Half Asleep In Frog Pajamas Part Two
This is a repost from 2019, before the world went into a spiral. … Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas finished it’s performance in front of my glasses. Like most Tom Robbins books, HASP does not have a satisfying ending. The author/auteur creates characters, throws them into troubling situations, and makes word jokes about their plight. Unfortunately, books come to an end, and what serves as a plot should have a termination. For this wordsmith, the journey is so much fun that the destination is reduced to an ad in the travel guide. (Author and auteur both come to us through “Middle English auctour, from Anglo-French auctor, autor, from Latin auctor promoter, originator, author, from augēre to increase.”) Neither noun is as important as it used to be.
The best way to approach HAFP is to forget the plot God, and go directly to the details, where she can be found. Like page 333, which is half of 666, but with a fraction of the opprobrium. There is this exchange, between Gwen Mati and Larry Diamond. They are the *star crossed lovers* in HAFP. “Wait a minute. You have to get the government’s permission to get an enema?” “This may be the land of the free, sweetheart, but you’re deluding yourself if you think your ass is your own.”
Larry Diamond is probably the stand in for Tom Robbins. He is full of conspiracies, hypotheses, feces, and other aromatic arcana. Considering that HAFP was published in 1994, and presumably written before then, the reader wonders what was in his crystal ball. Consider this item on page 315: “If global warming melts the polar ice caps, as some predict, we will have little choice in our resumption of an aquatic life style.” LD talks about frogs a lot in HASP, but very has little to say about pajamas. Do you say pa JAH muz, or pa JAM muz?
HAFP is full of semi-plausible conjecture projection. Consider the part on page 318, about magic mushroom spores coming to earth, from the star Sirius. Fair enough, but how did the extraterrestrial spores find their way to cowpies? The star Sirius is a key player in the morpho-mythology of HASP. How much is true, and how much was created in the mental compost of the Robbins mind? When I read HAFP in 1996, I could only wonder. On the 2019 reading, Google is ready when you are.
The tale LD weaves involves the Dogon people of ancient Timbuktu. Here is what one source says: “The Dogon stories explain that also. According to their oral traditions, a race people from the Sirius system called the Nommos visited Earth thousands of years ago. The Nommos were ugly, amphibious beings that resembled mermen and mermaids. … The Egyptian G-ddess Isis, who is sometimes depicted as a mermaid, is linked with the star Sirius.”
Isis has a PR problem these days. For some reason, an armed terrorist/freedom fighter group is killing people in the middle east. Depending on the day, and campaign contributions, ISIS is seen as an enemy of the American people. What does this have to do with a Goddess? Will a rebel army be named for Astarte, Diana, Hecate, Demeter, Kali, or Inanna?
“The Nommos, according to the Dogon legend, lived on a planet that orbits another star in the Sirius system. They landed on Earth in an “ark” that made a spinning decent to the ground with great noise and wind. It was the Nommos that gave the Dogon the knowledge about Sirius B. The legend goes on to say the Nommos also furnished the Dogon’s with some interesting information about our own solar system: That the planet Jupiter has four major moons, that Saturn has rings and that the planets orbit the sun. These were all facts discovered by Westerners only after Galileo invented the telescope.”
“The system is also known to the Bozo, who call Sirius sima kayne (literally: sitting trouser) and its satellite tono nalema (literally: eye star).” Lately another Kayne has become popular. He is hardly a sitting trouser. Has the Kardashian husband been gifted to us from a distant solar system?
At some point in HAFP, Larry Diamond makes plans to go to Timbuktu. He will lick the belly of the toad, and take a magic carpet ride. Gwen Mati was grossed out. “It sounds like a drug.” “Its a hallucinogenic bufotoxin. Aspirin is a drug.”
“Bufotoxin, a moderately potent poison secreted in the skin of many anuran amphibians, especially the typical toads (genus Bufo.) The milky fluid contains several identifiable components: bufagin, with effects on the heart similar to those of digitalis; bufotenine, a hallucinogen; and serotonin, a vasoconstrictor. The composition of the poison varies with the species of toad. Taken internally, the poison causes severe, even fatal reaction in many predators, but some animals (e.g., hognosed snakes) are not affected. The poison does not normally affect human skin, but it does irritate the eyes and mucous membranes.” There was no word on spores from outer space.
