1:90
Posted: July 30, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentFor Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket. You feel you have to publish crap to make money to live and let live.
from a letter Hemingway wrote F. Scott Fitz re Tender Is The Night. I was looking for a different Fitzgerald letter, where he calls self-pity “SP,” the great thing to be avoided.
Blunt
Posted: July 30, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentDESANTIS DONOR DRAMA — Back in May,we wrote about concerns among some Republican insiders that Florida Gov. RON DESANTIS’ political operation isn’t ready for prime time (a.k.a. a presidential campaign) due to a lack of loyalists on staff. Now, we’re hearing from donors who feel like they’re not getting the proper treatment from the governor.
A GOP source told our own Daniel Lippman that last month, about 20 other big-time donors flew to D.C. from California and Florida for a DeSantis fundraiser hosted by former RNC chief and Mississippi Gov. HALEY BARBOUR — only to be stiffed by DeSantis during his Washington fundraising swing June 23.
After waiting about an hour for the governor to show up to the late-afternoon affair, the donors were told DeSantis wouldn’t make it. As a consolation prize, they were offered a later time slot: dinner with the governor at The Oceanaire in Penn Quarter. They again waited for DeSantis, and at 8 p.m. were told the dinner was off.
Among the political chattering class, DeSantis’ dislike of gladhanding has led some to refer to him as a “porcupine.” After a Republican Governors Association panel in Aspen last week, when panelists including Govs. LARRY HOGAN, PETE RICKETTS, DOUG BURGUM and TATE REEVES took to the floor to shake hands with activists and donors, DeSantis made a backdoor exit, according to attendees.
For his part, DeSantis’ office and top allies say he’s too busy running Florida to deal with the politicking.
“Gov. DeSantis had a full plate of meetings at the RGA, a panel and the Governors Only meeting,” said HELEN AGUIRRE FERRE, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida. “No one should be surprised that Gov. DeSantis is pretty busy, Florida is the third largest state in the nation, and he spends most of his time on state business.”
That’s all well and good, but if DeSantis is serious about his presidential ambitions — and we have no reason to believe he isn’t — donors suggest that he’d be well-advised to show a little less porcupine and a bit more golden retriever.
This is from today’s Politico Playbook, a politics dirt sheet. I don’t like Ron DeSantis, but isn’t it good if he’s ignoring donors? Something gnarly about Politico reflecting the take of “a GOP source,” maybe a DeSantis rival or a jilted donor or donor-worker-for, saying this guy can’t be serious about being president because he doesn’t pay enough attention to small groups of rich people who want “the proper treatment.” Maybe Playbook just calls it like it is, don’t like it, go vote Bernie, see where that gets ya.
Big buck of this lick
Posted: July 29, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
On a misunderstanding one time between Lincoln and William Grigsby, Grigsby flared so mad he challenged Abe to a fight. Abe looked at Grigsby, smiled and said the fight ought to be with John D. Johnston, Abe’s stepbrother. The day was set, each man with his seconds. The two fighters, stripped to the waist, mauled at each other with bare knuckles. A crowd formed a ring and stood cheering, yelling, hissing, and after a while saw Johnston getting the worst of it. The ring of the crowd was broken when Abe shouldered his way through, stepped out, took hold of Grigsby and threw him out of the center of the fight ring. Then, so they said, Abe Lincoln called out, “I’m the big buck of this lick,” and his eyes sweeping the circle of the crowd he challenged, “If any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns.” Wild fist-fighting came and for months around the store in Gentryville they argued about which gang whipped the other.
That’s from Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln: The Prairie Years.
As a young boy growing up in Galesburg, Illinois, Carl Sandburg often listened to stories of old-timers who had known Abraham Lincoln.
so says the NPS.
I was listening to Rick Rubin, music producer and massive wrestling fan, on Marc Maron. Re: President Trump, and wrestling as politics, Rubin said something like:
It’s always been wrestling. Now we know!
