C.S. Lewis
There was a facebook link to a feature, Ayn Rand Really, Really Hated C.S. Lewis. It turns out to be verbatim droppings from Ayn Rand’s Marginalia : Her Critical Comments on the Writings of over Twenty Authors. If you are interested in details, there are the links. 55% of the comments were one-star. This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
Miss Rand has read more C.S. Lewis than PG. There was a copy of a CSL work at a yard sale once, which PG invested a quarter in. He read as far as the appearance of a pig named trufflehunter. Maybe it was a bad day for books, but PG put CSL down, never to make another attempt.
There was a sixth grade english teacher at Ashford Park named Mrs. Ruff. Lots of people talked about how sweet she was, but PG was not impressed. One day, between handing out mimeographed copies of poems to be memorized, Mrs. Ruff started to talk about Narnia. It was a fantastic and amazing story. With a hint of primness, she told the class that Narnia was really about Jesus.
Who Invented The Word Racism?
Writers tackle was rampaging through Brookhaven. PG looked in a list of old product, and found a feature built on the output of Teju Cole. He has a dandy article, at the New Yorker, about what is antiseptically called drone warfare. It is the twitter feed that gets attention. This is a repost.
@tejucole George Carlin’s original seven dirty words can all be said freely now. The one word you can’t say, and must never print, is “racist.”
The quote marks lend mystery to the tweet. Does he mean the dreaded “n word”? Or does he mean that other six letter slur? There is no shortage of people screaming racist in Georgia, often at the slightest provocation. There is an attitude that racism is the worst thing you can be accused of. Once accused, you are guilty until proven innocent. If you do a bit of research into racism, the word, you will see some interesting things.
The concept of populations not getting along is as old as mankind. The word racism apparently did not exist before 1933 (merriam webster), or 1936 (dictionary dot com). (In 2020, both of these sources have updated their notes, on the original use of the word “racism.”)
Something called the Vanguard News Network had a forum once, What is the true origin of the term racism? This forum is problematic, as VNN seems to be a white supremacist affair. One of the reputed coiners of the R word was Leon Trotsky, also referred to as Jew Communist. Another Non English speaker who is given “credit” for originating the phrase is Magnus Hirschfeld. As for English, the word here is: “American author Lawrence Dennis was the first to use the word, in English, in his 1936 book “The coming American fascism”.”
The terms racist and racism seem to be used interchangeably in these discussions. This is in keeping with the modern discussion. As Jesus worshipers like to say, hate the sin, love the sinner.
The Online Etymology Dictionary has this to add: “racist 1932 as a noun, 1938 as an adjective, from race (n.2); racism is first attested 1936 (from French racisme, 1935), originally in the context of Nazi theories. But they replaced earlier words, racialism (1871) and racialist (1917), both often used early 20c. in a British or South African context. In the U.S., race hatred, race prejudice had been used, and, especially in 19c. political contexts, negrophobia.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. Part two is now available.
Last week this blog ran a story about the word racism. The story stated that the earliest use of the r-word was 1932. A comment led to The Ugly, Fascinating History Of The Word ‘Racism.’ Apparently, Col. Richard Henry Pratt used the word in 1902.
“The Oxford English Dictionary’s first recorded utterance of the word racism was by a man named Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. “Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or makes their growth very slow. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.” Col. Pratt was speaking at the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the American Indian.
It is always good to check out the context. Col. Pratt spoke at the Fourth session, Thursday Night, October 23, 1902. The event was well documented. There are some other noteworthy quotes.
“We have brought into our national life nearly forty times as many negroes as there are Indians in the United States. They are not all together citizen and equal yet, but they are with us and of us; distributed among us, coming in contact with us constantly, they have lost their many languages and their old life, and have accepted our language and our life and become a valuable part of our industrial forces.” The text capitalizes Indian, and presents Negro in lower case.
“It is the greatest possible wrong to prolong their Indianism, whether we do it for humanitarian or so-called scientific reasons. … The ethnologists prefer the Indian kept in his original paint and feathers, and as part and parcel of every exposition on that line. … It will be a happy day for the Indians when their ethnological value is of no greater importance than that of the negro and other races which go to make up our population.”
Col. Pratt “is best known as the founder and longtime superintendent of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School at Carlisle, PA.” While progressive for the times, many of the school’s policies were harsh.
“He pushed for the total erasure of Native cultures among his students. … The students’ native tongues were strictly forbidden — a rule that was enforced through beating. Since they were rounded up from different tribes, the only way they could communicate with each other at the schools was in English. … “In Indian civilization I am a Baptist,” Pratt once told a convention of Baptist ministers, “because I believe in immersing the Indians in our civilization and when we get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.” … Pratt also saw to it that his charges were Christianized. Carlisle students had to attend church each Sunday, although he allowed each student to choose the denomination to which she would belong.” Carlisle closed in 1918.
“In 1875, Captain Richard Pratt escorted 72 Indian warriors suspected of murdering white settlers to Fort Marion in St. Augustine, FL. Once there, Pratt began an ambitious experiment which involved teaching the Indians to read and write English, putting them in uniforms and drilling them like soldiers. … News of Pratt’s experiment spread. With the blessing of Congress, Pratt expanded his program by establishing the Carlisle School for Indian Students to continue his “civilizing” mission. Although liberal policy for the times, Pratt’s school was a form of cultural genocide. The schools continued into the ’30s until administrators saw that the promised opportunities for Indian students would not materialize, theat they would not become “imitation white men.”
