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grandhotelabyss · 6 months

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What makes an artwork highbrow? What makes another low?

Keeping in mind that this is a sociological rather than an aesthetic distinction, I believe the distinction hinges on how much you already have to know about art in general to appreciate any given work. As the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu writes:

A genre containing ever more references to the history of that genre calls for a second-degree reading, reserved for the initiate, who can only grasp the work’s nuances and subtleties by relating it back to previous works. By introducing subtle breaks and fine variations, with regard to assumed expectations, the play of internal allusions (the same one that has always been practised by lettered traditions) authorizes detached and distanced perception, quite as much as first-degree adherence, and calls for either erudite analysis or the aesthete’s wink.

This is most obvious in the case of a work that is both intensely allusive and extremely sophisticated in technique, like Ulysses, but it also applies to works of a radical simplicity or even contentlessness, like the writings of Gertrude Stein or the paintings of Jackson Pollock, where you have to know enough about art to know why this apparent non-art ("my toddler could paint that!") is actually very serious and meaningful art.

In practice, these distinctions don't hold. They don't hold aesthetically, because most actual practitioners say that the relevant distinction is not high and low but good and bad. But they also don't hold sociologically. The high-low distinction only applies after the mass literacy of the late 19th century, which generated both a mass culture industry and writers and artists who wanted to set themselves apart from this mass culture industry. The very same industry, however, produces such a proliferation of niche markets that even low-art genres become as complex and recursive in their own traditions as the high-art genres, such that you can't really just hand The Big Sleep or Dune or Watchmen to a person off the street anymore than you could with Ulysses. This is the symbolic import of the factoid I am always insisting upon: that this all comes from Poe, that Poe invents both Mallarmé and Lovecraft.

Then "middlebrow" as a concept presents problems of its own. A serious critic wants to scorn the middlebrow and uphold only the raw energy of the lowbrow and the radical intellection of the highbrow, but this standard is too severe. Anti-middlebrow critics get trapped in a hipper-than-thou spiral, or, to vary my image, they futilely chase an unreachable horizon of authenticity and difficulty. There is such a thing as middlebrow—we know it when we see it—but if you become obsessed with the idea, then soon you'll find that nothing is astringent enough for your taste. Anti-middlebrow critics may start by dismissing Our Town and The Grapes of Wrath, but they will inevitably end up writing "Against Ulysses."

Finally, these categories assume too much about who attends to what, and where and when and for what purpose. I quoted that Bourdieu passage above this summer in my Oppenheimer essay. Is Oppenheimer lowbrow, middlebrow, or highbrow? A film made for and sold to a mass audience through memes and sex appeal (lowbrow), a film full of Big Themes and Human Interest and Major Issues (middlebrow), a film formally ambitious, politically ambiguous, tragic in theme, and freighted with unexplained scientific, historical, political, and cultural allusions (highbrow)? I just don't think it's a very interesting question.

Do these categories explain why I read about Ulysses on Microsoft Encarta when I was 13 years old? (It included a recording of an Irish actress doing some of Molly Bloom's interior monologue.) I first checked the novel out of my suburban public branch library the summer of the same year and determined to read it, a task I admittedly didn't accomplish in full until later, when I was in college, just as Bourdieu would predict. But the ambition first found me in the lower-middle-class suburbs through a simple consumer conveyance rather than through any type of elite training.

I don't mean to sound a note of false populism here, to suggest that there's much hidden greatness in the morass of cranked-out junk clogging Amazon. It is, as I've written, "lonely at the top." My populist instinct, insofar as I have one, runs in the other direction: not "low art is actually great" but rather "great art is actually for everyone." (Or perhaps not "everyone" but "anyone." Not every single person but any single person capable of being found by it, which can't be determined in advance.) Still, the worth of a work of art is not extrinsically determined by the position it occupies in the social field, as the sociologists claim, but rather relies on its intrinsic merit in dynamic interaction with an unpredictable range of actual and potential audience members.

#pierre bourdieu #sociology of art

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adhoption · 5 years

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Lord Haw-Haw

Today’s engrossing wikipedia rabbit hole was William Joyce, a Nazi propagandist who broadcast pro-German messages to Britain during WWII, known for his efforts as the infamous Lord Haw-Haw.

Highlights below:

Joyce has the distinction of being the last person in the UK to be hanged for treason.

This fact is made slightly less impressive by the fact another man was hanged the following day... for treachery, which is apparently a completely different crime.

Why is treachery different from treason? Well, according to its article treachery was a new law introduced just for the war because treason was too hard to prove and prosecute. So they basically introduced an easier version of the same offence and just stuck a slightly different name on it.

The article for high treason is a treat. Alongside the obvious king-slaying, siding with the king’s enemies, and trying to disrupt the line of succession, a full half of the examples given are sexual: ‘sleeping with the king’s wife’, ‘sleeping with the heir to the throne’s wife’, and ‘sleeping with the king’s eldest daughter’ (any younger daughters are apparently fair game).

That sleeping around is apparently worthy of being listed with a death sentence, equivalent to killing the king, as part of a category of crimes that threaten the safety of the state. Monarchs were super jealous.

High treason is also separated from ‘petty treason’, which is the act of murdering a legal superior e.g. a servant killing their master, a wife killing her husband (!), or anyone killing a bishop, because apparently the UK used to be run on some wild set of chess-style rules.

You may be asking ‘hang on, isn’t that just murder anyway?’, which is the same question law-makers eventually figured out and then merged petty treason into the existing murder laws. It turns out that a pawn killing a bishop is not a different crime from a bishop killing a pawn, but a pawn or bishop killing a king or queen still is.

Back to Lord Haw-Haw. People don’t even know where the nickname came from, or whether it was even intended to refer to Joyce. Supposedly it was hard to tell the difference between voices on the radio, and the article contains an actual list of people who “could have been Lord Haw-Haw”.

Other equally ridiculous nicknames were occasionally used to distinguish between obviously different speakers, such as the infamous Nazi “Sinister Sam”.

This confusion peaked with this absolute shambles - “In reference to the nickname, American pro-Nazi broadcaster Fred W. Kaltenbach was given the moniker Lord Hee-Haw by the British media. The Lord Hee-Haw name, however, was used for a time by The Daily Telegraph to refer to Lord Haw-Haw, generating some confusion between nicknames and broadcasters.”

Joyce’s description isn’t flattering. He had been attacked by Communists and had a permanent scar from his mouth to his earlobe, just to give him that cliché look you might expect from your Hollywood Nazi villain.

A face made for radio, then - but his voice wasn’t much better, only described as follows: “His distinctive nasal pronunciation of "Germany calling, Germany calling" may have been the result of a fight as a schoolboy that left him with a broken nose.”

But not only did the Nazis look past that in appointing him as a radio broadcaster, he actually turned up to the interview with "a heavy cold and almost losing his voice” and they still hired him immediately.

Who got him the interview? Dorothy Eckersley, who has her own wild story: she was the wife of the BBC’s programme planner Edward Clark, then left him for the BBC’s chief engineer Peter Eckersley (who was married, and had to resign because his boss was super religious and got the Archbishop of Canterbury involved), then fled to Germany and raised her son to be a Nazi broadcaster like Joyce.

Joyce was eventually captured in Flensburg, a town in northern Germany which was the capital of the Third Reich for its last few weeks of existence. There’s something satisfying in the idea of a random town (not even city) being the extent of the Third Reich, a national government of Nazis crammed into a town council hall still making proud noises like they’re going to take over the world.

Flensburg’s article is another unexpected treat. It begins by listing seven things the town is famous for in Germany. Surprisingly, being briefly chosen as the final world capital of the Nazi empire doesn’t make the list. Instead, Flensburg is known for its “large erotic mail-order companies” and “the greeting Moin Moin”. What a place to live.

Joyce was arrested by British forces including a returning German named Geoffrey Perry (born Horst Pinschewer), who had left Germany for England before the war and presumably changed to an English name to avoid anti-German sentiment. I’m on the guy’s side, but you have to appreciate the irony of a German-turned-Brit arresting a Brit-turned-German for treason.

Joyce’s arrest is summarised with the following incredible sentence: “After they asked whether he was Joyce, he reached into his pocket (actually reaching for a false passport); believing he was armed, they shot him through the buttocks, resulting in four wounds.”

Can you imagine someone pitching a new cartoon Nazi villain? “I’m going to call him Lord Haw-Haw and give him a prominent scar down the side of his face” - sounds too unrealistic, how do the heroes beat him? - “oh, he accidentally gets shot in the ass”

But the trial was somehow an even bigger shambles. Effectively the prosecutors had no evidence that Joyce had actually been the Nazi broadcaster, apart from ONE person who said they had recognised his voice on ONE broadcast SIX YEARS prior to the trial. That was apparently enough to convict him for a capital offence.

Then the real plot twist:

He wasn’t even British

“During the processing of the charges Joyce's American nationality came to light, and it seemed that he would have to be acquitted, based upon a lack of jurisdiction; he could not be convicted of betraying a country that was not his own.”

It turned out he wasn’t British after all, but had been born in New York to an Irish-American family and then raised and educated in Ireland (who were neutral in the war). Apparently nobody had thought to check this prior to charging him with treason. He was immediately acquitted on two of the three charges.

But the prosecutor argued that because Joyce had a British passport (even though he wasn’t British and had lied about his nationality to get it) he had the benefit of British diplomatic protection from it and therefore owed allegiance to the king, and should be sentenced to death for treason for working for the Germans.

Which is nonsense because a) he only went to Germany when they were at war with Britain, in which case having a British passport hardly protected him, b) if anything he was only safe in Germany because he wasn’t loyal to Britain, c) he was then brought back to Britain and now sentenced to death because he had a British passport, so it hardly brought him diplomatic protection, and d) it is entirely consistent for a non-British person working against Britain to lie to the British authorities to get a passport, so where exactly is the treason?

The article drops this incredible quote from historian AJP Taylor to sum it up: "Technically, Joyce was hanged for making a false statement when applying for a passport, the usual penalty for which is a small fine."

Finally, the article leaves us with the disgusting fact that “the scar on Joyce's face split wide open because of the pressure applied to his head upon his drop from the gallows.” Just in case anyone was wondering.

Thank you, wikipedia.

#not defending the guy #he was kicked out of the british fascist group for being TOO anti-semitic #so he deserved anything that was coming to him

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walaw717 · 5 years

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The dialect spoken by Appalachian people has been given a variety of names, the majority of them somewhat less than complimentary. Educated people who look with disfavor on this particular form of speech are perfectly honest in their belief that something called The English Language, which they conceive of as a completed work - unchanging and fixed for all time - has been taken and, through ignorance, shamefully distorted by the mountain folk.

The fact is that this is completely untrue. The folk speech of Appalachia instead of being called corrupt ought to be classified as archaic. Many of the expressions heard throughout the region today can be found in the centuries-old works of some of the greatest English authors: Alfred, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the men who contributed to the King James version of the Bible, to cite but a few.

Most editors who work with older materials have long assumed the role of officious busy bodies: never so happy, apparently, as when engaged in tidying up spelling, modernizing grammar, and generally rendering whatever was written by various Britons in ages past into a colorless conformity with today's Standard English.

To this single characteristic of the editorial mind must be ascribed the almost total lack of knowledge on the part of most Americans that the language they speak was ever any different than it is right now. How many people know, for example, that when the poet Gray composed his famous "Elegy" his title for it was "An Elegy Wrote in a Country Churchyard?"

