These wounds I have...

This morning is one of those mornings.
Blogger is acting up.
Today already feels like it is going to be one of those days.
Every time I web surf or see a political poll, I find myself feeling extremely pessimistic.
Halloween is approaching, and the world is frightening - not in a good way.
I do not wish to go off to work, but I must. Earning a living is still my necessary duty.
And so off to the battles with management and the battles with the teenage slacker staff, and the battles with the customers.

We who actually do the work shall proudly bear our wounds from this day to the ending of the world.
We shall be remembered- we few, we happy few, we band of workers
And those still now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not there,
 And hold their persons cheap whiles any speaks that worked with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

 (with apologies to Will S.)

My patience, like autumn, is fleeting...

Two and a half weeks. Every few minutes I tell myself, it will all be better in two and a half weeks. In two and a half weeks, the elections will be over. With any luck, the Democrats will then stop sending me twenty plus emails a day begging for money. Some of their emails show the level of my contributions - which are nil. I have explained to them on multiple occasions that the economy, reluctance to hire older workers, and the lack of decent jobs in my area have all conspired to leave me unable to contribute to the obscene amount of money they have collected and spent already. I guess they are trying to shame me into a donation. Better yet, in two and a half weeks, on November the 10th, I will become officially retired. I will be living in genteel poverty, but hell, I've been doing that for quite awhile, and I will actually have a better income than I have now from my place of employment after 5 years of subservience. (I'm not joking about that - one of the first things they do is make a name-tag for you, which you must wear, which uses your first name so that people may address you as though you were the stable boy or the scullery maid.)

(Not quite) soon enough it will all be over. Although the election is troubling - it turns out that the company which makes the voting machines in the make or break state of Ohio is owned by a company with heavy investment by Romney's son Tagg (the one who wanted to "take a swing" at Obama). Who names their kid Tagg? Well, today I suppose that is a conservative name.

With the day off, I started digging to find those photos of Newfane in autumn that I promised to scan. The first box I picked up had its bottom give way just shy of where I was going to put it. Most of the photos in it were ones that I was looking for last Spring. I didn't find the Newfane shots, but I did find a few others that I took some years back. So here, from two different scanners, two 35mm cameras and one low price digital camera, are a few pics of autumn in New England. (note- Blogger is acting up and not putting the photos where I want them. With any luck, I can still make this make a little bit of sense....)

 Taken by the side of the road at a Gentleman's Farm in Rhode Island

The next Gentlemen's Farm down the road....

Another farm in Rhode Island - okay not especially autumnal,
but I liked these Scottish Highland wooly cows - this guy came over to check me out.

When I had a car, I used to go visit an old friend - meaning a friend who has known me for a very long time (although he is now getting along in years just like myself), who lives just over the Vermont border in New York State. On the way to his town, this old diner sits abandoned by the road. I love diners, so I had to take and share this picture, oaky?

On the way back from the above visit... I just liked this scene - it cried out to be photographed.

I used to live in Boston, so it's only fair that I post one of two pics from there.

The above was taken in the Back Bay Fens. On the other side of that bridge are the old Victory Gardens.
Across the street to the left of the photo is Fenway Park, the home of the Red Sox.

I can remember taking this in a Boston park, but I can't remember which one ---
I think it was the Esplanade  but it looks more like the Arnold Arboretum. 

Just a short train ride from Boston in Concord, Mass.

Monument Mountain in western Mass., near the spot where Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville had a picnic with friends (which I seem to recall included Thoreau) - and  let me tell you, those Victorians had to be pretty damn hardy to carry a full picnic up to this spot.

Just a little south of the above, across the border into Connecticut. I used a version of this shot with people in it (towards the left) so there is a reference point for the scale of this waterfall.

Somewhere around the Mass/Ct. border.

I don't remember where I took this -
I thought it was near the Wachusetts Reservoir in MA,
but I could be wrong about that.

