G-d Is In The Details
As the reader(s) of this blog might know, PG listens to “stuff” on the internet while working on pictures. One of the favorites is 99% Invisible, or 99pi. It is a quirky little show. The content is mostly about design, which is supposed to be 99 percent invisible.
The quote is allegedly by Buckminister Fuller, but google does not show a source. PG sent this tweet. “@romanmars When/where did B. Fuller say that design was 99% invisible? I am looking for a source, and google is not helping.” Mr. Mars is the voice of 99pi, and the father of their star advertising voice over. (The notoriously unreliable brainyquote quotes RBF thusly: “Ninety-nine percent of who you are is invisible and untouchable.” G-d is in the details.)
99pi comes out roughly once a week, and PG faithfully downloads every one. With all the other listening options, some shows pile up. Today, while putting the final touches on a poem, PG listened to episodes 181, 182, 183, and 184.
Milk Carton Kids is about the custom of posting pictures of missing children on milk cartons. The meme much more successful at raising conciousness than it was at finding children.
Bonnie Lohman was an exception. Her stepfather took her shopping, and Bonnie saw her picture on a milk carton. The stepfather bought the milk, cut out the picture, and gave it to Bonnie. Somehow, a neighbor saw it, and the jig was up.
A Sweet Surprise Awaits You is about fortune cookies. This was a minor Japanese custom, which became a fixture at American style Chinese restaurants. The story starts off March 30, 2005. (On April 1, 2005, PG was laid off by Redo Blue after 24 years of service.) Fortune cookies had a number on them that day. The number was the second prize winner in the Powerball lottery.
Dead Letter Office is about the Mail Recovery Center, where long lost packages at the Post Office are auctioned off. The MRC is out by Six Flags, also known to local listeners as Da Hood. One lady bought a box of dishes, with a fine white powder on them. An urn in the box was broken. The ashes of the previous owner were scattered on the plates and saucers.
Rajneeshpuram is about a desert valley in Oregon. It became the home of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and a few hundred of his friends. BSR intended to create a profitable utopia. It did not work out well. The ranch is now owned by a Christian youth group, Young Life.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Gender Is A Flimsy Construct
An SJW heard the first line of the joke, and had a temper tantrum. ~ It sounds like such an obvious line that thousands have said it over the years, each one thinking it is original. ~ Compared to the glamor challeged Bernie and Hillary, MO’M is a greek g-d. ~ Learn the art business, know your number do the math, cross t dot i now ~ I have repeatedly said that in my opinion the idea of a personal God is a childlike one. You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being. Albert Einstein Letter to Guy H. Raner Jr. (28 September 1949), from article by Michael R. Gilmore in Skeptic magazine, Vol. 5, No. 2 (1997) ~ @ApprovedNews6 Concerned Parents Claim Teenager Died of Political Correctness ~ @FilmVerity @MooseAllain So close to ‘bookkeeper’ – the only word in Eng Language with three doubles in a row. Free fact! Free fact! ~ Thousands of Facebook Profiles Went Black This Past Weekend, Here’s Why. ~ There was a memorial stone made. The stone said “Faygele Baker of Bread Giver of Head.” ~ Is this for the meaningless overall popular vote, or for the handful of swing states who will decide the election? ~ This show has three stories. The first is a gross out sex worker story, by Atlanta resident TS Madison. The third is about a failed suicide attempt. It gets TMI about the effect of taking a hundred hits of tylenol. Risk is doing a live show in Atlanta November 4. ~ The chief business of the nation, as a nation, is the setting up of heroes, mainly bogus. H.L. Mencken ~ I heard Depak Chopra on a book tour radio appearance. The host said something tacky. Mr. Chopra “That says more about you than it does me.” ~ Mr. Chopra’s response was much shorter. In a spoken context, it is less likely to be interrupted. Also, there was a station break coming up. ~ Opiates are the religion of the masses. ~ @postcrunk gender is such a flimsy construct that it needs constant defense ~ 7 Ways To Identify A Member of Hotep Twitter ~ Hari Ziyad ~ facebook ~ Letter from Billie Holiday to Tallulah Bankhead ~ Here’s What LGBT Organizations Need to Tackle Next: White Privilege ~ pictures from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Streets Alive
There is a thing in Atlanta. They close off a street to motor traffic, and let bikes, people, and dogs take over. This time it was Peachtree, between 17th street and downtown. PG thought the best way to do it was to take the train. Uzi pointed out that for what it took two people to take marta, you could pay to park. After some wandering, a lot behind the Fox Theater was found.
