You get too old to use nice things--except maybe on a holiday

 

Minneapolis--this morning's evidence of the Rage that Trump released.

 Why could the male brawlers not have just hurried to the men's room where the stalls have been widened to accommodate anyone with a wide stance? This is all the RAGE that Trump released by lying and lying.

Brawl breaks out between passengers at airport after flight lands

SOMEONE JUST TRIED TO KILL ME AT SAN JACINTO AVENUE AND HIGHWAY ONE

 Well, I did not want to die a few days shy of 86, so that's a relief that it is after my birthday. At the Intersection I was nearly killed a few years ago coming back from the beach. Back then I waited at the light on San Jacinto until it turned green and started across only to have a southbound car go by at about 75 MPH. Here 65 is actually legal, between the 2 stop lights in town. Today I waited there after a trip to the beach again, but this time after the light turned green I LOOKED to my left. OK. 2 cars ahead of me, one going right through, the other signaling left and then turning left. I hung back a little to let him turn, but when I moved on across the assassin who had been waiting across the highway for the light to turn green, which it would have done a little after I got across, decided that he NEEDED to go South and ran the red light, making a left turn against the light, just in front of me. I was able to brake, but Good Lord why did he want to kill me? I intend to be 87 my next birthday, and it is a long time away. We are so very cautious, but after the great Jim Maguire dying in Pozo a few days ago my sacrifice is not needed. Very upsetting.

The Excitement of Discovery! In the last few days I have found remarkable documents about the MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE

 How I wish Will Bagley had not died, as he did at the end of September. I could have brightened more than a couple of different days of his life. The more I find the longer my chapter will be, but the greater the need to narrow my focus. I can't tell the story of the massacre, which after all has been well told by Will and by Walker, Turley, and Leonard. But I can tell about the grief of the families.

It's not quite up there with finding the title THE ISLE OF THE CROSS. Then I could telephone Hayford and Sealts and go up to tell Jay Leyda. And now I can't run in White Clay Creek by the Arc Corner and on a stretch of the Mason-Dixon Line, but I can run oh so fast on the beach at Morro Bay. And when someone comes up behind and passes me I can say, "How can you do that? I am going as fast as I can."

LIES THAT LIVE ON: Richard Brodhead in the New York TIMES & Andrew Delbanco in the New Republic

         So many people are dying around me that I begin to worry about what people might say about me when I die. What if someone looked in the New York TIMES for a good quotation and found that Richard Brodhead said I simply made up POEMS (1860), something no one else had heard of. Well, Raymond Weaver did not know about it in 1921 but the next year Meade Minnigerode told us almost all that is now known about POEMS, which was quite real. Brodhead's ignorance (if it was not malice) goes uncorrected in the New York TIMES. Andrew Delbanco's critical biography 2005 mentions both THE ISLE OF THE CROSS (1853) and POEMS (1860) which he said in the NEW REPUBLIC that I had invented. Curiously, his uncorrected proofs did not mention that I had written a two-volume biography. How had he learned that I had not invented these two lost books and where did he rush to apologize?

        No, if there is an obit for me someone who knows only Brodhead and Delbanco may repeat the slander.

        I am working on the MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE right now and thinking about the impossibility of killing a lie.

Ken Burns calls for what I have about ready to publish. Does anyone want to publish it?

 

Ken Burns on "Reckoning with A History Fraught with Violence and Injustice" and the Table of Contents of "An Okie's Racial Reckonings"

 In the Washington Post 22 November 2021 Ken Burns says: "Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.

What I have been doing in 2021 is reckoning with that history. Here is the table of contents of a book I have nearly finished (one and a half chapters to go). I hope it can be published. All the chapters are about kinfolks in the colonies or the United States. Not one of my ancestors came to the United States.  A riddle: Neither of my parents was born in one of the states of the United States.

