Pauline Kael, Gina James, And James Broughton
Pauline Kael was the rockstar film critic. James Broughton was the radical faerie poet laureate. They were lovers, and had a daughter, Gina James. Pauline and James were not married, contrary to what some naysayers would tell you. This is a repost.
Much of the information in this feature is taken from online reviews of Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, a 2012 biography written by Brian Kellow. Gina James, also known as Gina Broughton, was not interviewed for the book. Neither did she participate in the making of Big Joy, a movie about James Broughton. (A wig store, Gina Beauty Supply is located at 25 W Broughton St, Savannah, GA 31401.)
Pauline Kael was born June 19, 1919, Petaluma, CA, died September 3, 2001, Great Barrington, MA, and stood 4 feet 9 inches tall. James Broughton was born November 10, 1913, Modesto, CA, and died May 17, 1999, Port Townsend, WA. Neither one had a middle name. Both used their birth name throughout life. Both had lives, before meeting in the late forties.
When she met James Broughton, Miss Kael was living what would later be called the bohemian life. After moving to New York, and being dumped for composer Samuel Barber, Miss Kael moved back to California. “Returning to the Bay Area with her tail between her legs in 1945, Pauline became involved with the incredibly effeminate avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton. He managed to impregnate Pauline but threw her out as soon as she told him, whereupon she moved to Santa Barbara to give birth to her daughter, Gina, in 1948.”
“Like her early career, Kael’s personal life was also fraught with failures. Kellow says “she had a habit of falling for gay men” earlier in her life because “they tended to share her passions and enthusiasms.” She had a daughter … with one of them, experimental filmmaker James Broughton.”
“For a time, during the 1940s, he lived with future film critic Pauline Kael. She encouraged his filmmaking endeavors but their relationship ended after she got pregnant. … Pauline Kael thought that Broughton made the biggest mistake of his life when he turned down a studio film after winning the prize at Cannes.” (Apparently Mr. Broughton was from a wealthy family, and could afford this attitude. Regarding his movie The Bed, Mr. Broughton said “It was the only film I created that ever made any money.”)
“Which brings us to the strange tale of Pauline’s only child, Gina James. … In 1948, at age 29, Kael got pregnant after she “talked her way into moving in” with James Broughton, a bisexual poet living in Sausalito. By Kellow’s account, Broughton was furious at the news of Kael’s pregnancy; he felt trapped and tricked by her. One of Broughton’s friends reported that he kicked Kael out of his house. She moved to Santa Barbara to have the baby. The birth certificate listed the father as “Lionel James, a writer”. It is one of the disappointments of the book that Kellow shines little light on Kael’s passion — or whatever it was — for Broughton, on how she processed that cruel rejection and on whether Broughton ever recognized Gina as his daughter.”
James Broughton moved on with his life. He made experimental films, got married, and fathered two more children. At some point he met Joel Singer, and began the romance that would last the rest of his life. It is tough to say whether he was genuinely bisexual, or whether he was playing the role society expected of him.
This review of Big Joy continues: “But interviews with Singer, waxing poetic about his years with the artist, are balanced by reminiscences from Broughton’s ex-wife and his abandoned son. Rather than only celebrating silliness, I found it admirable that the directors didn’t gloss over the pain he caused his wife and children. After all, when you think about it, he spent all of his life unable to decide if he was gay or straight; leaving a lot of broken hearts in his wake.
We learn from Kael that he flirted with everyone he met. “He rode off into the sunset with some guy,” his wife, Suzanna Hart tells us. “That was very sad for me, but not for him, which was…very irritating.” In her segments, Hart keeps her emotions in check but you can clearly read the sadness and anger in her face. The son doesn’t have much good to say about his absent father and the two daughters (the first by Kael and the second by Hart) both refused to be interviewed for the film. Singer has a lot to say about their blissful decades together, but he also comes off a bit heartless when he shows no guilt over breaking up what he calls Broughton’s “loveless” marriage.”
The baby daddy leaves, and the struggling writer becomes a single mom. “… Kael’s relationship with her actual daughter was something out of a Tennessee Williams play, and not in a good way. Kael home-schooled Gina and, as the girl grew up, kept her close, as a typist, projectionist, driver and right-hand man, and she banished any friend who actively encouraged the young woman to break out on her own. Though she was in many ways a loving and committed mother, helping to raise Gina’s son and always living nearby, one senses a Gothic selfishness in her mothering.”
Gina James declined to talk with Kellow for his book, but the author says Kael and her daughter had a sort of symbiotic relationship. “Pauline did not type, Pauline did not drive — Gina performed both those functions for her. And Gina was a very good critic of Pauline. She got to see Pauline’s copy before anyone else did and she often had very, very important and influential things to say. But Pauline really wasn’t wild about the idea of Gina breaking away and having her own life apart from her, and she didn’t do anything really to encourage her in that direction as far as I can see.”
Amazon one star comment: And her poor daughter – what a fate – TYPING all that. Poor Gina, — I can see her – Kellow described sitting silently in some coffee shop while her mother raved on and ON with her pet directors.