Southern mountain dialect (as the folk speech of Appalachia is called by linguists) is certainly archaic, but the general historical period it represents can be narrowed down to the days of the first Queen Elizabeth, and can be further particularized by saying that what is heard today is actually a sort of Scottish-flavored Elizabethan English. This is not to say that Chaucerian forms will not be heard in everyday use, and even an occasional Anglo-Saxon one as well. When we remember that the first white settlers in what is today Appalachia were the so-called Scotch-Irish along with some Palatine Germans, there is small wonder that the language has a Scottish tinge; the remarkable thing is that the Germans seem to have influenced it so little. About the only locally used dialect word that can be ascribed to them is briggity. The Scots appear to have had it all their own way.

When I first came to Lincoln County as a bride it used to seem to me that everything that did not pooch out, hooved up.

Pooch is a Scottish variant of the word pouch and was in use in the 1600's. Numerous objects can pooch out including pregnant women and gentlemen with "bay windows." Hoove is a very old past participle of the verb to heave and was apparently in use on both sides of the border by 1601. The top of an old-fashioned trunk may be said to hoove up. Another word heard occasionally in the back country is ingerns. Ingems are onions. In Scottish dialect the word is inguns; however, if our people are permitted the intrusive r in potaters, tomaters, tobaccer, and so on, there seems to be no reason why they should not use it in ingems as well.

It is possible to compile a very long list of these Scots words and phrases. I will give only a few more illustrations, and will wait to mention some points on Scottish pronunciation and grammar a little further on.

Fornenst is a word that has many variants. It can mean either "next to" or "opposite from." "Look at that big rattler quiled up fornenst the fence post!" (Quiled is an Elizabethan pronunciation of coiled.) "When I woke up this morning there was a little skift of snow on the ground." "I was getting better, but now I've took a backset with this flu." "He dropped the dish and busted it all to flinders." "Law, I hope how soon we get some rain!" (How soon is supposed to be obsolete, but it enjoys excellent health in Lincoln County.) "That trifling old fixin ain't worth a haet!" Haet means the smallest thing that can be conceived of, and comes from Deil hae't (Devil have it.) Fixin is the Old English or Anglo-Saxon word for she-fox as used in the northern dialect. In the south of England you would have heard vixen, the word used today in Standard English. It is interesting to note that it has been primarily the linguistic historians who have pointed out the predominately Scottish heritage of the Southern mountain people. Perhaps I may be allowed to digress for a moment to trace these people back to their beginnings.

Early in his English reign, James I decided to try to control the Irish by putting a Protestant population into Ireland. To do this he confiscated the lands of the earls of Ulster and bestowed them upon Scottish and English lords on the condition that they settle the territory with tenants from Scotland and England. This was known as the "Great Settlement" or the "King's Plantation," and was begun in 1610.

Most of the Scots who moved into Ulster came from the lowlands1 and thus they would have spoken the Scots variety of the Northumbrian or Northern English dialect. (Most highland Scots at that time still spoke Gaelic.) This particular dialect would have been kept intact if the Scots had had no dealings with the Irish, and this, according to records, was the case.

While in Ulster the Scots multiplied, but after roughly 100 years they became dissatisfied with the trade and religious restrictions imposed by England, and numbers of them began emigrating to the English colonies in America. Many of these Scots who now called themselves the "Scotch-Irish" came into Pennsylvania where, finding the better lands already settled by the English, they began to move south and west. "Their enterprise and pioneering spirit made them the most important element in the vigorous frontiersmen who opened up this part of the South and later other territories farther west into which they pushed."2

Besides the Scots who arrived from Ireland, more came directly from Scotland to America, particularly after "the '45", the final Jacobite uprising in support of "Bonnie Prince Charlie," the Young Pretender, which ended disastrously for the Scottish clans that supported him. By the time of the American Revolution there were about 50,000 Scots in this country.

But to get back to the dialect, let me quote two more linguistic authorities to prove my point about the Scottish influence on the local speech. Raven I. McDavid notes, "The speech of the hill people is quite different from both dialects of the Southern lowlands for it is basically derived from the Scotch-Irish of Western Pennsylvania."3 H. L. Mencken said of Appalachian folk speech, "The persons who speak it undiluted are often called by the Southern publicists, 'the purest Anglo-Saxons in the United States,' but less romantic ethnologists describe them as predominately Celtic in blood; though there has been a large infiltration of English and even German strains."4The reason our people still speak as they do is that when these early Scots and English and Germans (and some Irish and Welsh too) came into the Appalachian area and settled, they virtually isolated themselves from the mainstream of American life for generations to come because of the hills and mountains, and so they kept the old speech forms that have long since fallen out of fashion elsewhere. Things in our area are not always what they seem, linguistically speaking. Someone may tell you that "Cindy ain't got sense enough to come in outen the rain, but she sure is clever." Clever, you see, back in the 1600's meant "neighborly or accommodating." Also if you ask someone how he is, and he replies that he is "very well", you are not necessarily to rejoice with him on the state of his health. Our people are accustomed to use a speech so vividly colorful and virile that his "very well" only means that he is feeling "so-so." If you are informed that "several" people came to a meeting, your informant does not mean what you do by several - he is using it in its older sense of anywhere from about 20 to 100 people. If you hear a person or an animal referred to as ill, that person or animal is not sick but bad-tempered, and this adjective has been so used since the 1300's. (Incidentally, good English used sick to refer to bad health long, long before our forebearers ever started saying ill for the same connotation.)

Many of our people refer to sour milk as blinked milk. This usage goes back at least to the early 1600's when people still believed in witches and the power of the evil eye. One of the meanings of the word blink back in those days was "to glance at;" if you glanced at something, you blinked at it, and thus sour milk came to be called blinked due to the evil machinations of the witch. There is another phrase that occurs from time to time, "Man, did he ever feather into him!" This used to carry a fairly murderous connotation, having gotten its start back in the days when the English long bow was the ultimate word in destructive power. Back then if you drew your bow with sufficient strength to cause your arrow to penetrate your enemy up to the feathers on its shaft, you had feathered into him. Nowadays, the expression has weakened in meaning until it merely indicates a bit of fisticuffs.

One of the most baffling expressions our people use (baffling to "furriners," at least) is "I don't care to. . . ." To outlanders this seems to mean a definite "no," whereas in truth it actually means, "thank you so much, I'd love to." One is forevermore hearing a tale of mutual bewilderment in which a gentleman driving an out-of-state car sees a young fellow standing alongside the road, thumbing. When the gentleman stops and asks if he wants a lift, the boy very properly replies, "I don't keer to," using care in the Elizabethan sense of the word. On hearing this, the man drives off considerably puzzled leaving an equally baffled young man behind. (Even the word foreigner itself is used here in its Elizabethan sense of someone who is the same nationality as the speaker, but not from the speaker's immediate home area.

Reverend is generally used to address preachers, but it is a pretty versatile word, and full-strength whisky, or even the full-strength scent of skunk, are also called reverend. In these latter instances, its meaning has nothing to do with reverence, but with the fact that their strength is as the strength of ten because they are undiluted.

In the dialect, the word allow more often means "think, say, or suppose" than "permit." "He 'lowed he'd git it done tomorrow."A neighbor may take you into her confidence and announce that she has heard that the preacher's daughter should have been running after the mailman. These are deep waters to the uninitiated. What she really means is that she has heard a juicy bit of gossip: the preacher's daughter is chasing the local mail carrier. However, she takes the precaution of using the phrase should have been to show that this statement is not vouched for by the speaker. The same phrase is used in the same way in the Paston Letters in the 1400's.

Almost all the so-called "bad English" used by natives of Appalachia was once employed by the highest ranking nobles of the realms of England and Scotland. Few humans are really passionately interested in grammar so I'll skim as lightly over this section as possible, but let's consider the following bit of dialogue briefly: "I've been a-studying about how to say this, till I've nigh wearried myself to death. I reckon hit don't never do nobody no good to beat about the bush, so I'll just tell ye. Your man's hippoed. There's nothing ails him, but he spends more time using around the doctor's office than he does a-working."The only criticism that even a linguistic purist might offer here is that, in the eighteenth century, hippoed was considered by some, Jonathan Swift among others, to be slangy even though it was used by the English society of the day. (To say someone is hippoed is to say he is a hypochondriac.)

Words like a-studying and a-working are verbal nouns and go back to Anglo-Saxon times; and from the 1300's on, people who studied about something, deliberated or reflected on it. Nigh is the old word for near, and weary was the pronunciation of worry in the 1300's and 1400's. The Scots also used this pronunciation. Reckon was current in Tudor England in the sense of consider or suppose. Hit is the Old English third person singular neuter pronoun for it and has come ringing down through the centuries for over a thousand years. All those multiple negatives were perfectly proper until some English mathematician in the eighteenth century decided that two negatives make a positive instead of simply intensifying the negative quality of some statement. Shakespeare loved to use them. Ye was once used accusatively, and man has been employed since early times to mean husband. And finally, to use means to frequent or loiter. Certain grammatical forms occurring in the dialect have caused it to be regarded with pious horror by school marms. Prominent among the offenders, they would be almost sure to list these: "Bring them books over here." In the 1500's this was good English. "I found three bird's nestes on the way to school." This disyllabic ending for the plural goes back to the Middle Ages. "That pencil's not mine, it her'n." Possessive forms like his'n, our'n, your'n evolved in the Middle Ages on the model of mine and thine. In the revision of the Wycliffe Bible, which appeared shortly after 1380, we find phrases such as ". . .restore to hir alle things that ben hern," and "some of ourn went in to the grave." "He don't scare me none." In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries do was used with he, she, and it. Don't is simply do not, of course. "You wasn't scared, was you?" During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries many people were careful to distinguish between singular you was and plural you were. It became unfashionable in the early nineteenth century although Noah Webster stoutly defended it. "My brother come in from the army last night." This usage goes back to late Anglo-Saxon times. You find it in the Paston Letters and in Scottish poetry. "I done finished my lessons," also has many echoes in the Pastons' correspondence and the Scots poets. From the late Middle Ages on up the Northern dialect of English used formations like this: "guiltless persons is condemned," and so do our people. And finally, in times past, participial forms like these abounded: has beat, has bore with it, has chose. Preterite forms were as varied: blowed, growed, catched, and for climbed you can find clum, clome, clim! all of which are locally used.

Pronunciation of many words has changed considerably, too. Deef for deaf, heered for heard, afeared for afraid, cowcumber for cucumber, bammy for balmy, holp for helped, are a very few. Several distinct characteristics of the language of Elizabeth's day are still preserved. Words that had oi in them were given a long i pronunciation: pizen, jine, bile, pint, and so on. Words with er were frequently pronounced as if the letters were ar: sarvice, sartin, narvous. It is from this time that we get our pronunciation of sergeant and the word varsity which is a clipping of the word university given the ar sound. Another Elizabethan characteristic was the substitution of an i sound for an e sound. You hear this tendency today when people say miny kittle, Chist, git, and so on. It has caused such confusion with the words pen and pin (which our people pronounce alike as pin) that they are regularly accompanied by a qualifying word - stick pin for the pin and pin and ink pin for the pen.You can hear many characteristic Scottish pronunciations. Whar, thar, dar (where, there, and dare) are typical. So also are poosh, boosh, eetch, deesh, (push, bush, itch, dish and fish.)