“Beginning in 1887, the federal government attempted to “Americanize” Native Americans, largely through the education of Native youth. By 1900 thousands of Native Americans were studying at almost 150 boarding schools around the United States. The U.S. Training and Industrial School, founded in 1879 at Carlisle Barracks, was the model for most of these schools. Boarding schools like Carlisle provided vocational and manual training and sought to systematically strip away tribal culture. They insisted that students drop their Indian names, forbade the speaking of native languages, and cut off their long hair.” As Col. Pratt said at the LMCFAI, “I also endorse the Commissioner’s short hair order. It is good because it disturbs old savage conditions.”
Col. Pratt was known for saying “Kill the Indian, and Save the Man” He probably meant that you should destroy the native culture, so the man inside could flourish. It is easy to misunderstand this type of rhetoric. The source of this phrase: “Official Report of the Nineteenth Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (1892), 46–59. Reprinted in Richard H. Pratt, “The Advantages of Mingling Indians with Whites,” Americanizing the American Indians: Writings by the “Friends of the Indian” 1880–1900 (Harvard University Press, 1973), 260–271.” There are some tasteful quotes.
“Inscrutable are the ways of Providence. Horrible as were the experiences of its introduction, and of slavery itself, there was concealed in them the greatest blessing that ever came to the Negro race—seven millions of blacks from cannibalism in darkest Africa to citizenship in free and enlightened America; not full, not complete citizenship, but possible—probable—citizenship.” Col. Pratt used African Americans as an example of how to assimilate Native Americans.
“The five civilized tribes of the Indian Territory—Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks, and Seminoles—have had tribal schools until it is asserted that they are civilized; yet they have no notion of joining us and becoming a part of the United States. Their whole disposition is to prey upon and hatch up claims against the government, and have the same lands purchased and repurchased and purchased again, to meet the recurring wants growing out of their neglect and inability to make use of their large and rich estate.”
The best known student at the Carlisle School was Jim Thorpe, coached by Pop Warner. Wa-thohuck was born May 28, 1888, near Prague OK, into the Sauk and Fox Nation. He won gold medals in the pentathlon, and decathlon, at the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, Sweden. It later came out that he had been paid to play semi-pro baseball, and was not an amateur. The gold medals had to be forfeited. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
The Obama Doctrine
There is a novella in the current issue of The Atlantic, The Obama Doctrine. It is written by Jeffrey Goldberg. PG was mining TOD for big words, to use in a poem. While doing this, he copied a few quotes. These quotes, and the commentary they inspire, are a good excuse for a post. The pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
“Obama would say privately that the first task of an American president in the post-Bush international arena was “Don’t do stupid shit.” Obama’s reticence frustrated Power and others on his national-security team who had a preference for action. Hillary Clinton, when she was Obama’s secretary of state, argued for an early and assertive response to Assad’s violence. In 2014, after she left office, Clinton told me that “the failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad … left a big vacuum, which the jihadist have now filled.” When The Atlantic published this statement, and also published Clinton’s assessment that “great nations need organizing principles, and‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle,” Obama became “rip-shit angry,” according to one of his senior advisers. The president did not understand how “Don’t do stupid shit” could be considered a controversial slogan. Ben Rhodes recalls that “the questions we were asking in the White House were ‘Who exactly is in the stupid-shit caucus? Who is pro–stupid shit?” The Iraq invasion, Obama believed, should have taught Democratic interventionists like Clinton, who had voted for its authorization, the dangers of doing stupid shit.”
TOD has two parts. The first section is devoted to a decision not to bomb Syria. The second part is the result of a series of interviews that Mr. Goldberg conducted with President Obama. Apparently, bombing Syria would have been stupid shit. Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bowdlerized this mantra. Apparently this is the job of the Secretary of State… to turn shit into stuff.
“Obama was also unsettled by a surprise visit early in the week from James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, who interrupted the President’s Daily Brief, the threat report Obama receives each morning from Clapper’s analysts, to make clear that the intelligence on Syria’s use of sarin gas, while robust, was not a “slam dunk.” He chose the term carefully. Clapper, the chief of an intelligence community traumatized by its failures in the run-up to the Iraq War, was not going to overpromise, in the manner of the onetime CIA director George Tenet, who famously guaranteed George W. Bush a “slam dunk” in Iraq.”
Syria had long been ruled by the Assad family. They are not nice people. The people of Syria wanted regime change. The Assads responded by killing lots of people. There was much hand wringing in the west about this. President Obama said that it would be a “red line” if chemical weapons were used. Then, reports of WMD use came in. The President needed to do something.
“He and McDonough stayed outside for an hour. Obama told him he was worried that Assad would place civilians as “human shields” around obvious targets. He also pointed out an underlying flaw in the proposed strike: U.S. missiles would not be fired at chemical-weapons depots, for fear of sending plumes of poison into the air. A strike would target military units that had delivered these weapons, but not the weapons themselves.”
Chemical weapons do not respect borders. If poison gas is released into the air, it will go wherever it wants to go. This includes Syria’s next door neighbor Israel. The role of Israel is the Syrian troubles is kept quiet. It is known that when the Muslims are fighting each other, they are not fighting Israel. This concept kept the Iran-Iraq was going for eight bloody years.
“Ninety minutes later, at the White House, Obama reinforced Kerry’s message in a public statement: “It’s important for us to recognize that when over 1,000 people are killed, including hundreds of innocent children, through the use of a weapon that 98 or 99 percent of humanity says should not be used even in war, and there is no action, then we’re sending a signal that that international norm doesn’t mean much. And that is a danger to our national security.”
