Chamblee54

Dangerousminds , which is seldom at a loss for words, posted the video of Bob Dylan seen above. The young Mr. Zimmerman is in angry young man mode, and discusses the concept of an all picture Time magazine. All pictures, no words. This may be where this blog is headed.
Writers block is real. You have all of modern media at your beck and call, and yet you don’t have a message. TwentyTwoWords posts the story of a medical study into writers block. The study wastes no words in it a pithy treatment of this issue. It is an unspoken masterpiece, the treatment that dare not speak it’s name. The research was financed by a block grant.
The findings of this study were replicated in 2007. The report is included here, in it’s entirety. The editor noted ” I did not change one word, and this is a first in my tenure as editor.” There is no word on whether the report was submitted before the deadline.
Ben Hecht tells a story in his autobiography “Child of the Century”. As a young, underpaid newspaper writer in Chicago, Mr. Hecht was hired to participate in literary debates. In the era before movies and radio, these were considered after dinner entertainment. One night, Mr. Hecht got together with his opponent, and hatched a plan. The topic of the debate was ” People who attend literary debates are idiots.” The first speaker did not say a word, but gestured towards the crowd. The second speaker said, you win.
“Child of the Century” is now out of print. In 1994, PG thought he was going to have to move, and the first step was to throw away things. His copy of “Child of the Century” was one thing he pitched.
The idea that less is more has spread. Fun loving Jesus Worshiper Frank Turk had a post titled: “I got nothin” The text elaborated on this theme: “Not even a “best of”. He got 114 comments..
The sound that you hear is one hand clapping. Those reading with one hand can join in with the other one. Appreciation is always welcome. Vintage pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” .

PG has now walked the complete beltline. He finished the part between West End Marta station, and the Bankhead station. In show business tradition, he saved the best for last. Go HERE to see a map.
Only three people made it to this Thursday adventure. It started going down Murphy Avenue, and turning on Allene Street. Soon, the first of many brick warehouses appeared, with an abandoned rail corridor behind them. The first tunnel of the day went under Murphy Avenue and Lee Street, and led to “Warehouse Row”. Many of these buildings are not in use today, and are surrounded by razor wire topped fence. This was the first time that PG and Sandy walked down this corridor. On PG’s previous trip to this area, the hikers took a concrete path on White Street. The next street south is Dimmock Street, home of Atlanta’s historic outdoor reefer market.
At Ralph David Abernathy the trio ( Led by Angel) went through another tunnel, and went down a walkway that is 500 percent better than the last time PG went through here . Another tunnel, under Lucille Street, had an art installation at it’s entrance. The trail led under I20 and Westview Drive. The beltline goes through a residential area now. Some of the houses are not boarded up.
The bridge over MLK Drive was life threatening before, but now had a smooth wooden walkway. Next on the agenda was a mound of tree cuttings and soil, that is in the beltline path. Purist Angel ignored a smooth path nearby to lead Sandy and PG over the mound. ” It’s ok”. Shortly after this was Lena Street, which leads to the Ashby Marta station. This had been the starting point of the previous hike.
There is a part of the beltline corridor that goes north of Lena Street, runs parallel to the Marta line, and apparently peters out. Angel led the group down this path, and PG said that this doesn’t go anywhere. Angel said that today it would. The path got narrow, leading to speculation that it was a toy railroad corridor. After going past a boarded up house, the threesome emerged on Joseph E. Boone Blvd., and crossed over the Marta line.
A trip through an apartment complex led to the next section of the beltline corridor. It seems as though there is a train line near there, which is in use by CSX. A long abandoned spur branches off this line at this point, and this is where the beltline goes. Past a certain point, it is solid kudzu. Angel  said we had gone five miles in two hours. The next mile would take an hour.
After hacking through the kudzu (mercifully turned gray by cold weather) for a while, the terrain got even rougher. (Sandy was wearing old shoes, with torn spots in the front, that served as kudzu catching hooks.) At one point, the crew had to crawl on hands and knees under some vines. After a while, there was a pathway(of sorts) behind yet another brick building, which appeared to be in use.
After a while, the last underpass of the day was in sight. This was a bridge over Donald Lee Hollowell Pkwy, formerly known as Bankhead Highway. There was some road work going on there, with men and heavy equipment making mud. The supervisor came down to see who the three visitors were. “You walked through that?”.

