| Autumn People |
| pandemonium & shadow show |
Cardiff University researchers think they may have found fossils in a Sri Lankan meteorite.
They are in Cardiff. Of course they are going to find fossils from space. That is undoubtedly the reason the meteorite was brought to Cardiff for study. Gotta keep an eye on these things.
The Albany (Ore.) Democrat-Herald, in an editorial: “Eleven years later, we could at least draw some conclusions about the mistakes we have made since that day, and then resolve to undo them as soon as we can. In the wake of that day, but not just because of it, we’ve allowed our country to become much less free than it used to be. That is a big mistake, and we should strive to undo it bit by bit. Citizens should be able to move about the country without allowing themselves to be searched and patted down without an actual or probable cause. A free people would not tolerate government agencies secretly putting some of them on no-fly lists and then refusing to explain … why they did so.”
Yes, there are people still trying their best to kill or convert us all as they go about their not terribly subtle yet people still ignore it plan to take over the world. But dammit. If we continue lie down for the death of our freedoms I’m not sure we deserve any better than they have planned for us.
Remembering with sadness or even anger isn’t good enough. It has to spur us to do something other than write blog posts about it.
The OAM and I have talked off and on about the different versions of Stagger Lee that we have in our library (3 of them, Lloyd Price, Pacific Gas & Electric and Anonymously Yours). Upon his suggestion, I went out and looked for the history of the song.
Turns out it is a song based in history. A history with many versions.
In 1895 a man named Lee Shelton killed William Lyons in St. Louis, Missouri. It was one of five murders in the city that night but the circumstances surrounding it and the rumored particulars of the case led to its immortalization in song.
Lee Shelton was an organizer for the Democrat Party. Lyons was an organizer for the Republican Party. Shelton may have been a wealthy pimp and carriage driver and Lyons was a levee hand who was well connected through his sister’s marriage to one of the richest black men in St. Louis who owned the Bridgewater Saloon, a center of black Republican politics. Depending on the version of the story you want to believe, they may have been friends but possibly just acquaintances or maybe simply drunk in the same place. That place was Bill Curtis’ saloon, the Elite Club, a growing center of black Democrat politics for the red light district. As the St. Louis Globe-Democrat reported on December 28, 1895, the two were friends who began to argue about politics while both were liquored up. Lyons grabbed Shelton’s new Stetson hat and would not surrender it. Shelton shot Lyons in the stomach, took his hat back and left the saloon. Lyons subsequently died of his wound. The paper reported that Lee Shelton was also known as “Stag Lee.”
Put into context of the time, things were tense on the political scene and St. Louis was the fourth largest city in the country coming into the election year of 1896. It had been a Republican stronghold but Democrats were making headway. Traditionally blacks had voted for the Republicans, but times were changing. Politicians were scraping for every vote there and the connection of the two men to the two political parties threw the case into prominence.
At first the case resulted in a hung jury. However, two years later Stagger Lee was tried again and convicted. It took only about five years after his conviction for the first printed lyrics to surface referring to the case.
The song became a staple of black culture with Stagger Lee becoming a hero to the populace as someone who could scare The Man into not arresting or convicting him. The man who took over Hell from the Devil himself.
Shelton was given a (possibly politically motivated) pardon 12 years into his 25 year sentence. Two years later he was back in prison for killing another man during a home robbery. A year into this second sentence he received a second pardon, but this time he died in prison of tuberculosis before he could be released. Versions of the song with him being dead by hanging or other justice were certainly in release during the time he was in prison.
The most popular version was Lloyd Price’s, released in 1958 it was the first number one single to ever be censored for airplay. Dick Clark thought it was too violent and Price rewrote the song to have a happy ending when he played it on American Bandstand.
Over 400 artists have recorded versions of this song. Notably, they don’t all have the same lyrics or even the same music. It isn’t just 400 covers of a song. Four hundred plus versions of the same event.
In a majority of the versions of the song, Stagger Lee is a powerful black man. Mississippi John Hurt’s version is considered by most to be the definitive version and he insisted that Stagger Lee was a white man.
If Stagger Lee was white, the hung jury surely resulted in an angry furor as it was reported that Shelton and his lawyer, a morphine addict who had previously won the first ever conviction in the state against a white man for the murder of a black man, were booed and hissed as they entered the courthouse. Given the political pressures of the time, I am inclined to think Lee was black. If the Democrats were trying to wrap up the black vote, why would a white killer receive not only one but two pardons that were rumored to be politically pressured by Democrats? And further, based on the time period, it is unlikely that a black man and a white man would have been drinking in the same establishment.
Also, descriptions of Lee have noted his tendency to sharp and flamboyant dress (thus the new Stetson hat). This and his second profession as pimp place him solidly within the black culture of the time.
