Whitman To Ginsberg
“… I’ve slept with Neal Cassady who slept with Gavin Arthur who slept with Edward Carpenter who described sleeping with Whitman to Gavin Arthur. [The “Gay Succession”]” Allen Ginsberg was fond of his place in a line of gay succession. This is a repost.
A 1974 interview makes the same point about Whitman-Carpenter-Arthur, but does not mention Cassady-Ginsberg. Could anyone be telling stories? The Carpenter-Arthur connection happened in 1924, but is described in wonderful detail by Mr. Arthur in 1967. There are few details about the Arthur-Cassady link in the chain. As a BBC interviewer said to Mr. Ginsberg in 1994 “Both Bob Dylan and Jack Kerouac, I think, described you as a “con-man extraordinaire”. What did they mean?” AG: “Oh, maybe they were projecting their own goofiness on me.”
“Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was a writer and gay mystic and lived in England all his life. Although ordained an Anglican priest in 1869 he soon renounced religion and became a Fabian socialist. Among his works on social reform is Towards Democracy (1883-1902), a long, un- rhymed poem revealing the influence of his friend Walt Whitman. He edited the first gay literary collection, Iolaus: An Anthology of Friendship”
Mr. Carpenter exchanged letters with Mr. Whitman. “Although Whitman was not a socialist, his writing had a profound effect on Carpenter, who made the long trip to America primarily as a pilgrimage to his literary and spiritual inspiration. He visited the poet for several weeks in 1877 and again in 1884. In 1906 he published an account of his visits to America, Days with Walt Whitman, writing a respectful, even somewhat glorified, portrait of his idol.”
“It was not until the 1966 publication of a memoir by Gavin Arthur entitled The Circle Of Sex that the intimate details of Carpenter’s visits were revealed. Arthur slept in bed with Carpenter … leaving us with our only description of Whitman’s sexual behavior, an area otherwise shrouded in mystery and controversy.” In later years, we learned that Mr. Whitman possibly spent a happy afternoon with Oscar Wilde. Mr. Whitman was also fond of cruising the Brooklyn Waterfront.
Gavin Arthur (born Chester Alan Arthur III; March 21, 1901 – April 28, 1972) is a key link in this chain. As often noted, he was the grandson of Chester Arthur. The elder Mr. Arthur was elected Vice President in 1880, and promoted after the death of James Garfield.
The younger Mr. Arthur was a piece of work. In the early 1920’s, Mr. Arthur dropped out of Columbia, got married, and moved to Ireland. Mr. Arthur somehow got to meet his idol, Edward Carpenter. At the time of this meeting, Mr. Arthur was 23, and Mr. Carpenter was 80.
THE GAY SUCCESSION “… is a document given me by Gavin Arthur in 1967.” The story goes into extravagant detail about the meeting between Mr. Arthur and Mr. Carpenter. One wonders how the elderly Mr. Arthur remembers all this 43 years later.
EC – “No, Walt was ambigenic,” he said. “His contact with women was far less than his contact with men. But he did engender several children and his greatest female contact was that Creole in New Orleans. I don’t think he ever loved any of them as much as he loved Peter Doyle.”
GA – “I suppose you slept with him?” I blurted out half scared to ask.”
EC – “Oh yes–once in a while–he regarded it as the best way to get together with another man. He thought that people should ‘know’ each other on the physical and emotional plane as well as the mental. … the best part of comrade love was that there was no limit to the number of comrades”
GA – “How did he make love?” I forced myself to ask.”
EC – “I will show you,” he smiled. “Let us go to bed.”
Mr. Arthur spares few details in what happens next.
Chester III renamed himself Gavin. After losing the financial support of his family, Mr. Arthur moved to San Francisco. For a while, he sold newspapers on the street. “And he delved deep into both astrology and sexology. Gavin took his star charts very seriously: When one self-administered reading told him he was heading to prison soon, he immediately drove to San Quentin and took a job as a teacher, the better to prevent going in as an inmate.”
“By the 1960s, Gavin Arthur had become a well-known and respected astrologer. In 1966, some Bay Area activists, cultural and political, began to plan a transformative event. They wanted to unite the cultural radicals of the Haight, and the political radicals of Berkeley. Those plans led to the Human Be-In. In order to have maximum astrological impact, its organizers asked Arthur to determine the most auspicious date. Arthur determined that January 14, 1967, would have the greatest impact.”
“I had a flashback to the time I spent with Ginsberg in Cambridge, MA, in 1982, when he told me that I was part of an erotic lineage that connected me to Whitman … a quick Google search identifies Arthur as ”a certain astrologer and San Francisco character, Gavin Arthur … gave lectures at San Quentin while Neal was a prisoner.” Another entry reports that he studied astrology with Ronald Reagan before Reagan started his political career.”
“In 1958, he (Neal Cassady) was arrested after being caught using marijuana at a San Francisco nightclub. He was sentenced for two years at San Quentin State Prison.” This was when Mr. Arthur was teaching at San Quentin. Mr. Cassady mentions him in two letters to his wife Carolyn. (For those who just got here, Neal Cassady was the model for Dean Moriarty in On The Road. Mr. Cassady also drove the bus “Further,” for the Merry Pranksters.)
August 13, 1959 from San Quentin to Carolyn Cassady “Last Saturday, “Uncle Gavin” Arthur, grandson of our twenty-first President who, Republican though he was, could hardly have been more conservative than is Gain underneath all his Occult Astrology, failed to show (again, for the third time in six weeks) to teach our class in Comparative Religion and Philosophy, about three dozen regularly in attendance, on account of a death in his group at the Global House, which he bought by selling papers on Market Street for ten years; so again it was my pleasurable duty to instruct the boys in Cayce-hood [Edgar Cayce]”
Septetmber 22 1959 from San Quentin to Carolyn Cassady “Uncle” worry-wart [Gavin Arthur] missed showing up for the class again last week and I hear, probably unfounded, rumors that it is to be discontinued, too bad if true, because it was fun to hear the old geezer expound, without at all remembering he had, on the very same things week after week. I mean his examples, and their wording were always so alike one could not only anticipate, but, with any memory at all, give in advance the exact sentence he would be about to pronounce: it was sort of a game.” Eight years later, the “old geezer” described a 1924 tryst in clinical detail.
San Quentin broke Neal Cassady. The railroad would not take him back, and Carolyn divorced him. “He, however, felt now he had utterly failed in his mission, and he knew he could never go back. He died inside; only his body survived. This he did his best to destroy. He no longer believed in suicide, but he did all he could to be killed. … He told me he swallowed handfuls of pills anyone offered, even not knowing what they were. Is this not an obvious death-wish? He admitted it was.”
During this down and out time of his life, Neal Cassady apparently connected with Gavin Arthur. In a 1974 radio interview, Allen Ginsberg recalls “That was already the ’60’s, but there was that atmosphere back in San Francisco, around Gavin Arthur, particularly. Arthur was a great friend of Neal Cassady, slept with him all the time, or whenever Neal had nowhere to go he’d wind up in Gavin’s house, sort of falling asleep, exhausted, in his bed.”
The Neal Cassady to Allen Ginsberg connection is well documented.
