Water Lawsuit Thrown Out By SCOTUS
The U.S. Supreme Court has decided not to hear an appeal of the lawsuit over the water of the Chattahoochee River. (Here is the ruling that was upheld.) Until the next round of regulation and litigation, Atlanta can use the water from Lake Lanier.
If you look at the size of the Chattahoochee watershed , you might wonder why anyone would build a city here. The water is coveted by Alabama and Florida, as well as downstream Georgia. For some bizarre reason, there is a nuclear power plant on the river, using enormous amounts of water. 
Water simply is not regarded as a precious commodity in Georgia. The drought in 2007 is forgotten, except for a few environmental wackos. What water we do have is not well managed. A comment at the fishwrapper says it better than this slack blogger.
“Now can we do ourselves a favor and outlaw ‘homeowners associations’ from requiring water hog vegetation? Can we raise the money to fix water system leaks? Will we join the rest of the civilized world in realizing that water is NECESSARY and PRECIOUS and treat it that way? Is it possible to require electric utilities to reduce the amount of water they waste through evaporation? Will another year come and go in the General Assembly without reining in the influence of the turf grass growers? Has there ever been a better opportunity to RAISE THE LEVEL of Lake Lanier to 1073 ft. above sea level which would completely eliminate the need for any wasted money and unnecessary fights over reservoirs? We dodged a bullet with the SC decision. It would be a shame not to learn from it and modify our laws and practices so the problem is solved instead of ignored.”
Certainly, the amount of water released from the lake can be altered. Perhaps, when it is raining South of the perimeter, we can take that into account, and release less from the lake. More reservoirs are clearly needed, which will give the developers something to build luxury homes around.
There is a blog post today, Dirty politics and decrepit strip malls. It has a picture of an empty strip mall, a sight as common as kudzu. The difference is, kudzu goes away in the winter. For years, the developers have built as if there was no tomorrow, without a thought as to where the water for these projects is coming from. The money quote “All you have to do is look around at the never ending, hideous, suburban sprawl and you will come to the conclusion that there is a massive amount of cronyism in the State of GA. There was obviously no thought put in to quality of life/environmental factors, only who could line his pockets more by building yet another decrepit strip mall.”
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Suicidal Strategy For Empire.
There was a comment left at a post, Never leave a cybernetic organism behind! The post was about the emotional impact, or lack of same, of shooting down an unmanned aircraft. Losing one of your toys is not the same as losing a crew of humans.
The comment dealt with another effect of advanced technology. “In the long run it’s a suicidal strategy for Empire. Thanks to Moore”s Law and micromanufacturing, before too long this stuff’s going to be available as a cheap off-the-shelf technology for the resistance. Networked resistance forces will be using cheap h-k drones to target U.S. regional chains of command, logistical tails, support infrastructure on the airbases the drones are staged from, the factories that build them in SoCal, the corporate boards of directors, the American engineers who design them, etc. In which case the side with the most concentrated target profile loses.”
Ever since the first monkey hit his neighbor with a stick, there has been an arms race. Side a builts a better weapon, and has an advantage over side b. Then side b gets the same weapon, and things are even, unless one side builds a better weapon.
The ability to kill people more efficiently is a driving force of science. Many of today’s products were first developed for military use. It has been said that if we had destroyed Hiroshima with sunbeams, we would be using solar power today.
Even more troubling than unmanned aircraft is the potential of cyberwarfare. Our side let the genie out of the bottle with Stuxnet. It is only a matter of time before the other finds a way to use malicious code as a weapon of war. It is ironic that the use of Stuxnet was against Iran, to keep her from getting nuclear weapons. Nukes are another technology that gave us a temporary advantage, until other people figured out how to do it.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Motivational Recycling
This is a repost double feature. It is on the general subject of motivation, inspiration, and manipulation. Such things are like perfume…nice to sniff at, but dangerous to swallow. Pictures are from the ” Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
Back when I was at redo blue, we traded some printing for a motivational speech. The speaker was D. J. Harrington. He came on stage with a telephone handset, demonstrating how to answer the telephone. There were a lot of statistics, like you get 50 percent more information when you use your left ear. ( This is a made up example, not a quote. I don’t remember any of his examples) It reminded me of something a teacher said once…: ” The best way to win an argument is to use statistics. The best way to get statistics is to make them up”
On the all important issue of what to say when you answer the squawk box, he suggested “How may I direct your call?” Now, I like to identify the company and myself as briefly as possible, and quit wasting the customer’s time. Mister customer knows why he called. HMIDYC is seven unnecessary syllables that do your customer no good.
