Chamblee54

There is a story in a New York Times “blog” about a man, Yasser, who died in a bombing, in Baghdad, the other day. With all the talk about “the surge winning the war”, this is a sad story. It would be a sad story without the happy talk about victory.
Yasser_____ ( use of his last name would endanger his family) worked for a London news service. His Shiite family moved out of a mixed neighborhood during the civil war, only to move back after things calmed down a bit. The blog story tells a few things about him…he was brave, friendly, and useless in the kitchen… that underline the fact that this was another human being. And now he is a statistic.
There is a sense in America that the wars are a game, that the lower price of gas, and spreading democracy to Babylon, make it all worthwhile. The Arabs and Persians are seen as somehow less than human, as towelheads and terrorists. These people are human, and have paid a fierce price for our experiment.
HT to Iraqimojo for the story. Pictures are from “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library“.

The wordpress homepage had an eyecatching story about “Sex and Bristol Palin“. It seems as though the young lady has taken a vow of chastity until marriage. This is a bit like locking the barn door after the horses run off…and Levi is long gone anyway. It was the comments to this that got PG’s attention. Someone has named their blog “Tallulah Bankhead“. The concept of using a famous dead person as an online identity is not original, but Tallulah Bankhead has a big personality to live up/down to.
Miss Bankhead was born January 31, 1902 in Huntsville AL. She had a year-older sister, Eugenia. Their mother died February 23, 1902. Legend has it her last words were “Take care of baby Eugenia. Tallulah can take care of herself.”
The father of the actress was Will Bankhead. He was a prominent politician, who served as Speaker of the House of Representatives in Washington. Mr. Bankhead was on the short list of Vice Presidential candidates for Franklin Roosevelt, but was passed over. The Bankhead national forest and the Bankhead Highway are both named for Will Bankhead.
Tallulah Bankhead was an actress, radio show hostess, and personality. She went to London in the early twenties and became a stage sensation. Returning to the United States, she became a Broadway star with “The Little Foxes”. She made a few movies, but saved her best public performances for the stage.
Miss Bankhead was known for being sexually active, with both men and women. Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammie in Gone With The Wind, was rumored to be one of her “friends”. Her introduction to Chico Marx went like this “Miss Bankhead.” “Mr. Marx.” “You know, I really want to fuck you.”. “And so you shall, you old-fashioned boy.”
Her most famous movie role was in “Lifeboat”, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. Her co stars complained that she was not wearing panties under her dress. Mr. Hitchcock posed the question, is this a matter for wardrobe or for hairdressing?
In the fading days of radio, Tallulah was the host of “The Big Show”. She became known for her deep voice, and for saying “Dah-ling”. More than one guest got big laughs by calling her Mister Bankhead. After “The Big Show” ended, Miss Bankhead remained active on stage and television. She died December 12, 1968.
Miss Bankhead was a staunch Democrat, as is fitting for the political family she was raised in. During the McCarthy era, an actress friend of hers was accused of being a communist. Miss Bankhead made a statement of support for the actress on the radio, and then asked her, are you a communist? The actress said that her daddy was a republican, and so she guessed that was what she was. Miss Bankhead was horrified. “A republican! That’s worse than being a G-ddamn communist.”

Was the Vikings-Saints game rigged?
It seems suspicious to some that the Vikings had so many fumbles and interceptions in the NFC championship yesterday. The Saints never did seem to stop the Vikings offense, but they stopped themselves. To this, you can add a couple of questionable calls by the officials.
There are several ways to see this. One is that the NFL would want a Favre fest super bowl, that the talking heads could blather about Saint Brett for two endless weeks. A Favre vs Manning showdown would take attention away from what Michelle Obama is wearing. The flip side is that someone, somewhere, is tired of crybaby antics, and wanted to spare America the spectacle of tmi Brett Favre.
Eleven years ago, the Falcons played the Vikings for the NFC championship. For the Vikings, a field goal kicker who had missed all season, missed. The Falcons won a game they had no business winning, and got clobbered by Denver in the Super Bowl. The Falcons once employed Brett Favre.
The NFL is terrified of a gambling scandal. There is no way to know who bet what on whom yesterday. It is theoretically possible that some big money players told Mr. Favre to throw that insane pass at the end of regulation. Or, maybe some TV folks thought the ratings would be better for New Orleans. Or, maybe some cajun voodoomeister cooked the books.
Pictures are from a beltline walk last July. The place where the beltline goes under I-75 on the south end is a contender for best graffiti in the city.

