Transplants
@jimgoad “I had an aneurysm before finishing the headline.” The headline in question is Doctors seek approval to transplant dead man’s sex organs onto trans-identified woman, appearing in The Christian Post. The story is tacky yellow journalism. A major source appears to be Jennifer Bilek, who has created a cottage industry out of badmouthing trans people. A comment typifies the approach here: “Frankenstein. And not much different than attaching the dead religion of the Torah/Talmud onto the living word of the New Testament.”
“Penis transplant performed on soldier at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore considered a success” The procedure has been performed, although not on ftm trans. “… a complex genital transplant on a soldier who also lost his legs in a bomb blast in Afghanistan, the man says he has normal functions and is “feeling whole.” The man … received a donated penis, scrotum and part of an abdominal wall during a 14-hour surgery in April 2018. … the man has “near-normal erections and the ability to achieve orgasm,” and can urinate “while standing, without straining, frequency, or urgency, with the urine discharged in a strong stream.” … Hopkins covered the $300,000 to $400,000 cost of the procedure and doctors donated their time. The hospital approved up to 60 more such procedures for service members, though not for transgender individuals or those born with defects.”
The CP article linked to a more serious medical magazine, Hospital Debates Penis Transplant in Transgender Patient. This article had some solid information, and will be quoted in the next few paragraphs. This article got a comment: “This is such a long article, that I feel comments probably are needed to be made, but I can think of nothing to say.”
“The main objectives of penis transplants are to provide an aesthetic phallus, urinary function, and sexual function (including erections and “erogenous sensitivity”) … While outcomes remain unknown, the prospect of penis transplants in transgender men is “huge” … phalloplasties – in which phalluses are constructed from flaps of skin – have complication rates of 80% to 90%, and that’s not the only limitation. … phalloplasties “don’t have the same aesthetic appeal [as natural penises] and they don’t enlarge and get hard on their own. They’re always the same size.”
“Metoidioplasties (met-oh-id-ee-oh-plas-tees) are another option for transgender men, but they also have limitations. In these procedures, surgeons form neophalluses out of clitoral tissue. The phalluses are disappointingly small … “You do have an erection and it can stay hard. Some people are capable of penetrating a partner, and some are not.”
“Compared to these existing options, a penis transplant ideally will offer “fewer urethral complications, better cosmetic outcome, and better physiological sexual capacity.” Still, limitations include the fact that transgender men who receive penis transplants will not be able to ejaculate since they lack a male reproductive system. It’s also not known if they’ll be able to have erections. For now, … the plan is to see if physical stimulation of the transplanted penis will engorge the clitoris enough to trigger blood flow to the corpus cavernosa in the penis – an erection.”
“Not surprisingly, penis transplants in transgender men will be more challenging than in cisgender men. In addition to connecting nerves and blood vessels, … patients will need urethra lengthening, as in phalloplasties, so the transplanted penis can urinate. However, … “the beauty of taking transplanted tissue is you can take as much tissue as you want. You can take the extra length of the donor’s urethra so you wouldn’t have to do the lengthening procedure.”
“Penis transplants in transgender individuals raise many other questions. Will scrotums also be transplanted, as was done in the Johns Hopkins transplant? What about testicles, which could produce sperm and – conceivably – offspring of the original donor? Testicles were not transplanted in the soldier … at Johns Hopkins for this reason … “Then the offspring is technically whose child?”
“VCA transplants (vascularized composite allotransplantation) in general are a controversial topic among bioethicists, especially in light of their high cost, high risk, and need for lifetime immunosuppression. “Unlike most solid organ transplants which are typically lifesaving, the goal of VCA is to improve quality of life. One of the challenges in VCA is that the [bioethics] field is still determining how to define and evaluate quality of life.”
“One critic questions whether penis transplants should be performed at all. They raise “ethical questions concerning aesthetics, morbidity, function, and cost-burden given the more readily available and less morbid alternative of phalloplasty” … The cost of a penis transplant in a transgender patient would likely be covered by research grant funds. … The transplant at Johns Hopkins cost a reported $300,000-$400,000, all covered by the institution.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Here is another look at ethical issues.
Oscar Wilde
October 16 is Oscar Wilde’s birthday. On that day in 1854, he appeared in Dublin, Ireland. He is one of the most widely quoted people in the english language. Some of those quotes are real. Since he was a published author, it should be easy to verify what he really said. This birthday celebration is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
One night in 1974, PG was talking to someone, and did not know who Oscar Wilde was. The conversational partner was horrified. PG became educated, and learned about a misunderstanding with the Marquess of Queensberry. Soon the “Avenge Oscar Wilde” signs made sense.
Mr. Wilde once made a speaking tour in the United States. One afternoon, in Washington D.C., the playwright met Walt Whitman. Thee and thou reportedly did the “Wilde thing”.
The tour then went to Georgia. A young black man had been hired as a valet for Mr. Wilde on this tour. On the train ride from Atlanta to Augusta, some people told Mr. Wilde that he could not ride in the same car as the valet. This was very confusing.
After his various legal difficulties, Oscar Wilde moved to Paris. He took ill, while staying in a tacky hotel. He looked up, and said “either that wallpaper goes, or I do”. Soon, Oscar Wilde passed away.
Bridget Phetasy
Joe Rogan Experience #1367 – Bridget Phetasy hit the ether last week. Miss Phetasy bills herself as Writer, Comedian, Verified Nobody. Her real name is Bridget Anna Walsh. The visit to the Rogan show was impressive. Three minutes in, Miss Phetasy made a meme worthy comment.
03:00 “I don’t blame myself for that happening but I do have to take responsibility for the fact that when you’re a woman or a girl and you’re out getting blacked out … bad things happen.” Where was this voice of reason during the Brock Turner circus? A young lady, with a history of blackout drinking, passes out behind a dumpster. This was scarcely mentioned in all the outrage about Brock Turner.
