Odds and Sods - Tanya and Nancy 20th-Anniversary edition

At left: Tonya Harding talks to Geraldo. (Ohhh, she talked to everybody.)





Like every dedicated, connoisseur-level scandalmonger, I was knee deep in the whole Tanya Harding/Nancy Kerrigan Olympics foofaraw, back in 1994. ESPN has aired a timely Winter Olympics documentary titled "The Price of Gold"--which every good Harding/Kerrigan scandalmonger and sports groupie will certainly enjoy!

Other 20-year reminiscences about our favorite figure skater-gals:

ESPN revisits the Tonya Harding-Nancy Kerrigan scandal of 1994 (New York Daily News)

Tonya Harding Reflects on 20-Year Anniversary of Nancy Kerrigan Attack: "Get Over It" (E-Online)

Tonya, Nancy reflect on 'the Whack heard round the world' (USA Today)

And the most comprehensive, blow-by-blow account, for you true-crime hounds:

Harding-Kerrigan 20 Years Later: Remembering the Stunning, Life-Changing Attack (Bleacher Report)

~*~

At left: my daughter's cat, Napoleon.







I know there are people (waves at PETA) who think there can be vegetarian cats, but I think you are all insane. Sorry. That's the word for today: insane. Or maybe you don't really care about animals as much as you say you do?

Predatory animals eat PREY, you dolts.

But the legions of hard-core vegans continue to protest. A fellow named James Peden has even written a book, aptly titled Vegetarian Cats and Dogs. OMG, that is horrible. Dogs, maybe. Cats, no. This is plain old Appalachian folk wisdom speaking. CATS EAT MEAT, you deluded fools! They are not orangutans.

From Scientific American:

Unlike dogs and other omnivores, cats are true (so-called “obligate”) carnivores: They meet their nutritional needs by consuming other animals and have a higher protein requirement than many other mammals. Cats get certain key nutrients from meat—including taurine, arachidonic acid, vitamin A and vitamin B12—that can’t be sufficiently obtained from plant-based foods. Without a steady supply of these nutrients, cats can suffer from liver and heart problems, not to mention skin irritation and hearing loss.

As such, a cat’s ideal diet is made up mainly of protein and fats derived from small prey such as rodents, birds and small reptiles and amphibians. Some cats munch on grass or other plants, but most biologists agree that such roughage serves only as a digestive aid and provides limited if any nutritional value.

So there.

Still, even this article tries to have it both ways, and suggests that some companies (and whaddaya know, James Peden works for one of them! Imagine that!) have figured out the cat-related dietary issues and manufacture "imitation meats" with appropriate nutritive content, crafted especially for felines. I am skeptical, and will remain that way.

Unfortunately (and I say this as a serious vegetarian of many years duration), nothing lights up kitty's eyes like the sudden appearance of a mouse or moth, or a bird fluttering across the patio. If you have ever heard that little agitated "chirping" noise cat's make, then you know what I mean: Bloodlust. No other word for it.

We have chosen to live with predatory animals. How "animal-centric" or animal-rights-oriented is it, to expect them to be like humans? They are FELINES and we like them for being felines. Their lovely eyes and quirky independent behavior are that of HUNTERS, not pet cockatoos.

If you want dogs or cockatoos, then by all means, get them and feed them corn flakes or whatever... but CATS are special creatures and have always lived by their own cat rules. This is why we love them.

Don't starve your cat or make them miserable. If you want to buy them veggie cat food (because you understandably do not want to support the pet-food industry itself), just supplement this with a little tuna or fish.

But I would never EVER give my cats only vegetarian food on a daily basis.

~*~



For my fellow old hippies who, like me, unaccountably find ourselves sifting through the endless fulminating that is Tumblr, scratching our heads in abject confusion: I have BROUGHT YOU THE STONE TABLETS!

This brilliant and fascinating article is titled The Rise of the Post-New Left Political Vocabulary and it even comes with a handy-dandy chart for comparison of the Old Left vs New Left lexicon. (A million thanks to wonderful, astute John Powers for the link! I linked this on my own Tumblr and added a few comments.)

Sadly, some of my special favorite Tumblr-terms have not been mentioned, such as "othered"--and let's not forget "shaming" tacked onto the end of everything: slut-shaming, fat-shaming, food-shaming, etc. (I have repeatedly asked how one can be "shamed" without the consent of the shamed, but no replies have been forthcoming. Totally unhip question! Albert Ellis, call your office.) I once made fun of some MRA-dude on a blog, talking about "chicks"--and in old 70s-feminist style, I replied to him as if he had said "chickens"--one of our old jokes, which I STILL think is lots nicer (and hence, more effective) than screaming "you misogynist douchebag!" at him. He wrote "the chicks say..." and I replied, "If you have talking chickens, I think you need to contact the Nobel committee posthaste! WOW!" I also told him that he should not EAT the talking chickens, and maybe house them at some distance from the non-talking chickens, just to be sure they aren't accidentally slaughtered with the rest. Because those are some EXPENSIVE chickens, man! Guard them with your life!

Then again, if they are housed separately, it might keep the other chickens from learning how to talk.

Yes, I did go on at some length, until he stopped referring to women as animals. But it made him furious! (I told him, well, I've made an honest mistake! You are the one talking about poultry.)

Anyway, at this notable juncture, the MRAs promptly accused me of "language-shaming" this poor man with the talking chickens. Huh? What? I corrected them: No, I am MAKING FUN OF HIM and his antiquated pseudo-biker talk. Fuck this "shaming" bullshit.

Where do they get this stuff? Maybe screaming "douchebag!" at men who call women "chicks"--is what I should be doing instead?

Do you believe these people? They excoriate other leftists endlessly; they are deliberately cruel, nasty and vicious at every opportunity... but hey, no SHAMING anyone, because that makes you a puritan!

Whether they destroy people's self esteeem ANYway, without the "shaming"?

Well, who cares, right?

~*~

Other stuff:

:: Last week's celebrated Wednesday edition of the Occupy the Microphone radio show, Does music contribute to a culture of violence?--produced by Traci Fant, was exemplary. All of us connected with the show are exceptionally proud. Part of the show featuring Traci interviewing Cayson Logicc, has been made into a YouTube video for Blakfokused Filmz. Check it out, peeps! GREAT STUFF!

