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Bastille Day Requiem

Posted on July 16, 2016 by CJ Verburg

The Second Coming

by William Butler Yeats

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Source: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats (1989)

California on High Alert – Power Grab by Cell/Wireless Corporations

Posted on June 17, 2016June 19, 2016 by CJ Verburg

by C J Verburg

Not very sexy, is it? “The US National Toxicology Program Carcinogenesis Studies of Cell Phone Radiofrequency Radiation” — the name alone could put you to sleep. But the reality behind it is an urgent wake-up call. It’s already woken AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, & the other communications corporations that have staked billions of dollars on our addiction to staying connected.

What the preliminary results that were released a month ago tell us is (surprise!) there’s truth in the rumor that heavy exposure to cellphone radiation can cause cancer.

Skipping over what this says about the need to change our habits, what does it mean to the companies who provide our service? Well, for one thing: ACT FAST! Put up as many cellular/wireless antennas and panels as possible before the regulations tighten.

Here in California, an ambitious assembly member by the name of Mike Gatto is rushing through legislation to free cellular/wireless facilities from even the few regulations that already exist. We’ve received urgent warnings about this from both sides of San Francisco’s political spectrum.

PLEASE DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO STOP AB 2788 from passing!

That means: Call, email, and/or write to your representatives in Sacramento by June 20 opposing AB 2788. If this bill passes, your neighborhood could soon look like this, because neither you as a citizen nor your local government would have any say about it.

Who are your state reps?
What’s their contact info?
Find out on this handy website: http://findyourrep.legislature.ca.gov/

Here are details about AB 2788, reprinted from an e-mail just received:

AB 2788 hearing
June 21, 9 am
California Senate Energy, Utilities and Communication Committee, Sacramento.

[Assemblyman Mike] Gatto gutted a natural gas storage bill on June 13 and replaced with this cell antenna bill. In it he says small cell are “not a municipal affair” just as the previous bill passed recently [AB 57] ruled that collocation facilities are “not a municipal affair.” Next stop is cell towers as a whole.

I think the NTP [National Toxicology Program; see above] research is driving this legislative rush before CalEPA lists RF as a carcinogen, as Ken Foster of IEEE expects to happen. One important action everyone should take is to write CalEPA and Calif. Dept. of Public Health to request this now; cc to Gatto’s office when you do that.

Gatto is also the author of the Abolish CPUC constitutional amendment which will also be heard at the hearing. As bad and corrupt as the CPUC, this constitutional amendment by this bought and paid for legislator, despite his high-sounding rhetoric in the text, is simply staging a give-away for utilities. Instead of one-place regulation for all utilities, his amendment squirrels the oversight away into different rabbit holes of captured agencies in the state, with far less visibility. This is bad, bad, bad.

A San Francisco Coup d’Etat – May 1856

Posted on May 31, 2016 by CJ Verburg

by CJ Verburg

From the Daily Alta California of May 23, 1856:

Our streets have assumed a more quiet aspect this morning than we have witnessed for several days past. The proceedings of yesterday have very naturally produced such a result.

Execution of James P. Casey and Charles Cora, By The Vigilance Committee, of San Francisco, on Thursday, May 22d, 1856, from the Windows of their Rooms, in Sacramento Street, between Front and Davis Streets. Made by Huestis; sold by M. Ullman, New York. From the Bancroft Library: BANC PIC 1963.002:02–B

The Alta didn’t need to spell out the details. Everyone in the little city of San Francisco (which filled an area roughly from today’s South Beach to Mission to North Beach) knew what “proceedings” had occurred on Thursday, May 22.

While 3000+ armed San Franciscans hanged two human symbols of violence, corruption, and vice, the rest of the city marched toward Lone Mountain Cemetery to bury James King of William, crusading editor of the Evening Bulletin.

Supervisor Casey’s crime was shooting King in the street on May 14 for refusing to retract an insult he printed in the Bulletin. Although King did not appear to be mortally wounded, a surfeit of medical attention soon finished him off. When the Vigilantes took over the County Jail on Broadway and removed Casey to their own “Fort Vigilance” for a kangaroo trial, they also removed gambler Charles Cora, who was awaiting retrial for fatally shooting a U.S. Marshal, arguably in self-defense.

Here is the Bulletin’s account of San Francisco’s transformation in May 1856:

There never was a more perfect or complete revolution in the government, or the affairs of a community, than in this city the past week.Among our citizens confidence is restored, and the virtue, intelligence, and ability of our people to govern themselves. Those who lived in fear of some outrage upon their lives or property feel a security greater than they have experienced in a long time.

