March 1974, with a glamor girl cover photo by Eve’s number one lady lover, Annie Leibovitz. D&B does not have any hint that EB and JD were cleaning carpets together. … Part two of D&B is available. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. “The social media picture: Unidentified soldier in Company H, Vermont uniform” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah
Those Who Cannot Remember …
This content was published February 15, 2025. … “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Unless you live under a rock, you have heard that quote. Credit/blame for this item goes to George Santayana. (b. Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás, December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952.) This quote is the only reason anyone has heard of GS. As it turns out, GS also can be credited with the phrase “Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of war.” Details on these two crowd pleasers to follow.
“Those who cannot remember …” (TWCR) appears in The Life Of Reason. “During the years of 1905 and 1906, he published a five-volume work titled The Life of Reason; or, The Phases of Human Progress … Santayana investigates the birth and development of human reason, which he views as an evolutionary system within the scope of physical reality. He traces the growth of the human mind towards a state of rationality, exploring the details of existence and evaluating human life in general.” TLOR was written while GS was teaching philosophy at Harvard.
TWCR is in CHAPTER XII—FLUX AND CONSTANCY IN HUMAN NATURE of volume one. Here is the abbreviated paragraph: “Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians … Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird’s chirp.”
TLOR is a heavy duty piece of work, not a glib collection of uplifting quotes. Chapter XII is about mankind’s progress in becoming a thinking being. TWCR appears to be an incidental line, not the main thrust of his thesis. The last sentence … “memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird’s chirp” … would seem to contradict the more famous TWCR.
How did TWCR go from being an incidental line, to being the coffee mug classic that we know today? We don’t know. Quote Investigator® traces known citations through the years. There does not seem to be any one moment when the quote became famous.
”Santayana sometimes repudiated his earlier work, in part for its having the taint of academic life. He especially spoke down at times about the Life of Reason series for its association with the progressivism of the day, and it was later edited by Santayana and his late-life personal assistant and secretary, Daniel Cory, with the intent of removing some of its more humanistic overtones.” I do not know whether TWCR is one of the “humanistic overtones.”
In contrast to TWCR, few people know about the GS connection to “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” OTDH appeared in Soliloquies in England (1922) “remarkably written amidst the uncertain, violent times of World War I.” OTDH appears in soliloquy 25, _TIPPERARY_ … “Only the dead are safe; only the dead have seen the end of war. Not that non-existence deserves to be called peace; it is only by an illusion of contrast and a pathetic fallacy that we are tempted to call it so. The church has a poetical and melancholy prayer, that the souls of the faithful departed may rest in peace.”
”Some scholars conclude that Santayana was an active homosexual based on allusions in Santayana’s early poetry (McCormick, 49–52) and Santayana’s association with known homosexual and bisexual friends. Santayana provides no clear indication of his sexual preferences, and he never married. Attraction to both women and men seems apparent in his undergraduate and graduate correspondence. The one documented comment about his homosexuality occurs when he was sixty-five. After a discussion of A. E. Housman’s poetry and homosexuality, Santayana remarked, “I think I must have been that way in my Harvard days — although I was unconscious of it at the time” (Cory, Santayana: The Later Years, 40). Because of Santayana’s well-known frankness, many scholars consider Santayana a latent homosexual based on this evidence.”
This text does not discuss the misuse of history, or of quotes. We seek to discuss the context of TWCR, and speculate about why this item is so popular. One of the lessons of history is that people will interpret history to suit their purposes, often to the detriment of mankind. It is ironic that TWCR (written in 1905) is often cited as a justification for war … and only the dead have seen the end of war. (OTDH was written in 1922, after another great war.)
Photographs today are from The Library of Congress. The featured photograph: “Two unidentified soldiers in Confederate uniforms” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
M.K. Gandhi And Truth
This content was posted January 14, 2025. … I identify as human @pixfiber “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” · Mohandas K. Gandhi. This item appeared in my twitter feed on January 6. Being an unreconstructed pedant, I went to the Gandhi Wikiquote. “Truth” had too many search results, so I went to “just.” I found a doozy: “I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.” Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97
Harijan was another word for the untouchable caste in India. “… Gandhi conducted an intensive crusade against untouchability …” Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it.”
Archive.org has much of Harijan available online, including the quote above. The quote is in a tsunami of text. Gandhiji was trained as a lawyer, and could crank out a word count. His positions are well thought out and complicated. This material is more complicated than the motivational Mahatma we are familiar with.
If you don’t mind wading through a pile of results, a search for “truth” on the Gandhi Wikiquotes will yield some good thoughts. Bear in mind that these quotes are without context. If you are willing to do the work, and google the source, you might find that the meaning of these thoughts is different from what you might think. The first three quotes in this list are from An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments With Truth By: M. K. Gandhi.
