Jean D. McKinnon
The first picture in this episode is a family portrait of the Quin family in Washington Georgia. The nine surviving children of Hugh Pharr Quin are sitting for the camera. Mr. Quin had joined the Georgia State Troops of the Army of the Confederacy at the age of 16, and after the war went to Washington to live with his sister. Mr. Quin was in the church choir of the First Methodist Church when he met the organist, Betty Lou DuBose. They were married January 22, 1879.
The original name of Mrs. Quin was Louisa Toombs DuBose. She was the daughter of James Rembert DuBose. His brother in law was Robert Toombs, the Secretary of State of the Confederacy, and a man of whom many stories are told.
In this picture, Mrs. Quin is holding the hand of her second youngest daughter so she will not run away. This is Martha (Mattie) Vance Quin. She is my grandmother.
After the Great War, Mattie Quin was living in Memphis Tennessee, where she met Arthur Dunaway. Mr. Dunaway was a veteran of the war, and was from Paragould, Arkansas. On July 23, 1922 her first Daughter, Jean, was born. This is my mother.
Mr. Dunaway died in 1930, shortly after the birth of his son Arthur. There were hard times and upheaval after this, with the family settling in Atlanta. There her third child Helen Ann Moffat was born on December 12, 1933. This is my Aunt Helen and my mother’s best friend.
Jean lived for many years with her mother and sister at 939 Piedmont, among other locations. She joined the First Baptist Church and sang in the choir. She got a job with the C&S bank, and was working at the Tenth Street Branch when she met Luther McKinnon. He was a native of Rowland, North Carolina. They were married October 6, 1951.
They moved into the Skyland Apartments, which in those days was out in the country. Mom told a story about Dad taking her home from Choir practice, and going home on the two lane Buford Hiway. There was a man who went to the restaurants to get scraps to feed his pigs, and his truck was always in front of them. This was a serious matter in the summer without air conditioning.
Soon, they moved into a house, and Luther junior was born on May 6, 1954. This is me. Malcolm was born May 10, 1956, which did it for the children.
The fifties were spent on Wimberly Road, a street of always pregnant women just outside Brookhaven. It was a great place to be a little kid.
In 1960, we moved to Parkridge Drive, to the house where my brother and I stay today. The note payment was $88 a month. Ashford Park School is a short walk away…the lady who sold us the house said “you slap you kid on the fanny and he is at school”.
In 1962, our family followed the choir director from First Baptist to Briarcliff Baptist, which is where my parents remained.
In 1964, Mom went back to work. She ran the drive in window at Lenox Square for the Trust Company of Georgia until it was time to retire. She became a talk radio fan when RING radio started, and was a friend of her customer Ludlow Porch. She gave dog biscuits to customers with dogs.
During this era of change, Mom taught me that all people were good people, be they black or white. This was rare in the south. She later became disgusted with the War in Vietnam, and liked to quote a man she heard on the radio. “How will we get out of Vietnam?””By ship and by plane”.
Eventually, it was time to retire. Her and Dad did the requisite traveling, until Dad got sick and passed away February 7, 1992. Mom stuck around for a few more years, until her time came December 18, 1998. This is a repost.
I Used To Be Charming Part Three
This is the latest edition of the chamblee54 book report on I Used to Be Charming, by Eve Babitz. This feature is a bit different. Instead of focusing on IUTBC, we will look at some of the key players in the story. A catalyst for today is a 2019 episode of the Bret Easton Ellis Podcast. The guest is Lili Anolik, promoting a book, Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A.
One important name is Earl McGrath. Bret had never heard of him. A friend of many influential people, McGrath had many careers. Apparently, his main skill was a talent for being fabulous. As David Bowie said, “It’s not really work, it’s just the power to charm.”
“McGrath’s story began in Superior WI. The son of an itinerant short-order cook, it wasn’t long before the teenage Earl began to display a wanderlust of his own, dropping out of high school and leaving home, ‘hanging out with Aldous Huxley in Los Angeles and going to see Henry Miller in Big Sur’, according to Vanity Fair. In the late 1950s he served with the Merchant Marine in Africa and the Middle East, and in Italy, in 1958, he met the woman he would later marry, Camilla Pecci-Blunt — a glamorous countess, and a descendant of Pope Leo XIII … McGrath was working for 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s when he met perhaps the other most influential person in his life, the legendary co-founder and president of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun.”
“Maybe that’s why Eve fell in “friend love” with a gay man, the cattiest breed of all, if we want to be cuntily honest as well. Specifically, Earl McGrath … As any gay man not fully out would be, McGrath was married to an Italian countess. He never had an official title, per se, though, in death, he would be credited as a “writer, music executive, art collector, and gallery owner.” In short, a jack-of-no-trades. Other than knowing how to be at the right place at the right time, and network with the right people. This is how he came into Eve’s orbit in the late 60s. The two grew Siamese twin close until McGrath’s venom reared its ugly head with the line … “Is that the blue you’re using?” As Anolik interprets the phrase, it’s an easy way to make an artist (of any kind) doubt themselves and their vision.”