Andrew Sullivan printed a comment, about a comment, about the death of fiction. The prime piece is in mother jones, and discusses the shaky future of University literary magazines. With a couple of yard sale based exceptions, PG does not recall reading any of these.
Lots of schools have masters programs in creative writing now. These institutions take money from students who have no chance of earning back the money to pay for these programs. Whether anything ever written in these programs is fun to read is not known.
As long as people can write, they are going to tell stories. With the explosion of processors and outlets, more people are telling stories than ever before. The pleasure of writing insures that millions are going to tell stories, whether anyone reads them or not.
This explosion of outlets for written stories means more and more competition to reading. Movies, videos, and games are all fighting for the attention of the population. When you consider that many people never get the book habit, this means a shrinking demand for an expanding supply.
Pictures are from the “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. In the best Atlanta fashion, most of the buildings are history. One is from the Fox Theater…and it stars a dead President.

PG started the day by driving to the Bankhead Marta Station. The idea was to leave a car there, and take people back to the starting point at Ansley Mall. Eventually, other people showed.
The walk started at the bridge, over the rail lines, on Piedmont Road. A few steps down a steep, muddy hill, and you were on the beltline. One man said the bridge over Piedmont had the highest concentration of quality graffiti in the city. PG listened to a few minutes of talk about graffiti, and learned a few things. The question remains unanswered, where is the best quality graffiti in Atlanta ?
PG had been on these tracks last July, when it was an impassible mess of kudzu. Today, it was piles of railroad ties, line, and paraphernalia. The ground around this material was chopped up and muddy, and not at all pleasant to walk on.
The 25 hikers ( 24 humans and one dog) went past the Ansley Golf Club, and took a right at a Y in the tracks. An old bridge, in good condition, went over the old I 85. The newer I 85 was next to that, and a tunnel took the hikers beneath it. The path soon turned right onto an active Norfolk Southern line. The hikers walked on the granite shoulder of this line, between a Marta line and an industrial district.
Before long, Peachtree Creek was in front of the crew, along with an abandoned CSX line fifty feet below. This is the next stage of the beltline. One of the problems facing the beltline is how to connect sections, like the one beside the Ansley Golf Club, to the old CSX line beside Peachtree creek.
The next stage of the walk was a pleasant change from the concrete plants on the NS line. On the south side was a swamp, and on the north side was the back of upscale houses. Before long, Peachtree Road was overhead, and the crew took a break. The day was dry and overcast, with a wind keeping the temperatures down. PG took gloves, scarf, hat and layers, and used all of them.

The next excellent adventure came at the Tanyard creek overpass. The trestle is roughly 100 feet over the creek below. Several hikers, with more energy than PG, climbed down the hill, found a way across the creek, and climbed back up the hill.
On a previous hike on this territory, the route had gone through a very long tunnel. The group leader was informed that this territory was still the property of the railroads, and they did not appreciate the presence of hikers. A different route was used for the last part of the walk today.
After going under Huff Road, the rail line ran into a major rail artery…the one the tunnel had gone under. Today, the hike went across this artery, up a hill, and through a broken fence. The fence was in back of a parking lot for an adult video store. The hikers resisted the temptation to go inside, and went down sidewalks for about a mile.
Soon, a branch of rail line crossed the sidewalk, and the hikers turned right onto this line. There was a delay at the end of the first line, as a very slow freight train moved by. One time conscious hiker said that if we had been on schedule, we would have crossed that line before the slow moving freight train…which was headed for the tunnel.
PG was getting weary, and his knees and ankles were protesting every step. A path went through a wooded area, spotted with homeless shelters. One of the residents talked about how he used to live in the village…PG assumes this was a New York thing. The parking lot behind the Marta station came into site, and PG saw his car, with no broken glass. It was what he wanted to see.