“A second, serendipitous event further spurred (Joey) Cain’s interest in researching Gavin Arthur. Cain found a used copy of Carpenter’s “Towards Democracy” in a used bookstore for $3.00. It had a lot of writing in it. Cain noticed the following lament among the notes in the book, “This is one of my Bibles, please return. This volume is the third I have had to buy, people being so dishonest about books.” Then he looked below and saw Gavin Arthur’s signature and address. The writing belonged to Arthur. The book in his hand had once belonged to Gavin Arthur. He went up to the cashier who said, “It’s a shame about all this writing in it.” Cain replied, “Let me pay for it first, and then I’ll tell you about this writing.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Uterus Collector Part Two
Judge says Maddow, other MSNBC hosts made ‘verifiably false’ statements about doctor suing for defamation. This is how one outlet covered the latest Maddow-pants-on-fire story. At first glance, this is not newsworthy. However, curiosity got the best of me, and I looked into the story. I soon realized that I had written a blog post about the story.
When I hear that something I wrote four years ago might be relevant, my instinct is to look for it. Unfortunately, Google advanced search was not helpful. Even a post titled The Uterus Collector is missed by the algorithm, when searching for “uterus” at chamblee54.wordpress. It is almost as if someone did not want me to find it. Fortunately, I have other methods for finding old posts. Here is what the chamblee54 post found.
“The story broke with a report from Project South. The whistle blower was Dawn Wooten. video video Ms. Wooten, a single mother of five, worked at ICDC (Irwin County Detention Center) until her hours were cut, after a dispute about Covid-19 infection. As is the case with many workplace stories, there are conflicting accounts.” …
“The focus of the complaint is inadequate safety measures, taken with regard to Covid-19. “Priyanka Bhatt, staff attorney at … Project South, told The Washington Post that she included the hysterectomy allegations because she wanted to trigger an investigation. …”
“If ICDC did not have the resources to provide adequate safeguards against Covid-19 infection, how are they going to have the resources to provide hysterectomies? … a hysterectomy can cost thousands of dollars and both ICE and the private companies that contract with the agency to oversee its detention centers notoriously provide dangerous and substandard medical care to cut costs and maximize profits.”
There are more problems with TUC narrative, which you can see at the post. This post was thrown together by an old white guy with too much free time. Why was he able to see this better than a major news organization? Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Cringeworthy Conversation
The display of a link on this page does not indicate approval of content.
Tabletop Gaming’s Anti-Israel Meltdown: The Strange Tale of Waffles and Syrup
Report Addresses Key Issues in Legal Battles over Gender-Affirming Health Care
I Became Friends With A White Woman. Then 1 Cringeworthy Conversation …
Donny and Marie Osmond explain why they are ending their Las Vegas residency
The Color of Medicine: The Story of Homer G. Phillips Hospital
The humble onion could be holding India’s economy hostage
Push to save ‘last free parking lot in Little Five Points’ heats up Converting property to …
Which Motorola Phone Should You Buy? These Android smartphones often deliver…
government story distant tasteful human joy gay chicken howling
Prosecutors Got Trump — But They Contorted the Law By Elie Honig, a former federal …
@TaylerUSA My thoughts on San Francisco Pride and all that I’ve documented …
Paging Dr. Altman: Times beckons doctor out of retirement for Trump health report card
Nordic Shaman Imelda Almqvist Shadow Work, Ragnarök & Norse Mythology
Walt Whitman’s Civil War: Stories of the Wounded – went to Washington in 1863 …
The Downtown Den Where Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians Met
Walt Whitman’s Civil War: Stories of the Wounded – went to Washington in 1863 …
The Downtown Den Where Walt Whitman and America’s First Bohemians Met
Kinky Friedman Tells Stories About Bob Dylan and Glen Campbell
People Don’t Care How Much You Know Until They Know How Much You Care
Immersive Theatre That Left Scars: Behind the Collapse of Serenbe Playhouse
Woman Asks Why Do Black Women Give Their Kids Ridiculous Ghetto
Israel is heading for “national suicide” says Jewish Arab Israeli
Frequently Asked Questions about Confederate Monuments and Vandalism at Oakland
From one Jeff to AJC Peachtree Road Race organizers: Invite Jeff Galloway to next one
hog wrestling ~ reggie jackson ~ christian cooper ~ Col. Douglas Macgregor ~ kamala
fp ~ ruin ~ fellatio ~ Bari ~ cecil render
Belkys Dominguez ~ catharine butler ~ dan stephens ~ barnett harden ~ victor jackson
tony sanford ~ pc ~ john astin ~ tomorrow ~ bari
risk ~ risk ~ hawkwind ~ tia ~ als
marta ~ ms ~ peter frampton ~ mahmood od ~ shiama
gray zone ~ hydrocholorothiazide ~ lives well lived ~ jamie farr ~ hawk tuah
theresa davis ~ Mr. Whitman’s ~ walt ~ Nathan Englander ~ Chris Adrian
@NathanEnglander ~ @NathanEnglander ~ diarrhea ~ diarrhea ~ letters
whitman in camden ~ story ~ Nathan Englander ~ story ~ @NathanEnglander
@NathanEnglander ~ diarrhea ~ preachers ~ fireworks ~ stormy daniels
pearl sandow ~ Feb. 16, 2023. ~ Lawrence K. Altman, M.D. ~ alvin bragg ~ fani
cafe ~ cafe brief ~ pc biz ~ backfired ~ @ori_goldberg
@ori_goldberg 1/ The IDF and Shin Bet have released Shifa hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya after months of detention back to the Gaza strip. Israel’s government is in an uproar. This state of affairs demonstrates the depths of Israel’s unhinged mendacity. —> ~ Fiction Issue ~ @NYerFiction “New fiction by Sally Rooney, in The New Yorker’s annual Fiction Issue.” Back in the corner newstand days, the AFI was a lot of fun.. I miss dead tree magazines, and decided to go out and get a copy. Barnes & Noble was still open on Perimeter Center W. I had not been in a bookstore in a long time. They still smell the same. The price was going to be ridiculous, but it was time for a foolish extravaagence. The periodicals were against the western wall. I looked carefully in every section, but did not see TNY. A second examination of the magazine shelf yielded the same result. A lady said that some magazines were in a rack by the front. In the second rack we perused, TNY was for sale. The cost was $8.99, before tax. It was not the summer fiction issue. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress ~ @mtracey Presidents enjoyed functional immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts” between 1789 and 2023. Now, the Supreme Court has codified that immunity. This is largely thanks to the Special Counsel purporting to criminalize a massive array of “official” actions undertaken by Trump, such as conferring with Justice Department officials, conferring with the Vice President, and even Tweeting — under a cockamamie and newly concocted theory designed to specifically prosecute Trump. Given the clear excesses of this literal “conspiracy theory” proposed by Jack Smith, the Court has accordingly formalized a wide-ranging immunity for all presidents, even for future “official acts” which might be more narrow and concrete, and related to more straightforwardly “unlawful” conduct. So if the President has now been accorded King-like immunities for his “core Constitutional” acts, as well as far-reaching “presumptive immunity” for his “official” acts, the reason for this new monarchical standard ultimately stems from the heedless crusade of Jack Smith and the DOJ ~ but when you impose meaningful search parameters, the truth emerges: The charges against Trump are obscure, and nearly entirely unprecedented. In fact, no state prosecutor — in New York, or Wyoming, or anywhere — has ever charged federal election laws as a direct or predicate state crime, against anyone, for anything. None. Ever. Even putting aside the specifics of election law, the Manhattan DA itself almost never brings any case in which falsification of business records is the only charge. Standing alone, falsification charges would have been mere misdemeanors under New York law, which posed two problems for the DA. First, nobody cares about a misdemeanor, and it would be laughable to bring the first-ever charge against a former president for a trifling offense that falls within the same technical criminal classification as shoplifting a Snapple and a bag of Cheetos from a bodega. Second, the statute of limitations on a misdemeanor — two years — likely has long expired on Trump’s conduct, which dates to 2016 and 2017. So, to inflate the charges up to the lowest-level