"Tis Almost Faerie Time!"

Art by "Pixeworth"

"SAMAIN",...All Hallows Eve

"Samain Night"

When the moon on a cloud cast night
Hung above the tree tops' height
You sang me of some distant past
That made my heart beat strong and fast
Now I know I'm home at last

You offered me an eagle's wing
That to the sun I might soar and sing
And if I heard the owl's cry
Into the forest I would fly
And in its darkness find you by.

And so our love's not a simple thing
Nor our truths unwavering
But like the moon's pull on the tide

Our fingers touch, our hearts collide
I'll be a moons breath by your side. 

Loreena McKennitt

"...to the Moon"

The Moon G-ddess, and her flower children is the 'Real' reason we never went back. Not that she didn't want us, but the "Powers" thought all them moon kids, and their magical Mama might be trouble.

...for 'them'.


Stay Tuned.

"Yeah We Went to the Moon!"

 "Yeah we went to the Bleeping MOON! Now Shut the Fuck UP!!!!!!!!!!!"

"Sooner or Later"

Sooner or later we're just gonna 'have' to make "PEACE" with each other. We're on the road there have been for over a century. Soon.

"You Smell Something Burning?"

Right so I wake up today, and what hits me in the face. I mean besides folks tossing their babies out the window like the other day. Today the News cyborgs tell me that they're running out of them evil chemicals they use to execute folks with.

Good!

Heaven forgive us! The Law is nuffing out 'so many' lives. We're Killing so many they're actually running out of the poison they use to Nuff'em with. Well of course this means a Suspension of Executions, and maybe a Review of the Many Cases.

NOT!

Instead in the tradition of da American "Can Do" spirit. Yep in that swell Spirit these Maniacs are discussing Firing Squads instead. 'Mercy' ain't in their language...didn't even occur to them.

Yeah I was Dumbfounded Too!

This after 'the' Pope fer Christ's sakes pleaded for the "Worldwide End" of the "Death Penalty" before the Joint House. This is beyond meanness or maybe even evil...this is Fuck'n Nuts!

All this being so I just thought that I'd mention that dreaded "Tribulation" is already here.  Has been for a while. We're 'all' in Hell or at least half way there. There's no way out btw. We ain't exactly among the select...yeah surprise.

There's Francis who we 'thought' was our pal saying  "...So long Suckers you 'had' ya Chance."

So Relax, and Enjoy the Ride.

Yep we're in for a Hot ole Time!

Stay Tuned.

"New Pod-cast Shows"

Greetings comrades. Another three Pod-Radio shows are up at:

http://www.unclesidney.com

Just type: unclesidney

That'll get you there.

Above my Faeries under Stormy Skies.


Stay Tuned.

"Remember "Bob the Bunny" is Watching"

"The Mic is Red"

 (From my Old radio Files)

'Makes a kind of sense to me...ya had to be there.

Uncle Sidney in his favorite disguise as a famous Russian comedian, ...see above, explains the subtle nuances of Radio Art to attentive workers.

"Dear Beloved Uncle" made a surprise visit to a workers collective today. Uncle just loves surprises. Beloved Uncle took it upon himself to visit the Peoples Administrative, Sub-Directorate Office of the Volga Shoehorn Factory No. 12.

All of the comrade administrators were in awe of the wit, and charm of Dear Uncle, and his off the cuff presentation. Uncle warmed to his favorite subject, and waxed poetic on the spiritual nature of a well written, and performed station break.

He then shared several hours of anecdotes about his broadcast adventures with the transfixed comrades. Most touching was his impromptu re-enactment of his dear friend's *(Name Redacted) on air reading of Pushkin while having just snorted ten grams of Cocaine followed by five bottles of Ripple.

*(...noted New York poet, broadcaster, and old pal.)

An astounded "Beloved Uncle Sidney",...still in disguise as that famous Russian comedian,  and some middle level Party officials witness "Good Comrade (Name Redacted), amazing performance while under the influence of enough dope, and booze to kill Ten Cossack's!!

Angels wept Silver Pearls at the beauty of that long ago performance.

