Poem: James Wright

Forming a blessing on those trembling lips,
He dropped to his knees and sang out
As free as a bee and as drunk as Li-Po.
With no brush or quill, he made words
For the wind and lived to regret nothing.

At night, he summoned the old shades,
Their nods a gallery of applause
And leveled bony guiltfingers, history's dare:
The thing itself justifies the shuffle.
Hung over the void on a bouncing limb,
He watched Norwegian rats nibble the roots,
Edging the tree further into the dark.
He knew, as well as you, that the branch would break.
---o0o---

The Johnson Treatment, Part 5: Senator Richard Russell (Dem., Georgia) Undergoes The Treatment

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Senator Richard Russell was a powerful 30+ year veteran in the Senate. He was the king of the senate--what Lyndon would later become.

He helped LBJ learn the ropes when he was a freshman Senator. That didn't get him off the hook from The Johnson Treatment.
---o0o---

Happy Mother's Day, Mothers

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The Johnson Treatment, Part 4: President Johnson Gives The Treatment To Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas

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Even though he was a friend, Abe Fortas, newly nominated justice of the Supreme Court, gets a taste of The Johnson Treatment in 1965.
---o0o---

Poem: Falling

Falling is not the problem:
It's the absence of silk
And earth appearing.
---o0o---

The Johnson Treatment, Part 3: LBJ Gives Eartha Kitt The Treatment

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Moments before this photograph was taken, at a White House luncheon given by Lady Bird, the actress Eartha Kitt stood up and denounced LBJ for sending children off to die in Vietnam. LBJ happened at that moment to pass by and saw that Lady Bird was upset.

Eartha Kitt tells the story:

In 1968, during the Vietnam War, I was invited by Lady Bird Johnson to give my opinion about the problems in the United States, specifically, "Why is there so much juvenile delinquency in the streets of America?" The First Lady seemed to be more interested in decorating the windows of the ghettos with flowerboxes. I mean—it's fine to put flowers in the ghettos, but let's take care of the necessities first: give people jobs, and find a way to get us out of poverty.

When it came my turn to speak, I said to the president's wife, "Vietnam is the main reason we are having trouble with the youth of America. It is a war without explanation or reason."

I said that the young ghetto boys thought it better to have a legal stigma against them—then they would be considered "undesirable" and would not be sent to the war. In their opinion, in this society the good guys lost and the bad guys won. "

I don't know what he said to her, but his press office painted her to reporters as a harridan who pissed on her host's carpet. Almost needless to say, she soon had the FBI crawling all over her in addition to having her tax returns exhaustively audited.

Almost immediately, all her acting and singing work evaporated, and she was eventually forced to move to Europe to make a living.

Eartha Kitt is still around and performing more than 30 years after LBJ gave up the ghost. When Eartha comes to Seattle, my friend Milo Petersen plays drums during her run at Jazz Alley.
---o0o---

The Johnson Treatment, Part 2: Richard M. Nixon, Republican Presidential Front-runner Gets The Treatment

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I can't find the provenance of this photograph, but it must be 1968, probably after Lyndon had bowed out of the election, and when Richard M. Nixon, Presidential hopeful, emerged as the front-runner in the Presidential sweepstakes.

I don't remember ever reading about this meeting. In any case, Richard Nixon looks like he's getting The Johnson Treatment. President Johnson has him surrounded! One was enough...The Trickster got three LBJs!
---o0o---

The Johnson Treatment

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LBJ once asked a reporter:

• "Why do you come and ask me, the leader of the Western world, a chicken-shit question like that?"

In these pictures, Lyndon as majority leader in the Senate takes Theodore F. Green, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for a ride.

---o0o---

Poem: [Life Is Not A Hardy Novel]

Life is not like a Hardy novel,
'Though it seems so at times.
God's not mad at us;
But his patience is stretched
To a molecule thick.
---o0o---

Photograph Of Pope Benedict XVI With Daryle Conners

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My friend Daryle Conners met the new Pope a few years ago, when she produced a five-hour documentary, Vatican II: The Faithful Revolution for the PBS. She interviewed over 180 Catholics from all over the world, including Cardinals, Bishops, a Catholic priest in Texas named Father Church and a nun in Rome named Sister Ellen Guilty.

She is pictured above with Cardinal Ratzinger aka Pope Benedict XVI. He was known during his long tenure as "The Darth Vader Of The Vatican."

Until 1968 his office was known as The Office of the Inquisition. It was renamed Office of Doctrine For The Faith after Vatican II.
---o0o---

Dire Predictions For The Administration Of President Thomas Jefferson

Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and
practiced, the air will be rent with cries of distress, the soil soaked with blood, and the nation black with crimes. Where is the heart that can contemplate such a scene without shivering with horror?

- New England Courant newspaper, 1801, on the election of Thomas Jefferson

Painting: Self Portrait No. 4

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