felony (Class E, on a scale of Class A through E) — and to electroshock them back to life within the longer felony statute of limitations — the DA alleged that the falsification of business records was committed “with intent to commit another crime.” Here, according to prosecutors, the “another crime” is a New York State election-law violation, which in turn incorporates three separate “unlawful means”: federal campaign crimes, tax crimes, and falsification of still more documents. Inexcusably, the DA refused to specify what those unlawful means actually were — and the judge declined to force them to pony up — until right before closing arguments. So much for the constitutional obligation to provide notice to the defendant of the accusations against him in advance of trial. (This, folks, is what indictments are for.) In these key respects, the charges against Trump aren’t just unusual. They’re bespoke, seemingly crafted individually for the former president and nobody else. ~ @Fritschner “Kennedy told the person, who was traveling to Asia, that he might enjoy a restaurant in Korea that served dog on the menu, suggesting Kennedy had sampled dog. The photo was taken in 2010, according to… metadata—the same year he was diagnosed with a dead tapeworm in his brain.” ~ On July 3, 1981, an article appeared deep inside the New York Times. “RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS.” Very few people knew how big that story was going to get. The author, Lawrence K. Altman, is still writing for the NYT. ~ Tyler Mahan Coe (chaotic good) @TylerMahanCoe I know I’m supposed to ignore the trolls but it’s so difficult to do when I know they became the way they are from feeling ignored by their mommies … @chamblee54 If only they hadn’t been drunk the day she got out of prison … the tweet has been deleted. ~ Every night for a thousand years. ~ “I do not need to wash my hands every day!” The words were probably grumbled in many bars, ball games and bathrooms across the country. It is hard to identify a fatal organism when we cannot see it with our eyes. So it is difficult to get the masses to believe that some tiny microorganism can cause a miserable death. ~ “That whole damned war business is about 999 parts diarrhea to one part glory.” Looking for the source of that quote led to the research shown above. … “Intimate with Walt Selections from Whitman’s Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1882-1892.” ~ contestants on the Hollywood Squares would tape five episodes at a time. You would bring a blazer, and five ties. ~ I just listened to this wonderful show, with Jamie Farr talking to Gilbert Gottfried. Towards the end of the show, someone mentioned that Jamie worked with Milton Berle. The story about “just take out enough to win” was mentioned, without any context. Someone said, you must not have worked with Forrest Tucker. ~ “He sounded terrible and then he went to Waffle House and then was fine.” “He was reinvigorated by the Waffle House.””I want to know what he ordered.” ~ Seán Ono Lennon @seanonolennon I really don’t know what people expect from me when they insult my mother. The mind boggles. ~ true stable genius i074 i075 0718i 0718ii ~ zabriskie point ~ I drive by a sign everyday. “Nancy Creek Cemetary” The spell check suggestion is elementary. ~ @QuoteResearch Before you engage in a protracted argument on x-twitter please consider this comment from Cyrus Stuart Ching in 1948: ‘What’s the sense of wrestling with a pig? You both get all over muddy . . . and the pig likes it.’” @chamblee54 When clicking on this link, I found myself in an argument with google ads. Arguing with the algorithm is the modern version of wrestling with a pig. ~ Prompt If I Were a Photograph or Picture this – I confirmed that it was blow up, and not throw up. That moment I captured at Krystal left room for doubt. The lady who took my order asked if I wanted to take an art portrait of her. I thought I would let it slide, since I knew that art was slang for porn, and there was no lens strong enough to make the onion hamburger smell go away. But there was no film in my camera anyway, and you can take that at face value, or think that it is a cliche metaphor. I wanted to be kind to the lady, so I ordered a sack full of Krystalburgers, and prayed that I would be alive when I finished eating them. The happy krystal habit is not what it used to be. If only they had white castles in georgia, but you can’t have everything. I can always settle for the mystery meat at taco bell, my true idea of junk food nirvana. Meanwhile, the rain is coming down here, and I am going to continue to type until the call to action. Maybe I could have considered what I could have done to make a naked krystalburger mama look like something other than the way those hamburgers smell. In the old days, of the Krystal emporium on peachtree industrial boulevard, across from the frito plant, the management would not have tolerated a krystalburger princess asking a poet to take her art portrait, with or without the side of fries. ~ “He sounded terrible and then he went to Waffle House and then was fine.” “He was reinvigorated by the Waffle House.” “I want to know what he ordered.” ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress ~ selah
Racially Motivated
A post on chamblee54 examined the local custom of changing street names. Towards the end, there was this sentence: “Some of these changes are racially motivated, while others are not. Some make sense, while most do not.” If you were to say this out loud, chances are good that someone would interrupt you, and say “Why don’t you say racist?” This is a repost.
The AP style guide took up this issue earlier this year. Here is what they say: @APStylebook “Do not use racially charged or similar terms as euphemisms for racist or racism when the latter terms are truly applicable.” @APStylebook “The terms racism and racist can be used in broad references or in quotations to describe the hatred of a race, or assertion of the superiority of one race over others. Our new race-related coverage entry on Stylebook Online offers details on when and how to use the terms.” You have to pay for the Stylebook online. God is in the details, and hiding behind a paywall.
@AnApeInKhakis “Remove nuance from journalism. If water’s not frozen, it’s boiling.” @beautypill “Yes, for example “You’re missing the point” and “You should go fuck yourself” both apply here, but critical differences in tone guide which one I should use to address your tweet.”
@Zigmanfreud “Yeah, the HUGE problem with this AP stylebook decision is that the people making the judgment call on what is “racist or racism” are so liberal & so PC that anything short of a white person apologizing for being born white (especially if they are a conservative man) would qualify”
@EvanDonovan “Yes, but when are they truly acceptable? Increasingly, newsrooms want attribution when that word is used. “Xxxxx has been under fire since making controversial comments last week. Yyyyy called those comments racist….”
This quotefest could go on all day. If you want to explore the racially/racist rabbit hole, go to an internet near you. More to the point, is changing a street name racially motivated, or racist? This statement applied to multiple street name changes. Often, race was not an apparent factor. We don’t know when the changes took place, or what government body made the changes.
Is this institutional oppression, or just government nonsense? Changing the street name is typical of the petty, separate-water-fountains nature of Jim Crow. Is the water boiling, or is it not frozen? At some point, the writer needs to think for them self. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Is Facial Recognition Technology Racist?
Wrongfully Arrested Because Face Recognition Can’t Tell Black People Apart This headline. posted on facebook, led to a discussion of Facial Recognition Technology (FRT). The headline pushed a lot of my buttons. People are aroused, to the breaking point, about racism. The person who posted the story disagrees. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The reply posted by person #1 featured some other links. One was for a video, Wrongfully Arrested Because of Flawed Face Recognition Technology. To me, this is more reasonable, and less inflammatory, than “… Can’t Tell Black People Apart.” It is also easier to believe. I can accept that FRT has more problems with POC, than with PWOC. To make a blanket claim like “… Can’t Tell Black People Apart” seems like an dangerous exaggeration.
The conversation sat still for the rest of the day. Person #1 is an attorney, who used to live in Atlanta. This is where I met him. Person #1 is an intelligent, thoughtful person, someone you should listen to. I might disagree with person #1 on this issue, while still having respect for him.
