"Huchy Kuchy At The Fair" -- And Other Stories
Thurs. Dec. 11, New York Deli, 7-8 p.m.


Ladies and gentlemen, gentlemen and ladies, roll up, roll up, to the New York Deli, tomorrow, Thursday night, and for one night only, where Harry Kollatz Jr., author of the action-packed Richmond In Ragtime: Socialists, Suffragists, Sex and Murder, will present diverting, entertaining and instructive selections.

He will be accompanied by the musical stylings of the Happy Lucky Combo and for educational purposes only, those in attendance will learn the origins of the "huchy kuchy" dance, as demonstrated by a special guest. This performance altered for life the perspective of civic muckraker Adon Yoder. All this and a rousing tribute to Eugene V. Debs. What better reasons to come out on this dreary damp evening?

The gloomy weather-or-not crowd is predicting rain for the evening, so pull on your galoshes, carry your umbrella, but come regardless for this evening of morals and mirth. History will never be the same.

P.S. For the members of the billion-eyed audience who've been impatient and wondering where their Blue Raccoon got off to, it's simple. Between selling the above volume, and the annual seasonal crush at the Other Network, the last thing I want to do when I get home is look at a computer screen. This makes me poor blogger material, I reckon.

Yet while nobody was looking, among my current assignments at the Other Network is a blog itself. So far, we've got sidewalk art, hawks eating squirrels and a dead black cat. Gripping stuff.

I've Just Been Busy
Birthdays, short stories, leaf sweeping, work, history, wondering if JPMorgan's purchase of Bear Stearns signals the collapse of the economy.


This is Amie and me at the New York Deli's photo booth during the wonderful observation of the annual anniversary of her birth this past week. I love photo booths. They are so retro, and you always look famous. In addition, I'm reminded both of Amélie and Paris, both of which Amie and I enjoyed in the recent past.

The weather here has been sunny, bright, breezy and a bit rainy in the evenings. I got some leaf sweeping accomplished during the weekend, from out of the stairwells to the basement. And the upright waste pan I use that saves untold suffering of my back fell apart during the process. My screws came loose.

The Late Henry Moss closed at the Firehouse Theatre Project and so goes an era at the company. This was Justin Dray's final performance on the Firehouse stage for the foreseeable future as he leaves this week for L.A. and director and actor Bill Patton returned to his new conjugal home in Maine. We were so happy to see our most civilized friends, the Cusacks, down from their home of about two years, near Boston.

I completed a short story and submitted it for a compilation volume; a day late, and not short, and perhaps not much of a story. We'll see. I wish I'd demonstrated some patience and gotten Amie to read the piece before I slung it through the cyber-aether.

At any rate, billion-eyed audience I'm a bit concerned--as many of you are, too , I wager-- about the financial future of the nation as today--Sunday--JP Morgan purchased the failing mortgage house Bear Stearns. I've navigated around various blogs from the sober probity of The Economist to the sassy libertarian (and pro-bankruptcy advocate, among many other things) Just A Girl In Shorts Shorts Talking About Whatever and I look forward to what Kunstler will make of the mess.

To quote Twofish:

"So what is happening is that the Federal Reserve is basically taking the role that would be played by bankruptcy court, it gave Bear-Stearns an emergency blood transfusion that could get it to the emergency room. This is quite unique and it is something that was done in the case of Long Term Capital Management. It’s really breaking new ground here, and what happens will be studied as a guide for what happens the next time this happens (which I hope will be a long, long time from now, but who knows).

One group that comes out of this looking really bad is CITIC Securities. JP Morgan ended up paying $200 million for all of Bear Stearns and total control, whereas CITIC was about to pay billions for ten (?) percent with no management control. It’s fortunate that the Chinese securities regulators failed to approve the deal otherwise, CITIC would have ended up burning $5 billion.

I think the one common thing that Spitzer, Tibet, and Bear-Stearns have in common is that it shows how quickly things can fall apart."

I watched Wolf Blitzer with U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Paulson and all I could think of was this Saturday Night Live character from years ago; he was the Corporate Spokesman, who smoked, and sweated and got visibly more nervous as he was asked questions by a Weekend Update reporter, and his catch phrase was, "Did I say that? I don't recall saying that."

"Remain not only calm, but convivial."

As Tom Hanks admonished patrons at the Byrd Theatre last week during a power interruption, so seems the grey Establishment faces and Voices of Reason pertaining to the financial crisis. As of Monday prior to lunch, the joggled U.S. markets were actually rebounding, but concerns that this is but the beginning of something worse has curtailed outright optimism. Lehman Brothers could be on the ropes.

