When we begin Hamlet in my English classes, I like to assume the role of the skeptical scholar Horatio; I force my students to ask me if I believe in ghosts-- "Go ahead . . . ask me if I believe in ghosts . . . ask me!"-- and when they comply, just to humor me, I chastise them and reply angrily: "Of course I don't believe in ghosts! I'm a teacher! A man of logic and reason! Not a purveyor of fantasy and superstition!" and in a sense there's a grain of truth to my schtick, as is evident here, but an old student pointed out an apparent contradiction in my outspoken doubt of all things spooky: the fact that I found this movie incredibly scary suggests that my words may not accurately reflect my subconscious.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query ghosts. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query ghosts. Sort by date Show all posts
Ghosts, Music, White People and Black People
I am a man of reason and so-- of course-- I don't believe in ghosts, I don't believe in a spirit world, lurking just beyond what we can see and sense . . . but that doesn't mean I don't occasionally enjoy a ghost story (Hamlet, for instance) and Hari Kunzru's new book White Tears is primarily a ghost story, and the ghosts in this tale often manifest themselves sonically and they have been badly put down by the white man; if you like music and musical production, then this is the ghost story for you . . . it's about two white kids who want to find and create "authentic music," it's about race and cultural appropriation, it's about obsessive collection, money, power, desire, and oppression . . . and mostly it is a very very weird, fragmented, well-written, surreal, and slightly self-congratulatory version of the 1986 film Crossroads . . . the middle section of the book loses some momentum, but the pay-off is vivid and tragic and moving and it will connect you with the spectre of racism way down in Mississippi in a very real way (and if you want something lighter to read with a musical theme, check out this Quincy Jones interview, it's amazing).
A Head Full of Choices (and Ghosts)
A Head Full of Ghosts, by Paul Tremblay, is a genuinely scary (and very transparent) pastiche of Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Exorcist, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper" . . . with some modern touches (including a very entertaining blog, written by the lone survivor from the family, Merry-- who mistakenly poisoned her family, while being manipulated by her possibly possessed or possibly mentally ill sister . . . or was the poisoning a mistake? or was Merry possessed? or was the whole family possessed? or was it all a stunt for reality TV? you'll have to read it-- if you dare-- and then decide for yourself).
Stacey Summons the Dead
Stacey and I have the same schtick when we begin Hamlet-- we both play the role of Horatio, who-- in the opening moments of the play-- is skeptical of ghosts and the supernatural . . . Marcellus explains, "Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him" and Horatio, in reference to the apparition, confidently asserts "tush, tush, 'twill not appear" but, moments after he says this, the ghost of Old Hamlet DOES appear and, after some good natured "I told you so!" by Barnardo (How now, Horatio! You tremble and look pale.Is not this something more than fantasy? What think you on't?) Horatio admits that "Before my God, I might not this believe without the sensible and true avouch of mine own eyes" and just before the apparition enters, Stacey and I always ask the class if they believe in ghosts, then chastise the believers for their irrationality and then we try to summon the dead, call upon the spirit world to strike us dead and stop our hearts, etc . . . and there are usually a few kids who get upset by this-- who don't think we should fuck around with the netherworld, whether we believe in it or not-- but we've never been haunted or struck dead . . . until now-- apparently last week, the night after Stacey did her ghost bit, she was visited by a spirit in the night, a little girl in a green sweatshirt that hovered over her bed-- twice!-- and she woke her husband up but he didn't see her and now she wonders if there might be spirits walking the earth, and she wonders if she has summoned them . . . but of course, I think she was dreaming or saw a shadow or whatever, as I am a logical and rational man-of-logic who would never be perturbed by such rubbish.
2016 Book List
Here's what I read in 2016 (and despite reading nearly a book a week, I feel dumber than ever) and if you head over to Gheorghe: The Blog, you can see my eleven favorites . . . and if you're really feeling crazy and literary, you can check out my previous lists, but if you're going to read one book on this list, I would suggest Death Comes to the Archbishop by Willa Cather . . . I've read it twice, and I'll bet I'll read it again someday . . . anyway, here they are-- it's a little scary for me when I peruse this list, because I can't remember all that much about some of the titles, but I guess that's what happens when you read too much;
1) Trunk Music (Michael Connelly)
2) Hide & Seek (Ian Rankin)
3) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis Robert D. Putnam
4) One Plus One Jojo Moyes
5) Andrea Wulf The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World
6) Death Comes to the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
7) The Milagro Beanfield War (John Nichols)
8) Agent to the Stars (John Scalzi)
9) The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run-- or Ruin-- an Economy (Tim Harford)
10) Tim Harford The Undercover Economist
11) The Expatriates (Janice Y. K. Lee)
12) Tim Harford The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
13) Dale Russakoff The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools?
