Easter Hiatus

I'll be sailing across the Atlantic shortly, tracing a route from the Keys to the Barbary Shore.  This will take awhile and may result in folly.  It's good to be alive, isn't it?

Anyway, we'll speak of it upon our return in about three weeks.

An Update and Continuing Humble Request

As we noted last week, The Coracle is building electric guitars for use by schools and other institutions that no longer have the wherewithal to support music programs, or for those young people whose parents haven't the discretionary income to purchase an overpriced store guitar for their offspring. 

We have arranged for guitars to be built and given to two state school districts, a school on the Navajo reservation, and a school in Kenya.  Our projected goal is 200 guitars.

Thus far, we have received enough in donations immediately to begin work on five guitars.  We hope the first, The Jeanne Edition [she knows why it's named that], will be ready to present to a student at the end-of-year ceremonies at a local school.

To the right, you will see a button marked as such:

Even a few stray dollars will get us further towards our goal and, importantly, prevent the vagaries of our economy from robbing young musicians of a chance to participate and excel.

A Pungent Question, as Seen Online

When 50 Muslims were murdered at the Mosque in New Zealand, London Mayor Sadiq Khan instantly ordered extra policing to protect mosques in London
After 300 Christians are murdered in Sri Lanka, what additional policing resources has he made available to protect London's Churches?

— David Vance (@DVATW) April 23, 2019

Also, bub, I understand from our political elites, social justice knights, and thought leaders that they were, in fact, "Easter worshippers".  [The rare spelling of "worshippers", which is usually spelled "worshipers" in American English, was shared by all of those who used the phrase.  It was almost as if they were all copying from the same text.  Weird, huh?]

The Environmental Scolds Can't Go After Cows Anymore

Study Clarifies U.S. Beef's Resource Use and Greenhouse Gas Emissions

For people who claim to love science, they certainly have difficulty accurately reading scientific reports.

No, WaPo. It's Not Just the "Far Right" Who Care About This.

Analysis: Sri Lanka church bombings stoke far-right anger in the West https://t.co/seWuJwgzwG

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) April 22, 2019

As it is something that affects all of us who are Easter worshipers Christians, it is beyond the tedious concerns of American politics.

As Seen Online

Imagine hearing about terrorist attacks killing ~300 people & realizing you can’t simply express sympathy for the victims because:
1. Identifying their beliefs upsets your base
2. Use of bombs means you can’t pivot to gun control
3. You’ve demonized expressing thoughts & prayers

— Jon Sanders (@jonpsanders) April 22, 2019

Apparently, the Word of the Day is "Easter Worshippers", Rather Than Christians

Click to Enlarge

Honestly, I've never heard Christians described as those who worship Easter.  We worship Christ.  Is it so hard for politicians to say "Christians"?

Easter Sunday Wave

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ’s compassion to the world;
Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which He is to bless others now.
- Teresa of Avila

O God, who for our redemption gave your only-begotten Son to the death of the cross, and by his glorious resurrection delivered us from the power of our enemy: Grant us so to die daily to sin, that we may evermore live with him in the joy of his resurrection; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Must See

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Play It Loud: Instruments of Rock & Roll

Holy Saturday Wave

New advent of the love of Christ,
Shall we again refuse You,
Till in the night of hate and war
We perish as we lose You?

From old unfaith our souls release
To seek the kingdom of Your peace
By which alone we choose You.

O wounded hands of Jesus, build
In us Your new creation;
Our pride is dust, our vaunt is stilled,
We wait Your revelation.

O Love that triumphs over loss,
We bring our hearts before Your cross;
Come, finish Your salvation.

O God, Creator of heaven and earth: Grant that, as the crucified body of your dear Son was laid in the tomb and rested on this holy Sabbath, so we may await with him the coming of the third day, and rise with him to newness of life; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Good Friday Wave

Almighty God, we pray you graciously to behold this your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was willing to be betrayed, and given into the hands of sinners, and to suffer death upon the cross; who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Carroll Shelby

I've always been asked, 'What is my favorite car?' and I've always said 'The next one.'

Once, on Ohio Route 322 in the rural part of the state east of Cleveland, when the flat two-lane blacktop gave me almost three miles of visibility, seeing no cars in front of or behind me, and knowing that none of the towns along that stretch had police departments, I scared myself silly getting that beast in the photo above up to 125 miles per hour with a simple tap on the accelerator.  Man, it was great.  I did, however, finally have to stop and turn around to help an Amish guy by the roadside pick up the cheese wheels and wedges that my draft had sucked off his farm stand. 

His first statement was, "Is that a Cobra?"

Maybe it was because I was exposed to it at an impressionable age, and with a couple of wrenches in my hands, but I've always thought that one of the world's great works of art is the carbureted V8 Cobra engine.  If form follows function in architecture and graphic arts, then surely this automobile engine, the pure product of mid-century American engineering, deserves a place in a museum.  [There actually is a Ford V8 museum in Auburn, Indiana.]

