What About Innocence

Back in 1993, The United States SCOTUS ruled on Herrera v. Collins. "The issue in that case was whether an inmate could present new evidence to make a claim of habeas corpus, the ancient legal vehicle by which prisoners can seek relief from unlawful imprisonment."

Nine years after his conviction for shooting and killing two police officers, Herrera produced writs stating that he was innocent, and that his deceased brother had actually committed the murders. Herrera's last-ditch effort failed, but his case was then used by the Supreme Court in order to decide whether any inmate could use claims of new evidence to argue that their imprisonment violated their Constitutional rights. They decided no. In other words, a claim of innocence based on newly discovered evidence — according to this decision — didn't provide grounds for habeas corpus relief.

Scalia concurred with the court's 6-3 decision that a claim of innocence should not serve as the sole grounds for habeas corpus relief, stating in his written opinion that sufficient legal relief already existed for people presenting new evidence of innocence (to be fair, Scalia also said 'not that factual innocence was irrelevant') and "that ruling otherwise would impose an unmanageable burden on lower courts to review newly discovered evidence." (LINK)

ME - Which seems to be basically saying, it would be too damned much trouble and costs too much money to check one more time before executing someone to see if they are indeed factually innocent. Which is where I blow a gasket and start screaming.

Lest you think this is a problem solely in the United States, Lord Denning, the most celebrated English judge of the twentieth century, said in 1988, “It is better that some innocent men remain in jail than that the integrity of the English judicial system be impugned.” Denning was discussing the Birmingham Six, a group of Irishmen who were convicted of bombing two pubs and then spent more than a decade protesting their innocence. The Court of Appeal had dismissed their case, and Denning himself had thrown out allegations of police corruption, because even the idea of the police could be corrupt was “such an appalling vista that every sensible person in the land would say that it cannot be right.” (More screaming from me.) After activists and journalists took up the issue, Denning complained that it would have been better if the men had all been hanged. “They’d have been forgotten and the whole community would be satisfied,” he said. (New Yorker)

Anyway, it turned out that the police had been corrupt and fabricated evidence against the Birmingham Six. They were finally freed in 1991. Their case was one of several – the Tottenham Three, the Bridgewater Four, the Maguire Seven - in the eighties and nineties that eroded faith in the British justice system.

As a public outcry grew over wrongful convictions, the Criminal Cases Review Commission was formed and started operating in 1997. The CCRC was designed as an independent check on the Court of Appeal, but it was never given full freedom. It was allowed to refer cases only if there was a “real possibility” that the Court of Appeal would overturn them, and defining that limited the cases severely.

In 2021, a cross-party inquiry issued a damning report, concluding that the CCRC was “too deferential to the Court of Appeal.” Wrongful convictions in the U.K. were repeatedly traced to failures by police or prosecutors to hand evidence over to the defense (see, it doesn't just happen here), but the CCRC didn't look into it very often, and its work was 'routinely hampered by officers’ destruction of forensic evidence.'

A classic example of police 'officers’ destruction of forensic evidence' is the Whitehouse Farm murders, "The U.K.'s Most Infamous Family Massacre".

Late at night on August 7, 1985, Jeremy Bamber called the police to Whitehouse Farm, where they found Jeremy's parents, Nevill and June Bamber, his sister Sheila and her six year old twins all shot to death in different rooms of the house.

At first everyone believed it was Shiela, diagnosed with schizophrenia and was often threatening, who'd shot everyone and then herself. But then other things came up.

Like the police.

Detective Inspector Ron Cook, the lead crime-scene officer, was known as "Bumbling Ron." The night of the murder he picked up the Bible that was either on Sheila's body or by her side - no one will ever know for sure - and started flipping through it. Without wearing gloves. He also moved the murder weapon without wearing gloves, and no one checked for fingerprints until weeks later. And he actively disposed of bloody carpets and bedding. Cook died several years ago, but his deputy, Detective Sergeant Neil Davidson, revealed that after Bamber was declared the prime suspect, “The shit hit the fan, big time."

“ ‘What can we salvage? Who can we blame?’ ” Cook spent weeks “chasing about, red in the face,” trying to find scraps of evidence, Davidson told me. “He was trying to dig himself out of the hole. The whole forensic thing was really a shambles, because nothing was preserved.” Watching the chaos unfold had left him conflicted about the case. “I would not be surprised if, one day, someone comes along and says, Here’s definitive proof that he didn’t do it.”

And then there's the crime-scene photographs, including ones which were not made available to the original defence. Let's just say that in these photographs, dead bodies move and things come and go. Some show Sheila's right arm and hand in slightly different positions in relation to the rifle, which is lying across her body. The rifle itself also appears to have moved, more than once. (I think Bumbling Ron probably struck again.) Former DCS Mick Gradwell, shown the photographs by The Guardian, said in 2011: "The evidence shows, or portrays, Essex police having damaged the scene, and then having staged it again to make it look like it was originally. And if that has happened, and that hasn't been disclosed, that is really, really serious."

Much of the trial revolved around a silencer, which had been photographed (?) on the rifle. Somehow the police failed to secure it at the time, and it vanished. But then 3 days later, David Boutflour, Jeremy's cousin, found it in the gun cupboard and took it home, where he and his parents, etc, handled it freely for three days before giving it to the police. Boutflour said it felt sticky, and they found red paint and blood on the silencer. When the police did collect the silencer on August 12, five days after the murders, an officer reported seeing an inch-long grey hair attached to it, but this disappeared by the time the silencer arrived at forensics. There a scientist, John Hayward, found blood on the inside and outside surface of the silencer, but not enough to permit analysis. Later, the blood inside was found to be the same blood group as Sheila's, although it also could have been a mixture of Nevill's and June's – or David Boutflour's.

Speaking of David Boutflour, there was a second silencer, identical to the first, which was his. The police eventually took that one away too, which didn't just muddle the waters, it pretty much turned them to sludge. To this day, no one knows which silencer was actually tested, or both. There are three exhibits, titled "SBJ/1", (because it was handed over by Detective Sergeant Stan Jones), "DB/1" after David Boutflour had found it, and another labeled "DRB/1" because there was also a Detective Constable David Bird. Which what where? No one knows.