Before going further with this, we can mention a couple of youtube gadgets. If you look under the viewing window, you see three dots. If you click on those dots, you will be able to see a transcript of the show. You copy some of this text, and make a comment. If you put the time of the text in your comment, youtube will make a link to the text. That is how the link, at the start of the paragraph above, was made. The link goes directly to the “don’t blame myself” comment.
Bridget Phetasy is a cool person. She has a youtube show, Dumpster Fire. She likes to make fun of sjw goofiness … a topic that never runs out of material. At 3:48 of the latest episode, she dropped this tidbit: “moving on … clapping banned at Oxford University to stop people from being triggered” She ranted for a few minutes, leading up to this: “around this they banned clapping banned it like I’m gonna end up in the gulag someday fucking clapping I know by these people.”
PG had never heard of this, and wanted to know more. There were several tabloid articles, and this: ‘University of Oxford Clapping Ban’ Rumor. This is the danger of saying “google it.” Someone might find information that you don’t want them to find.
“The first Student Council meeting of the academic year, … passed the motion to mandate the Sabbatical Officers to encourage the use of British Sign Language (BSL) clapping, otherwise known as ‘silent jazz hands’ at Student Council meetings and other official SU events. … BSL clapping is used by the National Union of Students since loud noises, including whooping and traditional applause, are argued to present an access issue for some disabled students who have anxiety disorders, sensory sensitivity, and/or those who use hearing impairment aids.”
Clapping out loud is not banned. Nobody is going to the gulag for applauding. While some noise-weary people might appreciate the use of jazz hands, this ban is simply not going to happen. Bridget Phetasy does not always know what she is talking about. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestion for Phetasy is Pheasant. This is a repost.
DG-GD
PG was listening to disgraceland episode#64, about the grateful dead. He was at a stopping point with multi tasking, and decided to look something up. The show mentioned the first show by the warlocks, later known as the grateful dead. This was 50 years before “dead name” was a dirty word.
“On May 5, 1965 ‘The Warlocks’ … played their first show, at Magoo’s Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park, California” This was the day before PG turned 11. Lyndon Johnson was settling in for his elected term as President. The Braves were playing their lame duck season in Milwaukee. Combat troops had been in Vietnam for a little over two months. This was the start of the escalation. “By the end of 1965, more than 184,000 American troops were in Vietnam.”
Multi tasking is full of pitfalls. Whenever there is a break, you are tempted by facebook and twitter. Like this tweet: “The audio excerpt in this article is incredible: Part of a multi-movement work called “PASSOVER” by Rick Burkhardt. Musicians speak while playing, seated around a dinner table. From the collective @ensemblethingNY” The answer is to make a note of the link. Maybe you go back later and listen. Maybe you don’t. The focus should be on the first entertainment/chore. The dg-gd episode has a half hour to go. UPDATE The audio excerpt is pretty good. It is under seven minutes long. People of a certain age may feel old while listening to it.
At 27:44, dg-gd dropped an item that could not be ignored. The warlocks had to find a new name. Someone else was called the warlocks, and there were complications. It seems as though the warlocks … a pretty obvious name … was also an early name of the velvet underground. Other early vu names included the primitives and the falling spikes.
“When they (vu) finally did come across a name which stuck, it was thanks to a contemporary paperback novel about the secret sexual underworld of the 1960s that Tony Conrad, a friend of John Cale, happened across and showed to the group. The novel, written by Michael Leigh, remains in print most likely thanks to the band which appropriated its title.”… “Had Lou Reed and John Cale not seen a copy of this book in a New York City gutter (fittingly) and decided to use its name for their group, this little volume would have been justly forgotten. Written in a style which titilates while decrying the scene it describes, it’s a piece of blue-nosed junk.”
The rest of the show rolled on. Jerry stuck his finger in a dictionary at random, and found grateful dead. It was the name of a story. The band played at the acid tests, which mostly went well, until they did not. Pigpen drank rotgut to excess, until it killed him.
PG was editing pictures out of a folder labeled pa41. The images were shot by John Vachon,in June 1941. The last picture, while the 27 club end of Pigpen played over the speakers, was Women washing clothes in utility building at FSA (Farm Security Administration) trailer camp. Erie, Pennsylvania. Another picture, from January 1941, is Pinochle game in Czecho-Slovak Dramatic Club. Ambridge, Pennsylvania. Both pictures are included in this feature.
Podcasts Part Two
This is tuesday morning, which means download podcasts. I did a post about these shows last tuesday. Of course, this feature will be posted on wednesday, because of the conspiracy. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Part three is also available.
@disgracelandpod “What spawned the #GratefulDead? Deadly folk tales, dire wolves and murder ballads. Listen to part two of the Grateful Dead in Disgraceland, an origin story, the ballad of #Pigpen.” Many non-naive people already know that the dead have a healthy *dose* of music business nasty. Later this week, “Dead and Gone” takes a long look at missing and murdered deadheads. Atlanta based @paynelindsey is the co-host.
This is Criminal had a new show. This true crime how is produced in North Carolina, and has delivered many, many times. The most recent show is Dr. Parkman is Missing. “In the mid-1800s, Harvard Medical School had a reputation for being a “den of body snatchers.” And then, in November 1849, the school’s most prominent supporter went missing.”
Selected Shorts is a stationary bike favorite. SS is not always good for this. The ATT 40440 has a media player that does not fast forward. If you get stuck on a sticky story, then your only option is to listen to it, or turn it off. This past monday, the first story on SS was about a yuppie couple. They have board game nights with other yuppie couples. Everybody involved is insufferable, and the story was a drag. Meanwhile, the controls on the stationary bike were having performance anxiety. Just muddle through, until it is time to go home.
