Tyler Perry And The Heart Of Atlanta
There is an old saying, what goes around comes around. When you sow the wind, you reap the whirlwind. The thing is, it is not always obvious what is payback for what. Moreton Rolleston Jr. filed a lawsuit to have the Civil Rights Act declared unconstitutional. Forty years later, a Black man, built a mansion on the site of Mr. Rolleston’s home. The fact that this Black man earned his money by playing Black women, in movies, is icing on the cake.
When the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, Moreton Rolleston, Jr. owned the Heart of Atlanta Motel. He filed a lawsuit, trying to have the law overturned by the courts. The case went to the Supreme Court, which upheld the law.
The legal justification of the Civil Rights Act was a law giving the U.S. Government the right to regulate interstate commerce. Mr. Rolleston argued that this use of the commerce clause went too far. “‘The argument that this law was passed to relieve a burden on interstate commerce is so much hogwash. It was intended to regulate the acts of individuals.’ If the commerce clause can be stretched that far, declared Rolleston, ‘Congress can regulate every facet of life.'” (PG supports all citizens having the right to housing, education, etc. He also wonders if we are on a slippery slope. The government keeps taking more and more freedom away.) (The link for the quote no longer works.)
In 1969, Tyler Perry was born. From humble beginnings, he has been incredibly successful. His signature character is a woman named Madea.
In 1985, Mr. Rolleston was involved in a real estate deal that went sour. He was sued. In 2003, Mr. Rolleston was evicted from his Buckhead home. In 2005, the property was sold to Tyler Perry. Mr. Rolleston sued Mr. Perry, claiming that 2035 Garraux Road was still his property.
Mr. Rolleston , was disbarred in 2007. The Veteran’s History Project shows his race as “Unspecified.” Moreton Mountford Rolleston, Jr., born December 30, 1917, died August 29, 2013.
HT Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub.. This is a repost, with pictures from The Library of Congress.
The Number One Hit When I Was Born
There was a man known as XWinger. He sold Celtic music, and promoted DimSum groups. He also had a blog. It linked to a site that tells you what the Number One song was on that day. The arbiter of number oneness is Billboard, with assistance from wikipedia.
The List goes back to 1892. On January 1, 1892, the #1 hit was “Drill, Ye Terriers, Drill,” by George J. Gaskin. I imagine that before a certain date this would refer to sheet music, or maybe player piano thingies. Other big hits from the Gay Nineties include “The Fatal Wedding” (1894, George J. Gaskin), “Little Alabama Coon” (1895, Len Spencer) and ” A Hot Time in the Old Town”(1897, Dan Quinn).
When my daddy was born in 1916, the top hit was “M-O-T-H-E-R (A Word that Means So Much to Me,)” by Henry Burr. When my mother was born in 1922, the top of the billboard charts was “Stumbling,” by Paul Whiteman.
In October 1929, the stock market crashed to “Am I Blue,” by Ethel Waters. When Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, the big song was “Chattanooga Choo Choo,” by Glenn Miller. Mr. Miller joined the Army after the start of the War, and toured with a band to entertain troops. On December 15, 1944, his plane disappeared in France. The number one hit that day was “I’m Making Believe,” by the Ink Spots and Ella Fitzgerald. The Ink Spots played at the Domino Lounge downtown when I was a kid. I heard people say, “the Ink Spots have been around for a while”.
In 1954, this reporter was born. The number one hit that day was “Wanted,” by Perry Como. Two years later, my brother was born to the sounds of “Heartbreak Hotel,” by Elvis Presley.
One way to track the hits through the years is to pick a date and follow it. It should be noted that Billboard is the essence of “commercial”. On my tenth birthday, the big sound was “Hello Dolly,” by Louis Armstrong. On the verge of the summer of Love, the big hit was “Something Stupid,” by Frank & Nancy Sinatra. At no time did the Beatles have a number one hit on my birthday. This attitude improved in 1969 with “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” by the Fifth Dimension.
The seventies continued the commercial tradition with “Joy to the World,” by Three Dog Night. This was in 1971, the year they played a big show at Atlanta Stadium. The disco monster raised its glittering hand with “Night Fever,” by the Bee Gees in 1978.