“A man of truth must also be a man of care.” Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.” Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” p. 453
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285 (context below)
“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation.”
“Generalisation”, Harijan (6 July 1940).
“If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. There must be a conquest — [audience claps] — please, please, please. That will interfere with my speech, and that will interfere with your understanding also. I want to capture your hearts and don’t want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying, and I think, I shall have finished my work.”
Speech in New Delhi to the Inter-Asian Relations Conference (2 April 1947)
“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.” Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.” Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry)
“It is no use trying to fight these forces [of materialism] without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Vol 46, p. 203
Wikiquotes has a lively section devoted to quotes that are Disputed and Misattributed. One Disputed entry is especially festive: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “The earliest attribution of this to Gandhi … is in a T-shirt advertisement in Mother Jones, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 1983), p. 46”
Several much loved Gandhisms have a shaky history. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” “God has no religion.” “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Young India supplied one of the quotes above. Here is page 1285. “Some Posers: — ‘A well wisher’ sends these lines for my meditation: ‘The Bible can be read in 566 languages. In how many can the Upanishads and the Gita? How many leper asylums and institutions for the depressed and the distressed have the missionaries? How many have you?’ It is usual for me to receive such posers. ‘A well wisher’ deserves an answer, I have great regard for the missionaries for their zeal and self-sacrifice. But I have not hesitated to point out to them that both are often misplaced. What though the Bible were translated in every tongue in the world? Is a patent medicine better than the Upanishads for being advertised in more languages than the Upanishads? An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. The Bible was a greater power when the early fathers preached it than it is today. ‘A well wisher’ has little conception of the way truth works, if he thinks that the translation of the Bible in more languages than the Upanishads is any test of its superiority. Truth has to be lived if it is to fructify. But if it is any satisfaction to ‘A well wisher’ to have my answer I may gladly tell him that the Upanishads and the Gita have been translated into far fewer languages than the Bible. I have never been curious enough to know in how many languages they are translated.”
“As for the second question, too, I must own that the missionaries have founded many leper asylums and the like. I have founded none. But I stand unmoved. I am not competing with the missionaries or any body else in such matters. I am trying humbly to serve humanity as God leads me. The founding of leper asylums etc. is only one of the ways, and perhaps not the best, of serving humanity. But even such noble service loses much of its nobility when conversion is the motive behind it. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. But let me not be misunderstood. The missionaries that selflessly work away in such asylums command my respect. I am ashamed to have to confess that Hindus have become so callous as to care little for the waifs and strays of India, let alone the world.”
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi. 040515 020521 042222 Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “Farmer
Farmer outside the cooperative store. Irwinville, Georgia.”©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Sausage Vat Murder
This content was published January 16, 2024. … The case of Adolph Luetgert is mostly forgotten today. In its day, the story was a sensation. “Adolph Louis Luetgert (December 27, 1845-July 7, 1899) was a German-American charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in acid in one of his sausage vats at the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company in 1897. … After the news of the trial became public, rumors spread that Luetgert had actually turned his wife into sausage and sold the “sausage” to unknowing consumers.”
Is it possible to explain what is in sausages without making it erotic? A twitter thread got me thinking about a sausage story I read in 1989. The Fairy was in Gaily, Gaily by Ben Hecht. The story originally appeared in Playboy. “In a 1962 article for Playboy collected in his rollicking 1963 memoir Gaily, Gaily — the legendary Chicago reporter Ben Hecht recalls a murder case that sounds suspiciously similar to the Adolph Luetgert case. Hecht describes an story that apparently occurred sometime during the five years after he began working as a reporter in Chicago in 1910. He writes: “Fred Ludwig, a popular North Shore butcher, went on trial before Judge Sabath for the murder of his wife. The wedding band with its romantic inscription had turned up in one of the sausages manufactured by Ludwig and sold to one of his customers, Claude Charlus, a well-known financier and epicure.” In the Hecht story, Mr. Charlus was the bf of Mr. Ludwig. When it was time to execute Mr. Ludwig, young Mr. Hecht went to a whorehouse, to borrow a makeup kit. Mr. Ludwig painted his face before he went to the gallows.
“Adolph Luetgert (originally Adolph Ludwig Lütgert) came to New York in around 1865 or 1866 when he was about twenty years old.” … “He married his first wife, Caroline Roepke, sometime between 1870 and 1872. She died on November 17, 1877. He married his second wife Louise Bicknese, two months after Caroline’s death, on January 18, 1878. Luetgert had six children—two with Caroline and four with Louise. Only three of his children survived past the age of 2.”