The Truth is another show that works when you are pedaling to nowhere. TT focuses on technology, and modern culture. One episode had a phone that knew all a young girls secrets. The phone told the best friend that phonegirl was borrowing her boyfriend.
Futility Closet is an old favorite, with a companion blog. Sharon and Greg Ross tell tales of history, usually lasting about twenty minutes. A recent episode, The Taliesin Murders, is about Frank Lloyd Wright. The famed architect apparently was a piece of work.
Bawdy Storytelling is a gem. Host-with-the-most Dixie De La Tour introduces tales of sexual adventure, running the gamut from analcuisine to zoophiliality. The start of BS features the best theme song in podistan.
Reply All is a corporate-hip show about the internet. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes it is a snooze. A recent show, #166 Country of Liars, takes a look at the q-anon phenomenon. The more you know about q-a, the less interesting it is.
Yuck On My Yum Part Two
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Uber driver shot in possible road rage incident in Brookhaven, police say
Former HSU football player reportedly killed by police after intervening in domestic fight
Leaked documents in Breonna Taylor case paint troubling picture
Did Ronald Reagan Say Socialism ‘Only Works in Two Places,’ Heaven and Hell?
Medical examiner says death of Cobb County teen shot by police is a homicide
Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping
Timeline: The long, risque history of Atlanta’s nightlife
ABDL Definitions: DDLB, DD, Daddy and More
The Secret Society Of Twisted Storytellers – “RACE!” – Celeste Demps-Simons
D.C. Renters Are Evicted Every Year. Do They Know To Show Up To Court?
the spell check suggestion for wokeness is woodenness
the spell check suggestion for wokeism is tokenism
Pulitzer Board Must Revoke Nikole Hannah-Jones’ Prize
Compensatory conspicuous communication: Low status increases jargon use
We Cannot, As a Society, Allow Hideo Kojima to Read ‘Infinite Jest’
The Mavericks say band member assaulted in Franklin reportedly for speaking Spanish
Nothing says democracy like an eight foot fence around the state capitol.
What kind of apple did the serpent give to Eve?
Strip Club Boss Tied Up, Shot, by Employee and Boyfriend Before Deadly Fall
Florida woman charged with murder months after release from Monroe County jail
‘Beast of a snake’: Huge python caught in the Everglades could set a new record
Unfiltered: What If I Don’t Like Either Party?
Tifton family, community left heartbroken after fatal stabbing of nine-year-old
A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
@CitizenDildo5 Taking pictures of Portland riots, because traditional media refuses to. Geter/done
MTA bus driver shot, killed by passenger after argument Thursday in SE Baltimore
‘Dead and Gone’ Podcast Explores Mysterious Deadhead Deaths, Disappearances
The McDonald’s Commercial White People Have Never Seen
Forget What Gender Activists Tell You. Here’s What Medical Transition Looks Like
Actually, the fence is to protect the rest of the population from the legislature.
Eddie Van Halen endured ‘horrifying racist environment’ before becoming rock legend
Louisville police release body camera videos showing night Breonna Taylor was killed
SHOCKING NEW EVIDENCE IN BREONNA TAYLOR’S CASE.
AG Cameron is taking extra steps to make sure Breonna Taylor grand juror can’t speak
‘We brought the disease’: Will the pandemic shift Australia’s historical imagination?
Did Margaret Mead say that a healed femur is the earliest sign of civilization?
Has anyone ever seen @RealCandaceO and @MichelleObama together?
Helen Pluckrose – Cynical Theories and Their Liberal Opponents
Two deaths a day: S.F. drug overdoses fueled by fentanyl are spiking, figures show
the spell check suggestion for fentanyl is entangle
SNL Is Paying People $150 To Watch Their Show In Person
they tell you it is all in your head t davis one woman show
The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship Of Colleagues
“i like writing columns it’s power without responsibility”
An Arrest in Canada Casts a Shadow on a New York Times Star, and The Times
Chamblee54 wrote another post about this incident.
sir, when will you be returning to life as normal?
sensitivity reads ~ @NYTimesGuild ~ 1619 fallout ~ US vs B. Holiday ~ Seltzers Amerika
super inn ~ beachtree motel ~ gulfway motel ~ Alazia Johnson ~ anomaly 31 ~ monica roberts
hsa threat assessment ~ kool ~ memorial dirve ~ 39 page report ~ yeah write
@ChrchCurmudgeon Have to go down to City Hall to renew my poetic license. Aaaaaand I forgot to put change in the meter. Turns out they charge by the foot. ~ Leaked documents in Breonna Taylor case paint troubling picture ~ @noremacback I want to personally thank everyone who has taken the additional precaution of wearing a mask in their social media profile picture. The LAST thing we need right now is for covid to mutate into a computer virus. ~ @chamblee54 @avitable I am currently binge listening “Angel” “I am not going to be married to a girl with 7 cats, while some other guy is getting the pussy” ~ @chamblee54 I just received a robo call from @ReverendWarnock The volume was set down low, and I could barely hear it. He did not call himself Reverend I guess I won’t be voting for him. ~ Dorothea Lange later went to a Japanese internment camp, at the start of World War II. The experience nearly destroyed her. ~ The uproar over Breonna Taylor ~ @chamblee54 @robertwrighter #WordsToLiveBy Some people have too many opinions “we probably shouldn’t spend forever on hypothetical counterfactuals” “i like writing columns it’s power without responsibility” ~ @chamblee54 In which @robertwrighter says that we helped saddam gas kurds, and Bret Stephens, who is not on twitter, counters by saying he helped the soviet union in ww2, but did not sanction their massacres ~ facebook is at it again. They recommended three racism comedy videos: Meeting Your White Boyfriend’s Family for the First Time – Marina Franklin It’s Not Racist if it’s True. BT- Full Special Being the Only Black Kid in School – Donald Glover ~ pictures for these hypothetical counterfactuals are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Pauline Kael, Gina James, And James Broughton
Pauline Kael was the rockstar film critic. James Broughton was the radical faerie poet laureate. They were lovers, and had a daughter, Gina James. Pauline and James were not married, contrary to what some naysayers would tell you. This is a repost.