BTW, the whole point of the silencer – and it was the major point of the prosecution - was that the rifle was short enough that Sheila, who was also short, could not have killed herself with the rifle if the silencer was on it. So, my question: If the silencer was on the rifle, why were they looking for it in the guncase? Why are there pictures with the silencer and without it? And how did Boutflour find the silencer (a silencer) there 3 days later?

NOTE: David Boutflour's family inherited Whitehouse Farm after Bamber was convicted.

But details, details. The prosecution argued that if Sheila's blood was inside the silencer, it supported the prosecution's position that she had been shot by another party, but if the blood inside the silencer belonged to someone else (and later tests indicated that it was her mother June's), that part of the prosecution case collapsed.

NOTE: Bamber's defence brought this up in an appeal after later tests indicated it was probably Sheila's mother June's blood. "The judges' conclusion was that the results were complex, incomplete, and also meaningless because they did not establish how June's DNA came to be in the silencer years after the trial, did not establish that Sheila's was not in it, and did not lead to a conclusion that Jeremy's conviction was unsafe." (Wikipedia) In other words, screw you, we're sticking with our decision.

More cock-ups: Officers did not take contemporaneous notes; those who had dealt with Jeremy wrote down their statements weeks later.

The bodies were released days after the murders, and three of them (Nevill, June and Sheila) were cremated.

Jeremy's clothes were not examined until one month later.

Ten years later, all blood samples were destroyed.

Oh, and there's Jeremy's girlfriend Julia Mugford, with whom he'd broken up before the murders. She said that he'd planned and done the murders. The police promptly arrested him, and at the station, Bamber insisted that Mugford had invented the story after he broke off their relationship. “If she could put me behind bars then nobody else could have me,” he said. (Apparently she also tried to kill him at one point, literally telling him, "If you're dead, no one else can have you!")

About a month after the murders, Mugford testified against Bamber. Later, during appeals, Jeremy's lawyers argued that a 26 September 1985 letter to Mugford from John Walker, assistant director of public prosecutions, raised the possibility that she had been persuaded to testify in the hope that charges against her would not be pursued. You see, during her police invterviews, Mugford had confessed to drug offences, burglary, and cheque fraud, and in the letter, Walker had suggested to the Chief Constable of Essex Police, "with considerable hesitation", that Mugford not be prosecuted for any of it.

Also, after Bamber's conviction, Mugford sold her story, complete with semi-nude photos, to a tabloid and got enough "blood money" as she called it, "to buy a flat."

Despite all of this and more, Bamber was convicted and sentenced to five life terms. He's been appealing ever since, based on the unbelievable incompetence and general 'mucking about' of the police – and so far the CCRC has rejected all appeals.

In July 2025, the CCRC announced that they had reviewed four of Bamber's latest ten grounds for appeal and had decided they should not be referred to the court of appeal. The other six grounds remain under review… But I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

'Michael Naughton, a scholar of sociology and law at the University of Bristol, said that the C.C.R.C. had come to serve the opposite of its intended purpose—it was effectively insuring “that miscarriages of justice don’t come to public attention, because they diminish confidence and trust in the criminal-justice system.” In 2004, Naughton began launching innocence projects at universities across the U.K., emulating a movement that has exonerated hundreds of convicts in the United States. The network closed down after eleven years, having overturned just one conviction. “People tend to say terrible things about America, but they have this real commitment to innocent people not being convicted,” Naughton said. “We don’t have that focus on innocence in this country.”' (My emphasis added.)

Sources: (The Guardian, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Wikipedia Jeremy Bamber)

I've sat in at a lot of parole hearings to testify on the behalf of inmates. All too often, the State's Attorney of the case shows up, claims they're not there to relitigate the case, and then promptly relitigate the case with a venom that has to be heard to be believed. Most of them simply don't want any inmate who was convicted under their watch to get out. Even if they might be innocent.

And I've seen inmates who have been granted commutations linger for years in limbo, waiting for the Governor to sign the commutation papers. Again, even if they might be innocent.

Is the majesty of the law more important than the accuracy of the law?

Is the majesty of the law more important than finding out the truth?

Should there be a limit to the costs (financial and time) to the state to prove whether someone is innocent or not?

As a human being, I would reply "NO" to all three of those questions.

But, "The first rule of a bureaucracy is to protect the bureaucracy."

— Ronald Reagan

Words Haunt Me

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford – I've written about this one at length before.  See my blog post on it HERE.  All I can say is that I've never read another novel like it.  Twists and turns?  Try corkscrews and wormholes.  I still read it once a year, just to see how he did it.  

The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead (1940)

Meet the almost most dysfunctional, chaotic, insane family that has ever been, or at least written about.  Sam Pollitt is what would have happened if Alden Pyle from Graham Greene's "The Quiet American" had come back home, married, and had children.  They're both American bureaucrats, egoistic idealists, who love mankind, but...

(I can't help but compare Pollitt's mission in Malaya to Pyle's in Vietnam: disastrous, although Pollitt survives his.) 

The Pollitts have too many children (and Sam always wants more, and the question is why), too little money, too little love, devotion, faith, warmth or peace - and complete chaos.  It's a complete shit-show in lyrical prose.  

Jonathan Franzen said of it, "Its prose ranges from good to fabulously good — is lyrical in the true sense, every observation and description bursting with feeling, meaning, subjectivity — and although its plotting is unobtrusively masterly, the book operates at a pitch of psychological violence that makes Revolutionary Road look like Everybody Loves Raymond. And, worse yet, can never stop laughing at that violence!. . .The book intrudes on our better-regulated world like a bad dream from the grandparental past. Its idea of a happy ending is like no other novel’s, and probably not at all like yours."  Then again, maybe it is.

MY NOTE:  I can say that last line because years ago, I met a family straight from hell.  They were the parents of the man I'd left Los Angeles with, and they explained so much.  A family where the parents were both alcoholic drug addicts who were in their 60s and looked at least 30 years older than that.  The parents regularly took off, abandoning their 4, maybe 5 children.  The state would come get the kids, eventually, put them in orphanages and/or fostercare, and then the parents would come staggering back, semi-sober, pick them up, and it would all start over again.  By the time I met this monstrous couple, they were actively trying to kill each other, and their lack of success was a deep disappointment to many, including me.  All of this is absolutely true, and it's not even the worst.  I wrote a very long story called Grace about them which I've never been able to find a market for.  Probably just too damned dark.  Some things no one wants to hear...