A "Kodak moment" by the woolen mill in (upstate) Johnson, Vermont

The Cemetery in (upstate) Hyde Park, Vermont

Now, I do have a thing for cemeteries - particularly New England cemeteries in autumn. The tombstones in Vermont's "Northeast Kingdom" are especially wonderful - Italian stone cutters were brought over to work the granite quarries, and they carved wonderful monuments. Here's an example from the town of Hardwick:

The Hardwick cemetery is situated on a hill. As I walked up the hill to take the photo above, I saw one large headstone, which was very plain. The husband's name was on the left, and the wife's name was on the right. As I passed the stone, I noticed something carved on the thickness of the right hand side:

I walked around the headstone to the husband's side.

And  there I discovered this:

Righteous

So I was kind of needing to hear a little music. Dave was doing his reggae show on the community radio station I help to run, but it just wasn't what I was looking for. While idly drifting along in the web, I looked in on the blog and this morning's post, which I finished just in time to head out to work. I ended up watching and listening to all the songs again. God but I loved those songs back then. I still love them now. Momma Cass sends me, what can I say? Love the voice and the persona. Watching and listening to her makes me happy.

Okay, here comes the confession. I was a Righteous Brothers fan. I have more than one of their 45s. As a teenager I was a huge fan of those bombastic Phil Spector wall of sound productions that played like mini rock and roll operas. I wrapped myself in them as I embraced my loneliness. You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' was great. But there was one other song that was just mournful teenage superb. It was sung as a solo by Bobby Hatfield. I was 14 when it was a hit, I loved it then and I cherish it now. Here's a clip I found on YouTube of Hatfield singing it on the old Shindig show. Hatfield sings and moves like a cross between Sam Cooke and Johnnie Ray. This clip is before the image makers took over and cleaned up the 'Brothers' look and movements into a more homogenized product. If you look for the version of this recorded one year later in color, you'll see what I mean. Here it is the way I remember it, and the way I prefer to remember it, and them.

Her own kind of music

My gosh, but the birthdays this month.... Today there are a number of people to celebrate whom I've admired, who have given me pleasure, or who have influenced my life in one way or another. But one name on the list today stands out for her songs, which were popular as I was growing up. Cynthia Weil trained as an actress and dancer, but discovered that she had talent as a songwriter. While working at the office of Don Kirshner's and Al Nevin's Aldon Music Co., she met and married songwriter Barry Mann, who had written and performed the hit song "Who Put the Bomp". Together they became major players at the Brill Building, the 1960's incarnation of Tin Pan Alley, writing many of the top pop hits of the day. Young Stevil loved many of their songs. Last year, the couple was awarded the Johnny Mercer Prize, the highest and most prestigious award which can be given a songwriter.

Many of the Weil-Mann collaborations expressed a social consciousness unusual for their day. One, "Only in America" was written for the Drifters but was reworked into an uncontroversial song by Leiber and Stoller for Jay and the Americans. I first heard the Drifter's version, and like it better.

 

A few other favorites include:

 



The following song was one that I often played on the jukebox at a favorite Boardwalk diner in Ocean City, NJ. There is a lip synch video of it which is staged on a beach that I would have put here but it sounds like it was recorded underwater, so I'm using a different version with less visual quality. No matter, it still expresses my teenage angst. Hell, it expresses my adult angst for that matter.

 

There are so many other songs that anyone my age would recognize instantly, But finally, I have to post this one. As of 2010, it was the most popular song ever to appear on radio with over 14 million plays. And yes, I have the 45rpm record.

 

So Happy Birthday Cynthia Weil - and Thank You for so much wonderful music!

A moody, sensitive young man

Marilyn Monroe called him, "The only person I know who is in even worse shape than I am." He was nominated for three Best Actor Academy Awards and one for Best Supporting Actor. He was James Dean's idol - Dean used to call him just to hear his voice. The Clash recorded a song about his sad later years. He was stunningly handsome. The New York Times noted that he was known for his portrayals of "moody, sensitive young men". His mother raised him as though he were an aristocrat, partially home schooled, and educated in French, German and Italian. Today is the birthday of another Stevil fave, Montgomery Clift. His is a hell of a story.