Much of the information in this feature is taken from online reviews of Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark, a 2012 biography written by Brian Kellow. Gina James, also known as Gina Broughton, was not interviewed for the book. Neither did she participate in the making of Big Joy, a movie about James Broughton. (A wig store, Gina Beauty Supply is located at 25 W Broughton St, Savannah, GA 31401.)
Pauline Kael was born June 19, 1919, Petaluma, CA, died September 3, 2001, Great Barrington, MA, and stood 4 feet 9 inches tall. James Broughton was born November 10, 1913, Modesto, CA, and died May 17, 1999, Port Townsend, WA. Neither one had a middle name. Both used their birth name throughout life. Both had lives, before meeting in the late forties.
When she met James Broughton, Miss Kael was living what would later be called the bohemian life. After moving to New York, and being dumped for composer Samuel Barber, Miss Kael moved back to California. “Returning to the Bay Area with her tail between her legs in 1945, Pauline became involved with the incredibly effeminate avant-garde filmmaker James Broughton. He managed to impregnate Pauline but threw her out as soon as she told him, whereupon she moved to Santa Barbara to give birth to her daughter, Gina, in 1948″
“Like her early career, Kael’s personal life was also fraught with failures. Kellow says “she had a habit of falling for gay men” earlier in her life because “they tended to share her passions and enthusiasms.” She had a daughter … with one of them, experimental filmmaker James Broughton.”
“For a time, during the 1940s, he lived with future film critic Pauline Kael. She encouraged his filmmaking endeavors but their relationship ended after she got pregnant. … Pauline Kael thought that Broughton made the biggest mistake of his life when he turned down a studio film after winning the prize at Cannes.” (Apparently Mr. Broughton was from a wealthy family, and could afford this attitude. Regarding his movie The Bed, Mr. Broughton said “It was the only film I created that ever made any money.”)
“Which brings us to the strange tale of Pauline’s only child, Gina James. … In 1948, at age 29, Kael got pregnant after she “talked her way into moving in” with James Broughton, a bisexual poet living in Sausalito. By Kellow’s account, Broughton was furious at the news of Kael’s pregnancy; he felt trapped and tricked by her. One of Broughton’s friends reported that he kicked Kael out of his house. She moved to Santa Barbara to have the baby. The birth certificate listed the father as “Lionel James, a writer”. It is one of the disappointments of the book that Kellow shines little light on Kael’s passion — or whatever it was — for Broughton, on how she processed that cruel rejection and on whether Broughton ever recognized Gina as his daughter.”
James Broughton moved on with his life. He made experimental films, got married, and fathered two more children. At some point he met Joel Singer, and began the romance that would last the rest of his life. It is tough to say whether he was genuinely bisexual, or whether he was playing the role society expected of him.
This review of Big Joy continues: “But interviews with Singer, waxing poetic about his years with the artist, are balanced by reminiscences from Broughton’s ex-wife and his abandoned son. Rather than only celebrating silliness, I found it admirable that the directors didn’t gloss over the pain he caused his wife and children. After all, when you think about it, he spent all of his life unable to decide if he was gay or straight; leaving a lot of broken hearts in his wake.
We learn from Kael that he flirted with everyone he met. “He rode off into the sunset with some guy,” his wife, Suzanna Hart tells us. “That was very sad for me, but not for him, which was…very irritating.” In her segments, Hart keeps her emotions in check but you can clearly read the sadness and anger in her face. The son doesn’t have much good to say about his absent father and the two daughters (the first by Kael and the second by Hart) both refused to be interviewed for the film. Singer has a lot to say about their blissful decades together, but he also comes off a bit heartless when he shows no guilt over breaking up what he calls Broughton’s “loveless” marriage.”
The baby daddy leaves, and the struggling writer becomes a single mom. “… Kael’s relationship with her actual daughter was something out of a Tennessee Williams play, and not in a good way. Kael home-schooled Gina and, as the girl grew up, kept her close, as a typist, projectionist, driver and right-hand man, and she banished any friend who actively encouraged the young woman to break out on her own. Though she was in many ways a loving and committed mother, helping to raise Gina’s son and always living nearby, one senses a Gothic selfishness in her mothering.”
Gina James declined to talk with Kellow for his book, but the author says Kael and her daughter had a sort of symbiotic relationship. “Pauline did not type, Pauline did not drive — Gina performed both those functions for her. And Gina was a very good critic of Pauline. She got to see Pauline’s copy before anyone else did and she often had very, very important and influential things to say. But Pauline really wasn’t wild about the idea of Gina breaking away and having her own life apart from her, and she didn’t do anything really to encourage her in that direction as far as I can see.”
Amazon one star comment: And her poor daughter – what a fate – TYPING all that. Poor Gina, — I can see her – Kellow described sitting silently in some coffee shop while her mother raved on and ON with her pet directors.
