Silflay Hraka

The October 1915 American Magazine was the first published under the aegis of John M. Siddall. The first Sid Says, an appeal for women’s suffrage, appeared in the November issue. It’s the fourth essay in Siddall’s book, so it should appear tomorrow, barring turbulence in the life stream.

I know this because I discovered an entire run of the American Magazine in Davis Library on the UNC campus this morning. I only had time for a quick glance at the first two issues published under Siddall; neither had much in the way of biographical information–surprising to the modern eye. Nowadays a change in editor at a major magazine occasions great comment in the press. Tina Brown is to blame, I expect.

It’s a slow slog, but I’ve managed so far to run across new tidbits of information about Mr. Siddall each day without having to start emailing random Siddalls to ask about a connection, though I suspect that will come soon enough.

The photo in the first post, for instance, was taken by Arnold Genthe, a German Immigrant and acclaimed photographer around the turn of the century. It now resides in the Library of Congress, along with a number of other examples of Genthe’s work, like this one of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Aside from the mildly distressing lack of Siddall information within them, the bound issues of The American Magazine in Davis are a treasure trove. Each are chock full of ads, portraits, and essays from one of the least studied, most forgotten eras of American History, the pre WWI years. The cover art alone is stunning. Aside from “Remember the Maine”, “Bully!” and the McKinley assassination, most people would have difficulty recalling the era from 1890 to 1917, though some might have a vague memory of trust-busting, Gibson girls and the muckrakers.

Had I the money and the time, I’d like to scan the pages of every issue of the American from that time up until….well, sometime in the 30’s at this point, since copyright would kick in at some point. Then I could start on McClure’s, or the Saturday Evening Post.

I’ve no idea why I have this compulsion to pour the textual equivalent of raw materials into the gaping maw of the Internet– it just feels like something that needs doing. There’s no other reason I can think of to explain what I’m doing, other than the need to document a native curiosity, when it comes to John M. Siddall, who at best is a minor, minor figure in American Literature.

Continue reading ‘Sid Says: A Great Ancestor Would be All Right If So Many Outsiders Didn’t Butt In’ »

The second Siddall essay from Sid Says deals with the workplace, and were it not for the writing style one could not tell whether it appeared 80 odd years ago, or yesterday.

I was going to research more on John M. Siddall today at the UNC libraries, but a server crisis pulled me out of the shower this morning. By the time everything had settled down it was after 10, and neither diamonds nor pearls will buy a parking spot at Carolina after ten on a weekday.

I tell a lie. There are pay spots available in downtown Chapel Hill, so diamonds and pearls will buy a parking space. But since they are in Chapel Hill, it takes a inordinate amount of pressed carbon and solidified shellfish spit to use one for an hour.

So I worked from home today. In place of careful research, I’ll offer the introduction to the book, written at the seventh hole* of the Dunwoodie Golf Club in Yonkers, New York by one Robert H. Davis, who seems to have been at least a little bit drunk as well as a good bit racist, on July 27th, 1917.

Continue reading ‘Sid Says: Men Can’t be Geared Up?Unless They Are Cheered Up’ »

The second Siddall essay from Sid Says deals with the workplace, and were it not for the writing style one could not tell whether it appeared 80 odd years ago, or yesterday.

I was going to research more on John M. Siddall today at the UNC libraries, but a server crisis pulled me out of the shower this morning. By the time everything had settled down it was after 10, and neither diamonds nor pearls will buy a parking spot at Carolina after ten on a weekday.

I tell a lie. There are pay spots available in downtown Chapel Hill, so diamonds and pearls will buy a parking space. But since they are in Chapel Hill, it takes a inordinate amount of pressed carbon and solidified shellfish spit to use one for an hour.

So I worked from home today. In place of careful research, I’ll offer the introduction to the book, written at the seventh hole* of the Dunwoodie Golf Club in Yonkers, New York by one Robert H. Davis, who seems to have been at least a little bit drunk as well as a good bit racist, on July 27th, 1917.

Continue reading ‘Sid Says: Men Can’t be Geared Up?Unless They Are Cheered Up’ »

The second Siddall essay from Sid Says deals with the workplace, and were it not for the writing style one could not tell whether it appeared 80 odd years ago, or yesterday.

I was going to research more on John M. Siddall today at the UNC libraries, but a server crisis pulled me out of the shower this morning. By the time everything had settled down it was after 10, and neither diamonds nor pearls will buy a parking spot at Carolina after ten on a weekday.

I tell a lie. There are pay spots available in downtown Chapel Hill, so diamonds and pearls will buy a parking space. But since they are in Chapel Hill, it takes a inordinate amount of pressed carbon and solidified shellfish spit to use one for an hour.

So I worked from home today. In place of careful research, I’ll offer the introduction to the book, written at the seventh hole* of the Dunwoodie Golf Club in Yonkers, New York by one Robert H. Davis, who seems to have been at least a little bit drunk as well as a good bit racist, on July 27th, 1917.

Continue reading ‘Sid Says: Men Can’t be Geared Up?Unless They Are Cheered Up’ »

Continue reading ‘Sid Says: To Get Thoroughly Married Takes Time and Trouble’ »

In 1925, Will Rogers wrote a newspaper column on the occasion of Washington’s birthday entitled “The Normal Majority.” A couple of quotes from it have made it down through the years to be remembered in the present, notably “This country is not where it is today on account of any one man. It is here on account of the real common sense of the Big Normal Majority.”– but like The Hireling Ministry, the entire text of the column is not to be found on the Internet, at least not by me, and I’m pretty good at looking.