Eve met Earl McGrath when Eve, and possibly McGrath, was dating Peter Pilafian, the electric violin player with The Mamas and The Papas. Peter Pilafian is one of those players that is unknown today. He does not have a wikipedia page, and we do not know if he is alive. Apparently, Eve would spend the night with Pilafian, and McGrath would show up at 7am the next day.
Somehow, Eve and McGrath connected. McGrath makes a spectacle of himself in Slow Days Fast Company. McGrath also gets credit/blame for the line you always seem to hear about Eve. “In every young man’s life, there is an Eve Babitz. It is usually Eve Babitz.”
lilianolikwriter has a tasteful picture, with this caption: “Eve Babitz with frenemy, Earl McGrath, at the opening of the Black Rabbit restaurant on Melrose, at the tail-end of the 60s. Earl is in the cowboy mustache, Eve in the glasses, which she was normally too vain to wear in photographs. The brunette with the pixie hair is Diane Gardiner, Doors publicist and long-time squeeze of Chuck Berry. (Says Eve, “Diane was a mean monster but everything she said was funny so I forgave her.”) … The woman in the floppy hat and sunglasses, says Eve, doesn’t ring a bell, not even a faint one.”
Allegedly, the Eve-McGrath falling out came when Eve was dating Harrison Ford, who also caught McGrath’s eye. A posthumous article about McGrath mentions “His great friend Harrison Ford — three of whose children were among McGrath’s two-dozen godchildren — saluted him as, ‘The last of a breed, one of the last great gentlemen and bohemians.’”
Lili Anolik tells an amusing story about Mr. Ford. “I remember one of our first conversations Eve told me about Harrison Ford dealing dope out of a bass fiddle at Barney’s Beanery”…. Michelle Phillips talks about seeing Star Wars when it first came out. When Harrison Ford appeared on the screen, Michelle said “whats he doing there, that’s my dope dealer.” A less reliable source chimes in: “Harrison Ford was her weed dealer, and, briefly, her lover: “The thing about Harrison was, Harrison could fuck. Nine people a day. It’s a talent, loving nine different people in one day. Warren [Beatty] could only do six.”
Part of the Eve legend is the photograph of Eve playing chess with Marcel Duchamp. “What happened was, my boyfriend at the time, Walter Hopps [director of the Pasadena Art Museum, 31, married], had scored this great coup. He’d convinced Duchamp, who’d given up art for chess back in the 1920s, to do a retrospective with him. He threw a party for the private opening, and L.A. had never seen anything like it. Everyone, everyone, was there—Duchamp, naturally, and Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg and Dennis Hopper and, oh, just everyone. I wasn’t, though, because I wasn’t invited. I guess Walter was afraid I’d make a scene in front of his wife. I was mad, which is why when Julian asked me at the public opening to take off my clothes and pose for him, I said sure. I mean, my breasts were normally something to behold, but birth control had made them even bigger, so they were really something to behold at that particular moment. …”
The photographer, Julian Wasser, was dating Eve’s sister Mirandi. Wasser had an exhibit in 2019, so apparently he was alive 3 years ago. Wasser took his most famous picture a few years later.“One August day in 1969, I was listening to a police radio when I heard all this strange talk about something going on in this residential area next to Beverly Hills. It was the kind of neighbourhood where people would … put pillows over their heads if murders were going on.”
“That was how I first heard that Roman Polanski’s wife, Sharon Tate, had been killed, along with four others. When I went up there shortly afterwards for Life magazine, Roman asked me to take Polaroid shots of the scene as well – and give them to a psychic who could study them and find out who the killers were. You can see my Polaroid on the chair beside Roman. …”
“When I was 14, I used to steal my dad’s car and drive all over Washington listening to police radio. There was segregation then and all the best murders, robberies and bloody events were in the black part of town. I’d photograph them and give the shots to the Washington Post. I was so naïve. Of course they wouldn’t run them – it was black people. … It’s a rough world now. I think Manson started it and 9/11 finished it. Reality has fallen on us like a ton of bricks.”
Ed Ruscha and brother Paul Ruscha were longtime *friends* of Eve. After Eve died, they had a paywall protected chat. Ed Ruscha: “Oh, it was the early ’60s, but she was a great part of my growing up. I know I was with her when Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. I was in bed with Eve and we were watching this on live TV, a little black-and-white set. … she lived in this house behind her parents’ house. She kept a sloppy quarters because she had a lot of cats who had their way. Her parents lived up at the front house on Bronson near Franklin. And I knew her parents well. Mae was a beautiful, sweet Texan who was an artist, and she drew pictures of the gingerbread houses on Bunker Hill. And Sol was the musician, violinist. They were very sweet people.”
