Men are soooo strange to begin with, and many of them are completely lacking in acceptable social skills as well. Some of the jobs I have held over the years were absolute man magnets, for some unexplainable reason, such as waitressing, cashiering, and hospital work. What is it that is so damned attractive about a woman working in those jobs? Is it the fact that a strange woman is waiting on you? That the woman in question is somewhat captive to her post?
I used to collect a pocketful of phone numbers during each shift behind the cash register or one spent schlepping food and beverages to and fro. I didn't want these numbers, as I've always had a steady boyfriend, since the age of four, but I didn't want to hurt some delicate male's feelings, or worse yet, piss one off and have him lurking in the parking lot, waiting for me to get off work, so I always just slipped them into my pocket, and disposed of them when I got home.
There were lots of nice men who properly asked my out on dates, but I also ran into some who were just downright vulgar. Does anyone think it will win me over if they just walk right up and ask me if I want to go have sex with them? A few were that brazen (stupid), and were immediately instructed to go fuck themselves. Of this latter group, two informed me that if I only knew how well-endowed they were, I wouldn't be able to refuse. Oddly enough, that didn't work either, and they received a double dose of my well refined cussing skills.
I will never forget one of them though, and this didn't happen at work, but in a parking lot as I was leaving a grocery store. This aspiring Romeo was just getting out of his enormous pickup truck when he spotted me, and came rushing over and said something like "Oooh, I just love little short women like you!". I was already altering my course to avoid interacting with this jackass in a giant cowboy hat when he said something I've never forgotten. He said "You're so cute, I'd like to get down on my knees and kiss your little "tweepot". As pissed off as I was, I was so taken aback by this strange reference to female genitalia that I probably didn't give him nearly the cursing he so well deserved. I've never forgotten it either, although it only pops into my head once every few years, and I googled the term tweepot just now to see if perhaps it is a known synonym for what he was trying to express, and I came up empty handed. Has anyone ever heard that word, used in that way? This guy looked and sounded like a Texan. Maybe this is some strange Texan dialect? I have unusual ponderings at this late hour.
Of all the failed pick up lines I've endured, his was at least the most creative.
Watching the Democrats in the final weeks of the presidential election has been a lesson in revisionist history. While they lament the terrible crimes perpetrated against the American people by George Bush and vow to keep fighting for our rights, they conveniently gloss over the fact that they have no standing to make such claims. Indeed, the Democrats, including Senator Barack Obama, have actually voted with President Bush’s agenda, making them complicit in his acts, not valiant opponents defending our liberties. PELOSI’S PROMISE TO END THE WAR Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi said that if she became the speaker of the House of Representatives she would end the war in Iraq. Remember that? The Boston Globe noted, "Pelosi vows no ‘blank check’ on Iraq funds.” (1/8/07). In her own words: "If the president wants to add to this mission, he is going to have to justify it. And this is new to him, because up until now the Republican Congress has given him a blank check with no oversight, no standards, no conditions.” Rick Klein of the Globe noted "Pelosi’s comments mark the first suggestion by a Democratic congressional leader that Congress could use its authority over the nation’s finances to hasten an end to the war. Her remarks point toward an aggressive stance on Iraq from Congressional Democrats in their opening days of control of the House and Senate.” Yet after she became the speaker of the House in Jan 2007, war appropriations actually went up by $50 billion, with no strings attached and no date for the withdrawal of troops. This year, 2008, they’ve gone up by another $25 billion for a two-year total of $350 billion, with no end in sight. So what happened to the promise of "no blank check?” REID’S FILIBUSTER RULE Sen. Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, has complained that the Republicans have filibustered (a procedure used by the minority party to delay voting on legislation) more times in the last two years than in the entire history of the United States to explain why he can’t move forward a progressive agenda. First he said it was over 70 times, then adjusted it by saying it was 65 times (Las Vegas Sun 3/6/08); yet still the highest for any two-year period (the previous record was 57 filibusters) (Politico, 3/6/08; Gov.Track.us 4/15/08). But Sen. Reid’s frustration has proven to be a red-herring. Did you know that Reid lets the Republicans filibuster telephonically, meaning that he doesn’t require that they physically present themselves on the floor of the Senate? Why is he making it easy on them? Is this what an opposition party looks like? REPUBLICAN CLASS ACTION REFORM Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic Party nominee for president, has a long history of voting against the interest of the American people, and specifically, the working class. Before entering the presidential contest, he supported the Republican Class Action Reform Bill, which made it harder for class-action lawsuits to be brought in the state courts. State courts are exactly where consumer protection lawsuits and recent wage and hour claims have succeeded in improving the lives of workers and helped them obtain better wages and breaks during work hours have succeeded. Progressive commentators at the time called it a thinly veiled special-interest extravaganza. Journalist David Sirota noted "Opposed by most major civil rights and consumer watchdog groups, this Big Business-backed legislation was sold to the public as a way to stop ‘frivolous’ lawsuits. But everyone in Washington knew the bill’s real objective was to protect corporate abusers.” (The Nation, 6/26/06). So why did Obama vote for it? PATRIOT ACT & FISA AMENDMENT Sen. Obama supported one of the worst attacks on civil liberties in recent history, the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, which extended an earlier law granting law enforcement expanded powers to search telephone, e-mail, and financial and medical records, in addition to granting the federal government a host of other powers to combat so-called domestic terrorism. After saying he would oppose it if elected to the U.S. Senate (NOW questionnaire, 9/10/03), in July 2005, Obama voted for it. But this wasn’t enough. After entering the presidential race and running on a "change” message, Obama vowed in February of 2008 to vote against—and filibuster if necessary—the FISA bill amendment (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) that gave immunities to telecommunications corporations that cooperated with the Bush administration’ s warrantless surveillance program. This eavesdropping program clearly violated the privacy of law-abiding Americans at the behest of the president, and made the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover seem tame by comparison. Those voting in favor of the bill didn’t even first require full disclosure to see how deep the illegal conduct extended and agreed to apply the law retroactively. Despite his promises to the contrary, and despite the vehement protests of many of his supporters, when the FISA bill came to the Senate for a vote this past July, Sen. Obama voted for it without explaining how this vote fit in with his change message or reconciled with his repeated claims he was going to protect the American people from repeated assaults on civil liberties by President Bush. Here was his chance to lead and make good on his promise, and what did he do? The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called the FISA bill "an unconstitutional domestic spying bill that violates the Fourth Amendment and eliminates any meaningful role for judicial oversight of government surveillance" (ACLU press release, 7/9/08). Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office called the bill "a Constitutional nightmare” and noted "with one vote, Congress has strengthened the executive branch, weakened the judiciary and rendered itself irrelevant.”Obama even voted to stop debate on the bill so he could get back to the campaign trail. How ironic is it that he was in a hurry to give more speeches about change and hope but couldn’t find the time or integrity to convert these ideas into action? On the eve of the vote MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow noted "I’m betting that [Pres. Bush’s] wildest dreams did not include the prospect that Congress — a Democratic-led Congress — would help him cover up his crimes. Yet that is exactly what the US Senate is poised to do.” (Countdown with Keith Olbermann, 7/8/08). OFF-SHORE DRILLING As Sen. John McCain started to call for domestic drilling to ease our dependence on foreign oil, rather than debate the scientific and economic illogic of the position, Sen. Obama announced that he agreed with McCain. Reversing a 25-year ban on off-shore oil drilling, Sen. Obama led his party’s reversal, offering no explanation for how this would ease oil prices, particularly as experts noted that drilling would likely have an almost imperceptible impact on oil prices in the near future. As Lester Brown and Jonathan Dorn of the Earth Policy Institute noted in "Drilling For Oil Is Not The Answer” (9/30/08) "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that lifting the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) moratorium [of the lower 48 states] would not increase production before 2017 and that by 2030 production would only amount to 0.2 million barrels per day—less than 1 percent of current consumption.” Furthermore "The U.S. Department of Energy projects that opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) would lower gasoline prices at the pump by a mere 2 cents per gallon.” Even if we combined the two regions in question, it wouldn’t amount to much of an impact on oil prices: "Lifting the moratoria on drilling in ANWR and the OCS would reduce the price of a gallon of gasoline by at most 6 cents—and this would not be seen for at least another decade.” Proponents of drilling have also exaggerated the environmental safety of current off-shore drilling and oil production technology in general. There is widespread evidence that current drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is already leading to serious pollution and spills. After reviewing data from the National Response Center, the Houston Chronicle found there had been 595 oil spills across four state coastlines, totaling roughly 9 million gallons spilled in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita ("Spills from hurricanes staining the coast” by Dina Cappiello, 11/13/05). So why is Sen. Obama, who claims to care about the environment, now advocating off-shore drilling? DEATH PENALTY In June of 2008, the conservative Supreme Court struck down the use of the death penalty in cases of child rape (Kennedy v. Louisiana held that states may not impose the death penalty for the commission of a crime that did not result in the death of the victim), a decision that surprised even death penalty opponents who hailed it as an important step toward full abolition of the death penalty. Sen. Obama’s response? He quickly called a press conference to denounce the decision. Obama stated that he agreed with the extreme conservative minority, comprised of Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Scalia and Thomas. Despite the many known racial and class inequities inherent in the death penalty, a practice abolished and abhorred in most of the rest of the world, Obama celebrates that he has always been a supporter of it. On the campaign trail, Sen. Obama likes to highlight death penalty legislation that he sponsored while a member of the Illinois legislature, to show his commitment to reform. But let’s be clear, he didn’t work on laws to address the disproportionate rate of death penalty convictions of African-Americans, but rather a law to require videotaped interrogations of death penalty suspects. Yes, something we can applaud, but something many critics have noted merely greases the wheels of this injustice. Most disquieting of all, as a state legislator, Obama voted "to expand the list of death-eligible crimes” (Chicago Tribune, 5/2/07), despite admitting in his own allegedly soul-searching memoir that the death penalty "does little to deter crime.” (The Audacity of Hope, 2006). AFGHANISTAN On foreign policy, Sen. Obama’s approach is hawkish. He wants to deploy more soldiers to Afghanistan, which will only further destabilize the Afghan-Pakistani border. He simply ignores the historic reality that no invading army has ever managed to successfully win a war in this area or subjugate the Afghani people. During its ill-fated 10-year war, between 1979 and 1989, the Soviet Union deployed 620,000 soldiers to Afghanistan and sustained 470,000 casualties (sick and wounded, including infectious diseases such as hepatitis and typhoid fever). Why does Obama want to ignore these facts and risk further destabilizing the area and creating another Vietnam/Iraq occupation there? IRAQ With respect to Iraq, Sen. Obama has conceded the main argument of Sen. McCain’s campaign and said the so-called "surge” worked (despite significant evidence and analysis to the contrary). And he has vowed to keep soldiers in Iraq to fight counterterrorism. John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress, estimated this would take a 60,000 troop presence to achieve. Moreover Obama "will not ‘rule out’ using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq” according to Democracy Now! Correspondent Jeremy Scahill. And Obama did not plan on signing on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of such forces by the U.S. government by January 2009, according to one of his senior foreign policy advisors. (Democracy Now! 2/28/08). (This is one promise Obama unfortunately has kept, refusing to sign onto the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont). In an interview with Amy Goodman, Sen. Obama stated his intention of leaving 140,000 private contractors in Iraq because "we don’t have the troops to replace them.” He also stated the need to keep an additional "strike force in the region … in order to not only protect them, but also potentially to protect their territorial integrity.” Summarizing the interview, Amy Goodman concluded that it sounded as if Obama "would leave more than 100,000 troops, close to 200,000 in Iraq. ‘Troops’ meaning U.S. soldiers and military contractors which some call mercenaries.” (4/1/08). Even concerning a possible timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq, Obama has diminished his promises. He now is committing only to "reducing the number of combat troops within 16 months,” presumably to "bolster efforts in Afghanistan so that we can capture and kill bin Laden and crush al Qaeda.” (Obama/McCain debate, 9/26/08). What we know for certain, though, is when given a chance to commit to a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq, Obama said "no.” When Tim Russert asked him, during a debate in New Hampshire in September 2007, if he could promise having American troops out of Iraq by 2013, he would not do so. MILITARY SPENDING According to military policy analysts at the Arms Control Center, in their report "U.S. Defense Spending, since 2001” military spending has risen from $333 billion in 2001 to $696 in 2008 (including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) . It’s expected to rise even more in 2009, to $706 billion. Despite this, Sen. Obama has joined Sen. McCain and called for increased military spending. "I’ve said that we have to increase the size of our military,” Obama told ABC’s This Week (9/7/08). The details of which he has previously noted in a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs: "I strongly support the expansion of our ground forces by adding 65,000 soldiers to the Army and 27,000 Marines.” ("Obama surrenders on military spending” by Glen Ford, The Progressive, 1/15/08). WALL STREET CRISIS The current financial crisis has generated perhaps the most fascinating political rhetoric of all. Obama has blamed the Republicans for deregulation and in doing so, his poll numbers have given him a healthy lead as we approach the final days of the campaign. The only problem is that the economic crisis is not just the fault of the Republicans. It is the direct result of bipartisan bills enacted into law by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton. In 1999 Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach- Bliley Act. This repealed the last vestiges of an important Depression-era law, the Glass-Steagall Act (1933), which prohibited banking, brokerage, and insurance companies from merging together, thus compartmentalized the financial industry and protected it from future collapses. Equally significant in 2000, President Clinton signed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which repealed 20-year-old agreements between the Security and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, so that financial institutions could sell credit derivatives such as the now notorious "credit default swaps” without any oversight and with no regulation. Two of its cosponsors