It has certainly captured the imagination of many different types of men and women through the years.  Some have been actual engineers, some garage or shade tree mechanics, weekend hobbyists, farmers with something rusty and discarded in the corner of a barn, Southern California hot rodders, or a 20-year-old in Ohio who has just purchased a 1969 Ford Torino GT with the 390 c.u. Cobra package from a neighbor for $100.  This writer even knows a professional poet who has about a dozen cannibalized V8's scattered about his garage in various conditions, all waiting eventually to be consolidated and fitted into a 1932 Ford pickup truck.  Whatever their background, they're all motorheads; and motorheads love V8's.

There is a bit of an "attitude" about a Cobra V8, too, that's rather hard to describe unless you take into account the guy who managed to make a simple auto engine an international corporate statement and the rallying point for a kind of asphalt patriotism. 

Imagine, if you will, a collection of Detroit auto executives in the 1960's gathered in a top floor office: Brooks Brothers sack suits, horn-rimmed glasses, skinny ties, button-down shirts, the full Mad Men look.  At least one has a pocket protector.  Their boss, Henry Ford II, and his hatchet man, Lee Iaccoca, have just given them a directive to build an American car that can compete with the best that Europe has to offer in both the showroom and the race track.

As the last innovation of these men was the Ford Edsel, the most unpopular car in U.S. automotive history, the room is rather glum.  Then in walks a tall, rangy, drawling Texan wearing a suede, western-style sport coat with no tie.  He looks around the room for the whisky decanter, rests his cowboy boot-shod feet on the nearest side table, and tells "the fellers" that he is "fixin'" to build them a car like no other.

I'm sure they thought he was either some kind of turbo-powered savior or a complete lunatic.  In reality, Carroll Shelby was a little of both.

He had done a number of things in the automotive world, mainly selling cars, building cars, repairing cars, improving cars, and racing cars.  Perhaps you will notice the leitmotif in his activities?  Born in a small town in Texas in 1923 and having spent his childhood in bed with a heart ailment, the teenage Shelby was told by doctors that he had "outgrown" his malady [ah, early century medicine] and thus indulged his interest in machines by attending the Georgia Institute of Technology [whose president at the time was my wife's grandfather, by the way].  Unfortunately, Shelby's academic career was interrupted by WWII.

After the war, during which he served as a sergeant in the air corps, he sought to recapture the thrill of aerial derring-do by entering as an amateur in auto races, performing so well that he became semi-professional and then fully professional, driving for several of the leading teams of the 1950's in competitions as significant as the Le Mans 24 Hour race, which he won in 1959 driving for Aston-Martin.  During the race he came to admire the sturdiness and style of the British AC automobiles against which he competed.  So much so, that when he retired from racing at the end of that year, Shelby received the license to sell AC autos in the USA as part of his new company, Shelby-American.

Even snazzier than James Bond's Aston-Martin.

There was just one problem, though.  Shelby thought that the 2-liter engine that AC installed in its cars resembled more a sewing machine than a high performance motor, so he replaced it by fitting, barely, a robust, bulletproof Ford V8 under the hood.  The Shelby Cobra, as it came to be known, would become the hottest and most desired high performance automobile in the United States, outselling similarly priced models from Ferrari, Porsche, and Mercedes. 

Not to mention making it the car of this writer's dreams

The mid-'60's were a wonderful time for flexing on the world stage the competitive muscles of American manufacturing.  For some time, Henry Ford II had been annoyed at the perceived superiority of the European racing marques, knowing that American cars could be faster and more reliable than anything produced on the continent.  The only way to prove that was to go to Europe and roundly defeat the European racers on their home ground.  In Carroll Shelby, Le Mans victor and car innovator, he found the perfect champion to lead this effort.

Shelby was hired by Ford to take their newest car, a Ford Falcon with a jazzed body, known at that time as "the car for secretaries", and turn it into a street and race track powerhouse.  This new car, eventually labeled the "Mustang", would prove to be as popular with young men as with secretaries, and the Shelby version, the GT350, would become the stuff of which dreams are made.

The Ford Motor Company took this...



And, keeping the same chassis and engine, put a new body on it to make this:

Otherwise, it was the same car.  Not the same price, of course.

This appalled Shelby, so he took the Mustang and made this:

To the naked eye it looks like any other Mustang of the mid-'60's, but motorheads know that the back seat is missing [Who needs that?], the Falcon engine was replaced with a 289 cubic inch V8 racing engine, and, for good measure, big sedan suspension, an overhead camshaft, aluminum headers, and a large barrel carburetor were added.  Oh, and a chrome fire extinguisher mounted to the drive train hump, because you never know, especially when it's putting out 225 horsepower.  

It was almost impossible to drive, rather uncomfortable, and everyone wanted one. [In fact, two are currently listed for sale by Hemmings' Motor News for $140,000.]   While it was "street legal", with minor modifications it could handily compete on the track. 

And that was just the street car.  In order to show the Europeans who was boss, Shelby designed for Ford what was probably the best sports prototype racing machine of its era.  Designated the GT40, it fulfilled Henry Ford II's desire to prove American cars the best regardless of where, when, and in what conditions.

The GT40 at rest.

And at work.

To give the novice an idea of how dominant Ford became, and how much it changed the world of European road racing, from 1923 until 1965, Italian, German, British, and French cars won the 24 Hours of Le Mans each year, with Porsche, Ferrari, and Jaguar the teams with the most victories.  From 1966 to 1969, the Ford factory team won every race, with Fords also finishing to either place or show in the same races.