Paul Ruscha: “I came to L.A. in 1973. We met at Jack’s Catch All; it was this great thrift store. I was a veteran thrift shopper and so was Danna [Ed Ruscha’s wife]. She introduced me to Eve, who said, “I’d like to have you over for dinner.” Danna said, “I think she likes you.” Eve knew that Ed and I were friends with [fashion model] Leon Bing. So she called Leon, who told Eve, “Well, no matter what you make for him, be sure that it’s loaded with cilantro because he’s just crazy about cilantro.” Eve put it in the salad and the soup, and I hate cilantro and I couldn’t eat it. All I could do is laugh. … If I spent the night with her, she’d wake up before I did and then want me to leave. So she’d throw coffee into a pot of boiling water and bang on it to make the grounds go down and to wake me up and say, “OK, here’s your coffee. Now get out of here.” And I’d laugh and then she’d say, “I think I’ve got something I’d like you to read.” Then I’d read whatever she’d written the day before. I gave her my critique, and if she liked it, she let me stay, and if she didn’t, she’d throw me out. … She just couldn’t go anywhere without ruining something. She’d knock something over or break something, and the same thing at her house. I remember a couple of fur coats I gave her, and one of them she threw over this little space heater that she had. It caught on fire and it burned up her garage.”
Since this is Hollywood, a certain amount of skepticism is appropriate. Lili says in the BEE appearance “the modern way of being objective is a kind of hyper objectivity, it’s a reconstituted objectivity, is objectivity that acknowledges the inevitability of subjectivity.” Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” More episodes of this series are available. one two four five
Richie Havens
Richie Havens died April 22, 2013. He was 72 years old. In 1969, he was the first performer at Woodstock. Mr. Havens was featured in the movie, and became very popular. The promoters asked him to play longer, while backstage chaos played out. “Freedom” was improvised to fill this need.
In 1974, PG had the privilege of seeing Richie Havens. He was playing at Richards, a club on Monroe Drive. It was the 2am show, on a weeknight. There was not a large crowd. What crowd there was kept yelling for “Freedom”, as if Mr. Havens had an obligation to play it.
Mr. Havens played a Guild guitar. He strummed it hard, with his pick dragging down over the body past the air hole. It looked like a guitar would only last a show, or two, before he would wear scratch marks in the body. Indeed, he did change guitars in mid show that night.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Harvey Fierstein
@HarveyFierstein wrote a book, I Was Better Last Night: A Memoir. Harvey Forbes Fierstein is selling his book, and saying festive things in the process. This will probably not influence one star commenter amazon customer. “This story seemed disjointed and superficial.”
Free Library of Philadelphia begins the discussion. The lady began with the traditional question about how Popeye Harvey got started. “I never wanted to be a writer. I never wanted to be an actor. I wanted to be an artist, but artist is is the 1950s word for gay.”
The chat turned onto the topic of sobriety. “By the time I stopped drinking I was drinking half a gallon of southern comfort a day, of 100 proof. So you’ve got to work your way up to that, because that will kill you if you try doing that on one day’s notice.”
“I think we’re almost gonna head to the Q&A, but I’m curious.” (Harvey puts the Q back in Q&A) “What advice do you have for young artists starting out in the world right now?” “Go get a real job.”
Barbara Walters interviewed Harvey in 1983. 39 years later, it is a cringefest. “His name is Harvey Fierstein, and with this success, he’s become Broadway’s newest celebrity. He is, to say the least, an unlikely celebrity. Harvey Fierstein, 29 year old homosexual playwright, actor, two-time Tony winner, and, just until a few years ago, earning his living as a drag queen … a man dressed up as a woman. At the age of 13 his middle-class parents from Brooklyn knew for certain that he was a homosexual, and by the time he was 15, he was performing as a transvestite.”
The 20/20 appearance is remarkable in many ways. Baba Wawa was known as a close friend, and possible beard, of Roy Cohn. She knew a lot more homosexuals than she acknowledged that night. Ms. Walters was roasted in a 2013 article about her retirement. “She’s old friends with make-believe TV tycoon Donald Trump.”
The WTF podcast, with Marc Maron, made this feature necessary. There was the time Harvey’s mother took his grandmother to see Torch Song Trilogy, when it was on Broadway. “She’s watching the show, and she’s hard of hearing, and in the loudest voice that has ever been projected in in a Broadway theater, she says “So Harvey’s a homosexual,” and my mother, in a voice loud enough for my grandmother to hear her, said “how should I know I don’t sleep with him.”
