Chamblee54

In honor of the National Day of Prayer , Chamblee54 presents two reruns, both based on the words of Mark Twain. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
One hundred and four years ago, the United States was involved in a war, that did not want to end. This conflict was in the Philippines. Although there had been an official end to the war, guerrillas continued to fight the Americans. The war was a nasty affair, with many atrocities.
The War against the Philippine people was a souvenir of the Spanish American War. There had been a rebellion against Spanish rule in the islands. After the American forces routed the Spanish, the rebellion shifted to the American occupiers. It was a war stumbled into, and difficult to end.
Mark Twain was horrified. He wrote a story, The War Prayer. As Lew Rockwell tells the tale
“Twain wrote The War Prayer during the US war on the Philippines. It was submitted for publication, but on March 22, 1905, Harper’s Bazaar rejected it as “not quite suited to a woman’s magazine.” Eight days later, Twain wrote to his friend Dan Beard, to whom he had read the story, “I don’t think the prayer will be published in my time. None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth.” Because he had an exclusive contract with Harper & Brothers, Mark Twain could not publish “The War Prayer” elsewhere and it remained unpublished until 1923.”
HT to David Crosby and his autobiography, “Since Then“. A book report is forthcoming.
Getting back to “A War Prayer“, the story starts in a church. A war has started, and is popular. The troops leave for glory the next day. The preacher has an emotional prayer to send them on their way. Unknown to the minister, there is a visitor. “An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there, waiting.
With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,” Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger motioned to the preacher to step aside. The stranger stepped into the pulpit, and claimed to have a message for the worshipers, sent directly from G-d. The preacher’s message was for support in time of war, and implied that G-d and the preacher support the same side in this conflict. There is an unspoken part to a prayer like this. This unspoken part was what the stranger was going to put into words.
“”O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-
for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!
We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.”

Mark Twain wrote a lot during the American Genocide in the Philippines. Many of his words could apply today. War has gotten more high tech…for our side…, but the bottom line is the same. No matter how fancy the weapons get, the casualties are just as dead. And the investors make money.
Mine eyes have seen the orgy of the launching of the Sword;
He is searching out the hoardings where the stranger’s wealth is stored;
He hath loosed his fateful lightnings, and with woe and death has scored;
His lust is marching on.
I have seen him in the watch-fires of a hundred circling camps;
They have builded him an altar in the Eastern dews and damps;
I have read his doomful mission by the dim and flaring lamps —
His night is marching on.
I have read his bandit gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:
“As ye deal with my pretensions, so with you my wrath shall deal;
Let the faithless son of Freedom crush the patriot with his heel;
Lo, Greed is marching on!”
We have legalized the strumpet and are guarding her retreat;
Greed is seeking out commercial souls before his judgement seat;
O, be swift, ye clods, to answer him! be jubilant my feet!
Our g-d is marching on!
In a sordid slime harmonious Greed was born in yonder ditch,
With a longing in his bosom — and for others’ goods an itch.
As Christ died to make men holy, let men die to make us rich —
Our g-d is marching on.

Thursday is the National Day of Prayer. It is also PG’s birthday. This week, we will have commentaries on the custom of prayer. ( He put forth the proposition that you can petition the Lord through Prayer) Today is a repost, written in first person. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
So much for world affairs. It is time to tell a story, with no moral and no redeeming social value.
In 1980, I was staying at a place called the Sea Haven Hostel, affectionately known as Sleaze Haven. This was in Seattle WA, as far as you can get from Atlanta, and still be in the lower 48. I was working through Manpower, and staying in a semi private room for $68 a month.
There was a Christian group that met in the basement on Sunday Night. Now, as some of you may know, I am a recovering baptist, who hasn’t been to church since 1971. However, the lure of a free meal was hard to resist, so I went to a few meetings.
One night,after doing quality control work on the local beer supply,I cheerfully joined in the discussion. This was the night when I realized that the Bible is not the Word of G-d, a concept that has been very handy in dealing with the clumsy efforts of our Jesus-mad culture to convert me.
They seemed to like me, though, and welcomed me back. Maybe it was the southern accent.
One Sunday, after the dinner was finished , it was time to have a prayer to begin the meeting. I raised my hand.Now, Jesus Worshipers enjoy prayer as entertainment. When they bow their heads, you see them stretching and deep breathing, in anticipation of a good, lengthy, message to G-d.
My message was a bit of a disappointment. Instead of a long winded lecture about Jesus and the magic book, I said what was on my mind. Lord, thank you for letting us be here today. What else do you need to say?

