John, I'm only blogging....

I wrote about Matthew Cissell back in July. Matt had given a shout out to LoS in advance of a lecture he gave for International Pynchon Week. He'd written us to see if we could make contact with Tod Perry, a poet and Cornell alum who'd been a friend of Thomas Pynchon, and who we'd interviewed about Cornell in the late 50s (here).

His interest was a reference Tod made to a NYC "salon" hosted by Hans and Greta Meyerhof. That's the difference between real scholars and amateurs like us. Matt immediately saw the importance of the salon, we just kind of let it pass.  But in a way, that's our role.

Cissell has published his doctoral thesis:  Arc of the Absent Author: Thomas Pynchon's Trajectory from Entropy to Grace (full pdf). He cites LoS in several footnotes and very generously acknowledges our interview.  I really appreciated the following:

By way of introduction to this section I must start by saying first that research on Pynchon would not be what it is if it were only left to academics and their shelves of primary and secondary sources. Indeed it is my experience that many non-academics contribute a great deal to work on Pynchon and that is where one may still find new avenues to investigate; as such it is no surprise to find that many Pynchon scholars keep
an eye on the Pynchon list serve and other webpages that may offer new information. In fact that is how I learned about an interesting couple that Pynchon and his Cornell friends used to visit in New York.

It came to my attention that there was a blog called “Laws of Silence” that was investigating some photos related to Pynchon at Cornell and possibly including him.... (p. 113)

He then goes on to describe how we'd made him aware of the Meyerhof salon and put him in contact with Tod Perry.

I know it's not a super big deal, but it's rewarding to have been able to help Pynchon scholarship in even this small way. I'm glad Cissell recognizes the value of what we do. We're not academics or journalists, but we do something akin to both. Personally, I've written poetry, fiction, journalism and theater....and maintained this blog for years. I always just thought of myself as a "writer," but maybe I shouldn't be so hesitant to assume the mantle of "blogger." If not for those pesky connotations!

Plus, not all of my work is on the blog. I'm really into the physicality of things, the written word as an object, or in a manuscript.  Concrete poetry (or not) in a concrete medium.

In the end, perhaps it's all just much ado. The real goal here is, on one hand, to thank Cissell, but also recognize his appreciation for an oft-mocked medium: the blog. I write novels and poetry, but my most frequent outlet is here. It's humble, but we do have a small audience, and some posts have made small impacts; that is just what we intended. "Micro-history," small details, tempests in teapots.

And I've even made a buck or two. I don't do it for that, but it's part of the deal. I've made money blogging (very little), with journalism, and a novella.  I would write regardless, but I've often thought of this Stephen King quote whenever I catch myself being pretentious:

“If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented.”

I would add being cited in a doctoral thesis is well, maybe not a sign of talent, but that one has, at the very least, something to say worth citing. And that may be a tautology. Who cares? We're only bloggers....

Isidore Ducasse

Possible photo of Ducasse; provenance: Dazet family

 

Portrait imaginaire de Lautréamont par Félix Vallotton,  1898

L'Enigme d'Isidore Ducasse, Man Ray, 1920

The Magic Number

It's rather meta, posting a screenshot of the stats of a previous post, but for all you Associationalists out there, you'll see why it's here pretty quickly....

"You Maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you! God damn you all to hell!"

I sorta kinda wrote about the Georgia Guidestones in 2010.

Old news now, but someone finally blew them up back in July. Locals seem kind of bummed: 

"My initial reaction was heartbreak and anger, frustration.  And I think that's consistent with the community's reaction."  Elberton Mayor Daniel Graves.

Lots of (if not most) articles about the Guidestones play up the anonymity of the person who originally funded the monument. Seems like a Rosicrucian group cuz the mysterious stranger who ordered them called himself RC Christian....subtle. 

The principles engraved upon it are also not inconsistent with Rosicrucian ideas.

The contact was not actually named RC Cola Christian, but Herbert Hinie Kersten, and was a doctor from Fort Dodge, Iowa.  Apparently a fan of David Duke and an outspoken racist who, in addition to financing mysterious monuments, sought to make a definitive scale to show how Whites are the superior race.

The Guidestones have a generally decent message.  Except the population control measures which evoke culling.  That Daisy David Duke support makes that one a bit more chilling.  