“No one knew who gay people were. We were something they talked about. We were vampires that only appeared at night. We weren’t normal people. Then aids hit … and suddenly we were everywhere. We’re doctors and teachers and lawyers and priests and mothers and babies. Now they see us everywhere, hospitals, classrooms, obituaries. We were gay, and now we’re human, that was a huge change. All of a sudden we existed. Now did they run away from us, did they turn their back on us, did they wish we did all die, maybe, but we were no longer deniable. We existed, and that changed everything. We’ve now got this war we’re fighting for our lives, because because of aids, and out come these young people screaming for marriage equality, and I’m saying what the [ __ ] is wrong with you people. We have we have so much other work to do. We’ve got all this crap going on to take care of, and you care about a [ __ ] wedding cake. Where are your values? Then I stopped myself. I said, you know, these are younger people than you, and don’t they have the right to define what the revolution should be? So I shut my mouth, and I went to work for them, and they turned out to be right.”
“Now this generation, coming back to where we started this whole conversation, has brought up gender, said, we’re now going to show you about gender, or at least question all of the roles of gender once again. I don’t understand it but I have lived enough history now to know, follow the young people, it’s their world, it’s not our world. We should shut the [ __ ] up. The role of an elder is not to tell you what to do, even though people think that’s what an elder is supposed to do. The role of an elder is to facilitate what young people want to do. That’s the best thing we can do.”
Marc Maron: “That whole world of gay sex that you write about it, to me it’s just like, oh my god, I mean like it was just you just walking around [ __ ] wherever you wanted, and just like kind of the insane electricity of that world, I can’t even imagine it.” Harvey: “Mark, my love, do you really think we aren’t still doing that? You really think i can’t take you to Central Park now, and show you people
[ __ ] in the rambles, are they yeah of course they are … it’s boys yeah what do boys need to have sex a finger that can pull down a zipper.”
“I never had children, believe me, raising Matthew Broderick was enough.” Pictures for this unpaid exercise in book promotion are from The Library of Congress.
Siddhartha Gautama
“The Buddha” is available for online viewing. 43 minutes into the PBS production, Gautama Siddhartha (pronounced sid HART ha) turned away from asceticism. He accepted a bowl of rice pudding from a lady, and was a step farther on the path to enlightenment.
Buddhism has always seemed “too asian” for an occidental to follow. There are some things, confirmed by this video, that PG finds appealing. The stories of Buddha are understood to be legends, with no one (that we know of) claiming them to be literal history. This is not like the book worship of Christians. Stories about Jesus are said to be literal truth. The ideas that Buddha taught are not changed by “mistakes” in telling his life story.
There is a story about Buddha seeing his ascetic buddies, after he ate the bowl of rice pudding. He got the ascetics to listen to him, until he won them over. From what PG has seen of humans, especially spiritually charged ones, he finds it tough to imagine these people listening that long. The average Jesus worshiper cannot be quiet long enough for you to finish a single sentence.
Christianity is obsessed with life after death. The Buddha of this show takes a different approach: “There are stories of people coming to the Buddha, and saying, “I am leaving your teaching because you have not told me about whether there is a life after death, or whether there is another world. And the Buddha says, ‘Did I ever say that I would give you the answers to these things?’ ‘No, Lord, you didn’t.’ ‘Why do you think that I ever said that I would give you the answer to these things? Because these are not the things that you need to know. The thing that you need to know is how to deal with suffering, because at this very moment, what made you ask that question was suffering.”
The focus is on the life of Buddha, not his death. The focus is on this life, not on life after death. Buddha lived to an old age, teaching up until his departure. Maybe if Jesus had been better at human relationships, he would not have been executed.
Maybe PG is so scarred by Jesus that he cannot benefit from any other source of wisdom. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The men are Confederate soldiers from the War Between the States. Many resources are available for those who wish to learn more.
Confederate Memorial Day
Today is Confederate Memorial Day in Georgia. It is an ancient question…how to honor the soldiers from the side that lost. They were just as valiant as the Union Soldiers. Considering the shortages of the Confederate Armies, the Rebels may have been just a bit braver.
The issue of Federalism is a defining conflict of the American experience. What powers do we give the Federal Government, and what powers do we cede to the States? The Confederacy was the product of this conflict. The Confederate States were a collection of individual states, with separate armies. This is one reason why the war turned out the way it did.
This is not a defense for slavery. The “Peculiar institution” was a moral horror. The after effects of slavery affect us today. Any remembrance of the Confederacy should know that. This does not make the men who fought any less brave.
It is tough to see the War Between the States through the modern eye. It was a different time, before many of the modern conveniences that are now considered necessities. Many say that the United States were divided from the start, and the fact the union lasted as long as it did was remarkable. When a conflict becomes us against them, the “causes” become unimportant.
