We come a long Way, Baby.

This is the newspaper story that ran one week after the raid on the Stonewall Inn. Notice the condescension and ridicule. Happy Pride Month.

HOMO NEST RAIDED – QUEEN BEES ARE STINGING MAD

-by Jerry Lisker, New York Daily News, July 6th 1969

She sat there with her legs crossed, the lashes of her mascara-coated eyes beating like the wings of a hummingbird. She was angry. She was so upset she hadn’t bothered to shave. A day old stubble was beginning to push through the pancake makeup. She was a he. A queen of Christopher Street.

Last weekend the queens had turned commandos and stood bra strap to bra strap against an invasion of the helmeted Tactical Patrol Force. The elite police squad had shut down one of their private gay clubs, the Stonewall Inn at 57 Christopher St., in the heart of a three-block homosexual community in Greenwich Village. Queen Power reared its bleached blonde head in revolt. New York City experienced its first homosexual riot. “We may have lost the battle, sweets, but the war is far from over,” lisped an unofficial lady-in-waiting from the court of the Queens.

“We’ve had all we can take from the Gestapo,” the spokesman, or spokeswoman, continued. “We’re putting our foot down once and for all.” The foot wore a spiked heel. According to reports, the Stonewall Inn, a two-story structure with a sand painted brick and opaque glass facade, was a mecca for the homosexual element in the village who wanted nothing but a private little place where they could congregate, drink, dance and do whatever little girls do when they get together.

The thick glass shut out the outside world of the street. Inside, the Stonewall bathed in wild, bright psychedelic lights, while the patrons writhed to the sounds of a juke box on a square dance floor surrounded by booths and tables. The bar did a good business and the waiters, or waitresses, were always kept busy, as they snaked their way around the dancing customers to the booths and tables. For nearly two years, peace and tranquility reigned supreme for the Alice in Wonderland clientele.

The Raid Last Friday

Last Friday the privacy of the Stonewall was invaded by police from the First Division. It was a raid. They had a warrant. After two years, police said they had been informed that liquor was being served on the premises. Since the Stonewall was without a license, the place was being closed. It was the law.

All hell broke loose when the police entered the Stonewall. The girls instinctively reached for each other. Others stood frozen, locked in an embrace of fear.

Only a handful of police were on hand for the initial landing in the homosexual beachhead. They ushered the patrons out onto Christopher Street, just off Sheridan Square. A crowd had formed in front of the Stonewall and the customers were greeted with cheers of encouragement from the gallery.

The whole proceeding took on the aura of a homosexual Academy Awards Night. The Queens pranced out to the street blowing kisses and waving to the crowd. A beauty of a specimen named Stella wailed uncontrollably while being led to the sidewalk in front of the Stonewall by a cop. She later confessed that she didn’t protest the manhandling by the officer, it was just that her hair was in curlers and she was afraid her new beau might be in the crowd and spot her. She didn’t want him to see her this way, she wept.

Queen Power

The crowd began to get out of hand, eye witnesses said. Then, without warning, Queen Power exploded with all the fury of a gay atomic bomb. Queens, princesses and ladies-in-waiting began hurling anything they could get their polished, manicured fingernails on. Bobby pins, compacts, curlers, lipstick tubes and other femme fatale missiles were flying in the direction of the cops. The war was on. The lilies of the valley had become carnivorous jungle plants.

Urged on by cries of “C’mon girls, lets go get ’em,” the defenders of Stonewall launched an attack. The cops called for assistance. To the rescue came the Tactical Patrol Force.

Flushed with the excitement of battle, a fellow called Gloria pranced around like Wonder Woman, while several Florence Nightingales administered first aid to the fallen warriors. There were some assorted scratches and bruises, but nothing serious was suffered by the honeys turned Madwoman of Chaillot.

Official reports listed four injured policemen with 13 arrests. The War of the Roses lasted about 2 hours from about midnight to 2 a.m. There was a return bout Wednesday night.