Then person #2 entered the conversation. I have never met person #2. All he knows is what he sees on her facebook page. It shows pictures of a vacation in Havana. Person #2 is clearly white. The fact that she took a vacation in Havana indicates that person #2 enjoys a certain amount of privilege. Here is what person #2 added to the conversation:
“”…flawed face recognition technology” sounds like there was a glitch, not like the entire technology was designed in a way that supports white, male normativity (aka white supremacy). Your suggestion that this is the same message is false and suggests we should avoid being more upset by avoiding the actual issue here—because we should frame matters in ways that obfuscate the real problem. We can’t begin to solve these problems if we are afraid to actually say what they are. Yeah, people are going to be upset. THEY SHOULD BE.” … “If you are following the protests and the recent changes that have happened, you know exactly what the anger has led to. If Black anger makes you uncomfortable, address your white fragility. Try to let go of your tone policing and actually engage with the issues. That’s work you have to do on your own.”
University Avenue cleared of barricades near property where Rayshard Brooks was killed. This was the story I posted in response to “you know exactly what the anger has led to.” In the aftermath of the Rayshard Brooks killing, an armed gang took over the burned out Wendy’s on University Avenue, where the incident occurred. “Residents of the south Atlanta neighborhood in the area had grown frustrated by the blockade that formed – guarded by what they described as armed citizens who they said were not protesting but using the space for their own gain. Residents said that the people would block the street and sometimes not allow them to get in or out of their neighborhood.”
This is one of many examples of where the anger caused by current events has spilled over to harm people. Often, the “collateral damage” did nothing to deserve the abuse they are getting. In many cases, it is POC who are suffering the brunt of the damage. When a privileged white person, like #2, rabble rouses people into action, this is what can happen. University Avenue is the first exit on i75/i85 south of downtown, and is an important access point for many neighborhoods. Many of the people affected by the turmoil on University Avenue are white.
After hearing talk about “white fragility” and “tone policing,” I am inclined to dismiss person #2 as a cliche spouting idiot. Unfortunately, that seems to be the approach many people have to complex issues. The idea that FRT is designed to reinforce white supremacy would be very amusing to the Chinese government. They are major players in FRT, using it to enable Asian hegenomy.
Lets examine the notion that FRT is racist by design. If this were the case, the developers would go the extra mile to make fewer mistakes with POC. If the goal of FRT is to keep the lawless POC masses under control, then it would help if the system actually worked on POC.
One of the articles cited by person #1 mentioned announcements by some major tech industry players that they were not going to sell FRT services to police. The article linked above mentions concerns about race/gender bias. However, the greater focus here is the overall privacy concerns about FRT.
Is it really a good idea to focus on the racial problems with FRT? There have long been overall privacy concerns about Big Brother. Unfortunately, many people will see an headline about racism and either tune it out, or think that it does not affect them. (“If you are tired of talking about racism, how would you like to live with it”) The human rights concerns about FRT affect everyone. To dismiss these concerns as “white fragility” is counterproductive, insulting, and insane.
This feature is approaching the attention limit of many readers. The facebook thread, and the identity of persons #1 and #2, were hidden out of respect for the privacy of the people involved. Even a cliche-spouting SJW deserves privacy.
Walt Whitman And The War
Every night for a thousand years is a story about Walt Whitman’s time as a caregiver during the War Between the States. It appears this month on The New Yorker fiction podcast. ENFATY was written in the voice of Mr. Whitman by Chris Adrian, and read for the podcast by @NathanEnglander.
After looking for his wounded brother, Mr. Whitman was struck by the plight of wounded soldiers. He started to visit the soldiers, giving them candy and food, writing letters for them, and giving what comfort he could. ENFATY focuses on one soldier, Hank Smith. Doctors wanted to amputate his leg. Hank had a pistol, and would not let them. By the time Hank was tricked into allowing an amputation, it was too late.
Not everyone approved of Mr. Whitman. “One disapproving commissioner, Harriet Hawley, complained to her husband: “Here comes that odious Walt Whitman to talk evil and unbelief to my boys. I think I would rather see the evil one himself—at least if he had horns and hooves.”
Others saw things differently. “Union Colonel Richard Hinton met Whitman at Armory Square Hospital while recovering from a bullet wound suffered at Antietam … “When this old heathen came and gave me a pipe and tobacco, it was about the most joyous moment of my life. Walt Whitman’s funny stories, and his pipes and tobacco were worth more than all the preachers and tracts in Christendom. A wounded soldier don’t like to be reminded of his God more than twenty times a day. Walt Whitman didn’t bring any tracts or bibles; he didn’t ask if you loved the Lord, and didn’t seem to care whether you did nor not.”
Conditions conditions in the hospitals were beyond horrible. This was an era when many people said “I do not need to wash my hands every day!” One nurse asked Mr. Whitman if he had a Bible. She wanted to cheer up, by reading the Book of Job.
“These hospitals, ranging in size from converted private mansions to filthy, mud-encrusted tents in contraband camps, were places to be feared by any thinking person. The great European medical advances in bacteriology and antisepsis were still tragically a few years in the future … the overworked and understaffed physicians continued to ascribe the soldiers’ ills to such fantastical causes as “malarial miasms, mephitic effluvia, … sewer emanations, and poisonous fungi in the atmosphere.” …
The predictable result of such hurried and horrific operations was postoperative infection. Pyemia, septicemia, erysipelas, osteomyelitis, tetanus, and gangrene were grouped together as “surgical fevers.” Pyemia, literally “pus in the blood,” was the most dreaded of all, with a mortality rate of 97.4 percent, but the other surgical fevers also claimed their deadly share of victims. Not without reason did Civil War soldiers fear doctors much more intensely than they feared the enemy. They had a greater chance of dying in the hospital than in the field.
“That whole damned war business is about 999 parts diarrhea to one part glory.” The quote is on page 187 of Intimate with Walt – Selections from Whitman’s Conversations with Horace Traubel, 1882-1892. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress
Last Surviving Witness
The display of a link on this page does not indicate approval of content.
This ain’t Texas, it’s Thursday night at the Heretic DanceOut Atlanta teaches free country …
Meak Pro Media SPECIAL EDITION 15th Anniversary (Episode 22 with Dave …
U.S. readies to evacuate Americans from Lebanon if fighting intensifies
Chase Oliver Brings Fire to Atlanta City Council re: Cop City
Israel HUMILIATED as Iran, Yemen, Lebanese and Gaza Forces Crush IDF
An Israel offensive into Lebanon risks an Iranian military response, military leader says
The Last Surviving Witness to Emmett Till’s Abduction Finally Tells His Story
55 Years On, Charles Bukowski’s ‘Notes of a Dirty Old Man’ Ages Well
@catholiccom What, you thought we weren’t gonna talk about baptizing with Gatorade?
Gatorade: A Sin-Quencher? You can’t baptize with Gatorade! It might not be so simple.
A Catholic organization built an AI priest. Here’s what happened.
“Sarah Netanyahu Reiterated This Multiple Times To Families of Israeli POWs”
Israel’s Supreme Court rules ultra-Orthodox men must serve in military
I Regret to Inform You That We Will All Grow Old, Infirm, and Unattractive they say …
Hollywood Jews Slam Violence Outside L.A. Synagogue as ‘Horrifying,’ Vow to ‘Mobilize’
How to Explain Trans Hermits – women passed themselves off as men to become monks?