The first unexpected excursion came at a Lutheran Church. A labyrinth was laid out in the lobby. PG decided to walk it, but had to take his shoes off first. This was a quick trip, with a fellow traveler waiting on the sidewalk outside.
Moving north of Peachtree, there were plenty of bicycles and dogs. In front of a bar, cheesecake samples were given out. Uzi felt a pang of nostalgia for the strip. Many people, of a certain age, remember when this part of Peachtree was much less wholesome than today.
Just shy of 14th street, Uzi decided it was time to turn around. A discussion of prescription painkillers came up. Just about then, PG’s knee began to hurt. Was it the talk about medication, or the realization that many of the high rise apartments cluttering the thoroughfare were specimens of ugly architecture? Developers are not known for having aesthetic vision.
At the Federal Reserve building, Uzi went inside. PG stayed on the sidewalk, which was three times as wide as the old sidewalks. This was where a porno theater was converted into Weekends, one of the best dancehalls to ever entertain this town. Next door was a Kresge’s, that had become a theater. A production of Rocky Horror show was staged there, with RuPaul playing Riff Raff.
Soon, PG’s phone went off. The Federal Reserve was open to visitors. PG went through a thorough metal detector, and was ushered into the house of money. A lady stood in front of a processing machine, that went through millions of dollars of bills a day. Out of many, many millions, only twenty or so are counterfeit. Soon, PG wanted to be moving again. Standing still is rougher on your back than doing something. The less discomfort, the better.
The rest of the journey was uneventful. None of the photographed dogs attacked PG. The Krystal on 7th street is still gone. The Peachtree Manor hotel is standing … maybe they found a way to keep the walls from talking. The car was not damaged when PG returned to the parking lot.
Free Bacon
There was a tweet. Perspicacious One @JessSmith_TPC LOLOLOL Can’t make this stuff up @EWErickson President’s Speech Defending Obamacare Nearly Kills Innocent Woman http://shar.es/ES3kQ. The link is to a story, President’s Speech Defending Obamacare Nearly Kills Innocent Woman. The medium is something called The Washington Free Beacon. Free Bacon is a typo.
TWFB has some interesting stories. When PG was a kid, his mother said story when she meant lie. One entertaining example is Pro-Iranian Regime Journalist Defends Controversial Tweet Former translator for Ahmadinejad called WSJ editor ‘Iranian House Negro’. The offending tweeter owns a fashion blog, the house of Majd. Rumors that Mr. Ahmadinejad is a model cannot be confirmed.
A more believable story is Netanyahu’s Mission: To Head Off Iran Sanctions Relief. The thought of a deal between Iran and the West is very troubling to Israel. An important distraction to the Palestinian tragedy would be removed by the rehabilitation of Iran. One interesting section of the story mentions 911 labor supplier Saudi Arabia. “Saudi Arabia, another key U.S. ally in the Middle East, is also deeply worried about any sign of a deal between Washington and the kingdom’s arch-rival, Iran.”
Free Bacon is the order of the day in the last story we will look at. USDA Celebrates Forcing Kids to Try Kale, Chard, Collard Greens. “The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) extolled a local elementary school in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. for making its students try broccoli gratin, Tuscan kale, and beet hummus, as an example of the department’s efforts to fight obesity.” Pictures for this repost are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Puns
1. The fattest knight at King Arthur’s round table was Sir Cumference.
He acquired his size from eating too much pi.
2. I thought I saw an eye doctor on an Alaskan island, but it turned out to be an optical Aleutian.
3. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still.
4. The teacher confiscated a rubber band pistol was confiscated from a student in an algebra class, because it was a weapon of math disruption.
5. No matter how much you push the envelope, it’ll still be stationery.
6. A dog gave birth to puppies near the road and was cited for littering.
7. A grenade thrown into a kitchen in France would result in Linoleum Blownapart.
8. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie.
