Owl mythology

At left: On Sunday, I saw this owl on the Swamp Rabbit Trail, maybe 90 minutes before dusk.




He flew from tree to tree about 100 yards in front of me, which is when I first noticed him. He had an enormous wing span. I was walking in his direction, so when I arrived below the tree where he was, I spoke to him. He looked right at me and seemed to be listening. I suddenly understood all the stories about owls being "wise"--they do seem to be smart and attentive, with their immense, intense eyes.

Watching him for a few minutes, I realized he was carefully watching me too, looking me up and down. Very large black eyes; a creepy feeling, as if sizing me up to determine if I could be eaten.

I stood there awhile, sort of communing with the owl. I asked him a couple of spiritually-oriented questions that I won't repeat here. As I said, he seemed to be listening, so why not? The swamp is so, so hushed and quiet. It seemed appropriate to break the silence and say hello.

I then pointed him out to the next couple of cyclists as they whizzed by; these two expensively-sports-attired young fellows ignored me as if I was a crazy old woman (uh-oh). But the next two middle-aged women cyclists stopped and cooed appreciatively at him, taking photos also. A nice Baptist-looking family of cyclists also stopped, their teenage son especially impressed, exclaiming he had never been so close to an owl that was not caged.

On my way home, I idly considered the Lakota legend concerning the sighting of owls in the daytime (portent of death) and wondered if Lakota legends 1) applied to non-Lakota, and 2) applied in Carolina. (Wouldn't Cherokee or Catawba legends apply here instead?) And then I promptly forgot about the owl... until I dreamed about him.

He was answering my questions. He answered them very clearly, but not in "language." They were answers that formed in my mind, and when I woke up, I knew what I should do and what was going to happen.

So, I realize now that the owls are magic.

I posted the owl's photo on Facebook and received a couple of warnings about bad luck. And so I looked up some of the mythology and omens connected with owls. I discovered that throughout the world, they are regarded as signs of both good and bad luck. Also, I learned that the concept of owls being "sisters" originally comes from the indigenous people of Australia (see list below), which I hadn't known. There is a national women's organization called OWL (Older Women's League), which (as far as I know) has mostly regrouped into smaller, local chapters. I always wondered why they chose that particular name; I assumed it was a reference to the wisdom of age. I realize now that the connection of owls/women is part of the world's mythology.

The Owl Pages offers everything you ever wanted to know about owls. I discovered his species: Barred Owl, although many southerners call them Rain Owls, which is certainly an interesting (and appropriate!) name, since we have had so much rain lately.

From the Owl Pages, I found a list of fascinating world-legends and mythology about owls.

Here are some of my favorites:

Africa, Central: the Owl is the familiar of wizards to the Bantu.

Africa, Southern: Zulus know the Owl as the sorcerers' bird.

Africa, West: the messenger of wizards and witches, the Owl's cry presages evil.

Algeria: place the right eye of an Eagle Owl in the hand of a sleeping woman and she will tell all.

Arabia: the Owl is a bird of ill omen, the embodiment of evil spirits that carries off children at night. According to an ancient Arabic treatise, from each female Owl supposedly came two eggs, one held the power to cause hair to fall out and one held the power to restore it. Arabs once believed that the spirit of a murdered man continues to wail and weep until his death is avenged. They believed that a bird that they called "al Sada" (or the death-owl) would continue to hoot over the grave of a slain man whose death had not been avenged. The bird would continue to hoot endlessly until the slain man's death was avenged.

Arctic Circle: a little girl was turned into a bird with a long beak by magic, but was so frightened she flapped about madly and flew into a wall, flattening her face and beak. So the Owl was created.

Australia: Aborigines believe bats represent the souls of men and Owls the souls of women. Owls are therefore sacred, because your sister is an Owl - and the Owl is your sister.

Borneo: the Supreme Being turned his wife into an Owl after she told secrets to mortals.

Brittany: an Owl seen on the way to the harvest is the sign of a good yield.

Burma: during a quarrel among the birds, the Owl was jumped upon and so his face was flattened.

Cameroon: too evil to name, the Owl is known only as "the bird that makes you afraid".

Carthage: the city was captured by Agathocles of Syracuse (Southern Italy) in 310 BC. Afterward, he released Owls over his troops and they settled on their shields and helmets, signifying victory in battle.

Celtic: the Owl was a sign of the underworld.

China: the Owl is associated with lightning (because it brightens the night) and with the drum (because it breaks the silence). Placing Owl effigies in each corner of the home protect it against lightning. The Owl is regarded as a symbol of too much Yang (positive, masculine, bright, active energy).

France: when a pregnant woman hears an Owl it is an omen that her child will be a girl.

Germany: if an Owl hoots as a child is born, the infant will have an unhappy life.

India: The Barn owl is the "vahana" (transport/vehicle/mount) of the Hindu goddess of wisdom, Lakshmi. As such, the owl is held as a symbol of wisdom and learning. The eagle owls, especially the rock eagle owl [Bubo bengalensis] and the brown fish owl [Bubo zeylonensis] are called " ullu" in Hindi and the word is also used as a synonym for "idiot" or "imbecile". The most chilling sound during the quiet and cold winter nights in the plains of Bengal is perhaps the call of the " kaal penchaa", the Brown Hawk Owl. The rhythmic "kuk - kuk - kuk" is believed to be a foreboding of impending death.

Indonesia: Around Manado, on the isle of Sulawesi, People consider Owls very wise. They call them Burung Manguni. Every time someone wants to travel, they listen to the owls. The owls make two different sounds; the first means it is safe to go, and the second means it's better to stay at home. The Minahasa, people around Manado, take those warnings very seriously.

Iran: In Farsi the Little Owl (Athene Noctua) is called "Joghde-kochek". It is said that this bird brings bad luck. In Islam, it's forbidden (Haram) to eat.

Ireland: An Owl that enters the house must be killed at once, for if it flies away it will take the luck of the house with it.

Israel: in Hebrew lore the Owl represents blindness and desolation and is unclean.

At left: the swamp itself, which is much more ominous after heavy rains. I love love love it, except for the mosquitoes, which are humongous and always-starving. It is also home to the largest snake I have EVER seen that wasn't under glass in a zoo.