We had witnessed the bold attempt at assassination in our streets; we had seen the infuriated mass rush wildly after the prisoner, with exclamations of “Hang him!” filling the air.

We had witnessed the organization of the Vigilance Committee in our very midst, with a list of 3,000 names; we had witnessed their formidable array in the streets of our city; and we had witnessed their successful campaign of rescuing the prisoners, Casey and Cora, from the jail on Sunday; all attended with the most intense and enthusiastic excitement.

But never until the death of Mr. King was announced yesterday [May 20], at half past one o’clock, have we seen such a powerful and universal demonstration of real, true, heartfelt sorrow and mourning as was exhibited by our people.

JKofW-LiveAndDead-digitalassets.lib.berkeley.edu-calheritage-ucb-honeyman-figures-HN000768aA — James King of William, before & after. Honeyman Collection, UC Berkeley.

On Thursday morning, many of our business and private dwelling houses, that had not previously robed in black, put on the garb of mourning, and the flags of the city, with but one exception—Engine Company Number Ten—hung at half mast. At an early hour, the meetings and organizations of our different societies took place; and by twelve o’clock, all were ready to join in the procession.

The body of the deceased had been conveyed to his late residence at the corner of Pacific and Mason Streets. A few minutes before noon, the hearse was borne to the Unitarian Church on Stockton Street. The church was well filled long before the hour appointed. Mrs. King and children and Mr. Thomas S. King [the deceased’s younger brother] were seated in front of the pulpit, and the immediate friends of the deceased in the adjoining pews.

The cortege moved in the following order:

The Masonic Order in full regalia with the Royal Arch Chapter. A carriage containing the Reverend Misters Cutler, Lacy, and Taylor. A carriage containing the physicians to the late deceased. The hearse, drawn by four gray horses richly caparisoned, attended on each side by the pallbearers. Carriage containing Mrs. King and children and Mr Thomas S. King. Carriages containing mourning friends of the deceased.

Attaches of the Evening Bulletin on foot. California Pioneers with badges and mourning emblems. Members of the press in the city and towns in the interior. Sacramento Guard in full uniform. The San Francisco Fire Department in citizens’ dress, headed by the chief engineer. Every company was largely represented except Number Ten.

The San Francisco Minstrels, members of the theatrical profession, and the musical bands of the city with muffled instruments. The boys from St. Mary’s Library Association. The draymen of the city on horseback, to the number of 350 men. The steveodores, with banners, numbering 142 men. The Turnverein Society in full costume. A deputation of 10 colored persons with badges representing the San Francisco Athenaeum, a library association composed of colored persons. These were followed by a large number of carriages and private vehicles. It is estimated that the procession extended a mile and a half in length.

The tragic martyrdom of a hero was just the story San Franciscans needed to excuse themselves for taking the law into their own hands and lynching two scapegoats. It also got them off the hook for not utilizing the legal system already in place. If any Vigilantes felt guilty for leaving the job of cleaning up their city to James King of William while he lived, they could pat themselves on the back for doing a zealous job of avenging his death.

But in reality there was more to the story than that. When we come back, a 160th-anniversary look at some startling twists behind the purification of San Francisco.

Reprinted from “Vigilante Justice in San Francisco” https://boom-books.com

“Books. Cats. Life is good.” – Edward Gorey

Posted on May 17, 2016 by CJ Verburg

by C J Verburg

I picked my late cat Grusha because she was born on Cape Cod right around the time my friend and neighbor Edward Gorey died. If souls do by any chance migrate, I figured he’d come back as a cat — most likely a delicately etched black-and-white one.

Edward embraced all cats. I wish he could share the pleasure of getting to know my new one, Roo. Her harlequin coloring and sweet disposition are happy reminders of every cat who’s shared my home over the years . . . and Edward’s home, too: her nose is George, her bib is Weedon, her face is half Alice and half Thomas, and her back is a pastel Jane. Those are the five cats Edward was down to by the end of his life, each with a plain English name for daily use, and a secret Japanese name from his favorite book, The Tale of Genji.

(George and Weedon Grossmith, among their many talents and enterprises, wrote the comic English novel The Diary of a Nobody. Hugh Bonneville, lately famous as Lord Grantham of Downton Abbey, proved his thespian chops years earlier by starring in a mesmerizing film of that unfilmable book. George Grossmith also pops up in the Gilbert & Sullivan biopic Topsy-Turvy.)