26 November 2021--TITLES IN ITALICS AND BOLD ARE NOT WRITTEN

                           ONE OKIE’S RACIAL RECKONINGS

 #01 “GODDAMN OKIES”

#02 WHO THE OKIES WERE

#03 FAMILY STORIES--BEFORE I SAW I HAD TO DO RACE--good happy oblivious stories

#04 COUSINS AT WAR ON THE CHEROKEES What the Carolinians were doing at first instead of going off to fight the British

#05 JEFFERSON, COCKE, SIMS (The burning of the Sims Settlement 2 times. TJ as one of the cousins, an inconsistent one)

#06 RACIAL OBLIVIOUSNESS AT TRAP HILL (the Siamese Twins in NC--and 2 NC men who held Union meetings in 1863)

#07 Dropped this chapter

#08 MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE (kin in the Arkansas wagon train were slaughtered in 1857) This is what I am working on right now.

#09 SIMS & SPARKS & THE “ATROCITY” AT MILLIKEN’S BEND (great cast of characters including Grant and the Empress Carlota & the handsomest hero--2 cousins of mine not kin to each other)

#10 FLETCHER HILL & FRATERNITY (1864 escape from Rebel Prison and journey to Union lines)

#11 CAPT. MATTHEWS--LIAR & MURDERER 1866 (Freedmen's Bureau lies are history now, still repeated)

#12 TOURGEE vs MCGEHEE--KKK 1860s & 1870s (awful details about KKK and end of Reconstruction)

#13 WILLY SIMS & THE DANVILLE “MASSACRE” or “STREET-FIGHT” (a reckless cousin who all by himself ended Reconstruction in Virginia)

#14 GLENN-TUCKER JARNDYCE vs JARNDYCE OF I. T. (My family story ending with 3 corrupt judges who ruled against us--one died in alcoholic binge, another slit his throat (but lived), and third had a leg cut off and died.)

#15 DICK COSTNER’S GALLANTRY AT WOUNDED KNEE (provocative--Sen. Warren is right to want to rescind medals--but Dick really was gallant and deserves to keep his medal.)

#16 LEE SPARKS--ONE BAD COP (Houston thug who doomed the Buffalo Soldiers in 1917)

#18 DOVEY--BLACK COSTNERS (horror story of black family driven from place to place)

         Appendix--RACIAL DOCUMENTS (grim items about kinfolks--disposition of slaves in wills, ads for runaways, auction ads for slaves &c)

 

Thanksgiving Morning Throngs

 

How can you jump in and profit from the death of Jim Maguire, a wonderful public man? Well, I just found out how.

 Maguire, who had been a public defender and active in many other local areas including the Botanical Garden, was killed in a car crash this week. A lot of people are grieving. We knew him only slightly, but we once went out to the north county and bought from him half a lamb, neatly packed. He was a man of many interests.

So I look on Google to see if there is more recent news of the accident and find several links that look like stories but soon ask you to chat and what you realize is that these are lawyers wanting to talk about suing someone the grounds of bereavement.

This is so very vile.

Man threatens Little Caesars workers with AK-47 during 10-minute wait, TN police say

 He did not know that good pepperoni takes a little longer than mushrooms.

Ken Burns on "Reckoning with A History Fraught with Violence and Injustice" and the Table of Contents of "An Okie's Racial Reckonings"

 In the Washington Post 22 November 2021 Ken Burns says: "Being an American means reckoning with a history fraught with violence and injustice. Ignoring that reality in favor of mythology is not only wrong but also dangerous. The dark chapters of American history have just as much to teach us, if not more, than the glorious ones, and often the two are intertwined.

What I have been doing in 2021 is reckoning with that history. Here is the table of contents of a book I have nearly finished (one and a half chapters to go). I hope it can be published. All the chapters are about kinfolks in the colonies or the United States. Not one of my ancestors came to the United States. Neither of my parents was born in one of the states of the United States.

24 November 2021--TITLES IN ITALICS AND BOLD ARE NOT WRITTEN

 

                           ONE OKIE’S RACIAL RECKONINGS

 

#01 “GODDAMN OKIES”

#02 WHO THE OKIES WERE

#03 FAMILY STORIES--BEFORE I SAW I HAD TO DO RACE--good happy oblivious stories

#04 COUSINS AT WAR ON THE CHEROKEES What the Carolinians were doing at first instead of going off to fight the British

#05 JEFFERSON, COCKE, SIMS (The burning of the Sims Settlement 2 times. TJ as one of the cousins, an inconsistent one)

#06 RACIAL OBLIVIOUSNESS AT TRAP HILL (the Siamese Twins in NC--and 2 NC men who held Union meetings in 1863)

#07 Dropped this chapter

#08 MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE (kin in the Arkansas wagon train were slaughtered in 1857) This is what I am working on right now.

