Frank Beacham's Journal

In 1962 — 60 years ago this week — New York’s Playboy Club opened its doors on East 59th Street

In 1962 — 60 years ago this week — New York’s Playboy Club opened its doors on East 59th Street with a rollicking $100-a-plate benefit for the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation.

“Nothing Stays Those Bunnies,” read the headline in Billboard, accompanied by a photo of Bunny Wanda chiming the call for Playboy Breakfast.

Opening-night talent included a quartet doing vocal impressions of jazz and pop singers — Tony Bennett caught the act of a Tony Bennett impersonator.

The club, complete with mood lights on each floor and “technomated” murals in which lights on buildings actually flashed, was a beacon to a certain kind of “Mad Men”-era businessman or those who sought to live like one.

It also attracted the attention of Gloria Steinem, who went undercover as a Bunny for a 1963 exposé.

By the mid-’80s, the club had closed.

Thanks New York Times!

In 1895 — 127 years ago today — the New York Times reported a sighting of a giant sea serpent off the shore at Spring Lake, New Jersey

In 1895 — 127 years ago today — the New York Times reported a sighting of a giant sea serpent off the shore at Spring Lake, New Jersey.

There were other sightings too in the New York City area, including several at the Brooklyn Bridge.

Phillip N. Jackson, vice president of the Newark Electric Light and Power Co., said he saw the creature — which traveled through the water at great speed and was about 100 feet long.

A number of folds in the creature’s body were plainly seen as it rose and fell, Jackson said.

Another witness told Scientific American that the body of the long creature was as large around as a flour barrel. “The nose and mouth resembled those of an alligator, but there were no tentacles to be seen. The body was smooth and round and of dark color,” the witness, Willard P. Shaw of 41 Wall Street, said.

Shaw also said the creature was about 100 feet long and travelled about 50 miles an hour and jumped from the water several times.

An image of the serpent was created by Currier & Ives.

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom took place in Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963 — 59 years ago today

The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom or "The Great March on Washington," as styled in a sound recording released after the event, was one of the largest political rallies for human rights in United States history and called for civil and economic rights for African Americans.

It took place in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, August 28, 1963 — 59 years ago today.

Martin Luther King, Jr., standing in front of the Lincoln Memorial, delivered his historic "I Have a Dream" speech advocating racial harmony during the march.

The march was organized by a group of civil rights, labor, and religious organizations, under the theme "jobs, and freedom." Estimates of the number of participants varied from 200,000 to 300,000. Observers estimated that 75–80 percent of the marchers were black.

The march is widely credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965).

Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson sang "How I Got Over," and Marian Anderson sang "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands." This was not Marian Anderson's first appearance at the Lincoln Memorial. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused permission for Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall.

With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Joan Baez led the crowds in several verses of "We Shall Overcome" and "Oh Freedom." Bob Dylan performed, "When the Ship Comes In," for which he was joined by Baez. Dylan also performed "Only a Pawn in Their Game," a provocative and not completely popular choice because it asserted that Byron de la Beckwith, as a poor white man, was not personally or primarily to blame for the murder of Medgar Evers.

Peter, Paul and Mary sang "If I Had a Hammer" and Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." Odetta sang "I'm On My Way." Some participants, including Dick Gregory criticized the choice of mostly white performers and the lack of group participation in the singing.

Dylan himself said he felt uncomfortable as a white man serving as a public image for the civil rights movement. After the March on Washington, he performed at few other immediately politicized events.

The symbolism of the March was contested before it even took place. In the years following the March, movement radicals increasingly subscribed to Malcolm X's narrative of the March as a co-optation by the white establishment. Liberals and conservatives tended to embrace the March, but focused mostly on King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the legislative successes of 1964 and 1965.

The mass media identified King's speech as a highlight of the event and focused on this oration to the exclusion of other aspects. For several decades, King took center stage in narratives about the March. More recently, historians and commentators have acknowledged the role played by Bayard Rustin in organizing the event.

On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the African American civil rights movement reached its high-water mark when Martin Luther King, Jr., spoke to about 250,000 people attending the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

The demonstrators — black and white, poor and rich — came together in the nation's capital to demand voting rights and equal opportunity for African Americans and to appeal for an end to racial segregation and discrimination. The peaceful rally was the largest assembly for a redress of grievances that the capital had ever seen, and King was the last speaker.

With the statue of Abraham Lincoln — the Great Emancipator — towering behind him, King used the rhetorical talents he had developed as a Baptist preacher to show how, as he put it, the "Negro is still not free."

