Ta-Nehisi Coates On WTF Podcast
This content was postedJanuary 18, 2024. … Episode 878 of Marc David Maron’s WTF podcast features Ta-Nehisi Paul Coates. Chamblee54 once wrote about a video featuring Mr. Coates. This seems like a good day to listen to the show, and take notes.
The show starts with TPC and MDM (Is Ta-Nehisi two words?) discussing the business of writing books. The word black is not heard until 28:33 of the show. At 31 minutes in, TPC is talking about when he moved to New York, and struggled. He mentions that when you lie to other people, you begin to accept yourself as a liar.
At 53 minutes, TPC is talking about sexual harassment, and how he… a man … could never know what a woman experiences. MDM says that he … a white man … could never know what a black man feels, and how books by TPC made MDM realize this. You get the sense that this is what MDM wanted to talk about all along, and that TPC is tired of talking about race. MDM had the prominent black intellectual on the show, and MDM was going to talk about race, whether PBI wanted to, or not.
At 1:02 pm est, the show is over. I have more respect for TPC now. Most of the show was about fatherhood, writing, and the struggle to succeed. The expressions whiteness, and white supremacy, were not heard. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in November 1937. “Children of John Harshenberger [i.e. Harshbarger], Mennonite farmer. Sheridan County, Montana” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Twenty Three Thoughts
This content was originally published January 23, 2009. … “23 skiddoo” is said to be the first national slang saying. It’s origin is is bit uncertain, making 23S with mythmakers. One story involves a place on 23rd street in New York, with a lot of wind blowing about. The legend is that men would hang out on 23rd street, near the Flatiron building, to see the wind pick up ladies skirts.
23 is a prime number. The only way to get it through multiplication is 23×1. However, using division, we see that 69/3 is 23. 69 sometimes refers to an act that involves two people. The concept of 69 divided by three is rather gruesome. · UrbanDictionary calls 23 the greatest number of all time. · 23 is an odd number. · Psalm 23 is one of the high points of the Bible. · 2 divided by 3 is .666 · 6+6+6+2+3=23 · The number 23 in the alphabet is W. If you can’t say anything good, say it about him. · Dr. Pepper is the combination of 23 flavors. 10+2+4 =16. If you add lucky 7, you get 23.
Willie Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564. He died April 23, 1616. · Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message on May 24, 1844. “What hath God wrought” was from the Bible passage Numbers 23:23 · On January 23, 1973, Richard Nixon announced a peace accord for the Vietnam War.
On January 23, 1978, Terry Kath (Guitar player for the band Chicago) came home from a night of partying. He picked up a 9mm pistol, and held it to his head. He said, “ don’t worry, it’s not loaded.” He was mistaken, with fatal consequences. · Human DNA has 23 chromosomes. 23andMe can tell you more about where those 23 chromosomes came from.
23 enigma is one phrase for this vortex of coincidence. William S. Burroughs is credited by some for first noting the 23 enigma. “I first heard of the 23 enigma from William S Burroughs … According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.”
“Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker were shot to death by officers in an ambush near Sailes, Bienville Parish, Louisiana on May 23, 1934.” · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Russell Lee took the social media picture in May 1942. “San Juan Bautista, California. Schoolchildren collecting scrap metal for war” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
M.K. Gandhi And Truth
This content was posted January 14, 2025. … I identify as human @pixfiber “Truth never damages a cause that is just.” · Mohandas K. Gandhi. This item appeared in my twitter feed on January 6. Being an unreconstructed pedant, I went to the Gandhi Wikiquote. “Truth” had too many search results, so I went to “just.” I found a doozy: “I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.” Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97
Harijan was another word for the untouchable caste in India. “… Gandhi conducted an intensive crusade against untouchability …” Harijan was also a newspaper that started on 11 February 1933, brought out by Gandhi from Yerwada Jail during the British rule in India. Gandhi popularized the term Harijan across the states of India but he was not the first person to use it.”
Archive.org has much of Harijan available online, including the quote above. The quote is in a tsunami of text. Gandhiji was trained as a lawyer, and could crank out a word count. His positions are well thought out and complicated. This material is more complicated than the motivational Mahatma we are familiar with.
If you don’t mind wading through a pile of results, a search for “truth” on the Gandhi Wikiquotes will yield some good thoughts. Bear in mind that these quotes are without context. If you are willing to do the work, and google the source, you might find that the meaning of these thoughts is different from what you might think. The first three quotes in this list are from An Autobiography Or The Story of My Experiments With Truth By: M. K. Gandhi.
“A man of truth must also be a man of care.” Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.” Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.” p. 453
“An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.” Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285 (context below)
“A seeker after Truth cannot afford to indulge in generalisation.”
“Generalisation”, Harijan (6 July 1940).
“If you want to give a message again to the West, it must be a message of ‘Love’, it must be a message of ‘Truth’. There must be a conquest — [audience claps] — please, please, please. That will interfere with my speech, and that will interfere with your understanding also. I want to capture your hearts and don’t want to receive your claps. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I’m saying, and I think, I shall have finished my work.”