9. A hole has been found in the nudist camp wall. The police are looking into it.
10. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
11. Atheism is a non-prophet organization.
12. A baseball cap and a beret were hanging on a hat rack in the hallway. The beret said to the cap:
‘You stay here; I’ll go on a head.
13. I wondered why the baseball kept getting bigger. Then it hit me.
14. A sign on the lawn at a drug rehab center said: ‘Keep off the Grass.’
15. The midget fortune-teller who escaped from prison was a small medium at large.
16. The soldier who survived mustard gas and pepper spray is now a seasoned veteran.
17. A backward poet writes inverse.
18. In a democracy it’s your vote that counts. In feudalism it’s your count that votes.
19. When cannibals ate a missionary, they got a taste of religion.
20. If you jumped off the bridge in Paris, you’d be in Seine.
21. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, ‘I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.’
22. Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says ‘Dam!’
23. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft.
Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.
24. Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says, ‘I’ve lost my electron.’ The other says ‘Are you sure?’
The first replies, ‘Yes, I’m positive.’
25. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal?
He wanted to transcend dental medication.
26. There was the person who sent ten puns to friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did.
27. This is a repost. Pictures for this questionable use of technology are provided courtesy of “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Cougar
@SlavojTweezek Philosophy aims at explicating the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence through the application of logic and bullshit. ~ “the most popular leftist pastime” is saying racist. The louder the better. Finger pointing and pearl clutching are optional. ~ The celebrity remains beautiful, while the phone turns to crap. ~ jesus wants me for a sunbeam ~ That goes for Fox News as well. The sound off/closed caption tv’s are tough to ignore if it is in you line of sight. Football is like moving wallpaper, and easier to ignore. ~ In the first chapter of “Plays Well with Others” by Allan Gurganus, someone cleans out the apartment of a man about to die. He takes the dildo collection, and puts them in a paper bag. The paper bag breaks open on the subway. ~ @MarkHarrisNYC @AlysiaAbbott Monstrous Asshole Racist Xenophobe= MARX ~ @rgay IDGAF. I like the Kardashians. – I don’t watch their shows but I will read any glossy article about them. ~ @WernerTwertzog The truth will set set you free. Just like the other forms of delusional madness. ~ Is she saying there is one chemical in that can? ~ I like BS less after seeing this video. Right now, I am thinking over a blog post, where I will go into this in more detail. BS is good at rheotoric, and telling his followers what they want to hear. The question was electability. Is BS electable? In the electoral college nightmare that is American presidential elections, does electability matter. Al Gore can tell you how much the popular vote counts. ~ Every cougar that ever lived on the planet earth @natsecHeather @dandrezner ~ It was a debate not a football game nobody won, except for viewers that saw a movie instead ~ procrastination, fear in five short syllables, good day tomorrow ~ haiku happening, equal sign five syllables, make it so easy ~ Man charged in slaying of transgender woman ~ don’t look at this ~ Can you name the 5,000 most common English words grouped by frequency? ~ full rush transcript ~ Can We Sum Up Your Life Story In Just Six Words? ~ What to Do When Someone Tells a Racist Joke ~ ‘You Talk White:’ Being Black and Articulate ~ 33 Questions White People Have For White People ~ cougar ~ come on all you big strong peeps uncle sam has got in deep she got herself in a terrible jam out there in afghanistan put down your phones and give us your loot there’s women and children to shoot ~ #Bernie supports the murder of women and children in Afghanistan “I voted to make sure that Osama bin Laden was held accountable in Afghanistan” ~ @VeryShortStory I cooked a special meal for our date, but Adele screamed when I put the fish on her plate. Apparently mermaids don’t eat their friends.~ @WernerTwertzog “It is not a significant apocalypse.” ~ @NightlyForecast We don’t understand the problem. We put all your organs back. Now they’re in even more interesting locations. Trust us. We’re professionals. ~ An SJW heard the first few words of this joke and started shouting. ~ Pictures are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
25 Things About Georgia
These daze, there is more media than messages. People need things to write about. One popular theme, at least in itp/otp, is lists about life in Georgia. A web facility that should know better, thought catalog, recently put out 25 Things You Need To Know About Georgia.