“Louisa Bicknese was an attractive young woman who was ten years younger than her husband. She was a former servant from the Fox River Valley who met her new husband by chance. He was immediately taken with her, entranced by her diminutive stature and tiny frame. She was less than five feet tall and looked almost child-like next to her burly husband. … As a wedding gift, he gave her a unique, heavy gold ring. Inside of it, he had gotten her new initials inscribed, reading “L.L.”. Little did he know at the time that this ring would prove to be his undoing.”
After a while, the couple started to bicker. “Despite his coarse appearance, (one writer vividly describes him as a Falstaffian figure with “a face of suet, pig eyes, and a large untidy moustache that was a perfect host for beer foam”) Adolph was something of a womanizer. … Claiming that he needed to keep a round-the-clock eye on his factory, he had taken to spending his nights in a little room beside his office, equipped with a bed that he frequently shared with his twenty-two-year-old housemaid, Mary Siemering, Louisa’s own cousin. … He was also conducting a surreptitious courtship of a wealthy widow, Mrs. Christina Feld, sending her amorous letters in which he rhapsodized about their rosy future.” (During the murder trial, “Mrs. Christina Feldt, … testified that Luetgert often expressed his hatred for his wife and intimated that he would get rid of her.”)
“At around 10:15 on the evening of Saturday, May 1, Louisa was seated in the kitchen, chatting with her twelve-year-old son Louis, who had attended the circus that evening. The boy was excitedly describing some of the wonders he had seen—a giant named “Monsieur Goliath” and a strongman who juggled cannon balls—when Luetgert appeared and told his son to go bed. Precisely what happened between the two adults after Louis retired to his room is unclear. Only one fact is beyond dispute. After the boy bid goodnight to his mother at about 10:30 P.M., she was left alone in the company of her husband.” … “Mrs. Luetgert wore only a light house wrapper and slippers, although the night was cold and rainy. It never was shown that she had taken with her any of her belongings.”
“When questioned by his sons, Luetgert told them that their mother had gone out the previous evening to visit her sister. After several days though, she did not come back. Finally, Diedrich Bicknese, Louisa’s brother, went to the police. The investigation fell on Captain Herman Schuettler, … “an honest but occasionally brutal detective”.
“Frank Bialk, a night watchman at the plant … saw both Luetgert and Louisa at the plant together. Apparently, Luetgert sent him out on an errand that evening and gave him the rest of the night off.” There is another version of the Bialk story. “Frank Bialk … testified … Luetgert instructed him to bring down two barrels of caustic potash and place them in the boiler room, and that Luetgert then poured the contents of both barrels in one of the vats. The watchman was instructed to keep up steam all night and at 10 p. m. he was sent by Luetgert to the drug store after some nerve medicine.”
“The police also made a shocking discovery; they came across bills that stated that Luetgert bought arsenic and potash the day before the murder. … the detective was convinced that Luetgert had killed his wife, boiled her in acid and then disposed of her in a factory furnace.”
“Luetgert’s night watchman, Frank Bialk, approached the police and told them that, on the night Mrs. Luetgert disappeared, his boss had been acting suspiciously, busying himself with one of the large steam-vats down in the factory basement. Following up on this tip, investigators checked out the vat, which—despite having been cleaned two weeks earlier—still contained a residue of a thick, greasy fluid, reddish-brown in color and giving off a nauseous stink. When the fetid slime was drained from the vat, the detectives discovered tiny pieces of bone along with two gold rings, one of them a wedding band engraved with the initials “L. L.” More bone fragments, as well as a false tooth, a hairpin, a charred corset stay, and various scraps of cloth turned up in a nearby ash heap.”
Luetgert was arrested, and charged with the crime. “On October 18, the case was submitted to the jury and after deliberating for sixty-six hours they failed to agree, nine favoring a conviction and three voting in favor of an acquittal. On November 29, 1897, the second trial began. … The trial resulted in a conviction and on May 5 Luetgert was sent to the Joliet State prison for life.”
“July 27, 1899, Luetgert left his cell and returned shortly afterward with his breakfast in a pail, but just as he was about to eat it, he dropped dead from heart disease.”
“Frank Pratt … asked Luetgert if he wanted his “hand read.” The latter consented and Pratt told Luetgert that he possessed a violent temper and at times was not responsible for his actions. Pratt stated that Luetgert then virtually admitted that he killed his wife when he was possessed of the devil. … It is said that Luetgert also made similar admissions to a fellow prisoner.” Pictures for this true crime story are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in October 1941. “ Mr. Albert Brissant and his niece, who are still living in the Pine Camp relocation area near Evans Mills, New York. They have an antique shop here which they have sold out and are now looking for a new farm” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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