He told of the struggle ahead, stressing the importance of continued action and nonviolent protest. Coming to the end of his prepared text (which, like other speakers that day, he had limited to seven minutes), he was overwhelmed by the moment and launched into an improvised sermon.

He told the hushed crowd, "Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettoes of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair."

Continuing, he began the refrain that made the speech one of the best known in U.S. history, second only to Lincoln's 1863 "Gettysburg Address":

"I have a dream," he boomed over the crowd stretching from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument, "that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

“I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today."

King had used the "I have a dream" theme before, in a handful of stump speeches, but never with the force and effectiveness of that hot August day in Washington. He equated the civil rights movement with the highest and noblest ideals of the American tradition, allowing many to see for the first time the importance and urgency of racial equality.

He ended his stirring, 16-minute speech with his vision of the fruit of racial harmony:

"When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, 'Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!'"

In the year after the March on Washington, the civil rights movement achieved two of its greatest successes: the ratification of the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished the poll tax and thus a barrier to poor African American voters in the South; and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited racial discrimination in employment and education and outlawed racial segregation in public facilities.

In October, 1964, Martin Luther King, Jr., was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 4, 1968, he was shot to death while standing on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee — he was 39 years old. The gunman was escaped convict James Earl Ray.

Here is film from King’s speech at the march

Thanks History.com

Living in a Time of Extreme Hate

Living in a Time of Extreme Hate

I try to avoid the nasty politics of this era on these pages. I focus on creativity and what our species can achieve at his or her best. Yet, I grew up with hate in South Carolina, have written and reported about it, studied it and seen it wear different disguises over the years. It is often hard to ignore.

Mendacity — as Tennessee Williams so perfectly described it — constantly generates new disguises and wears many masks as those who practice it try to hide it. Mendacity is and always will be a fog of lies that allows humans to try to hide what is real in their lives and avoid facing it. The facade fractures and blows up occasionally, just as it has during the pandemic and post-Trump era.

As sad as it is, we must face the harsh fact that a large chunk of the American population is feeding this mendacity. The attack on Salman Rushdie last week was especially heinous. It seems to be getting worse and never ends.

We remain a split nation. It has been caused by several things, including misinformation via an increasingly fragmented internet and a core of despicable people, led by a disgraced former president, who feeds it. The remnants of this toxic time still hangs in the air.

Racism has always been ugly. The last few years have given many permission to take off their masks. It has happened for all to see on television. All we see is rage, insanity and violence. Trump’s defeat at the polls last year does not make it instantly go away.

Shakespeare told us about these traits many years ago. Some of us learned what he wrote. But the current lack of education and jobs, coupled with extreme poverty and ignorance, has taken a huge toll. As a country, we have to dig our way out of it or we will cease to exist as a nation. It is a major and severe challenge ahead.

I doubt it will happen in my lifetime. That’s why I find solace in the creative arts. For me, the arts are the best way to enjoy life in a time of 24/7 chaos and despair. It’s all I know to do. Each of us must deal with it in our own way. But none of us should ever accept it. That would be the greatest tragedy of all.

Frank Beacham

Above photo by Edu Bayer

Hipsters: Real vs. Fake

Harry “the Hipster” Gibson

Photo by William P. Gottlieb

Hipsters: Real vs. Fake

It makes my skin crawl whenever I hear a young person refer to his or herself as a “hipster.”

Not only do most people today not even understand what the term means, but they live in a corporate-infused world where it is now almost impossible to be truly hip.

The New York Times recently wrote about the origins of the word hipster, which might help to explain to those who don’t understand the history of the word and how it has changed over time.

Though the word has been in use for a long time, the Times credits the jazz clubs of 1940s Harlem for making the term popular. In the 40s, a Bronx-born, Juilliard-trained musician, Harry Raab, helped popularize the word with his stage name: Harry “the Hipster” Gibson. His big hit was “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine.”

At the time, “hipster” was used to describe someone who saw him or herself as hip and ahead of the curve, Lewis Porter, a jazz historian at Rutgers University, told the Times.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word is also thought to be a modernized version of “hepcat,” which had the same meaning in jazz circles.

Porter added that the word might also have been used to describe white jazz musicians like Gibson, who played in traditionally black clubs. “That certainly was not its original meaning, but that could have become attached to it later on,” he said.

In his 1957 essay, “The White Negro,” Norman Mailer examined beatnik culture, posing the theory that to be a hipster was to be a white American who adopted black culture, world views and music as an act of rebellion against capitalist greed, wartime violence and the ever-present specter of nuclear war.