In some ways this vintage English reflects the outlook and spirit of the people who speak it; and, we find that not only is the language Elizabethan, but that some of the ways these people look at things are Elizabethan too. Many other superstitions still exist here. In some homes, when a death occurs all the mirrors and pictures are turned to the wall. Now I don't know if today the people still know why they do this, or if they just go through the actions because it's the thing to do, but this belief goes far back in history. It was once thought that the mirror reflected the soul of the person looking into it and if the soul of the dead person saw the soul of one of his beloved relatives reflected in the mirror, he might take it with him, so his relatives were taking no chances.

The belief that if a bird accidentally flies into a house, a member of the household will die, is also very old, and is still current in the region. Cedar trees are in a good deal of disfavor in Lincoln County, and the reason seems to stem from the conviction held by a number of people that if someone plants a cedar he will die when it grows large enough to shade his coffin.

Aside from its antiquity, the most outstanding feature of the dialect is its masculine flavor - robust and virile. This is a language spoken by a red-blooded people who have colorful phraseology born in their bones. They tend to call a spade a spade in no uncertain terms. "No, the baby didn't come early, the weddin' came late," remarked one proud grandpa. Such people have small patience with the pallid descriptive limitations of standard English. They are not about to be put off with the rather insipid remark, "My, it's hot!" or, "isn't it cold out today?" They want to know just how hot or cold: "It's hotter 'n the hinges of hell" or "Hit's blue cold out thar!" Other common descriptive phrases for cold are (freely) translated) "It's colder 'n a witch's bosom" or it's colder 'n a well-digger's backside."

Speakers of Southern mountain dialect are past masters of the art of coining vivid descriptions. Their everyday conversation is liberally sprinkled with such gems as: "That man is so contrary, if you throwed him in a river he'd float upstream!" "She walks so slow they have to set stakes to see if she's a-movin!" "Thet pore boy's an awkward size - too big for a man and not big enough for a horse." "Zeke, he come bustin' outta thar and hit it for the road quick as double-geared lightenin!"

Nudity is frowned upon in Appalachia, but for some reason there are numerous "nekkid as. ." phrases. Any casual sampling would probably contain these three: "Nekkid as a jaybird," "bare-nekkid as a hound dog's rump," and "start nekkid." Start-nekkid comes directly from the Anglo-Saxons, so it's been around for more than a thousand years. Originally "Start" was steort which meant "tail." Hence, if you were "start-nekkid," you were "nekkid to the tail." A similar phrase, "stark-naked" is a Johnny-come-lately, not even appearing in print until around 1530. If a lady tends to be gossipy, her friends may say that "her tongue's a mile long," or else that it "wags at both ends." Such ladies are a great trial to young dating couples. Incidentally, there is a formal terminology to indicate exactly how serious the intentions of these couples are, ranging from sparking which is simply dating, to courting which is dating with a more serious intent, on up to talking, which means the couple is seriously contemplating matrimony. Shakespeare uses talking in this sense in King Lear.

If a man has imbibed too much of who-shot-John, his neighbor may describe him as "so drunk he couldn't hit the ground with his hat," or, on the morning-after, the sufferer may admit that "I was so dang dizzy I had to hold on to the grass afore I could lean ag'in the ground."

One farmer was having a lot of trouble with a weasel killing his chickens. "He jest grabs 'em before they can git word to God," he complained.

Someone who has a disheveled or bedraggled appearance may be described in any one of several ways: "You look like you've been chewed up and spit out," or "you look like you've been a-sortin wildcats," or "you look like the hindquarters of hard luck," or, simply, "you look like somethin the cat drug in that the dog wouldn't eat!"

"My belly thinks my throat is cut" means "I'm hungry," and seems to have a venerable history of several hundred years. I found a citation for it dated in the early 1500's.A man may be "bad to drink" or "wicked to swear", but these descriptive adjectives are never reversed.

You ought not to be shocked if you hear a saintly looking grandmother admit she likes to hear a coarse-talking man; she means a man with a deep bass voice, (this can also refer to a singing voice, and in this case, if grandma prefers a tenor, she'd talk about someone who sings "Shallow.") Nor ought you to leap to the conclusion that a "Hard girl" is one who lacks the finer feminine sensibilities. "Hard" is the dialectal pronunciation of hired and seems to stem from the same source as do "far" engines that run on rubber "tars."

This language is vivid and virile, but so was Elizabethan English. However, some of the things you say may be shocking the folk as much as their combined lexicons may be shocking you. For instance, in the stratum of society in which I was raised, it was considered acceptable for a lady to say either "damn" or "hell" if strongly moved. Most Appalachian ladies would rather be caught dead than uttering either of these words, but they are pretty free with their use of a four letter word for manure which I don't use. I have heard it described as everything from bug _____ to bull ______. Some families employ another of these four letter words for manure as a pet name for the children, and seem to have no idea that it is considered indelicate in other areas of the country.Along with a propensity for calling a spade a spade, the dialect has a strange mid-victorian streak in it too. Until recently, it was considered brash to use either the word bull or stallion. If it was necessary to refer to a bull, he was known variously as a "father cow" or a "gentleman cow" or an "ox" or a "mas-cu-line," while a stallion was either a "stable horse" or else rather ominously, "The animal." Only waspers fly around Lincoln County, I don't think I've ever heard of a wasp there, and I've never been able to trace the reason for that usage, but I do know why cockleburrs are called cuckleburrs. The first part of the word cockleburr carries an objectionable connotation to the folk. However, if they are going to balk at that, it seems rather hilarious to me that they find nothing objectionable about cuckle.

A friend of mine who has a beauty parlor now, used to have a small store on the banks of the Guyan River. She told me about a little old lady who trotted into the store one day with a request for "some of the strumpet candy." My friend said she was very sorry, they didn't have any. But, she added gamely, what kind was it, and she would try to order some. The little lady glanced around to see if she could be overheard, lowered her voice and said, "well, it's horehound, but I don't like to use that word!"

The dialect today is a watered down thing compared to what it was a generation ago, but our people are still the best talkers in the world, and I think we should listen to them with more appreciation.

Notes1. Thomas Pyles, The Origins and Development of the English Language. (New York; Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1964), 36. "It is not surprising that those lowland Scotsmen who colonized the 'King's Plantation' in Ulster and whose descendents crossed the Atlantic and settled the Blue Ridge, the Appalachians, and the Ozarks should have been so little affected by the classical culture of the Renaissance."

2. Albert C. Baugh, A History of the English Language, 2nd ed., (New York, 1957), 409

.3. H. L. Mencken, The American Language, ed. Raven I. McDavid, Jr., the 4th ed. and the two supplements abridged, with annotations and new material. (New York, 1963), 455.4. Ibid., 459.

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ruminativerabbi · 6 years

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The End of Privacy

I have been revised! The news came just the other day in an email from ancestry.com informing me that my DNA profile has been revised in light of serious amounts of new data that they have recently processed and which now allow them to refine my ancestral portrait based on the DNA sample I sent them last spring. And now for the results: instead of being of 96% European Ashkenazic heritage, 2% Sephardic, 1% South-East Asian (a true mystery) and 1% of indistinct origin (whatever that meant exactly), my DNA profile has now been revised to yield the completely un-startling result that, genetically speaking (as well as by disposition, worldview, and appearance), I am of 100% Ashkenazic/European origin. Was I surprised? Not very! And yet…I had come to like the idea of having some weirdly inexplicable Sri Lankan blood in me somewhere, something that, at the very least, could have turned into a good short story. I suppose I’ll get over it. I might as well!

Joan took the test too and received similarly expected results. I suppose most people do. But, of course, not all do. I wrote to you last year about the remarkable way that a woman from Chicago discovered that her (apparently) 100% Irish Catholic father turned out to have started out in life as a 100% Jewish baby boy who was sent home with the wrong set of parents and whose real parents (i.e., the woman who gave birth to him and his biological father) took whom the (actually) Irish Catholic baby who grew up to be a Jewish man from the Bronx and the patriarch of a large, complicated Jewish family. (If you find that confusing, you can revisit that letter by clicking here.) There, I mused aloud about the malleable boundaries of identity, about what it means to be who we are—and what that means with respect to the ultimate definition of Jewishness or, for that matter, any kind of identity deemed to inhere in an individual at birth. To my great surprise, I actually received an email from the woman with the Jewish Irish Catholic father in response to what I wrote about her case and I was very gratified indeed by her very generous appraisal of what I had to say about her situation and her father’s.

You have to be a serious genealogist to take advantage of most of what these online DNA sites offer. When I visit the ancestry.com website, for example, I can see the names of more than a dozen people whom the site says are “almost definitely” my fourth or fifth cousins. (Fifth cousins are people, one of whose thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents was a sibling of one of the other person’s thirty-two great-great-great-grandparents.) I’ll have to upgrade my membership if I want actually to contact any of them, but I haven’t taken that step. Nor do I think I will in the future. (In all fairness, they’ve also dangled the names of two second cousins to see if I’ll take the bait. So far, I’ve resisted.) But it turns out that there is a lot more to all of this than learning the names of theoretical cousins possibly descended from theoretical siblings who lived in the eighteenth century.

One of the side developments of all this DNA testing is the discovery some men have made, not of distant cousins, but of children inadvertently fathered somewhere along the way and in any number of different ways. (This phenomenon, which will only become more common in the coming years, has touched one family in our congregation and it has touched my own family as well. Those two stories were different in detail, but identical in terms of result…and, although both appear to be having happy endings, it feels unlikely that there are not out there people whose entire lives have been or will be turned upside down by this kind of unanticipated revelation.) Another has to do with the forensic use of these data banks to solve crimes long consigned to the “cold case” bin and only now becoming solvable in the wake of the proliferation of these online DNA banks. You may recall reading about the arrest of the man police accuse of being the so-called “Golden State Killer,” a violent criminal considered likely to be responsible for fifty rapes and a dozen murders committed between 1976 and 1986 whose identity was only revealed to the authorities after they uploaded DNA taken from the crime scenes to a site called GETmatch.com. (To read more about that specific case, click here. Making that specific case more interesting is the fact that although the suspect did not personally offer his DNA to any of the online testing sites, a few of his relatives did…and matching the crime-scene DNA to their profiles led to the arrest of the sole individual to whom they were all related.)

But the specific issue I want to write about this week has to do neither with the discovery of unknown offspring nor the solution of cold-case crimes. Instead, I’d like to write about an issue that feels as though it has the potential to dwarf both those issues in terms of the impact it could conceivably have on society.

To date, about fifteen million people have consciously and intentionally sent in samples of their DNA for analysis to sites like 23andme.com or ancestry.com. Another couple of million have signed up at a few less well-known sites. We are, therefore, talking about far less than 10% of American citizens, but the implications of this phenomenon are far greater than the numbers suggest. Just this week, a study co-written by Yaniv Erlich, Tal Shor, Itsik Pe’er, and Shai Carmi was published in the journal Science that suggested just how important this whole phenomenon is…and how it will soon affect the lives of millions of people who themselves have not sent in their DNA for analysis.

To date, about sixty percent of Americans of North European descent—Brits, Germans, Poles, Danes, Swedes, etc.—can be identified through these databases regardless of whether they have personally sent in their DNA for analysis. And that number is only the beginning: within two or three years, the authors of the Science essay imagine that a full ninety percent of Americans whose families originate in northern Europe will be identifiable through their DNA even if they themselves have not personally contributed any DNA sample.

To me, that sounded unbelievable. It’s one thing, after all, for my ancestry.com page to say that mitchKK (whoever he is) and I are “highly likely” to be second cousins. (I think we probably are cousins, by the way—the 2nd K matches the odd way my great-grandparents spelled their last name so I’m guessing one of his grandfathers must have been one of my grandmother’s brothers.) But that only sounds plausible because we both contributed samples of our DNA and so opened ourselves up to being identified as each other’s relative. But how could this possibly work with people who specifically have not contributed their DNA? That’s what I set myself to trying to figure out.

I’m not sure I understand the Science article entirely correctly. (To try for yourself, click here.) But as far as I can understand, the whole thing has to do with third cousins because, it turns out, the way the tests work is precisely to identify people whose DNA samples match closely enough for them to be third cousins, i.e., the great-grandchildren of siblings. Most of us apparently have about 800 people in the world whose DNA matches ours to that extent. And if just one of those people is in the data base, then someone who truly knows what he or she is doing can extrapolate information based on other public records to find a trail to a sought-after individual even if that person has not personally contributed DNA of his or her own. This does not bode well for people who value their privacy.

The authors of the Science article chose thirty DNA test results at random from the GEDmatch database and then, by analyzing that data and using public information available to all, they were able to identify third cousins of about 60% the people whose DNA they had selected for study. (GEDmatch, with only a million customers, is significantly smaller than its competitors but was amenable to allowing the experiment to proceed.). In an article describing the experiment published in the New York Times this week (click here), Heather Murphy quoted Yaniv Erlich, one of the authors of the Science article, as saying that, “to identify an individual of any ancestry background, all that is needed is a database containing two percent of the target population.” That stopped me in my tracks.

Is that really possible? Graham Coop, a genetics professor at the University of California Davis who is cited in the Times article, thinks so and is quoted as saying that “society is not far from being able to identify 90 percent of people through the DNA of their cousins in genealogical databases.” In my opinion, anyone who doesn’t find that both startling and seriously unsettling probably hasn’t thought the matter through carefully enough!

I’ve been sensitive for a long time to the slow erosion of personal privacy in our American culture. For most of us, that thought conjures up almost funny images of some drone at the NSA poring over trillions of emails that could not possibly be of interest to anyone other than the person to whom they were sent. But the thought that society seems to be blundering almost unawares into a future in which personal privacy is a thing of the past and the fullness of an individual’s genetic heritage is suddenly a matter of public record regardless of whether that individual has or hasn’t chosen to become part the digital quarry from which amateurs like myself presumed such data could only be mined—that seems to me to be far beyond something reasonably referenced as a quirky innovation of the digital age. The right to personal privacy in life—to live free without the oversight of others and without their interference—is one of the fundamental privileges of citizens in a democracy. That we appear to be on the verge of losing control over that foundational right is just another sign of just how out of control things are as we barrel into the future only vaguely aware of what we ourselves have wrought.

#DNA testing #privacy #ancestry.com #23andme.com

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blogra235 · 3 years

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A Monk Swimming

A Monk Swimming. New York: Hyperion, 1998. Citation formats are based on standards as of July 2010. Citations contain only title, author, edition, publisher, and year published. Citations should be used as a guideline and should be double checked for accuracy. By Malachy McCourt. Alachy McCourt, the author of this amusingly intemperate memoir, 'A Monk Swimming,' is a younger brother of Frank McCourt, whose. A Monk Swimming: A Memoir (Hardback) Malachy McCourt. Published by Hyperion, United States (1998) ISBN 10: ISBN 13: 983. New Hardcover Quantity available: 10. Seller: Book Depository International. (London, United Kingdom) Rating. A Monk Swimming A Memoir. By MALACHY MCCOURT Hyperion. Read the Review. There is a story in our family that one day my mother was strolling along with my brother Frank and myself, and pushing our twins in a pram. A huge black motorcar stopped at the kerb, and out hopped a smartly dressed chauffeur, who opened the rear door for a bejeweled.

A Monk Swimming Malachy Mccourt

A Monk Swimming Meaning

June 4, 1998

BOOKS OF THE TIMES / By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT

A Monk Swimming Malachy Mccourt

'A Monk Swimming': A Tragedian's Brother Finds More Comedy in Life

A MONK SWIMMING A Memoir. By Malachy McCourt. 290 pages. Hyperion. $23.95.

alachy McCourt, the author of this amusingly intemperate memoir, 'A Monk Swimming,' is a younger brother of Frank McCourt, whose best-selling 'Angela's Ashes' won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for the best autobiography published in 1996.

A Monk Swimming Meaning

So right away, you can't help thinking that 'A Monk Swimming' is an exercise in me-tooism. After all, the McCourt brothers, who were born in Depression-era Brooklyn and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland, have teamed up before. As Malachy tells it, 'The brother Frank had somehow got to the U.S.A. in 1949, at the age of 19, and then saved up enough money to send for me in 1952, when I was 20.'

Years later, they performed together in 'A Couple of Blaguards,' a musical revue about their Irish youth. At a time when it was not politically incorrect to make generalizations about people of like cultural backgrounds, you might have said they shared the Irish gift of gab. (As Malachy puts it, introducing one of the several Irish songs he quotes, 'To make fine wine, it is necessary to crush the grapes, and the English crushed us Irish, hence the vintage wine of words.') Since they have so much in common, why shouldn't the McCourt brothers produce matching volumes for the bookshelf?

Yet a reading of 'A Monk Swimming' reveals that if Malachy is horning in on Frank's act, he has managed to do so in a most un-imitative way. Where 'Angela's Ashes' is about the McCourts' childhood in Limerick, 'A Monk Swimming' picks up the story after the brothers return to America. Where the older brother writes in the modulated lyricism of an Irish-American looking back to a distant time and place, the younger brother speaks in the raucous brogue of a native freshly landed on a foreign shore.

MALACHY MCCOURT Credit: Michael Brennan/Hyperion

Where Frank is restrained and tragic, Malachy is outrageous and comic. Where the title 'Angela's Ashes' refers to the author's mother's suffering, 'A Monk Swimming' is a whimsical evocation of the way its author as a child misheard 'Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women' as 'Blessed art thou, a monk swimming.' The only sense you can make of this is to think of the book as an expression of the author's somewhat distorted behavior 'amongst women.'

McCourt's recollection of this behavior begins somewhat unpromisingly with a series of disconnected but mildly amusing stories about his adventures as a longshoreman, actor and barfly after he first arrived in New York. One night at P.J. Clarke's, Ed Wilcox, 'a sometime gossip columnist,' saw the Giants football players Kyle Rote and Frank Gifford heading back to the pub's lavatory, and 'without a moment's hesitation' shouted 'for all to hear, 'See what the backs in the boys' room will have.'

Another evening McCourt arrived at a restaurant to meet a friend and was asked by the bartender to please check his overcoat in accordance with the establishment's dress code. Because McCourt did not like to be ordered around, he repaired to his car, took off ALL his clothes, put on his overcoat again and returned to the bar. When the bartender once again asked him to check his coat, McCourt complied, leaving himself buck naked in front of the diners and causing a near riot.

But wherever he went and whatever he did, people seemed to take to him, to want him at their parties or on their television talk shows. So he played the stage Irishmen for all it was worth, drank up everything that was poured for him, did his own pouring in a singles bar called Malachy's that he helped start, slept with every willing woman he could stay awake for, acquired a wife and fathered two children with her, and drank a great deal more.

McCourt does not boast about these feats. Rather he describes them ruefully in language that would not be badly misplaced in John Millington Synge's great drama 'The Playboy of the Western World,' in which the author acts at one point in his narrative.

Despite his irresponsibility as a husband and father and the infantile way he behaves when his wife finally leaves him and asks for a divorce (he forces his way into her apartment and begins to demolish the place), one grows to like McCourt for his honesty and to sympathize with him for the struggle he wages with a mind that he describes as 'leaping about like a caged and vicious rodent' whenever he wakes up after a night of drink. When he is eventually reduced to smuggling gold bars into Bombay, India, wearing a vest that makes him precariously top-heavy, you laugh when he nearly tips over from the weight of it, and you sweat when the authorities seem to be closing in.

Of course, you know from the book's flap copy that McCourt at 66 is now happily married, the father of five children and the grandfather of three. This is a long way from a low point in his story, when he returned to New York from Europe after an extended drinking spree with assets consisting of 'three shoes (apparently one had taken a walk by itself), some tattered drawers, some defeated shirts, a woebegone suit, a drove of dead socks, a balding toothbrush, a well-worn passport and a tie, that if immersed in water, would have made a thick, nourishing soup for to feed most of Calcutta.'

How he got from then to now is not told in this volume. But apparently the pitilessness with which he could gaze at his past sent his demons to a place they could no longer torment him. Whereupon peace came and allowed him to write this funny, oddly winning book.

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teacherintransition · 4 years

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Plans for Life Change: Books to read, check; Paint, check; Travel ... uh travel?

Philosophers, intellectuals, humorists, writers the world over advocate the mind opening, enriching benefits of seeing the world ... ah, but 2020!

In 2013, my wife changed my life ... again, she has the habit of doing that. During that year, I was enduring year seven of a debilitating leg injury, I wasn’t painting, I wasn’t playing golf, not really reading, the guitar was gathering dust and I was putting on the weight. Any dreams or lofty goals were far on the back burner. One afternoon Kim came home from work and declared, “oh my god, we are going to Ireland!” The panic of the couch potato took hold and my response was limited to single word utterances, “ what ... how... when ... no... afford... us?” Ireland had been a dream of ours for years. Every time John Wayne’s “The Quiet Man” was on, we would stop what we were doing and get lost in the lush green and rolling hills of Eire’. We would laugh as we spoke to each other in really bad Irish accents and it was an evening well spent.

Now, here my wife barrels through the door and says with absolute authority that we are going to Ireland...what madness is this!? Without going into tremendous detail, my wife had treated the wife of an old college professor of mine who was mildly handicapped. Despite this, she and her husband managed to go yearly to Ireland regardless the obstacles. Kim replied, “one day ...,” and my professor said, “no, stop!” He shared with her a nugget of wisdom that has stayed with us to this day; he said, “Kim, if you wait until you have enough money or everything falls into place, ‘one day’ will never come... go.” Eight months later; my knee had been replaced, I was pain free and we were climbing the hills and exploring the castles of Ireland. We met fellow folks with wanderlust who became magnificent friends who we would continue to travel with throughout Europe every summer since our meeting. It wasn’t travel on the high end, nor was it travel on the extreme cheap, it was a series of adventures with close friends of like minds.

Every summer it was a time to recharge, to draw inspiration, to explore, to get lost in all that was around us. My views changed, my mindset changed, my heart changed and it became an almost addictive balm that soothed the wounds of everyday life. It became our life... Ireland, Scotland, France, Spain, Wales, England, Monaco, Italy in affordable, magical doses that we shared together and with friends every summer. I would return refreshed mentally and spiritually to a depth I didn’t understand until it was taken from us this year. It was a shock to our collective systems... we hadn’t fully comprehended how healing our travels had been to us in breaking free from the daily anxieties and stresses that weigh on our lives in ways we don’t fully understand. Worries clung a little tighter; problems were a little harder to shake off; I ran out of ideas for paintings; that little, secret smile that you share with your partner was harder to come across, the anticipation that kept you going ... didn’t, it felt like you had lost some sustenance that you couldn’t get and didn’t know when you could get it again. (Yikes ...I didn’t intend to make this a drug addiction analogy). This was a loss that we felt deep in our bones and the pain exacerbated by the unknown nature of a crisis we were helpless to combat.