14) Charlie Jane Anders All the Birds in the Sky
15) Mohamed A. El-Erian The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
16) Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (Evelyn Waugh)
17) The Power of Habit:Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
18) Angels Flight (Michael Connelly)
19) Robert J. Gordon The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War
20) Tony Hillerman A Thief of Time
21) Peter Frankopan Silk Roads: A New History of the World
22) Tony Hillerman Hunting Badger
23) Tony Hillerman Listening Woman
24) Tony Hillerman The Wailing Wind
25) The Lost World of the Old Ones:Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest David Roberts
26) Roadside Picnic (The Strugatsky Brothers)
27) Chuck Klosterman But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past
28) White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer
29) The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will Shape our future by Kevin Kelly
30) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
31) Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Jerome K. Jerome
32) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
33) Truly Madly Guilty Liane Moriarty
34) Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
35) Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil
36) Ghosts by Reina Telgemeier
37) The Walking Dead 23-26
38) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark For the Ivy Leagues by Jeff Hobbs
39) The Nix by Nathan Hill
40) Bill Bryson The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
41) Tim Wu The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
42) Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
43) Nicholson Baker Substitute
44) The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts
45) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.
1) Trunk Music (Michael Connelly)
2) Hide & Seek (Ian Rankin)
3) Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis Robert D. Putnam
4) One Plus One Jojo Moyes
5) Andrea Wulf The Invention of Nature: Alexander Humboldt's New World
6) Death Comes to the Archbishop (Willa Cather)
7) The Milagro Beanfield War (John Nichols)
8) Agent to the Stars (John Scalzi)
9) The Undercover Economist Strikes Back: How to Run-- or Ruin-- an Economy (Tim Harford)
10) Tim Harford The Undercover Economist
11) The Expatriates (Janice Y. K. Lee)
12) Tim Harford The Logic of Life: The Rational Economics of an Irrational World
13) Dale Russakoff The Prize: Who's In Charge of America's Schools?
14) Charlie Jane Anders All the Birds in the Sky
15) Mohamed A. El-Erian The Only Game in Town: Central Banks, Instability, and Avoiding the Next Collapse
16) Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred & Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (Evelyn Waugh)
17) The Power of Habit:Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg
18) Angels Flight (Michael Connelly)
19) Robert J. Gordon The Rise and Fall of American Growth: The U.S. Standard of Living Since the Civil War
20) Tony Hillerman A Thief of Time
21) Peter Frankopan Silk Roads: A New History of the World
22) Tony Hillerman Hunting Badger
23) Tony Hillerman Listening Woman
24) Tony Hillerman The Wailing Wind
25) The Lost World of the Old Ones:Discoveries in the Ancient Southwest David Roberts
26) Roadside Picnic (The Strugatsky Brothers)
27) Chuck Klosterman But What If We're Wrong?: Thinking About the Present as if It Were the Past
28) White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World by Geoff Dyer
29) The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will Shape our future by Kevin Kelly
30) Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer
31) Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) Jerome K. Jerome
32) Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
33) Truly Madly Guilty Liane Moriarty
34) Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong
35) Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O'Neil
36) Ghosts by Reina Telgemeier
37) The Walking Dead 23-26
38) The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace: A Brilliant Young Man Who Left Newark For the Ivy Leagues by Jeff Hobbs
39) The Nix by Nathan Hill
40) Bill Bryson The Road to Little Dribbling: Adventures of an American in Britain
41) Tim Wu The Attention Merchants: The Epic Scramble to Get Inside Our Heads
42) Colson Whitehead The Underground Railroad
43) Nicholson Baker Substitute
44) The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea by Callum Roberts
45) Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of Family and Culture in Crisis by J.D. Vance.
The Wailing is an Awesome Movie
The Wailing-- an epic 2016 Korean horror film-- is a cross between The Exorcist and The Naked Gun . . . and the imagery and cinematography, which is astounding and beautiful, is somewhere between Deliverance and Apocalypse Now . . . the movie features angels and demons and all of us bumbling idiots in between, there are shapeshifters and possession, zombies and infection, ghosts and senseless violence . . . but all of these tired tropes are given new life . . . the film is streaming on Amazon Prime, watch it before it vanishes.
Bubble Bubble, The Irish Troubles
A new episode of my podcast is up and streaming-- "Bubble, Bubble, The Irish Troubles" . . . this one is inspired by Stuart Neville's thriller The Ghosts of Belfast and it is a major improvement from my last effort, which was a rambling and convoluted attempt to cover far too large a topic-- this episode has an eclectic crew of special guests to boot, including: The Hasbro Pop-O-Matic, Detective Sean Duffy, Adrian McKinty, Sinead O'Connor, Indiana Jones, Erin Quinn, Grandpa Joe, The People's Front of Judea, and U2.
Tranquil Time Travel
Emily St. John Mandel's new novel Sea of Tranquility floats by in an otherworldly manner, which makes sense-- since it is beautifully written about other worlds, other times, other timelines, and other possibilities . . . and while there are ghosts of the post-apocalyptic, post-pandemic world of Station 11, the current COVID pandemic, and the author herself, the book flows by in an odd, serene state of hypothetical possibility, the possibility that the world is a simulation, the possibility that you might interview yourself, that you might go back in time and live a recursive life, the possibility of moving too fast and too far, and the possibility of being still, and the possibility that time and motion and memory might be corrupted like a bad file . . . this was a much smoother and philosophical read than the last time travel novel I read, The Paradox Hotel.
The Books Dave Read in 2023
1) The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
2) The House Across the Lake by Riley Sager
3) Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton
4) Hark! A Vagrant by Kate Beaton
5) Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
6) Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline by Simon Parkin
7) The Quiet Boy by Ben H. Winters
8) Flight by Lynn Steger Strong
9) The Revolutionary: Sam Adams by Stacy Schiff
10) How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix
11) South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation by Imani Perry
12) Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson
13) This Is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers and Ogi Ogas
14) The Undertow: Scenes from a Slow Civil War by Jeff Sharlet
15) Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State by Kerry Howley
16) The Other Side of Night by Adam Hamdy
17) The 7½ Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
18) Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
19) The Little Friend by Donna Tartt
20) Carmageddon: How Cars Make Life Worse and What to Do About It by Daniel Knowles
21) The Ghosts of Belfast by Stuart Neville
22) Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson
23) 1215: The Year of Magna Carta by Danny Danziger and John Gillingham
24) If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
25) Ringworld by Larry Niven
26) My Murder by Katie Williams
27) Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
28) The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley
29) The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker
30) God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker
31) Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century by J. Bradford DeLong
32) Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker
33) Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
34) Under the Eye of Power: How Fear of Secret Societies Shapes American Democracy by Colin Dickey
35) Counterweight by Djuna
36) Judas Goat by Robert B. Parker
37) The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
38) Pet by Catherine Chidgey
39) Let's Talk About Love: Why Other People Have Such Bad Taste by Carl Wilson
40) Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen
41) The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
42) Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith
43) Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
44) Wellness by Nathan Hill
45) Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse
46) All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
47) When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole.
Spooky Etiquette
When people at my place of work--mainly women-- are talking about contacting spirits, receiving signs from the afterlife, and decoding messages from dead relatives and deceased strangers, am I allowed to crack jokes, question their sanity, and express my very specifically skeptical feelings about ghosts and the netherworld, or do I have to pretend to believe in that stuff?
Cheers . . . with Ghosts
Last night, after a delicious meal at The Fox's Den, we stopped at the colonial-era Middleton Tavern for a nightcap (and some live music) with the locals-- the vibe of the bar is "Haunted Cheers" and then today we took a boat ride past the Naval Academy and up Spa Creek, past all the yachts and fancy homes, and I was thinking this is a lot of fucking boats, the most boats I've ever seen and then the captain of our little tour boat told us that the harbor and creek were totally empty now and there were no boats at all, compared to October-- so obviously I have no fucking clue what a lot of boats look like.
Stuff I Watched, Stuff I'm Watching
If you're looking for a different take on the horror genre, check out His House-- it's the story of a refugee couple from wartorn Sudan who seeks asylum in England and ends up in a not-so-typical-haunted-housing situation . . . these folks have some real skeletons in the closet and some real ghosts in their past; if you're looking for more traditional horror, check out Midnight Mass, a Netflix miniseries directed by Mike Flanagan-- the characters are well-drawn and Saracen from Friday Night lights has a superb role in this haunted island community; if you're looking to be stressed and depressed, watch The Americans . . . we've almost made it to the end of season four, and while the portrayal of two Soviet deep-cover spies who are "married" and have a family in Washington D.C. is compelling, gripping and candid, the show gets dark and then it gets darker . . . we can't stop watching, but it's brutal.
It Will Be Harder (But Not Impossible) to Read About Zombies During the Zombie Apocalypse
When the zombie apocalypse comes, one of the many things I will miss is the convenience of Hoopla, a free digital media platform which runs through the library, and allows me to download the newest issues of The Walking Dead on our iPad . . . you can download five books a month, so if you like the show, see if your library has this feature and read the comics-- they're darker and more expansive than the show, and as far as graphic novels go, they're easy to consume: you could real all twenty-six in six months, using Hoopla; I also recently read Ghosts, which is written and illustrated by Reina Telgemeier, and despite my vehement skepticism towards the spirit world, I enjoyed this graphic novel as well (and it's perfectly appropriate for kids, unlike The Walking Dead series, which is appropriate for no one).
Are Dogs the New Black Dudes?
Once upon a time in America, horror and war movies often implemented the Black Dude Dies First trope. But times have changed, for the better. Audiences won't stand for that racist bullshit. You can't go killing off Denzel Washington or Morgan Freeman or Will Smith just because they're black. While this is absolutely a good thing, someone has to pick up the slack in these kinds of movies. Someone has to die in these movies.
So who suffers?