An affair with the experimental filmmaker James Broughton produced a child, Gina, whom Kael raised by herself, Mildred Pierce–like, heroically supporting them with a number of odd jobs, including running a laundry. Gina’s heart condition required expensive surgery, and Kael ended up enticing Edward Landberg, the owner of a local art-house theater, Berkeley Cinema Guild. They had begun as co-programmers. As Landberg tells it: “One day, when I was over at her place, I happened to graze her breast with my hand, and she kind of looked up and said, ‘What have you got to lose?’” Their marriage proved a fiasco, but Landberg agreed to pay for Gina’s operation, which Kellow suspects had been Kael’s motive all along…. Kellow shows more independence in assessing Kael’s treatment of her daughter Gina, whose ambitions to become a dancer or a painter she did little to encourage, preferring to keep her on “a silver cord . . . she had also grown accustomed to the steady, dependable role that Gina played—as secretary, driver, reader, sounding board—and she was loath to give her up.” Gina, for her part, was mistrustful of the dynamic she witnessed between Kael and her acolytes.“
“The closest and longest-lasting partnership of her life was with her daughter, Gina James … James considered speaking to Kellow, but finally declined, leaving a blank space at the center of this otherwise vividly detailed biography. Gina lived with her mother till she was over 30, typed up her reviews after Pauline stayed up all night writing them in longhand, and gave up both college and a shot at a dance career to serve as her mother’s caretaker, companion, and driver….
Kellow cites the text of the breathtakingly passive-aggressive eulogy that Gina delivered at her mother’s funeral in 2001: “My mother had tremendous empathy and compassion, though how to comfort, soothe or console was a mystery that eluded her … . Pauline’s greatest weakness, her failure as a person, became her great strength, her liberation as a writer and critic . … she turned her lack of self-awareness into a triumph.”
One more chapter remains. “Gina lived with Kael well into her thirties … That she married and had a child, Will, seemed to catch Kael by surprise, though she ended up adoring her only grandchild, someone with whom she could watch action movies with.
Kael died in 2001, when Will was about 19. Unfortunately, and Kellow made no mention of this in his book whatsoever, there’s a horrible postscript, one that may well have been the reason for why Gina declined to be interviewed for the book. On October 6, 2007, Will, then 25, went hiking in the East Mountain State Forest in the Berkshires. He was an avid hiker, not to mention a devoted martial artist. He had a girlfriend. He never came back. Gina reported him missing, but his body wasn’t found for more than week, on October 15. … “authorities found camping equipment nearby and while cause of death has not been determined, foul play is not suspected.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. UPDATE These two comments were made to the original post. Anonymous said, on June 16, 2017 at 9:18 pm Your piece on Kael and Broughton is rife with misinformation and judgements galore and unbelievably badly written. Get a life and stop spreading falsehoods. And next time you put your fingers to a keyboard do your due diligence! James’ son was NOT ABANDONED! He lived happily with the two of us after the divorce. You fail to recognize that James’ ex-wife was a classic fag hag who had been married to another gay man before her relationship with James. She had been in psychotherapy for years before they got together and for many years after they split up. James certainly did not spend the rest of his life uncertain about his sexuality. Read his autobiography COMING UNBUTTONED and you’ll discover how misinformed your take on him is. You have done a great disservice to your readers by publishing such homophobic nonsense. Joel Singer ~ Sterling Wilson said, on August 19, 2017 at 1:40 pm Curious about this autobiography, I found the following from a Publishers Weekly review “Broughton forsakes introspection for literary gossip and name-dropping: Kenneth Rexroth, Pauline Kael, Dylan Thomas, Anais Nin. The birth of a daughter is dispensed with in two sentences. Broughton’s insistence on making himself the center of attention increasingly intrudes.”
UPDATE A journey down an internet rabbit hole uncovered this item. It is from “Remembering Harry and John”, by Mark Thompson on the occasion of Harry’s 100th anniversary “I remember the night we were socializing at the San Francisco Art Institute at a gala tribute for James Broughton. Harry (Hay) and James had sparked briefly as Stanford University undergraduates, but didn’t meet again until fifty years later at a faerie gathering. Few people knew that James had fathered a daughter with esteemed film critic Pauline Kael during their bohemian Berkeley days, but Harry was alert to the fact. Kael and Broughton were having their own reunion at the moment when, with typical impudence, Harry interrupted the conversation by loudly asking, “So, who was the mother and who was the father?” The stunned silence was punctured only by the whoosh of Kael’s furious departure.”
Motel One Star Reviews
PG was listening to a podcast. Some of the action took place in a tacky motel. The narrator mentioned a review of this motel. A guest said he complained to the staff about roaches in the room. The motel employee said the roaches were high, and that they would not bother anybody.
This got PG curious, which is never a good idea. He googled “high roaches motel.” He could not find the comment from the podcast, but did find reviews of two motels in Texas. A later search for “worst motel in Georgia” turned up a third suspect. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Today’s pictures are all white men. The older, and the gnarlier, the better.
Beachtree Motel, 3126 Avenue S, Galveston, Galveston Island, TX 77550
“The tub was so disgusting we were better off bathing on the beach! Dust..outdated tv…bootleg rigged plumbing and lights… and to top it off the owner walked around all night and his wife checked me out with crust in her eye and no bra!”
“It was filled with junkies and Acoholics hanging in the doorways asking for cigarettes. I could not sleep all night because the drug people were up all thur the nite slamming doors, shouting and fighting and starting up their cars to go make their drug buys. The furniture looked like it came out of the goodwill store from the 50’s.”
“We went for a girls weekend and stayed in this awful place. It was so disgusting! We killed several bugs, water bugs and roaches! We had to go buy sheets because theirs were so gross, bought towels because theirs were covered in hair and bought lysol and bleach wipes to wipe everything down! Not to mention the meth heads that wondered the parking lot and came back so drunk and high from the bar they kept trying to walk into our room.”
“Jigsaw the clown would be disgusted to lock you up in here”
Gulfway Motel, 365 Hwy 124, High Island, TX 77623
“Dead bugs and dirt along with a couple of paint chips around the sink. The light fixture above the sink would not work and it was rusty. There were two bulbs missing out of it. I took a bath and ended with paint chips all over me because the poorly painted bathtub was not just beginning to flake apart, it appeared that it had been doing so for some time. … I also had to walk through bird poop(a good ammount) to get to my room. This is because a bird nest was right in front of my door and every time the bird takes off it has to fly over this spot.”