25TYNTKAG was written by Jeremy Populus Jones. He seems to be the CEO of something called GAFollowers. (@GAFollowers on twitter) From the fine print: “GAFollowers was created on a “strength in numbers” foundation, finding a creative way to use free online social networking sites to strengthen the “bond” between people in Georgia to help better form this state. … GAFollowers is one of the largest twitter accounts in the state of Georgia that spans nearly every corner of the region.”
These lists about Georgia life usally have a few common comments. There is the heat, the bugs, the traffic, the multiple Peachtrees, and southern accents. They seldom mention the shameless corruption, religious mental illness, rampant obesity, or racial pandemonium. Lets take a look at 25TYNTKAG. Mr. Jones will be in blue, and Chamblee54 in green. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
1. The weather here is just as inconsistent as your ex-girlfriend. Not really. It gets cold in January, hot in July. Your ex-girlfriend is staying out of this.
2. We call all interstates in Georgia, “The Highway”. Most people use the number.
3. Only in Atlanta is everything named “Peachtree” without a single tree with peaches around. Peachtree is all over OTP.
4. Terio and Honey Boo Boo were born and raised here. You couldn’t do this without google. Terio is a chubby kid who dances. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
5. “Knuck if you Buck” is the song we will always get hype to no matter the age. Yuck.
6. White girls wear Nike shorts with big t-shirts covering their shorts. (How many can you spot?) Maybe there was a sale on big t-shirts at Walmart.
7. Zaxbys is what you eat. The TC comments said this is not accurate. They mentioned a certain spelling challenged company, that specializes in overpriced chicken sandwiches. At least the son of Mr. Zaxby doesn’t run off potential customers with his big mouth.
8. We call it a “rag” not a “washcloth”. Do people up north say a woman is on the washcloth?
9. Going outside at anytime during the summer instantly guarantees a minimum a 7 bug bites. This is mostly true. Who is counting?
10. In Georgia when someone ask, “Where you from?”, people usually reply with a county not a city. In Atlanta, when you say “Where are you from?” it is almost always somewhere outside of Georgia.
11. The speed limit is 65 mph but if you’re not going at least 80 mph you’ll be ran off the road. This is also true on surface roads. In hilly Atlanta, there are few places to pass on two lane roads.
12. In Georgia it’s not a shopping cart, it’s a buggy. Do people really say shopping cart? At Kroger it is a bascart. The stores have a bascart corral.
13. We get more inches of pollen in a week than inches of snow in a full year. Pollen season hits in early spring. It is rough for many people. The rest of the year gets relatively little pollen. There is a good ice/snow storm every ten years or so. This one is probably true.
14. You say Georgia, we say Jawja. Others say George-ah. To untrained ears they sound the same.
15. Sweet tea is our water. Very few people wash cars with sweet tea.
16. The night has been a success if you ended up at Waffle House. This is especially true if you are scattered, smothered, and covered.
17. In Georgia it’s necessary to look at the weather before picking out an outfit. A reason not to do numbered lists. Just think of what you have to say, write it down, and hope it is not copyrighted.
18. We pray that we get snow during the winters. The people who pray for winter storms are merchants. They have an inventory of batteries, milk, ice, and eggs to sell.
19. We are the creators of, “Turn Up”. You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip.
20. Here in Georgia white girls can twerk. No Miley Cyrus. Ditto reaction to number 17. What was PG thinking of when he decided to do this post?
21. You will usually be 30 minutes away from just about every destination that you’re heading to. 22. There’s a Waffle House in walking distance of every Waffle House. These two have been combined, for obvious reasons. Do people proofread these lists before sending them out?
23. Any dark soda is simply called “Coke”. Many say Cocola, without the second syllable.
24. We pronounce it “Atlanna”. Whatever. Sometimes the second t is audible, sometimes not. It definitely is not the ATL, except to radio shouters.
25. Braves, Falcons & UGA are the teams we really care about. Tech fans may disagree. Ditto taxpayers, who don’t care if Rankin Blank gets a new stadium.
