History project, part 3

At long last!

Yipster Times cover, June 1975

Overthrow cover, April 1979

Rock Against Racism (poster), Chicago, June 1979

Steve Conliff gives speech at Rock Against Reagan concert and demonstration, Ohio State House. April 30, 1983























~~~*~~*~~~

Truth:

I am actually hosting/posting these so I can post them someplace else. Yes, ulterior motives! Enjoy!

Good news: Despite my hands disintegrating from old-ladydom (seriously), I will be back to post some recent photos and document local demonstrations and actions that have been totally ignored (nah, go on) by the local conservative media... and thus are in danger of disappearing into the ether... so stay tuned, sports fans. I knew this blog would come in handy again some day! ;)

Love, peace, hair grease,

Your humble narrator (who finally rallied sometime this summer and has stayed on fire since),

I call this last one, the grand-handmaid's tale.


:)

50th Anniversary of Selma: All Lives Matter

Below, my photos of yesterday's upstate South Carolina march and rally, honoring the 50th Anniversary of the famous Civil Rights march in Selma, Alabama.

The Greenville rally was called "All Lives Matter"--building on recent events and the popular slogan "Black Lives Matter"--with a deliberate emphasis on inclusion highlighted by organizer Traci Fant and participants from the Empowerment Zone (host of the galvanizing yearly event Voices Against Violence, that we have sponsored at Occupy the Microphone).

It was Traci's hope to include active law enforcement in the march, and many decided to attend the march on their own time and brought family members. Other rally speakers familiar to our radio listeners include repeat-guest Reverend Jack Logan of Put the Guns Down Now, Young People.

This event was huge and well-attended, quite a contrast to the NAACP's small but prayerful Spartanburg event on February 7th, also attended by radio personnel.

As I have said countless times, Traci is a human dynamo. She did an outstanding job. Her upstate radio show REAL TALK is on every Sunday afternoon on WOLI FM (our station!) at 3pm, so don't miss it.

~*~

First photo features my fabulous radio co-host, Double A, on left, and that's me on the right. (His sign got him into almost every video, including the Fox Carolina footage linked above.) You can click all photos to enlarge.

Ain't gonna study war no more

All my life, I have been listening to justifications for war. All my life.

Constantly, whether acted upon or not.

I realized, driving down the road today... this is not the experience of non-Americans. And I was suddenly starkly jealous of all of you. It must be nice to live in Brazil or Nepal or Paraguay or Iceland or Canada or someplace where your country's population and artillery-soaked media is not always always always talking about the need for military intervention in some area of the world most people have trouble locating on a map.

My God, I am so tired of it. I am weary. I am also SICK over the fact that innocent civilians have already lost heat, water, food, roads, medicine, the necessities of life, all because I have a cowardly president afraid to stick to his bullshit lying campaign promises. And let me tell you, with ONE exception ((waves to the peanut farmer from Georgia)), I have had that same exact damn president ALL MY LIFE. Yes, totally interchangeable presidents. We always think THIS ONE (dubbed President Hopey Changey by witty blogger Lotus) is gonna be the one to NOT act like the others. We always think THIS ONE will be better. Somehow, in some way better.

HAHAHA, yeah I was taken in, as this blog makes clear. I have considered deleting my entire blog out of sheer embarrassment, but then, that would be unfairly presenting myself as someone smarter than I was, less gullible than I was. Instead, I was someone A HALF-CENTURY OLD, yet I nonetheless believed the okey-doke, even after I had already seen decades of lying American presidents. There can be no excuse, except that yes, I was operating on HOPE. My HOPE VALVE was on automatic pilot, cruise control... I wanted so desperately to believe.

And now, I see. I see clearly.

I have talked about strategic voting many times on this blog. And with that in mind, I can't say I will never vote for Democrats again. Certainly, here in South Carolina, that would be utterly suicidal. The Republicans hate poor people and openly seek to eradicate us. I can't trust them. We are left with inferior choices in this election year, as we so often are. Why won't the good people run for office? Why do decent ordinary working people vote for politicians who openly despise them?

And why do they promise peace when they intend no such thing?

I am heartbroken and distraught. This attack on ISIS is bullshit to make Lockheed Martin and the other endless munitions makers and military contractors staggeringly rich. I don't believe anything the media tells us; I often wonder if Americans are now as cynical as the citizens of the late-stage Soviet Union were, as the stories we are given change every day, even several times a day.