Two veterans recently recalled the battle and issued a warning to the cops. “If they close up all the gay joints in this area, there is going to be all out war.”

Bruce and Nan

Both said they were refugees from Indiana and had come to New York where they could live together happily ever after. They were in their early 20’s. They preferred to be called by their married names, Bruce and Nan.

“I don’t like your paper,” Nan lisped matter-of-factly. “It’s anti-fag and pro-cop.”

“I’ll bet you didn’t see what they did to the Stonewall. Did the pigs tell you that they smashed everything in sight? Did you ask them why they stole money out of the cash register and then smashed it with a sledge hammer? Did you ask them why it took them two years to discover that the Stonewall didn’t have a liquor license.”

Holly Woodlawn 

Bruce nodded in agreement and reached over for Nan’s trembling hands.

“Calm down, doll,” he said. “Your face is getting all flushed.”

Nan wiped her face with a tissue.

“This would have to happen right before the wedding. The reception was going to be held at the Stonewall, too,” Nan said, tossing her ashen-tinted hair over her shoulder.

“What wedding?,” the bystander asked.

Nan frowned with a how-could-anybody-be-so-stupid look. “Eric and Jack’s wedding, of course. They’re finally tying the knot. I thought they’d never get together.”

Meet Shirley

“We’ll have to find another place, that’s all there is to it,” Bruce sighed. “But every time we start a place, the cops break it up sooner or later.”

Andy Warhol Self Portrait

“They let us operate just as long as the payoff is regular,” Nan said bitterly. “I believe they closed up the Stonewall because there was some trouble with the payoff to the cops. I think that’s the real reason. It’s a shame. It was such a lovely place. We never bothered anybody. Why couldn’t they leave us alone?”

Shirley Evans, a neighbor with two children, agrees that the Stonewall was not a rowdy place and the persons who frequented the club were never troublesome. She lives at 45 Christopher St.

“Up until the night of the police raid there was never any trouble there,” she said. “The homosexuals minded their own business and never bothered a soul. There were never any fights or hollering, or anything like that. They just wanted to be left alone. I don’t know what they did inside, but that’s their business. I was never in there myself. It was just awful when the police came. It was like a swarm of hornets attacking a bunch of butterflies.”

A reporter visited the now closed Stonewall and it indeed looked like a cyclone had struck the premises.

Police said there were over 200 people in the Stonewall when they entered with a warrant. The crowd outside was estimated at 500 to 1,000. According to police, the Stonewall had been under observation for some time. Being a private club, plain clothesmen were refused entrance to the inside when they periodically tried to check the place. “They had the tightest security in the Village,” a First Division officer said, “We could never get near the place without a warrant.”

Police Talk

The men of the First Division were unable to find any humor in the situation, despite the comical overtones of the raid.

“They were throwing more than lace hankies,” one inspector said. “I was almost decapitated by a slab of thick glass. It was thrown like a discus and just missed my throat by inches. The beer can didn’t miss, though, “it hit me right above the temple.”

Police also believe the club was operated by Mafia connected owners. The police did confiscate the Stonewall’s cash register as proceeds from an illegal operation. The receipts were counted and are on file at the division headquarters. The warrant was served and the establishment closed on the grounds it was an illegal membership club with no license, and no license to serve liquor.

The police are sure of one thing. They haven’t heard the last from the Girls of Christopher Street.

Cats Evolving? Eeek!

Click Me!

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Fesgao remarked, his dark eyes unreadable. Aly rolled her eyes. Why did everyone say that to her? “People always forget the rest of the saying,” she complained. “‘And satisfaction brought it back.” ― Tamora Pierce, Trickster's Choice

Nobel Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway was a famous aficionado of polydactyl cats, after being first given a six-toed cat by a ship's captain. Upon Hemingway's death in 1961, his former home in Key West, Florida, became a museum and a home for his cats, and it currently houses approximately fifty descendants of his cats (about half of which are polydactyl). Because of his love for these animals, polydactyl cats are sometimes referred to as "Hemingway Cats".