:: Can you say "arrogance"?: The Company Behind West Virginia's Chemical Spill Skips Congressional Hearing Well, what did you expect them to do, show up and take actual responsibility for trying to poison 1/6th of the state?

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- The company that owns the facility that leaked 10,000 gallons of chemicals into the water supply of hundreds of thousands of West Virginians last month was a no-show at a congressional hearing on the spill Monday.

Freedom Industries, which owns the storage facility that leaked chemicals into the Elk River, did not have any representatives at a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held in the state capital Monday morning. The company's president, Gary Southern, had been invited to testify.

"He chose not to be here today to answer for what his company has done to the people of West Virginia. And I find that extremely telling," said Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). "Freedom Industries' decision not to testify today compounds its gross misconduct, and is an absolute affront to every person impacted by its spill."

"The one empty seat ... belongs to the one entity at the epicenter of all this," said Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), "the one who totally blew it."

"There is an odor coming from Freedom Industries, and it's not licorice," said Rahall, referring to the anise-like smell that residents have reported coming from their tap water following the spill.

:: From the New York Times--Speaking of the Olympics, here is "what it's like to be Fourth" (and just miss a medal).

:: I went to an Imbolc ceremony, which satisfied my primal need to honor Groundhog Day. It was wonderful!

It is so great to finally find my spiritual community!


~*~

And now, time to batten down the hatches for the upcoming ice storm. I just want the electricity to stay on, and if it does, I will count that as a win. (Ice storms inevitably bring about downed power-lines on a massive scale.) About 8 yrs ago, we lost power for 4 entire days, and it was traumatic. Remember, when you lose electricity, so has everyone else, so it's not like you can just bebop into a Best Western for a quickie hot shower, donut and hot coffee to get you through. The rooms are already booked up long before you even considered that. Nothing to do but wait it out, when it happens. Nightmarish. Just pray it isn't too bad.

I did not move down south to freeze my ass off. (growf!)

Stay warm, everyone, and watch out for the ever-treacherous black ice. Don't forget to check on outside-dwelling animals, and consider letting them into basements, sheds, inside-porches or sun-rooms during the storm.

West Virginia map

My mother's home state. Too true! (You can click to enlarge)

The Real Daisy

... was my grandmother. I have no idea when or where this photo was taken, but it was probably in Pittsburgh.

Her eyes were so black, you couldn't even see the pupils. Her hair was likewise very black, naturally curly and silky.

My grandmother was Melungeon, which I have always intended to blog about, but there is so little known about them, I don't know exactly what to write. Suffice to say, they were very WEIRD backwoods people with all kinds of BIZARRE traditions you never heard of. (I later understood this is why my family was so odd and never fit in with the other nice, Midwestern families on the block.) Her youngest brother (who never left the backwoods) had an indescribable, hard-to-place accent that was nearly indecipherable, as did both of her parents. It went beyond mere Appalachian accents, and it was nice to finally learn the reason why.

When the Melungeons were asked questions by census takers, they told them all kinds of creative stories, claiming to be Portuguese, Arabs, Jews, and whatever else they thought the census-taker wanted to hear. That's why nobody knew for sure what race/ethnicity they were, and historians are still arguing over it. Much has finally been sorted out through DNA: Melungeons were "tri-racial isolates" -- Native American indigenous people (and refugees from colonial encroachment) and free African-Americans, intermarried with white colonists who decided to go off and live in the wilderness for whatever reasons. This accounts for their deep secrecy and suspicion of strangers (and especially the government).

When white colonists eventually migrated to the Cumberland Gap and the New River (where my grandmother was born), they found these strange folks already living there.

I am interested in learning more, as it becomes known. In studying the Melungeons, it is fascinating to note how some people don't mind being one of the first Americans, but twist themselves in knots to deny the African ancestors. My grandmother told me that as a child, she always knew there were Africans in her family tree... but that is not the rude terminology she used, which I will not repeat here. (What is interesting is that she found this amusing and never denied it. In all honesty, she seemed to find the idea of being related to Cherokee more disturbing.) When people snootily remarked that she looked like Lena Horne, she was obviously too thrilled to get mad about the racial thing.

Second photo is of my grandmother and my mother, Betty, on the right. I estimate their ages to be 37 and 21, respectively. (1955 - Parkersburg, WV)

















Third photo is my mother and me, ages 38 and 15. (1973 - Columbus, OH)
Yes, before you ask, I think that IS real fur. She thought fake fur was low class.

I miss them a lot during this time of year.

And now, your turn. Who do you miss?

Hare Krishna leader Swami Bhaktipada is dead

... and I imagine we will be hearing some scary stuff now. It was already plenty scary while he was alive!

Swami Bhaktipada, Ex-Hare Krishna Leader, Dies at 74
By MARGALIT FOX, New York Times
Published: October 24, 2011

Swami Bhaktipada, a former leader of the American Hare Krishna movement who built a sprawling golden paradise for his followers in the hills of Appalachia but who later pleaded guilty to federal racketeering charges that included conspiracy to commit the murders-for-hire of two devotees, died on Monday in a hospital near Mumbai, India. He was 74.

The cause was kidney failure, his brother, Gerald Ham, said.

Mr. Bhaktipada, who was released from prison in 2004 after serving eight years of a 12-year sentence, moved to India in 2008.

The son of a Baptist preacher, Mr. Bhaktipada was one of the first Hare Krishna disciples in the United States. He founded, in 1968, what became the largest Hare Krishna community in the country and presided over it until 1994, despite having been excommunicated by the movement’s governing body.

The community he built, New Vrindaban, is nestled in the hills near Moundsville, W.Va., about 70 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. Its conspicuous centerpiece is the Palace of Gold, an Eastern-inspired riot of gold-leafed domes, stained-glass windows, crystal chandeliers, mirrored ceilings, inlaid marble floors, sweeping murals, silk brocade hangings, carved teak pillars and ornate statuary.

New Vrindaban eventually comprised more than 4,000 acres — a “spiritual Disneyland,” its leaders often called it — with a live elephant, terraced gardens, a swan boat and bubbling fountains. A major tourist attraction, it drew hundreds of thousands of visitors in its heyday, in the early 1980s, and substantial annual revenue from ticket sales.

The baroque frenzy of the place stands in vivid contrast to the founding tenets of the Hare Krishna movement. Rooted in ancient Hindu scripture, the movement was begun in New York in the mid-1960s by an Indian immigrant, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. It advocates a spiritual life centered on truth, simplicity and abstinence from drugs, alcohol and extramarital sex.