As the eighties rolled in, I got a job and apartment, and music became less familiar. The first big May hit of the eighties was “Call Me,” by Blondie. It was from a movie starring Richard Gere, without gerbils. The decade was not a total loss, as 1983 featured “Beat It,” by Michael Jackson.
Moving into the nineties and oughts, my old fogey decrepitude is near total. Or is that the wasteland of pop music? By this time top 40 is all but extinct, am radio given over to all talk stations, and fm music so spread out that no one style of music is dominant. The number one hit on my birthday, one recent year, is “Bleeding Love,” by Leona Lewis.
Of course, the leaders of our country don’t always listen. On May 28, 1915, the biggest song was “I Didn’t Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier,” by the Peerless Quartet. And, on May 28, 1964, the number one hit was “Love Me Do,” by the Beatles. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. XWinger, aka Michael Liebmann, passed away July 26, 2016.
Slow Days, Fast Company
On the last wednesday of 2021, I read the last paragraph of Slow Days, Fast Company: The World, The Flesh, and L.A. by Eve Babitz. Bret Easton Ellis mentioned EB, and SDFC, several times on his podcast. I ordered SDFC from the library. While reading it, on December 17, Eve Babitz died. Did I kill EB, by reading her book?
SDFC has been described as the work of an unapologetically shallow California girl. It is true. Then EB references Virginia Wolff, or Diane Arbus. In one story, EB (no middle name) goes to a gated community in Orange County for the weekend. The people there are so Nixony! Later, one of the ladies commits suicide. EB plows ahead without missing a beat.
EB was gonna design an album cover for Janis Joplin, and went to meet her. Janis was in the studio. The music was painfully loud. Janis was passed out on the floor of the studio. A few days later, EB went to visit Janis at some hotel in Los Angeles. Janis was laying up in the pool face up, not drowning but obviously on a distant planet.
SDFC is an amazing book. It’s not very long, broken down into nine stories. EB went to Bakersfield to hang out with the son of a grape grower. Another is when that EB hangs out with a lady who is a musician, and heroin user. EB thinks that heroin is very glamorous, for other people. EB was a big tequila fan, and consumed a few plane-loads of white powder. SDFC is set around 1973, before the democratization of cocaine in the eighties.
After the demise of Joan Didion, and EB, Bret had Lily Anolick on his show. She did a podcast series about Bennington College. The lady … whose name is not anal-lick … wrote Hollywood’s Eve: Eve Babitz and the Secret History of L.A. Amazon had a one star review: Totally the C Word “After reading this book I thought I was going to have to go to the clinic and get treated for VD. Incredible, did she really have sex with this many people?”
SDFC is written by a woman, from a woman’s point of view. Here is a sample. “Women want to be loved like roses. They spend hours perfecting their eyebrows and toes and inventing irresistible curls that fall by accident down the back of their necks from otherwise austere hair-dos. … The only time men fall in love with roses is on douche commercials.”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Second International Pageant of Pulchritude and Eighth Annual Bathing Girl Revue, May 21, 22, 23, Galveston, Texas, 1927. This article includes the picture of a naked EB playing chess with Marcel Duchamp.
Bowel Games
The story below is a repost from 2013. The Dawgs® had a good year, and are in the Capital One Orange Bowl. The pictures are from The Library of Congress .
The Georgia Bulldogs beat somebody’s Aggies in Shreveport, Louisiana last night. The affair is something called the Independence Bowl. The Fishwrapper has an ad for a casino-hotel-spa. The link no longer works. Athens can go back to creating a school the football team can be proud of.
This is the season of bowl games. A few years ago, any town with a stadium, and a chamber of commerce, could get a bowl game. Any school with .500 season could go to a bowl, many of whom now had grafted on corporate names. There was, literally, the poulon weedeater bowl holiday classic.
What follows is a story PG read in Sports Illustrated when he was a kid. There is no source, and there is a slight possibility that it is not true.