Speech in New Delhi to the Inter-Asian Relations Conference (2 April 1947)
“Impure means result in an impure end… One cannot reach truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach Truth.” Harijan (13 July 1947) p. 232
“[Government] control gives rise to fraud, suppression of truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…It makes them spoon-fed.” Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry)
“It is no use trying to fight these forces [of materialism] without giving up the idea of conversion, which I assure you is the deadliest poison which ever sapped the fountain of truth.”
Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Vol 46, p. 203
Wikiquotes has a lively section devoted to quotes that are Disputed and Misattributed. One Disputed entry is especially festive: “Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.” “The earliest attribution of this to Gandhi … is in a T-shirt advertisement in Mother Jones, Vol. 8, No. 5 (June 1983), p. 46”
Several much loved Gandhisms have a shaky history. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.” “God has no religion.” “We need to be the change we wish to see in the world.”
Young India supplied one of the quotes above. Here is page 1285. “Some Posers: — ‘A well wisher’ sends these lines for my meditation: ‘The Bible can be read in 566 languages. In how many can the Upanishads and the Gita? How many leper asylums and institutions for the depressed and the distressed have the missionaries? How many have you?’ It is usual for me to receive such posers. ‘A well wisher’ deserves an answer, I have great regard for the missionaries for their zeal and self-sacrifice. But I have not hesitated to point out to them that both are often misplaced. What though the Bible were translated in every tongue in the world? Is a patent medicine better than the Upanishads for being advertised in more languages than the Upanishads? An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody will see it. The Bible was a greater power when the early fathers preached it than it is today. ‘A well wisher’ has little conception of the way truth works, if he thinks that the translation of the Bible in more languages than the Upanishads is any test of its superiority. Truth has to be lived if it is to fructify. But if it is any satisfaction to ‘A well wisher’ to have my answer I may gladly tell him that the Upanishads and the Gita have been translated into far fewer languages than the Bible. I have never been curious enough to know in how many languages they are translated.”
“As for the second question, too, I must own that the missionaries have founded many leper asylums and the like. I have founded none. But I stand unmoved. I am not competing with the missionaries or any body else in such matters. I am trying humbly to serve humanity as God leads me. The founding of leper asylums etc. is only one of the ways, and perhaps not the best, of serving humanity. But even such noble service loses much of its nobility when conversion is the motive behind it. That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. But let me not be misunderstood. The missionaries that selflessly work away in such asylums command my respect. I am ashamed to have to confess that Hindus have become so callous as to care little for the waifs and strays of India, let alone the world.”
Chamblee54 has written about M.K. Gandhi. 040515 020521 042222 Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “Farmer
Farmer outside the cooperative store. Irwinville, Georgia.”©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Conversations Part Two
Yesterday, I reposted a 2013 piece about tiresome conversations. To be fair, most of these are monologs, by people/bots who have no interest in my point of view. On my way to an appointment, I realized that the last 13 years have given us plenty of new conversations to be bored by. As soon as I got to the waiting room, I began to dictate a list.
Israel, religion, bad faith rhetoric, trans issues, personal insults, heterodox, and whataboutism appeared on the screen. Many of them can be lumped under bad faith rhetoric, or the use of logical fallacies to promote an agenda. If you look at these discourses, most of them fall under this umbrella. To be fair, this might be the exact definition of bad faith, but for today’s discussion it will do.
On my way to and from the appointment, I was listening to Blocked and Reported. Host Katie Herzog was talking to guest Jonathan Kay. Mr. Kay is a player at Quillette a “heterodox” journal/podcast. Merriam-Webster defines heterodox thusly, between the inevitable parade of popups: “Heterodox: contrary to or different from an acknowledged standard, a traditional form, or an established religion.” Heterodox would seem to be the opposite of Orthodox.
Quillete might still call itself heterodox, but when it comes to Israel, heterodoxy gives way to tribal orthodoxy. Two articles are on the Quillette home page now: The Genocide Libel · Francesca Albanese’s Campaign Against Israel. The latter article was promoted on X by @jonkay.
The Herzog-Kay discussion had little to say about the tragedy in Gaza. Mostly, they discussed conspiracies, trans issues, and vaccines. The latter issue is driven by big money rhetoric, with “Big Pharma” promoting their products. At one point, Katie Herzog enthusiastically said “I love big pharma”, and called for more and better vaccines.
The discussion of trans issues caused me to pause the show, and dictate a comment. @jonkay was talking about how extreme trans activism is causing problems for many cis queers. Has he ever considered that extreme pro-zionist rhetoric is causing problems for many Jews? Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took the social media picture in September 1939. “Witnesses and spectators during trial of automobile accident case in Superior Court. Granville County Courthouse, Oxford, North Carolina” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Conversations I Am Tired Of Having
This content was originally published January 6, 2013. … There was a post a while back, 10 Conversations On Racism I’m Sick Of Having With White People. The original started at The Chronicle, but LiveJournal is LiveJoural, so a mirror image will have to do.
I got to thinking about “10 Conversations”, and a reply began to take shape. I started a list of conversations I am tired of having, and before you could say toxic masculinity, there were a dozen items. Many of these incidents have involved people of color, or POC. Many others have not. Often, the ethnicity of the other person has little importance to the discussion. Therefore, the title of this feature will not be racially specific. This monolog will probably not go viral, or even bacterial. Washing your hands might be a good idea when you are finished reading.
Meetings where one person does all the talking The word conversation implies that more than one person says something. Often, this does not happen. One person will talk for a while. Before person two finishes a sentence, person one will interrupt them.
This does not work. When the other person is talking, listen. Don’t be thinking of your clever comeback, but pay attention to what the other person is saying. What the other person says is just as important as what you say.
Listening is not valued in our culture. It is seen as a loss of control, a sign of weakness. It is really a sign of strength. If you are weak, you don’t want to allow the other person to say anything. Have you ever heard anyone boast about the clever things that they say to someone? Of course you have, just like you never hear anyone talk highly about himself because he is a good listener.
My question is not an excuse to make a speech. Some people have an agenda. Whatever you say is an obstacle to the message they want to broadcast. When you ask a question, some people think you are handing them the talking stick, to do whatever they want. When your eyes glaze over, they plow on, in total disregard to your discomfort, and lack of comprehension. It is almost as if they are talking to hear the sound of their own voice.
I’m not talking to you. If you are screaming something, anyone with earshot can hear you. Do not get offended if there is a reaction to your words, especially if it is subtly directed at the person you are not talking to. This applies to the internet as well, where all of humanity is *privy* to your innermost thoughts. Keep the farmyard meaning of *privy* in mind when sharing your innermost product.
Conversations should be with people. If you are a business, and you want to tell me something, send me a written message. Please refrain from using robocall machines. I feel very foolish talking to a machine, especially one that doesn’t understand southern english.
You don’t have to shout. The amount of truth in a statement is not increased by the volume of expression. If you are standing next to me, the odds are I can hear you in a normal tone of voice. If you are across the room, come stand next to me, rather than shout across the room. If your normal tone of voice is shouting, then you have a problem.
The same principle goes to controlling your temper. When you choose not to control your temper, you show disrespect to yourself, and the person you are talking to. There is no situation that cannot be made worse by angry speech.
Privilege Racial polemic is getting more subtle these days. We are not quite post racial, although there are rumors of a PostRacial apartment community. The phrase that pays these days is Privilege. This is always something owned by the group you do not belong to.
This is getting longer than the attention span of many readers. It might be continued later. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Collier Jr. took the social media picture in December 1941. “Washington Hot Shoppe restaurants. Washington, D.C. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
From A Firehose
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Rutland YouTube personality charged in alleged gun incidents
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@samtripoli JD Vance literally wrote in his own book that he had convinced himself he was gay but Peter Thiel convinced him not be gay and become Christian. Which confirms my whole belief that Peter Thiel got deep into JD Vance’s ass. @0xChainsmoker @grok provide the quote from JD’s book that details this interaction @grok In “Hillbilly Elegy,” JD Vance describes a childhood moment (age 8-9) where he thought he might be gay after hearing a preacher. He confided in his grandmother, who asked bluntly if he wanted to “suck dicks.” When he said no, she replied, “Even if you did, that would be okay. God would love you, just the same.” Peter Thiel is not mentioned in this anecdote; their connection came later at Yale. · “@503i7 Iranian State TV highlights the destruction caused by the protests Mossad admitted to having agents on the ground during the 12 day war There is no reason to believe that is not still the case” … There is a video attached to this comment. There is also a comment about this video. “@503i7 Interesting side note – I tried to have Google translate the Farsi in this video but it refused bc “it contains reference to a terrorist attack”. An extremely problematic policy” · The Paces Ferry roads were named for Hardy Pace, who established his ferry in the 1850s. The fare was 62 cents for a full wagon, 50 cents for an empty wagon, 12 cents for a man and a horse, and 4 cents per head of cattle. · “Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of LA” is the story of a groupie. This is part two of a book report about HEEBATSHOLA · AI Overview – That popular humorous quote, “I never drink water because of the disgusting things that fish do in it,” is widely attributed to the famous comedian and actor W.C. Fields, though it’s hard to pinpoint the exact movie or show it came from · This is the monday morning reader for today. X is platforming people who support military action against Iran. The justification is support of protesters. Will they greet us as liberators this time? · Has anybody said how military strikes are going to help the protesters?A Soviet and an American are on an airplane seated next to each other. “Why are you flying to the US?” asks the American. “To study American