As the sun set behind Shoehorn factory No.12 our Dear Uncle informed the gathered comrades it was time for him to go. The workers protested, and fell to their knees begging him for just one more dope story.

However our most stalwart Uncle mildly chastised them saying that it was time for them to go back to work. Because,..."Socialism needed them!"

                     (Uncle in his study where he meditates before doing his Pod-cast.)

With that our ever thoughtful, and kindly Uncle got on his old bike, and peddled his way back to the Kremlin. There to write more lovely stories about Teen-aged Homosexual Angels that Fight for the Rights of the Oppressed!

( Go here for my swell  Pod-casting crap: http://www.unclesidney.com/  )


Stay Tuned.

"I am become Death..."

                      "I am become Death the Destroyer of Worlds"

"Journey"

As I say below I was a fan of war movies which filled TV in the 1950's or so. What young boy wouldn't. Boys males are genetically wired to crave excitement. 

However one day...I guess I was 11. It came to me these were all just people. People like my dad, and uncles, and everybody. That's when I began to re-think that whole war thing. War is death suffering terror, and waste. Yeah no choice we had to 'stop' the Nazi's. However I sort of got it that war even 'that' one was all about hurting people. 

What a confused awful mess. 

It was a beginning of my moral life's journey


Stay Tuned.

"Colored Guys in the RAF"

When I was a lad,..yeah in Brooklyn. Like all other young boys I was watching all them WW2 movies on black, & white TV. This back in the 1950's, and 60's. I never saw any guys like my dad blowing the bad guys away. I certainly knew that there were Colored troops in the war.

For heaven's sakes my dad, all my uncles, all my friends dads'n uncles, and the mailman were either fighting the Nazis or the Nipponese.

They beat'em too.

However they never made it into any of the movies. Well not till the 70's, and 80's. Also they couldn't keep us out of the few Viet-Nam flicks. What with more than half of the black teenagers being drafted out of the American race ghettos to fight that war.

Anyway I came across some Coloreds in the RAF stuff. Interesting. I knew from family that in Trinidad the Raf had Caribbean Colored flying officers during the war. As you know part of my mother's family is from there.

I may have had "uncle-cousins" in all that somewhere. I have memories of family talk about having this or that relation flying in the war.

Anyway I was happy to find these images. Imagine Colored Guys in the Battle of Britain. It seems there were some from Jamaica. Cool.






















(...what on earth sort of dog is the above?!!)














*In 1953 the movie ‘Appointment in London’ was released. The story was about a Bomber Command squadron in 1943. Someone involved in the movie had the knowledge and courtesy to include a reference to black aircrew. It lasted only a few seconds, but must have confounded the audience at the time – as it did me when I watched a few days ago!

Above is a screen shot. It shows the Wing Commander (played by Dirk Bogarde) chatting to a black airman.

One of the script writers for the movie was John Wooldridge, a commander of 105 Squadron RAF during WW2. It seems reasonable to assume that he was aware of the presence of black aircrew in the RAF and inserted the scene into the movie as a mark of recognition and respect.

*[courtesy Tom Graham from Perth, Australia]

"The Secret Lives of Cartoon Characters"

This happy story is from my never to be published book "The Secret History of Everything". This is one of the chapters on the world of Toons. That immortal race of beings that hides in plain sight.

Our tale so to speak describes the origins of out dear pal Daffy Duck.

Daffy Duck was born or should I say hatched on May 12, 1923. His original destiny was to be guest of honor in a boxed lunch at an annual convention of vacuum cleaner salesmen. However history had other plans for this unique foul.

Daffy's formative years were spent in the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a Harlem oriental noodle shop. This informed him that there was a better world outside the oppressive confines of an American race ghetto.

The blossoming Harlem Renaissance was a cornucopia of wonders for the young Daffy. Naturally this led him to the stage. Daffy Duck performed publicly for the first time at the famed Apollo Theater on amateur night.

He charmed the audience with his kid act. He juggled broken beer bottles while swallowing watermelons. He'd then squat, and lay them while doing the Charleston. True he was a male, but to the audience a duck was a duck.

Anyway it brought the house down.

..hey keep reading it gets better.