An affair with the experimental filmmaker James Broughton produced a child, Gina, whom Kael raised by herself, Mildred Pierce–like, heroically supporting them with a number of odd jobs, including running a laundry. Gina’s heart condition required expensive surgery, and Kael ended up enticing Edward Landberg, the owner of a local art-house theater, Berkeley Cinema Guild. They had begun as co-programmers. As Landberg tells it: “One day, when I was over at her place, I happened to graze her breast with my hand, and she kind of looked up and said, ‘What have you got to lose?’” Their marriage proved a fiasco, but Landberg agreed to pay for Gina’s operation, which Kellow suspects had been Kael’s motive all along…. Kellow shows more independence in assessing Kael’s treatment of her daughter Gina, whose ambitions to become a dancer or a painter she did little to encourage, preferring to keep her on “a silver cord . . . she had also grown accustomed to the steady, dependable role that Gina played—as secretary, driver, reader, sounding board—and she was loath to give her up.” Gina, for her part, was mistrustful of the dynamic she witnessed between Kael and her acolytes.“
“The closest and longest-lasting partnership of her life was with her daughter, Gina James … James considered speaking to Kellow, but finally declined, leaving a blank space at the center of this otherwise vividly detailed biography. Gina lived with her mother till she was over 30, typed up her reviews after Pauline stayed up all night writing them in longhand, and gave up both college and a shot at a dance career to serve as her mother’s caretaker, companion, and driver….
Kellow cites the text of the breathtakingly passive-aggressive eulogy that Gina delivered at her mother’s funeral in 2001: “My mother had tremendous empathy and compassion, though how to comfort, soothe or console was a mystery that eluded her … . Pauline’s greatest weakness, her failure as a person, became her great strength, her liberation as a writer and critic . … she turned her lack of self-awareness into a triumph.”
One more chapter remains. “Gina lived with Kael well into her thirties … That she married and had a child, Will, seemed to catch Kael by surprise, though she ended up adoring her only grandchild, someone with whom she could watch action movies with.
Kael died in 2001, when Will was about 19. Unfortunately, and Kellow made no mention of this in his book whatsoever, there’s a horrible postscript, one that may well have been the reason for why Gina declined to be interviewed for the book. On October 6, 2007, Will, then 25, went hiking in the East Mountain State Forest in the Berkshires. He was an avid hiker, not to mention a devoted martial artist. He had a girlfriend. He never came back. Gina reported him missing, but his body wasn’t found for more than week, on October 15. … “authorities found camping equipment nearby and while cause of death has not been determined, foul play is not suspected.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. UPDATE These two comments were made to the original post. Anonymous said, on June 16, 2017 at 9:18 pm Your piece on Kael and Broughton is rife with misinformation and judgements galore and unbelievably badly written. Get a life and stop spreading falsehoods. And next time you put your fingers to a keyboard do your due diligence! James’ son was NOT ABANDONED! He lived happily with the two of us after the divorce. You fail to recognize that James’ ex-wife was a classic fag hag who had been married to another gay man before her relationship with James. She had been in psychotherapy for years before they got together and for many years after they split up. James certainly did not spend the rest of his life uncertain about his sexuality. Read his autobiography COMING UNBUTTONED and you’ll discover how misinformed your take on him is. You have done a great disservice to your readers by publishing such homophobic nonsense. Joel Singer ~ Sterling Wilson said, on August 19, 2017 at 1:40 pm Curious about this autobiography, I found the following from a Publishers Weekly review “Broughton forsakes introspection for literary gossip and name-dropping: Kenneth Rexroth, Pauline Kael, Dylan Thomas, Anais Nin. The birth of a daughter is dispensed with in two sentences. Broughton’s insistence on making himself the center of attention increasingly intrudes.”
UPDATE A journey down an internet rabbit hole uncovered this item. It is from “Remembering Harry and John”, by Mark Thompson on the occasion of Harry’s 100th anniversary “I remember the night we were socializing at the San Francisco Art Institute at a gala tribute for James Broughton. Harry (Hay) and James had sparked briefly as Stanford University undergraduates, but didn’t meet again until fifty years later at a faerie gathering. Few people knew that James had fathered a daughter with esteemed film critic Pauline Kael during their bohemian Berkeley days, but Harry was alert to the fact. Kael and Broughton were having their own reunion at the moment when, with typical impudence, Harry interrupted the conversation by loudly asking, “So, who was the mother and who was the father?” The stunned silence was punctured only by the whoosh of Kael’s furious departure.”
What Ben Franklin Really Said
It is a popular line. “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” The credit, or blame, for this gem is assigned to Ben Franklin. Did he really say it? What was he talking about?
The good news is that Mr. Franklin did say these words. (Here is the text.) What follows was written by a lawyer. Prepare to be confused.
“The words appear originally in a 1755 letter that Franklin is presumed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly to the colonial governor during the French and Indian War. The letter was a salvo in a power struggle between the governor and the Assembly over funding for security on the frontier, one in which the Assembly wished to tax the lands of the Penn family, which ruled Pennsylvania from afar, to raise money for defense against French and Indian attacks. The governor kept vetoing the Assembly’s efforts at the behest of the family, which had appointed him. So to start matters, Franklin was writing not as a subject being asked to cede his liberty to government, but in his capacity as a legislator being asked to renounce his power to tax lands notionally under his jurisdiction. In other words, the “essential liberty” to which Franklin referred was thus not what we would think of today as civil liberties but, rather, the right of self-governance of a legislature in the interests of collective security.”