There is a six syllable phrase whose use is rampant on the political end of the internet…Epistemic Closure. With all these learned folks tossing the phrase around, PG would like to know what it means.
One way is to separate the two words. Epistemic, the more impressive of the two, means “of or referring to knowledge”. Closure has a few meanings, mostly related to the end of something. The combination of the two does not really add up to what the pundits mean when they talk about EC.
What is being talked about here is more like rhetoric . This is writing, or speech, designed to persuade. You list the “facts” that support your cause, and you ignore any troubling information that disagrees with you. You write with a specific audience in mind, and make the most noise about the “facts” that push their buttons.
We appear to be at the beginning of a tsunami of verbiage about EC. The oil well in the gulf of Mexico may be easier to shut off. In this brief study of EC, we will quote two sources on the internet. One makes a claim to define EC, but this claim may be another example of EC.
At True/Slant Mark Adomanis tells a tale of EC and Russia. It seems like the press likes to talk about Russia as being close to collapse. Some of the data available now indicates that things are not that bad. The press ( many of whom were cold warriors, long used to trashing Russia) seems to ignore this new data when writing about the problems in modern Russia.
Mr.Adomanis appears to be too young to remember the firebreathing anti communism of the Soviet era. He says that maybe things got so bad in Russia that the only way to go was up. Mr. Adomanis just wants a little bit of balance in the reporting. He also contributes a sentence that gives EC a new look. “Are there more consequential examples of epistemic closure, closed-mindedness, or, using my own preferred synonym, intellectual douchebaggery (spell check suggestions: carpetbagger, debauchery) than movement conservative efforts to propagandize about Russian demographics?”
PG interrupts this commentary to note that using female hygiene products as an insult does not raise the level of discourse.
At National Review Online, Jim Manzi writes a piece about a “conservative manifesto” called Liberty and Tyranny. L&T is a doorstop volume, and Mr. Manzi did not want to spend his summer reading it. He decided to focus on the section involving global warming. Before he made this call, he noted ” But when I waded into the first couple of chapters, I found that — while I had a lot of sympathy for many of its basic points — it seemed to all but ignore the most obvious counter-arguments that could be raised to any of its assertions. This sounds to me like a pretty good plain English meaning of epistemic closure. “
The chapters on AGW were full of EC. ” Levin argues that human-caused global warming is nothing to worry about, and merely an excuse for the Enviro-Statists (capitalization in the original) to seize more power. It reads like a bunch of pasted-together quotes and stories based on some quick Google searches by somebody who knows very little about the topic, and can’t be bothered to learn. “ (The post you are reading is another “bunch of pasted-together quotes and stories based on some quick Google searches by somebody who knows very little about the topic, and can’t be bothered to learn.” )
Global warming is a playground of rhetoric, paid spokesmen, and EC. The subject is complex, with literally millions of measurements that few know the significance of. There is big money on the side of denial, and lots of entertainers to take the loot.
Mr. Levin does not look good in his chapter on global warming. ( This is the view of Jim Manzi. PG has not read “Liberty and Tyranny”). At one point, Mr. Levin cites a petition “rejecting the theory of human-caused global warming”, signed by 31,000 scientists. One of the signatories is Spice Girl Geri Halliwell.
Mr. Manzi writes a dynamite concluding paragraph to his post. “There are many reasons to write a book. One view is that a book is just another consumer product, and if people want to buy jalapeno-and-oyster flavored ice cream, then companies will sell it to them. If the point of Liberty and Tyranny was to sell a lot of copies, it was obviously an excellent book… But if you’re someone who read this book in order to help you form an honest opinion about global warming, then you were suckered…This section of the book is an almost perfect example of epistemic closure. ““>