The War was a horror, with no pain medicine. Little could be done for the wounded. It took the south many, many years to recover. This healing continues today. Remembering the sacrifices made by our ancestors helps. This is a repost. Pictures are from the The Library of Congress.
Mohandas Or Mahatma
Mahatma Gandhi – dying for freedom drops a curious tidbit 164 seconds in. “in the Indian capital Delhi there are several sites dedicated to the memory of the man to whom the poet Tagore gave the name Mahatma, great soul.” PG had always been annoyed by the custom of referring to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as Mahatma. It was time to learn more.
“The honorific Mahātmā (Sanskrit: “great-souled”) was first applied to Mr. Gandhi in 1914, in South Africa.” (Earlier wikipedias said that Mr. Gandhi was “pained” by the title.) A footnote has a googlebooks reference. “… Addresses in Durban and Verulam referred to Gandhi as a ‘Mahatma’, ‘great soul’. He was seen as a great soul because he had taken up the poor’s cause. The whites too said good things about Gandhi, who predicted a future for the Empire if it respected justice.”
“Rabindranath Tagore (1861 – 1941) is best known as a poet, and in 1913 was the first non-European writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.” Mr. Tagore was a big deal in India. “Despite formal address till 1919 (“Dear Mr. Gandhi”) Tagore refers to Gandhi as the ‘Mahatma’ as early as February 1915. “… in April of 1919, Tagore had for the first time addressed Gandhiji as “Mahatma”, even though it wasn’t Tagore who was the first to use the honorific.”
Mr. Tagore and Mr. Gandhi differed sharply. Many of these conflicts were about tactics Mr. Gandhi was using against British rule. “Some of us are reported to be of the opinion that it is mass animosity against the British that will unify India… So this anti-British animus, they say, must be our chief weapon… if that is true, then once the cause of the animosity is gone, in other words when the British leave the country, that artificial bond of unity will snap in a moment. Where, then, shall we find a second target of animosity? We shall not need to travel far. We shall find it here, in our country, where we shall mangle each other in mutual antagonism, a thirst for each other’s blood.”
The matter of who first used the M-word has been the subject of a court case. “The Gujarat High Court on Friday declared that Rabindranath Tagore gave the title to “Mahatma” to Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, reported India Today. The court was hearing a petition filed by one Sandhya Maru challenging the answer key of an examination held by a Rajkot local body, which said an “unknown journalist” came up with the title. … Maru said she lost marks because of the ambiguity about who gave the title to Gandhi … An RTI activist from Hyderabad had filed a query with the Prime Minister’s Office in 2012 seeking to know how, when and why Gandhi was given the title of Mahatma. The PMO had forwarded the request to the Indian Council of Historical Research … However, the ICHR informed RTI activist Raju Malthumkar in a letter that neither the NAI nor the Council had any documentary information on the subject.”
“A controversy broke out over a claim that a journalist – whose name remains unknown – first called Gandhi Mahatma. Tagore scholar and poet Sankha Ghosh made it clear that the Nobel Laureate was indeed not the first person to use the title. Gandhiji was first addressed as Mahatma at a reception at the Durban Town Hall in South Africa on July 12th 1914.”
A comment to this story has another take. “Nagar sheth of Jetpur Shri Nautamlal B. Mehta (Kamdar) was the first to use and bestow “Mahatma” for Shri Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on January 21, 1915, at Kamri Bai School, Jetpur, India. From then on, Gandhiji was known as Mahatma Gandhi.”
We do not know who first called Mohandas Gandhi “Mahatma.” We also do not know why the M-word is so widely used. Many people think that Mahatma is Mr. Gandhi’s first name. Is Mr. Gandhi more inspiring with an honorific title, rather than the name his parents gave him?
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi before. one two. Was Mohandas Gandhi A Racist? looks at Mr. Gandhi’s time in South Africa. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Drones
A giant art installation in Pakistan got some attention. An international committee displayed a large picture of a child, in an area that receives many drone strikes. The idea is to make drone controllers more aware of the human life on the ground. This is a repost from 2014.
A few days later, a commentary appeared, This Giant Art Piece in Pakistan Won’t Be Making Drone Pilots Feel Empathy. The author said the *target audience* of the piece was the empathetic public, not the drone controllers. There is a link to an article, where the psychological impact of drone warfare, on the controllers, is discussed. People in Yemen have a different perspective.