Lotus, linked above, provided an amazing quote from George Orwell... as always, timely as ever:

Every war when it comes or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

Yes.

And to the media-pundit hacks like David Gergen and the others? When are you enlisting? You were not in Vietnam, you were working for RICHARD FUCKING NIXON... so tell me, WHEN ARE YOU ENLISTING FOR THIS WAR YOU SO ENTHUSIASTICALLY EXHORT US TO GET INVOLVED IN? If I hear another made-to-order Harvard/Yale "pundit" or "expert" (translation: a well-trained media toadie/lackey, who promptly reports whatever they are told to report) from the cushy white suburbs say "Right on!" about poor and already-exhausted rednecks, blacks and Latinos doing another tour of duty in the silos pushing buttons on people, I will SCREAM and SPEW... which is one reason I finally turned off the cursed television. I can't stand to hear their lying filth one more minute.

I am meditating, and I am thinking of all the other people not able to meditate, as their homes fall around them.

All I can say is: I am sorry, Syrian sisters and brothers, my fellow humans.

I was not consulted on your fate when they decided to tax my money to make bombs to destroy you. In fact, I was lied to and told that my votes might even prevent that. And I was dumb enough to believe, since I did not know what else to do.

Please forgive me.

South Carolina election commercials

I now present to you some of the worst campaign commercials you will ever see. Get out your barf bag now.

Well, okay, maybe not the worst, but... dreadful, simply dreadful.

First up, Governor Haley shores up her lady-voter base that put her over the top in 2010, by addressing BULLYING.

Say what, you ask? Bullying? We can't drive on our shitty roads; we have kids dying in Protective Services; we are going flat-ass broke... and we suddenly have the Governor playing Big Mother and assuring us that she CARES! (Note: she cares about nice white middle class girls like the one in the commercial; obviously, those dead kids in foster care can suck it.)

This commercial would never be made about a male candidate. That's enough reason to hate it.

Further, do teenagers send suicide notes to the Governor? Seriously? (More on the ad here) And what exactly would a governor do, to stop bullying?

"Nikki Haley Makes a Difference"



I told you it was bad.

~*~

And now from Haley's Republican/Independent challenger on the Right, here is Tom Ervin, who is some kind of relation to Senator Sam Ervin of Watergate committee fame (son or grandson?).... but right now, it is interesting that he seems to be downplaying that connection. (notice their kinship isn't mentioned on either Wikipedia entry) On the Right, Sam Ervin was hated for helping bring down Richard Nixon, while on the Left, he was hated for being a Jim Crow politician. It was the great middle that loved Sam Ervin, who unexpectedly became a star during the televised Watergate proceedings, as he would periodically huff and puff, become amusingly annoyed and pointedly lecture the witnesses on the meaning of the Constitution. He was a huge hit, and I am surprised Ervin isn't reminding voters of his famous TV-star relative.

Maybe Tom Ervin figures its better to leave good ole dad/granddad out of the campaign, especially when you are running against a nonwhite woman, the first nonwhite and the first woman to be elected governor of SC.

Anyway, here is the ad, targeting older voters and veterans.

"That's Tom"



Is that the most sentimental, treacly thing you ever saw? Argh.

As we said on our radio show last week, the idea is that you can call some politician any time you need help, the way Haley famously promised: "If you have trouble voting with the new rules, just call me and I will make sure you can vote!" Politicians want the old-bubba network of making lots of personal friends by getting stuff done for them, as in those old, well-oiled Democratic machines of the North (and the Dixiecrat machines of the South). Notice the ad subtly trashes the VA, yet makes no overt criticism, much less suggest what should be done to make improvements. The overriding concept is that these faceless bureaucracies sure do suck, but a nice guy like Tom can make it alright.

These are the choices on the Right. This means we will probably end up with one of them. Watch em and weep.

Monday Music - Grateful Dead, Johnny Cash

Music history lesson: You will notice that the traditional "Little Sadie" shares some of the same lines from Johnny Cash's "Cocaine Blues"... the first song is ominous and haunting; the second song more whimsical and defiant.

Both versions are great.

Warnings for woman-killing, drugs, etc.

~*~

Little Sadie - Grateful Dead (acoustic, live in Austin, TX 2/23/70)



~*~

Cocaine Blues - Johnny Cash

Deportees

We saw Arlo Guthrie on Sunday and he did this song. I love it so much.

Whenever there is a news story about immigrants/undocumented workers, and their names are omitted, I always think of this song.