By 1970, Henry Ford II had proved his point, and anyone with even a casual interest or knowledge in automobiles knew that the Cobra trademark stood for speed, victory, torque, and good old-fashioned American attitude.  Seriously, what could be better than that?

Carroll Shelby would move on to work with Chrysler-Plymouth when Lee Iacocca took over that company in the 1980's, producing Shelby Cobra versions of the Dodge Viper, Charger, Daytona, and lesser models.  He would also make his own line of Shelby Cobra cars, based on existing models but serving the motorheads everything they could want in a car that was barely legal to drive in suburban America.  In 2003, he would return to Ford and produce 21st century versions of the Shelby Mustang and a street model based on the GT40.  He would also make a fortune with his own...chili sauce.

He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1991, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1992, and the SCCA Hall of Fame posthumously in 2013.  Shelby would die at the age of 89 in 2012, leaving a remarkable legacy in auto craft and racing engineering, reminding us of the glory days before cars looked like jelly beans stuffed with unnecessary electronics.

There are many, many books about Shelby, the Cobra lineage, and Ford's dominance in all forms of racing in the 1960's.  If I were to suggest one, it would be Go Like Hell, which chronicles the battle between Enzo Ferrari and Henry Ford II in endurance racing; a book that prominently features Shelby and his contributions.  There is also an authorized biography entitled [What else?] Carroll Shelby.

If that's not enough, his chili sauce is tasty and more popular than ever and, if you're ever in Las Vegas, you can visit the Carroll Shelby Museum just outside the gates of the Vegas Speedway.







That's Been Happening for a Couple of Millennia Now

Punched priest believes cross around his neck 'Enraged' suspect

When wearing clericals in public, brothers and sisters, practice situational awareness.  Also, sprays, blades, and collapsible batons are worth having on your person.

Maundy Thursday Wave

"You can't change the shape of a wave; you can only ride it.  So, choose your wave and surf it."

Almighty Father, whose dear Son, on the night before he suffered, instituted the Sacrament of his Body and Blood: Mercifully grant that we may receive it thankfully in remembrance of Jesus Christ our Lord, who in these holy mysteries gives us a pledge of eternal life; and who now lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Thursday's Place: Cornelia Street Cafe

The Cornelia Street Cafe

Greenwich Village, NYC

The quintessential place of verse and song, along with free espresso refills guaranteed to keep you going for 36 hours while on a very tight budget.

The Cafe was on my original lists of places to include on these Thursday musings, written as they are as a writing workout and also to mark places that have been significant in literature, history, music, or surfing.  [Those are the things that interest me, along with Christianity and Christendom so, if you're reading this, that's what you're stuck with.]

It was at the bottom of the list, though, as I wanted to get to the places that no longer exist or are in danger of disappearing for good.  No chance of that happening to the Cornelia Street Cafe, of course, as it has become a fixture in Greenwich Village and the place that started a hundred careers in the arts.  Yeah, about that.

In December I learned that the Cafe was closing, another victim of NYC's absurd rents.  Let's face it, keeping the graft flowing to pols and unions is expensive, and the Cafe's rent of $33,000 a month was a bit ridiculous.  One has to admire the dedication of its owners for keeping it going and even expanding it for over four decades.  When I read of its closing, I felt yet another potion of my youth surrender.  Is that too melodramatic?  Again, you chose to read this.

During my New York years, I knew times of plenty and times when my budget forced me to choose between eating or buying a subway token.  I always lived in Manhattan and, save for a period as a hospital chaplain in Queens, always worked there, too.  Through all of those changes in attire, attitude, hair style, and artistic taste, the Cornelia Street Cafe was always there and always affordable.

The first time I was there was to hear a local poet recite his works and have what turned out to be my first real cappuccino.  That was all I could have as the Cafe's offerings came from a sole cappuccino machine and a toaster oven.  Those brioche did smell good, though, but, at $1.50, they were out of my price range [that was the equivalent of two subway tokens].

The last time I was there it had expanded to the space next door and the space next door to that.  It had a bar, two kitchens, and a full menu.  There was still poetry, though, and music of all sorts; now with a green room for the performers.  As the independent voice in poetry and song became more popular, the cafe appeared to become more prosperous, but still fulfilling its original mission of supporting the local creative community.

From their self-written history:

Singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega started out here, as did Eve Ensler’s Vagina Monologues; senator and presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy and attorney-activist William Kunstler have read their poetry; Dr. Oliver Sacks continues to read his prose. Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann presents a monthly Science Series; members of Monty Python & the Royal Shakespeare Company intermittently perform. Cornelia Street now offers some 700 shows a year, two a night, ranging from science to songwriting, from Russian poetry to Latin jazz, from theatre to cabaret. In 1980 Stash Records released the award-winning album, Cornelia Street: The Songwriters Exchange, a collection of songs born at the café.

Through the years, my favorite part of time spent at the Cafe was listening to people of whom you had never heard.  It didn't matter, as they all brought some verve to the place.  Some were better than others, but all of them were serious and were trying to do something original and entertaining.  That's increasingly rare, isn't it?

