Hey Mabel

Depending where you are in the english speaking world, this may be familiar, “Hey Mabel, Black Label”. Now, i read,that, Black Label is the black man's beer in South Africa, and it is the top selling lager in Britain. It has been sold buy several different companies. It began in Canada in the first half of the 19th century. It had a couple of re-incarnations in Cleveland, O.

Mr. Roosevelt brought back real beer to America in 1933, a campaign promise kept. There was a luxury car company in Cleveland called Peerless Motor Car. It was the last automobile producing company in Cleveland. The Depression killed it. They had their factory at E. 94th and Quincy. James Bohannon turned the car plant into a brewery for Carling's Red Cap ale, and Black Label beer. They brewed in Cleveland from 1934 to 1971. Towards the end of WWII, they bought out Tip Top, and Black Forest.

In 1949 their advertising firm came up with the simple, successful slogan. The only one more successful, and simple, in Cleveland was, “GArfield 1-2323” which is their phone number; the Lawson's orange juice jingle was a full song. When Channel 8 WJW was Channel 9 WXEL, the sports guy, John Fitzgerald was advertising Black Label. Later the sports report went to Blatz. Eventually Heilemann bought both beers, and others, and did terrible things to them. In the 1950s and '60s Black Label was a great beer in its hometown Cleveland.

Sometimes 'recipes' were changed, especially when new management came. Schmidt's bought the old Carling's brewery in Cleveland and continued to 1984, it has been razed [and a new county juvenile detention center (courts and jail) has been built there this year.] I think, they passed out the same single swill with different labels Duke, Old Dutch, Knickerbocker, grocery store brands, P.O.C. (which was famous for its wretchedness, at one time it may have been good, and it was brought back for an eyeblink, but most of the time the letters did not stand for Pilsner of Cleveland, but PISS of Cleveland, one advertising hack called it pride of Cleveland); Heritage House was awful. This is just memory, i wouldn't want one now to be proved right, or wrong.

Not everyone had cars. Carrying a case, we are talking 24 bottles, wasn't always convenient. Not everyone wanted to pull a cart home. Beer trucks made house deliveries in those days. Before Prohibition every sizable town from New York to Missouri, and Minnesota had german breweries, now mostly gone. Milwaukee wasn't the only city that liked beer. You could get beer in Davenport and Louisville, and for that matter, New Orleans.

Iron City, Rolling Rock, Schlitz, Stroh's, Genesee, Wiedemann, Hudepohl (Erin and Leisy's were before me) and some of the others were interchangeable american lagers. On a hot day, they were a relief. There were a few exceptions, Pabst had a stench, and i mentioned the horrible products. Still, i think i could recognise and really enjoy a genuine Black Label.

Ozymandias

“So let it be written; so let it be done.”

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said:“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

—a sonnet by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818

Since the poem is getting close to two hundred years old, i don’t expect Coca Cola, Disney, or Rupert Murdoch holds the copyright. I include the sonnet complete.

And who is Ozymandias? A greek historian from Sicily, Diodoros Sikeliotes (Siculus), who lived slightly more than a generation before Jesus used a greek form of one of the names of faro Ramses II, Usermaatre Setepenre. Ramses II, is widely believed, faro in Exodus. He reigned for two generations centered in the 13th century before Christ. Yul Brynner in the movie. Brynner caught the fearsome arrogance well.

Ramses II makes the paper every once in a while (a, b). He like Louis XIV had such a long reign, that, he outlived several heirs. Louis (the Sun King) Quatorze reigned 72 years and was succeeded by a great grandson. Ramses reigned 66 years and was succeeded by his 13th son, the then elderly Merneptah.

Damnatio memoriae, complete condemnation and eradication from memory, was shown in the movie, ‘Ten Commandments’, where faro (Yul’s father) Set(h)i said,

“Let the name of Moses be stricken from every book and tablet, stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of Moses be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men for all time.”