It is another saturday night on the internet. PG is listening to bloggingheads and editing pictures. The pictures are from a trip he took to the beach a few weeks ago. There are 350 pictures in the folder, and the only way to get through them is to sit down and go through them.
The first bloggingheads is about nuclear disarmament. That is not a flavor of gum, like peppermint and doublemint. The doublemint twins are not good at negotiating arms control agreements…another flavor of mint.
It seems like the IAEA is having it’s once-every-five-years conference. Many of the countries at the conference are mad at the US for hanging onto our nukes, while not letting any other countries get them. There is hope for an agreement of sorts, but it probably won’t come until the last minute. A few years ago, they did not have an agreement at the end of the last day, so the delegates unplugged the clock and worked until the next afternoon, and came up with a treaty.
A few weeks before the end of the Bush regime, the US made an agreement with India to do something…PG doesn’t remember the details, and doesn’t want to listen to the broadcast again to find out. Anyway, India is somewhat of a rogue country, since it went ahead and got the bomb, prompting it’s neighbor Pakistan to get the bomb. Some say that if a nuclear war ever starts, it will be between those two. So, it is a bit controversial that India is getting special treatment from the US…Israel and South Africa are especially jealous.
Iran’s President and fashion icon Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will speak to the conference. The diplomatic one has a way of making enemies when he opens his mouth. Iran, and her nuclear program, are being watched at the moment. Israel especially likes to make noise about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and diverts attention from the Palestinian tragedy while doing so.
This is another place where the talkers need to play smart…while the temptation to make Iran an issue is strong, there are other fish to fry. If Iran wants to make trouble, and prevent consensus on other issues, it can.
It is noted in the video that the IAEA is charged with monitoring nuclear programs to verify compliance with treaties. This is considered an important job, and yet the IAEA has less of a budget than the police department in Vienna, the base city of the IAEA. It is expected that more money for this agency will be discussed at the conference.
The second part of the doubleheader is “Science Saturday”, and the subject is nuclear energy. It seems like the US is buying decommissioned weapons from the USSR and is using the radioactive matter to generate electricity.
One of the guys is a navy man, who works on nuclear vessels. He gets going on the different types of nuclear matter, and your eyes can glaze over quickly. The pro nuke man said that the containment buildings around reactors is too strong to be penetrated by an aluminum plane, The issue of a 911 plane attacking a nuclear facility is a non issue. He says that the nuclear matter supply is secure, and this blog hopes he is right.
The issue of nuclear energy…developed separately from nuclear weapons…can be a force for peace. The navy man said, in response to critics who say nuclear power is too expensive, said (31:00) that the US Navy is an organization that spends $600 for a hammer, and just because our plants are expensive doesn’t mean that your would be .
The regulation and licensing issue was discussed. There are a lot of obstacles for a person who wants a small scale nuclear plant on their farm. On the other hand, China is building many large reactors, and the regulation process is taking a fraction of the time that America takes.
The pro nuke man…his name is Rod Adams…is a master of rhetoric. He says that a problem with the nuclear industry is the influence of the submarine industry, which is a tight lipped bunch. He says that there is a need for English majors at nuclear facilities, to get the word out about the benefits of the industry.
John Horgan, the anti nuke man, said something about the Homer Simpson syndrome, with regards to nuclear power plant workers. Mr. Adams said he hopes people don’t make career choices based on a cartoon. He does not watch the Simpsons, because it offends him. (57:30)
Mr. Horgan was gushing with praise for Mr. Adams at the end of the dialog, saying he might have to become pro nuke. PG was a bit more skeptical. Mr. Adams was repeating rhetoric, saying all the good things about nukes, a few bad things about non nuclear energy, and little bad about nukes. Mr. Horgan was over matched.
Watching the military man with the big mustache made PG wonder about the truth of what he said. (He was more plausible when listened to, without the visual part of the show).The man was just a bit too slick to be completely believed, especially on a subject as complex as nuclear energy.
One of the commenters said “it would be wonderful to hear Rod come back to discuss his views with someone who has his technical chops but not his enthusiasm for nuclear power. I’m not knee-jerk anti-nuke by any means, but I would like to hear some skepticism — this diavlog was at times only one step away from “too cheap to meter.” Nothing against Rod for being gung-ho, and I don’t think he misrepresented anything, but still: nothing is ever as good or as easy as it sounds when a proponent is the only informed voice in the room.”