I found this version of the song by Arlo and Emmylou Harris. So beautiful! (Unfortunately, the audio-synchronization seems a bit OFF in this video, and their mouths don't quite match up to the lyrics, but that's quibbling.)

Happy 100th birthday, Woody Guthrie.

Arlo's tour started two years ago, to celebrate his father's centennial celebration.

~*~

Deportees - Arlo Guthrie and Emmylou Harris



EDIT: And yes, this is "Tuesday Tunes" because I wrote it on Tuesday and did not post it until today. THANK YOU FOR NOTICING! :P

I have removed the "Tuesday Tunes" designation for those readers who are uncompromising sticklers for accuracy. Truthfully, I didn't even notice. I DID manage to say "Wednesday edition" on the radio today, so I am NOT a total loss.

Thanks yall! :) Its so nice to know you care.

The Lynching of Willie Earle

NOTE: I originally posted this in February of 2011, when the memorial was placed. It has now been 67 years; the memorial is now a mainstay of Greenville County Civil Rights/genealogical tourism.



65 years ago, the last lynching in South Carolina took place about 10-15 miles from where I live. And last year, after a very long 64 years, a memorial was finally erected on the rural back road where it happened.

[Caution: disturbing and violent content]


On February 16, 1947, Thomas Watson Brown, a white cab driver, picked up a black man on Markley Street in Greenville, South Carolina. Brown was later found half-dead, his taxi driven off the road in rural Pickens County. He had been beaten, robbed, and stabbed three times.

The Pickens County sheriff reported that muddy footprints at the crime scene led to the house of Willie Earle, about a mile away, where officers reportedly found cash, a blood-covered knife and bloody clothing. (Many of these facts have always been in dispute, but this is what was presented at trial.) Willie Earle, age 24, wasn't at his residence; he was in another cab, driven by a man who would later become one of the 31 defendants.

Earle was arrested and put in the Pickens County second-floor lock-up.

The news of Brown's stabbing traveled like wildfire, as did the news of Willie Earle's arrest. The nexus of unrest was the Yellow Cab office on West Court Street, where Greenville's taxi drivers had congregated in an angry pack, and started passing around a bottle of whiskey.

The Greenville News, recently granted access to some of the trial records and police reports, offers some chilling accounts:

The attitudes of the time are reflected in the casual manner in which one of the defendants, Hubert Carter, explained in his statement to police how he joined the mob.

The 33-year-old driver and father of four called for a ride home from the Cleveland Street taxi stand at 1 a.m. on the 17th, according to the Greenville Police Department file. He was picked up by another defendant, Paul Griggs, who "asked me if I wanted to go with the others to get the Negro being held for stabbing Mr. Brown.

"I told him I'd go along with the crowd," Carter said in his statement.

And so, in a tableau reminiscent of the famous scene in To Kill A Mockingbird (and perhaps it was an inspiration for it), the taxis all lined up in the early morning hours and drove in formation out to the Pickens County jail, maybe 20 miles away. It was February 17th.

I have often re-imagined the striking sight of the line of yellow cabs driving down the old rural road I have traveled down so many times myself. Did other people see them? They must have. Did the onlookers know where they were going? Did they tell their wives or girlfriends first?

And there was, sadly, no Atticus Finch to stand by the door. Instead, there was a jailer named Gilstrap, who suddenly had two shotguns pointed in his face. He didn't argue.

The mob took Willie Earle from the jail.

A call to Greenville's black funeral home, notified authorities of where the body was.

Thomas Brown died six hours later.

~*~

The first lynching since 1912, the murder of Willie Earle became big news. The trial was biggest lynching trial the state had ever seen. Most lynchings had never even been investigated, while this one had then-Governor Strom Thurmond threatening to put the perpetrators away (yes, you read that right). Time magazine sent reporters, and The New Yorker sent no less than Dame Rebecca West to cover the event.

From Time magazine:

Somebody "pulled the Negro out of the car by his belt." The drivers ''hit him several times with their fists and knocked him to the ground." One of the drivers pulled out a knife. "Before you kill him," he said, "I want to put the same scars on him that he put on Brown." Said Jessie Lee Sammons: "I could hear the tearing of clothing and flesh."