~*~





Japan: Among the Ainu people the Eagle Owl is revered as a messenger of the gods or a divine ancestor. They would drink a toast to the Eagle Owl before a hunting expedition. The Screech Owl warns against danger, although they believe the Barn Owl and Horned Owl are demonic. They would nail wooden images of owls to their houses in times of famine or pestilence.

Latvia: when Christian soldiers entered his temple, the local pagan god flew away as an Owl.

Lorraine: spinsters go to the woods and call to the Owl to help them find a husband.

Madagascar: Owls join witches to dance on the graves of the dead.

Malawi: the Owl carries messages for witches.

Mexico: the Owl makes the cold North wind (the gentle South wind is made by the butterfly). The Little Owl was called "messenger of the lord of the land of the dead", and flew between the land of the living and the dead.

Newfoundland: the hoot of the Horned Owl signals the approach of bad weather.

Poland: Polish folklore links Owls with death. Girls who die unmarried turn into doves; girls who are married when they die turn into Owls. An owl cry heard in or near a home usually meant impending death, sickness, or other misfortune. An old story tells how the Owl does not come out at during the day because it is too beautiful, and would be mobbed by other, jealous birds.

Puerto Rico: The Owl is called "Mucaro". Back in the 1800s, the people from the mountain coffee plantations used to blame the little mucaro for the loss of coffee grains. The belief was that the coffee was part of the owls' diet, and many owls were killed. There are old folklore songs on the subject, one goes like this:

Poor Mucaro, you're a gentleman
you just want to eat a rat
then the rat
set up a trap
he eats the coffee grains
and people blame you.

Romania: the souls of repentant sinners flew to heaven in the guise of a Snowy Owl.

Russia: hunters carry Owl claws so that, if they are killed, their souls can use them to climb up to Heaven. It is said that Tartar shaman of Central Russia could assume Owl shapes. Kalmyks hold the Owl to be sacred because one once saved the life of Genghis Khan.

Samoa: the people are descended from an Owl.

Siberia: the Owl is a helpful spirit.

Spain: legend has it that the Owl was once the sweetest of singers, until it saw Jesus crucified. Ever since it has shunned daylight and only repeats the words 'cruz, cruz' ('cross, cross').

Sri Lanka: the Owl is married to the bat.

Sumeria: The goddess of death, Lilith, was attended by Owls.

Sweden: the Owl is associated with witches.

~*~

And so we see, Owls are often connected with women, and with spirituality... or both.

Since my dream, I choose to see my owl as a good omen. But I also realize that life IS impermanence, and what is regarded as "good" right now, may well be considered "bad" in the future.

Perhaps that is the lesson of the owl. Live completely in the present.

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FDR Memorial on Swamp Rabbit Trail

Greenville's Swamp Rabbit Trail was first a railroad bed before it was recycled for use as a recreational trail. This modest stone memorial to President Roosevelt is on the trail, and I wanted to share it.

It's one of those charming, amazing little snapshots of history.

The marker reads:

FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

1882 - 1945

While serving as the 32nd president of the United States, Roosevelt led our country through the Great Depression and World War II. He died while in office on April 12, 1945 in Warm Springs, Georgia.

Near this site on April 13, 1945 the funeral train carrying the body of Franklin Delano Roosevelt stopped at the Greenville station on its way to Washington, DC. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was aboard the train along with FDR's beloved Scottish Terrier Fala.

A crowd of more than 15,000 mourners gathered in final tribute and to show respect to Mrs Roosevelt. Soldiers lined the tracks for a mile north and south of the station. A telegram listing the names of family, friends and dignitaries who would attend FDR's funeral in Hyde Park, NY, was sent from the station.

Mayor C. Fred McCollough presented two floral wreaths to Presidential Secretary Steve Early. The wreaths were put inside the funeral car, one placed on top of the flag-draped casket.

Children began singing 'Onward Christian Soldiers' and the large crowd quickly joined in as the train slowly pulled away from the station.

~*~

At that time, the population of the city of Greenville was only around 35,000; Greenville County's entire population was approx 140,000.

In light of that, 15,000 mourners is an astronomical number.

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Kent State Remembered

Kent State student John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of Mary Ann Vecchio discovering the slain Jeffrey Miller.


Originally posted here on May 4, 2008. (I read it on the air yesterday on our radio show, Occupy the Microphone.)

43 years ago on April 30, 1970, Richard Nixon announced that military operations would be expanding into the neutral, peaceful country of Cambodia, which had the bad fortune to share a border with Vietnam. Viet Cong insurgents were said to be hiding in the mountains of Cambodia. (In fact, the USA had already been conducting a secret bombing campaign, unbeknownst to the general public, engineered by Nixon and his butchers, named Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger.) These illegal, immoral, reprehensible acts were the acts of criminally insane men, who had just realized they were losing their filthy, insane, extremely expensive war.

The result of this announcement was demonstrations on many American college campuses over the next few days. Nixon had promised to end the war, and proved to be a liar. The anger of the youth who would fight this war was palpable. At Kent State University in Ohio, demonstrators burned down an ROTC building. It was never known if this was deliberate or just an act of vandalism that got out of hand. Ostensibly due to this event, Governor James Rhodes declared Martial Law on the campus of Kent State University and sent the National Guard onto the campus. He also held a press conference in which he made famous inflammatory statements: "They're worse than the brownshirts and the communist element and also the night-riders and the vigilantes," Rhodes said. "They're the worst type of people that we harbor in America. I think that we're up against the strongest, well-trained, militant, revolutionary group that has ever assembled in America."

On May 4th, a demonstration was scheduled for noon. There were about 2000 people gathered for the demonstration, and about 1000 troops on campus. For unknown reasons, the Guard decided to break up the demonstration, and ordered the crowd to disperse. They were met with rocks and flying debris. The Guard responded with tear gas, and it was on.

I have read multiple versions of what happened next. Several facts dominate these versions: the kids were returning the tear gas cannisters (which do POP loudly like guns when they go off) and the Guard seemed very confused and didn't know what to do. At one point, none seemed sure of which direction to advance, but advance they did. At 12:22 PM, after guardsmen had advanced to the top of the hill near Taylor Hall and the parking lot, they turned and fired. They commenced firing for 13 seconds and fired 67 M-1 semiautomatic bullets. They wounded nine students, and murdered four in cold blood. Only two of these four students, Allison Krause and Jeffrey Miller, were actually demonstrating against the war. The remaining two, Sandra Scheuer and William Knox Schroeder, were merely changing classes.