Steve Duncan, a poster commenting on Kunstler's blog, makes the laconic observation that,
"Market trading in positive numbers. Bear meltdown but a blip. I think if NASA scientists announced concrete proof the Earth was getting sucked into the Sun on April 1st there would be a 500 point rise in the Dow. There is seemingly no such thing as bad news. And what we think is bad news produces positive trading action. Go figger........"

And this pragmatic assessment from Tanqurena reacting to one of Kunstler's observations:

">In addition to the financing the Federal Reserve ordinarily provides through its Discount Window, the Fed will provide special financing in connection with this transaction. The Fed has agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns’ less liquid assets.

So. In this week's Rodney Dangerfield moment, the Fed had to tie a $30 Billion pork chop around Bear Stearns' neck to get JPM to play with them.

And to think that JPM only paid $236Million for that $30Billion pork chop (it is a non-recourse loan, which means the Fed can't go after JPM if they default on it). Ain't corporate welfare wonderful?"

By the way, Kunstlers's posting this a.m. "A Real Freak Out," is well-worth reading and until the comments deteriorate into flame throwing--why, boys and girls, why?--they, too, can provide insights.

I quote from Kunstler:

"Things are getting very weird very fast -- and will probably get even weirder, faster, as the train wreck of bad debt meets the Saint Paddy's Day Parade of bacchanalian excess at the grade-crossing of destiny. The train is carrying America's financial system, but the engine driving it is peak oil, because declining energy resources necessarily means declining capital wealth -- and declining value of all the institutions, instruments, and markers that denote that wealth or hope to profit by trading in it. The fiasco leads straight to the necessary reinvention of American life on other terms and by other means....

I'm sure our political leaders will mount a campaign to rescue the futureless infrastructure of suburbia. It will necessarily be an exercise in futility. But it has already started. That's what the swindle of ethanol has been all about. And the touting of hybrid cars, and the flimflam of "energy independence." Even the "environmental" crowd" squanders most of its attention these days on how to keep all the cars running on something other than gasoline. They don't question the assumption that we will remain a car-dependent society.

As much as I loathe the suburbs in their grotesque late-stage efflorescence, I can understand why those stuck in them would wish to defend their misinvestments. I just hate to think of the political consequences when their disappointment catches up to the reality that the suburbs will not be rescued. And by that I mean not just the houses but the way-of-life associated with them and all its accessories, furnishings, and activities. Bewilderment will soon turn to rage out in the highway-strip-and-cul-de-sac empire."

l love that phrase "grotesque late-stage efflorescence." Kunstler is all about the peak oil business and if you read him every week, his message of The End Is Near gets threadbare as the End's goalpoasts, that seem to be getting closer, are instead moved down the field a few more yards. Being a Jeremiah has its risks because you end up sounding like a crank, but doom and gloom provides odd comfort to those who see nothing but a collapsing civilization all around--much like that crane in New York, or tornadoes in Atlanta (see below).

Kunstler reminds me of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), whose philosophy hinged on how life is in the crapper and you just have to realize this without expecting events to get any better. He was a best seller, in his day. (And, by the way, I'm not saying either Schopenhauer or Kunstler are wrong.)

Schopenhauer, not content to the detail the depressing nature of things, gave his readers the following advice for-- not quite happiness, but emotional maintenance.

• Live in the present, making it as painless as possible.
• Make good use of the only thing we can control, our own minds.
• Our personality is central to our level of happiness.
• Set limits everywhere: limits on anger, desires, wealth and power. Limitations lead to something like happiness.
•Accept misfortunes: only dwell on them if we're responsible.
•Seek out solitude, other people rob us of our identities.
•Keep busy.

He sounds almost Zen here: desire is the root of all unhappiness, or even Existential: recognize life is meaningless and have a good time, whatever that means to you.

I don't know enough about Schopenhauer's views on whether art or creativity mattered in all this (I think the importance is paramount), and he seems to prefigured Sartre in Nausea: hell is other people. Which, by the way, I believe only a few days out of the year.

And by the way, Kunstler's next book is coming out. World Made By Hand: A Novel of the Post-Oil Future. Listening to the "trailer" (Books with trailers!) I am reminded of The Postman, that called up a post-oil world, too, and focused on bands of survivors and zealots. The subject seems less far fetched today than when David Brin's novel was published in 1982. That was a time of nuclear immolation fears, Reagan and the "Evil Empire." Those were far off, innocent days.

