Snow in Athens and Atlanta, 2014: still on the grid

(Athens, GA, January 10 2011)

Here in the south people don't take to snow particularly well. That's why we live where we do, even northern transplants like myself (I've lived in Georgia since 1976). When friends from Oxford, Mississippi report snow in Faulkner country, that's real weather news. 

In the metro areas of Atlanta, two inches of snow and roads topped with black ice are reason enough for days of Atlanta TV station instilled panic (with advertising breaks). Each southern snow emergency is different, according to when people begin to panic: when the snow hit in mid-afternoon, on a workday, the blame game began early. The traffic pile-up was either GDOTs fault, or the governor's, or whoever-is-in-charge-of-the-road salt.  

In cold and snowy reality, on radio talk shows the southern folk who like to picture themselves as hardy and self-sufficient Dan'l Boones weren't prepared for the eventuality .... of not getting home in time for dinner. Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed found himself on the Today show pointing out the video that was showing more that 2,000 stranded vehicles (and many drivers) on the interstates was from outside the city limits -- a case of the snowstorm's political NIMBY effect. Later, Governor Deal bit the bullet and accepted partial blame for the lack of preparation, in hopes the backlash wouldn't bite into his re-election hopes next fall.

To be fair, the interstates were indeed a mess, without much surface preparation, and school kids spent the night in buses or on gym floors. Some motorists actually braved WALKING in the cold and snow, which must have been a novel experience. And the miles and miles of the interstates' gently-sloping roadbeds created a roller coaster for motorists, creating real gridlock of seemingly unending endurance. 

Still: for two days and counting I have yet to hear anyone admit they shoulda stayed home on Tuesday, or made any alternate plans for "a light dusting and more south of the city." In 1981 the Snowjam that ground the city to a halt for days -- stranded suburban motorists, downtown commuters, and included massive power loss throughout the city -- was a truly unexpected event that, as it happened, struck on a workday afternoon. By 5 o'clock that afternoon, people bedded down in the Trust Company Bank lobby in Five Points with no hope of getting home.

Apparently every generation of middle-managers and junior executives and SUV moms has to find out for itself what a southern snowfall can bring. 


Until the lights go out in Athens due to snow, I'm sucking on the power grid with no pretense of hardihood or self-sufficiency except the ability to read a book until the light fails, and with tuna-fish sandwiches to sustain me. After that, there's a leftover long winter's nap from the holiday season around here somewhere. There's beer in the fridge for later. I think I'll put "A Charlie Brown Christmas" back on the box for a spin and enjoy warm thoughts, until the temperature (projected: mid-50s today) melts the last of the snow.

Burroughs: "Art, like R.E.M. sleep, is a biological necessity"

“There is nothing more provocative than minding your own business.” 

― William S. Burroughs, The Place of Dead Roads

Jed Birmingham's Reality Studio is a ever-deepening vault of William Burroughs-related literature and images. It would be unfair to classify such collected scholarship for fans exclusively, but at this date the experience is as close to a trip to Burroughs' creative bunker as the internet allows. The resulting maze of Burroughsian idea and theory, control and abandon, fact and conspiracy is not for the faint-hearted or the casual browser. 

Here by way of introduction to his interview with WSB, William Weiss sketches the 70-year-old author at the time of The Place of Dead Roads (1984). Guns, films, CIA plots, time and space, and the proper use of mace are all under discussion: "Nothing worse than a weapon that fizzles.”

The full interview, uncollected from The Cleveland Edition and published 1984, is posted here with photos taken at the interview by Abe Frajndlich. Here's Weiss' original excerpted introduction.



William Burroughs smokes Players and manipulates them with a hand that is thin and pale and missing the last terrible joint of the fifth digit. We’re drinking coffee and talking and eating almond pastries around a glass-topped table in a room full of rich, soft couches, objets d’art, books… sun’s in the morning window. His presence is attentive and genuine, though his eyes sometimes sweep about furtively in response to questioning. When he wants to emphasize a point, the orbs fix and stare into you, searching: “Do you understand, dear?”

He is 70. In a league with Swift, Orwell, Huxley. I feel like Sweet Pea applying for a sorceror’s apprentice vacancy.

In 1977 he taught a class in screenplay writing at the Naropa Institute, a Buddhist college in Boulder, Colorado. He taught us all he dared of time, synchronicity and carefully measured self-confession — handfuls of that “unutterable earth.” “Time is that which ends” or “Art, like REM sleep, is a biological necessity” or “The only thing worse than a cop lover is a cop hater” and so on and so on, sitting there, unfathomable, an alien blitzkrieg.