The presidential election isn’t a toss-up As our model launches, either Biden or Trump …
Cyprus: From early Zionist colony to military base for Israel’s war on Gaza
Wisdom, Montana. Ranchers and cowhands in Fetty’s Bar april 1942 John Vachon
‘Quon Grills Nathan Wade on Fani Willis Fling and Trump Case Dismissal
Kinky Friedman, provocative satirist and one-time gubernatorial candidate, dies at 79
Kmart wiped out from California as last store in state closes
I Was A Pastor At A Megachurch. Then Someone Asked Me A Question That Turned …
ye ~ tomorrow ~ tim dillon ~ bawarchi ~ texas rangers
cox media ~ vaush ~ @kc_ceo34 ~ scotus ~ debate
data ~ everett dirkson ~ nato ~ foot numbness ~ pride
lebanon ~ @thebishgossip ~ ono matopoeia ~ spiritual abolitionist ~ onomatopoeia
onomatopoeia ~ sf pride ~ cardi b ~ flavorwire ~ lgbtq tour
martin mull ~ harland sanders ~ k-mart ~ aitah ~ glenn & john
hippie hibachi ~ chasing the dragon. ~ stp ~ stp ~ ouroboros
kinky friedman ~ raw dog ~ fatcon ~ fatcon ~ hodge twins ~ donald sutherland
warnock on msnbc ~ judge ~ carolyn bryant ~ jfif jpeg ~ aitah
crab fried rice ~ deuteronomy ~ LA synagogue ~ bobby jr ~ phil walden jr
tomorrow ~ otis redding ~ escapepod ~ drabblecast ~ catholic ai
dual n back ~ dual n back ~ eno gaza ~ emmitt till ~ osterweil
shakespeare pronouns ~ ian hunter ~ carlos santana ~ LA synagogue ~ bobby jr
Accident Waiting To Happen ~ Here is Liverpool native Malcolm McDowell talking about seeing the Silver Beetles at the Cavern Club one two ~ @AdameMedia “I am personally proud of the ruins of Gaza, and that every baby, even 80 years from now, will tell their grandchildren what the Jews did,” The Minister of Social Equality in Israel, Mai Golan… ~ @ofcrdeonjoseph IT WAS STUPID. BUT I WAS FED UP Note: Please do not do what I did. In all truth, it’s just not worth it. So a few days ago, I went to the store to get stuff for my wife off duty. As I entered I saw this tall, blond. She was tanned with designer sunglasses. You could tell she had a lot work done. She was at the counter asking weird questions to the cashier. It was a strange exchange, that was circular. It was odd. But it felt as if it was a distraction. As I start to walk deeper into the store, I see a well dressed young man with tattoos on his neck and arms. He had a bottle of Hennessy in his hand as he walked from the alcohol section very calmly towards the exit. I heard the cashier yell at the man “I SAW YOU TAKE THAT! YOU GOTTA PAY FOR THAT!” As he walks towards the exit, he laughs stating “I’m sorry ma’am. Don’t worry about it.” She yells for him to put it back again, to which he replied “I’m sorry ma’am. I can’t put it back. Once I’m out the door it’s mine. You know the rules! You can’t do nothing” The blond walked out with him as the alarm went off. They were both laughing. The cashier was demoralized. Seemed like this was a reoccurring theme for her. I just witnessed a theft. Everything in me was trying to resist going after him. “It’s just property. The police won’t even come for this. Why bother? He will just get released in an hour or two. What if you get into an altercation? The DA will file on you before they file on him. The department will burn you. You have a family. It’s just a bottle of booze. Don’t get involved. You’re off. Just be a good witness if the police arrive.” But he was so brazen about it. So cavalier. I kept trying to talk my self down, but I couldn’t help it. It wasn’t about the property. It was the principle. The look of frustration on the cashiers face was affecting me. The customers who were doing it right, who were going to pay for their items with their hard earned money staring angrily at the door as the idiot exited smiling. At this point, it had nothing to do with me being a cop. It had everything to do with me being a fed up, and tired of the lawlessness and hopelessness it causes. I thought of all the stores closing because of folks like this. The jobs lost. My mind, my heart and body were in full agreement. I marched out the door and caught him before he hit the lot. “Bro. Imma need you to put that back. He cursed as he turned to face me, but when he saw my stature, he froze and said. “Come on. You Black. You know how we do!” He was Hispanic. “Walk your ass back into that store and put it back.” I said. He looked as me and said “It’s mine. I walked in with it!” He told so many lies in a span of one minute it was mind numbing. I said “People are sick of this shit bro. You know they have to raise their prices because of the shit you just did. I’m telling you to put it back!” He looked at me and said “Nah. I’m going to my ride and leaving. Do you know who I am? I’m a TikTok star.” He walked over to a red Mercedes, where the blond was sitting in the driver’s seat. I followed him. “Nah, bruh. That ain’t happening.” He stuck his chest out like he was going to do something. But when I stepped toward him he pushed it back in. His lady was nervous. She rolls down the window and says to him. “Mi amore. I’ll hold it.” He gives it to her and smiles stating “I don’t have it no more Sug Knight!” The blond reaches towards me and hand hands me the bottle. She apologized and tells him to get in the car. “Bitch! Why you give him that shit!” He yelled. She said “What if the calls the cops. Let’s get outta here mi amore!” He goes to his trunk. I don’t flinch. I told him he wasn’t going to do shit. And he didn’t. An off duty sheriff deputy came backed me up. I thanked him and walked back into the store. I approached the clerk, and placed it on the counter. The cashier and customers smiled and thanked me. It felt good to give folks hope. The way we should. ~ Samsung – Galaxy A15 5G 128GB (Unlocked) ~ Gatorade Baptism Manley Pointer was looking at X one tuesday morning, trying to stay out of trouble.. He found this item from @catholiccom “What, you thought we weren’t gonna talk about baptizing with Gatorade?” A praying man was about to be hit with an onslaught of brightly colored liquid, coming out of a Gatorade cooler in the sky. To a Catholic, baptize means to sprinkle a few drops of sacred fluid on the forehead. To a Baptist, babtize means filling a tub with water, and dunking the recently-saved sinner. To fill that tub with Gatorade would require at least 100 gallons. You can’t drink Baptismal fluid after it has been dunked in. All that lovely Gatorade would have to be poured down the drain. Baptists know that baptizing with Gatorade is a dumb idea, even by Catholic standards. @catholiccom has a link to a story, Gatorade: A Sin-Quencher? You can’t baptize with Gatorade! Right? It might not be so simple. After you click through the request for donations, you get to the story. It seems like the Church built an AI priest, Father Justin. Someone asked FJ if it was ok to Baptize an infant with Gatorade. People have serious discussions about this. You will be forgiven if you do not participate. ~ Lunch today is a tussit special. The collards and potatoes were steamed yesterday. The rice patty covers a partial burrito. The carne asada burrito came from a former Milk Jug store on Buford Hiway, which is now a takeout taco place. The burrito came with a side order of arroz y frijoles. When I had eaten as much as I wanted, I put the remaining burrito on top of the remaining rice, and put the styrofoam container in the refrigerator. The plate dates back to the Truman Administration. When I was growing up, all our meals were served on a plate that looked like that. Fifties era plastic is utterly indestructable. ~ I got a message from Centerwell today. “it’s too soon to refill 1 or more of your prescriptions. Check your order status As soon as the refill is available on 8/21/2024, we’ll start processing the prescription.” the order is for “XXXXX6957 – ROS” Should I just ignore this? ~ Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia by Robert Greenfield ~ I tried to catch some Fog. I mist. ~ When chemists die, they barium. ~ Jokes about German sausage are the wurst. ~ Venison for dinner? Oh deer! ~ A soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran. ~ I know a guy who’s addicted to brake fluid. He says he can stop any time. ~ How does Moses make his tea? Hebrews it. ~ I stayed up all night to see where the sun went. Then it dawned on me. ~ This girl said she recognized me from the vegetarian club, but I’d never met herbivore. ~ @hodgetwins on Ben Shapiro: “He’s a Jew conservative. He’s not America first he’s Israel first.” ~ that.traveling.diva ~ “they can get Hamas like we did Bin Laden” ~ That’s where President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden stopped by following Thursday night’s highly-watched presidential debate with former President Donald Trump. The couple stopped by 2758 Cobb Parkway SE in Cobb County for a late-night meal. ~ President Biden went to the Waffle House at 2758 Cobb Parkway, in front of Life University ~ there are 12 Kmart stores still open. The nearest one to Georgia is Kmart Miami #3074 ~ I saw Martin Eugene Mull in person three times. He opened for Melissa Manchester in 1974 at the Music Hall. I stayed for the headliner. Melissa Manchester was GOOD. Learning about her was a gift MEM gave me. When the Music Hall was in Cherokee Plaza, I drove by one night and saw cars in the parking lot. MEM was doing a solo show, and I caught the last few minutes. He did a song about doing nothing, and said that dead people can do it to. When Atlanta hosted the Super Bowl in 1994, MEM taped a comedy special in Woodruff Park. The Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders were kicking field goals. After the show, MEM was waiting for somebody, and I stood a few feet away and made eye contact. I couldn’t think of anything to say. ~ This is a repost from 2019. ~ … “David! Sweetie! Where are you watching from? Come hang out with us on Allen’s balcony!” David, a bookish looking middle-aged man, destroyed the festive mood in the little store in an instant. “Absolutely not. Those defectives and freaks?” he spat, indicating the colorful crowd outside the store, “They have nothing to do with MY life, thank you very much. This parade has as much dignity as a carnival freak show. It’s no wonder the whole country hates us.” Luckily for David, the Asshole Killer mind ray I’ve been working on is not yet operational.” … ~ pictures for the first day of the second half of 2024 are from The Library of Congress ~ selah
On The Road Part Two
One moment in the integration of On The Road into my Mcmansionville life in was the washing machine incident. I was doing the clothes. When the machine gets to the spin dry cycle, the clothes settle unevenly in the spin basket. The machine starts to rock on its feet, and make machine noise music of Lou Reed proportions. I will rest my butt against the side of the machine, and read OTR.