No one knows who gave the order to fire, if anyone did.

The kids in the National Guard were the same ages as the kids on the campus. These kids were all facing the same reality--the males of both groups were trying to avoid going to war. One group could afford college and the other could not, but could somehow get into the Guard. There is no question there was significant class hostility directed at the college kids by the Guard; the males in the Guard were closer to actual combat in Vietnam, although William Schroeder attended Kent on a ROTC scholarship and may well have intended to become an Officer himself.

From this incident, we learned that even the pampered children of the middle class were expendable. We learned that totalitarianism can erupt quickly and suddenly, particularly in small, contained areas where there exists considerable class hostility, panic, and loaded weapons. We learned that the Governor of Ohio was a fascist and a murderer, as was the President and his henchmen, all of whom nodded approvingly at the murders at Kent.

The lines were drawn very clearly, especially for me. I woke that morning in Ohio, to see that my state was all over the national news, all over the newspapers. We had various Moments of Silence for the next week. Everyone seemed to know someone involved. My grandmother cried and explained to me that these students were exercising their civil rights, and had been shot for it. "You have to remember this," she told me.

In the subsequent lawsuits, the families received an average of approximately $63,000 per student.

~*~

Ohio - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

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The History Project, part 2

My original intention was to put the lady-stuff here on International Women's Day... and I guess you see how that turned out. Hey, better late than never!

And so, I am finally getting around to posting Part Two of the History Project. Intro to the DEAD AIR History Project (and first installment) is here. (You can click all photos to enlarge.)

~*~

Anarcha-Feminist Notes, September 1977, which I believe was published in Madison, Wisconsin.



San Francisco Women's Building Newsletter, March 1981.



From Berkeley 1981, movie poster for "El Salvador: The People Will Win".



Ancient black-and-white photos of my hometown (Columbus, OH) Take Back the Night march, one of those antiquated Second Wave feminist things almost completely lost to posterity. (1983)



Bookmark from Fan the Flames feminist bookstore in Columbus, OH. Since they began in 1974 and this bookmark is celebrating 10 years, it must be from 1984. From Outlook Columbus:

Began in 1974 by six women who each contributed $100 to a book collective, the shop evolved and moved many times over the next 22-and-some years. Fan the Flames grew from the United Christian Center, to the Women’s Action Collective, to the YWCA, and finally to their own space in Clintonville [and the store was then renamed Women's Words]. It may have been the final move that killed them. Moving away from their diverse audience downtown, and adding on to that the burden of renting their own space, proved too much and the advisory board decided to close shop.

The Women's Action Collective was in its own building for awhile, something I can't even imagine now.



Purty Pittsburgh Smoke-In poster, which I framed for my spare room. (1977)



"Freeze It! A citizen's guide to reversing the nuclear arms race"--San Jose, 1983.




Stay tuned for the next installment, sports fans! And I promise it won't be another half-year this time.

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Amazing Race lays Hanoi-sized egg

If you have ever watched "The Amazing Race" TV show on CBS network, you know the protocol. A diverse collection of two-person teams race around the world at breakneck pace, stopping at various tourist traps, landmarks and special events. At these colorful pit stops, they are usually required to participate in various contests and exercises: scaling mountains and walls and ladders into the stratosphere; dancing some intricate local tribal dances or engaging in some arcane ceremony; answering questions and quizzes about the history of wherever they are, and so forth. After they perform some telegenic activity (whilst inevitably arguing with each other about who is going to do it, who is right, etc)... they pick up the sacred clue to the next location, and off they go. The last pair to arrive at each locale is eliminated, until finally, there is one pair left, who are thereby proclaimed the winners.

Needless to say, it probably isn't easy to find distinctive, cool places to send the contestants. There is a bit of a travelogue on each show, as narrators quickly explain local history and customs, and provide interesting details, such as how many feet into the air they will have to climb, or how far away they are from such-and-such or so-and-so. It all tends to run together, so the challenge is to make each new location stand out and become uniquely interesting to the viewer.

Sometimes a locale is obviously chosen strictly for its emotional or political value, to stop viewers from getting bored and picking up that deadly remote. Or to get some drama going from the contestants' reactions to such a place.

On the March 17th show, it was Hanoi. HANOI.

H.A.N.O.I.

I was somewhat dumbfounded.

As soon as I saw the smashed-up B-52, I thought, oh shit. I saw that coming like a freight train.

And then I instantly wondered... who is working for CBS? Who is working for "The Amazing Race"? Do they not associate with regular people out here in the American heartland? Do they understand the emotional reaction to a downed American B-52 from The Vietnam War? Good Lord.

Well, John McCain did, and a bunch of other veterans did, too. The shit hit the fan in short order.

From Yahoo:

Usually, it is "Amazing Race" contestants with loose lips that stir up controversy for being insensitive, offensive, or ugly Americans while dashing around the less scenic or underprivileged countries of the world on the competition reality show. But with last week's Vietnam-based episode, it was the producers and network that found themselves on the receiving end of public backlash.

Veterans, conservative newscasters, politicians like Arizona Sen. John McCain, and plenty of the show's fans were upset that the show filmed at the site of a crashed U.S. B-52 bomber, and featured a segment where players had to listen to a pro-communist anthem being sung in front of a portrait of Ho Chi Minh and then find one of the song's lyrics in a sea of propaganda posters. Vietnam War veteran and American Legion National Commander James E. Koutz sent a letter to CBS Thursday, asking that the network apologize for "its disgraceful slap-in-the face administered to American war heroes. We only wish that the network would not be so eager to broadcast anti-American propaganda."

And yes, they got their official apology.

From the National Post:

Senator John McCain is among those who have accepted CBS’ apology for a passage on The Amazing Race where contestants visited the wreckage of an American B-52 bomber in Vietnam, writing on Twitter that the “issue is closed.”

The national commander of the American Legion, James Koutz, has also accepted the apology. Commander Koutz said said he believed it was sincere and heartfelt.

The segment aired March 17 and angered many veterans, particularly those who served in the Vietnam War. As part of its scavenger hunt game, contestants on the show had to visit the site in Hanoi, which Vietnamese authorities turned into a memorial.

Before this Sunday’s edition of The Amazing Race, host Phil Keoghan read a statement apologizing to veterans and families who may have been offended.

