Open Tummler 04/26/16

Today they are making the president, and in five states: Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Connecticut, Rhode Island.

All of these states, they are, in some way, disturbed.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tk118ZeIvbY]

My daughter, she lived for a while in Pennsylvania. I learned then that this state, it is infested with doctors suffering from a severe religious disability, one that causes them to balk at prescribing birth control. I told my daughter to find a Jewish doctor. This she did. And that solved that problem.

But it did not solve the problem of the many young men roaming about in the pickups, all streaming from the bed, the slavery-diaper. These retroverts, they would oft cruise southern Pennsylvania town and country, then dip below the Maryland line, there to gather at squalid Ku Klux Klan compounds.

Yes. These are the people, of The Hairball.

My daughter, she lived downwind from Harrisburg. And at night she could see Three Mile Meltdown, glowing there, in the dark.

When she returned to California, it was with a cat with two heads.

Delaware, it is basically a post-office box for corporados, one owned by the Du Pont family.

I was once going to write a travel guide to Delaware. But then the publisher, he confessed that he was of Du Pont lineage, and therefore the book, it would need to elide all mention of the many Du Pont misdeeds. Lest the family, they would lure this man, to that place where Joe Pesci, he took a bullet to the brain, in GoodFellas. And there beat him with big sticks.

I eschewed the assignment.

Before the job aborted, I wandered widely the state, and was everywhere appalled to discover that spicy food, it is apparently against the law there. Delaware food, it was nearly as bland as that available, in ghastly abundance, in the nation's buffet-belt, that horrendously large swath of states in the nation's midsection, where mammoth peoples, they gather to feed, in huge low warehouses, that are perpetual-motion machines of something like food, steamy, aorta-blowing grease palaces, where the pork chops, and the macaroni salad, they never end.

Finally, there in Delaware, I found a roadhouse barbecue joint. But it was like no barbecue joint I had ever before endured. The guilt-ridden proprietor, a black man, he admitted that he been forced to strip all the spices from his recipes. Because the white 1279.jpgpeople of Delaware, when encountering his original barbecue sauces, they would pant, and sweat, and snort, and finally flop around in serious seizures. He was afraid, he said, of lawsuits.

Dolefully, he told me, that scrapple, which is sort of the American version of haggis, it is considered by the Delaware white people, to be the very apogee, of spice, and heat. And he said that he could not serve it. Because, if he did, he knew, that all of his ancestors, they would haunt him, every day, and into all of the night.

In desperation, I began cruising the supermarkets, looking to buy there some Hot Duck Sauce, which is known everywhere as an essential food group. I figured I would just drink it right out of the can, while driving around in this wasteland. But there was no Hot Duck Sauce, I discovered, in all the state.

I literally wept. And then I drove to Washington DC, to the Indonesian place, and there ate rendang. Which is one pound of shredded beef, and one pound of chili peppers, with a little garlic and shallots and ginger and turmeric and lemongrass tossed in, all simmered in coconut milk, for 13 or 14 days.

When I returned to Delaware, to explore the southern portion of the state, things got spooky. The trees, they became thicker, began to close in upon the road, and then—yes—came the swamps. Until finally arrived the albinos, bursting out of the woods, beating on the car with banjos, demanding I squeal like a pig. I knew then that I had drifted into Maryland.

Quickly, I wheeled the car around, plowed through a brace of banjo-bearers, and then drove at top speed, until I had exited the swamp zone. I next checked into a motel, and there ate Medicine.

Russ Smith, the guy who founded the Baltimore City Paper, he once told me, years ago, before he went over to the dark side, that politicians in Maryland, whether Democratic or Republican or Wile E. Coyote, they are all so crooked, that they need to screw their pants on, come every morning.

And, it is true, that Maryland, it does seem to send to the pokey, nearly as many elected officials as does Louisiana, a state where it is actually a requirement, that one engage in criminal conduct, before seeking public office.

Spiro Agnew, for instance, he was governor of Maryland. Before Richard Nixon selected Agnew as his national-ticket partner in crime. Agnew, he is the only person known to have regularly received bribes of American currency, stuffed into crumpled brown paper bags, while sitting behind the vice-president's desk.

Before he was retired to the golf courses, Agnew, he would sneeringly deride the Americans with epithets like "nattering nabobs of negativism." In speeches written for him by Pat Buchanan, an ageless Nazi who today pens apologia for Adolf Hitler, and fervently supports for president The Hairball, his fellow Klansman.

Connecticut has a silent "c," and therefore it does not belong in the United States. It should be in France. In France, the people strive to pronounce as few of the letters in the words as possible. Or else the words are pronounced mutant.

For instance, the "Hebdo," in Charlie Hebdo, it is pronounced "eh' do," except you 635565049547417747-afp-5366182901 copy_0.jpgrace across the "d" as quickly as possible, so that hopefully it won't sound at all. Another example: the French author Michel Houellebecq, his last name is pronounced "wehl bek," except you should race over the final "k" at the speed of light.

Connecticut needs to detach itself from the North American land mass and float across the Atlantic and there fasten on to France. The people of Connecticut, they will certainly be happier. Because they have national health care in France. Also, the food, wine, film, literature, philosophy, and sex, they are all better there. And, if you happen to lose your job, 100,000 people, they will pour into the streets, to demand you get it back.

Rhode Island. What can I say? It's a chicken.

Also, its nickname is "Little Rhody," which calls up hideous visions of hemorrhoids.

Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, Delaware: when you stand on the beaches in those states, and look out, you will see the sun, rising out of the ocean.

That is so totally wrong. Because, everyone knows, the sun, it is supposed to set, in the ocean.

It is all very disorienting.

And, today, disoriented people from these states—and from Pennsylvania, which is so disoriented it doesn't even get to have an ocean—they will be voting to make the president. And, many of them, they will vote for people, who are even more disoriented, than they are.

It can also be disorienting, to reflect, when one is attempting to determine one's location using a sextant, that the sextant assumes the earth is flat.

The earth is not flat. Probably. And yet the sextant, it works. Anyway.

This is an example of how you can do something, even when, at root, you don't know what you're doing.

Irving Berlin, he is another example. He could neither read nor write music, and was such a buffoon on the piano, he could really only play in the key of F sharp—which is the one where you get to lean heavily on the black keys, which are those that stick up, and so are most forgiving, to fumbling fingers.

But, every day, melodies, they were arriving in his head. So he found ways to get them out. He would whistle these melodies, to people who could write music, and they would scribble them down. He later bought a transposing piano, where he could finger his melodies, in his fumble-fingered F sharp, and then turn a wheel, on the piano, that would shift the melodies, into other keys.

In such ways, Irving Berlin, he wrote almost as many songs as god.

However, even when he got done, doing what he was doing, not knowing how to do it, he still, often, didn't know, what it was, he'd done.

For instance, when Berlin wrote the songs for the film Holiday Inn, he thought "Be Careful, It's My Heart," that would be the big hit. When, instead, the people, they wanted, from the same film, "White Christmas." The single that has since sold the most copies of any song in the history of the humans.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1mIgKOdOyA]

The humans, they are on this planet, only because somebody went ahead and did something, not knowing what they were doing.

We know this from the true-life documentary series Battlestar Galactica. There, Kara Thrace, an arrogant skilled fuck-up; when all, for all and everybody, is pretty much terminally lost; she is told, to just go ahead, and jump; the ship through hyperspace; though she has no coordinates, none at all; just jump blind, she is told; and she then reaches, in her mind, for a scrap of music; and she jumps the ship, to those notes, of music; and those notes, as it develops, they are what is known, as here.

This is doubly impressive. Because Thrace was dead at the time.

All of the humans, they are descended from a child, aboard that ship, who was, and is, Mitochondrial Eve, and who only reached here, because she was scooped up, and saved, by a couple of other wandering souls, who had followed, scraps of vision, they had received, through the years and the years and the years and the years, of the Opera House.

So. You know. Even if you think you don't know. What you're doing. Maybe. Just go ahead. And do it. Anyway.

My advice. Anywho.

[video:https://youtu.be/wFuc-J-WPtg]

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janis b's picture

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hecate's picture

"take me to the river."

That can be accomplished.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ar2VHW1i2w]

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[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngrXi5Dwk2I]

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janis b's picture

[video:http://youtu.be/_nj0GjyWTi0]

You tube googling can be fun.

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hecate's picture

the chicken, and the hemorrhoid, problems, Rhode Island is the third-worst state, at least by one measure, for black humans, in the United States:

While typical black households earned 62.3% of the white median household income across the nation, black Rhode Island households made just 52.5% of white households in the state. Such disadvantage can lead to a variety of negative outcomes, including higher poverty and death rates. Last year, there were 234 more deaths per 100,000 people among the black population in Rhode Island than among the white population, nearly the largest gap nationwide. More than 23% of black Rhode Islanders lived in poverty last year, while less than 11% of white residents lived in poverty, a difference of 12 percentage points, among the larger gaps nationwide. Another particularly detrimental area of inequality is the housing market. While 67.2% of white households in the state were homeowners, only 29.4% of black households were. The 38 percentage points was wider than the gap nationwide of nearly 30 percentage points.

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riverlover's picture

I am thinking about the French words and silent letters in words of languages. I have slight experience with Quebec francais, to a HS learner of French from native French-speakers, 5 years of French instruction (reading, writing and speaking), when I heard Quebec french in Montreal and north, it was nearly incomprehensible. Different slang, different pronunciations of identical words.

thinking about the author Houellebecq, I though of the spelling of Quebec--did those snooty French add the "q" to increase the name length? Or did the practical early French settlers pare down? From Wiki (not necessarily the best source) Quebec was a frenchified First Nation regional word. Learn something every day. Reading more about Quebec, out in the regional wilds, there are many different versions of Quebecois, reflecting different times of migration from the old country. Then there is this wonderful linguistical sentence:

"The consonants /t/ and /d/ are not pronounced [t͡s] and [d͡z] before /i/ and /y/ and the vowel /ɛː/ is not diphthongized in closed syllables (e.g, the word fête is generally pronounced [fɛːt], rarely [faɪ̯t])."

Well. Okaay. But that is only in a small area of Quebec. Good.

Yesterday I spied, in my woods, a difference. Then I saw movement: tails flicking. Deer. But wrong, something white, bigger that the back of the tail. There is a piebald deer out there, not a fawn. I had never seen that one before. No good photos for proof. I am on lookout.

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hecate's picture

of the French, though they share the same Celticity, are the Welsh. Who pronounce pretty much every letter. And delight in concocting literally insane words. Like Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch. Which is allegedly the name of a town. But is really just something to fuck with the non-Welsh with. When such non-Welsh folk are not around, the Welsh, they just call the place, "The Town." And laugh and laugh.

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riverlover's picture

My summer place is on an island. It is not necessary to designate where one is going except for to the Head, or to the Foot. My place is near the Foot. The village is closer to the Head, and Town is a ferry ride away.

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hecate's picture

come from the coal dug for perfidious Albion. Of which the Welsh have never truly been a part. They are increasingly remembering that now.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws0QlTubyZ4]

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riverlover's picture

in a motel room (well, cheap hotel) in Wales and watched Welch TV children's shows. The language is so different to my ear as so far as to not always be able to differentiate when single words ended. Probably because some went onandonandon. There may have been single word-picture associations, the shows were like Sesame Street but I would get lost in the pronunciation and how it fit into all those letters.

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To buy a chainsaw in Rhode Island and it sure wasn't silent, perhaps I should have gotten it in CT. The people in RI figure the state is so small, it doesn't take any time to know where all the roads go, so if you don't know where you are that's your problem as there are hardly any road signs. Almost like NJ where all the great highways lead to NYC but there are no signs telling you how far you are away from it making you feel like you'll never get out of jersey. If I was me I probably wouldn't speak of these things.