Alan Burnett //Bill Medlock//Bill Meneely//Blaze Mills//Buddy Conine//Calvin Bunn//
Danny Fields//David Chewning//David Hadden//Dixie//Dwight Dunaway//Freeman Waldrop//
Gary Hunton//Gene Haynes//Gene Holloway//Gibson Higgins//Glenn Krause//Greg Scott//
Harold King//Hawk//Jerry Pyschka//Jim Anderson//Jim Woodward//Joe Kenney//Joe Vickery//
John Harllee//Jon Gordon//King Thackston//Larry Jackson//Layton Gregory//Lee Mullis//
Les Friessen//Mac Wilson//Manfred Ibis//Mark Keenum//Mark Rosen//Michael Dollins //
Micheal Mason//Moon Moore//O’Gene Donohue//Purl Sudds// Sam Mitchell //Skeeter Smith//
Steve Bedworth//Stuart Davis//Ti Barfield//Tim Jeffries//Tom Aderhold//Tom Selman//
Tom Williams //Trion//Winston Morriss//

PG heard a bit of chatter about wikileaks (spell check suggestions:windbreaks, jailbreaks)last night.
(This is dog bites man. Man bites dog would be to listen to the various gasbags yesterday, and not hear talk about wikileaks.) There was a blog post referenced, which Mr. Google turned up quickly.
The thesis of this post is that more classification means less security. The more items are deemed sensitive, the more people are going to wind up with access to them. Eventually, the wrong someone will get a hold of these items.

The other day was the 150th anniversary of the first picture of Abraham Lincoln with a beard. The New York Times thought that this was news that matters. Apparently, the Lincoln Regime was the start of an era of bearded politicians. This was an era before disposable razors, when shaving meant a trip to the barber shop.
The Times article links to an essay by Allan Gurganus ( two L’s, tow a’s) about a visit to the Shiloh battlefield. (Apparently, Mr. Gurganus has a beard ) It seems his great grandfathers had fought there, one for the union and one for the rebels. The essay has little about Lincoln, or beards, except for unflattering comparisons to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Abe Lincoln did not dye his hair.
“Consider our recent actor of a President. One study found that during his eighth and last year in office, his most often repeated sentences were ‘Nobody told me’ and ‘I don’t remember’. Chuckling, he left mere telling and remembering (any leader’s holiest function) to unworthy others. And, how popular he was! Friends, if memory serves, I think we have lost something. We have become a nation of amnesiacs, frequent flyers bent on endlessly upgrading to first class. Lincoln remembers. And therefore is remembered: Picasso owned a large collection of Lincolnalia and told Gertrude Stein that Lincoln was ‘le Quixote USA’. Marilyn Monroe pronounced Lincoln ‘the sexiest man in American history’ and claimed she married Arthur Miller because of his Lincolnly length and raw-boned face. “
These observations were made nearly twenty years ago. It can be assumed that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama are not improvements. And all three are clean shaven, even if some say that Laura Bush was a beard.
PG has read two books by Mr. Gurganus, who was the BFF of the late Doug Marlette. At roughly the same time as the Shiloh visit, PG made it through 800 pages of Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All: A Novel. At the time, he was riding the train downtown to a job with lots of free time. There was time to slowly read a long story, and contemplate the details. At about page 500, the TV miniseries came on, which cast another light on the tale.
A central character in this story is Castalia, who was the cook for Veteran Will Marsden ( played by Donald Sutherland in the tv show). Cicely Tyson played Castalia, who went from slave to employee. She was not fond of the lady Mr. Marsden married.
As it turns out, Castalia is a small town in North Carolina. Another Castalia story is in today’s Kikoshouse. This tales involves Timothy Leary and Hermann Hesse. “Out of its ashes rose Leary’s next ego trip, an organization called Castalia that was to set up shop on a tropical island a la Huxley’s Island, a utopian counterpoint to Brave New World where a drug he called soma was used for enlightenment…The name Castalia came from Hermann Hesse’s Glass Bead Game. The IFIF crowd was convinced that the German author was a psychedelic adept from an earlier age who had succeeded where Huxley had failed in that his books were accounts of the internal drama of the psyche.”
The other book by Mr. Gurganus to pass before PG’s eyes is Plays Well with Others. Like the essay about the Shiloh battlefield, PWWO starts off strong and draggggs. This may be because of the subject.
PWWO is the story of a young man who moves to New York, seeking fame, fortune, and good times. He falls in with an artsy crowd, and seems to be doing well. Then AIDS appears, and takes out his friends, one after the other. While writing this book was probably a good way for Mr. Gurganus to put this horrific experience behind him, it is not always worth the effort it takes to read.
One of the themes of PWWO is the pineapple, a symbol of hospitality. One of the fallen friends had a four poster bed, with a pineapple carved on top of the four posts. It was said to be a hospitable place. While PG was reading this book, he drove past a crackhouse/hotel every day. One day, he noticed a drawing of a pineapple in the hotel’s sign.
Pictures for this journey are from The Library of Congress.

