Saturday, April 30, 2005

POTUS 28: President Woodrow Wilson - The President Who Short-Circuited & POTUS 28A: President Edith Wilson - An Alternate Portrait


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Happy Birthday, April 30th!

April 30 is an important date in the history of the USA. On this date in history:

Washington was sworn into office, Hitler commited suicide, and The Vietnam War officially ended.

POTUS 33: President Harry Truman - "The Buck Stops Here"


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Harry Truman did not want to be vice president, and he didn't have to be for long. He was VPOTUS 83 days before FDR died in his fourth term of office.

He hoped to play the piano for a living, but opened a haberdashery with a fellow army buddy that went bust. Harry refused to declare bankruptcy and worked his entire life to pay the debts from the business. He got into politics.

In his bid for re-election in 1948, he was dubbed the loser to Thomas Dewey as newspaper headlines read DEWEY WINS when in fact Truman was the winner. You've seen the famous photograph of Harry holding the 'paper declaring Dewey the winner.

When bad reviews appeared in the press following his daughter Margaret's singing debut in new York, he threatened to punch the reviewer in the nose.

The President never removed his suit jacket while working in the Oval Office. Harry was not a shirt-sleeve guy.

When Japan refused to surrender in World War II, he made the decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, two cities devoted to war work. He may have ended the war, but he let the genie out of the bottle, and we've never been able to put the genie back.

In June 1950, when the Communist government of North Korea attacked South Korea, Truman again went to war: "There was no suggestion from anyone that either the United Nations or the United States could back away from it." A brutal struggle ensued as U.N. forces held a line above the old border of South Korea. Truman kept the war a limited one, and avoided engaging either China or Russia.

He retired in early 1953, succeeded by President Eisenhower.
---o0o---

Friday, April 29, 2005

POTUS 28: President Woodrow Wilson - The President Who Short-Circuited & POTUS 28A: President Edith Wilson


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President Wilson started out as an academic, working his way up to President of Princeton in 1902. He ran for governor, and won, in 1910, and was nominated for President at the democratic convention in 1912.

After winning re-election in 1916 on the premise that "he kept us out of war," he asked congress to declare war on Germany in 1917. The American presence in the war eventually helped tilt the balance in favor of the allies. After the Germans signed an armistice, Wilson went to Paris to work on the Treaty of Versailles and The League of Nations. Alas, in the midterms, the balance in Congress had tilted toward the Republicans. The Treaty died in the Senate.

After a long tour on the hustings to drum up support for Versailles and the League of Nations, President Wilson became ill.

On October 2, 1919, Wilson suffered a massive stroke that left him partially paralyzed on his left side. His intellectual capacity remained intact, but his emotions and judgment were shattered. No one suggested that Wilson resign. The 25th amendment was fifty years in the future. His wife, Edith, undertook a massive cover-up of his condition. She controlled access to him and made the decisions for him. In a very real sense, Edith Wilson was the 29th President of the United States (or maybe 28A).

It's a mind f**ker for us in the age of revved up Kleig-light journalism and media scrutiny to imagine keeping a President on ice for two years. Imagine if a year from now, we never saw President George W. Bush again. We get communiques from him, we never actually see him. He is somewhere behind The Closed Door. He becomes a Howard Hughes and any information we do get comes from aides. You no longer even really know who is behind that closed door. No one has the power to peek beneath the covers.

Although President Wilson gradually recovered from the worst effects of the stroke, Wilson never got his game back. In the meantime, the Senate twice rejected the Versaille peace treaty. Wilson had refused to compromise and the United States never joined the League of Nations. President Wilson left the White House in March 1921 a broken man.
---o0o---

Thursday, April 28, 2005

More Thoughts On Jacko - Michael Jackson's Trial Continues

A comedian has to have already said this, but::::::::::::::::shouldn't Michael Jackson's plastic surgeon and dermatologist be on trial for something?
---o0o--

POTUS 31: President Herbert Hoover - The Scapegoat


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As I've said before about Hayes, Taft, Coolidge, Bush, Ford (who barely qualifies), et al, my second favorite variety of President is the one-term Republican defeated for re-election. My favorite configuration is, of course, the two-term Democrat. I am sad to report that in my now lengthy lifetime, I've seen--and voted for--only one: POTUS 42 William Jefferson Clinton.

Run from office on a rail in 1932 by the FDR juggernaut, President Hoover's star has risen over the years.

In the book, The Herbert Hoover Story, Eugene Lyons writes: "A Fantastic Hoover Myth. . .It presents our thirty-first President as a heartless ogre, inept and callous and reactionary, who 'caused' a depression, then 'did nothing' to mitigate its horrors."

President Hoover is no longer blamed for causing the Depression. However, he was trounced by FDR and the nation then began the excruciatingly slow march toward recovery, and, a decade later, war with the Axis.

Years later, in 1947, President Truman enlisted Hoover to help with various issues, including flying to Europe to fix the food production pipeline in defeated and occupied post-Hitler Germany.

Flags in the classrooms at Kent Elementary were draped with black bunting for a month when Hoover died in the fall of 1964. It was a relief I think, going back to a time when Presidents died in bed, of old age.
---o0o---

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

POTUS 17: Pres. Andrew Johnson - The Worst President Ever


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While Andrew Johnson's predecessor, Lanky Link, is considered America's greatest President, Johnson is often considered the worst. It requires a crash course in The Reconstruction to understand how badly he screwed things up.

When Civil War broke out, Johnson was a first-term Senator in the proslavery wing of the Democratic Party. He differed with them in that he didn't want to split The Union. When Tennessee left the Union after the first election of Abraham Lincoln, Johnson broke away and became the only Southerner in the U.S. Senate.

Johnson wanted to save the union, but did not believe in the emancipation of slaves. Concerned about his chances for reelection, Lincoln felt that he needed a man like Johnson on the ticket in 1864. Lincoln's enemies could not easily depict him as a tool of the abolitionists with the scurrilous and racist Johnson as his running mate.

Days after the Civil War ended, Lincoln was assassinated. President Johnson now blocked efforts to force Southern states to guarantee equality for blacks. While Congress was in recess, The President rushed through his own twisted policies--handing out thousands of pardons and essentially allowing slavery under another name. When Congress reconvened, the Republicans went to political war against the President.

During the congressional mid-terms in 1866, President Johnson went on a speaking tour to campaign for congressmen supporting his policies. In speech after speech, Johnson personally attacked his Republican opponents in vile and abusive language. On many occasions, it appeared that the President was drunk. One observer estimated that Johnson lost one million Northern votes in this debacle.

Congress voted to impeach Johnson by a vote of 126 to 47 in February 1868, citing his violation of the Tenure of Office Act and charging that he had brought disgrace and ridicule on Congress. The Senate voted not to convict Johnson (he won by one vote), and he limped through the sullied term originally won by President Lincoln.
---o0o---

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Happy 202nd Birthday Meteors


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202 years ago today, around 2,300 meteorites weighing between one quarter ounce and 20 pounds fell on the town of L’Aigle in northeastern France, 100 miles from Paris.

No one was killed. No one was even hurt. It was the first time scientists could verify that stones could come from outer space.

