I Sing The Body Electric
1
I sing the body electric,
The armies of those I love engirth me and I engirth them,
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the charge of the soul.
Was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves?
And if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?
And if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?
And if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
2
The love of the body of man or woman balks account,
the body itself balks account,
That of the male is perfect, and that of the female is perfect.
The expression of the face balks account,
But the expression of a well-made man appears not only in his face,
It is in his limbs and joints also, it is curiously in the joints of his hips and wrists,
It is in his walk, the carriage of his neck, the flex of his waist and knees,
dress does not hide him,
The strong sweet quality he has strikes through the cotton and broadcloth,
To see him pass conveys as much as the best poem, perhaps more,
You linger to see his back, and the back of his neck and shoulder-side.
The sprawl and fulness of babes, the bosoms and heads of women,
the folds of their dress, their style as we pass in the street,
the contour of their shape downwards,
The swimmer naked in the swimming-bath, seen as he swims through
the transparent green-shine, or lies with his face up and rolls
silently to and from the heave of the water,
The bending forward and backward of rowers in row-boats,
the horse-man in his saddle,
Girls, mothers, house-keepers, in all their performances,
The group of laborers seated at noon-time with their open dinner-kettles,
and their wives waiting,
The female soothing a child, the farmer’s daughter in the garden or cow-yard,
The young fellow hosing corn, the sleigh-driver driving his six horses
through the crowd,
The wrestle of wrestlers, two apprentice-boys, quite grown, lusty,
good-natured, native-born, out on the vacant lot at sundown after work,
The coats and caps thrown down, the embrace of love and resistance,
The upper-hold and under-hold, the hair rumpled over and blinding the eyes;
The march of firemen in their own costumes, the play of masculine muscle
through clean-setting trowsers and waist-straps,
The slow return from the fire, the pause when the bell strikes suddenly again,
and the listening on the alert,
The natural, perfect, varied attitudes, the bent head, the curv’d neck
and the counting;
Such-like I love—I loosen myself, pass freely, am at the mother’s breast
with the little child,
Swim with the swimmers, wrestle with wrestlers, march in line
with the firemen, and pause, listen, count.
3
I knew a man, a common farmer, the father of five sons,
And in them the fathers of sons, and in them the fathers of sons.
This man was a wonderful vigor, calmness, beauty of person,
The shape of his head, the pale yellow and white of his hair and beard,
the immeasurable meaning of his black eyes,
the richness and breadth of his manners,
These I used to go and visit him to see, he was wise also,
He was six feet tall, he was over eighty years old, his sons were massive,
clean, bearded, tan-faced, handsome,
They and his daughters loved him, all who saw him loved him,
They did not love him by allowance, they loved him with personal love,
He drank water only, the blood show’d like scarlet
through the clear-brown skin of his face,
He was a frequent gunner and fisher, he sail’d his boat himself,
he had a fine one presented to him by a ship-joiner,
he had fowling-pieces presented to him by men that loved him,
When he went with his five sons and many grand-sons to hunt or fish,
you would pick him out as the most beautiful and vigorous of the gang,
You would wish long and long to be with him, you would wish to sit by him
in the boat that you and he might touch each other.
4
I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly
round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them,
and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.
5
This is the female form,
A divine nimbus exhales from it from head to foot,
It attracts with fierce undeniable attraction,
I am drawn by its breath as if I were no more than a helpless vapor,
all falls aside but myself and it,
Books, art, religion, time, the visible and solid earth,
and what was expected of heaven or fear’d of hell, are now consumed,
Mad filaments, ungovernable shoots play out of it,
the response likewise ungovernable,
Hair, bosom, hips, bend of legs, negligent falling hands all diffused,
mine too diffused,
Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swelling
and deliciously aching,
Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love,
white-blow and delirious juice,
Bridegroom night of love working surely and softly into the prostrate dawn,
Undulating into the willing and yielding day,
Lost in the cleave of the clasping and sweet-flesh’d day.
This the nucleus—after the child is born of woman, man is born of woman,
This the bath of birth, this the merge of small and large, and the outlet again.
Be not ashamed women, your privilege encloses the rest,
and is the exit of the rest,
You are the gates of the body, and you are the gates of the soul.
The female contains all qualities and tempers them,
She is in her place and moves with perfect balance,
She is all things duly veil’d, she is both passive and active,
She is to conceive daughters as well as sons, and sons as well as daughters.
As I see my soul reflected in Nature,
As I see through a mist, One with inexpressible completeness,
sanity, beauty,
See the bent head and arms folded over the breast, the Female I see.
6
The male is not less the soul nor more, he too is in his place,
He too is all qualities, he is action and power,
The flush of the known universe is in him,
Scorn becomes him well, and appetite and defiance become him well,
The wildest largest passions, bliss that is utmost, sorrow that is utmost
become him well, pride is for him,
The full-spread pride of man is calming and excellent to the soul,
Knowledge becomes him, he likes it always, he brings every thing
to the test of himself,
Whatever the survey, whatever the sea and the sail
he strikes soundings at last only here,
(Where else does he strike soundings except here?)
The man’s body is sacred and the woman’s body is sacred,
No matter who it is, it is sacred—is it the meanest one in the laborers’ gang?
Is it one of the dull-faced immigrants just landed on the wharf?