For my part, I continue to be amazed at the mainstream media's general cluelessness about such matters. I could have easily predicted this reaction, as everyone I know could too.

As I asked, above: WHO works for these people? Didn't anybody on the show's staff speak up and say, "Hey, ya think maybe this isn't such a good idea?"

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DIY Greenville space - Garaj Mahal

The new DIY Greenville space, known as the Garaj Mahal, had their first show last night. It was epic! I am SO PROUD of these kids. They are very open, accepting, and intensely committed to diversity and creativity. They are ready to try anything, the whole DIY ethic brought to life. Daisy hereby gives the whole endeavor a big fat A plus.

The new space is in an old garage near Paris Mountain; the "before" photos show a piled-up dump of furniture and detritus right out of the TV show "Hoarders" ... the DIY collective jumped in with aplomb; cleaning, hauling trash, scrubbing, building, installing a usable toilet and importing the requisite stinky old couches required by punk rockers everywhere (there's a law somewhere, I'm certain of it). When we arrived, the place was staffed with eager young volunteers with hula hoops and balloons-- as well as the occasional baby and dog.

The overall vibe really reminds me of the days of 70s Deadhead culture, people selling (or giving away) their own handmade comics, patches, buttons, t-shirts and zines of all descriptions. Although the music is (mostly, not entirely) punk, I can distinctly remember a violent, repellent, scary skinhead/biker atmosphere in the days of 70s punk, which often served the purpose of keeping women and gender-variant people away. Neo-nazis invariably showed up at 70s punk shows, usually sporting biker chains, swastikas, racist patches sewn on their butts ("Drop the Bomb and let God sort em out" was a real favorite) and other unfriendly paraphernalia. (It was due to this default-racist atmosphere within punk, that the Rock Against Racism movement was born, which I was proud to be part of.)

By contrast, the young folks in the current DIY movement seem more like the artist-rebels at an event like Burning Man. They are lots of fun, dedicated to advancing anti-corporate culture, and very positive.

And not a single swastika.

~*~


Photos below, and as always, you can click to enlarge.

Hay Fever, featuring lovely singer/guitarist Amber and drummer Ryan.



~*~

Weapon Y/Z



~*~

I was thinking that this guy brought the freaking house down with his bang-up Broadway-stripper version of Total Eclipse of the Heart, and I thought Who is he? And whaddaya know, he's already one of my Facebook friends! Small world, huh?

I also heard the opening bars of "Nothing compares 2 U" and I was really disappointed he didn't tear that one up as well.

NEXT TIME, Jake Xingu! I'm holding you to it!



~*~

From Indiana, Ghost Mice--lots of fun!



~*~

Below, the Ghost Mice fiddler with her significant-other and adorable little leopard-clad baby; dancers; hula-hoopers, etc.

And the very last photo, a man who certainly needs no introduction here at DEAD AIR: my fabulous radio co-host, DOUBLE A, rock and roll diehard.



And a splendid time was had by all!

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Blogular updates

Great graphic comes courtesy YELLOWDOG GRANNY.



Blogger has unexpectedly monkeyed with the process of posting photos. Again. As stuffy Evelyn Waugh (disgusted with Vatican II and Mass in English) famously remarked: The same again, please. Those of you who have had your favorite soap or frozen burrito or bra discontinued, never to be found again, can totally relate... as can middle-aged bloggers who finally mastered something, only to find it CHANGED AGAIN, and NOT for the better.

So, now I must copy and paste my old photo-format and insert the new URL of the photo in its place, to get it to look the way I want. Growf.

The same again, please!

Which reminds me. Ratzinger, I mean, Pope Benedict XVI, is abdicating at the end of the month, which we discussed on the radio show. On Gregg's Friday podcast, he went into more detail. (Specifically: What type of crimes is the Pope allegedly seeking immunity from? Is it for protecting pedophile priests or Vatican bank-laundering dirty money?) I am personally hoping for an African or South American pope this go-round, although I am unsure if that would have any appreciable effect on doctrine. Still, we see that an Eastern Bloc pope had the undeniable effect of helping to take down the Soviets; Vatican funds were funneled directly to the Solidarity union in Poland. Might an African pope get some of that Vatican cash for a similar fight against tyranny? Certainly, the possibilities are endless.

And speaking of religion: I have started reading an intense, smart fella named Dan Fincke, who is my kind of atheist. His blog is named "Camels with Hammers"... apparently, Dan has not read my smug young critic of last summer, who confidently assured me that Nietzsche is totally YESTERDAY, man. Direct quote: "You do know that he was discredited ages ago, right? Only alienated teens take him seriously any more."--just like the Beatles, one assumes. Is that a bummer or what?

You are hopelessly OUT OF IT, Mr Fincke! (But a very entertaining writer.) If I EVER get around to fixing the broken blogroll (something else Blogger supposedly "made better" and instead, made horribly worse)--I will be including you posthaste. Please accept this friendly mention in the meantime!

~*~

I forgot to re-post THIS on February 17th: my account of the lynching of Willie Earle, which took place here in upstate South Carolina, 66 years ago. I DID remember the date (rather late in the day) and posted a link on Twitter and at the South Carolina Progressive Network page on Facebook.

Please pass it on... its my own small contribution to Black History Month.

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The white South’s last defeat

... is the title of an article by Michael Lind on Salon. Some of it really rings true to me, and I thought I would do some quoting and commentary of my own.

The article is accompanied by a photo of the confederate battle flag in front of the State Capitol here in South Carolina. (sigh) Every time I go to Columbia (I think the last time was for Occupy Columbia), I see someone taking a picture of that damn flag, and it's pretty embarrassing.

Some excerpts from the article:

The white Southern narrative — at least in the dominant Southern conservative version — is one of defeat after defeat. First the attempt of white Southerners to create a new nation in which they can be the majority was defeated by the U.S. Army during the Civil War. Doomed to be a perpetual minority in a continental American nation-state, white Southerners managed for a century to create their own state-within-a-state, in which they could collectively lord it over the other major group in the region, African-Americans. But Southern apartheid was shattered by the second defeat, the Civil Rights revolution, which like the Civil War and Reconstruction was symbolized by the dispatching of federal troops to the South. The American patriotism of the white Southerner is therefore deeply problematic. Some opt for jingoistic hyper-Americanism (the lady protesteth too much, methinks) while a shrinking but significant minority prefer the Stars and Bars to the Stars and Stripes.

The other great national narrative holds that the U.S. is a nation of immigration, a “new nation,” a melting pot made up of immigrants from many lands. While the melting pot story involves a good deal of idealization, it is based on demographic fact in the large areas of the North where old-stock Anglo-Americans are commingled with German-Americans, Polish-Americans and Irish-Americans, along with more recent immigrant diasporas from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

But even before the recent wave of immigration from sources other than Europe, the melting pot never included most of the white South. From the early 19th century until the late 20th, the South attracted relatively few immigrants.

Many, many Americans in the Midwest (where I am from) descend from German and Irish immigrants. This is likely one reason they are more tolerant of immigration in general.

Lind includes THIS FASCINATING MAP (reproduced at left, you can click to enlarge), pointing out that much of the south simply regards its ancestry as "American" (which I guess ought to be spelled "Amurrican"). That truly does speak volumes.

However, I would also point out the huge swaths of purple on that map, which are the majority-African-American counties. That might give you some idea of how old-school white people feel "surrounded" in the South (underscoring the facts in my post about how white-flight brought down the economy). It is my contention that MOST whites would feel that way, and it is notable that there is no such similar swath of purple anywhere else in the country. Although yankee whites feel superior to southerners in race-matters, that is because they are safely in the majority. When African-American populations reach a certain critical mass (my estimate is about 25-30%), then racial animosities manifest in the North as well as the South.

One of the first things I noticed when I moved down South was that there are lots of rural African-Americans here, as well as city-dwellers, something nearly unheard of in the North. In the North, various white threats to "move out to the country" are racist code; dog-whistling for 'escaping' from blacks. In the South, such comments simply mean that you are moving to the country so you can grow tomatoes and raise chickens; no dog-whistling intended. Here in the South, there is no place whites can go (other than the richest enclaves) to 'escape' from black people. Would white yankees be as tolerant, in the same circumstances? Since most currently choose to live in segregated enclaves, far more segregated than the neighborhoods of most southerners .... I hardly think so.

This is the major reason white southerners don't like racial finger-pointing from yankees who live in all-white neighborhoods. I do not live in a white neighborhood, and I understand the sentiment.*

Back to Lind:

As difficult as it may be, outsiders should try to imagine the world as viewed by conservative white Southerners, who think they are the real Americans — that is, old-stock British-Americans — and the adherents of the true religion, evangelical Protestantism. In this perspective, the rest of the country was taken over by invading hordes of Germans, Irish and other European tribes in the first half of the 19th century, leaving the South, largely unaffected by European immigration, as the last besieged pocket of old-stock British-Americans, sharing parts of their territory with subjugated and segregated African-Americans.

This local British-American ethno-racial hegemony in the South was eroded somewhat by the migration of Northeasterners and Midwesterners to the Sun Belt following World War II and the advent of air-conditioning. And now, predominantly nonwhite immigration from Latin America and Asia threatens to make white Southerners of British Protestant descent a minority in their own region. Texas and Florida are already majority-minority states. It is only a matter of time before the same is true of every state in the South. Southern whites will go from being a minority in the nation as a whole to a minority in the South itself.

If Southern culture had a tradition of assimilating immigrants, then cultural “Southernness” could be detached from any particular ethnicity or race. One could be an assimilated Chinese-American good old boy or a Mexican-American redneck. To some degree, that is happening. And Southern whites and Southern blacks have always shared many elements of a common regional culture.

Indeed, one thing I find especially charming is young Asians with deeply-southern accents (little Asian children saying "Hey yall!" is too adorable for words) or young Mexicans at the White Horse Road Flea Market warning their brothers and sisters, "Its fixin to rain!" sounding as thoroughly southern as any other native South Carolinians. After all, they have been born here, and it was inevitable. There is a great deal of intermarriage among young white southerners and the new arrivals, and adorable kids of indeterminate race/ethnicity hollering "yall" has been the result. (And places like the White Horse Road Flea Market and the immensely-popular Anderson Jockey Lot is where we all come together.) I am one of the Midwesterners who moved here (in 1987) after the advent of air-conditioning (even though I often regard myself as a 'repatriated southerner'--since my mother's family was southern).

But the Old South ain't buying. Lind is right about that much:

[It] is difficult, if not impossible, for many white Southerners to disentangle regional culture (Southern) from race (white) and ethnicity (British Protestant). The historical memory of white Southerners is not of ethnic coexistence and melting-pot pluralism but of ethnic homogeneity and racial privilege. Small wonder that going from the status of local Herrenvolk to local minority in only a generation or two is causing much of the white South to freak out.

The demographic demise of the white South is going to be traumatic for the nation as a whole. A century ago, when European immigration made old-stock Yankee Protestants a minority in much of the Northeast and Midwest, one response was hysterical Anglo-American nativism. In a 1921 essay in Good Housekeeping titled “Whose Country Is This?,” then Vice President Calvin Coolidge, an old-stock Yankee from Vermont, explained: “Biological laws tell us that certain divergent people will not mix or blend. The Nordics propagate themselves successfully. With other races, the outcome shows deterioration on both sides.” Patrician Yankees promoted immigration restriction to prevent “inferior” European races from further contaminating America.

And now we come to another fascinating map provided by Lind, also reproduced at left (again, click to enlarge): Evangelical Protestants, rates of adherence per 1000 population. It largely speaks for itself.

I was particularly curious about those bright red hot spots of Evangelical religious activity, which are mostly in rural areas. Snooping around (with the invaluable aid of Google Maps), I discovered some of these bright red spots are on (or near) the home-bases of various influential mega-churches: Morristown First Baptist (Morristown, TN); Heartland Worship (Paducah, KY); Victory Family Life Worship Center (Hugo and Durant, OK), Altus First Baptist (Altus, OK), First Baptist Church of Wichita Falls (Texas), Harrisburg Baptist and The Orchard (both in Tupelo, MS). That bright red square in Montana jumped right out at me also--possibly a Christian militia stronghold? Likewise, the spot in Idaho is very close to Ruby Ridge.

As we see, most of the orange swaths are in the South, and many of these spots also correlate to various mega-churches.