I left New York in 1986, when there were still a number of the locales that had produced what the rest of the 20th and early 21st century would appreciate in terms of art, verse, music, and literature.  One could lean against the same wall by the same sign under which Jack Kerouac had been photographed, listen to The Ramones and Blondie perform live, sit in front of Allan Ginsburg as he recited his latest, hear Joe Walsh give an impromptu performance in the Sam Ash music store when he was looking for a new axe, and wander down Bleeker Street and read the signs in front of establishments that had served as the settings and references in a dozen dozen songs and books.

Now, Greenwich Village looks like an outdoor shopping mall with a disturbing sameness to the street vibe.  Ah, well, such it is to live in the stream of history.  It seems, with the closing of the Cafe, like I'm trying to listen to the Peter Gunn theme without the bass line.

More may read here and here.

One Will Never Go Broke Predicting the End of the World

10 Apocalypses That Didn’t Happen This Century

A Pungent Confession

Whenever someone uses the terms "re-think" or "re-imagine" when speaking of the re-building of the Cathedral de Notre Dame, I require great moral stamina not to bop them on the nose.

Also, I wonder if a 12th century cathedral needs a re-created 19th century spire.

He's Not Wrong

Seriously, given how much today's architects seem to hate both beauty and the general public, why you'd let them near anything to do with a new spire for Notre Dame is beyond me.

— James Morrow (@pwafork) April 17, 2019

Holy Wednesday Wave

“If I am mistaken, that means that I exist.” —St. Augustine

Lord God, whose blessed Son our Savior gave his body to be whipped and his face to be spit upon: Give us grace to accept joyfully the sufferings of the present time, confident of the glory that shall be revealed; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Humble Request Update

We had a very strong overnight reaction to our appeal, enough that we can begin working on the first of the 200 guitars this week, with a projected five completed by the end of May.

For those wondering, it costs about $100 to manufacture one guitar for our purposes.  The cost is kept to a minimum because we don't charge for labor and we harvest some of the parts from former guitar renovations.  We have drawers filled with tuners, knobs, ferrules, tremolos, and such, so we don't have to buy all of the parts required.

Any amount donated will be used, however, even if it's just $5.  Please help bring music to those who would otherwise be denied that form of artistic expression.

The button is to the right and looks like this:
 

Holy Tuesday Wave

“Faith is to trust yourself in the water.  When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown.  Instead you relax and float.” – Alan Watts

O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

A Humble Request

As many of those who read The Coracle know, one of my jobs is making and customizing guitars.  While I have gotten away from providing them for music stores and other venues, I have continued to donate them to charity fund-raisers and art shows.  In addition, since so many schools are cutting their budgets for music programs, and as the mark-up on commercial guitars borders on the obscene, I have been making more and more for schools in areas of economic fragility.

I am expanding that practice so that more students have the opportunity to learn music, play music, and otherwise express themselves in ways that are not always supported by their school system.  We are also reaching out to schools as far away as east Africa and the Southwestern tribal reservations.  We hope to produce upwards of 200 guitars a year for donation.

This is a huge endeavor, however, and one that requires a daunting amount of capital.  If you have read and enjoyed [or been infuriated by] The Coracle during its eleven years of existence, please consider hitting the donation tab on the right.  It would go far to help reverse this trend away from the arts and bring the joy of playing in ensemble to young people who would otherwise be lost in an impassive system.

Thanks in advance, and thanks for reading.

[We'll post photos of some of our creations as time unfolds.]

Holy Monday Wave

“It is not what you are nor what you have been that God sees with all-merciful eyes, but what you desire to be.” – The Cloud of Unknowing

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Palm Sunday Wave

“You can’t know your direction if you don’t know your origin.” – Alan Watts 

Almighty and everliving God, in your tender love for the human race you sent your Son our Savior Jesus Christ to take upon him our nature, and to suffer death upon the cross, giving us the example of his great humility: Mercifully grant that we may walk in the way of his suffering, and also share in his resurrection; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Well, Connecticut is All For It, So the Answer Must Be Yes

Are Plastic Bag Bans Garbage?

We Win Again!

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner

Like a Jazz Score: The Sense for Life

Lenten Wave #39

"If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground." - Fyodor Dostoevsky

Lenten Wave #38

"There is no one so uncivilized, and of such a crude disposition, that, raising his eyes to heaven, he does not understand from the very magnitude of the objects, from their motion, arrangement, constancy, usefulness, beauty, and temperament, that there is some providence — though he does not know by what god’s providence all the visible universe is governed." —Lactantius

B. Traven

The creative person should have no other biography than his works.

There is a place of ephemeral legend in Mexico, known in Spanish as "El Camino", that doesn't exist on any map, save those written in the hearts of those who yearn.  It refers to the experience of outsiders who come to the southern states to find...well, either something or nothing, depending on their desire, and become lost within the quest.  It has claimed many people, men and women, through the years.  There have been explorers, of course, who have worked their way through the jungles and beaches of Mexico; there have been poets, artists, and any number of musicians.  J. Frank Dobie, Ambrose Bierce, William Cullen Bryant, William Burroughs, Jack London, Katherine Anne Porter, Edna Ferber, Jack Kerouac, Hart Crane, and Ken Kesey offhand come to mind as just a few of the gringos and gringas who have, one way or another, hiked the mythical El Camino.  Personally, I've known a number of surfers who have looked for oblivion in the Meso-American waves.