Each belongs here or anywhere just as much as the well-off, just as much as you,
Each has his or her place in the procession.
(All is a procession,
The universe is a procession with measured and perfect motion.)
Do you know so much yourself that you call the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight,
and he or she has no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together from its diffuse float,
and the soil is on the surface, and water runs and vegetation sprouts,
For you only, and not for him and her?
7
A man’s body at auction,
(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)
I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.
Gentlemen look on this wonder,
Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,
For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,
For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.
In this head the all-baffling brain,
In it and below it the makings of heroes.
Examine these limbs, red, black, or white, they are cunning in tendon and nerve,
They shall be stript that you may see them.
Exquisite senses, life-lit eyes, pluck, volition,
Flakes of breast-muscle, pliant backbone and neck, flesh not flabby,
good-sized arms and legs,
And wonders within there yet.
Within there runs blood,
The same old blood! the same red-running blood!
There swells and jets a heart, there all passions, desires, reachings, aspirations,
(Do you think they are not there because they are not express’d
in parlors and lecture-rooms?)
This is not only one man, this the father of those who shall be fathers
in their turns,
In him the start of populous states and rich republics,
Of him countless immortal lives with countless embodiments and enjoyments.
How do you know who shall come from the offspring of his offspring
through the centuries?
(Who might you find you have come from yourself,
if you could trace back through the centuries?)
8
A woman’s body at auction,
She too is not only herself, she is the teeming mother of mothers,
She is the bearer of them that shall grow and be mates to the mothers.
Have you ever loved the body of a woman?
Have you ever loved the body of a man?
Do you not see that these are exactly the same to all in all nations
and times all over the earth?
If anything is sacred the human body is sacred,
And the glory and sweet of a man is the token of manhood untainted,
And in man or woman a clean, strong, firm-fibred body, is more beautiful
than the most beautiful face.
Have you seen the fool that corrupted his own live body?
or the fool that corrupted her own live body?
For they do not conceal themselves, and cannot conceal themselves.
9
O my body! I dare not desert the likes of you in other men and women,
nor the likes of the parts of you,
I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of the soul,
(and that they are the soul,)
I believe the likes of you shall stand or fall with my poems,
and that they are my poems,
Man’s, woman’s, child, youth’s, wife’s, husband’s, mother’s, father’s,
young man’s, young woman’s poems,
Head, neck, hair, ears, drop and tympan of the ears,
Eyes, eye-fringes, iris of the eye, eyebrows, and the waking
or sleeping of the lids,
Mouth, tongue, lips, teeth, roof of the mouth, jaws, and the jaw-hinges,
Nose, nostrils of the nose, and the partition,
Cheeks, temples, forehead, chin, throat, back of the neck, neck-slue,
Strong shoulders, manly beard, scapula, hind-shoulders,
and the ample side-round of the chest,
Upper-arm, armpit, elbow-socket, lower-arm, arm-sinews, arm-bones,
Wrist and wrist-joints, hand, palm, knuckles, thumb, forefinger,
finger-joints, finger-nails,
Broad breast-front, curling hair of the breast, breast-bone, breast-side,
Ribs, belly, backbone, joints of the backbone,
Hips, hip-sockets, hip-strength, inward and outward round,
man-balls, man-root,
Strong set of thighs, well carrying the trunk above,
Leg-fibres, knee, knee-pan, upper-leg, under-leg,
Ankles, instep, foot-ball, toes, toe-joints, the heel;
All attitudes, all the shapeliness, all the belongings of my or your body
or of any one’s body, male or female,
The lung-sponges, the stomach-sac, the bowels sweet and clean,
The brain in its folds inside the skull-frame,
Sympathies, heart-valves, palate-valves, sexuality, maternity,
Womanhood, and all that is a woman, and the man that comes from woman,
The womb, the teats, nipples, breast-milk, tears, laughter, weeping,
love-looks, love-perturbations and risings,
The voice, articulation, language, whispering, shouting aloud,
Food, drink, pulse, digestion, sweat, sleep, walking, swimming,
Poise on the hips, leaping, reclining, embracing, arm-curving and tightening,
The continual changes of the flex of the mouth, and around the eyes,
The skin, the sunburnt shade, freckles, hair,
The curious sympathy one feels when feeling with the hand
the naked meat of the body,
The circling rivers the breath, and breathing it in and out,
The beauty of the waist, and thence of the hips,
and thence downward toward the knees,
The thin red jellies within you or within me, the bones and the marrow
in the bones,
The exquisite realization of health;
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!
Text for this adventure is from the Project Gutenberg.
The text was reformatted by Chamblee54.
“I sing the Body Electric” was written by Walt Whitman.
An audio version of this poem is available from Librivox.
Pictures from The Library of Congress.