This is a repost of a story from a year ago. It is good to see Carrie Prejean becoming a trivia question. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Back when PG was working at Shakey Blueprints, he had this running conversation. “PG you should write a book”. “No one would believe it”.
Now we fast forward to the blogosphere of 2009. You can write a post, and no sane person would believe it. The only problem is that it is the truth…at least part of the story is real.
The story in question is Carrie Prejean and Perez Hilton. As you probably know by now, Miss Prejean is Miss California, and was a finalist in the Miss USA pageant. Perez Hilton asked her whether the other states should follow the lead of Vermont, and legalize same sex marriage. Miss Cali gave a rambling answer. The bottom line was, her religion taught her that marriage was between a man and a woman.
The story went downhill from there. Mr. Hilton ( whose “real” name is Mario Lavandeira, which is spanish for laundromat) had a hissy fit, and insulted mama dogs. Miss Prejean opened her mouth, and has not shut it. It takes talent to make Perez Hilton look smart, but Carrie Prejean has done it.
Then reports came out that Miss Prejean had breast implants. There was a public statement by the Co Executive director of the Miss California Organization, speaking under the poetic handle Shanna Moakler. It turns out that the Miss California Organization paid for the breast implants. You can’t make this stuff up.

The video below uses language that some might find offensive.

A man named Ray McBerry is running for Governor of Georgia this year. His website makes the point that “Ray is the only former educator in the Republican race for Governor”. If you have not been following the race ( and it is understandable if you don’t), you may wonder why he is a former educator.
It seems as though he got to be “good friends” with a 16 year old girl, while he was a high school teacher. Shortly before a hearing was held about a restraining order, Mr. McBerry sent this letter to the girl and her family. It is a doozy. ” I couldn’t stand the thoughts of maybe never seeing y’all again and ______carrying around the burden of thinking from now on that it had been her fault that I left our church and never came back.” (HT to swgapolitics for printing the letter)
At the fishwrapper today, political writer Jim Galloway reports that opposing candidate Karen Handel is “very uncomfortable” with Mr. McBerry in the race. As several commenters point out, Ms. Handel is way too old for Mr. McBerry. Compared to McBerry, John Oxendine, Roy Barnes, and “friend of Genarlow Wilson” Eric Johnson, Ms. Handel may be the only edible candidate left.
Mr. Galloway, in the spirit of fairness, quoted Mr. McBerry about all of this. “[I]n spite of the many lies and personal attacks that have been hurled against me in this race by liberal elements of the media, it is encouraging to know that my fellow Georgians are excited that they have a true champion of states’ rights running for governor this year, someone who will stand up for their liberties and is not going to back down.” If only he would take down that comment about being a former educator.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. None of the people shown are former educators, running for Governor of Georgia.

This facility recently printed some commentary on the english language, courtesy of Gartalker. Here is part two, not to be confused with number two. Weird is spelled correctly…you can’t have weird without we. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.
If all that wasn’t bad enough may I point out a few other basic flaws in our language that makes no sense to any one other than us
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? You have one goose, 2 geese; so one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?
Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’
In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all.. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.
Once I was in New England and I stopped at a Taco Bell because I actually wanted to taste something. Any thing that wasn’t boiled and maybe had just a little pepper on it. Any way by the time I had left ever kid in the place was saying, “Order that one more time Mr. We just love how you talk.” One girl asks me how long it took me to learn to talk that way. Yankees, you gotta love them.

