Poem: Falling

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

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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.
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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.
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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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Poem: Seven

It's too slow to see.
It happens right under
My nose.
Every molecule in every person
Changes every seven years.

I'm completely rebuilt
Seven times now
And working on the eighth.
The dormant features redeploy,
Installing themselves
On millions of fresh molecules,
And altered but happily,
I trudge on.
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jack brummet

The Man Who Should Have Been King, 2: Senator Robert Francis Kennedy

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Bobby. He went from a cold-blooded streetfighter to tenderly compassionate big brother about as fast as a car goes from 0 to 60. He did the big turnabout. And he stayed there. I often wonder just how far he would have gone, just where he would have taken it if the Nixon Years had been replaced by The Bobby Years. How far we might have gone?

He was killed at the height of his personal and political power. For a man earlier in life always described as ruthless, it was amazing to watch him jump the rails. /jack
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Index to the Paintings And Thumbnail Biographes of The Presidents Of The United States

This series is now complete. All the Presidents have had their turn. The list below provides links to the paintings and thumbnail bios, in order! /jack


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
POTUS 2: President John Adams, The Only President Defeated For Re-election By His Own Vice-President
POTUS 3: Pres. Thomas Jefferson
POTUS 4: President James Madison, The First President To Wear Pants
POTUS 5: Pres. James Monroe
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
POTUS 7: Pres. Andrew "Old Hickory" Jackson - The Star Of The $20 Dollar Bill
POTUS 8: President Martin Van Buren
POTUS 9: Pres. William Henry Harrison - The Drive By President
POTUS 10: Pres. John Tyler - The First Accidental President
POTUS 11: Pres. James Polk - The Man With The Mullet
POTUS 12: Pres. Zachary Taylor - The President Who Mostly Closely Resembled Mel Brooks
POTUS 13 - Pres. Millard Fillmore: Another Partial Term President
POTUS 14: Pres. Franklin Pierce - The Most Handsome President?
POTUS 15: President James Buchanan, The Man Who Left A Divided Country And War For Pres. Abraham Lincoln
POTUS 16: Pres. Abraham Lincoln - The Most Beloved President?
POTUS 17: Pres. Andrew Johnson - The Worst President Ever
POTUS 18: Pres. Ulysses Grant - The Man Inside Grant's Tomb
POTUS 19: Pres. Rutherford B. Hayes - "Rutherfraud"
POTUS 20: Pres. James Garfield
POTUS 21: Pres. Chester Alan Arthur - Accidental, Partial One-Term President, Owner Of Some Impressive Muttonchops, And Dandy
POTUS 22: President Grover Cleveland - The Man Who Was President Twice
POTUS 23: Pres. Benjamin Harrison - The Last Bearded President
POTUS 24: President Grover Cleveland - The Man Who Was President Twice
POTUS 25: President William McKinley - Puppet Or Visionary?
POTUS 26: President Theodore Roosevelt - The Roughrider
POTUS 27: Pres. William Howard Taft - Who Preferred To Be Remembered As Chief Justice
POTUS 28: President Woodrow Wilson - The President Who Short-Circuited & POTUS 28A: President Edith Wilson
POTUS 29: Pres. Warren G. Harding - He Never Lived To Rue The Day
POTUS 30: President Calvin Coolidge "Keep Cool With Coolidge"
POTUS 31: President Herbert Hoover - The Scapegoat
POTUS 32: President Franklin Delano Roosevelt - The Man In The Wheelchair Who Lifted The Country On His Shoulders; The Only POTUS To Win Four Terms
POTUS 33: President Harry Truman - "The Buck Stops Here"
POTUS 34: Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower - A Most Detached President
POTUS 35: Pres. Jack Kennedy - Johnny We Hardly Knew Ye
POTUS 36: Pres. Lyndon Baines Johnson - Majority Leader, Accidental President, Hawk
POTUS 37: Pres. Richard Milhous Nixon - Tricky Dick And The Comedy Of Errors
POTUS 38: Pres. Gerald R. Ford - Pardon Me, Mister President!
POTUS 39: President James Earl Carter - Not As Bad A President As You Have Been Led To Believe, But Rather A Victim Of Circumstance
POTUS 40: Pres. Ronald "Dutch" Reagan - B Movie Actor To President
POTUS 41: Pres. George Herbert Walker ("Read My Lips") Bush
POTUS 42: Pres. William Jefferson Clinton - The Comeback Kid
POTUS 43: Pres. George W. Bush - One Of The Nearly 5% Of Presidents Who Are Sons Of Presidents

Typing Monkeys And The Shakespeare Simulator

"If you have enough monkeys banging randomly on typewriters, they will eventually type the works of William Shakespeare."

The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator seems to have fallen on hard times...but it is still working. I have no idea if the simulation is real. . .or an incredible simulation of a simulation. It runs in the background just like the SETI (Search For Extra Terrestial Intelligence) application.

In the simulator, time passes 86,400 times faster than real life. 'The odds against monkeys typing Shakespeare by chance are astronomical. With about 80 typewriter keys, the chance of getting the first letter right is about 80 to 1. The chance of getting 2 letters right is 1 in 80×80, or 6400 to 1. Each letter increases the odds against by 80 times. The odds of getting 10 letters right is about 11 million million million to1."

Here are examples of a four letter hit and a long 24 letter hit.

4 letters from "The Winter's Tale" after 195 monkey-years.
Sent in by Matt Greer on 26 July 2003.
"Archan:jdTAQ]Mu:.jt "gm3dw.jhVHw.V2..." matched "Arch. If you shall chance (Camillo) to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my seruices are now on-foot, you shall see (as I haue said) great difference betwixt our Bohemia, and your Sicilia"

24 letters from "The Second Part of King Henry IV" after 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years.
Sent in by Darren Eggett from Bountiful, Utah on 3 Jan 2005. "RUMOUR. Open your ears; 9r"5j5&?OWTY Z0d "B-nEoF.vjSqj[..." matched "RUMOUR. Open your ears; for which of you will stop The vent of hearing when loud Rumour speaks?..."

24 letters? That's a lot of billion billion billion monkey years. But, hey, we're making progress!
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