Unmarked Polyforms
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why do sjw make such ugly graphics? there are much more appealing ways to tell that story than all caps, toxic masculinity font, and smallest letters on the bottom. ~ @LimbaughRoomie Rush Limbaugh’s Roommate in Hell I thought the low point of my life was being damned to hell, but then I was assigned Rush Limbaugh as a roommate. ~ Someone collected the best told by each American President. This was compiled while POTUS #44 was in charge. ~ why do sjw make such ugly graphics? there are much more appealing ways to tell that story than all caps, toxic masculinity font, and smallest letters on the bottom. ~ Herbert Hoover “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” Address to the Nebraska Republican Conference, Lincoln, Nebraska (16 January 1936) ~ “the epistemological equivalent of him saying that i blow goats uh the first time by the way that the word epistemological appeared within five words of a reference to having oral sex with goats but go ahead” ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Cuck A Doodle Do
Cuck is a popular insult. The primary audience is people who take Milo Yiannopoulos seriously. Cuck is short for cuckold, a time honored insult for a man with an adulterous wife. One popular legend has St. Joseph, the step father of Jesus, as the patron saint of cuckolds.
Urban Dictionary has an alternate perspective. “A word used by White Supremacists to solicit sex. Because they believe people whom they call cucks would want to fuck them. … Cuck itself is an onomatopoeia derived from the moaning sound white supremacists make while fantasizing about getting fucked. It is NOT, as some trolls suggests, derived from “cuckold” – a fantastical troll logic only horny White Supremacists would believe in.”
MTV Decoded recently had a video, The Strange & Gross Origin of “Cuck”. The host is natural hair maven Francesca Ramsey. The entertainment has 42,621 views, with 559 likes, and 14k dislikes. This is a 25-1 thumbs-down-to-thumps-up ratio.
Frannie says that cuck is the love child of racism and misogyny. Racism says cuck isn’t his kid, and refuses to pay child support. Frannie offers, as evidence, the popularity of cuck pornography. In CP, a white man watches his white wife get fucked by a black man. CP, with productions like Cuckold Creampie Cleanup, is a noted crowd pleaser.
A possible origin for cuckold is cuckoo. This bird likes to lay its eggs in another bird’s nest. How Republican! As for the etymology, cuckold shows “Middle English cokewold First Known Use: 13th century.” Cuckoo comes from “Middle English cuccu, of imitative origin.” At least one source suggests that cuckoo, the bird, is derived from cuckold, the clueless husband.
Frannie’s video has links in the show notes. It is not known what fact is connected to what source. Still, it is better than having no source at all. One of these stories is from BBC news, Cuckolds, horns and other explanations. This article does not mention racism.
“But that gesture – the hands to the forehead, finger and thumb outstretched. How has that become to mean “you are a cuckold”? One explanation comes from the Roman era. Back then, returning soldiers were given horns, symbolizing success on the battlefield. But the horns also came to imply failure in the bedroom, and that it was never a good idea to leave a Roman wife alone for too long. A more common explanation is that a horned beast cannot see its own horns. And husbands are often the last to know about their partner’s infidelities.”
This is a possible source for “horny.” But the fun doesn’t stop there. “In Britain, the word “cuckold” is old-fashioned. But youngsters still love to stick their fingers up behind their friends’ heads in photographs, to make them look silly.”
The Library of Congress supplied the pictures for this feature. This is a repost.
Gene Talmadge
Former Georgia Governor Eugene Talmadge was famous for saying, to cheering crowds, “Sure I stole, but I stole for you”. PG suspected an urban legend, and decided to see what Mr. Google had to say.
Eugene Talmadge was Agriculture Commissioner before he was Governor. He had some relatives on the state payroll. There was something funky going on with fertilizer. He bought a bunch of hogs, and sent them to Chicago, where he thought he could make more money. After a while, some people started to ask questions. His answer was “If I stole, it was for farmers like yourselves”. (This is on page 59 of “The Wild Man from Sugar Creek.”)
This was in 1931. The depression hit Georgia hard. The wool hat boys were in a world of fertilizer. Mr. Talmadge set himself up as the champion of the dirt farmers, and the enemy of the lyin’ Atlanta newspapers. In 1932 he was elected Governor. He was re-elected three times, but died in 1946, before he could serve again. He was replaced by two Governors.
The county unit system was one reason Mr. Talmadge kept getting elected. Each of Georgia’s 159 counties got a certain number of votes. Three rural counties were the equivalent of winning Fulton County. Mr. Talmadge boasted that he never won a county with street cars.
Mr. Talmadge’s campaigns were legendary. He would speak at the county courthouse, and plants in the crowd would scream questions, like “what about those lyin Atlanta newspapers?”. One of his favorite lines was “Yeah, it’s true. I stole, but I stole for you, the dirt farmer”.
PG’s aunt went to work at the Trust Company of Georgia in the early fifties. There was a story that the new employees were told. It seems as though Governor Talmadge was in the lobby of the Trust Company, after having a happy lunch. He had to use the restroom, and went to the corner of the lobby to relieve himself.
There is a statue of Gene Talmadge in front of the State Capitol. The plate at the base reads “I may surprise you, but I shall not deceive you.” This is a repost, with pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library.”
Why The War Between The States Was Fought
Recently, Mr. Trump said something stupid about the War Between the States. After his comments began to filter into the marketplace of ideas, people began to react. There was a good bit of self righteous talk about how bad the Confederacy was. Maybe it is time for another point of view. This feature will have minimal research. Mostly, PG is typing things he has heard and thought. It is possible that some items will be incorrect. The reader is encouraged to do their own research. Comments are welcome.