Josephine Baker was so impressed by his act that she took him along on her tour of France. "My little Black Duckie" she called him. Josephine while making the rounds of the jazz clubs in the City of Light would introduce Daffy as her nephew.

The sophisticated Parisians didn't blink at this. They took it to be just another bizarre American custom.

Daffy while doing his act at the Cafe 'Celluloid was noticed by a famous American producer. Yep it was the old proto nazi himself,..Walt Disney.

He was seated at a private table with his protégé a young black mouse named Mickey. Walt liked them young, and dark. Also at the table was a very well dressed German gentleman named Goebbels.

After Daffy's performance in which he played Beethoven on a grand piano while juggling several large bottles of nitroglycerin with his butt. He was invited over to Mr. Disney's table for a chat.

Disney who was sipping owls head soup from a Ming Dynasty bowl seemed a pleasant affable sort of fellow. On the other hand his little companion, the mouse, was obnoxious. Indeed he was more than a little vulgar.

The disheveled rodent kept passing wind, giggling, and putting a strange white powder in his nose. The German gentleman just sat there stiffly staring at nothing while slowly sipping calf's blood through a polished platinum straw.

Daffy now a worldly duck quickly sized up the scam. He'd been to a number of parties like this already. Before Mr. Disney could say anything Daffy told him, "..I don't take it up the ass!"

The German's left eye twitched.

The little mouse began laughing like a hissing like a steam pipe. He was also masturbating spilling all the white powder onto the floor as he did.


Walt Disney turned to the crazed rodent, and in a lazy tone said, "Aw Mickey now look what you've done."

"How many times have I told you that stuff is expensive. Now Doctor Goebbels will have to get us more."

Walt confided in Daffy, "You'll have to excuse my young friend."

"He is after all a mouse, and so has a rather limited intellectual, and emotional repertoire."

However as for 'your' lovely black ass please be reassured that back door grease jobs are not something I'm likely to be doing for quite some time."

"Or so my doctors tell me."

"Seems I acquired a rather unfortunate condition while on holiday in the Philippines."

"No, I have something entirely different in mind for you."

Besides his interesting lifestyle Walt Disney was a businessman. One without an once of sentiment so he made Daffy an ironclad offer!

Of course Walt was aware of Daffy. The Toon grapevine was buzzing with his name since his Apollo days. Everyone knew this was a duck to watch, and watch the shark of Hollywood did. Disney had his operatives secretly film all of Daffy's acts.

Walt especially liked the self-immolation routines.

Daffy would blow himself up with a barrel of dynamite. As the smoke cleared his blackened bill would slam to the floor as his eyeballs bounced about the stage,...brilliant thought Disney!

Walt said to Daffy, "I intend to use you, and your colorful Toon colleagues to mold the dreams of America, and then the World!"

Mr. Disney pointed to the German gentleman who seemed to be injecting something into his arm. "Doctor Goebbels here has been invaluable to me in forming the foundations of what I intend to be an Empire of Dreams!"

"My Dreams!"

Clearly this is a gang of fruitcakes thought Daffy,..rich fruitcakes. So Daffy asked a question. A question that has led many a Toon down the road to perdition.

"How much?"

Ahhhh, old Disney smiled like a shark circling an overturned lifeboat full of children.

"How much?" "...why as much as you want my dear lad,..sign here."

...and he did.

Thus began Daffy Duck's adventures in Toon Hell!





Stay Tuned.

"re-enactment" (...reprint from 2009)

Well you might ask why, but I went out, and re-enacted my homeless days over the weekend. From Friday to now early Monday morning I've been on the outside. Mind you not continuously.Like last time I still had my job which gave me options the hard core homeless have long lost. So yeah I still went to the radio station for my shifts, but then went back out to the street when they were over. Also like before I slept on the Long Island Railroad.

Far safer than the subway. That is if you can keep up a middle class appearance.

'But why?

Maybe like war vets I needed to see the old battle fields. Btw this particular war ain't over,..not nearly. Not with 1,000,000+ more folks facing the streets this year.

Maybe I needed to see if I could still do it. Still survive. These times are so uncertain. It's not impossible that I might re-join the growing population of the post industrial dispossessed.