The first manager of the Atlanta Braves, Bobby Bragan, died thursday. He was 92 years old, and was in Fort Worth, Texas.
The 1966 Braves had Hank Aaron and Eddie Matthews, who have the most combined home runs of any teammates in baseball. The catcher was Joe Torre. The problem was the pitching, which is a big problem. The pitcher on that team that lasted the longest was Phil Niekro. The problem in 1966 was catching a knuckleball with a mitt instead of a backstop.
At any rate, the Braves lost more games than they won that first season in Georgia. In baseball, the manager is hired to be fired, and sometime that summer, Bobby Bragan was looking for a job. He became the President of the Texas League, and worked with the Texas Rangers. Maybe Mr. Bush is his fault.
Bobby Bragan was the second string catcher in Brooklyn when Jackie Robinson came to play there. At the time, Mr. Robinson was the only African American in the major leagues, and many people did not like it. Mr. Bragan was one, until he talked to Mr. Robinson on a train trip one night. After they got to know each other, they got along fine.
That first summer of major league baseball in the south, PG was a 12 year old, always ready to go to the game. On the last night of school, the Braves played the Cardinals, and lost. PG got his patient dad to go to the tunnel at the south end of the stadium, to get autographs of the players as they came out. When the last player left, PG saw Bobby Bragan leaning against a car, talking to someone.
PG went over and joined the conversation. Mr. Bragan ( who was known to talk) compared taking a pitcher out of a game to selling stock. PG asked Mr. Bragan about an incident where the manager was fired. He had walked onto the field to talk to an umpire, while carrying an orange drink. Mr. Bragan pulled his hat off, and acted for a minute like he was going to swat PG. Maybe he should have.

The Supreme Court ruled thursday that corporations can buys ads influencing an election. Direct contributions to a campaign from a corporation remain prohibited. The ruling was in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 08-205.
There is much hand wringing about this decision. PG does not see how the system could be any more corrupt than it already is, but maybe it can be. There is not much talk about campaign financing reform at the moment.
The business of influencing is slick in our country. Where dictators jail and kill, in America we put out ads and write stuff. The corporations can establish subsidiaries with happy names, and no one will be any the wiser.
The link happy obsidian wings points us to a quote about the implications of this ruling. Bear in mind that most large corporations are, to some degree, multi national.
“The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United is probably a greater catastrophe than the Mass. Senate election. In effect, it allows corporations to put unlimited amounts of cash into influencing elections.
One aspect of the ruling that hasn’t gathered much attention: as far as I can tell, the analysis doesn’t distinguish between domestic and foreign corporations. Not that it would matter much, since a foreign corporation can always establish a domestic subsidiary, or buy an American company: Cities Service, for example, is a unit of PDVSA, the Venezuelan state oil company. So the ruling allows Hugo Chavez to spend as much money as he wants to helping and harming American politicians. If the Russian, Saudi, and Chinese governments don’t currently have appropriate vehicles for doing so, you can count on it: they soon will.
Nor is this a problem that can be handled by “disclosure.” The ad on TV praising the opponent of the congressman who did something to annoy Hugo Chavez won’t say “Paid for by Hugo Chavez.” It will say “Paid for by Citizens for Truth, Justice, and the American Way,” which in turn will have gotten a contribution from “Americans for Niceness,” which in turn will have gotten a contribution from a lobbyist for a subsidiary of Cities Service that no one has ever heard of.
The United States has a $13 trillion GDP, and total annual campaign spending is on the order of $2 billion. Buying influence on the American government has to be the highest-leverage activity ever invented, and Justice Kennedy and his four accomplices just invited every oligarch and tyrant in the world to play. This is not just a threat to democracy; it’s a threat to sovereignty.”