In the sixties, NBC had a new years day triple header of bowl games. The sugar bowl was followed by the rose bowl was followed by the orange bowl. Hangovers and national championships were fixed in one day. NBC made handsome profits.
An Olympic committee had a meeting one day, to determine who would telecast the upcoming games. The man from NBC went in, with promises of money for amateur athletics. The presentation centered on the january first triple header: the sugar bowl, the rose bowl, and the orange bowl.
Another network won the bid. After the meeting, an Olympics official had a private conversation with the NBC man. The committee felt that their emphasis on bowel games was in bad taste.
Flannery O’Connor
With one day before it was due, PG finished reading Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor , by Brad Gooch. The author is a professor of English at William Patterson University in New Jersey. He spares no citations. You can see where he gets his information. This is a repost.
Chamblee54 has written before about Miss O’Connor , and repeated the post a year later. There is a radio broadcast of a Flannery O’Connor lecture. (The Georgia accent of Miss O’Connor is much commented on in the book. To PG, it is just another lady speaking.)
Mary Flannery O’Connor was born March 25, 1925 in Savannah GA. The local legend is that she was conceived in the shadow of St. John the Baptist Cathedral, a massive facility on Lafayette Square. Her family did leave nearby, and her first school was just a few steps away. This is also a metaphor for the role of the Catholic Church in her life. Mary Flannery was intensely Catholic, and immersed in the scholarship of the church. This learning was a large part of her life. How she got from daily mass, to writing stories about Southern Grotesque, is one mystery at the heart of Flannery O’Connor.
Ed O’Connor doted on his daughter, but had to take a job in Atlanta to earn a living. His wife Regina and daughter Mary Flannery moved with him, to a house behind Christ The King Cathedral. Mr. O’Connor’s health was already fading, and Mother and Daughter moved in with family in Milledgeville. Ed O’Connor died, of Lupus Erythematosus, on February 1, 1941.
Mary Flannery went to college in Milledgeville, and on to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. She dealt with cold weather, went to Mass every day, and wrote. She was invited to live at an artists colony called Yaddo, in upstate New York. She lived for a while with Robert and Sally Fitzgerald in Connecticut, all while working on her first novel, “Wise Blood”. In 1950, she was going home to Milledgeville for Christmas, and had been feeling poorly. She went to the hometown doctor, who thought at first that the problem was rheumatoid arthritis. The illness of Flannery O’Connor was Lupus Erythematosus.
Miss O’Connor spent much of that winter in hospitals, until drugs were found that could help. She moved, with her mother, to a family farm outside Milledgeville, which she renamed Andalusia. She entered a phase of her life, with the Lupus in relative remission, and the drugs firing her creative fires, where she wrote the short stories that made her famous.
Another thing happened when she was recuperating. Flannery was reading the Florida “Market Bulletin”, and saw an ad for “peafowl”, at sixty five dollars a pair. She ordered a pair, and they soon arrived via Railway Express. This was the start of the peacocks at Andalusia, a part of the legend.
During this period of farm life and writing, Flannery had several friends and correspondents. There was the “Bible Salesmen”, Erik Langkjaer, who was probably the closest thing Flannery had to a boyfriend. Another was Betty Hester, who exchanged hundreds of letters with Miss O’Connor. This took place under the stern eye of Regina O’Connor, the no nonsense mother-caregiver of Flannery. (Mr. Gooch says that Betty Hester committed suicide in 1998. That would be consistent with PG stumbling onto an estate sale of Miss Hester in that time frame.)
The book of short stories came out, and Flannery O’Connor became famous. She was also dependent on crutches, and living with a stern mother. There were lectures out of town, and a few diverse personalities who became her friends. She went to Mass every day, and collected books by Catholic scholars. Flannery was excited by the changes in the church started by Pope John XXIII, and in some ways could be considered a liberal. (She supported Civil Rights, in severe contrast to her mother.)