There was a comment on Facebook, and a reply. “Why does Gillian Duffy complain about welfare cheats and eastern Europeans, and then object when Gordon Brown calls her a bigot?” “The same reason Gordon Brown objects when the English speaking world calls him an idiot.”
This is a little mediadrama, recorded and distributed for all its gnarly glory. At the top of this feature is the original dialog, with British Prime Minister/Reelection candidate Gordon Brown in a rather testy chat with a lady named Gillian Duffy. Brown comes off as a slimy politician, and Ms. Duffy seems to have a bit of sense. After the chat, Mr. Brown gets in a car, and says some unfortunate things into an open mike.
It has been noted that a lie can go around the world while the truth is putting it’s shoes on. Today, this happens before the liar takes another breath. The judgment comes before common sense takes the shoes off the shelf. The digital parade includes when Duffy is told, the Duffy reply, the Brown reply.
The entire issue of race is saturated with snap judgment, name calling, and lack of understanding. The frustrations of a Gillian Duffy can be seen in many people, and only gets worse in economic hard times. It is a rare…maybe even nonexistent…person who has never said anything that could lead to being accused of bigotry. And to be put in a global spotlight, because of something a politician said when he thought no one was listening, must be horrible.
Mr. Brown is different. He is a public figure, running for a national office. Mr. Brown and his type use the press to gain power, and now the press has hit him with a sucker punch. He is not an old lady, going out for a loaf of bread, who made the mistake of talking on camera.
Pictures from The Library of Congress.

PG found the story below at a site called downhillbothways . (spell check suggestion: downheartedness) DBW is a series of stories about life in Minneapolis, a place that PG has little desire to visit. It is supposed to be cold up there! Despite the overchill, the stories on DBW are sometimes fun to read.
The tale below came with a postscript. If you enjoyed this post, I’d be very grateful if you considered sharing it with your friends in whatever way you like to do your internet sharing. You may also want to subscribe to downhillbothways . Thanks a lot for reading! -Abraham
PG considers that an invitation. The pictures are from the Atlanta Beltline. As much as PG hated the “Freedom Parkway”, he admits the graffiti under it is pretty cool.
Nicollet Mall is dead on Saturday nights. There are a few bars, but no clubs. Looking in the windows, you see loafers and handbags, not flashing lights and lonely people dry humping, like you do on Hennepin or First Avenue, 3 blocks west. You learn that knit ties are back in style as they rest around the neck of a male mannequin with a woman’s wig on.
And unlike the bumping bass and puerile disc jockeying over on Hennepin and First, there is little sound coming out of the streetside businesses on Nicollet. This makes the sounds that do interrupt the stillness all the more noticeable—the occasional cabs, the bus stop conversations, rain, the laughter of two guys smoking weed on the dry stretch of sidewalk beneath a skyway.
As I pass these two men, one asks if I have a light. I nod. He asks if he can “hit it” as if the lighter itself is a thing he can smoke. I hand him my Zippo and he ducks his head toward a wall away from the wind and watchful eyes and lights his imitation-cigarette one-hitter. His friend stares at me, frog-eyed and motionless, with what I assume is a smirk, given his state of mind and drug of choice.
When I get my lighter back, I walk on, away from the pleasant, yet incriminating, scent of marijuana and into the sounds of distant music. Some sort of bluesy hip-hop, it sounds like. Then it turns into a jazzy bit of trance as I get nearer. It’s perfect at first, an unlikely blend of ordinary noise creating a fresh, surprising genre.
But as the music becomes clearer with proximity, its serendipity wears thin. The music is falling apart. Tones and beats lose their places like Nurse Ratched left the asylum unlocked. I’m tweaked by the slight remorse of awakening from a pleasant dream.
It will never be heard again, that perfect song, nor—if I’m honest—was it ever heard at all. I imagined it. I created it with my innately and uniquely human ability to turn happenstance into consequence. And, like any given moment that you or I experience alone, it became nothing, or—I should say—nothing more than what I’d be able to make of it later, here.
Hearing the music with increasing accuracy as I came nearer to it didn’t make it wrong or bad, just incidental, accidental, the way you’d expect noise on a street to sound. And what’s the pleasure in finding things just the way you expected them to be?
I crossed 9th and closed in on the sources of my aural interest. I say sources because what I’d been hearing as such lovely and unusual music was only the fortuitous blend of a bar’s sidewalk speakers and a man playing his saxophone on the sidewalk nearby just outside the yellow haze of the well-lit alley he was next to.
I stopped for a moment and tried to feel the music I had a block ago. The sax euphoniously drifting like a kite in and out and through and over the sky created by the beat of the bar’s stereo. But it wasn’t there anymore. What was left was only what it was: a guy busking near a loud pub.
The sax stopped and I crossed the street without looking both ways toward the musician and his stage—a wide, dark, empty sidewalk. He saw me coming and didn’t start his next tune. I could only see his silhouette—black in front of the dark grey of the building he sat against—and the cherry of a tiny cigarette brightening and dimming with each draw like the red flash on top of a radio tower.
“How’s business?” I asked him, knowing already.“Slow.”“Yeah. How long you been out tonight?” His case was open beside him. There were perhaps a dozen ones and a five strewn in there along with a pack of Camels.“Bout a half hour.” “I don’t have any money, but I can leave you a smoke.”
His face brightened. “Yeah, I’ll take a couple o’ those. I lost a whole pack today.” I handed him two and sat down against a window several feet away.
He began to play again, his grey hands pressing the sticky buttons of his old alto sax, his raspy breaths wheezing into the brass and coming out in the plaintive yet adamant sounds of “Amazing Grace.” Each line ended with his wobbling head and wavering hands creating a vibrato no producer would allow on record but that everything in me shook along with.
He transitioned into “Swing Low.” Several people had passed and the most he’d received so far was a thumbs up. I wondered unhappily if my sitting near him hurt business. But I didn’t want to go. He was playing there on the street to be listened to, right? And that’s what I was doing, so it’s fine, right?
“Swing Low” drew to its quivering close as a man passing by stepped away from his lady to drop a dollar in the case. The busker grunted his gratitude and blew the first friendless notes of “Danny Boy.” I laid my head back against the window whose sill I was sitting on and felt the only way that one can feel while listening to a street musician play “Danny Boy” in the dark on an almost deserted street near midnight next to a yellow-lit alley.
When the song was done, he leaned over and picked up a dollar bill and began rubbing it in between the buttons of his instrument. “Damn things keep sticking,” he explained as he maneuvered his makeshift rag. “I think I’m gonna call it a night.”
“Alright,” I said, unresting my head and standing up. “I’m Abraham.” He shook my outreached hand. “Joe.” “Thanks for playing, Joe.” “Thanks for listening.”
I walked on, past the bar that a half-hour before had been the backing band in my brain for Joe’s lilting saxophonic riffs. Across 10th, there was a guy and a girl dancing for tips to the crackly sound of a cheap boombox (spell check suggestion: boomerang)turned all the way up.
Their choreography involved a couple impressive twirls and then each ominously simulating shooting themselves in the head. I was a half-block away by the time their routine was over, and I heard them behind me breathing hard and laughing. Looking back, I saw the girl taking a drink of water and the fellow picking up their tips and boombox.
It was the end of the night for street performers on Nicollet, it seemed. But then in the distance, behind me this time, I heard this whimsical bit of jazzy trance, a saxophone solo blending in and out of the most unlikely orchestration.
Ah, Joe. I smiled and felt like I was falling back asleep where it all makes sense. Apparently you just wanted me to leave—eh, Joe? That’s OK. You sounded good from where I sat, beside you, but you sound even better from here, further and further away, as I wander home and you make serendipitous music with a nearby stereo. Far from purposeful, close to perfect.