Still there was a net beneath this high wire act, and I knew it. Just like Yankee Civil War re-en-actors know there's a hot bath, pizza, tv, and a warm bed at the hotel after they shoot it out with Robert E. Lee's boys.

I knew I could go home,..but I was driven to do this anyway. I may do it again.

Right now I need a really hot bath, and night's sleep in a bed. An actual bed. I do not, and never will take such things as this for granted. I'm now surprised at how quickly all of the civilized middle class niceties melted away.

When I was 'really' homeless I was too busy trying to survive to notice.

Your clothing becomes soiled, and you start to stink quickly out there. Again I don't remember noticing last time. Though I imagine everyone around me did. I think if I stayed out for a week all the reflexes would have come back.

..not to mention the swelling of my ankles.

This from standing or crouching all the time. One has to keep moving or you're a sitting duck for the cops, crazies, gangs or do-gooders. All of them want a piece of you for assorted reasons.

My sister, and the social consular I had for a while think these episodes are a form of urban post traumatic stress. I guess it is. Sort of like Veit-Nam era vets going out to live in the deep woods to recreate their wartime environment.

Seems that's the only place some of them feel safe in. No one has written much about the post-homeless experience. I guess because not that many make it back to the main stream, and those that do ain't talking.

Maybe I should do something along those lines,..we'll see.

Also long time readers will know this isn't the first time I've done something like this. In the months after my recovery I used to go out at night, and re-visit some of the places I had been.

Places where I hid, tried to sleep or have meals.

I haven't done anything like that in nearly two years, but the need came back with a strange electric urgency. So out I went. No planning I just went. I'm troubled that if it happens again I might not come back. Not come back to safety, routine, and electric bills.

Dammit, where are the support groups for ex-homeless?!

Lawd knows there's groups for 'everything' else. Sorry to my knowledge I wasn't abducted by the space alien saucer guys nor do I hear my toaster speaking to me,..much.

'But I did my time at the front. The photos here are from my 'real' homeless wanderings. Back then I was a forcefully conscripted grunt in the unending American culture, and economic wars. I did my bit, but the memories won't go away.

When you are outside of the main stream you're out of sync with the world. You've become "unstuck in time" as Kurt Vonnegut sez in "Slaughter House Five". So-called reality flows around you.

You exist in a different time stream.

A slower one. One that notices details invisible to everyone else. Maybe that's how I, and all the other outsiders survive. We can see the side spaces. The time space loop holes that offer shelter for us.

"Seven Billion G~ds"

We're a species that seems to need a g-d or gawds. Our consciousness makes us barely aware that there's more to reality than what we can see or touch. So we created gawds, and religions to fill that void. Some are kindly some brutal, but they all express the same yearning to know what's beyond our physical senses.

As with gender, modes of desire. There are seven billion of them. One for each person. So too there are seven billion faiths, paths to the country yet discovered.


The problem is that society only acknowledges two genders, and maybe a dozen or so religions.

Do the math.

No wonder we're all so nuts. Anyway I had another of them Angel dreams a few nights ago. This in the middle of all my other static, and confusions. I can only remember bits, and pieces, but it was basically this.

Pray for...

The Forgotten,

The Remembered,

The Saved,

The Lost,

The Good,

The Evil,

The Cruel,

The Kind,

The Dead,

The Living,

The Tormented,

The Torturers,

The Born,

The Unborn,

The Givers,

The Takers,

The Light Makers,

The Dark Bringers,

The Dreamers,

The Deniers,

The Loving,

The Hating,

The Full,

The Starving,

The Demons,

The Angels,

Pray for the Creatures,

The Flying,

The Crawling,

The Swimming,

The Walking,

The seeds,

The Blossoms,

The Fruit,

The Worlds,

The Stars,

The Seen,

The Unseen,

The Momentary,

The Eternal,

The dream invited me,..and I imagine you to "Pray" for all of the above, and more. As for who or what I'm supposed to pray to wasn't revealed. So they best I can do is to meditate, to acknowledge, wonder about, upon all the above.

Stay Tuned.

