The Salem Orientalist Society

Three things that have happened lately:
1. Yesterday, I went up to New York on the Chinatown Bus, spent what time I had looking for cheap shoes in Chinatown and visiting the Whitney. Then, I headed out to Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, built in 1849, where Henry Ward Beecher peached back in the day (I had to put aside my politics to enjoy it, but that's so often the case up North...) and where the BBC was filming a television program (programme, I suppose...) about the history of the song "Amazing Grace." We sang a couple versions a whole bunch of times while they shot us from one angle and then another, and it was actually kind of fun. Less fun was later when a few of us were on our way to a Chinese restaurant and a couple of the perky young Boston/Amherst people (who all needs to be learned a thing or two) started singing as we walked down the street. I slowed up and walked just far enough behind to avoid (I hoped) being associated, and, serendipitously, to avoid a couple of snowballs (well deserved)... I took the 11:00 PM bus home so I could be at work in the morning. And, incidentally, there was a man there by the name of Rick Wakeman who was apparently once or is possibly still a member of the band Yes. I didn't know this, mind you, until after we had left, and found it rather amusing that old guy with long hair who introduced us was someone I've heard before a time or two. So, anyway, if anybody's going to be in Britain the week before Easter, watch for me on BBC1.

2. A week ago tomorrow, I went down to Richmond and was hoping to make it to Petersburg before hand, but didn't have quite enough time due to bad traffic, so I stopped instead at the Stonewall Jackson Shrine in Guinea Station. I had been told by someone who thought that they knew what they were talking about that the arm that was amputated shortly before his death was preserved there, so it was to my general disappointment that I discovered that the shrine is just the building in which he died, the 1824 farm office pictured below. The arm was actually buried around about the time he died, though not with his body. The shrine was a nice place, though, apparently a distant outpost of the Chancellorsville Battlefield Park that's only open on weekends, and the young lady from the Parks service seemed glad to have someone to give the tour to when I arrived. Back when I was in junior high school, every time I got to choose the topic to write a report on, I picked Confederate generals - I didn't ever get around to Stonewall Jackson, though.




















3. By far the most important: The other morning, I got up with the name "Roscoe Conkling" inexplicably in mind. I decided it must be somebody from the first part of the century before last, since I've been doing a lot of reading in that area of late, and then forgot about it. When I started thinking about Roscoe Conkling again at lunch time, I looked him up, and was perplexed to find that he was a senator from New York, did what he's remembered for after the Civil War, and, so far as I could tell, is unlikely to have come up in anything that I've read since I was taking American history in high school.
Later that evening, I went up to Baltimore to see a man who describes himself as "New York City's angriest yodeling banjo player." Apart from more than living up to his moniker, he did a lot of songs with cloying nostalgia for things like Coney Island in 1903, which I thought were terrific, and he closed with one ruing the day that movies started talking, whose refrain lamented the loss of Buster Keaton. One of the lines in that song alluded to Fatty Arbuckle, which made me smile as it's been years since I've had occasion to think of him.
First thing I did when I got home was to look on the internet for a picture of Fatty Arbuckle throwing a pie, and I wish I could express the awful dread that took me as I read on the first page I came to that Fatty Arbuckle's real name was ROSCOE CONKLING Arbuckle. I'm not sure what else to say about this incident apart from the obvious fact that my life will never be the same. Here's Fatty helping himself to some money. Never did find one with him throwing a pie.





















Yours but not the same,
W. Tiger Purple

In a mostly unrelated matter, they've been getting me to play the piano for one of the local Spanish speaking wards at their choir practice. Given that I know essentially no Spanish and that the director is far from proficient in English, things run a little weirdly. At one practice, she broke down and started crying and being obviously very disappointed at how things were going, and from her painfully long invective that elicited defensive and curt responses from more than one of the choir members, the only thing that I was certain I had understood was that she had spent upwards of eighty dollars to have her hair highlighted. Fortunately, though, someone went and fetched the bishop, who said lots of serious but calm things, and after some hugging and sighing, everything was more or less back to normal, albeit with runny makeup. A woman from El Salvador who might be 4 foot seven in six inch heels asked me on my way out if I understand Spanish, and, relieved at my negative response, suggested that I was lucky, an assertion with which I was only half inclined to concur. Things are much better lately, however, as the worst I have to endure is being asked at some time or other by every single person with whom I attempt to converse whether I have a girlfriend, and then being told that my rakish smirk and shrug of the shoulders are insufficient explanation as to why not.

Here's a picture of me with my new haircut: