extremely loud and incredibly close - jonathan safran foer and the falling man of 9/11

I got into reading 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' (by Jonathan Safran Foer) just before Channel 4 started showing films and documentaries about 9/11, and didn't realise when l started reading it, that there was any connection to the destruction of The World Trade Centre (but there is).
A young boys father has been killed (guess where and how), and the boy (Oskar Scell) then finds a key that his father had hidden in a vase, and wonders what it will open. As the envelope it was contained in had the word 'Black' written on it, he assumes that must be someone who his father knew, so goes out on a long, long search around New York to try and find them. I really enjoyed the book, as it kept you absorbed and guessing, so I won't give the outcome away, but at the end of the book there are numerous pictures of a man falling from the twin towers, which coincidentally led on nicely to 'The Falling Man' documentary which was broadcast just as l finished the book.

That concerned the identity of the falling man that was originally shown in 'The Morning Call' newspaper in the States, but subsequently seen all around the world.  There were viewpoints on whether the photograph should have been printed, and there was a (you would imagine) impossible search to try and find out who the man was. However, once a couple of suspects had been mooted and family and friends questioned, there was also the consequences of the harm and hurt the families might suffer if the mans identity was confirmed which had to be taken into consideration.  Maybe it is better for all involved not to know, and have him represent other victims, the way that 'The Unknown Soldier' does.  Of course there was the dilemma that some family members who were Catholic and did not want to think their relative had committed suicide, as that was a sin and their soul would 'Go to Hell', which puts another slant on the need to identify the jumper. In the end, the identity was left open, despite some decent evidence, and that was probably for the best.
It must have taken some nerve to jump, but l would rather have done that myself than staying in the building and burning.

As a sidenote, one of the adverts inbetween the programme started with 'Jump into a world of choice...'
How ironic.

toodle pip

8th grader test from 1912

Think you are smarter than a 13/14 year old in 1912 America?  Then try this test and be amazed. Obviously l know all the answers, but l doubt many others will.
It's from Bullitt County, Kentucky, and there is more information about it here.

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more scans from the 2000 america trip - new york

I'd like to be back there now.

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the death of emmett till

 Emmet Till and his mother

The Jury - who thought Bryant and Milam were guilty, but didn't deserve a life sentence or the death penalty for killing  a black man, so acquitted them

The murderers

I first heard about the death of Emmet Till through the song by Bob Dylan, but after re-reading about it recently, it is amazing to think that it only happened in 1955, ten years after the end of the Second Word War.
Till (aged 14) had supposedly wolf whistled at Carolyn Bryant, a shop girl in Money, Mississippi, and was subsequently beaten, an eye gouged out, fatally shot, and then thrown into the Tallahatchie river.
While there was outage after the body was found, and the open casket funeral to show Till's beaten and disfigured face, there was even more when the all white jury found the killers, Roy Bryant and J.W Milam (Carolyn's husband and his half brother) to be not guilty.  The killers later gave a paid interview to Look magazine in 1956, where they admitted what they had done, but because of Double Jeopardy, they could not be retried, and they went on with their lives, with Bryant not dying until 1994, aged 63.
Despite the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr preaching non violence, and the rapid escalation of the Civil Rights movement due in no small part to this case, l'd still have wanted to extract revenge on the murderers.
Just over 50 years ago - that is no time at all as far as history is concerned, and sadly, there are still plenty of people about now who still harbour the white supremacy attitude, and probably think what happened to Till was justified.
Twats.

toodle pip

russell brand on msnbc tv

This is about a month old now, but Russell Brand makes mincemeat of the presenters on USA's MSNBC.
It makes you proud to be English.

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more scans from the america 2000 trip - new orleans and san antonio

There's plenty more where these came from.

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tim biskup artwork

Tim Biskup is an American artist who has done album covers and posters for the likes of Pavement and Faith No More.  I'm all for a bit of surrealism and psychedelic imagery, and his style has changed over the years, but l have to admit l prefer the older works rather than the more modern ones (the top three are more modern).
As l am a novice who knows bugger all about art, the top three may be technically better and more difficult to produce, but the rest remind me of artwork by Jim Flora (who l wrote about here), and that is never a bad thing.
Tim's site (with more artwork) can be found here.

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america trip 2000 - some scans from memphis

Some scans of the crap l kept from Memphis in 2000. It's the home of Elvis Presley and Sun Studios, so music, drink and food was the order of the day.
Robbo proposed to Kerry at Gracelands, l bared my bum and pissed in the Mississippi, and this was also the place where we argued with a taxi driver who called us 'Damn Fools' for taking drugs and not believing in God.
Can't argue with that, so l got a t-shirt made up afterwards with 'Damn Fool' written on it (which l still have).

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