Mr. Franklin was writing on behalf of legislators who wanted to assess a tax. The quote is used by tax hating conservatives. The modern conservative wants to send a hundred thousand troops to a conflict eight time zones away, and pay for it with tax cuts.
Another article tells much the same story, but with a couple of twists. There is a google gimmick that shows how often a quote is used. The BF quote was little known until the twentieth century.
The techcrunch article introduces a dandy word for the rampant misuse of quotes. The word is contextomy. This explanation is from Matthew McGlone of the University of Texas at Austin.
“‘Contextomy’ refers to the selective excerpting of words from their original linguistic context in a way that distorts the source’s intended meaning, a practice commonly referred to as ‘quoting out of context’. Contextomy is employed in contemporary mass media to promote products, defame public figures and misappropriate rhetoric. A contextomized quotation not only prompts audiences to form a false impression of the source’s intentions, but can contaminate subsequent interpretation of the quote when it is restored to its original context. …”
The spell check suggestion for contextomy is contentment. This is a repost. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
Tom Paine
There is a meme floating through the innertubes. “To argue with a person who has renounced the use of reason is like administering medicine to the dead.” Thomas Paine English-American political activist, writer and revolutionary. A drawing of Mr. Paine lurks to the left of the text.
The quote is from the first paragraph of a pamphlet written by Mr. Paine, The American Crisis: LANCASTER, March 21, 1778, TO GENERAL SIR WILLIAM HOWE. It was part five of a series, The American Crisis. The tract was intended to inspire the war effort against the British. The full sentence: “To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.”
Four Principles of Quotation was written in 2002, before the rise of meme culture. The salient principle for today is number four, “Only quote from works that you have read.” The tract by Mr. Paine is 6956 words of revolutionary era purple prose. Today’s facebook expressionist does not want to go to that much trouble.
The American Crisis V has some interesting passages. It would be considered politically incorrect today. The British labelled is “the encourager of Indian cruelties,” and accused of “the unchangeable name of meanness.”… “The particular act of meanness which I allude to in this description, is forgery. You, sir, have abetted and patronized the forging and uttering counterfeit continental bills. … shows an inbred wretchedness of heart made up between the venomous malignity of a serpent and the spiteful imbecility of an inferior reptile.”
The text is directed at General William Howe. The war was not going well for the British… “They resemble the labors of a puppy pursuing his tail; the end is still at the same distance, and all the turnings round must be done over again.” General Howe resigned April 4, 1778, fifteen days after The American Crisis V was written. The purple prose might have been a factor.
“Your master’s speech at the opening of Parliament, is like … daily decaying into the grave with constitutional rottenness. … If there is a sin superior to every other, it is that of wilful and offensive war. … We leave it to England and Indians to boast of these honors; …”
Mr. Paine has a good reputation today. This was not universal during the revolution. “In 1777, Congress named Paine secretary to the Committee for Foreign Affairs. The following year, however, Paine accused a member of the Continental Congress of trying to profit personally from French aid given to the United States. In revealing the scandal, Paine quoted from secret documents that he had accessed through his position at Foreign Affairs. Also around this time, in his pamphlets, Paine alluded to secret negotiations with France that were not fit for public consumption. These missteps eventually led to Paine’s expulsion from the committee in 1779.”
After the war, Mr. Paine went back to England. He soon got involved in the French Revolution, and was imprisoned. He continued to write, and get in trouble. Mr. Paine was invited back to the United States by Thomas Jefferson. He “died in June 1809, and to drive home the point of his tarnished image, the New York Citizen printed the following line in Paine’s obituary: “He had lived long, did some good and much harm.” Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Quoting James Baldwin
James Arthur Baldwin has become a star on facebook, thirty five years after his death. People love to quote him, and post artsy pictures of his face. Over the past year I have seen three Baldwin memes that required action. Once you start to research, there is no telling what you are going to find.
“I can’t believe what you say because I see what you do.” This item is from a 1966 article that Mr. Baldwin wrote for The Nation. “One is in the impossible position of being unable to believe a word one’s countrymen say. “I can’t believe what you say,” the song goes, “because I see what you do”—and one is also under the necessity of escaping the jungle …”
“The song goes” is what the memes leave out. Ike Turner wrote the song. The Ikettes sing “I can’t believe…”, while Tina goes “agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh, agh.” Ike knew about being a no-good man. Tina looks a lot better in a short skirt than Mr. Baldwin did.
“I’d like to leave you with one more short quote from James Baldwin, “Whoever debases others is debasing himself.” This is from a June, 2020 video about racism. This quote is from Letter from a Region in My Mind, a 1962 essay in The New Yorker. “Letter…” clocks in at 22,114 words. Mr. Baldwin could crank out the word count.
“Letter…” covers a lot of ground. The “debase” quote comes in after Mr. Baldwin describes a visit to Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam. Soon, Mr. Baldwin starts talking about race in the United States. One quote stood out: “But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.”