Rift by Liza Cody (1988).  

This is actually the first coming-of-age book of a young woman I ever read and it doesn't involve love and/or romance.  (Huzzah!  Passed the Bechdel test!)  Fay is working on a film shoot in Kenya and decides to drive to / through Ethiopia, and agrees to deliver a letter across the border from a writer to his estranged lover, Natasha Beyer. She ends up in a nightmare, from the famine, epidemics, armed insurrections, crime(a), and intrigues that take her far too long to catch on to.  But Fay finds out that she's willing to do anything to survive, absolutely anything, and she does it.  And then she "gets" to live with it.

"It's based on a trip I made myself at a time of famine and revolution. All the places are real, as are a lot of the characters and some of the events. I should not have been there, because to witness events like those and yet be able to do nothing to help made me part of the problem. I thought about it for over 10 years before I dared write about it. But even after 10 years, the trip was, in memory, still so catastrophic that I needed to face it and try to make sense of the experience.

I don't actually believe that writing a novel was the appropriate response, but it's the only skill I can use to remind people about other, godforsaken parts of the world where ordinary folk, just like you and me, endure or die in unbelievable suffering." - Liza Cody, July 2008  (Link - Robert Davis' comment)

My note:  To me one of the hallmarks of adulthood is to recognize and admit that you have done something wrong and irreparable:  and then learn to live with it, without inflicting the pain and/or self-pity on others, without falling into the too-handy illusion that it really wasn't that bad, and/or diving into any of the many substances or distractions provided by our world to make you even worse...  Fay manages that hat trick.  That's a reason to read it right there.  

Nemesis by Agatha Christie (1971)

This is my personal favorite of the Christie canon, and I feel the most literary of her works.  There is far more style and mood in the writing than Christie usually provided.  

“It was a neglected garden, a garden on which little money has been spent possibly for some years, and on which very little work has been done. The house, too, had been neglected. It was well-proportioned, the furniture in it had been good furniture once, but had little in late years of polishing or attention. It was not a house, she thought, that had been, at any rate of late years, loved in any way.”  (Which sounds to me almost like Shirley Jackson in my favorite of hers, We Have Always Lived in the Castle.)

The message from the dead.  A quest with justice in view.  An unspoken crime.  An unknown victim.  An unknown murderer.  The garden tours.  Three strange sisters.  Two unknown women.  Two victims.  

BTW, there are some modern essays on Nemesis about the lesbian angle, but I disagree with their negative tone. Christie did write about gay people in a positive way: in A Murder is Announced Miss Hinchcliffe and Amy Murgatroyd are a couple and no one thinks twice about it.*  Christie actually wrote quite a bit about the dangers of obsessive / possessive love, and what terrible things a person can and will do in order to keep someone... forever. Even if that doesn't mean alive.  I see Nemesis as Christie's meditative masterpiece on that danger.  I've often wondered how the ancient Egyptians managed to live with all those mummies, when what they really wanted was their loved ones back.  But then again, perhaps mummification wasn't so much about eternal life as eternal possession...  

*There's a similar couple in Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire Chronicles, only neither gets murdered.  

Beloved by Toni Morrison (1987)

Won the Pulitzer Prize 1988

Just read it.  Just read it.  Just read it.  

The Roots of Heaven by Romain Gary (1956)

Winner of the Prix Goncourt

Probably the first novel truly about environmentalism, set in Chad in the 1950s. But even more it's about the search for dignity and freedom in a world that regularly vomits up war, cruelty, concentration camps, destruction of humans, the natural world, etc., and justification for all of it.  The hero Morel is a French WW2 concentration camp survivor, whom everyone talks about (and mostly get wrong) but doesn't actually show up in person until late in the novel.  

“This was what he stood for: a world where there would be room enough even for such a mass of clumsy and cumbersome freedom. A margin of humanity, of tolerance, where some of life’s beauty could take refuge. His eyes narrowed a little, and an ironic, bitter smile came to his lips. I know you all, he thought. Today you say that elephants are archaic and cumbersome, that they interfere with roads and telegraph poles, and tomorrow you’ll begin to say that human rights too are obsolete and cumbersome, that they interfere with progress, and the temptation will be so great to let them fall by the road and not to burden ourselves with that extra load. And in the end man himself will become in your eyes a clumsy luxury, an archaic survival from the past, and you’ll dispense with him too, and the only thing left will be total efficiency and universal slavery and man himself will disappear under the weight of his material achievement. He had learned that much behind the barbed wire of the forced labor camp: it was our education, a lesson he was not prepared to forget.”

But this is the quote that haunts me the most:

Morel, talking about a stray dog he'd picked up in Berlin which vanished one day.  "He wandered all over looking for her, qeustioning people, but it was not a time when people were interested in lost dogs.  Finally, someone advised him to go to the pound.  He went.  The man led him in.  It was a place about 50 yards by 10, surrounded with barbed wire.  Inside it were about a hundred dogs, mostly mongrels, the kind one saw on every road of Europe or Asia, animals with no pedigree...  They gazed at him intensely, hopefully, all except the most discouraged ones, who seemed to know their fate and who did not even raise their heads to look at you.  But the others - they had to be seen to be believed, the ones who still hoped to be rescued, and who pricked up their ears and looked at you as if they knew how you felt..."  (p. 212)*

And this one seems very timely:

"That someone may simply be fed up with them and their ways and may want to look for another company, that just cannot enter their heads.  They can't believe it.  There must be a trick about it, a dishonest trick, something crooked, something political, something they can understand.  They're so used to sniffing their own behinds that when someone wants to get a breath of fresh air, to turn at last to something different, and more important, and threatened, something that's got to be saved at all costs, it's quite beyond them."  (P. 264-265, and always timely)

NOTE:  Romain Gary is the only person to have ever won the Prix Goncourt twice, first for Les Racines du Ciel (Roots of Heaven) and in 1975 for La Vie Devant Soi (The Life Before Us).  Madame Rosa, the film version of La Vie Devant Soi starring Simone Signoret, won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1978.  I recommend reading him.  