My family doesn't watch many scary movies because my older son Alex is a sniveling coward. Catherine, Ian and I like them, so it's always a treat when we get to hunker down and put one on. I'm definitely not a horror movie aficionado though. Usually when I mention a horror movie I've seen to someone who really likes horror movies-- usually one of my students-- she'll be like: "That's not scary!"
I get scared by pretty much anything (especially Blair Witch and Paranormal Activities).
The other night, Alex elected to go upstairs and pirate some Star Wars spin-off series called The Mandalorian (which sounds like a citrus fruit) so Catherine, Ian and I watched The Babadook.
It's really scary!
Terrifying.
It's the story of a mom who is possessed by the physical disembodiment of her tragic grief. And her super-creepy kid. And an even creepier children's book. There are some mean Australian moms, too-- a macabre Liane Moriarty milieu. It's well acted and vivid, and-- in the end-- profound about death and loss. A good scare and a good film.
My only complaint is the use of the dog.
So who suffers?
My family doesn't watch many scary movies because my older son Alex is a sniveling coward. Catherine, Ian and I like them, so it's always a treat when we get to hunker down and put one on. I'm definitely not a horror movie aficionado though. Usually when I mention a horror movie I've seen to someone who really likes horror movies-- usually one of my students-- she'll be like: "That's not scary!"
I get scared by pretty much anything (especially Blair Witch and Paranormal Activities).
The other night, Alex elected to go upstairs and pirate some Star Wars spin-off series called The Mandalorian (which sounds like a citrus fruit) so Catherine, Ian and I watched The Babadook.
It's really scary!
Terrifying.
It's the story of a mom who is possessed by the physical disembodiment of her tragic grief. And her super-creepy kid. And an even creepier children's book. There are some mean Australian moms, too-- a macabre Liane Moriarty milieu. It's well acted and vivid, and-- in the end-- profound about death and loss. A good scare and a good film.
My only complaint is the use of the dog.
There's all kinds of creepy shit happening around this house. Doors opening and closing, odd figures lurking in the shadows, sleepless nights, etc. Most of the time, the dog is nowhere to be found. That's not how dogs are. They are investigative. They take up a lot of space. They are always underfoot. And whenever there's something weird happening, your dog is there. Loyal, curious, and wanting to be involved. But not this dog. Not Bugsy. Bugsy is rarely in the scene, and never when the shit is going down. And the boy and the mom aren't actively bringing the dog into the room when things get scary.
Bugsy is barely even mentioned in the full cast on IMDB. It's a shame.
One of the main reasons to have a dog is to ward off ghosts and demons. There's no better feeling than going to sleep on the same floor as a trusty canine. If a burglar, or -- far worse-- a shadowy death-creature arisen from repressed bereavement, comes a-knocking, your dog is going to get after it. Or at least bark and run around in circles.
Not only does Bugsy not act like a dog, there's also no accurate portrayal of dog ownership. No walking and feeding the dog, no picking up its poop and all that.
Soon enough, you realize why the dog is in the movie.
To die.
It's not that sad, because the dog hasn't been a main character. It's not like what happens in I Am Legend. That's tragic.
The death of the dog in The Babadook is more perfunctory. And inevitable. The dog is the new black dude. I guess that's progress, but instead of being racist, the movie is speciesist.
Ian and I also had this complaint about another horror movie we loved, The Conjuring. Early in the movie, Sadie the family dog refuses to enter the new house . . . because she knows the house is haunted. At this point, the family should up and leave. Trust your dog! But instead, they leash her outside the house and enter.
When they check on her in the next morning, she's dead.
As if this isn't awful enough, they barely mention her death the rest of the movie. I actually think they wrote the dog into the script after the movie was finished and then added the scene in post-production, just so they could have an early death.
If this were my family, and we spent a night in a spooky new house-- a house that our dog refused to enter-- and then the next morning our dog was dead, that's all we'd be talking about. We'd be broken up and upset and angry and investigative. Every time something weird happened in the house, we'd be bringing up Sadie and how she died and how she wasn't around the protect us. That would be THE topic of conversation.
I know it's tough to use children and animals in movies. Horror movies often employ both. The kids are great in both The Conjuring and The Babadook. And neither movie kills off any black dudes. That's great. But now it's time to show respect for our four-legged friends. They require a lot of work. They take up a lot of space. They investigate everything. And they will protect you from the supernatural like nobody's business.
Wilmington's Lie: If You're White, Read at Your Own Risk
Holy shit. The culmination of my Black History Month Book Club (with one member) is a wild one. Wilmington's Lie: The Murderous Coup of 1898 and the Rise of White Supremacy is a great read, but it's brutal. Downright humiliating American history. The worst behavior.
And the book explains a lot about present-day America. The reason progressives just can't fathom why poor white folks would vote for policies that harm them.