included Democratic Senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tim Johnson of South Dakota. The measure had such bipartisan support that it was never even debated in the Senate and was passed by unanimous consent. This resulted in the repackaging of mortgages into securities and the failure to regulate institutions that then over-leveraged themselves as they sold credit derivatives to investors who wanted protection from risky investments. This is what led to this financial crisis whose ramifications we have only begun to understand. Both Obama and McCain voted for the $700 billion taxpayer-funded bailout despite the plea of 200 economists (including Nobel Prize winners) urging them not to do so (Open Letter to Congress regarding Treasury bailout plan, 9/24/08). Obama keeps emphasizing that the mess was the fault of Republicans alone. But how is this argument credible when the law responsible for the financial meltdown enjoyed unanimous support from both parties? NAFTA It was quite emblematic of Sen. Obama that he has changed his position on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to suit whatever situation he is in. First, while running for the Senate in 2004, he said he supported NAFTA and thought there should be more trade agreements like it. (AP story 2/26/08). Then, while running against Hillary Clinton he blamed her for NAFTA’s impact on workers in the "rustbelt” states of Wisconsin and Ohio. But once he won the primary things changed. When asked if he would truly invoke the six-month clause in NAFTA for unilateral withdrawal, Obama showed his signature political reversal. NAFTA created a trilateral trade bloc encompassing the United States, Canada, and Mexico, which was meant to foster greater trade between its members. It primarily lifted tariffs on goods shipped between the three countries but has caused economic turmoil both among American and Mexican labor, with unexpected loss of jobs and negative environmental impacts. Nina Easton, a Washington editor for Fortune, noted in a June 18, 2008 article that "the presumptive Democratic nominee backed off his harshest attacks on the free trade agreement and indicated he didn’t want to unilaterally reopen negotiations on NAFTA,” something he had promised to do when locked in a close primary race with Sen. Hillary Clinton. Asked directly about whether he would move the U.S. out of the trade agreement, Obama said "Sometimes during campaigns the rhetoric gets overheated and amplified.” Fortune magazine concluded that, despite once calling NAFTA "devastating” and "a big mistake,” Obama "was toning down his populist rhetoric” and had no intention of following through with his anti-NAFTA promises now that the primary battle was won. In light of this evidence, can we believe any of the other commitments he‘s made? THE FEDERAL JUDICIARY Those who think Sen. Obama will appoint good Supreme Court justices should just take note of his long history of supporting some of the worst Bush appointees to the federal bench, including Thomas Griffith (D.C. Cir.), Susan Blake Neilson (6th Cir.), Milan Smith (9th Cir.), Sandra Segal Ikuta (9th Cir.), and Kent Jordan (3rd Cir.). The Neilson vote was particularly troubling as both senators from her own state "blue slipped” her for being "too extreme.” And even when he does manage to muster the courage to vote against conservative appointees, he does it in a lukewarm and perfunctory manner, refusing to join Democratic Party filibuster efforts. This is deeply troubling. He voted cloture (to end any voting delay) on Priscilla Owen (5th Cir.) and Brett Kavanaugh (D.C. Cir.) both extremely conservative jurists, thus ensuring they would be confirmed. SEN. JOE BIDEN AS VICE-PRESIDENT Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden as a running mate is particularly troubling and does not bode well for the decisions Obama is likely to make if elected president. Obama has presented Biden as someone who never forgot his roots, is a working class, regular guy. The only problem with this characterization is Sen. Biden’s voting record. He was one of the main supporters of the Republican Bankruptcy Reform Bill that Pres. Clinton vetoed twice, only to have it signed into law by Pres. Bush in 2005, with Sen. Biden’s ardent support. Criticizing the Bankruptcy Reform Bill, Arianna Huffington noted that the bill "makes it harder for average people to file for bankruptcy protection [average annual income of Americans who file for bankruptcy is less than $30K]; it makes it easier for landlords to evict a bankrupt tenant; it endangers child-support payments by giving a wider array of creditors a shot at post-bankruptcy income; it allows millionaires to shield an unlimited amount of equity in homes and asset protection trusts; it makes it more difficult for small businesses to reorganize while opening new loopholes for the Enrons of the world; it allows creditors to provide misleading information; and it does nothing to rein in lending abuses.” (Salon.com, 3/05) Jackson Williams noted, in "Joe Biden: No True Friend of Working Men and Women” (Huffington Post, 10/27/08), that Biden "didn’t just vote for it, he helped carry the water on it. Some Democrats tried to soften the bill with a series of amendments; for example, exempting military personnel at war in Iraq. Biden joined the majority of his colleagues—the Republicans and too many Democrats—in knocking down every possible change that was offered.” Sen. Biden has built a reputation as someone who works tirelessly for credit card companies, with some critics even referring to him as the senator from Mastercard—rather than the senator from Delaware. In addition, Biden voted for the War in Iraq and the Patriot Act, so it’s hard to understand how Sen. Biden is going to help bring about change in the new administration. OTHER FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES Obama called Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez an enemy of the United States and urged sanctions against him. (Interview with Jorge Ramos, El Mercurio, 6/11/08) He heaped praise on the first George Bush saying, "You know, one of the things that I think George H.W. Bush doesn’t get enough credit for was his foreign policy team and the way that he helped negotiate the end of the Cold War and prosecuted the Gulf War. That cost us $20 billion dollars. That‘s all it cost. It was extremely successful. I think there were a lot of very wise people.” (Larry King Live 3/23/08). And in a much-anticipated speech to America’s pro-Israeli government lobby, AIPAC (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee), Obama towed the typical pro-Israel line. He urged that Jerusalem would belong to Israel, despite peace efforts currently underway which would allow the holy city to be shared among both Israelis and Palestinians. He unequivocally stated "Israel’s security is sacrosanct.” And "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” (AIPAC speech, 6/08). MAKING A DEMAND Before you vote for someone with such a checkered voting record, it might be worthwhile to make some demands on him, don’t you think? Or at the very least we should ask him to explain why he’s capitulated so many times. I’m sure Sen. Obama would find such questions uncomfortable. In fact, even progressives find such inquiry bothersome: they are aware of Obama’s lamentable history of capitulation on votes that take away our civil rights, but nevertheless cling to their wish that Obama will be something other than what he has already proven himself to be. But it’s not likely that he will be a transformative leader. He’s already announced economic advisors whose ideas are at the heart of the economic meltdown, like Austan Goolsbee, an aggressive free trader and subprime loan advocate, and former Clinton advisors, David Cutler and Jeffrey Liebman, supporters of market-oriented solutions to social welfare issues such as the partial privatization of Social Security. ("Subprime Obama” by Max Fraser, The Nation, 1/24/08). He has foreign policy advisors who helped take us into war, like Colin Powell, who in 2003 addressed the United Nations on behalf of the Bush Administration, outlining the reasons the U.S. had to invade Iraq (he also disturbingly, as a young Army Major, worked to suppress key evidence about the My Lai Massacre in Vietnam). But that’s not all. Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman spoke with journalists Allan Nairn and Kelley Beaucar Vlahos who discussed Obama’s foreign policy advisors (2/10/08). They noted that Obama proudly brought on to his team old cold warrior and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has boasted of having created the whole Afghan Jihadi movement; Anthony Lake, who was behind the U.S. invasion of Haiti during the Clinton years; General Merrill McPeak, who delivered U.S. fighter planes to Indonesia shortly after the Dili massacre in East Timor in 1991; and Dennis Ross who has pushed to subordinate the rights of Palestinians to the needs of the Israeli government. What do you think the likelihood is that Obama will listen to us, once we’ve voted for him, without making any demands on him?As Robert Scheer, a noted columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, noted on July 23, 2008, shortly after Obama voted for the FISA bill, "Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack.” And Scheer made these remarks before Obama decided to support off-shore drilling, denounce a Supreme Court death penalty decision, and before he voted for the Wall Street bailout. CONCERNING RALPH NADER But we don’t have to vote for either Senators Obama or McCain, do we? Ralph Nader has a more impressive legislative record as an outsider than do Sen. Obama and Sen. McCain combined. And he has a proven record of fighting the culture of Washington. Just think of the Freedom of Information Act, Clean Air, Clean Water, automotive safety, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Yet despite these accomplishments, Obama and McCain do not believe they should even have to debate him. What they don’t tell you is that the so-called independent Commission on Presidential Debates is actually a private corporation run by former leaders of the Republican and Democratic parties. The Commission, which was formed in 1987, is currently led by Frank Fahrenkopf, a former head of the Republican National Committee, and Paul Kirk, the former head of the Democratic National Committee. No wonder they won’t debate Nader or anyone else. Of course they justify this by saying Nader isn’t polling well enough to include him in the debates. Yet, interestingly, both McCain and Obama were losing their respective primary races until they were let into televised debates. And there are well-known examples of how letting a candidate debate "mainstream” candidates can lead to a different outcome. Jesse Ventura won the governor’s race in Minnesota in 1998 when he was allowed to debate the Republican and Democratic Party candidates, going from 9 or 10 percent in the polls to ultimately winning the contest. Ralph Nader polled at five percent and above at least four different times this year in national polls, and he even reached 10 percent in one poll in the state of Michigan (conducted by Lansing-based EPIC-MRA, 4/15/08). This should have been sufficient to gain access to the presidential debates. Ross Perot got in the debates in 1992 even though he was polling below 10 percent. Perot went on to win 19 percent of the vote, and his warnings about NAFTA and deficit spending influenced Clinton policy and proved prescient. Afterwards, the two parties retaliated by creating a 15% threshold which ironically no candidate is likely to reach without being included in televised debates. The worst part of the so-called presidential debates as they are currently produced is that two-party control ensures that the questions are not sufficiently hard-hitting. Isn’t it appalling that we saw three debates between Obama and McCain at a time our country is suffering its worst economic crisis, and no one asked these men "Why should Americans have any confidence either of you is the best choice to tackle these problems given that both of your political parties helped pass laws that made this crisis possible—or even inevitable?” They also like to say that voting for Nader is throwing your vote away. The Democrats often cite the 2000 election to blame Nader for Bush’s victory. But they noticeably never mention the 1992 election, when Bill Clinton won because Ross Perot "spoiled” the race for George Bush’s father, an incumbent president. By the way, Clinton got only 43 percent of the vote in 1992 compared to 48 percent by Bush in 2000. And they offer no explanation for why they haven’t worked on election reform since 2000. Imagine claiming your political party lost the presidency because the "winner” was declared even though he hadn’t won a majority of the votes cast? Then imagine doing nothing to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. Isn’t it odd that the Democrats haven’t worked on election reform in the past eight years? They never will change the system because the way things are now, they can be assured that they will be in office roughly half the time. They also count on people to accept their arguments that Nader and other third parties aren’t polling high enough to get your vote; that the real contest is between just two candidates. If all else fails, they argue that it’s the most important election of your lifetime. I’m 43 years old and I’ve heard this argument each time the presidential race has come up. If you accept these arguments, you are in effect rewarding the two parties for not fixing how we do elections in this country. You reward them for creating the Commission on Debates. You guarantee that things will not change. And you ensure that candidates that support single-payer health care, decent wages and pensions for workers, controls on corporations and a foreign policy based on achieving peace rather than driven by self-interest, cannot ever be heard. Nader wants a more humane and democratic society. He’s seen that you can’t get anything done in Washington because senators like Obama and McCain ignore what’s good for Americans in pursuit of their own interests. Sure McCain talks like a maverick and Obama talks like a revolutionary, but look closely and you will see repeated capitulations to the very entities our government needs to get away from if we are to build a more democratic society. WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE & EUGENE DEBS Eugene Debs ran for president several times in the early 20th century. He advocated the right of women to vote at a time when it was not popular to do so and while other more successful politicians openly argued against giving women the right to participate directly in elections. The general attitude among men was exemplified by Elihu Root, a former cabinet secretary to presidents McKinley and Roosevelt and winner of the 1912 Nobel Peace prize who said: "Suffrage would be a loss for women. I think so because suffrage implies not merely the casting of the ballot, (…) but suffrage, if it means anything, means entering upon the field of political life, and politics is modified war. In politics there is a struggle, strife, contention, bitterness, heart-burning, excitement, agitation, everything which is adverse to the true character of woman. Woman in strife becomes hard, harsh, unlovable, repulsive…” (N.Y. Constitutional Convention, 1894). President Theodore Roosevelt, himself, said "Personally I believe in woman’s suffrage, but I am not an enthusiastic advocate of it, because I do not regard it as a very important matter.” (Letter to Dr. Lyman Abbott, 11/10/1908). And President Grover Cleveland said, "Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.” (1905). Despite these sentiments Debs advocated this right. Yet he never obtained more than 6 percent of the vote. Let me ask you: Were the men who voted with Debs throwing their vote away? If you had lived in that era, would you have voted for him? Or would you have come up with an excuse for why it wasn’t important enough? CONCLUSION On the street when I am approached by an Obama/Biden volunteer or someone who tells me they’re voting for Obama, I usually ask "What about the FISA vote?” And each time I hear in return "What’s that?” Or if I say, "You know he supports the death penalty,” I usually hear in response, "No he doesn’t.”At what point will there be intellectual honesty about what is happening? People are voting for Obama because they find him to be an engaging public speaker and like his message regardless of his history of being part of the very problem he professes to want to fix. Most people don’t want the actual facts to interfere with the desperate hope that he is everything they want him to be. Do you really want to vote for someone who has already voted to take away your civil liberties because of some vague wish that he’ll act differently as president? Obama himself, speaking of Sen. Hillary Clinton, made a remark that could just as easily apply to him, and, unwittingly makes the case for why no one should vote for him: "We can’t afford a president whose positions change with the politics of the moment. We need a president who knows that being ready on day one means getting it right from day one.” (Salem, OR, 3/21/08). If voting for war appropriations and taking away civil liberties was bringing us closer to a more democratic and egalitarian society, well, I would advocate it. But it isn’t doing that. What is your breaking point? At what point do you decide that you’ve had enough? What do they have to do to lose your vote? Matt Gonzalez is Ralph Nader’s Vice-Presidential running mate on an Independent ticket.