But by the mid-1980s, New Vrindaban had become the target of local, state and federal investigations that concerned, among other things, the sexual abuse of children by staff members at its school and the murders of two devotees.

The resulting federal charges against Mr. Bhaktipada, a senior spiritual leader of the movement, and the ensuing international publicity did much to contravene the public image of the gentle, saffron-robed acolytes who had long been familiar presences in American airports.

Scandalmongers among you will enjoy the true crime account titled Monkey On a Stick: Murder, Madness and the Hare Krishnas, which I think is out of print in paperback? Check your local library, the true crime section, helpfully numbered "364" in the Dewey decimal system. (For us rushed, busy scandalmongers who have no time to browse, it's easy to just run to the 364s, grab one, and run out. Yes, I HAVE.)

Let's see, can I think of anything nice to say about the Hare Krishnas? I can't think of anything nice to say about Bhaktipada.

Okay, a few things:

The West Virginia Hare Krishnas were very kind to the Rainbow Family (apparently some crossover membership) when they had the Gathering of the Tribes in WV, I think in 1979 or 1980? (corrections and/or clarifications welcome)

Also, the fruit crepes they made at their restaurants and missions were really good. When we slept overnight in Central Park during the Democratic National Convention, they came out and gave us free fruit crepes. Wasn't that nice? I recall that the strawberry/blueberry ones were especially fabulous.

Once upon a time in a galaxy called the 70s, a dancing Hare Krishna* --possibly sensing my high spiritual nature (joke)-- stopped dancing, approached me smiling beatifically, and simultaneously pulled out a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, when I was about 18 or 19. "Do you like George Harrison?" he asked me, as I stared at that painted stripe down his face. (Will somebody please tell me what that IS and why they wear it?)

"I LOVE George!" I replied, amazed that he had correctly guessed my favorite Beatle.

Then he showed me "George's favorite book" --the Bhagavad Gita, which for some reason was titled Bhagavad Gita As It Is. He offered it to me for a fee. I have no money, I said, and must have looked either convincingly-poor or cute, since he went ahead and gave it to me. He made me promise to read it; I solemnly promised. I had actually just intended to look at the pictures (see link), which were bloody AWESOME. I had never seen Indian art before, and certainly, never a blue-colored God, which made sense to me... I mean, if he's in the sky, right?

Not only did I read it, I took notes in the margins.

I regret to say I eventually lost my Hare Krishna-published version (bankrolled by George, and it said so right inside!), which was a lovely, large, multicolored hardcover volume, as impressive as any Bible. There were photos of various Swamis and gurus and ashrams in it and I was utterly fascinated. I studied it extensively. When I lost it, I replaced it with a more dignified, nicely-bound Bhagavad Gita, but it isn't nearly as big, pretty or flashy as the one paid for by Fab Four money.

At yard sales and used bookstores, I nose around and sometimes find other ancient holy books re-published by ISKCON, and consequently, I own several. One of these, The Path to Perfection by founder Swami Prabhupada, was also scribbled in quite a lot.

So at least they did a couple of good things.

I realize that legally, child abuse pales next to murder-for-hire (which grabbed all the headlines), but the Hare Krishna child abuse allegations were as extensive as the Catholic abuse scandal, at the time. Interestingly, the Catholic Church dug their heels in, but the Hare Krishnas, on this subject (if not others), came clean:

Three years later, [Texas lawyer Windle Turley] followed up with a $400 million lawsuit against the International Society for Krishna Consciousness [ISKCON], a Hindu missionary sect popularly known as the Hare Krishnas.

Both the Krishnas and the Catholics warned that Turley's lawsuits would drive them into bankruptcy, hurting innocent Hindus and the faithful people in the pews.

But that's not what happened -- at least for the Catholics. And the moral of the story may turn out to be that honesty may not be the best policy.

Talk to Hare Krishna spokesman Anantanda Dasa and he'll tell you that his movement did exactly what many have said the Catholic bishops should have done 15 years ago.

Long before Turley's lawsuit was filed, the Krishnas admitted they had a history of molestation and other physical abuse in their religious boarding schools, called gurukalas.

They set up an office of child protection and hired an outside investigator to study the treatment of children in this hippie-era sect, which became famous in the 1960s and 1970s for its chanting Western converts wearing saffron robes.

That report was devastating, but the Hare Krishnas published it anyway. And it was like handing Windle Turley a lawsuit on a silver collection platter.

The Krishna case, which is still in the courts, alleges that dozens of children of Hare Krishna members were abused in the 1970s at church boarding schools in Texas, West Virginia and New York.

E. Burke Rochford, a professor of sociology and religion at Middlebury College in Vermont, was the sympathetic scholar hired by the Krishnas to investigate the allegations of abuse.

His damning report, however, provided lots of material for Turley's suit as well as for others who accuse the Hare Krishnas of being an abusive and exploitive cult.

The shit first hit the fan in 2000, when there was an ABC 20/20 report about ISKCON's gurukula (religious school) system. (Transcript here.) It was ugly, indeed.

It was all downhill from there. According to news accounts, the once-robust cult has only 200 residents left.

And I hope they all leave.


*I keep wanting to say this was near Central Park in New York, since I did see them happily gyrating there all through the 70s. Then again, I might be confusing my memory with the scene in Hannah and Her Sisters, wherein Woody Allen, on a spiritual quest, is similarly given his free copy in Central Park. Woody then says to himself/us:

Who are you kidding? You're gonna be a Krishna? You're gonna shave your head and dance around at airports? You'd look like Jerry Lewis!

Tuesday Tunes: Stolen gravestones and other musings

Some Tuesday tunes to bum you out and then pick you back up again.

If you are already bummed out, you can jump to the last two.

~*~

Listen to how these gee-tars all sound like whips. Bloody incredible... especially around the 3:50 mark. This kind of otherworldly guitar-playing inspired people to do bizarre things, like steal Duane Allman's graveyard monuments and headstones in Macon, Georgia.

WHERE would you put such a thing? In your house?

Glad to see that they have replaced them! (see link) I've heard the gravestones were stolen multiple times. For some reason, that strikes me as very southern... it also puts me in mind of the psychology behind Catholic relics, i.e. if you steal the gravestone, maybe you will one day play like that, too? (I own lots of relics, as you probably know, and I won't get rid of them, just in case.)