One of the foremost actors of his day, with a penchant for re-writing the scripts of movies in which he appeared, Clift was disfigured in an horrible automobile accident. He was patched back together, but he never really recovered. His health suffered, and he became addicted to pain killers and alcohol. During his last years people thought he was often drunk or drugged, but an autopsy showed that he had a thyroid condition which would make him appear so while cold sober. He was only 45 years old when he died. But he lives on as George Eastman in A Place in the Sun, as Morris Townsend in The Heiress, as Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt in From Here to Eternity, and in roles in projects as diverse as The Search, Red River, The Misfits, and Judgement at Nuremberg among others. His performances have given me a great deal of pleasure over the years, and I just want to wish him a Happy Birthday.

From the opening sequence of A Place in the Sun

With Elizabeth Taylor in A Place in the Sun

Both of them were just so damned beautiful to look at (sigh).

Near the beginning of his film career, in Red River

After the accident, in The Misfits

Happy Birthday, Monty.

Uncle Oscar

Today is the birthday of our dear Uncle Oscar.

Oscar was brilliant, but had a bit of unpleasantness in his life after he became involved with a member of the Douglas family. Everyone knew the Douglas clan was a bit well, off-kilter. I mean really, the young man in question, 21 at the time he met Uncle Oscar, was nicknamed "Bosie" by his own mother! Bosie's father was pugilistically inclined and often threatened to beat people with a horse whip (and probably did), his Uncle was in love with his twin sister and after she married someone else kidnapped a young woman, another aunt was a suffragette, oh, the things that went on in that family!


At any rate, his relationship with Bosie proved to be Uncle Oscar's undoing. Uncle was packed off for two years of hard labor which basically destroyed him. Just three years after his time away, Uncle Oscar died in Paris, destitute, at the age of 46.

It was all so sad, Uncle had been such a brave man - he was the only well known author to sign George Bernard Shaw's petition to pardon the anarchists who had been arrested and were being being blamed for a riot in Chicago's Haymarket Square (they were later executed).

In his day, he was a well known author, playwright, poet, and lecturer (according to reports, he was particularly well received by cowboys in the old American West!)

I've collected just a few of my favorites of Uncle Oscar's comments as my way of remembering him today. Sadly, I've no time to do this right as I must go off to toil in the fields of Mammon.


It is perfectly monstrous the way people go about, nowadays, saying things against one behind one's back that are absolutely and entirely true.
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately.
-- Letter from Paris, dated May 1900

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.
-- “Lord Arthur Savile's Crime”

Young men want to be faithful and are not; old men want to be faithless and cannot.
-- “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.
--  "An Ideal husband"

Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.
-- "Lady Windermere's Fan"

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.

I can resist anything but temptation.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

I am not young enough to know everything.


I think that God in creating Man somewhat overestimated his ability.

One should always play fairly when one has the winning cards.

Work is the curse of the drinking classes.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Uncle's friend Bosie

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.

We live in an age when unnecessary things are our only necessities.

To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable.

Wisdom comes with winters.

Happy Birthday, Unc !

Lucious Lucius

As I started to read the news via the internet this morning, my wandering eye first caught the story of a bartender at the Playboy Club in London who had created a cocktail costing $8,824.00. My first thought was that it must have a 150 year old absinthe in it. As it turns out, I had guessed partly right - it is made of a 1778 Clos de Griffier vieux cognac, a 1770 Kummel liqueur, a circa 1860 Dubb orange Curacao and two dashes of Angostura bitters dating from around 1900. Now personally, I think wealth is great (although the wealthy should damn well pay an equitable share of taxes). Even at my age, I still have aspirations, although no expectations - if you know what I mean. But a cocktail whose cost is more than half a year of my current income? Before taxes? Even when I wasn't working poverty level jobs, that one drink would have cost close to a third of my yearly salary. This is truly disgusting and outrageous ostentatiousness. It is the kind of thing which would have been appreciated - and roundly skewered - by once noted and now sadly forgotten, bon vivant and writer Lucius Beebe. It was Beebe who, when confronted by a table of rare wines which had been festooned with orchids, cried out, ""Throw wide the windows! Air the rooms! Is the bouquet of my wines to have to conflict with these stinking flowers?"