“The first thing to hit us was the odor. Many couldn’t place it, but it seemed like insecticide … The next thing that greeted us was three dead sewer roaches–not the little brown things, but the two-inch guys that look like they belong more in the Amazon jungles. No amenities, cracks in the tub base and elsewhere–obviously where this monsters hang out during the day, one meager bar of soap, a quarter roll of toilette paper with no additional roll. I knocked on the office door, the dog barked, but no one came out. I finally borrowed an extra roll of T.P. from another trip-mate’s room.”
“Only two rooms were adequate, all others contained a film of dirt on everything, stained carpets, and strange odors. The bed comforters had questionalbe stains on them and hair. … The swimming pool was green with algae and there was a dead bird”
Super Inn, 301 Fulton Industrial Cir, Atlanta, GA 30336.
“Nasty i moved the sheets back and found things that are used for drug use ..so dirty i tried to post pics of the lube on base of lamp i mean alot if it”
“We arrived after 11 pm so didn’t notice this hotel was surrounded by strip clubs…luckily we were fine once inside, but when my partner went outside for a smoke he was propositioned by a prostitute…the second time he went out there were 2 prostitutes fighting and the one was threatening that her pimp was going to come down (from the hotel)…one of them had a small board with nails as a weapon. My partner was too scared to try to intervene in the fight and just came in to warn us not to come out.”
“There are at least three strip clubs right across the street, in which, prostitution is going on too and they end up at Super Inn. … They kept slamming the doors in the hallway ALL NIGHT!!!!! It didn’t stop until 5 a.m.”
“Upon arrival, we were greeted by multiple prostitutes and their pimp/ drug dealer. The place is located in an alley with several strip clubs in sight. After making my way past the prostitutes, there was no one in the lobby. A prostitute informed us to knock on the door to get the office managers attention. Against my better judgment, I took the key and made my way past more prostitutes smoking pot in the main hallway/lobby. Once in the room, I found at least FIVE car air fresheners hanging throughout the room trying to cover the musty/smoky smell in my “non smoking” room.”
“With the stares we got from the men and prostitutes coming in and out of the hotel I felt like fresh meat among a pack of wild dogs. The taxi driver stated he could not leave us here so we got back in the vehicle and drove back to the airport.”
“First of all there are 4 strip clubs across the road from the hotel. Secondly, there was about 5 prostitutes at the entrance of the hotel. When we went into the lobby we asked the clerk if it was safe there and he said, “of course, why do you ask?” and I said, “because there are about 5 prostitues standing at the entrance” then he said, ” NO, they don’t come on my property, you have nothing to worry about. They aren’t allowed in this hotel”. We believed that until that night when we saw him give the prostitutes a room key!!!!! The whole weekend stay the prostitutes were cold I guess so they were prostituting from the lobby of the hotel! Their pimps were outside bringing in the customers. I saw this with my two very own eyes!”
Migrant Mother
It is perhaps the most famous photograph from the depression. . The semi official title is Migrant Mother. The Library of Congress says “Destitute pea pickers in California. Mother of seven children. Age thirty-two. Nipomo, California.” The exact date is unknown, and was either February or March of 1936. The photographer was Dorothea Lange (pronounced dore-THEE-ah lang). The model was Florence Owens Thompson .
Ms. Lange was born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn May 26, 1895 in Hoboken, N.J. When she was seven she had polio, and when she was twelve her father left. Both events affected her deeply. (Lange is her mother’s maiden name, chosen for use after the father left.) She became a photographer, and had a successful studio in San Francisco. By 1936 she was with her second husband, her sons were in boarding school, and she went to work for the Farm Security Administration.
The Farm Security Administration hired a number of photographers to document the lives of Americans between 1934 and 1944. (During part of this time, it was connected to the Office of War Information, and the Resettlement Administration.) Since they were working for the government, the photographers were not entitled to copyright protection. The majority of these pictures are in the public domain, including the famous pictures of Florence Thompson.
This feature started with a google search for the correct way to pronounce Dorothea Lange. (Readers of this blog have seen the fondness for Library of Congress historic pictures. Ms. Lange is one of their stars.) This search led to a teacher’s guide from Yale University. This guide is about Dorothea Lange and the Migrant Mother. It tells the story as well as PG could. Bless his pea picking heart.
The day that Dorothea Lange photographed what would become her most famous photograph, Migrant Mother, has been retold by Lange in numerous sources. She was on her way home from a trip documenting the living and working conditions of the migrants to California. She followed their schedules, getting up at sunup and working until sundown, which made for long, sixteen-hour days. She was tired, and she was ready to see her family.
With about seven hours of driving left ahead of her, she passed a homemade sign that said Pea Pickers’ Camp. She knew that a late frost had ruined the pea crop, and was concerned about the people who might be at the camp. It nagged at her to turn around, to go back and visit the camp, another opportunity to document. About 15 minutes (20 miles) later, Lange did turn around.
Right away she saw the woman who would be the subject of Migrant Mother. Some sources say she took 5 shots, but she really took 6; in any case each shot focuses in on the woman a little more, and the final shot is the one that would become the “timeless and universal symbol of suffering in the face of adversity “ (The Library of Congress only has five of the shots.)
Early the morning after she got home, instead of spending time with her family Lange rushed to develop the photographs and submit them to the FSA and The San Francisco News. She thought that these photographs could help bring attention to the plight of these American migrant farmers. She was right; the story was printed in newspapers around the country, and the federal government immediately sent 20,000 pounds of food…. (The Thompson family had left for Watsonville by the time the food arrived)
The Dust Bowl refugees were of European descent, and were migrating to California because they were displaced from their farmland by drought. Florence Owens Thompson, though from Oklahoma, was a full-blooded Native American, and her family had been displaced from tribal lands by the U.S. government. (By 1930, Native Americans had lost more than 80% of their lands this way).
