Chamblee54

Angry Arab said this. “A friend wrote that on Facebook: “”Dear US government: We don’t hate you because we hate your freedom; we hate you because you hate our freedom.” tks Lina”. (thanks As`ad–not me)”
If you have a few minutes, here is the long version.
Pictures of Egyptians are here. Pictures of Americans are from The Library of Congress.

There was a snarky commentary about the demise of UGA VIII. It mentions an Athletic director arrested for DUI, with red panties in his lap. There are comments about PETA, and animatronic mascots. The genetic issues of inbred white bulldogs were considered. A delighful comment from the fishwrapper was copied in all it’s 86 proof glory. Then it was time to close a few windows on the computer. “Save changes to Template?” So what does PG do but click no, and waste a half hour of work? When Nancy Reagan said “just say no”, she had never worked with windows. The good news is, the comment by Greg Garious is intact in the fishwrapper ether. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
they slobber they stink and you need to wash your hands after everytime you touch one, it’s white, has poor and snaggled teeth and inbred to a fault, wait, hey, perfect mascot for UGA. I’m joking, c’mon…but without a doubt, the mascot should be the American Bulldog. better dog, healthier dog, beautiful dog and key word here, American…the English Bulldog would be a good mascot for say the University of Buckingham(don’t look it up folks, doesn’t exist) where inbred genetic defects are embraced like family, the royal family! hey did you hear the one about the English Bulldog that tried to cross the street? didn’t make it, dropped dead of a congenital heart defect before he even got off the curb…hey why does it take 10 English Bulldogs to screw in a light bulb? because a large percentage of them will have hip dyspasia before at the first rung of the ladder… I mean, damn! go to Wik and look up English Bulldog the section on health, the poor things sound like my grandfather and he’s been dead 20 years!…the things are put together like a Mexican-built house….the Bubble Boy is least likely to need a hospital visit….when you pick a mascot it should be strong, fierce and worthy of respect. not something that would quickly be denied health insurance at the initial exam…hell it can’t even woof worth a damn, the fans even have to do that for him…but seriously though folks, UGA goes though those dogs like george bush goes through crayons.u-g-l-y your dog ain’t got no alibi…
ok, ok, a Labrador Retriever, a Doberman and an English Bulldog start to walk into a pet store and…man, for the love of God already, the English Bulldog with cherry eye, c-section complications, patellar luxation and interdigital cysts has fainted and lapsed into a coma after being scared again by another Auburn football player scoring a touchdown. what’s that? oh, the word’s t-o-u-c-h-d-o-w-n, it’s what winning teams try to do against their opponents, kinda the object of the game. I know guys, it’s math, now don’t you get startled too. math isn’t really all that hard to pass at UGA. all you have to do is never study, show up for class whenever you feel like it and join the football team and wah-bam 4.0 baby! we all know that whole math thing is just another passing fad, like the hula hoop or the virtual pet, it never last, ya know no real staying power…..kinda like those sickly mascots y’all got. what ya need is an English Bulldog puppy mill located just under the bleachers with a new future veterinary dissection candidate for your ag dept. spit out after the end of every class then maybe you can come close to keeping up with the attrition rate at the front. but whatever you do don’t use you agricultural dept. to help with the problem, how silly would that be, right. besides, that would put a quick end to the half price specials at the Oriental Cuisine restaurant just ’round the corner.

This is a double repost. For better or worse ( it’s ok to curse), the tea party is a part of the scene. The seminal event was the Boston Tea Party in 1775. The first post below is a look at what really happened in Boston harbor. It is tough to discern truth from fable at a distance of 236 years, but we will try. The tea party metaphor gets worked over this post, would you like a refill?
The second part is a look at the phrase “founding fathers”. This phrase is “liberally” sprinkled into rhetoric of all persuasions. This author sees a square peg being forced into round holes. Pictures this morning are from The Library of Congress.
In the first year of the Obama regime, America has seen the rise of the “Tea Party”. These affairs are usually right wing, and have lots of clever signs. The general idea is that taxes are too high, government is too big, and that the people need to do something.
The namesake event was the Boston Tea Party. On December 16, 1773, crowds of people ( some dressed as Mohawk indians) went on board the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver. The crowds threw overboard 342 chests, containing 90,000 pounds of tea. The crowds were unhappy because the East India Company was importing the tea into America, with a 3 pence per pound tax.
A website called listverse plays the contrarian. According to them : “American colonists did not protest the Tea Tax with the Boston Tea Party because it raised the price of tea.
The American colonists preferred Dutch tea to English tea. The English Parliament placed an embargo on Dutch tea in the colonies, so a huge smuggling profession developed. To combat this, the English government LOWERED the tax on tea so that the English tea would be price competitive with Dutch teas. The colonists (actually some colonists led by the chief smugglers) protested by dumping the tea into Boston Harbor.”