David Zucchino tells the story of Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. At the start of the book, the city is a prosperous port. Blacks and whites live in the same neighborhoods. Blacks occupied positions in business, the middle class, and politics. In many regards, black freedmen were just as affluent and successful as whites. It was truly a functioning mixed-race city.
Then the Democratic politicians and the white newspapers joined forces to oppress and terrorize blacks, disenfranchise them from voting, and essentially run them out of town. The story takes a violent turn when the paramilitary Redshirts, emboldened by a "white Declaration of Independence" run amok. They are heavily armed-- unlike the black folks in town (because munitions dealers would only sell to whites). They burn down the office of the black newspaper, The Record. They terrorize women and children. They kill at least sixty black men. The government coup is successful, Democrats illegally remove the Republicans and Fusionists. Crazy racist coup. The Wilmington government is now all white.
And then comes the whitewashing.
The first person to take the blame was a black newspaper owner, Alexander L. many. He had the gall to print an editorial debunking a fundamental white myth: the inviolate purity of the white woman. Manly suggested that many of the black men charged with "raping" white women did not do so. Instead, he speculated that they were often consensual lovers. He urged white men to protect their women, and not blame and lynch black men for taking part in willing trysts. Sacrilege! So they burned down his building, threatened him and his family, and sent him into hiding.
White papers and politicians knew how to manipulate this editorial and enrage white folks. It's the same political tactics of race and xenophobia as today, but you've got to replace the Republican party with the Democrats. They were the abominable racists involved with voter suppression and white supremacy in 1898. This is weird at first, but you get used to the flip-flop on racial politics. The Democrats hate the other, the Democrats blame the other, the Democrats gerrymander and suppress the other. It's a tactic, and an effective one. During the Reconstruction, the Republicans used the black vote, the Democrats destroyed it. The opposite of today's politics.
After the violence, Coup leader Col Alfred Waddell proclaimed a “White Declaration of Independence” and installed himself as mayor. He proudly instituted law and order and called the massacre a "race riot" started by blacks. Meanwhile, black families were mourning the dead, hiding out in swamps, taking trains North, and still being terrorized by white supremacists. They could not walk through the city without being stopped at Redshirt checkpoints, where they were searched, harassed, and often killed.
In the 1940s, Southern textbooks still portrayed the local (white) version of events. The Carpetbaggers and Scalawags were at fault for the violence, for inciting racial tension. The city was saved from chaos and disorder by a "sort of club which they named the Ku Klux Klan." The KKK performed the charitable task of "scaring lawless men into acting decently." They dressed as "ghosts" and "frightened Negroes into leading better lives." Yikes. That's what they were teaching the kids.
by the 1950s, the truth about the event was slowly uncovered. It still causes unrest and ill-will today. 2100 blacks fled the city, and many blacks and whites were banished for political reasons. It's the stuff of banana republics. The "success" in Wilmington emboldened white supremacists throughout the South to enact Jim Crow Laws and various means of black voter suppression.
The white supremacist newspaper editor, Josephus Daniels, moved on to Louisiana and campaigned for white supremacy there. He created a voter-suppression law that, in New Orleans, “helped reduce the number of black voters from 14,117 to 1,493.” Attempts to undo these wrongs were met by indifference by Republican President William McKinley (who was involved with other ordeals, including the Spanish-American War).
This book details a downright embarrassing period of American History. It's an important reminder that the end of the Civil War did not in any way mean civil rights for freedmen. The Reconstruction was a war unto itself; the history of the Reconstruction is historiography worth investigating-- though if you're a white dude (like me) you might find yourself reflecting on just how many obstacles were thrown in the way of blacks in America and wonder about the consequences. How long will they last? Will race be an issue in America for the rest of our days as a nation?
And the book explains a lot about present-day America. The reason progressives just can't fathom why poor white folks would vote for policies that harm them.
David Zucchino tells the story of Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. At the start of the book, the city is a prosperous port. Blacks and whites live in the same neighborhoods. Blacks occupied positions in business, the middle class, and politics. In many regards, black freedmen were just as affluent and successful as whites. It was truly a functioning mixed-race city.
Then the Democratic politicians and the white newspapers joined forces to oppress and terrorize blacks, disenfranchise them from voting, and essentially run them out of town. The story takes a violent turn when the paramilitary Redshirts, emboldened by a "white Declaration of Independence" run amok. They are heavily armed-- unlike the black folks in town (because munitions dealers would only sell to whites). They burn down the office of the black newspaper, The Record. They terrorize women and children. They kill at least sixty black men. The government coup is successful, Democrats illegally remove the Republicans and Fusionists. Crazy racist coup. The Wilmington government is now all white.
The first person to take the blame was a black newspaper owner, Alexander L. many. He had the gall to print an editorial debunking a fundamental white myth: the inviolate purity of the white woman. Manly suggested that many of the black men charged with "raping" white women did not do so. Instead, he speculated that they were often consensual lovers. He urged white men to protect their women, and not blame and lynch black men for taking part in willing trysts. Sacrilege! So they burned down his building, threatened him and his family, and sent him into hiding.