*The first time I read that paragraph, I instantly thought of a scene in Fellini's Satyricon, when Encolpius and Ascyltus wander into an abandoned villa and spend the night with an African slave girl who was left behind, abandoned.  She sings, but she doesn't talk.  When they leave, she doesn't run after them.  There's something missing in her:  hope. Which is what happens, over time, to the homeless, the abandoned, the stateless, the orphans.  

Which is why we long for stories where (most) villains get their comeuppance, (most) victims get their revenge, and there is always a new beginning and a sure place for the lost and abandoned. Today there's too damned many Successions, Billions, House of Cards,etc. where all that happens to rich villains is that they die of old age in a cushy bed. We want a lot more than that. 

The great masters were the Victorians, both in England and in France.  

Dickens, except that he would keep killing off someone young and helpless like Little Nell, or abandoned and crippled like Smike, etc., to ram home how bad the baddies were.  

Robert Louis Stevenson could get pretty damn dark, too, what with Jekyll and Hyde and The Master of Ballantrae - but oh, Kidnapped (I fell so hard for Alan Breck) and Treasure Island.  Loved them both.

Alexandre Dumas:  The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo are my two favorites.  (I tried the later D'Artagnan stories, but... not that good.)  Anyway, we're having the time of our lives watching the new production of The Count of Monte Cristo on PBS.  Let's face facts, there's nothing like watching someone betrayed, abandoned, and almost destroyed rise from the ashes and work out complete revenge on all those who did them wrong.  

"All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope”

Ripped From the Headlines!

Chelsea, MI police looking for woman who donated a human skull at Goodwill

(LINK)  Possibilities:

1. She was tired of it lying around the house.
2. It was the last of her grandfather's belongings, and she didn't want it.
3. Someone gave it to her (I hope not for Valentine's Day).
4. She'd picked it up at the town dump / local bar / the back of an Uber.
5. Well, she had to get rid of it somewhere.  
6. Nobody knows.

Scientists Recreate What a Mummy's Voice Would Have Sounded Like

(He doesn't sound that enthusiastic to me, but he got his wish.)

Firefighters Rescue Swan in the Connecticut River  (Link)

"Crews also rescued a duck and a dog, but said saving the swan also gave them a valuable opportunity to train for future ice rescues."

Serial underwear thief at New Zealand school identified as...  (LINK)

"A serial thief who has been stealing items including towels, shoes and underwear from a New Zealand school for over a year was finally caught on camera and identified as a literal cat burglar."  As in meowy kind.  Nobody yet knows why the cat was enamored by objects smelling of sweat and a hint of chlorine.

Swimmer's lost prosthetic leg washes up 10 months later, 14 miles away  (LINK)

So... jealous mermaid?  A hoarding octopus?  A kinky surfer?  My favorite part is that it was found with the sock still on it...  

Texas big game hunter killed while stalking African Cape buffalo (Link)

I like to think of it as Animals 1: Humans 0.  

Australian Mushroom Murderer Finally Sentenced:   (LINK)

Mrs. Patterson, a 50-year-old mother of two, was sentenced in early September, weeks after she was convicted of killing three of her estranged husband's elderly relatives with poisonous mushrooms in a home-cooked meal. 

The menu:
"...individual portions of home-made beef Wellington, a steak dish wrapped in pastry, usually with a paste of finely chopped mushrooms. And, as Patterson herself acknowledged during the trial, that paste contained death cap mushrooms, which are among the most poisonous in the world." 

Also, Pro Tip:  If you're going to host a toxic meal, do not, I repeat do not, serve your portion on different tableware than that of your guests.  It raises suspicions.

An Upteenth Case of Child Porn in South Dakota

"James Allen Frank, a 36-year-old man from Spearfish, has been arrested for possession of child pornography, according to a ticket and probable cause affidavit obtained by KELOLAND News.  Frank’s address, listed on the court documents, matches the address listed on business filings for an unlicensed in-home child care center run by his wife...  The tip from NCMEC included three videos depicting the sexual content involving prepubescent and pubescent girls.  He has since been sentenced to eight years in prison."  (I would think this rated a little longer sentence, like... 20 years?)  (LINK)

Boxer Loses Hairpiece in the Ring.  (LINK)

Before:  

After:  

(NOTE:  The bout was eventually scrapped because he failed a drug test.)

From News of the Weird:  (Link)

"Shepherd Dieter Michler had no real answers for why 50 members of his flock split from the 500-sheep herd and made their way into a Penny supermarket in Burgsinn, Lower Franconia, Germany, on Jan. 5. Shoppers and employees quickly took to higher ground, climbing atop the conveyor belts of the checkout lanes to make way for the ovine interlopers, who left broken bottles, droppings and strewn products in their wake when they were eventually removed from the store. Michler told the Main-Post newspaper that he suspected the wandering sheep became distracted by acorns as he led the herd across the industrial area, and, after losing contact with the rest of the group, meandered into the store's parking lot."

"Skip Cunningham, 70, was asleep on his couch on Jan. 13 when a car crashed into his home and landed on him, WWNY-TV reported. "I woke up and blood running down my head and a car laying on top of me," Cunningham said. "The guy's running around saying, 'Sorry. Sorry. Sorry.' I says, 'Well, call 911.'" An ambulance took Cunningham to the hospital, where he got 13 staples in his head. But on the way, trying to play out his amazing "luck," he asked the ambulance driver to stop so he could buy a lottery ticket. "But they wouldn't stop," he said. Cunningham has lived in the house for 50 years and said cars have run into his home five times." 

Dear Skip, MOVE. Sincerely, Concerned.

And my favorite:

"Cops Forced to Explain Why AI Generated Police Report Claimed Officer Transformed Into a Frog." Source

“The body cam software and the AI report writing software picked up on the movie that was playing in the background, which happened to be ‘The Princess and the Frog,'” police sergeant Rick Keel told the broadcaster, referring to Disney’s 2009 musical comedy. “That’s when we learned the importance of correcting these AI-generated reports.”  

Yeah, right...

"I got better."