Needles
Posted: July 25, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
One of America’s hottest cities is down to one water well. What happens if the taps go dry?
Thought this was an interesting story, by Ralph Vartabedian, reposted on Yahoo News and then to Drudge. it’s about Needles, California, famously home to Snoopy’s brother Spike.
What’s interesting, as you can see in the photo, is that the Colorado River runs right by Needles. The Colorado forged the Grand Canyon, it’s one of the great rivers of the world. A great quantity of water, but claims on it by different states, and the taking of the water by the USA before it gets to Mexico are famously a source of controversy and dispute. The river is mercurial, and powerful.
I thought one of the more memorable parts of Into The Wild (the book) was about McCandless trying to paddle to the Colorado’s end, into a messy maze of marshland and silt that dissolves into the Gulf of California / Sea of Cortez.
A town running out of water while a river runs through is a very 21st century kind of problem, feels like.
In related river news:
A lack of rainfall in South American farming regions has left the Paraná River too shallow for fully loaded boats to pass from Argentina’s interior to Atlantic shipping lanes, contributing to high prices for soybeans and corn. Flooding in Germany last week forced the closure of a plant owned by Aurubis AG , a major metal producer and recycler, as copper prices hover around all-time highs.
from “Western Wildfires Are Hitting Lumber Prices” by Ryan Dezember in WSJ.
I realize this is “bad news,” which I try to avoid here on Helytimes, there being plenty of giddy bad news tellers and everybody has heard that the climate is being weird. But the good news is: these stories of compounding effects and complex systems are interesting!
The murder of Jane Stanford
Posted: July 23, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
On Saturday, January 14, 1905, at her Nob Hill mansion, wealthy widow Jane Stanford took a sip of mineral water that didn’t taste right. She vomited up the water and had her secretary, Bertha Berner, taste it. The secretary agreed it tasted strange, so they sent it to the pharmacy to be analyzed. A few weeks later, the report came in: the mineral water had been poisoned with a lethal dose of strychnine.
Who would want Jane Stanford dead? Well, maybe a lot of people. Her late husband was Leland Stanford, one of the “Big Four” founders* of the Central Pacific Railroad and a former governor of California, a tough customer for sure. Together the Stanfords founded Stanford University in honor of their son, Leland Jr., who died young. When Leland Senior died, Jane ended up in a long running squabble with the university’s president, David Starr Jordan.
After the attempted poisoning, Jane Stanford fired her maid and decided to get out of San Francisco. She sailed to Hawaii. Soon after arriving at the Moana Hotel in Honolulu, she asked for a bicarbonate of soda to settle her stomach. Bertha Berner prepared it for her and gave it to her. Jane Stanford drank it. A few hours later she cried out that she’d been poisoned. The hotel physician was summoned and tried to help her:
As Humphris tried to administer a solution of bromine and chloral hydrate, Mrs. Stanford, now in anguish, exclaimed, ‘My jaws are stiff. This is a horrible death to die.’ Whereupon she was seized by a tetanic spasm that progressed relentlessly to a state of severe rigidity: her jaws clamped shut, her thighs opened widely, her feet twisted inwards, her fingers and thumbs clenched into tight fists, and her head drew back. Finally, her respiration ceased. Stanford was dead from strychnine poisoning.
I quote from Wikipedia:
After hearing three days of testimony, the coroner’s jury concluded in less than two minutes that she had died of strychnine “introduced into a bottle of bicarbonate of soda with felonious intent by some person or persons to this jury unknown.” The testimony revealed that the bottle in question had been purchased in California (after Richmond had been let go), had been accessible to anyone in Stanford’s residence during the period when her party was packing, and had not been used until the night of her death.
After the death, David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford, turned up in Hawaii and def acted fishy. He hired a local doctor and tried to prove that Mrs. Stanford wasn’t poisoned. Which, like, shouldn’t you be running your university?