This is a great song for drinking in excess, so be careful. Especially if incidents in your life are shaping up like the incidents in the song... and believe me, I know what I am talking about!

And pay attention to Berry Oakley's fabulous rumbly bass line that begins the song... in live performances, people would start screaming and hollering even before the killer-whip-riffs start... the rumbly bass signaled the beginning of a southern-drinking-man's symphony...

Allman Brothers Band - Whipping Post



~*~

This song is for my stepfather, Elliott Horn, full name George Elliott Horn, a multi-talented guitarist and singer (also played mandolin, steel guitar, banjo, bass). Born in Logan, West Virginia to Cherokee parents, Arminda and George, July 1933. Death in Canton, Ohio, 1968. (leaving this info for the genealogists among you!)

He was once a lover of Jackie DeShannon, which made my mother mad. We were not allowed to mention her name or play her records. (But when she came on the radio or TV, my mother would always listen to/watch her carefully.) He was also briefly in Billy Joe Royal's band, called The Royal Crowns. That riff you hear on "Down in the Boondocks" which makes the whole song? Is my stepfather. Interestingly, hearing the song always comforts me and brings me Elliott's presence, whereas the following song is difficult for me to get through, at least on most occasions. Luckily it is now somewhat obscure, although there is also a lyrical reference to it in my favorite movie, Taxi Driver.

I loved Elliott very much; far, far more than my biological father.

This song is about him.

So much so, I can only listen to it maybe twice a year, and this is one of those days.

Kris Kristofferson - The Pilgrim, Chapter 33



~*~

Okay, who knew that Tommy Boyce committed suicide? I just wrote (up there) that you should jump to the last two songs, but that was before I checked Wikipedia. Well, damn, another rock and roll suicide (deliberate David Bowie reference). That is sad. :(

How could anybody who writes happy songs for the Monkees get depressed? That seems to go against the fundamental laws of the universe or something.

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart wrote over 300 songs; their songs sold over 42 million records.

I just wrote about my stepfather who died in 1968, which was the year of this tune, which is why I thought of it. The song and the duo were also featured on an old episode of "I Dream of Jeannie" for some inexplicable reason. (If I hadn't seen it, more than once, I wouldn't believe it either.)

I am a big sucker for the Hup Hup! (or whatever he is hiccuping there, at about 1:28 and 2:13) right before they sing the chorus, which I think made the upcoming-chorus somehow more exciting. Pop music genius!

Rest in Peace, Tommy.

Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart - I wonder what she's doing tonight



~*~

I love the Perry-Masonish horn arrangement in this song, which made it sound like a melodramatic 50s drive-in B-Movie. It is actually the theme to an A-movie with Kirk Douglas, surprisingly enough. (1961)

It comes on LOUD, so turn it down a wee bit first.

Town Without Pity - Gene Pitney



~*~

Perry Mason?--say the kids... huh?

Yes, this is one of the best noir numbers you will EVER hear... I associate it with very early, almost unconscious childhood. The brassy blast at the end of "Town Without Pity" makes me think of the brassy blast at the end of this TV theme song.

I watched the dopey reruns for years, just so I could hear the music. I also love the late 50s/early 60s aesthetic of the show: gigantic Buicks and coffee-tables, and men wearing hats during the day. (The clothes were the GREATEST, as regular readers know, I love that era of fashion.)

Raymond Burr was gay, which as a world-class scandalmonger, I already knew... but who else did? What would my grandmother have said, if she'd known? She worshiped Erle Stanley Gardner, and by extension, Raymond Burr.

I could only find a short clip, which apparently is from German TV...there is a longer version of this that closed the show--it ran more than a minute. Can't find that one. Poo! :( This will have to do.

Old Perry Mason TV theme



~*~

Speaking of the south (which I mentioned way up there)... only someone living here could have written this. I've been thinking of it a LOT lately.

For my friends in the Occupy movement!

These bastards stole their power from the victims of the Us v. Them years,
Wrecking all things virtuous and true
The undermining social democratic downhill slide into abysmal
Lost lamb off the precipice into the trickle down runoff pool
They hypnotised the summer, 1979
Marched into the capital brooding duplicitous, wicked and able, media-ready,
Heartless, and labeled
Super US citizen, super achiever,
Mega ultra power doesn't relax.
Defense, defense, defense, defense. Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland
Yeah, yeah, yeah

The information nation took their clues from all the sound-bite gluttons
1980, 84, 88, 92 too, too
How to be what you can be, junk, damn junk in your energy
How to walk in dignity with throw up on your shoes
They amplified the autumn, 1979
Calculate the capital, up the republic my skinny ass
TV tells a million lies
The paper's terrified to report
Anything that isn't handed on a presidential spoon,
I'm just profoundly frustrated by all this.
So, fuck you, man (fuck 'em)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland
If they wasn't there we would have created them
Maybe, it's true,
But I'm resentful all the same
Someone's got to take the blame
I know that this is vitriol
No solution, spleen venting,
But I feel better having screamed--don't you?
They desecrate the winter, 1979
Capital collateral

Brooding duplicitous, wicked and able, media-ready,
Heartless, and labeled
Super US citizen, super achiever,
Mega ultra power doesn't relax.
Defense, defense, defense, defense. Yeah, yeah, yeah
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland
Yeah, yeah, yeah, ignoreland. Yeah, yeah, yeah

I did not do the revolution
Thank you

I know exactly what he means.

R.E.M. - Ignoreland

Joe Bageant 1946-2011

I'm so behind in my reading, I didn't know Joe Bageant, patron saint of rednecks, had passed. (on March 26)

I can't improve on what others have already written about the amazing author of Deer Hunting with Jesus and Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir, so I will quote from them.

From Michael Loughnane:

"Poet", "prophet", "hillbilly revolutionary", "progressive redneck with a conscience" — these are some of the descriptive terms that have been conferred on Joe Bageant who died on March 26. Steve Austin of the Australian Broadcasting Company called him "The Woody Guthrie of the typewriter" for he championed the cause of the "redneck", a social group he saw as being one of the most marginalized and disenfranchised in America.