"The Adventures of Evil Lassie"

"Wuff wuff wuff!"

"Whats that Lassie?"

"You say that grampa is trapped in the uranium mine?"

"Wuff wuff wuff!

"He broke both legs, severed his spine. and is bleeping from the mouth with radiation poisoning?"

"Wuff wuff wuff, grrrrrr, wuff wuff grrrrrr wuff wuff!"


"You say we should leave the sadistic old bastard down there to die the miserable death he deserves."

"Wuff wuff wuff, grrrrrr, wuff wuff grrrrrr wuff wuff!"

"...and we should sell the farm, cash in the inheritance, and go to Vegas'n get laid, and drunk for the rest of our lives."

"Wuff!"

"Good Dog!"

(Episode One of a Sydneyland dramatic series.)

Stay Tuned.

"Forward into the Past!"

'Wish I could afford one of them new Dell or Sony time machines they got these days. Turns out there's an infinite number of alternate Earths all more or less the same as this so you go back into 'their' history mess around all ya like, and 'our' time stream is fine. None of the weird muddying of events.


You can go to Woodstock, Stonewall or opening day at Disneyland screw around , and not mess it up,...at least for us. Gawd know how ya frying the other guy's history. If the Time Cops don't catch ya you're fine.

Anyway I'd go to 1959, and have a ball. Everything is 80% cheaper. So you can live like a plutocrat for a few bucks. Btw be real frigg'n careful to exchange ya cash before ya go. Ya don't wanna go back with dough that sez 2011 on it.

Eh ya might get vaporized,...slowly, by that 40th century Time Police I mentioned. They're always nosing about. So watch it with the 21st century artifacts, and try not to shoot Elvis.

Other than that when I go back I'd get a '59 Mercury Land Cruiser, see above, and hit the brand new interstates for adventure plaid sox drive-in flicks the Brooklyn Dodgers, and priceless, in our time, $0.10 cent comic books!

I'd get laid a lot too in that pre-AIDS, and generally non-toxic era.

Sure there'd be radiation from all them stupid bomb tests them lunatics was doing, but there's radiation now from all them melt downs,..I'd say they cancel each other out.

Ahh, the glorious demented closeted murderous segregated cold war hysteria 1950's in gawds country!

Compared to the End-of-Empire crap we got now it's Paradise!

"Old New York"

Well for me "Old New York" is the immediate post-war years. I was born in 1950 so remember the city from the early '50's. The town still looked much as it did in the 1930's. It didn't radically change till the 60's, and then again in the 1980's. It's doing it again now.

However I have a romantic memory of how things were then, and I miss it. Not the crap, and awfulness, but the sense of things as they were. ..or at least as I remember them.

The city was historically interesting then. We've lost so many of the late 19th, and early 20 century places, and things. Places taken for granted for generations.

For example my Mom, when we went shopping, would take me to lunch at the "Automat",..yeah that one. The for real as in 1920's/30's movies Automat. Many streets were still cobblestone. This from the era of horse drawn wagons, and carriages.

Also people dressed better. There was more of a consciousness of appearance. One that had nothing to do the the fashion dementia of today. It had to do with self respect.

Well-to-do middle or working class all dressed as best as they could when they went out. I remember my Dad taking me, and my sister to our neighborhood park. We dressed up! He wore a tie, jacket, and fedora, and we wore clean play clothes. I don't have to tell you what it's like now.

There were no glass, and steel clad skyscrapers. Everything was granite, limestone, and marble. I used to think that the buildings were made from Graham crackers, and cookies. This because in the afternoon sun that's exactly what they looked like.

A whole city made from cookies or biscuits..for you folks in the Commonwealth.

You could tell the cars apart as well. This because each manufacturer had radically different designs. ..at least as compared to today. Our rides are made of plastic, and look like melted sneakers. They give just as much mileage too.

The subways system still had rolling stock from the late 1920's , and earlier in service. Everything from the "AB Standard" 1914 model to the 1948 Red Bird was banging around our tunnels.

You could stand on the platform, and see the whole history of subway trains fly by! Also while standing there you could get a five cent Coke out of them classic neat old machines, and candy was one cent!