Jordan’s motives for involvement in the case are uncertain, but he had written to the new president of Stanford’s board of trustees, offered several alternate explanations for Jane Stanford’s death, and suggested to select whichever would be most suitable. The university leadership may have believed that avoiding the appearance of scandal was of overriding importance. The coverup evidently succeeded to the extent that the likelihood that she was murdered was largely overlooked by historians and commentators until the 1980s.
The coverup worked! I mentioned this story to my friend MLW who’s affiliated with Stanford, and she’d never heard it. I’d never heard it either until I read about it in this terrific book, The King and Queen of Malibu, by friend of the blog David K. Randall:
Randall’s book is about Frederick and May Rindge, who owned almost all of what’s now Malibu in the late 19th century. May was a distant relative of Jane Stanford. The Rindges had their own share of enemies among the squatters, travelers, and developers of the pretty wild California of that era. I loved this part about the boundaries of the old ranchos of California:
In the Rindge days, the only way to cross Malibu was along the beach at low tide, until the Rindges put up gates, one at Las Flores Canyon and one at Point Dume, the eastern and western boundaries of their ranch. This pissed everybody off. After her husband’s death, May Rindge tried, and failed, to keep the Pacific Coast Highway from being built across what had once been her family’s idyllic ranch. Randall’s book functions as a great introduction to the history of Los Angeles as it transitioned from a distant outpost to a train and car-based metropolis that grew, fast.
As for Jane Stanford, her murder was never solved. David Starr Jordan lived on to promote his views of eugenics until his death, on campus, in 1933.
I’ll tell you who was never mixed up in anything like this:
* of the Big Four, two have names that live on in institutions in California: Leland Stanford has Stanford U, Collis Huntington has Huntington Library and Huntington Beach (both actually named after Collis’ nephew, Henry, but still), and Mark Hopkins at least has the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco. In fact, Stanford, Huntington, and Hopkins all have stuff named after them around Nob Hill. But you don’t hear much about Charles Crocker. Seems like he was a bit of a petty bitch? I learn from Wikipedia that he is great-great-grandfather to Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.
Soobleej Kaub Hawj
Posted: July 22, 2021 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a commentThat’s the name of a 35 year old Hmong man shot and killed by law enforcement in Siskiyou County, far northern CA, on June 28.
The victim, identified as Soobleej Kaub Hawj of Kansas City, Kansas, allegedly pointed a gun at officers on the evening of June 28 when he turned the wrong way at a checkpoint on Highway A-12 near Weed. His family was following behind in a second vehicle.
State game wardens, members of the Etna Police Department and county sheriff deputies were all on the scene when Hawj was killed.
There was a mandatory evacuation order in place at the time due to the Lava wildfire. Hawj was killed at a checkpoint related to that, is my understanding.
Despite this headline, “Shooting of Hmong American man during Lava Fire draws nationwide attention,” in the Siskiyou Daily News, I hadn’t heard about this at all, and probably wouldn’t have had I not driven by a protest at the Siskiyou County courthouse in Yreka, CA on Sunday, July 11.
I probably still wouldn’t have known what the protest was about – it was over 100 degrees in Yreka, I’d had a long day of smoky driving, and I wasn’t energized to turn freelance citizen journalist – if Siskiyou County didn’t have a quality local daily newspaper.
And I probably still wouldn’t have known about it were it not for a hunger strike by Zurg Xiong:
Saturday’s vigil will take place at the Siskiyou County Courthouse, where a local Hmong American resident has been staging a hunger strike for the past 10 days to spotlight Hawj’s death.
“I will continue this hunger strike until talks are made or until I die,” said Zurg Xiong, who lives in the Mt. Shasta Vista Subdivision, has been on a hunger strike since July 6 and has been demonstrating in front of the courthouse in Yreka since Sunday.
In this case, a hunger strike as a tactic to bring attention to an issue has worked.