White papers and politicians knew how to manipulate this editorial and enrage white folks. It's the same political tactics of race and xenophobia as today, but you've got to replace the Republican party with the Democrats. They were the abominable racists involved with voter suppression and white supremacy in 1898. This is weird at first, but you get used to the flip-flop on racial politics. The Democrats hate the other, the Democrats blame the other, the Democrats gerrymander and suppress the other. It's a tactic, and an effective one. During the Reconstruction, the Republicans used the black vote, the Democrats destroyed it. The opposite of today's politics.
After the violence, Coup leader Col Alfred Waddell proclaimed a “White Declaration of Independence” and installed himself as mayor. He proudly instituted law and order and called the massacre a "race riot" started by blacks. Meanwhile, black families were mourning the dead, hiding out in swamps, taking trains North, and still being terrorized by white supremacists. They could not walk through the city without being stopped at Redshirt checkpoints, where they were searched, harassed, and often killed.
In the 1940s, Southern textbooks still portrayed the local (white) version of events. The Carpetbaggers and Scalawags were at fault for the violence, for inciting racial tension. The city was saved from chaos and disorder by a "sort of club which they named the Ku Klux Klan." The KKK performed the charitable task of "scaring lawless men into acting decently." They dressed as "ghosts" and "frightened Negroes into leading better lives." Yikes. That's what they were teaching the kids.
by the 1950s, the truth about the event was slowly uncovered. It still causes unrest and ill-will today. 2100 blacks fled the city, and many blacks and whites were banished for political reasons. It's the stuff of banana republics. The "success" in Wilmington emboldened white supremacists throughout the South to enact Jim Crow Laws and various means of black voter suppression.
The white supremacist newspaper editor, Josephus Daniels, moved on to Louisiana and campaigned for white supremacy there. He created a voter-suppression law that, in New Orleans, “helped reduce the number of black voters from 14,117 to 1,493.” Attempts to undo these wrongs were met by indifference by Republican President William McKinley (who was involved with other ordeals, including the Spanish-American War).
This book details a downright embarrassing period of American History. It's an important reminder that the end of the Civil War did not in any way mean civil rights for freedmen. The Reconstruction was a war unto itself; the history of the Reconstruction is historiography worth investigating-- though if you're a white dude (like me) you might find yourself reflecting on just how many obstacles were thrown in the way of blacks in America and wonder about the consequences. How long will they last? Will race be an issue in America for the rest of our days as a nation?
Dave's 105 Books to Read Before You Die (Which Will be Sooner Than You Think)
Everyone seems to have a top hundred list of something, and so here are my top hundred books (plus five bonus books in case you finish the top hundred too quickly) and each author is only represented once, so while Shakespeare and Italo Calvino may actually deserve more than one slot, for the sake of variety there are no repeats; also, there is fiction, non-fiction, and everything else on this list . . . and I should point out that once you finish reading all the books on this list, then you will be much smarter than me, because though I've read them all, I'm not sure I remember anything from them:
1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2. Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Lives of the Cell by Lewis Thomas
5. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
6. If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
7. Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne
8. Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard
9. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
10. V by Thomas Pynchon
11. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
12. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
14. Into the Wild by John Krakauer
15. Music of Chance by Paul Auster
16. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
17. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
18. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
19. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
20. The Bible
21. Henry IV (part 1) by William Shakespeare
22. The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard
23. The Stories of John Cheever
24. Will You Please Be Quiet Please by Raymond Carver
25. The Image by Daniel Boorstin
26. Clockers by Richard Price
27. Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
28. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
29. A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
30. Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan
31. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
32. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
33. Chaos by James Gleick
34. The Society of the Mind by Marvin Minsky
35. Watchmen by Alan Moore/ Dave Gibbons
36. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
37. The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
38. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa-Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
39. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
40. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
41. Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
42. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
43. War With The Newts by Karel Kapek
44. The Miracle Game by Josef Skvorecky
45. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
46. Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
47. White Noise by Don Delillo
48. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
49. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
50. Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
51. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
52. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
53. Bully For Brontosaurus by Stephen J. Gould
54. The Drifters by James A. Michener
55. Geek Love by Catherine Dunne
56. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
57. Human Universals by Donald Brown
58. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan
59. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
60. The Diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson
61. The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
62. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
63. American Splendor by Harvey Pekar/ Robert Crumb
64. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz by Hector Berlioz
65. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
66. The Castle by Franz Kafka
67. Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
68. Naked by David Sedaris
69. Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
70. The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner
71. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
72. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
73. Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer
74. Monster of God by David Quammen
75. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
76. Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco
77. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
78. Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
79. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
80. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
81. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Richard Wright
82. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
83. Manchester United Ruined My Life by Colin Shindler
84. Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
85. From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple
86. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
87. The End of the Road by John Barth
88. Neuromancer by William Gibson
89. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
90. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
91. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
92. Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout
93. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
94. The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
95. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
96. The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
97. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
98. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
99. 1493 by Charles C. Mann
100. Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
101. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
102. The Life and Death of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
103. Methland by Nick Reding
104. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
105. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
1. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
2. Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
3. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Lives of the Cell by Lewis Thomas
5. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
6. If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino
7. Tristram Shandy by Lawrence Sterne
8. Freaky Deaky by Elmore Leonard
9. Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
10. V by Thomas Pynchon
11. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
12. 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
13. Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges
14. Into the Wild by John Krakauer
15. Music of Chance by Paul Auster
16. The Dog of the South by Charles Portis
17. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
18. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren
19. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather
20. The Bible
21. Henry IV (part 1) by William Shakespeare
22. The Complete Stories of J.G. Ballard
23. The Stories of John Cheever
24. Will You Please Be Quiet Please by Raymond Carver
25. The Image by Daniel Boorstin
26. Clockers by Richard Price
27. Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
28. American Tabloid by James Ellroy
29. A Peoples History of the United States by Howard Zinn
30. Balkan Ghosts by Robert Kaplan
31. The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles
32. The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick
33. Chaos by James Gleick
34. The Society of the Mind by Marvin Minsky
35. Watchmen by Alan Moore/ Dave Gibbons
36. The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson
37. The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer
38. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa-Puffs by Chuck Klosterman
39. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson
40. Cannery Row by John Steinbeck
41. Foucalt's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
42. Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
43. War With The Newts by Karel Kapek
44. The Miracle Game by Josef Skvorecky
45. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
46. Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
47. White Noise by Don Delillo
48. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler
49. Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell
50. Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
51. Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
52. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues by Tom Robbins
53. Bully For Brontosaurus by Stephen J. Gould
54. The Drifters by James A. Michener
55. Geek Love by Catherine Dunne
56. The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker
57. Human Universals by Donald Brown
58. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Anne Druyan
59. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
60. The Diversity of Life by E.O. Wilson
61. The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins
62. Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
63. American Splendor by Harvey Pekar/ Robert Crumb
64. The Memoirs of Hector Berlioz by Hector Berlioz
65. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
66. The Castle by Franz Kafka
67. Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz
68. Naked by David Sedaris
69. Godel Escher Bach by Douglas Hofstadter
70. The Worldly Philosophers by Robert L. Heilbroner
71. The Big Short by Michael Lewis
72. Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt
73. Video Night in Kathmandu by Pico Iyer
74. Monster of God by David Quammen
75. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
76. Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco
77. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
78. Hyperspace by Michio Kaku
79. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke
80. The Complete Stories of Flannery O'Connor
81. Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny by Richard Wright
82. The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins
83. Manchester United Ruined My Life by Colin Shindler
84. Soccer in Sun and Shadow by Eduardo Galeano
85. From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple
86. A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace
87. The End of the Road by John Barth
88. Neuromancer by William Gibson
89. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
90. A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
91. Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman
92. Some Buried Caesar by Rex Stout
93. The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
94. The Ascent of Money by Niall Ferguson
95. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
96. The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
97. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman
98. Walden by Henry David Thoreau
99. 1493 by Charles C. Mann
100. Our Band Could Be Your Life by Michael Azerrad
101. A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
102. The Life and Death of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch
103. Methland by Nick Reding
104. A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
105. Born Standing Up by Steve Martin
The Books Dave Read in 2024
1) The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon
2) More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon
3) They Walked Like Men by Clifford D. Simak
4) Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz
5) Welcome Home, Stranger by Kate Christensen
6) All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries #1) by Martha Wells
7) Artificial Condition (The Murderbot Diaries #2) by Martha Wells
8) Dark Rivers of the Heart by Dean Koontz
9) The Charm School by Nelson DeMille
10) Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer
11) Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
12) The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham
13) Disillusioned: Five Families and the Unraveling of America's Suburbs by Benjamin Herold
14) The New Analog: Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World by Damon Krukowski
15) Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
16) The Fifties by David Halberstam
17) Outside the Gates of Eden: The Dream of America from Hiroshima to Now by
Peter Bacon Hales
18) A Year in the Life of Shakespeare:1599 by James Shapiro
19) One Good Turn (Jackson Brodie 2) by Kate Atkinson
20) Sentient by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta
21) Faithful Place by Tana French
22) Age of Revolutions: Progress and Backlash from 1600 to the Present by Fareed Zakaria
23) The Detective Up Late by Adrian McKinty
24) When Where There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
25) The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz
26) The Man in the Flannel Gray Suit by Sloan Wilson
27) A Line to Kill by Anthony Horowitz
28) Banal Nightmare by Halle Butler
29) The Sentence is Death by Anthony Horowitz
30) Perfect Little Children by Sophie Hannah
31) The New Me by Halle Butler
32) The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz
33) Close to Death by Anthony Horowitz
34) Horror Movie by Paul Tremblay
35) The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay
36) A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
37) Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman
38) Medieval Horizons: Why the Middle Ages Matter by Ian Mortimer
39) Fuzzy Dice by Paul Di Filippo
40) The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew Bacevich
41) Supernova Era by Cixin Liu
42) Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
43) The Wych Elm by Tana French
44) Spin by Robert Charles Wilson
Dave and The Good Doctor Celebrate Yet Another Birthday With Some Doggerel Rhymes
The day has arrived,
the day of my birth--
And while the good doctor
has passed from this place,
I'm still hanging on
still running the race,
still working the job,
still writing the posts,
still chasing the lob,
still taunting the ghosts--
I've been knocking around
for fifty-three years,
my knees are a wreck,
I can barely quaff beers--
but while I can walk,
stand and not fall,
I'll remain in the game
and play pickleball.