“By this time, I was in a high school that was predominantly Jewish. This meant that I was surrounded by people who were, by definition, beyond any hope of salvation, who laughed at the tracts and leaflets I brought to school, and who pointed out that the Gospels had been written long after the death of Christ. … My best friend in high school was a Jew. He came to our house once, and afterward my father asked, as he asked about everyone, “Is he a Christian?”—by which he meant “Is he saved?” I really do not know whether my answer came out of innocence or venom, but I said, coldly, “No. He’s Jewish.” My father slammed me across the face with his great palm, and in that moment everything flooded back—all the hatred and all the fear, and the depth of a merciless resolve to kill my father rather than allow my father to kill me—and I knew that all those sermons and tears and all that repentance and rejoicing had changed nothing.”
“The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” This quote proved more difficult to chase down. It does not appear in any of Mr. Baldwin’s work. The earliest mention appears to be behind The New Yorker paywall. “During his wanderings, Baldwin warned a friend who had urged him to settle down that “the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it.” There is no link to a source.
The New Yorker article is cited by Lithub, which is then cited by New Transcendentalist. “These Timely James Baldwin Quotes … ,” from Bustle, credits the quote to “a 1957 letter to Sol Stein.”
Sol Stein “attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he served on the Magpie literary magazine with Richard Avedon and James Baldwin.” We don’t know if Mr. Stein was the one who made David Baldwin slap his step-son. A paywalled article, about the correspondence between Mr. Stein and “Jimmy,” does not mention the “place in which I’ll fit” quote.
The WaPo article did have a mind-blowing quote. “In the introduction to the book, Baldwin would ponder his influences: “When one begins looking for influences, one finds them by the score. … the King James Bible, the rhetoric of the store-front church, something ironic and violent and perpetually understated in Negro speech…” I saw this quote in 1976, in a college textbook. At the time, I thought this was an amazing quote. It stayed in my mind until the next life changing detail came along, not to be thought of again for forty six years.
Chamblee54 has written about Mr. Baldwin before. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” UPDATE: @QuoteResearch Replying to @chamblee54 @HilalIsler @lithub “It appeared in a 1957 letter from James Baldwin and Sol Stein reprinted in “Native Sons” (2004) edited by Sol Stein. I am planning to create a QI article on this topic” @QuoteResearch “Please get over the notion, Sol, that there’s some place I’ll fit when I’ve made some ‘real peace’ with myself : the place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it. You know and I know that the ‘peace’ of most people is nothing but torpor” … James Baldwin to Sol Stein UPDATE: I was writing a story about Flannery O’Connor. I wanted to quote this post, but could not find the link. Neither google nor duckduckgo would show me this post. I had to go to the chamblee54 archive, and scroll through October 2022 until I found the post. This is a repost from 2022.
Community Standards
This is a repost from 2021. … A facebook friend posted a meme. It had a drawing of James Madison, and a quote. “The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.”
The quote is generally said to be from a letter written in 1803. However, no one seems to know who the letter was sent to, or the context of the quote. A website, Positive Atheism’s Big List of James Madison Quotations, notes: “A diligent search for the source of this quotation is underway among Madison scholars and our correspondent, James Haught. No source has, at this time, been found; thus, we have deleted it from the regular section of our Madison page and moved it here (November 26, 2004). Until such time as this quotation can be verified as genuine, we strongly recommend discontinuing the use of this quip. … “
PG is fond of debunking quotes, but did not think to investigate this one. What he did do was remember a photograph of Dolley Madison, the wife of Mr. Madison. PG posted a link to the picture, along with a comment about Mrs. Madison being the first White House resident to be photographed. John Quincy Adams was the first President to be photographed.
This should not be controversial. Pedantic maybe, but not fighting words. Facebook had another opinion. “Your comment goes against our Community Standards on spam. No one else can see your comment. We have these standards to prevent things like false advertising, fraud and security breaches. Repeatedly violating our Community Standards can cause further account restrictions.”
The photograph of Mrs. Madison was taken by Matthew Brady in 1848. Mrs. Madison died in 1849. There were three First Ladies before her. Martha Washington died in 1802. Abigail Adams died in 1818. Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, daughter of Thomas Jefferson, died in 1836. There are no photographs of Sally Hemings.
“Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the daguerreotype process in France. The invention was announced to the public on August 19, 1839 at a meeting of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris.” Dolley Madison is the earliest First Lady to have lived after the invention of photography. Apparently, facebook does not want you to know this.
Pictures today are from the Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took these pictures in June, 1940. “Home demonstration club meeting has games and refreshments after discussion. La Delta Project, ” Thomastown, Louisiana.
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Julian Carr And Silent Sam
This is a repost from 2018. … A Confederate monument was torn down last night in Chapel Hill NC. The statue, known as “Silent Sam,” was intended as a monument to students who left school to fight in the War Between the States. “In 1913, the Daughters of Confederacy, after four years of fundraising, paid sculptor John Wilson, a Canadian, $7500 for the statue. Wilson used a Boston-man, Harold Langlois, as the model. It’s unclear, however, if those attending Silent Sam’s dedication knew they were celebrating a Yankee’s profile. Silent Sam was among many “Silent Sentinels,” – statues of soldiers without cartridge box, soldiers who could no longer fire a shot – that were manufactured and bronzed in the North and then sent down south for public display. Many of these statues look remarkably similar. Like Silent Sam, they also face north, toward the Union.”