During the 1920's and 30's a series of riveting novels, set mostly in Mexico and mostly about the spiritual experience of El Camino, had been best-sellers in Europe.  Their author, known only as B. Traven, had remained aloof from any sort of publicity.  He lived somewhere in Mexico, no one really knew where, and wrote in German, with his publisher translating his works into the various languages of his continental audience.

In 1946, the filmmaker John Huston began his walk of El Camino.  Having spent several years as the ne'er do well son of a recognizable and bankable stage and movie actor, Huston had been a boxer, drinker, flunky, go-fer, writer, and general dogsbody in the film industry until, to quote from Steely Dan, "he crossed a diamond with a pearl" and wound up writing the screenplay for and directing "The Maltese Falcon", a critical and box office hit that earned serious money for his studio, made a leading man out of Humphrey Bogart, and created the entire genre of film noir.

The only problem with being a success in a world of transient fame was that one was only popular until the next big movie came along.  This is why Huston was sitting in a humid café in Mexico City waiting to meet a man who did not exist.

Having lived and traveled freely in Europe and familiar with the popularity of Traven's work, Huston was particularly interested in Traven's 1927 novel, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, especially as it was the first and only Traven book translated and marketed in the United States at that time. That the novel was an American best-seller and a terrific story convinced Huston that it should be translated to the screen.  Before he could begin to do so, however, the whole world was distracted with World War II.

When Huston returned to civilian life after directing documentaries for the War Department, he again returned to his Sierra Madre project.  His first item of business was receiving the author's permission to use his novel, something that was trickier than it ordinarily would have been since no one was really sure of Traven's whereabouts or true identity.  Still, Huston was not one to be daunted and he began a near Quixotic quest to contact the author and receive his permission.

So it was that Huston found himself waiting for Traven to join him for a drink or three.  However, instead of Traven, a man introducing himself as Hal Croves turned up, explaining that he was serving as Traven's representative and had the power of attorney necessary to complete their contractual negotiations.  While Huston initially suspected the Croves was Traven, he was willing to indulge him in order to complete the film.  The meeting went well and the two met again in Acupulco to finalize the deal and appoint Croves as a "technical adviser" to the film.  In 1947 the filming began on location in Mexico with Croves a familiar personality on the set.  Once filming was completed, Hal Croves disappeared.

Tim Holt, Humphrey Bogart, and Walter Huston; and maybe Traven in the tent, who knows?

Of course, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart and Huston's father, Walter, was a huge success; nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture of 1948 and earning Oscars for Best Screenplay Adaptation and Best Director for John Huston.  With the popularity of the film and the reignited interest in the novels of Traven,  reporters became interested in the elusive author.

However, the only connection to Traven was Hal Croves, who had not been seen for over a year.  A particularly intrepid reporter for a Mexican newspaper began a search for Croves and, instead, found a fellow in Acapulco named Traven Torsvan, a recluse called "El Gringo" by his neighbors.  His interest piqued, the reporter discovered through immigration paperwork that Torsvan was born in Chicago and had come to Mexico in 1930, eventually establishing residency.  Using questionable techniques, mainly bribery and petty theft, the reporter established that El Gringo was receiving royalty checks in the name of "B. Traven" along with correspondence from other authors.  When confronted by reporters, Torsvan, like Croves, disappeared.

A decade later, after interest in Traven and his true identity had cooled, the mysterious Hal Croves, in absentia from the human race since 1947, reappeared to serve as Traven's official representative in negotiation with European filmmakers interested in emulating Huston's success with Treasure.  He would even attend film festivals in Europe, only to be peppered by reporters with questions about his true identity.

Croves would die in 1969.  His widow, who had also been his secretary, would then reveal the true story of B. Traven.  Senora Croves told the press that her late husband had, in fact, been a German anarchist named Ret Marut [aka Otto Feige].  In Germany, her husband published a successful novel, The Death Ship, and edited an anti-government magazine for which he was eventually arrested and sentenced to death.  He managed to escape to Mexico, altering his identity to that of an American émigré.

During his years south of the border, in addition to writing over a dozen novels and short story anthologies, Feige/Marut/Torsvan/Croves/Traven also managed to work as a photographer for some expeditions into the Mexican jungles [from which the above photo, maybe of Traven, comes], as a translator and guide, and as an inn-keeper.  It was a busy life for him, but since he may have been five or so people, perhaps not that unusual.

There is now an entire industry devoted to claiming to know Traven's real identity and disparaging other theories.  It's rather entertaining but largely meaningless.  As Traven noted, for a true artist it's about the work, not the biography.  His story is yet another tale of those, like his characters, who travel El Camino in search of something that they never entirely find and leave behind a life more full of questions than answers.

B. Traven's novels are now all available in English and most are still in print; some are even available in e-book format.



Traven.  Maybe.

Now That's a King

The last king of Hawaii was elected by a vote of the people. He traveled the world and popularized Hula, the ukulele, and surfing. pic.twitter.com/BxWGEiJp4H

— Weird History (@weird_hist) April 12, 2019

The Political World in Which I was Formed

A Tale Of Two Suburbs: White Democrats’ culture clash has been long in the making.