Somewhere, if I haven't sold it to make ends meet, I may still have my copy Beebe's wonderful tome, "The Big Spenders - The Epic Story of the Rich Rich, the Grandees of America and the Magnificoes, and How They Spent Their Fortunes". It tells the story of a time before income tax, when the rich freely spent their wealth - occasionally in grand gestures of public good. A copy of it on Amazon will run you $125.00. I got it through the Book of the Month Club, to which I belonged when I was 15.

Charles Clegg

Much of Beebe's affectionate skewering of the wealthy was co-authored and illustrated with photographs taken by Beebe's long time partner Charles Clegg. Beebe was open about his relationship with Clegg in a time before it was acceptable. They were both from wealthy New England families. The rich, after all, have always enjoyed a morality not permitted to the poor, the middle classes, or to those who are merely well-off.

Beebe's first photographer/partner (during the 1930's) was Jerome Zerbe (also wealthy), one of the inventors of what became the genre of celebrity and society photography (now relegated to the paparazzi - although Zerbe would have been horrified at the ambush tactics so popular today). Zerbe is also credited with the invention of the vodka martini. It was Zerbe who, being a friendly insider, was was allowed to take photographs of Cary Grant and Randolph Scott during their years together.

above, and on the right,
"Cary and Randy" at home
from a series of photographs taken for
"Modern Screen" magazine in 1933.

Beebe and his two partners chronicled "cafe society" (a term invented by Beebe) for New York City newspapers from the early 1930's through the 1940's. Of those days, Beebe remarked, "I considered my function that of a connoisseur of the preposterous... I did have a fabulous time. I did drink more champagne and get to more dinner parties and general jollification than I would have in almost any other profession."It was Beebe who wrote one of my favorite descriptions of New York City as "Babylon-on-the-Hudson, sinful, extravagant, full of the nervous hilarity of the doomed".

Walter Winchell, a rival society columnist, often snippily called him "Luscious Lucius". During their time together Beebe made so many flattering remarks about Zerbe in his column that Winchell wrote that Zerbe should change his name to "Jerome Never Looked Lovelier."

When it was  noted that the possible election to the presidency of Republican Thomas Dewey would set the country back 50 years, Beebe immediately replied, "And what was wrong with 1898?"

In 1950, Beebe and Clegg set out for the once grand mining town of Virginia City, Nevada, where they renovated an old mansion, resurrected a once famous newspaper that had given early employment to Mark Twain, and began restoring old railroad cars. For one, the "Virginia City", Beebe brought in a friend who was a Hollywood set decorator to redesign the car in what he called "Venetian Renaissance Baroque". They used it for their travels.

Clegg and Beebe in their private railroad car, the "Virginia City".

Beebe and Clegg eventually retired to the San Francisco area. As he aged, Beebe wrote, "High blood pressure, cheeriness at breakfast, a mellowing political philosophy, and an inability to drink more than half a bottle of proof spirits at cocktail time without falling over the fire irons all suggest dark wings hovering overhead and the impending midnight croak of the raven." Beebe passed away in 1966 at the age of 63. Clegg committed suicide in 1979, on the day he reached the age at which Beebe had died.

Beebe once wrote, "If anything is worth doing it is worth doing in style, and on your own terms, and nobody's Goddamned else's!". He and his era are gone, and I often think that we are the poorer for it. There are still a few people around with style - but almost none of them seem to be rich folk. The rich of our day are of a different coarser breed. $8,824.00 for a cocktail is practically an obscenity. Lucius Beebe would have had a good comment about it.

"All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left"

                                                                              -attributed to Lucius Beebe

I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night

When I first started the process of moving from Boston to Brattleboro, the nurses at the Brattleboro Retreat had just won a long fought battle to form a union.