According to Wikipedia, the Dutch tea had been smuggled into the colonies for some time. The Dutch government had given their companies a tax advantage, which allowed them to sell their product cheaper. Finally, the British government cut their taxes, but kept a tax in place. The “Townsend Tax” was to be used to pay governing colonial officials, and make them less dependent on the colonists.
In Charleston, New York, and Philadelphia, the tea boats were turned around, and returned to England with their merchandise. In Massachusetts, Governor Thomas Hutchinson insisted that the tea be unloaded. Two of the Governor’s sons were tea dealers, and stood to make a profit from the taxed tea. There are also reports that the smugglers were in the crowd dumping tea into the harbor.
The photogenic tea party movement seems to be destined to stay a while. The question remains, how much does it have to do with the namesake event?

People often try to justify their opinions by saying that the “founding fathers” agree with them. They often are guilty of selective use of history. A good place to start would be to define what we mean by the phrase founding fathers.
The FF word was not used before 1916. A senator from Ohio named Warren Harding used the phrase in the keynote address of the 1916 Republican convention. Mr. Harding was elected President in 1920, and is regarded as perhaps the most corrupt man to ever hold the office.
There are two groups of men who could be considered the founding fathers. ( The fathers part is correct. Both groups are 100% male.) The Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, which cut the ties to England. Eleven years later, the Constitutional Convention wrote the Constitution that governs America today. While the Continental Congress was braver than the Constitution writers ( We must hang together, or we will hang separately), the Constitution is the document that tells our government how to function. For the purposes of this feature, the men of the Constitutional Convention are the founding fathers.
Before moving on, we should remember eight men who signed the Declaration of Independence, and later attended the Constitutional Convention. Both documents were signed by George Clymer, Benjamin Franklin, Robert Morris, George Read, Roger Sherman, and James Wilson. George Wythe left the Convention without signing the new document. Elbridge Gerry ( the namesake of gerrymandering) refused to sign the Constitution because it did not have a Bill of Rights.
The original topic of this discussion was about whether the founding fathers owned slaves. Apparently, PG is not the only person to wonder about this. If you go to google, and type in “did the founding fathers”, the first four answers are owned slaves, believed in G-d, have a death wish, and smoke weed.
The answer, to the obvious question, is an obvious answer. Yes, many of the founding fathers owned slaves. A name by name rundown of the 39 signatories of the Constitution was not done for this blogpost. There is this revealing comment at wiki answers about the prevalence of slave ownership. “John Adams, his second cousin Samuel Adams, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Paine were the only men who are traditionally known as founding fathers who did not own slaves.
Benjamin Franklin was indeed a founder of the Abolitionist Society, but he owned two slaves, named King and George. Franklin’s newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette routinely ran ads for sale or purchase of slaves.
Patrick Henry is another founding father who owned slaves, although his speeches would make one think otherwise. Despite his “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, he had up to 70 slaves at a time, apologizing a few times along the way, saying he knew it was wrong, that he was accountable to his God, and citing the “general inconvenience of living without them.”
Patrick Henry was a star of the Revolution, but not present at the Constitutional Convention. The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, was in Europe during the convention. Mr. Jefferson not only owned slaves, he took one to be his mistress and kidsmama.
One of the more controversial features of the Constitution is the 3/5 rule. Here are the original words “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.” In other words, a slave was only considered to be 60% of a person.
That seems rather harsh. The truth is, it was a compromise. The agricultural southern states did not want to give up their slaves. The northern states did not want to give up Congressional representation. This was the first of many compromises made about slavery, ending with the War between the States. This webpage goes into more detail about the nature of slavery at the start of the U.S.A.
The research for this feature turned up a rather cynical document called The myth of the “Founding Fathers” . It is written by Adolph Nixon. He asks : “most rational persons realize that such political mythology is sheer nonsense, but it begs the question, who were the Founding Fathers and what makes them so great that they’re wiser than you are?”
Mr. Nixon reviews the 39 white men who signed the Constitution. He does not follow the rule, if you can’t say anything nice about someone, then don’t say anything at all. Of the 39, 12 were specified as slave owners, with many tagged as “slave breeders”.
The Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, have served America well. However it was intended, it was written so that it could be amended, and to grow with the young republic. It has on occasion been ignored ( when was the last time Congress declared war?). However fine a document it is, it was created by men. These were men of their time, who could not have foreseen the changes that America has gone through. It can also be assumed that those who talk the most about the founding fathers know the least about them.
A big thank you goes to wikipedia Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

The facebook (spell check suggestions: casebook, facetious, facecloth) friend posted an entry from a facebook application called G-d wants You to Know. Before we consider some of the implications of this, lets take a look at the message: On this day, G-d wants you to know… that most of your words are unnecessary. All too often you speak simply to fill the space with sound, because you feel too uncomfortable with the silence. But this silence is golden. Only in silence you can hear G-d speak to you. Only in silence can a real prayer, a heart prayer be born. Next time you start chattering, stop and feel into the silence, feel its shape, its texture, and then  say only what really has to be said.
