I'd probably have more trouble with theTrue!
ghosts of the past, she said, if my
memory wasn't shot to hell.
From StoryPeople.
I'd probably have more trouble with theTrue!
ghosts of the past, she said, if my
memory wasn't shot to hell.
For as long as I’ve known of OWS there’s been Mark Adams. He's the poster person for this phenomenon coming from somewhere else after his home was swallowed up in foreclosure. There are other parts of his story he should tell you, not me. Those details add fuel to that motor of energy inside him of, “Why not justice? Why not now?” He said to me last week that he “came to join a social movement in Occupy and found a family instead.”I think that discernment is what makes his representation in Occupy so compelling. When others might be drawing from personal agendas he fulfills what Jesus said of Nathanael in John’s Gospel, “Here is a man of no guile!” (John 1:47) By no design of his, circumstances around him drop pretense…like a court room revealing itself as nothing more than a star chamber so Trinity can collect rents and swagger.Even as I prepare to pick up trash at Tompkins Park for my days of community service I still breath the air in freedom but my sweet brother languishes behind bars where he has started a hunger strike “for all those who are unjustly imprisoned.” Even from jail Mark Adams beckons to our better selves.
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Hadacol was a patent medicine marketed as a vitamin supplement. Its principal attraction, however, was that it contained 12 percent alcohol (listed on the tonic bottle's label as a "preservative"), which made it quite popular in the dry counties of the southern United States.Several popular songs were inspired by Hadacol, including "Hadacol Boogie", performed by Jerry Lee Lewis.
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The label on the tonic's bottle clearly stated that the recommended dosage (1 tablespoonful taken 4 times a day) was to be taken "...in a 1/2 glass of water after meals and before retiring". However, some pharmacies in dry counties were known to sell it by the shot-glass and at least one bar in New Orleans' French Quarter was known to sell a "Tassel Cocktail" with Hadacol as an ingredient.
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette has acquired a rare personal letter and other memorabilia associated with John Kennedy Toole, the author of “A Confederacy of Dunces” who briefly taught at ULL’s predecessor and is believed to have drawn inspiration there for characters in that classic book.Confederacy is one of my favorite books about my beloved New Orleans. The book is a masterpiece, which Toole could not get published in his lifetime. His mother, Thelma, believed that the failure to publish contributed to the despair that led Toole to take his own life at the age of 31.
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The letter in the collection was written in January 1963 to English professors Patricia and Milton Rickels at the former University of Southwestern Louisiana from Puerto Rico, where Toole was serving in the U.S. Army and working on “A Confederacy of Dunces.”
Toole submitted Dunces to publisher Simon & Schuster, where it reached noted editor Robert Gottlieb. Gottlieb considered Toole talented but felt his comic novel was essentially pointless. Despite several revisions, Gottlieb remained unsatisfied, and after the book was rejected by another literary figure, Hodding Carter Jr., he shelved the novel.What were they thinking? Kudos to Thelma Toole, who would not give up her hope for publication, and pestered the novelist, Walker Percy, until he read the manuscript. After reading it, Percy submitted the manuscript to LSU Press with an enthusiastic recommendation, and they published the book. Confederacy became a best seller and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980.
Do you remember the time that I went to Baton Rouge in one of those? I vomited several times. The driver had to stop the bus somewhere in the swamps to let me get off and walk around for a while. The other passengers were rather angry. They must have had stomachs of iron to ride in that awful machine. Leaving New Orleans also frightened me considerably. Outside of the city limits the heart of darkness, the true wasteland begins."
"Of course," Ignatius continued, mistaking his mother's rapt look for interest, "that was the only time that I had ever been out of New Orleans in my life. I think that perhaps it was the lack of a center of orientation that might have upset me. Speeding along in that bus was like hurtling into the abyss. By the time we had left the swamps and reached those rolling hills near Baton Rouge, I was getting afraid that some rural rednecks might toss bombs at the bus. They love to attack vehicles, which are a symbol of progress, I guess.”
Earth's seasons. Far left: summer solstice for the Northern Hemisphere. |