Many of the comments today quote a speech made at the 1913 unveiling. The speech was by Julian Carr, a prominent businessman and philanthropist. Mr. Carr is considered, with some justification, to have been a white supremacist. A Confederate veteran, Mr. Carr appears to have been a complex man, who did both good and harm.
This tweet is typical of today’s discourse. @jjones9 “From white supremacist Julian Carr’s speech at the dedication of Silent Sam in 1913.” The tweet features a screen shot, of a quote from the 1913 speech. “I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand, less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison, and for thirty nights afterwards slept with a double-barrel shot gun under my head.”
What was the rest of the speech? A bit of research turned up a transcript, Julian S. Carr, “Unveiling of Confederate Monument at University. June 2, 1913.” The rest of the speech has little in common with the “one allusion.” The speech sounded like the memorials to fallen soldiers in many other wars. “They served, they suffered, they endured, they fought, [and died – crossed out] for their childhood homes, their firesides, the honor of their ancestors, their loved ones, their own native land.”
Mr. Carr’s theme is defense of a the homeland. When the War broke out, the concept of a United States, ruled by a strong federal government, was less accepted than it is today. Many people in the South saw it as a failed experiment. Slavery was an important issue in the decision to secede, along with economic matters that do not get twenty first century people worked up. Slavery is not mentioned in the 1913 speech.
“Of the students and alumni of the University of North Carolina, about 1800 entered the Confederate army … . The University had in the service 1 lieutenant-general, 4 major-generals, 13 brigadier-[page break 8] generals, 71 colonels, 30 lieutenant-colonels, 65 majors, 46 adjutants, 71 surgeons, 254 captains, 161 lieutenants, 38 non-commissioned officers and about 1000 privates. I regard it as eminently appropriate to refer briefly at his point to the magnificent showing made by our state in the military service of the Confederacy. … The entire Confederate loss on the battlefield was 74,524, of which North Carolina’s share was 19,673, or more than one-fourth; 59, 297 died of disease, and of these, 20,602 were North Carolinians.”
“And I dare to affirm this day, that if every State of the South had done what North Carolina did without a murmer [sic], always faithful to its duty whatever the groans of the victims, there never would have been an Appomatox[sic]; Grant would have followed Meade and Pope; Burnside, Hooker, McDowell and McClellan, and the political geography of America would have been re-written.”
There are three other noteworthy quotes in the speech. “Even the great Northern universities – Harvard, Yale and Princeton – furnished quotas of soldiers for the Confederate ranks. From Harvard came 257, of whom 58 were killed in battle and 12 died in the service, and in this large list appear 8 brigadier-generals and 5 major-generals. Of the graduates and students of Yale, 48 entered the Confederate service, and of these 8 were killed in battle or succumbed to disease. At Princeton 55 men left the University, early in 1861, to enter the Confederate service, and from the somewhat incomplete records of that University it appears that a considerable percentage of these young men were killed in battle, or died from disease.”
“Permit me to refer at this point to a pleasing incident in which that distinguished son of the South, Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States, had the leading part. A year or two ago diplomas were given by our University to all the students who had interrupted their studies to enter the military service of the Confederacy. Mr. Wilson, then President of Princeton University delivered these diplomas. One man only of the Class [handwritten – that Matriculated in 1862] wearing the Confederate uniform, came forward to receive that highly prized token. It was the humble individual who now addresses you. At the dinner, later in the day, Professor Wilson greeted me with the remark that in many years nothing had so much touched and warmed his heart as the sight of that Confederate uniform.”
The speech went on and on, and sounded much like any other memorial. Once again, it should be noted that defense of the homeland received much more notice than a defense of slavery. The speech ended with these words: “In the knowledge of subsequent developments, the progress, peace and prosperity of our united, common country, victor and vanquished now alike believe that in the Providence of God it was right and well that the issue was determined as it was. And the people of all sections of our great Republic, moved by the impulse of sincere and zealous loyalty, of fervent and exalted patriotism may say: “All is well that ends well.”
“Again, dear Daughters of the Confederacy, I thank you in the name of the eighteen hundred brave, loyal, patriotic, home-loving young student soldiers who went out from this grand old University to battle for our Southern rights and Southern liberties, five hundred of whom never came back. God bless every one of you, and every Daughter of the Confederacy in our dear Southland.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Revenge Of Puff
This is a repost from 2010. In the past fourteen years, same sex marriage has become legal, and profitable. Pictures are from The Library of Congress, a branch of federal big government. … The national organization for marriage (NOM) wants to keep marriage as a man and woman type of thing. They have a right to say that, and to have rallies where they say that. This is America. You are entitled to your opinion, no matter how stupid it is.
What you are NOT entitled to is the unfettered use of copyrighted material. Someone heard a recording of Peter, Paul, and Mary singing “This land is your land” at a NOM sponsored homonomo happening. They sent a letter to Peter Yarrow, who sent a cease and desist letter to NOM. It was co-signed by Paul Stookey. Mary Travers passed away September 16, 2009.
Mr. Stookey wrote “The Wedding Song”, which is as common at weddings as inedible cake. The song…written years before same sex marriage became an issue…does talk about a woman and a man. It also says “Whenever two or more of you are gathered in his name, there is love”. With royalty revenue from that song, Mr. Stookey has a selfish interest in the institution of marriage remaining healthy. Or perhaps, an increase in those revenues from gay marriages.