#09 SIMS & SPARKS & THE “ATROCITY” AT MILLIKEN’S BEND (great cast of characters including Grant and the Empress Carlota & the handsomest hero--2 cousins of mine not kin to each other)

#10 FLETCHER HILL & FRATERNITY (1864 escape from Rebel Prison and journey to Union lines)

#11 CAPT. MATTHEWS--LIAR & MURDERER 1866 (Freedmen's Bureau lies are history now, still repeated)

#12 TOURGEE vs MCGEHEE--KKK 1860s & 1870s (awful details about KKK and end of Reconstruction)

#13 WILLY SIMS & THE DANVILLE “MASSACRE" or "STREET-FIGHT” (a reckless cousin who all by himself ended Reconstruction in Virginia)

#14 GLENN-TUCKER JARNDYCE vs JARNDYCE OF I. T. (My family story ending with 3 corrupt judges who ruled against us--one died in alcoholic binge, another slit his throat (but lived), and third had a leg cut off and died.)

#15 DICK COSTNER’S GALLANTRY AT WOUNDED KNEE (provocative--Sen. Warren is right to want to rescind medals--but Dick really was gallant and deserves to keep his medal.)

#16 LEE SPARKS--ONE BAD COP (Houston thug who doomed the Buffalo Soldiers in 1917)

#18 DOVEY--BLACK COSTNERS (horror story of black family driven from place to place)

         Appendix--RACIAL DOCUMENTS (grim items about kinfolks--disposition of slaves in wills, ads for runaways, auction ads for slaves &c)

 

This man is striving toward positive emotions and responsible parental involvement. Give him a little time? And give him a dog?

 Emma Colton

Wed, November 17, 2021, 7:04 AM

A Purdue University professor of psychology who specializes in "positive emotions" and "parental involvement" was arrested for allegedly beating his wife in front of his 10-year-old son, who was locked in a dog cage.

I wanted to know when Utah got a telegraph line--It was late 1861, 4 years after the Mountain Meadows Massacre

What I found ended with a tribute to the early telegraphers. I was a railroad telegrapher 1952-1959, ending in a night job at Port Arthur. Imagine quitting an 8 at night till 4 in the morning job on the Gulf and driving up to Evanston, Illinois, to start classes at Northwestern. Consulting Google: I may have quit just in time. A lot of the remaining telegraphers were fired 1962-1965. When was the last one fired? Was it somewhere remote, like Alaska?

 "Many of those who were connected with telegraphy in the early days of Utah have attained much prominence in the State. I am convinced now more thoroughly, than ever, that this is the result of loyalty to their labors and their employers and a strong ambition to perform well the duties that were assigned them. In the early days, the compensation of the telegraph operators was very small, and many of the operators whose names have been given, associated themselves with the work very much as some men devote their time and energy to religious duties; in fact, to many operators, it was part of their religion. This was particularly the case in southern Utah, where the telegraph played such a useful part during Indian depredations, when there was such a great need of rapid and direct communication. For many years a telegraph office was maintained at the headquarters of President Young, in this city; who was in direct and immediate communication with every important locality in the State."

HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET THAT WE ARE DYING. An Episode from early 2020 and the situation now

 Having been told by the great ocular oncologists up north that enucleation of the eye gone black was a possibility but why bother when the lymphoma was so aggressive, we got home and made haste--new wills, final attempt to salvage something of my hobby turned obsession, my American ancestry, narrowed way down to racial reckonings. I could at least pull out a few hundred documents that I or someone could use to write about or at least talk about the family and race.

But the word was disposal. Miraculously, my Melville library was already on its way off, the bulk of it, to the Berkshire Athenaeum. More boxes are following. But other papers?

Then a flattering note came in the U S mail and I said, happily, "I WANT TO KEEP THIS." Then I laughed and laughed at myself because I was not going to be around to "keep" anything. That was a revelation.

That was a year and a half ago. In 2021 I have written about 15/17th of a book called AN OKIE'S RACIAL RECKONINGS. I am walking 2 miles a day--well, not everyday (not on Costco day, not on trip to Templeton to doctor day), and walking faster than a few months ago. And I must not forget the new REAL ID, good for 5 years and almost 2 weeks from now. The future is indefinite.