In 1958, Flannery O’Connor went to Europe, including a trip to the Springs at Lourdes. Her cousin Katie Semmes (the daughter of Captain John Flannery, CSA) pushed Flannery hard to go to the springs, to see if it would help the Lupus. Flannery was reluctant…” I am one of those people who could die for his religion sooner than take a bath for it“. When the day for the visit came, Flannery took a token dip in the waters. Her condition did improve, briefly. (It is worth speculating here about the nature of Flannery’s belief, which was apparently more intellectual than emotional. Could it be that, if she was more persuaded by the mystical, emotional side of the church, and taken the healing waters more seriously, that she might have been cured?)
At some point in this story, her second novel came out, and the illness blossomed. Much of 1964 was spent in hospitals, and she got worse and worse. On August 3, 1964, Mary Flannery O’Connor died.
PG remembers the first time the name Flannery O’Connor sank in. He was visiting some friends, in a little house across from the federal prison.
Rick(?) was the buddy of a character known as Harry Bowers. PG was never sure what Harry’s real name was. One night, Rick was talking about Southern Gothic writers, and he said that Flannery O’Connor was just plain weird. ”Who else would have a bible salesman show up at a farm, take the girl up into a hayloft, unscrew her wooden leg and leave her there? Weird.”
Flannery O’Connor was recently the subject of a biography written by Brad Gooch. The book is getting a bit of publicity. Apparently, the Milledgeville resident was a piece of work.
PG read some reviews of this biography, and found a collection of short stories at the library. The book included ” Good Country People”, the tale about the bible salesman. Apparently, this story was inspired by a real life incident. (Miss O’Connor had lupus the last fifteen years of her life. She used crutches.) And yes, it is weird. Not like hollywood , but in the way of rural Georgia.
Some of the reviews try to deal with her attitudes about Black people. On a certain level, she is a racist. She uses the n word freely, and her black characters are not inspiring people. The thing is, the white characters are hardly any better, and in some cases much worse. In one story, “Everything That Rises Must Converge,” a black lady is the hero.
The stories are well crafted, with vivid descriptions of people and places. The reader floats along with the flow of the story, until he realizes that Grandma has made a mistake on a road trip. The house she got her son to look for is in Tennessee, not Georgia. She makes him drive the family car into a ditch. Some drifting killers come by. Grandma asks one if he prays, while his partner is shooting her grandchildren. Weird.
In another story, a drifter happens upon a pair of women in the country. The daughter is thirty years old, is deaf, and has never spoken a word. The drifter teaches her to say bird and sugarpie. The mother gives him fifteen dollars for a honeymoon, if he will marry her. He takes the fifteen dollars and leaves her asleep in a roadside diner.
There was a yard sale one Saturday afternoon. It was in a house off Lavista Road, between Briarcliff and Cheshire Bridge. The house had apparently not been painted in the last forty years. Thousands and thousands of paperback books were on the shelves. The lady taking the money said that the lady who lived there was the friend, and correspondent of, the “Milledgeville writer” Flannery O’Connor. This is apparently Betty Hester, who is mentioned in many of the biography reviews.
PG told the estate sale lady that she should be careful how she said that. There used to be a large mental hospital in Milledgeville, and the name is synonymous in Georgia with mental illness. The estate sale lady had never heard that.
UPDATE: PG sometimes reads poems at an open mic event. His stage name is Manly Pointer. This is the bible salesman in “Good Country People.” This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” It was written like James Joyce. An earlier edition of this post had comments.
Fr. J. December 10, 2009 at 3:00 pm I am glad you take an interest in Flannery, but to say baldly that she is a racist is to very much misunderstand her. For another view on Flannery and race, you might want to read her short story, “Everything that Rises Must Converge.”
chamblee54 December 10, 2009 at 3:17 pm “On a certain level, she is a racist.” That is not the same as “baldly” labeling her a racist. (And I have a full head of hair, thank you). As a native Georgian, I am aware of the many layers of nuance in race relations. I feel that the paragraph on race in the above feature is accurate.