Secret Mall Apartment and Other Dives

Okay, this is my new favorite documentary:

https://www.impawards.com/2025/secret_mall_apartment.html

Trailer here:  LINK

Available on Netflix

"In 2003, eight Rhode Islanders created a secret apartment inside a busy mall and lived there for four years, filming everything along the way. Far more than a prank, the secret apartment became a deeply meaningful place for all involved."

Ahem.  They were eight Rhode Island artists, led by Mike Townsend, who had been living and working in cheap slum housing (haven't we all...) all of which was knocked down and replaced by the Providence Place Mall and Marketplace.  To quote Townsend, 

"the only mantra they [the developers] have is if you see a space that’s underdeveloped, you have a God-given responsibility to develop it. And it was basically like having a complete stranger be like, “We’ve been thinking about it, and we think we want to knock your house down and make it a parking lot, if it’s cool with you.”"...

"Oh, our actual home? Oh, yeah, they [BLEEP] leveled that. They came in with bulldozers and cranes and knocked that sucker flat... I’m like, “Oh… Really? Game on.”"

Back when the Mall etc. was being built, Townsend had noticed "an accidental room–a remainder left over by the long division of the mall’s architecture" in the guts of the mall, only accessible by crawling up inside the walls of the mall. 

So... while their homes and studios were gone forever, this room, this underdeveloped space, was there, and no one knew about it but them.  After all, they had a God-given responsibility to develop it, and they did.  (Wait until you see how they moved the furniture in.)  

*****

Squatting is artful expression?  Sounds like a bunch of homeless trespassers

- Comment on a website about SMA.

I disagree.  

For one thing, Townsend's a hell of a good artist:  starting at 23:08 on the video are the sculptures he built in the tunnel under the railroad tracks (another hidden space) that are... haunting, to put it mildly. 

Secondly, while we live in a country that remembers with pride homesteaders and explorers, mountain men and hunters... there's no free space left to do any of that in.  Every scrap of land in this country is owned and controlled by somebody: private citizens, city/county/state/federal governments, Native American tribes, corporations.    

BTW, most farms in America are "family farms" - but as you can see, the top 4%(which earn $1 million+ and are structured like corporations) account for most of the production.  

And if you're homeless - OMG.  There's no place for the homeless to go, which gets hugely ironic when a city/corporate deal knocks down 32 acres of urban shops and housing to build a mall, without making any arrangements for relocating the people who used to live there. Oops! You're out! Good luck finding a new place to live! And how dare you hang around here and muck up our new upscale image?  

Similar stuff's happening here, too. The Sioux Falls City Council decided to build a Convention Center downtown, and in order to do that demolished the Sioux Falls Department of Social Services (DSS) building, moving it to a new, consolidated "One Stop" building way out on the perimeter, hard to get to for people who don't own a car and/or are disabled. 

Now the idea was that a Convention Center will bring in lots of revenue, decrease crime, and get rid of the pesky homeless who live on the river in the summer.  I find this hilarious, because conventions generally come with an increase of crime, especially prostitution, theft, assaults, DUIs, etc. After all, one of the major reasons people go to conventions is to get away from their home territory and let their hair down, not to mention their pants. Why do you think Grindr breaks down every time a convention hits a town? Look it up.  

And the idea that you can go out into the wilderness and live off the land - a favorite fantasy, BTW, of inmates and I don't blame them a bit – Well, you can't.  What wilderness? You can't even pull over to the side of the road in your car and crash out anymore, which is what my parents did when we used to travel cross country in the 1960s. Some law enforcement personnel is going to stop and ask you what you're doing and how intoxicated you are.  There is no more homesteading.  And even in the Alaskan wilderness, if you go out and build a cabin miles from anyone anywhere...  well, if the government finds it, they'll take it down.

Now let's talk rent: A 2 bedroom apartment in Providence, Rhode Island ran around $570+ in 1994, but then again, minimum wage was $4.25/hr = $170 a week = $680 a month.  That leaves $110 for food, clothing, utilities, etc.  Not much to actually live on, was it?  

Same when I was sharing a 4 bedroom house (old, with cockroaches, in what was basically a slum) with a bunch of artists in Atlanta back in 1973 - rent ran around $400 a month, while minimum wage was $1.60/hr = $64 a week = $256 a month.  You damn well better share to split the rent.  

BTW, we turned the place into a 6 bedroom simply by making every room except the bathroom, kitchen, and living room a bedroom.  Mine was the back porch, which had wrap-around windows and a gas space heater I lit with a match. I loved it - my sanctuary, where I wrote like a maniac, read like an opium addict, dreamed... oh, how I dreamed...  And with six of us (not to mention sleepovers), there was always someone available for talking, dreaming, drinking, laughing...   

So I'm all in favor of survival.  No one was using that room that was so well hidden that the mall administration and security guards themselves didn't know it was there. No harm, no foul in my book. Because if you're not born rich, you've got to be creative to stay alive in this world. 

Especially if you're becoming an artist. It takes a lot of work, obsession, talking, arguing, partying, debating, cooperating, and more work to get from the dream to the reality.  Every city has had and still has its neighborhood.  Some are more famous than others:  Left Bank!  Montmartre!  Greenwich Village!  Chelsea!  Florence!  Soho!  Tribeca!  Little Five Points!  And so many more.  

There's a reason Murger's Scènes de la vie de bohème of starving artists and their muses has been translated into dozens of languages, made into movies, operas, musicals, etc. Because right now, there are a group of artists in your city that are living in a run-down section of town, working crap jobs and staying up all night to do the work to become their dream... Whether in a slum or a house or a Secret Mall Apartment.

I hope you enjoy it. I sure did. Both the documentary, and in real life.

"We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident"...

Some things never change...  

I clearly remember the assassination of JFK in 1963, especially the shock and the tears, the flags at half mast, and the endless television coverage, so that we all got to see quite clearly when Jack Ruby ran up to and shot Lee Harvey Oswald to death and the two detectives escorting Oswald simply made a lot of faces while it happened.  Nobody stopped Ruby or even tried.  Even as a child, it occurred to me that someone might not have wanted all the evidence to come out.