PG agrees with this particular message. The shouting, and emotion mongering, of Jesus worship is repulsive. One must wonder what these shouters are afraid of, when they cannot let their tongues rest. Many confuse noise for truth. ( Prayer is talking to G-d. Meditation is listening to her.)
Even if a particular message is agreeable, sometimes you must question the medium. Where do these facebook applicators get off in claiming to speak for G-d? Even if 645,898 “like” the page. And what were they thinking of when they posted this… APP UPDATE: You can now add a God’s Message tab to your facebook profile that includes your last message from God. Just go to your facebook profile, click on that “+” sign near the top, and search available tabs for “G-d wants you to know”. Enjoy :)
Exodus 20:3-7 3Thou shalt have no other g-ds before me. 4Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy G-d am a jealous G-d, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. 7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy G-d in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
Man has been playing this game for a long time. The first,second, third commandments would seem to forbid labeling the product of man’s labor as “the word of G-d”. And yet, over a billion people make this claim about the Bible. It is a slippery slope…one day you claim the output of a Catholic committee is ” the word of G-d”, then soon a social media computer tells you what “G-d wants you to know”.
Pictures of Confederate soldiers are from The Library of Congress. HT to joemyg-d for the video below.

PG was listening to Ricard Brautigan read. He wanted to hear more. Mr. Google showed him more files, but a download was needed to run them. PG is nervous about loading new stuff on his machine, but the thought of hearing Mr. Brautigan count the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes was too good to pass over.
Mr. Brautigan…hereafter called RB…doesn’t sound like you think he would. A tall man, with a walrus mustache, his voice is kinda nasal, and a bit high pitched. Maybe, if he sang, he would be a tenor.
Back to the download. It was an apple player, and it would play some music files that would not work on the windows music box. However, it would not work on the RB files. At least not in firefox, but in internet explorer it works fine. Maybe the apple download was not needed.
The first story is “The Hunchback Trout”, which was in “Trout Fishing In America” . PG seems to remember this as the part that caught his interest, when he read  TFIA 27 years ago. Meanwhile, the pictures from the past of Georgia were flopping across the screen, to be sized and contrast adjusted, for internet consumption.
The visual counterfuzz was from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” , a section called corporate bodies. The last box to be worked on was number 22, means that the thrills tonight come from box 23 , Central to Charles. The Central part was the Central of Georgia railroad, and had a shot of Mayor Hartsfield, wearing a double breasted coat, in a lounge car. The mayor is talking on the phone, and not smiling for the camera. This is out of character for him.
On the RB sound page, a group of people read a poem, called “Love Poem”. Its so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don’t love them anymore. One man is yawning, another tries to be ironic, a radio station announces itself, two voices read in harmony…you get the idea.
These 26 words ground themselves into PG’s brain, despite the experience he had with email. Someone wanted PG to send out an email message. The correct response is to send this person the list of email addresses. The only trouble was a quirk in open office. If you try to copy a list of addresses, off an open office spreadsheet, into email, then chaos will ensue. The only answer is to close all the affected programs, copy the addresses into wordpad, and then copy the addresses into the email. Tonight is a night of quirky technology, while listening to an alcoholic writer who died in 1984.
When writing about books, it is a cool thing to supply a link to the book on amazon . You need to be careful what field you type in when you are searching. PG entered B, before he shifted over to the proper field. The search engine got the wrong idea from this. “Your search “brautigan” did not match any products in: Baby Products”. Picky, picky, picky.
The next thing by RB is the reason PG wanted to hear this stuff bad enough to download apple software ( when what he really needed to do was switch browsers). The story is ” The Rivets of Ecclesiastes”. It is about a man who reads the Bible by lantern light, and counts the punctuation marks in Ecclesiastes. The first chapter of the E book has 22 commas, 8 semicolons,8 colons, 2 question marks, and 17 periods. It is said that the Bible gains something when read by lantern light, that the book has never adjusted to electricity. ( Later this evening, PG finds a picture from 1954. It is of a construction site. A sign says “Quiet Please. Listen to the Riveters Symphony”.)
Moving along, the spoken word gives us a series of poems from The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster. These poems are in the video embedded here, and were responsible for this adventure. Whether this is credit or blame is a matter for the individual to decide.