Some sources state that these cats are rare in Europe because they were killed as witches' familiars,[3] but other sources indicate that they are quite common in southern Britain.[2] - Wikipedia.

Indy the Smart Cat can open jars without a thumb.

Waist Deep in the Big Muddy. Some fools say to push on.

    UPDATE: Japan to Announce Fukushima Water Release Into Sea Soon

The Japanese government has decided to dispose of massive amounts of treated but still radioactive water stored in tanks at the wrecked Fukushima nuclear plant by releasing it into the Pacific Ocean, local media say, a conclusion widely expected but delayed for years amid protests and safety concerns.

By Associated Press, Wire Service Content April 9, 2021

More

Japan’s environmental Minister calls for closing down all nuclear reactors to prevent another disaster like Fukushima.

“We will be doomed if we allow another nuclear accident to occur.” - Shinjiro Koizumi

Japan’s new environmental minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, called Wednesday for permanently shutting down the nation’s nuclear reactors to prevent a repeat of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, comments that came just a day after Koizumi’s predecessor recommended dumping more than one million tons of radioactive wastewater from the power plant into the Pacific Ocean.

Russia is sending a nuclear reactor to the Arctic. Russia just had a serious nuclear explosion. Five nuclear scientists died.

I do not think we need any country to build more nuclear reactors. We need to abandon them. We need to shut down existing reactors and build no more. 

The Music and the Scientist are here to tell you why we must do that. I put the Science first.

"Proponents of nuclear power often bill the option as a panacea to the impending climate crisis, arguing that it is a clean alternative to a carbon-reliant industry. Kate Brown, professor of science, technology and society at MIT specializing in environmental and nuclear history, says the full story is far more complex. "The thing that keeps me up at night is the health effects," she says. Brown, who has spent five years researching the fallout and lasting repercussions of the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, adds that "to this day when people tell you we have no evidence of low-dose exposures cause harm to human health, that is because that big study was never done." - Democracy Now. 

A Tribute to Pete Seeger (1919-2014)

"Pete Seeger was a giant of our time. Growing up in a musical family, he had a long and productive career as a folk song leader and social activist. His father was the musicologist Charles Seeger, and his mother Constance was a classical violinist. At one point during his youth, Seeger and his brothers traveled extensively with their parents, entertaining communities throughout the countryside. When he was sixteen, he accompanied his father to Bascom Lamar Lunsford’s folk festival in Asheville, North Carolina. It is there that he first encountered the banjo and fell in love with it." - Folkways

Resurrection and Redemption

This year Easter falls on April Fool's Day. The Roman Catholic Church is asking disaffected American Catholics to come home. 

Come home to what? Sexual shame? Mutilation and possible death in childbirth as a social good? Get in line and vote for Traitor Trump like all your hypnotized Sheep? American Catholics put the Stooge of Darkness in the Oval Office. 

I will not count the ways the RCC has abandoned and tormented me. Sufficient to say I did not give my children to the RCC for spiritual education.

I know I will come home when they make a plate for me at the table. And smile when I sit down. And apologize for treating a poor young unwed Catholic Mother as though she was beyond the pale, not worth speaking to, or worthy of assistance - me. And I rejected the illegal abortion my Catholic Mother offered me.

I reject the Atonement. I am responsible for my own sins. I am responsible for my own redemption. I would never seek to profit from the torture death of any being - god, human, or animal. Got room for me now?

The long-awaited second Southern Gospel Revival EP has finally been released.
The project, which is a follow-up to the first one that was released in 2012, reunites Courtney Patton, Drew Kennedy, Jamie Lin Wilson and Ben and Micah Hester. Each recording was completed in one take, with no overdubs. Songs include 'When They Ring Those Golden Bells,' 'Take Your Shoes Off Moses,' 'By the Riverside' and 'I Can't Even Walk.'