Things got worse.  Vietnam was going on, nightly on TV.  The My Lai massacre:

• Võ Suu's photo of the Saigon execution of a Viet Cong leader.  
• Buddhist monks burning themselves to death in protest, and the nightly battles and death counts on TV. 
• 1968, the Battle of Bến Tre, "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."  
• The 1970s, the little Vietnamese girl running naked and screaming down the road because the napalm had burned all her clothing off of her.  

Vietnam had the 4th highest death toll in US war history.  Not to mention the troops who came back with PTSD, permanent mental and physical wounds, and addictions like you wouldn't believe.  Nightmares every night…

Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) 

demonstration during the 1976 US Bicentennial 

celebration in Philadelphia

And back at home, Birmingham's Bull Connor unleashing firehoses and police dogs on protesters: 

http://apushcanvas.pbworks.com/w/page/125950658/Birmingham%201963

And the pictures of the aftermath the Birmingham 16^th Street Baptist Church bombing, in which these four little black girls were killed. 

 https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-birmingham-news-6000-mourners-jam-r/138782787

BTW, the FBI did do an investigation into that bombing, and came up with the names of four white KKK men who committed the crime.  J. Edgar Hoover  promptly blocked any impending federal prosecutions against the suspects, refused to disclose any evidence his agents had obtained with state or federal prosecutors, and then sealed the records in 1968. The files weren't reopened until 1977, when the first conviction was made by Alabama AG Bill Baxley.  The other three were tried by Federal Attorney Doug Jones in 2001 and 2002.  Justice can take a long, long time.*

1968 was a hard year.  Besides Vietnam, Robert F. Kennedy Sr. and Martin Luther King, Jr. were both assassinated, followed by the incredible amount of police violence at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.  And it wasn't just the police:  Mayor Robert Daly, who ran Chicago with a strangulating hand, had 12,000 police, 5,000 National Guardsmen, and 7,500 regular army troops out in the streets, and he unleashed them to do anything they wanted. And they did. There were protesters rioting, but even the news said the police were rioting, too. A very young Dan Rather got sucker punched and dragged by security guards on the floor of the Convention.  (Link)  To which Walter Cronkite tersely replied, "I think we've got a bunch of thugs here, Dan."

And then on May 4, 1970, when the National Guard shot four students dead at Kent State in Ohio.  Four unarmed students, two of whom were walking to class, nine wounded, all unarmed…

"I survived the Kent State shootings. 

Why use force against college protests?"

The lies:  

• The chief military officer of the National Guard claimed that there had been a sniper firing on them, which is why they retaliated. 
• The guardsmen claimed they feared for their lives, but none of the students had weapons, and none of them were closer to the guardsmen than 71 feet. 
• Someone gave the order to fire.
• Initial newspaper reports had inaccurately stated that several National Guard members had been killed or seriously injured. 

A subsequent FBI investigation concluded that the Guard was not under fire and that the guardsmen fired the first shots. And while many guardsmen claimed to have been hit by stones that were pelted at them by protesters, only one Guardsman, Sgt. Lawrence Shafer, was injured enough to require medical treatment (he received a sling for his badly bruised arm and was given pain medication). In 1986, Shafer identified the person that he shot as student Joseph Lewis. Shafer nailed Lewis in his gut and in his leg.  

Kent State Victims

• Allison Beth Krause: A 19-year-old freshman from Pittsburgh, PA, she was participating in the protest and was shot in the chest.
• Jeffrey Glenn Miller: A 20-year-old sophomore from Plainview, NY, he was participating in the protest and was shot in the mouth.
• Sandra Lee Scheuer: A 20-year-old honors junior from Youngstown, OH, she was walking to class and was shot in the neck.
• William Knox Schroeder: A 19-year-old sophomore from Lorain, OH, he was an ROTC student walking to class and was shot in the chest/back.

Nine other students were wounded during the shooting. They were:

• Alan Michael Canfora: A junior who was hit in the right wrist.
• John R. Cleary: A freshman who was hit in the upper left chest.
• Thomas Mark Grace: A sophomore who was hit in his left ankle.
• Dean R. Kahler: A freshman who was shot in the back and permanently paralyzed from waist down.
• Joseph Lewis Jr.: A freshman who was hit twice, in the right abdomen and lower left leg.
• Donald Scott MacKenzie: A student who received a neck wound.
• Matthew J. McManus: A student (listed in one snippet, but specific wound details are limited).
• James Dennis Russell: A senior who was hit in his right thigh and grazed on his right forehead.
• Robert Follis Stamps: A sophomore who was hit in his right buttock.

"Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down

Should have been gone long ago

What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground

How can you run when you know?"

— "Four Dead In Ohio", Neil Young

"Afterwards a Gallup Poll showed that 58 percent of respondents blamed the students, 11 percent blamed the National Guard, and 31 percent expressed no opinion."  (LINK)  

None of this stopped me from joining in a couple of anti-Vietnam War protests.  But I knew what the risks were.  I still know what the risks are.  I just have too much arthritis to get out there.  

Meanwhile:  On social media, and this is a direct quote:  "Well, yeah, you can assemble peacefully but you can't protest!  Protest is unconstitutional!"  

Oh, p*** off.  Protest is not only constitutional, but it's the foundation of this country.  What do they think the Boston Tea Party was?  And I'll bet they never heard of the Boston Massacre, the Pine Tree Riot or the First Continental Congress which basically told the British Crown to go stuff itself.  

And the Declaration of Independence is a supremely radical manifesto saying:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."  READ THAT CAREFULLY.

BTW, also in the Declaration of Independence is summary from "The Crimes of the King":

• "He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws of Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
• He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.
• He has made judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
• He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out their substance.
• He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
• He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
• He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended legislation:
• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
• For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from Punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
• For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
• For imposing taxes on us without our Consent:
• For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
• For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:"

Read the whole Declaration of Independence HERE.  It's worth a careful read.  Our Founding Fathers were, by the standards of their day and apparently ours, radical.  

Meanwhile:

 

The (hopefully) good thing that's happened out of this is that ICE Agents have received updates on what is and what is NOT legal procedure  (LINK):

 

****************** NEWS ALERT UPDATE *********************

"ICE memo allows agents to enter homes 

without judge’s warrant, legal group says"

"The memo, allegedly signed by Todd M. Lyons, acting director of ICE, tells personnel that they only require a Form I-205 to force entry into a private residence. A Form I-205 is signed by an immigration enforcement official and authorizes an arrest following a final order of removal, which is typically issued by an immigration judge.