As you may have heard, Egypt is having a revolution. The latest from Al Jazeera is that “pro Mubarek forces” are staging a counterattack against the protesters, and that things are getting ugly. ( A word of warning. If you click on Al Jazeera, you might find it difficult to turn away. )
There is other coverage from websites that are not corporate media. Palestinian Pundit has a picture, at the top, of Khalid Sa’id. He is a young man killed by authorities in Alexandria. There is a video of the violence in Cairo, with this comment ” IT APPEARS THAT A COUNTER OPERATION VERY SIMILAR TO OPERATION AJAX, WHICH SUCCEEDED IN TOPPLING MOUSSADEQ IN IRAN IN 1953 AND IN RESTORING THE SHAH, IS UNDER WAY! IT LOOKS THE SAME AND FEELS THE SAME. NO DOUBT, ISRAEL AND THE US CIA HAVE PUT THIS NEW PLAN INTO ACTION!”
With regards to BHO, he appears to be making a lot of people mad. Some say he is propping up a corrupt dictator. Others take another view. “One comment by Aviad Pohoryles in the daily Maariv was entitled “A Bullet in the Back from Uncle Sam.” It accused Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of pursuing a naive, smug, and insular diplomacy heedless of the risks. Who is advising them, he asked, “to fuel the mob raging in the streets of Egypt and to demand the head of the person who five minutes ago was the bold ally of the president … an almost lone voice of sanity in a Middle East?” “The politically correct diplomacy of American presidents throughout the generations … is painfully naive.”
Some see the Middle East as being all about Israel. Many of these are in congress . “Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R) of Florida, who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that only parties who support Israel should be allowed to compete in fall elections.“The U.S. should learn from past mistakes and support a process which only includes candidates who meet basic standards for leaders of responsible nations – candidates who have publicly renounced terrorism, uphold the rule of law, recognize Egypt’s international commitments including its nonproliferation obligations and its peace agreement with the Jewish state of Israel, and who ensure security and peace with its neighbors.”
Another source of information is Angry Arab . A sampling of his recent comments include:
Protesters determined Aljazeera is reporting that protesters are now about to control all entrances to Tahrir Square. The counter-revolutionary plot of Obama-Netanyahu is way too clear to people. Another Zionist is freaking out“We are concerned. We are watching this very anxiously,” says Dan Gillerman, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations. “This is a very, very tough neighbourhood,” he says. “We are already facing Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza and the prospect of, God forbid, an autocratic, fundamentalist, Islamic organisation taking over in Egypt is obviously not something we can ignore.””A plea to the Egyptian Army Why don’t you perform for the us the walk of surrender that you were most famous for in 1967?”
Pictures from Egypt are from arabs48

A blogger named gartalker has a list of words that are becoming extinct. Maybe it is a southern thing, but PG still goes to supper. The rest of the list is amusing, and can make you feel old…even if your age is not an interstate speed limit. This is a repost. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
A term I haven’t heard in a long time, and thinking about ‘fender skirts’ started me thinking about other words that quietly disappear from our language with hardly a notice like curb feelers. Any body remember them. And steering knobs.’ (AKA) suicide knob, Neckers Knobs. Since I’d been thinking of cars, my mind naturally went that direction first. Any kids will probably have to find some elderly person over 50 to explain some of these terms
Continental kits They were rear bumper extenders and spare tire covers that were supposed to make any car as cool as a Lincoln Continental. Emergency Brakes At some point ‘parking brake’ became the proper term. I miss the hint of drama that went with ‘emergency brake.’ Clutch -‘Foot Feed -Dimmer Switch. I’m sad, too, that almost all the old folks are gone who would call the accelerator the ‘foot feed.’ Many today do not even know what a clutch is or that the dimmer switch used to be on the floor. Running Board Didn’t you ever wait at the street for your daddy to come home, so you could ride the ‘running board’ up to the house? You felt like a real G-man. Heck, most of you most likely don’t know what a G-man is. Store-bought Here’s a phrase heard all the time in my youth but never anymore -’store-bought.’ Of course, just about everything is store-bought these days. However, once it was bragging material to have a store-bought dress or a store-bought bag of candy.
Coast to Coast Coast to coast’ is a phrase that once held all sorts of excitement and now means almost nothing. Now we take the term ‘world wide’ for granted. I guess that soon it will be Universal.
Wall to Wall On a smaller scale, ‘wall-to-wall’ was once a magical term in our homes. In the ’50s, everyone covered his or her hardwood floors with, wow, wall-to-wall carpeting! Today, everyone replaces their wall-to-wall carpeting with hardwood floors. Go figure. In A Family Way – P G When’s the last time you heard the quaint phrase ‘in a family way?’ It’s hard to imagine that the word ‘pregnant’ was once considered a little too graphic, a little too clinical for use in polite company, so we had all that talk about stork visits and ‘being in a family way’ or simply ‘expecting. The more sophisticated town girls called it P G. (That is not the source of the pen name.) Brassiere Apparently, ‘brassiere’ is a word no longer in usage. I said it once to my daughter when she was a teen and she cracked up. I guess it’s just ‘bra’ now. ‘Unmentionables’ probably wouldn’t be understood at all.