At the time, Vermont was the only state in U.S. not to have a Walmart. So Walmart built a store in New Hampshire, just across the river from Brattleboro. It destroyed the small businesses of our downtown, and changed Brattleboro forever. About the time I moved here in 1995, a few women were fired at that Walmart for daring to suggest the workers form a union.

About 10 years ago, there was a union movement at our local food co-op where I had once worked. My dear friend Laura over at Austanspace was one of the prime movers in that effort. Things got nasty. The co-op management brought in a team of very expensive lawyers to"advise" them - lawyers whose web page bragged of their ability to crush nascent union movements.

At the same time, there was also a union effort at our once well regarded local daily newspaper which had been decimated by new corporate ownership. There was another local union effort at the time, but I can't quite recall the details anymore.

All of the efforts failed.

In the last few weeks, the Union effort at the co-op was reborn, and is currently having a baptism of fire. Our local independent weekly, the Commons, has followed the effort. In this week's edition, which reported the refusal of the co-op's Board to accept the union and let the general manager demand a monitored vote, there was also a column which declared that "Not all the information is coming out, Not all Co-op employees embrace the union". It was written by a woman whose name I did not recognize, Elizabeth Julia Stoumen. Of course, I looked her up. Until recently, there was an Elizabeth Julia Stoumen who lived in New York City. If this is the same Elizabeth Julia Stoumen, she was Director of Operations and President of the NYC International Women's Writer's Guild, an organization under financial duress. She has filed suit against the Guild claiming fraud and slander over her dismissal from her leadership role after having acknowledged that she improperly used Guild funds for personal purposes. (She used a Guild credit card for expenditures of close to $5,000. and then requested personal reimbursement for those expenses. After it was discovered, she claimed it was a mistake, and repaid the monies. As noted on the IWWG's info page about the lawsuit, "Subsequent investigation has revealed multiple additional instances of improper expense reimbursements...")

Trying to form a Union can get messy. There are always accusations flying around. Management and/or ownership has historically used many nasty methods to stop workers from seeking any say whatsoever about their working conditions, their safety, or their pay.

One famous case of false allegations involved a Swedish immigrant who went by the name of Joe Hill. His is quite a story, even though not all that much is known for sure. We do know that he worked his way from New York City across the United States through a series of  low wage jobs. And we know that in California, he became a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, the "Wobblies". Stories, most undocumented, have him involved in Labor movement actions up and down the West Coast. Certainly, he was badly beaten by police in Fresno during a protest there. If he wasn't at a protest or strike in person, he was there in spirit as a songwriter. In those days, his songs were well known - at least by workers. Here's a couple of examples which explain why all the Misters Moneybags might not have liked Joe very much:

 

The footage in the above video is from a strike against General Motors in 1937.

In 1914, Joe Hill was working in a mine near Salt Lake City, where he caught pneumonia. While he was recuperating, there was a murder of a shopkeeper and his son. Joe Hill was accused. Evidence was planted, and he was framed. Rumors involved Mormon higher ups (the Mormons were heavily anti-union) as well as the mine bosses. Hill maintained his innocence, and during trial refused to cooperate,  claiming that his attorney was working with the court to frame him. There were numerous protests over the guilty verdict, including one by that well know Wobbly, Helen Keller. Protests to the Republican Governor of the state of Utah ranged from the Swedish Ambassador to the President of the United States. Whomever, whatever, on a November morning in 1915, Joe Hill was shot to death by a firing squad.

Before he was executed, Joe Hill sent a telegram to a Wobbly leader in Chicago. It read,
"Don't waste time mourning. Organize!"

Earl Robinson and Alfred Hayes wrote a song about him which has become fairly well known:



Today is Joe Hill's birthday, and it is important we remember him.
Happy Birthday, Joe.
The struggle still goes on....

Meanwhile... back in what passes for reality these days...

