The Talented Mr. Santos

Heisman Trophy winner George Santos

George Santos, creator of RuPaul's Drag Race 

I started this post a while back and quickly abandoned it.  I conceived of it as a brief catalog of Santos' lies, how his ongoing presence in Congress is linked to Trump's normalization of "alternative facts," and how for today's GOP the end justifies any means.  Sadly, the lies started coming in so thick and fast I couldn't keep up....Bear in mind this is a woefully incomplete and undeveloped text.

Let me introduce George Santos, uh, I mean Antony Devolder, um, excuse me, that's George Devolder.  Ahem.  Wait, what?  Ah fuck it.  We don't know what his name is....

A drag queen "hides" in plain sight.  We know it's a man dressed as a woman, but we enjoy the illusion, indeed, we reward it.  Or at least RuPaul does.  But drag is not a lie.  It's not even false.

The lies of George Santos' lies as of February, 2023

Santos stands up in front of the public and lies to them.  Unlike drag, there is no consensus.  The public has not agreed to participate in an illusion.  We like to think of Politics as Theater.  If the illusion between an actor and the public is erotic, the lies of a politician are closer to rape by deception:  

a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in a sexual act political exchange that they would otherwise not consent to.

Santos is either a con-man who has reached too far, or a compulsive liar.

Santos means "Saints," as in "Saints alive!" --  but the only holy things here are his stories: "Hole-y" that is, as in full of holes.  Dude's got more holes than a box of doughnuts.... 

Herschel Walker. Bald-faced lies, Alternative facts, Doublespeak, GOP rhetoric

His mom died in 9-11!  His grandparents were killed in the Holocaust!  He's Jewish.  Oh, I meant "Jew-ish."  He was the target of a kidnapping attempt.  He was a producer on that ill-fated Spider Man musical.  He fell off a chair and tipped a table over during a meeting with Stephen A. Schwarzman....

Mix in a few boners to make the lies about the power broker stuff more credible....

Santos has lied about his education and his professional background, but one company he actually did work for was found to be defrauding clients in a Ponzi scheme.  He is accused of sweeping campaign finance law violations.  He robbed a vet's Go Fund Me earnings; the homeless veteran was raising money to save his service dog.  No money, no care.  The dog died.  Santos also robbed an Amish farmer, paying for some puppies with a rubber check.  Bur hey! his (non-existent) charity has saved thousands of (non-existent) dogs. 

He is accused  of organizing a credit card scam in 2017, even blackmailing a guy into participating.  He has been broke one moment and wealthy the next.  He stole clothes from and otherwise defrauded his roommates.  He is accused of sexual harassment.  He claims he was the target of a kidnapping attempt.... 

Here's his official House of Reps biographical blurb:

SANTOS, George, a Representative from New York; born on July 22, 1988; unsuccessful candidate for election to the One Hundred Seventeenth Congress in 2020; elected as a Republican to the One Hundred Eighteenth Congress (January 3, 2023-present).

Bare bones indeed.

That this dude hasn't been frog-marched to the Capitol entrance and flung down the steps is a testament to due process, and/or Congressional venality.

So that's the beginning of the abandoned project. Wikipedia has a good overview of his deceit.  This here post is problematic and not at all developed, and I've given up on it, but I'm so disgusted with this guy I figured anything that publicizes his shittiness is worth putting online....

Refusing to Submit to the Laws of Silence

A few days ago, at the venerable and genteel Chatauqua Institution in upstate New York, Anglo/American, Indian-born author Salman Rushdie was brutally attacked as he got up to address an audience about threats to freedom of expression in the world today.  Rushdie has intimate knowledge of what he speaks; he had to live in hiding for years after a fatwa and a bounty were placed on his head in response to perceived blasphemy in his novel, The Satanic Verses (1988).

In an article about Rushdie's assailant, the young man's mother says her son changed after visiting his father in Lebanon, predominantly bitter because she'd never introduced him to Islam.  He became moody and quarrelsome, sleeping all day and staying awake all night.

What really struck me is that in the middle of the article, the following advertisement appeared.  Was it because I'd mentioned the group in recent posts, so the ad targeted me, or is it something much more cynical?

To whit (the ad from the article in question):

Meeting Jihadists with Crusaders

If this ad appeared because LoS recently mentioned the Templars, it's understandable, that's how algorithms work.  If I Google "flights to Addis Ababa," I'd expect to see ads for flights for Adis Ababa on sites I visit.