Thursday's Place: Charlie's

Charlie's

Somers Point, New Jersey

This one's a bit more personal, as it was a place of curious welcome to me.  Once, as a self-consciously sophisticated Euro-American teenager and, secondly, as one who had seen evil and really didn't want to see anything more complicated than a beach, a surfboard, and a wave.  It, too, is still open for business.

Charlie's welcomed me home from overseas on two different occasions.  The first was when I returned from Scotland and had to get used to warmer water, sun, tiny money, and girls who actually smiled.  The second time was not as filled with youthful exuberance.  I was only a few years older, but that period had been filled with darker responsibilities.  It's best that I let those days pass and not speak of them.

Instead, let's speak of Charlie's, where I found myself once again in a summer.  It was still a neighborhood place, set in the community that provides middle-class homes for those who work in the commercial boating and tourist industries on an expensive barrier island across the bay.  It had its own set of characters on their familiar stools; it had a kitchen of sorts that served something resembling food.

Mostly, though, I remember one of the charter captains had a couple of large pots boiling in the back from which he would pluck some good-sized shark's jaws to display to the customers and eventually have mounted on walls.  

On the next block over were a couple of places that served the energetic and enthused college demographic.  I was only in my early 20's, but my world-weariness made me middle-aged and I didn't want to hang out with the summer vacation kids.  So, I found a hour or so in the evening at Charlie's to be a likely place to end a day's surfing, order something inedible, while listening to the tales of charter boat crews.  Some of the other surfers would join me and, with some fits and starts, including one evening where I wound up with a black eye, we beach bums were accepted into their community.

Suffice it to say, my life changed and I was not back there for some time.  Upon my return fifteen years later, I found that Charlie's had decided to join the contemporary era and had expanded the building, "disappeared" the regulars, added an honest-to-gosh kitchen with highly edible food, and opened a dining area.  There were families there now, eating together.  There were t-shirts for sale behind the bar ["At the shore since '44"].  The shark jaws were gone, though, and I was kind of sad about that.

But, it was still, at its heart, a neighborhood place that was as friendly as south Jersey can be when you're not a local and still a good place to end a long day shredding the waves.  The surfers who had started coming there were still coming, albeit now with their children and, as of last summer, their grandchildren.

I've found sanctuary in a number of places during my life.  Churches, certainly, and libraries.  A coffee house in Greenwich Village and a deli in Cleveland.  Bars and restaurants, too.  Almost all of them are gone, now, so I'm glad that there are still some Charlie's left in the world for me and those like me.  Certainly, it was a place that allowed a kind of exorcism.

Maybe it's because I'm a bassist, but everything is better and more cohesive if there is at least some portion of steady rhythm present.

Lenten Wave #37

"If you believe what you like in the Gospel and reject what you do not like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourself." —St. Augustine

Looks Like I'm Not the Only One Who Noticed

Exploiting fear and confusion after a shocking event, they warned that our country was in imminent danger at the hands of a mad man. They insisted that legitimate intelligence, including a CIA report issued a month before a national election and a dossier produced by reliable sources in the United Kingdom, proved the threat was real. The subject monopolized discussions on Capitol Hill, in the White House, and in the press. 

They argued that the situation was so dire that it was straining our relationship with strategic allies. Any evidence to the contrary was readily dismissed. And anyone who questioned their agenda was ridiculed as a coward, a dupe, or a conspiracy theorist. The news media dedicated endless air time and column inches to anyone who wanted to repeat the falsehood. 

But an investigative report released two years after the propaganda campaign began found no evidence to support their central claim. The CIA report was highly flawed. The official dossier, some concluded, was deceptive and “sexed-up.” 

No, I’m not referring here to the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, although the similarities are nearly identical. I’m talking about the period between 2002 and 2004 when many of the very same people who recently peddled collusion fiction also insisted that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—including material to produce nuclear bombs. On the heels of the horrors of 9/11, the United States and our allies waged war against Iraq in 2003 based primarily on that assurance.

Manipulating the population into doing dangerous and foolhardy things so that a select few may enjoy increased power, influence, and, in many cases, income is the main role of the elites in contemporary American society.

Lenten Wave #36

God is equally near in all creatures. - Meister Eckhart

The 21st Century: When the Hillbillies I Grew Up With Are Better Stewards of Their Health Than Are Brooklyn Hipsters

Today, I am declaring a public health emergency due to the measles outbreak. @nycHealthy is ordering all people in Williamsburg to get vaccinated against measles. https://t.co/1u29736yTy

— Commissioner Oxiris Barbot (@NYCHealthCommr) April 9, 2019

It is Noticeable

Why So Many White Supremacists Are into Veganism

Part of the commonality may be the drive to coerce others through extreme measures to one's ideology.

For example, Vegan protesters charged after Melbourne's CBD brought to a standstill during peak hour

Lenten Wave #35

"Our Lord has written the promise of resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in springtime." - Martin Luther

His Theory of Religion was Debunked a Long Time Ago

Researchers claim to debunk Stephen Hawking’s theory of dark matter

Needlehooks

I’ve never understood why we immediately assume that young people are more open-minded, forward-thinking, or moral than older people. Sure, sometimes they are. But sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re just open-minded about the things they believe and closed-minded about everything else. And there are few things they are more closed-minded about than the past. I don’t just mean the iconoclastic goons tearing down statues on college campuses, I mean many generally decent and intelligent young people who seem to take it as a given that moral progress has advanced in lockstep linearity with technological progress. Today, people — at least the right people — are simply better people than those from earlier generations.

