Little Match Girl

Jean Renoir's.

And my own.

Happy 9th Birthday

to the best daughter in the world!

The Conspirators

The names of those who plotted, directly or indirectly, the murder of John F. Kennedy; and the names of those with foreknowledge of the plot. (Not inclusive.)

    Allen Dulles

    James Jesus Angleton

    William Harvey

    Lee Oswald

    David Atlee Phillips

    David Morales

    Ann Egerter

    Richard Helms

    Desmond FitzGerald

    McGeorge Bundy

    Robert Maheu

    Lawrence Houston

    Frank Wisner

    Ferenc Nagy

    William Pawley

    Tracy Barnes

    Bill Bright

    Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge

    Ambassador Thomas Mann

    Thomas Karamessines

    Richard Cain

    Colonel Boris Pash

    J.C. King

    Thomas Clines

    I. Irving Davidson

    Lt. Lucien Conien

    Carl Jenkins

    General Lyman Lemnizter

    George Joannides

    Sergeant Daniel Groth

    E. Howard Hunt

    Sheffield Edwards

    General Thomas Power

    Louis Bloomfield

    Dr. Sidney Gottlieb

    Hal Hendrix

    Floyd Boring

    Sam Halpern

    Edward Lansdale

    Lt. Col. George Whitmeyer

    Sergio Arcacha Smith

    Emilio Santana

    Carlos Quiroga

    William Sullivan

    Ruth Paine

    Henry Luce

    Michael Paine

    Cord Meyer

    Eddie Bayo

    Anne Goodpasture

    Forrest Sorrels

    John Rosselli

    Eladio del Valle

    Frank Sturgis

    Mitch WerBell III

    Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell

    Richard Case Nagell

    General Lucius Clay

    Richard Bissell

    Win Scott

    Felix Rodgriguez

    Elmer Moore

    Jane Roman

    Claire Booth Luce

    John Martino

    Rip Robertson

    Jack Ruby

    Thomas Eli Davis III

    Emory Roberts

    Jack Crichton

    General Curtis Lemay

    General Charles Cabell

    Clint Murchison

    Charles Willoughby

    David Ferrie

    Guy Banister

    Ted Shackley

    Cliff Carter

    Lyndon Johnson

Nightmare on Elm Street

The best and most stylish documentary yet on Dallas (like Errol Morris with a purpose): Terrence Raymond's Evidence of Revision.

Someone Would Have Talked

Indeed.

Lost

What was, that day, per Oliver Stone.

Something Has Happened in the Motorcade

The best and most complete compilation I know following the trip from Dallas Love Field to Parkland Memorial Hospital, made from all known photographs and home movies.

Welcome

Dallasites celebrate Thanksgiving, 1963.

Sugar

The #1 song of '63, featuring a person who embodies that magical year as well as anybody.

Light

The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty is signed.

Not Coming to Town

Not for six more months anyway. . .

But Jib-Jab put Saya, me, and a couple other chuckleheads to work getting ready.

Twift Shoeblade

Mouse on Mars, Autoditacker, (1997)

Just Say No

The week of April 15th, my 8-year-old 3rd-grader Saya will be forced by the munchkin leader of Bloombergistan to take a three-day English test, followed by a three-day math test the week of 4/22 – the preparation for both having dominated her classroom for most of 2013, clearing time away from art, science, history, games, and music. Saya's a pretty good student, getting mostly As and Bs (or 4s and 3s as they mark it these days), while not taking anything too seriously. If she were to fail either of these city-enforced tests (score notices won’t come in until the last week of the school year, making summer plans impossible), she’ll be made to take 8-weeks of summer school in order to repeat the tests in late-August. If she fails either test again, she’ll have to repeat the 3rd grade.

Flunk.

I’ve seen sample versions of both tests, and while the math part seems pretty honest, the reading exam stunned me. Not only did it scan as something near junior-high level (sorry, middle-school), I’d bet two-thirds of American adults would fail it. In the sample, the first story to be analyzed is Leo Tolstoy’s “The Gray Hare”: a hare in winter-time plays with his companions, searches for food, and watches the sad people. The last paragraph:

The dawn was glimmering in the east; the stars grew less, and the frost vapours rose more densely from the earth. In the near-by village the women got up, and went to fetch water; the peasants brought the feed from the barn; the children shouted and cried. There were still more carts going down the road, and the peasants talked aloud to each other. The hare leaped across the road, went up to his old lair, picked out a high place, dug away the snow, lay with his back in his new lair, dropped his ears on his back, and fell asleep with open eyes.

The questions:

-- In detail, describe the hare.

-- Why does the hare keep moving through the countryside?
 
-- What is the hare's goal for the day? Does he reach his goal?

-- How does the author use the word sugar?

This is not Count Tolstoy writing for his children.

There’s a fight-back beginning. (Sadly not in P.S. 139’s district). A growing revolt against the expanding use of standardized tests to evaluate students, teachers, schools, districts and states – at all grade-levels. Parents have started refusing to allow their children to take the exams. School boards have approved resolutions calling for an end to test-based accountability systems. Hundreds-of-thousands of people have signed a national resolution protesting high-stakes tests. Superintendents have spoken out, and so have teachers. This corporatized “No Child Left Behind” end-all, be-all stranglehold is a perversion of what a child’s education should be.

Teachers at Garfield High School in Seattle have banded together to boycott mandated tests called The Measures of Academic Progress – an action that’s serving as a flashpoint in the growing revolt. A video by Storyline Research & Productions about the moment it all started at Garfield High, and the problems with The Measures of Academic Progress – and all standardized tests, in school or out:

The Devils

Sulphur: We're being suffocated by it. President Chavez calls out the Texas Cracker Devil and the United States in an astonishing 2006 UN speech, not knowing (none of us did) how much more effective and slicker a devil would be Bush's successor.

Imperishable

How natural the shit-pimpers in downtown Mannahatta reached their highest numerical point on the day Hugo Chavez left us. He was the greatest and most human leader of our young century, a luminous giant among the pygmy Bush/Obama miasma. Chavez burned with communion, courage, joy, humor, compassion, sorrow, love of the arts, remembrance, true justice and -- perhaps most important of all -- HONESTY; while being the greatest Christian leader of his time: Christian in fact, in deed, in thought -- in passionate opposition to the vampires and their minions who have so degraded that term. He could have used his guts, strategic brilliance and cunning to become just another vampire, pimp, or baboon. Instead he chose to be a protector of those needing protection, blessing us with the grace of his deep sympathy and understanding of the powerless, the weak, the sad.

Those gloating tonight will immediately become mere worm food once dead. In his passing, Hugo Chavez becomes an imperishable Light of the World.

Once more, we turn to Stone. . . .

A beautiful tribute from Andre Vltchek.

50 @ 50

Atlantic Magazine with a spread of photos from the year of miracles, and crucifixions.

Let There Be Neon