And if he was black, that fits in with the versions of the song in which Staggolee cannot be arrested because the police are afraid of him or his “neck refused to crack” when he was hung. The versions in which he takes over Hell from the devil also likely come from the perception that Lee was black and a black man strong enough to do all of that would have quickly become a folk hero to an oppressed minority population, who, although having been freed from slavery 30 years prior, were still laboring under Jim Crow laws. A trickster type of character would appeal to people in less than optimum conditions who saw no path to change.
(As a side note, Frankie & Johnnie was originally written about yet another St. Louis murder that occurred a few blocks from Bill Curtis’ saloon right around the same time as the Lee-Lyons case…)
Aren't many left from this one anymore...
Remember that book I reviewed awhile back? Jackdaws by Ken Follett?
I thought at the time that it was loosely based on a historical backdrop. Turns out even the main character and the basic story were based more than loosely on real events and people.
Women of WWII. Check out the Violette Szabo section. And all the others. Pretty interesting stuff.
It isn’t even racist as African American blacks claim because it’s not about them. It’s about Indians (the dot-not-feather kind).
I used to love going to the Sambo restaurants. They were all glittery. They had the story told in panels over the counter all lit up and glittery.
And the restaurants weren’t about blacks either, even if the pictures used to show Sambo quite darker in tone. And they weren’t started by racist Southern rednecks, either. They started in California.
Maybe that’s why I don’t like pancakes. No more Tiger Butter. :(
I really resent and despise how ignorance runs everything.
Thanks to Leeann for linking the Story of Little Kettlehead in her sidebar, which lead me to remember Little Black Sambo.
I saw this and thought of Laura:
Now I can use bookcases for books. :)
Back before Thanksgiving Mom went to Texas and brought back one of my Granny’s china hutches for me. Along with it Granny also handed down to me some china plates that her mother had and a crystal vase that my father had brought her from Iceland when he was stationed there. Now I have a place to keep them safe – also a plate that my great aunt Coila had. Several memories in this cabinet already.
If you get a chance, go check out Life magazine’s feature on the 30 dumb inventions of the 20th century.
What I love about this one from 1948 is not the stupidity of a motor on a surfboard but how it shows a different era. Dude in a suit, hat and tie on a surfboard plus, he’s smoking.
They keep making me have to state that I’m NOT not doing something because I agree with them. Last time it was airing up my tires. I haven’t aired my tires since Obama was elected because I didn’t want people to think I was doing it because He decreed it to be a gas saving measure and chided us all for not doing it. Now it’s not having kids. I don’t have kids for many personal reasons, none of them aligned anywhere near the reasons these loons have.
(I know there are chile haters in the audience, and that’s okay. I know you don’t hate chiles because they are bad for Gaia. You hate them because they are annoying to you and it’s okay to hate them because of that. Hating them because they are a carbon producing vanity purchase is idiotic. )
The idea has bubbled around the edges of the environmental pond for a while: choosing to be childfree expressly for the purpose of reducing one’s carbon footprint. An environmental correspondent at Mother Jones, for example, has pointed out that “…Nothing else you can do — driving a more fuel efficient car, driving less, installing energy-efficient windows, replacing light bulbs, replacing refrigerators, recycling — comes even close to simply not having that child… Why are we pretending that because they’re cute they’re harmless? Little monsters.”
It’s been much longer than awhile that the population reduction movement has been afoot. Every time we have an energy crisis in the world these wack-jobs stick their heads up out of their eco-bunkers and lecture us all on how the population is growing too quickly for the earth to support us all. We’ll all starve in 20 years if we don’t voluntarily (or mandatorily) sterilize ourselves NOW. We should probably implement a Logan’s Run type of set up, too, while we’re at it, but only for the undesirables who aren’t on the wack-job mailing list.
These folks are, coincidentally, never volunteers to extinct themselves. It’s everyone else who needs to shut off the chile taps and go live in sackcloth and ash without electricity in mud floored huts until they die of hard living at the ripe old age of 43.
Via Dustbury, who appropriately categorizes this blather as “Wastes of Oxygen.”
Now, if we all looked like Jenny Agutter, but had to die at 30… that might be a decent trade off. As long as none of us ever had to work and could just boink like bunnies all day long.
We went to the colorguard ceremony at the Liberty Memorial this morning. (What I like about this Memorial is that it isn’t a tribute only to Americans, but more than half of the museum is devoted to those who fought in WWI before the US got involved.) I have no idea how many people were there. Not as many as I’d have liked to see there, and I’m sure not as many as were at the previous night’s fireworks show and symphony concert. It was, after all, at 9:30 in the morning and not everyone gets the day off. Regardless, while the infield seats were not full, there were plenty of folks standing around the periphery to more than fill them.
They had several groups carrying flags from different eras and representing different groups. I did wonder, seeing the old dudes in a couple of the groups, just who would do this when those men were gone. I guess the younger folks there today will. I hope they continue to find this kind of thing as worthwhile as they grow up.
There was a row of folks dressed up in traditional costume and sitting with flags from around the world to show respect to those who sacrificed in the name of freedom. They have that every year. It didn’t look like there were as many there as there were the last time I went.