As some of you know, I have a sensitive BS detector. This gets in the way of being “motivated”. When confronted with a entertainer motivational speaker, I try to glean one or two worthwhile tidbits. I give D.J.H. credit, he did make one good comment. “You must sell yourself first, your company second, and your product third” There are some idea mongers who feel I owe them my trust. I beg to differ.
Mr. Harrington used to call his dog and pony show “C*** U* F*** T** N*** U*.That phrase is currently a registered trademark of the Mood Disorders Association of Ontario and may be used with permission only.
Redo Blue was a diverse company. I suspect D.J.H. toned down some of the good ole boy touches from his presentation. Towards the end, he described a speech he gave in Oklahoma. “The only Catholics they have ever seen are Ted Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne” He proceeded to tell a tasteless story about the Catholic Church. I was almost motivated to walk out.
In an early morning discourse, I said that Martin Niemöller was rolling in his grave looking for the royalties from his poem, “First they came…“. A little research later, I don’t think he ever wrote it down. For those of you with very short memories, here is the work…
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
Martin Niemöller
Martin Niemöller was the son of a Lutheran minister. In World War 1, he served on a U boat crew. Harold Marcuse tells this story: “Niemöller was a commander of a German U-boat in World War I. A seminal incident in his moral outlook, as he related in many public speeches later in his life, occurred when he commanded his submarine crew not to rescue the sailors of a boat he torpedoed, but let them drown instead. “
After the war Mr. Niemöller became a Lutheran Minister. He was originally a supporter of Mr. Hitler, but became an opponent. He was imprisoned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps from 1937 to 1945.
After the war, he began to speak out. The famous poem was derived from these speeches. It was never written down in typical poet fashion. There are several versions of it from him, and many more as the years rolled by. It has been quoted, updated, and quoted again.
In addition to the four groups mentioned above, the Nazis also came for mentally ill, incurably ill, or people in occupied countries. The legend is that when asked if he included Catholics, Mr. Niemöller said “I never said it. They can take care of themselves.” (If you have a few minutes to spare, the page that quote came from is worth looking at.) When the McCarthy fever hit America, he declined to mention Communists.
With regard to the royalties, I could not see that it was ever copyrighted. I do not know who “owns the rights”. Some have even speculated that the poem was not composed by Mr. Niemöller.
Recently, there was a blog post that quoted “First they came…” The post was about gay marriage. With all due respect to the people affected by this, the ability to marry someone of the same gender does not come close to a government killing six million Jews. .
There is the Rebel looking for a cause syndrome. Many people just want to fight about something, and the cause is secondary to the lust for battle. When a poem like this is used to fire up people for a shaky cause, it brings discredit to the poem..
There is the matter of the “Next Hitler” argument. During the run up to the first war against Iraq, Saddam Hussein was routinely called the next Hitler. While this may be a valid argument at times, it is like the boy who cried wolf if used too much. (This is also known as Godwin’s Law ).
Maybe a general moratorium is needed on the use of “First they Came…”
Buying Water In Kenya
One part of life taken for granted in America is indoor running water. You turn on a faucet, and get what you need. There are concerns about the future, and fussing about water rights. What does happen here is a person walking to a water vendor to buy a 20 liter supply of water. In Kenya, that is a way of life.
Kibera is euphemistically known as an informal settlement. It is located in Nairobi, Kenya. A land mass 75% the size of New York’s Central Park is home to a lot of people. “More accurately, Kibera turned into an unauthorized settlement after Kenya gained independence in 1963 and the new government made illegal certain forms of housing. Nonetheless, landlords rented out cheap properties to impoverished Kenyans who could not afford legal housing, and has since earned the reputation of being one of Africa’s largest urban slums. Importantly, the precise population of Kibera is hotly debated and remains uncertain. Some estimates are as high as one million and others as low as 170,000 (e.g, 2009 Kenya Census). Estimates are difficult because Kibera is made up of residents who are extremely mobile, and often prefer to remain in the shadow of the law.”
Very few of the residents have running water. Every day, people have to carry a 20 liter jerrycan to a water vendor. Often, there are shortages, and the price goes up. The water is often contaminated. There are water mafias, which create artificial shortages to boost the price.