Lind again:

Just as white Southerners today are gerrymandering congressional districts and contemplating gerrymandering the Electoral College to compensate for their dwindling numbers, so the outnumbered Yankees of the North sought to dilute the political influence of European “ethnics” in the early 1900s. When the 1920 census revealed that largely European urbanites outnumbered mostly old-stock Anglo-American rural voters, Congress failed to reapportion itself for a decade, because of the determination of small-town Anglo-Americans to minimize the power of “white ethnics.”

The startling difference at this historical juncture is that they will not admit what they are doing. They will deny that this has anything to do with their whiteness, although they will proudly cop to evangelical religion as a major motivation (deny Christ at your peril!).

I have to admit, this denial of their xenophobia is what I find so confusing, as someone who lives here and argues with these folks rather frequently. The racists and bigots of yore came right out and told you what they were thinking; they were not ashamed. Modern-day southerners categorically deny that their gerrymandering and various attempts to prevent minority voting (etc) has anything at all to do with race or ethnicity ... and they actually appear to believe their own lies. They tell you it is about IDEOLOGY. They refuse to believe that their ideology or politics is backward or racist, and consider such a statement anti-southern.

This is why I continually remind everyone of the purple swaths on that map: whites are not the only southerners. I refuse to let them forget it.

Lind winds up:

By the 1970s, the social divisions among old-stock Anglo-Americans and the “white ethnics” had faded to the point that most white Americans in the North had ancestors from several Western European nationalities. Similarly, the trans-racial melting pot in the U.S. will probably blur or erase many of today’s racial differences by the middle of the 21st century.

But the old-stock Yankees in the Northeast and Midwest did not accept their diminished status in their own regions without decades of hysteria and aggression and political gerrymandering. The third and final defeat of the white South, its demographic defeat, is likely to be equally prolonged and turbulent. Fasten your seat belts.

Yup.

A few days before the 2012 election, I was shopping at the Fresh Market (a gourmet store) and blundered into the men's restroom. (there is only one toilet per restroom) A well-dressed, mellow old southern white man was drying his hands, leisurely, and looked up at me, bemused. He wasn't bothered.

"Ohhhh--" I burbled, embarassed. "I am so sorry! I wasn't paying attention!" He laughed, and then so did I. "You got me, dead to rights!" I held up my hands, as if under arrest. He laughed heartily.

"Welp, in a coupla days," he drawled in his low-country accent (a speech pattern strongly associated with 'old money' in these parts) "somebody else in Washington, Deee Ceee is gonna be held dead to rights too!" he cackled delightedly. In case I didn't know what he meant, he punctuated his comment with, "Benghazi!" --which he pronounced Benn Gozzeh.

I was stunned, but I smiled and nodded politely. I hardly knew what to say, so I said nothing. Mr Low-Country departed the restroom, chuckling happily at Obama's imminent demise.

I was stunned because: 1) He really did believe with his whole heart that Obama was going to lose, like most of the Fox News fans, and 2) he had no doubt that if he was talking to a white woman over 50, that I must agree with him. I mean, I was a reasonable person who apologized for entering the wrong-gender toilet, wasn't I? OF COURSE I was no hooligan, and I must therefore be a Republican.

It did not seem to occur to him that he might be talking to someone who would not agree with him. I think this is because he had met so few people who did not.

This is the South that is currently perishing. Not fast enough for me, but probably too fast for Mr Low-Country.

I have thought of him many times since the election. And I wonder how he dealt with the shock.






~*~

*I was once self-righteously preached at by a prominent blogger, that she made People of Color her role models about racial matters (I had foolishly remarked that I looked up to my mother as a political role model). When I checked the demographics of the Midwestern town this blogger lived in, I was stunned: It was 98.5% white. Who the hell are these role models she is talking about?

I realized then, that she was talking about, you know, Oprah Winfrey and bell hooks and various bloggers at Racialicious, not people she actually lived next to or associated with in real life.

This was a major wake-up call for me, contrasting the political-correctness of what various hip, so-called 'progressive' white bloggers SAY and how they actually live and what they actually do. When I bring these matters up (of neighborhoods and personal associations), it is understood that I am somehow saying something dirty or uncool--the idea that they should practice what they preach seems foreign to them. Am I suggesting they stop living in all-white neighborhoods?

Why yes, I am.

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African-American daughter of Strom Thurmond passes away

At left: the cover of Essie Mae Washington-Williams' biography, titled Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond. South Carolina Senator and proud Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond was the third-longest serving Senator in US history.







Strom Thurmond's mixed-race daughter, conceived with his family's 16-year-old maid and born in 1925, has passed on at the age of 87.

From the time I first moved to South Carolina in 1987, I heard rumors of Essie Mae's existence, but just found it so hard to believe. I didn't think there was any way the rumors could be true. Thurmond was the last of the old-school segregationists.

But I was repeatedly assured that the story was true. When she finally came forward after Thurmond died in 2003, I was not at all surprised, and I doubt anyone else was either.

From the Greenville News:

COLUMBIA — Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race daughter of one-time segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond who kept her parentage secret for more than 70 years to avoid damaging his political career, died Monday. She was 87.

Vann Dozier of Leevy's Funeral Home in Columbia said Washington-Williams died Monday. A cause of death was not given.

Washington-Williams was the daughter of Thurmond and his family's black maid. The identity of her famous father was rumored for decades in political circles and the black community.

But not until after Thurmond's death in 2003 at age 100 did Washington-Williams come forward and say her father was the white man who ran for president on a segregationist platform and served in the U.S. Senate for more than 47 years.

"I am Essie Mae Washington-Williams, and at last I am completely free," Washington-Williams said at a news conference revealing her secret.

She was born in 1925 after Thurmond, then 22, had an affair with a 16-year-old black maid who worked in his family's Edgefield, S.C., home. She spent years as a school teacher in Los Angeles, keeping in touch with her famous father.

While Thurmond never publicly acknowledged his daughter, his family acknowledged her claim after she came forward. She later said Thurmond's widow, Nancy, was "a very wonderful person," and called Strom Thurmond Jr. "very caring, and interested in what's going on with me."

Several members of Thurmond's family didn't respond to messages seeking comment Monday.

Washington-Williams was raised by Mary and John Washington in Coatesville, Pa. Her world changed when she was 13 when Mary Washington's sister, Carrie Butler, told Essie Mae that she was her mother.

Washington-Williams met Thurmond for the first time a few years later in a law office in Thurmond's hometown of Edgefield.