Now an innovative thespian troupe in New York has staged a play written and directed by Travis Russ, in which three actors play Edward Gorey in a life imagined by Russ from his own life plus a lot of reading and mulling. It’s called Gorey: The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey, and it’s playing at HERE, 145 Avenue of the Americas, through May 22. Reviews are strong enough that those of us who can’t make it to Manhattan this month may get another shot.

Meanwhile, anyone curious about Edward’s real life in the theater can still read/see/hear the whole story in my print and e-book Edward Gorey On Stage. One of my enterprises for this summer is creating an updated edition and adapting the book specifically for iPad.

The Agatha Christie mystery Edward and I once talked about setting at our friend Jack’s breakfast-and-lunch cafe, Jack’s Out Back, became Croaked: an Edgar Rowdey Cape Cod Mystery (also available in print and e- form). Its sequel, Zapped, is in the labyrinthine publishing pipeline. While I’m waiting, I’ve started a novella . . . peering (as I type) over the furry helper who’s exploring my keyboard to assert her proper place as center of human attention.

Books. Cats. Life is good.

War, WMD, Wall Street, Washington, & the New Reality

Posted on April 6, 2016 by CJ Verburg

by CJ Verburg

“Plenty of people got Iraq wrong, but plenty of people – experts and ordinary citizens – got it right. The problem was that it made no difference.”

So states St. Louis-based writer Sarah Kendzior in “Iraq and the Reinvention of Reality” in the March 28 Al Jazeera.

I’ve been teaching a course on non-Western literature this winter at San Francisco’s Mechanics’ Institute Library, and our April class focuses on Iraq. So lately I’ve been reading a lot of fiction and nonfiction by Iraqis. It’s not an exploration to undertake lightly. Writers in all war-torn countries radiate a deadly consciousness that what they say matters. Some stake their lives on speaking out; some resort to allegory or magical realism or another veiled approach to spread their message before the censors or military police can snuff it. Whatever the tactics, one discerns an unquenchable flicker of hope.

Yet in contemporary Iraqi literature the dominant tone is bleakness. These are writers – human beings – to whom normal life, as we in the West define it (a morning chat over coffee, checking e-mail, grocery shopping, a sunset stroll) is foreign. If they’ve ever encountered normality, it was long ago or far away.

Rory McCarthy’s disturbing book Nobody Told Us We Are Defeated: Stories from the New Iraq depicts a normality in which shopping or a stroll could very well end in random arrest, imprisonment, torture, even death, for no other reason than that the government’s most powerful and popular tool is intimidation.

Sarah Kendzior pushes that bleakness a quantum leap further.

“The Iraq war is notable not only for journalistic weakness, but for journalistic futility: the futility of fact itself. Fact could not match the fabrications of power. Eventually, our reality shifted to become what they conceived. ‘I could have set myself on fire in protest on the White House lawn and the war would have proceeded without me,’ wrote Bush speechwriter David Frum.

“That was the message of the Iraq war: There is no point in speaking truth to power when power is the only truth.”I heard years ago that an aide to President George W. Bush had scoffed at a journalist during the Iraq war for being part of the “reality-based community.” Kendzior sets that remark in context. Here’s an extract from her article, e-mailed by a friend (thank you, Tom Englezos). I strongly urge you to read the whole piece.

“In 2002, Ron Suskind, a reporter for the New York Times, met with an unnamed aide to George W Bush who accused Suskind of being part of the ‘reality-based community’. The aide meant it as an insult: this was not the way the world worked anymore.“‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,’ said the aide, later alleged to be Bush adviser Karl Rove. ‘And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’

“In one sense, this quote seems of a piece with its era – with the entry of truthiness into the dictionary, with the rise of whole industries, like reality TV, built on choreographed sincerity. But while we may associate the ‘creation of reality’ with a wildly hubristic administration, it remains the flavour of our time, a manipulation that moves from crisis to crisis. . . .

“We see remnants of this created reality in the financial crisis – the ongoing ‘great recession’ that, like preemptive war, has transformed what Americans will accept. It is normal for criminal financiers to receive record bonuses in an age marked by austerity, it is normal for professionals to work years unpaid in the hope of someday landing a job, it is normal for one year of college to cost more than the average median income. This is normal, they say – but if Iraq should have taught us anything, it is how easily and brazenly ‘normal’ can be redefined.”

What Iraqi literature teaches us is that literary technique is no mere artistic device. The late Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez, asked about his use of magical realism, answered that he simply described life as he observed it. Any writer living the nightmare described by one of Rory McCarthy’s sources – “Even in my dreams I saw them . . . Every single minute I felt they would take me away for execution” – has crossed the border that for most Westerners protects the reality-based community.