This is enough fun for one day. Part one of this series is available at an internet near you. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Sixty One Years
Sixty one years ago, John Kennedy went to the oval office in the sky. The bullets hit Mr. Kennedy at 12:30 pm, CST. He arrived at the hospital at 12:37. He had a faint heartbeat on arrival, but quickly succumbed to his wounds.
I was nine years old. I was in Miss Mckenzie’s fourth grade class. There was going to be an assembly soon, and the class was going to perform. There was a rehearsal in the cafetorium, and some of the kids were acting up. They went back to the class, and I thought they were going to be chewed out about the misbehavior in the cafetorium. Instead, Miss Mckenzie came into the room, and told the kids that President Kennedy had been shot during a parade in Dallas Texas. She did not say anything about his condition. One kid cheered the news.
School let out at the regular time, and I walked home. My mother and brother were crying. I was told that the president had died. The cub scouts meeting that afternoon was canceled.
Later that night, a plane arrived in Washington. The tv cameras showed a gruesome looking man walk up to a microphone. He was introduced as President Lyndon Johnson. This may have been the worst moment of that day. Photographs for this repost today are from “Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”.
Did Socrates Read And Write?
This story starts with a facebook meme. A fbf posted a picture of a thoughtful statue. The text read ‘When the debate is lost, slander becomes the tool of the loser.’ Socrates. I thought that Socrates never wrote anything that survived. All of what we attribute to Socrates was written by Plato. People reading this blog should know what happened next. This is a repost.
Did Socrates Say Slander Is ‘The Tool of the Losers”? is one of several results. They all said the same thing … the quote is bogus. A tweet from Eric Trump is not evidence of authenticity.
I began to think, which is never a good sign. Was Socrates able to read and write? was on the screen a few minutes later. The speculation is mixed. Some say that that Socrates was stone illiterate.
Thomas Musselman “Socrates served in the government on juries. Historians now know that legal proceedings were common over business matters of great sophistication and the the juries were well-educated concerning such matters. General literacy existed by the late 400s BC for the general pubic in primary school. Upper class males even in Socrates’ day would have been literate and there was an active book-seller market. To function in the world that Socrates functioned in required literacy.”
Google turned up a curious document. It is a passage written by Plato, “Phaedrus.” Pp. 551-552 in Compete Works. An Egyptian G-d is talking to a King, about an invention … writing.
“In fact, it (writing) will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.”
SOCRATES: “But, my friend, the priests of the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak. Everyone who lived at that time, not being as wise as you young ones are today, found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, so long as it was telling the truth, while it seems to make a difference to you, Phaedrus, who is speaking and where he comes from. Why, though, don’t you just consider whether what he says is right or wrong?”
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
Eight Score And One Year Ago
A vicious battle had been fought near Gettysburg, PA. It is widely considered the turning point of “Mr. Lincoln”s War,” the moment when the Union took the upper hand. It came at a horrible price, and a cemetery was built to hold this price. This is a repost.
The ceremony to dedicate the cemetery was held November 19, 1863. The headline speaker was Senator Edward Everett. The President was an afterthought. After it was over, Mr. Everett reportedly told the President that he said more in two minutes than he did in two hours.
The speech by Mr. Lincoln is an American classic. Schoolchildren are forced to memorize it. There are a few legends, many of which are not true. According to The Lincoln Museum, the speech was written on White House stationary, not the back of an envelope. The train ride would have been too bumpy to write. There is also confusion about what happened to the original text.
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Sutra Concern
dark thin empty gaze · remember creaking clomping · nothing but himself
Robert Lee Frost wrote the motto of the fencing industry, and never recieved a dime in return. Of course, RLF has been dead 61 years, which may have something to do with this. RLF is not well known to the younger generation, but was quite a force in his day.
teenage Buddhism · understand Sutra concern · will raise man warning
There are a lot of warnings in the manosphere these days. The spectre of teenage Buddhism is attaching itself to the carnal corporal copulation, while inducing somatic suffering and existential eggheads. When you understand … or oversit … these concerns, you will be blessed.