propaganda,” replies the Soviet. “What American propaganda?” asks the American. “Exactly,” the Soviet replies. · Eleven years ago, activists entered “quiche-and-mimosa joints … When they arrived, they began reading the names of Black Americans killed by police to diners.” · The anagram for Mossad is dom ass · sam harris abby martin Published on Apr 16, 2017 A mock debate between Sam Harris and Abby Martin on U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, generated by clips from different appearances on the Joe Rogan Experience. Clips were chosen to demonstrate Harris and Martin’s disagreements on U.S. foreign policy. In several clips they directly address each other’s points, other may have a different context. · A White Gay’s Guide for Dealing with the Black Community: Chapter 6: Why Fighting for Gay Marriage is a Privilege · @chamblee54 @grok How would a military strike help the Iranian protesters? @grok A military strike could potentially help Iranian protesters by weakening the regime’s security forces, degrading their ability to crackdown, and creating chaos that might enable regime change. However, many experts argue it risks uniting Iranians against an external threat, escalating violence, causing civilian casualties, and backfiring by strengthening hardliners. Outcomes are unpredictable, with high regional instability possible. Diverse analyses suggest diplomacy and sanctions might be safer alternatives. · Louisa Luetgert, the wife of a Chicago sausage maker, went missing. Police eventually found a wedding ring, with the initials LL, in the bottom of a vat. There was a rumor that Adolph Luetgert made sausage out of his wife’s remains · -cant tell if he is asleep or woke, it changed in a just a whisper, it was always sounding when he spoke, the dude was a lisper, macaroni and kim chi for dinner, korean addition to stuff from a box, i am just a culinary sinner, but damn that fermented cabbage rocks, sensational mammon-grabbing click bait, i said i would use this in my next feature, didn’t know when so i trusted fate, you will never know if he is a teacher · thomas fucaloro · wall Miami nightclub Vendôme faces backlash after playing Kanye West’s antisemitic anthem “Heil Hitler” during an event featuring Andrew Tate, Tristan Tate, Nick Fuentes, Clavicular, and Sneako. · Pictures today are from The Library of Congress William Perlitch took the social media picture in June 1941. “Camp Shelby, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. A soldier” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Sausage Vat Murder
This content was published January 16, 2024. … The case of Adolph Luetgert is mostly forgotten today. In its day, the story was a sensation. “Adolph Louis Luetgert (December 27, 1845-July 7, 1899) was a German-American charged with murdering his wife and dissolving her body in acid in one of his sausage vats at the A.L. Luetgert Sausage & Packing Company in 1897. … After the news of the trial became public, rumors spread that Luetgert had actually turned his wife into sausage and sold the “sausage” to unknowing consumers.”
Is it possible to explain what is in sausages without making it erotic? A twitter thread got me thinking about a sausage story I read in 1989. The Fairy was in Gaily, Gaily by Ben Hecht. The story originally appeared in Playboy. “In a 1962 article for Playboy collected in his rollicking 1963 memoir Gaily, Gaily — the legendary Chicago reporter Ben Hecht recalls a murder case that sounds suspiciously similar to the Adolph Luetgert case. Hecht describes an story that apparently occurred sometime during the five years after he began working as a reporter in Chicago in 1910. He writes: “Fred Ludwig, a popular North Shore butcher, went on trial before Judge Sabath for the murder of his wife. The wedding band with its romantic inscription had turned up in one of the sausages manufactured by Ludwig and sold to one of his customers, Claude Charlus, a well-known financier and epicure.” In the Hecht story, Mr. Charlus was the bf of Mr. Ludwig. When it was time to execute Mr. Ludwig, young Mr. Hecht went to a whorehouse, to borrow a makeup kit. Mr. Ludwig painted his face before he went to the gallows.
“Adolph Luetgert (originally Adolph Ludwig Lütgert) came to New York in around 1865 or 1866 when he was about twenty years old.” … “He married his first wife, Caroline Roepke, sometime between 1870 and 1872. She died on November 17, 1877. He married his second wife Louise Bicknese, two months after Caroline’s death, on January 18, 1878. Luetgert had six children—two with Caroline and four with Louise. Only three of his children survived past the age of 2.”
“Louisa Bicknese was an attractive young woman who was ten years younger than her husband. She was a former servant from the Fox River Valley who met her new husband by chance. He was immediately taken with her, entranced by her diminutive stature and tiny frame. She was less than five feet tall and looked almost child-like next to her burly husband. … As a wedding gift, he gave her a unique, heavy gold ring. Inside of it, he had gotten her new initials inscribed, reading “L.L.”. Little did he know at the time that this ring would prove to be his undoing.”
After a while, the couple started to bicker. “Despite his coarse appearance, (one writer vividly describes him as a Falstaffian figure with “a face of suet, pig eyes, and a large untidy moustache that was a perfect host for beer foam”) Adolph was something of a womanizer. … Claiming that he needed to keep a round-the-clock eye on his factory, he had taken to spending his nights in a little room beside his office, equipped with a bed that he frequently shared with his twenty-two-year-old housemaid, Mary Siemering, Louisa’s own cousin. … He was also conducting a surreptitious courtship of a wealthy widow, Mrs. Christina Feld, sending her amorous letters in which he rhapsodized about their rosy future.” (During the murder trial, “Mrs. Christina Feldt, … testified that Luetgert often expressed his hatred for his wife and intimated that he would get rid of her.”)