When the United States invaded Iraq, we changed it forever. Iraq, in turn, forever changed reality in the United States and the world.

Want to Dump Your Lover? There’s an App for That….

Posted on February 27, 2016February 27, 2016 by CJ Verburg

by Charisse Howard

Romance! It can take so long to find that perfect match . . . and even longer, sometimes, to get out when the thrill is gone.

Take heart, wannabe ex-lovers! With Valentine’s Day vanishing in the rearview mirror, the road ahead is studded with helpful tools to ease that difficult break. Maybe not for your soon-to-be-former heartthrob . . . but hey, if you cared, you wouldn’t be breaking up, right?

In a recent issue of Nextrends, Swissnex’s Zanet Zabarac catches us up in Breaking Up Used To Be Hard To Do.

The app Zabarac calls “Uber for breakups” is The Breakup Shop. Here’s an offering:

Whether you’re the dumper or the dumpee, it can be tempting to cling to (or even stalk) those old memories after the split. To keep your eyes off the past, Zabarac points to Facebook’s new “silence your ex” feature. (Or, as Facebook calls it, “Improving the Experience When Relationships End.”) The ever-resourceful Zuckerberg & Company now let you limit what your dear departed can post or see of your current doings. You don’t even have to search for this function: “When people change their relationship status to indicate they are no longer in a relationship, they will be prompted to try these tools.”

Paul Simon FB — There must be 50 ways to leave your lover.

But is Unfriending and Unfollowing enough? Are you overwhelmed by the prospect of erasing your once-beloved from your Pinterest, SnapChat, and all the other shifting sands still dotted by two sets of footprints? No worries! You can hire a “Social Media Break Up Coordinator.” This specialty, notes Zabarac, “initially started out as a satiric art project [but] has now evolved to a service with an actual market.”

When you’re ready to get back in the game, there are plenty of apps and sites to help you find a new honey. Until lightning strikes, what better way to warm up than a nice hot Regency romance? Here are three James-Bond-meets-Downton-Abbey novellas — all spicy, suspenseful, and passionate, each set in a different exotic location.

Lady Annabelle’s Abduction: A kidnapped bride, a ruthless earl, a ransom that must be paid before sunset, and a persistent spaniel . . .

Lady Barbara & the Buccaneer: A pirates’ Mardi Gras is her last fling before sailing for London, but a masked stranger changes her course.

Lady Caroline, the Corsair’s Captive: The scourge of the Barbary Coast is the corsair Barbarossa, and his favorite booty is an English virgin.

If you’re not quite ready to jump into your next entanglement, try the softer romantic suspense novel Dark Horseman: Mystery, Adventure, & Romance in Regency Virginia. A rebellious belle faces the challenge of saving her home and horses in a “battle of stallions” which mixes love, betrayal, fast horses, and Shakespeare.

Happy landings!

Happy Edward Gorey’s Birthday!

Posted on February 23, 2016February 23, 2016 by CJ Verburg

by CJ Verburg

As always on February 22, favorite lines that Edward Gorey wrote and dramatized at one time or another during our decade of staging theatrical entertainments on Cape Cod have been zipping through my head today like bats.

Life is distracting and uncertain,
She said, and went to draw the curtain.

He meant to have written an epic in Erse,
But all he could manage was greeting-card verse.

HauntedT — ‘I am the Bahhum Bug,’ it declared; ‘I am here to diffuse the interests of didacticism.’

I vividly recall how thrilled Edward was when he announced he’d come up with the Bahhum Bug. And the many nights I drove home from rehearsal shivering, peering down empty black roads through my frost-rimmed windshield, waiting for the heat to come on in my car, thinking:

Through unvisited hamlets the car went creeping,
With its headlamps unlit and its curtains drawn;
Those natives who happened not to be sleeping
Heard it pass, and lay awake until dawn.

I’m glad to have these memories and so many others. I’m thankful for the extraordinary people I met because of Edward Gorey, and for the creative work and thoughtful (or simply giddy) conversations we enjoyed together (and sometimes still do). I cherish him when I look closely at the intricacies of a drawing, or savor the intricacies of baroque music, or admire the virtuosity of a good mystery writer, or ruffle a dog’s ears or play with a cat.

Happy Edward Gorey’s birthday!

Edward Gorey & the Edwardian Ball

Posted on January 12, 2016 by CJ Verburg

If Edward Gorey could see the diverse and unpredictable directions his legacy has taken, he might be most amazed by the annual Edwardian Ball.

