Resurrection

Some time ago I talked about the curious and somewhat dreary phenomenon of "abandoned" or orphan blogs; once gay and riotously convivial places whose owners, tenants, or lovers appeared to one day simply have walked away, leaving the lights on but nothing else.

From time to time I've come across these mysterious blogs and wondered; what happened? Lost job? Broken marriage? Simply lost interest? What? I never know; the blogs are simply artifacts without clues, riddles wrapped in enigmas, drifting endlessly in the Outer Rim of cyberspace.

The one blog in particular I discussed was one called, simply, D.D. Tinzeroes that had caught my eye because it spent some time on Portland history, a subject dearly treasured and laved with much adoration here in the Fire Direction Center.

Well!

It turns out that D.D. Tinzeroes was not dead! It was merely resting; pining for the fjords, the Norwegian Blue! Taking a bit of a nap, having the night off, merely biding its time!

Turns out that the blogger has, indeed, been busy, posting delightful bits of Northwest historiana, including more trolleys, trains, and streetcars as well as the top-rated urinals of the region and, lately, some priceless bits of the past pried from the World's Worst Newspaper, complete with commentary.

Here's my personal favorite, with the blogger's comments included:

"Arthur Davis, a negro who has frequently been sent to jail for roaming the streets after midnight, was tried and convicted in the police court yesterday on a charge of vagrancy. Davis, for months past, has been a hanger-on about some of the lowest dives at the lower end of town, among them a newly incorporated 5-cent all-round liquor establshment, and has made himself conspicuous by his general worthlessness. Davis pleaded that he one time washed a window, and on another occasion a floor. Judge Dement, in passing sentence, told David he had given him quite a number of opportunities to reform, and this time would allow him twenty-five days to debate and think over the subject. It cost Minnie Reynolds 10$ for acting in a disorderly manner and disturbing the neighbors on the vicinity of her residence Monday night. Officer Beach arrested her. She put up $10 bail, amd failing to appear for trial it was ordered into the city treasury."

-May 19 1886

["You are conspicuous by your general worthlessness."
"No! I washed a window, once."
"To see whether the saloon was open yet!"
"And a floor!"
"You were very drunk, and crawling in circles crying."]

Terrific stuff. So I'm pleased to report that D.D. Tinzeroes is NOT dead, but is, in fact, not just alive but very well.Pay a visit, leave a comment...let the blogger know you like his stuff, if indeed you do. That's all the pay we bloggers need.

And just so I can say that I did some bloggage...the appalling picture above is the "Coon Chicken Inn" that once occupied the site of "Clyde's Prime Rib" on NE Sandy.This fowl franchise - it was one of several outlets featuring the same racist trademark - opened here in 1931, lasted until the Fifties, and the original building appears to be in use today; the giant darkie-head has been decapitated and some sort of faux-medieval facade built over the other wing but the outline of the roof on the street side (the left as you look at the pictures) looks pretty much identical.I doubt whether the Inn would have welcomed any of Mr. Davis' descendents, seeing as it wasn't considered one of "the lowest dives at the lower end of town". We forget, now that we're "Little Beirut" the hipster capital of the Northwest how bloody ignorant and brutally racist we were just a generation or two ago.

The only black face the good citizens of white Portland wanted to see was on the front of the building winking.

So - a bit of Portland's scurrilous history for you, and while we're at it another shoutout to D.D. and his blog; long may their pixels phosphor!

Wish I'd said it first...

I try not to go to the same well too often, but this was too lovely to pass up; more from Chas. Pierce, in this case on the House of Representatives as currently constituted:

"In 2010, the voters, in their infinite wisdom, visited upon the country the biggest bunch of fantasts, paranoids, and general whackaloons since the last time Glenn Beck dined alone."

Like the man or hate him, you just can't be indifferent to the quality of the man's invective.

Forever Fools

My pals jim and Lisa over at Ranger Against War have a nice vituperative little post up discussing the bizarre success of Newt Gingrich (or, as Charlie Pierce likes to tag him: "N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization's Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of the Civilizing Forces") in portraying his 1%-wealthy-Beltway-insider, perpetual-staff-banging-serial-adulterer self as a good ol' Christian Boy to the good people of the great State of Florida.

My friends speculate that:

"...(t)hese are not fit people and would in fact do well to walk, but have bought into a society which has effectively rendered them hostage to Big Pharma and Big Agra. They feel impotent -- often are -- and out of frustration will vote on seeming kinship alone, so disenfranchised are they from the system. Maybe someone who looks like he has to take the same statin drugs or eats the same fast food will feel their pain."