It is my hope that this won’t be viewed by some as some kind of off the wall wail of despair... travel of any nature is a treasure that too many of us don’t avail ourselves. The quotes of the restorative and enlightening nature of travel are in abundance.

“Live your life by a compass, not a clock.” – Stephen Covey

“Nobody can discover the world for somebody else. Only when we discover it for ourselves does it become common ground and a common bond and we cease to be alone.” – Wendell Berry

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

I could go on but the point is made I think; a willingness, a need to travel is a metaphor for an open mind... a breaking free of constraints often placed upon us by the fears of others. If you never break these constraints, you never know the peace of liberating yourself from living in a limited space in a world that was made to explore and to experience. Again, I’m not just referring to exotic adventures in exotic locations, wonderful though they may be, a simple road trip can break shackles and dispel fears. It’s not so much a literal breaking free as it is a breaking free into the world of ideas. It helps our minds become unencumbered by fear that is often a falsehood. A desire to travel is just one aspect of a liberated mind... it’s walking to the other side of the block, it’s trying the spicy order, it’s changing the music to another style, it’s zigging when everyone expected you to zag. The world is bigger ... your mind is expanded, and as Mr. Holmes said in the aforementioned quote, “you can never go back....”. I don’t want to ...

Yet, in apparent contradiction, I stand fearful that something may be lost forever because of our world’s current crisis. I can’t find inspiration for my art, a listless feeling permeates my mood, an anxiety that I might not see friends again fills my heart, the lessons that should have been learned from our travels seem obscured by mist. It is a worrisome time for us all. Since I started the blog, I’ve tried very hard to avoid the dark clouds that have come with this pandemic and political climate, I don’t need to be brought down and neither do any potential readers. While sharing with my brother how dissatisfied I was with my last few paintings, he asked why. Puzzle pieces starting falling into place as I told him that I usually had dozens of ideas floating around in my head after summer, hmmmmm...why would that be? It’s been tough to get myself out to maintain my daily walking goals, hmmmmm... why would that be? I started this change of life energized by a myriad of plans and projects and was doing great... my fuel tank was low ... we hadn’t been able to travel... we’d been restricted in our movements not by choice, but by circumstance and it was frightening.

There were lessons that should have been learned that apparently hadn’t taken root. Fear and anxiety are often unavoidable, but the self discovery and benefits of a road well traveled should combat them. I had failed to apply the lessons that came from seeing the world because I let their temporary (?) absence obscure the benefits they had provided. What can I say, a rookie mistake, it’s all going to be ok. Isn’t that what I was supposed to have learned by seeing different people and places? It will all be ok ... this is the truth that all the history and culture and locales were to have taught me. I’ve seen places that were millennia old and had seen severe suffering and strife and they were still there. I’m still here... my travels were teaching me still... the new way of seeing things as quoted above was in full affect. Rome, Nacogdoches, London, Lufkin, Barcelona, Beckville... the truth was there; it had never left.

I love talking about traveling and in my thinking, this may just be the first in a series of writings on how my wife, my friends and my adventures have made me a better person... not where I want to be, but at least able to persevere this difficult time.

http://labibliotecacoffee.com/

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kayla1993-world · 4 years

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John Crosbie was a one-of-a-kind politician, a mix of differences and endlessly fascinated by his home region. He was also, writes John Gushue, a very convenient public official.

When John Crosbie released his stories in 1997, there was a bit of a rush to read the juicy bits. My Life in Politics, which Crosbie wrote with former Globe & Mail managing editor Geoff Stevens, was stacked with them; I recall seeing a couple of people at a store when the book came out, scanning the index of names at the end with their fingers, and flicking quickly to stated pages.

He did not disappoint.

One of my favourite stories in the book is about what went down when a young Crosbie and Clyde Wells decided they had made a devil's agreement by joining Joseph R. Smallwood's cabinet in 1966, and had had enough of what he called ill-judged industrial plans. The final straw was the Come By Chance oil factory, and their disgust with one John Shaheen.

By May 1968, they had had enough. One Monday morning, armed with departure memos, they marched into Smallwood's office.

What did they find? Smallwood was prepared with documents of his own.

"He produced two letters and said, 'I'm dismissing you.' I said, 'Like f--k you are. Here's my letter of departure." Crosbie then flicked his letter at an angry Smallwood.

I believe I am safe in assuming that Clyde Wells — who would have course go on to be premier, a job that Crosbie once wanted but never won — did not use the same kind of language. (Michael Harris, my former editor and the author of Rare Passion, a must-read book about the history of the Crosbie family, noted that while Crosbie had the comfort of the family fortune to fall back on, it was Wells, a 30-year-old lawyer of humble origins and a young family at the time, who took the far biggest risk of standing up to Smallwood.)

The story always spoke to me about John Crosbie, and who he was as a person — not so much about the salty language, but about his opinions.

Crosbie, 88, died Friday morning. He leaves a rich, complicated bequest.

Even though he never led a government, he succeeded in many levels of government, and after leaving politics continued to serve in roles that included lieutenant-governor and chancellor of Memorial University.

Let's talk about his tongue, and his chin.

With the first, he called it as he saw it, and was not afraid of offending people. That rude tongue got him in trouble a lot, even in an epoch that was far more disregarding than now … and much more tolerant of off-colour jokes and insulting language.

That, it has to be said, was part of John Crosbie's life. However, I often was struck at what a walking batch of differences Crosbie was. He sometimes seemed to enjoy provoking women-lovers, yet supported many of their causes (he was a pro-choice Red Tory, and there don't seem to be as many of them anymore).

Cartoonists loved him. His chin was often a focus, and they loved to draw him — he was unique (as finance minister in 1979, he wore mukluks rather than the old notion of a new pair of shoes) and interesting, and constant food for Canada's opinion pages.

Like comedians and impressionists (the key to sounding like Crosbie is the rough sound that comes from the back of the throat, and not the Irish accent that some mainlanders mistakenly adopted), cartoonists were drawn to him like nails to a magnet.

And he loved their exploitation. Rather than be offended, Crosbie's staff would find originals of cartoons. His house in Hogan's Pond, just outside St. John's, is lined with dozens of them.

I first met Crosbie professionally in the mid-1980s, when my first reporting job took me to Ottawa. Crosbie was one of Brian Mulroney's front bench ministers then, and a bit of a darling with the press corps; even on a dry day, Crosbie could be counted on to say something colourful, maybe even offensive. I recall looking at the disorganized struggles around him; they always seemed to be wider than those of most of his peers.

I also remember how the air in the public gallery in the House of Commons would become a little more electric when Liberal MP George Baker would rise from his seat. Baker would often be casting a point at Crosbie, knowing full well Crosbie would fire right back at him. Even sourpuss partners would crack up as they enjoyed political theatre of the very best kind.

Crosbie didn't back down from a fight often, but he wasn't careless with the actions he picked, either. He said it was "fun to tangle" with former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whose pride and enjoyment of life he actually liked. There was a famous exchange in May 1983, in which they not only fought about an possible conflict of interest, but did it with Latin — and Greek.

"There is a test which is well known and which I will not insist on but which has been used time out of mind: Quad semper, quad ubique, quad omnibus," said Trudeau, using the Latin phrase that really means something always was, was everywhere, and known by all.

Crosbie didn't miss a beat. "That's the Jesuit coming out," to which Trudeau could not resist an insult. "I know that is beyond the important member for St. John's West."

Crosbie interrupted Trudeau with some Latin of his own: "Res ipsa loquitor" — a well-known legal phrase meaning "the thing speaks for itself." In fact, Crosbie translated it on the floor, to which Trudeau said, "Oh, you don't have to translate it." Trudeau then teased Crosbie in Greek: "Ta zoa etrekhe," which means "the animals are running, before adding, in English, "and that applies to him."

Crosbie closed the exchange — and apparently brought the house down — with the only Greek phrase he could remember. "Andrezesthe krateousthe," which he translated in his journal as "Could you like men be strong."

I talked with Crosbie many times over the years. My favourite interview, by far, happened in the fall of 1989, when I was a young reporter working with the Sunday Express in St. John's. I wanted to write about the legendary rural Liberal leadership race of 1969, when Smallwood cancelled his planned retirement to run against Crosbie to replace himself. I had heard so much about it over the years, and was curious to know more. Smallwood was still alive at the time, but was unable to speak because of a stroke. (I did get to interview Smallwood once, as a Grade 8 student. Story for another time.)

Crosbie was more than game to talk; the question was finding time. We found a Sunday afternoon. I was staying with relatives in Ontario; he was in New Brunswick, in a hotel room with family. As he was propping his feet up, he directed a young child on how to pour Poppy a drink and bring it to him.

We spoke for more than an hour, as he recalled details, spun stories and cracked jokes. The episode interfered with Crosbie's desires to be premier, but played a big part in pushing him to the Tory side of politics. Smallwood's was a winner; in less than three years, the PCs were not only a functional party, but running the government.

Crosbie wanted to lead ("I wanted to premier that badly!" he wrote of why he accepted Smallwood's poisoned-cup invitation to join cabinet in 1966), at both the local and federal level. It's often said Crosbie was the best premier the region never had.

Easy, informed and a bit of a quote machine, Crosbie was a reliable interview. Over the years, especially after his retirement, he was also just fun to talk with. As the Latin and Greek exchange above suggests, he was well educated (he was top of his class as both an undergraduate and a law student), and very well read. On some occasions, just talking, he'd ask about what I was reading. He seemed to read energetically, and widely. To cast him as an adherent with a fixed view on the world would be to misunderstand him completely.

It's worth noting that Crosbie expressed regrets about being so quick with jokes and points. He worried sometimes that people would not take him seriously.

Another favourite moment with Crosbie was the time we found ourselves attending a dinner theatre in Gander. The audience consisted of my family of three. He was travelling with his wife, Jane Crosbie, and an assistant de camp.

Believe it or not, we were the only people in the audience. We all sat together at the same table. I felt bad for the performers, who but put on a show as if the house was full.

The Crosbies were entertaining that night, too. In my view, Jane Crosbie can be at least as bright as her husband. I recall him saying he needed to work at keeping up with her.

At the time, John was fully advancing for his passion project: the memorial to sealers that would be built in Elliston. (It was finally named for him.) Even though it was the height of summer, he was wearing a sealskin vest, a article he wore so proudly and often that it's what often comes to mind when I think about Crosbie.

Crosbie was created for many things, and one of them was an inability to make eye contact. Some people I know found it withdrawing; I guess I and other writers were usual to it. (I remember once searching through a long interview he gave to Anthony Germain to find a frame of Crosbie looking up. I found exactly one moment where he did so.)

At a podium, though, or in a house, Crosbie could give operatic performances: arms waving, head brought back, no sense at all that this man once went to Dale Carnegie courses so he could speak comfortably in public settings.

Notwithstanding the lack of eye contact in conversation, Crosbie could in other cases be at ease. He loved to chuckle — and to tease. A point or two about the mechanisms was the usual way things go. (He would often, I should note, add that his reject was for the national press, or as he put it "the bosses," whoever they were.)

This is how I will remember John Crosbie: a terribly smart, boldly stubborn, deeply dedicated (for his area, especially) and finally warm-hearted man. He was one of a kind.