“If the root of water problems in Kibera centered on price and supply it may be more manageable, but issues of water quality substantially complicate clean water delivery systems. Most water pipes in Kibera run above ground and are made of plastic (due to issues with theft of steel pipes), which are highly fragile and easily manipulated. These pipes will often crack or break (either accidentally due to traffic or intentionally by competitors), allowing sewage to seep into drinking water. Indeed, water sources that are generally clean can easily become contaminated without notice. This is reflected in public health data—infant mortality rates and bloody diarrheal infection rates in Kibera are more than three times the average of Nairobi as a whole (UNDP 2006).”
Stanford University is setting up a program to use mobile telephones to help people find water. Evidently, mobile phones are more common is the slums of Kenya than clean water. The program is called M-Maji, which is Swahili for mobile water. A database will have information about who has water for sale, the price, and the quality of the water. This information will be available to water users via mobile phones.
HT to Bloggingheads.tv. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. The spell check suggestion for Kibera is Liberace.
Do You Feel Safer?
A recent episode of Radiolab, Grumpy Old Terrorists, spotlights Georgia. It is about four elderly men, arrested in North Georgia for terrorist activity. The episode features Tom Junod, who wrote an article for Esquire Magazine, Counter-Terrorism Is Getting Complicated. The article has much more information than a twenty minute radio show.
The story focuses on Fred Thomas. A retired Navy man, he worked for Lockheed in Virginia, and moved to Georgia when he retired. He began to hang out on the internet, focusing on a militia forum. After BHO was inaugurated, Mr. Thomas felt that America was going downhill. He met some men online who agreed. The men started to meet, first at Mr. Thomas’s house. One of the players was a government agent.
The informer was named Joe Sims. (PG does not know if this is his birth name.) According to Esquire, Mr. Sims is a slimy character. He got in trouble, and then got out of jail to work as a snitch.
It is interesting to note that two of wives, of the accused, did not like Mr. Sims. Charlotte Thomas, the wife of Fred, only met him once. Mrs. Thomas was a Frank Sinatra fanatic. When Mr. Sims was in their home, he saw the Sinatra shrine. Joe said, “The trouble with Frank Sinatra is that he can’t sing”.
As the story went down, the old men, and Joe the snitch, had many meetings where they said that something violent needed to be done. Joe the snitch encouraged them, and set up a meeting with an “arms dealer”. Joe handed over his money,and the old man handed over some money. The federal swat team moved in, threw flash grenades, and arrested the old men. The conspirators were so scared they wet their pants. At the same time, a the Frank Sinatra shrine was raided. The carpets have burn marks from the flash grenades.
A question was raised on radiolab, do you feel safer now? The feds encouraged the scheme, and helped drive it forward. One person speculated that the sheriff should have had a talk with the old men. Let them know that the law was wise to their game, and the activity would have stopped. Is it a good role for the government to encourage people to commit crimes? In at least one case, government agents recruited and paid people to take part in the “terrorism”. Is this a good use of taxpayer money, and, indeed, does it make us safer?
There are some crucial details left out of this post. Readers are encouraged to read the Esquire magazine article, Counter-Terrorism Is Getting Complicated. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Author Insults
These author insults were borrowed from flavorwire. HT to Andrew Sullivan The pictures are from The Library of Congress This is a repost. 25. Gertrude Stein on Ezra Pound “A village explainer. Excellent if you were a village, but if you were not, not.” 24. Virginia Woolf on Aldous Huxley “All raw, uncooked, protesting.” 23. H. G. Wells on George Bernard Shaw “An idiot child screaming in a hospital.” 22. Joseph Conrad on D.H. Lawrence “Filth. Nothing but obscenities.” 21. Lord Byron on John Keats (1820) “Here are Johnny Keats’ piss-a-bed poetry, and three novels by God knows whom… No more Keats, I entreat: flay him alive; if some of you don’t I must skin him myself: there is no bearing the drivelling idiotism of the Mankin.” 20. Vladimir Nabokov on Joseph Conrad “I cannot abide Conrad’s souvenir shop style and bottled ships and shell necklaces of romanticist cliches.” 19. Dylan Thomas on Rudyard Kipling “Mr Kipling … stands for everything in this cankered world which I would wish were otherwise.” 18. Ralph Waldo Emerson on Jane Austen “Miss Austen’s novels . . . seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer . . . is marriageableness.” 17. Martin Amis on Miguel Cervantes “Reading Don Quixote can be compared to an indefinite visit from your most impossible senior relative, with all his pranks, dirty habits, unstoppable reminiscences, and terrible cronies. When the experience is over, and the old boy checks out at last (on page 846 — the prose wedged tight, with no breaks for dialogue), you will shed tears all right; not tears of relief or regret but tears of pride. You made it, despite all that ‘Don Quixote’ could do.” 16. Charles Baudelaire on Voltaire (1864) “I grow bored in France — and the main reason is that everybody here resembles Voltaire…the king of nincompoops, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the spokesman of janitresses, the Father Gigone of the editors of Siecle.” 