Roll Model
another monday morning collections of facebook comments i was too discreet to publish, links to things i never wrote about, disclaimers, boilerplate, and pictures of country roads going nowhere ~ @postcrunk the cultural fetishization of virginity and the economic fetishization of brand new products are the same thing ~ #Junky is a book where you appreciate the privilege of leaving the story for your own life ~ @SlavojTweezek @WernerTwertzog The hole, of course, is god. !~ sticks and stones may break my bones but words can also hurt me compliments make me uncomfortable i have social anxiety resting bitch face negative attitude jesus hates me i don’t believe you i am a wreck just go ~ I thought it was legal for two fruit crates to get married. ~ I don’t know if involving police is a good idea. Snitch is a worse insult than faggot. ~ Roseanne Barr? ~ are we keeping #carlyfiorina alive so we can harvest her brain? ~ foreplay ~ So far, Brookhaven government has been bad. Maybe Lysol could be our City Symbol. In no particular order, here is what I want to see: 1. Leave Pink Pony alone. 2. Secure the Greenspace at PDK. It would be OK to give the county a couple of acres on Clairmont to park their work vehicles. The rest of that lands needs to be a permanent passive green space. This is an opportunity that will not come back. Once this space is lost, it is lost forever. 3. Use vision and common sense while redeveloping the land around the Marta station. This is another one time opportunity that needs to be done carefully. I don’t have any thoughts on how to do this, except that we should be skeptical of the claims of developers. 4. The less commercial development the better. 5. Discourage the building of McMansions. Encourage the renovation of the existing houses. 6. Encourage the Police to be aggressive against bad drivers from outside the city. ~ @whitman632 The sheer magnitude of human insignificance is incomprehensible. ~ I hope no one takes their life after reading this post. Good intentions do not always lead to good results. ~ @BurnBrigettes @RISKshow @TheKevinAllison Why did the dead baby cross the road? he was trying to get to the post office use stamps dot com ~ I heard a teacher say that the best way to win an argument was to use statistics. The best way to get statistics is to make them up. ~ @ChrchCurmudgeon Hashtag unto others as you would have them hashtag unto you. ~ This is on top of my facebook feed right now.~ We never had any goals in Afghanistan. Our invasion was a knee jerk reaction to 911. The only other possible goal was to protect the heroin merchants, which has also been achieved. ~ @sullydish @robertwrighter ~ I believe a literary classic was written in Tennessee: 200 Yards to the Outhouse, by Willie Makeit and Betty Wont ~ In the immortal song “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah”, there is a scary line. “You remember Leonard Skinner He got ptomaine poisoning last night after dinner” Just Gimme Three Steps. ~ said it much better ~ libruls ~ what he said ~ @miragonz imagine how hard life is gonna be for the children of youtube celebrities ~ @AdviceToWriters Mere literary talent is common; what is rare is endurance, the continuing desire 2 work hard at writing. DONALD HALL ~ Maybe it is time to just admit that racism is anything that you don’t like, and is a meaningless all purpose insult. ~ @postcrunk thank god we’re the least religious generation ~ You’d rather pursue science than waste time contemplating metaphysics? That’s sad. Perhaps you knew that Newton was an alchemist, a philosopher, a historian, a theologian, and a warden of of the mint… and, in his spare time, a physicist and a mathematician. ~ 14 words: Candied lemon roasted brussel sprout and caramelized onion white pizza with roasted garlic sauce. ~ 33 characters left if you put this on twitter ~ the power went out and the machine opens in safe mode this is not the same as the old sm, where you could play games the only thing you can do in this sm is write there probably are other things to do but i am not going to look for them now ~ Eʟɛʍɛռtaʟ ɛaʀtɦ, tɦɛʀɛ’s օռʟʏ օռɛ ɖɨʀɛċtɨօռ , up ~ australian rupert murdoch is top trending topic he did not die he said usa needs a “real black” potus ~ The domain Whiteprivilege.com is listed for sale. Click here to inquire about this domain name. ~ Sedo LogoThis page provided to the domain owner free by Sedo’s Domain Parking. Disclaimer: Domain owner and Sedo maintain no relationship with third party advertisers. Reference to any specific service or trade mark is not controlled by Sedo or domain owner and does not constitute or imply its association, endorsement or recommendation. ~ Is Benghazi the best scandal the Repubs can dig up? ~ Maybe it is time for a discussion of how visible we want to be. Do you want to tell the commercial media that you are a “radical faerie,” with all the opportunities for misunderstanding that would involve? Or do we want to be a bit more opaque about it? Bear in mind, we don’t have memberships. You don’t join the faeries. (or not join, because someone said something you do not like) Anyone can call them self a “radical faerie.” Is it appropriate to call yourself a “radical faerie” when listing your qualifications? Maybe a “secret society” is more of the way to go.