The whistleblowers believe new ICE recruits have been directed to follow this policy “while disregarding written course material instructing the opposite,” the disclosure says.  

They were aware of multiple DHS employees who had faced retaliation for expressing concerns about the memo and one instructor who resigned rather than teach it, it says." (LINK)  

^* Doug Jones is currently running for Governor of Alabama. God bless you, Mr. Jones.

Farewell Darkness, Welcome Light!

"We don't believe; we fear." Inuit spiritual healer Aua to explorer Knud Rasmussen (some time between 1921-1924).

"In the distance the dark outlines of the little hut emerge. Here, always on the same spot, I have for some time been startled by a remarkable fantasy. I imagine that something has risen out of the unquiet water in the last inlet before the hut, a dark form which is making its way towards me, bent, noiseless, and ineluctable. Again and again I try to banish this phantom, clear and sharp though its outlines may be in my imagination. How astonished I am then in the winter night, to find in an old case of books left behind by the hunter Nois an old number of Allers Familienjournal, containing an article on spectres which reproduces a faithful likeness of my own phantom. There is the hobgoblin and the legendary sea-serpent, and there also is the black figure as it rises out of the water and, stooping, slowly and inexorably approaches its victim. The caption reads: ‘A spectre of the shore which appears to fishermen.'"
— A Woman in the Polar Night (1938), by Christiane Ritter, translated by Jane Degras, p. 98.*

"Winter’s a dangerous thing to love. It’s pure and it’s gorgeous and it owns this land. It owns us. We sit in our houses with the heat turned up and think what a pretty day it is out there, with the sun gleaming on the snow or the snow dancing in the air. But a tree falls in the ice, and the power goes out and we’re ice men again. We’re out on the road and we’re full of the power of our automobiles and at the same time we know one little slip, one little mistake in judgment or speed or just the chance encounter with a pebble or a bird or a deer and there we are, with winter laughing all around us. You live up here, and it doesn’t take long to understand why crime rates drop like a stone come November. Winter takes the place of crime; winter takes the place of night; winter takes the place of the bogey-man and the mothman and the raptors and everything you’ve ever been afraid of. Winter rules everything, and if you don’t know that, you don’t know anything. And you will die."
— Eve Fisher, Drifts, AHMM (Jan/Feb 2006)

***

From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night,
Good Lord, deliver us!
   - Traditional Scots Prayer

Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long:
And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad;
The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,
No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,
So hallowed and so gracious is the time.
--Marcellus.

So have I heard and do in part believe it.
--Horatio.

"So says the immortal Shakespeare [Hamlet, act 1, scene 1]; and the truth thereof few nowadays, I hope, will call in question. Grose observes, too, that those born on Christmas Day cannot see spirits; which is another incontrovertible fact.

"What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks [necks], waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling], pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost.

"Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit!"

The Denham Tracts, edited by James Hardy  (SOURCE)**

Whew.  

***

Anyway, there's a reason why Christmas comes in the darkest time of the year (in ancient Rome, the winter solstice was on December 25... calendar time has changed with the centuries).  Four days after the winter solstice, when the 4-7 minutes you gain are barely noticeable, you need light, torches, songs, feasting, and and a Yule log that will burn all the way to Twelfth Night, to beat back everything and anything of monsters and death and endless darkness.  Even now, on January 8th, we've only gained 15 minutes of light.  And it's worse the further north you live in December, and in the Southern Hemisphere, the further south you live in June.  In each case, the polar night lasts around 4 months.  That's a long time to live in the dark.  

Except, of course, for the aurora borealis / aurora australis.  Light in absolute darkness...  (From Wikipedia):

The earliest depiction of the aurora may have been in Cro-Magnon cave paintings of northern Spain dating to 30,000 BC:

The oldest known written record of the wintertime aurora was in a Chinese legend written around 2600 BC; an autumnal aurora is recorded centuries later, around 2000 BC.  

The Aboriginal Australians say the aurora australis is bushfires, or a kootchee (an evil spirit creating a large fire), or the campfires of spirits in the Land of the Dead.  The Maori of New Zealand, the Dene and other northern Native Americans, all see their departed friends dancing the sky around the campfires.  Way up north, the Sami and the Inuit share similar beliefs of northern lights being the blood of the deceased, 'some believing they are caused by dead warriors' blood spraying on the sky as they engage in playing games, riding horses, or having fun in some other way.'

John W. Thompson, Jr., a Civil War survivor of the Battle of Fredericksburg, wrote "Louisiana sent those famous cosmopolitan Zouaves called the Louisiana Tigers, and there were Florida troops who, undismayed in fire, stampeded the night after Fredericksburg, when the Aurora Borealis snapped and crackled over that field of the frozen dead hard by the Rappahannock ..."

Speaking of the Lights making sound - they do. They really do.  

  

So light candles! Keep the hot drinks flowing, the sweet treats coming, and late at night, cuddle under the covers, and listen to the light crackling in the sky...  

The darkness is vanquished!  

The light is finally returning!    

*Back in 1933, Viennese Christiane Ritter spent a year on the remote archipelago of Svalbard, far above the Arctic Circle, with her husband and another hunter.  It's an amazing record, and I highly recommend it.  

**From "Folklord and Mythology Electronic Texts", edited and/or translated by D. L. Ashliman, University of Pittsburgh.  (HERE)  A wonderful source for just about any folklore you would want to know about.  Enjoy!

Christmas Movies for the Ages — at Our House At Least

(This first appeared 10 years ago, but I think it's always good to look at (my) classics again!)

I love a good Christmas movie or story, but I take my entertainment with a little salt, thanks. Or at least a shot glass. And a little murder just adds to the fun.  Here's a list of my favorite Christmas movies, the ones my husband and I watch every year, and yes, we know the lines by heart:

We're No Angels, 1955

I first saw this when I was ten years old, back in the 60's, watching it on a black and white TV set, all by myself. I laughed until I cried, and I remembered lines from it for years afterwards. It warped me for life.