The drone war has been going on for some time now. It began under George W. Bush, and was intensified under Barack H. Obama. The “right to life” moving lips have been strangely silent. There are indications that fewer children are being killed now than before. Since the drone war is conducted by the secrecy oriented C.I.A., there is little way to *confirm or deny* these reports. Nor is it possible to determine the financial cost of this program. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Day Lincoln Was Shot
PG has read The Day Lincoln Was Shot. It is written so that the casual reader can enjoy it. There is a powerful history lesson here, and worth the twenty five cents PG paid at Book Nook. The pictures for this book report are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
This book contradicts another book PG read. Genius and Heroin reports that Mary Todd Lincoln had a bad headache on April 14, 1864. Some opium was found for her, and she was able to go to Ford’s Theater that evening. TDLWS does not mention this.
The story begins in the weeks leading up to “Good Friday”. John Wilkes Booth was in the crowd at Mr. Lincoln’s second inauguration. Vice President Andrew Johnson was also there, and made a drunken fool of himself. Mr. Johnson did not meet with Mr. Lincoln until the afternoon of April 14.
John Wilkes Booth was a famous actor, He made $20,000 a year as a performer. Mr. Booth was also a fan of the Confederacy, and launched a plan to kidnap Mr. Lincoln. There was an attempt to kidnap the President, but Mr. Lincoln did not show up as planned. The conspiracy of Mr. Booth almost broke up, and was reduced to four men.
The four men…John Wilkes Booth, Lewis Paine, David Herrold, and George Atzerodt … met at a boarding house owned by Mary Sarratt. Ultimately, Booth went to Ford’s Theater to kill the President. Lewis Paine and David Herrold tried to kill Secretary of State William Seward. George Atzerodt took a room at Kirkland’s boarding house, and was supposed to take out Vice President Andrew Johnson. Mary Sarratt was not involved in the plot, but was executed by hanging anyway.
In the weeks before Good Friday, a few things happened. On March 7, the door to box seven at Ford’s Theater was broken down, and the lock broken. On April 5, Secretary of State William Seward was badly injured in a carriage accident. On April 9, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to General Ulysses Grant, ending the War Between the States.
Part of the celebration was a theater party on Friday, April 14. Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln were to join Gen. and Mrs. Grant at Ford’s Theater. The show was “Our American Cousin”, starring Laura Keene. The Grants did not really want to go, and decided to catch a train to New Jersey. They wanted to see their children. Mrs. Grant had also witnessed a temper tantrum by Mrs. Lincoln, and was possibly avoiding the hot headed first lady.
Mr. Booth decided that this was the night for action. He went by the Kirkwood house, and left a note for Andrew Johnson. The idea was for the police to see the note, and think that Mr. Johnson was part of the conspiracy. This was foiled when Mr. Johnson’s secretary stopped by Kirkwood house, and picked up the Vice President’s mail and messages.
Ford’s Theater was prepared for the visit by the President. A barrier was taken out from between two boxes. Flags were hung around the building. At 9:00 pm, the President’s bodyguard, a Washington policeman named John F. Parker, got bored with the play. Mr. Parker went to Taltavul’s saloon, along with with Francis Burns, the president’s driver and Forbes, the valet. They were in the saloon during the action at the theater.
John Wilkes Booth was an experienced actor, and he knew how to follow a cue. At 10:15 pm, the player onstage said “Wal I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologizing old mantrap”. Booth placed a derringer between Mr. Lincoln’s left ear and spine, and pulled the trigger. He said “Sic Semper Tyrannis”, and cut Major Henry Rathbone. Booth leaned over the edge of the theater box, and lowered himself to the stage. The spur of his right foot catches on the Treasury regiment flag. This causes him to land on his left leg at an odd angle. The leg broke.
While this is going on, Lewis Paine and David Herrold went to visit Secretary of State William Seward. He is laying in bed, covered in bandages, recovering from the carriage accident. The bandages get in the way of the knife that cuts him, and save his life.
The wounds to Mr. Lincoln are considered mortal. The President was moved to Peterson’s boarding house nearby. At 7:22 am on April 15, he died. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who served as acting President during the night, said “Now he belongs to the ages.”
Thomas Jefferson Said What?
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.” Desmond Tutu. Some lines sound good, but don’t hold up to a bit of thinking. Desmond Tutu may very well have said it. (or maybe one of his rivals said it, and Mr. Tutu copied it.) The quote has been attributed to Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Patrick Henry, and probably others. Almost no one has a source, for the quote, from the dead white guys.
A post called MISQUOTING THE FOUNDERS did not mince words. “The only problem … is that Thomas Jefferson never said that, never wrote that, and quite possibly never thought it. … Right now if I Google “All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent” the entire first page of results wrongly attribute it to Thomas Jefferson. The quote and its many variants have been attributed in the past to Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke, but no record exists of the quote in any of their writings or contemporary accounts.”
On November 13, 1787, Mr. Jefferson wrote a letter to William Smith. The letter is full of zesty quotes. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it’s natural manure.”