“At around 10:15 on the evening of Saturday, May 1, Louisa was seated in the kitchen, chatting with her twelve-year-old son Louis, who had attended the circus that evening. The boy was excitedly describing some of the wonders he had seen—a giant named “Monsieur Goliath” and a strongman who juggled cannon balls—when Luetgert appeared and told his son to go bed. Precisely what happened between the two adults after Louis retired to his room is unclear. Only one fact is beyond dispute. After the boy bid goodnight to his mother at about 10:30 P.M., she was left alone in the company of her husband.” … “Mrs. Luetgert wore only a light house wrapper and slippers, although the night was cold and rainy. It never was shown that she had taken with her any of her belongings.”
“When questioned by his sons, Luetgert told them that their mother had gone out the previous evening to visit her sister. After several days though, she did not come back. Finally, Diedrich Bicknese, Louisa’s brother, went to the police. The investigation fell on Captain Herman Schuettler, … “an honest but occasionally brutal detective”.
“Frank Bialk, a night watchman at the plant … saw both Luetgert and Louisa at the plant together. Apparently, Luetgert sent him out on an errand that evening and gave him the rest of the night off.” There is another version of the Bialk story. “Frank Bialk … testified … Luetgert instructed him to bring down two barrels of caustic potash and place them in the boiler room, and that Luetgert then poured the contents of both barrels in one of the vats. The watchman was instructed to keep up steam all night and at 10 p. m. he was sent by Luetgert to the drug store after some nerve medicine.”
“The police also made a shocking discovery; they came across bills that stated that Luetgert bought arsenic and potash the day before the murder. … the detective was convinced that Luetgert had killed his wife, boiled her in acid and then disposed of her in a factory furnace.”
“Luetgert’s night watchman, Frank Bialk, approached the police and told them that, on the night Mrs. Luetgert disappeared, his boss had been acting suspiciously, busying himself with one of the large steam-vats down in the factory basement. Following up on this tip, investigators checked out the vat, which—despite having been cleaned two weeks earlier—still contained a residue of a thick, greasy fluid, reddish-brown in color and giving off a nauseous stink. When the fetid slime was drained from the vat, the detectives discovered tiny pieces of bone along with two gold rings, one of them a wedding band engraved with the initials “L. L.” More bone fragments, as well as a false tooth, a hairpin, a charred corset stay, and various scraps of cloth turned up in a nearby ash heap.”
Luetgert was arrested, and charged with the crime. “On October 18, the case was submitted to the jury and after deliberating for sixty-six hours they failed to agree, nine favoring a conviction and three voting in favor of an acquittal. On November 29, 1897, the second trial began. … The trial resulted in a conviction and on May 5 Luetgert was sent to the Joliet State prison for life.”
“July 27, 1899, Luetgert left his cell and returned shortly afterward with his breakfast in a pail, but just as he was about to eat it, he dropped dead from heart disease.”
“Frank Pratt … asked Luetgert if he wanted his “hand read.” The latter consented and Pratt told Luetgert that he possessed a violent temper and at times was not responsible for his actions. Pratt stated that Luetgert then virtually admitted that he killed his wife when he was possessed of the devil. … It is said that Luetgert also made similar admissions to a fellow prisoner.” Pictures for this true crime story are from The Library of Congress. Jack Delano took the social media picture in October 1941. “ Mr. Albert Brissant and his niece, who are still living in the Pine Camp relocation area near Evans Mills, New York. They have an antique shop here which they have sold out and are now looking for a new farm” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
A List Blogger
This content was posted January 20, 2009. … Sometimes I make a funny. Other times, I steal humor product. The following content is from Jokes Funny. While most other people are blathering about the inauguration, here is a bit of “humor”.
1. THINGY (thing-ee) n.
Female – Any part under a car’s hood.
Male – The strap fastener on a woman’s bra.
2. VULNERABLE (vul-ne-ra-bel) adj.
Female – Fully opening up one’s self emotionally to another.
Male – Playing football without a cup.
3. COMMUNICATION (ko-myoo-ni-kay-shon) n.
Female – The open sharing of thoughts and feelings with one’s partner.
Male – Leaving a note before taking off on a fishing trip with the boys.
4. COMMITMENT (ko-mit-ment) n.
Female – A desire to get married and raise a family.
Male – Trying not to hit on other women while out with this one.
5. ENTERTAINMENT (en-ter-tayn-ment) n.
Female – A good movie, concert, play or book.
Male – Anything that can be done while drinking beer.
6. FLATULENCE (flach-u-lens) n.
Female – An Embarrassing byproduct of indigestion.
Male – A source of entertainment, self-expression, male bonding.
7. MAKING LOVE (may-king luv) n.
Female – The greatest expression of intimacy a couple can achieve.
Male – Call it whatever you want just as long as we do it.
8. REMOTE CONTROL (ri-moht kon-trohl) n.
Female – A device for changing from one TV channel to another.
Male – A device for scanning through all 375 channels every 5 minutes.