Robert Kaplan: More Analogies!
When my wife and I lived in Syria, it made sense for me to read a lot of Robert Kaplan: Balkan Ghosts, An Empire in Wilderness, The Coming Anarchy, Arabists, The Ends of the Earth . . . then we returned stateside, bought a house, had children, and our travels to exotic overseas locales ended . . . as did my obsession with the most literary of geopolitical analysts-- because reading Robert Kaplan takes a lot of concentration, it's not like breezing through a Thomas Friedman book-- but just because I forgot about Robert Kaplan, doesn't mean he stopped writing, and I've decided to catch up: I picked up Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific in a used bookstore in Vermont and I'm wading through it, trying to sort out analogies like this: "Whereas Hanoi is Vietnam's Ankara, Saigon is Vietnam's Istanbul."
Seven Ways to Stay Calm in Traffic
So you're stuck in traffic and you are freaking out. Feeling trapped and claustrophobic. You might ram the car in front of you just to break the monotony.
Stop go stop go.
Before you do something you might regret, use one of these tried and true methods to keep your cool.
1) Beep
Beep the fuck out of your horn. Lay on that thing. Beeeeeeeeeep! Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeeeeeeeeep! Feels good right? Satisfyingly loud and futile.
2) Scream
Best done in concert with the beeping.
3) Profanity
You can only scream incoherently for so long before you blow out your vocal chords.
4) Regret
Regret your decisions, big and small. You should have moved to Vermont long ago. You should live in the woods with three dogs. Own a few acres of land near a mountain. Grow your own organic produce and tend a chicken coop.
Instead, you're going to get lung cancer from the smog, your kids have asthma, and you just learned that those beautiful purple and red sunsets are particulate matter. Why do you still live in New Jersey? And why did you feel the need to drive up Route 18 on a Friday afternoon?
5) Play some music . . . NOT
You might think some groovy tunes would soothe your road rage, but music is a trap. Blasting upbeat songs will only remind you that you're stalled out, crawling through an industrial zone, while your friends drink beer at the bar.
Born to run? You're born plod.
Into the great wide open . . . my ass.
Life is a highway and you chose the wrong one.
6) Text and Drive
Texting while driving is dangerous and illegal, but might be distracting enough to take your mind off the herd of cars surrounding you. Text your wife, text your friends . . . text them about the traffic you are in. They would want to know about your pain and suffering. Warn them! Proclaim the apocalypse! Pity the fools that would drive into this pandemonium! Stay home! It's crazy out here!
7) Contemplate
Think really hard about traffic. Why are people stopping? What exactly is causing the back-up? You've heard it doesn't need to be an accident. It could be a near-miss . . . or a near-hit. It could be an old lady wearing a pink hat riding her brakes. Why don't they make old people retake their road tests?
And then there's the most disturbing thought of all: this morass of cars that's making your heart pound and your hands sweat, this congregation of flesh and steel bringing your blood to a rapid boil, making you wish things upon your fellow humans that Pol Pot would consider inhumane . . . it might be caused by phantoms, ghosts in the machine: emergent phenomena amplified by the agglomeration of absurdly random moments; a brake light here, someone playing with their phone there, a truck that needs to get over to the right to exit, a poorly executed zipper merge. Trivial events cascading into epic delay.
And then you see it. Lo and behold. The anticlimax itself. The raison d'etre for all your misery. A car on the shoulder.
Seriously?
That's why all these cars have slowed to a crawl? That cannot be it. There's got to be something else. A sinkhole or a helicopter crash.
Are people really fucking stopping to look at a stalled Civic on the side of the road? No accident. No one is dead. Not even an ambulance. One police car. This is what it's come to? No one has anywhere to be? And there's nothing but cars and brake lights ahead, and there's no exit, no way off the road. And everyone is fine with this? All these commuters are fine with it? Day after day? Night after night? This is what we've chosen? Over maglev trains and flying cars and trolleys and horses and hydrogen-powered buses? These rolling coffins?
Beeeeeeeeeep!
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