In this statement, the President was talking about Syria. He could have meant any number of conflicts. Children in Gaza are killed by Israeli cluster bombs. Children in Africa are killed, often by other children, in dozens of wars and guerrilla conflicts. Children in American cities are killed by handguns. It goes on and on.
“I have come to believe that, in Obama’s mind, August 30, 2013, was his liberation day, the day he defied not only the foreign-policy establishment and its cruise-missile playbook, but also the demands of America’s frustrating, high-maintenance allies in the Middle East”
For years it has been a mantra that Israel is the only ally of the United States in the middle east. Of course this is nonsense, as anyone driving a car powered by Arab oil products should know. For Jeffrey Goldberg to acknowledge this may be the most startling thing in this feature.
But not the last. The article goes on, and on, and on. It is full of overblown talk like this: “Obama said that to achieve this rebalancing, the U.S. had to absorb the diatribes and insults of superannuated Castro manqués.” TOD reads like a Rorschach test. Those who admire the President will find confirmation for their opinions. Those who dislike Obama will also see much they agree with. It is a good question what Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton see. This is a repost.
The Poetry He Invented
PG has learned that two poems he enjoyed were “borrowed.” One was in Mad Magazine. It was a poem about baseball. “Tigers Tigers, burning bright, in the ballparks, of the night, your pitching’s fair, your fields adroit, so why no pennant for Detroit.” Not only was this a memorable rhyme, but it has the word adroit. While this is a wonderful addition to a vocabulary, in fifty six years PG has never used it. Maybe the only purpose adroit serves is rhyming with Detroit.
PG is not terribly well educated when it comes to poetry. A lot of things slip by him. He did develop an admiration for Allen Ginsberg, which led to William Blake. One night, with the World Series in the background, PG found a poem by Mr. Blake, The Tyger.
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” Could it be that Mad was more fun to read? A more adroit turn of phrase? Or less prophetic … The Tigers won the World Series before the sixties were over.
In a few years, PG moved byond Mad Magazine. He read about these albums being sold by Warner Brothers. They were collections of songs from different artists, designed to make you want to buy more. “The Big Ball” cost two dollars by mail order. Side four was devoted to weird stuff. Captain Beefheart, The Mothers of Invention, The GTO’s, and Pearls Before Swine. The last band had a song, Footnote, which is included today.
Footnote is a quiet song, with easy to remember words. PG listened many, many times, and thought he had it figured out. It was about an arms dealer. Of course, most think the Pearls Before Swine is something in the Bible. Another version is when Clare Boothe Luce went into a room ahead of Dorothy Parker. “Age before beauty” “Pearls before swine”.
So anyway, there was an article about something, somewhere. It was quoting Wyston Hugh Auden, known mercifully by his initials W.H. This is another famous person that PG knew little about, other than his friendship with Christopher Isherwood. The quote was familiar. Then it hit… this was that song by Pearls Before Swine. It seems like the performer borrowed the lyrics from Epitaph on a Tyrant. Pictures for this repost are from The Georgia State University Library.
Hollywood Part Five
This is the fifth, and final, installment of chamblee54’s revenge fantasy against Hollywood, by Charles Bukowski/Hank Chinaski. The book is an account of making the movie Barfly. Other chapters in this series are available. one two three four Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
37 – Some photographer comes by. He wants to take photographs of Hank, and Francine Bowers/Faye Dunaway. Jack Bledsoe/Mickey Rourke also posed, but refused to sign a release. I went looking for the pictures online. I found a picture that Francine and Hank did after the movie has been released. I don’t know what happened to the glamor shots.
38 – The action starts at a party, after shooting for Barfly wrapped up. It’s at a club somewhere, rented only until midnight. Hank orders a drink after midnight. The bartender says she has to charge him. Tonight, because, she’s a fan, Hank won’t have to pay. The evening is a mixed blessing for Hank. Some guy comes up to him, and swears he got drunk with Hank at Barney’s Beanery. The fan is offended that Hank does not remember.
The Super Bowl turned into a disaster. I was at my online poetry reading, watching the game with the sound cut off. Channel 11 was not doing very good. It kept going into this video catastrophe. It was tolerable as long as the picture came back, and I could see most of the action. But then, just as the game was starting to get good, the video just completely went out. I’m probably not going to watch too much TV until football season starts again, so it might not be a problem.
I’m trying to pay attention to the game, and feeling terrible because I can’t. I get a phone call, pick up the phone, and push this button. It is supposed to turn on speaker phone, but, if the call is not fully connected, will decline the call. IOW, I hung up. The call was from “J,” who lives in Mexico. He can call me, but I cannot call him. After some facebook messaging buzzouts, we get to talk on the phone. “J” was carrying on about how he does not care about the super bowl, and I just zoned out and said yeah, yeah, yeah. Tomorrow is another day.
39 – Hank goes to the editing room, and asks John Pinchot about the producers. “They are like children, they have heart. Even when they are trying to cut your throat, there is a certain warmth about them. I’d much rather deal with them than with the corporate lawyers who run most of the business in Hollywood.”
There’s a tasty quote on page 200. Hank notices a shot in the movie where his alter ego is meeting a girl. He takes a beer that he’s halfway through, pushes it aside, and doesn’t finish it. Hank points out that no alcoholic would ever do that. “That’s what happens you have a director who isn’t an alcoholic, an actor who hated to drink, and an alcoholic writer who preferred to be at the racetrack.”