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“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire

hecate's picture

and I think now is the time to speak of the emptying of New York.

Before the white people came, the entire area, in and around the island, it was home to but 15,000 Lenape people.

That is therefore the maximum number of humans, the place can support.

Thus, the current denizens of NYC, they must draw lots.

Some 15,000 can stay. The rest, must needs, get the hell out. Now. And forever.

They can get out, mebbe, on the highways. And, there, they can go, as at least first refuge, to New Jersey.

I hear the governor, there in New Jersey, he has experience, with traffic jams.

Though, such a sad man. The governor. Captain Lapband. All he ever wanted, was to snuggle up close, to Bruce Springsteen. And that, can never, really, be.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKHV0LLvhXM]

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[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Koogv4fLLnM]

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It must be settled that the hairball stays. The 14999 other people might not like that, but it wouldn't be fair to the rest of the country to have him elsewhere, though that makes me a NIMBY.

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“The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us”
― Voltaire

hecate's picture

Bald One version of Star Trek, some beings from the holodeck, they managed to get to the door, that opened onto the rest of the ship, and then, arrogantly, triumphantly, stepped through. And then, stood there, frozen, as, from the feet up, they dissolved, into nothingness. Because they were not made to be. Out of the holodeck. Into the real world.

That is what would happen to The Hairball. If he were ever to try to leave New York. He is the quintessence of the arrogant, self-absorbed, narcissistic, cruel, selfish, flaccid, floppy, at core dumb as dirt, loud-mouthed, braying, stupido extremo, New Yorker. He could not possibly exist, other than on that isle. You are right. He must remain there.

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riverlover's picture

about fleeing NYC? They did not turn out well. I hope they are not used as training films. Many are probably on Netflix. Sigh.

I chose to live in NY, but away from the City, and also way uphill. Out where "as the crow flies" is definitely a faster mode of transportation than driving or walking or running. And shadows from trees, not tall buildings. Or hills, if you pick a wrong site. My climate may survive for longer, except there could be those pesky refugees who have never seen a turkey except naked and headless, or who still go oooh and ahhhh at cute things like deer. But that's just me. But I sadi above I did go ooooh, ahhhh at a deer yesterday. And fawns are adorable, like all baby mammals or dinosaurs, but grow up to be more. Like humans.

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hecate's picture

about the world of NYC is Planet Of The Apes. With the Statue of Liberty. Buried in the sand.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvuM3DjvYf0]

But you have fawns. So you are right out of it. Not of the city.

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riverlover's picture

http://surroundedbyreality.com/Misc/Water/Mendota/LadyLib/Liberty01.jpg

I saw her before she was burned (rumored by the Fraternities). Pure theater.

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Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

I've posted a challenge here ----> http://caucus99percent.com/comment/70104#comment-70104

Anyone game to brainstorm it out?

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riverlover's picture

I have Some Thoughts about Post Offices but am unfamiliar with the hierarchy of that Library and additions (even though I have read much there). Cheers! Rain for you, today? Another cold front...

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Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

If you look at the top right, under Groups, the essays are under "Resilience" the "Library" stands alone and is only for links, not discussions.
(It appears we are having issues with the right hand side, nothing is showing up for me.)

Here is the Post Office discussion.

Yes, it is raining pretty good here this morning... and is cold and windy. A miserable day actually, and I have to go out later to run some errands... oh joy! LOL! Wink

EDITED TO ADD: WOW - I should look around more.... it appears the right hand side has migrated to the left! Sorry about that! Click on *Essay Queue under the Resource Group list for all of the essays.