Debunking An Urban Legend
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slovenia santa ~ Pachyderm ~ whataburger ~ ride ~ sos
velvet underground ~ lombardi ~ safe words ~ the grand finale ~ fruitcake lady
fruitcake song ~ aita ~ “Fruitcake Lady.” ~ repost ~ National Fruitcake Day
ukraine ~ fonts ~ gene autry ~ rudolph ~ rudolph
gene autry ~ st paul of thebes ~ margarine ~ Buc-ee’s ~ steam games
beltline ~ eve babitz ~ buffalo springfield again ~ eve babitz ~ white women
frank sutton ~ ami mattison ~ dylan vs donovan ~ self respect ~ spacey
gusto ~ writing retreat ~ senate $ disclosure ~ jesse ~ kkk
letters of note ~ burroughs/capote ~ burroughs/capote ~ Susan Maree Bourne ~ aitchison
Renay Mandel Corren ~ twitter rules ~ tpusa ~ franklin abbott ~ zestos L5P
blake stuerman ~ mcmichael ~ wheel of fortune ~ wretched ~ vanna white ~ aspiration
New York Police officers throw American flag on the ground, arrest unvaccinated man after trying to order food at Panera Bread ~ “A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that’s just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it’s a joke.” -Soren Kierkegaard ~ For many years I believed that I remembered helping my grandfather drink his whisky toddy when I was six weeks old, but I do not tell about that any more, now; I am grown old, and my memory is not as active as it used to be. When I was younger I could remember anything, whether it had happened or not; but my faculties are decaying, now, and soon I shall be so I cannot remember any but the latter. It is sad to go to pieces like this, but we all have to do it. Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1 (2010) p. 210 ~ Someone posted a meme-quote by Isaac Asimov, “Any book worth reading is a book worth banning.” Being the pedant that I am, I went looking for the quote in Mr. Asimov’s wikiquote. Using banning and worth as search terms did not yield any results. Using reading uncovered this gem: “Seeing a rotten picture for the special effects is like eating a tough steak for the smothered onions, or reading a bad book for the dirty parts.” “Editorial: The Reluctant Critic”, in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 6, (12 November 1978) ~ i just learned that #EveBabitz also died this week. I am in the middle of Slow Days, Fast Company. It is almost as if I killed her ~ 99% Invisible recently did a show, “I can’t believe it’s pink margarine.” PIctures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” This is a repost. ~ There is a story about the recording session. There is no source, so believe if you like. Gene Autry had a recording session. The studio time, and musicians, were paid for a certain amount of time. The session went well, and the sides were recorded. There was a half hour of paid up studio time available. Somehow had the sheet music for this song, it was passed out to the musicians, and Mr. Autry recorded “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer.” ~ dear 2021 What are your preferred pronouns? I am going to call you he/him. You are a singular entity … for which we can be grateful … and therefore they/them is out. / If there is one thing you have taught me, it is to listen to my gut. The old saying is that if a man is not a liberal when he is 20, he does not have a heart. If he is not a conservative when he is 40, he does not have a brain. I am 67, and my heart and my brain are not what they used to be. However, my gut is bigger than ever. My gut tells me things that my heart and my brain are afraid to. / One news item from the last week is our anti-christ former president telling people to get the covid vaccine. His administration pushed to get a vaccine out in less than a year. I have my doubts and issues about this treatment, but am playing along. I would like to take human ivermectin as a prophylactic, but big pharma/big government/ big data are making that very difficult. My gut tells me that something is very, very, wrong here, but feel powerless to do anything. Just as I am powerless from having your time run out friday night, only to be replaced by another he year. ~ @chamblee54 @NYerFiction On podcast page of @WNYC the author is referred to as “her” In this tweet, the author is “his” Apologies play a role in this story. What apology is appropriate for this misgendering? ~ “i’m the most hated lesbian in baltimore due to my views on trans debate ~ @ContraPoints I have way more haters than she does for the record ~ @chamblee54this is progress. we have gone from babs johnson, the nastiest person in the world, to whatshername, the most hated lesbian in baltimore ~ @ContraPoints *filthiest ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Fruitcake
December 27 is National Fruitcake Day PG sees a chance for some text to put between pictures. He would be nutty as a fruitcake to turn down this chance. This is a repost.