40 – Hank and Sarah go to a screening of the movie. They get to the screening place, and it’s been moved to another location. They have to drive over there, and Hank needs a bottle.
There is a rhetorical tactic called the Motte and Bailey. As I understand it, this strategy involves making a claim that no one could disagree. Later, you learn that the plan is for something treacherous. An example would be CRT in K-12 schools. Who could disagree with learning about racism in school? It seems reasonable enough. It is only when you bring in Robin DiAngelo that you learn the truth. “Its always something. If its not one thing its another.”
Motte and Bailey is based on a medieval castle. The motte is a ground in front, where people live their everyday lives. The Bailey is a fortified stone house behind a moat. When there is trouble, this is where people go to wait out the trouble.
41 – Well Hank is going good, now that he’s made it to the premiere. This chapter is pretty boring, except when Hank tells about the time he lived with Tully and Nadine. This is not the same Nadine that Chuck Berry wrote a song about. Nor is it about the facebook friend who lives in Florida with three cats, one of whom is named Nadine.
Hank was living with this lady named Tully, some sort of entertainment industry suit. Tully thought Hank was in a bad way, and needed to be cared for. Hank responded by staying drunk, insulting all her friends, and fornicating with Tully whenever appropriate. Tully had a housemate named Nadine, who was keeping a musician named Rich. One night Hank and Rich got drunk, and decided that this business of being a kept fuckboy was not working too good, even if Nadine was a nymphomaniac. Nadine was going around the house naked one time, when Tully was out. Hank was not amused, and said he didn’t want to see her p**** flapping around. Nadine replied that she wouldn’t screw him if he was the last man on Earth.
42 – Hank is hanging out at the house in Los Angeles, and takes a phone call from Jon Pinchot at the Cannes Film Festival. Mickey never showed up, and Francine is making a spectacle of herself. She’s the last great movie star. Meanwhile Hank is reading James Thurber, who he thought was pretty funny. It was a shame that Thurbur had such a upper-middle-class view point. “He would have made one hell of a badass coal miner.”
It’s time for another interlude from real life. I was at the gym, and Neil Young’s “Rockin in the free world” came over the noise box. It was so ironic to hear that old geezer sing about freedom, when he is made taken it upon himself to censor Joe Rogan. I agree with Lynyrd Skynyrd about Neil Young.
I will give Neil Young credit for one thing. One afternoon in 1978 I went over to see someone. He told me that 96 Rock was giving away tickets to see Neil Young. 96 Rock was in that triangle building on Clairmont Road. There was a man out in front, with a shoebox full of tickets for Neil Young at the Omni. You could have taken you could have asked him for 15 tickets, and he would have happily given them to you. The seats were in the upper level, at the back of the hall. The band was so loud you could hear them clear as day. Even though I think Neil Young is a pretentious, half-crazy fuquad, he puts on a damn good show. He was doing the Rust Never Sleeps show. The roadies were dressed up like Star Wars characters. Neil tore the place up, so you have to give a man credit, even if he has way too many opinions for his own good, and is ugly is boiled over sin.
The only Neil that’s uglier than Neil Young is Neal Boortz. I would hate to be the judge of that beauty contest. I saw Mr. Boortz give a show, at the CNN Center, one time. They had an on camera talk show, with Neal as the host. It is a cliche that Neal has a face for radio, but there is another reason he never made it on tv. When he talked that day, you could see the disdain for the audience in his face. You can just look at him, and tell that he’s a lying a*******. He thinks you’re an idiot for paying attention to him, which many of his followers are … this robo secretary rant is being edited on the day after Russia invaded Ukraine. It is amazing how last week’s concerns are now obsolete.
43 – At first, there was not going to be a premiere for Barfly. Then Hank insisted that he wanted one. He wanted to have a white limousine take him to this premiere. On the night of the premiere, this gentleman named Frank picks him up. Frank was sort of an a******, but then very few people got along with Hank. They made it to the premiere without breaking down in Hollywood traffic.
There used to be a dirt road in Chamblee, where a bunch of limousines were parked. I just rode my bike by there, and I saw them. There’s another place down on Whitehall Street, just south of downtown. They kept horses that used to pull buggies for the tourists . I don’t go downtown anymore, so I don’t know if it is still there.
44 – So the premiere happened. Hank and Sarah showed up, and had to have some wine brought in for them. They sat on the front row, where all he could see was these huge figures towering above. He realized that one day he was going to watch it all on videocassette, so he could actually see it.
After the premiere Hank is in the men’s room. There’s this drunk at the urinal next to him. He says “hey you’re hanging trying to ski.” Hank says “no, I’m his brother Danny.” “why don’t you talk to him” “because I used to beat him up every time I could and that’s why we don’t get along. I don’t know why I came to this premiere, I hate his guts, but that’s how life goes”
There were a bunch of hippies at Cross Keys who thought forty four was a magic number. It was Hank Aaron’s jersey number. Forty four has a certain synchronicity, with the multiplication of two times two times eleven. Eleven is two ones to that, so there is a sequence of two ones multiplied by two twos. There’s a certain fibonaccian synchronicity afoot. Two is a fibonacci number, as is thirteen, which is two plus eleven. Thirteen is also considered unlucky.