SCAM ORIGINATES · RUNAWAY COLONIAL · FAT INDIGENOUS
The headline of this all-caps eyesore is “IN THIS HOUSE WE BELIEVE.” Of course, the middle three letters of BELIEVE is LIE, but don’t worry about that one. It is all a SCAM, and if you BELIEVE enough you will revert from slender Euro-American to FAT INDIGENOUS.
JD Vance normal · became radical they/them · resents deranged me
Actually, JDV is the closest thing to normal in the new odor order. He is already radical, no matter what pronoun he uses. JDV is going to bring back using initials to identify politicians, in the tradition of FDR, JFK, and LBJ. Never mind that the last one did not work out so well. The resentment of Trump deranged America will not go away.
racism models · #BlackWoman consequences · mediocre bet
This is about the phenomenon of Kamala Devi Harris. She is 44% Jamaican, and yet was aggressively marketed to the voting public as a #BlackWoman. If you point out the Indian mother, then you were a racist. KDH became Democratic Presidential nominee after a bizarre set of circumstances which nobody fully understands. KDH ran one of the worst campaigns in recorded history, including youtube ads … with no opportunity to skip … where she screams “And when we fight, we WIN!!!” Maybe somebody was impressed by these ads, but the net effect is to blow through untold billions of dollars and elect the antichrist former POTUS to a second term. Mediocre is a compliment when talking about a corrupt hack like KDH.
his op-ed sexist · transphobic harassment con · young men art problem
Part of the fun of #Politics2024 is phrases like “manosphere.” Apparently, saying anything other than white men are the source of all the world’s ills is tantamount to platforming neonazis. Saying that prepubescent young men should not take puberty blockers women is transphobic harassment. The woke-apocalypse is at hand, and all those who resist will be forced to watch Kamala Harris campaign videos on endless repeat, with no opportunity to skip.
Found Dead In Tanning Bed
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‘Where are all the Jews at?’ A year after rally for Israel, turnout at its followup is sparse
Remembering why US nuclear submarines found a home in Scottish waters
How a tax increase helped spark the American Civil War
Planet Fitness responds after missing man found dead in tanning bed at south Indy gym
Mother of Man Found Dead in Tanning Bed at PF Gym Details His Final Moments
What is a tiered formulary and what does it mean for me?
Little Happier: The Happy Story of When Carol Burnett Fired Harvey Korman
How I Discovered Microdosed Gummies were Answer to My Everyday Stresses and Worries
Artsy compound and popular Airbnb tucked off Ponce de Leon Avenue dates to 1919 …
party, fight, gunfire: Witnesses to Tuskegee homecoming shooting describe a war zone …
Tropical Storm Sara is expected . storm will bring ‘life-threatening’ impacts to …
Joe Rogan Isn’t a Right-Winger — He’s a Swing Voter – Misunderstanding Rogan, …
Jake Paul-Mike Tyson snoozer draws harsh criticism: ‘Not great for boxing’
@ChrchCurmudgeon There’ll be better fights at Waffle House in about an hour.
Kamala Harris raised more than $1 billion for her campaign. She’s still sending …
Woman told House Ethics Committee she saw Gaetz have sex with minor, lawyer says
She Was Global Superstar—And World-Class Spy – story of Josephine Baker …
hillary · glory story · afghanistan · tariffs · wbts · n****r
tyler white · lou reed · the wild side · barbara kvam · 1001 albums · guitars
very fine people · deviant art · all poetry · heroes · bob smith
your heroes · glaucoma · advance auto parts · hillary · codex alimentarius
malebolgia · malebogia · rivian · kudzu · pete seeger
sam harris · gladys knight highway · veggies · peter frampton · perimeter mall
loc color pics 112923 · This is a repost from 2015. Tom Robbins is still alive after 92 years on the planet. … · This is a repost from 2016.. That year, The Washington Post ran the story described below. Many people saw corporate media as having an obligation to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. This year, WAPO chose not to endorse any candidate. This angered many people. Compared to how WAPO conducted itself in 2016, not endorsing a candidate might be the best alternative. · If you google Knights Party, you will see a lot of links to ADL, SPLC, and FBI. If you are willing to scroll a bit on duckduckgo, you can see information about the Knights Party. It is not known if this is the same group that published “The Crusader,” or if this newspaper is published in 2024. · The Washington Post caught a lot of flack in 2024 for not endorsing Kamala Devi Harris. In 2016, WAPO spread the ridiculous rumor that “the KKK” endorsed Donald John Trump. Maybe not endorsing a candidate was a better alternative. · Friends – Please note the new login information (below) for the Gay Spirit Visions Heart Circle scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday, November 17, 2024, 5:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) Gay Spirit Visions Heart Circle Sunday, November 17, 2024, 5:00 PM Eastern Time (ET) Leader: Eli Andrew Ramer Join Zoom Meeting Link: Meeting ID: 827 8563 9528 Passcode: 055727 Gay Spirit Visions Online Heart Circles · The link you are trying to access has been identified by X or our partners as being potentially spammy or unsafe, in accordance with X’s URL Policy. · pictures today are from The Library of Congress · selah
RuPaul
RuPaul Andre Charles was born on November 17. He or she? Ally or enemy? Racist or whatever? Labels are part of the packaging, and have little to do with the product inside the box.