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peterpanquotes1 · 5 years

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The Review of Reviews: First Impressions of the Theater, 1905

Page 245: Last month I had my first experience of the musical comedy, which I have hitherto avoided. I went to see, or hear, “Veronique” at the Apollo Theatre. I should not break my heart if my first musical comedy should prove my last. But I also had another experience of a much pleasanter kind. I went to see “Peter Pan.” And I heartily wish that every child and every grown-up who has still preserved the heart of a child, or any part thereof, could have an opportunity of seeing that charming spectacle.

Before describing my impressions of cither, I must make a passing note of the reviving popularity of Shakespeare—and of Shaw. "John Bull's Other Island" has been so popular at the Court Theatre last month in the afternoons, that an Irish peer told me he had in vain attempted to book a scat. "House full " in the afternoon has encouraged the experiment of a series of evening performances. In time we may see this delightful play making the tour of the provinces. It is not the only play of Mr. Shaw's that has been performed last month. We have had the sequel to "Candida" at the Court, and "The Philanderer" in the City. Shaw stock is looking up.

But this is as nothing to the run on Shakespeare. Last month three of Shakespeare's plays were performed every night at three of the most popular theatres. "Much Ado About Nothing" has succeeded "The Tempest" at His Majesty's Theatre. "The Taming of the Shrew " still attracts crowds to the Adelphi; and Mr. Lewis Waller has revived "Henry V." at the Imperial. Besides these runs, the heroic and indefatigable Benson has played Shakespeare twice a day at the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill, where the London public have had an opportunity of seeing "Macbeth," "King Lear," " Richard II.," and "The Comedy of Errors." It is a long time since the sovereignty supreme of the King by right divine of the drama was simultaneously acclaimed on so many London stages. May this be an augury of better things to come!

Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up, is a dainty, delightful little magician, who makes old boys grow young again at the Duke of York’s Theater, twice a day, six days a week. I saw it on its 98th performance. I hope to see it again on its 998th, for there is no reason why it should ever grow stale. It ought to share the eternal youth of its charming hero. Mr. .J.M. Barrie deserves the thanks and the congratulations of all who love children and of all who possess the faculty of being as little children. To become as a little child is the secret of entering other kingdoms besides the kingdom of heaven. I frankly own I was prejudiced against “Peter Pan,” because of the legend put about that it was a dramatized version of the “Little White Bird.” That legend is a libel upon “Peter Pan.” The story is not by any means exceptionally attractive: it is tantalizing, irritating, unsatisfactory. But “Peter Pan” is simply delightful, unique, and almost entirely satisfactory.

Imagine one of Hans Christian Andersen’s charming Christmas stories, one of Captain Mayne Reid’s hair-raising romances of scalp-raising Red Indians, and R.L. Stevenson’s tales of bold buccaneers, all mixed up together, and the resulting amalgam served up in humorous burlesque fashion for the delight of the young folks, and you have “Peter Pan.” Grey-bearded grandfather though I am, I felt as I looked at “Peter Pan” that I renewed my youth. It seems as if I had never grown up. I was in the magic realm of the scalp-hunters, the enchanted wood of the gnomes, revealing in the daring devilry of the pirates, and clapping my hands with delight over the exploits of the darling, delightful, invincible Peter Pan. And I wondered as I left the theater whether Mr. Barrie and Mr. Frohman had enough love for little children in their hearts to give some free performances of “Peter Pan” to the poor children of London town, to whom seats in the Duke of York’s Theater are as unattainable as a dukedom. The good old principle of tithes might be invoked to justify such occasional free performances as a thank offering for a great, a continuous and an increasing success. Instead of the ancient hebrew offering of the sheaf of the first-fruits, which was brought to the Temple in thanksgiving for the harvest, it surely ought not to be an impossible thing to get the principle accepted by all theatrical managers and authors that whenever a piece has made its century one free performance should be given as a thank offering — a sheaf of first-fruits offer in thanksgiving to the poor of our people. And what play so admirably suited to initiate this law of thank offering as “Peter Pan”?

“Peter Pan” opens with an immediate initial success — a success achieved by an actor whose human identity is so completely merged in the dog (fem.) Nana, that it is a moot point with many youngsters whether Nana is not really a well-trained animal. Nana, a black-and-white Newfoundland, is the nurse of the three children of Mr. and Mrs. Darling. She puts them to bed, tucks them in, and hangs out their clothes to air by the fire.

Page 246: After an amusing scene with some medicine, the three children — the girl, little Wendy, and her two brothers — in their nighties and pajamas, are sung to sleep by their mother, who is not only a darling in name but in nature. When the mother has gone and the night-lights are out, the window opens, and Peter Pan climbs into the room. Peter is a superb figure of a Cupid without his wings, who, nevertheless, and perhaps because he has no wings, flies much better than Ariel, as seen at His Majesty's “Tempest.” A ruddy-faced, lithe-limbed, beautiful Cupid, not the chubby little Cupid of Thorwaldsen, but the divine boy of Grecian sculpture, a Cupid crossed with Apollo, a magical, mystical lad, with whom it is not surprising that everyone fell in love, from the fairy Tink-a-Tink to Tiger Lily, the Indian Queen. He wakes the little girl, and tells her he is the boy who did not want to grow up, and who, for that good reason, ran away from home, as soon as he was born, to the Never Never Never Land, where he has charge of all the boy babies who fall out of their perambulators. He never had a mother, does not know what a mother is. When the little maid proposes to give him a kiss her heart fails her, and she gives him a thimble as her kiss. Not to be outdone in generosity, he gives her a button as his kiss. Waxing bolder, Wendy kisses him, and explains that that is a thimble; and Peter Pan only knows of kissing as an exchange of thimbles. Peter astonishes Wendy by flying about the room, and she hears the bell of Tink-a-Tink, the fairy, whom Peter has inadvertently shut up in the drawer. Being liberated, Tink-a-Tink, a swift quivering white light, flies about the room. When the bell rings she talks, and Peter interprets her words to the wondering Wendy. At last she perches above the clock, and appears like a little Tanagra figure of light. And here I may make my only criticism. If Mr. Barrie were to go to any of Mr. Husk's seances l>e would hear fairy bells much better worthy the name than the muffin bell of Tink-a-Tink. And if he would consult any of the classics of the nursery he would discover that his white little statuette that perches above the clock may be anything in the world, but it is not a fairy. Tink-a-Tink could so easily be made so fascinating and so real an entity that I was surprised at such a failure in a play that is otherwise so admirably staged. Peter Pan, expounding the truth about fairies, explains that a fairy is born with every baby, but that, as a fairy dies whenever any boy or girl says " I don't believe in fairies," the mortality in fairyland is high. But unless something is done to make Tink-a-Tink a little more life-like than this darting light and white illuminated little statuette, I am afraid “Peter Pan” will raise rather than reduce the death-rate among the little people.

When Peter Pan tells Wendy that it is quite easy to fly she wakes her brothers, and the three kiddies make desperate and at first unsuccessful efforts to imitate Peter's flight backwards and forwards across the room. At last they master the secret, and one after another, the children fly out of the window and disappear. They are off to the Never Never Never Land, where little Wendy becomes the mother of the forlorn “mitherless bairns" who live in the care of Peter Pan, clad in furs, in a region haunted by fierce wolves with red eyes, by prowling Redskins and savage pirates. The interest of the play never stops. The wolves are banished by the simple and approved method of looking at them through your legs. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, to quote her full name, comes flying overhead and is mistaken for a strange white bird. The children shoot at it, and Wendy falls apparently dead with an arrow in her heart. Peter Pan arrives, and, in fierce wrath, is about to execute judgment upon the murderer, when Wendy revives; the arrow has been turned aside by the button which Peter Pan had given her as a kiss. Grief being changed to rejoicing, Wendy is adopted as the mother of the brood, they build her a house, improvising its chimney pot by the summary process of knocking the crown out of a hat of that description. The scene shifts, and we are introduced to noble Redskins and ferocious pirates, in fierce feud with each other—a feud terminating unfortunately in the discomfiture of the Redskins after a desperate battle. Then we make the acquaintance of James Hook, the terrible pirate, whose right hand has been eaten off by a monstrous crocodile, which relished it so much it has spent all its time ever since tracking down the owner of the rest of the body. The pirate, who has replaced the missing hand by a double hook," is a holy terror to all his men. He fears neither God nor man, but he is in mortal dread of the gigantic saurian, which would have eaten him long ago but for the fact that it had swallowed a clock, the ticking of which in its inside always gives the pirate warning of its approach. At last, however, Peter Pan extricates the clock and the pirate meets his doom.

This, however, is anticipating. Peter Pan, who does not understand what love is, inspires Wendy, Tink-a-Tink and Tiger Lily, the Indian Queen, with a hopeless passion. He can only interpret it by saying that they all want to be his mothers. Poor Tiger Lily courts him with unreserve, but he is faithful to Wendy. The pirates capture all the children, and the pirate chief pours poison into Peter Pan's medicine glass. Tink-a-Tink, the faithful fairy, drinks up the fatal draught to save Peter. As she is dying, Peter Pan rushes to the front, and with a genuine fervour of entreaty that brought tears to some eyes, declared that if every child in the audience would clap its hands as a sign that it really did believe in fairies, Tink-a-Tink would recover. Of course there is an 'immediate response. This profession of faith in the reality of fairies revives the dying Tink-a-Tink, and the clanging muffin bell testifies to her complete restoration to health.

Page 247: Before the children are captured by the pirates there is a delectable scene, charmingly true to life, where Wendy, the child-mother, tells stories to the children after they have gone to bed. It is simplyexquisite; the interruptions of the youngster insatiable for white rats, the exclamations of interest and approval, the naivete and earnest make-believe of the little story-teller, are absolutely true to life. The story-telling was better than the pillow fight, which might have been much more realistic, and the dancing of the boy with the pillows on his legs was hardly in keeping with the realism of the rest of the scene.

The last act brings us to the pirate ship, where the children are captive. They are about to be made to walk the plank when the cockcrow call of the adorable Peter Pan is heard within. He slays two pirates who are sent to investigate the strange noise, blows out the captain's lantern, and finally engages the pirate captain in broadsword combat. The fight becomes general. The pirates, discomfited, leap overboard, and the children crowd round the victorious Peter Pan, whom we recognise as the latest lineal descendant of Jack the Giant Killer, and who, although no braggart, is calmly complacent as he reflects upon his prowess. "Yes," he says, as he seats himself after the battle, "I am a wonder." And a wonder he is, a wonder-child of the most approved pattern.

After the restitution of the lost children to their beautiful mothers—where, by-the-bye, in harping on the mystery of twins Mr. Barry ventures perilously near forbidden ground, Peter Pan returns to his house on the tree-tops, when the curtain falls upon him and his beloved Wendy standing, like jocund day, tiptoe on the misty forest tops.

I ought not to omit to mention that the crocodile gets the pirate after all; that the dear, delightful nurse-dog reappears, and is restored to his kennel, in which Mr. Darling has been living ever since the loss of the children; and that everything is wound up satisfactorily. Only we feel sad for Tiger Lily and the heroic fairy Tink-a-Tink; but then, when three people love one boy, it is beyond the power even of a Peter Pan to make them all happy. That reflection is probably foreign to the mind of the younger spectator. Old and young enjoyed " Peter Pan," are enjoying " Peter Pan," and will, I hope, go on enjoying "Peter Pan." For as yet not decimal one per cent, of the children of the land have seen " Peter Pan," and I wish they could all see it—every one.

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roguenewsdao · 6 years

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Was Billy Graham Praying for Armageddon?