Meanwhile, OTR is sitting there, patiently waiting on the slack blogger to write yet another chapter. Sal Paradise (Jack Kerouac) is back in Frisco. As soon as Dean (Neal Cassady) gets there, he takes off in search of pussy. … “‘Oh I love, love, love women! I think women are wonderful! I love women!’ He spat out the window; he groaned; he clutched his head. Great beads of sweat fell from his forehead from pure excitement and exhaustion.”… Marylou, the Dean-babe they went cross country with, has run off with some rich people she knows. Sal is broke, starving, and dreaming of food. “There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and coffee was just a nickel.” Sal was in the pre-beatnik San Francisco of 1948, 71 years before I rode the washing machine in summertime Brookhaven. The culture may be internet processed, but the fridge has food, and the clothes are going to be clean in a little while.
Part Two of OTR starts with Sal back in New Jersey. He takes his aunt down to Virginia for a family holiday. Who should show up but Dean Moriarty, first wife Marylou, and Ed Dunkel … “ready to do anything Dean asked him, and at this time Dean was too busy for scruples.” Sal’s aunt has furniture to take back to New Jersey, which Dean winds up taking in his ’49 Hudson. There is an extended New Years Eve party in New York. Before long, Dean needs to get back to Frisco, and he talks Sal into going along. … “… but now the bug as one me again, and the bug’s name was Dean Moriarty and I was off on another spurt around the road.” … They go through Washington as Harry Truman is being sworn in for a full term as POTUS. Around that time, they got a costly speeding ticket in Virginia. They paid that off, leaving them very little money to get to California. (Ed Dunkel, aka Al Hinkle, was the “sole survivor” of the OTR characters. He died December 26, 2018.)
The first stop is New Orleans. Old Bull Lee (William S. Burroughs) is there, along with Galatea, the wife of Ed Dunkel. The cadaverous OBL is leading the opiated life described in Junky. Galatea is one of the more curious side stories of OTR. Ed meets her out west. “These two mindless cads decided to bring the girl along to the east and have her foot the bill … By the time they got to Tucson she was broke. Dean and Ed gave her the slip in a hotel lobby and resumed the voyage alone …”
Galatea made it to New Orleans, and Old Bull Lee. Galatea was reunited with Ed, and began their life together. 46 years later, Galatea … whose real name was Helen … was still with Al Hinkle. Here is the honeymoon story. Better Homes and Gardens chose not to publish this tale.
“… the Burroughses weren’t all too happy to have had Helen ‘dumped’ on them. As a matter of fact, when Helen first got there, Bill wasn’t happy and began writing letters to Allen (Ginsberg) in New York telling him to tell me to come and get her out of his house, it’s not a hotel! When we finally got to their house, which was actually in Algiers, LA (across the Mississippi River from New Orleans), Bill and Joan welcomed us. Helen had made herself indispensible in the three weeks she had been there, caring for both the Burroughs children (Joan’s three year old daughter Julie and William Jr., who was an infant at that time); she bathed them, fed them, and generally kept them out of their parents’ way. Bill and Joan actually asked Helen and I if we would stay with them – he had a room all ready to fix up for us! But Helen wanted out – she couldn’t believe how they lived, how little care they took of their children; never mind the house, which was dirty, with lizards running around everywhere.”
Helen was appalled by Joan’s use of the Benzedrine inhalers – she would open them up and swallow the cotton. Joan would send Helen to buy an inhaler almost every day. Once Helen mentioned to Joan that the pharmacist told her he would happily sell her ten inhalers at a time because he knew she was not the type to abuse them, to which Joan replied, “So, where are they?” And Helen never figured out that Bill was using heroin – she just thought he was stoned on marijuana all the time (which he was, on top of the heroin). It was all just a little too crazy for Helen, and she was glad when we turned down their offer of a room and found ourselves a room in New Orleans, where we stayed for about six weeks. It was a low-budget adventure, but we did get our honeymoon and we enjoyed it immensely.”
Sal and OBL went to the racetrack. Sal had a vision about his father, and told OBL to bet on a horse because of it. OBL ignored Sal. The horse won, and paid fifty to one. Soon after that, OBL kicked the bunch out. They headed to Frisco without any money. They stole food and gasoline. They picked up hitchhikers, who promised money from a rich aunt down the road, who sometimes existed. Dean cut off the gas while going downhill and coasted. Sal did not like to drive … “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” … took up space and grooved on the goneness of it all.” … “And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy I had always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move one, with a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiances shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven.”
After much hunger and grooviness, Dean, Sal, and Marylou made it to Frisco. Dean promptly dumped Marylou to take up with kids-mama Camille. “You see what a bastard he is?… Dean will leave you out in the cold anytime it’s in his interest.” Sal wanders the city dreaming of food, until he gets his GI bill money, and decides to go back to New Jersey. “What I accomplished by going to Frisco I don’t know. Camille wanted me to leave; Dean didn’t care one way or the other. I bought a loaf of bread and meats and made myself ten sandwiches to cross the country with again; they were all going to go rotten on me by the time I got to Dakota. … We were all thinking we’d never see one another again and we didn’t care.” The beatnik lifestyle had a downside.
The first draft of this piece is done. I get more coffee, and goes to work on another project. He is producing a sticker picture based on Lizard (No. 56) by M.C. Escher. Today is the day to start cutting out lizards. These pieces are larger, and more complicated, than what I usually cut out. The Grateful Dead is goofing on “China Cat Sunflower” in the background. Jerry would have made a lousy headlight on a northbound train.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost from 2019. The chamblee54 On The Road series is complete. part one part two part three part four part five part six part seven
Author Insults
25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound “A village explainer.
Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.”
24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley “All raw, uncooked, protesting.”
23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.”
22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence “Filth. Nothing but obscenities.”
21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820) “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.”
20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.”
19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling “Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.”
18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.”
17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes “Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.”
16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864) “I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.”
15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”
13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.”
12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”
11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972) “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.”
10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876) “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.”
09. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.”
08. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger “I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?”
07. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923) “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’…. One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!”
06. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning “I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.”
05. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948) “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.”
04. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898) “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.”
03. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce “the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.”
02. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922) “A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.”
01. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928) “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.”
Bonus. Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.”
Bonus Two, from Flannery O’Connor “I hope you don’t have friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is as low as you can get re fiction. I hope you picked it up off the floor of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.”
These author insults were borrowed from flavorwire. HT to Andrew Sullivan. The pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia
Jerry Garcia was in bad shape. At a sound check, he disappeared for 45 minutes. When he came back, there was a plastic shower cap on his head. When smoking heroin, Jerry wore the cap to keep his hair from falling into the fire. This time, he forgot to take the cap off.
This is from the epilogue to Dark Star: An Oral Biography of Jerry Garcia. DSAOBOJG was curated by Robert Greenfield, who put together a lovely story about The Rolling Stones 1972 tour. This book later became a podcast series.
Jerry saw his father drown, when Jerry was very young. Clifford “Tiff” Garcia, Jerry’s older brother, cut off one of Jerry’s fingers. Jerry made a living giving guitar lessons in Palo Alto. Somehow this evolved into playing in a Jug Band, which became the Grateful Dead. At this point the story is well known, and a part of sixties lore.
To this reader, the turning point is when Pigpen dies in 1973. The band kept playing. The ouroboros grew and festered. Again, this is familiar to anyone with access to a deadhead. What was not public knowledge was Jerry’s junkie problem. Jerry never shot heroin, but rather smoked it off aluminum foil, aka chasing the dragon.
I first heard about Heroin Jerry in 1986, after he had a diabetic coma. I appreciate athletic substance use in rockandroll, but never did quite imagine Jerry as a junkie. Maybe I wasn’t paying attention when he was busted freebasing cocaine in Golden Gate park. Aside from the heroin, Jerry was severely diabetic, and yet ate sweets and junk food. It is a miracle that he made it to 1995.
Jerry had other issues. He treated the women in his life horribly. He was married either three of four times, and had a collection of daughters. The book has interviews with many of the ladies, and much more detail. There are a many other counterculture metaphors metastasizing. I just want to put this book on the shelf, and move on. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The KKK In Atlanta
@SpaceyG “Buckhead hasn’t been considered an Atlanta suburb since the head of the ATL Klan developed the Peachtree Battle-Peachtree Rd. area as one. When he sold some land to the Catholic Church (for Christ the King) he was relieved of his top Klansman duties.” This was news to me, though not terribly shocking. My google habit kicked in, and soon there was a handful of articles. There was a lot of disagreement over the specifics.
There was also a lot of oh-how-terrible posturing. This will be held to a minimum in this post. We are talking about the Ku Klux Klan. If you don’t know by now, they were horrible, horrible people. If you want to get worked up about it, go watch tv.
The KKK was revived in 1915. Birth of a Nation was one inspiration. Another catalyst was the Leo Frank affair. He was convicted of the murder of Mary Phagan, despite substantial evidence of his innocence. Mr. Frank was Jewish. The trial was the occasion for anti-Semitic hate speech.
Gov. John Slaton commuted the death sentence of Mr. Frank to life imprisonment, along with suggestions that the verdict would be overturned. A group called “The Knights of Mary Phagan” broke into the state prison, and took Leo Frank out. On August 17, 1915, he was taken to Marietta, and lynched. This happened where I-75 crosses Hwy 120 today, downhill from the Big Chicken.
“An itinerant Methodist preacher named William Joseph Simmons started up the Klan again in Atlanta in 1915. … On Thanksgiving Eve 1915, Simmons took 15 friends to the top of Stone Mountain, built an altar on which he placed an American flag, a Bible and an unsheathed sword, set fire to a crude wooden cross, muttered a few incantations about a “practical fraternity among men,” and declared himself Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”
The Klan initially did not do very well, until I.W. Simmons met Edward Young Clarke and Mary Elizabeth (Bessie) Tyler, a pair of promoters. They rebranded the Klan to fight against Jews, Catholics, and anything else people did not like. Clarke and Tyler had a knack for publicity, and got a lot of new members. The recruits paid a $10 initiation fee, with a substantial cut of that going to Clarke and Tyler. Soon, the money began to pour in.
These recruits were going to need pointed hoods. “Although it’s little morethan an unassuming office structure today, the Cotton Exchange Building on bustling Roswell Road has something of a haunted past. In the early 1920s, the Ku Klux Klan bought and used it as a manufacturing and distribution center for the group’s propaganda. Additionally, the Klan produced its robes, hoods and gloves there.” The Cotton Exchange building still stands today, a block north of the Buckhead triangle.
“On October 11, 1921, Elizabeth Tyler was entertaining a few friends in her elegant Atlanta home. … At 9:45 p.m., five gunshots rang out. Half an hour later, the telephone rang at the Atlanta Constitution. “I want to talk to a reporter … I just want to tell you that we got Mrs. Tyler tonight.” The assailants, who were never identified, hadn’t gotten anyone. All five bullets had missed.”
That was not the only trouble in paradise. The Klan leadership began to quarrel. I.W. Simmons was pushed out, replaced by Hiram Evans. Soon, Clarke and Evans were out. Imperial Kleagle Clarke was convicted of violating the Mann Act. Bessie Tyledr moved to California, and died in 1924.
The sources I found are unclear about a KKK real estate business. I.W. Simmons had plans for a University, and began to purchase property for it. There was also the Imperial Palace, at the corner of Peachtree and West Wesley. Here is what the Catholic church says:
“In 1916, an elegant white-columned, Greek revival-style mansion was built by Edward M Durant on the site of the Cathedral. In 1921, the house was bought by the Ku Klux Klan. The group met mostly in secret in the home with the intention of transforming it into their “Imperial Palace,” but by the 1930s had begun to unravel with the onset of the Great Depression. After the property went into foreclosure, the Church was able to purchase the land from the mortgage holder. The cost of the 4 acres of land and mansion was $35,000, quite a sum at that time but was chosen over other available locations due to the fact it was on public transportation. … On the Feast of Christ the King on October 31, 1937, the cornerstone for the Church was blessed and the dedication took place on January 18, 1939.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
Failed Regime-Change
The display of a link on this page does not indicate approval of content.
NOAM CHOMSKY ON DERRIDA, FOUCAULT, LACAN AND POSTMODERNISM
The hisTory of Bail and PreTrial release sePTemBer 23, 2010 TimoThy r. schnacke …
BOMBSHELL: IDF Had Hamas Oct 7 Blueprint. Did NOTHING
If You Think Trump’s Money Comes From His Dad, You’re Only Half Right
David Foster Wallace on How Advertising Ruined America
Islamism Killed My Partner. Why Won’t the West Fight It? My daughters have grown …
Pride Month Would Not Exist as We Know it if Juneteenth Did Not Happen
Hamas Took Down The Newest IDF AFV | “We’re Facing Strategic Collapse”
Baldfellas: How Belarus’s Failed Regime-Change Movement Shaped Putin’s War Plan
… “perfectionism” and “individualism” as characteristics of “white supremacy culture”…
The Biden-Harris Administration’s Actions to Address Conflict-Related Sexual Violence
Pregnant wife’s sister offered to sleep with me
Mays-Newcombe barnstorming tour of 1955 set records, broke barriers
Why is low blood sodium a health concern for older adults? How is it treated?