Or maybe it's just a coincidence. 

But if they're intentionally marketing Templar-themed gear in an article about about a violent attack by a young Muslim, who appears to have been motivated by an old fatwa declared by the Ayatollah Khomeini, well....wtf, no?

The Templar motif has been widely used by groups both benign and malevolent, but like so many once-noble symbols, Templar imagery has been co-opted by the far right.  

"OK?" 

"18?"   

"Don't tread on me?"

White nationalists who have "defended" Europe from Muslim immigration are in the mix, Anders Breivik among them.  

But....using the attempted murder of Rushdie to sell merchandise, symbolically pitting one religion against another?  Responding to an Imam-inspired attack by marketing Templar-themed clothing, the cross staring right atcha....

It may be a coincidence.  Or it may be Diabolical....

Right-wingers call Latino immigration to the US an "invasion."  Some rght-wing Europeans see Muslims as the invaders.  All part of the "plan" -- the "Great Replacement" -- facilitated by the European left.  Which is why Breivik targeted young Socialists in his rampage that left over 70 dead.  Future "replacement facilitators," I suppose. (See more on Breivik as a fake cop, fake Freemason and fake Templar....)

And young, radicalized Muslims seem all too happy to riposte to the ripostes.  A "Cold Crusade," if you will.  No shortage of troubled, alienated young men on both "sides" to push into the role of martyr.  Who doesn't want to be a hero?

It goes without saying,  LoS supports an author's right to express their ideas, and if it so happens, to offend.  Just like we supported the arguably more offensive Charlie Hebdo.  

We wish Mr. Rushdie a speedy recovery and commend his courage in the face of threats he received during his defense of free speech for writers in any genre, anywhere they may be.  Obviously, not idle threats.  Rushdie's courage in the face of danger was not something played up by clever agents and publishing marketing departments.

And courage is needed, because these things have a way of snowballing and spawning copycats:  Police are already investigating a threat to J.K. Rowling after she tweeted her support for Rushdie.  

Try as you might, you can't silence us all.  If anything, you'll just encourage more insult and blasphemy, if only out of spite.  Ponder that.  I had half a mind to republish that infamous Mohammed cartoon, but I did that before, at the time it was really overheating the hookahs....Maybe I'll just film myself eating bacon off my copy of the Quran.  But to be honest, I have too many Muslim friends I respect to do that.  But see where the mind goes when you physically asault us?  Not pleasant places to visit.  There are better ways to speak up, and perhaps one of those ways is before your eyes.

By the way, the book which started this hubbub, The Satanic Verses, has, as of this writing, once again become a bestseller (number 1, in fact).  A fatwa and a brutal onstage stabbing;  now that's marketing!  I'm gonna have my publisher put an ad on Craigslist:  "Young, alienated Salafi wanted for a one-time performance, all expenses paid.  To be remunerated upon completion of the job.  Ice Mine author to be silenced.  (Please note that given the current shortage due to fierce competition from QAnon Global Elites, 72 underage virgins cannot be guaranteed, although a spot in Paradise has already been reserved)."

I think it could work.  I'll wear a bullet-proof vest and a kevlar helmet.  When the bodyguard I've hired -- I know a cop from Uvalde, Texas who moonlights as private security -- subdues the attacker, we'll go down to the bar for some porkchops and beer, and start planning on how to spend the money my now-infamous novella will rake in.

Good job trying to suppress Rushdie's work, stabber-lee.  You dumbass.  Salamu alaykum....

.

Slow Learner

In 2017 Matthew Cissell gave a lecture at the International Pynchon Week conference about Thomas Pynchon's time in NYC just after graduating from Cornell.

I wish Matt had told me, cuz I'm just a short train ride away!  Doh!

One thing he focused on in his lecture was the informal salon that affluent couple Hans and Greta Meyerhof hosted, at time including Pynchon and his set, aka "The Whole Sick Crew."

Apparently, Cissell was turned onto the subject by our interview with Mr. Tod Perry, back when we were investigating some potentially unknown photographs of Pynchon, an investigation which morphed into a broader look at Cornell in the 50's and the "Cornell School" of writers.

I recently posted about Cissell's request on the P-List for any info on the Meyerhofs.  I guess he got what he needed!