A few lines above that, Mr. Jefferson said “God forbid we should ever be 20 years without such a rebellion.” Twenty years after he wrote this, Mr. Jefferson was President. He probably did not want to deal with a revolution when he was President.
Getting back to the quote about tyranny, Martin Porter wrote an entertaining essay, A study of a Web quotation. He gives credit, or blame, to Edmund Burke. First, a list of different versions is presented. This is a clue that something is awry. The conclusion: “There is no original. The quote is bogus, and Burke never said it. It is a pseudo-quote, and corresponds to real quotes in the same way that urban legends about … alligators in the sewers correspond to true news stories.”
Mr. Porter wrote a follow up essay, Four Principles of Quotation. These principles are: Principle 1 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with an author but no source assume that it is probably bogus. Principle 2 (for readers) Whenever you see a quotation given with a full source assume that it is probably being misused, unless you find good evidence that the quoter has read it in the source. Principle 3 (for quoters) Whenever you make a quotation, give the exact source. Principle 4 (for quoters) Only quote from works that you have read.
If these principles were to be used, then there would be a lot less hotheaded talking on the intercom. Pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. These pictures are Union soldiers, from the War Between the States. When war is discussed, all inspiring quotes are in doubt.
This is a repost. It is written like James Joyce. In the past year, doing due diligence on alleged quotes has become a hobby. Many people don’t care who said it, if they agree with the thoughts expressed. The prevailing thought is that an idea becomes more true with a famous name at the end. If the famous person is deceased, and cannot defend his/her reputation, that is not a problem. People do not like being told that Santa Claus does not exist.
Cary Grant Took LSD
There is a nifty article about Cary Grant and LSD on the web now. It seems Mr. Grant, the onetime Archibald Leach, had a few issues. Duh. Married five times. Widely rumored to the the bf of Randolph Scott. A talented actor, but a mess in the real world.
In 1956, Mr. Grant was with third wife Betsy Drake, who had a tough summer. “It was an open secret between cast and crew alike that the married Cary Grant was sleeping with Sophia Loren during their filming of The Pride and The Passion. Drake had flown to Italy to be by her husband’s side during the shoot only to find Grant ignoring her. Distraught, she fled on what was to be a quiet voyage on the SS Andrea Doria. On July 25, 1956 her quiescent journey turned into a nightmare. The ship collided with a Swedish ocean liner off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, sinking to the bottom of the Sea and claiming fifty-one lives.2 Betsy survived but was traumatized. The incident, coupled with the estrangement of her husband, haunted her in her sleep.”
Betsy Drake had a friend named Sally Brophy, an actress. Miss Brophy also received help from a psychiatrist, which included taking LSD. Eventually, Cary Grant started to go see this doctor.
Taking a legal trip, in a Hollywood doctor’s office, is not like going to a rave. It was seen as therapy, a way of learning how to deal with your problems. According to Cary Grant, it worked very well. He talked about it to a reporter, and then confirmed that he wanted this to go out to the public.
“The shock of each revelation brings with it an anguish of sadness for what was not known before in the wasted years of ignorance and, at the same time, an ecstasy of joy at being freed from the shackles of such ignorance … I learned many things in the quiet of that room … I learned that everything is or becomes its own opposite … it releases inhibition. You know, we are all unconsciously holding our anus. In one LSD dream I shit all over the rug and shit all over the floor. Another time I imagined myself as a giant penis launching off from earth like a spaceship … I seemed to be in a world of healthy, chubby little babies’ legs and diapers, smeared blood, a sort of general menstrual activity taking place … As a philosopher once said, you cannot judge the day until the night ..”
The only problem was, Mr. Grant had a movie coming out, “Operation Petticoat”. The studio “tripped out” when it heard the star of the show was praising LSD in the press. Mr. Grant had a share in the profits of the film, and was persuaded to call the reporter and recant on the interview.
Not everyone was impressed by the doctors that Mr. Grant used. “Aldous Huxley had encountered the clinic prior to his death, but had sought his LSD experiences from the parallel practice of Dr. Oscar Janiger, the other acid doctor to the stars. Huxley witnessed Chandler and Hartman’s work and was unnerved by their approach. “We met two Beverly Hills psychiatrists the other day,” he wrote, “who specialise in LSD therapy at $100 a shot – and, really, I have seldom met people of lower sensitivity, more vulgar mind! To think of people made vulnerable by LSD being exposed to such people is profoundly disturbing.”
In any event, LSD became criminalized, Doctors Chandler and Hartman got in trouble, and Cary Grant got married two more times. While Grant never renounced LSD, he refused to use any other illegal drug, even marijuana. He was a conservative old fogey.
Maureen Donaldson was the lover of Cary Grant in the seventies, and was a friend of Alice Cooper. She finally persuaded Mr. Grant to go to an Alice Cooper concert with her. He wore sunglasses, gold chains, and dressed like a “seedy agent”. He sat through the entire show, wearing earplugs, hating every minute of it.