How the scientists figured it out is anyone's guess. Doctors at the time still believed that "humors" in the blood caused all illness. Bloodletting was the cure-all. Doctors didn't even wash their hands until the late 19th century, when Louis Pasteur and Joseph Lister's findings led to antiseptic surgery. Antiseptic practice saved thousands of lives during the Franco-German War, and yet American and British doctors--who killed far more people than they saved--long resisted the theory of sepsis.
---o0o---

POTUS 6: President John Quincy Adams - First Son Of A President To Become President And The First President To Become A Congressman Post-White House


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John Quincy Adams, the son of POTUS No. 2, attended Harvard and held several diplomatic posts over the years. He was elected to the Senate in 1803 and from 1809 on, held many other dipolomatic posts. As Secretary of State for James Monroe, he worked closely with POTUS 5 to formulate The Monroe Doctrine.

In 1825, no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes. Adams, with the support of Henry Clay, was elected President by the House over Andrew Jackson. His independence did not sit well with The Federalists, who kicked him out of the party.

Leaving the White House, Adams ran for the House as a Whig, and stayed there many years, and in fact, experienced a stroke on the floor of the House and died two days later.
---o0o---

Monday, April 25, 2005

VPOTUS Nelson Rockefeller Gives The Finger To Protestors


This is one of my favorite political photos. At a campaign stop for Senator Bob Dole (on the VP's left) in '76, Nelson Rockefeller was heckled by protesters over his Vietnam war policy. Rocky ricocheted it. Soon after this, and unrelated to the famous finger, an appellate court ruled that giving the finger was not legally obscene.
---o0o---

Myth # 8: The Consumer


provenance unknown

I don't know where this came from, but it's true. At least about videogames.
---o0o---

POTUS 25: President William McKinley - Puppet Or Visionary?


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William McKinley has often been considered a lame President; a marionette controlled by cronies who was pressured into war with Spain by a hysterical press. Historians now lean toward seeing him as a decisive President who launched America on the road to world power through his use of tarriffs, his policy toward trade with China, his war against Spain over Cuba, and by annexing real estate we picked up in our adventures.

He was a populist president, usually taking the side of The People over the side of "private interests," e.g., business.

In the 100-day war over Cuba, the United States destroyed the Spanish fleet outside Cuba, seized Manila in the Philippines, and occupied Puerto Rico. He also picked up Guam for his troubles.

His second term began well, but came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later and was succeeded by his VPOTUS, Teddy Roosevelt.
---o0o---

Sunday, April 24, 2005

POTUS 39: President James Earl Carter - Not As Bad A President As You Have Been Led To Believe, But Rather A Victim Of Circumstance


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I remember how proud I was of Jimmy Carter, that Tuesday in November, 1976, when he stomped President Gerald R. Ford. It was my second Presidential election, and my first election had been a disaster, for me, and for the country.

With Ford's departure, the White House would finally be swept clean of the detritus of Dick Nixon. President Carter was my kind of people. Even among hillbillies, there are a few who rise above their mean beginnings. Of course, his brother Billy Carter was more my kind of people with his constant beer infusions, improvident talk, and public urination.

I didn't take long before things didn't go so well for President Carter, even though he would win the Nobel Peace Prize eventually. The last year of his admininstration was scarred by the Iranians holding a large number of Americans hostage. They would not be freed until the moment Dutch Reagan took the oath of office. Runaway inflation didn't help his election either. Since his forced retirement, the former President has worked tirelessly for various causes, most notably Habitat For Humanity.

He is the only person to be sworn in as president using his nickname. President Carter was also the first president born in a hospital. Jimmy Carter caused quite a stir when he said he had lusted many times in his heart after seeing pictures of women such as those in Playboy magazine. He instituted the first live televised phone-in broadcast from the White House in March 1977. He also began regular Saturday morning radio addresses to the American public.
---o0o---

Poem: Coyote Comes Home Like A Salmon

Crossing real estate lines
That mean nothing to him,
Coyote traverses the pale fog
Driven in from the sea.
He has a loan of time
To walk through his old salal tangled home.
Sneaking through nettles and Oregon grape,
He carries his battered canoe
Along magnolia darkened clay
Back where he grew from whelp to pup.
Down whitewater roiling over boulders
He feathers the current with his paddle,
Turning in the current like a leaf.
The spent river slinks into the sea.
Pipers spoon their bills in the sand for clams
And robins claw at earthworms.
A diving hawk sends smaller birds
Tumbling into hysterical flight.
His bones feel fragile as obsidian
As he watches the green Kalopanish stop
And they all come to the end:
The river, the creek, and God's old friend.
---o0o---

Jack Brummet
poem started in 1983, finished 4-23-2005.
That took a while!

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Jack Brummet And Keelin Curran On The I.R.T. Local, 1982


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Happy Birthday Bill!


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William Shakespeare was born April 23, 1564, 351 years ago. Although he was writing fairly early in the development of modern English, no one has come within spitting distance of the master.
---o0o---

Poem: Shorts For Jerry Melin ca. about 1988

1
A dim crescent
Hung cockeyed
On cathedral skies.

2
An orchard of salt pillars
Circles Gomorrah's ashes:
Lot's Wife had no name.

3
Two vultures flap
Side by side into the sun.
Calcutta awakes.

4
The wine in this cup
Has a tide all its own.
I am the sucking moon.
---o0o---

Friday, April 22, 2005

POTUS 15: President James Buchanan, The Man Who Left A Divided Country And War For Pres. Abraham Lincoln


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James Buchanan rose from the state legislature to representative, senator and cabinet member. He made a run at the White House in 1844, 1848, and 1852 before finally winning in 1856.

In the 1850s, the question of slavery divided the United States. People hoped that the new President, "Old Buck," was the man to prevent a national crisis. He failed miserably. During his administration, the Union broke apart, and when he left office, civil war was just around the corner.

By 1856, the debates over slavery had reached hysterical intensity, with abolitionists and proslavery forces alike advocating violence and resorting to it frequently.

Two days after Buchanan's inauguration, the Supreme Court announced the Dred Scott decision. Influenced by the new President's pro-southern interests, the Court ruled that because slaves (and former slaves) were not citizens, they had no right to sue for freedom. The court also invalidated the Missouri Compromise of 1820, which banned slavery in the portion of the Louisiana Purchase above 36 degrees latitude. Republicans denounced the decision and vowed to repudiate it.

America was a hopelessly divided nation. The Republicans were anti-slavery Northerners, and the Democrats, mostly Southerners with Northern allies who defended states' rights.

In 1859, John Brown seized the Southern town of Harpers Ferry in Virginia in an attempt to spark an uprising of slaves. Brown was captured and hanged but his action only fanned the flames.

The Democratic Party finally snapped in two. An unknown lawyer from the insurgent Republican Party--Abraham Lincoln--won the White House. The election of a Northerner opposed to the extension of slavery outside existing Southern states was the straw that broke the camel's back.

Six weeks after Abraham Lincoln's election, South Carolina left the Union, and six other states soon followed. Lame Duck Buchanan did nothing to stop the secessions, which strengthened the young Confederacy and gave seceding states time to set up a government. Buchanan was eager to depart the White House before the real disaster. On leaving office, he saw only close friends until his death in 1868.
---o0o---

Sasquatch Sighting In The Great White North

A Manitoba ferry operator has filmed what many people feel is a real Bigfoot.