It's a great post, and well worth the reading.

But, in the tradition of how many words is the worth of a single picture, all I can say is:Do we really need to know more about the U.S., circa 2012, than that people are willing to both purchase, and, worse, leave the house, in something like that?

For this, men and women gave their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to wrest independence from Great Britain? For this, whole families suffered in the coal mines, men died builing the intercontinental railroads, sacrificed and bled to win the terrible World Wars?

For this?

WASF

Update 1/31 PM: Speaking of Chas, here he is in brilliant form, discussing Santorum, the - excuse the expression - hindmost ass in the GOP Florida donkeyshow:

"He had the right to expect better than to be reduced to being the undercard in the low-class donkeyshow into which the "fight" between Romney and Gingrich has devolved. Two colossal fakes, one with more money, gulling the rubes by pretending in many cases to be what Rick Santorum has been his entire career, for good and ill. Meanwhile, Santorum is the purest product out there of what the conservative movement transformed the Republican party to produce. It may, in fact, be true that Rick Santorum is too much of a modern Republican for the modern Republican party to nominate. He may be the mirror into which his party is afraid to gaze."

Hard not to wince in recognition.

Yep. We truly are well on the road to being irrecoverably fucked; having a third of the electorate harking after clowns, fools, charlatans, and grifters is the broad, smooth road to Hell and there is no disguising that.

Blogrolled!

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I check the stats for this blog.

Egotistical? Me? (Blush)

Ooooookay, well, yes.

So I was looking over the stats earlier this week and noticed this:See it?

This little blog babbles along at about 600-700 pageviews a day. I assume that the vast bulk of these are poor deluded bastards looking for gay porn - I threw a Tom of Finland picture into a blog post two years ago and that post is STILL in the top five searched posts in the history of this dog. Hopefully a few idle passersby actually take the time to read the thing and like it; maybe one or two (if I'm lucky) make it a regular stop on their peripatetic blogrounds.

But 2,300 views?

That's ridiculous - nice, but utterly unlike anything I've ever had before (or since, as you can tell. So what was so special about 4 JAN?

Well, this.

I got blogrolled!

Now I suspect that I owe a lot of my fleeting fame to pure nepotism; I've corresponded a little with Fran from BlueGal/Crooks and Liars, and when my son was little he once attempted to use her wonderful rendition of the "World's Meanest Mommy Song"
as a sort of aphrodisiac for the twenty-something he was utterly crushing on (it didn't work but it was sure worth the try, and it's a damn funny song)

But hopefully a little of that was the result of a well-written post, and my reward was a brief moment of stardom, a diurnal flirtation with the Thrones and Dominations of the Big Blog World. For one brief, bright, shining moment I shared the spotlight with Crooks and Liars, thanks to the professional courtesy of a much better blogger than I.

And then it was back to pulling an oar.

But it was nice while it lasted. Funny world, this blogging.

But, hey - thanks, Fran!

Monday Thought for the Day

"In contrast to Locke's quasi-favorable take on the State of Nature, Hobbes believed that humans are bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling."h/t to "Gin and Tacos" for the actual student response...and have a great week!

Sex as Entomology

I have written a fair bit about men, women, and sex, but nothing quite like this:

"Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her."From this year's "Bad Sex Award" winner.

There's more, too.

Sympathy for the Devil

Speaking of comics and cartoons...If you have a moment you might look in on "Luci's Letdown", a webcomic that provides a slightly different take on the antihero of Milton's "Paradise Lost": Early days yet, but as a quondam cartoonist, I like what I see. Kick down some cash and give the Devil her due, eh?

Storms are brewin' in your eyes...

I should mention that perhaps the most succinct but most comprehensive discussion of the "royal wedding" (see below) I found was over at "Sarah, Proud and Tall"; scroll down to her "Dispatches from the Royal Wedding."Outstanding. Good stuff, and you can say I said so.

And don't leave right after the reception. Sarah is a hoot, and some of her stuff is too funny to be a mere bagatelle. I'd like to think that she and Gloria Vanderbilt really DID kick Ayn Rand's ass back in '57.

Sarah; she's good.

Check her out, and you can drop my name when you get there.

Hope you had a good May Day and a good first week of Spring. I've bucked up a bit, and hopefully more regular bloggage will commence.

And I should add that this year there was neither blood nor shit for the Mommy. The kiddos both made her some adorable klutzy kid gifts, Mojo got to sleep in until nearly noon, read a lot, got tons of quiet time alone, and generally seemed to have a fairly good Mother's Day. Which just proves that if you wait long enough your kids will grow into your priorities.