As it turns out, author Woody Guthrie never renewed the copyright to TLIYL, and the song is public domain. However, the recorded version by PPM is copyrighted, and belongs to the artists. If they don’t like the way it is being used, they have every right to object.
Mr. Guthrie was not a Republican. He wrote TLIYL as a response to “G-d Bless America” a radio hit of the early forties. The original title was “G-d blessed America for me”. There are lines about private property, that are not included in the popular versions. Somehow, this song is considered a patriotic standard. Grammar school chorus class would not be the same without it.
The Heroin Diaries
This is a repost from 2021. The Nikki Sixx circus continues to make money. … The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star turned up on the used book table at the Chamblee library. A hardback copy was $2. THD is a visual overload. Every page has comic-book drawings, in a horror show theme. The text/background switches back and forth between red, black, and white. If you are in a spot with low lighting, red on black text is almost impossible to read.
THD is about the life, and near death, of Nikki Sixx. He is the bass player/creative force for Mötley Crüe. THD starts Christmas 1986. The main portion ends at the end of 1987. There are a few pages, telling the short version from 1988, until the book’s publication in 2007. The copyright is assigned to Nikki Sixx, with Ian Gihins the editorial miracle worker. Mr. Sixx kept a diary throughout 1987, and added comments in 2007. A cast of characters adds further commentary.
Nikki Sixx did a lot of drugs in 1987. Heroin, cocaine, and Jack Daniels were the big three. Crüe went on tour in June, and were on the road the rest of the year. The “Girls, Girls, Girls” tour may have been the high water mark for rockstar bad behavior. One story has Nikki, and Tommy Lee (Crüe’s drummer/Nikki’s co-conspirator) set a hotel room on fire. Nikki thought it was someone in their entourage, and was surprised when it was a Chinese tourist. There are many more stories.
Frank Carlton Serafino Feranna Jr. was born December 11, 1958. THD starts two weeks after his 28th birthday, ending his chance to join the 27 club. At some point, and ex-girlfriend took a boyfriend named “Nikki Syxx.” Frank Feranna had a tough childhood. After his father left, Frank was bounced around between his mother, and his grandparents. Somewhere in there, his mother is said to have dated Richard Pryor. Frank got older, with a lot of issues. AHD goes into great detail about his childhood, and the self-medicating that followed.
The GGG tour came to the Omni, in Atlanta, November 20, 1987. By this time Guns and Roses were the opening act. (Slash on the same tour as Nikki Sixx, what could possibly go wrong?) “Axl Rose was onstage in Atlanta when he saw one of the security guards, who turned out to be an off-duty cop, pushing their fans around. Axl jumped off the stage and started fighting the guard, so security grabbed him and took him backstage. So Slash sang a few songs, and Guns’ drum technician sang “Honky Tonk Woman”—four times, not terribly well.”
“As concert promoter Charlie Brusco walked through the back door of the arena shortly after the concert started, he knew something was wrong. “I heard this horrible sound,” Brusco says. “I look up, and one of the guys in the road crew was singing.” A roadie for the band named Big Ron was on lead vocals, because, earlier, Rose had jumped offstage, punched a cop, and been carried away. The Omni’s head of security told Brusco, … “Third strike, he hit a black female Atlanta police officer. He’s going to jail.” Brusco begged for Rose to be allowed to finish the show. Finally the security chief said, “If he apologizes to the police officer in writing, we’ll let him go.” Brusco agreed. He was led to Rose, who was sitting at a makeshift booking table wearing his trademark bandanna. Rose dutifully signed his apology, and security brought in the female officer. Then Rose looked up and said, “Fuck you, you fucking jag-off cop.” He was hauled to jail, and the show was canceled.”
An amazon one-star review: “I don’t know how you read this and aren’t questioning how Nikki Sixx isn’t in prison for rape; “Nikki. He asked me if I was serious about her, and when I replied that we were just getting to know each other, Nikki started telling her how hot she was. As he bent her over what was a locker-room bench she complained that she was in the middle of her period. Nikki told her he wasn’t scared by a little bit of blood and proceeded to have intercourse with her right there on the spot, in front of anybody who happened to be there.”
THD is ever-so-slightly misogynistic. The phrase “CHICKS=TROUBLE” appears throughout the book, beside the tittie bars and groupies. The ladies are definitely not as important to Nikki as the drugs. “My dick didn’t seem to be aware that she was there. She kept asking me what was wrong, and I was so out of it that I thought she meant what was wrong with the world, so I started talking about global poverty and shit. I’m not surprised she left. I suspect she won’t be coming back.”
“We paint the outside of our bodies beautiful but the inside is like dead men’s bones. … We mistake lust for love and pop more pills, slam more drugs, drink ourselves silly or end us, as I did, scraping the inside of a pipe just to hit the resin and flush life down a toilet.” Evangelist Denise Matthews, aka Vanity, was Nikki’s girlfriend for much of 1987. A former gf of Prince, Miss Matthews had a volatile personality. Being a serious crackhead did not help. Evangelist Denise Matthews passed away February 15, 2016. Her kidney failure is almost certainly the result of her crack addiction.