What he captured, according to his sister, Sharness Henry, is the image of a massive creature that stands eight, nine, maybe 10 feet (three metres) tall, walking along the edge of the water through some bulrushes. Near the end of the video, the creature turns and appears to stare into the camera, but the details of its face are impossible to make out.

Click on the title to link to the article.
---o0o---

Thursday, April 21, 2005

The Pope: Number One With A Bullet

The Yahoo Buzz Index is a cool web site, which tells you on any given day what's hot on the internet. The Pope is big this week. Out of the top 20 searches, four of the top 7 are Pope-related. Divas like Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Gwen Stefani, and Britney take four as well. Tupac Shakur, Eminem, Akon, and Fiddy Cent get one slot each. Paris Hilton is in the top 20 too. . .she seems to appear there whenever pictures of her naked or in flagrante appear on the 'net.
---o0o---

The Wrong Stuff: Pope Benedict XVI

Some facts, wild suppositions, and articles re: Il Poppa: Pope Benedict XVI (a/k/s Cardinal Georg Ratzinger).

  • This Pope is teetering on the brink of death? The College of Cardinals wanted a short term Pope, who would not have a long papacy. In the past 227 years there have been 14 popes, with an average age at death of 78.8 years. The Pope was born on April 16, 1927, and should last about nine months, if he conforms to the statistical bell curve.

  • We can safely bet The Pope will not be among the 1.5% of all Catholic Popes who died during sex: Leo VII (936-9) died of a heart attack, John VII (955-64) was bludgeoned to death by the husband of a woman he was "ministering" to, John XIII (965-72) was also murdered by an angry husband, and Pope Paul II (1467-71) allegedly died while being sodomized by a page boy.

  • Joseph Ratzinger, served in the Hitler Youth during World War Two when membership was compulsory, according to his autobiography. Ratzinger's wartime experiences have been a source of controversy in some newspapers when he became a frontrunner for the pontiff's seat. His biographers say he was never a member of the Nazi party and his family opposed Adolf Hitler's regime. BERLIN, April 19 (Reuters). But it still sticks, you know? Just a little.

  • In a Good Friday Mass this year he said: "How much filth there is in the Church, even among those who, in the priesthood, should belong entirely to Him." I guess he is referring both to Priests and lay sinners. Watch out.

  • In choosing Joseph Ratzinger, the cardinals picked the most polarizing figure in the Catholic Church. No one was respected more as a student of theology. But, as CBS News Correspondent Mark Phillips reports, no one was more feared as a chief enforcer of Vatican orthodoxy. "He has the most appalling reputation around the world as someone who has squashed theology, persecuted theologians - the chief of the thought police, the master of the inquisition," says Catholic journalist and feminist writer Margaret Hebblethwaite. (CBS) In short, I don't think women will make many strides in the church, if they're not actually propelled backwards. I also suspect we won't see the celibacy doctrine lifted from the priesthood on this turn on the merry-go-around. Therefore the numbers of brothers, sisters, and priests will continue to decline.

  • The brother of Pope Benedict XVI Georg Ratzinger, 81, said he was "very concerned" and "shocked" upon hearing that Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had been elected as head of the Roman Catholic Church because of his age and frail health."I am very concerned. I would have thought his advanced age and his health which is not very stable would have been reason enough for the cardinals to pick someone else," said the visibly moved sibling in an interview on German television after the election of his 78-year-old brother. (AFP)

POTUS 19: Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes - "Rutherfraud"


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Rutherford B. Hayes, as 19th President, began implementing policies to heal the nation after the Civil War. He had a reputation reputation for integrity as a soldier and politician. His election was the lengthiest , most bitterly contested, and corrupt presidential election in history. . .until the year 2000.

After the Civil War, Hayes served as a governor and congressman, and by 1876, Republicans recognized that the scrupulous Hayes--a swing state war hero--was potential Presidential timber. His opponent, Democratic opponent Samuel J. Tilden of New York rolled up a plurality of 250,000 votes, but the vote in three southern states was close enough for both Republicans and Democrats to contest them. Congress set up a special commission which awarded the disputed electoral college votes. The outraged Democrats called Hayes "Rutherfraud" and "His Fraudulency."

As President, Hayes believed that military occupation bred hatred among southerners and prevented a national healing. Reconstruction was nearly over when Hayes took office in 1877. Federal troops were stationed only in New Orleans, Louisiana, and South Carolina. The federal occupation ended early in his administration. Alas, by the 1890s, the racist Democratic hold on the South resulted in a complete denial of voting rights for blacks until the 1960s.

Hayes ran for only one term. In retirement he worked for equal educational and prison reform.

President Hayes was the only President whose election was decided by a congressional commission. He was the first president to travel to the West Coast as president and the first to have a telephone and typewriter in the White House.
---o0o---

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Poem: Bird

Carrying his dented horn in a paper sack--
Pawned, lost, fifty times found and bought back.
He paid the price of a Stradivarius
To unhock that horn and blow for us.
---o0o---

James Joyce's Ulysses: A Book Report

For what little actually happened, the book could have been a bit shorter. He lost me at times, but the crux of the biscuit is this:

Stephen - Telemachus loaned Malachi his hanky, two cents for beer, handed him a key, suffered agenbite of inwit, and got drunk.

Leopold - Ulysses grilled a kidney, fed his cat, bought some soap, sat and read on the 'loo, commited an act of self-love and pondered The Suitors.

Molly - Penelope said "rocks," dreamed of sexual intercourse, and answered several times in the affirmative.
---o0o---

Poem: Monism

I'm you,
You're me.
All this
Is That.
---o0o--

I was thinking about religions and monism, and I wrote this. And a minute later, I remembered A Beatles song by John Lennon that said exactly the same thing: "
"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together."
From I Am The Walrus by Lennon-McCartney © Copyright 1967 Northern Songs

Poem: The Golden Rule

Listen to the songbirds
Trill
But keep an eye
On the buzzard section.
----o0o----

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Hira Bluestone: Better Red Than Dead


Hira Bluestone's blog is about her life, from very early childhood, as a Rajneesh [1] sannyasin; a Rajneeshi. She grew up partly in Pune, India, and on Rajneesh's 65,000 acre operation/"Ranch" in Antelope, Oregon. These fantastic tales in her blog so far cover only the ground up to her seventh birthday. It is a colorful, strange, enthralling, fascinating, and heartbreaking story. Please keep them coming Hira!

[1] The Bhag (a/k/a Osho and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh) seems to have basically taught Monism--that God was everything and everyone. There is no division between "God" and "not-God". People, even at their worst, are divine. He recognized Jesus Christ as having attained enlightenment, and believed that he survived his crucifixion and moved to India where he died at the age of 112. That's part of what he believed. He also appears to have believed in "free love" and that children should be raised communally. His top aides were charged with a number of crimes, including attempted murder of his doctor, and another attempt on a lawyer trying to close down the ranch. There were allegations of mishandled money. There are rumors they had a hit list. There was a lot of public outrage over him and his lifestyle. You hear a lot of good along with the bad. The volume is dialed way up on both sides of the question. It's hard to tell which story is right (but like most stories, you probably need to split the difference between the extremes). /jb
---o0o---

POTUS 4: President James Madison, The First President To Wear Pants


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President Madison was the 4th president of the United States. He served eight years each as a Congressman, as secretary of state, and as POTUS. He played many parts in the founding of this country, and he led the country through the War of 1812, which was more or less a second war of independence.