When the colonies declared independence in 1776, nobody knew how things would turn out. First, Great Britain needed to be defeated. After that, the Articles of Confederation went into effect. “Under these articles, the states remained sovereign and independent, with Congress serving as the last resort on appeal of disputes. Congress was also given the authority to make treaties and alliances, maintain armed forces and coin money. However, the central government lacked the ability to levy taxes and regulate commerce…”
This arrangement was not working, and the Constitutional Convention was called. Originally, the CC was going to revise the Articles of Confederation, but wound up throwing the whole thing out, and creating the Constitution. This document called for greater federal authority. The issue of what powers to give to the states, and what powers to give to the central government, was contentious. It remains controversial to this day.
Had any group of antonymous states formed a federal union before? Usually, such a union is the result of a conquest, with one of the states ruling the others. It is unclear whether such a union had been attempted before, or how successful it was. When the “founding fathers” created the constitution, they probably did not foresee how it would play out. The current system, with a massive central government cat-herding the 50 states, would have been laughed off as a dangerous fantasy.
So the states start to have disagreements. One of the things they disagreed over was slavery. Yes, this was an important factor in the unpleasantness to come. Slavery also influenced a lot of the economic conflicts. The North wanted high tariffs to protect industry. The South wanted low tariffs, so they could sell cotton to Europe. There were many other ways for the states to not get along.
Finally, in 1861, the disagreements became too big to ignore. The south seceded, and the War Between The States began. The Confederate States of America was a looser union than the United States. The thought was that the states were more important than the federal union. Mr. Lincoln disagreed. (One popular name for the conflict was Mr. Lincoln’s war.) Many people say that Mr. Lincoln was not especially concerned about the slaves, but wanted to keep the union together.
How does slavery enter into this? Imagine the conflict over states rights vs federalism to be an open tank of gasoline. The lit match that was thrown into that tank was slavery. When the winners wrote the war history, it sounded better to say that the war was fought to free the slaves. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This was a repost.
The Covid Debt
“Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.” Herbert Hoover said this, at the Nebraska Republican Conference, January 16,1936. In 1936, the national debt was $33.7 billion. This was during the depression, when the government was trying to revive the economy. When Mr. Hoover was President, in 1932, the debt was $19.4 billion.
The national debt today is $28.2 trillion. This is 855 times the debt in 1932. The government likes to spend more money than it has.
2020 was a big year for the national debt. When covid hit, the economy shut down. The government went on a spending spree. The resulting budget deficit (the amount added onto the national debt) for fiscal year 2020 is estimated to be $3.7 trillion. The fiscal year is October 1 through September.
$3.7 trillion is larger than the total national debt in 1991, $3.666 trillion. $3.7 trillion works out to $71.1 billion per week, $10.1 billion per day, $422.3 million per hour. This does not include government spending covered by tax revenue.
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” This gem is credited to the late Everett Dirkson, Republican Senator from Illinois. In 1965, the photogenic Senator was losing sleep over raising the national debt to $328 billion.
A billion is a difficult number to comprehend. A billion seconds ago, it was 1989. A billion minutes ago, the Roman empire flourished. (There are 24 hours/1440 minutes in a day. There are 525,600 minutes in a non-leap year.) Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. These men were soldiers in the War Between the States. In 1865, the national debt was $2.6 billion.
Lene Lovich
Lene Lovich was born Lili-Marlene Premilovich in Detroit, Michigan, March 30, 1949. She moved to England as a teenager, and met Les Chappell. He who played guitar in her band, and was her man.
As an art school student, she started to tie her long hair in plaits to keep it out of the clay while studying sculpture. Her recording debut was as part of an audience, when Chuck Berry recorded “My ding a ling”. This may have been the inspiration for “Lucky Number.”
Miss Lovich played in several bands, before winding up on the Stiff label. She put out two albums that became popular in the USA, and did a tour. After a while, she retired from music to raise a family. Miss Lovich has made a slight comeback in recent years.
PG had the privilege of seeing Lene Lovich at the Agora Ballroom, Atlanta GA, in the winter of 1980. The opening act was The Romantics. The show was taped for broadcast on the NBC radio network, and Don Pardo was on hand to introduce the bands.
The Romantics were unknown to the crowd at the Agora that night. They came on stage wearing costumes that looked like the Beatles of 1963. Every song they did was a bit better than the one before, and they got a big round of applause when the set ended.
Don Pardo had quite a career. He was the house announcer on November 22, 1963, and was the voice of NBC when he interrupted a soap opera to announce that John Kennedy had been “cut down with assassin’s bullets”. During his career as a TV announcer, Mr. Pardo could not use profanity. That night at the Agora, he made up for lost time…every other word he said was a cuss word. Dominick George “Don” Pardo, born February 22, 1918, passed away August 18, 2014.
Soon, Lene Lovich (spell check suggestion:lovechild) and her band came on stage. She was not the typical sexpot rock chanteuse… A bit chubby, with her long hair tied in plaits. Wearing a long sleeve black dress, probably stolen from a convent, she provided fantasy for only the kinkiest. Les Chappell was there, with his shaved head, to stop any trouble before it started, and play guitar.
The material came mostly from the first two albums on Stiff records. (At some point in the evening, someone…maybe Lovich, maybe Pardo…said “Be stiff”.) She introduced “Lucky Number” by saying “We have a song that goes ah oh aih oh”. During an instrumental jam in that song, she cried out “We have an American on keyboards”. The American was Thomas Dolby, who would soon go solo. He did not appear to be blinded by science.