15. William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.” 14. Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?” 13. Gore Vidal on Truman Capote “He’s a full-fledged housewife from Kansas with all the prejudices.” 12. Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope “There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.” 11. Vladimir Nabokov on Ernest Hemingway (1972) “As to Hemingway, I read him for the first time in the early ‘forties, something about bells, balls and bulls, and loathed it.” 10. Henry James on Edgar Allan Poe (1876) “An enthusiasm for Poe is the mark of a decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” 09. Truman Capote on Jack Kerouac “That’s not writing, that’s typing.” 08. Elizabeth Bishop on J.D. Salinger “I HATED [Catcher in the Rye]. It took me days to go through it, gingerly, a page at a time, and blushing with embarrassment for him every ridiculous sentence of the way. How can they let him do it?” 07. D.H. Lawrence on Herman Melville (1923) “Nobody can be more clownish, more clumsy and sententiously in bad taste, than Herman Melville, even in a great book like ‘Moby Dick’….One wearies of the grand serieux. There’s something false about it. And that’s Melville. Oh dear, when the solemn ass brays! brays! brays!” 06. W. H. Auden on Robert Browning “I don’t think Robert Browning was very good in bed. His wife probably didn’t care for him very much. He snored and had fantasies about twelve-year-old girls.” 05. Evelyn Waugh on Marcel Proust (1948) “I am reading Proust for the first time. Very poor stuff. I think he was mentally defective.” 04. Mark Twain on Jane Austen (1898) “I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.” 03. Virginia Woolf on James Joyce “[Ulysses is] the work of a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples.” 02. William Faulkner on Mark Twain (1922) “A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.” 01. D.H. Lawrence on James Joyce (1928) “My God, what a clumsy olla putrida James Joyce is! Nothing but old fags and cabbage stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest stewed in the juice of deliberate, journalistic dirty-mindedness.” Bonus. Mary McCarthy on Lillian Hellman “Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the.” Bonus two, a comment to the original post.: RomanHans Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.”
The Last Night Of Judy Garland
In march of 1969, Judy married her fifth husband, Mickey Devinko, better known as Mickey Deans, a gay night-club promoter. Judy had an unfortunate habit of marrying gay men. They lived together in a tiny mews house in Chelsea, London. For a look inside, click here. The evening of Saturday June 21 1969, Judy and Mickey were watching a documentary, The Royal Family, on television, when they had an argument. Judy ran out the door screaming into the street, waking the neighbors.
Several versions of what happened next exist, but the fact remains that a phone call for Judy woke him at 10:40 the next morning, and she was not sleeping in the bed. He searched for her, only to find the bathroom door locked. After no response, he climbed outside to the bathroom window and entered to find Judy, sitting on the toilet. Rigor Mortis had set in. Judy Garland was dead at the age of 47.
The press was already aware of the news before the body could be removed. In an effort to prevent pictures being taken of the corpse, she was apparently draped over someone’s arm like a folded coat, covered with a blanket, and removed from the house with the photographers left none the wiser.
The day Judy died there was a tornado in Kansas. Several people have claimed this to be false, but Findadeath friend Kris Fenton sends this: When I came across the Judy Garland page, I noticed the part about the legend of a tornado occurring in Kansas the day she passed. Being somewhat interested in tornadoes, I checked out Tornado Project.com which has a database listing historical tornadoes by state and by county. There were none on June 22nd, 1969 in Kansas. Actually, 1969 was a light tornado year for Kansas, they usually average about 75 tornadoes/year but that year only had 17. However, in Saline County, a rather large F3 tornado (injuring 60, but causing no deaths) did hit at 10:40 pm on June 21st, that would be 4:40 am, June 22nd, London time, the morning she died. I know the time of death has never been firmly established, but since Rigor Mortis had already set in, I think this tornado may very much be in the ballpark in terms of coinciding with time of death. The St. Petersburg Times, on June 23, 1969 featured a story on that early summer tornado outbreak, and on page 2-A there is a mention of the Saline county tornado from June 21st, which hit the county seat at Salina, next to a photo of Garland, Bolger and Haley from The Wizard of Oz as a part of a story on Garland’s death. The St. Petersburg Times article indicates the Tornado in Salina was “early yesterday [June 22] morning” which may indicate this may have been a rather long-lasting tornado, as some of them are, or that the 10:40 pm start time given by Tornado Project is only a best estimate. Other news articles suggest the tornado struck Salina “late at night” which could certainly also mean after midnight on June 22, or roughly 6:00 am London time.