Madison co-authored The Federalist Papers--a series of articles written under the pen name Publius with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. These papers were intended to gain support for the proposed Constitution. The Federalist Papers are often studied in public relations classes as a prime example of how to conduct a successful campaign; they are considered one of the greatest PR campaigns of all time.

We mainly remember James Madison as "Father of the Constitution." He was its leading defender and interpreter for 50 years. He is often considered a lackluster President, but in fact he accomplished a great deal without a lot of flash.

His wife Dolley Madison was a spitfire, and one of the best-loved first ladies of all time. James Madison is the only President to have two Vice Presidents die, and is the first President to wear pants instead of knee breeches.
---o0o---

POTUS 8: President Martin Van Buren


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Martin Van Buren was the first President born as a United States citizen. He was the last vice president to be elected to succeed the president under whom he served. . .until then Vice-President George H.W. Bush was elected.

He was described as a "dandy," much like President Chester Alan Arthur, and loved frenchified clothes, expensive wine and rich food. His muttonchops were even more impressive than those of that other dandy President, Chester Alan Arthur.

He presided over the economic Panic of 1837, which was the worst recession the U.S. had ever experienced.

Before he was President, Van Buren moved from the New York State Senate, to the New York attorney general's office, and on to the U.S. Senate. Unhappy with the policies of President John Quincy Adams, Van Buren aligned himself instead with Andrew Jackson, the war hero who wanted a return to the Jeffersonian policies of a small government.

In Washington, he continued his party-building efforts on a national scale. Jackson was elected and named Van Buren secretary of state, in recognition of his political skills (and his help during the 1828 election).

Van Buren oversaw the nation’s foreign affairs and continued to build the organization that would become the Democratic Party. He became one of Andrew Jackson’s most trusted advisers and friends. Van Buren also threaded his way through the palace intrigues and in-fighting that marked Jackson’s cabinet. Toward the end of his first term, Jackson fired most of his cabinet, cut his relations with Vice President Calhoun, and dispatched Van Buren to the political calm of London as U.S. minister to England. He replaced Calhoun in the next election with Van Buren.

His enemies called him "Martin Van Ruin." He lost the 1840 presidential election.

Van Buren played key roles in the creation of both the Democratic Party and the so-called "second party system" in which Democrats competed with their opponents, the Whigs. He ignored calls from some Americans to respond to Canadian and British provocations with force, working instead successfully through diplomatic channels to calm tensions.

Martin Van Buren said that the two happiest days of his life were his entrance into the office of president and his surrender of the office.
---o0o---

Monday, April 18, 2005

POTUS 21: Pres. Chester Alan Arthur - Accidental, Partial One-Term President, Owner Of Some Impressive Muttonchops, And Dandy


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Chester Alan Arthur was catapulted into the Vice-Presidency and Presidency on the basis of a pretty thin resume. Arthur had been Collector of Customs for the Port of New York, an important and powerful position. He was appointed by President Ulysses S. Grant but was fired by Grant's successor, Rutherford B. Hayes, under (probably false) suspicions of bribery and corruption.

Arthur is remembered as one of the most society-conscious presidents, earning the nickname "the Gentleman Boss" for his dandy dress and courtly manner.

Chester Alan Arthur was elected Vice President of the United States on the Republican ticket with President James Garfield. His term as VPOTUS only lasted a few months.

Following President Garfield's assassination, he became President of the United States on September 20, 1881. He was often seen in the company of the socially prominent in Washington, New York, and Newport.

To the outrage of stalwart Republicans, the onetime Collector of the Port of New York and dispenser of political patronage became, as President, a champion of civil service reform. Public pressure, heightened by the assassination of Garfield, forced an unwieldy Congress to heed the President. He lost what friends he had in the party, and was not nominated for his own full term in office, which he likely would not have completed. Early in his Presidency, he had contracted Bright's Disease, a fatal kidney disease, from which he died in 1886.
---o0o---

Poem: The Countdown

The countdown is long:
3 Years
9 Months
4 Days
20 Hours
10 Minutes
17 Seconds.

Long Tall 'Abe weeps agates
From his throne of marble.
A wig of pain settles in.

The reign of error brings on xenophobia
And a touch of The Jitters.
Even a spring day is suspect.

A nervous wind
Rattles the windowpanes
In time with the sabres.
---o0o---

The Nuge To Fellow NRAers "Let's Get Hardcore!"

Click the title for a link to the AP story on Ted Nugent's NRA speech.

"I want carjackers dead. I want rapists dead. I want burglars dead. I want child molesters dead. I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead. Get a gun and when they attack you, shoot 'em."

Sunday, April 17, 2005

POTUS 2: President John Adams, The Only President Defeated For Re-election By His Own Vice-President


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John Adams was our first Vice President, and second President. He was in the Federalist Party, and was a mover and shaker in the formation--and formulation--of our government. He worked on the Declaration of Independence; the actual drafting was assigned to Thomas Jefferson. When President Washington refused a third term, Adams ran to succeed him and beat Thomas Jefferson.

Adams's years as president (1797–1801) were marked by intrigues and public relations disasters that embittered him the rest of his life.

Passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts helped discredit the Federalist party. Four laws, were passed. Most would be found unconstitutional. The Alien Act made it possible for the President to deport any alien he judged to be dangerous. The Alien Enemies Act gave the President more power during times of war--allowing him to "remove" or deport any foreigner that hadn't been naturalized. These acts were aimed at garnering the support of immigrants , who were supporting the Republican Party.

The party devolved into backbiting factions. Adams and Hamilton sharply split, and members of Adams's own cabinet looked to Hamilton--rather than The President--as their political Rabbi. Adams was drawn into the European vortex (the XYZ Affair), and instead of taking advantage of the militantcy it aroused amongst the proletariat here, devoted himself to securing the peace with France. That cost him the whole tamale.

In 1800, Adams ran again as a Federalist candidate. Distrust of him in his own party, public dislike of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and Thomas Jefferson's popularity led him to defeat. He was the first and only President to be defeated by his Vice-President. He retired.

Twenty-five years later--> On the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, John Adams died at Quincy, after uttering his famous last words: "Thomas Jefferson still survives." He didn't know it, but Thomas Jefferson (Potus 3) had died a few hours earlier.
---o0o---

The Imagism Movement In Poetry

In a way, Imagism reminds me of the Dogma 95 movement (although I think it has generated more enduring works of art, and tends less to handcuff the creators).