Cormac McCarthy's The Road of 2006 is even more grim; and is set in the immediate post-collapse of Everything, what Kunstler is also discussing.


From CNBC:

"There's turmoil in all markets after Bear Stearns, and equities is not the place to be," BNP Paribas strategist Edmund Shing told Reuters. "Everyone's asking: Who's next? Is there a Bear Stearns in Europe, could investment banks start to fail?"

The shock news, the biggest sign yet of how devastating the credit crisis is for Wall Street, slammed the U.S. dollar to a record low against the euro and boosted gold and low-risk bonds.

"The fear is how many more skeletons in the closet are still there in the global credit markets?" said David Cohen, economist at Action Economics in Singapore. "This is another effort by the Fed to calm things down, but the cloud on the horizon is just how much more of these credit issues are still out there."


Tornado Hits CNN -- World Stops Spinning



CNN all the sudden became the Weather Channel on Saturday as its varied correspondents went scrambling through a few blocks of blasted wreckage following the work of a tornado roaring through during the night.

[The image is via Sansego's blog that has some other arresting images and good commentary. ]

We first heard the news on Colonial Avenue when Amie's dad, watching the SEC Tournament in progress on live television, observed how the Alabama v. Missississippi State matchup was interrupted when part of the Georgia Dome was ripped away.

At least three are known to have died--a low number considering the thousands who were concentrated in midtown Atlanta that night. Stilll, behind every statistic is a tragedy, and no less so than in Atlanta. Bonnie Turner, a protector of animals, was taken by this force of nature. Many of the animals she'd rescued were loosed into the storm.

According to CNN's Wynn Westmoreland, Mrs. Tyler left this quote on her Web site, www.flinthillkennel.com: "Beauty such as this is a gift, and I'm often in awe of this world we've been given."

In other news, as they say, a gigantic construction crane operating in east Manhattan collapsed, causing wreckage that looked like that wreaked by a tornado, and killing even more than than what natural forces took out of Atlanta-- maybe four died as the device smashed to the ground. The construction of a 43-story building had been cited for 13 safety violations, five of which were pending resolution. In Bloomberg's New York, if it isn't getting turned into a Starbuck's, then it's a high-priced condo. Hizzoner never met a developer he didn't like.


The Duty Patriot

So we watched the first two episodes of John Adams tonight. The program does convey the anarchic quality of revolutions--what with goaded massacres and crowds gone crazy. That any kind of Declaration of Independence came out of such a cauldron of emotions is amazing.

McCullough was right to point out in his remarks that the 18th century was not a simpler time. From disease to the whimsical rules of a tyrant, life's qualities were far more challenging. Still, one does wonder: thinking of Adams, Washington, Jefferson, Ben Franklin...where is such brilliance in the public sphere today?

The lonesome whistle of a train in the distance, and the lateness of the hour, and work in the morning, hastens me to bed.

Post-Nativity Celebration: "Les Filles de Premier Vendredi"



Yes, billion-eyed audience, les filles des Premier Vendredi are ba-ack in their fine form because it's that time of the month here in Richmond, Vee-ay, for the High Art Hike Up and Down and Around Broad and Main streets. The girls here need to cover those up with a heavy wrap as the temps are frosty man, frosty, as Webb Wilder sang in his great ballad, "There's A Cold Front Movin' In."

If you are a long-time listener but a first-time caller, you probably already know that these deux filles were attending an opening at the long passed Three Miles Gallery, now the bustling Tarrant's restaurant.


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But before I get into any of the art stuff, I wanted to tell you that Amie, that loving sneak, arranged for me a very fine Nativity Anniversary Celebration. Dinner at home, lamb and salad and wine, and a digestive walk that I she led me to believe proved too chilly for her and I said, well, if D is there let's go to the Deli and have a drink and we'll go home. And I was content with that arrangement.

She had arranged instead to have the bar crowded with friends! And I got presents and stuff! Even Raynor Scheine was there, and my big and best pals Joe and Beth, and the NYD crew, and Charlene the Empress Herself called from her sickbed in Fluvanna to wish me well and say she owed me lunch. Wow. I was just kind of overwhelmed.

Further, Amie got a call from her, our, friend Goxwa, the Maltese artist living in Paris, to give her annual nativity greeting, and tell that she and writer Robert Wernick will soon be stateside. Bob was a Time-Life writer for many years and I read a few of his books when I was teenager haunting aisles of the Chesterfield Public Library branch on Lori Road: The Standing Stones of Europe, and the Blitzkrieg and Liberation of Europe volumes in the Time-Life series on World War II. I probably read articles of his in Smithsonian and elsewhere, long before I ever made his acquaintance in Goxwa's skylight-roof, fifth floor Parisian studio. He lives next door.