As Miss Donaldson recalled the evening “Driving back to Los Angeles, I congratulated Cary for being such a good sport … He’d made an extraordinary effort to please me … [I asked him] ‘You really hated it, didn’t you?’ ‘It’s…’ he said, struggling for words, ‘you know what it’s like? Remember I told you about the time I took LSD in my doctor’s office and shat all over his rug and floor?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well now I know how that poor doctor felt.”
This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
David And Elton
On page 327 of David Bowie: A Life, the Live Aid show goes down. “There wasn’t much love lost between David and Elton–perhaps they’d fallen out at some point …” This is a repost.
Elton John says he fell out with David Bowie over ‘token queen’ remark “David and I were not the best of friends towards the end. We started out being really good friends. We used to hang out together with Marc Bolan, going to gay clubs, but I think we just drifted apart…. He once called me “rock’n’roll’s token queen” in an interview with Rolling Stone, which I thought was a bit snooty. He wasn’t my cup of tea. No; I wasn’t his cup of tea”.
1975 was a different time. David Bowie was moving out of Ziggy Stardust, and became the Thin White Duke. At some point he starting doing lots of cocaine. On page 196 of DB:AL, Jayne County has stories. “It was pretty obvious the David was taking coke. He became very skeletal in his appearance and began rattling off speeches that sounded meaningless to the rest of us–strange things about witchcraft, demons, and sexual prostitution in ancient times … weird things that made everyone nervous. He began to get paranoid and accusing people of ripping him off and stealing his drugs…. He had to have cartilage removed from one part of his body and put in his nose because the coke had eaten his nose cartilage away.”
While David was popular in 1975, and had a certain aesthetic aroma, Elton John was a phenomenon. Everything Elton touched went to Number One. Elton was one of the most popular solo acts the market ever sold. Maybe David was jealous of Elton’s success.
By all accounts, Elton did his share of “hooverizing.” In 1975, Elton was officially in the closet, although a lot of people knew otherwise. In one impossible to confirm story, a friend of PG was working in an Atlanta club called Encore, later known as Backstreet. One busy night, he was in a hurry to get somewhere, and bumped into someone. The person he knocked over was Elton John.
The infamous Rolling Stone interview was part of the damage. “Rock & roll has been really bringing me down lately. It’s in great danger of becoming an immobile, sterile fascist that constantly spews its propaganda on every arm of the media. …. I mean, disco music is great. I used disco to get my first Number One single [“Fame”] but it’s an escapist’s way out. It’s musical soma. Rock & roll too — it will occupy and destroy you that way. It lets in lower elements and shadows that I don’t think are necessary. Rock has always been the devil’s music. You can’t convince me that it isn’t.”
Cameron Crowe How about specifics? Is Mick Jagger evil? David Bowie “Mick himself? Oh Lord no. He’s not unlike Elton John, who represents the token queen — like Liberace used to. No, I don’t think Mick is evil at all. He represents the sort of harmless, bourgeois kind of evil that one can accept with a shrug…. Actually, I wonder … I think I might have been a bloody good Hitler. I’d be an excellent dictator. Very eccentric and quite mad.”
Playboy Magazine gave David another chance to talk about Hitler. “I’d love to enter politics. I will one day. I’d adore to be Prime Minister. And, yes, I believe very strongly in fascism.” “Rock stars are fascists, too. Adolf Hitler was one of the first rock stars.” “#54: PLAYBOY: How so?” BOWIE: “Think about it. Look at some of his films and see how he moved. I think he was quite as good as Jagger. It’s astounding. And, boy, when he hit that stage, he worked an audience. Good God! He was no politician. He was a media artist himself. He used politics and theatrics and created this thing that governed and controlled the show for those 12 years. The world will never see his like.”
#77: PLAYBOY: “Last question. Do you believe and stand by everything you’ve said?” BOWIE: “Everything but the inflammatory remarks.” We don’t know whether a jab at Elton was inflammatory. “I consider myself responsible for a whole new school of pretensions–they know who they are. Don’t you, Elton? Just kidding. No, I’m not.”
Seven daily grams of coke (DB:AL, p.223) did not kill David Bowie. He soon moved on to make The Man Who Fell to Earth. People magazine helped out with the publicity. “No role could have suited David Bowie better in his first major movie than that of an inscrutable interplanetary traveler outfitted with human skin, sex organs, Ronald Reagan hair and humanoid pupils to slip in over his horizontal, mismatched feline slits.” Forty years before Donald Trump made the tangerine toupee cool, Ronald Reagan was prematurely orange. Pictures for this deplorable dive into hissyfit history are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
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