Picture Show I always loved going to the picture show. In fact, I have written about it in this very blog. I considered ‘movie’ an affectation. Rat Fink Most of these words go back to the ’50s, but here is a pure-’60s word I came across the other day – ‘rat fink.’ Ooh, what a nasty put-down! These two words could cut like a sharp knife. Especially if they were true.Percolator- DynaFlo -Elevtrolux – Spectra Vision Here is a word I miss – ’percolator.’ That was just a fun word to say. What was it replaced with? ‘Coffee maker.’ How dull. Mr. Coffee, I blame you for this. (Where have you gone Joe DiMaggio..) I miss those made-up marketing words that were meant to sound so modern and now sound so retro. Words like ‘DynaFlow and‘Electrolux..’ Introducing the 1963 Admiral TV, now with‘SpectraVision!’ ( PG has a percolator in his camping gear. It works well over a propane stove, but the coffee is too hot.) Lumbago- Castor Oil -Food for thought – Was there a telethon that wiped out lumbago? Nobody complains of that anymore. Maybe that’s what castor oil cured, because I never hear mothers threatening kids with castor oil anymore. Supper Some words aren’t gone, but are definitely on the endangered list. The one that grieves me most, ’supper.’ Now everybody says ‘dinner.’ Save a great word. Invite someone to supper. Chimney One last thing, when I was a kid we passed a neighbors house. They had a T V antenna strapped to their Chimney. It was a cold day and smoke was bellowing out the old leaning stack. My mother said, “Look there can’t afford butane to keep warm but they got a television set.” Yes, when I was kid a sure sign of poverty was smoke coming from your chimney. Now you know you are in an up scale neighborhood.

This is a rendering of Cat’s Cradle. Parts one and two are previously published. Pictures are from The Library of Congress . The picture of the Ambassador is from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
24- what a wampeter is Mr. Vonnegut published a book of speeches, articles, and short stories once. It was called Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons . PG got a copy at a flea market, as part of a boxed set, including Slaughterhouse-Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. In WF&G, Mr. V observes that many writers make more money by giving a speech than they do by writing a book. PG did not read much more of WF&G, and is uncertain what all those goofy concepts really mean.
25- the main thing about Dr. Hoenikker In this chapter, we learn that Dr. Hoenikker was interested in truth, or so the administrative flack says. The word truth is a conundrum. It is like those round things called a globe. They have bodies of water, and masses of land, and purport to tell the truth about the earth. However, they are always shown with the northern hemisphere on top. The majority of the people on this planet live in the northern half. However, if you were to see this planet from outer space, you would be likely to see it from other angles, and the southern hemisphere would be just as likely to be on top. Maybe truth depends on what angle you are looking in from.
26- what G-d is Miss Naomi Faust says that G-d is love, no matter what Doctor Felix Hoenikker thought. This phrase spelled backward is evol si d-G, which almost would make more sense if you changed the o to i, saying evil yes dog. When PG lived in the attic apartment, most of his white neighbors had dogs, and in one way or another the dogs were all problems. While some say that dog is nam’s best friend, PG has his doubts. PG does not agree with everything people say about G-d either, especially fictional characters from 52 years ago.
27- men from mars Dr. Hoenikker liked to photograph cannonballs stacked up in front of courthouses. There is a building on Marietta Street where a bunch of cannonballs are stacked up in pyramid fashion. They have been welded together so they reamain in this shape, and greedy passersby don’t take one home. Cannonballs are much more pleasant when they are not used to kill people, unless it is a Yankee.
28- mayonnaise The other time PG did this render by chapter thing, the model book was “Trout Fishing In America”, The last chapter of TFIA is “The mayonnaise chapter”, and the last word is mayonnaise. Richard Brautigan did not like hippies, drank too much, and came to an unhappy end. Maybe he should have stuck to fancy ketchup.
29- gone, but not forgotten PG copped free tickets to see Neil Young once. The show was at the Omni, and there were lots of unsold seats. A man stood out in front of a radio station office, and had a shoebox full of tickets. Neil Young ( who is just as ugly as Neal Boortz) did a song about rust that night. There was a line…”the king is gone but he’s not forgotten, this is the story of johnny rotten.” .
30- only sleeping When in Ilium, do as the Iliuminati do. Dr. and Mrs. Hoenikker are buried in Ilium. The Mrs. has a hunk of marble 20 feet tall, with poems by her two older children. The marker for the Doctor is a forty centimeter cube, This was in his will. Forty centimeters is 1 9/16″. The monuments were financed by the Nobel Prize.
31 another breed The man who carves headstones in Ilium is Marvin Breed, the brother of Asa Breed. When PG was seven years old, his next door neighbor was Marvin Murphy. He wore undershirts with the straps over the shoulder, which is called tank top today,but was not fashionable in 1961. Marvin Murphy smoked cigars, and chewed Red Man tobacco. Every few minutes, he would go out the back door, stand on the landing, and spit.
