Category: Counter Culture

Menin Gate At Midnight (1927) – Will Longstaff

Art, Counter Culture, Paintings, Roaring Twenties

Will Longstaff’s depiction of the Menin Gate war memorial in Ypres (also known as Ghosts of Menin Gate) forms part of a collection at The Australian War Memorial in Canberra. The composition captures the spirits of soldiers marching in unison across a cornfield under an indigo evening sky. After attending the unveiling of Menin Gate in July 1927, Longfield claimed to have had an apparition of the steel-helmeted troops. The artist went home to London and completed his tribute in one sitting. The red poppies in the foreground represent the blood shed during World War I and the limestone memorial on the left shows a dark, sinister entrance. Buildings are dotted upon the far horizon (with intermittent light) suggesting that the area is under close scrutiny.

Urban Legends: The Candy Lady (Austin, Texas)

American South, Cursed Places, Urban Legends

The Candy Lady is a legendary figure who is said to make children in Austin, Texas, disappear. “Children in the area told stories of how they would wake in the morning to find candy sitting on their windowsills … and would start to find notes on the wrappers, many times asking the children to come and play,” according to UrbanLegendsOnline.com. “The notes were signed ‘The Candy Lady.'”

According to legend, numerous children apparently took the Candy Lady up on her offer. “To this day, any time a kid goes missing, all the locals say The Candy Lady got them. Children believe that she takes them somewhere and pulls out their teeth or stabs them with a fork,” the website says.

Urban Legends: The Bunny Man (Fairfax, Virginia)

American South, Cursed Places, Urban Legends

When you approach a railway tunnel on Colchester Road in Fairfax County, be careful: This is where the Bunny Man is said to roam. According to local lore, the Bunny Man is a man dressed in a rabbit costume who carries and ax. A story by WAMU.org says, “In 1904, there was an asylum not far from this bridge. Clifton residents didn’t like the idea of mental patients near their new homes, so they got it shut down, and all the patients were taken by bus to Lorton prison.” The bus crashed and one inmate escaped. That story claims the name came from bunny carcasses left in the woods that the escapee had eaten.

The WAMU article reports that people began going to the tunnel on Halloween. Legend says if they see a bright light or orb, the people “are strung up like bunnies.”

Quips, Wit and One liners of Yesteryear

Counter Culture, Quips & Wit, Quotes

Insults from an era of quips and wit, “before” the English language got boiled down to 4-letter words:

  1. “He had delusions of adequacy ” Walter Kerr
  2. “He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.”- Winston Churchill
  3. “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure. – Clarence Darrow
  4. “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”-William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)
  5. “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner)
  6. “Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I’ll waste no time reading it.” – Moses Hadas
  7. “I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.” – Mark Twain
  8. “He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” – Oscar Wilde
  9. “I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend, if you have one.” -George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill
  10. “Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second… if there is one.” – Winston Churchill, in response
  11. “I feel so miserable without you; it’s almost like having you here” – Stephen Bishop
  12. “He is a self-made man and worships his creator.” – John Bright
  13. “I’ve just learned about his illness. Let’s hope it’s nothing trivial.” – Irvin S. Cobb
  14. “He is not only dull himself; he is the cause of dullness in others.” – Samuel Johnson
  15. “He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up. – Paul Keating
  16. “He loves nature in spite of what it did to him.” – Forrest Tucker
  17. “Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?” – Mark Twain
  18. “His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork.” – Mae West
  19. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
  20. “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp-posts… for support rather than illumination.” – Andrew Lang (1844-1912)
  21. “He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” – Billy Wilder
  22. “I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But I’m afraid this wasn’t it.” – Groucho Marx
  23. The exchange between Winston Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, “If you were my husband I’d give you poison.” He said, “If you were my wife, I’d drink it.”
  24. “He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” – Abraham Lincoln
  25. “There’s nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won’t cure.” — Jack E. Leonard
  26. “They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.” — Thomas Brackett Reed
  27. “He inherited some good instincts from his Quaker forebears, but by diligent hard work, he overcame them.” — James Reston (about Richard Nixon)

New York, Early Twenties (1920-24) – Thomas Hart Benton

Art, Counter Culture, Paintings, Roaring Twenties

Missouri-born artist Thomas Hart Benton pays homage to his adoptive city of New York in this oil composition, presenting a bird’s-eye view of Madison Square Park. Internationally renowned as a pioneer of the regionalist art movement, Benton studied urban space within New York, Early Twenties (1920-24), depicting moving people who are painted as dark matchstick figures. Filing neatly past stationary vehicles, these figures weather the dark storm forming above the imposing skyscrapers and American flag. The tempestuous climate is set during a period of personal and professional unrest for Benton as a leftist sympathiser.