Then the drivers "beat the side of his head with a shotgun." Said Marvin H. Flemming's statement: "I could hear some licks like they were pounding on him with the butt end of a gun. I heard the Negro say, 'Lord, you done killed me.' " Finally, said Charlie Covington, he heard Roosevelt Carlos Hurd Sr., a Blue Bird cab driver, cry out: "Give me the gun and let's get this over with." Just then, "a tall, slender boy with bushy hair hit the Negro in the mouth and knocked him down. The Negro started to get up when Mr. Hurd took the shotgun. He shot the Negro in the head. He unloaded the gun and called for more shells. . . . Mr. Hurd shot the Negro two more times." The tissue of Willie Earle's brain was left hanging on the bushes. The lynchers went back to Greenville and drank coffee.

Of course, it was an all-white jury. Of course, they offered no defense at all. And of course, they were acquitted.

Of the acquittal, Dame Rebecca West wrote:

There could be no more pathetic scene than these taxi-drivers and their wives, the deprived children of difficult history, who were rejoicing at a salvation that was actually a deliverance to danger. For an hour or two, the trial had built up in them that sense of law which is as necessary to man as bread and water and a roof. They had known killing for what it is: a hideousness that begets hideousness. They had seen that the most generous impulse, not subjected to the law, may engender a shameful deed. For indeed they were sick at heart when what had happened at the slaughter-pen was described in open court. But they had been saved from the electric chair and from prison by men who had conducted their defense without taking a minute off to state or imply that even if a man is a murderer one must not murder him and that murder is foul. These people had been plunged back into chaos.

Chaos is the word. Chaos was the state of race relations in the south until the Civil Rights movement, when the chaos was at last addressed.

Next week, after many long decades, the spot where Willie Earle was murdered will be officially and historically marked. Future generations will not be like me, driving by a rural place in the road without knowing whose blood was shed there. We will see, and we will know.

Tessie Robinson, Willie's mama, died 8 years ago. I am so sad she will never see the memorial to her son.

For black people, a memorial and a reminder of what they already know and do not have to be told. For us white people, a souvenir of our savagery, and the cover-up of that savagery. Which is why the memorial has taken 64 years.

Rest in Peace, Willie Earle.

Nelson Mandela 1918-2013

The media mourning for Nelson Mandela has been shocking to me. Revisionism in my lifetime always rearranges my senses, and here we are again. (Note: Our radio show honoring Mandela was yesterday; our show honoring martyr Fred Hampton was Wednesday.)

It seems that only a short while ago, Mandela was regarded as a dangerous terrorist. Republicans spoke his name with audible contempt. It is dizzying and disorienting to see Fox News being all polite and respectful. I feel as if I have fallen through the proverbial Looking Glass.


As Mark Quincy Adams accurately writes (at Alan Colmes' blog titled Liberaland):

Their failed attempt to co-op the memory of Rosa Parks have not stopped our friends on the Right from trying the same with the late Nelson Mandela. Whether their hope is widespread ignorance of history or an attempt to disguise their true feelings, we must remember that Conservatives have always despised Nelson Mandela.

Dick Cheney, in particular, should be singled out as a leader in the ‘COWSHIT* Coalition’ (*Conservatives On the Wrong Side of HIstorys Tide). He was a vocal opponent of even setting the man free from prison! Sure, he said years later that Mandela had “mellowed out” but that’s hardly a recant of his indefensible position. Clearly, those who populate the Conservative Movement today are equally as hateful toward the man as Cheney and his ilk were in the 1980′s as we see from comments on Ted Cruz’s Facebook post attempting the gentlest of praise of Mandela.

While on some level we should welcome those on the Right who now want to praise Mandela, their sincerity should be met with great skepticism. The good news is there is something Conservatives really have to be genuinely thankful to him for. They should never forget that when Mandela was elected President of South Africa after 27 years in prison, he called for “Truth and Reconciliation” NOT “Truth and Retribution”. That’s a precedent Conservatives across the world should celebrate and hope that others in the future will find the Mandela-like strength to be so forgiving. Given their history, they will certainly need it.

And as Nelson Mandela himself said:

I was called a terrorist yesterday, but when I came out of jail, many people embraced me, including my enemies, and that is what I normally tell other people who say those who are struggling for liberation in their country are terrorists. I tell them that I was also a terrorist yesterday, but today, I am admired by the very people who said I was one.

~*~

As I get older, I am more and more curious about how history will judge us. The longer I live and the more I witness this kind of revisionism, the more I realize we will be judged in ways we can not even anticipate right now.

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that as I stood reading the words on the Confederate memorial downtown, I was struck by the total moral certainty of the poem engraved on the side of that memorial. It never once occurred to the folks erecting the monument, that mores might change; that there would come a time that their moral certitude would be shameful and even regarded as patently evil.