Common Sense Renewed, a book intended to explain the Guidestones, is said to describe a eugenics program to keep humanity going in the future.  So, wariness of the stones is not unwarranted.

Was Kersten representing a racist group, or was it a hobby horse of his alone?

Was he alone, or did he represent a group of "Perfectibilists," as the Illuminati called themselves.  A group of sages directing society behind the scenes:  Rosicrucians, Masons, Illuminists?  Secret Chiefs?  An underground stream?  Or a series of ponds?

So someone blowed 'em up.  And the remaining slabs were then demolished.  

Elberton should have kept them, and let the destruction serve as a monument to ignorance.  Fence them up at night to protect them.  Locals are worried about the lost tourist dollars.  Another reason to keep them.  Not just lucre, but as a "fuck you" to those who blew them up.  Leave what's remaining, and the rubble.  Erect a life-sized panel facsimile of the destroyed stone.  Despite some weird ideas and sketchy financing, it was an interesting monument.  At noon each day the sun used to shine through a hole onto that day's date.  It was a functioning solar calendar and clock.

Alas.  Turning destruction into history.  Too late to make lemonade from these lemons.

I've written a lot about the Temple de Sagesse Suprème, the so-called "Illuminati Pyramid" of Blagnac (a suburb of Toulouse).  They tagged and damaged that too.  Hard time to be an esoteric monument.

But we've written about the destruction of monuments before.  In the end, it's a testament to the power of public art as much as public ignorance....see The Politics of Removal for our take on it.

What is it with Georgia and cwazy cupcakes? Walker, Green, and Kandiss Taylor, who wrote:

“I am the ONLY candidate bold enough to stand up to the Luciferian Cabal,” Taylor wrote on social media app Telegram after releasing her video.

Taylor actually promised to blow them up.  Someone did it for her!  She denied involvement when the destruction occurred. 

BTW, here are the Guidestones' injunctions, originally engraved in 8 languages:  English, Spanish, Swahili, 

Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, Traditional Chinese, and Russian.

Easy to see how this was seen as a kind of NWO blueprint, or some kind of Utopian scheme proposed by Rosicrucians.

• Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.

• Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.

• Unite humanity with a living new language.

• Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.

• Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.

• Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.

• Avoid petty laws and useless officials.

• Balance personal rights with social duties.

• Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.

• Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature.

Georgia on My Mind

Update October 27:  "Herschel Walker is a hypocrite and he is not fit to be a U.S. senator."

Second woman says Ga. Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker paid for abortion (NPR)  

BTW, even National Review has written that the first claim is "almost certainly true."

Grab 'em by the....

from The Atlantic: Herschel Walker’s Candidacy Is Just Insulting:

Until this week, Christian [Walker's son] had appeared to earnestly support Walker even after revelations that he had fathered two more children than he had publicly disclosed and that he had lied about working in law enforcement, his academic record at the University of Georgia, and his business success. Christian appeared at an early campaign event for his father even though his mother, Cindy Grossman, had told ABC News in 2008 that when she and Walker were married, he’d pointed a gun at her head.

Oh yeah, Walker also paid for one abortion and urged his girlfriend to have another, yet is campaigning as a strict "pro-lifer" forced birther. Liar.  Hypocrite. And ignorant. A incompetence trifecta.

Walker on China putting fluoride in our water supply corrupting our air:  

“Do you know we don’t control this air?  No matter how much money we put in controlling our air, it goes over to China or to somewhere else, and it messes it up. All of a sudden, it comes back over here. All we’re doing is spending money.”

It messes it up.

Let's face it, Walker is a barely coherent hypocrite, and, yeah, I'll go there, a token, a pawn for rich, white people using him to show how not racist they are, while adding a malleable vote for Team MAGA.  He's an embarrassment to Georgia and the nation.  But not the GOP!  His Democrat opponent is also African-American, with a proven track-record.  And I know why people who dig Walker don't dig Raphael Warnock; his education:

Warnock graduated from Sol C. Johnson High School in 1987, and, having wanted to follow in the footsteps of Martin Luther King Jr., attended Morehouse College, from which he graduated cum laude in 1991 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology. He credits his participation in the Upward Bound program for making him college-ready, as he was able to enroll in early college courses through Savannah State University. He then earned Master of Divinity, Master of Philosophy, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from Union Theological Seminary, a school affiliated with Columbia University.