The first encore was ” I think we’re alone now”, which had been a hit for Tommy James and the Shondells (spell check suggestions: shoulders, shovelfuls). Soon the night was over. Pictures are from the “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. This is a repost.
UPDATE: This comment was left on facebook “Those first two albums are GREAT. I probably saw her on this same tour; Dolby was with her. I was a club on South Street in Philly. She looked like a freaked-out Teutonic barmaid, the St. Pauli girl gone goth (before there was goth). Somehow, the sight of her playing sax was hilarious, and the concert was a blast. I bought a recent Thomas Dolby CD a couple months ago. Sucked, as, alas, did Lene’s last one.
POTUS Jokes
After a ADHD WHCD, the Washington Post published The single best joke told by every president, from Obama to Washington. It was easier than finding anything funny said by Larry Wilmore Michelle Wolf. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.
The pickins are surprisingly slim, especially for the modern era. When everything you do is recorded, something has to be funny. Three recent Republicans show a liberal capacity for humor.
George H.W. Bush, 1989 Gridiron Club: “People say I’m indecisive, but I don’t know about that.”
Richard Nixon, in Ms. magazine, 1971: “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I wouldn’t want to wake up next to a lady pipefitter.”
Herbert Hoover “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”
Warren Harding was a dog. … “referring to his penis, which he named Jerry, in a 1915 love letter to his mistress Carrie Fulton Phillips: “Jerry — you recall Jerry, whose cards I once sent you to Europe — came in while I was pondering your notes in glad reflection, and we talked about it.”
You have to go back over a hundred fifty years to get a serious laugh.
Andrew Johnson “Washington, D.C., is twelve square miles bordered by reality.”
Abraham Lincoln “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”
Franklin Pierce about duties after leaving office: “There’s nothing left. . . but to get drunk.”
Zachary Taylor when suggested that he run: “Stop your nonsense and drink your whiskey!”
John Tyler on his death bed: “Doctor, I am going. Perhaps it is best.”
James Madison on his death bed: “I always talk better lying down.”
PG found a quote once about Alexander Hamilton, by John Adams. “His ambition, his restlessness and all his grandiose schemes come, I’m convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn’t find enough whores to absorb!” A google search for verification led to a reddit page, Fake Founder Quotes, starring John Adams. Apparently, Mr. Adams said something similar to that in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, sent January 25, 1806. According to this source, the letter was a satire of Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub
George Washington in a 1788 letter congratulating the Marquis de Chastellux on his recent marriage: “Now you are well served for coming to fight in favour of the American Rebels, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible Contagion — domestic felicity — which like the small pox or the plague, a man can have only once in his life: because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America — I don’t know how you manage these matters in France) for his whole life time.”
Will Slack Destroy America?
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Congresswoman Liz Cheney On The Attack On Israel And The Divide Within The GOP
Is Slack Destroying American Companies? Q&A With Antonio Garcia-Martinez
Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia – a Film by Nicholas Wrathall
Rogan Says Giving Into Woke Mob Will Result In ‘SWM’ Not Being Allowed To Talk
Colin Powell: ‘We’ve come to live in a society based on insults, on lies’
‘We got shot at’ – the outrageous life of Jayne County, the first trans rock’n’roller
Why grievance studies hoaxer James Lindsay wants to save Southern Baptists
Fungus full of psychedelic drugs could cause Indiana Brood X cicadas’ butts to fall off
deadly consequences when kids run away from CO residential treatment centers
Biden ripped for joking about running over reporter who asked about Israel
He’s “mad, bad and dangerous to know”. He is the scandalous Lord Byron
Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris 25 Dec. 1783Writings 9:138
From Benjamin Franklin to Robert Morris, 25 December 1783
UNC backs down from offering acclaimed journalist tenured position
Why wasn’t Sylvester “Redd” Coles tried for the murder of Mark McPhail?
Davis Hearing Wraps Up With Stunning Admission by Witness
Walgreens Closes 17 San Francisco Stores Due To “Out Of Control” Shoplifting
UNC-Nikole Hannah-Jones: They’re coming for you, too
Biden administration drops Trump-era discrimination lawsuit against Yale
“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
7 Bible Passages to Remind You God Loves You & Wants You to Take Care of Yourself
Denial Of UNC Tenure Is Result Of Scholarly Malpractice, Not Discrimination
Jemele Hill Accidentally Got Involved in the Kwame Brown Saga and …
Kwame Brown says the magic word 56 times in 4:18
Chorus of “We Shall Overcome” breaks out at @unc Board of Trustees meeting
we can’t change our procedure on the basis of psychological irregularities
A Culture of Free Speech Protects Everyone … Nikole Hannah-Jones appears to be …
the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) posted about my friend Emily …
Andrew Sullivan’s Free Speech Hypocrisy A false narrative of cancel culture …
Pulitzer Prize-winning NYT journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones joins UNC faculty
UNC hire of acclaimed journalist sparks conservative ire
People Are Roasting The Viral “Vaccinated By The Lord” Card
Mossad proxy faked violent Facebook anti-Semitism
Athletic Tape Binding Tutorial for Drag Kings, FTM, and Enbys
Don’t Let Fear of ‘Wokeness’ Close Hearts and Minds
Placards with anti-Jewish hatred mar protests by tens of thousands
best way to explain why we incarcerate is to explore what would happen if we didn’t.