~ “He ain’t even from ATL! He just moved here and he just played y’all like sheep and pocketed sooooo much of your money.” That narrows it down to about 100,000 people. ~ @JamilSmith That Raven-Symoné used “Watermelonisha” as an example of a “black name” shows you how deep the internalized racism and self-hatred goes. ~ is “Black as a dice game at a church fish fry” racist? #Ebony magazine said it about #RavenSymone ~ Franklin Graham is the poster child for the dangers of nepotism ~ Quote Investigator has found no substantive linkage to Dorothy Parker. ~ I do not recommend Ian Curtis as a role model. ~ @SlavojTweezek You have no more right to demand that I be consistent than I have to demand that you be interesting. ~ PROTESTER ~ Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. ~ @ListofX Arguing which politician is more authentic is like arguing which lion is more of a vegetarian. #Clinton vs #Biden ~ I thought entitlement was a type of chewing gum. ~ publix takedown ~ White Women, Please Don’t Expect Me to Wipe Away Your Tears ~ 9 Ways We Can Make Social Justice Movements Less Elitist and More Accessible ~ EVERYDAY SELF-LOVE COURSE ~ synchronicity ~ Davis: What Hurts Me Most Is ‘When Someone Tells Me My God Doesn’t Love Me’ ~ pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. ~ selah
Cemetery Blues
PG and Uzi had their usual Sunday phone call, and agreed to go to “Sunday in the Park”. It is a festival in Oakland Cemetery, with live music, people in costumes, open mausoleums, and lots of good clean fun. It wasn’t until that evening that PG learned that today is Dead Poets Remembrance Day. Edgar Allan Poe met his maker on this day in 1849. This is a repost.
There was a Chamblee54 post about DPRD two years ago. The idea is to go to a cemetery and read a poem. An effort will be made to do that tonight, although promises about dead poets are notoriously unreliable. The 2010 post is included as part two of this feature.
The first poem read that afternoon was “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey. In the intervening two years, PG listened to a podcast with Christopher Dickey, the son of the writer. Sometimes bard is short for bastard.
So PG, Uzi, and Hazmat went to a festival in Oakland Cemetery. Like everything else, it is more popular and expensive. You had to pay to park, which Uzi generously took care of. The brick walls around the boneyard have been repaired, and no longer look like they are going to fall down. Those walls are important, because people are dying to get inside. This is the second time that PG and Uzi have attended the October festival in Oakland Cemetery.
There are always things that you need to see at Oakland. Margaret Mitchell, the Lion Statue, and the mausoleums are important stops. PG followed the signs to the grave of Bobby Jones. It had golf balls and a putter, which was not necessary.
Don LeVert was a member of the Atlanta Sky Hi Club for many, many years before his departure in 1997. PG and Uzi always seek him out, and it is usually a bit of an adventure finding him.
After visiting Don, PG found the marker for “Brother John Wade”. His time on earth was September 23, 1865 to January 15, 1916. This was from the autumn just after the War Between the States, until 37 days before PG’s father was born in Rowland, North Carolina. There was a renewed sense of connection to the stone monuments.
The facebook friend said “Today is Dead Poets Remembrance Day, Oct. 7th, the day Edgar Allan Poe died. Be sure to visit a graveyard and read some poetry today”. PG didn’t have anything better to do.
The first obstacle was finding a book of poetry. PG is not a poetry person. A look at the shelf turned up a paperback, “125 years of Atlantic “. Poetry was to be found between those covers.
The book had two stickers, both saying 69 cents. At the old Book Nook, this meant that the book was half the price on the sticker. With tax, that would be 38 cents.