And that will happen to us, too. About the drones, maybe... or the way we have refused to take responsibility for changing the climate. What are we doing right now, that we will be held ethically accountable for in the future? What horrors do we tolerate so we can hold on to our standard of living?

If I contemplate this too long (and I have made the whole "history's judgment" concept a repeated subject of my anicca meditation), I become afraid that I am not doing enough. I can become nearly frantic. It's a scary concept for me, which of course means that I must deal with it, head on.

I am often overwhelmed by trying to do everything at once. I spread myself pretty thin as it is, and yet... I worry it simply is not enough. And I also worry that no matter what we do, it will make no difference.

At least we can look at a life like Mandela's and say, HERE is a life that truly mattered, that made a difference in ways that counted, in ways that endured.

And at such times, when I have doubts that what we do makes any difference, I hold on to one truth:

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business." -- TS Eliot.

Rest in peace, Nelson Mandela.

What does this bumper sticker mean?

Its our brand new DEAD AIR holiday bumper-sticker-deciphering contest! WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?-- please offer your 2 cents.

I haven't thought of any cool prizes yet, but working on it.


I took this photo about two miles from here in a public parking lot in a nice suburb. Not in the backwoods or anything. But of course, this is still the South.



~*~



I understand the basic assertion of the bumper sticker: The Confederacy would never have "left" the POWs and MIAs in Vietnam. (And that's some deliberately-inflammatory rhetoric right there, that they were somehow "left" deliberately. By whom?)

1) Does this mean the Confederacy would have had a Vietnam war too, in some alternative universe that never happened?

2) Does this include the African-American soldiers, too? (Can they be forgiven for thinking that your word ain't much, on this particular score?)

Any other questions, please ask in comments. Play along at home!

~*~

PS: This also gets put in my "You Yankees don't know how easy you've got it!" file.

Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009 and have re-posted it every November since then. Since this is the 50th anniversary of the assassination, it seems even more pertinent and poignant.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.



~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

Day of the Dead links

At left: I celebrated Samhain with the pagan community at Greenville Unitarian-Universalist Fellowship (known as GUUF). It was wonderful!



I always loved the Christian rituals at this time of year, so its nice to know I can find working alternatives.

Hope your Halloween was fun. (PS: here are my adorable grandbabies in costume!)

~*~








Occupy the Microphone:

Our Wednesday radio show was probably the best one this week, featuring Mary Olsen of Nuclear Information Resource Service. Have a listen!

Thursday's show: Senator Lindsey Graham's stock takes a nose dive in polls

Friday's show: Did the US government know before or after the Israelis attacked Syria?

Remember, you can listen to us on livestream every weekday, LIVE AT FIVE! (And if you'd like to donate your spare change to us, please go HERE.)

~*~

Random Links:

:: 11 signs you might be an MRA (Men's Rights Advocate). Although this was posted earlier this year, I just came across it... and this certainly rings true for all of my online brawling.

:: How the religious right won: Birth of the fundamentalists, in our modern times (Salon) is excerpted from Molly Worthen's upcoming book, titled Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism. Excellent history and analysis, highly recommended, and I am hoping to read the entire book soon.

From the piece:

The decisive battles over the meaning and role of the Bible in modern society [in the 70s and 80s] did not, primarily, unfold in the form of dueling proof texts or Sunday pulpit ripostes, but in skirmishes for control of the machinery of intellectual authority: seminaries, missions boards, denominational presses, and authorized church history. The personal magnetism of gurus was not sufficient to stanch the secularist tide. Just as thousands of volunteers at Billy Graham’s crusades worked to settle new converts into local churches before their enthusiasm could evaporate, conservative activists knew that the fervor wandering sages left in their wake would fizzle unless channeled into institutions and sustained by an infrastructure built to teach and train future generations.

Worthen provides an in-depth account of exactly how the fundies took over the various Protestant denominations from within. And it's some fascinating history:

Historically, Southern Baptists have opposed the idea of creeds: formal statements of doctrine to which all members of a church must subscribe. Every Baptist is expected to articulate his beliefs for himself. The principle of “soul liberty” or “soul competency” means that each believer is accountable to no one but God. Few principles, however, are absolute in reality. Early Baptists approved confessions that reflected consensus and set boundaries for acceptable beliefs, although they did not recite them in worship. Southern Baptists, alarmed by Darwinism’s challenge to traditional interpretations of the Bible, adopted a “Faith and Message” in 1925 declaring their belief that God created man “as recorded in Genesis.” The convention elaborated on this statement in 1963 after seminary professor Ralph Elliott roiled Southern Baptists by advocating a nonliteral reading of the creation story in his book The Message of Genesis. The [Southern Baptist Convention] emphasized the “proper balance between academic freedom and academic responsibility” in Christian education, but reiterated the fallible nature of any doctrinal statement, the possibility for future revision, and the importance of soul competency.