I remember when Clinton was running for prez, and for a few years after he got elected, women's magazines were publishing articles about how many women were having wet dreams about him.
Well I just had my first Barack Obama Dream, a non-sexual one thank God, but a BOD nonetheless! We were taking a long trip on a bus, and Obama sat next to me. He looked really handsome, and young, and he was wearing a blue shirt. He was notably friendly and pleasant, and tried to engage me in chit-chat, and I tried to ignore him. (I know from experience that when a crazy person sits next to you on the bus, it is best to not even make eye-contact.)
He could tell I didn't like him, and I almost felt sorry for him, because he didn't seem to grasp the concept of someone disliking him. He WANTED me to like him. And I WANTED to like him. Everyone else on the bus was exceedingly excited over his presence, and I could tell they just adored him, and I felt a little guilty about not liking him.
As the trip dragged on, he got sleepy, and started leaning against me and nodding off and drooling. It was extremely creepy how he was invading my space, but I did feel somewhat sympathetic toward him. He seemed to be near exhaustion. He was eating a bag of Cheetos, and when he dozed off, he spilled some of them on me and got that flourescent orange Cheeto dust on my clothes, and this annoyed me even more. He was exceedingly apologetic, and tried to help me brush the dust off.
I don't know where we were going, but it must have been a long trip, because the dream seemed to go on forever. We stopped somewhere for a bathroom/food break, and I was happy to get away from him for a few minutes. He slept through the break, and when I got back on the bus, he was sprawled over my seat, and I had to awaken him and get him to scoot over.
I finally woke-up without ever finding out where we were going or why, just feeling glad to be away from "The One", and my conflicting feelings of dislike and sympathy. I think it was all SO symbolic. Does anyone do dream interpretations?
A vote for either John McCain or Barack Obama is—at best—an act of criminal negligence. Mickey Z.
The liberal argument for Obama boils down to the logic of lesser evilism.
October 24, 2008 | Issue 683
WITH THE presidential election two weeks away and momentum seeming to flow in only one direction--toward Barack Obama--the Democratic nominee's progressive supporters are worried.
Not worried about whether Obama will live up to the hopes that millions of people have placed in him. Instead, they're worried about the possibility that McCain could make a comeback. And so they're pulling out all stops to convince anyone who might be wavering to vote for Obama.
What has unfolded is a two-pronged approach. On the one hand, minimize or ignore Obama's gestures or actions that fly in the face of progressive values. On the other, accentuate the differences between him and McCain, no matter how small they might be on particular issues.
A good example of the former was the reaction of Progressive Democrats of America (PDA) to the recent Wall Street bailout bill and Obama's support for it.
To its credit, PDA opposed the legislation as a "sellout to greedy fat cats," as PDA National Director Tim Carpenter called it in an October 2 press release. Carpenter pointed out that Senate changes to the bill (what he called "lipstick") and renaming it a "rescue plan" didn't change its essence as a "blank check bailout."
Yet two days later, Congress passed that blank-check bailout. The administration's efforts to round up support got a boost from Obama, who campaigned for the bill and persuaded leading members of the Congressional Black Caucus to switch from "no" to "yes."
In many ways, Obama and the congressional Democratic leadership led the way to the bill's passage. And what did PDA say about that? Nothing. Its next official press release, dated October 10, quoted Carpenter as saying, "We're stepping up our efforts during these closing weeks to elect Obama and a more progressive Congress. We've already started. New-voter registration coordinator Bruce Taub and a team of Massachusetts volunteers just returned from a four-day trip to Pennsylvania."
Given that PDA and other progressive Democrats are invested in an Obama win and substantial Democratic coattails, it's unlikely they would have taken the opportunity to denounce Obama or the Democrats.
But then, that's not their modus operandi anyway. Progressives for Obama initiator Tom Hayden even explained: "I have no problem with Barack Obama supporting the bailout package as long as it keeps him on track to the presidency. He needs to be critical, to offer amendments, and to promise to return to the crisis the day after November 4."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
GROUPS LIKE PDA and Progressives for Obama pose themselves as a sort of conscience of the Democratic Party. They uphold values like single-payer health care and immediate withdrawal from Iraq that mainstream Democrats won't support.
And when the mainstream Democrats cross them--to accept Obama's lousy "individual mandate" health plan or vote to continue the occupation of Iraq--progressives express disappointment, while noting how many votes they received for their liberal alternative proposal. Then they move on to getting out the vote for Democrats, including those who just sold them out.
This is the way "progressive" politics oriented on the Democratic Party is played--because when all is said and done, it is no more than liberal gloss on the politics of the "lesser of two evils."
A good example of how this works was Hayden's response to Nation writer Robert Dreyfuss, when Dreyfuss criticized Obama's hawkish posture on foreign policy. It's a good representation of the second prong described above: magnify the differences between the Democrats and Republicans.
Reviewing the first McCain-Obama debate, Dreyfuss wrote:
If, God forbid, foreign policy had to be the deciding factor in choosing between Barack Obama and John McCain, then last night's terrible showing by Obama would make me a Ralph Nader voter in a heartbeat. Obama's performance was nothing short of pathetic, and only Democratic-leaning analysts and voters with blinders on could suggest that Obama won the debate. More important, he utterly blew a chance to draw a stark contrast with John McCain on America's approach to the world.
Responding to his "respected friend" on the Progressives for Obama blog, Hayden criticized Dreyfuss for concentrating on all the places where McCain and Obama agreed (at least eight, by my count) rather than the crucial "Iraq difference."
As Hayden wrote, "Obama's pledge to withdraw combat troops in 16 months, while not the 'out now' demand of the anti-war movement, is generally supported by most Americans and most Iraqis, and leaves Bush-McCain isolated in their opposition to deadlines."
Thus, a vote for Obama will be, according to Hayden, a "peace mandate." As Hayden continued:
Belittling the Iraq difference reflects a much greater omission, ignoring the gaping differences between the two candidates with 36 days until the election. On the basis of what he's written, Dreyfuss ignores this context.
It is as if frustration with Obama is greater than anything some people on the left can feel towards McCain. I feel their pain, but let me offer this formula: no candidate will move further left than their base demands and public opinion allows.
In other words, it all boils down to the central lesser-evil logic. Obama may not be what we want, but McCain would be so much worse. And just to make sure we got the point, Hayden ended his response to Dreyfuss by calling up that old standby: the Supreme Court. "[W]hen the faith-based right has been promised a Supreme Court majority by McCain-Palin, I think the left should be in full battle mode" instead of, presumably, writing articles criticizing Obama's shortcomings.
In other parts of the response to Dreyfuss, Hayden proposes that Obama's hawkishness is just a political strategy intended to "close off any possible attacks from the right or the media on his national security policies and credentials."
Yet anyone who has been paying attention to Obama's foreign policy statements over the last two years (as Hayden has) can see that what he's saying today is pretty much consistent with what he was saying then. If that's the case, then why pretend that Obama's hawkishness is just a stratagem, with the implication that the "real" dovish Obama will emerge after he's safely elected?
Setting aside the objective fact that Obama agreed with McCain on foreign policy far more than he disagreed with him during the debate (which was Dreyfuss' point), would a vote for Obama really be a mandate for peace? Couldn't a victorious Obama also say, "The American people have endorsed my calls to launch missile strikes in Pakistan without the consent of the Pakistani government, to base withdrawal from Iraq on 'facts on the ground,' to kill Osama bin Laden, to stand up to Russia in Georgia, etc."?
In other words, couldn't Obama claim that a vote for him is really a "war mandate"?
Time will tell, but progressives for Obama shouldn't deceive themselves into believing that they will have a secret ally in the White House.
I am in a lot of online political discussion groups, and as a result I contend with an overwhelming number of opinions concerning Barack Obama. There seem to be four main categories of opinions on the man that I would like to elaborate on.
In the first group are the people who either hate him because he is African American or because they believe all the online propaganda about him being Muslim/unpatriotic/a "terrorist", or terrorist sympathizer. I tend to lump the racists into the same group as the conspiracy theorists, as there seems to be an awful lot of overlapping of those two opinions.
I have absolutely no problem with Obama's race. I would LOVE to have an African American president, and feel that it is past time that we have one. And I do not find ANY evidence to support the conspiracy claims that he is not a citizen, he refuses to salute the flag, etc. This is all republican propaganda, with no credible evidence to support it.
The next group of people are the democrats/progressive/liberals who are supporting Obama because they see him as the lesser of two evils. What they don't seem to realize is that the lesser of two evils is STILL EVIL! Obama's voting record and platform could not even qualify him as a centrist dem! He voted for continual funding of the illegal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, for the Patriot Act, for telecom immunity, for tort reform, for the bailout of Wall Street, and it seems to me, for every bit of horrendous legislation the neo-cons wanted to get passed. He has also said his policies "are not that different from Bush's", that he wants to INCREASE military spending, and increase troop levels by 92,000. He wants to escalate the slaughter in Afghanistan, leave a large number of troops and mercenaries in Iraq indefinitely, has threatened to bomb Pakistan, and has said that he would be willing to bomb Iran. That is NOT less than evil!! That is evil incarnate!
Now I know that most thinking people are absolutely terrified at the thought of a McCain/Palin presidency, but I really don't see that Obama would be any better. If Obama is in some way less evil than McCain, I have yet to discover it.
The next group is the one that really puzzles me. They are the ones who view Obama as The Second Coming, and get VERY upset at any criticism of "The One". When confronted with Obama's reich-wing voting record and platform, they make every excuse imaginable for his heinous behavior. They also believe (and this is SO bizarre!) that once he is elected, he will magically CHANGE, and become an actual progressive.
This sort of behavior, wishful thinking on the part of Obama supporters, defies all logic known to man! What they are saying is that they believe their candidate is lying! That he is a poseur! And that they are willing to vote for a lying poseur! I understand this even less than I understand the bigoted conspiracy nuts. Some of my friends fit into this third category, people who have always seemed more or less rational. Suddenly, they are some of the craziest people I know! I keep wondering if they will revert back to their former, sensible selves when the election is over. And what will they do and say, if and when Obama gets elected, and then he doesn't start healing lepers and changing water into wine? Will they suddenly feel as foolish as they are behaving now? Inquiring minds want to know!
The last group is made up of me, and people just like me, who do not dislike Obama because he is black, or because there are repub rumors regarding his patriotism. In fact, we admit that Obama is intelligent, attractive, somewhat charismatic, and looks good in a bathing suit. But we do not like him, and refuse to vote for him, because he represents NO CHANGE AT ALL from the current regime!
In my opinion, Obama is neither The Messiah, nor The Antichrist. He is just another slick snake-oil salesman, who is willing to sell us all down the river in order to get elected. His threats to snuff out even more innocent humans in the Middle East is sociopathic. I do not think he even thinks of those people as human beings when he is standing there on TV arguing over whether he or McCain can kill the most of them in the most efficient manner.
Americans seem to be dreaming, and I think we are, as a nation, about to sleepwalk right over a cliff. It is time to wake up and throw both wings of The Corporate War Party out of office, as there is not enough difference between the dems and repubs to make it worthwhile to vote for one or the other. The only sensible thing to do at this time is to vote third party!
This is something that I spend a great deal of time thinking about lately. I just googled the term, and found a wiki article on it:
Interconnectedness is part of the terminology of a worldview which sees a oneness in all things. A similar term, interdependence, is sometimes used instead, although there are slightly different connotations. Both terms tend to refer to the idea that all things are of a single underlying substance and reality, and that there is no true separation deeper than appearances. Some feel that 'interconnectedness' and similar terms are part of a contemporary lexicon of mysticism, which is based on the same core idea of universal oneness.
Farther down, the article mentions Quakerism (something else I think about a lot).
In terms of religion, spirituality, personal world-views and paradigms, the theology of 'god present within every human being' - a concept familiar to Quakers and to Lutherans might help to explain various life actions (e.g. Quaker testimonies) such as, for example, the rejection of human slavery (to own a slave would, in this cosmo-theological world-view, be to claim ownership of 'that of god' present within the slave.)
I have been coming to terms with this idea of God (or Goddess) being present in every living creature for several years now. Sometimes it comes in a rather blinding flash. I have never been very tolerant of addicts (even though I have my own addictions), and it was always difficult for me to see the spark of the divine in them, until one night a few years ago when I was working the late shift in a convenience store. It was pouring rain, and chilly outside, when an older black gentleman came into the store. He was exceedingly intoxicated, and had either been in a fight or fallen down, as his face was bruised and bleeding. This particular store was in a "bad" neighborhood, and customers who were under the influence were the norm rather than the exception, and I had grown quite tired of all of them and their bad behavior by this time, but this man was so pitiful that he caught my attention. He was so obviously tortured by his addiction, as he stood there, cold and wet, and begging me and the other clerk for cigarettes. I had some sort of epiphany that enabled me to see that not only had he the "spark", but he was himself divine.
After that experience, I started paying closer attention to all the customers, and was pleasantly surprised to find this spark again and again in the inebriated (and sober) patrons of the mini-mart.
Animals were always the easiest way for me to connect with the Godness of others. The essence of God is strong in all of them, and I know this sounds like bragging,( and I don't mean it that way at all, it just IS) but I think my ability to recognize this got me out of some tight situations with pit bulls, rottweilers, and bulls when I was out reading electric meters at my day job. I would talk to the animal in question, and point out to them that I was merely there to do my job, and they would calm down and allow me entry into the backyard or pasture so I could get the meter reading. The other meter readers soon found this out, and before long I had to go get all the "scary" reads. (There was only one dog I encountered who really, truly, wanted to kill me, and we never interconnected AT ALL, but Dinky Dell is another story. He honestly tried to bust through the windows of my truck to get me! It was like a scene from Cujo!)
Lately, I am spending more and more time communicating with Nature. When I wander around my woods and admire the trees and rocks and clouds, and listen to the wind and the rustling of leaves, it is very simple to discern the presence of a higher power, and I am easily enraptured by the night sky as well. Shooting stars are absolute GIFTS from the heavens!!
To embrace interconnectedness is to weigh each step you take, each action, each gesture, and to imagine the impact of these on the rest of the planet. I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing I do that is without repercussions, however small. I am going to ponder all of this more and more, and work to make my influence on the world as positive as possible, and, I hope, help people who don't see the world this way become more aware of how we are all part of the same whole, and how we influence everything.
I would be interested in hearing if anyone else is feeling this way, and if so, how and when it came about.
ttfn
Jodda
Interconnectedness Quotes:
I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.
~ Mahatma Gandhi Quotes
He alone sees truly who sees the Lord the same in every creature...seeing the same Lord everywhere, he does not harm himself or others.
~ Krishna Quotes from The Bhagavad Gita
Self-actualizing people have a deep feeling of identification, sympathy, and affection for human beings in general. They feel kinship and connection, as if all people were members of a single family.
~ Abraham Maslow Quotes from Motivation & Personality
There is much suffering in the world - physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.
~ Mother Theresa Quotes
Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said to him, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
~ Jesus Quotes
And a poem:
Abou Ben Adhem
Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase!) Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace, And saw, within the moonlight in his room, Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom, An Angel writing in a book of gold:
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold, And to the Presence in the room he said, "What writest thou?" The Vision raised its head, And with a look made of all sweet accord Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord."
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so," Replied the Angel. Abou spoke more low, But cheerily still; and said, "I pray thee, then, Write me as one who loves his fellow men."
The Angel wrote, and vanished. The next night It came again with a great wakening light, And showed the names whom love of God had blessed, And, lo! Ben Adhem's name led all the rest!
Mon Dieu! It is so hot! It is 10pm, and the temp is 92. I am MELTING! I am so sick of Southern summers, I don't know how much more I can take. I wish I could bring myself to migrate north.
A wonderful thing happened to me a couple of days ago! I got an email from Kirby, my very bestest friend from high school! I haven't heard from him in 23 years, so I was quite surprised to get an email from him. He lives in Dallas, but his parents still live here, and we will be getting together the next time he is in town. I can't wait!! Kirby is without a doubt the most fun person I have ever known! He kept me laughing all the way through school! He is highly creative, snarky and sarcastic, energetic, and just funny as hell! We had so many secret jokes, like the religion we created where we worshipped K-Mart. We would go hang out there and drink Icees, ride the merry-go-round, try on hats and critique the employees hair-dos. I have never had as much fun with anyone else in my entire life as I did with Kirby. We got to go to Galveston one year for our band trip, and it was wonderful. We even got into a big fight in a restaurant and ended up throwing food and squirting ketchup on one another. As I recall, we made up before we got back home. I just have SO many great memories of the time I spent with him, and I am really looking forward to seeing him again! He says he will be here in October, and I will be a happy woman!
In other news, I am sooo sick of my alleged b/f! He has to be the most childish, spoiled, selfish person on the planet. His staycation starts next week, and I am trying desperately to convince him to go visit his parents or something, just get the hell out of my hair for a week. I don't feel like I can stand him being home for a week. I hope no one ever dislikes me as intensely as I dislike Alleged. I hope no one ever cringes at the thought of spending time with me.
I am still plugging away on the novel and the family tree. I haven't unearthed any more interesting ancestors lately. I need to work on some of my brick walls, the lines that have dead-ended. It is intoxicating when I finally break through one of them. I am so glad I discovered genealogy!!
I had another really interesting Native American dream last night. In this one, I was attending a Buffalo Dance, and it was so cool to watch. I emailed Standing Bear today to get his interpretation of this, and the last buffalo dream I had, but I haven't heard from him yet. I am meeting with him as soon as the weather cools down, and attending the next gathering in Gulpha Gorge. Two people I know have strongly recommended that I meet with Standing Bear ASAP. I have been studying his website: http://www.manataka.org/
I think it will be a very interesting meeting, and I hope the beginning of a good friendship. I feel honored and very lucky that I am going to meet him!
Ever since my father passed away earlier this year, I have felt an overwhelming desire to reconnect with my family. I attended the Mitchell reunion 2 weeks ago, visited my cousin Fred Allen 1 week ago, and spent this past weekend with my nephew Jacie and his family.
In addition to this whirl of gaiety, I have been steadily working on my family tree. It seems I am descended from a bunch of incredibly wealthy white devil slave-masters. I am deeply ashamed of this fact, but I can't help but wish some of that wealth had trickled down on me!
Alleged and I are trying to buy a house. I don't know if this is a good idea or not, as I don't plan to stay with him forever, but OTOH, I REALLY want a house! Oh well, I'll just wait and see how this turns out. We may not even get the loan. I want a straw-bale house more than anything, but I would settle for any kind of a house, on a very shaded lot, with a garden patch! I want to grow tons of veggies!
I finally got around to starting my book. It is slow going right now, but I'm hoping I get into the flow soon. I think I'll go write some more of it now! ttfn
I unearthed a new ancestor last night, Tom Edward "Black Jack" Ketchum. He was my maternal great-grandmother's first cousin. He is my 1st cousin, 3 times removed.
Tom Ketchum and His Gang
Texas cowhands-turned-outlaws Tom and Sam Ketchum, along with range pals like David Atkins and Will Carver, robbed trains and became notorious in the Southwest.
By Jeffrey Burton
At almost 1:15 on the afternoon of Friday, April 26, 1901, a one-armed man in a black suit hurried up the 13 steps of the gallows at Clayton, Union County, New Mexico Territory. Tom Ketchum, an attested but unconvicted killer and the most notorious outlaw in the Southwest, was soon to become the first person to suffer public judicial execution for merely attempting to rob a railroad train. A bad life was about to end for a bad reason. And the ending would be worse, for he would not die in the officially approved fashion-from breakage of the neck vertebrae-but from decapitation at the rope's end.
At 17 minutes past the hour, and at the second attempt, Sheriff Salome Garcia's hatchet sliced through the control rope, the trap was sprung, and in a moment or two Tom Ketchum had made history-twice. The clicking cameras mounted beside the stockade snapped again and the ghastly scene was captured for all time: There, held on its side by a doctor and a deputy sheriff, was the body of Thomas Ketchum, and there, in the bloodied black hood held in place by horse-blanket pins, was Ketchum's severed head.
"Nothing out of the ordinary happened," Sheriff Garcia declared. "No bungling whatever. Everything worked nicely and in perfect order." Like many of the others present, the sheriff probably was not lastingly discomforted by the horrifying spectacle of butchery that had been enacted before his eyes. It was a bad and hard way to die, but Ketchum, manifestly, had been a bad and hard man.
Thus, at age 37, Tom Ketchum-popularly, but erroneously, known as "Black Jack" today-took leave of life. But what were his origins, what made him what he became, and how did he earn his reputation?
The story opens in 1849, when several wagonloads of Ketchums migrated to Caldwell County, Texas, to raise cattle. Head of the party was Peter Ketchum, 50 years old and originally from Virginia but successively a resident of Tennessee, Alabama and Illinois.
By 1860, Green Berry Ketchum, Peter's eldest son, and his wife, Temperance Katherine (Wydick) Ketchum, had acquired personal property worth $4,500. They also acquired a sizable household. Their first child, Elizabeth, was born about a year before the family left Illinois. Next came two boys, both born in Caldwell County-Green Berry, Jr., in October 1850, and Samuel W. on January 4, 1854. Their second daughter, Nancy B. arrived in January of 1860, a year or so after Green and his brother James had taken their families to San Saba County.
The family was working hard and doing well, but their fortunes began to dip not long after the birth of the last addition to the family, Thomas Edward, on October 31,1863. San Saba County was tough frontier country, where life expectancy was commensurately short. James Ketchum and a kinsman were among a party robbed and murdered by Kickapoo Indians in 1867. A year later, Green Berry Ketchum, Sr., died at age 46. His widow, "Tempa," followed him to the grave in 1873. Meanwhile, the family estate had shrunk to less than half its 1860 value. But now the head of the household was Green Berry Ketchum, Jr., (known always by his middle name). This was of great importance not only to Berry himself, but to both Sam, who was now 19, and the 10-year-old Tom, because, as was commonly the way in those days, the great bulk of the estate passed to the eldest son, and not much to the younger boys or to the daughters. Berry, at any rate, seems never to have looked back. But Sam and Tom?
Sam's recent service as a Minuteman-a kind of Home Guard for defense against possible Indian outbreaks-gave no foretaste of the criminal career he would embrace in middle age. In 1875, soon after his 21st birthday, he married Louisa J. Greenlee, six years his junior. The union produced a boy and a girl, but it did not endure. In 1878 the couple sold some land, and by 1880 the marriage was definitely over. Sam, now landless and homeless, was taken in by his sister Nancy and her husband, Abijah E. "Bige" Duncan. Louisa remarried, but Sam never did; his life for the most of the next 16 years was that of an itinerant cowhand.
Tom was with Berry. In the light of Berry's secure position and the disparity in their ages, it is not surprising that Tom was treated as a dependent, rather than as someone who would emerge as an equal. Tom's resentment is a matter of record; whether, or how far, his attitude was justified is something we cannot know.
On March 17, 1880, Tom Ketchum fell athwart the path of legal process. It seems he was summoned for contempt of court, arising from his failure to appear as a witness in an earlier case. Already, at 16, he was becoming set in defiance of authority.
But Berry was doing well. In the early 1880s, his search for a bigger and better cattle range took him to Tom Green County, 70 miles farther west. Tom went with him, but his role would still have been more that of employee than associate. Sam was with Berry on and off. From June to December 1885, Sam was on the payroll of the big Half Circle Six outfit, with headquarters near Knickerbocker, and he is said to have worked for Richard Tankersley, of San Angelo, and other local cattlemen. As Tom grew into young manhood, he, too, began hiring out to these and other ranchers. Soon he was well known in, and well acquainted with, all the country between San Angelo and the Rio Grande. In January 1889, Tom Green County had a new sheriff, Gerome W. ("Rome") Shields. The first man he arrested was Tom Ketchum. Tom's offense had been to pursue a dog into a church and then down the aisle while a religious service was in progress.
Many people would not have been amused. One of them was Berry Ketchum, who had a very particular reason fro keeping on good terms with the new sheriff. On May 23, 1889, at the sensible age of 48, Berry married Barsha Ola Shields, the sheriff's daughter. This duality of circumstance adds weight to a family anecdote, retold by author Barbara Barton. Before setting off for San Saba County, where the woman still lived and where the wedding was to take place, Berry had a few words for Tom: "Be out of the house for good when I return." Tom went, and Sam went with him.
In later years, Berry and his youngest brother were partly reconciled, largely through Berry's regard for Sam and, possibly, the intercession of other kinfolk. Tom later implied that Berry's change of front sprang from self-interest, aroused by the financial success of Tom's earliest ventures into banditry.