So I am still taking blood thinner and an anti-fungal drug and I could fall again any time and a Mother of Mayhem could get me on the way to the beach or coming back (I mention this hoping to get patrolmen out to watch), and when I do die, what a mess of things to get rid of!

But now I can laugh at my saying "I WANT TO KEEP THIS!" I don't want to keep that much, now that I think about it. But I do want to finish the last chapter and this next-to-last chapter. If I can't, if have left good outlines.

The basic insight: OH, HOW QUICKLY WE FORGET THAT WE ARE DYING.

TERRIFYING: Look now at Hawley, Cruz, Kevin McCarthy & all the masses who say they believe the election of 2020 was stolen.

 Now, John Brown on 24 May 1856 led his sons and others on a raid in Pottawatomie, Kansas, in which he and the others hacked several men and a boy to death. Everyone knew this, but the New York Tribune and the Boston Liberator denied it and suppressed it. The truth did no come out in absolutely irrefutable form for two decades. But there were still people to believed that John Brown could not have been a murderer who hacking people to death with is own hands. The Liberator printed a letter on 16 December 1859 from R. J. Hinton: "John Brown told me he was not a participator in the Pottawatomie homicides. John Brown was incapable of uttering a falsehood."

         This is the Louisville Courier 19 November 1859, after quoting Emerson’s claim that John Brown (to be hanged, on 2 December) “will make the gallows glorious like a cross.”

         "In addition to these oracles of Northern sentiments, observe also the language of the New York Tribune, the leading organ of one of the great parties of the country. ‘Let their epitaphs (of the insurgents) remain unwritten until the not distant day, when no slave shall clank his chains in the shades of Monticello or by the graves of Mount Vernon.’ It is a fact tat cannot be concealed, though though some of the Republican press (such as the New York TImes, of strong Douglas proclivities by the way) may through policy tenderly condemn the Harper’s Ferry ‘insurrection.’ as they are fond of terming it, yet the mass of the party give their silent approbation. The only thing of regret was its failure. Another significant fact is that though William H. Seward was clearly apprised of the treasonable conspiracy, and said not a word in disapprobation of it, yet not a voice in the party is raised in his condemnation. Think, Kentuckians, of a people upholding their leading statesman in connivance at an iniquitous plot to butcher the innocent families of a sister State! From the signs of the times let us profit, and no longer stultify ourselves under the garb of conservatism."

For many ICU survivors and their families, life is never the same

 So, how about getting vaccinated? You can still get sick but you don't die as often when you do.

People kept coming up behind me and passing me. See the footsteps. See in the far distance, runners.

 It was a wonder. How could they all pass me when I was going as fast as I could?

Started at 5, Served at 8

 

Making broth with carcasses of Costco roasted chickens. Does every Frugal Cook do this?

 As a Depression Okie I used to pick all the arguably edible meat off the bones before discarding the carcasses of 2 Costco chickens.  This year I have been starting a big pot of water while I am still working on the first of two chickens. I put in a couple of onions, several garlic cloves, a little salt, and one carcass and then the other, and simmer them 3 hours or so and let them cool a few hours. Then I WASTE the bits of flesh and onion. Any wasting is hard to do if you are a Depression Okie. I strain the mass using a cullender (or colander) then do a second catching with a large strainer then let the liquid cool a couple of more hours and skim it and decant it into pint jars. Product: 8 or 9 pints of good strong broth. Much better than store-bought broth. 

Clapton at near his worst. The worse was making money from his not having the brains to close a window.

  Clapton released two more lockdown songs, conducted a lengthy interview with vaccine skeptics, and pledged to perform only where fans would not be required to be vaccinated, or, as Clapton said in a statement, not “where there is a discriminated audience present.”

After a September show in Austin, Clapton posed backstage with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. Abbott had recently signed the country’s most restrictive abortion law and a Republican-backed measure to limit who can vote in the state. Like that, a 35-year friendship was over.

What happened to Eric Clapton? The guitar legend has long been inscrutable, but his covid turn has friends and fans puzzled like never before.

 Well, he is not smart enough to close a window.

My new book will be controversial. I want to get Greg Abbott as outside reader. Will he have the time? Can he read hard words?

 Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) issued an executive order calling on state education officials to review the books available to students for “pornography and other obscene content.” Abbott indicated before the order that such content needed to be examined and removed if it was found. He reportedly did not specify what the “obscene content” standard for books should be.

BUT WILL HE KNOW PORNOGRAPHY WHEN HE SEES IT?

10 November 2021--TITLES IN ITALICS AND BOLD ARE NOT WRITTEN 

                          AN OKIE’S RACIAL RECKONINGS

 

#01 GODDAMN OKIES

#02 WHO THE OKIES WERE

#03 FAMILY STORIES--BEFORE I SAW I HAD TO DO RACE--good happy oblivious stories

#04 COUSINS AT WAR ON THE CHEROKEES What the Carolinians were doing at first instead of going off to fight the British

#05 JEFFERSON, COCKE, SIMS (The burning of the Sims Settlement 2 times. TJ as one of the cousins, an inconsistent one)

#06 RACIAL OBLIVIOUSNESS AT TRAP HILL (Siamese Twins in NC--and 2 NC men who held Union meetings in 1863)

#07 Dropped

#08 MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE (kin in the Arkansas wagon train were slaughtered in 1857)

#09 SIMS & SPARKS & THE “ATROCITY” AT MILLIKEN’S BEND (great cast of characters including Grant and the Empress Carlota & the handsomest hero--2 cousins of mine not kin to each other)

#10 FLETCHER HILL & FRATERNITY (1864 escape from Rebel Prison and journey to Union lines)

#11 CAPT. MATTHEWS--LIAR & MURDERER 1866 (Freedmen's Bureau lies are history now, still repeated)

#12 TOURGEE vs MCGEHEE--KKK 1860s & 1870s (awful details about KKK and end of Reconstruction with scary parallels to 2021)

#13 WILLY SIMS & THE DANVILLE “STREET-FIGHT” (a reckless cousin who all by himself (they said) ended Reconstruction in Virginia)

#14 GLENN-TUCKER JARNDYCE vs JARNDYCE OF I. T. (My family story ending with 3 corrupt judges who ruled against us--one died in alcoholic binge, another slit his throat (but lived), and third had a leg cut off and died.)

#15 DICK COSTNER’S GALLANTRY AT WOUNDED KNEE (provocative--Sen. Warren is right--but Dick really was gallant and deserves to keep his medal.)

#16 LEE SPARKS--ONE BAD COP (who doomed the Buffalo Soldiers)

#18 DOVEY--BLACK COSTNERS

         Appendix--RACIAL DOCUMENTS (wills, ads for runaways, sale ads &c)

Kansas City Star Questioning Josh Hawley’s sexuality is not OK, even if it is Josh Hawley

 Oh, I am so ashamed of myself. I did not understand what the fist pump meant. I thought Hawley was just encouraging the insurrectionists.

But I am not quite sure I understand now.

Why am I laughing?

We know that Hitler studied Race Laws in USA. Did he get the idea of stuffing Jews into cattle cars from Sherman?

 

Leon Howard's birthday

 After he retired to Albuquerque he used to come to LA and give me and give Leo Lemay guest lists for all over the basin and the valley because we had party-houses. A good many people got invited to both parties. Leo and Ann are long dead and almost all of the guests. Some of his students in New Mexico must remember him.

I copied Cleanth Brooks's letters years ago and can't find them now in packing boxes to send away. I found one today in a book.

 I noticed the book when I got down here, Arthur F. Kinney's G. K. Hall 1996 CRITICAL ESSAYS ON WILLIAM FAULKNER: THE SUTPEN FAMILY.  I saw Cleanth's letter first then checked the contents and saw that the last essay was my 1974 piece in Mississippi Quarterly, "What Quentin Saw 'Out There'"--the point being that he had learned the solution by seeing, not hearing.

Copying was so slow that I will do the second page later.

‘Violent attack’ by teen student knocks principal out at school, MA officials say. TRUMP HAS MADE IS OK TO EXPRESS RAGE.

 ANY RAGE AT ALL.

This is all a result of Trump's endless slurs and lies.

Late--One O'Clock

 

From the back patio this morning, after making Skillet Bread

 

Up at 5:30 to make Skillet Bread--2 photos