Lenten Wave #34

"Not only in faith, but also in works, God has given man freedom of the will." —St. Irenaeus

The Power of Boys

Chanting Schoolboys Help Save Suicidal Woman Hanging From Bridge

That Male Privilege I Keep Hearing About

Elder abuse on the rise in U.S., especially among men

Lenten Wave #33

"Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged in his deepest reveries--stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water, if water there be in all that region. Should you ever be athirst in the great American desert, try this experiment, if your caravan happen to be supplied with a metaphysical professor. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever."  -Herman Melville

A Refreshingly Honest Expression of Intolerance

A Campus Is Not the Place for Free Speech

Remember when universities were places of learning and true education, instead of factories for mass-produced non-thinkers?

It's Not Like Our Elites Weren't Warned of the Dangers of Social Re-Engineering

Joe Biden Created the Culture He Is a Target Of

Seriously, the politicians who can read should pick up a copy of Mary Shelley's novel.  Sometimes that which we create can turn on us.

Great Moments in American Socialism

De Blasio ferry program turns out to be a gift to the rich

and

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and her campaign manager ran a “subsidy scheme,” according to a new Federal Election Commission complaint that alleges they abused campaign finance laws. The complaint, filed Wednesday, claims Ocasio-Cortez and Saikat Chakrabarti, her campaign manager, used PAC money funneled through an LLC to “subsidize cheap assistance for Ocasio-Cortez and other candidates at rates far below market value.”

I had a brief flirtation with socialism when I was a teenager.  That ended abruptly when 1.) I noticed how their leadership tended to get rich and their followers poor, and 2.) They tried to kill me.  With guns.  Oh, and a machete.  I tend to block out machete guy.

Here's Bernie Sander's third home, a lake compound in Vermont.  Ah, socialism.

 

The Coracle's Saturday Literary Corner

Batman and the Rise of the American Superhero

Lenten Wave #32

"I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in." – George Washington Carver

Lenten Wave #31

"No one should be so active as not to seek the contemplation of God." —St. Augustine

Jacques Piccard

Piccard on the right with a naval officer, having just done something no one had ever done.

".... And as we were settling this final fathom, I saw a wonderful thing. Lying on the bottom just beneath us was some type of flatfish, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across. Even as I saw him, his two round eyes on top of his head spied us - a monster of steel - invading his silent realm. Eyes? Why should he have eyes? Merely to see phosphorescence? The floodlight that bathed him was the first real light ever to enter this hadal realm. Here, in an instant, was the answer that biologists had asked for the decades. Could life exist in the greatest depths of the ocean? It could! And not only that, here apparently, was a true, bony teleost fish, not a primitive ray or elasmobranch. Yes, a highly evolved vertebrate, in time’s arrow very close to man himself. Slowly, extremely slowly, this flatfish swam away. Moving along the bottom, partly in the ooze and partly in the water, he disappeared into his night. Slowly too - perhaps everything is slow at the bottom of the sea - Walsh and I shook hands."

_______________________________________________________________________________

When I was nine years old and with my family on vacation in south Jersey, we took a day trip up north to Atlantic City.  This was in the mid-1960's and pre-casino A.C. was filled with gloriously wondrous activities, especially on the famous Steel Pier.  For example, for a quarter [pricey, I know] one could race slot cars on an enormous track with a number of other competitors, see a live musical act [The Supremes minus Diana Ross; Davey Jones minus The Monkees, Pat Boone plus his wife and daughters], a horse plunge into the ocean from a diving board with a helmet-clad bathing beauty on his back, or, for a nickel, watch a chicken in a lighted box dance "The Twist" to a Chuck Berry 45 while electric current pulsed through a wire under its feet.  It really was nothing but non-stop amazement.

My favorite activity was also the most expensive, naturally.  At the side of the Steel Pier was a blue and white diving bell affixed to the superstructure.  For a dollar, we could stand in a long line, climb aboard, and sink like a rock 22 feet under the surface.  The view was ordinary, of course, unless you're excited by discarded cans, carrion crabs, and muddy sand.  But still, how many of us really got to travel in an actual submersible?  Fortunately, it would also return to the surface.  It was so amazing, none of my friends back in Ohio believed it existed.

One of the reasons that I was so determined to spend the equivalent of ten comic books worth of money on this ride is that I had written a report for my favorite elementary school teacher just a few months before on Jacques Piccard and his bathyscaphe Trieste, which had descended to unheard of depths in the Pacific Ocean.  The descriptions of the adventure were still fresh in my imagination when I took that two-story plunge into the Atlantic.

The Trieste was merely one of many devices created by a remarkable Swiss family reaching back into the previous century.  While it was used to plumb the depths of the sea, the bathyscaphe was actually based on the high altitude experiments of Auguste Piccard, Jacques' father and a physicist at the University of Brussels in the 1930's who decided to test his theories using a new type of pressurized balloon gondola of his own invention that would allow its occupants to reach high enough into the atmosphere that Piccard could study cosmic rays.  Auguste would make 27 balloon journeys, eventually reaching the record height of over 27,000 feet, or one-third of the way into space.