This is Bob in his fifth-floor walk up studio apartment, from his blog. Both of he and Goxwa are fascinating people for numerous reasons.

Bob has lived an incredible span and his stories are amazing, about the people whose acquaintance he's made and the places he's traveled. On his site you can read about some of Bob's transits with people like Marilyn Monroe (on a Ferris wheel), Joseph Pilates (at his New York gym), Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dalí, and the Giacometti brothers. He's getting a slender volume of reminisces published in French about his friendship with Alberto and Diego.

Amie suggested that we try and organize some kind of reading for him here, but as his text is in French, could be a challenge, unless he read in French and perhaps somebody else in English? Have to cogitate on this.

At any rate, the gathering the New York Deli with good friends was quite enjoyable and one must never forget that the best blessings in life are the rewards of fellowship with people who've known you in your best and worst phases, and still like you, regardless.


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As for First Friday tonight, the two places we're for certain visiting is the 1708 Gallery where Kai Richter, Kathy Snow Stratton and Merrill Shatzman. The exhibtion, Constructing Form, was curated by Brad Birchett, Vaughn Garland and Allison Andrews. Should be a varied and texturous exhibition.

Then, to Art6 where a former student of Amie's, Marsden Williams, is showing.

And a Annual Nativity Celebration foot note. The birthday calendar at my office here had me down for a commemoration not yesterday but...today. So I'm getting chocolate cake. So much for my girlish figure.

Finally, while at the Annual Nativity gathering, a few of my friends were using their hand held devices to monitor contests of both the gridiron and Idaho caucus variety. I don't know the outcome of the athletic contests, but I am now acknowledging that Dennis Kucinich, the real candidate with a difference and a stunning willowy red-headed wife named Elizabeth, did not win.

Instead, another somewhat surprising candidate got the approval of Iowans and gave an unsurprising speech that was supposed to be, I guess, inspiring. But this "new day" stuff is shopworn.

As for the candidate who is making the press get all weak-kneed with his "straight talk" and folksy aphorisms and appreciation for rock and roll, all I can say is with Naomi Watts, here dressed as the kind of Handmaid women could be turned into if affairs procede as they are in this gray-uht nation:

Going Out


Well, billion-eyed audience, with Louise, I raise a glass to you on this New Year's in Richmond, Vee-yay where the sun is bright, the wind mild and cool, and the massive second annual Carytown celebration is gearing up.

We were startled awake this ayem by the grumbling and reverse-alarm-beeping of trash trucks. Our New Year's day began with hauling our holly daze trash and recycle to their respective pick up places, fore and aft.


Last year, the folks at the New York Deli who cooked it up. Demetrius of the NYD said to, "So, Harry, for New Year's we're going to close off this end of Cary Street and have a party."

I admit to my own skepticism, being a Richmonder, and infected with its Eeyorosis that I must combat with regular treatments of a wild abandonment in dance, but I wanted success.

RVA Magazine promoted the spectacle. Most of us round C-town thought that maybe a few hundred people would attend. But good weather--a slight, fine mist toward the midnight hour--and the novelty of the thing brought out more than 5,000 with just nine peace officers to keep order. But what happened was a good time with nary a provocation prompting police procedure.



This year, the street is closed off for almost its entire mile length, with jumbo tron television screens, a bigger better ball above the Byrd Theatre (we raise our annual orb, instead of lowering one -- we don't care how they do it in New York), with three stages for music including our very own Black Cash and the No BS Brass Band. [Image, above, via RVA, by
Dave Kenedy]

Amie cut my hair today and while so engaged realized she'd not seen our megaphone employed for the "Dictation" portion of Walk The Walk. I went to retrieve the vocal magnifier, and on my way out--this I think around 1 p.m.that the traffic was getting rerouted because the blocks of the Byrd were already fenced in.

I was happy to see the megaphone still up, a sentinel of potential sound before now bare white walls, except for Amie's smudged backward writing. When I stood on the one side of the 'phone, looked like the words were coming from the wide end, and I took a cell pic, but, this requires another technological leap to display the image.

Upon my return, Amie awarded me with the news that my Flash issues were cleared up: hence, no more crashing of browsers. An early birthday present.

Later, we walked up to Ellwood Thompson's and the street and its tributaries was buzzing with expectation of the upcoming event. The possible number floating around for maximum audience to see the ball going up is around 20,000. Could happen.