Music: 01 Cameo by Bob Reeder from the album Best of the Vest. Always reminds me of Memorial Day.
Pictures by Denzil Burriss
There may be light posting around here this weekend. I plan to cook mass amounts of meat over an open flame and eat till I’m sick. So, yeah… pretty much like every weekend. And I may try to get to Liberty Memorial again. They are supposed to have a vintage military vehicles display this weekend. If I could stand mega crowds without wanting to kill people in like 2 minutes, I’d go to the fireworks and symphony concert on Sunday at the memorial. As it is, I may just try to watch the broadcast of it on the local public television station. At least my tax dollars go for something I agree with.
Do spare the time to remember what the holiday is for, though – and regardless of what it has become to some, it isn’t to remember every single person who is dead. It is to remember fallen military personnel, no one else. This is their day, not Gramma’s unless she was a military nurse or something.
3:00pm on Monday, a moment of silence, please.
The OAM caught a gunny from Colorado and his gal at the Memorial a few days ago and asked them to pose for this picture. They were kind enough to do so and it turned out very well. Click to embiggen a lot.
Also during my Aunt V’s visit, we went to the Liberty War Memorial and National World War I Museum here in KC. Somewhat ashamed to admit I hadn’t been before. We got bricks put in the entry for both of my grandfathers back during the opening ceremony, which I went to, but had never been in the museum itself until this past weekend.
It is a seriously impressive museum. Wonderful exhibits. Massive amounts of information – you want a full day to look through it and allow for little old man time while you are there. The guides are very informative and they add a lot to the experience but they do like to talk. :)
Personally, I thought the sections dealing with the war prior to the entry of the US were the best, but it was all excellent. I am guilty of not knowing much about WWI. I know far more about WWII. So much of WWII was built on what happened during and after WWI, but I never really realized that.
It truly did change the entire world. Not just through the technological advancements during the war, but also during the way war was viewed, the way nations were viewed by others and themselves, the way the world was viewed by the people in it.
Tickets are $12 and are good for 2 days. It is a visit that is well worth your time. Plan a weekend to KC if you can. Go to Kemper Art Museum, to the dino exhibit at Union Station, to the zoo, to the Jazz museum, to the little art galleries in town… there’s lots to do here but this museum should be on your list.
I have a soft spot for people’s remembrances of their parents and grandparents and Mark has done it up right.
His dad would have been 80 on Tuesday and his words about his father are touching and well crafted.
That the memories of his harmonica playing, memories of teaching me to fish and to swim, the example he set through a life well lived that a man is only limited by his dreams in what he can accomplish will stay with me forever, and be passed on to my two sons.
What higher praise can anyone hope for or work towards than to be remembered as a good example of how to live a life?
That is a large part of my regret in not having a child. Those examples provided me by my parents end with me. At least there is a small one on my mom’s side of the family that will be getting the examples of her grandparent and great-grandparents to witness. But overall, my family is shrinking generation by generation. On my dad’s side they breed like rabbits, but really, there isn’t much to pass on by way of example. Dad’s siblings have become brainwashed, insular religious cultists or totally self-involved pricks. I look for things to point to as living by example and all I come up with are whining brats or holier than thou snobs. They apparently didn’t learn much from their father’s example. Or maybe they learned only the bad parts.
Mom’s side just doesn’t have kids. I have two cousins who both have stepkids now and one of them has a baby of his own. That’s it. This one lone little girl is the only biological heir to my Mom’s family.
I am unlikely to have a biological child and my brother, being gay and having massive, massive psychological issues that will prevent him from ever adopting, is pretty well guaranteed to never have a child. The One Armed Man is an only child so his family line ends with him as well.
So goes the world, I guess. We just have to live our lives as examples to whoever might be paying attention and hope we impact someone in a postive way, related by blood or not.
A good post on the Comedy Central censoring of South Park, the Draw Mohammed Day originator wimping out and the general folding of western cultural elites before the demands of the barbarian horde.
This combination of fear and appeasement (and the latter follows the former) essentially means that western popular culture and academia – if not the actual people – have surrendered to the terrorists. Its easy to say ‘if you do x the terrorists have won!’ but there is a sense in which caving in to Islam to prevent its adherents from doing the things which scare you is their victory. If you can make fun of every single icon and object of respect in the world except for Islam, then Islam is de facto the one thing you respect, fear, and honor.
Like the Muslim leaders in the 18th century who thought the rest of the world feared, respected, and obeyed them because other nations would bring chests of gold to them in tribute to stop Barbary pirates, today the Islamic leaders can think no different: we command, and they obey. We threaten, and they cringe. The west is weak, they surrender to us, terrorism works.
I am not in favor of going out of your way to offend people just for the sake of being offensive. However, I do not believe that anyone on the planet has a right to not be offended. Someone somewhere does find something funny, offensive, stupid or ridiculous about you, your life or your beliefs. And you, if you are completely honest with yourself, find something about someone else’s life and/or beliefs funny, offensive, stupid or ridiculous.