During Auguste's work improving the pressurized balloon gondola, now with Jacques as his assistant, they realized that with some minor re-engineering the balloon gondola could be made into a submersible cabin.  Using the same physics employed in gauging the buoyancy of a high-altitude balloon, the Piccards fashioned a pressurized sphere attached to a larger cylinder filled with heavy viscous liquids and weighted with simple iron shot.  The first version of the bathyscaphe [from the Greek for "deep vessel"] was ready for its shakedown cruise in 1939 when world events delayed its development.  After the war, the experiment fell to Jacques to complete, as his father now considered himself too old for such extracurricular adventures.

Jacques was born in 1922, had studied engineering, physics, and economics at the University of Geneva [where his father taught], served in the Free French Army during the war, and was working as a lecturer upon the war's conclusion.  As he became more involved with his father's projects, he would leave teaching and dedicate his days to perfecting what would become the third and most famous of the Piccard bathyscaphes, the Trieste.

As you can see, unlike a submarine, it was not self-propelled; able only to go either down or, thankfully, up.

In 1953, the Trieste managed to descend to a record depth of over 10,000 feet [nearly 2 miles] into the Mediterranean Sea near Capri, but that wasn't enough for Jacques, who was now being recognized in the European press as a "hydronaut".  He knew that the Trieste could go much, much deeper. However, such a bold venture required capital and, in the 1950's, the best place to find that revenue was in the United States.

Piccard went to the U.S. Navy with an offer to use the Trieste in their deep-submergence experiments. In those earlier, wilder days at the Defense Department, instead of simply renting the Trieste, the Navy bought it outright and appointed Piccard as its pilot/consultant.  Training a Navy lieutenant, Don Walsh, in its operation, Piccard convinced the powers-that-be into making a bold attempt to sink the Trieste into the deepest known portion of the undersea floor.

On January 23, 1960, Piccard and Walsh began a five hour descent into the Marianas Trench in the southern Pacific.  Their target, a valley labeled on undersea maps as the "Challenger Deep", was seven miles below, a depth that exerted 4348 pounds per square inch on the hull.

[As a helpful example to understand how much pressure this is, a stream of water leaking from a pinhole in the submersible's hull would, before the entire vehicle imploded, have the force necessary to cut through flesh and bone as efficiently as a high-intensity laser.]

Not exactly roomy, either.

While the goal of the mission was to prove the engineering superiority of the Trieste, a secondary, and rather staggering, result was also achieved.  Until that time, it was assumed by marine biologists that no sea life existed at those depths due to the extreme pressure.  But, as Piccard watched in fascination out his small, thick window, even the ocean deep held a rich variety of God's creatures.

After twenty minutes on the sea floor, Piccard noted that micro-fissures were beginning to develop in the Trieste's port window, so it was prudently decided to get the heck out of there.  [He had been warned by "experts" not to include a window in the design, but c'mon....]  It took three more hours to surface and, by the time they broke through the waves near their Navy escort ship, the entire study of ichthyology had been re-appraised.  The only problem, said the scientific community, was that the Trieste was not equipped to take samples.  Piccard decided to address this problem directly.

Piccard designed a replacement to the bathyscaphe, a mesoscaphe that was capable not only of collecting samples and traveling independently at a specified depth, but could also carry a larger crew. The first, the Auguste Piccard, was used to boost awareness of submersible technology and raise funds by ferrying paying passengers under the waters of Lake Geneva during the Swiss Exhibition of 1964.  A second mesoscaphe was created under contract with Grumman Aircraft and named the Ben Franklin.

This one had enough room for The Professor and Mary Ann, too.

In 1969, carrying a crew of six, the Franklin would drift with the Gulf Stream for over four weeks. During that time, Piccard and the crew would study the current and also the psychological effects on half a dozen men living in tight quarters and engaged in dangerous activity. This latter study was of particular importance to NASA's Apollo space program.  After being launched off the coast of Palm Beach, Florida, the Franklin would next surface 1500 miles away off of the coast of Nova Scotia.

[Interesting note: Robert Ballard, the discoverer of the wreck of the RMS Titanic and director of the Mystic Aquarium, would make his first underwater voyage as a crew member on board the Franklin.]

Piccard would continue his research until his death in 2008, winning a number of accolades and honors along the way.  While originally disputed by the scientific community, the existence and deep-sea life was eventually proven and Piccard's observations ratified.  His early research into ocean pollution and the results of coastal development served as the foundation for the scientific, rather than political, understanding of planetary changes.  In so doing, he would found La Fondation pour l'étude des Mers et des Lacs, an organization that works with many of the surf and beach conservation organizations that this writer holds dear.  Continuing in the tradition of his family, Jacques' son, Bertrand Piccard, completed the first non-stop circumnavigation in a balloon in 1999.

Jacques Piccard's two books, Seven Miles Down and The Sun Beneath The Sea are no longer in print but can be located for very reasonable prices through used book dealers.  Libraries always seem to have copies of them about, too.

And what happened to the diving bell from the Steel Pier, you ask?  It is currently beached and on display at the Atlantic City Aquarium.