Hipster was used to refer to members of the Beat Generation, who virtually all defied and criticized the white, capitalist establishment culture of the 1950s. All lived cheaply and outside the scope of mainstream consumerism. Virtually all true hipsters observed the counter culture ethics of the 1960s.

Jack Kerouac described 1940s hipsters as "rising and roaming America, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere [as] characters of a special spirituality.” Near the beginning of his poem, Howl, Allen Ginsberg mentioned "angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”

The New York Times said it has used the word “hipster” more than 3,000 times since 1851. Yet, the newspaper said, the bulk of those references came after the year 2000, when most of the people who used the term were only wannabes.

The Times said it typically used the word to describe a class of people who moved to Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The problem with that, of course, is that if one could afford to live in Brooklyn after the boom, they were not genuine hipsters.

Today, the hipster subculture is composed of affluent or middle class youth who reside primarily in gentrifying neighborhoods. It is broadly associated with indie and alternative music, a varied non-mainstream fashion sensibility, vintage and thrift store-bought clothing, generally progressive political views, organic and artisanal foods and alternative lifestyles.

The subculture typically consists of white millennials living in urban areas. Often the world hipster is now used as a pejorative term to describe someone who is pretentious, overly trendy or effete.

In Rob Horning's April, 2009 article, The Death of the Hipster, he wrote that the hipster might be the "embodiment of postmodernism as a spent force, revealing what happens when pastiche and irony exhaust themselves as aesthetics."

Of all places, Time magazine, described the modern hipster phenomenon in a July, 2009 article:

“Hipsters are the friends who sneer when you cop to liking Coldplay. They're the people who wear T-shirts silk-screened with quotes from movies you've never heard of and the only ones in America who still think Pabst Blue Ribbon is a good beer. They sport cowboy hats and berets and think Kanye West stole their sunglasses. Everything about them is exactingly constructed to give off the vibe that they just don't care.”

One of the benefits of getting older is being able to easily see through the pretensions of youth. Whenever someone living in a major city like New York tells you today he or she is a “hipster,” run for the hills. Fraud is written all over them.

Thanks New York Times!

Before this day in 1986 — 36 years ago — a woman could not be a “Ms.” in the pages of The New York Times

Styles often change very slowly. Before this day in 1986 — 36 years ago — a woman could not be a “Ms.” in the pages of The New York Times.

That’s because a top editor had persuaded the publisher, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, that the usage was a passing fad. Reporters had to pry when interviewing women: Are you Miss or Mrs.? “It’s none of your damned business!” reporters were sometimes told.

In 1972, “Ms.” was accepted by the American Heritage School Dictionary. But it took protests, internal pressure, time and a smart strategy to persuade The New York Times to follow suit.

Paula Kassell, a feminist writer and publisher, bought Times stock so that she could raise questions about the policy at shareholders’ meetings. In April, 1986, Kassell persuaded Sulzberger to convene language experts — but then received word that the paper would allow “Ms.” without further discussion.

As The Times prepared its first edition using “Ms.,” Betsy Wade, a Times editor, wrote, “Gloria Steinem, Mary Thom and other editors of Ms. magazine walked into the city room with a basket of flowers for the editor” — A. M. Rosenthal — “and the copy editors and reporters applauded.”

The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world

The main reading room of the Library of Congress.

Photo by Richard Perry

It contains 167 million items and 838 miles of bookshelves, and it adds 12,000 articles of history daily.

The Library of Congress is one of the largest libraries in the world. It was established on this day in 1800 with the same sweep of President John Adams’s pen that moved the federal government from Philadelphia to Washington.

As its name suggests, the library was originally for members of Congress, but its role as the leading research arm of the government has expanded. Anyone 16 and older may get a library card and use the collections on site.

While its main building is in Washington, the library has offices around the world and has materials in 470 languages. It is home to a Gutenberg Bible and a 1507 world map that is the first known document on which “America” appears (over what is now Brazil).

The Librarian of Congress is a title that has been held by 14 people since 1800. Carla Hayden, the current librarian, is the first woman and first African-American to hold the post. “If you can absorb information yourself and make your own decisions, that’s a freedom,” Dr. Hayden told The New York Times.

Thanks New York Times!

Today is World Consumer Rights Day

Today is World Consumer Rights Day.

Started in 1983, the day was inspired by an address that President John F. Kennedy gave in August, 1962 — 60 years ago.

Many of Kennedy passages resonate more than ever today.

“The march of technology — affecting, for example, the foods we eat, the medicines we take and the many appliances we use in our homes — has increased the difficulties of the consumer along with his opportunities,” Kennedy said.