According to Amy Lowell, one of the founders of the Imagist movement in poetry in the early years of this century, imagist poems should observe seven rules:

1. Use language of common speech
2. Avoid clichés
3. Create new rhythms to express new moods
4. Absolute freedom of subject
5. Create concrete, firm images
6. Strive for concentration as essence of poetry
7. Suggest rather than state


Some of my favorite poets briefly embraced imagism. As a movement it foundered, probably because it just had too many rules. However, some striking, small. and dense lyric poems came out of the movement. A few examples:


Aubade
As I would free the white almond from the green husk
So I would strip your trappings off,
Beloved.
And fingering the smooth and polished kernel
I should see that in my hands glittered a gem beyond counting.

- Amy Lowell

L'Art, 1910
Green arsenic smeared on an egg-white cloth,
Crushed strawberries! Come, let us feast our eyes.
- Ezra Pound

The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
- William Carlos Williams

In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
-Ezra Pound

MONOTONE
The monotone of the rain is beautiful,
And the sudden rise and slow relapse
Of the long multitudinous rain.

The sun on the hills is beautiful,
Or a captured sunset sea-flung,
Bannered with fire and gold.
A face I know is beautiful--
With fire and gold of sky and sea,
And the peace of long warm rain.

- Carl Sandburg

Fog
The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
- Carl Sandburg
---o0o---

POTUS 41: Pres. George Herbert Walker ("Read My Lips") Bush


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George Herbert Walker Bush was a Senator's son, a New England blueblood, who transplanted himself to Texas after college at Yale (his father Prescott and son George also attended Yale).

He was the fifth cousin four times removed of Franklin Pierce, the seventh cousin three times removed of Theodore Roosevelt, the seventh cousin four times removed of Abraham Lincoln, and the eleventh cousin once removed of Gerald Ford.

He started out as a good guy. Despite being born rich, on his 18th birthday, six months after Pearl Harbor, George enlisted in the Navy and became a bomber pilot. He flew 58 combat missions in the Pacific, earning four medals including the Distinguished Flying Cross.

George worked his way up the Republican ranks via some adept brown-nosing and served in President Ford's cabinet as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as Vice-President to the 40th President, Ronald "Dutch" Reagan. He got the nod from his party to run for POTUS, and won on the unspoken premise it would be Reagan's third term. Democrats Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro didn't really put up much of a fight.

Early in the 1988 campaign, George Bush jumped the rail to focus on one thing: winning. He said a lot of things he didn't really believe in, and made promises he would regret.

The Congress will push me to raise taxes and I'll say no. And they'll push, and I'll say no, and they'll push again. And I'll say to them: 'Read my lips: No. New. Taxes.'


He started a war in Iraq, targeting Saddam Hussein, and he invaded Panama (as the United States had so many times before) where he captured Manuel Noriega our old ally, who had now become a murderous drug kingpin and was openly taunting The White House.

I would be remiss if I neglected to mentioned that President Bush also made the unforgivable mistake of selecting Senator Dan Quayle as his Vice-President. Not only was Quayle an empty suit, he was a knucklehead too. He wasn't just bland or a faceless political operative. . .he was dumb as a post. A statement he made debating Senator Lloyd Bentsen (VPOTUS candidate on Michael Dukakis's ticket) is a classic deer-in-the-headlights moment:


Indiana senator Dan Quayle (George Bush's running mate) made a remarkable claim. "I have as much experience in the Congress," he said, "as Jack Kennedy did when he sought the presidency." Texas senator Lloyd Bentsen was not amused. "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy," he declared. "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy!"


In his re-election bid, they never let President Bush forget "No New Taxes." Running in a strange three-way against a charismatic and politically savvy William Jefferson Clinton, and a complete dingbat, Ross Perot, he lost the election. Perot siphoned off something like 19 million votes, presumably largely from The President. Who knows how the election would have gone without Perot in the spoiler role? Bill Clinton easily won and remained in the White House for eight years (despite some close calls, including impeachment). The President's war against Saddam Hussein didn't seem to affect the election much. His son would would try to finish that war eight years later.
---o0o---

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Voices In Wartime: Poetry And The Wages Of The War Of Have Waged


This moving film just opened in Seattle, Washington D.C., San Francisco, NYC, and Los Angeles. Go see it now, while it's still in theatres. Bring some friends! Let's get the theatrical run extended. Don't wait for the DVD! See the trailer! Go to their website! The movie documents the wages of wars in interviews and in poems. Jonathan King, a beloved brother-in-law, produced this documentary, so I hold it to a higher standard than other works of art. Poets have been reacting to war since before Homer penned the ultimate war poem. And they have been doing it well. This movie shows a wide variety of poets and their take on the wages of war. The movie uses excellent stock footage and documents from World War I to the present. It even has an interesting score. You should see this movie.

One of the poets I enjoyed most on screen was David Connolly, a poet who lives in Southie in Boston. He served in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment in the Vietnam war. The war palpably affected his life, and his work. A collection of his poems Lost in America is not in print, but is available from used bookstores on Amazon.com.

This is one of the Connolly poems, and may be the spookiest war poem I have ever read:

Food for Thought, 3:00AM

They moved in unison
like dancers in a ballet,
the spider, twenty inches from my rifle,
the VC, twenty feet farther out, in line,
each slowly sliding a leg forward.
I let the man take one more step
so as not to kill the bug.

- David Connolly
---o0o---

POTUS 30: President Calvin Coolidge "Keep Cool With Coolidge"


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President Coolidge was a quiet, sober and somber man, whose pained expression concealed a dry wit. In the middle of the night in 1923, he was informed of the death of Warren Harding. Coolidge's father, a justice of the peace, gave Coolidge the Oath Of Office, and he immediately went back to bed! He finished Harding's term, and ran for one on his own. Although he was eligible to run for an additional term (like LBJ), he chose not to.

Although he was a well-loved President, after leaving office his policies were increasingly blamed for the events that led to the Great Depression.

On being told of Calvin Coolidge's death, Dorothy Parker famously remarked of the taciturn President, "How could they tell?"
---o0o---

Friday, April 15, 2005

POTUS 1: The First President Of The United States, Pres. George Washington a/k/a The General a/k/a The Father Of Our Country


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More nonsense has probably been written about Washington than any other President. Except Jack Kennedy, about whom even more gibberish has been written because his murder literally sparked an industry of conspiracy theorists.

Did young George chop down the cherry tree? Was he lying when he said "Father, I cannot tell a lie," which may be the biggest whopper of all time? "Father, I cannot tell a lie. I cut the tree," George says when asked by his father. This story elevated him into the pantheon and onto Rushmore. It is also bunk, bogus, hokum, flim-flam::::::::::100% ca-ca. Parson Mason Locke Weems concocted the story in a biography of Washington. In The Moral Washington: Construction of a Legend Weems wanted to humanize Washington after a less than flattering earlier biography of him as 'cold and colorless.' Weems book was very popular with the public and they equated Washington with honesty.

Did he wear wooden teeth? No. He had hippomus ivory teeth--from rarely visited Africa. How they became his teeth is a mystery.

His tight-lipped grimace is often attributed to the wooden teeth. We do know that his false teeth has springs that made them adhere in place, but that is not the reason for the tight-lipped grin. The raconteur, humorist, and radio legend Jean Shepherd talked about Washington on his Washington birthday show on February 22, 1973. Shep tried to bust a few of the myths around The General. In particular, some of the notions that have arisen from Gilbert Stuart's portraits.