The day Lange photographed Thompson, she and her family were driving towards Watsonville, hoping to pick lettuce in the Pajaro Valley. The timing chain on their car broke just outside Nipomo, and so they pulled into the pea -pickers camp to fix it. While fixing the chain, the radiator was punctured; Thompson’s two boys (and likely her male companion) (Wikipedia says it was husband Jim Hill) brought the radiator into town to be fixed. While they were gone, Lange arrived…
The choices Lange made in terms of shooting the scene are very telling in light of our discussion about documentary photography. Most strikingly, the woman’s teenaged daughter is purposefully excluded from the photograph. She appears in the first two photographs of the series, but Lange thought that including her would cause the viewer to speculate about how old the mother was when she began having children (Curtis p. 55). At the time, the ideal family contained no more than three children; this woman’s family of seven could have detracted from the matter at hand, and maybe caused people to feel less sympathetic towards her (Curtis p. 52).
In the third shot, all you see is the mother nursing her youngest child. Migrant Mother is often referred to as Migrant Madonna… Lange thought that her subject looked too anxious and uncomfortable with the camera, as Lange seemed to have triggered in her what she called “that self-protective thing” (Curtis p. 57). So, despite being uncomfortable with how unpredictable children were to photograph, to calm the mother she added one of the children back into the frame for the fourth shot. She had the child rest her chin on her mother’s shoulder, which, though somewhat unnatural, served the purpose of anchoring the child still. She was also asked to remove her hat, which would have obscured her facial features. This resulted in a good photograph. Lange “thought she could do better.”
The fifth shot was the same, but from a different angle, which illuminates an empty pie tin, heavily symbolic of the hunger the family was facing. It also highlighted a warm and loving relationship between mother and child, as the child is leaning lovingly on the mother’s shoulder, which is comforting to the child.
For the sixth and final shot, (the one which became famous) Lange brought another child in, but she had both children face away from the camera, so that her shot would not be jeopardized by their unpredictability, and they would serve as a loving frame for the mother. Lange asked the mother to bring her right hand up to her face, and that resulted in exactly what Lange wanted and knew was there (Curtis p. 65). It softened her anxiety about the camera into a mother’s concern for the welfare of her family. The mother was worried about letting her sleeping child slip, so in the original sixth shot you could see her thumb grasped around the pole for support. In her excitement Lange did not see it. She eventually altered the original photonegative because she “did not want a small detail to mar the accomplishment (of overcoming her subject’s defensiveness) (Curtis p. 67).”
In this feature, the second image from the session is missing. The pictures in this feature are as follows. 1- The famous picture, cropped. 2- The first shot from the session. 3- A detail from the first shot. 4- The Migrant Madonna. 5- Child on the shoulder. 6- Child on the shoulder #2. 7. The full length famous picture. 8- A portrait of Dorothea Lange. 9- Another photograph by Ms. Lange, taken on the California-Arizona border in the summer of 1936. 10- The information from the famous picture. 11- The famous picture with the thumb included.
2012 Repost Notes This was on a list of posts that could be repeated. Of course, there are usually improvements to be made. Youtube was searched, and some videos were found. One of them mispronounces Dorothea. A search for the correct pronunciation of that first name was how this post got started in 2010.
Looking at the pictures reveals a glitch in the famous picture. If you look in the part of her hair, you will see a gray stripe. This is a bit of damage to the negative, and is common to old photographs. Ordinarily, PG would paste over a spot like that, but this is a sacred photograph.
The files of the LOC were consulted, and a 115mg original was downloaded. The grey stripe was still in the part, which is where it will stay. The original has the thumb, which was taken out of the famous prints. It is included in this post, along with the information typed into the side.
A look at some of the other pictures taken that day show a grey spot in the part. Maybe it wasn’t a photo glitch. Raising seven children can give any woman a few gray hairs.
Another question is about Florence Thompson, the “Migrant Mother”. It was noted that she was a Native American. PG has decided that the expression “Native American” is the invention of European Import Americans, and is only marginally less offensive than Indian. There are hundreds of tribes in the Americas. A person is a member of a tribal nation. What tribe was Florence Thompson?
Mr. Google points us to this answer. “Thompson, a “full-blooded” Cherokee, was born Florence Leona Christie on September 1, 1903, on the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. Her father, Jackson Christie, was an ex-convict who had abandoned the family before her birth. Her mother, Mary Jane Cobb, married Charles Akman, a Choctaw, in 1905, with whom she raised Thompson near Tahlequah OK”
At the start of World War II, Dorothea Lange went to a Japanese internment camp, . The experience nearly destroyed her. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Not Be Moving Ahead
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kweisi mfume ~ lived experiences ~ earl silas tupper ~ whites/rights ~ grand jury
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transcript ~ mannesplaining ~ alice & gertrude ~ sir maejor page ~ mcbath ad
@MandieMontes FUCK WHITE PEOPLE. FUCK RACIST INSTITUTIONS. FUCK TOXIC WORK ENVIRONMENTS. FUCK IT. I, alongside, 40 other staff editors at @nyunews resigned today. Read our resignation letter as well as our list of demands here – @chamblee54 @MandieMontes announcing your manifesto with an all caps f white people is not a good look ~ @chamblee54 I live in GA6. @karenhandel is a disgusting excuse for a human being @lucymcbath_ has built a political career over her son. Jordan Davis went ballistic on a man with a gun. This is not a good move. I wish this election was over ~ @MattWalshBlog Every day I see more grown adult men use emojis. There is no excuse for this. Emojis are for children and women. Do you think your great grandfather would have been caught dead using emojis if the internet existed back then? Have some self respect for God’s sake. ~ @BarackObama got clobbered in his first debate with @SenatorRomney and won the election in a landslide ~ @enrique_tarrio Although I am excited about our mention on the debate stage… I am not taking this as a direct endorsement from the President. He did an excellent job and was asked a VERY pointed question. The question was in reference to WHITE SUPREMACY…which we are not. ~ @chamblee54 @UncleHotep records videos while driving, with his little girl in the back seat. In this segment, she says good bye to the audience ~ fragility is similar to sensitivity it is odd that the leading text for racial sensitivity training uses fragility as an insult ~ This poem was created during a writing workshop sunday night: contaminated vessel, falling in the driveway, diarrhea squirt, of disrepute, wipe silverware, ewwie gooey vomitory, clean with your shirt, grunt and groan, for the loot, on a pentagram, when it’s time to pay, infected tree, sneak out of diner, birmingham, say this is better than, junior plays hopscotch ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Tupperware
It is another morning. Get up, do a few gentle exercises, stumble into the kitchen, make the first part of breakfast, go back to my room. Turn the computer on, take out my medications. Since two of the meds are out, I walk across the room. There is a shelf with pills waiting to be taken. It turns out I have, for some reason, a double supply of my blood pressure meds. It is the time of year when I need to see the doctor. She will think of something to fuss at me about, and spoil my day. Since I have a six month supply of things, I can put this unpleasant duty for a while.