"He never called my mother by her name. He didn't verbally acknowledge that I was his child," Washington-Williams wrote in her autobiography, "Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond."

"He didn't ask when I was leaving and didn't invite me to come back. It was like an audience with an important man, a job interview, but not a reunion with a father," she said in the book released January 2005.

It was the first of many visits between Washington-Williams and her father.

He supported her, paying for her to attend then-South Carolina State College at the same time Thurmond was governor. He also helped her later after she was widowed in the 1960s.

"It's not that Strom Thurmond ever swore me to secrecy. He never swore me to anything," she wrote. "He trusted me, and I respected him, and we loved each other in our deeply repressed ways, and that was our social contract."

Washington-Williams watched from afar as Thurmond ran for president as a segregationist for the Dixiecrat Party in 1948, saying "all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the army cannot force the Negro race into our theaters, our swimming pools, our schools, our churches, our homes."

Washington-Williams recalled once asking her father about race.

Thurmond defended his beliefs as part of the "culture and custom of the South," she wrote.

"I certainly never did like the idea that he was a segregationist, but there was nothing I could do about it," Washington-Williams said in 2003. "That was his life."

Thurmond later softened his political stance and renounced racism. But he never publicly acknowledged his oldest daughter or the active role he played in her life. Thurmond and his first wife, Jean, were married in 1947; she died in 1960. They had no children. He had four children with his second wife, the former Nancy Moore, whom he married in 1968.

Washington-Williams was left unsettled by her father's death. At her daughter's encouragement she decided to make her story public.

"In a way, my life began at 78, at least my life as who I really was," Washington-Williams wrote. "I may have called it 'closure,' but it was much more like an opening, a very grand opening."

A statue of Thurmond on the Statehouse lawn was originally cast saying he had four children. Thurmond's family agreed to have Washington-Williams' name added.

We mentioned Essie Mae's passing today on our radio show, Occupy the Microphone.

May her soul rest in peace... and may the south one day recover from Jim Crow.

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Reflections on Jack Ruby

Depending upon who you read, Jack Ruby was a petty strip-club gangster or an important mobster-friend of Sam Giancana.







NOTE: I first wrote this in 2009 and have re-posted it every November since then.

Please limit comments to current post. Thanks.


~*~


It was November 24, 1963.

I remember that I was sitting on a footstool, my nose approximately 8 inches from my family's black-and-white TV set. If I got too close, I couldn't see anything, but I was intent on getting just as close as I could. I wanted to see it all.

It was Sunday morning, and I remember well the hubbub of the adults in the kitchen. I was the only one in the small dining room that served as our TV room. I heard the TV-news announcer say that Lee Oswald was going to be transferred in an armored vehicle. I didn't know what an armored vehicle was, but it sounded awesome. And yet... that little guy? As a six-year-old, I was surprised that such a skinny little guy could be the villain of the hour. I had expected the president's assassin to look something like Brutus, the dastardly evil man of the Popeye cartoons... or at least, he should bear some resemblance to Lex Luthor. This skinny, slight, soft-spoken fellow who calmly denied being near Dealey Plaza? Well, he was just spooky, that's all. They kept calling him a Marxist and a communist, words I didn't yet understand but knew meant that he was a bad person. (I would say the word "communist" in 1963 had the similar gravitas of the word "terrorist" in 2009.) I was enthralled by the constant TV-coverage, the switching back and forth from Dallas to Washington... to our new president, Lyndon Johnson and then back to the basement of Dallas city jail. It was as dazzling as space travel.

Middle-American culture had changed utterly and completely in only two days.

For one thing, the TV had not always been on before. You turned on the TV to watch something, and when it was over, you turned it off. Sometimes you left it on, but usually not. Among the working classes, it was not unusual for some families not to own a TV at all. There were often anti-TV holdouts in these families; cantankerous, old-school types who thought TV was all rubbish and probably unchristian. But after this weekend? This archaic viewpoint was consigned to the dustbin of history. Back in my first-grade class, I would hear about parents who had rushed out to buy a TV at long last. They simply could not bear to be left out.

The TV had been turned on, and stayed on. It was on when I got home from school, dismissed early due to the tragedy, and it was on throughout the funeral. And it stayed on forever after.

And the TV was on as they transferred Lee Oswald to the armored vehicle, or attempted to. There was much talk about security because tensions were running extremely high; there was palpable fury throughout the city of Dallas. When police had forcibly taken Oswald from the theater where they had discovered him, hostile mobs surrounded the police car, and it was said he might have been torn to pieces if the crowd had been able to get their hands on him.

Listening to all this, I was riveted. I remember peering intently as they brought him out, my nose almost right on the screen: There he is!

And then, the inevitable disappointment: such a nonthreatening little dude he was.

I peered and peered and then... bang. Oswald was down.

What?

It was so quick. If not for the firecracker-noise of the gun, I would never have known.

"They shot him!" I shouted, "They shot Oswald! They shot him!"

The adults stampeded as one entity, from the kitchen to the small dining room where I was. My mother, grandparents, some other relatives I have since forgotten... possibly my cousin Charlene.

"I SAW it!" I was shouting, "I SAW IT!"

SSSSSSSssssssshhhhhhhh! Everyone was shushing me. Had I really seen that? The adults' eyes were collectively popping. I felt pretty important for being the one to see it.

"He must be really mad about the president, huh?" I asked.

Nobody answered. They kept shushing me, as obviously-shaken news-announcers talked about what they had just witnessed.

And then, the adults were all looking at each other, that way adults did when they were thinking things that they would not share with children.

Finally, my grandfather said, in what I have come to call his Christian Science Wisdom voice: "Well, that really stinks."

My mother's eyes were wide, wide, wide.

My grandfather shook his head and said "Stinks!" again, rather emphatically. My mother nodded gravely back at him.

I didn't know what he meant then.

The TV-announcers were saying his name: Jack Ruby. The man's name was Jack Ruby.

~*~

Like millions of Americans that day, I saw a murder on live television. Because the murder was widely perceived as an act of justice, nobody worried about the ill effects on all of us children who saw it. And later, many years and decades later, when we began to doubt that what we saw was justice and instead wondered if it had been the silencing of a co-conspirator... nobody worried about the erosion of our morality and the consequential development of our cynicism.