Seen together, the two younger brothers were an impressive, even an imposing, presence. Tom stood 5 foot 11 (nearly 6 inches taller than the average male of that era) and, in prime condition, weighed 180 pounds. "Every inch seemed brawn and muscle," noted one observer; another, years later, drew attention to his "wonderful physique." He was dark skinned and black haired, with small, piercing eyes that were "indefinably swift and menacing" and "obsessed of an extraordinary alertness." Opinion was divided as to whether he looked intelligent, but intelligent he certainly was, whether he looked it or not.
Many Western outlaws were falsely accredited with prodigious shooting skill. But Tom Ketchum was the real thing; a true marksman. He was also, in the judgment of Dave Atkins, who rode and robbed with Tom and Sam in the 1890s, and who was himself a murderer, "a very brutal man."
Sam, quite unlike his brother, was fair complexioned and freckled, with reddish-blond hair. He lacked no more than an inch of Tom's height and was, to cattleman Jack Culley, "the finest figure of a man in my recollection." He was, said Atkins, "as fine a man as could be."
The years passed. Sometimes together, sometimes apart, Sam and Tom worked at the roundup and on the trail throughout the Southwest. Occasionally they were seen in southern Colorado and, at least once, as far north as Hole-in-the-Wall, Wyoming. They seemed to have harbored no thoughts of "settling down." Marriage, which Sam had tried without much success, was something that Tom-so gossip charged-avoided by the traditional means, as in the instance where (it was alleged) he impregnated one woman who was already married to someone else. Truth? Slander? We can only report that the story circulated in Tom's own lifetime.
During those years the brothers drew closer to two young men whose appetite for travel and adventure resembled theirs. Tom and Sam had known both of them for years in Tom Green County. They were William Richard Carver and David Atkins.
Will Carver was born in Comanche County, Texas, in September 1868, but was hardly more than a baby when he lost his father through desertion. His mother, Martha, became Mrs. Walter Causey in 1872, and Will's intermittent adoption of his stepfather's name may have been the basis for the later belief among detectives that he used "Will Casey" as an alias. The Causeys, including Will Craver and his sister, moved to Pipe Creek, in Bandera County. So did Will's uncle, Richard T. Carver, most lately a resident of Uvalde County but originally from Missouri. Uncle Dick Carver was another footloose character. He it was who introduced Will to life as a cowboy in the Devil's River County, not far from the town of Sonora, in Sutton County.
Will Carver was a popular young man but never readily companionable-affable rather than sociable. Most of him many have been below the surface. Such people are often slow to commit themselves, but uncompromising when they do.
In 1891, when Will was a cowboy for the Half Circle Six in Tom Green County, he fell in love with 17-year-old Viana Byler; the following February, he married her; and before July was out, he was a widower-Viana had suddenly taken sick and died. Carver took her death hard and never got over it. Romance, of a sort, was provided by Viana's niece, Laura Bullion, a precocious 15-year-old; but Carver never proposed and probably never considered marriage to her, though their association did not end when Laura became an inmate of one of San Antonio's many brothels. Laura herself had been badly let down by the selfish promiscuity of a mother, Fereby Bullion, who had twice thrown Laura and her brother upon the goodwill of Fereby's own parents, the Bylers. Carver, meanwhile, went into partnership with Sam Ketchum to open a saloon and gambling hall in San Angelo.
At the turn of 1895-96, Sam, Tom, Will and Dave Atkins were standing at the critical juncture of their earthly careers. Only Atkins would live out a full span of years. Unlike his friends, he was a native of Tom Green County-born in the spring of 1874, the fifth child of a farmer. Like the other three, he worked as a cowboy, both locally and in New Mexico; unlike them, he never minded labor in the fields: sowing, reaping, and gathering crops or mowing hay.
In an age of venturesome people, Atkins went beyond the norm; he seems to have been afflicted with a severe case of wanderlust. Just before Christmas, 1894, he married Saba Banner, a neighbor's daughter. But Dave did not turn out to be a very good husband, or much of a father to the baby girl who soon came along. The event that broke the precarious marital harmony was as sordid as it was sensational.
John N. "Jap" Powers lived near the Atkinses. He was also a neighbor of Berry Ketchum. In falling out with some of his fellow citizens, Jap incurred the enmity of Tom Ketchum. Also, it was said, his gambling had put him in debt to Sam and Carver. These factors created a situation that Mrs. Powers and their foreman, John Wright, exploited to accomplish a plan for the removal of Mr. Powers.
The two schemers, making the most of Jap's unpopularity, commissioned Tom and his friends to do away with him. The task was discharged with efficiency on Thursday, December 12, 1895. As Powers entered his horse pasture, several men with rifles used his back for target practice. He was felled by three bullets; a fourth was fired into his head, probably from short range. The killers got clean away, aided by the widow's failure to report the crime until dusk.
Much later, a grand jury indicted Tom, Atkins and a young man named Upshaw; but they were gone. Also missing were Sam Carver, and one W.H. Kelley, who may have had nothing to do with the case beyond unwillingness to be dragged into the investigation. But when, on May 25, 1896, that investigation at last reached Mrs. Powers, Sheriff Shields decided that Tom, Dave, and Upshaw were innocent of collusion and concentrated all his interest on Wright and the Powers woman. He was wrong. Five years later, in court, Tom Ketchum himself said so, absolving Upshaw but admitting his own part and implicating others.
In the spring of 1896, Carver and Atkins were in Arizona. The two Ketchums were hired as line riders for the Bell ranch, with headquarters near the site of Fort Bascom, N. M. Tom soon quarreled with the wagon boss, collected his pay, and rode off with Sam. On the night of June 8, they stole supplies from the bell storehouse, and early on the 11th they burglarized the nearby Liberty post office and store, operated by Levi and Morris Herzstein. Commendably, but rashly, Levi elected to be his own thief-catcher. Accounts differ over whether the fugitives were taken by surprise, or whether they expected pursuit and were lying in wait for it. The result was beyond controversy: Levi and a companion, Merejildo Gallegos, were killed. Tom and Sam faded into Arizona Territory, where they may have rejoined Carver and Atkins. The brothers definitely spent much of the winter of 1896-97 in Graham County, Ariz.
Upon learning that he had been cleared of the Powers killing, Atkins returned to Tom Green County. He did not tread carefully. On March 20, 1897, he drank himself into a jealous rage against Tom Hardin, a young storekeeper who had once bested him in a fight. When Hardin laid hands on Atkins to calm or restrain him, the younger man drew his gun and shot him in the head. Chillingly sober the next morning, he narrowly evaded capture. Soon he was back in the company of Tom Ketchum and Will Carver. For Tom and Dave, murderers both, the road ahead was clearly marked and led one way, inexorably toward crime as a profession. Carver, however, had done no great wrong; perhaps he was merely sickened by adversity and desperate for a change of luck.
Their common purpose took them south, through Sutton County and the Devil's River country, thence westward through Val Verde County to the tracks of the Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Railroad (in all but name the Texas division of the Southern Pacific). At 1:50 a.m. on Friday, May 14, 1897, as westbound train No. 20 was pulling out of Lozier, a depot and water stop 15 miles west of Langtry, Tom Ketchum and Will Carver scrambled over the coal tender and took charge of the cab from engineer George Freese and fireman Jim Bochat. The train was stopped at the next cut, where Atkins had snipped the telegraph wires and was waiting with the horses and dynamite. Using Freese and Bochat as shields and mouthpieces, the bandits were soon admitted to the express car. First, they blew open messenger W.H. Joyce's allegedly empty way safe and extracted some money from it. Three charges were needed to crack the big through safe, but the rewards justified the delay; at 3:15 a.m. the marauders had enriched themselves with three sackfuls of plun der.
Years later, Joyce maintained that the booty amounted to only $6,000, mostly in Mexican silver. Untrue-some Mexican silver was aboard the train, but the road agents left it on the floor because they could not be bothered with the extra weight. On the eventual admission of the company's own officials, the robbery cost Wells, Fargo $42,000.
An assortment of sheriff's posses, deputy U.S. marshals and Texas Rangers took the trail and stuck to it. The trio had to ride hard to keep ahead, but eventually, and separately, they made it back to Tom Green County.
Their spectacular success ought to have made them rich, but it did not. They had to pay highly for food, shelter and secrecy, and they may also have fallen into the common error of trusting the wrong people to act as their bankers.
Soon afterward Sam Ketchum arrived from New Mexico to visit Berry. The three train robbers may have left already to rob another train-this time in New Mexico, where, since 1887, train robbery (actual or attempted) had carried the death penalty. Anyone who got himself caught after holding up a train in New Mexico had to hope that the United States would assert its primacy by prosecuting him for offenses connected with the passage of the U.S. mail, and that the Territorial authorities would let it go at that. Although the federal law book was severe on mail robbers, it stopped short of the death penalty.
Finally legend has it that Berry asked Sam to dissuade Tom from venturing further down the pathways of crime. Sam soon found Tom, but when they talked the younger brother proved the more persuasive. The outcome was that Sam joined Tom, Will, Dave and possibly a man known as "Charles Collings" in holding up a train on Twin Mountains bend, between Folsom and Des Moines, New Mexico Territory. The subject of the assault was train No.1, southbound, of the Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf (formerly the Fort Worth & Denver); the date, Friday night, September 3, 1897. Here the messenger, Charles P. Drew, was viciously assaulted by one of the gang, supposedly Sam Ketchum. As at Lozier, three detonations were needed before the through safe burst open. Estimates of the booty varied as usual. The likely gain to the robbers was something between $2,000 and $3,500 in cash, plus jewelry and a consignment of silver spoons. Ketchum, Ketchum & Co., would not have trifled with tableware had the cash receipts been more substantial. Only Collings was arrested; his trial late in 1898 produced an acquittal. He was probably Bruce "Red" Weaver, who hailed from the same section of Texas as the rest of the gang. Tom and Sam, et al., were the others indicted; behind the et al., would have been Carver and Atkins.
The gang hid first in Turkey Creek Canyon, a remote spot a dozen miles northwest of Cimarron, well screened by brush and timber. After a few days they headed for the southeasternmost corner of Arizona. Before September ended Carver was guiding the others into Texas Canyon, in what the ranchman Jess Benton portrayed as "a wild and beautiful locality at the south end of the [Chiricahua] range, a wooded region with a pretty spring and a chinked log house in a clearing."
Early in December 1897, the U.S. marshals of New Mexico and Arizona territories heard that a train would be held up at Stein's Pass within the next 10 days. The pass overlooked the territorial boundary and was within easy riding distance of "Tex Canyon."
Shortly after 6 p.m. on Thursday, December 9, 1897, Dave Atkins and a man known locally as Edward H. Cullen held up the post office in the nearby village of Stein's. Their take was $9. They and Sam then grabbed the station agent, Charles E. St. John, and ransacked the premises of express and railroad company funds, inflating their haul by a further $2.20. Tom relieved the telegraph operator of his Winchester .44. He and Carver then took the horses two miles down the line and built a bonfire on each side of the track.
Toward 9 p.m. the westbound flyer, No. 20, came toiling up the grade to Stein's station. The gang stopped it by ordering St. John to show a red light, seized control of the engine and told engineer Thomas W. North to pull ahead as far as the two bonfires.
The train was halted and the outlaws approached the express car. A terrific battle then ensued between the bandits and the three men in the car-messenger Charles Jennings and two guards. Four of the gang were wounded and the fifth, Cullen, killed when he picked the wrong moment to raise his head. That ended the affray. Leaving Cullen where he lay, the band slunk back to Texas Canyon to patch themselves up and exchange recriminations. Tom blamed Atkins; he had got drunk, said Tom, and spilled word of their plans into too many and too receptive ears.
Six men were arrested in or near Texas Canyon in connection with the Stein's Pass case. Three finally were cleared, while the other three-Leonard Alverson, Walter Hovey, alias Hoffman, and William Warderman, alias Fatty Ryan-were jointly indicted by a federal grand jury and eventually convicted of post office robbery. They were all thieves and smugglers, but none had participated in the holdup of the post office, station or train.
On the other hand, not only had they been sheltering the Ketchum Gang, they knew exactly who they were, what they were, and what they were going to do. Knowingly or not, they were accessories before the fact. That made them all equal in guilt to the principals, if the jury chose to believe that even one of them was at the scene of the crime. The jury believed that a flesh wound in Hovey's leg had been sustained during the holdup. Hovey's explanation sounded implausible, but it was almost certainly true. Anyway, despite the confessions of both Tom and Sam Ketchum, the three men stayed in prison until 1904, when President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned them.
Cullen, the man killed in the holdup, is sometimes said to have been Ed Bullion, Laura's brother. But Laura had no brother named Ed. Her only brother was Daniel, born in 1879, and he was still living long after 1897.
After the debacle at Stein's Pass, the outlaws were short of money. But, since trains were still running and express cars were still carrying money, there was an obvious remedy. Once again, westbound train No. 20 was the object of their attentions, but the spotlight had shifted back to Texas and the Galveston, Harrisonburg & San Antonio.
Midway between Langtry and Del Rio, and 30 miles east of Loxier, was Comstock station, where the Newman gang had held up a train in 1896. They had obtained little loot, and were soon caught. The Ketchums would do better.