So I’ve reproduced the column here, at the bottom of the post. I wasn’t totally sure if the essay had passed into the public domain yet or not, thanks to Sonny Bono, may he roast for a thousand years in the dripping pans of Hell, but according to this site The Normal Majority passed into the public domain in 1993.

The Normal Majority was pretty influential for its time. Even though the essay itself is not now a part of current discourse, some of the ideas it first introduced are. Pat Buchanan was obviously recalling it when he included the term “Silent Majority” in Nixon’s speech of the same name, though the original coinage has been claimed by others.

It’s worth reading the essay just to see what things Will Rogers thought ought to be capitalized, but many of the points he makes easily make the transition from 1925 to today. One just has to update the groups he’s talking about.

Or not, as the case may be.

On the impact of Radical Left:

So that’s how it is with this so called Radical Element. Let them have a Park or a Hall as an exhaust Pipe. Then when they have some particular Noted Denouncer, why, you will hear a loud report. You will listen, or read what he said and go on about your business the same as the listeners to a back fire.

On Bloggers?:

Give ‘em a Hall or a Box to stand on and say “Sic ‘em; knock everything in sight” and when they have denounced everything from Bunions to Capitalistic Bath Tubs, then they will go home, write all week on another speech for the following Sunday and you never have any trouble with them.

On the Self-Importance of Politicians:

We lost Roosevelt TR, a tough blow. But here we are still kicking. So, if we can spare men like Roosevelt and Wilson there is no use in any other Politician ever taking himself serious.

I’d quote more, but there wouldn’t be much of the essay left, and it deserves to be read in context. I’ve added explanatory links where I felt they would be useful, but the text itself is all Will.

Continue reading ‘The Normal Majority’ »

The idea that the United States is a “Christian Nation” has been getting more press lately, quoted by those who rally in support of the display of the 10 commandments in Alabama, by those who oppose homosexual marriage, and on a somewhat smaller scale, by those who believe that the mayor of Crystal River, Florida should be allowed to open City Council meetings with a prayer. Nebulous “founding fathers” and their ideas are invoked by both sides of the separation of church and state debate, ironically enough taking the authoritative position previously occupied by God and the Scriptures in moral arguments of an earlier time.

I thought it might be interesting to both sides to see the thoughts of a decidedly unnebulous founding father, the Reverend Roger Williams, the founder of not only the first Baptist church in America, but of the colony of Rhode Island.

Following is his essay on The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ’s, which though ostensibly about the forcing of tithes to support ministers, partakes of writings on the relationship between church and state that Williams had published earlier in The Bloody Tenet. I’ve not been able to find a copy of The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ’s on the Net, which is fast becoming one of my pet peeves, so I’ve reproduced the essay in it’s entirety here.

Continue reading ‘The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ’s’ »

Elsewhere in the Eisenhower to Marshall letter I mentioned below was an anecdote about George Patton that I hadn’t seen before. It didn’t really fit in with the Unseen History stuff, so I thought I’d give it a post of its own.

Patton’s latest crackpot actions may possibly get some publicity. One involved the arbitrary relief of a censor (over whom he had no authority whatsoever) for what Patton considered to be an error in judgement. All the censor did was to allow the printing of a story saying we had captured some of the German monetary reserves. Three or four newspapers have written very bitter articles about Patton, on this incident, and to my disgust they call it another example of “Army Blundering”. I took Patton’s hide off, but there is nothing else to do about it. Then again, he sent off a little expedition on a wild goose chase in an effort to liberate some American prisoners. The upshot was that he got 25 prisoners back and lost a full company of medium tanks and a platoon of light tanks. Foolishly, he then imposed censorship on the movement, meaning to lift it later, which he forgot to do. The story has now been released and I hope the newspapers do not make too much of it. One bad, though Patton says accidental, feature of the affair was that his own son-in-law was one of the 25 released. Patton is a problem child, but he is a great fighting leader in pursuit and exploitation.

Got a Letter to Osama in my inbox yesterday. The title reminded me of a Vapors song from 20 years ago. No, not “Turning Japanese”.

Letter from Hiro.

I went googling for the lyrics, but apparently no one has thought to transcribe them for eternity yet. I thought that was a shame, if for no other reason than it was a piece of my youth in danger of being lost.

I think it was Thursday, I think it was late…….1938
Got a letter from Hiro, he’d left out the date
He said he was waiting for an outbreak

Took a look in the mirror, it should have been me
But there was nothing to see
Pulled a thought from the curtains and I went downstairs
It was utterly futile, so I combed my hair

All the kids in the factory say
My letter from Hiro came too late

Communication leaves me out of touch
You say it means nothing, well, nothing much
Like the sign on the door, too hard too see too soft to touch
The Age of Reason is out to lunch

All the kids in the factory say
My letter from Hiro came too late

5 o’clock in the morning sun rising in my hand
And I’m not quite sure if I’m just insecure or if the problem
Is simply that I really don’t understand
’bout the guns and the crossfire and the social disease
And when the sun was rising somewhere in the East
And when a flag meant more to Hiro than to me

All the kids in the factory say
My letter from Hiro came too late

I’ve always thought it a haunting lyric (though I fear what that implies about my musical taste) and slightly more representative of the Vapors sound than “Turning Japanese,” though their fascination with the East is clearly evident in “Letter to Hiro” as well.

Update: Links to sound files are only temporary. If it’s gone, you were too late.