A facebook friend put up a link to a RuPaul interview, Real Talk With RuPaul. The FBF is over RuPaul. I read the interview, and found many things that I agreed with. Is it possible to be a conservative because you like RuPaul?
The Vulture feature is similar to the WTF podcast that RuPaul did. Chamblee54 wrote about that interview. The Vulture chat is better for bloggers, since it is a copy friendly text affair. When you see quotes, you can include them verbatim.
RuPaul has a talent for snappy sayings, to be remembered for later use. An example would be “I’d rather have an enema than have an Emmy.” Some unkind people say that if you were to give RuPaul an enema, you could bury him in a shoebox.
A persistent theme of RuPaul’s moving lips is “the matrix.” “Because you get to a point where if you’re smart and you’re sensitive, you see how this all works on this planet. It’s like when Dorothy looks behind the curtain. Like, “Wait a minute. You’re the wizard?” And you figure out the hoax. That this is all an illusion. There’s only a few areas you can go. First, you get angry that you’ve been hoaxed and you get bitter. But then, take more steps beyond the bitterness and you realize, “Oh, I get it. Let’s have fun with it. It’s all a joke.”
The Bosslady of “RuPaul’s Drag Race’ is an African American. Duh. In the Vulture piece, there are 4355 words. Racism/racist is not included. Could it be that America’s obsession with other people’s racial attitudes is part of the illusion? “Derogatory slurs are ALWAYS an outward projection of a person’s own poisonous self-loathing.”
RuPaul is not always politically correct. She supports Shirley Q. Liquor. RPDR was instrumental in the rise to fame/descent into the abyss of Sharon Needles. “But if you are trigger-happy and you’re looking for a reason to reinforce your own victimhood, your own perception of yourself as a victim, you’ll look for anything that will reinforce that.”
Years ago, I worked with someone who liked to say “and a ru hu hu.” This was shortened to ru, and was usually said very loud. Ru became a greeting.
About this time, RuPaul was living in Atlanta. Many people remember a spectacular self promoter. RuPaul would sit in an apartment balcony, and wave at cars passing by. Posters for his band, Wee Wee Pole, were on telephone poles up and down Ponce de Leon Avenue.
One night, Ru Paul was working as a gogo dancer in a club called Weekends. During a break, I went over to talk to him. The use of ru as a greeting was mentioned. Soon, people came over, and I started to leave. Before I could get away, RuPaul turned to me, lifted an index finger, and said “Keep on saying my name.”
RuPaul went on to become famous. Weekends was torn down, and is the site of the Federal Reserve Bank. I do not watch much TV, and has never seen an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” This is a TV show about a TV.
There is a recent controversy about RPDR. It seems that the phrase shemale has been used. Some people are offended by this. The expression is no longer used on the show. Holly/Diane/Sashia, a transcritter, introduced me to the term “shemale” in 1998.
The use of offensive language is to be avoided. If you know something is going to hurt people, then you should avoid saying it. There is a good possibility that Ru Paul knew what she was doing, and just didn’t care. The problem comes when you haven’t received the latest update from the language authorities. Keeping up with what is cool to say can be a full time job. Is it still ok to say ru?