I think it's safe to say today, the GOP's base is leery of people with too many degrees.  Universities are seen as bastions of left-wing radicalism.  Obama they didn't like because he seemed too professorial, as if he was talking down to us.  They loved that Bush had a tendency to mangle his sentences.  Despite the fact he's a teetotaler, I think it was during the Bush/Gore election he was chosen in a poll as the guy those asked would most want to share a beer with (with whom they'd most like to share a beer?)  I think a lot of people find those who use "whom" suspect.  I was once sneered at as being "some kind of college boy" for using the word "ludicrous" in a small dispute. 

I'm sure there's a racial component in the animus towards Warnock or Obama for some people.  I don't want to say that everyone who was leery of Obama hated that an African-American guy was so educated.  But to think there aren't people who dislike him for his eloquence, intelligence and academic record would be as naive as to suggest all of his antagonists are somehow racist.  Sadly, I think it's basically the old antipathy for the "uppity negro." I'm sorry to offend by using the expression, but what's really offensive is the attitude to which it refers. 

I think part of Walker's appeal are the very things that people who want serious and effective governance find so ridiculous; he's a party-line parrot with enough charisma to pull off a viable campaign.  His tenuous grasp on subjects such as air quality is really just folksy charm.  Bonus that he's African-American, as is the incumbent.  It reduces a lot of the extra weight from the racial baggage in the South.  That both candidates are black, in a state like Georgia, is a step in the right direction, especially given the state's large African-American population.  Atlanta is a very important part of African-American "psychogeography."

But the Walker revelations mentioned in The Atlantic don't seem to have affected the polls one iota.  In my opinion, I think this joke of a candidate doesn't even deserve to be elected village fence-watcher, but the GOP is shameless, and will pull any stunt and put any dunce up for election, no matter how stupid, bat-shit crazy, or ignorant.  As long as they can get elected and help create a GOP majority, so the big boys can play around and wreak more havoc on this country than they did from '16 to '20 with that ridiculous, piss-bathing, bloviating turd I won't even deign to name.  Imagine if the turd made a comeback?

For shame.  Georgia, if you elect this nitwit, you deserve all the incompetence headed your way.  Plenty of you are buying this Super Gulp of snake oil....you already elected the heinously hateful Marjorie Taylor Greene, just how much lower are you aiming?

Call the Guinness Book, I think a record is being set for "Largest shit smear on the idea of democracy" in history.  Except for Hitler maybe.  He was elected, innit?  

(BTW, that "shit-smear" isn't specifically Walker, but Greene, Boebert Gosar, Palin....along with the whole atavistic crew of "slap-your-head in disbelief" candidates the GOP has managed to get elected.) 

Heck, MJT loves comparing opponents to Nazis.  Legally-required vaccines? Nein! MJT nearly blew a gasket...acted like Fauci was advocating racial purity tests in order to shop at Wal-Mart.  So, yeah, I'll invoke lil' 'Dolphy, as we liberals so affectionately call out Dear Leader, that is, if Lucifer isn't around.

And I know that all this is ridiculous and is as "See Dick Run" is to Shakespeare, satire-wise.  About the same relationship MJT and Walker are to legitimate politicians.

Enough with know-nothings and wearing ignorance like a badge of honor.  I want smarty-pants professors, educated people, eggheads, and intellectuals in office.  Call me crazy.  I'm tired of listening to politicians dumber than I am; because to be frank (as opposed to Bill or John),  I ain't very clever to start with....

The choice is clear....

Tamám Shud

The Somerton Man, Post-Mortem

WRGOABABD

MLIAOI
WTBIMPANETP
x
MLIABOAIAQC
ITTMTSAMSTGAB

Perhaps we can add WTF?

It's 1948. The Second World War has ended, but the Cold War is just beginning. The Spectre of Communism has begun haunting Europe in earnest.  Anyone, anywhere could be a spy.....

"Have you no sense of decency, sir?"

In 1948, a John Doe was found lying on Somerton Beach, a suburb of Adelaide, Australia, propped up against the rocks like a man taking a nap, perhaps recovering from a night on the town.  Or lying down to watch the sea as his life slipped away. 