The story of Cary Grant taking LSD came to this blog courtesy of WFMU , an appendage of a radio station somewhere east of the Mississippi. Recently, a reporter from this facility went to the “TCM Classic Film Festival” in Hollywood. Here is a highlight of episode six. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
I quickly excused myself from the paparazzi line so as not to taint WFMU’s reputation and took my place in a line-up for Judy Garland’s A Star is Born, the kick-off screening of the TCM festival. I found myself easily agitated after my exposure to the rude row of TMZ types, and became testy when an elderly man in front of me was moving too slow for my liking. Shortly thereafter a six-foot tall, statuesque (apparent) prostitute joined him and I suddenly realized I had just been directing my rage at Hugh Hefner. I pivoted to try and share the surreal moment with whoever was standing in line behind me. Fully prepared to give a stranger a nudge, my brain stopped me in time to acknowledge that the person standing in line behind me was Nancy Reagan. I wish I had some story to go along with this odd Hefner-Reagan sandwich of which I was the pathetically insignificant strip of meat, but I do not. I was, I will admit, somewhat starstruck by the co-star of my favorite anti-commie movie, The Next Voice You Hear. I’m fairly certain that I was not supposed to be in a line consisting of these wildly famous geriatrics, but much of this week has turned out to be about being exactly where I don’t belong. And enjoying every minute of it.