Okay, I had told myself that I would show restraint. I've tried, I've really tried. I don't want to spend my time preaching to the converted. But I just can't ignore the current political "news" any longer. There have been several fun images worth re-posting which have appeared since the 'Great Debate' between President Obama and President-wanna-be Mitt Romney. Romney came off as a preppy on speed, obnoxiously interrupting and speaking over both the debate moderator and the President of the United States. There is such a thing as respect, Mitt. It might help if you learned to show it, even if you can't quite connect with the concept of humility which goes along with it.   For his part, Obama seemed tired, first exhibiting the kind of patience a parent shows a child who has just discovered that there is injustice in the world, then tolerance, then peevishness, and only occasionally delving into momentary flashes of frustration. Romney constantly noted that the President was misinformed about his (Romney's) proposals, most of which were stunningly different than those on which he has been running since the start of the primaries and which are contained the Republican Party Platform he helped create. The President let him get away with it. Jeezus, Obama - when the hell are you going to stand up and tell these people off? It's time you called the Republicans on their lies and noted that it is they who have refused to work with you and your administration. You are letting them get away with re-writing your administration's history and spreading it as vote-for-Republican-propaganda-manure. Man up and fight back, damn-it.

As I have no money for cable and there is no broadcast television signal where I live, I had to rely on the internet to watch the debate. Every web-stream I found, including the one on YouTube, was provided by a partnership of Yahoo and ABC News. The anchoring was annoying, but no where near as bad as the constant popups and superimposed tweets of such sophisticated thoughts as "Go get im". The entire internet, once a wonderful resource, has become a constant corporate commercial of banners, roll over signs, and superimposed messages (some can't even be turned off - the only way to get rid of them to read a news story is to reload the page) supplemented by expressions of thought from people who are clearly not used to the process. Don't expect to be able to read much of the news on the internet without paid subscriptions any longer - reportage on the internet has gone heavily into web-streams of talking heads with annoying graphics and music - some as short as 20 or 30 seconds - in place of text. Aside from online sales, it is as though there were a prejudice against  people who can read. Perhaps that is why Romney felt bold enough to note that he would pull all funding from the Public Broadcasting Service (which gets about one one-hundredth of the US budget, less than the Pentagon spends in one day).

Okay, I guess I feel better now.
Maybe.

October Mornings

It's October. That seems like a simple enough statement, but around these parts it is fraught with meaning. How did it get to be October? September was taking forever to get through, but October? It's like seeing purple loosetrife in the summer - when he would see it in bloom, my landlord in Boston used to say that summer was almost over. Of course, it was then only July. But as the years have gone by, I now see purple loosetrife in bloom and can be heard murmuring, "summer is almost over". Snow should be here soon.

We've had warm rainy weather for over a week now. Mornings have been gloriously foggy. Even though the wet gray gets to be a bit much, I like it this time of year as it often makes the leaves in their autumnal colors pop a bit as though they were under black-light from the late 1960's. The maple across the street by the Episcopal church turned its usual bright yellow, stunning against the fog. It has already lost most of its leaves. The church has been doing construction work fixing this and that and adding a small addition which will contain an elevator to its basement, scene of large tag sales. The tag sale usually held this weekend (Columbus Day) will have to be held elsewhere - in Dummerston.

The view from my balcony as the fog burns off and shows the colors that have started to arrive.

It will be a busy weekend. The just up the road village of Dummerston will also have its annual apple pie festival. They make thousands of apple pies for sale - and they sell them all, too. It must be a good recipe  And Newfane, a perfect picture postcard New England village, will have its "Heritage Festival" this weekend. And Friday night here in Brattleboro (oops, that's tonight!) will be our monthly "Gallery Walk", which is kind of an amusing name as most of the art galleries are gone. Still it can be a fun time. I may go.

Thinking about Newfane, I looked for my photos of that village's center taken one autumn years ago. Of course I can't find them at the moment. So here, not intended for this blog, are the digital equivalent of snapshots, taken two days ago. Over the next few days I'll try to dig out a few of my half way decent photos of the autumn colors from years past.

Two buildings down from my apartment, looking towards downtown.

Just around the corner from the red brick house in the shot above.