Many seemingly strange details about the Somerton Man have caused many people to speculate that the man was a spy.  No labels on his clothes, some of which were determined to be American.  An unused train ticket.  No ID.  Well-shaven.  The body of an athlete or a dancer.  A strange code linked to a rolled up pîece of paper found in a hidden pocket.

His suitcase was found 6 weeks later at the local train station. Which turned up more clues that led nowhere.  It contained the usual stuff:  slippers, extra clothes, etc.  But there was also "an electrician's screwdriver; a table knife cut down into a short sharp instrument; a pair of scissors with sharpened points....and a stencilling brush."  (This quote and the basic story comes from Wikipedia, but I have read a lot of articles, and there really are a lot out there.)

Somerton Man's tools....

A few weeks after his death a police inspector found a rolled up scrap of paper in a hidden pocket sewn into Mr. Somerton's pants.  It is printed with the expression "Tamám Shud."

Someone pointed out that this is the final phrase from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám and translated from Persian means "It is ended."  The end, basically.  It was a popular book at the time. I myself have a copy dating from about the same year as the Somerton edition.  My grandmother's, I believe.  It was translated by Edward Fitzgerald in the 1860s and still seems to be a popular and respected translation.  Many early translations of other books haven't aged so well.  Most translations of the roughly contemporary Les Chants de Maldoror by Franco-Uruguayan Isidore Ducasse (as Le comte de Lautréamont) are lambasted by translator Alexis Lykiard.  No holds barred.  I don't have my copy at hand (just moved) but I've never seen a translator speak so harshly about the work of others.  And the example he cites justify words like "travesty".

Wild, wild, world, because a few weeks later, the very same copy of the book from which the phrase was torn, turned up; the scrap found on Somerton matched where it had been torn from this copy.  It had been tossed onto the back seat of someone's car. The book, oddly, had been found 10 days before Somerton's body was discovered. That, to me, is very strange. If he tossed the book into the car, why didn't anyone report seeing him in the ten days he was in the area? Could it indicate he wasn't the one who'd tossed the book?  Could it indicate Somerton was murdered and the scrap of paper was placed in the hidden pocket?  If it was Somerton, what was he up to in the ten days after he tossed the book and died on the beach?  Maybe the guy who found it had a wonky memory of when it was found.  

The random (?) letters which start this post were found scribbled in the book, along with a phone number. Amateur sleuths have attempted to decrypt the letters as if it were a code, and some think one would need a specific book to solve the cipher.  But 'til now, nothing has been made of them.  Others say it was probably just his way of keeping track of the horse races, or something equally banal.  Why horses?  Easy, the man recently identified as Mr. Somerton was keen on the races.

Code....or shopping list?

The phone number led to a nurse, Jessica Thompson, who lived half a kilometer from where Mr. Somerton was found. She was brought in to see the death mask that had been made. She claimed not to know the man, but was apparently clearly upset when she saw the plaster cast, to the point one man present thought she might faint.  It could be that she was upset at seeing the visage of a dead man.  But she was a nurse and might be expected to know how to deal with death.  Plus, her number was in the book.  Maybe Mr. Somerton didn't write it.  

But, dig this. The woman's daughter thinks her mum was lying and knew the man. Mum, you see, spoke Russian, but was cagey about how, when, and why she'd learned it. Mum also apparently told the daughter she did know Somerton but lied to the police because it was "not at their level." Is the daughter lying? Was mum? Was either telling the truth? Dead people tell no tales....All these details make tales of espionage more credible but more importantly, prove nothing.

Said nurse also had a son, Robin Thompson.  A professional dancer.  Of course. Remember Somerton had legs some described developed like a dancer's.  Somerton also had a rare ear configuration found in 1 to 2% of the caucasian population.  He also had hypodontia, a rare genetic disorder affecting the teeth, found in about 2% of the general population.  Guess what, Jessica's son, the dancer, had both conditions, which experts say is up to a 1 in 10 or 20 million shot, coincidence-wise.

Maybe the reconstruction was made to resemble the nurse's son, but they do resemble each other....