32- Dynamite Money Dr. Hoenikker won the Nobel Prize. The prize was financed by Alfred Nobel, who invented dynamite. Mr. Nobel was reading a newspaper one day, after his brother had died, and the newspaper got the facts wrong. The obituary said ” The merchant of death is dead”, and reported that Alfred had met his maker. The chemist Nobel was concerned about how posterity would view him, and set up a trust with his fortune, to be paid out to people who won his prize. It is not likely that a scientist, working on the atomic bomb, won the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the Nobel Peace Prize is not what it used to be.
33- an ungrateful man Marvin Breed was not a fan of Felix Hoenikker. This is not uncommon in history. For every great man, there is a mere mortal who thinks the annointed one is a son of a bitch. Even Jesus managed to get people so mad at him that…you know the rest of the story. Getting back to Iliuminati, there were rumors that Asa Breed was the secret bf of Emily Hoenikker. There are 94 chapters left, both in the book, and in the PG notes.
34 -vin-dit During the conversation with Marvin Breed, John asks about a certain carved headstone in the shop. It turns out a man ordered it for his wife, and then got robbed. The Breed family was fond of this stone, and refused to sell it. John took a close look at the stone, and saw that the name carved on it was the same as John’s last name. PG promises to tell the last name of John when it is revealed in the book. People named John need a last name, preferably one that isn’t Jones or Smith. PG, by contrast, was named Cam by his well meaning parents. After 56 years of explaining his name whenever introduced, PG now uses Luther, his first name.
35 -Hobby Shop The oldest son of Dr. Hoenikker was named Franklin. He was a weirdo, just like the rest of the family. Franklin made models, and went to Florida after his father died. Franklin had the bad fortune to get involved with a criminal operation, and is widely believed to be deceased. PG has a sense that F-H ( no middle name has been assigned yet) is going to appear at some point in this tale. And no, when PG refers to Mary’s babydaddy as G-d, he does not imply that Mr. Dammit has a middle name. That is just how some people spell G-d. PG tries not to think about G-d too much, which requires great concentration in the Jesus happy United States.
36- meow John made a foolish mistake. When he left for Ilium, he let a poet stay in his apartment. The man did not appreciate the kindness, and returned it by trashing the apartment. The poet must have been a jesus worshiper. John should forgive him.
37- a modern major general John finds an advertisement for the republic of San Lorenzo, which will prove vital to the plot of this book. The word modern is used sarcastically, which is perhaps the best way to use this word. Modern implies that something is up to date, the state of the art. Once modern was seen as a good thing, then the avant garde took over, and then retro was the rage. We are in a post modern age, where we look back to see if we have indeed lost its way. Or perhaps, the best use of M word was a band that PG used to hear about. The band was the modern mannequins.
38- barracuda capital of the world The ad sang the praises of San Lorenzo, although if karaoke had been invented this melody would not be a hit. It seems that one of the founding fathers of this island delight was Frank Hoenikker, the wayward son of the atom bomb scientist. He is the blood son of Felix Hoenikker, although the path to glory is not yet spelled out. You have to have mysteries to keep those pages turning.
39- fata morgana In 1966, the Braves had been in Atlanta a year and a half, and had stunk. They lost more games than they won, and the thrill of major league baseball in a commode shaped stadium was wearing thin. One afternoon, a third baseman named Clete Boyer was at bat. A young lady got out of the stands, ran up to home plate, and gave Clete Boyer a big kiss. She was gently arrested and led off by the police. The lady was an exotic dancer named Morganna, the wild one. She was appearing in a nightclub on Peachtree Street at Broad Street. It was downtown, upstairs from a Krystal. The aroma of dried onions on the grill wafted upstairs, to the bar where Morganna, the wild one, performed.
40- house of hope and mercy San Lorenzo had characters, and a few plots. A man named Julian Castle gave up being a playboy to build a hospital, the house of hope and mercy. Shirley and goodness left mercy for greener pastures, and soon all she had was hope. Alas, Bob Hope was another celebrity who was beloved by millions and found boring by those who knew him best. Soon, Vietnam would come along, and his show would be booed by the servicemen ordered to attend. He sold his share in this hospital…which was nothing but a tax gimmick anyway…to some religious fanatic.
41-a karass built for two John is on a plane to San Lorenzo, to interview Julian Castle, or maybe his idiot son. There are a lot of idiot sons in this story, and most of the dads aren’t too bright either. His first two companions are the ambassador to San Lorenzo and his wife. An anagram for ambassador is mad ass boar. There used to be a restaurant downtown called the Ambassador, or maybe Buckhead.

PG saw a notice on Facebook about a new trail by Peachtree Creek. . There was going to be something going on Sunday afternoon, and at 1:00 pm he was at the starting place.