PG is a slack writer. This does not mean that he writes about slack (a contradiction), but that he often has an idea for a post, and then never follows through. His desktop is cluttered with files, each containing the start of a post. The concept today is to take a few of these, write a bit about each, through some pictures in, and call it a day.The pictures are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
The first snipoid is about Ralph Reed . Mr. Reed is a professional Christian, the youthful looking head of publicity groups. At one time he was the big dog at something called the Christian Coalition. He left that to start his own consulting company.
This was the first time Mr. Reed and PG became connected. There is an office space on Presidential Drive, just down the road from the round hotel. PG ran bluelines in this space, until circumstances moved him into a midtown workplace. After the blueprint company moved out, a company called Century Strategies moved into this space. Century Strategies was the consulting firm that Mr. Reed started after leaving the Christian Coalition. While PG does not know whether Mr. Reed actually used this office, it gives him a warm feeling to think that he has shared a commode with this celebrity.
Later, Ralph Reed caused another problem for PG. In 2006, Mr. Reed ran for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. He lost to Casey Cagle, whose shoelaces become untied. When the Republican Primary was held that year, PG felt obliged to help put an early stop to Mr. Reed’s elected ambitions.
The problem lies in the primary system. In Georgia, you must choose either Democrat or Republican, and in the inevitable runoff vote in the same party. To help Mr. Reed spend more time with his family, PG needed to vote Republican. There was a race on the Democratic side which was important.
Hank Johnson was running against Cynthia McKinney. While PG used to like Miss McKinney, after a while the joke grew old. She needed to retire. While Mr. Johnson won the runoff, PG would have liked to help. The bottom line is, Ralph Reed cost PG his last chance to vote against Cynthia McKinney.

The second part of this entertainment is about Arlo Guthrie . Last week was thanksgiving, which is connected to Mr. Guthrie. Unlike the turkey, or tofurkey, Mr. Guthrie has gone on to have a flourishing career. It seems probable that he will not come down with Huntington’s Disease, which claimed his father Woody Guthrie.
The video that goes with this text was the first time PG saw Arlo Guthrie. This was broadcast January 21, 1970. PG was an unhip fifteen year old, who had not heard Alice’s Restaurant, seen the movie, or been to Woodstock. He did see the Johnny Cash show this night, or at least the part where Arlo Guthrie did the motorcycle song.
To quote the digital facility PG is borrowing from: ” Born Arlo Davy Guthrie on July 10, 1947, in New York, NY; son of Woody (a folksinger) and Marjorie Mazia (a dancer; maiden name, Greenblatt) Guthrie; married Jacklyn Hyde, October 9, 1969; children: Abraham, Cathyalicia, Annie Hays, Sarah Lee.” Abraham and Sarah Lee play in Arlo’s touring band.
The Alice’s Restaurant Masacree is a part of Americana now. There are two bits of knowledge, that are as true as anything told to a Persian king. When trying to dispose of some garbage, and finding the city dump closed, Arlo found some litter by the roadside, and made a value judgment…One big pile of garbage is better than two little piles.
The second is about the draft, and the business of choosing people to fight our wars. There is a regulation today that says that Gays and Lesbians are not supposed to be soldiers and sailors. In the tale of the thanksgiving dinner, it was litterbugs. ( There was also a draft, and a a different war. Lots of Americans were coming home in boxes.) The bottom line is, Mr. Guthrie is confused about not being considered moral enough to kill people, because he was a litterbug.
A few years into his career, Arlo Guthrie had a hit record called “City of New Orleans”. It was about a train, and said “Good Morning America”. “City of New Orleans” was written by Steve Goodman, who is no longer with us. Mr. Goodman also wrote the perfect country and western song .
PG heard a story about Steve Goodman. “The songwriter is Steve Goodman. He gave a show at the Last Resort in Athens GA, that a friend of PG attended. Mr. Goodman tells a story about performing on a train, during a series of concerts supporting Hubert Humphrey. It seems like Mr. Goodman had to use the restroom on the train. Now, in those days, the trains did not use holding tanks, but just ejected the matter by the tracks as they rode by. Mr. Goodman was told, do not flush the commode while the train is in the station. Mr. Goodman forgot the instructions. Mr. Humphrey said ” I am going to give the people of this country what they deserve”, Mr. Goodman flushed the commode, and sprayed the crowd. PG is not sure if he believes this, but it is a good story.”