45 – I am starting to run out of things to say. The story is over, but Hank might be getting paid by the word. I did enjoy this adventure. The next book is The Santa Suit, by Mary Kay Andrews. TSS is off to a slow start, and seems a touch boring, after the antics of Hank Chinaski. An Amazon one-star review gets to the inner truth: “The book is ripped and dirty. I can’t give this to a patient for christmas! If I could give it zero stars I would”
The one-star review did not have a period at the end. When you write stuff, you notice details like that. God is in the details. I always think I am going to have a red-pencil happy english teacher going over my text. Like my butch tenth grade teacher. She was married at the time, to a greasy haired man with two packs of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.
46 – This is the last chapter. This has been a fun series. It was my first production written, in part, by the google robo secretary. While it requires a lot of editing after the fact, it does have its applications. It is good for reading text from a book, like this cable tv movie show review of The Dance of Jim Beam, which is what Hank calls Barfly. The next paragraph was borrowed, and not written by me.
“Selby shook his head, and limp-wristed the movie away. Awful, terrible. This has to be the worst movie of the year. Here we have this bum, with his pants down around his ankles. He’s filthy, uncaring, obnoxious. All he wants to do is beat up the bartender. From time to time he writes poems on torn pieces of paper, but mostly we see this scumbag sucking on bottles of wine, or begging for drinks at the bar. In one bar scene, we see two ladies fighting to their very death over him. Impossible. Nobody nobody would ever care for this man. Who could care for him. We rate movies from 1 to 10 here. Is there anyway I can give this a -1?”
From what I remember of my bar-room days, there’s a lot of characters like that. I’ve always felt that Hank Chinaski is the one person who actually created something, instead of just feeding a urinal. Drunks are generally useless people.
One morning, a friend and I had been up all night tripping. We wound up in the blue room, a beer joint across the street from the bus station. There was this guy in there named Hawaiian Eddie. He was insisting that we stay, and let him buy us another beer. We had to lie to him, and tell him we had to go to work, so we could leave without drinking more beer. Life was fun in those days.
Mardi Gras
It is fat tuesday again. For someone who lived most of his life in Georgia, it is just another day.
In 1990, PG went to carnival. He rented sleeping bag space in a house on Marigny Street, just outside the quarter. It was like nothing he had ever seen.
This was 14 months after PG quit drinking. If he had life to do over, he would have gone to Mardi Gras first. He did feel good about going through that much drinking without being tempted to participate.
By the end of the Rex Parade, PG was getting tired of the whole shebang, Mob scenes of drunks, in costume, can get old. PG has not been back.
Two years later, the Grateful Dead was playing at the Omni, and the camp followers were in the parking lot. PG would go on his lunch hour and observe. A young lady walked by, and PG said Happy Mardi Gras. She gave him a string of beads.
Five years after that, PG had a boss from New Orleans. He looked like the Grinch who stole Christmas. He also hated Mardi Gras. PG did not know this, and greeted him Tuesday morning with a cheerful Happy Mardi Gras. If looks could kill, PG would have dropped dead. This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
The Consumption Of The Poor
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eve babitz ~ repost. ~ vouchers ~ alfred north whitehead ~ persuasion vs. force
fengshui.com ~ twitlonger ~ mohini books ~ dialectics ~ whitman
livemylief ~ upshift strategies ~ jayne cortez ~ leaf blowers ~ kmart
gaza ~ antonio brown ~ omeretta ~ repost. ~ baby boy pajulas
benajim smith ~ qe2 covid ~ paul farmer ~ bible one star ~ jesus and mo
8 values ~ american values 2 ~ white rabbit ~ grant macdonald ~ ram ranch ~ maajid nawaz
that looks like my wordle today. I was getting discouraged. The temptation to give obviously wrong answers, to get to the end, can be strong. Sometimes, it is just a matter of not giving up. It is only a game. ~ dorothy parker If, with the literate, I am/Impelled to try an epigram,/I never seek to take the credit;/We all assume that Oscar said it. ~ @nhannahjones For instance, if you think the SF school board recall was abt building names, and not abt changes to admission to the selective high school that would let more Black and Latino students in, you are being willfully ignorant of these same battles happening in other parts of the US ~ Grant MacDonald: “I’m just elated, totally elated that my song could be used to stand up for science” ~ Honk Honk means to squeeze your titties while screaming out: “Honk Honk!” Many women and trans people do this to indicate they are ready for mating season. ~ @robstiles1 “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. Once the fraud is exposed they must then rely solely on force.” – George Orwell ~ “The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy … good writing stops.” George Orwell ~ @SenSanders Yes, it’s important that McDonald’s pigs be treated humanely. But maybe it’s more important that we take care of the humans who work there by paying them a living wage and making it easier to form a union, instead of spending $15 billion on stock buybacks to enrich the wealthy. ~ @realchrisrufo P.S. The reason John Oliver and Trevor Noah aren’t funny is because, traditionally, the court jester is supposed to mock the nobility; Oliver and Noah, by contrast, sneer at the population “below” them. They’re not a challenge to power; they’re a mouthpiece for power. ~ @mfa_russia Russia government organization #Putin: The purpose of this operation is to protect people who, for 8 years now, have been facing genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime. To this end, we will seek to demilitarise & denazify Ukraine, bring to trial those who perpetrated bloody crimes vs civilians ~ This tweet includes a brief video that explains this point. Almost nobody in the United States was thinking about Ukraine at the time. @ThePr0diga1S0n Analysis & prediction on Ukraine from 6 years ago: “The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path & the end result is Ukraine is going to get wrecked.” -John J. Mearsheimer, Professor of Political Science, U. of Chicago ~ “Well behaved women rarely make history” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” Oscar Wilde The Critic As Artist ~ Birds spray Xanax, on the compulsive joker, Who is afraid of the punitentiery. When you drink like a land based animal, Hit men would be cheaper. The subliminal message in the cheesecake only works for low perbole. The world knows, and does not care. ~ Pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” ~ selah
Gloomy Sunday
Billie Holiday had a hit with Gloomy Sunday in 1941. The legend is that people would listen to the song, and kill themselves. As a result, the song was banned from the radio. Or was it?