This content was published January 11, 2009. … One of the bloggers in the frequent folder here is Adam Heath Avitable. At the top of his homepage, he is riding in a convertible eating an ice cream cone. The other passenger is Adolph Hitler. The slogan below: “tact is for pussies”.
Hilly recently sent five questions to @avitable. Readers were invited to give their answers in his comments. Chamblee54 is a “green” blog that recycles. These five questions will make the nucleus of a dandy post here.
1.) What is the one thing that a blogger can do to really annoy you? · The one thing would be music players with auto start. Jasmyne Cannick has an auto start player. It would have been rude to turn it off, so I had to hear a performance by Shirley Q. Liquor. · 2.) Even though I HATE this phrase, do you consider yourself an “A List Blogger” or do you see it a different way? · I am lucky to get into double digits most days. Technorati has me in the top 800,000. In honor of our new president, I am going to claim to be an ”O List Blogger”.
3.) If you did not work for yourself, what kind of job would you like to have? · Something that does not cause brain damage, and where the checks don’t bounce. · 4.) If I dared you to talk dirty to me, could you do it? Why or why not? · It depends on who “I” is. If it was Avitable, I seriously doubt it. Mostly, I feel silly talking dirty.
5.) How many folders do you have in Google Reader and what are their labels? · There is a file on my machine which does not allow me to use google products. This is the reason I went from Blogger to wordpress. As for the whole rss thing … I just do it manually. I have a frequent folder with shortcuts to the blogs. Drag the thingie into the firefox, and I don’t miss anything important. … Google Reader was euthanized in 2013. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took the social media picture in August 1940. “Natchez, Mississippi” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Invisible Pink Unicorn
This content was published January 29, 2009. … An Atlanta blogger recently posted “a random list: music artists I can’t stand.” The list: Nickelback, M.I.A., U2, Matchbox Twenty/Rob Thomas, Gwen Stefani, Fergie/Black Eyed Peas, Old Dirty Bastard/Big Baby Jesus, Norah Jones, Bob Dylan/Jacob Dylan/The Wallflowers, Linda Perry/4 Non-Blondes, Natalie Merchant/10,000 Maniacs, Sonic Youth, Kid Rock, T-Pain, Jack Johnson, KATY PERRY, TV on the Radio, Eddie Vedder/Pearl Jam.
The random list makes me feel like an old fogie. This might not be a bad thing. To begin with, I have never heard several of the acts. There is Kid Rock, who got in a fight in a Buford Highway Waffle House. Or Katy Perry, who kissed a girl before she got talking about Jesus. … It is encouraging to see the vastly overrated U2 on the list. Or puzzling to see that not everyone thinks Bob Dylan is fabulous. … But the main reason the list made me feel old was the length of time since I felt hip. When you are an observer, it can be easier to not like something, than to appreciate it.
I had a friend years ago, who we will call Geronimo. He had a lot of influence over my thinking. There were things he liked. Of course, the list of things he did not like, and would ridicule, was even longer. One day, Geronimo started to rant about Jeff Beck. As it turned out, I liked Jeff Beck, and let my pal know it. Eventually, I learned to think for myself.
This was the early seventies. For many like Geronimo, disco was the anti christ. Meanwhile, I started to hang out downtown. One night I was dragged, kicking and screaming, onto the dance floor. I liked it, and enjoyed the music that so many of my friends hated. … The process of learning to appreciate music was a long journey, and is probably still not complete. There was even the time when I stood outside a stadium listening to Black Sabbath … another bane of the 1972 music snob. … Music went into the mtv era, and radio got more and more specialized. I got older and more decrepit, and caught myself enjoying Lawrence Welk.
This content was published January 28, 2009. … There has been talk lately about The Flying Spaghetti Monster. The FSM was originally created in response to the Kansas State Board of Education. The KSBE ruled that alternatives to evolution needed to be taught in public schools, including some contraption known as intelligent design. There was talk about whirlwinds rampaging through warehouses and creating jet engines. … FSM soon appeared, in all it’s meatball glory. FSM is a satire religion, in the footsteps of the Invisible Pink Unicorn. Bertrand Russell wrote of an Interplanetary Teapot, which will provide the beverage for the spaghetti supper.
FSM is often used as a substitute for the G word, or God. In the struggle for hearts and minds, God has an advantage over FSM. The G word is a marketing dream. It is short, and easy to say. Almost everyone has heard someone say God. While people mean different things when they say God, almost everyone knows about the general concept. … FSM has seven syllables. Spaghetti is notoriously tough to spell, and has a silent letter. OTOH, no one says FSM got an underaged virgin pregnant. … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. John Vachon took the social media picture in May 1938. “The MacDuffey family. Irwinville Farms, Georgia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
The Tortured Struggle
This content was published January 9, 2025. … It started out as a joke comment. Thank God for secular humanism. · You’re welcome. I got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between God and man?
Zen and the art of motorcycle repair says that the division of God and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. I am not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspect that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that God is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true. Let no man bring together what God has rent asunder.