At 11:30 local time on Thursday, April 28, 1898, as the train was picking up speed out of Comstock, two intruders entered the locomotive cab and ordered engineer Walter Jordan to bring her to a halt. Two more men then appeared and detached the passenger coaches. At 11:50 p.m. the mail and express cars were taken ahead to a place called Helmet, where messenger Richard Hayes surrendered when the cartridges jammed in his Winchester. The bandits emptied the way safe, placed dynamite on the time-locked through safe, put the way safe on the dynamite and lit the fuse. The ensuing explosion sent the way safe soaring through the roof of the car and into the night sky.
"Big Booty for Texans," roared a headline in the faraway San Francisco Chronicle, leading a report from El Paso that the bandits had netted $20,000. At the opposite end of the scale was the figure of $4.80 cited by a correspondent in Del Rio. About all that can be warranted is that the higher figure was much too high, and the lower much too low.
The descriptions of the robbers, such as they were-a large man with a German accent and three small men-were nothing like those of the known members of the Ketchum Gang. But the men were heavily masked, it was dark and the witnesses were too rattled to agree on whether there were four robbers or six.
Whatever their haul, the men had a seven-hour start on their pursuers and stayed clear of them. Special officer Fred Dodge was sent from Houston to lead Wells, Fargo's investigation into the case, but without tangible result.
The Comstock robbery is not mentioned in Barbara Barton's new book, Den of Outlaws, on the Ketchums and their associates. But she does point to the recent discovery of a cave near Pandale, Texas, one of whose walls bears the inscription "Tom Ketchum" beside the date 4-26-98. Pandale and Comstock are just 25 miles apart.
Proof that the robber gang had struck no lode at Comstock was forthcoming two months later, when the gang of four stuck up westbound train No. 3 near Stanton, Texas. In crow's flight terms, Stanton was 180 miles almost due north of Comstock, but in practice the Ketchum Gang would have traveled by way of Tom Green County, spending several weeks there before pushing on to intercept the Texas & Pacific train on Mustang Creek at 10 p.m., Friday, July 1, 1898. They reverted to the methods tried at Stein's Pass, stopping the train with a red light signal and track where the passenger coaches were unhooked, the express car pulled ahead and the safe blown.
There followed the usual seesaw speculations about the extent of the booty-perhaps $50,000; perhaps $10,000; perhaps no more than $1,000. The fact that a number of $10 bills were left behind, along with some jewelry, suggests that the last figure is too low. A couple of days later a report came that a posse was on the rail of four men-two on horseback, one on a bicycle and one on foot. It doesn't sound much like the Ketchum Gang, who, moreover, were well mounted on fresh horses obtained from a ranch in Sterling County not long before the robbery.
Another posse scoured the hills and hollows of Tom Green County. If the officers didn't know where the road agents were going, at least they had a pretty good idea where they had been.
It was another easy getaway. But, though none could have guessed it at the time, it was also the end of the Ketchum Gang, as such. Dave Atkins may have left already. If he was absent from one or both of the 1898 robberies, the fourth member of the team may well have been Benjamin Kilpatrick, third of the six sons (there were three daughters besides) of George and Mary Kilpatrick, of Concho County. Ben, born in 1874, had known the Ketchums, Carver and Atkins from his teens and had worked alongside some or all of them on various ranches.
Sam and Will broke with Tom in New Mexico in the spring of 1899. The exact precipitant is unknown, but the causes were cumulative. Tom's mood swings were becoming wilder and ever more unpredictable, until the day arrived when even Sam could stand no more of him.
Butch Cassidy and his closest friend and ally, William Ellsworth "Elzy" Lay (pictured left), came down from Wyoming late in 1898 and, as Jim Lowe and Bill McGinnis, were hired by Bob Johnson, foreman of the Erie outfit in Cochise County, Ariz. Early in 1899 they and others were taken on by the WS ranch of Alma, N.M., which desperately needed hands for special roundup, prior to partial sell-up and partial removal to Springer. Also present were Red Weaver and Ben Kilpatrick, who was calling himself Johnny Ward. It is likely that the Ketchums, Kilpatrick and perhaps Carver had found sanctuary in Hole-in-the-Wall in the late summer or early fall of 1898. They could then have recommended the Erie and its knowledgeable but uninquisitive foreman to Cassidy and Lay. Cassidy got along nicely with Carver, only half-trusted Weaver and had no use or time for the Ketchums. He advised Lay to keep clear of all three of the latter. The advice was ignored, though Tom Ketchum's departure may have removed much of its point. In any event, Lay agreed to join Sam, Will and Red in a repeat hold up at Twin Mountains, on the Colorado & Southern Railway (the recently renamed Union Pacific, Denver & Gulf).
Sam and Will set up camp in Turkey Canyon during May 1899. Lay and Weaver quit the WS at about that same time, their last service being to oversee the transfer of a trainload of cattle to Springer, the railhead close to the WS's new northern headquarters. Once there, Weaver was carted off to the local pesthouse as a smallpox suspect. He was soon released, however, and was seen with Lay in Cimarron toward mid-June. Later that month, Lay and Carver were together in the same town for nearly a week. While there, Carver, giving his name as "G.W. Franks" and "Simerone" as his address, wrote to a Springer storekeeper for two 40-inch rifle scabbards. He also ordered a .30-40 carbine and 1,000 rounds of ammunition from a supplier in Denver.
During this period Tom Ketchum was nearly 400 miles away, in Yavapai County, in central Arizona. As night was falling on Sunday, July 2, 1899, he entered a store at Camp Verde and shot dead the proprietors, Mack Rogers and Clint Wingfield.
Whatever the motive, it was not robbery. Rogers certainly recognized Tom. It might also be relevant that he had once lived in Texas, though that is rather like saying that the needle was somewhere in the haystack. But on this slenderest of evidence rests the only plausible explanation for the murder of Roger: that it sprang from some prior difficulty between the two men. Possibly Ketchum's intention was merely to approach Rogers for provisions and an olive branch, until this course was preempted by the storekeeper's dash for the counter. If Rogers meant to arm himself, he came nowhere near doing it, for Ketchum shot him in the back. Wingfield was killed because he happened to be there; he was working upstairs on the company books and rushed down to inquire into the cause of the commotion. Ketchum responded by killing him.
Outside the store, Tom scattered the by-standers and hurried to his horse, a mile away. The pursuit was directed more by anger than by thought, making it easier for Ketchum to escape into New Mexico.
Sam Ketchum heard nothing of this. On the evening of July 7, he and Carver bought supplies in Cimarron and cached them in Turkey Canyon. Next day, Lay and Weaver also left Cimarron. Red headed northeast; Lay, at first, northwest. The four would have been mortified had they known that their activities had aroused suspicion in Cimarron, and that warnings had been passed to the U.S. marshal, Creighton M. Foraker (though not to the county sheriff). But before Foraker could do anything about the warnings, the Colorado & Southern No. 1 southbound train was robbed, at almost the same spot and in almost the same fashion as in 1897.
At 10:10 p.m. on Tuesday, July 11, Sam Ketchum and Elzy Lay slipped aboard the blind end of the baggage car while the engine was taking on water at Folsom. Will Carver had a fire blazing beside the track two miles into the "S" bend at Twin Mountains. There, engineer J.A. Tubbs was told to stop the train. At Carver's urging, emphasized by a few shots from his carbine, messenger Hamil Scott opened the car door. The first explosion miscued; the second, in the words of the conductor, Frank Harrington, blew a hole in the safe "about as big as a common soup bowl," pulling back the roof of the car "just like you peel a banana."
Watched by Harrington and two sheriffs, the three men attached many packages and bundles to the saddles of three horses. In the light of the messenger's sturdy insistence that the robbers had taken only a saddletree and some fruit from the train, one might wonder where else the packages and bundles could have come from. Marshal Foraker, whose information would have included at least a modicum of fact, stated not long afterward that the loot amounted to $30,000. The information that eventually found its way to Governor Miguel Otero may have been as authoritative as any audit. It placed a whopping $70,000 to the credit of the robbers' account.
Most onlookers reported the presence of a fourth bandit, and the posses found four sets of hoof prints, though the conductor and sheriffs had seen only three men and horses. Some witnesses said one of the horses was carrying two men when the robbers left. Weaver evidently was on guard duty near the train, having left his own mount some distance away.
Some 45 miles southwest of the scene of the robbery, Weaver left the others. He intended to lay over on the WS, then travel to Silver City by train, and thence to Alma. Evidently his first duty was to place the stolen money in a temporary cache: after the posses had given up and gone home, he would rendezvous with the trio from Turkey Canyon, and the plunder would be divided.
That, at any rate, is likely to have been what was meant to happen. But events supervened. Weaver secreted the swag but was arrested soon after ward; while the other three, far from being secure in Turkey Canyon, were trapped there without knowing it.
Ketchum, Carver and Lay were grossly overconfident. First, they made themselves too conspicuous in Cimarron. Then, after the robbery, they rode blithely into the canyon without checking to see whether anyone nearby was watching for them.
Someone was.
Among the residents of Cimarron who had been suspicious of the four strangers was freighter James Morgan, nicknamed "Billy," who saw the three men turn into Turkey Canyon on July 15. Early the next evening, the 16th, a seven-man federal posse, guided by the rising smoke of the bandits' campfire, came up unnoticed to within easy shooting range.
Early the next evening, a Sunday, a seven-man federal posse, guided by the rising smoke of the bandits' campfire, and further assisted by the crowning folly of the hunted men in not posting a lookout, came up unnoticed to within easy shooting range.
Nominal leader of the posse was Deputy U.S. Marshal Wilson "Memphis" Elliott, but two of its other member behaved at times as though they were in charge. One of them was Edward J. Farr, sheriff of Huerfano County, Colo., who was closely allied with the railroad and industrial interests of southern Colorado. The other was William Hiram Reno, special officer of the Colorado & Southern Railway. While neither of them had a shred of independent jurisdiction authority in New Mexico Territory, it is fair to say also that Elliott-who had known Sam Ketchum in San Angelo-showed no evidence of effective leadership.
Even so, Farr's initiative was more pragmatic than legal. Seeing Lay, disheveled and unarmed, near a pool 100 yards distant but far below him, Farr opened fire. If the sheriff-or Deputy Marshal Elliott, who fired a few moments later from another angle-shouted any command to surrender, they gave Lay no time to react to it. Farr's bullet dropped Lay "just the same as if I had been hit with a club." As he was falling, he was shot in the back by either Elliott or Morgan.
Ketchum seized his rifle and got into the action, inviting the possemen to "come down here." A bullet from Elliott broke Sam's left arm, putting him out of the fight.
Carver, from above and invisible to the posse, kept up a vigorous fire, wounding one man and forcing the others to keep close cover. Lay, reviving, crawled back to his rifle, fainted again and regained consciousness while Carver was single-handedly holding the posse at bay. (Some researchers say that it was another outlaw, Harvey Logan, who did the shooting and that Carver had left the canyon earlier-see "Gunfighters and Lawmen" in the June 1999 Wild West.) Carver located Farr trying to take cover behind a small tree and fired at his protruding south end just as the sheriff withdrew it from the bullet's path. Well knowing the penetrative force of the .30-40 bullet, he aimed next at the center of Farr's tree and "blew splinters clear through the officer." The wound was fatal.
Reno, who was close to the slain sheriff, and F.H. Smith, the wounded posseman, then departed to summon help from Cimarron. He left his horse where it was picketed and took the safer way out-over the top of the mountain, and perforce afoot. He was undoubtedly frightened, and with good cause. So were the other surviving members of the posse. Elliot and Morgan, who had been bold enough when the advantage rested with them, were utterly unnerved by the abrupt change of fortunes. Henry Love, the second posseman to be wounded by Carver, was in great pain; the bullet had driven Love's skinning knife deep into his thigh. Eliott waited until morning and then ordered a retreat.
The bandits had left during the night, headed southwest. Sam Ketchum could not go beyond Ute Park and had to be abandoned. He was captured and taken to Santa Fe, where his wound was treated. Too late-gangrene had taken over, and he died on July 24. Henry Love had died in agony four days earlier. Lay, despite the severity of his wounds, needed only a week's care and immobility before he was fit to travel.
Fortunately for him, his wounds, though they had cost him a lot of blood, were "clean through and through." They had almost healed when-over breakfast on the morning of August 16-he was captured on Lusk's ranch at Chimney Wells, near Carlsbad, N.M. Carver eluded the posse.
Tom Ketchum, too, had kept clear of the posses. But as he had avoided most other human contact after his flight from Camp Verde, he had heard nothing of the recent train robbery, the fight in the canyon, and Sam's death. He was counting on reconciliation with Sam and Carver as he rode to Wagon Mound, New Mexico Territory, where he hoped they would be in camp. When he saw they were not, he decided to hold up a train unaided. On the night of August 10 or 11, he was about to slip aboard the baggage wagon at Wagon Mound when he spotted an armed guard at the open door of the express car. Tom carried on walking, mounted the horse he had left downtrack and headed for Folsom 70 miles to the northeast. His mind had reverted to the gang's old plan for a second hold up at Twin Mountains. Sam and the others, he assumed, had dropped the idea; very well, he would carry it through-alone.