The Toledo Blade for June 24th, also in an article located right next to a picture of Garland, in a write-up on the Salina tornado noted that “Late Saturday [June 21] and early Sunday [June 22, another batch of tornadoes struck in central Kansas.” So it seems the legend seems confirmed.
The text for this story comes from Findadeath. You can spend hours at this site. Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Dorothy Parker
PG first heard of Dorothy Parker in tenth grade. His friend Bob Gibson cut the poem Resume out of the literature text book, and carried it in his wallet. Mrs. Parker had been dead for two years at the time, with her ashes resting in her attorney’s filing cabinet. As the years rolled on, there were stories about the round table at the Algonquin hotel, and a poem about W.R. Hearst … Upon my honor, I saw the madonna, by the door, in a niche, of a well known whore, and a prominent son of a bitch. There was a movie, and more stories. One day there was a comment, to a post called Raw, Uncooked, Protesting . The comment went: Re “The Cardinal’s Mistress” by Benito Mussolini, Dorothy Parker wrote one of my favorite bon mots: “This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” PG decided it was time for a Dorothy Parker tribute. The google search for “Michele Bachman Weird” can wait a day or so, and will probably have a million more results. These quotes are from the quotations page .There is a political ad for the Presidential election. Pictures today are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library” This is a repost. ~ A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika. ~ Brevity is the soul of lingerie. ~ I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true. ~ I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound – if I can remember any of the damn things. ~ I’ve never been a millionaire but I just know I’d be darling at it. ~ If all the girls who attended the Yale prom were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. ~ If wild my breast and sore my pride, I bask in dreams of suicide, If cool my heart and high my head I think “How lucky are the dead. ~ If you want to know what G-d thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to. ~ Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves. ~ The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant–and let the air out of the tires. ~ This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. ~ That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment. ~ They sicken of the calm, who knew the storm. ~ The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. ~ I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do any thing. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more. ~ Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong;And I am Marie of Romania. ~ Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses. ~ She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B. RE: Katharine Hepburn ~ I require three things in a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid. ~ Scratch an actor – and you’ll find an actress. ~ I went to a convent in New York and was fired finally for my insistence that the Immaculate Conception was spontaneous combustion. ~ Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair. ~ Ducking for apples – change one letter and it’s the story of my life. ~ My land is bare of chattering folk; the clouds are low along the ridges, and sweet’s the air with curly smoke from all my burning bridges. ~ The affair between Margot Asquith and Margot Asquith will live as one of the prettiest love stories in all literature. ~ The only “ism” Hollywood believes in is plagiarism. ~ That woman speaks eighteen languages and can’t say “No” in any of them. ~ Four be the things I’d have been better without: love, curiosity, freckles and doubt. ~ “I really can’t come to your party Mrs. Parker, I can’t bear fools.” “That’s strange; your mother could.” ~ “Coolidge is dead” “How could they tell? ~ You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks. ~ You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.
Sharon Needles
PG got in one night, and found a summer storm brewing on facebook. “Dear white people who still love Sharon Needles. Before you begin to defend her or justify this as art or whatever, please keep in mind that THERE IS AN ENTIRE POPULATION OF PEOPLE AFFECTED BY RACISM WHO THINK THIS IS FUCKED UP. Can you respect that, or will you continue to tell people of color what does and does not oppress them?” The first question is, who is Sharon Needles?
A baby boy was born in Newton IA on November 28, 1981. His parents named him Aaron Coady. He did not fit in, and moved to Pittsburgh PA in 2004. His stage name was Sharon Needles. As the years went by, he developed a “personality”. There was a tv show, Ru Paul’s Drag Race. Miss Needles won season four. The Pittsburgh City Council honored her. Meanwhile, some people did not like her act.
There was a link on facebook, Dragged into Debate: Reality-TV fame puts spotlight on Sharon Needles’ controversial act. PG looked at the article, and found a video of a performance by Miss Needles. The show was in a noisy bar, with some drinking jokes. The makeup and costumes were flawless. (flawful might be better, if it wasn’t the name for hummus hushpuppies) The act was what one might expect of a button pushing drag queen. It is tough to be outrageous these days, but Sharon Needles is giving it the old college try.