PG was not sure he wanted to hike sunday. When he woke up, his left foot was sore. Sometimes, you need to take a chance, and sunday it turned out all right.
The walk in question was on the Atlanta beltline (spell check suggestions: beastliness, Beltane) site, between the Inman (spell check suggestion: Inmate ) Park Marta station and the West End station. PG did this hike in July of 2009. That day, the weather was a mix of blast furnace heat, and thunderstorms. With his wet jeans rubbing against his legs, and the sun fixin to take him out, PG was miserable. Today, the weather was sunny, with the starting temperature 39 degrees. The outer jacket came off during the first mile of the walk.
There were 12 people ( estimated), four dogs, and one bicycle. With that many canines, some conflict can be expected. A couple of the four legged critters did not see eye to eye, and had to be pulled apart a few times. A couple of miles into the hike, the lady with two dogs decided to call it quits. After this, there were few dogfights.
By coincidence, the lady with two dogs left when the beltline crossed Boulevard. There is a house near there, with a bunch of cages in the back yard. The story is that the cages are where a man raises roosters, with the intention of using them in cockfights. Mike Vick was playing football in Chicago.
The MC for the walk was, as always, Angel. There was a chance that he would be called into work today. He took his bicycle with him on the hike, even the parts with a consistent layer of broken glass. The tires seemed to be in good shape when we got to West End.
There was a story about the origin of the beltline railroad lines. Atlanta was founded as a railroad town, and in the 19th century had four major lines intersecting downtown. With all those trains, there began to be traffic jams. A series of bypass routes were built, to help trains get around the congestion. This was the original plan for I285, before it became a traffic nightmare of its own. It could be said that the beltline railroad tracks was the original perimeter.
Walks like this always seem to go faster the second time you do them. A few construction projects…notably the Stanton Park…showed remarkable progress. The high point of the south end hike remains the tunnel under McDonough Boulevard, near Carver High School. Another colorful section is under I75/85, which one participant calls the World Series of Graffiti.
There is talk of a one day hike to do all 22 miles of the beltline. This will be in the spring. There is also talk about another hike Tuesday morning. This will start at the West End Marta station, and end at the Bankhead (spell check suggestions: Lunkhead, Blackhead) station.
Some friends of PG and Angel did a 13 miles hike in North Georgia, on Sunday. When he was approaching West End, PG decided that six miles on flat land was enough.