In the first robbery at Twin Mountains-and, as he would learn, in the second-the gang had not uncoupled the express car from the passenger coaches, because a man or two could be spared to prevent interference from the coaches. But Tom, acting alone, could not be in two places at once. He would have to cut the train behind the express car, which could then be drawn ahead to the spot where he had left his horse and the dynamite.
Ketchum was ignorant of one crucial operational detail: The "Miller hook," the old-fashioned coupling device still in use with the Colorado & Southern, would lock whenever the train entered a curve, thus binding the cars together.
It was 10:20 p.m. on August 16-some 16 hours after Elzy Lay's arrest near Carlsbad-when Tom Ketchum sneaked onto the blind baggage of train No. 1 at Folsom station. Under the urging of Ketchum's Winchester, engineer Joseph Kirchgrabber halted the train on the bend, some four miles south of Folsom. Tom's horse was two miles downtrack, close to the scene of the two earlier robberies. The conductor of the train was Frank Harrington, who had played a spectator's role during both of them; the difference was that, this time, he had a shotgun for company. Charles Drew, whom the gang had manhandled in the 1897 robbery, was the express messenger. In his charge was well over $5,000 in currency-enough, Tom reckoned, to see him aboard a ship for South America.
Drew was ordered to the ground and told to hold a lantern while fireman Tom Scanlon struggled with the locked couplings. Scalon knew that he was being asked to do what was next to impossible, but the robber's curtness and impatience made him disinclined to say so. Yet, clearly, the man with the Winchester was on the edge of his temper. Somehow the deadlock would have to be resolved.
The tension snapped when Fred Bartlett, the mail clerk, stuck his head out. Ketchum fired what was meant to be a warning shot, a deliberate near miss; but the bullet ricocheted from a steel projection and struck Barlett's jaw, tearing out two teeth.
After a further bout of furious effort, Scanlon told Ketchum that he had at last got the cars unhooked. He lied, or was mistaken; he had done better, better, except from Ketchum 's viewpoint-he had cut the airhose, thereby locking the brakes on all the passenger coaches and irretrievably wrecking the bandit's plan. But Ketchum was still determined not to give up. His obstinacy was to cost him his liberty and his life.
Ketchum ordered Kirchgrabber to take over from Scanlon. The engineer was toiling over the couplings with a jackbar when conductor Harrington, shotgun cocked and at the ready, half opened the front-end door of the leading coach. As soon as he had a clear sight of the bandit, he flung the door wide open and fired.
Even before the loads tore into his right arm, just above the elbow, Tom was throwing his aim from Drew to Harrington, but he was an instant too slow. As he explained later, "The buckshot jiggled my aim," and the bullet from his rifle merely grazed the conductor's left arm.
Ketchum reeled away into the night, turning for a few moments only to send a couple of shots toward Drew's lantern. He managed to reach his picketed horse, but lacked the strength to mount. he lay down by the track to wait for the first northbound train and for the posse that would be on it. He and his career were done for.
The essence of the rest is soon told. On October 10, 1899, under his assumed name of William H. McGinnis, Elzy Lay was sentenced to life imprisonment for second-degree murder. Governor Otero commuted the life term to one of 10 years' imprisonment. He believed, rightly, that Lay's trial had been handled unfairly; and, wrongly, that Lay had fired no shots in the Turkey Canyon fight. Deduction for good behavior and 17 days' further remission earned by road-building labor gave Lay his freedom on December 24, 1905.
Marshal Foraker had released Red Weaver on July 20, 1899, evidently concluding that Red's demonstrable absence from the Turkey Canyon affray proved he had nothing to do with train robbery. Red took leave with a fine show of injured innocence. Some while later, he recovered the Folsom loot, took it south and reburied it near Alma, New Mexico. Loyalty, or more probably a due sense of self-preservation, constrained him from helping himself to more than his share. He lived for some months in a style to which he had never been accustomed, but spoiled the picture for himself by losing a gunfight he should have won, with results that were fatal for him. The winner was William "Pad" Holomon. The date was April 8, 1901.
Fifty-eight thousand dollars of Folsom loot remained underground. But Lay had been told where to find the hoard, and it passed into his possession shortly after his reappearance in Alma in the last days of 1905. It must have considerably eased his journey through the next few years, but at the time of his death in 1934 he was not well off.
Will Carver helped Butch Cassidy and Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid, rob the bank at Winnemucca, Nev., on September 19,1900, but on April 2, 1901, Carver was shot and killed in Sonora, Texas. With him at the time was George Kilpatrick, a younger brother of Ben. Georadley. rge recovered from his wounds and joined Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry, after the latter's escape from jail in 1903. Logan committed suicide in 1904. George's later history is unknown.
After Carver's death, Laura Bullion transferred her affections to Ben Kilpatrick. Ben had cast his lot with Curry in 1898 and taken part in two or three train robberies alongside him. After the last of these, Ben and Laura were imprisoned for forging signatures on incomplete bank notes. She served 3 1/2 years. He served 9 1/2. On March 13, 1912, nine months after his release, Ben was killed by an express messenger near Sanderson, Texas. Laura lived under an assumed name until 1961, mainly in Tennessee.
After breaking with the Ketchum Gang in 1898, David Atkins went north. His friend, Joseph "Mack" Axford, received one letter from him, mailed from Idaho, and never knew what happened to him thereafter.
Plenty happened. In March 1900, Atkins was arrested in Montana and subsequently collected by Rome Shields, who was still sheriff of Tom Green County, Texas. On his return to Texas, Dave was bailed out to await trial for the murder of Tom Hardin. Those who had trusted him were left holding the bag. Atkins absconded early in 1901, intending to join the British army in South Africa for the war against the Boer Republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State. He sailed from New Orleans as a muleteer, disembarked at East London late in March 1901 and enlisted as a mounted rifleman in a force of Cape Colony Volunteers. He saw much action over the next year or so, mostly against Cape Dutch insurgents.
A few weeks after the war ended on May 31, 1902, Atkins took ship for Southampton, England. After an interval of sightseeing, he returned to the United States. Nine peripatetic years followed, during which he lived in Mexico, British Honduras, and various other countries in Central and South America. Finally, in 1911, he was caught on one of his periodic trips to Tom Green County. He was convicted of the Hardin killing and sentenced to five years' imprisonment. Otherwise, the state of Texas had no argument with him.
For a man of his record, that was light treatment indeed. But Dave Atkins had outlived his own fleeting notoriety. No one was interested in blowing the dust off the case papers for the Powers murder or the Lozier robbery, or establishing a link between Atkins and any robbery in New Mexico. He died in 1964, having spent his last 32 years in a mental institution. Even in his worst moments, though, he could not have envied Tom Ketchum his fate.
Governor Otero and the legal-politico establishment of New Mexico were set on making an example of Thomas Edward Ketchum. The Territory of Arizona believed it had an irrefragable case against Ketchum for the Camp Verde murders, but Otero, with the help of his attorney general, produced a serviceable excuse for denying a writ of requisition. In Otero's submission, a botched train hold up in New Mexico was a greater crime than a double murder in Arizona. As he put it in a letter to Governor Nathan O. Murphy of Arizona, "Train robberies have been entirely too frequent in our territory to permit this one to go by unnoticed, and I am determined that it must be stopped."
Ketchum's damaged right forearm was amputated on September 3. Subsequently he made one escape attempt and two suicide attempts. He was first tried in federal court for delaying the passage of the U.S. mails, and answered the charge with a plea of guilty. The authorities in Union County, New Mexico Territory, were not ready to deal with him until September 1900-more than a year after his arrest. He was convicted with superlative ease and sentenced to death on September 11. In January 1901, the Supreme Court of the Territory rejected his appeal. Ketchum was sentenced to hang on March 22, but two postponements pushed the date to April 26.
During his 21 months in captivity, Tom talked a great deal about himself, his career and other people. Some of what he said about himself and his career was true, some half true, some wholly untrue. Much of what he said about others was malicious. On the morning of Friday, April 26, he was still talking. He denied being Black Jack and said that a dozen men in Arizona could testify that he was not. Actually, many more than a dozen could have borne him out, had they thought him worth the trouble. Almost at the last he made a sworn statement, admitting the Stein's Pass holdups and exculpating Alverson, Hoffman and Warderman.
Salome Garcia, sheriff of Union County, would be in charge of the hanging. Lacking prior experience in this field, he consulted widely, but not wisely. Others tendered advice without being asked for it. Governor Otero sent Lewis C. Fort to oversee the arrangements; he had a lot of faith in Fort, who had assisted in the prosecution of Ketchum and Lay.
It was decided that a drop of 5 feet 9 inches would suit a man of Ketchum's weight-193 pounds. But matters did not end there. Someone-presumably Garcia-lengthened the drop still further, to 7 feet. This was a dire error, for even 5 feet 9 would have been several inches too long. And a Clayton newspaperman who was not noticeably hostile to Salome Garcia later wrote that the sheriff doctored the rope with soap "to make sure that it slipped properly."
Since 7 feet was a good 18 inches more drop than was needed, and the lubricated rope was too thin and cordlike, Ketchum was beheaded by the noose. Thus a cruel and unusual man was put to death in a cruel and unusual manner.
Much of the material for the above article was used in the author's Dynamite and Six-shooter, but it has been supplemented by research done in Texas and elsewhere since that book was published in 1970. Particular thanks are due to Berry Spradley, great-grandson of Samuel Ketchum, for many details of Ketchum family history, and to John Tanner for sharing information that definitely establishes Ben Clark's role as creator of the myth that Tom Ketchum was called "Black Jack."
This article was written by Jeffrey Burton and originally appeared in the February 2002 issue of Wild West. Photos added by Berry Spradley, owner of this web site. Jeffrey Burton is the preeminent authority on the Ketchum gang. He has traveled and researched the facts about the gangs activities for four decades. He will be publishing a well documented book about the gang this year.
OK, I have completely lost myself in genealogy! I finally found my great-grandfather, Reginald Channing Davis, and from there I have found hundreds of ancestors, and even some living cousins I have never met! My great-great-grandfather was Colonel James Jekyll Lucius Davis, a very famous civil war colonel.
He wrote a book:
Davis, James Lucius. The trooper's manual: or, Tactics for light dragoons and mounted riflemen. Compiled, abridged and arranged, by Col. J. Lucius Davis, graduate of the United States Military Academy, West Point, formerly an officer of the United States Army; and for many years commander and instructor of volunteer cavalry. Richmond, Va. Published by A Morris. 1861. UE 161.5 D26
I also found this about his book:
The Confederate War Department did not issue an official drill manual for the cavalry; however, The Trooper's Manual, written (48) by J. Lucius Davis, former instructor in Cavalry Tactics at West Point and subsequently colonel of the 10th Virginia Cavalry, and General Joseph Wheeler's Cavalry Tactics, (49) were in general use.
He was quite a man, but I am so sad to learn that my ancestors were involved in the Confederate Army. The Colonel had six sons, J Lucius Jr., Lewellyn Catesby, Mervyn Bathurst, Frank Tudor, Reginald Channing, and Lodowick Kossuth. J Lucius and Lewellyn Catesby both died in the war, and possiby Frank Tudor as well. Lodowick Kossuth died in childhood. The Colonel survived the war, but his plantation was burned, and his wife never turns up after that, so I am assuming she died during that time. He lost everything he had, trying to hold onto it.
His other two sons, Reginald Channing (my great-grandfather) and Mervyn Bathurst, went to Texas, where Reginald was in the Cavalry and Mervyn was a Texas Ranger. Mervyn was also a well known journalist, and founded the Texas Humane Society and the Texas Audubon Society. I contacted his great grandson today, and he may be coming to my family reunion in July!!
After the war, my great-grandfather worked driving a mule-drawn streetcar in Waco. He was involved in an accident, which didn't hurt him, but a mule was pinned beneath the streetcar, and he spent several hours in severe weather working to free it. As a result, he developed pneumonia and died a few weeks later, leaving a grieving widow (Abbie) with four young children.