This result may not be typical, mind you.

I dreamed I was advertising in my Maidenform bra...

How's your relationship working out?Read anything good lately?Check it out.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

I wanted to take a moment to draw your attention again to the wonderful blog "Une Envie de Sel" for several reasons.

First, because the blogger, a delightful graphic artist, has several new images up on her site which you can acquire from her online shop here. Her work is just the right side of whimsical; crisp, vibrant, it is "charming" in the very best meaning of the word. That in itself is a good reason to visit.

But the other is her beautiful little girl. Here she is, in just one of the many moods you will find her at her mother's blog.I want you to remember this: little Q is three years old.

Three. Not four, not five. Only thirty-six months from the day of her birth, from the orphanage and the cleft repair and the new family who is laving her with love and wisdom in her new home.

But...three!

For reference, here is FOUR, begging for Halloween candy.See the difference.

Every so often I can see the big girl in Missy. Sometimes I can even glimpse the smallest hint of what she might be like, might look like, as an older girl.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

But look at this little girl; the lovely young woman she will be shines out of her like a candle in a night window, illuminating everything around her. I fear she will grow into that haunting beauty, and many a high school youth will long for her, and despair.

And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Riddle wrapped in an enigma

Part of the entertainment of blogs and blogging is the mystery of them.

Here's a good example. "D.D. Tinzeroes" the blog seems to have had a lifespan of about three years, from 2006 to 2009.

The blogger, who seems to be a Portland urbanite, possibly a grad student, raconteur, historian, and great consumer of pop culture both present and past, appears to have begun the blog with the idea of documenting some sort of map he was making of old Portland streetcar lines.The map itself and everything connected with the project has disappeared; if you follow the various links you get the dreaded 404 Error - Page Not Found. The blogger seems to have been involved in the "Platial", something called a "social mapping site" that nose-dived early this year. So all Tinzeroe's hard work, all his trolley line maps, are gone into that aetherial void space where lost Internet stuff goes when the website dies. The only remainder are the short blog posts that picket Tinzeroe's site in 2006 and 2007.

The thing is, the trolley line posts are really pretty fucking brilliant. The author finds old city maps as well as historical photos of the trolleys and their surroundings. And Tinzeroes is a good enough historian to know that history is just people living before the reader, so he makes sure to bring the human interest.Like here, where he memorializes a completely forgotten tragedy that struck four families on April 27, 1897 (he wrongly reports the accident date as the 28th, which was the date it appeared in the New York Times) when a trolley on the Mount Tabor line derailed crossing the trestle that bridged the Hawthorne Springs slough - in itself a fascinatingly forgotten piece of Portland, the wetlands and watercourses that drained the then-boggy inner East Portland lowlands - and fell into the water, killing three people; one W. W. Blanchard, described as a "laborer",
Newton Hanson, an eighteen-year-old who may have been either in high school or also working as a "laborer" and an unfortunate woman identified only as "(a)n unknown young lady". Tinzeroes says that a fourth was so badly injured that he, or she, died in hospital later, but I cannot trace the source of this.There must have been a Blanchard or two, perhaps a Missus Blanchard, a set of Hanson parents, a beau of the unknown young lady, or perhaps a sister...all of them grieved for their beloveds, drowned in a ridiculous trolley crash; April 27th must have been the most terrible day in history to them. Tinzeroe's momento mori brings these people, their families and friends, their lovers and loves, back to life for a brief moment. I'd say that's not a bad sort of gift to give.Or this gem of a little post, about the Portland Heights line and its timber trestle that ran from downtown Portland to the Vista Heights neighborhood along what was then Chapman Street. Chapman has disappeared, either subsumed in SW 18th or dug out to create the Vista Ridge tunnels in the late Sixties and then developed for the narrow, off-camber streets now typical of the flanks of the Heights.Look at this tremendously Victorian creation, vigorously free of guardrails, safety barriers, or, indeed, any sort of fall or crash protection at all.Which gives you pause when you read that a car crashed two days after the structure was opened in February, 1890, while on July 11th, "Car No. 13 broke loose from the cable at the powerhouse & rolled down 18th to Jefferson where it overturned. Car No. 18 then did the exact same thing & slammed into the overturned Car 13!"

Hmm. Maybe I'll walk.