See moment Nathan Wade’s team pauses interview with Kaitlan Collins
Fani Willis speaks out against critics, says she has been attacked and over-sexualized
Wikipedia: From Democratized Knowledge to Left-Establishment Propaganda, w/ Larry Sanger.
The war comes to the Park Slope Food Coop — could it also provide the blueprint for peace?
The Racial Wealth Gap Is About the Upper Classes The top decile disparities drive almost …
Israel unprepared for full-blown war with Hezbollah — senior electricity official
Black Man Calls Police on White Man For the Dumbest Reason
Emmett Till, Billie Joe McAllister, the Civil War on the Tallahatchie River
Missouri AG says he’ll sue New York over Trump hush money case
MANIPULATING ADVICE IMPROVE LARGE WORDS CRAM GOD COG FURNITURE
Does the first letter of one’s name affect life decisions? A natural language processing examination …
matt taibbi ~ doe vs princeton ~ leon redbone ~ darryl rhoades ~ rubbish
campside ~ anti racism ~ elizabeth trump ~ kevin ayers ~ dangerous minds
banning mill ~ banning mill ~ banning mill ~ alcohollywood ~ @QueerLibLib
Queer Liberation Library ~ phyllis lyon del martin ~ subway incident ~ justin kruetzmann
@JustKreutzmann ~ bill kreutzmann ~ bibi ~ styx666 ~ weigel wedding ~ martyr made
billy preston ~ russia china energy ~ gateway ~ dave smith ~ auditorium
mlk ~ trump ~ semafor ~ purple tenacle porn ~ alex van halen
bari weiss jre ~ exodus 20 ~ ttc ~ cool air ~ roidroids
Rusty Sue ~ elitefitrea ~ rj ~ bsb ~ Donald Trump ~ Elisabeth Trump
Christopher John Molluso ~ Christopher John Molluso ~ dick code ~ mark stuart farrar
nellie bly ~ nathan wade ~ mahmood od ~ rogan ~ trump ~ @TheWarNerd
So many “heterodox” personalities have come out as aggressive, hasbara slinging supporters of Israel, and her dirty war in Gaza. This blows a hole in the entire heterodox/mainstream dynamic. ~ Patrick Henningsen @21WIRE #Palestine have reached the third round of 2026 World Cup qualifiers for the first time in their history, under Tunisian coach Makram Daboub. An impressive feat, and they also played all 28 of their games away, thousands of miles away from their home stadium in West Bank. The violent Israeli occupation has now made it impossible for them to host any matches there. Despite all the challenges the team faced, and the horror of Israel’s ongoing genocide against the people of Gaza, they still performed strongly, securing second place in their group…🍉🍉⚽️⚽️❤️❤️✊🏼 ~ @AdameMedia BREAKING: Chaim Otmazgin, a senior Zaka commander, main source of “mass r*pe” and other atrocity propaganda, and a star witness in the Sheryl Sandberg “documentary”, has been EXPOSED as a FRAUD by Israeli media. For years he falsely claimed to be a lawyer to scam clients out of money, with one client being scammed out of half a million shekels (over $400,000). Never trust a word they say. ~ @mtracey In a draft treaty dated April 15, 2022, the central dispute between Ukraine and Russia apparently related to “security guarantees” for Ukraine if it were to adopt “permanent neutrality,” a central Russian demand that Ukraine appears to have entertained at the time. (No NATO, no foreign military presence, no foreign military hardware, etc.) … ~ what changed in August 2020 was a massive protest movement in Belarus, backed by the West, to overthrow Lukashenko and replace him with the western-backed opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya. It was this failed western-backed regime-change movement against Lukashenko — and the sanctions imposed by the EU and Washington to isolate and collapse Lukashenko’s regime — that once and for all forced Lukashenko to stop playing both sides off each other, and instead throw himself at Putin’s mercy to save his regime. For a couple of months in early autumn 2020, the smart money was on Lukashenko going the way of Yanukovych, Ceacescu and other color revolution losers — but Putin, after waiting for Lukashenko to get so desperate for help he’d agree to any of Putin’s demands, came in and saved Lukashenko’s regime. And in return, for the first time in their 20-year frenemy relationship, Putin got whatever he wanted from Lukashenko. ~ @FiringLineShow In his book, former Mueller prosecutor @AWeissmann_ recounts Paul Manafort meeting with a Putin ally over a proposed deal allowing Russia to take control of part of Ukraine with #Trump’s implicit approval. “It was such a clear indication of what Vladimir Putin was trying to do.” ~ In 2020, In 2020, Belarus was not getting along with Russia. The deep state screwed it up, and now Belarus is a close ally of Russia. Content Warning: This article contains a lot of long names, and headache inducing details ~ cvs 404 320 6658 ~ Elizabeth Christ Trump (born Elisabeth Christ; German pronunciation: [e:li:zabɛt kʁɪst]; October 10, 1880 – June 6, 1966) was a German-American businesswoman and the paternal grandmother of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. She married Frederick Trump in 1902. They had three children, Fred, John, and Elizabeth (later Mrs. Walters). Her husband died in 1918, requiring the 37-year-old widow to manage their properties. She co-founded the real estate development company E. Trump & Son with her son Fred, the father of Donald Trump. ~ Frederick Christ Trump Sr. (October 11, 1905 – June 25, 1999) was an American real-estate developer and businessman. He was the father of Donald Trump, the 45th president of the United States. ~ barackobama I didn’t really know my father—he left my mother and me when I was two years old, and only traveled from Kenya to visit us once, when I was ten. That trip was the first and last I saw of him; after that, I heard from him only through the occasional letter, written on thin blue airmail paper that was preprinted to fold and address without an envelope. His short visit had a profound impact on my life. My father gave me my first basketball and introduced me to jazz. But for the most part, the visit left me with more questions than it answered, and I knew I would have to figure out how to be a man on my own. ~ But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. Mark 6:4 ~ jameselliott60016@gmail.com ~ It was a typical thursday night in McMansion City. Manley Pointer took his brother, Laser, to Walmart. While sitting in the parking lot, MP listened to Rusty Sue, a drabblecast episodes about killerbots. The cyborgs all talked like characters in a b-movie western, which was the story’s mcguffin. MP was listening with his eyes fixed on the mirrors, so he could see any nefarious characters as they came up to his vehicle. Finally, the whole thing grew tiresome, and MP decided to go in the store. Carefully walking through the obstacle course of abandoned shopping carts, MP made his way to the store. The human flotsam and jetsam that one sees at the Chamblee Walmart is only slightly less menacing than the repair challenged roidroids in the story. They probably did not talk with cliche western accents. MP turned to look at the parking lot, and saw the sign turning on at the hemp store. But then the sign turned red, then purple, then blue, then green. The hemp store has a sign that changes colors every few seconds. This is truly the best of all possible worlds. Walmart is always a consumer wonderland. The loaves of bread were marked down to thirty six cents, but MP passed. A loaded shopping cart was leading Laser to the checkout line. It was time to go back to the vehicle and wait. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress selah ~ @Drabblecast This is what happens when you listen to a DC about old west androids in a Walmart parking lot ~ this is a repost ~ pictures for this ecstatically boring monday are from The Library of Congress ~ selah
leave a comment