FBI Files: Truman Capote – Suspected Communist

Counter Culture, FBI Files, Literature, Most Admired Authors

The F.B.I. ostensibly kept records on Capote for being “a supporter of the Cuban Revolution,” based on his association with The Fair Play for Cuba Committee. When asked why he supported the FPCC, Capote told the F.B.I., “my step father is Cuban.” The bureau also took an interest in the author because he accompanied a black cast performing “Porgy and Bess” in the Soviet Union.

But Capote’s F.B.I. file may have actually been the result of the author’s lust for gossip. Capote himself admitted to spreading rumors about F.B.I. Chief John Edgar Hoover’s supposed homosexual relationship with friend Clyde Tolson. He went as far as telling a magazine editor about the affair and almost wrote an article about it titled, “Johnny and Clyde.” “It got Hoover upset, that much I know,” Capote said. “And it got me … about 200 pages in an F.B.I. file.”

The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse – Dorothy Parker

Confessional Poetry, Counter Culture, Literature, Poetry, Roaring Twenties

And now I have another lad!
No longer need you tell
How all my nights are slow and sad
For loving you too well.

His ways are not your wicked ways,
    He’s not the like of you.
He treads his path of reckoned days,
    A sober man, and true.

They’ll never see him in the town,
    Another on his knee.
He’d cut his laden orchards down,
   If that would pleasure me.

He’d give his blood to paint my lips
    If I should wish them red.
He prays to touch my finger-tips
   Or stroke my prideful head.

He never weaves a glinting lie,
    Or brags the hearts he’ll keep.
I have forgotten how to sigh—
    Remembered how to sleep.

He’s none to kiss away my mind—
A slower way is his.
Oh, Lord! On reading this, I find
A silly lot he is.

Urban Legends: The Bell Witch (Adams, Tennessee)

American South, Cursed Places, Folklore, Legends, Urban Legends

The legend of the Bell Witch of Tennessee is arguably the most famous haunting in the country, or at least the best documented. It has been the subject of books and movies across 200 years. The Bell Witch remains popular with tourists today – people can visit the Bell Witch Cave, located on the land where John Bell and his daughter, Betsy, reportedly experienced horrific manifestations between 1817 and 1821 in Adams, Tenn.

It began when John Bell spotted a mysterious creature in the cornfield with “the body of a dog and the head of a rabbit.” Soon after the sighting, the Bell children began hearing scratching noises and experiencing various disturbances, thought to be the result of a curse by a local woman with whom John had a property dispute, Kate Batts.

Pat Fitzhugh wrote: “The encounters escalated, and the Bells’ youngest daughter, Betsy, began experiencing brutal encounters with the invisible entity. It would pull her hair and slap her relentlessly, often leaving welts and hand prints on her face and body.” In 1820, John Bell died, becoming, Fitzhugh said, “the only person in history whose death was attributed to the doings of a Spirit.”

He continued: “In 1817, Bell contracted a mysterious affliction that worsened over the next three years, ultimately leading to his death. Kate took pleasure in tormenting him during his affliction, finally poisoning him one December morning as he lay unconscious after suffering a number of violent seizures.”

Urban Legends: The Lizard Man (Bishopville, South Carolina)

American South, Legends, Urban Legends

The Lizard Man is a legendary creature who roams the swamps near Bishopville, S.C. The Lizard Man is a “connoisseur of delicious chrome trim on automobiles … South Carolina’s very own homegrown monster,” the website says. The creature, with red eyes, green skin and long black claws, was said to attack cars, ripping off mirrors, shredding roofs and ripping off fenders.

It began on June 29, 1988, when a teenager got a flat tire and stopped to change it at the edge of Scape Ore Swamp. “He got out of the car to change the tire when he heard a sound, like someone running, getting louder and louder. Suddenly, from the darkness, it emerged!” Since then, police have responded to numerous reports of damaged cars near the swamp and sightings of the creature continue to be reported to this day.

Sources: Discover South Carolina dot com