This is a repost. In the past year, very little has been done to reduce carbon pollution. A “conservative republican” majority was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. What little chance of action there was of American action to reduce carbon pollution has probably been lost.
In other oil addiction news, a horrendous accident in the Gulf of Mexico spilled untold amounts of crude oil into the water. While the leak has reportedly been capped, the level of damage to the ecosystem will never be known. The USA continues to be involved in military action that is motivated, at least in part, by a need to maintain a supply of oil. In addition to the damage to the atmosphere, the economic dependence on oil is extracting a heavy price.
The jubilation over “climategate”seems to have faded. While some scientists may have made mistakes, the overall problem of maintaining a usable atmosphere, in an industrial age, continues.
By now, many of you have heard about “climategate”. It seems like someone hacked into a computer at an English research institute, and found some emails. A few of the emails have been released, and people say curious things. With years of correspondence to go through, only a part of which has been released, there is lots of room for mischief. If the hackers are smart enough to steal those emails, they are also smart enough to fake a few.
PG is not a scientist, and these reports makes his head spin. There is a suspicion that a lot of the people making noise now don’t understand the science, but are creating a turmoil to support already held views. It should be noted that there are big money interests who would like to see talk about global warming go away, so they can work without interference. These interests have lots of money to buy off journalists, who then produce prose like this: “AGW (anthropogenic global warming) is about raising taxes; increasing state control; about a few canny hucksters who’ve leapt on the bandwagon fleecing us rotten with their taxpayer subsidised windfarms and their carbon-trading; about the sour, anti-capitalist impulses of sandal-wearing vegans and lapsed Communists who loathe the idea of freedom and a functioning market economy.”
The discussion has leaped out of the frying pan of science, and into the fire of politics. There is an international conference in Copenhagen soon, and the timing of “climategate” is curious.
Two words stand out in this discussion, believe and prove. PG wonders if they are appropriate. AGW is not really a matter of believe or not believe. Since the industrial revolution, man has made an enormous change in the balance of the atmosphere. This ecosystem has evolved to where it is over billions of years, either by accident or intelligent design. Man has made profound changes in the last two hundred years. As Chamblee54 crunched the numbers last July:
The atmosphere on planet earth is a marvel, quite possibly unique in the universe. It supports a wide range of life forms, from amoebas to Bruno. This blanket of gas evolved over a period of billions of years. Man has changed it more in the last two hundred years than nature did in four billion before that.
Those numbers don’t mean too much like that, so lets put them into another form. Comparing 200 years to four billion years just takes a calculator. That is like comparing one minute to 38 years. What G-d created ( or nature evolved, or however you explain it), what took 38 years to create, industrial man has nearly ruined in one minute.
In the interest of showing how we got our numbers, here is the breakdown. Divide 4 billion by 200 and you get 20 million. Divide 20 million by 1440 ( the number of minutes in a day) gives us 13888 days. Dividing 13888 days by 365 gives us 38 years. Even if the earth is less than four billion years old, the fact remains that industrial man has destroyed in almost no time what took a long time to create.
The second weasel word in the current blabberfest is prove. There is a difference between prove and indicate. If they emails are genuine, they would indicate that some scientists in England cooked the books on their research. As to the larger issue of what industrial man is doing to planet earth, they prove nothing.

PG does not want to bore you with talk about gratitude. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

PG is stalled at page 738 of The Lives of John Lennon . He got a beatup paperback copy at booknook for 25 cents, which works out to .0338 cents per page. This does not factor in the parts that were skipped over. This volume was written by Albert Goldman, who likes to go off on tributaries.
Mr. Goldman has written several other biographies. The one that PG read was Ladies and Gentlemen, Lenny Bruce . This was over 700 pages of drugs, backstabbing, drugs, comedy, drugs, sex, and more drugs. Mr. Bruce was not a very nice man. Mr. Goldman does not put lipstick on the hog.
Much the same could be said for John Lennon. According to this account, John was Brian Epstein’s rough trade boytoy. He did mountains of heroin, LSD, marijuana, alcohol, and breakfast sausages. He told Yoko she could sing. ( Yoko’s singing is also compared to a stomach pump after a suicide attempt.)
John Lennon had a tough beginning. His mother abandoned him, and he was raised by an aunt. His father disappeared, only to show up after John was a superstar. After playing in a band with Paul and George for a few years, John became incredibly popular. His comment that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus may have been the truth.
It was thirty years ago that John went to Strawberry Fields forever. Albert Goldman left the building in 1994. Yoko survives. Pictures for this evening are from ” The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”.