Gloomy Sunday was written in 1933 by Rezső Seress. Additional lyrics were later written by László Jávor. It became known as the “Hungarian Suicide Song”, and was reportedly banned in Hungary. An english translation (which is said to not do justice to the original Hungarian) was rendered.
Gloomy Sunday has a melancholy sound, even as an instrumental. The story is about a person…it is not gender specific…who decides to join a loved one who has died. A third verse was added, to the english version, where the singer says it was all a dream.
Gloomy Sunday became popular in the United States. And the suicide stories started to spread, along with rumors that the song had been banned from the radio. (It was indeed banned by the BBC.) There are indications that these rumors were part of a publicity campaign.
Snopes. calls the story “undetermined”. Legends like this get a life of their own. A grieving person hearing this song on a dreary Sunday is not going to be uplifted. One thing is known for sure…the original composer did take his own life. Rezső Seress jumped off a tall building in Budapest in 1968. The legend is he had never had another hit song after writing “Gloomy Sunday”. This repost has pictures from The Library of Congress.
The Portrait Of Mr. W. H.
“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.” The gem, blamed on Oscar Wide, turned up on a data mining site. A quick search indicates that the quote in genuine, and is found in The Portrait of Mr. W. H. (1889.) Searching for context in a Wilde story can yield more than you bargained for.
PMWH is a tacky short story, with an eyeroll-inducing ending. SPOILER ALERT: This ending will be discussed today. PMWH is the story of an unnamed correspondent (UC), who is having a conversation with Erkskine. The players are Englishmen of a certain class, who all seem to have servants. The conversation gets onto forgery in the arts. UC felt that “to censure an artist for a forgery was to confuse an ethical with an aesthetical problem.” To which Erkskine replied, ‘What would you say about a young man who had a strange theory about a certain work of art, believed in his theory, and committed a forgery in order to prove it?’
Erkskine’s friend was Cyril Graham. “He was very fascinating, and very foolish, and very heartless.” Cyril developed some theories about the identity of Mr. W.H. … “A person known only by his initials, to whom the first edition of William Shakespeare’s sonnets (1609) was dedicated”… “To the onlie begetter of, These insuing sonnets, Mr. W.H. all happinesse … ” Cyril thought that W.H. was Willie Hughes, an androgynous young man of great beauty. “He felt, as indeed I think we all must feel, that the Sonnets are addressed to an individual, – to a particular young man whose personality for some reason seems to have filled the soul of Shakespeare with terrible joy and no less terrible despair.”
Erkskine thought that these ideas were foolish, and said so to Cyril. Soon after, Cyril produced a painting, that he found under strange circumstances. Allegedly, it was a portrait of Willie Hughes. Erkskine thought this a bit odd, but played along … until he stumbled onto evidence that the painting was a forgery. “I went off at once to Cyril’s chambers, waited there for three hours before he came in, with that horrid lie staring me in the face, and told him I had discovered his forgery. He grew very pale and said – “I did it purely for your sake. You would not be convinced in any other way. It does not affect the truth of the theory.
“The truth of the theory!” I exclaimed; “the less we talk about that the better. You never even believed in it yourself. If you had, you would not have committed a forgery to prove it.” High words passed between us; we had a fearful quarrel. I daresay I was unjust. The next morning he was dead.'”
“… he shot himself with a revolver. … By the time I arrived – his servant lad sent for me at once – the police were already there. He had left a letter for me, evidently written in the greatest agitation and distress of mind. … he believed absolutely in Willie Hughes; that the forgery of the picture had been done simply as a concession to me, and did not in the slightest degree invalidate the truth of the theory; and that in order to show me how firm and flawless his faith in the whole thing was, he was going to offer his life as a sacrifice to the secret of the Sonnets. It was a foolish, mad letter. I remember he ended by saying that he entrusted to me the Willie Hughes theory, and that it was for me to present it to the world, and to unlock the secret of Shakespeare’s heart.’ “
UC is convinced that the Willie Hughes story is real. “Erskine looked at me in amazement. ‘You are carried away by the sentiment of the whole story,’ he said. ‘You forget that a thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it. ” UC leaves, and tries to prove the Willie Hughes hypothesis to be true. This goes on for a while, until UC talks himself out of it. By this time, however, Erkskine has changed his mind, and is a Willie Hughes true believer. If this is getting complicated and confusing, you can read the story. Oscar’s prose is entertaining, if a bit archaic to the modern reader.
Erkskine is dismayed by UC’s lack of belief. He sent UC a letter. “The concluding words of the letter were these: ‘I still believe in Willie Hughes; and by the time you receive this, I shall have died by my own hand for Willie Hughes’s sake: for his sake, and for the sake of Cyril Graham, whom I drove to his death by my shallow skepticism and ignorant lack of faith. The truth was once revealed to you, and you rejected it. It comes to you now stained with the blood of two lives, – do not turn away from it.'”
“It was a horrible moment. I felt sick with misery. … To die for one’s theological beliefs is the worst use a man can make of his life, but to die for a literary theory! It seemed impossible.”