The first part of the day was a trail clean up. The “meadow trail” is a loop, off Lindbergh Drive, just before you go under the freeway. Plastic bags were handed out, and the people walked down the trail until it reached Peachtree Creek. This area was prone to floods, and garbage was in the trees as much as ten feet above the water. PG filled a couple of bags, and walked back to the start to get more.
There were two ladies looking at plans. One introduced herself to PG, giving the name of her friend. She then introduced the real owner of that name, and told PG her name. PG is bad with names, and cannot remember either one. The first lady encouraged PG to take a break from cleaning up and walk down the other side of the path, which loops back around to join the cleanup.
PG walked down the right side of the loop, until it went under the the freeway. The underside of the big road was populated with huge chunks of granite, which is not easy to walk on. PG made it past one set of highway, and turned around.
This neighborhood is highway happy. The first big road…the one PG walked under…is now known as the Spring-Buford connector. It is the original I85, and is now used as an access road. The regular I85 passes by, in it’s twelve lane glory. A bit south, by the site of the second trail, is the place where highway 400 joins I85. The land for the meadow trail is owned by the Georgia Department of Transportation, and was possibly intended for an extension of highway 400 south of I85. That road was a center of controversy, and was never built.
Walking back on the loop, PG easily filled a bag with garbage. When he got to the start of the cleanup, the lady said she was leading a hike on a trail nearby. PG followed her to the trail head of hike number two. They were joined by some people, and led by two patient dogs. The trail starts across the creek from the end of Faulkner Drive, a warehouse road off Cheshire Bridge. In a warehouse, about 100 yards from the trail head, volunteers were painting decorations for the Intergalactic Love Affair.
The trail is on an access road the City built to facilitate an expansion of the sewer system. There were some silt fences, which blocked the view of the creek. The path was in fairly good shape, although what will happen when plants start growing is anyone’s guess.
After a little while, the path went under the three branches of freeway. When the big I85 was built, PG remembers the rows of concrete beams. rising out of the ground like cement lollipop sticks. Now this path goes underneath this, including an empty space with impressive grafitti. One of the paintings was a self portrait, of a graffiti artist. PG stayed behind to photograph the spraypaint, and missed the commentary on the trail. One section had a thin shaft of light landing on the ground, below the painting, which was an excellent way to light the pictures.
The trail came to an abrupt halt, across the creek from apartments off Lindbergh Drive. This is near the confluence, where the south fork of Peachtree Creek meets the north fork. The meadow trail is off the north fork; trail number two is on the south fork. To the right, Highway 400 roars into I85.
The trail head, across from Faulkner Drive, is not intended to be the end of the trail. There is a wildlife refuge on the other side of Cheshire Bridge road. There are two alternatives to joining the sections. One is to build a bridge over the creek, and take the path on the concrete of Faulkner Drive. The second is to buy land easements from people by the creek, and extend the path on the north side of the creek. The plan is to have the neighborhood vote on how to proceed.

PG has read “The Road To Woodstock” by Micheal Lang, ghostwritten by Holly George-Warren. Mr. Lang was one the the producers of the Woodstock music and arts festival in 1969. It is quite a story.
Mr. Lang was a Brooklyn kid, who got turned onto the counterculture in 1959. When he decided that college was not for him, he did what Jews do…he moved to Miami. Before long, he owned a head shop, and was promoting a rock festival. The Miami Pop Festival, in 1968, featuring Jimi Hendrix and a big rainstorm, was sort of a success. Micheal Lang was back in New York soon.
Mr. Lang met Artie Kornfield, who was in the recording business. They started to talk about ventures, and had an idea for a recording studio in Upstate New York. They met some guys with capital, John Roberts and Joel Rosenman. The four of them became Woodstock Ventures. Somewhere along the way, a music festival in the country got started.
Back to 2010, with PG waiting to talk to someone at the Department of Labor. A book is a handy companion in a waiting room. He brought a notepad along.
PG is reading a memoir about the Woodstock festival, and it is a gold mine of trivia. Did anyone know that Joan Baez was pregnant? Jim Morrison would not appear because he was afraid of an on stage assassination. The promoters kept Pete Tomnsend up until 8am to convince him to play. When it finally went off, the Who followed Sly and The Family Stone.
In Woodstock, the town of Walkill kicked out the festival, and, with a few weeks to go, they met Max Yasgur. Max rented the farm to 50k. This was the same price that David Selznick paid to Margaret Mitchell for GWTW.
Bethel approved the festival July 21, one day after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. The festival was August 15-17.
The Jeff Beck Group cancelled, when Rod Stewart quit the band to join Faces.
PG got his business done at the DOL, and the festival on Yasgur’s farm went off. There was a lot of chaos and ignorance, but good will saw the thing through. The first act to perform was Richie Havens. He was playing an acoustic set while the electric PA was set up, and was not allowed to leave the stage. Finally he ran out of material, and just started to say the word Freedom and jam. This is what appeared in the movie.