Conservatives began to suspect that the historic Baptist resistance to creeds provided cover for heterodox interpretation of essential doctrines. They pushed for traditionalist revisions and more rigorous enforcement of statements of faith at the denomination’s seminaries and colleges, and even agitated for emendation of the Baptist Faith and Message. Creeds, far from threatening the Baptist way, were the only way to preserve it.

If you are interested in the history of Christianity (and specifically, how the biblical-literalists took over everything), this is a great read.

And it explains so much.

:: Check out Paul Krugman's New York Times column titled, A War on the Poor:

John Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, has done some surprising things lately. First, he did an end run around his state’s Legislature — controlled by his own party — to proceed with the federally funded expansion of Medicaid that is an important piece of Obamacare. Then, defending his action, he let loose on his political allies, declaring, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That, if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”

Obviously Mr. Kasich isn’t the first to make this observation. But the fact that it’s coming from a Republican in good standing (although maybe not anymore), indeed someone who used to be known as a conservative firebrand, is telling. Republican hostility toward the poor and unfortunate has now reached such a fever pitch that the party doesn’t really stand for anything else — and only willfully blind observers can fail to see that reality.

Read it all.

:: Jonathan Chait explains Why Letting Everyone Keep Their Health-Care Plan Is a Terrible Idea. (New York magazine)

:: Your Day of the Dead dose of cute comes from sweet Harley, all dressed up in a Hello Kitty costume. Adorable!

:: Your spiritual-reading assignment: A Journey from Humiliation to Humility, by Corrado Pensa:

Humiliation is not auto­­matically present; it gets fabri­cated by the ego. We have a choice. We can get into the old habit of fab­ri­cating suffering, or we can stop and watch. Can we lit­erally sit still in the tiny con­traction that we ex­perience, in face of that person who never smiles back at us? ‘Never’ means ‘every time’. ‘Every time’ means ‘a number of opportunities’. Are we going to use those opportunities? Or are we going to consider them irrelevant, minor?

Maybe it is the end of a long day. We are tired and our feet hurt. Can we focus on this fact instead of drifting into wanting and aversion? Can we be gently aware of the range of physical sensations as well as the range of reactions? This is such a wise use of time. But it can just slip through our fingers. We can con­stantly think that we have something more important to do.

~*~

I took some artsy photos in a car wash and I also updated my Flickr page, so yall come over and see my purty pics.

Have a great Day of the Dead/All Souls Day.

Confederate Memorial

We went down to Springwood Cemetery, because Mr Daisy discovered that one of his favorite mystery authors was buried there, John Dickson Carr.



And so, while we were there, we had a look around. It was cloudy and overcast, giving off a perfect Halloween vibe. We saw some interesting tombstones, many very old.

This statue was on a toddler-aged child's tombstone, very poignant:




This being the South, lots of references to heaven:




Springwood Cemetery is well-known as a famous Confederate resting place. There are countless tombstones accompanied by the historic CSA (Confederate States of America) marker. Many are unmarked stones. It is a popular site for genealogical researchers, as well as history buffs.

Memorial to General Robert E Lee:



Interestingly, it is now known as Main Street, and hasn't been called "Dixie Highway" since I have lived here.


And there is a Confederate Memorial with some sobering words on the side. I knew as soon as I read it, I had to share it here.




The monument reads:

All lost, but by the graves
Where martyred heroes rest
He wins the most who honor saves
Success is not the test
The world shall yet decide
In Truth's clear far-off light
that the soldiers
who wore the Gray and died
with Lee, were in the right.


Obviously, speaking from 2013, Truth's clear far-off light has decided the opposite. But see, how utterly certain they were? As certain as today's war-partisans are.

And I often wonder, how will history judge us?

Random worries over the future of online social justice

VINTAGE CAR OF THE MONTH! Any guesses on the year? I will take a wild guess and say 1975. (Can Volkswagens last that long?)

I took this shot at Greenville County Square on Saturday, right before the March Against Monsanto.