Near the end of 1987, Nikki shot too much heroin. Many people thought he died. He managed to pull through. The next few years saw Nikki get sober, only to relapse, only to get sober again, only to relapse. Rinse and repeat, unlike the appalling approach to personal hygiene. Hong Kong, December 19, 1987: “P.S. I smell so bad, I haven’t showered since LA I can see people actually look repulsed when they get a whiff of me. I stand next to people just to fuck with them. I didn’t bring any clothes with me, just cash. Fuck, what else do I need.”
After 1987, the narrative becomes much less detailed. Nikki gets married and divorced a few times, with a few children born along the way. At one point, he abandoned his wife and kids, which made him feel horrible, but did not stop him. Finally, Nikki detoxed for good, and was clean when THD was written in 2007. According to his instagram, Nikki Sixx has been sober 20 years on July 2, 2021. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Hiroshima 78 Years Later
At 8:15 am, August 6, 1945, Hiroshima got nuked. It was the start of a new era. Since Japan is 13 hours ahead of Georgia, and standard time was used, the literal anniversary is 8:15 pm, August 5.
Tsutomu Yamaguchi was working in Hiroshima when the bomb hit. He survived, and found a train to take hime to his home town, Nagasaki.
The device dropped on Hiroshima, the Little Boy, had an estimated force of 13 kilotons of Trinitrotoluene, or TNT. A kiloton of TNT is roughly a cube whose sides are ten meters. This device is fairly tiny compared to many of the warheads developed since. Many of the modern appliances are measured in megatons, or millions of tons of TNT. The Soviet Union had a bomb with a capacity of 50 megatons, or 4,000 times the size of the Little Boy.
The largest weapon tested by The United States is the Castle Bravo. This device destroyed Bikini Atoll in the Pacific. The two piece swimsuit was named for this island. The Castle Bravo device had a yield of 15 megatons of TNT. This is roughly 1,000 times the power of the Little Boy.
The decision to drop the bomb has long been controversial. There are a lot of factors and gray areas, and the issue does not lend itself to sound bite solutions. The conventional wisdom is that Japan surrendered because of the nuclear attack. This meant the war was shortened by at least a year, there was no invasion of Japan, and many lives were saved. PG is scared by the moral calculus involved in a decision like this….do 100,000 civilian deaths prevent the deaths of 500,000 soldiers? PG suspects that even G-d herself would lose sleep over that one.
There is also evidence that the bomb was not needed. Japan was whipped in August 1945. The air raids were conducted in daylight with little resistance. A debate was going on in the Japanese government on whether to continue the fight.
An event happened the day between Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, which influenced the Japanese decision to surrender. The Soviet Union had agreed to help the United States with the war against Japan. On August 8, The Soviet Union invaded Japanese occupied Manchuria. There are indications that Japan knew the fight was hopeless at this point, and would rather surrender to The United States than The Soviet Union. This is one of the gray areas that never seems to be mentioned.
The United States wanted the war to end quickly for obvious reasons, and a few subtle ones. America did not want to share the spoils of Japanese war with The Soviet Union. There were already tensions between the two allies, and the cold war was not far off. Many felt The United States used the Little Boy as a warning to The Soviet Union.
When you get your moral software out, you might want to figure in the effect of opening the nuclear Pandora’s box. Would the nuclear bomb have been developed by other countries if America had not led the way? The science is not that complicated…after all, America hit paydirt with the Manhattan Project fairly quickly. Nonetheless, there is karma involved in using a terrible new device on a civilian population. The United States started the wind of the arms race, and has yet to feel the whirlwind.
This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress. Ansel Adams took pictures of Japanese Americans, in a World War Two internment camp. The ladies in the bridge game are Aiko Hamaguchi, Chiye Yamanaki, Catherine Yamaguchi, and Kazoko Nagahama.
Middle Names
This is a double repost, about the custom of middle names. It was published in this format in 2011. Today, a middle name is like a body part or an excuse.. everyone has one. It has not always been that way. The part about Presidential middle names was written during the 2008 campaign. Pictures are from The Library of Congress .
With the commentary about the middle name of Barack Hussein Obama, perhaps it is time for a look at the lessons of history. George Washington did not have a middle name. Nor the rest of the early Presidents. The first one to have a middle name (or initial) is John Quincy Adams. J.Q. Adams is the first son of a president to hold the office. The second one proved to be unfortunate.
The next POTUS to show a middle initial was William Henry Harrison. He was the first victim of the Zero Factor, in which Presidents elected in years ending in zero died in office. This tradition was ended by Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Another Zero Factor President, Abraham Lincoln, did not have a middle name. Ulysses S. Grant was born Hiram Ulysses Grant. One legend has a mistake on a school application giving him the middle name Simpson, after his mother’s maiden name. Moving into the twentieth century, William Howard Taft was referred to by all three names.
In many ways, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the first president of the modern age. For some reason, his middle name was frequently used, and the initials FDR became popular. Presidential initials did not become popular again until JFK and LBJ. After FDR went to the fireside chat in the sky, Harry S. Truman became president. The S stood for nothing.
The next president whose middle name was frequently used was John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Could this be a subtle dig at his Irish background, much as the current noise about Barack Hussein Obama? As for Baines and Milhous, those middle names both seemed to fit the personality of the man.