The bigger context:
Tensions have been escalating between Siskiyou County’s Hmong population and county officials since local authorities in May passed an ordinance limiting where water trucks can drive in an effort to curtail illegal marijuana grows. A second ordinance requires a permit to transport water on certain roads where illegal grows are known to proliferate.
Drought, water, wildfire, climate catastrophe, police violence, immigration, racial tensions, this story seems to exist at an intersection of the biggest, most explosive issues in the USA right now, and yet I don’t think I would’ve heard about it had I not almost literally stumbled across it.
“Hard news” isn’t usually my beat here at Helytimes, but “the California condition” for sure is, and I found it an interesting case of what does or doesn’t become widespread “news.”
Update: looks like the local Republican congressman has chosen to inflame the issue. I can appreciate the anger on both sides, illegal grows are very destructive.
How Quentin Tarantino got into Hollywood
Posted: July 21, 2021 Filed under: film, movies Leave a commentThought this was interesting, from this Deadline interview with Mike Fleming. Luck + preparation?:
How I eventually got into the industry to some degree was, my friend Scott Spiegel was going to write something for the director, William Lustig, who did Maniac, Maniac Cop. He wanted to bring me in to help him, and Lustig looked at me and said, “Who is this f*cking guy?” And so, he gave them my script for True Romance, just as an audition piece. He read it, and he really, really liked it and couldn’t quite get it out of his head. He had a deal with Cinetel at the time, and so he showed it to the people there and bought it. They were going to make it, with William Lustig. But then the woman who was the head of development at Cinetel, Caitlin Knell — who really helped me out in getting started in my career — she was really good friends with Tony Scott because she used to be his assistant. She knew I was a big fan of his. So she invited me to the set of The Last Boy Scout, and I was able to watch filming for a little bit, and she took me to Tony’s birthday party. I was in heaven. I was only just a year out of the video store. And apparently, I made such a nice impression on Tony that he was like, “Who is this kid?” She said, “The boy’s a really good writer, I’m working with him on this thing at Cinetel.” And he goes, ‘Well, send me a couple of his scripts. Let me read them. He seems like a nice guy. I mean, he really likes me, so he’s obviously got good taste. Send me a couple of his scripts.”
She sent him True Romance and Reservoir Dogs. He read them, and he called Cat in a month and goes, “I want to make it. I want to make Reservoir Dogs. Let’s do it right now.” She was, “Well, OK. That one he won’t give you. That one he looks like he could make himself.” Tony says, “OK, OK, I’ll do the other one.” And then it became a situation where Cinetel was going to make it, but then Tony wanted to make it. I go, “Well, get it away from Cinetel, or pay them off or whatever or make it for them.” He said, “OK,” and that’s how it happened.
Chan Chan
Posted: July 17, 2021 Filed under: Caribbean, Cuba Leave a comment
There was a time (1998?) when you’d hear the album Buena Vista Social Club all the time. If you travel along the tourist trail of Central America you will not go far without hearing it again.
The first song on the album is called Chan Chan. Here are the lyrics:
Lyrically, the song is set on the beach and revolves around two central characters called Juanica and Chan Chan.The most complete explanation says: ‘The song relates the story of a man and a woman (Chan Chan and Juanica) who are building a house, and go to the beach to get some sand. Chan Chan collects the sand and puts it on the jibe (a sieve for sand). Juanica shakes it, and to do so she shakes herself, making Chan Chan embarrassed. […] The origin of this tale is a farmer song learnt by Compay Segundo when he was twelve years old.’
The most recognizable part of the song is its chorus, whose lyrics are as follows:
| De Alto Cedro voy para MarcanéLlego a Cueto voy para Mayarí | From Alto Cedro I go to MarcanéI get to Cueto, then head for Mayarí |
The four mentioned locations (Alto Cedro, Marcané, Cueto and Mayarí) are towns near each other in the Holguín Province on the east side of Cuba
I like that the song is sort of a set of directions. You can think of the song as being “here are directions to see a girl who moves her butt like a cement mixer.”