Aw man, and comics were a dime.

I remember on one birthday my dad got me a dollars worth,..Ten comics!

A vast fortune in kid currency!

Best of times the worst,..blah, blah you get the deal. It's just that things seemed to matter more then. As I say I think we were all more connected to our person-hoods back in that day. Stuff mattered, had value all that.

Mind you maybe them that was adults back then might think all this is a load of crap. Hey I was a kid, and this is what it looked like to me.

Anyway I was just thinking about them times is all.

~\V/~

"My Family"

Below the flags, click to enlarge the tiny wide-screen. These are my Civil War ancestors. Col. William Stewart, a Confederate officer, and Josephine his beloved, and former slave. They're my great, great grandparents. Below them are their children my great grand's I think. The Darker of the sisters was by another man. For Heaven's sakes! Oh my family! Oh the South!

This below is part of my family now. Two cousins Dionne, and Monique,That's and my sister Sylvia in the middle. That's me below them a few years ago.









On the left, click to enlarge, is a Slave manifest from the ship the Pioneer. These persons were bought by my white great, great grandpa or perhaps 'his' father, not sure, in 1848. Josephine in not on the list as she was born on the plantation.




Good grief. The only worse thing about not knowing the truth is actually finding it. Raw, un-prettified, honest, and plain.

(Below is from "Finding Josephine." my cousin's website.)





FAMILY HISTORY

Josephine Burton Ford was my great, grandmother. My search for her and the rest of my family history began at age 12, when I asked a simple question: “Grandpa, are you white?”

My grandfather’s answer sent me on a lifelong journey to piece together our family story and reveal a not uncommon but often untold part of American history. His grandparents were a slave named Tempy Burton, and her master, Col. W. R. Stuart, pictured in the header.

Three decades after I first learned of this interracial, Civil War-era duo, I found another one of their descendants. Monique, my third cousin, once removed, is as passionate about our history as I am. Together, we’ve been reclaiming our family’s history which includes masters and slaves, Confederates and Senators, preachers and entertainers. Follow our journey at www.findingjosephine.com.

Dionne Ford Kurtti

Also from "Finding Josephine" Dionne finds my sister Sylvia,..and as an added bonus,..me.

My cousin Monique is now the queen of all Internet searches. It was her voracious searching that turned up my second great-grandfather’s **Civil War era sword** on ebay, a portrait of one of our ancestors at the Maryland Historical Society on their online database, and me on ancestry.com. Now, she’s done it again. Monique found another one of our cousins, again on ancestry.com. (I think that internet genealogy site is going to have to start paying her soon – she’s a walking commercial for their services!)



Meet cousin Sylvia Smith Isabel. She lives a short bus or train ride away in New York and is as passionate about uncovering our family’s history as Monique and I.

Keeping track of all these cousins can be confusing so here is how we’re all related:

The ancestors that all three of us have in common are Tempy Burton and Col. W.R. Stuart, aka The Colonel. Tempy was a slave in Elizabeth McCauley’s family. When Elizabeth married the Colonel, Tempy was given to the couple as a wedding gift. Elizabeth couldn’t have any children but Tempy could and did have seven, probably all with The Colonel. But two of her children were definitely The Colonel’s, documented through their death certificates. They were Alfred Burton Stuart, Tempy and The Colonel’s oldest child and Josephine Burton Ford, their youngest child. Alfred was Monique’s great, great-grandfather and Sylvia’s great-grandfather. Josephine Burton Ford was my great-grandmother. Using the cousin calculator that makes Sylvia and Monique first cousins, once removed, Monique and I third cousins, once removed and Sylvia and I plain ole third cousins.

(My cousin Monique's Family,..left.)

Two days after Thanksgiving, Monique and her family came over to our house and we had a few good hours of laughs over all the things we’ve found this past year and we were feeling pretty thankful, like we’d reached the peak of our genealogy mountain and could just take in the view. Then, two days later, with the discovery of Sylvia, we had even more to be thankful for, and more history to uncover (her dad grew up on Alfred’s farm and told her stories of Alf working as an unofficial town vet – news to us!). It feels like we’re at the beginning of another journey.