Fruitcakes were buried with the dead in Ancient Egypt. It’s true. Ancient Egyptians used to fill the tombs of the dead with all the supplies that they would need to enjoy the afterlife, including food and water. Fruitcake was often put into the tomb of a deceased person because a fruitcake soaked in a natural preservative like alcohol or fruit juice would last a long time. It was thought that the preserved fruitcake would not spoil on the journey to the afterlife. Fruitcake was a staple food of other ancient Middle Eastern, Southeast Asian and Mediterranean cultures as well
Candied fruits are used in fruitcake because using sugar was the only way to preserve the fruit long enough to get it back to Europe from the Middle East. When the Crusaders began carrying exotic fruits back to their European home the fresh fruit would spoil long before they were able to get it home. Ingenious traders began drying the fruits by candying them with sugar which made them an even more delicious treat and preserved them indefinitely. Once the candied fruits were sent to Europe and to other parts of the world they were baked into cakes so that they could be shared with family and friends on special occasions.
Fruitcakes will last for years without spoiling. It’s true. A fruitcake that is properly preserved with an alcohol soaked cheesecloth that is then wrapped in plastic wrap or foil can be kept unrefrigerated for years without spoiling. In the past, before refrigerators came along, families would make fruitcake for holidays and special occasions months in advance of the actual event and then let the covered fruitcakes sit wrapped in an alcohol soaked cloth until the event happened. As long as the cloth was remoistened with alcohol occasionally the cakes not only didn’t spoil, they actually tasted richer and sweeter because they had been soaking in brandy and rum for a couple of months.
To millions of fruitcake consumers, the town of Claxton GA is very special. This south Georgia town, just down the road from Reidsville, is home to Claxton Fruit Cake . The story of the Claxton Fruit Cake company is a sweet one. Savino Tos founded the Claxton Bakery in 1910. He hired Albert Parker in 1927, and sold him the business in 1945. Mr. Parker decided to sell Fruit Cake to America.
No story about fruitcake is complete without mentioning the “Fruitcake Lady.” Marie Rudisill, an aunt of Truman Capote, wrote a book of fruitcake recipes. She became a tv celebrity, before going to the bakery in the sky on November 3, 2006.
The urban dictionary has nine listings for fruit cake. The ones for homosexuals and crazy people are there. UD gets creative with this selection: “The act of releasing green chunky diarrhea onto your partners face then, ejaculating on it, then punching him/her in the nose causing the colors to mix together to form a fruit cake like color.”
If you tire of jokes about fruitcake, you can go to The society for the protection and preservation of fruitcake . (If you click on the “new URL”, you will be invited to join in the green card lottery.) There used to be a link on the society page that enables you to buy Fruitcake Mints. “Keep your breath fruitcake fresh with these festive mints!”
Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
White Margarine
PG used to hear old timers talk about margarine being a white paste. The consumer would add the yellow color later. This bit of information had gone undisturbed for many years, until the 12:58 point of the Useless Information Podcast. There was a 1947 radio commercial for Delrich E-Z Color Pak.
Delrich E-Z margarine came in a plastic bag, along with a capsule. You broke the capsule, and yellow dye flowed out. You knead the bag, until the dye mixes with the margarine. It was considered an improvement over the mixing bowl.
Margarine was invented in 1869. “French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès … patented a lower priced spread made from beef tallow. He dubbed it oleomargarine–from the Latin oleum, meaning beef fat, and the Greek margarite, meaning pearl, this last for its presumably pearlescent luster.”
The dairy industry saw margarine as unfair competition for butter. In 1886, the federal Margarine Act was passed. Many oppressive taxes and regulations were put in place. Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Ohio enacted a legislative ban on the use of margarine.
Most butter is dyed. The rich yellow that we associate with butter only comes from grass fed cows. If the cows are grain fed, butter is a pale yellow.
Yellow was more appealing than pink. In an effort to further demonize margarine, Vermont, New Hampshire, and South Dakota required margarine to be dyed pink. The Supreme Court overturned the pink laws, citing the laws’ effect on interstate commerce.
During World War II, butter was in short supply. Margarine became more popular. Finally, the laws requiring the sale of white margarine were repealed. Wisconsin kept the white margarine law until 1967, and forbade use of margarine in public places, unless requested, until 1971.