This content was published January 10, 2025. … X does not like linking to a post. I write a description, and leave a link in the comments. Yesterday, it looked like this: “Is there a difference between God and Man? If so, where do you draw the boundary?
Facebook had a response: “I am so inexplicably bored to tears by that tedious conversation. The only way either side can prove their point is to die. The pictures are nice. Further proof that there isn’t any god, only the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche. Thanks for sharing.”
My smartass reaction was that “the tortured struggle between man and his own psyche” was a good description of God. Or, to quote someone more popular than Jesus, “God is a concept by which we measure our pain.” But I didn’t want to start trouble, so I clicked “Like,” and went on my way.
One person who talked about that tortured struggle was Billy Graham. The GSU library has a picture of the marquee at the Tower Theater, during a 1954 Billy Graham Crusade. The Tower theater is now a parking lot. “The Tower Theater, previously the Erlanger Opera House, was located at 583 Peachtree Street. It was originally constructed in 1790. In the 1950’s the theater was turned into a Cinerama, and the name changed to Martin Cinerama. The theater would also be known as Atlanta Theater, and Columbia Theater. The building was razed in 1995.”
The Erlanger Opera House was probably not built in 1790. I decided to do some checking up, and began by seeing when the North Avenue Presbyterian Church was built next door. This is where the investigation took a curious turn. “The church was constructed from Stone Mountain granite donated by charter members whose family owned the mountain and were in the granite quarry business. It was occupied for the first time for the Thanksgiving service in 1900.”
“The building program was helped immeasurably by the generosity of the Merssrs. William H. and Samuel H. Venable, who donated the granite out of which the building was constructed.” · “William Hoyt Venable (1852-1905) and Samuel Hoyt Venable (1856-1939) were involved with the Stone Mountain quarrying industry. The Venable brothers were the sole owners of Stone Mountain and much surrounding land which they purchased in 1887 at a claimed cost of $350,000.”
“James Venable (1901-1993) was the Imperial Wizard of the National Knights of the Klan from 1963 to 1987, “which he organized as one of several rival Klan factions nationally.” (NY Times) Venable had but continued the family tradition. As a 13 year old, he attended the 1915 Klan resurgence and rally on top of Stone Mountain. He was with his uncle, Sam Venable, who, as one of the owners of Stone Mountain, also became the secretary of the Klan.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These details are from picture #06665, “Bathing Beauty Pageant, 1925, Huntington Beach CA.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Harry Hay And Joe Pyne
This content was originally published January 16, 2021. … Joe Pyne was a notoriously abrasive TV personality. He pioneered many of the things that today’s shock jock hosts do, before his death in 1970. One of his guests was Georgia Governor Lester Maddox. While writing a blog post about Lester, I did a bit of research on Joe Pyne.
Wikipedia had an intriguing comment. “Gay activists Harry Hay and John Burnside—who were a couple from 1962 until Hay’s death in 2002—appeared on Pyne’s show in 1967.[citation needed]” Harry Hay is a seminal figure in certain “radical” communities. Mr. Hay had a sharp tongue, and might have given the combative Pyne a bit of pushback. I decided to look for the video. … 2026 Update: The current Wikipedia entry for Joe Pyne (born Joseph Edward Pine) does not mention the appearance by Harry Hay and John Burnside.
[citation needed] is the key phrase. Youtube has a few dozen videos of the Joe Pyne Show. None of the ones here include Harry Hay. The internet archive has a collection of Pyne tapes, but no Harry Hay. A google search provides many mentions of this interview, but no more details. Many of the references were apparently copied, verbatim, from Wikipedia. 2026 Update: Almost all of the youtube links in the original post no longer work. The internet archive did not archive most of the ones I looked for. If you search for “Joe Pyne” on youtube, you will see more than you need to see.
There is a possibility that Harry Hay was never on the Joe Pyne show. There are other urban legends about Joe Pyne. The most famous involves Frank Zappa. It is helpful to know that Joe Pyne had a rare form of cancer in 1955, and part of his left leg was amputated. In the story, Mr. Pyne asks Mr. Zappa if his long hair makes him a girl. Mr. Zappa replied, does your wooden leg make you a table?
TV Party might have a reason for the missing video. “Most, if not all, of the syndicated Joe Pyne programs still exist on videotape in the archives of Hartwest Productions, Inc. Here’s what Hartwest tells us: “The tapes are 2″ Quads, meaning that they are so ancient that you only get one pass before the oxides flake off. That one pass is fine to make a new digital master, but the cost (including two digital clones) comes to about $600 a show. So far, we have only transferred three shows, with the cost being paid for by people who were either in the show, or who were making a documentary, or who now seem to worship one of the guests (and I mean the last literally).”
The research turned up another story. 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.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The men were soldiers in the War Between The States. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
Ansel Adams And Dorothea Lange
This content was published December 10, 2022. … The facebook feed has recently had links to a story, Dorothea Lange’s Censored Photographs of FDR’s Japanese Concentration Camps. Miss Lange was the photographer of the iconic Migrant Mother. After Pearl Harbor, Miss Lange took a job with the War Relocation Authority, documenting the “relocation” of Japanese-Americans to interment camps. The photographs did not please the authorities. They were censored, and only appeared recently.