Sunday does not, under any circumstances, include going to church. It does include taking a reading on the water meter. I have had my issues with the county water department. It pays to take a weekly meter reading. This week was within reasonable usage, so we move on.
Twitter and facebook, the midget mannequins of the apocalypse, are full of cheerful commentary about our antichrist POTUS. I am just sitting back, taking it all in. It does seem to give Mr. Biden an advantage in the upcoming election. Whatever g-d chooses to do with the orange haired idiot is fine with me. I would, however, prefer not to let VPOTUS have a chance at playing world leader.
I took the transcripts of the debate, and broke it down into ten beat lines. The next step is to retrofit the lines into couplets, and create poems. Breaking down the transcript was triggering. POTUS interrupted, lied, shouted down, and generally acted like a total asshole. It brought back unpleasant memories of jousting with verbally incontinent bullies. After this wrestling match with a hog, the entire country was dirty. The pig enjoyed himself.
People obsessed with Donnie’s racial attitudes are missing the point. The president is a crook, a liar, and a fuckup. Maybe he is a racist, maybe not. Unfortunately, many people thing a man’s racial attitudes are a good reason to hate him. Me, when I hear someone call president Trump a racist, I realize that this same person probably calls me a racist. I hate feeling solidarity with Donald Trump, but these social justice wankers are forcing me to.
Breakfast began with mandarin oranges, and canned cherries, left over from yesterday. Every other day, I open a can of each, pour the juice in my tea, and put half the can in a bowl. The other half goes in a jar, waiting for the next day. This was a jar morning.
Two Tupperware containers are waiting for me. Yesterday, I cut up potatoes, washed some turnip greens, and put them in the steamer. I remembered to cut down the heat, after it started to boil. After a half hour, I have a delicious breakfast for two days.
The Tupperware #250 Millionaire Line is a marvel of Eisenhower era plastics. This container is clear plastic, 3.5″ tall and 4″ round. The plastic is .16″ thick, and utterly indestructible. This product was bought at a Tupperware party.
“After World War II, (Earl Silas) Tupper received a block of polyethylene from DuPont, which was hoping plastics manufacturers would invent peacetime uses for the new material the company had developed during the war. Tupper tinkered with his molding machines for months. DuPont had added fillers to the polyethylene to firm it up and it was difficult to mold. Tupper asked DuPont for some pure polyethylene pellets instead. They were skeptical, but after much trial and error, Tupper produced the first of his Tupperware bowls.”
“Tupper started marketing his products as giveaways with cigarettes. Eventually they made it into department stores. He even opened a showroom on Fifth Avenue in New York. His Tupperware “wonderbowl” — with its patented burping seal — won design prizes. He advertised widely. But he wasn’t doing very well financially.”
“The person who transformed Tupperware into a marketing empire was Brownie Wise — a single mother with no formal business training. She had started selling huge quantities of Tupperware at home parties, and when Earl Tupper noticed the sales figures in 1951, he invited her to visit Massachusetts. The result: he decided to sell Tupperware exclusively through home parties and to make Wise his company’s vice president and head of all sales.”
It worked well, until it didn’t. Mr, Tupper fired Ms. Wise, and sold the company. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
New Regime
The day started out like many others. Get up, do human being stuff, and settle in for the day. One thing I try to do is put something up on the blog every day. Often, it is reruns of things I have previously posted. Today is no different.
It is pretty basic. You find an old post. Right click on the edit tab, and open it in a new window. Then you open a window for a new post. This is where it got complicated today.
For months, WordPress has been warning me that a new editor was coming. Based on previous experience with new editors, I stuck to the classic editor. Today, the classic editor is not available.
Anybody that works with machines is familiar with the new edition experience. You have to learn all over again. Some things will be easier. Some things will be impossible. Features that you took for granted are no longer there. You don’t know what you have until it is gone.
The only thing to do is write a post, and try to figure out the new editor. This is done without human assistance. You can scroll through a forum, or try to decipher some instructions. Mostly, it is open menus, and look. The first step is to write text, and mark it up.
The next step is finding pictures. Photographs, and graphic poems, are an essential part of chamblee54. I honestly don’t know how I am going to add photographs to this.
I try to add photographs. You have to insert one picture at a time. The instructions are useless. Finally, I hit publish by mistake. I go to a menu, and look up the post to edit. It gives me the option of editing in the classic editor. I take this option. This is enough brain damage for one day.
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Chamblee54 
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