125YOA had stayed in PG’s car for a few years. Whenever he was stuck somewhere with time to kill, this book was waiting. One afternoon in 1998, there was a slow day at work. PG read a remembrance by Gertrude Stein, about life in France at the start of World War II.
The cemetery of choice was connected to the Nancy Creek Primitive Baptist Church. PG has driven by this facility thousands of times. He walked past the graves until he found a fallen tree to sit down on.
The first poem was “Looking for the Buckhead Boys” by James Dickey. PG began to read out loud, and soon could smell the drug store air of Wender and Roberts. The author bought fifty cents worth of gas at a Gulf station. Today, fifty cents might buy a tablespoon of gas, and Gulf was long ago bought out by BP. Wender and Roberts became a bar, which was torn down, to make way for a shopping destination. One day the money lenders will allow construction.
Buckhead is not what it used to be. When Mr. Dickey was the bravest man in Buckhead (he took a shit in the toilet at Tyree’s pool hall), PG was not even thought of. The traffic jams on Peachtree Street are still there, as the blue haired ladies follow poets into the ground.
When PG finished reading Mr. Dickey, he put a teal postit in the book, where the poem stood. PG looked up, and the graveyard seemed different. Maybe the sun had sank a bit in the sky, and maybe the poem had changed PG in a way he could not put into words. Maybe another poem was the answer. Take the glasses off, open the book at random, and turn the pages until a poem shows up.
On page 404…the historic Atlanta area code…was “The Wartime Journey” by Jan Struther. The 1944 work was unknown territory. A group of people are traveling on a train. The wounded vet, the untried recruit, the salesmen shared the space with a lady, taking a baby for her soldier husband to meet. The theme of the rhymes was that America was totally at war, and that war is different from peacetime. Today’s war in Babylon is not like that.
Halfway through the reading, a freight train pulled by. Today, passenger trains are a novelty, and freight rules the rails. The shipment today was double decked containers, ready to pull off and slap on an eighteen wheeler.
Deaths are said to come in threes, and reading poetry in a graveyard should be the same. PG went on a random search for a Moe, to go with the Curley and Larry already digested. A page of poems by Emily Dickinson was the result. These pages left PG unmoved. It was as if he was back in the sixth grade, with a horrible English teacher forcing him to memorize Hiawatha. It was time to go home.
One Man Heart Circle
It is the first full day back in town, after the 2015 fall gathering. If you have to ask where I was, you don’t need to know. This time around, the custom of the morning circle was brought back. This is where anyone, who wants to, can talk about the gathering.
Since this is the return to solitary city life, rather than in an improvised community, this will be a one man morning circle. I’m Luther, and my preferred pronoun is he. Pronouns are not a big deal to me. Since this is a one man circle, a singular pronoun is preferred. The concept of using they, as a gender neutral alternative to he/she, is problematic.
Some things are so much easier in this life. One of the chores I assigned myself was clearing weeds off a stone staircase. One of the tools needed an adjustment. I spent a half hour trying to find a phillips head screwdriver. Just now, I needed a flat head screwdriver to pry open a zipper. I found one in less than a minute. City life has advantages.
I don’t pay much attention to omens. If I did, I may have left after the first day. I put my tent up to a group of people who played canned music on a device. I moved my tent, further down the yurt yard. When I was putting my tarp up, I saw a seven foot non poisonous snake. This reptile made another appearance a couple of mornings later, when I was returning from my morning piss. After that, I looked where I stepped. The sticks always seemed to be moving.
remember mama in the rain
kobir made me miss the train
pick up truck needs oil
radiator fixin’ to boil
drunk down at the prison gate
mama you don’t need to hate
Very few people send postcards from gatherings. If they did this time, they would not say “the weather is beautiful wish you were here.” It rained every day, except for the last day. It drizzled. It thundered. It splattered. It dripped. It took away the sun. The paths turned into mud. Everything got wet. It was horrible. Yes, the rain did force people to stay indoors and talk to each other. There might be a better way of doing that.