But now we talk about his work with Laurie Anderson on her haunting Mister Heartbreak album… about .357 magnums and 9mm handguns… about the possibility of Soviet missile bases being built on the border if the U.S. abandons Central America… soon we’re into crossbows and machetes… I suggest that a sabre is the ideal weapon for slashing… he reminds me when using mace to be sure of proper pressurization and always spray directly in the face. “Nothing worse than a weapon that fizzles,” he drawls.

It’s his latest book, The Place of Dead Roads, that I’m after, a strange and wonderful novel whose protagonist — Kim Carsons — journeys through time and space exploring possible avenues of mutation and shooting it out with the shits of this planet, who want to keep the Great Illusion rigged for their own diabolical insect purposes. As a western, Roads is tough and dusty, and Kim gunfights his way into your heart. As satire, it is a well-conceived stage where many of Burroughs’ most characteristic reproaches of Western Civilization achieve formidable delirium hilarity.  ....

Ginsberg at Stonewall, June 1969: "defend the fairies!"

"We are the Stonewall girls

We wear our hair in curls

We show our pubic hair ...

we wear our dungarees

above our nelly knees!"

(Chant at Stonewall, June 1969)

The passage of legislation permitting same-sex marriage is in a slow-motion, stately procession -- state by state the national (and legal) mood is changing, even as the road ahead still seems a long one. For those of a particular and increasing age, the Stonewall Inn riots, in New York's West Village, June 27-28, 1969 seems an improbably long time ago. 

The police who harassed the bar crowd that gathered to observe the memory of Judy Garland (she had died on the 22nd and a memorial service held on the 26th) were met by Stonewall patrons who refused to show I.D. one more time, including Marsha P. Johnson, a transgender activist. What happened afterward has been called by many names -- a riot, an uprising, a beginning -- but it began, as many historical events do, at a point when the ideas of the past collide with the idea of a future.

Allen Ginsberg, never one to miss the action of whatever kind, was eventually drawn to The Stonewall Inn to make the scene. As it was reported in Lucien K Truscott IV’s controversial Village Voice account:

“... Allen Ginsberg and Taylor Mead walked by to see what was happening and were filled in on the previous evening’s activities by some of the gay activists. 'Gay power. Isn’t that great!' Allen said. 'We’re one of the largest minorities in the country –- 10 percent, you know. It’s about time we did something to assert ourselves.'

Ginsberg expressed a desire to visit the Stonewall ('You know, I've never been in there') and ambled on down the street, flashing peace signs and helloing the TPF. It was a relief and a kind of a joy to see him on the street. He lent an extra umbrella of serenity to the scene with his laughter and quiet commentary on consciousness, 'gay power' as a new movement, and the various implications of what had happened.

I followed him into the Stonewall where rock music blared from speakers all around a room that might have come from a Hollywood set of a gay bar. He was immediately bouncing and dancing wherever he moved.

He left, and I walked east with him. Along the way he described how things used to be. 'You know, the guys there were so beautiful –- they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago.' It was the first time I had heard that crowd described as beautiful.

Outside the Stonewall Inn, June 27-28, 1969

We reached Cooper Square, and as Ginsberg turned to head toward home, he waved and yelled 'Defend the fairies!' and bounced on across the square. He enjoyed the prospect of 'gay power' and is probably working on a manifesto for the movement right now. Watch out. The liberation is underway.

As David Carter has pointed out: 'Ginsberg's characterization of the change that the Stonewall Uprising had brought about was so trenchant that when the early gay activist Allen Younginterviewed (him) for the literary magazine, Gay Sunshine, the only question that (he) asked him about Stonewall was the circumstances behind Allen's statement.' Allen's reply:

'I wasn't there at the riot. I heard about it, and I went down the next night to the Stonewall to show the colors. A crowd was there, and the place was open. So I said, the best thing I can do is go in; the worst that can happen is I'll calm the scene. They're not going to attack them while I'm there. I"ll just start a big "Om". I didn't relate to the violent part. The trashing part I thought was bitchy, unnecessary, hysterical. But, on the other hand, there was this image that everybody wanted to make that they could beat up the police, which apparently they managed to do. It was so funny as an image that it was hard to disapprove of, even though it involved a little violence'." ...

Whatever happens in the national discussion of same-sex marriage it appears the conservative tactic of state-by-state challenge is failing (in 2011 one opponent called the law's passage in New York state a victory of "the last of the low-hanging fruit." Currently same-sex marriage has been ratified in 17 states and the District of Columbia), but more arcane lawsuits and loud accusations of Supreme Court politics are sure to follow.

It would be interesting to see what Ginsberg and Harry Hay of the Mattachine Society would say regarding the sweeping momentum of same-sex marriage legislation, its challenges and legal effects. It will be a different world to imagine that what was once too scandalous to speak openly of in a court of law will be the basis of the court's august deliberations about the very meaning of marriage as the lawsuits unfold.

(1969 Stonewall photo from the Columbia University archives)