PG saw Richie Havens in 1974, at a nightclub in Atlanta called Richards. Havens played a Guild guitar, which he strummed, hard, across the front of the instrument. He would wear holes in the front of his guitar, which apparently did not last for more than a show or two. The crowd…this was the second show of the evening, starting at 2am…kept yelling for Freedom.
Back to the dairy farm. The story is familiar by now…it was a free concert, they ran out of food, and tie dye was perfected. Abbie Hoffman jumped on the stage during the Who, and Pete Townsend hit him upside the head with a guitar. Stephen Stills did not need a laxative.
After Jimi Hendrix played the final set, the crowds went home, and the workers wanted to get paid. A series of meetings took place to settle the business end of the festival. Lang and Kornfield were bought out, and Roberts and Rosenman owned the franchise.
The Woodstock festival was a milestone of sorts. Richard Nixon was new to the Presidency, and the war in Vietnam was going strong. The moratorium in the fall of 1969 was the high water mark of the anti war movement. Soon,the government started to withdraw troops, and look for “peace with honor”. And so on and so forth. The sixties were too beautiful to live, and too profitable to die.
Pictures are from “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. They are from 1969 ( give or take a bit) in Atlanta, GA. This is a repost.

When PG was in grammar school, there was a popular TV show called “House Party”, hosted by Art Linkletter. At the end of the show, Mr. Linkletter interviewed some children, who said cute things. There was a popular book based on this, “Kids Say the Darndest Things! “ “.
Some of these kids get older, and become “senior officials” in governments. Unlike the house party kids, they do not show a face on camera. They say the darndest things.
Egypt is in turmoil now. Her neighbor, and ally, Israel, is watching with concern. An American media outlet interviewed a “senior official…who spoke on condition of not being identified by name or portfolio,” “But while it may be more efficient to deal in with a strongman in Cairo — Mubarak has ruled for 30 years — and a king in Amman, democracies make better neighbors, “because democracies do not initiate wars,”.
This might come as a surprise to the people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq. But then, some say the United States is not a democracy, but a republic. Maybe that is the difference.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

1. “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” ~Anton Chekhov
2. “As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.” ~Rhys Alexander 3. “Whether or not you write well, write bravely.” ~Bill Stout (ed. note: I don’t think these are mutually exclusive but I appreciate the sentiment) 4. “Writing well means never having to say, ‘I guess you had to be there.'” ~Jef Mallett 5. “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” ~Anaïs Nin 6. “Sometimes a flat-footed sentence is what serves, so you don’t get all writerly: ‘He opened the door.’ There, it’s open.” ~Amy Hempel 7. “Don’t get it right, just get it written.” ~James Thurber8. “Write about what you know and care deeply about. When one puts one’s self on paper — that is what is called good writing.” ~Joel Chandler Harris 9. “Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear.” ~Ezra Pound 10. “Start early and work hard. A writer’s apprenticeship usually involves writing a million words (which are then discarded) before he’s almost ready to begin. That takes a while.” ~David Eddings 11. “Revision is one of the true pleasures of writing. I love the flowers of afterthought.” ~Bernard Malamud 12. “Writing is the only thing that, when I do it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” ~Gloria Steinem 13. “Writing is the best way to talk without being interrupted.” ~Jules Renard 14. “The wastebasket is a writer’s best friend.” ~Isaac Bashevis Singer 15. “True ease in writing comes from art, not chance, as those who move easiest have learned to dance.” ~Alexander Pope 16. “Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.” ~Gene Fowler 17. “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” ~Anaïs Nin 18. “The profession of book-writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business.” ~John Steinbeck 19. “I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again.” ~Oscar Wilde 20. “I just sit at a typewriter and curse a bit.” ~P.G. Wodehouse 21. “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” ~Oscar Wilde 22. “Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” ~ Mark Twain 23. “If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing.” ~Benjamin Franklin 24. “We writers dream of a future where actors are mostly computer generated and their performances can be adjusted, by us, on a laptop, alone.” ~Tina Fey 25. “Anyone can become a writer. The trick is staying a writer.” ~Harlan Ellison 26. “A synonym is a word you use when you can’t spell the other one.” ~Baltasar Gracián 27. “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” ~E. L. Doctorow 28. “If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.” ~Isaac Asimov 29. “I write when I’m inspired, and I see to it that I’m inspired to write at 9 o’clock every morning.” ~Peter De Vries 30. “Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté.” ~Margaret Atwood 31. “I’m an avid collector of quotes. They’re cheaper than vintage records, don’t take up as much space as a retro lunch box collection, and unlike most other tchotchkes, have the potential to keep those creativity juices flowing.”~ Urban Muse 32. HT to DailyPost. Thank you Urban Muse. Pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. chamblee54 regrets the omission of a George Bernard Shaw quote in this collection.