This is exactly the kind of thing we hope for.  Mr. Perry makes a few brief remarks about the Meyerhofs and it gets turned into an entire lecture.  When we're dealing with a writer like Pynchon, who is a very private man, anything we can study will shed light on the genesis of and motifs found in his work.  Rad!

We're glad to have made our small contribution to Pynchon Studies, and thanks Matt for giving up a shout out.

Pulling an Oneida, Pt. 3

Back in January 2016 I wrote about a town in New York whose seal depicted what appeared to be a frontiersman throttling a Native American fellow.  Critics called it racist and offensive, defenders said it portrayed an actual historical event, a friendly wrasslin' match between one Hugh White and an unnamed Oneida, a test of strength and manliness.

The seal looked pretty darn dubious, but Whitesboro residents were not phased and didn't want to change it.  Well, national media coverage must have had an effect because less than two weeks later it was reported that the town and reps from the Oneida Nation were going to come up with a new seal.

Just a peek at the original:

 

I don't think one need be a "social justice warrior" to see why this seal is problematic.  If I didn't know the story, I'd probably think it was satire.  I mean, even the name...Whitesboro!? 

Well, I'm a bit late (it was reported back in September) but they've finally come up with something that's basically the same image but a little more even-handed:

 

I think it's a good compromise.  Sign o' the times.

Although now it's "case closed", you can still enjoy this witty bit The Daily Show did back when the kerfuffle was still causing noise....

Pulling an Oneida, Part 2.

This seal will go

In our last post we marveled over the seal of Whitesboro, NY, which appears to show a pioneer choking an Oneida man to death.  At the time, the village had decided to keep the logo after it was put to the vote.

Apparently all the attention has caused them to reconsider, and the village has now decided to work with the Oneida nation to come up with something new.

The NYT has the story.

See also another recent post:  The Politics of Removal which is in many ways the same story....

Pulling an Oneida....

This seal will stay

When I saw this village emblem in an article on my Facebook news feed I thought I was looking at something from the Onion or some other piece of satire.  I looked for a motto such as "A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man."

Fortunately I'm not overly sensitive, for it appeared as though some white dude wass choking the life out of some unfortunate Native American guy, perhaps a Mohawk or Seneca (he's an Oneida).  Under the impression that this was a joke, I found it a pretty deft piece of satirical dark humor.

But wait, the link was to a "serious" newspaper.  Just to clear the remaining grit from my eyes after having rubbed them both vigorously with the top of my clenched fists, I did a quick Google and found an article in America's paper of record.  Surely, that can't be true!  The village emblem shows a man killing an Indian?  In a town named Whitesboro?  I could already see the protest signs being marched in circles in front of city hall on an Onion News Network segment:  "Whites don't borrow, they steal!"

The drawing itself is so lacking in stately gravitas....that....surely it was something popped out by an intern graphic designer for use in a little article poking fun at white insensitivity to Native American complaints about offensive place names, mascots, Hollywood depictions, municipal logos....

Nope.  The image depicts an allegedly real occurrence, a friendly wresting match won by town founder Hugh White, who in a swift and decisive victory over his challenger gained the respect and acceptance of the Oneida already living in the area.  Presumably these Oneida were subsequently forced off their lands because the village's Native American residents make up a scant .33% of the total population, according to recent census results.  But that's another story.

19th c. version

As for the quality of the image in the current iteration, it's as if they'd hired that lady in Spain who transformed a portrait of Jesus in her local church into some kind of weird, featureless monkey:  Ecce Mono!  

Better than the Whitesboro emblem

In 1977, the current emblem replaced an earlier version; White's coonskin hat disappeared and his hands are now on the Oneida's shoulders and not around his neck, in order to make it appear less like what it still seems to depict, e.g. the murder of a Native American.

In any event, this comes hot on the heels of our last post about updating place names and public art in order to reflect changing attitudes towards targeted elements of our history.  Not to mention demographic reality.  Although the slight modification in '77 was triggered by a complaint and that even the mayor at one time suggested a change, it's apparently not offensive to the majority; on the 11th of January a vote was held and the townspeople came down in favor of keeping their disconcerting village emblem.

But even if the emblem does depict a friendly wrassle, it's a bit weird when you consider that the town was founded in 1784 and incorporated in 1813.  This would be about the time that veterans of the Revolution began occupying their land grants, received as a reward for their military service....despite the fact that the land was often already occupied.  Incidentally, it's also about the time my ancestor Amos Adkins was leading his family through the area, staying long enough to give birth to Great (etc.) Grandfather Issac in Cayuga County (1817), before moving on to Ontario and finally to Newport, Ohio.  When Amos and Mary Adkins arrived in Newport (1830), the local Indians had for the most part already been forced west.

The Whitesboro emblem is more of a wound than an offensive image to New York's Native American nations, because they are still fighting in the courts to regain some of the lands wrestled away by the State of New York around the turn of the 19th century.

New York's Native Americans have tended to make slow headway, despite the fact that the very first act of the very first Congress under the newly-ratified Constitution was to pass a law declaring that only the Federal Government could negotiate with foreign nations.  Congress thus defined the Native American nations as sovereign -- which is sort of why you can buy your tobacco tax free and go gambling on the Rez.  

That Congressional action also renders un-Constitutional any treaties signed between New York State and the Native American nations.  Of course, as Native Americans were overwhelmed by ever-growing numbers of illegal aliens on their soil, their sovereignty became increasingly meaningless.  Disease and warfare continued to reduce their numbers and the tribes became a shadow of what they once were, pushed onto reservations which continued thereafter to be nibbled away as these European immigrants and refugees saw the "need" arise.

Every treaty ever signed between Congress and Native American nations has been broken by Washington.  Not a single treaty has been signed that Washington has not broken when European numbers made it possible to ignore what they had signed when they had been vulnerable due to the fact that they were so few and far between.  When these newly-minted Americans grew in numbers strong enough, they no longer concerned themselves with treaties in order to acquire land.  Brute force was both quicker and had the added advantage of killing off as many of those bothersome aborigines as possible.

So Whitesboro might as well have kept the pre-1977 version of the emblem, showing a Daniel Boone-style frontiersman with a more determined choke-hold on a Native American's neck.  Unlike the wrestling match, this part of history can be confirmed.

But to be honest, I'm far more offended by the flag of my hometown of Tampa, Florida.  I mean, one can argue that Hugh White was a decent guy and by all accounts trusted by the Oneida, so the flag represents not hatred, but a friendly tussle.  But Tampa's flag, my God!  Whoever approved that thing should be tried at The Hague for Crimes Against Humanity.  Don't look too long, your eyes might fry in their sockets....

At the Mountains of Madness

Paging Dr. Cbarl!

This post started way back when we decided to write about our search for a reputed photograph of Thomas Pynchon duelling with Richard Fariña while students at Cornell University.  We wrote the post and sent out a few queries to some of the people we thought might have been involved.

Investigating these individuals led us to write another post about a student protest, sometimes dubbed a "riot", that occurred about the time this photograph was taken in 1958.

One of the people we contacted was Carl Leubsdorf ('59), a veteran political journalist and past president of both the Gridiron Club and the White House Correspondents' Association.  He was also Associate Editor of the Cornell Daily Sun at the time of the duel photo shoot (The Cornell Daily Sun, Volume LXXV, Number 25, 24 October 1958).  These photos feature one "Ivan Cbarl":

Dr. Cbarl confirms Aladar's death.

Digging around The Sun archives, we discovered that Leubsdorf's name had been misspelled as "Cbarl" on a byline for an earlier article and speculated that Ivan Cbarl and Leubsdorf were one and the same. We also found a letter to the editor by Ivan Cbarl from a couple years later, and speculated that it was written by the same person.

We sent Mr. Leubsdorf a link to the post and asked him if he could shed any light on Dr. Cbarl's origin.

This was his response: 

I can indeed help you. As the blog points out, I was indeed Dr. Ivan F. Cbarl and the name was indeed inspired by the typo in which my byline appeared one day in The Sun as Cbarl P. Leubsdorf. I did write the letter when I was working for the AP in New Orleans.

The duel was conceived by the editors of The Sun, led by Editor-in-Chief David Engel and Managing Editor Bob Malina, for the Spring Weekend edition of The Sun. I was the Associate Editor, or editorial page editor, of The Sun. As the article points out, college newspapers of the day often had joke issues, akin to today's Onion, for special social occasions on campus. Our idea was to have a perfectly straight paper with the exception of the article about the duel. We had hoped to stage it in the middle of campus, in the Arts Quadrangle, but realized that, by the time there was enough light, there might be others there. So we moved it to the cemetery on Stewart Avenue, just below the campus. As the pictures show, the light was indeed not very good.