Now, archæological record shows Ramses II had monuments defaced from the Amarna (a monotheistic period) age of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV). The latin phrase came from the time the senate, or the emperor so hated a predecessor they attempted to erase him from memory. George Orwell (Eric Blair) showed this in ‘1984’, Winston Smith's job was the continual revision of history; occasionally someone fell into the memory hole, and was scrubbed from history. This was a reference to how things were done frequently under stalinism.

The age of faros is gone. History still records the existence of the past, contrary to the desire of some revisionists. Getting back to Shelley, ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’. You can see these words coming from Brynner.

Ozymandias/Ramses is gone 3000 years, the statue is a ruin. It was believed that existence continued of the person in his monuments. The drama of erasure was great. Shelley alludes to the sands of time that cover the interval of passage. One can contemplate the legacy of any personage, and wonder of his importance, and his own. Life and reputation are transitory.

today's screensaver

Depending on your circumstances and preferences there is an image background on your computer. You can use one that comes with the machine, or choose your own, well if the computer is yours. I am not going to use one with an advertisement. Occasionally i get bored with the the one i have; so i change it. At one time, they would have been famous paintings, or some interesting, or humourous photograph i downloaded. Now, my tendency is to use a recent photo that i snapped. This is the shot, through my car roof, after church service.

Quijote in blue

Pablo Picasso. Don Quijote y Sancho Panza. 1955.

El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha.
In Paris, in August of 1955, there appeared in a weekly journal a drawing by Pablo Picasso. Now, Paris was the cultural capital of the world; Picasso the most celebrated artist of his time; Cervantes' Quijote the world's first novel (romance), and arguably still the greatest. Now, that drawing appeared in a shade of grey; it has been near universally reprinted in black and white. Last year in Tblisi, Georgia, there was discovered the original painted sketch, and it was in a blue green, and faded black (not supra which is a weakly computer manipulated from the black and white icon). Does a bit of color change matter? It was to celebrate the 350th anniversary of Quijote's appearance.

But what does Quijote mean to us? And who is us? Quijote and Cervantes were Spaniards, i am not, and if you are reading this in english, probably not you either. Now, that i am not a young man, Quijote is even more dear. Quijote has gone mad and pursues his illusions. Quijote wants to be the perfect christian. He takes as a model the role of the knight. Spain is the power of the world. The time of knights and chivalry are gone. The spaniards conquered the world, and spread the Gospel, but not in a gracious manner.

Quijote is an old haggard man (bordering on fifty), with a pure soul. The complete book, if it were to fall on your foot, would hurt. One does not have to read far, before one is brought to tears. I am of that age. Youth is gone. Now in these four hundred years, our average life spans have increased. Still, youth is gone. Try to get hired at this age. We have a clause, ignored, in our contract, that, says a shop must have a certain percentage of men above this age. Unions have suffered in this country, even beyond the current malaise, we have seen management growing too onerous, and we have had poor leadership that has easily compromised the men for ease of relationship.

Now, our hero was an hidalgo (gentry, minor nobility, fijo d'algo, son of something). He identified as a gentleman of the blood, hidalgo de sangre, though impoverished. He saw himself as the redresser of wrongs. Love and justice were one in him. Others saw him as a crazy fool, and treated him this way. That is the poignancy. He ought to know better, but he suffers honourably. Did not Jesus suffer? Quijote had read the mediæval romances and used them as manuals. He was bound to do right, no matter the outcome. A canny man would not.

Getting back to the Picasso drawing, see how large Quijote is. He dwarfs the windmill that defeats him. His loyal companion also is under scaled. The stature of Quijote in the print suggest his importance. His steed, Rocinante, is flesh bare. His armour is rusty and ridiculous. His bearing is as magnificent as he can muster.

Quijote is an existential hero. He knows he is a character in a book, but beyond that; doing good in a cruel world, has what value for us? How are we to act? What is the price of wisdom and discernment? Gustave Doré. Don Quichotte et Sancho Panza. 1863. The previous iconic Quijote.