~*~

My wee Tumblr blog doesn't get much attention... not sure why I started it, except that now I can officially "like" other people's entries. Still no comments allowed though! Such a weird system; I still find the 'nesting' thoroughly confusing and I frequently can't decipher who has said what.

I recently posted THIS on Tumblr... to me, some of the most shocking content I could ever have posted. (Then again, that statement probably just shows my age.) It's a photo I took at the Fort Sumter museum in Charleston, of a slave tag. Lots of people don't realize that enslaved African-Americans wore identifying tags (like animals), so I thought I would share the photo. I also included a slavery-era poster warning northern blacks (in Boston) against approaching police, who were then-empowered as bounty hunters (aka "slave catchers"). These two displays in aforesaid museum had the cumulative effect of shooting me right through the heart. I may even have shed some tears. But on Tumblr? Not a big deal--I got one "like" and one reblog. And that's it.

History is bunk, as Henry Ford schooled us.

I recently read a Wiki about a Tumblr blogger I have been following for some time. I consider this individual little more than an amusing hysteric/abusive psycho-nuisance, but when she has emotional meltdowns (often, as psycho-nuisances usually do), she unwittingly provides us with some first-class comedy relief. I was startled to read that this person is regarded as "serious social-justice" (is "social-justice" now a noun for a certain type of radical poseur on Tumblr?). And I am wondering--how is that possible? Serious social-justice?!? Saints preserve us.

This person has done nothing but vent endlessly (several times a day, usually) in a self-righteous, pseudo-political fashion, using all the trendy lefty buzzwords of the day. She has never done ANY political organizing or actual community-work in real life. At least, if she has, she has never mentioned it. And since every single wayward hypochondriacal symptom and every meal eaten and every DVD viewed is carefully cataloged and shared with her legions of fans, I think we would have heard all about any ACTUAL SOCIAL JUSTICE work by now. In excruciating detail.

And yet, this person is considered "serious social-justice"; its enough to make you want to tear your hair out.

This might go a long way towards explaining why this current generation faces endless wars (plural) they seem disinclined to stop, much less actually protest against. After all, it's been left to their poor and immigrant peers (along with computers and drones) to actually fight these wars, so what is the harm? They have far bigger fish to fry, like picking apart other bloggers for using the wrong trendy words and/or having the wrong opinions. (And even though they loooove to see racism and ethnic bias under every rock, they don't see their blatant disregard for the people their country is bombing, as racism and/or xenophobia, as it certainly is.) This explains why there are all these "social justice warriors" on Tumblr, and yet they have had no impact at all, ZERO INFLUENCE, in the public square. None. Zip. Tumblr is like a fantasy-land, a computer game, and "social justice" is one of the colorful environments chosen as background, just like choices of locations in Farmville.

Very, very few Tumblrites have even commented on the current government shutdown, so it seems obvious none are receiving WIC (as I once did, which I mentioned on the air last week) or utilizing HEAD START or are immediately affected by government in any other way. In fact, very few mentioned the long-awaited roll-out of Obamacare. I have not seen any of them discuss the pros and cons of Obamacare... in fact, its all fulminating, with little mention of real life events or the ramifications of various political policies.

It's disheartening, even frightening. I hope this is not the future. If it's only one FRAGMENT of the future, I can handle it. But I hope this is not what "social justice" eventually devolves to: SOCIAL JUSTICE FARMVILLE! GET COOL CARTOON IMPLEMENTS FOR VIRTUAL COMPOSTING! BUY CHICKENS THAT LAY ONLY FREE RANGE VIRTUAL EGGS! And don't forget to put down the people with the ordinary chickens for not being cool. Otherwise, where's the fun in that?

(War? What war?)

Patriots Point: A photographic tour

Hey yall, time for your photographic tour of Patriots Point in coastal Mount Pleasant, SC... where my history-buff husband knows more than the plaques on display, and tells me all about war machinery I wish didn't even exist.

I have finally learned, after THIS rather mediocre attempt at historical photography, to take photos of the informational plaques as well... so when it comes time to blog about it, I will at least have some clue of what the photos are.

Admittedly, I am usually rather lukewarm about this kinda stuff, and then I always end up immensely enjoying it and getting into the whole historic vibe, deep in imagination about what it was like to live at sea. My grandfather served on the USS Arkansas (more about which in due course), and he talked about sailing the high seas, although not always in the best of terms.