A Lesson From The Crowded House (Abuse in Reformed Evangelicalism)
richie’s pronouns ~ ritas ~ Chief Noc-A-Homa ~ kwame brown ~ panos
eurovision ~ twitterholic ~ pledge ~ shaun mullen ~ usafa
timber rattlesnake ~ knight chairs ~ mossad gift shop ~ faulkner ~ cancel envy
@johannhari101 Whenever you are tempted to share something angry and abusive on Twitter, pause. Remember that your personality is being repatterned by shitty algorithms that reward aggression and rage and make you miserable. Stop. Don’t post it. ~ The Mossad: The Social Media Account @TheMossadIL We put lasers on aquatic animals and other satirical shenanigans Right behind you themossadil.com TheMossadIL ~ xxx The Pulitzer Prize-winning architect of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, made this distinction in an interview: “Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man’s neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral.” ~ @nhannahjones Reporter @nytmag // Knight Chair @unchussman //Slanderous & nasty-minded mulattress//Co-founder The Ida B. Wells Society //smart&thuggish//Creator #1619Project ~ Curing health care of racism: Nikole Hannah-Jones and Ibram X. Kendi, PhD, call on institutions to foster change ~ @chamblee54 Is this what you want on your faculty? @nhannahjones … Slanderous & nasty-minded mulattress … smart&thuggish… ~ @Jasmyne A friend told me in no uncertain terms that what’s going between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza is not her business. “It’s not my business.” Her reasoning is that the groups involved historically don’t get involved with Black American issues so she’s returning the favor. ~ @chamblee54 @bloggingheads @GlennLoury @JohnHMcWhorter “we have got to talk to charles blow in some different way” It does not matter how you talk to @CharlesMBlow if he does not listen on a lighter note, would you grant tenure to “Slanderous & nasty-minded mulattress” @nhannahjones ~ Lori Lightfoot Flees In Terror After Thomas Sowell Takes Her Up On Offer For Black People To Interview Her ~ The Cancellation of Nikole Hannah-Jones Cancellation is not criticism … “Cancel culture” is nothing more than the belief that one’s enemies consist mostly of Milo-like assholes, and that as many of them as possible should be treated this way, rather than be debated. Moreover, this belief encourages lazy intellectual habits, because calling someone an asshole or hitting him on the head is easier than, say, reading The Bell Curve and figuring out where it goes wrong. ~ the next question I got was what are your preferred pronouns so this was kind of a surprising question but just so you know my preferred pronouns are he/him him.he sir I do identify it as a male and I was born male and I identify as a male and I take pride in being a male so yes I’m a him ~ 1 stop video at moment you want to start 2 hit share/embed 3 get embed code 4 extract url from embed code 5 type &end=xxx 6 copy code ~ “Stop doing what Hitler did to you.” “Israel, the new Nazi state” ~ pictures today are from The Library of Congress. ~ selah
Bob Dylan Is 80
This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library”. Today is Bob Dylan’s eightieth birthday. This chamblee 54 birthday tribute is composed primarily of three previously published pieces of work.
This compendium was assembled in 2016. On David Bowie’s in 2016, PG created a computer playlist, and assembled a few blog posts into a birthday celebration. Three days later, David Bowie was dead. PG decided to do the same thing to Bob Dylan on his birthday. Instead of dying, Bob Dylan won the Nobel prize. A similar effort on RuPaul’s birthday had no effect on the performer.
It was a late may morning in Atlanta GA, and a slack blogger was searching his archives. Yes, Issac Asinov never got writers block, and when he wasn’t going to the bathroom he was typing, but that is a lifestyle choice. Easy writing makes tough reading. So, anyway, in the may archive for 2011 there was a post about Bob Dylan’s seventieth birthday. People were taking bets on whether he would make it to thirty, and here he is at seventy nine.
Hibbing MN is a cold place. At least it can claim to be the birthplace of Robert Allen Zimmerman. That’s Allen, with an e, and double L, just like hell. The original initials were RAZ, which might be a good trivia question, or, with a silent W in front, radio station call letters. The problem is, he legally changed his name to Bob Dylan, with no known middle name. Those initial are BD.
On May 24, 1941, the curly haired wonder boi arrived. The world was a different place. Europe was in flames, and eyeing the young men of America as fresh cannon fodder. This was twelve years, eleven months, and eighteen days before PG graced the planet. A twelve year old in Hibbing MN would have no reason to think of a newborn baby in Atlanta GA.
The first time PG heard of Bob Dylan was probably at the record rack of Zippy’s dime store in Cherokee Plaza. There was an album of his greatest hits, and it came with a poster. The poster had a drawing of the man, with psychedelic waves of hair cascading in multi colored glory to the edges. PG never did buy the LP.
The former Mr. Zimmerman was never big on top 40 am radio. Somebody somewhere was getting a headache over those lyrics, but Atlanta GA was not somewhere in those days. By this time, Mr. Dylan had crashed his motorcycle, and gone into hiding. As the counter culture exploded (if only someone had disinfected that counter) the curly haired poet was in hiding, the subject of much speculation. At one point, people were stealing his garbage, and claiming to find evidence of investment in munitions firms. The neoscience of Dylanology continues to this day.