The aptly named Dangerousminds has a link to a story about the recording of Blond on Blond, by Bob Dylan. It only happened once.
Bob Dylan was 24 years old, newly married, and had “sold out” i.e. started to play electric guitar. A bunch of Canadians known as The Hawks ( later The Band) was touring with him. Barely a month after the release of “Highway 61 Revisited”, sessions started at a New York studio.
The New York sessions did not work, so a decision was made to go to Nashville. Al Kooper played organ, and served as a music director. A crew of Nashville players was recruited. A bass player named Joseph Souter, Jr. would become famous a few years later using the name Joe South. Kris Kristofferson was the janitor at the studio.
Most studios have bafflers, or sound proof room dividers, splitting the studio into cubicles. For these sessions, the bafflers were taken down, and the band played together as a unit.
The second session in Nashville started at 6pm and lasted until 530 the next morning. Mr. Dylan was working on the lyrics to “Sad eyed lady of the lowlands”, and the recording could not start until he was ready. The musicians played ping pong and waited. At 4am, the song was ready, and the record was finished in two takes.
PG had marginal encounters with two of the players on this album. He met a lady once, who worked in an insurance office. One of the customers was Joe South. The file on his driving record was an inch thick.
Al Kooper had a prosperous career after his association with Bob Dylan. The former Alan Peter Kuperschmidt produced the first three Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, and sold that contract for a nice piece of change.
One night, Mr. Kooper was playing a show at the Great Southeast Music Hall, and PG sat in front of the stage. During a break between songs, PG asked his friend “what time is it?”. Mr. Kooper heard him on stage, and said it was 11:30.
Pictures for this feature are from The Library of Congress. They are left overs from the Confederate Memorial Day post on Monday.

One Sunday Afternoon, a man was playing golf. On the third hole, he hit the tee shot, and was walking down the fairway towards the ball. The fairway was next to a road. A funeral procession was driving down the road.
The man stopped his cart, got out, took his hat off and put it over his heart. He stood still, with his head bowed, until the mourners had driven by.
The playing partner of the man was astonished. “Don, why are you making such a big deal over that funeral procession”
“It was my wife”.
There was a small town once, with a Catholic Church, a Baptist Church, and a Jewish Synagogue.
One day the Catholics decided to give their priest a new car. They got an Audi, sprinkled a few drops of holy water on the hood, and gave it to the priest.
The Baptists thought this was a really good idea, and they decided to give their pastor a new vehicle. They got a Ford pickup truck,took it to a boat ramp, hooked a winch up to the front, and lowered the truck into the lake until it was completely covered in water.
Not to be outdone, the Jewish congregation decided their rabbi needed a new ride. They bought a Lexus, and cut half an inch off the tail pipe.
A woman was in town on a shopping trip. She began her day finding the most perfect shoes in the first shop and a beautiful dress on sale in the second. In the third, everything had just been reduced by 50 percent, when her mobile phone rang.
It was a doctor notifying her that her husband had just been in a terrible car accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU.
The woman told the doctor to inform her husband where she was and that she’d be there as soon as possible. As she hung up she realized she was leaving what was shaping up to be her best day ever in the boutiques. She decided to get in a couple of more shops before heading to the hospital.
She ended up shopping the rest of the morning, finishing her trip with a cup of coffee and a beautiful chocolate cake slice, compliments of the last shop.She was jubilant.Then she remembered her husband.
Feeling guilty, she dashed to the hospital. She saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about her husband’s condition. The lady doctor glared at her and shouted, “You went ahead and finished your shopping trip didn’t you! I hope you’re proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself in town, your husband has been languishing in the Intensive Care Unit! It’s just as well you went ahead and finished, because it will more than likely be the last shopping trip you ever take! For the rest of his life he will require round-the-clock care. And he will now be your career!”
The woman was feeling so guilty she broke down and sobbed.
The lady doctor then chuckled and said, “I’m just pulling your leg. He’s dead. Show me what you bought.”
Thank you Gartalker for the last story. Pictures are from the Library of Congress.