black crostini sugar cookie tilapia
waffle blue fish mushroom pussy
camouflage stroopwaffel comando
sloppy joe donut grey bacon waffle
watermelon naked tuna corn nothing
noodles nude peach plaid pizza
purple ribs red frys hotdog anus
white burger chocolate spaghetti
There were some wonderful moments. The Know Talent show was not planned at first, and then a wonderful man agreed to facilitate. I brought some poems. It was the first time I had read in public. I was one of the last people to perform, and was wondering if it would happen at all, or if anyone would be left to watch. Fortunately, I did not have to follow an amazing musical act. The act before me was, literally, falling down drunk. Performance art.
what is hidden in there
bigger than her derriere
life is not fair
try not to stare
say a quiet prayer
for the girl with big hair
Somehow, things came together. Meals were served, and were usually fabulous. The dishes got washed. The costumes were a sight. You could overlook things like saturday morning. I was making my mandatory visit to the chapel. Someone said, could you hand me some toilet paper. Another voice said, there is none here either, and no box on the top shelf.
Sunday, the sun came out. I took down my tent, and got stung by a yellow jacket. I got a wheel barrow, and almost slipped in the mud. This was the last time I would walk through the yurt yard mud, hopefully for the rest of my life. I loaded the vehicle, and started up the driveway. Someone was walking in the driveway, I lost the momentum, and had to back up and try again. The second time I made it up the hill. The rest of the journey home was uneventful.
So what did I take away from the gathering? There were moments when I looked up to the sky and said thank you g-d for letting me do this. There were moments on a dance floor surrounded by spectacular human beings. There were also moments of being wet, cold, and totally miserable. I will probably want to do it again. Blessed be.
These Are The 10 Most
PG saw a facebook post from his cousin. It was about the town he lives in: Wilton Named 83rd Drunkest Place to Live in Connecticut: Report It was based on a bit of creative clickbait, These Are The 10 Drunkest Places In Connecticut.
The distibutor of this information is RoadSnacks. “RoadSnacks is based in Durham, NC. We aim to deliver infotainment about where you live that your real estate agent won’t tell you. We use data, analytics, and a sense of humor to determine the dirt on places across the country.” Other information opportunities include: “TAT10 Poorest Places In Kentucky”, “TAT10 Drunkest Places In Pennsylvania”, “TAT10 Dumbest Cities In Illinois”, “TAT10 Cities In New Jersey With The Most Ashley Madison Accounts”, “TAT10 Snobbiest Places In Louisiana.”
When PG saw the initial TAT10, he wondered about Georgia. A google search was made for “TAT10 drunkest places in Georgia.” Apparently, RoadSnacks is still crunching the numbers on that one. Three enlightening features were available: TAT10 Most Dangerous Places In Georgia, TAT10 Most Ghetto Cities In Georgia, TAT10 Most Redneck Cities In Georgia.
TAT10 lists are not scientific. The criteria varies from study to study. (For more information, be sure to check the actual post.) In dangerous places, “If any places tied, we used the violent crime rank as a tiebreaker.” In ghetto and redneck, it seems to come down to the number of retail outlets. Ghetto was ranked by convenience stores, drug stores, beauty supply stores, and discount stores. Redneck is determined by dive bars, mobile home parks, tobacco stores, guns and ammo stores, Walmarts, Bass Pro Shops, Dollar Generals and Piggly Wigglys.
In OTP Atlanta, many areas change names at the county line. When you leave Dekalb County for Gwinnett, you go from Doraville into Norcross. One road you can do this on is Buford Hiway, which is lined with Asian businesses like My Dung video. This area is home to one of the metro area international communities, and is well known for ultra authentic restaurants. Well known by everyone except RoadSnacks.
According to the TAT10 body of knowledge, Doraville is the 5th most redneck city in Georgia. When you cross the county line, Norcross is the most ghetto city in Georgia. People who are familiar with this area are probably laughing right now. Especially when they see that most ghetto Norcross is also 15th most redneck. Doraville did not make the 90 spot list for most ghetto.
The most dangerous city in Georgia is College Park, with East Point in second place. Neither city was on the redneck list. On the ghetto list, College Park is 67, and East Point is 72.
The city of Brookhaven evidently has not been in existence long enough to be rated. The only list that included Chamblee was ghetto, at 55. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Chamblee54 
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