PG spent another evening listening to bloggingheads and perusing the photographs in the “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University”. Can we say get a life?
The two dialogs ( the preferred spelling is diavlog)( The spell check suggestions for diavlog are diagonal, diastole and diagnose) broke down on gender lines. Robert Wright and Mickey Kaus yell at each other the entire time. At one point, Mr. Kaus was ranting about health care reform, while Mr. Wright kept pleading for him to quiet down, Mickey Mickey Mickey. ( Some groupie in “Gimme Shelter” kept squealing Mickey Mickey Mickey. Mick Jagger is a better performer than Mickey Kaus. Which one is uglier is impossible to fathom)
After about ten minutes of the screaming sausages, PG got a phone call, asking him to get his brother at the train station. When he got back, he could not stomach any more Wright and Kaus. The other conversation was Emily Bazelon and Ann Althouse. They were much more agreeable to listen to, and were able to shut up when the other spoke.
This was two days after the special election in Massachusetts, where some repub beat a demo for the senate seat. Much of the media is in an uproar about this, which is puzzling to PG. It seems like the demo didn’t really want the seat, and the people chose to elect the repub. The ladies were discussing the sex appeal and pickup truck as Mr. Brown.
The ladies were also chatting up the evolution of the political spouse. It was agreed that Hillary played the game better than Elizabeth Edwards. They both seem to have an *admiration* for Todd Palin. At one point, one of the ladies (maybe Althouse, but PG is not sure) got an IM from her husband, telling her to cool it.

It started out as a joke comment about a joke. Thank G-d for secular humanism. You’re welcome. PG got to thinking, and wondered what the punch line was. Is there a difference between G-d and man?
In “Zen and the art of motorcycle repair” the author contends that the division of G-d and man, subject and object, is the dirty work of Aristotle. PG is not philosophically grounded enough to know, but suspects that unity is better than division. Is the earth a unified whole, “thou art that”?
Now, the truth just might be that G-d is separate from man. While unity may sound appealing, it might not be the way things operate. Just because a belief makes you happy does not mean that it is true.
If there is a division between G-d and man, then where does the boundary lie?
Pictures are from the “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Margaret Mitchell was not eating at the Krystal.

Renegade Evolution has a piece about violence today. One of the ideas was that not all violence is physical, that verbal abuse can hurt just as bad.
Violence is as old as mankind. It can be argued that progressing from fighting with fists to fighting with words is a civilizing step. While a world of harmony and cooperation may be a cool thought, in reality it will not happen for a long time.
American society is violent. The land was secured through violence, and the power of government is held by force. The dominant religion of America is Jesus Worship. Verbal abuse is a sacrament of the Jesus Worship church.
The pictures are from “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.

Did people look different back then?
PG has been cruising the picture collection at the GSU library. Most of the images are black and white, which might be part of the difference. Styles of dressing change, and there is less print media ( with posed pictures) today. Maybe people are still the same, but the pictures have changed.
Many of the ladies in today’s collection were in an organization called WOMPI- Women of Motion Picture Industry. They were working women, not stay at home cookie bakers.
When PG worked at Davisons in 1980, the employee entrance was on Ellis Street, the side shown in picture 08. In 1980, you could see the nail holes in the bricks where the words “Davison Paxon” had been attached.

The story should have aroused the skeptics. Three men held at Guantanamo Bay were said to have committed suicide on the same night. Looking back to June 2006, it seems like it slipped in under the radar. The war in Iraq was going badly, and the blame game was being played.
It turns out that those three men might have been killed by American agents. The use of torture and outlaw facilities was semi common knowledge by 2006. The reactions were split along the predictable lines…those against the war were horrified, and those who supported the war supported the torture. If the truth had been known in 2006, it likely would not have changed anyone’s mind.
It is said that in war, truth is the first casualty. In World War W, this would seem to be the case.