From Gary Coseri:

Deer Hunting is an excellent book. Rainbow Pie is even better. Rainbow Pie is about now; Deer Hunting laid the groundwork, sowed seeds of memory for this West Virginia-born sui generis intellectual. Rainbow Pie brings those seeds to fruition amidst our present devastation — the “financialization” of the “transactional economy.” Translation: outsourced jobs; debt and desperation in the homeland.

Before he died last month at age 64, Bageant’s witnessing was astute and acute; he had been there.

And now, I quote directly and at length from Joe's own introduction to Rainbow Pie, A Redneck Memoir:

The United States has always maintained a white underclass — citizens whose role in the greater scheme of things has been to cushion national economic shocks through the disposability of their labor, with occasional time off to serve as bullet magnets in defense of the Empire. Until the post-World War II era, the existence of such an underclass was widely acknowledged. During the Civil War, for instance, many northern abolitionists also called for the liberation of “four million miserable white southerners held in bondage by the wealthy planter class”. Planter elites, who often held several large plantations which, together, constituted much or most of a county’s economy, saw to it that poor whites got no schooling, money, or political power. Poll taxes and literacy requirements kept white subsistence farmers and poor laborers from entering voting booths. Often accounting for up to 70 percent of many deep-Southern counties, they could not vote, and thus could never challenge the status quo.

Today, almost nobody in the social sciences seems willing to touch the subject of America’s large white underclass; or, being firmly placed in the true middle class themselves, can even agree that such a thing exists. Apparently, you can’t smell the rabble from the putting green.

Public discussion of this class remains off limits, deemed hyperbole and the stuff of dangerous radical leftists. And besides, as everyone agrees, white people cannot be an underclass. We’re the majority, dammit. You must be at least one shade darker than a paper bag to officially qualify as a member of any underclass. The middle and upper classes generally agree, openly or tacitly, that white Americans have always had an advantage (which has certainly been the middle- and upper-class experience). Thus, in politically correct circles, either liberal or conservative, the term “white underclass” is an oxymoron. Sure, there are working-poor whites, but not that many, and definitely not enough to be called a white underclass, much less an American peasantry.

Economic, political, and social culture in America is staggering under the sheer weight of its white underclass, which now numbers some sixty million. Generally unable to read at a functional level, they are easily manipulated by corporate-political interests to vote against advances in health and education, and even more easily mustered in support of any proposed military conflict, aggressive or otherwise. One-third of their children are born out of wedlock, and are unemployable by any contemporary industrialized-world standard. Even if we were to bring back their jobs from China and elsewhere — a damned unlikely scenario — they would be competing at a wage scale that would not meet even their basic needs. Low skilled, and with little understanding of the world beyond either what is presented to them by kitschy and simplistic television, movie, and other media entertainments, or their experience as armed grunts in foreign combat, the future of the white underclass not only looks grim, but permanent.

Meanwhile, the underclass, “America’s flexible labor force” (one must be pretty flexible to get screwed in some of the positions we are asked to), or whatever you choose to call the unwashed throngs mucking around down here at the bottom of the national labor tier, are nevertheless politically potent, if sufficiently taunted and fed enough bullshit. Just look at the way we showed up in force during the 2000 elections, hyped up on inchoate anger and ready to be deployed as liberal-ripping pit bulls by America’s ultra-conservative political machinery. Snug middle-class liberals were stunned. Could that many people actually be supporting Anne Coulter’s call for the jailing of liberals, or Rush Limbaugh’s demand for the massive, forced psychiatric detention of Democrats? Or, more recently, could they honestly believe President Obama’s proposed public healthcare plan would employ “death panels” to decide who lives and who dies? Conservatives cackled with glee, and dubbed them the only real Americans.

But back in 2000, before the American economic implosion, middle-class people of both stripes could still have confidence in their 401(k)s and retirement stock portfolios, with no small thanks to the cheap labor costs provided by the rabble out there. And they could take comfort in the knowledge that millions of other middle-class folks just like themselves were keeping the gears of American finance well oiled and humming. Our economy had become fat through financialization. Who needed manufacturing? We were now a post-industrial nation of investors, a “transactional economy”. Dirty work was for ... well ... Asians. In this much-ballyhooed “sweat-free economy”, the white underclass swelled with every injection mould and drill press shipped across the Pacific.

Ten years later, with the US economy as skinny as the running gears of a praying mantis, the middle class — what’s left of it now — is having doubts about its traditional class security. Every day it gets a bit harder not to notice some fifty or sixty million people scratching around for any kind of a job, or working more hours than ever in a sweating, white-knuckled effort to hang onto the jobs they do have. With credit cards melting down and middle-class jobs evaporating, there is the distinct possibility of them slipping into the classes below them. And who are they anyway — those people wiping out the ramen noodle shelf at the supermarket, and looking rather surly as they are moved out of their repossessed houses?

True, with the right selection of lefty internet bookmarks, you can find discussions of the white underclass, and occasionally even a brief article in the New York Times about some scholarly book that asks, “Does a white underclass exist in America?” But most of the shrinking middle class pulls its blinds shut, hoping that if they don’t see bad fortune, perhaps bad fortune can’t see them and will not find their doors. Behind those doors, however, some privately wonder how the ranks of desperate and near-desperate American whites ever became so numerous. Where did all those crass people with their bad grammar and worse luck suddenly come from?

Seldom are such developments sudden, of course. It’s only the realization of them that happens overnight. The foundation of today’s white underclass was laid down in the years following World War II. I was there, I grew up during its construction, and spent half my life trapped in it.

When World War II began, 44 percent of Americans were rural, and over half of them farmed for a living. By 1970, only 5 percent were on farms. Altogether, more than twenty-two million migrated to urban areas during the postwar period. If that migration were to happen in reverse today, it would be the equivalent of the present populations of New York City, Chicago, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, and Saint Louis moving out into the countryside at a time when the US population was half of its present size.

In the great swim upstream toward what was being heralded as a new American prosperity, most of these twenty-two million never made it to the first fish ladder. Stuck socially, economically, and educationally at or near the bottom of the dam, they raised children and grandchildren who added another forty million to the swarm.

These uneducated rural whites became the foundation of our permanent white underclass. Their children and grandchildren have added to the numbers of this underclass, probably in the neighborhood of 50 or 60 million people now. They outnumber all other poor and working-poor groups — black, Hispanics, immigrants.