After Lightbulb Lyndon, the use of Presidential middle names went into decline. Gerald Rudolph Ford would be a good trivia question. George Herbert Walker Bush downplayed his quadruple initials, perhaps knowing that many people don’t trust a man with two middle names. George Walker Bush is frequently referred to by his middle initial.
In the 2008 election, we had a dark skinned man with a Muslim middle name. We had a white haired republican with the middle name of Sidney. And we had a married woman, who uses her maiden name as a middle name. Her original middle name is Diane. 2012 saw Willard Mitt Romney try to get elected. In 2016, Bernard Sanders was a Democratic challenger. Mr. Sanders does not have a middle name, leading to an unflattering set of initials. The less said about Donald John Trump versus Joseph Robinette Biden Jr, the better.
While researching this feature, PG noticed that many of the early presidents did not have middle names . Apparently, before the American Revolution, middle names were seldom given. For some reason the custom caught on during the 19th century. When America started to draft men for World War I, the draft papers included a space for the middle name.
One possible reason for middle names was population density and increased family size. Many people began to have the same first name (or Christian name) and last name (Surname). Middle names were a way to distinguish between Jimmy Bob Jones and Jimmy Joe Jones. There was possibly a bit of status involved in having more than one name.
Women have long used the maiden name as a middle name after marriage. Girls were often not given middle names for this reason. The hyphenated Maiden-Married name is a fairly recent custom (Which this author hopes is a fad that will go away).
While middle names were originally a decoration, many are now used as a primary identification. PG is referred to as a diminutive of his middle name, which can be confusing when authorities insist on using his first name. The middle name is also a handy alternative for someone who gets tired of the name they are called by. There is also this thought …”I think parents give kids middle names so the kids will know when they are really p****d at them.”
Gaza Suffering
This is a repost from 2010. Little significant change has taken place in 13 years. … British prime minister David Cameron is on a visit to Turkey. He made a few comments about Gaza. “Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change. Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp.” Israel’s ambassador to Great Britain, Ron Prosor, replied “The people of Gaza are the prisoners of the terrorist organization Hamas. The situation in Gaza is the direct result of Hamas’ rule and priorities.”
As per wikipedia, Hamas was founded in 1987. This was just after the Iran contra affair, when Israel was helping Iran buy weapons. 1987 is 39 years after the creation of the state of Many Arabs living in what became Israel left during this time, and many settled in the Gaza Strip.
The creation of Hamas was 20 years after the six day war, when Israel took control of the Gaza Strip. The Israeli soldiers were not greeted as liberators. What followed was an Israeli occupation of the territory. It was by, most accounts, a brutal affair, with Gaza resistance met by Israeli force.
During this occupation, the prime “terrorist organization” was the P.L.O. They were the object of attacks by Israel, both propaganda and military. They were connected to the party Fatah, which became the primary agent of governance in Palestine. There was an election, and Hamas won.
There are reports that Hamas was secretly founded by Israel, to fight Fatah/PLO. Whether or not this is true, the fact is that Israel maintained a brutal occupation of Gaza. It should be no surprise that a “terrorist organization” would be popular, and win an election over yesterday’s boogieman.
Both sides in this conflict have talking points, and have suffered losses. The commentary above is greatly oversimplified. However, to say the suffering of the Gazans “is the direct result of Hamas” constitutes an obscene piece of propaganda.
Pictures for this feature are from the Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library. HT to Juan Cole , an excellent source for news on the middle east.
July 3, 1981
July 3, 1981, was another day before a holiday. The new President, Ronald Reagan, was recovering from gunshot wounds. There was talk of an era of conservatism, with possibly severe repression.
There was an article in the New York Times. RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS. “Doctors in New York and California have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis…”
This was the media debut of AIDS. It would not have that name for a while. Almost nobody thought, on that summer day, just how bad AIDS would be. In five years it was obvious how serious AIDS was.
PG was on another trip to the west coast. It was becoming obvious that this would be a vacation, rather than a relocation. He was riding a bicycle, with a milk carton overloaded with camping gear. Some kids told him to get saddle bags, and carry the weight lower. If you have the weight on top, you would lose control coming down a big hill. PG did not listen to the kids.
On July 4, PG left Patrick’s Point state park, about 300 miles north of San Francisco. Coming down the first hill on highway 101, the bike shook, shook harder, and flipped on its side. PG was thrown off. The front wheel was bent beyond repair. PG gathered his gear, left the bike behind, and got a ride into the nearest town.
PG got a bus ticket to Seattle. That city was in an economic downturn, with less than half a page of help wanted ads. PG found a auto delivery service, and got a VW bug going to Oak Ridge, TN. In a few days he was in Atlanta. A few days later, a temp agency came up with a job as a driver for a blueprint company. PG worked for that company, in one form or another, for the next 24 years.
As for the gay men with Kaposi’s Sarcoma … in all probability, the patients mentioned in that article were all dead within a year. AIDS has become a dominating story in our time. At its worst, it was claiming 50,000 lives a year. With the advent of wonder drugs, the death toll has been greatly reduced. The impact of AIDS on American life cannot be adequately described. This is a repost.
Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. is still writing articles for the New York Times.
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