Farina was indeed Herman Hochkappler; I can't remember where that name came from but I don't think it came from another student; the name of the other dueler, Marcel Aladar, came from Editor-in-Chief Engel, whose middle name was Aladar. [...] The young lady, who was the object of the duel, was perhaps Farina's girl friend. She was not Diane Divers, whom I knew well and was in a number of classes with since we were both government majors. 

Heartened by this response, we sent him a list of questions:

1. Did we get anything totally wrong in our blog posts? If so, can you clear up the facts for us?
2. Who was using the name Ludlow in the photos? Just to clarify, in the third picture on our first blog post, was that Guy du Puy on the left and Ludlow on the right?
3. Did Fariña write the dueling article?
4. We'd like to know more about the pantheon of characters and pseudonyms. Aladar, Cbarl, Hochkappler, Ludlow, du Puy, Huntington...what other adventures did they get into, other than those we cited?
5. In our article, we wrote, "If Minstral Island is a jagged look at concerns Pynchon and Sale would address throughout their lives, mightn't the Sun articles also have some use, however minimal, in that regard?" Any thoughts on this speculation? Can you point us to anything that Pynchon or Fariña wrote (or collaborated on) in The Cornell Daily Sun under pseudonyms?
6. Do you know why Sale's arm was in a sling in photos of the protest?
7. One of the four students who was initially suspended immediately following the student protest was identified in newspapers as as "Robert M. Perry". Was this Perry the same person as Todd (or Tod) Perry who was reportedly good friends with Fariña, Pynchon, and Sale?
8.  As you can tell, we think this was a fascinating time/place to have gone to college -- with such talented group of students! Do you have any stories you'd care to share or misconceptions you'd care to clear up?
9. Can you tell us if Pynchon, Sale, Fariña, and/or Perry appear in any of these photos of the student protests (see attached)? If so, can you point them out for us? These photos all appeared in the Sun's coverage of the student protest, although the first one is copied from an AP reprint in the NY Daily (by the way, President Malott is the person circled in this first photo). If it helps to see these images in the context of the Sun, here are links: images 1 and 2 (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 7); image 2 - The Cornell Sun (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 1).

Mr. Leubsdorf responded: 

Let me try to answer at least some of this. Perhaps my general discussion will help you with the specifics. 

One thing is important to understand: Though a couple of people were involved in both, there was no real connection between the May 1958 demonstrations and the fraudulent duel that was staged for the October 1958 Fall Weekend issue of The Sun. The demonstration that got out of hand was the culmination of a long battle between the Cornell administration, led by President Deane Malott and his executive assistant Lloyd Elliott (later president of George Washington U), and various student groups including the Student Council and The Sun over student rights. As such it was something of a forerunner of the more significant civil rights struggles of the early 1960s.

It was precipitated, as is suggested in the post, by the comments of Theresa Humphreyville (real name), who was chair of a President's Committee on Student Affairs. At a Student Council meeting at the beginning of the week, she made the inflammatory comment that "apartment parties (a term used for the presence of men and women at social or even academic gatherings in off-campus apartments) were conducive to petting and intercourse" and should be banned. I've always believed that her comment, reported in The Sun, was the spark that set things off. I was Associate Editor and David Engel was editor-in-chief and, following in the footsteps of previous editors Andrew Kopkind (56-57) and Kirk Sale (57-58), we roundly condemned the administration position. What started as a peaceful demonstration at midday got out of hand with eggs thrown at Edmund Ezra Day Hall, the administration building. A second demonstration at night got even more out of hand and led to the burning of President Malott in effigy and the march on his off-campus house. I wrote about many of these events in a 100th anniversary edition of The Sun in 1985. Sale, the former editor of The Sun, appeared at the nighttime rally, and was one of the main speakers who fired up the crowd. I believe he is the person pictured in the middle of the group with his hand up in the air. At the time, Sale, who was about to graduate, was living off campus with several friends, I believe including Pynchon, Seidler and possibly Farina. They were there with him, but he was really the principal figure as the former Sun editor who had led the fight against the restrictive student rules. His picture appeared in a prominent way—the one with his hand raised in a way that made him look like the ringleader—in many pictures across the country and, among other things, cost him a newspaper job he had lined up. Robert Perry and Tod Perry were, I'm pretty sure, the same person; he was another friend of Kirk's. I believe Farina is pictured in the picture that shows Dean Frank Baldwin, but most of the pictures are too crowded for me to recognize individuals. The Sun said that, while the cause was justified and the initial demonstration was a good idea, the nighttime demonstration was a mistake and the violence was inevitable. For that, we were roundly condemned by some of our former Sun colleagues. Ironically, Lloyd Elliott was headed for a new job as President of the University of Maine. The same edition of The Sun that reported on the demonstrations also reported on the naming of John Summerskill as Vice President for Student Affairs. Summerskill, a liberal, was very different from Malott and Elliott and, over the next several years, guided the administration and student body in a very different direction including far more power for a revamped student government. Summerskill later became president of San Francisco State University and was a central figure in the student demonstrations there in the mid-1960s. Many accounts described his appointment as resulting from the demonstrations but, in fact, he had been named beforehand.