Later, the matter got a bit more personal. “Sharon Needles recently performed in Nashville. I went to the performance. One of my friends got her autograph after the show. Sharon Needles wrote a note in the autograph in which she called my friend a n****r. Several of my white friends continue to loudly and publicly worship and promote Sharon Needles, despite having been at the show and knowing about the autograph (nevermind having heard other discussion about Needles’ unapologetic racism). Just thought y’all should know that supporting and promoting someone who is unapologetically perpetuating racism and refusing to be held accountable for it, is racist!
The fuss was a bit puzzling to PG. We can begin by breaking down the opening post. “THERE IS AN ENTIRE POPULATION OF PEOPLE AFFECTED BY RACISM WHO THINK THIS IS FUCKED UP.” Does this include Ru Paul? What about the millions of People of Color (POC) who had no idea who Sharon Needles was?
“Can you respect that, or will you continue to tell people of color what does and does not oppress them?” Are those the only two options here? To “respect” the notion that a nightclub performer in Pennsylvania is oppressing 35 million Americans? Or, if you don’t “respect” this highly questionable concept, you “you continue to tell people of color what does and does not oppress them.” Are these the only two choices? What if you ignore the peroxide poster girl, and treat your neighbor with respect?
There is also the $64 question, is Sharon Needles racist? (Winning a tv contest hosted by RuPaul should be remembered.) The tumblr Fuck Yea Sharon Needles has a picture of the performer in blackface. She is singing the opening number of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, which all good fans know was a pair of lips against a black background. PG did not hear anything racist in the video he endured. But then, PG is a white person, and as such is not qualified to decide what is, or is not, racist.
Facebook is a magnet for people who enjoy a digital quarrel. Evidently, that sometimes includes PG. He made a comment: “There was a line in an article about Miss Needles that gave me a good laugh…”If Needles “were a straight person” engaging in this behavior, he adds, “people would feel more comfortable” criticizing it.”… I had never heard of this person before this conversation, and can’t say that I really enjoy her persona. It is like Charlie Brown after a four day speed binge. She is on the edge, which is where gay performers have traditionally been. I saw a video of her, and did not hear any racist comments… not that I doubt they exist. I found her act tough to enjoy, for reasons that have nothing to do with racism. Just ignore her, and find something more important to whine about. “
The notion that only a POC can offer opinions about racism is, well, racist. Anti white racism is a serious problem. It affects white people differently than it does POC, but can be every bit as hurtful. Do white people enjoy going downtown, and seeing the hate in the eyes of the POC multitudes? The fact is that when you hate someone, you hurt yourself worse than you hate that person. If POC would take a look at themselves, they might see a race of people repeating the mistakes of white people.
There was a second comment, which PG cut from the comment box. “Isn’t the concept that only “people of color” can judge racism a racist concept? What about anti white racism, which is very real and hurtful to a lot of people. If we are ever going to have a meaningful dialog about race in this country, then we need to consider the hatred against white people. Just because it takes different forms than anti black racism does not mean it does not exist.” And making noise about a drunken Iowa boy is not going to do much good for anyone, except for giving Miss Needles more publicity.
There was a reply. “Hey Luther, I don’t know how you meant for that to come off, but it’s not your job to tell us to ignore someone who is contributing to our oppression. Also, when you say, “find something more important to whine about,” I feel disappointed and dismayed because it sounds to me like you don’t understand that A) this is important to some of us, especially to those of us who are people of color, and it can be a very dehumanizing experience to be constantly confronted with people’s apathy around something that impacts our lives so intimately; and B) calling out racism in our community and “whining” are not the same thing, and, again, it’s really dehumanizing when we try to talk about something so important to us and people in the mostly-white communities around us dismiss our conversations as “whining” because they think our concerns or experiences are trivial, particularly when they personally, as white people, do not experience racism with the same intensity that people of color do. Obviously this is important to us and we have thought about it a lot. I stated that this has been going on (in my personal experience) for over a year and the autograph posted was signed months ago. It has actually taken us a long time to decide to say something so publicly about it, but I personally said something because THIS IS IMPORTANT AND PEOPLE NEED TO STOP IGNORING IT.
This person does not know very much about PG. This person does not know about the time PG asked a professional Jesus worshiper to turn his radio down, and nearly lost his job. This person does not know about the time PG was robbed at gunpoint. All this person knows is that PG does not take a Pennsylvania drag queen seriously as an agent of oppression.