Every January, about a month before his birthday, Gorey fans in San Francisco and Los Angeles gather to celebrate this New England artist’s tongue-in-cheek depiction of the dark side of Agatha Christie’s Britain. Ironic? Edward Gorey visited California just once, on leave from his U.S. Army posting in Utah, to meet up with his Chicago friend Consuelo Joerns, then a student at Mills College. He never set foot in Britain except for a single foray to the Hebrides. Once he moved into his sprawling antique home on Cape Cod, it was a challenge to lure him even to Providence or Boston.

Yet Californians have not just embraced Gorey’s England but colonized it. This just in, via Facebook:

**UPDATE** We were just informed Dark Garden Unique Corsetry has 30 tickets for Saturday night available in-store. First come, first served. Online tickets are sold out. Be sure to RSVP for their Styling Party on January 9th.

After Friday night’s global adventure, we return to The Grand Ballroom for the most decadent night of our season! This is the night that started it all, The Edwardian Ball, presented by co-hosts Rosin Coven and Vau de Vire Society.

Ballroom dancing leads way to stunning performances both on and offstage in a collage of fashion, theatre, music, circus performance, and dance. Each year, The Edwardian Ball presents a featured Edward Gorey tale in an original stage performance. This year’s event takes a unique turn, with Edwardian founders Rosin Coven teaming up with longtime collaborators Dark Garden Corsetry in a presentation of Gorey’s ridiculous tale, “The Stupid Joke.” Expect anything but stupidity as these masters of their craft collaborate in an unforgettable tale of a poorly planned joke gone incredibly wrong…

And in the spirit of celebrating all things Edward Gorey, Ball co-hosts The Vau de Vire Society present a series of vignettes throughout the evening paying homage to the most controversial works of the (in)famous illustrator…guaranteed to pop corsets and ruffle coat-tails!

If you prefer (as Edward Gorey did) to enjoy your frissons from the comfort of your own sofa,

check out his drawings and books for sale at Pomegranate;
read about his theatrical adventures, illustrated with little-known drawings, photos, film clips, and music, in CJ Verburg’s multimedia memoir Edward Gorey On Stage;
solve a murder with anagrammatic sleuth Edgar Rowdey in CJ Verburg’s Cape Cod mystery Croaked.

Sisters in Crime + Mystery Writers of America 12/12 Holiday Party

Posted on December 10, 2015 by CJ Verburg

ALL MYSTERY LOVERS WELCOME
to share some holiday cheer this Saturday afternoon —

DISCOVER a new favorite author / book / series

MEET your favorite (or soon-to-be-favorite) mystery writer

ENJOY good company, food & drink, and a whole store full of mystery, crime, sci-fi & fantasy books (plus a cool cafe)

EVERYONE’S INVITED
2-5 PM Sunday, Dec. 12
Borderlands Books and Cafe
866 Valencia St.
San Francisco CA 94110 USA
415 824-8203
888 893-4008
http://www.borderlands-books.com

BART and Muni accessible

Forgotten Inventor of Nature: the Amazing Alexander von Humboldt

Posted on December 3, 2015December 3, 2015 by CJ Verburg

In a new mini-review in Public Books, author and scholar Bettyann Holtzmann Kevles alerts us to a scientific genius, overlooked in 21st-century America, who 200 years ago was exploring the world and 150 years ago was honored all around it. Alexander von Humboldt influenced Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and John Muir, among others. A new biography by Andrea Wulf recommends we un-forget him.

In 1869 the centennial of Alexander von Humboldt’s birth was celebrated around the world, including in New York City, where bands and speakers gathered in Central Park to honor his legacy. He was hailed as the most brilliant explorer since Alexander the Great, a scientist equal in stature to Charles Darwin, and a genius who alerted the world to how humanity was destroying the environment. In the century and a half since, Humboldt’s star has dimmed, especially in the English-speaking world. In our era of climate change, when international science and the institutions of global governance present the only hope for addressing the crisis, Humboldt’s scientific and prophetic legacy deserves revival and reevaluation.

Andrea Wulf’s masterful The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World represents the best of the handful of English language books that have appeared in the last decade focused on Humboldt and his science. Gerard Helferich’s Humboldt’s Cosmos and Aaron Sachs’s The Humboldt Current brought the explorer back into the light, but Wulf’s superb biography reaches beyond Humboldt’s remarkable life to encompass his adventures as the first ecological internationalist.