I love the porch on this house, one more block towards town and across the street from the next shot:

Our town Common. Teddy Roosevelt once gave a speech from that bandstand. 

In the meantime, as I've been writing this the sun has come out from hiding, the sky seems to be making an attempt at turning blue, I have the day off from work and have started thinking about a perambulation around town with my camera, and in a phone call she made to me about something else I just told my boss that I'll be retiring from my job around November 15th. I think it's going to be a good day.

They're at it again...

Sometimes it is best to not read the news, and to not drift along in the web. This morning, as I was checking my email, I clicked a link to a Facebook post with a picture of my nephew that I wanted to see. I noticed that Facebook's ads, which are targeted based on what one reads and which pages one visits, are getting a little more interesting. One of today's was for Greg Palast's new comic book! Wait - a Greg Palast comic book? Yeah, I clicked on it.

Palast is one of the few reporters who investigated the theft of the 2000 U.S. election by illegally removing people from the voting rolls, a subject he revisited after the election of  2004. In his advertising for the comic, he quotes right wing win-at-all-costs operative Karl Rove's June 2011 Wall Street Journal article (“Why Obama Is Likely to Lose in 2012”) dictum that “If their [black voters’] share of the turnout drops just one point in North Carolina, Mr. Obama’s 2008 winning margin there is wiped out two and a half times over.” You can see where this is going. I moved on, only to find a Reuters News Service story which states that new laws in 23 of our 50 states could prevent up to 10 million Hispanic voters from registering or voting via picture ID checks, phony illegal immigrant claims and etcetera. (Latinos comprise more than 10% of US voters.) Experiencing a sudden chill I blamed on the cool morning, I moved on.

Oh, look, here's another Reuters article investigating how many Americans are not counted as unemployed because they have given up looking for work. Evidently, if they were counted the August unemployment figure would change from 8.1% of the country to 10.5%. Hey, what's another four million unemployed?

Speaking of which, Yahoo is reporting on a 19 year old unemployed male who stole a rare coin collection and then spent the coins at their face value for pizza and a movie for his pregnant girlfriend. He used a quarter that could be worth up to $18,000.00!

And then there's the story of a double amputee in a wheelchair who was shot to death in close quarters by a cop who thought that the pen the guy held was a gun.

And it turns out that the lining of soup cans contains so much of a harmful chemical known as BPA that a direct correlation has been shown in people with brain cancer. It has also been linked to breast cancer, prostate cancer, and diabetes. The Food and Drug administration refuses to ban it, though, so it must be okay - right?

Awww, here's some good news for the day - a baby goat is saved from drowning by a hero pig!



But the best news of all is that "Heaven's Gate" has been restored and is being shown at the Venice Film Festival where it is now garnering praise. When it was made back in 1979 and 1980, its cost overruns nearly  destroyed United Artists, which was soon gobbled up by MGM - itself about to be taken over by an evil financier eager to get his hands on that studio's prime L.A. real estate. The original negative was destroyed in a studio attempt at a recut. And it has been reported that an executive from the office of the new President, Ronald Reagan, told Hollywood executives that there were to be no more movies critical of United States history, thank you very much.

"Heaven's Gate", finally earning respect.

The film did pretty much end the careers of its director Michael Chimino ("The Deer Hunter"), and leading man Kris Kristofferson. It was long, close to four hours long. I was in the film business then, and saw the complete uncut version. It had its problems, including telling its story in a somewhat elliptical non-linear fashion, but I liked it. I was in a distinct minority. Many felt its theme was unappealing - it concerned the Johnson County War (Wyoming, 1892) in which wealthy cattle barons - with state approval - used hired guns to kill poor European immigrant farmers in order to keep grazing land from being settled. Eventually, the President of the United States had to send in the Cavalry - literally. The Cavalry,  by the way, were there to save the mercenaries who had been trapped by the poor farmers.

Killing the poor? Could never happen, right? Now we just find ways to stop them from voting. And working. And make them eat canned soup. Cue the hero pig!