The blog is full of this stuff, along with the random old building, idiosyncratic restaraunt reviews, historical trivia, personal maundering and marginalia that makes blogs so entertaining.Or at least to me. But to the blogger of "D.D. Tinzeroes", eventually, not so much.

The great days of the blog, the times when bandwidth fairly sang with trolleys and other Portland history, are over by 2008; suddenly the blog becomes almost exclusively about local 'zines and comics, random observations by the blogger, and review of science fiction and kaiju films. By 2009 things are getting sparse, and the final post, in May of this year, is a rather wan reflection of the time when "D.D. Tinzeroes" bestrode the narrow world of Portland historical blogging like a colossus; a snapshot of the urinals at Oaks Park, "near the roller rink".And that, it seems, is that.

Who was the man that knew so much about trolleys? Why did he start blogging? Why did he just stop caring about them? What is he doing now with the curiousity and knowledge that we get a glimpse of on his apparently-defunct blog?

We will probably never know. The result of his hard work and interest in the old rail line of Portland were his maps in Platial, which are as vanished as Lineal A.

Meanwhile his blog remains, idle in cyberspace, waiting like a left-behind book on an empty park bench for the passerby to stop and read, yet of its author- how he came to it, why he took it where he did, why he abandoned it - it is a mystery. It tells us nothing.

And never will.

Blogrolling Friday: Ginandtacos

Came across :this and laughed my fucking ass off.The high point? Here:

"If however, you and your unemployable band of pothead hobbyists are enticed by the prospect of a free open bar stocked with the finest of suburban banquet hall well-liquor and an opportunity to run a train on the most whorish collection of self-entitled bridesmaids this side of a Sex In The City marathon, please contact me. There's probably dinner in it for you too, if the starched vagina of a "wedding planner" (bride's bff) can get her 3rd rung caterer to leave a few sandwiches in a storage closet for you at some point in the evening."

Go and read it all. Pure Craigslist comedy gold.

While you're over at ginandtacos poke around a little. There's some good stuff there.

Back in a little with Friday jukebox.

Well, it pretty much sucked after Season Three...

So, you know I'm a chump for genre fiction, kaiju films, and goofy serial TV, right?

Well, here's someone who is totally more whack than I am, reviewing the Hitler History Channel series "World War II":

"Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese."

Hilarious. Go read the entire thing.

Orphan out of Carolina

I wanted to point you to a very good essay about adoption.

I've followed Lorrie over at Clueless In Carolina for years. She's that rare blogging combination of thoughtfulness and literacy that makes for genuinely good reading. She's hit a rough patch lately, and I hope things look up for her, but she's still a good read.

And her latest post was about adoption - her own.

I blog about adoption quite a bit. I have to; when a quarter of your public is adopted it kinda gets in your face. So it was painful to read;

"Today I realized for the first time that there is an unbridgeable gap between an adopted child and a person who can pick up the phone and call the people who brought them into the world and point to the bed where they were conceived. "I dread Father's Day," I told Roger tearfully. "I've lost two fathers."

And realize that there's really nothing you can say beyond that.

You know our story; we lost a daughter. Lorrie lost a father. Twice. Which is more heartrending, to lose the future, or to lose the past? I don't think that grief bothers keeping score.

I once wrote something about the effects of grief, and said;

"I realize anew reading "We must never limit the universe." from my friend's blog that what this old grief scar does do IS limit my universe. I'm perfectly functional, but I've taken the big wound. I can't ever again KNOW that something good is on the way. Because it was once and what arrived was pain and loss and sorrow. And nothing I could do - and I once foolishly said that anything that wanted to hurt my family would have to kill me first - was enough to stop the awful emptiness that still exists, a tiny universe of nothing but Dark Matter, in the locked room at the top of the stairs in the back of my head."

And now Lorrie knows that she, too, has that locked room where she can climb the stairs, and stand in the doorway, and see the face of Loss and say, welcome, old friend, old enemy.

Have you come to stay with me for a while?

I think you can sum up the entire business by remembering that every adoption begins with tragedy.

We Americans are especially bad at tragedy. We're the ultimate shiny happy people, and in a lot of ways that's a good thing. But not here.

I wish I had some words of wisdom or consolation for Lorrie. I don't. Some things are just pure grief.

The loss of her fathers, like all losses, like all griefs, can be softened by time and distance. As they are for all of us; the grieving parents, the harrowed soldiers, the bereft adoptees.But they will always be there, waiting, at the top of the stairs, waiting patiently to ask us if we want to sit with them on the top step and remember all the pain and heartache of the end of our yesterdays, and our tomorrows.