The duel was totally separate, conceived of by a group of Sun editors, as a good centerpiece for the Fall Weekend issue. As I said before, like many college papers, we sometimes did totally fraudulent Onion-like papers for these weekends; this time, the whole paper was legitimate except for the duel. I've explained to you the origins of Dr. Cbarl and Marcel Aladar. The name Ludlow stems from a Linotype process involving the melting down of lines of type after they're used. Though Farina was Hochkappler, I don't think he had any further involvement in either the conception or the writing of the article. Pynchon was not the other dueler.

You've listed several names:

Carol Huntington was someone's girl friend, but she definitely was not Diane Divers. As I recall, we wanted sort of a willowy, long-haired blonde as the prize for whom the duel was fought. Diane, with whom I had classes in government honors, dated Farina at one point. She went to work in one of the 1960 presidential campaigns after graduation (I think Stuart Symington), moved to Arkansas where she became a well known professor of government. She and her second husband, a prominent Arkansas Democrat named Jim Blair, were married by Bill Clinton, and she became especially close to Hillary Clinton before her untimely death from cancer at 61 in 2000.

C. Michael Curtis, who had a lengthy college career before graduating in about 1960, was at Cornell at the time but I don't believe he had anything to do with the Sun parody.

Kirk Sale, as I mentioned, had graduated at the time. He and Faith started dating midway through college and got married after graduation (I'm not sure precisely when). Stephanie Greene had nothing to do with any of this. Stephanie Gervis '58, who later wrote for The Village Voice and married Socialist Michael Harrington, was Associate Editor of The Sun when Sale was editor, but was not directly involved in either event.

O. Kristin Osterholm had graduated in 1957. She was on The Sun but was gone from campus when all this happened.

David Seidler was, I believe, principally involved because he was friends with Kirk. He had nothing to do with The Sun.

Bob Wegryn was The Sun's Photo Editor.

Allan Metcalf's use of the name Marcel Aladar may well have occurred because he was a Sun staffer at the time of the duel.

I hope this is helpful. But I have to ask: why are you so interested in this?

We responded with a note explaining our interest (which basically boils down to our interest in Farina and Pynchon as artists, as well as our curiosity about this time at Cornell). We also asked for Mr. Leubsdorf's permission to post his emails and shared a draft of the article with him, and he was kind enough to allow us to publish this. In this email to us, he wrapped up by stating that: 

The 1958 demonstrations were among the most significant events of my years at Cornell, while the fake duel shows how much fun at The Sun often had. It may explain why, some 55 years later, I'm still writing for a newspaper.

Having read a handful of Mr. Leubsdorf's opinion pieces in the Dallas News, we see that this sense of fun combined with tackling the significant still comes through in his writing.

Well, this wraps up our fourth post on this topic. We appreciated the opportunity to discuss this seminal period with some of its key figures. We entered this series of posts about Cornell in the late '50s with a focus on a series of pictures of the fake duel, and, thanks primarily to Mr. Leubsdorf, we have identified half of the participants: the two duelists and the doctor. If anyone is able to identify the two seconds or the woman in the photos, we remain curious....

Thank you, Mr. Leubsdorf and Mr. Perry, for your recollections and insights into these tumultuous times and interesting people, including yourselves.  We would appreciate hearing from anyone else who we've discussed, whether it's to share more anecdotes, clarify any mistakes we may have made or just to tell us to knock it off and leave you alone....