RuPaul is no stranger to attention being thought strange. The latest bit of publicity… there is no bad publicity, and they spell the name right … is an article in the eyeball grabbing HuffPo, RuPaul Responds To Controversy Over The Word ‘Tranny’. (Spell check suggestion: Granny) PG gave into temptation, and clicked on the link. It seems as though there was an appearance on the WTF podcast. Why settle for a sensational sample, when you can hear the entire show?
If you have an hour and twenty four minutes to spare, listen to this show. If you like, you can skip the first thirteen minutes, which is host Mark Maron talking about himself. The show is highly entertaining. A theme is that the world is the matrix, a fake construction. Some people look behind the curtain and see the wizard. Some people believe the matrix is reality. You should already know which side RuPaul takes. He was not born blonde.
The quote about the T-word comes toward the end of the show. I have mixed feelings about the whole affair, and does not completely agree with RuPaul. However, this human being is entitled to an opinion. He is going to share it anyway. RuPaul does not suffer from false modesty.
For a show that gets attention about language, it is a bit strange at times. While describing his career trajectory, RuPaul says he went through a phase of “gender f-word.” The show is called WTF. Twice a week, the host says fuck a dozen times in the first sixty seconds. And RuPaul said “gender f-word.”
Even more amazingly, RuPaul said that things were “n-word rigged”. RuPaul did break down and say the ultimate dirty word. When his mother saw his act on television, she said “N****** you crazy.”
RuPaul has had quite a career. He mentions that he has been sober for fifteen years, and had some therapy to get there. This was not the case when he lived in Atlanta. Many stories from those days are in the show. The bs detector went off a couple of times. I saw the Now Explosion, and did not remember seeing a tall black guy.
This is a rich seventy five minutes. Like saying that Madonna is a curator, that most fashion designers don’t know how to sew. The part that is getting the attention is towards the end of the show, and is just a small part. It is all part of the matrix.
This feature is a repost. Some of the pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Other pictures are from The Library of Congress. The images are of women, training to be bus drivers and taxi drivers. This was in Washington DC, November 1942. The photographer was Andreas Feininger, working for the Office of War Information. The picture of a dipstick demonstration is #8d36666.
Did The KKK Endorse Donald Trump?
This is a repost from 2016. That year, The Washington Post ran the story described below. Many people saw corporate media as having an obligation to promote the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. This year, WAPO chose not to endorse any candidate. This angered many people. Compared to how WAPO conducted itself in 2016, not endorsing a candidate might be the best alternative.
In the last days of the 2016 election, people began to say that Donald John Trump was endorsed by the KKK. @DefiantLionUK Don’t forget President-elect Donald #Trump is a hate-filled, #KKK endorsed, #racist & that simply can’t be tolerated #TrumpProtest. @Eti_Verde Vote! American democracy in action! Stop Trump & his white nationalist KKKlan!
The consensus was that DJT was endorsed by the KKK, and that DJT is a racist. Therefore, if you support DJT, you support the KKK, and you are a racist. There is a name for this type of logical fallacy. The net result was the election of DJT.
It is tough to say how much impact this KKK talk had on the election. By November 8, America had been hit over the head with political talk for two years. The various factions tend to live in echo chambers, where they only hear information that reinforces what they already think. People say what sounds good to them. If someone does not agree, then they are a racist. People seem to assume that their neighbor will agree with them, if only you insult them enough.
Google “kkk endorses donald trump.” The top result is in the Washington Post, KKK’s official newspaper supports Donald Trump for president. “It is called the Crusader — and it is one of the most prominent newspapers of the Ku Klux Klan. Under the banner “Make America Great Again,” the entire front page of the paper’s current issue is devoted to a lengthy defense of Trump’s message — an embrace some have labeled a de facto endorsement.”
There is no link to the endorsement. If you google the Crusader, you find this. The Crusader is a tacky little newspaper, headquartered in Harrison, Arkansas. It is “The official Newspaper of The Knights Party.” You get “4 Big Quarterly Issues” for $20. “The Charge on your Credit Card Statement will show up as Christian Books and Things.” … If you google Knights Party, you will see a lot of links to ADL, SPLC, and FBI. If you are willing to scroll a bit on duckduckgo, you can see information about the Knights Party. It is not known if this is the same group that published “The Crusader,” or if this newspaper is published in 2024.
The truth is that the Ku Klux Klan is an obsolete movement. There are a few dozen chapters, who often do not get along. The hand wringing by “liberals” empowers the Klan. If people would ignore the Klan, they would go away. The Chinese bed sheet manufacturers will miss them.