But I trace it all back to that day, the day in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

They ask us, do you remember where you were when John F. Kennedy was assassinated? But I always ask, instead: What did you think when his accused murderer was pronounced dead? Because the silencing began then, the questions asked that will forever remain unanswered. (As Norman Mailer once explained the existence of the angry kids of the 60s: They hated the authority because the authority had lied.)

My grandfather was right. It certainly did stink. And the stench covered everything.

The lies of the powerful were uncovered and exposed before us, that morning in the basement of the Dallas city jail.

Some of us never forgot.

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Military Fakes don't help Veterans

At left: My father, who was not a fake veteran.







I first started reading blogs in 1998, when the USA was still at relative 'peace'--in terms of war and military interventions. In the past decade, I have witnessed the increase and escalation of military activity in several countries... and with this escalation, an astronomical increase in online trolls and fakes, claiming all sorts of bogus military experience.

Yes, you read that right. Fakes.

On this Veterans Day, I am hereby calling out the fakes.

A real military veteran is usually not afraid to name themselves, or at the very least, share a significant part of themselves online: their photograph, their blog, their location, their Twitter or Facebook profile. Like all real people, pseudonymous or not, their experience rings true, because it comes from the heart. They don't always make themselves look good, or certain, or without ambivalence. Like the rest of us, pseudonymous or not, real veterans have a social-media presence that is believable and consistent. People know them, and there is genuine proof of their ongoing interaction in the world, including their military service.

By contrast, the fakes are anonymous troublemakers and the tellers of tall tales. They often claim to be signature bad-asses, such as Marines or Navy Seals (as the Vietnam Era fakes could not refrain from claiming to be Airborne Rangers or Green Berets). They always claim the violent, romanticized, movie-magic aspect of war; the fakes never claim kitchen duty or the boring grunt work of checking in thousands of uniforms. They claim to have seen lots and lots of carnage. They tell stories of car-bombs and how they breezed through such events, unblinking. They brag about drinking coffee next to piles of corpses, unfazed.

And this is how we know they are fakes. Nobody drinks coffee next to piles of corpses, unfazed, unless they are monsters. I simply refuse to believe our veterans are monsters.

For this reason, the fakes are a blight.

The posturing phonies who brag about their fictional service are doing actual harm to genuine veterans, making up bullshit-bad-ass stories, thereby claiming sympathy, expertise and respect that simply does not belong to them. The arrogance and superiority that is frequently obvious in their online personas (undoubtedly reflecting feelings of inferiority and unimportance in real life) creates antipathy in people who would otherwise feel great empathy for veterans. The fictional crap they constantly spew forth (and I have caught them in countless contradictions and lies) aggravates existing negative feelings that many of us have about war; it doesn't do the military any favors.

The stories of well-known Vietnam-era fakes (or 'partial fakes'--such as historian Joseph Ellis and recent congressional candidate Kenneth Aden) have been part of our culture for a very long time... and due to the endless war of the past decade, we can now expect to see a whole new crop of them. The problems with these fakes will be never-ending. There is already enough trouble tracking down the frauds who dare to name themselves and claim jobs they do not deserve.

The online versions are fast-becoming the same sort of plague--and there seems to be little we can do to expose them.

My advice to one and all, is, do not readily assume someone (especially an anonymous online person repeatedly blowing his/her own horn) is automatically telling the truth about military service. The internet has made it exponentially easier to research the specificities of war, as well as the in-depth details of various actions and incursions (and their casualties). There are more photos, facts and figures online than ever before in history. Any of us, gifted enough in story-telling and accompanying ego-driven motives, could likely pull this off with enough effort. Americans typically want to honor and believe the best of veterans, and are unlikely to call someone a fake, unless that evidence is literally staring them in the face.

But in the case of anonymous commenters and people hanging out on blogs, be skeptical. Just as anyone can claim to be a model or cheerleader or actor or math-genius, anyone can claim to be a veteran. When that person decides to show their ass or treat people in a deliberately unkind, nasty fashion, they tarnish the reputation of ALL veterans, while using their supposed (nonexistent) military service as an excuse to be a first-class asshole.

They don't deserve your indulgence, they deserve to be exposed.

Or at least ignored.

Happy Veterans Day.

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The History Project - part 1

Introduction to The History Project

A couple of months ago, I posted an assortment of old leaflets, posters, propaganda, photos and other interesting paraphernalia on Facebook. People liked it and asked me if I had any more stuff.

That is an understatement.

I'm now extending my history-recovery project to Blogdonia. This will be an ongoing DEAD AIR feature! I'm hoping that people Googling old events/people/etc, will find something here that they have been searching for. I am deliberately choosing events/leaflets that seem to have been forgotten and/or have no other online history.

This historical ephemera (etc) is being posted in no particular order, just in the order I manage to find and date it. (There is TONS of stuff buried in my cedar chest, some in scrapbooks and some in folders.) If I tried to post it in chronological order, I'd NEVER get done.

You can click on any graphic to enlarge.

And don't forget, folks: POST YOUR HISTORY! Don't just wait for someone else to do it or it might not get done.



Official WELCOME to the DEAR AIR History Project! If you're visiting here for the first time, greetings! Hope you find something that interests you.

~*~

Descriptions:

1) The cover of the widely-distributed Yippie Journal, SOUR GRAPES, published in Columbus, Ohio, 1974.

2) Program for "Haven Can't Wait: A Day in the Life of Abbie Hoffman" a play based on the Yippie-founder's life, New York City, August 23, 1978.

3) Cover of Red Tide newspaper, Detroit, MI, March 1978.

4) Poster advertising Wallflower Order Dance Collective show: Wildflower Brigade, Ohio State University, November 23, 1984

5) Poster by Citizens Against Nuclear Power, Chicago, IL, announcing protest against the Zion nuclear power plant in Zion, Illinois, Sept 29-20 1979.

6) Poster for "Women in Struggle" film series, Oakland/San Francisco, August 1981.

7) Poster for Wild Women (band) show at the Artemis Society, San Francisco, March 27, 1981

8) Poster advertising Midwest Alternative Press Convention, August 23-24, 1980, Columbus, Ohio.

9) Poster announcing Kate Millett at the "Women and Power" program series, Ohio State University, May 25, 1978.

10) Campaign poster for Jerry 'Babe' Smith, Yippie-affiliated anarchist running for mayor in Dayton, Ohio, 1980. He was a member of the band The Dates.

~*~

More history to come. Stay tuned, sports fans!

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