"On Saturday, February 1, 2003, I lifted my hands to begin praying and the Lord spoke to me ... I wanted to know whether the God the Father's direction was to go to war or not go to war.... The Lord said, ‘I am saying to go to war with Iraq’." - Roy A. Reinhold as quoted by F. William Engdahl

"They feel that everything from the Nile to Euphrates belongs to Greater Israel." - RM interview with Mimi al-Laham aka Syrian Girl, October 15, 2017

This past month the world mourned the death of arguably one of the most famous Evangelical preachers of the 20th century. I certainly remember him as a fixture and "spiritual advisor" to kings and presidents during my childhood. I am speaking, of course, of William Franklin Graham, Jr. He is better known as Billy Graham.

F. William Engdahl certainly remembers him too. The title of today's blog is taken from a subheading that appears in Chapter 10 of Engdahl's book "Full Spectrum Dominance - Totalitarian Democracy In The New World Order." Mr. Engdahl was good enough to share the entire chapter with his fan club. I have been wanting to talk about Christian Zionism and the "Greater Israel" agenda ever since I read Mr. Engdahl's kind gift last November [feel free to grab the PDF file here of Chapter 10].

What escapes millions of people today is the underlying belief that the British monarchy fosters about their special bloodline. Someday perhaps we'll speak about this at length, but the short story here is that the British monarchy - who, by the way, is just about the only bloodline to have survived all the other royal bloodlines of Europe - believe that they are the natural heirs and legal claimants to throne of King David and Jerusalem. Even the word "Saxon" is thought to derive from the land of Scythia which could well be where many thousands of Israelites eventually were dispersed following both the Assyrian takeover of the northern kingdom of Israel and the later Babylonian takeover of the houses of Judah and Benjamin 800 years before Christ. [See David Livingstone's research linked here.]

In season one of the Netflix series "The Crown," I hooted and hollered when the show depicted the full, ancient Jewish rituals that are associated with the coronation of the British monarch. This is well depicted in Season One, Episode Five's "Smoke And Mirrors" title. I highly recommend that you watch and pay close attention to the words uttered by the Archbishop as he alchemically "transforms" the woman Elizabeth into a deity. Yes, that is what they believe and the script of the episode makes this abundantly clear.

In season two of the series, the entirety of episode six revolved around the Queen's fascination with the Billy Graham crusade and his visit to London. She requests a private audience with the holy man because she is wrestling with what to do with her favorite but disgraced uncle, the abdicated and former King Edward VIII, a notorious Nazi sympathizer.

Now, what the entire series "The Crown" as well as every other pro-British-monarchy drama will never, ever reveal to you is that the heart and soul of pretty much all Illuminati Secret Societies in Europe is this agenda they have to thwart God's choice for ruler of the throne of David and, instead, seat their own choice. Their choice for Messiah and King has been engineered to bleed some very - uhh - shall we say, "interesting" DNA through his veins. This belief that they hold dear is the cause of every war that has been fought since the fall of Rome and is even running as a prime motivating force behind the "Singularity" human-hybrid civilization that is currently being imposed on you.

So I just had to roll my eyes when I saw the true-life encounter of Billy Graham with the current holy grail of the bloodline, Queen Elizabeth II, back in 1955 depicted in the popular Netflix series. Then came along Rogue Money friend and highly respected researcher, F. William Engdahl. What Mr. Engdahl has to say about Billy Graham and other men of his ilk, religious leaders like Jerry Falwell, needs to be broadcast far and wide. You will never understand the motivation behind the coming battle in the Middle East until you understand how mainstream organized religion in America has been used as a staunch and loyal tool to bring it about.

Rapture Theology and the 'Greater Israel'

In Chapter 10 of his book cited above, Engdahl reminds us that the popular Evangelical concept of a coming Rapture is a relatively recent teaching dating back only as far as the 1850's. Oh, yes, they did find a single passage in the Bible on which to build the idea. How better to secure a popular base for your warmongering agenda than to take advantage of the public's devotion to sacred scripture? It's the ol' Problem-->Reaction-->Solution formula, in play, again.

In the mid-19th century, John Nelson Darby, a renegade Irish priest of the Church of Ireland, created the idea of "the Rapture" as he founded a new brand of Christian Zionism. His invented doctrine promoted the idea that "Born-Again Christians" would be taken up to Heaven before the second coming of Christ—their "rapture." Darby also put Israel at the heart of his strange new theology, claiming that an actual Jewish state of Israel would become the "central instrument for God to fulfill his plans for a final Battle of Armageddon."

Keep in mind the political and financial history of that time period. The West has just come through a period of anti-monarchist revolution. City of London and Amsterdam banksters are firmly in control of a vast planet-wide economy. Half the authority over armies and treasuries now sits in the hands of elected Parliamentarians, not Kings. The other half, whether that be pertinent to the ruling body of the UK or that of the USA, sits in the hands of Lords or Senators whose loyalty is given to the Banksters. Therefore, to control those armies and treasuries, you simply need to control the thinking and the voice of the proletariat.

In a world where The People still generally regard the Bible as authoritative, nobody directs their thinking better than the voice of the Clergy. Engdahl goes on to write:

Christian Zionists like Reverend Jerry Falwell and Rev. Pat Robertson could be traced back to a project of British Secret Intelligence services and the British establishment to use the Zion ideology to advance Empire and power in North America. American Christian Zionists in the period of American Empire in the 1950’s and later, merely adopted this ideology and gave it an American name.

These American Christian Zionists, just below the surface, preached a religion quite opposite to the message of love and charity of the Jesus of the New Testament. In fact, it was a religion of hate, intolerance and fanaticism. The soil it bred in was the bitter race hatreds of the post-Civil War US South held by generations of whites against blacks and, ironically, against Catholics and Jews as ‘inferior’ races. Their religion was the religion of a coming Final Battle of Armageddon, of a Rapture in which the elect would be swept up to Heaven while the ‘infidels’ would die in mutual slaughter.

Do you see the Hegelian Dialectic in play? "The soil it bred in was the bitter race hatreds of the post-Civil War" South. That's how this works. You keep two polar opposites grinding at each other. Out of their conflict, a new path arises. Then you wash-rinse-repeat the cycle again.

Therefore, out of this period arose charismatic preachers like Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and others. Either wittingly or unwittingly, these leaders served the needs of that Babylonian Priesthood who is steadily moving an ancient football down the field toward a goal of ultimate one world government. The Priesthood has no qualms about hijacking sacred scripture and twisting their own blueprint of power out of it.

Regarding Billy Graham's son, Franklin, who also became a preacher in his own right, Engdahl goes on to say:

Echoing the anti-Islam fervor of Falwell and Robertson, Rev. Franklin Graham, son of the famous Christian evangelist and Bush family friend, Reverend Billy Graham, declared after September 11 that Islam was “a very evil and wicked religion.” The large US Southern Baptist Convention’s former President, Jerry Vines, called the Prophet Mohammed the most vile names imaginable. It was all about stirring Americans in a time of fear into hate against the Islamic world, in order to rev up Bush’s War on Terror.

Graham, who controlled an organization known as the Samaritan Purse, was a close religious adviser to George W. Bush. In 2003 Graham got permission from the US occupation authorities to bring his Evangelical anti-Islam form of Christianity into Iraq to win “converts” to his fanatical brand of Christianity.

According to author Grace Halsell, Christian Zionists believed that “every act taken by Israel is orchestrated by God, and should be condoned, supported, and even praised by the rest of us.” It was all beginning to sound far too much like a new Holy Crusade against more than one billion followers of the Islamic faith.

I would add to Engdahl's last comment there about a "Holy Crusade against more than one billion followers of the Islamic faith" to include also the adherents of Jewish faith. In fact, during the 1970's, Billy Graham got caught in the revelations of the infamous "Nixon Tapes" and was even accused of being anti-Semitic [linked here]. I know that this is a point that many people struggle to come to terms with: how can an a person be pro-Zionist and yet anti-Semitic at the same time?

The answer leads you to the very heart of the global network of secret societies. The key to reconciling such an apparent oxymoron is to realize that this entity that I refer to so often, this Babylonian Priesthood, sees itself as supra-human and actively in communion with supernatural beings or their human-hybrid avatars. When you look at the western history of the 19th and 20th centuries, it is easy to see how the Zionist agenda of British leaders like Lord Palmerston and documents like the Balfour Declaration were all stepping stones whose path has been carefully directed down to our day, a Sabbatean path whose cause has been somewhat gullibly supported by the powerful American "Bible Belt" puppets to wipe out anybody in the Middle East, Jews and Muslims alike, who gets in the way of the Priesthood.

To bring our discussion full circle and firmly cement it in the roots of that Babylonian Priesthood network, I'll present below another section from Engdahl's Chapter 10 to summarize the role that Freemasonry and Christian Zionism have played in moving that Priesthood's bloodthirsty anti-human manifesto forward.

Mr. Engdahl included a section in Chapter 10 entitled "Bush, Christian Zion and Freemasonry." Here are a few of his points:

A most difficult area to illuminate regarding American relations to right-wing Israeli Zionists and the ties between Israel and Christian Zionists such as Jerry Falwell, Rev. Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Gary Bauer and other US backers of the Right-wing Israeli Likud policies, was the role of international esoteric freemasonry.

Freemasonry has been defined as a secret or occult society which conceals its goals even from most of its own members, members who often are recruited naively as lower level members, unaware they are being steered from behind the curtains. The most powerful Freemasonic Order in the United States is believed to be the Supreme Council of the Scottish Rite, or the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, with its world headquarters now in Washington, DC....

There was a special role played by one of the two major branches of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry....The Scottish Rite enjoyed an active branch in Israel, even though it was nominally a Christian society. It spoke of its tradition going back to ‘the early masons who built King Salomon’s [sic] Temple.’ The fact that American Christian Zionists typically were concentrated in the South and came from the similar white racist strata as the Scottish Rite, and that they actively backed the Israeli fanatics who seek to rebuild the Third Temple of Salomon at the site of the sacred Al Aqsa Mosque and thereby ignite the Final Battle of Armageddon cannot be coincidence. All evidence suggested that the Jewish advocates of destroying Al Aqsa and rebuilding the Temple of Salomon there were being supported by the Scottish Rite masons in the United States and Britain.

Indeed, there was circumstantial evidence that much of the organized American Christian Right that backs Israeli right-wing policies was secretly backed by Scottish Rite masonry. The Southern Baptist Convention recently had a heated debate over allegations that some 500,000 of their members were also masons, reportedly most Scottish Rite. The Southern Baptist organization is well-known for its racial hatred of blacks. Cecil Rhodes, the man who was backed by Rothschild to create the mining empire of South Africa was a Scottish Rite member as was Lord Palmerston, also himself a British Israelite.

That, in a nutshell, is how you connect the dots between the the 17th century rise of the Rothschilds at the same time that the Illuminati, Rosicrucians, Jesuits, Sabbateans, and Freemasons were growing in power, and the modern-day Hegelian Dialectic opposition of Liberal Leftists and Conservative Rightists.

Satanism Boils Down to Lying

The takeaway of this blog is to show that there are hundreds of people who, either knowingly or unknowingly, have allowed themselves to be used as pawns by that Babylonian Priesthood. The Priesthood is actively promoting a vast deception. Millions of people have fallen under the spell of belief that they are the "chosen" who will be commuting to heaven. The cruel joke is that the Priesthood sees itself as the "chosen" who alone have the right to affix themselves to the heavenly realms of supernatural beings. By directing these charismatic leaders and their flocks to publicly "evangelize" that belief, the Priesthood has now verbalized the spell in order to effect its realization, a very Kabbalistic notion.