Ansel Adams also took photographs at the Manzanar, California, camp. In the current stories, he is literally a footnote: quotes were used from a book about his photography. Why is Dorothea Lange receiving attention, while Ansel Adams is ignored?
One answer is that Miss Lange was hired early on, and shows the harsh reality of relocation. “On July 30, 1942, the WRA laid her off “without prejudice,” adding that the cause was “completion of work. … the WRA impounded the majority of her photographs of Manzanar and the forced detentions, and later deposited 800 image from the series in the National Archives without announcement.”
“After Lange’s departure, Manzanar’s director Ralph Merritt visited renowned environmentalist and landscape photographer Ansel Adams and suggested he document the camp — Merritt and Adams were friends from the Sierra Club. Lange, also friends with Adams, encouraged him to take the job. (Coincidentally Adams printed “Migrant Mother” for her) … Ansel Adams made several trips to Manzanar between October 1943 and July 1944 for this new personal project, and, as Alinder writes, he was primed to try the kind of documentary photography regularly practiced by Dorothea Lange and the Farm Security Administration that he had earlier shunned. Unlike Lange, a white woman who had been viewed with suspicion by her subjects, Adams was welcomed by the incarcerees, even greeted as a celebrity in a cultural community that had a deep appreciation of nature — many incarcerees at Manzanar literally opened their doors to him dressed in their finest clothes. … By 1943, Manzanar’s incarcerees had had time to settle in and enjoy the fruits of their collective work. In less than ideal surroundings, they had collectively built their own post office, town hall, library, auditorium, co-op store system, police station, jail, cemetery with memorial, published their own newspaper (the ironically named the Manzanar Free Press, which was regularly censored by the military), and even their own YMCA.”
“As for Lange, looking at the historical record, it appears that she was treated differently from the other WRA photographers. She was discouraged from talking to the incarcerees, was constantly followed by a censor, and faced harassment. She was refused access to areas after being given clearance, and she was often hounded over phone charges and receipts. … After being discharged, Lange expressed in letters her dismay that her work was ineffective in helping the people she documented. Her assistant Christina Clausen later noted the ferocity of this body of work also marked the beginning of the photographer’s bleeding gastric ulcers. Lange was unable to work for a number of years after her harrowing experience at Manzanar. She died from esophageal cancer in 1965.”
“In 1944, Adams’s photographs were published as a book, “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans,” and shown at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Nativists took offense. They saw Adams’s work as a slur on the war effort. He was a “Jap lover.” This quote is from a 2016 article, Let’s be honest, Ansel Adams’s images of a WWII internment camp are propaganda.
“Adams visited Manzanar to take photos in 1943 at the request of camp director Ralph Merritt, who was a personal friend. “They don’t look quite as dusty and quite as forbidding as Dorothea Lange’s photos … Indeed, the place that looks barren and depressing in Lange’s pictures manages to look beautiful in Adams’. You get little sense that it was even a detention center, in part because Adams, like other photographers, was not allowed to shoot the guard towers or barbed wire …
There are scenes from a baseball game, kids walking to school, a gathering outside a chapel. Lots of smiles, too, and portraits of camp residents cropped so close, you can see every blemish and stray hair. In Adams’ vision, Manzanar comes off as a place where Japanese-Americans, dignified, resilient and optimistic in spite of their circumstances, built a temporary community in the desert.
(Skirball Cultural Center director Robert) Kirschner said that if Adams’ photos appear to sugarcoat the indignities of life in an internment camp, it is because he did not see himself as a social activist the way Lange did. Still, Kirscher says, Adams was challenging internment in his own way, by depicting its victims as patriotic, law-abiding Americans. Unlike Lange, Adams was given permission to publish his photos. Before the war ended, he did so in a book called “Born Free and Equal: The Story of Loyal Japanese Americans,” in which he warned about the dangers of letting wartime hysteria justify depriving U.S. citizens of their freedom.”
The NPR article mentions a third Manzanar photographer. “Before World War II, Toyo Miyatake had a photo studio in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. When he learned he would be interned at Manzanar, he asked a carpenter to build him a wooden box with a hole carved out at one end to accommodate a lens. He turned this box into a makeshift camera that he snuck around the camp, as his grandson Alan Miyatake explains in the video below, which is featured in the exhibit.
Fearful of being discovered, Miyatake at first only took pictures at dusk or dawn, usually without people in them. Camp director Merritt eventually caught Miyatake, but instead of punishing him, allowed him to take pictures openly. Miyatake later became the camp’s official photographer.” … Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Ansel Adams took the photograph in 1943. “People standing outside Catholic church at Manzanar Relocation Center, California.” … The ladies in the bridge game are Aiko Hamaguchi, Chiye Yamanaki, Catherine Yamaguchi, and Kazoko Nagahama. ©Luther Mckinnon 2025 · selah
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