We remember President Washington as tight lipped and aloof because as Gilbert Stuart wrote "When I painted him, he had just had a set of false teeth inserted, which accounts for the constrained expression so noticeable about the mouth and lower part of the face." However, we now know that Stuart disliked George Washington and many people speculate this led to the tight lipped portrait, as well as the air of aloofness we sense in Washington. Stuart also wrote that when he would sit for him: "an apathy seemed to seize him, and a vacuity spread over his countenance, most appalling to paint."

Thanks to the portraits, we also think of him as a dandified man, wearing flouncy shirts, an ornate doublet and knickers. We think of his hair as being bright white. As was the fashion at the time, that was a powdered wig!

We tend to also think of him as a genteel and gentle man of restraint (again, partly due to the portraits). However, he was a man of large appetites who enjoyed copious flagons of Madeira wine (and would have no doubt enoyed bourbon, had it been invented yet). He was not afraid to take a another officer out for a round of fisticuffs, and usually won. Martha Washington indicated in more than one letter to friends that "George is at it again," which some have speculated refers to extramarital affairs.

George was a big man. In that time, the average height of a Continental Army soldier was five foot six inches. George Washington stood six foot, two inches. He was literally a giant among men.

Washington was also an incredible horseman, by all accounts, both in peace- and in war-time. He was a strong man, and tough as nails, as he showed in the war, living under-equipped in the appalling climate of Valley Forge and the other battles of the revolution.

Washington State is the only state named for a President. When I grew up in the 50's and 60's, Washington's birthday was still a state holiday (before that abomination known as President's Day). On February 22, in celebration of the event, cherry pies were on sale in the stores and at bake sales by the Rotary, the Civitan Club, Kiwanis, and others.
---o0o---

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Poem: When Aliens Land, Or, The Return Of The King


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When aliens land
Do they come as Farmers,
To harvest seeds they planted long ago?

Is it "hi, Mom," or "hello cousin,"
Or will we be enslaved as drones?

Will they stop in for phosphorous or zinc or bauxite?
Or will they just toss earth in the back
Of an enormous galactic flatbed truckfarm pick-up
And head back to Zeta Reticulon?

Will they make this spinning ball
A rendering plant, or will they
Come to absorb our wisdom, art and humanity?

We never picture
aliens, greys, or martians
Coming in peace
Because we never came in peace.
---o0o---

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

How Do People End Up At Blogspot?, Continued

I wrote yesterday about how people end up at All This Is That. It's interesting...I went back over the referrals from search engines over the last 72 hours-->

Foot Washing Baptists (leads to my story about growing up Baptist)

video - cougar chasing pronghorn antelope (I published a land speed of animals list)

how many times david caruso appeared naked in NYPD (I mentioned this briefly in one post--it's obviously a popular search topic)

Urban Legend (the phrase occurs many times, and in my profile)

monkey and the engineer (I printed the lyrics)

creating chimeras (mentioned in one post)

im my own grandpa lyrics (printed the lyrics)

who runs faster - gazelle or pronghorn antelope (the land speed list again)

"heroes and villains" (the paintings again)

Optical illusion abraham lincoln (I have several Lincoln pieces, and I printed an optical illusion once)

"bella abzug" + "phyllis schlafly" (each appeared in heroes and villains paintings)

david caruso" +"three times" +buttocks (people love his butt I guess!)

The First "accidental president" was (mentioned in two or three posts)

song lyrics + I'm my own grandpa (I printed the lyrics here)

"29th presidency" (refers to Pres. Harding, of whom I did a POTUS painting)

"lockable pizza box" (comes from a list of new patents I published)

"lockable pizza box" (see above comment)

"condoleezza rice nude" (This was the title of a post I did about weird searches)

retriever "heroic dog stories" (referred to the story of dogs committing suicide)

im my own grandpa lyrics (see earlier)

Chinese astrophysicist Dr. Kang Mao-pang photos (Mentioned in The Skeleton On The Moon story)

"bug in the rug" +garciaroc jerrycan 1945 (interesting - this led to a piece about the Dead, where I wrote "there will always be a void that only Jerry can fill...")

disagreement between Bob Weir Phil Lesh on tour 2005 (Both Lesh and Weir were in the Heroes and Villains paintings)

Was Lauren Bacall Hot? (refers to the picture I printed of Lauren "Betty" Bacall on the piano while Harry was playing. And the answer to that question is "yes!").

Sex orgy+ oral sex (This is from a piece I wrote about President Bush where I used both those phrases in an indirect context--not referring to POTUS specifically).

---o0o---

Happy Birthday, President Jefferson!


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Tuesday, April 12, 2005

How Do People End Up At Blogspot?

The counter that I have on this web site also tracks how people got here. If you did a search on Yahoo or Google or any search engine, it grabs the text of the search. People come here for a lot of reasons--usually some specific topical reference. Today I noticed several people come from what turned out to be a porn site. It seems the site had All This Is That as a favorite link because of a couple of stories: mainly Frank Zappa's story of how he never ate s**t on stage, and the piece where I talked about the low esteem the Catholic Church was held in in Baptist churches.

Other sites have linked to the story about fishing with my old man, and some of the My Worst Jobs stories. One site on the presidency, has links to several of the digital paintings and thumbnail bios of the Presidents.

A lot of people come here from searches on poetry, the phrase Heroes And Villains (which was the title of 50 posts over time); searches on The President, and on POTUS; and various political topics. References to the Grateful Dead draw a lot of customers. Clearly it's titles of posts and names that draw people here.

Anyhow it's fascinating some of the twisted searches that draw people here too--sex with dogs has popped up a couple of times, although I have never addressed that subject (or engaged in the act)...but it must be in some quote or something.

For months, you couldn't find topics I'd addressed directly, but now that I am in the crawlers line of sight, even slight phrases buried in the middle of a posting will come up in a search. And in searches where you don't understand exactly why it was "googled." Yahoo and Google are by the far the most common search referrals, with Yahoo referring slightly more people.

The majority of referrals, however, come from Blogspot itself. People click the next blog button and are taken on a blind ride. People apparently do that a lot.

The third most common referral here seems to be either people who know me, or who have read the blog before and bookmarked it.

POTUS 43: Pres. George W. Bush - One Of The Nearly 5% Of Presidents Who Are Sons Of Presidents


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What can you say about The President? I guess he's a better President than David Duke would have been.
---o0o---

Monday, April 11, 2005

John Edwards Speaks Up

Ex-Senator and VPOTUS candidate John Edwards speaks out about Terry Schiavo, Hillary Clinton, and Condy Rice. Click on the title for a link to the article.


“I think talking about a front-runner four years before an election is ridiculous."


“We saw the memo that went out to Republican leaders about how they could take political advantage of Terri Schiavo. That’s disgusting. They will pay a price for this in the 2006 and 2008 elections.”

POTUS 36: Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson - Majority Leader, Accidental President, Hawk


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I've written a couple of times about Lyndon Johnson, the hero, and Lyndon Johnson, the paranoid and bellicose monster. When I did my series on Heroes And Villains, I considered using a picture of him as both the hero and the villain.