Even as the white underclass was accumulating, it was being hidden, buried under a narrative proclaiming otherwise. The popular imagination was swamped with images that remain today as the national memory of that era. Nearly all of these images were products of advertising. In the standard depiction, our warriors returned to the land kept free by their valor, exhilarated by victory, and ready to raise families. They purchased little white cottages and Buick Roadmaster sedans, and then drove off into the unlimited horizons of the “land of happy motoring”. A government brochure of the time assured everyone that “An onrushing new age of opportunity, prosperity, convenience and comfort has arrived for all Americans.” I quoted this to an old World War II veteran named Ernie over an egg sandwich at the Twilight Zone Grill near my home in town. Ernie answered, “I wish somebody had told me; I would have waved at the prosperity as it went by.”

According to this officially sanctioned story of the great postwar migration, these people abandoned farm life in such droves because the money, excitement, and allure of America’s cities and large towns was just too great to resist. Why would anyone stay down on the farm when he or she could be “wearing ten-dollar shoes and eating rainbow pie”? One catches a whiff of urban-biased perception here; but then, the official version of all life and culture in America is written by city people. Our dominant history, analysis, and images of America are generated in the urban centers. Social-research institutions, major universities, and the media — such as ABC, HBO, PBS, and the Harvard University sociology department — are not located in Keokuk, Iowa; Fisher, Illinois; Winchester, Virginia; or Lubbock, Texas.

I grew up hard by the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia, and am a product of that out-migration; and, as I said, grew up watching it happen around me. I’m here to tell you, dear hearts, that while all those university professors may have their sociological data and industrial statistics verified and well indexed, they’re way off-base; they’ve entirely overshot the on-the-ground experience. In fact, they don’t even deal with it. You won’t be surprised to hear that the media representation of the postwar era — and, let’s face it, more people watch The History Channel than read social history texts — it is as full of crap as an overfed Christmas goose.

My contemporaries of that rural out-migration, now in their late fifties and mid sixties, are still marked by the journey. Their children and grandchildren have inherited the same pathway. The class competition along that road is more brutal than ever. But the sell job goes on that we are a classless society with roughly equal opportunity for all. Given the terrible polarization of wealth and power in this country (the top 1 percent hold more wealth than the bottom 45 percent combined, and their take is still rising), we can no longer even claim equal opportunity for a majority. Opportunity for the majority to do what? Pluck chickens, and telemarket to the ever-dwindling middle class?

Ohhh my. When he pauses to say "dear hearts"--it takes my breath away. My mother's family, also from West Virginia, used that term in conversation in just that fashion. Thus, it's like a member of my family passing.

Who will say these things now? Who will write about us? (sobs) We have lost one of our precious scribes.

Goodbye Joe, and rest in peace.

Contemplating my obsolescence

I haven't had as much time to blog, because I've actually started hiking again. I started slow, and I am now up to about an hour and a half before I completely collapse. My beloved azaleas are in bloom, and it's a beautiful spring!

My goal is to someday be able to climb a real mountain again. At this admittedly-slow rate, it will be at least another year, but I am fervently hoping for next spring/summer... and I promise if I ever again get to the top of Table Rock, I will take oodles of photos for DEAD AIR--so you will all believe me!

~*~

As I said in this post (fabulous music awaits you at the link), the kids used to ask me the names of songs... but yesterday, I had to ask one of them. As you all know, it is impossible to Google lyrics from an instrumental song, since they have no lyrics. (sigh) Stranded, desolate and desperate... the pretty music plays on and on and you can't ever find it again. One 60s-era instrumental arrangement, in particular, has been haunting me for several months now. Upon hearing it again, I scurried over to the work-area of said young person, who then held his handy-dandy iPhone up to the speaker broadcasting my long-lost tune. Held the phone up, said the old lady, amazed...do you believe that shit?

Answer, within about 10 seconds: Cleo's Mood, by Junior Walker and the All Stars. (I have helpfully provided the long-lost song for you below. You knew I would.)

And that's what I mean about becoming obsolete. My musical memory is certainly no match for an iPhone application! Somehow, it makes me feel sad and exhilarated, all at once. I guess this is how the old mule skinner felt when he saw the Model-T Ford: Wow.

Just for that, adding Muleskinner Blues to our mix. (Just listen to her hit them high notes!!!)

~*~

Believe it or not, it was once considered pretty radical stuff for a woman to sing this song. (Notice she is careful to say she is a lady mule skinner.) Typically, Dolly takes a classic male song (about a male occupation!) and makes it totally her own, singing it far better than any man, with that Tennessee-wildcat soprano of hers. I've always loved this!

And for the record: It does not get more country than this, so if you don't like country music, do not listen. Really.

Mule Skinner Blues - Dolly Parton



~*~

My long-lost Motown instrumental! Brought to you by... the wonders of modern technology!

(Is this the coolest thing you ever heard or what?)

Cleo's Mood - Junior Walker and the All Stars



~*~

Last, but not least.

I grew up with this song, and I always think of it when any coal-miner is hurt. Dedicated to the miners in West Virginia, and their families; I'm sure lots of people are thinking about these words right now... and my prayers are with them.

Dark as a Dungeon (written by Merle Travis)

Oh come all you young fellers so young and so fine
Seek not your fortune in a dark dreary mine
It'll form as a habit and seep in your soul
Till the stream of your blood runs as black as the coal

Well it's many a man that I've seen in my day
Who lived just to labor his whole life away
Like a fiend with his dope and a drunkard his wine
A man will have lust for the lure of the mine

Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine

And pray when I'm gone and my ages shall roll
That my body would blacken and turn into coal
Then I'll look from the door of my heavenly home
And pity the miners digging my bones

Where it's dark as a dungeon and damp as the dew
Where the danger is double and pleasures are few
Where the rain never falls and the sun never shines
It's a dark as a dungeon way down in the mine


Dark as a Dungeon - Dolly Parton

Now it's a monster and will not obey

No, you are NOT expected to listen to all 7 minutes.

Offering this as Exhibit A, in my efforts to prove to people that revolutionary talk was all the rage in 1970, the year Bill and Bernadine were cooking up bombs in Greenwich Village and blew up three of their friends... and for the record, those are the only people they ever killed. Themselves.

As I said in the comments of my post titled the Bradley Effect, everyone got in on the act.

I wrote the following, in that thread, which I am reproducing here:

Did you ever hear the song "Monster" by Steppenwolf? I mention it (as a totally random example) because I first heard it at a redneck* party with a bunch of bikers drinking beer. I thought, WOW, since some of them were enthusiastically singing along with it, even the ones with confederate flag tattoos. And this was Bill Ayers' era.