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Alison Wunderland's picture

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Martha Pearce-Smith's picture

Good

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LeChienHarry's picture

learner's permit in Illinois. There was a sign on a chalk board in the high school drivers' ed class: make your check out to Paul Powell - Secretary of State. Those without checking accounts put the cash money in an envelope.
From the Chicago Tribune:

Powell, however, went from hero to bum quicker than you can say: "a shoe box filled with money."

Which was among other surprises found in the closet of a suite in Springfield's St. Nicholas Hotel where Powell lived. Discovered Oct. 13 even as Gov. Richard Ogilvie and Daley were eulogizing Powell in a memorial service in the rotunda of the state Capitol, that shoe box became an enduring symbol of the shady side of Illinois politics.

Remarkably, news of that stunning discovery wouldn't be revealed for more than two months, just the first of a number of suspicious moves following Powell's death.

When the find was announced on Dec. 30, it was described to the Tribune by the man who made the discovery, John Rendleman, chancellor of Southern Illinois University's campus in Edwardsville, only one of the saga's improbable cast of characters.

"I almost fainted when I got into the clothes closet in Powell's rooms at the St. Nick and found the money," said Rendleman, the executor of Powell's will. "It was in all denominations, but mostly in $100 bills. Also, there were some $1,000 bills."

According to the Trib's account: "Rendleman said that the money found in Powell's apartment was in a shoe box, two leather briefcases and three steel strongboxes which were hidden behind old whiskey cases and mixed among the old clothing of the closet."

The cash added up to $750,000. Another cache of $50,000 was found in Powell's state office. When his assets were deposited in banks and started drawing interest, Powell's estate had a cash value, two years later, of more than $3 million plus 61,290 shares of stock in seven Illinois racetracks.

Not bad for a guy whose annual salary never topped $30,000.

"Even in death Paul Powell retains the Midas touch," the Tribune editorialized.

Those dollar signs gave new meaning to the folksy aphorisms for which Powell was famed. Obviously, he wasn't thinking about lunch when celebrating an electoral victory of his party by saying: "I can smell the meat a-cookin'." The other turned out to be more literal than some realized: "There's only one thing worse than a defeated politician and that's a broke politician."

Steve Goodman has a song about Secretary Powell. I am restricted, from viewing but I'll try to link to the url.

About swallowing half the letters in French words, we were in a town spelled Montbard. Pronounced mon barrr, but hold that "r" too. No one could ever understand us about that name even when we heard French pronounce it and we thought we were saying it exactly the same. Apparently not. Ever.

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hecate's picture

had a pair of freeloading raccoons, a mom and her child, that we named Yves and St. Laurent. It was fun pronouncing the former "Why-vees."

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LeChienHarry's picture

is sorely needed at this time.

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You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce

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Gerrit's picture

the word "retrovert." It has now been assimilated. I shall not eschew it :=) Another beauty, that. Enjoy your day,

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

seefleur's picture

shouldn't "Retrovert" be pronounced "re-ro-verh"?

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Think off-center.
George Carlin

Gerrit's picture

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

Kurt from CMH's picture

that politicians in Maryland, whether Democratic or Republican or Wile E. Coyote, they are all so crooked, that they need to screw their pants on, come every morning

There might be a lot of other locales where we see this phenomenon!

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For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still.
John Maynard Keynes, 1930

moneysmith's picture

but I love love love your writing. Such nail on the head descriptions. And so funny. Thanks for making me laugh, so few things do that these days.

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Hell is empty and all the devils are here. William Shakespeare

hecate's picture

that is good Medicine. ; )

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mimi's picture

I dunno, Maryland, some state I haven't understood so far. Why the heck did the Baltimore Sun endorsed Clinton? Until some year or so ago, I hadn't figured out the kind of racism that lingers around here. I am very curious how the different counties of Maryland vote today.

And for the silent letters discussion in the thread above. I think Italian has the least silent letters from all latin based languages, but as you know, thinking is not my forte, so I just believe that to be the case. And the Quebed-ish French sounds to me like a French stew burned and thickened into something that isn't even funny.