So, Somerton has the number of a woman living 400m away from where died, who nearly faints upon seeing his death mask. Somerton had a dancer's legs and two rare conditions affecting his teeth and ears. The woman's son is a dancer with the very same rare features of the teeth and ears.  The woman speaks Russian, was interested in Communism, and according to her daughter, lied to the police about knowing Somerton because it was "above their pay-grade".  Weird stuff.

What's even weirder is that a researcher found Robin's daughter and was able to test her DNA, and found that Robin was NOT related to Somerton. How weird is it that a woman who some say clearly knew Somerton had a son who shared so many rare features with him, yet the son wasn't his?  This woman spoke Russian and had an interest in Communism.  Whose own daughter thinks she was lying?  There are so many made-for-TV intersections which suggest espionage that -- truth being stranger than fiction -- probably are in fact just coincidences....

Somerton may have been a spy, but many of the seemingly strange details can also be explained more prosaically. I have nothing profound to add to the case by way of speculation, but like many others, I find it a compelling mystery, quite sad. The man was no bum. He was well-dressed, clean-shaven, and had a thing for poetry. But the anonymity of his death, alone on a beach, probably by suicide, well, it's sad.  At what point did this man's life go off the rails....and why?  

If you accept the spy theory, perhaps he was murdered. He was poisoned by digitalis. I don't know if the Soviets in 1948 were as keen on poisoning people as the Kremlin has been under the Putin regime, but heck, it's not inconsistent.  If true, he didn't spend all of his final hours alone....so with whom?

When I found out about this story, I was kind of obsessed for a few days.  I got turned on to it by recent developments which perhaps reveal the man's identity. 

The Wikipedia article and the following video pretty much sum up the case.  The latest theory is that this man was named Carl Webb, an electrical engineer who'd abandoned his wife a year prior to his death.

People turn up dead every day. Not sure why this case from decades ago still strikes me so much....Carl Webb was apparently one of six children. He had an estranged wife. This case was a sensation at the time, and no one who knew him heard about it?  Or came forward to identify the body?  Possible.  I suppose Australia in 1948 was still fairly wild and woolly.  Like the US, very big with lots of small towns dotting large, open spaces.  Radio and telephones existed, but not the internet, no computerized databases, and TV wasn't introduced in Australia until 1956.   Still, there were a lot more newspapers filled with photographs.  No one filed a report that could have led to an ID?  No one saw a paper and said, holy-moly, it's Carl.  Wouldn't the family be on the lookout after he'd abandoned his wife?

Australian authorities contacted the FBI and Scotland Yard, turning up nothing; this further fueled speculation about the espionage. Perhaps he was from behind the Iron Curtain....?

Webb was apparently some kind of engineer or technician who lived in the proximity of people in military positions of a sensitive nature. To what degree this is significant is debatable. Some researchers don't flat out reject it, but remain hesitant to accept the Webb identification.  If it wasn't Webb, the whole "living near special ops people" is irrelevant.  So, was this a saga of espionage or an affair of the heart?  Or neither?

Who knows in the end? Wikipedia has pretty thorough summary:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerton_Man

YouTuber Joe Scott does a really good job of summarizing the facts with lots of images. He avoids undue speculation.  Sometimes Scott's mannered presentation annoys me, but I've watched his stuff and they are well-organized and illustrated.  I'd recommend looking at his videos on any subject he's covered that strikes your fancy.  He really does do good work.  

The following article talks about the possibility that the man is Carl Webb, who disappeared after leaving his wife in 1947.   The Somerton Man died in 1948. It also addresses whether or not the Somerton Man, Webb or not, was in fact a spy.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-02/is-carl-webb-really-the-somerton-man-and-was-he-a-spy/101375542

All in all, this is a really fascinating story and an interesting window on Australia in the years immediately following WW2.  The Webb ID isn't too fantastical, which in my book, lends it credence.  I'm a pretty sceptical person though, so until the 5-O/Po-Po/Keuf concur, or family steps forward, I mark Webb a good probability but not a certainty.  It seems to fit.  Dying a year after he left his wife; a family connection to a man named Keane (a name found on one article of clothing from which the labels hadn't been removed); a love of poetry; a photo of Webb's brother....they bear more than a passing resemblance.  All circumstantial.  None of these deets preclude him from being a spy, either, so for those with their hearts set on a Cold War drama, if the man is proven to be Webb, you'll have a lot more to work with.  