Cuba in the news again.
Bark beetle
Posted: July 12, 2021 Filed under: the California Condition Leave a comment
In years of drought, when trees in the forests of Oregon and northern California don’t get enough moisture, they don’t create the sap they need to prevent attacks of tiny bark beetles. The bark beetles kill trees, leaving the forest littered with dead trees, ideal conditions for a huge fire.
The beetle is a tiny insect, about the size of a match head, but the sheer numbers pose a risk to the forest, officials say. They lay much of the bark beetle problem on forests that have become too overgrown with small trees and brush.
And ironically, it’s decades of aggressive fire suppression that has left forests dense and overcrowded, according to the forest service.
A hundred years ago, low intensity fires regularly burned through the forests, keeping stands of trees thinned out, and prevented them from becoming too thick.
Because smaller trees were regularly thinned out by fire, the trees that remained were larger and spaced farther apart.
A hundred years ago, a forest would have typically 20 or 30 trees per acre, Hamilton said. Nowadays, though, it is not uncommon to have 800 to 1,000 smaller trees an acre, he said.
When a drought comes along, like the current one, too many trees are competing for too little moisture and the trees’ natural defense against bark beetles breaks down, he said.
When trees are healthy and they get plenty of moisture, they exude sticky sap to ward off the bugs and protect themselves.
But when trees lack water they can’t produce enough sap, and the beetles move in and damage trees until they die, Hamilton said.
“When bark beetles’ population is at epidemic levels they can still attack and overcome even healthy trees,” according to Cal Fire.
That’s from “Drought and bark beetle kill millions of trees, increase wildfire risk in North State forests” by Damon Arthur for the Redding Record Searchlight / Siskiyou Daily News.
The number of dead trees are staggering. Millions of trees:
The 2019 forest service aerial survey of tree mortality shows the Klamath National Forest, with large swaths of land in Siskiyou County, was the forest hit hardest in the state, with an estimated 1.8 million dead trees.
Here is a breakdown by county of tree mortality in the North State, according to the survey:
- Siskiyou: 2.8 million trees on 406,000 acres
- Trinity: 1 million trees on 150,000 acres
- Shasta: 305,000 trees on 115,000 acres
- Tehama: 318,000 trees on 67,000 acres
Yesterday I drove from Redmond, Oregon down here to Siskiyou County, a four hour drive, about two hours of it through smoke from a distant fire, (the Bootleg fire?), and through burnt forest, ranging from singed to totally black smoking ashscape, and still more through trees that looked dry and gnarled and unwell and ready to burn. It was over 90 degrees most of the way, dry, staying hot until 8 or 9 pm at night. A fire crew was cutting down a big old tree by the side of Highway 97, and not far beyond that was the ruins of a motel that had been burned to the ground, except for a sign, “MOTEL.”
Burnt over forest country makes me think of the start of Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River”:
The train went on up the track out of sight, around one of the hills of burnt timber. Nick sat down on the bundle of canvas and bedding the baggage man had pitched out of the door of the baggage car. There was no town, nothing but the rails and the burned-over country. The thirteen saloons that had lined the one street of Seney had not left a trace. The foundations of the Mansion House hotel stuck up above the ground. The stone was chipped and split by the fire. It was all that was left of the town of Seney. Even the surface had been burned off the ground.
Nick looked at the burned-over stretch of hillside, where he had expected to find the scattered houses of the town and then walked down the railroad track to the bridge over the river. The river was there. It swirled against the log spires of the bridge. Nick looked down into the clear, brown water, colored from the pebbly bottom, and watched the trout keeping themselves steady in the current with wavering fins. As he watched them they changed their again by quick angles, only to hold steady in the fast water again. Nick watched them a long time.
Helytimes 
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