As PG got older and stupider, he heard more and more Bob Dylan music. In the summer of 1972, there was a performance at the Concert for Bangladesh. A couple of albums released during this era sucked, and some people stopped caring about Bob Dylan.
At the start of 1974, a tour was announced. The Band was to be the backing group. The circus came to the Omni, and PG got some of the mail order tickets. He couldn’t find anyone to use the second ticket, and sold it to a stranger outside the arena.
The show was nothing special. Bob Dylan excels at writing, is ok in the studio, and blah on stage. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was at the show, and was said to look bored. Mr. Dylan was invited to the Governor’s mansion after the show, and talked to the Governor. A lot of people in Georgia were surprised that Jimmy would want to run for President.
As the Seventies went me me meing into sex and drugs oblivion, Bob Dylan regained both his writing touch, and love of the spotlight. The Rolling Thunder tour happened, he got back together with Joan Baez, divorced his wife, became born again, became more Jewish, counted money, and generally lived the life. PG did his own version of all that, without Joan Baez or being circumcised again.
In the winter of 1991, America was consumed by war fever. Saddam Hussein had been elevated to next Hitler status, and had to be taught a lesson. One night, Bob Dylan played on a music awards show, and performed “Masters of War”. He played a discordant version of that ditty, with the result that few understood what he had said. By this time, Mr. Dylan had assembled a band, and gone out on the “Never Ending Tour”. A Bob Dylan concert had gone from being a special event, to being another name on the festival roster. Overexposure will do that.
On the last night of the Olympics in 1996, Bob Dylan played the House of Blues downtown. PG won a pair of the $80 tickets in a radio station contest. It was his only trip downtown during the games, and had to wait in a security line to get into Centennial Olympic Park.
The only celebrity, other than Mr. Dylan, seen at the House of Blues that night was Bill Walton. The band was competent…they impressed PG as being like a bar band that did a lot of Dylan songs, with a strangely authentic lead vocalist. The sound in the room was not good, at least in the spot where PG stood. The only song he recognized was “All along the Watchtower”, the Jimi Hendrix classic. Mr. Dylan got a cheer when he put his harmonica appliance on.
The aptly named dangerousminds has a link to a story about the recording of Blonde on Blonde, by Bob Dylan. It only happened once.
Bob Dylan was 24 years old, newly married, and had “sold out” i.e. started to play electric guitar. A bunch of Canadians known as The Hawks (later The Band) was touring with him. Barely a month after the release of “Highway 61 Revisited”, sessions started at a New York studio.
The New York sessions did not work, so a decision was made to go to Nashville. Al Kooper played organ, and served as a music director. A crew of Nashville players was recruited. A bass player named Joseph Souter, Jr. would become famous a few years later using the name Joe South. Kris Kristofferson was the janitor at the studio.
Most studios have bafflers, or sound proof room dividers, splitting the studio into cubicles. For these sessions, the bafflers were taken down, and the band played together as a unit.
The second session in Nashville started at 6pm and lasted until 530 the next morning. Mr. Dylan was working on the lyrics to “Sad eyed lady of the lowlands”, and the recording could not start until he was ready. The musicians played ping pong and waited. At 4am, the song was ready, and the record was finished in two takes.
PG had marginal encounters with two of the players on this album. He met a lady once, who worked in an insurance office. One of the customers was Joe South. His driving record file was an inch thick.
Al Kooper had a prosperous career after his association with Bob Dylan. The former Alan Peter Kuperschmidt produced the first three Lynyrd Skynyrd albums, sold that contract for a nice piece of change, and lived happily ever after.
One night, Mr. Kooper was playing a show at the Great Southeast Music Hall, and PG sat in front of the stage. During a break between songs, PG asked his friend “what time is it?”. Mr. Kooper heard him on stage, and said it was 11:30.
If it ever quits raining, PG is going to walk to the Chamblee library and return a book, and a cd. The cd is by Bob Dylan, and is a work of genius. The book is about the former Mr. Zimmerman, and is a piece of garbage. (BTW, Dylan is not the only Zimmerman to hit the big time. Ethel Merman was born Ethel Agnes Zimmerman.The Zimmerman telegram got us into World War I. The less said about George Zimmerman, the better)
When returning cd’s to a library, you need to get a check in receipt. Once, PG returned a stack of cd’s to the Brookhaven library. When checking them in, one was missed by the scanner. A few days later, there was a note in the mail about an overdue cd.
The good news was, the cd was on the shelf when PG went back to investigate, and the matter was quickly settled. It did not help that the cd was a collection of disco music called “Shake your booty”.
“The freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” was released in the early sixties, when the man was barely old enough to buy a drink. There is not a bad song on it, and several are classic rock staples. At a time when mindless pop dominated pop music, here were thoughtful, moving lyrics.
In 1991, with America in a war frenzy, Mr. Dylan appeared on a music awards show. He performed “Masters of War”, at a time when the majority would be appalled if they could understand what he was singing. Mr. Dylan has been reinvented many times, and often the lyrics get gargled.