I remember my father saying that if you know the Russian alphabet to read that it exactly is spelled like it sounds. Sigh. I think all those Western and Southern languages have way too many silent letters and for very dubious purposes. No wonder we all feel betrayed and lied to so often with that much hidden silent letters. For a German, latin is a good base for pronunciation. I bet if my son had learned German in his elementary school years and Latin as his first foreign language, he would have never had problems with spelling in French or English. But I was a corrupted mom and sold out to the French before anything else. Sigh, they still can seduce me today, I just love them a little bit, probably because I don't know them too intimately... Smile

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hecate's picture

Baltimore has always been a problem. Edgar Allan Poe drank himself to death, so he wouldn't have to deal with it any more.

Though there is an alternative theory. That he was beaten to death by overzealous partisans for a political candidate.

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LapsedLawyer's picture

And there once was a note....

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGuRvEqm78k]

Ah, hecate, once again weaving your magic as you taught to Medea, your priestess!

Good morning!

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VF9OgOp6ZIo]

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"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon

hecate's picture

Yes. Pete. He knows about the notes. ; )

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enhydra lutris's picture

only as a child, and they are as you have described them, to a T, and then some. Way back when I hit PA as a child, it was also all covered with soot, especially Philly. There is a place in Panama with topography so convoluted that the sun rises from the Pacific and sets into the Atlantic. I blame it on Keats and his bullshit about fat stout Cortez.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

hecate's picture

Panama place, it is probably a Fringe event.

I knew a squadron of young men who migrated out here from the soot regions of Pennsylvania, intending to go to college. Instead they majored in quaaludes and blonde women.

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Shahryar's picture

that's when this site was at its heyday. "Hey, Day! Where you goin' with all that money in your hand?"

I fled the East when I was 17 or 21, depending on how we define East. I've hardly ever been back but when I do go there I travel by train. Well....I'd visited my sick Mom in Pennsylvania in April of...must have been 2007. By July she was getting worse so I booked a train. As it turned out she died on the day of my reservation so the trip was for her funeral. Somewhere in the darkness of eastern Washington I thought "Mama died today, or perhaps yesterday, I'm not sure". I had plenty of time to make it....until the engine conked out in Montana. By the time we got a new one and made it to Chicago I'd missed the connecting train. I hate flying, haven't flown since 1975, but I realized I was going to have to or....yes! The bus station was very close to the train station. I got on this Greyhound, went through places I'd never been before, like the parking lot of the Greyhound station in Akron, where guys sit and chat with their guns visible.

The bus went on, out of Ohio, into Pennsylvania but we got word there was a terrible crash up ahead on the Pennsylvania Turnpike so the bus driver decided to go South into Maryland (which is where we hook up with part of this diary). Yeah.....the backwoods of Maryland, where you don't want to be stranded. Little towns with little general stores. Hills and lots of woods. Even the trees look like they don't want to be there. It was eye-popping. This Greyhound bus was going as fast as it could around this tight curves, looking for the big East-West highway that runs through northern Maryland.

There's more to this amusing story besides the Maryland detour. The punchline is that I lost a full day, my sister picked me up at some bus station in eastern Pennsylvania, we drove straight to the cemetery in New Jersey while I changed into my suit in the car and we walked to the grave site....where I eventually broke down and cried at the tragedy of life.

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enhydra lutris's picture

Thanks for posting that scintillating summary.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

hecate's picture

Those little general stores! You can go in. But you'll never come out.

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Haikukitty's picture

But here's my song for the day, because I'm am feeling fed up and not at all hopeful today, despite trying to be. Also because my crazy parents both voted for Trump today. Sigh.

You disappoint me
You people raking in on the world
The Devil's script sells
You the heart of a blackbird

Sun's rising on a choppy glare
Rain dropping acid bought up in the air
A distorted reality is now
A necessity to be free

It's so disappointing
First I'll put it all down to luck
God knows why
My country don't give a fuck

Shine on me baby
'Cause it's raining in my heart

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgOn7wuC3tk width:420 height:315]

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