When you live in the USA you hear christmas carols. It is a part of the season. Many people enjoy them, but some do not. To some, Jesus Worship religion, and Jesus, are sources of unhappiness. The birth of Jesus is nothing to celebrate.
The melodies of christmas carols do sound pretty, and sometimes the singing is pleasant. Many people simply don’t pay attention to the lyrics. When they do, they might be in for a surprise.
If you find discomfort in these lyrics, don’t expect anyone to care. Jesus worshipers think they are right, and everyone else is wrong. Those on the fence tell you to ignore it. There are reasons why so many find the holiday season to be torture.
Once, PG was in a group of people singing christmas carols in a VA hospital. This is an event with the best of intentions…to bring a bit of cheer to people in a hospital. The trouble started when PG paid attention to some of the lyrics . “G-d rest ye merry, gentlemen//Let nothing you dismay//Remember, Christ, our Saviour//Was born on Christmas day//To save us all from Satan’s power//When we were gone astray .”
One, Jesus was probably born in the springtime. The date near the Winter solstice was chosen for political reasons. Two, a lot of us do not consider him to be “our savior”. Three, what is this business about “Satan’s power”?Four, maybe we are doing things right, and don’t need a man made “savior” to keep us from going astray. Yea, these lyrics really lead to “tidings of comfort and joy”. More like discomfort and misery, which is what Jesus means to PG.
In the last few years, the Jesus worshipers are getting more aggressive about wanting the winter holidays to be all about them. The largely secular christmas seasons of years past were fine and dandy. The church people talk about Jesus, the merchants sell presents, some eat and drink too much, and a good time is had by all. Now, with the war on christmas, it is yet another excuse for people to argue. Peace on earth, and goodwill towards men, are obsolete.
With this in mind, a facebook friend posted a video by Annie Lennox singing, what else, “G-d rest yea merry gentlemen” The following dialog resulted. You get three guesses which comment was by PG.
—I like the thought, but couldn’t listen to it. That song is among the worst for obnoxious religious lyrics.
— Luther, unfortunately, almost all the good carols are written for the christian holiday. There are hardly enough good secular carols to even make a CD. I’ve always wondered why Neo-pagans don’t write better music. Dogmatic zeal inspires a certain drama and energy I suppose. I’ve learned enjoy, without believing.
—Yes. Typically when one uses the phrase “Christmas carols” you may be sure the songs are about Christmas. Luther and Bruce…tough toenails!
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.

This is a double repost . Two score and seven years ago, America changed. Like 911, we will never know the complete story. Like 911, we soon found ourselves in a hopeless war.
When PG typed in the title of this segment, he was reminded what day this was. This was the day John Kennedy went to the oval office in the sky. The legend is that Marilyn Monroe greeted him. It was forty five years ago.
The bullets hit Mr.Kennedy at 12:30. He arrived at the hospital at 12:37. He had a faint heartbeat on arrival, but quickly succumbed to his wound.
In Georgia, PG was nine years old. He was in Miss Mckenzie’s fourth grade class. There was going to be an assembly soon, and the class was going to perform. There was a rehearsal in the cafetorium, and some of the kids were acting up. They went back to the class, and PG thought they were going to be chewed out about the misbehavior in the cafetorium. Instead, Miss Mckenzie came into the room, and told the kids that President Kennedy had been shot during a parade in Dallas Texas. She did not say anything about his condition. One kid cheered the news.
School let out at the regular time, and PG walked home. His mother and brother were crying. He was told that the president had died. The cub scouts meeting that afternoon was canceled.
Later that night, a plane arrived in Washington. The tv cameras showed a gruesome looking man walk up to a microphone. He was introduced as President Lyndon Johnson. This may have been the worst moment of that day.

PG woke up, and saw rain and fog. On a day like this in November, there is nothing like a football game. Today the Falcons will play the Giants in New York. Jimmy Hoffa is tailgating.
The Falcons won their first game in New York, in 1966. The Giants were having a bad year. The coach was a man named Allie Sherman, and the crowd in the original Yankee Stadium waved handkerchiefs and sang ” Goodbye Allie”.
At this time 46 years ago, a parade was lining up in Dallas. President Kennedy was shot in that parade. The theories started soon after, and have never been satisfied. Many people had  a motive.
Another mystery is the role of J. Edgar Hoover. Many speculate that Mr. Hoover knew of a plan to kill Kennedy.The FBI could have stopped the killing, but allowed it to happen. This would be the case even if Oswald acted alone. It is reasonable to assume that the FBI had Mr. Oswald under surveillance, and knew that he was working in a building on the parade route.