As Sherlock would say:  "The game is (still) afoot!"  

I know that sounds terribly insensitive, but this case has been famous since it first occurred 70+ years ago, which doesn't indicate a high degree of interest or concern among the family who survived him.  If it is Webb, that's 5 siblings and their children, grandchildren, and possibly great-grandchildren.  Not to mention cousins, aunties, family friends.  National news and not one friend or family member steps up?  A remarkably uncaring family?  Was Webb a total "good riddance best forgotten" prick?  

If the speculation that Mr. Somerton wasn't Australian bears weight....maybe he was from behind the Iron Curtain after all.  Prosaic or nefarious, this possible identification rakes up even more enigmas.  The Somerton Man was, and is, famous; and not a single person has stepped up to identify him.  Granted, those photos were post-mortem.  But surely a sibling or other relation would have recognized him?  That no one has done so again, makes me feel incredibly sad....Think if all you will be remembered for is that you turned up dead on a beach with some weird stuff in your pockets

We just have to wait and see....or....

Shai-hulud

The Voice of Shai-Hulud, from the Oral History

"Over here sand blows, over there sand blows. Over there a rich man waits, over here I wait."

Tamám Shud

XCIX.  Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, 5th ed.  Edward "Eddie the Veggie" FitzGerald

Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire 

To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire, 

Would not we shatter it to bits--and then 

Re-mold it nearer to the Heart's Desire!

And finally: 

Owa Tagu Siam 

Stimes Addisson, A Brief History Roman Mystery Cults from Greece, Persia, and Egypt.

By 300 C.E., the mystery cult called the rites of Auca (originally Ghaz) surpassed Mithraism and Christianity among soldiers in Britannia and sewage technicians from Gaul, Germania, and Syria Palaestina to Rome itself.  If not for Constantine's well-hidden anatidaephobia, it may have won out over Christianity and the cult of Sol Invictus; a nagging seat of power in the outre-mer legions was dedicated to Mithraism, whose initiatory grades appealed to men accustomed to advancing in rank; the rites of Auca had no such progression.  Their "life-mantra" was the Latin phrase "Owa Tagu Siam" literally meant "Let me be."  Their "death chant" finished with the congregation saying the Persian "Tamám Shud".  The officiant then intoned "tazh shrw'e shdh ast" or "It has only just begun." 

Be careful out there, wannabe Baker Street Irregulars.  What is true and what is an absolute crock is harder to delineate in this info-bite world. The internet is often one big tautology: A cites B in it's references; B then cites A.  I learned that to my embarrassment circa 1996, when I sent an email with a photo purporting to show a missile downing a jetliner just after it left JFK.  This theory still has, er, wings, and there's even a documentary about it.  The NTSB blamed faulty wiring around the central fuel tank.  The alternate take is that the US Navy shot it down by accident during routine target practice.  TWA flight 800.  I'd presented conspiracy theory as fact.

I'm getting off track here; just reiterating my preoccupation with confirmation bias.  You want Mr. Somerton to be a spy and you will find plenty of evidence to support your theory.  At one point I played around with conspiracy theory and what is referred to as "twilight language" in order to get into the mind of the would-be conspiracy buster.  Read the facts and then theorize; don't theorize prematurely and bend the data to fit.  Not to sound like a know-it-all.  I'm certainly guilty of confirmation bias and the making the red-car-phenomenon something which it isn't.  As a perception phenomenon it is indeed a window on and a shaper of reality.  I think I'm generally aware of it though, and also aware that more often than not, I'm absolutely fuggin' right!  About everything.  Haha.  I kid.  

Was Somerton a spy?  I don't know.  He could have been from the Soviet bloc or an Australian asset.  There are so many unknowns about the most banal and what should be public details of the man,  that determining whether or not he was a spy is probably impossible to determine.  So, I've really flogged this one.  Like many people, something about the story grabbed me and is still holding on.  For all the flip and cavalier things I've said, I really mean it when I say it saddens me.  My gut feeling is that he was a troubled guy with a flair for the dramatic, who abandoned his wife to recapture a lost love, the nurse perhaps, and, not finding it, took his own life.  I may very well be wrong, and I don't insist on this notion in the slightest.  It's just an inkling.  OK.  Now I can say

Tamám Shud........?