"I read someplace that when a lady faints, you should loosen her clothing." - Albert (Aldo Ray)

Three convicts escape from the prison on Devil's Island on Christmas Eve. There's Humphrey Bogart as Joseph, a maniac and master forger, Peter Ustinov as Jules, an expert safe-cracker, in prison only because of a "slight difference of opinion with my wife", and Aldo Ray as Albert, "a swine" of a heart breaker who only fell afoul of the law after asking his uncle for money (the illegal part was when said uncle said "no" and Albert beat him to death with a poker – 29 times, mam'selle). Oh, and their fellow-traveler, Adolphe - or is it Adolf?

"We came here to rob them and that's what we're gonna do – beat their heads in, gouge their eyes out, slash their throats. Soon as we wash the dishes." – Joseph

Anyway, these 3 convicts need money, clothing, passports - and they find it all at Ducotel's General Store, the famous Ducotel's, "the one who gives credit". Along with Felix (Leo G. Carroll), the most inept, innocent, and financially challenged manager in history, his beautiful wife, Amelie (played by Joan Bennett), and their daughter Isobel (Gloria Talbott, in full super virgin mode).

You can see where this is going: they get hired, they get interested, they get all warm fuzzy, they change their ways, everyone is happy. Right? Well, not quite. Because the big fat plum in this pudding is Basil Rathbone as Andre Trochard, who owns Ducotel's, and has come to Devil's Island - with his sycophantic nephew Paul - to do the books on Christmas Day. I love a good villain, and Basil Rathbone is as snooty, snotty, sneering, vindictive, scheming, insulting, arrogant, belittling, and generally nasty as they come. ("Your opinion of me has no cash value." – Andre Trochard.) He makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like a warm pussy cat.

Andre Trochard - "Twenty years in solitary – how's that for a Christmas present?"

Jules – "That's a lovely Christmas present. But how are you going to wrap it up?"

There's no Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, or Future in this one; no "God bless us, every one"; no Tiny Tim; but there's theft and forgery, fraud and deceit, murder and mayhem, all done with sharp, hilarious dialog. Go. Rent it now. Pour a Chateau Yquem (you'll understand later) or its equivalent, pull out a turkey leg, and enjoy! Merry Christmas! Compliments of the Season!

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), Monty Wooley, Bette Davis, Jimmy Durante, and more. The worst house guest in the world is also the most erudite, witty, arrogant, and popular man on the planet. Sheridan Whiteside was Kaufman and Hart's masterpiece (especially as played by Monty Wooley), based on (of course) the real Algonquin Club's founder, leader, gatekeeper and spoiled child, Alexander Woollcott.

Jimmy Durante, Mary Wickes (in her breakthrough screen role), and Monty Wooley

The play - and the movie - are chock full of characters who were based, almost libellously, on real people. Banjo = Harpo Marx. Beverly Carlton = Noel Coward. Lorraine Sheldon = Gertrude Lawrence, of whom Beverly Carlton says, in my favorite movie line of all time,

"They do say she set fire to her mother, but I don't believe it."

And Mary Wickes as Nurse Preen, who has to nurse the impossible Sheridan Whiteside:

"I am not only walking out on this case, Mr. Whiteside, I am leaving the nursing profession. I became a nurse because all my life, ever since I was a little girl, I was filled with the idea of serving a suffering humanity. After one month with you , Mr. Whiteside, I am going to work in a munitions factory. From now on , anything I can do to help exterminate the human race will fill me with the greatest of pleasure. If Florence Nightingale had ever nursed YOU, Mr. Whiteside, she would have married Jack the Ripper instead of founding the Red Cross!"

Somebody had to finally say it.

A/k/a Reborn (1981). Directed by Bigas Luna, "starring" Dennis Hopper as the snake-oil selling Reverend Tom Hartley, Michael Moriarty as Mark (a thickly-veiled Joseph), and (I kid you not, spoiler alert!) a helicopter as the Holy Spirit. While it has horrible production values, and was obviously made (in Italy, Spain, and Houston, TX) on rather less than a shoestring (I think all the money was spent on the helicopter), this may be one of the most interesting versions of the Nativity that's ever been done.  

"You're going to have a baby? I can't have a baby! I can't even take care of myself, much less a baby!" Mark.

The Thin Man (1934). William Powell and Myrna Loy. Machine-gun dialog, much of it hilarious. A middle-aged peroxide blonde and an incredibly young Maureen O'Sullivan. More drinking than anyone would dare put into a movie today, at least not without a quick trip to rehab for somebody, especially Nick Charles. And mostly true to Dashiell Hammett's plot.

"Is he working on the case?" "Yes, a case of scotch!"

Okay, a quick break for myself and the kids and the grandkids: A Muppet Christmas Carol (with Michael Caine), A Charlie Brown Christmas, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (narrated by Boris Karloff) A Christmas Story. Love, love, love them ALL.

"You'll shoot your eye out!"

Okay, back to more adult fare:

Love Actually (2003), mostly because I start laughing as soon as Bill Nighy starts cursing. (What can I say? I'm that kind of girl.)

"Hiya kids. Here is an important message from your Uncle Bill. Don't buy drugs. Become a pop star, and they give you them for free!" Truer words are rarely spoken in a Christmas movie…

© IMDb

Totally NON-secret NON-guilty pleasure: Blackadder's Christmas Carol (1988). Rowan Atkinson (Blackadder), Tony Robinson (Baldrick), Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Miranda Richardson, Jim Broadbent and Miram Margolyes as Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, and Robbie Coltrane as the Spirit of Christmas…

© IMDb

"Mrs. Scratchit, Tiny Tom is fifteen stone and built like a brick privy. If he eats any more heartily, he will turn into a pie shop." God bless us, everyone.

Scrooge (A Christmas Carol) (1951). Alistair Sim. This is my favorite version, mostly because it feels like Dickens to me, because I love Fezziwig's sideburns, because of the hysterical charwoman, but mostly because Mr. Sim's Scrooge really ENJOYS being a hard-hearted miser from hell. Which makes his delight, after coming back from his Christmas travels among the spirits, more believable. Or at least I always find myself grinning from ear to ear...

"I don't deserve to be this happy. But I simply can't help it!"

Hey, there's 12 Days of Christmas, and this is only the first one – there's PLENTY of time to watch them all!

Merry Christmas, everyone!