99% Invisible recently did a show, “I can’t believe it’s pink margarine.” PIctures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.” This is a repost.
Mithras Is Born
Until 2009, PG had never heard of Mithras.
Mithras is a Persian deity, from the Zoroaster tradition.(That is pronounced Zor uh THRUS ta.) Not much is known about Mithras … did he really exist, or was he a legend? There was a cult of Mithras in the first century Roman empire.
There are supposed to be similarities between Mithras and Jesus. These include the virgin birth, the birth on December 25, and rising from the dead after three days. Some spoilsports say the early christians grafted Jesus onto the legend of Mithras.
One indication that this might be true is The Catholic Encyclopedia. “Some apparent similarities exist; but … it is quite probable that Mithraism was the borrower from Christianity.” This repost has pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Solstice
1159 AM The audio entertainment for this morning is another episode of Cocaine and Rhinestones. This is a show about country music, with Tyler M. Coe hosting. Today’s history lesson was about soap operas, before diving into Tammy Wynette and George Jones. TMC got talking about how a George Jones song is the greatest country song ever written. This is kind of the sort of debate that I don’t really have much interest in.
Meanwhile, I am starting work on a villanelle. It was inspired by a 1960 something song, Let it all hang out. LIAHO is an esoteric piece of work, with lines like “makes Galileo look like a boy scout.” I don’t want to repeat copyrighted material, even if one of the villanelle rhymes is hang out. The other rhyming word is defenestration, and it is going to be all four and five syllable words. Some of these words I never knew before, like prefecundation. They are cool words, and will be exploited down to the last syllable. We will get back to George and Tammy, but not before Nashville made a suggestion. “Why don’t you shoot heroin like Ray Charles, instead of using that cocaine that ruins your voice.”
12:58 PM One of the biggest obstacles to getting anything done is Facebook. The temptation to check in on Facebook, or it’s evil sister Twitter, is overwhelming. I saw this post … something about Atlanta history … and they had this these catfish restaurants on Marietta, or Southside, or Alabama. Someone said something about having one on Cheshire Bridge. I had a ad on my computer for this one on Cheshire Bridge. The former catfish king is this building at the bottom of the hill, right next to Peachtree Creek. That building currently is a club called the heretic, and before that it was a lesbian wigwam called the sports page. If those walls could talk …
204 PM I’m experimenting with different styles of photo editing. I’m going to be using some shots of graffiti from east Atlanta. The idea is to go through the motions, until you start to do something that you like. I just finished my coffee. This is one of the turning points of the day, when I finish drinking coffee, and switch to water. Since it’s raining outside so I’m probably not gonna go walking, although I might go up to the gym. I have to take Mac to marta at 5:30, so I can’t really get anything going.
2:52 PM I’m finished with this episode of the show. It was time to sit down for a few minutes, and so I took the laptop into the living room. Next is the last episode of Operator, a show about people that had a phone sex room. In the last couple of episodes, people started to get too greedy and they started firing people. It’s getting into the sad part of the story. I used to read a lot of biographies of showbiz people, and they have a similar trajectory … they would start off poor, and then they work like crazy, and they get their break. They have a run of success, and then they start getting divorced, and taking drugs, and acting like fools. The craft starts to suffer. It’s kind of a typical story.
417 PM in three minutes it will be 420 which is not quite as much fun as it used to be. I’m taking a break from the pictures-and-podcast lifestyle for a minute. The podcast is You Must Remember This, hosted by Karina Longworth. It’s about Hollywood, and stories from the movies. Ms. Longworth is obnoxiously woke. She never misses a chance to remind you that racism is everywhere, and it is just horrible. The latest series is about Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. Ms. Longworth tells about the struggles Mr. Davis faced, in explicit woke fashion. Today was the last installment of the series. Dean and Sammy are dealing with the struggles of being old men. Mr. Davis did not help matters any by foolishly spending money, that he did not have. It was a sad finale to the story. The good news is that Ms. Longworth will move on to another subject, hopefully one with less racism to decry. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Chamblee54 
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