[From January 21, 2006, Wit of the Staircase]

As promised, though, Theresa Duncan posted to The Wit of the Staircase from beyond the cyber-aether. Went up some point before noon and is titled either with intended or now conveyed irony, "New Beginning," and is a quotation from TS Eliot's Four Quartets, the second section, "East Coker."

She cites the poetry and lit blog Whiskey River and according to the visitation log there, the pent up Duncan demand is getting satisfaction today.

Number Two starts, sounding like (in my first and most shallow reading)--from the early 21st century--a lament about suburban sprawl:

"In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended,
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth
Which is already flesh, fur and faeces,
Bone of man and beast, cornstalk and leaf.
Houses live and die: there is a time for building
And a time for living and for generation
And a time for the wind to break the loosened pane
And to shake the wainscot where the field-mouse trots
And to shake the tattered arras woven with a silent motto."

H'mmm. Time for the wind to break the loosened pane, indeed, in this particular case.

Duncan quoted from the first portion of the quarto's fifth part. The voice here is frustrated by the imprecision of words and the difficult effort in attempting to make art new. I don't know how familiar Duncan was with Eliot, or this poem, either. Here is the entire second portion, that offers a sense of affirmation:

Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living. Not the intense moment
Isolated, with no before and after,
But a lifetime burning in every moment
And not the lifetime of one man only
But of old stones that cannot be deciphered.
There is a time for the evening under starlight,
A time for the evening under lamplight
(The evening with the photograph album).
Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."


"A life time burning in every moment and not the lifetime of one many only," has a certain weight given the circumstances, and "Love is most nearly itself/When here and now cease to matter," and "..the wind cry, the vast waters/Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning."

Spooky.

I shan't belabor this; on other blogs I'm certain they have already applied tweezers to each syllable, or will soon enough, after the hangovers have receded.

It is getting on to 5 p.m. here and shadows growing long. The past few days I've been restructuring my office to better suit writing and research for the new book. Got a ways to go yet. Have a grand time, whatever you do tonight.

Shameless Self-Promotion: A continuing series
Hell, nobody else will do it for you, as the saying goes...

Here, billion-eyed audience, is filmmaker David Williams' verison of the event presented by me and the partner-in-art-for life Amie Oliver, with help from the Art Cheerleaders (Kendra, blonde; and Rebecca, both artists in their own right). This piece, called "Dictation," was part of Amie's Walk The Walk exhibit at Plant Zero Art Center, available for viewing through December 23. I read pieces about the arts from my book True Richmond Stories.

This is me, Amie, Kendra (left) and Rebecca posed in front of the wall on which Amie wrote her impressions of my subject matter. Yes, she writes backward with her left hand with greater ease than she can scribe the other way. Yes, she installed a mirror so that passersby who cared to or even noticed could read the text.



Then here's an image of me and Amie with her long-time friend, artist and professor Ken Mitchell, visiting Richmond from the Glasgow School of Art a few weeks back. We love Ken--I first met him when Amie took our wedding holiday around the Scottish Highlands--and were happy to see him even for a brief time. As you can see, too, Ken took some True Richmond Stories with him.


And to round out the multi-media aspect of this post, here is the 26-minute interview conducted by Tim Bowring with me and Amie on his WRIR 97.3 show, Zero Hour.

http://www.twango.com/flash/audioplayer.aspx?media=Aok.10001&channelname=Aok.public&autoplay=true

Below is a snippet from the New York Deli event in Carytown that Amie shot. Here I'm presenting a piece about Martin Hawkins, the Revolutionary War-era sturgeon rider in the James River. Behind me are members of the Happy Lucky Combo; Pippin Barnett on percussion, Barry Bless with the accordian, and Dave Yoh on upright electric bass.

This was a great time. Ward Tefft of Chop Suey Books brough books across the street from Chop Suey Tuey -- about 20 or so-- and sold out of them. People came off the street having seen the slender volume setting on the front window shelf table, even after the music was over. The attraction: the Hollywood Cemetery pyramid on the cover. This is primal stuff; the pyramid is a greater symbol of Richmond than even the Lee Monument, since it is old, mysterious and the shape and meaning are more ancient than Richmond, race, politics, or even the Civil War (which is its putative purpose, commemorating 18,000 Southern dead buried there).

One young woman bought five books. I signed expressions of my appreciation for her choice; and that of her varied future in-laws and family.

The New York Deli gang passed to Amie a splended signature book in which they all expressed their appreciation that made me feel as though I'd accomplished something far more important than I think I have....humbling, is what it was.