There is a lot of noise about racism. It is very one sided. Anti white racism is ignored or excused. The constant whining gets in the way of constructive action. There needs to be compassion and kindness for both people of color and white people. To focus this kind of attention on a PBR swilling loser says more about the complainer than it does the performer.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress. They are Union Soldiers, from 1861-1865. The spell check suggestions for POC are Cop and Pox.
Ultimate Photography Experience
The first mistake was reading Andrew Sullivan. There was a piece about a curious tale from Montana. It seems as though a man was hitchhiking through the state. He was going to write a book about “Kindness in America.” The plan came to a halt when his upper arm was shot. The various accounts do not say whether it was the right or left arm. The type of firearm is not indicated.
The shot man was Ray Dolin, of Julian WV. He owns a photography service, One Shot Impressions “From the minute you call me, to the moment you display our artwork on your wall, rest assured, you will enjoy the ultimate photography experience.” Perhaps what happened is “the ultimate photography experience”.
The following synopsis of Mr. Dolin’s ultimate experience is taken from a story in the Billings Gazette, Authorities say hitchhiker shot himself. The story was written by Matthew Brown, of Associated Press. It is available, verbatim, in dozens of web locations. The Billings version advertised Yoplait smoothies and the Montana lottery. The top five stories: 1 Authorities say hitchhiker shot himself, 2 Naked PETA demonstrators shower in downtown Billings, 3 Family pet dies of beating suffered during home burglary, 4 Reward fund grows in violent dog death, and 5 Patient at Billings Clinic arrested for assaulting employee.
A West Virginia man who claimed to be the victim of a drive-by shooting along a rural Montana highway while working on a memoir called “Kindness in America” has confessed to shooting himself, authorities said Friday. Valley County sheriff’s officials said they believe 39-year-old Ray Dolin shot himself as a desperate act of self-promotion, but they offered no further details. Dolin, of Julian, W.Va., acknowledged he concocted the tale about the random shooting after he was confronted by investigators at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Miles City where he is recovering, said Sheriff Glen Meier. Charges were pending, and the case remains under investigation. Dolin has not been arrested, but the weapon he allegedly used to carry out the scheme has been recovered, the sheriff said.
Dolin had claimed he was hitchhiking along U.S. Highway 2 west of Glasgow on Saturday when the driver of a maroon pickup pulled to a stop and shot him in the upper arm with no provocation. Authorities later arrested Lloyd Christopher Danielson III, 52, and charged him with felony assault. That charge was dropped Thursday, although Danielson remained in custody, accused of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol when he was arrested….
Dolin said no words were exchanged with the supposed gunman and that he never got a good look at the perpetrator. “He came up, pulls up at a normal speed, stops, points, shoots and drives off. It’s as simple as that,” Dolin said. “I did not get a good description.”
Authorities arrested Danielson — a Tumwater, Wash., man apparently in the region to work in the Bakken oil fields — based on a match between his vehicle and a description offered by Dolin. The arrest occurred near Culbertson, about 100 miles from where a passerby found Dolin wounded on the side of the road. He was exonerated after his vehicle was examined under a search warrant, Meier said, declining to give further details. Federal agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted in the case.”
There are a few things that don’t add up about the story. Was the self shooting story a cover up for something else? Was it a hand gun or rifle? What happened to the piece after the shot(s) was fired? Why was the upper arm chosen? Why was Mr. Danielson picked up, a hundred miles away, when Mr. Dolin did not get a good description?
The shooting took place in Eastern Montana, near North Dakota. The area is in an energy boom. (This paragraph was written when Mr. Dolin’s first story, of a random shooting by a stranger, was operative.) “Ah, the Bakken—the shale formation in the Williston Basin that has turned eastern Montana and western Dakota into the best place in the country to see jacked-up Dodge Rams. If you are a man willing to work grueling hours for good wages, the Bakken is why you have been to Williston. If you are a sheriff in eastern Montana, the Bakken is a universal adaptor for crazy. Desperate 52 year-olds whom nobody knows pass through Glasgow because of the Bakken. The Bakken is responsible for much of the eastern Montana meth trade, too, like gas mining in Gillette. It may not be a causal relation, but you can see it nonetheless. In the rural west, petro-booms are the recent present, better known as the future. If you regard the future as a crueler place, monied if not richer—as small-town sheriffs are wont to do—the connection between senseless roadside shootings and the Bakken is implied.”