Some of my favorite political books have been Lyndon Johnson biographies and studies. Recently, the movie Fog of War was an fascinating rehash of LBJ, the unwitting inheritor of an unwinnable (as he seemed to know from the get-go) war.

If you get a chance, the LBJ museum in Austin, TX, is worth an afternoon visit.
---o0o---

Sunday, April 10, 2005

POTUS 22 And 24: President Grover Cleveland - The Man Who Was President Twice


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The New York Times obituary of him on 6-25-1908 is full of praise from all quarters and in 1908, many people placed Cleveland at the very top of Presidents, right up there with the men on Rushmore (which, of course, didn't exist yet).

From his stint as mayor of Buffalo, to his time as Governor of New York, he was considered a hard working and honest man known for his sense of duty. He took on Tammany Hall when it was risky to do so, and despite the machine having backed him for Governor. He was one of the good guys.

President Cleveland had a sex-scandal or two to live down: he was accused of fathering a son out of wedlock--a charge that he admitted might be true (!), because of his affair with Maria Halpin in 1874. By 'fessing up, Cleveland pulled off what we might think of as a "Bill Clinton" and won the election by a slim margin.

After two years as a bachelor President, Cleveland announced his marriage to his twenty-one-year-old ward, Frances Folsom, the daughter of his former law partner. The press had a field day satirizing the relationship between the old bachelor and the recent college graduate, who quickly became the most popular first lady since Dolley Madison.

Cleveland would lose in his re-election bid, and is the first and last president to bounce back from a loss to retake the White House.

Historians consider him a President who strengthened the executive branch, but made no dramatic accomplishments, and had no real vision for the future. He is most remebered as being a bridge to the modern strong presidency as it would be practiced by Teddy Roosevelt and those to follow.
---o0o---

Chicken Cacciotare

Jack’s Chicken Cacciatore With Bay Leaves (And No Tomatoes)

1 chicken, or parts if you don't like to dismember chickens
3 Tbs. E.V. Olive Oil
4 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons dried rosemary, or, preferably, 2 Tbs fresh
5 Bay leaves
3 Tbs. Italian Parsley
2 Celery Stalks (with some leaves)
1 Cup dry white wine
1/3 cup Apple Cider or Red Wine Vinegar
¼ cup Chicken stock
salt and fresh ground black pepper



Cut the chicken into eight or ten pieces. I like to skin it. Season it with salt and fresh ground pepper.

Make a battuto of the parsley, rosemary, celery and garlic (that is, chop it fine).

Add the olive oil to a pot. When it is hazy, add the chicken and bay leaves. Brown the chicken, turning once in a while, for ten minutes over medium high heat. Add the battuto, and cook for a couple of minutes, stirring so the veggies don’t stick.

Deglaze the pan with the wine, stirring up the brown bits, and cook off the alcohol. Add chicken stock, and reduce it a couple of minutes. Add the vinegar. Cover the pot, and simmer the chicken over a medium low flame until tender…about 15 minutes. Check the seasoning and add a bit of salt and pepper. We usually serve this with Italian or French bread and put out small bowls of the de-fatted sauce for bread dipping.
---o0o---

Evil Rubbish



From Engrish.com, another great sign. This web site specializes in wacky English and words and phrases that are extremely lost in translation. This is a fascinating and deep collection.
---o0o---

Saturday, April 09, 2005

POTUS Bush, Clinton, and Bush Conclave At The Pope's Funeral

Comparing himself favorably to Mr. Clinton is the latest in a series of recent moves by Mr. Bush to strengthen relations with the man who vanquished his father in 1992. The thaw comes after years in which Mr. Bush talked of the need to 'restore honor and dignity to the White House' in the post-Clinton era. Click here to link up to the full story of The Three Presidential Pals.

POTUS 13 - Pres. Millard Fillmore: Another Partial Term President


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Unlike elevators, they don't skip the number 13 for Presidents. Not that President Fillmore experienced bad luck. . .or much good luck either. . .

President Zachary Taylor konked out early in his second year in office and Millard Fillmore finished his term. As President, he signed the Compromise Measure of 1850, which included the Fugitive Slave Act.

The Compromise Measure may have helped stave off the Civil War for ten years. It was unpopular with both factions, and The President was not nominated by his party for another term.
----o0o----

Friday, April 08, 2005

The Greatest Generation?


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Tom Brokaw wrote The Greatest Generation about the generation preceding mine; the generation that fought World War II and stomped The Nazis (eventually). We saw a great show of unity briefly, in the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks, but in World War II the entire country solidified to go to war. Republican and Democrat, rich and poor, black, yellow, red, white, men and women, college educated and high school dropouts all signed up to fight The Axis. That includes my parents, a city girl and a farm boy. Above, in the pictures on the left and the right. . .is my father, Corporal John Brummet. He was discharged from the army shortly before the war. After Pearl Harbor, he then enlisted in the Navy, and served in the South Pacific.

In the middle, in the Marine uniform, is Betty Brummet, my mom. During the war, she worked for a time as a riveter at Boeing; she was Rosie The Riveter. She later enlisted in the Marines, following the footsteps of her father, William Jennings Bryan Jones. He served in World War I, and when we entered World War II, he enlisted again even though he was in his mid-40's. The Seattle 'paper published pictures of my mother and grandfather together in uniform. That picture caused my mom's mom (divorced from WJB Jones) to disown her. They later reconciled. More or less. From my family, at least, everyone came home in one piece.
---o0o---

Thursday, April 07, 2005

A Salute To The Republican Party


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POTUS 20: Pres. James Garfield


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President James A. Garfield, (POTUS 20) is another short-timer, whose Presidency ran from March 1881 - September 1881. His term in office ran about 200 days. He was shot by a deranged lawyer, but survived; he was finally killed, 80 days later, by his team of doctors.

We mainly remember him today as one of the assasinated Presidents. His assassin, attorney Charles Guiteau believed that God had ordered him to kill the President. Guiteau stalked the President for weeks, and passed up one opportunity to shoot Garfield because his wife was present.

He was the first left-handed President. He sometimes entertained friends by writing Latin with one hand and Greek with the other (woah!). He was the last president born in a log cabin.
---o0o---

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

A Keith Haring Mural Shortly Before Its Destruction


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This is a Polaroid of a Keith Haring mural shortly before it was painted over (!!). You can see that taggers had already been making inroads on the painting. . .
---o0o---

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Hillbilly Cred


Click to enlarge - Jack and Dell Galvin, 1953

To prove that I do have Hillbilly cred, I submit this photo. It's 1953 and I am teething on my step-grandfather Dell's hook arm. He lost his hand at a sawmill or on the railroad (there was another missing limb in the family and I can't remember which was which).
---o0o---

POTUS 37: Pres. Richard Milhous Nixon - Tricky Dick And The Comedy Of Errors


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When I lived in NYC, we used to visit The Ex-President's house (All This Is That, December 8, 2004).