[Mike commented on the thread]: "but that that class of radicals think different from mainstream America."

Speaking of 2008, you would be right... in fact, any time after Reagan was inaugurated, you would be right. BUT AT THE TIME???? You are dead-ass wrong. As the poet-laureate of the age so memorably sang, "There was music in the cafes at night and revolution in the air." Hippies, bikers, housewives who frequented the same beauty salon my grandmother did, my neighbors, et. al. talked about revolution as if it might be inevitable, and there was even a revolutionary faction of ex-GIs against the war. Even serial killers (think: the most famous of our time) believed in revolution and made that part of their psychosis. IT WAS VERY DIFFERENT THAN NOW, and even my Republican grandfather from West Virginia thought there could be revolution.

Can I ask how old you are, and if you were there at the time? How old were you in the 70s?

As I wrote [in my Bill Ayers post linked above], I am getting fed up with the rewrites of history by people who have it wrong in countless ways. In addition, you are applying the morality of NOW to the morality of THEN, and as we all know, 20/20 hindsight is perfect.

And I offer the lyrics, also, to "Monster" (below) for those who can't get through the whole song. Musically, starts off like gangbusters alright, great middle-section, then at the end, turns into a sing-along... but again the SING-ALONG aspect was the POINT. Regular people, not Weatherman, but REGULAR PEOPLE bought this album and used to SING ALONG!!! The video I have selected, however, is pretty good. There are several versions, suggesting this song is as much of a landmark in other people's lives, as it was in mine.

This song represents so much. I wondered, as a teenager, if it meant there really might be revolution, which excited me. I was a working class kid from Ohio, and that's what I thought. The concept of revolution was not APART from the masses of mainstream America, at that time... just as now, "ordinary, mainstream America" is suddenly learning the intricacies of Wall Street economics, whether we really want to or not.

Dammit, stop rewriting history!


*one of those words I am allowed to use, but you aren't. :)


~*~

Words and music by John Kay and Jerry Edmonton

(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man

But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light

The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog

And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey

(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'

Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching

(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster

A case of the cutes

...was an expression employed by this blog's namesake, my grandmother. She did not mean it as a compliment. My grandmother dripped contempt for certain feminine excesses, thus precociously prepping me for the cold-showers-and-root-canal ideology of 70s radical feminism. (Sometimes you can still find this philosophy in certain corners of Blogdonia, but I digress.)

To have a case of the cutes was to be cuter than the damn dickens, oozing cute from every pore, the veritable personification of Brady-Bunch CUTENESS. When rude boys made fun of cute, my grandmother-the-gender-cop snorted her approval, thereby sending me mixed messages. Cute was bad, but one could be nauseatingly sentimental, particularly if talking about Jesus or anyone He may have known personally or been distant kin to. In fact, my grandmother's sentimentality annoyed the hell out of me, and I was as dogged in making fun of it as she was in lambasting my periodic Cases of the Cutes.

The Sentimental Epoch of her life was the Silver Bridge Collapse, which had been fairly close to her family home. (We'd all been across it many times.) This event prompted her to purchase awful collector dinner plates, bad country/western records and unreadable books cobbled together by local historians. I now realize the bridge was not simply the bridge connecting West Virginia and Ohio, but the bridge connecting North and South. It's collapse obviously signified something very personal to her, possibly symbolizing the psychological break she made with the South. (If you saw The Mothman Prophecies, you saw the dramatization of this collapse. Some of the film's terrifying rural sequences were set near my grandmother's family home, where I had always refused to stay overnight as a spooked, spoiled city kid!)

Thus, I always feel I need to apologize for cute, because the fact is--(deep breath) I often like cute things. I suppress it, and it therefore bubbles up, blossoms forth, bursts into waking life, unbidden.... a MASSIVE CASE OF THE CUTES! My cup runneth over, and when I was surfing ye olde net today (trying to get into that Currier and Ives Seasonal spirit, and everything, particularly since I am in RETAIL) I saw something SO CUTE, well, I had to haul it over here. Just had to. I am helpless to resist.

Cute Overload!

2 Sweet
2 B
--
4 Gotten

----------------
Listening to: The Kinks - See My Friends
via FoxyTunes

October 16, 1859

The biographies either emphasize what a mild-mannered fellow he was, or how crazy he was; fire in the eyes. I would like to have met him, and seen for myself.

I assume his demeanor changed, depending on the subject at hand.

Radicals from Ohio swear he was from Ohio, as radicals from New York swear the same. In fact, he was born in Torrington, Connecticut:

During his first fifty years, John Brown moved about the country, settling in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York and Massachusetts, taking along his ever-growing family. (He would father twenty children.) Working at various times as a farmer, wool merchant, tanner, and land speculator, he never was financially successful -- he even filed for bankruptcy when in his forties. His lack of funds, however, did not keep him from supporting causes he believed in. He helped finance the publication of David Walker's Appeal and Henry Highland's "Call to Rebellion" speech. He gave land to fugitive slaves. He and his wife agreed to raise a black youth as one of their own. He also participated in the Underground Railroad and, in 1851, helped establish the League of Gileadites, an organization that worked to protect escaped slaves from slave catchers.

In 1847 Frederick Douglass met Brown for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. Of the meeting Douglass stated that, "though a white gentleman, [Brown] is in sympathy a black man, and as deeply interested in our cause, as though his own soul had been pierced with the iron of slavery." It was at this meeting that Brown first outlined his plan to Douglass to lead a war to free slaves.

Brown moved to the black community of North Elba, New York, in 1849. The community had been established thanks to the philanthropy of Gerrit Smith, who donated tracts of at least 50 acres to black families willing to clear and farm the land. Brown, knowing that many of the families were finding life in this isolated area difficult, offered to establish his own farm there as well, in order to lead the blacks by his example and to act as a "kind father to them."

Despite his contributions to the antislavery cause, Brown did not emerge as a figure of major significance until 1855 after he followed five of his sons to the Kansas territory.

And in Kansas, it got ugly.

It's important to remember that he was a violent man. He fully believed that he who lived by the sword, died by the sword.