Note:  Significant updates on 12/10.  So much for Tamám Shud! 😀

"Hemingway wasn't on the committee."

Archived from The Tampa Bay Times, 1994.  Hehe. My first job....

Who says your kids can't write? Read on

By
STEPHEN HEGARTY

Published May 22, 1994 | Updated Oct. 7, 2005

The fourth-grader's essay was full of short sentences. Charming in a way, but a little choppy.

One reader-in-training decided the youngster had a lot on the ball, that the terse sentences were used to good effect. But according to the official guidelines devised by a statewide committee, the fourth-grader's writing was just plain choppy.

The reader argued: Didn't Hemingway build his considerable reputation on clipped, economic sentences?

The answer: "Hemingway wasn't on the committee."

The essay got a low score. Next.

Welcome to the reader qualification center in Tampa, where hundreds of college-educated people came in March to learn how to evaluate student essays for the state. If they measured up, these readers-in-training earned the right to sit in a room day after day, for six weeks, reading essays by Florida's fourth- and 10th-graders.

They were scoring the Florida Writes! test _ the state's $2.5-million effort to assess students' writing. More than 381,000 Florida children in grades 4, 8 and 10 took the test this year. Results were sent to school districts last week.

As far as teachers, students and parents are concerned, the writing test works this way: Kids spend 45 minutes in school writing an essay. Months later, they get back a score.

But where do the scores come from? Who decides that Florida's children, as a group, rate a 2 or a 3 on a scale of 1 to 6? How is the writing evaluated?

To answer those questions, spend a little time with the official state readers. For most of April and early March, each of the readers waded through thousands of student essays, working for $7 an hour in an office building near downtown Tampa.

"It's not bad work, especially if you're interested in writing and education. But if I have to read another essay about a fourth-grader's mom, I'm gonna go nuts."

That's veteran reader Jack McElhinney, a SEMIRETIRED television filmmaker/shopping mall Santa Claus/nudist who sports a remarkable snow-white beard. McElhinney tagged along with a friend and said he secretly hoped he wouldn't qualify this year, so he could go play tennis. But, alas, he caught on quickly and turned out to be one of the speediest readers in the group.

Out of the nearly 300 people who interviewed for the reader jobs, about 180 were invited to the three-day training session. If they learned to accurately score seven out of 10 papers consistently, they got the job. All but a handful of them qualified as readers.

Steven Adkins is a recent Stetson University graduate (a B.A. in history and humanities) who plans to go on to graduate school at the University of South Florida. He has the casual, slightly disheveled look of a student about him.

"This is an interesting job, and I think it's important," he said. "If a kid can write, if he can get his thoughts down on paper, he can do a lot of things. This is the sort of thing they should be testing."

Adkins was looking forward to his six weeks as an official state reader. Interesting work. Decent pay. You don't have to wear a tie.

"Acceptance and conformity"

There's a terrific bit of irony at work here. The readers are a diverse, intelligent, sometimes eccentric bunch. They all have ideas about what good writing is. But the readers' job here is conformity.

If the scores are going to be meaningful, the readers have to accept the state's rubric - the guidelines for judging good writing. Readers are supposed to consider things like focus, organization, supporting ideas and examples, transitions. Spelling and punctuation count for something, but they're not stressed.

Readers have to leave their own ideas at the door and apply the state rules consistently.

"I wish it were a job about your personal input. But it's not," said Bob Kampa, a testing official who supervised training. During the pressure-filled first days of qualifying, Kampa explains the readers' job plainly. "Acceptance and conformity. That's what this is about."

The first few times he says this, readers chuckle. After he repeats it a few more times, the response is a grim, knowing nod.

Orange you glad I didn't say Europa?

 

Well, it is true. Not the human being part.

If this is one of the first things you thought of when you heard the news, please share your experience below.  I'm not trying to be disrespectful, I had nothing against her.  But I'm guessing the news had an extra layer of meaning for generation of pale gloomy dorks, male and female, on both sides of the pond.

And just think, for those a few years older, she weren't no human being....

 

BTW, know how to identify totally worthless website? It calls The Smiths a "new wave band" and says TQID is their second album....