“The KKK is split into many smaller subdivisions, explained (KKK Imperial Wizard Frank) Ancona, and often times, banished members of a larger branch will attempt to start their own. Ancona believes this is the case with Murray, who is not even known to the Traditionalist American Knights. “He basically made up his own name,” Ancona said, explaining that Murray may not even be on his birth certificate…. Half of them don’t have the rituals for our ceremonies.” Frank Ancona died in 2017.
Despite it’s fierce reputation as a “racist terrorist” organization, the KKK is in bad shape. It has less credibility than the Westboro Baptist Church. The custom of wearing bedsheets makes them the easy target for jokes. The ADL and SPLC say the membership of the KKK is dwindling.
A good argument could be made that anonymous publicity is helping the KKK. It makes bed sheets look dangerous. While the three digital stooges of twitter/facebook/tiktok are focused on bed sheets, more dangerous white (and other color) hate groups are operating in darkness. With people fascinated with who is under the bed sheets, people that can do damage are buying ammunition, buying elections, and committing genocide in West Asia.
Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These men were Union soldiers, in the War Between the States. They did not post on facebook.
The Burning Of Atlanta
Around this time 160 years ago, Atlanta was on fire. General Sherman was preparing for his March to the sea, and wanted to destroy anything of value in the city. The fire is reported as being between 11-15 of November 1864, depending on what source you use.
The November fire was the second great fire in Atlanta that year. On September 2, the city was conquered by the Union Army. The fleeing Confederates blew up a munitions depot, and set a large part of the city on fire. This is the fire Scarlet O’Hara flees, in “Gone With The Wind”.
After a series of bloody battles, the city was shelled by Yankee forces for forty days. There were many civilian casualties. General Sherman was tired of the war, angry at Atlanta, and ready for action. This is despite the fact that many in Atlanta were opposed to secession.
Click here to hear a lecture by Marc Wortman at the Atlanta History Center. Mr Wortman is the author of “The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta”. The hour of talk is fascinating. This is a repost. The pictures are from The Library of Congress
About this time every year, there is a post about the burning of Atlanta. One of the sources is a lecture by Marc Wortman. If you have an hour to spare, this talk is worth your time. One of the stories told is the tale of Mr. Luckie.
“According to folklore, two stories abound as to how Luckie Street was named. The first is that its moniker came from one of Atlanta’s oldest families. The other, probably closer to the truth, regales the life of Solomon “Sam” Luckie. Luckie, as it turns out, wasn’t so lucky after all. When General William Tecumseh Sherman first came marching through Atlanta in 1864, Luckie, a free Black man who made his living as a barber, was leaning against a gas lamp post in downtown talking to a group of businessmen. A burst from a cannon shell wounded him; he survived, but later died from his injuries. Folklore suggests that he may have been one of the first casualties of the assault on Atlanta. Luckie Street, an extension of Auburn Avenue, was later named in his memory.”
Marc Wortman wrote a book, The Bonfire: The Siege and Burning of Atlanta. The one star review, and comments to that review, are unusually detailed. Here is a selection.
“…People forget – or were never taught in school – that most Confederate soldiers descended from Revolutionary War patriots or were up-country poor sons of farmers. Many Confederate soldiers were relatively recent new arrivals to the U.S., semi-literate dirt poor immigrants from Ireland and Scotland who’d never had the chance to own even an acre of their own land in Europe. In the mix were well-educated, elite merchant business owning French Huguenot refugees of the Catholic Bourbon genocide of Protestants. These immigrants had nowhere else to go, 9 times out of 10 never owned a slave, and fought for the CSA to keep what little they’d hardscrabble carved out over a decade of arrival into the U.S.”
The War Between The States continues to be a source of controversy. There are ritual denunciations of slavery, assumed to be the sole cause of the conflict. There seems to be more quarreling about the war now, than just a few years ago.
The notion of autonomous states in a federal union was novel when the United States Constitution was written. The debate over federalism versus states rights continues to this day. Many in the CSA saw the Union as being a conquering army, and fought to defend their homes. While slavery was certainly a factor in the creation of the CSA, it was not the only Casus belli. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress.
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