Alone On A Limb: September 2018

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

Gleaning Facebook: One Table

Another pic from the One Table event.

Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Gleaning Facebook: Pete & John

Look what was in the afternoon mail! It’s John McCutcheon’s latest album and a t-shirt. John and I are about the same age and each of us, in our teens, discovered a wonderful, kind, talented, controversial, sometimes wildly mistaken but always honest, American patriot and national treasure — Pete Seeger. The album is chocked full of John’s interpretation of some of the soundtrack of my youth. The t-shirt shows the skin of Pete’s banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender”

As a high-schooler I became a card-carrying member of the Columbia Record Club. As such I was able to order, for one cent as I recall, twelve LPs. Of course I was then committed to paying bout six dollars a month for the rest of the century or so. How I loved those albums… the Kingston Trio, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Peter Paul & Mary, the Limeliters, and more. Pete Seeger’s We Shall Overcome album was one of them. The title song, and "Guantanamera" (Oh! I have loved that song for more than fifty years.) "Little Boxes", "Oh, Freedom", ...

I sit in my easy chair, tapping at this keyboard, eyes blurred by moisture as “Sailing Down My Golden River” fills the room.

If you ever get a chance to hear John in concert, don’t miss it. In less than a month now Sheila and I will hear some of these songs again. John will be one of the featured storytellers at the National Storytelling Festival the first weekend in October. Wouldn’t miss it.

I had forgotten Sheila had bought this for me as a birthday present (in March!) before its release. It has finally been released!

Saturday, September 15, 2018

Gleaning Facebook: The Doorbell

This is the doorbell that has been attached above our front door since we bought this house in 1993. I have been curious about it and remember showing it to Harold Parker one time. He talked about coming back to take a closer look to see if we could get it working again. But we never got around to it, and Harold is now gone. The connections between the bell and the mechanical ringer were gone but by pushing and pulling the metal tab on the bottom (from a ladder) it rang loudly. Even under a few layers of paint the ghost circle of the ringer is visible on the door frame outside, and an actual hole that must have once held a pulley to guide a pull chain of some sort is on the inside doorframe.

Yesterday I took it down, took it apart and cleaned it. I tried to find a match to it on the net. The closest I could find for this type of mechanical bell was from 1865. Our house was built in 1869, so perhaps the bell is original to the days of Daniel Mitchell.

Friday, September 14, 2018

Gleaning Facebook: Talmadge Bridge

There is talk of renaming the Talmadge Memorial Bridge in Savannah. Even for his day, its namesake, Gene Talmadge, was a pretty blatant racist. Here are three pencils he used as campaign items during World War Two that I purchased at an antique shop in Kennesaw in the seventies.More Talmadge items from my collection.

These three pencils have no erasers. Instead, on the eraser ends of these wartime political items these words are printed:

"RUBBER

once used for

erasers, now

used to

'Rub Out'

JAPS!"

"LET'S KEEP

TALMADGE FOR GOVERNOR

Vote For 'GENE'

September 9th

Fulton County Headquarters • 508 Ansley Hotel

UNION MADE"

Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Gleaning Facebook: Broadside's writers

It was stressful.

Money was awfully tight for those years. 

We only lasted a little over two years, which was about a year and a half longer than wiser folks might have. 

But we accomplished some good during those two years. 

When there was empty ad space in Broadside we promoted ourselves there. The pictured writers are three of my heroes.

From right to left: 

Tim Poor the young reporter at Broadside who went on to a long career at the St. Louis Dispatch as a reporter, Washington corespondent, and foreign editor and then to Washington University as publications editor.

Steve Craw whose dogged, principled, thorough reporting brought Broadside some of its biggest scoops and important investigative reports. 

Sheila Shaw, a wonderful writer, editor, and human being. She went on to work in public relations at Floyd College (now Georgia Highlands) and in publications and marketing for Universal Tax Systems (later CCH). Oh yeah, she is also a fabulous mother to my two beloved daughters, grandmother to my cherished granddaughter, and the love of my life.