Here are some other famous people I am related to:
Jimmy Earl Carter (1924-) 39th President of the United States of America President Carter sought to restore confidence in the American people after they had been deceived by President Nixon. The energy and inflation crises motivated him to set an example of how to conserve energy. Relationship: 6th Cousin 4 times removed
Robert Morris (1734-1806) Pennsylvania Representative Prior to signing The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Articles of Confederation; Robert Morris borrowed money to pay Washington's troops during the Revolutionary War. Relationship: Distant (26) Great Grandfather
Richard Lovelace (1618-1657) English Poet Richard Lovelace was an English Nobleman and poet. His "Lucasta" poems brought him fame. Relationship: 3rd Cousin 5 times removed
Harriet Lane* (1830-1903) First Lady Harriet Lane was the niece of the bachelor President James Buchanon, and acted as First Lady for 4 years. She was so popular as a White House hostess that women copied her hair and clothes. Relationship: 5th Cousin 2 times removed
Mark Twain (1835-1910) (MY FAVORITE!!!) American Author Samuel Langhorne Clemens thought of his pen name, "Mark Twain," while working on a riverboat. This humorist's works include Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Relationship: 5th Cousin 2 times removed
Francis Lightfoot Lee (1734-1797) Virginia Representative Francis Lightfoot Lee was a radical patriot during the revolution. He worked with Patrick Henry to oppose the Stamp Act. He later signed the Declaration of Independence. Relationship: 4th Cousin 4 times removed
Lillian Gish (1893-1993) American Actress Lillian Diana de Guiche, or Lillian Gish, is known as the "first lady of the silent screen" and starred in many silent films including The Birth of a Nation and The Scarlet Letter. Her career spanned over 75 years and countless television and film appearances. Relationship: 5th Cousin 3 times removed
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) Scientist, Mathematician Isaac Newton is regarded as one of the greatest scientists and mathematicians in history. He described 3 laws of motion that also govern the entire earth and the celestial bodies surrounding it. Relationship: 4th Cousin 5 times removed
Nancy Astor (1879-1964) Viscountess of Britain Nancy Witcher Astor was the first woman to serve in the British House of Commons. Relationship: 5th Cousin 3 times removed
Thomas McKean (1734-1817) Delaware Representative A very prominent and active politician in the early days of the United States, Thomas McKean served as President of the Continental Congress, Governor of Pennsylvania, and Chief Justice of Pennsylvania. He also signed the Declaration of Independence. Relationship: 6th Cousin 1 times removed
Geoffrey Chaucer (1343-1400) English Author Often called the father of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, and courtier known especially for his "Canterbury Tales". Relationship: 14th Great Grandfather
Benjamin Harrison (1726-1791) Virginia Representative Benjamin Harrison had politics in his blood. From a highly politically involved family, he served in the Continental Congress and also was governor of Virginia. His great-grandson became president. Relationship: 1st Cousin 3 times removed
William Henry Harrison (1773-1841) 9th President of the United States of America William Henry Harrison is famous for having the longest inauguration speech and shortest term of any president. He was the first president to die in office; he died of pneumonia only 30 days into his term. Relationship: 2nd Cousin 2 times removed
Benjamin Harrison (1833-1901) 23rd President of the United States of America Grandson of President William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison was the 23 President of the United States. During his term 6 states joined the United States and the Sherman Antitrust Act, an act which prohibited monopolies, was passed. Relationship: 4th Cousin
John C. Fremont (1813-1890) American Explorer John Charles Fremont led several surveying expeditions through the western United States including the Oregon Trail and the Sierra Nevadas. Relationship: 5th Cousin
Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) English Author Virginia Woolf was one of the forerunners of the literary "Modernist" movement and is considered one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century. Besides her experimental writing style, Woolf is also remembered for her contributions to the feminist movement. Relationship: 6th Cousin 2 times removed
Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915) American educator, political leader, author Booker T. Washington was born as a slave but was freed at the age of 9. He received national attention as a spokesperson for African American citizens. Relationship: 5th Cousin 4 times removed
Laurence Olivier (1907-1989) British-born Actor, Director and Producer Laurence Kerr Olivier was an Academy Award-winning actor, director, and producer. He acted in such films as Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Spartacus. Olivier also appeared in many plays throughout his career. Relationship: 6th Cousin 3 times removed
Ruby Dee (1924-) actress Ruby Dee, born Ruby Ann Wallace, was an African American actress who starred in such films as A Raisin in the Sun and The Jackie Robinson Story. She was also heavily involved in the Civil Rights movement. Relationship: 5th Cousin 5 times removed
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) American Author Francis Scott Fitzgerald is considered to be one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. He wrote "The Great Gatsby" and "This Side of Paradise". Relationship: 6th Cousin 4 times removed
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) English Poet England's Poet Laureate from 1843 through 1850, William Wordsworth began what is now referred to as the Romantic Age in literature. "The Prelude" is considered one of Wordsworth's most notable and applauded poems. Relationship: 7th Cousin 2 times removed
Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968) American author and activist American author and activist Relationship: 8th Cousin
Robert Hobart (1760-1816) Politician Robert Hobar, 4th Earl of Buckinghamshire, was elected Member of Parliament in 1788 and served as Colonial Secretary from 1801-1804. Hobart, Tasmania is named for him. Relationship: 7th Cousin 2 times removed
William Lamb (1779-1848) Politician William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne served as prime minister in 1834 and 1835-1841. He was a mentor to Queen Victoria, and was noted for his ability to find the political middle ground. Melbourne, Australia is named for him. Relationship: 8th Cousin 1 times removed
Mae West (1893-1980) American Actress, Screenwriter, and Playwright Mae West, born Mary Jane West, is considered one of the most controversial stars of the 1930's. Her scripts often endured huge amounts censorship, but also huge success with audiences. She wrote and starred in She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel. Relationship: 8th Cousin 2 times removed
George Orwell (1903-1950) British Author Eric Arthur Blair is most commonly recognized by his pen name, George Orwell. His political commentary is a major theme in his most famous works: "1984", "Animal Farm", and "Down and Out in Paris and London". Relationship: 10th Cousin
Elizabeth Browning (1806-1861) English Author and poet How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. These famous words were penned by English poet and author Elizabeth Barrett Browning, one of the most respected writers of the Victorian era. Relationship: 11th Cousin
William Charles Wentworth (1790-1872) Early Settler Australian explorer, journalist, and politician William Wentworth was a leading figure of early New South Wales. He helped explore the Blue Mountains, founded a newspaper, and helped draft the New South Wales constitution. Relationship: 11th Cousin 1 times removed
John Allerton (1591?-1620) Mayflower Passenger John Allerton came to North America with the Pilgrims on the Mayflower, and signed the Mayflower Compact. He did not survive the first winter of the voyage. Relationship: 12th Great Grand Uncle
Lucy Ware Webb Hayes (1831-1889) First Lady Lucy Ware Webb Hayes convinced her husband, Rutherford B. Hayes, to fight in the Union army and to oppose slavery. He later became an influential part of the abolitionist cause. Relationship: 6th Cousin 4 times removed
Gore Vidal (1925-) American Writer Eugene Luther Gore Vidal is a versatile writer of screenplays, novels, and essays. His radical political views as often expressed in his controversial writings attributed to his fame. Relationship: 6th Cousin 1 times removed
Laura Welch Bush (1946-) (EEWwwwwwwwwwww!!!) First Lady Present First lady Laura Bush has taken an interest in the effects of the September 11 attacks on children. She has revived the more traditional role of First Lady back to the White House. Relationship: 9th Cousin
Bill Clinton (1946-) 42nd President of the United States of America Bill Clinton's agenda included healthcare improvements on a national level, and expanding the Income Tax Credit. He was impeached for perjury regarding his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. Relationship: 9th Cousin
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) English Poet ““Ozymandias," "Ode to the West Wind," and "Mont Blanc" are famous poems written by Percy Shelley. He has been called one of the greatest lyric poets of all time. His wife, Mary Shelley, is the author of the classic novel Frankenstein. Relationship: 5th Cousin 10 times removed
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) English Author Rudyard Kipling was the youngest ever recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote the famous children's story The Jungle Book. Relationship: 10th Cousin 1 times removed
I have had so much fun doing genealogy!!! I can't wait to find out more about my family!!
Barack Obama has ruined my very friendly little group! We used to all be pretty much on the same page, and now everyone is at everyone else's throat, as I absolutely refuse to support Obama. A couple of folks in the group support Hitlery, and they and the Obamabots fight all the time, and I fight with all of them for supporting corporate controlled war pigs! Cynthia McKinney is the only candidate for me! I voted for her in the primary and will do so in the general election. This lady kicks ASS!!! http://www.runcynthiarun.org/ http://www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com/
Other than waging political hell, I've been immersed in genealogy! It's a new passion for me, and I've traced my maternal grandmother back to 1400 Scotland. No such luck with my maternal grandfather. I have found his mother and siblings, but have no idea (as yet) who his father was, despite poring over old census records until my vision blurred.
I survived all the horrendous weather we've had lately, but my nerves are still a bit jittery from all of it! It has been insane!
Oh, this is new! My new cardiologist ran a lot of tests and discovered that I no longer have congestive heart failure!! I still have the leaky valves, but my heartbeat is much stronger now, and I'm plugging along just fine! I attribute this to a reiki treatment I got recently.
Still miss my baby! I don't know if I will ever get over Jazz growing up and leaving home. I still cry over her a coupla times a week. Why do kids have to do this to us??
Today is Sting's birthday!! This is one of my favorite Sting songs!!
Send Your Love From the Sacred Love album Words and music by Sting
Finding the world in the smallness of a grain of sand And holding infinities in the palm of your hand And heaven's realms in the seedlings of this tiny flower And eternities in the space of a single hour
Send your love into the future Send your love into the distant dawn
Inside your mind is a relay station A mission probe into the unknowing We send a seed to a distant future Then we can watch the galaxies growing
This ain't no time for doubting your power This ain't no time for hiding your care You're climbing down from an ivory tower You've got a stake in the world we ought to share
You see the stars are moving so slowly But still the earth is moving so fast Can't you see the moon is so lonely She's still trapped in the pain of the past
This is the time of worlds colliding This is the time of kingdoms falling This is the time of worlds dividing The time to heed your call
Send your love into the future Send your precious love into some distant time Fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing Send your love Send your love to me
There's no religion but sex and music There's no religion but sound and dancing There's no religion but line and color There's no religion but sacred trance
There's no religion but the endless ocean There's no religion but the moon and stars There's no religion but time and motion There's no religion, just tribal scars
Throw a pebble in and watch the ocean See the ripples vanish in the distance It's just the same with all the emotions It's just the same in every instance
No religion but the joys of rhythm There's no religion but the rites of spring There's no religion in the path of hate And no prayer but the one i sing
Send your love into the future Send your precious love into some distant time Fix that wounded planet with the love of your healing Send your love Send your love
There's no religion but sex and music There's no religion that's right or winning There's no religion in the path of hatred Ain't no prayer but the one i'm singing
Wow, I haven't written anything in more than a month. The most, BESTEST news of all is fall has arrived!!! The temp is getting down into the upper 50s at night, and I can go out in the day without dying or melting!! I am getting the urge to cook vast cauldrons of soup, and loaves of buttery breads. I am collecting recipes for things I may cook for the holidays, even though after every holiday I swear I will NEVER cook again.
The second wonderful thing is I am about to get a little money!! I have forgotten what color that stuff is,it has been so long!! I am getting a car, first of all!! One that I can drive!! One that has a REAL transmission, and not some kind of freakish torture device like the standard tranny in my current ride. Oh, the places we'll go!! I am sooo excited over this. I am threatening to visit Jazz every day!! Here are some other plans:
*Da 'hood in Little Rock I moved away from!! I want to see my old house, see if anyone lives there now. Hafta visit Sim's BBQ, which is just around the corner. Best sweet 'tater pie on the planet!! I wanna go to the C-store on the corner, and see my Palestinian friends there, and see if the elderly black couple is still running the liquor store. There is also an artesian spring there, and I plan to fill lots of water jugs. The water is wonderful!! I miss this neighborhood a lot!! Living out in the sticks is getting old!!
*My mother's grave!! I haven't been in a coupla years, not since I got the crappy POS car. it is so BEAUTIFUL there. It is out in the middle of nowhere, with a tiny, ancient white church, woods on one side, and a cow pasture on the other. I love going there!! I know the history of all the folks buried there. I'll post some pix!!
*Lots o' tiny towns I haven't visited in so long!! I love doing road trips!! Jazz and I did it all the time she was growing up. We'd just pile into the car in the morning, with dogs and bathing suits and a picnic lunch, and I'd let her choose a direction, N,S,E, or W, and we'd drive that way!! Totally funt!! I love having adventures!!
I do believe I am competely over John now!! Yay me!! I have a lot of other stuff going on right now, and I almost never think of him. Another online friend is coming to visit soon, and I am really looking forward to that! He has a wonderful sense of humor!! We are going to visit a farm, but I am not at liberty to divulge the nature of his visit! It will be another adventure!!
I am fitna head! I have had a nasty ass bug that Alleged brought home from work, and I needs some rest!!
I love this man!! I named my cat Diddy Wah Diddy!!
There's a great big mystery, and it sure is worrying me This Diddie Wa Diddie Mister Diddie Wa Diddie I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means
The little girl about four feet four, come on papa and give me some more, of your Diddie Wa Diddie, your Diddie Wa Diddie I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means
I went around and walked around, somebody yelled, said, "Look who's in town" Mister Diddie Wa Diddie Mister Diddie Wa Diddie I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means
Went to church, put my hand on the seat, lady sat on it said, "Daddy, you sure is sweet" Mister Diddie Wa Diddie Mister Diddie Wa Diddie I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means
I said, "Sister, I'll soon be gone, just gimme that thing you sitting on" Mister Diddie Wa Diddie Mister Diddie Wa Diddie I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means
Then I got put out of church, 'cause I talk about Diddie Wa Diddie too much Mister Diddie Wa Diddie Mister Diddie Wa Diddie I wish somebody would tell me what Diddie Wa Diddie means
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