There is another side to this tale. PG was following links to the story. It was time to put dishes away, and brush his teeth. There was an awful noise coming from the back of the house. It was an auto start video ad on a webpage, Man hitchhiking crosscountry for memoir titled ‘The Kindness of America’ shot on side of highway. PG tried to leave a comment: “Lose the auto start player. I was writing about this incident, and had several windows opened. I left the room to brush my teeth, and suddenly this nasty music was coming out of somewhere. It was not the alarm clock. I looked at the computer, went through the tabs, and found some caught cat tail singer on this site. If I want to hear your music, I will hit the play button. You do not have to make this choice for me. ”
The comments were connected to facebook. “You previously turned off platform applications. To use this feature you need to turn platform back on, which will reset your “How people bring your info to apps they use” settings. Learn about your privacy settings.” Deathandtaxesmag will continue to auto start tragic country singers. Maybe horrible music is inevitable, like death and taxes.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
Another Rock And Roll Book
PG read Fire and Rain: The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, James Taylor, CSNY, and the Lost Story of 1970. The long form title sums up the book. 1970 was the year PG turned 16, and heard some of these stories as they happened. It was fun to hear them again, with a few details added.
This is a fun book. The only problem is the finger wagging attitude about drug use. There was plenty of that… none of these eleven men liked to say no. And if amplifiers could run on attitude, then rock promoters would never pay a power bill.
The biggest names, to fall the furthest, would be John, Paul, George, and Ringo. It was obvious, to those who wanted to see, that the fab four were finished. The Let it be sessions, and the movie that resulted, had been highly unpleasant. On December 31, the men Paul paid to do things sent out lawyer letters to the men John, George, and Ringo paid to do things. The lawyers had lots of billable hours in the next few years.
Simon and Garfunkel never really liked each other, but had a good working relationship. Bridge over troubled water was the last time they could stomach being in the studio together. In 1970, Arthur played in movies, while Paul sulked and planned a solo album. The breakup was never formally announced. The pair got together for select concerts, but never was the force they had been in 1967.
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had an exciting year. They played a show in Denver, which Neil walked out of. The band nearly broke up, only to be revived by management threatening lawsuits. CSNY made big money from shows, which their drug dealers appreciated. This was not a band so much as an all star act. It was always a struggle to balance the egos. They played again after 1970, and may indeed do more shows together. The fact they are all alive in 2012 is a miracle.
James Taylor is a solo act, and cannot have a breakup. Unless you count the pieces of his personality, in which case the band unity is as remarkable as the three other acts. Mr. Taylor made a movie, courted Joni Mitchell, and took heroin. He wrote the song which graced the title of this book. The runner up was “Why don’t we do it in the road”?
This book is fun to read, and will keep your mind off how long you have been waiting to see the doctor. PG got it at the library, so that price was right. It should make a good gift for someone who is not embarrassed to admit he knows these artists. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”
Mrs. Dora Stainers
Some pictures have longer captions than others. Shorpy published one with a mouthful.
Mrs. Dora Stainers, 562 1/2 Decatur St. 39 years old. Began spinning in an Atlanta mill at 7 years, and is in this mill work for 32 years. Only 4 days of schooling in her life. Began at 20 cents a day. The most she ever made was $1.75 a day & now she is earning $1 a day when she works. She is looking for a job. Her little girl Lilie is the same age she was when she started work, but the mother says, “I ain’t goin to put her to work if I can help it. I’m goin’ to give her as much education as I can so she can do better than I did.” Mrs. Stainers is a woman of exceptional ability considering her training. In contrast to her is another woman (this name was withheld) who has been working in Atlanta mills for 10 yrs. She began at 10 yrs. of age, married at 12, broke down, and may never be able to work again. Her mother went to work in the cotton mill very young. Location: Atlanta, Georgia.
The photographs of Mrs. Stainers were made in March, 1915. The photographer was Lewis Wickes Hine. “Working as an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), Lewis Hine (1874-1940) documented working and living conditions of children in the United States between 1908 and 1924.” “In 1954 the Library received the records of the National Child Labor Committee, including approximately 5,000 photographs and 350 negatives by Lewis Hine. In giving the collection to the Library, the NCLC stipulated that “There will be no restrictions of any kind on your use of the Hine photographic material.”
The house that Mrs. Stainer lived in is long gone. 562 1/2 Decatur Street is across the railroad tracks from the Fulton Cotton Mill. With real estate agents demanding names for all neighborhoods, the area is known as the Old Fourth Ward. At 552 Decatur Street is A & R Welding.
Pictures are from The Library of Congress.
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