******************************************************************************
Related articles on LoS:

* Start of a Duel (Buried in The Sun) (the post that kicked this series off)

* Teacup in a Tempest (our follow up to the original post)

* Cozy & Loud as a Camel in the Rain: An Interview with Mr. Tod Perry

Debloke Ayiti

I seem to remember reading some time ago that American Christians were roughly divided into equal parts Catholic, mainline Protestant and "other", this meaning evangelicals and charismatics.  Seeing as I can't find that article anymore, it's probably not worth bringing up, especially as it appears to contradict the Pew Report on America's Religious Landscape.

In any event, this kind of survey seems fraught with pitfalls and I wonder about the figures.  Can there really only be 1.6 American who consider themselves atheists, for example?

Anyway, I read an article today which makes easy categorization difficult.  Moreover, it relates to posts we made a while ago about the earhtquake in Haïti.  Both Catholic and charismatic, with elements of Voudon thrown in, this brand of Catholicism defies many preconceptions; there are hundreds of Catholic charismatic groups with  followers estimated to number in the millions worldwide.  Popes themselves have embraced it.

Interesting read:  Suffering, Haitians Turn to Charismatic Prayer.

BTW, anyone else see the pun in a report on religion being conducted by a place named pew?

The Black Madonna of East Thirteenth Street

The Black Madonna of East Thirteenth Street. Good article by Joseph Sciorra from the magazine of the New York Folklore Society, from back in 2004.

Although a very focused look at the veneration of a Black Virgin among NY's Sicilian immigrants, it includes a few well-considered introductory comments about the phenomenon in general.

Related: Item 1 about St. Conus

Morsels to tide us over

1. Ever heard of Saint Conus? Neither had we. He's a rather obscure saint which has a following in many far-flung places, wherever Sicilians and Italians from Salerno are found. His day is June 3.

Interesting article about a disappearing New York: Still Taking to the Streets to Honor Their Saints. I hesitate to use the word gentrification in this case, but something of the same cultural divide is described.

2. In other news, 6 bodies were found in a cave near Cancun, 3 with their hearts cut out. If this weren't Maya country, we'd blame Aztecs, not the usual suspects (Narcotraficantes, duh).

3. Archeologists are pondering whether or not a cemetery full of headless skeletons found in York were gladiolas. Oh wait, I mean gladiators.

4. Finally, why is Erykah Badu sporting Royal Arch logo on her chest? And what does the Hebrew character signify?


Does it have to do with the Freemasonic "hijack" of Hip-Hop?

Yikes! Jay-Z put fluoride in my Cheerios!

Lo-tech noir

Jon Frankel, some-time comment-maker and friend of LoS, is a talented writer of books I like and not simply because he is a friend. He sent me this:

I want to invite everyone to listen to the weekly podcast of my book The Man Who Can’t Die at:

http://themanwhocantdie.com/

My friend Miette, who has a regular podcast, Miette’s Bedtime Stories, http://www.miettecast.com/, will be reading the whole book, for which I am eternally grateful.

Jon's books are very good and worth a read....and now, a listen. I've been privileged to read novels in progress and it means a lot to me that he'd share before publishing, solicit my opinion and take those opinions seriously. Please check out these podcasts and investigate further.

I've read, Specimen Tank, The Last Bender, The Man Who Can't Die and his latest work in progress Babes of the Abyss.

These books are savage, dark, cynical, and "true". As is often the case with authors of books of a like nature (which isn't to say they are of a "type" or fall into an easy genre), Jon is one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to meet. Please take a look.

Jim Carroll, RIP

Jim Carroll died on September 11th.

Even without the momentous timing, it would be as if yet another nail were driven in a bygone New York's coffin. Not to make his death into a potent symbol at the expense of his humanity--he seemed a decent and sensitive man--and the moniker "punk rock poet" so many articles seem to saddle him with is incomplete and misleading. He was a poet and diarist in a punk rock milieu who extended his art into a few largely overlooked albums. But what a poet!

It seems appropriate here to send you in the direction of this here essay by LoS commentator Jon about that disappeared New York. It's not about Jim Carroll, yet it is....

The Telectroscope

"Hardly anyone knows that a secret tunnel runs deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean. In May 2008, more than a century after it was begun, the tunnel has finally been completed. An extraordinary optical device called a Telectroscope has been installed at both ends which miraculously allows people to see right through the Earth from London to New York
and vice versa."