We last visited Patriots Point in 1993 (as I briefly mentioned here, when I stupidly mixed up the cruiser Yorktown and the USS Yorktown), and I can honestly report that my ability to climb steep, skinny steps has most definitely declined in 20 years. In fact, we didn't even notice how steep/skinny the steps were before, and now we are like... yighhhh! In fact, I declined some of the more narrow passages and exited the USS Clamagore submarine altogether after a few photos, as claustrophobia beckoned. (I can't imagine how Jimmy Carter or anybody else ever lived in one of those things!!!)


As always, you can click all photos to enlarge. Hope you find at least something you enjoy!

~*~

First up, you cross the purty and awesome Ravenel bridge, aka the Cooper River bridge... yes, named after THOSE Ravenels. This includes famous ex-SC treasurer/world-class cokehead Thomas Ravenel, who was arrested over the summer for drunken driving up in the Hamptons. Despite this, Ravenel will be the star of a spanking new reality show called SOUTHERN CHARM.

When you're poor, you go to jail, directly to jail, do not pass GO... but when you're rich, you get to be on BRAVO network. Moral of the story: being rich means never having to say you're sorry and having very cool, big-ass bridges named after your family!

First photos, what it looks like when you are ON it, then from afar.



~*~

Welcome to Charleston Harbor and Patriots Point! Meet the star of our tour, the USS YORKTOWN, the aircraft carrier that kicked all kinds of ass during the WWII Battle of Midway. (She was known as "The Fighting Lady"--also the name of the famous propaganda film about her.)

The smaller ship next to it (last photo) is the USS Laffey, a destroyer. The Laffey was known as "The Ship that Would not Die" at the Battle of Okinawa, where she was hit with 4 bombs and 6 kamikazes and stayed afloat.





The Yorktown is stuffed with antique war machinery and military memorabilia. I tried to match up the machinery with the correct plaque. Yes, that poster really does say (at bottom) "Get em up for your navy!" (I knew you'd never believe me unless I had the photo to prove it.)




~*~

Self-explanatory...that last photo is a kamikaze aircraft, which is surprisingly small. I'd be scared to death to fly in that flimsy plane, but I guess by then, fear wasn't exactly an issue, and well beside the point. (And as tiny as it was, you certainly wouldn't want to see one of those things headed straight for you.)




~*~

I was thrilled to see the FRIENDSHIP 7 on display at the Yorktown!

It's SO itty-bitty... again, you just shake your head: seriously?!? David Bowie's famous lyric, "sitting in a tin can/far above the world" comes to mind. I would be utterly terrified! John Glenn probably didn't even break a sweat. (IMPORTANT CINEMATIC NOTE: I highly recommend the excellent and entertaining movie, THE RIGHT STUFF, to any young folks who have never seen it. It deserved much wider fame, but Tom Wolfe's irony probably kept it from becoming an iconic American film. It's long, but well worth your time.)

The first two photos below are the interior of the Friendship 7, which is way smaller than a porta-potty.




~*~

Assorted photos from the Yorktown... Doolittle Raid map, torpedo room... and see those skinny, steep steps? Helm (Sulu), Captain's deck (Kirk), engineering (Scotty) and operating room (Dr McCoy).



~*~

Living arrangements: a bit close for comfort. I think the latrine (boys only!) is aboard the Laffey. And if you weren't Christian, well, tough shit. No other religious symbols displayed anywhere onboard.



~*~


As stated above, my grandfather served aboard the USS Arkansas. Basically, he wanted to get out of West Virginia and lied about his age (16) to enlist, at a time when lying about one's age was relatively easy to do and virtually impossible to check. By my estimation, this was circa 1925. He became extremely seasick, homesick, claustrophobic and all the rest of it... and the first chance he got, off he went. He stayed gone for awhile--I never did find out how long he was AWOL from the Navy.

Upon his return (he DID like the money, after all), they took him to the brig. Accounts vary, but he was there between 3-6 months. So, I took photos of the brig, that nasty place he never talked about.

Looks pretty unpleasant; speaking of claustrophobia, that last one was taken with my lens inside the cell. Not too much room. :(

My poor granddaddy... no wonder he never talked to us about it.



~*~


Assorted stuff, including enlistment posters... and in the last photo, what do you suppose the airplane-art meant? (LOL)




~*~


Here is where I got MY advanced case of claustrophobia, aboard the USS Clamagore submarine... Second photo: they actually slept right under the torpedoes. (I assume they all died of radiation poisoning if they managed to survive the war.)

The passageways were very narrow, and I took photos of all of them.



~*~

I hope you have enjoyed your tour!