SPOILER ALERT: Fret not, gentle reader. When UC caught up with the Erkskine’s family, he heard a different story. “I turned to the doctor and said, ‘What a dreadful shock it must have been to Lady Erskine! I wonder that she bears it as well as she does.’ ‘Oh, she knew for months past that it was coming,’ … if a mother knows that her son is going to commit suicide’ … ‘Suicide! Poor Erskine did not commit suicide. He died of consumption. He came here to die. The moment I saw him I knew that there was no hope. … At that moment Lady Erskine entered the room with the fatal picture of Willie Hughes in her hand. ‘When George was dying he begged me to give you this,’ she said. As I took it from her, her tears fell on my hand.”
“It is always a silly thing to give advice, but to give good advice is absolutely fatal.” The Portrait of Mr. W. H., by Oscar Wilde, has many zesty quotes not included above. The one about advice stands out. It is similar to well known Oscarism. “A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. ” The line about sincerity is found in The Critic as Artist. In this episode, Gilbert and Ernest are exchanging clever thoughts.
Gilbert: Ernest, you are quite delightful, but your views are terribly unsound. I am afraid that you have been listening to the conversation of some one older than yourself. That is always a dangerous thing to do, and if you allow it to degenerate into a habit you will find it absolutely fatal to any intellectual development. As for modern journalism, it is not my business to defend it. It justifies its own existence by the great Darwinian principle of the survival of the vulgarest. …
Ernest: But what is the difference between literature and journalism?
Gilbert: Oh! journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read. … How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions! …
Ernest: The true critic will be rational, at any rate, will he not?
Gilbert: There are two ways of disliking art. One is to dislike it. The other, to like it rationally. …
Ernest: Well, at least, the critic will be sincere.
Gilbert: A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.
Gilbert also says “Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.” This is a rather sexist counterpoint to that bumper sticker classic, “Well behaved women rarely make history.” The latter was penned by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, in a scholarly article. “1976 Spring, American Quarterly, Volume 28, Number 1, “Vertuous Women Found: New England Ministerial Literature, 1668-1735” by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Johns Hopkins University Press” The seminal quote said seldom, rather than rarely. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Examine Your Whiteness Part Three
During the debate about ex-employee revenge, PG took a bit of heat for his position. He was told repeatedly to “Examine your whiteness.” This was rather confusing. To attempt to get more information about EYW, PG typed the phrase into google. This is what he found. Out of consideration to the reader’s attention span, none of these results will be *examined* in depth. If the reader uses the links, they can get more information. This is a repost.
Examining Whiteness: An Anti-Racism Curriculum “These materials, prepared by the Rev. Doctor William Gardiner, are made available to Unitarian Universalists (UUs), particularly white people interested in transforming their whiteness through understanding the complex history of white supremacy of over four hundred years in the United States, and the impact it has on us as individuals and the society as a whole.” This is a study course, for groups and individuals. Two of the documents are DIFFERENT WAYS OF BEING WHITE and DEVELOPING A POSITIVE WHITE IDENTITY. Some of the materials seem a bit contradictory, but may prove valuable with enough study.
Why Talk About Whiteness? “Her statement illustrates why educators, activists and allies doing racial justice work are increasingly focused on the importance of examining whiteness: It’s impossible to see the privilege and dominance associated with white racial identity without acknowledging that whiteness is a racial identity.” There is a great deal of semantic prestidigitation in these materials, and in the overall discussion of racial values.
Examine Your Whiteness, and Examine Your Whiteness Part Two, are the two posts that PG wrote about Palmer Marsh. This is results three, and four, of the google search request. Hopefully, this will generate some traffic.
The Meaning of Whiteness ” One of the requested topics was “whiteness,” a topic both obvious—how can a book about race not examine whiteness?—and curious, for I was quite sure that there would be no similar entries for “blackness” or “Asian-ness”. Whiteness, you see, is a unique concept and explaining it poses unique challenges. … who gets to define whiteness? In contemporary progressive circles, it is generally assumed that a group should be able to define itself, but whiteness has historically been defined by non-whites. … There are several different components of whiteness. These include: 1) racial identity, 2) racial bias, and 3) racial privilege.”
What Is Whiteness? is from the New York Times. PG foolishly used one of his four free articles for this month to see this. The article was written in 2015, and used two current stories to illustrate a whiteness binary. While some might see what follows as nonsense, you should be aware that it was written by “Nell Irvin Painter, a professor emerita of history at Princeton University and the author of “The History of White People.”
“The terrorist attack in Charleston, S.C., an atrocity like so many other shameful episodes in American history, has overshadowed the drama of Rachel A. Dolezal’s yearslong passing for black. And for good reason: Hateful mass murder is, of course, more consequential than one woman’s fiction. … An essential problem here is the inadequacy of white identity. Everyone loves to talk about blackness, a fascinating thing. But bring up whiteness and fewer people want to talk about it. Whiteness is on a toggle switch between “bland nothingness” and “racist hatred.” On one side is Dylann Storm Roof … On the other side is Ms. Dolezal … . But why, we wonder, did she pretend to be black? … Eliminating the binary definition of whiteness — the toggle between nothingness and awfulness — is essential for a new racial vision that ethical people can share across the color line.”
America’s newspaper of record is saying is that the choices for whiteness are Dylann Roof and Rachel Dolezal. Maybe they are talking about hair. We get to choose between the soupbowl haircut of Dylann Roof, or the horror movie frizzle of Rachel Dolezal.