President Nixon was actually the last of the liberal Republican presidents--social spending was at an all-time high under The Nixon Administration. The country, however, seemed to visibly crumble under the domestic spying, break-ins, misinformation campaigns, Kent State, prosecution of the Chicago 7, massive anti-war demonstrations, the bombing of Cambodia, hardhats and Hell's Angels attacking peace marchers. . .and all the other outrages committed and encouraged by Nixon's henchmen, a band of misanthropic thugs. President Nixon's long smoldering resentments, doubts about his own self-worth, and his paranoia about The Kennedys would eventually sink his presidendcy.

The war against North Vietnam raged on with increased troop levels, saturation bombing, napalm napalm napalm, and massive body counts. The body count became a feature of every nightly news broadcast. On the plus side of the ledger, President Nixon reached out to both Russia and China, and set the stage for the later upheavals in Russia, up to and including the fall of communism. He opened China up to diplomacy and trade and sat with Mao Zedong.

After resigning in disgrace in August, 1974, Nixon hid out in California a couple of years, and then moved to NYC. He went on to write numerous books on foreign policy, and unofficially (with no public fanfare) advise every President until the day he died. If you want a fascinating read on Richard Nixon, check out Chris Matthew's book Kennedy And Nixon. I've read many books about Richard Nixon, and I probably enjoyed this one the most.
---o0o---

Monday, April 04, 2005

The Month They Tried To Kill Me


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It wasn't they so much as circumstance, my inexperience, the public hospital system, MedicAid, the New York Blackout and my poverty all colluding to nearly snuff me.

Son of Sam was on the loose in Brooklyn and Queens. The temperatures were in the upper 90s. I was on the job trail. On July 13, when I got back to our loft in Brooklyn, my back was killing me. I sat down and noticed it wasn't my back at all; it was my chest. My arm and back felt numb and I could barely breathe.

Was I having a heart attack? I called Keelin at the deli where she worked. "What should I do?" "Call 911!"

I called 911. I said I was having a heart attack. An hour later, no ambulance had arrived. I called again. Fifteen minutes later, a beat cop rang our buzzer. I let him in. I wasn't having a coronary, but something was really wrong. The friendly cop was able to raise an ambulance.

The ambulance brought me to the E.R. at Long Island College Hospital. It took the attending physician about five seconds to diagnose a spontaneous pneumothorax, or, a collapsed lung. People have collapsed lungs every day--usually athletes or people who've been jostled in an accident, or have been stabbed or shot.

A resident put a chest tube in, after giving me Novacaine to numb the scalpel's bite.

That night, the lights went out. From my window in the hospital I could see the World Trade Center. It was dark. The New York blackout of 1977 was on. Looting and fires broke out all over the city. Over 4,000 people were arrested. They re-opened The Tombs in downtown Manhattan, to warehouse all the arrestees.

At Long Island College Hospital, the backup generators fired up immediately. Alas, the air conditioning did not. It was around 104 degrees that day. It was at least 100 in the hospital by ten o'clock. The kitchen was closed, and they served us sandwiches and juice and fruit. It was the best food I would eat for three weeks.

It's not difficult to install a chest tube. I later learned how to do it advanced first aid. Yet, somehow, the hapless resident--Dr. Bucobo--f***ed it up. Normally, it takes a day or two for a collapsed lung to heal. It had been a week. Someone finally realized that the tube was in The Wrong Place. They chopped another hole in my chest and re-installed the tube. The resident and his intern came in once a day. If I survived these F-troop MDs, it would be a miracle.

Two days later, my new friend Jan Newberry, came to see me. I couldn't speak. I was in incredible pain. My fever was 104 and climbing. My breathing was shallow because it hurt to breathe. My blood gas was not promising. Jan called Keelin, who raced down and somehow convinced them they were killing me.

Things looked marginal for my continued existence. The pneumothorax was now complicated by double pneumonia. They hooked up a lung suctioning machine, put me on large doses of morphine, and pumped me full of vitamins, major antibiotics, stool softeners, sleeping pills every night, and other potions and elixirs. The morphine helped. When I was finally on antibiotics, the fever broke. After two grim days, I slowly began to recover. I was going to live. The only thing I cared about was the next dose of morphine.

After twenty days in LICH, the chest tube was removed. It felt great not to have to lug that box around (the chest tube ran into a box with water in it, which kept the lung pressurized as it repaired itself). The next day, they kicked me out. I was back on the streets of New York.

They caught Son of Sam the next month. He was our neighbor for a long time after that--we lived across the street from the Brooklyn House of Detention.
---o0o---


Sunday, April 03, 2005

The World Trade Center From The Promenade


Click to enlarge - Jack in Brooklyn Heights, ca. '78

When we first lived in NYC, we lived in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, just on the edge of downtown Brooklyn. One of our favorite walks was to Brooklyn Heights and the Promenade, with its fantastic views of the lower Manhattan skyline. We often walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to downtown.

The World Trade Center had just been finished. I liked going to the observation deck for the views of, I think, four states.

We went to the Avant-Garde fair there (in '78 or '79). Andy Warhol and Alen Ginsberg were wandering among the crowd. The Talking Heads were there. John Lennon and Yoko Ono hired a skywriter to write messages over the WTC plaza. I can't remember the message, but it was something like "Get Peace If You Want It."

I also liked to view the huge Joan Miro Tapestry (click to see the mural) in the lobby of one of the towers. I was a Miro fan, and loved to sit and stare at the gigantic tapestry. I do not believe it survived the attacks. /jack
---o0o---

Treachery

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Senator Orrin Hatch Speaks

Capital punishment is our society's recognition of the sanctity of
human life
[1].

[1] Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican, is the Senior Senator from Utah

POTUS 10: Pres. John Tyler - The First Accidental President


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John Tyler's detractors called him "His Accidency" because he was the first President to take office due to the death of his predecessor. When President Wm. Henry Harrison konked out, after one month in office, Tyler was sworn in. He finished the nearly four year term and did not run for re-election.

"Tyler Too" had troubles with the Whig party. When Tyler vetoed a banking bill, the Whigs retaliated by kicking him out of the party. All the Cabinet resigned except for Secretary of State Webster. A year later when Tyler vetoed a tariff bill, the first impeachment resolution against a President was introduced in the House of Representatives.

Years after leaving office, Tyler led a compromise movement when the first southern states seceded from The Union in 1861. The compromise failed. Former President Tyler then worked to create the Southern Confederacy. He died in 1862, a member of the Confederate House of Representatives.
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POTUS 12: Pres. Zachary Taylor - The President Who Mostly Closely Resembled Mel Brooks


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Zachary Taylor was another war hero President, who came to the oval office after serving forty years in the military in various capacities, including fighting numerous battles with Native Americans. He lasted about 16 months in office before he died. He was suceeded by his VPOTUS, Millard Fillmore.
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Friday, April 01, 2005

POTUS 3: Pres. Thomas Jefferson


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Thomas Jefferson stars on the five cent piece, commonly called the nickel. He is also the star of the notoriously unloved and unused $2 bill.

Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence. As President, he bought Louisiana from France for $15 million. He apparently fathered a child with his slave Sally Hemmings. Despite that, he's one of the good guys.
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Harry S. Truman and Betty Bacall


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David McCullough writes in his biography "Truman" that Bess hit the roof when she saw the photos of Harry entertaining the troops with Lauren Bacall as his hood ornament.
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