What the flock doesn't see is that the perpetuation of this spell is designed to lead themselves to a slaughter that likely will emanate from the territory of the 'Greater Israel' that Syrian Girl referenced in the opening quotation of this blog. When Jesus Christ walked the earth, he openly faced the agents of that Priesthood who even at that time exercised great influence over that same territory. Christ clearly exposed the root of their agenda. "You are from your father the Devil, and you wish to do the desires of your father. That one was a murderer when he began, and he did not stand fast in the truth, because truth is not in him," was the clear declaration that Christ broadcast in public. (John 8:44).

(Bill Graham, a long time spiritual advisor to President Nixon, delivered the eulogy at Nixon's funeral on April 27, 1994. And yet, according to the recent @DarkJournalist interview with Bob Merritt, the only men that Nixon trusted were Merritt and Kissinger - not Graham?)

It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out that if an institution is actively perpetuating a lie that will leads millions of people into a bloody war, then that institution is not aligned with the principles of Christianity. People often think of "Satanism" as referencing those dark ugly rituals of sex orgies and child sacrifices. To be sure, factions within those secret societies mentioned above are indeed participating in those acts. But Christ's definition of "Satanism" was much more broad: any ideology that promotes a deception and the murder of humankind is just as much a component of "Satanism" as the more obvious abhorrent practices.

In the next blog this week, I will include comments by W. The Intelligence Insider that speak to his opinion that the New World Order thugs are very much on track for launching that slaughter. #NoMoreSecretSocieties !

My Twitter contact information is found at my billboard page of SlayTheBankster.com. Listen to my radio show, Bee In Eden, on Youtube via my show blog at SedonaDeb.wordpress.com.

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djzena · 7 years

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11 Spooky, Obscure Halloween Songs For Your Retro Costume Get together

Unlike the winter holidays of Christmas, Hannukkah, Kwanzaa, and the Solstice, which seem to abound with music both sacred and secular, the musical traditions of Halloween fall flat. I will admit to simply skimming the preious entries, so please forgive me if somebody already talked about Mike Smith's Panther in Michigan. Completely adorable assortment of amazing comic interpretations of traditional nursery rhymes. Frankly, Carpenter's iconic theme for the basic horror movie could also be confirmation that a tune is definitely more horrifying when there's nothing but a plinking piano melody in the background. When youngsters dance they are more prone to making mates and constructing their socialization skills. Depending on the variety of kids you could have and the area you will have this can be accomplished in numerous ways. The final will consist of six entries that, through 50/50 public televoting and jury voting, can be shortened to a top 2, successful entry will probably be determined by the ‘gold closing' through which the highest two entries in the last will battle it out for the title of Iceland's 2017 Eurovision entry, determined by public tele-voting. Please be happy to incorporate some other Halloween celebration tunes within the feedback section below that you will have in your playlist this year! Howdytoons brings you one of the best music videos and cartoons for youths together with Dinostory, Halloween Songs and Rock'n'Rainbow. The Unique Nursery Rhymes - Learn aloud to family and friends well-known nursery rhymes and songs, reminiscent of Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater, Jack and Jill, and Outdated King Cole. Use the songs to teach Halloween based mostly classes and other ideas such as counting, sharing, feelings, elements of the physique, and extra! EFL/ESL Songs And Actions - This resource presents lyrics (and in some instances sound clips) so as to use music and games to show English as second language. Characters from nursery rhymes, like Old King Cole, Humpty Dumpty, or Mom Goose herself are Public Domain Characters that may function in all types of works.

We have followed Mother Goose's lead, including riddle rhymes as part of our weekly instruction. Opening with ominous bells, the mushy falling of rain and, finally, a bloodcurdling scream, Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting” instantly units the temper for an uneasy Halloween night time, kicked into excessive gear with the relentless pummeling of the drums, an ominous, gothic bass line, and haunting vocals courtesy of chief Johnette Napolitano. There has been some debate in regards to the racial message on the heart of this nursery rhyme (a couple elementary schools in 2011 changed the lyrics with Baa, Baa Rainbow Sheep”), however most students agree that the rhyme has to do with the Great Custom tax on wool from 1275. To begin this listing, I selected one in every of Rihanna's songs from Good Woman Gone Bad: Reloaded album. To preview and buy music from Halloween Songs & Sounds by Various Artists, obtain iTunes now. The video is a horror film in short, with zombies, corpses, and an extreme quantity of near bare ladies. I can safely say that before a couple of days ago, I had by no means really listened to the tune in its entirety or given the lyrics any thought in any way. A dancey little quantity that tells the tale of the narrator changing into undead to be together with his lady for a Halloween get together in contrast to any one before. That includes Nicki Minaj, Jay-Z and Rick Ross in addition to Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, it is a beast of a Halloween music lauded by critics and placed at number 53 in NME's Finest Tracks of the past 15 years. Advised in clean-as-silk rhyming textual content, a witch and various pals prepare for a party on Halloween night time, readying their haunted house for the trick-or-treaters who, as soon as they get a glimpse, flee in fright! There are eight different versions of this cute Halloween bingo card that you may get free of charge over at Crazy Little Tasks. Halloween songs for kids must be more upbeat, like Monster Mash” by Bobby Boris” Picket. Hardly a bone-chilling Halloween ditty, but it could turn your costume party into an all-out sing-alongside. Where to Find It: José-Luis Orozco's version (proven above) is great, though there are numerous videos on YouTube with Spanish lyrics and pictures to assist children follow alongside. To see all of the songs on the Halloween Songs for Circle Time Playlist click on the playlist button within the upper left-hand corner. IS THE TUNE ABOUT SOMETHING SCARY?: It is about being a nonconformist, which is only scary for conformists. Like Alice Cooper, this had some rock royalty guesting on it - Mick Fleetwood and John McVie of Fleetwood Mac carried out drums and bass duties respectively. As soon as they do, although, his lyrics rapidly fire up pictures of bats, undead souls, witches with capes and, after all, murder that fit perfectly alongside any Halloween-like setting. Instead, the rhymes were steeped with political and satirical messages, created in such a way to confuse the authorities listening; thus, preventing legal or different backlash. It is Halloween is a picture book written by Jack Prelutsky and illustrated by Marylin Hafner, revealed in 1977. So this track is finished by the rock group The Blue Oyster Cult and it made its debut in 1976. This track was created by the well-known composer Danny Elfman and it is safe to say that it is perfect for Halloween. For those seeking to have fun this Halloween weekend without getting all dressed up have a look beneath on the upcoming occasions that may entertain households and associates. One other tune that includes some oldschool dance strikes and definitely one to be performed is the Monster Mash. Halloween was apparently influenced by the Celts in England, or by the Irish and Scots in the United States. The songs, poems, quotes and greetings are only a reflection of that, what your children feel and think about the holiday. Maybe more despairing and disillusioned than creepy, but still certain to make any celebration really feel like a horror movie. Even inexperienced persons can play this free Halloween music by watching the intervals carefully. The poster boys for Submit-Punk existentialism, Pleasure Division virtually invented the goth subculture thanks to their gloomy lyrics and disconnected, often otherworldly melodies. A few months in the past i attempted to get the Heffalumps and Woozles track and itunes didnt have it on right here. Encourage them to do the identical, i.e. repeat the rhymes after you in a fun and rhythmic tone. Whereas he by no means goes full bore wailer like he would on different 50s horror movie impressed songs , there's enough edge in his voice to know he is not messing round. The Antrobus Soulcakers Track is sung at first of the Greenman Mummers Souling Play on YouTube. This piece has a haunting ingredient to it. Nonetheless, it's a wonderful addition to Halloween musical accompaniment that's been utilized in countless films, TELEVISION reveals, commercials, and different media.

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peterpanquotes1 · 5 years

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The Review of Reviews: First Impressions of the Theater, 1905

Before describing my impressions of either, I must make a passing note of the reviving popularity of Shakespeare — and of Shaw. “John Bull's Other Island” has been so popular at the Court Theatre last month in the afternoons, that an Irish peer told me he had in vain attempted to book a scat. “House full” in the afternoon has encouraged the experiment of a series of evening performances. In time we may see this delightful play making the tour of the provinces. It is not the only play of Mr. Shaw's that has been performed last month. We have had the sequel to “Candida” at the Court, and “The Philanderer” in the City. Shaw stock is looking up.

But this is as nothing to the run on Shakespeare. Last month three of Shakespeare's plays were performed every night at three of the most popular theatres. "Much Ado About Nothing" has succeeded "The Tempest" at His Majesty's Theatre. "The Taming of the Shrew " still attracts crowds to the Adelphi; and Mr. Lewis Waller has revived "Henry V." at the Imperial. Besides these runs, the heroic and indefatigable Benson has played Shakespeare twice a day at the Coronet Theatre, Notting Hill, where the London public have had an opportunity of seeing "Macbeth," "King Lear," " Richard II," and "The Comedy of Errors." It is a long time since the sovereignty supreme of the King by right divine of the drama was simultaneously acclaimed on so many London stages. May this be an augury of better things to come!

When Peter Pan tells Wendy that it is quite easy to fly she wakes her brothers, and the three kiddies make desperate and at first unsuccessful efforts to imitate Peter's flight backwards and forwards across the room. At last they master the secret, and one after another, the children fly out of the window and disappear. They are off to the Never Never Never Land, where little Wendy becomes the mother of the forlorn “mitherless bairns" who live in the care of Peter Pan, clad in furs, in a region haunted by fierce wolves with red eyes, by prowling Redskins and savage pirates. The interest of the play never stops. The wolves are banished by the simple and approved method of looking at them through your legs. Wendy Moira Angela Darling, to quote her full name, comes flying overhead and is mistaken for a strange white bird. The children shoot at it, and Wendy falls apparently dead with an arrow in her heart. Peter Pan arrives, and, in fierce wrath, is about to execute judgment upon the murderer, when Wendy revives; the arrow has been turned aside by the button which Peter Pan had given her as a kiss. Grief being changed to rejoicing, Wendy is adopted as the mother of the brood, they build her a house, improvising its chimney pot by the summary process of knocking the crown out of a hat of that description. The scene shifts, and we are introduced to noble Redskins and ferocious pirates, in fierce feud with each other — a feud terminating unfortunately in the discomfiture of the Redskins after a desperate battle. Then we make the acquaintance of James Hook, the terrible pirate, whose right hand has been eaten off by a monstrous crocodile, which relished it so much it has spent all its time ever since tracking down the owner of the rest of the body. The pirate, who has replaced the missing hand by a double hook," is a holy terror to all his men. He fears neither God nor man, but he is in mortal dread of the gigantic saurian, which would have eaten him long ago but for the fact that it had swallowed a clock, the ticking of which in its inside always gives the pirate warning of its approach. At last, however, Peter Pan extricates the clock and the pirate meets his doom.

Before the children are captured by the pirates there is a delectable scene, charmingly true to life, where Wendy, the child-mother, tells stories to the children after they have gone to bed. It is simplyexquisite; the interruptions of the youngster insatiable for white rats, the exclamations of interest and approval, the naivete and earnest make-believe of the little story-teller, are absolutely true to life. The story-telling was better than the pillow fight, which might have been much more realistic, and the dancing of the boy with the pillows on his legs was hardly in keeping with the realism of the rest of the scene.

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