5 Ways To Check Your White Privilege Imagine you walk into a room of 10 random strangers and shout the words “white privilege.” There is no need for suspense. The five ways are: “1. During discussions on race, be mindful not to silence people of color. 2. Do not assume you worked harder than a person of color to get where you are today. 3. Don’t expect a person of color to educate you on race whenever you feel like it. 4. Consume film, television, music, and other media in a mindful way. 5. Don’t assume people of color are “pulling the race card.””
How Much Sweat is Too Much Sweat? The article above had a header ad to pay the bills. “When sweating gets excessive and happens for no clear reason, it could be a sign of a real medical condition known as hyperhidrosis.”
The Whiteness Project “The Whiteness Project is an interactive investigation into how Americans who identify as “white” experience their race. … The latest installment, Intersection of I, is a collection of 23 interviews filmed in Dallas, Texas in July 2015 and released in April 2016.” This feature does not give any specific instructions for the examination of whiteness. OTOH, it is entertaining and enlightening. Twenty three young people, all white, give video talks about their experience with race. One is a running back, who people are surprised to hear is white. One is a high school student, who says some of the black kids at his school are disruptive. If you have the time, these videos are worth your time to watch. If nothing else, many of the young adults are cute.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The North Carolina pictures were taken in October, 1936, by Arthur Rothstein. The South Carolina pictures were taken in July, 1937, by Dorothea Lange.
Such A Society
The writing workshop announcement appeared before the event. I went to the signup, and was checked in at 7:27. Tonight’s prompt is to write a “golden shovel.” The gs poem is going to be 25 lines long. Every word in the original piece will appear at the end of a line. The seminal poem is by Dr. Doris Derby. … Pale green husks, Of corn grow, Tall and proud, As the young kernels, Of each one, Emerge from darkness, With bright faces, Bathed in Sunlight. … I finish the first draft at 7:55. I will now edit, until the workshop says to stop.
Seeking the beauty beyond the Pale, blue shimmering waves of green, another shucker looking for husks, recovering from the harvest Of, telepathic aromatic corn, after the earth is done with grow, yesterday’s yellow Tall, and wide and frangrant and, retro rainbow standing proud, wearing polyester of the nines As, whimsical overtures of the, quasi legal sticky ripe young, wallowing in the southern kernels, escaping from the yankee sludge Of, teach one reach one each, five four three two one, fighting and kicking to Emerge, out of the twilight from, the placebo darkness, driving out the donald With, fibonaccian synchronistic bright, well scrubbed faces, dark golden moonlight Bathed, over toes and behind ears in, radiant convulsive Sunlight, just, a suggestion she tells me now.
The day started with breakfast, and medications. I looked on Twitter and I saw this: @robstiles1 “All tyrannies rule through fraud and force. Once the fraud is exposed they must then rely solely on force.” – George Orwell” There are a lot of flaky Orwell quotes. The Orwell wikiquote does have a similar quote, and a source. I did a search of the TLDR document, and found the quote that uses “fraud.”
“Totalitarianism, however, does not so much promise an age of faith as an age of schizophrenia. A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is, when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud. Such a society, no matter how long it persists, can never afford to become either tolerant or intellectually stable. … The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy … good writing stops. …”
The second quotable is more relevant today. “The mere prevalence of certain ideas can spread a kind of poison that makes one subject after another impossible for literary purposes. Wherever there is an enforced orthodoxy … good writing stops.” The free flow of information, and entertainment, is currently under fire from many sources. The government, working in tandem with big data, has one agenda. Social Justice Jihad has a powerful ideology, upon which one trespasses at one’s own peril. With all these regulators of information, it is a miracle we hear anything other than football scores.
A poem was well on its way to completion. The soundtrack was a new episode of the Bret Easton Ellis podcast. The poem is a series of nine images, with text added at the bottom. When you finish a picture, the first reaction is to go look at facebook and twitter.
Grab the book nearest to you, turn to page 18, and find line 4. The book is the Holy Bible, with Jean D. Mckinnon in gold letters. Page 18/line 4: Genesis 18:15 “Then Sarah denied, saying, I laughed not; for she was afraid. And he said, Nay; but thou didst laugh.” Line 4 is underlined.
18:15 is just another verse from Genesis, and did not do much for me. What made me cry was the presentation page. “Presented to Jean, by Luke, 7-23-56” This was in my father’s challenging handwriting, on my mother’s birthday. 7-23-56 was a few weeks after my brother was born.
The guest on the BEE podcast was another writer, Jarett Kobek. The desperate state of modern publishing was lamented. The chat picked up when Mr. Kobek asked BEE if he heard about the amateur American Psycho porn. The video features two women having fun, while reading, out loud, a murder scene from American Psycho. It is moments like this, when you want to see the BEE reaction, that podcasting shows a weakness. Bret recovered fast enough, and said “I hope they were hot.” Soon another image was finished, and it was back to twitter.
Kyle Rittenhouse Reveals He Intends On Suing LeBron James. Announcing intention to sue online might not be a good legal strategy. Of course, we are talking deep pockets, and a deep throat. After the televised testimony of Mr. Rittenhouse, this tweet appeared: @KingJames What tears????? I didn’t see one. Man knock it off! That boy ate some lemon heads before walking into court. 🤣🤣
Mr. James likes to express his opinions. “James also made waves back in April for suggesting … that an officer was racially motivated for fatally shooting 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant, who was, at the time, attempting to stab another girl. … I am so desperate for more ACCOUNTABILITY.” You should be careful what you wish for. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
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