Five years later, PG won tickets to a Bob Dylan concert. It was the last night of the Olympics, and the man was appearing at the House of Blues. (Tickets were $80, so the radio contest is the only reason PG went). It was like hearing a good bar band, that did nothing but Dylan songs, with the man as the vocalist. Due to the mix of the sound, PG could not recognize many of the songs.
The book is Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet by Seth Rogovoy. It tells the Dylan tale as a story of Jewish prophecy. PG got to page 16, where the author claims that “Like a Rolling Stone” “almost single handedly revolutionized rock’n roll music”. Huh?
PG was eating dinner, and did not have anything else to read. He got to page 38. Nothing in the next 22 pages changed his mind away from ditching the book. How does nonsense like this get published?
#1619Gate Part Two
UNC backs down from offering acclaimed journalist tenured position This appears to be the piece that ignited this week’s media dumpster fire. Tenure disputes are seldom hot button topics. Relatively few people are concerned about the employment status of @nhannahjones.
The way the story has unfolded raises a few questions. On April 26, 2021, this announcement was made: “Nikole Hannah-Jones … will join University of North Carolina’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media in July as the Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.” The word tenure did not appear in the initial announcement.
On May 19, this story appeared: UNC backs down from offering acclaimed journalist tenured position The story has a lot of quotes, and finger pointing. Why did UNC announce the hiring before all the tenure details were in place? Why did NC Policy Watch release a story about the tenure decision? How did it get into the national outrage discussion?
This is a puzzling story for non-academics. There are countless stories of people who struggle for years to get a doctorate degree, and are lucky to get any kind of teaching position. And here we have a journalist, whose top degree is a masters, granted a five year contract as a professor. The chattering class is upset because she did not get tenure.
Nikole Hannah-Jones is at the center of this storm. She is best known as being the creator of The 1619 Project. “It aims to reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.” The 1619 Project has many admirers, and many critics.
Here is what @nhannahjones says about herself on twitter. “Reporter @nytmag // Knight Chair @unchussman //Slanderous & nasty-minded mulattress//Co-founder The Ida B. Wells Society //smart&thuggish//Creator #1619Project” 0 The former twitter profile is festive. @nhannahjones “Reporter @nytmag covering race from 1619-present//AKA The Beyoncé of Journalism//Co-founder ida b wells society //smart and thuggish//Aries//1619Project.” (This item was tucked away in the April 26 announcement. “In 2016, she (along with the AP’s Ron Nixon and ProPublica’s Topher Sanders) established the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting to increase and retain reporters and editors of color. The Society relocated to UNC Hussman from Harvard in 2019 …”)
The 1619 Project inspired intense controversy. There was this story from a fact checker: I Helped Fact-Check the 1619 Project. The Times Ignored Me. Many of projects claims were challenged. There was apparently some “stealth editing.” “Rather than address this controversy directly, the Times—it now appears—decided to send it down the memory hole … Without announcement or correction, the newspaper quietly edited out the offending passage such that it now reads …” Some unkind people speculate that Mrs. Hannah-Jones will be teaching a class in Journalistic ethics.
#1619Gate appeared on this blog after the stealth edits. Here are a few quotes from that piece. One of the @nhannahjones quotes is oh-so-ironic today. It will appear in boldface.
What is fascinating about #1619Gate is the spectacle of the mighty New York Times humbling itself. There is also the bizarre behavior of @nhannahjones. … After a while, “The Beyoncé of Journalism” looks more like the Kellyanne Conway of historic scholarship.
This tweet landed on my timeline earlier this week. @nhannahjones “There is a difference between being politically black and being racially black. I am not defending anyone, but we all know this and should stop pretending that we don’t” @kelsey_midd “What does this mean?” @nhannahjones “If you don’t know it ain’t for you.” @kelsey_midd “I’m not the only person that asked. I’m also a black person.” @nhannahjones “Yes, I am capable of seeing your avatar. And I will repeat: if you don’t understand the difference between being born/designated a certain race and taking up a particular set of racial politics, I am not going to educate you here. .
… The boundless folly of woke twitter awaited me. I soon came across the following exchange. I have a screen shot of the punch line, in case it is deleted.
@sullydish “Basic rule in online journalism: if you change something after publication, acknowledge and explain it. On 1619 Project, NYT just broke this basic *ethical* rule. And to further the cover up @nhannahjones deleted all tweet history. Let that sink in.”
@nhannahjones “This is the last thing I will say about this. The wording in question never appeared in the 1619 Project text. It appears nowhere in the printed copy, something easily verifiable as pointed out to you. It didn’t appear in my essay nor any of the actual journalism we produced.”
@ira_mckey “It may be the last thing you say about it, but the Twitter screenshots and the history of what you said about it Still exist.” (Includes photo of NHJ tweet: @@nhannahjones “I argue that 1619 is our true founding. Also, look at the banner pic in my profile.”)
@nhannahjones “This is my tweet. My tweets are not official 1619 copy.”
Nikole Hannah-Jones has become something of a celebrity. This is probably why she was given the Knight Chair. It is also why gems like this get out: “Violence is when an agent of the state kneels on a man’s neck until all of the life is leached out of his body. Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence. To use the same language to describe those two things is not moral.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. More #1619Gate episodes are available. One Three Four Five
Chamblee54 
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