The government, he said, should protect the right to safety, to being informed, to choice and to being heard.

Kennedy’s message helped pave the way for activists like Ralph Nader and his push for auto safety, and well as many other consumer safety initiatives.

Upton Sinclair, whose 1906 novel, “The Jungle,” depicted the deplorable standards in the meatpacking industry, prompting legislative action, was also viewed as an early advocate for consumers.

As corporations have accumulated more power, the movement is now cast in the role of underdog. This is especially true with the Trump administration systematically abandoning consumer protections that it took years to achieve.

“There are a lot of powerful interests trying to tilt the scales against consumers,” the publisher of Consumer Reports wrote in 2012. “But there is one important asset that they don’t have and we do. That asset is people power.”

That is if the people will wake up and recognize what is happening.

Thanks New York Times!

In the above photo, President Kennedy in Pierre, S.D., in August, 1962, when he made the speech.

Photo by George Tames

Think “selfies” are something relatively new?

Think “selfies” are something relatively new?

These photos were taken in 1920 in New York City. Five photographers posed together on the roof of Marceau's Studio, while Joseph Byron held one side of the camera with his right hand and Ben Falk held the other side with his left hand.

The photographers wrote that occupational self-portraits “proclaim a new profession independent from tradition. Images of photographers taken by photographers illustrate a developing self-awareness, an inventiveness and an introspection at once calculating and as casual as the experience of noticing one’s reflection in a shop window."

The image features Uncle Joe Byron, Pirie MacDonald, Colonel Marceau, Pop Core and Ben Falk long before the era of social media.

Having known both right-wing politicians and radio/TV preachers, I can tell you that most operate identically — they just wear different costumes

Jim and Tammy Bakker, 1986

Having known both right-wing politicians and radio/TV preachers, I can tell you that most operate identically — they just wear different costumes.

Sadly, most are after the money of poor, uneducated people who become their “believers.” These unsuspecting people buy the arguments of the public mouthpiece who blames third parties for whatever is causing their sad, miserable existence. This sort of evangelism has probably been around forever in some form.

The modern electronic media version, however, probably began with Father Coughlin, one of the first Roman Catholic priests to use radio to reach a mass audience. He began his broadcasts in 1926.

Coughlin started out as a supporter of President Roosevelt in the 1930s. He wrote a platform calling for monetary reforms, the nationalization of major industries and railroads and protection of the rights of labor. The membership ran into the millions, resembling the Populist movement of the 1890s. Coughlin had a great platform, blaming others for the Great Depression.

After hinting at attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program to issue antisemitic commentary, and later to support some of the policies of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The broadcasts have been called "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture."

After Coughlin’s radio show was canceled by the traditional radio networks, he raised money to build his own network, which soon reached millions of listeners on a 36-station hookup. What Coughlin proved is that anyone with the microphone and a “message” could raise money on the air. It was a revelation that many understood and adopted for their own uses.

This, of course, extends with variations of theme to the modern day. On the political side — all far to the right on the political spectrum — are the likes of Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and the late Rush Limbaugh. Donald Trump took it to an absurd new level.

Add to that the late Sen. Jesse Helms, who rose to the U.S. Senate from racist broadcasting in North Carolina, and created one of the biggest money machines of all of them.

On the religious side were Jerry Falwell, Billy and Franklin Graham, Kenneth Copeland, Reverend Ike, Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple McPherson, Oral Roberts, Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart and two of my old favorites, Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

Jim Bakker created the PTL Club, a popular television program. A sex scandal led to his resignation from the ministry. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about his imprisonment and divorce from Tammy Faye.

You can’t keep an old evangelist down, though. Bakker is still on the air and still owes the IRS about $6 million. These days, he pitches buckets of survival food to sell his audience for “the end of days.” And, yes, he’s a big Donald Trump supporter.

Tammy Faye, Bakker’s on-air cohort, died in 2007 of cancer. Today, she would have turned 79 years old.

Sadly, these media hustlers prey upon uneducated people by giving them someone to blame for their problems or someone who can fix them. The politicians, from Limbaugh to Helms to Trump, have blamed welfare mothers, dark-skinned people, draft dodgers, immigrants or anyone who challenges their own status quo.

The preachers say belief in “God” can fix all problems and it helps if listeners send them money to help them continue do their “good works.” Many of the people run for their checkbooks and some even leave their entire estates to these media evangelists.

At the end of the day, both groups solicit money from people, who keep paying them month after month. It’s a sad but true story that continues until this day.

It’s part of the human condition I’ll never understand.