Literally, he used swords:

In Aug. 1855 he followed 5 of his sons to Kansas to help make the state a haven for anti-slavery settlers. The following year, his hostility toward slave-staters exploded after they burned and pillaged the free-state community of Lawrence. Having organized a militia unit within his Osawatomie River colony, Brown led it on a mission of revenge. On the evening of 23 May 1856, he and 6 followers, including 4 of his sons, visited the homes of pro-slavery men along Pottawatomie Creek, dragged their unarmed inhabitants into the night, and hacked them to death with long-edged swords. At once, "Old Brown of Osawatomie" became a feared and hated target of slave-staters.

Of course, I have been to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia. I have seen the armory's engine house, which isn't even as big as a typical contemporary suburban house. I remember being startled at it's wee size: Did he really think he could hold them off from there? Good lord. A suicide mission!!! Or did he really believe a mass slave rebellion would ensue? Perhaps he had reason to be optimistic, but in retrospective, such an endeavor seems like madness:

...Brown had only 21 men (16 white and 5 black - three free blacks, one freed slave, and a fugitive slave). They ranged in age from 21 to 49. Twelve of them had been with Brown in Kansas raids.

On October 16, 1859, Brown (leaving three men behind as a rear guard) led 19 men in an attack on the Harpers Ferry Armory. He had received 200 breechloading .52 caliber Sharps carbines and pikes from northern abolitionist societies in preparation for the raid. The armory was a large complex of buildings that contained 100,000 muskets and rifles, which Brown planned to seize and use to arm local slaves. They would then head south, drawing off more and more slaves from plantations, and fighting only in self-defense. As Frederick Douglass and Brown's family testified, his strategy was essentially to deplete Virginia of its slaves, causing the institution to collapse in one county after another, until the movement spread into the South, essentially wreaking havoc on the economic viability of the pro-slavery states. Thus, while violence was essential to self-defense and advancement of the movement, Brown's hope was to limit and minimize bloodshed, not ignite a slave insurrection as many have charged. From the Southern point of view, of course, any effort to arm the enslaved was perceived as a definitive threat.

Initially, the raid went well. They met no resistance entering the town. They cut the telegraph wires and easily captured the armory, which was being defended by a single watchman. They next rounded up hostages from nearby farms, including Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grand-nephew of George Washington. They also spread the news to the local slaves that their liberation was at hand. Things started to go wrong when an eastbound Baltimore & Ohio train approached the town. The train's baggage master tried to warn the passengers. Brown's men yelled for him to halt and then opened fire. The baggage master, Hayward Shepherd, became the first casualty of John Brown's war against slavery. Ironically, Shepherd was a free black man. For some reason, after the shooting of Shepherd, Brown allowed the train to continue on its way. News of the raid reached Washington by late morning.

In the meantime, local farmers, shopkeepers, and militia pinned down the raiders in the armory by firing from the heights behind the town. Some of the local men were shot by Brown's men. At noon, a company of militia seized the bridge, blocking the only escape route. Brown then moved his prisoners and remaining raiders into the engine house, a small brick building at the entrance to the armory. He had the doors and windows barred and loopholes were cut through the brick walls. The surrounding forces barraged the engine house, and the men inside fired back with occasional fury. Brown sent his son Watson and another supporter out under a white flag, but the angry crowd shot them. Intermittent shooting then broke out, and Brown's son Oliver was wounded. His son begged his father to kill him and end his suffering, but Brown said "If you must die, die like a man." A few minutes later he was dead. The exchanges lasted throughout the day.

By morning (October 18) the engine house, later known as John Brown's Fort, was surrounded by a company of U.S. Marines under the command of Lt. Col. Robert E. Lee of the United States Army. A young Army lieutenant, J.E.B. Stuart, approached under a white flag and told the raiders that their lives would be spared if they surrendered. Brown refused, saying, "No, I prefer to die here." Stuart then gave a signal. The Marines used sledge hammers and a make-shift battering-ram to break down the engine room door. Lieutenant Israel Greene cornered Brown and struck him several times, wounding his head. In three minutes Brown and the survivors were captives. Altogether Brown's men killed four people, and wounded nine. Ten of Brown's men were killed (including his sons Watson and Oliver). Five of Brown's men escaped (including his son Owen), and seven were captured along with Brown.

We need to go back to my post on Saturday morning, and play the James Brown refrain here: I'm a bad mother. Indeed, by all accounts, Brown dazzled all the soldiers and authorities he encountered, with his utter lack of fear and total righteous attitude.

And then, his trial, which for it's day, apparently made OJ's look like a tea party. His famous final words, upon his death sentence:

I have, may it please the Court, a few words to say.

In the first place, I deny everything but what I have all along admitted: of a design on my part to free slaves . . .

Had I interfered in the matter which I admit, and which I admit has been fairly proved . . . had I so interfered in behalf of the rich, the powerful, the intelligent, or the so-called great . . . and suffered and sacrificed, what I have in this interference, it would have been all right. Every man in this Court would have deemed it an act worthy of reward rather than punishment.

I see a book kissed which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament, which teaches me that all things whatsoever I would that men should do unto me, I should do even so to them. It teaches me further to remember them that are in bonds as bound with them. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say that I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, I did no wrong, but right.

Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked,cruel and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done.

John Brown was hanged on December 2, 1859, virtually the eve of the Civil War. Some people blamed him for the Civil War. And certainly, his unapologetic, incendiary abolitionist presence hovered over Union troops, and they even made up a marching song about him, which they sang with enthusiasm. The Battle Hymn of the Republic was taken from the Union marching song:

John Brown's body lies a moulderin in the grave
John Brown's body lies a moulderin in the grave
John Brown's body lies a moulderin in the grave
But his soul goes marching on

Yes, I do like Julia Ward Howe's Christian rewrite, but I have always preferred the original.

The discussion of vigilante/street justice and whether it is ever warranted continues today; on the right, regarding violence against abortion clinics, doctors and employees; on the left, regarding direct-action groups like Earth First and the Animal Liberation Front. In the 70s, the Weather Underground, as well as radicals such as Karl Armstrong and David Fine, rekindled a long-standing feud between those radicals who held to pacifism at all costs, and those who thought pacifism rendered one a sitting duck.

And in every such discussion, there is his name, waved about like a bloodied banner: What about John Brown? His name is invoked as an indictment, as well as a blessing.

His soul goes marching on.




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Listening to: Patti Smith Group - Till Victory
via FoxyTunes