A Very Long Thing About America Really. With Photos. No, Really.

"Oh There's Nothing Like A Road Trip
... when your life is going nowhere"

                              -- Jean Shepard

Charles Cushman; Kodachrome Slide Of Golden Gate Bridge, February 1953

This post has been taking shape for months. But first -- a little digression. Sort of a Fuck You Very Much, You Orc Fucks. You know -- Because Freedom. I warn you, it's a little intense, but these are intense times. 

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The Following Is A (Not That Brief) Unpaid Political Rant

"It's A Little Angry -- And That's After The Edits."

In November, half of the United States screeched, We want Oligarchs and Fascism! And this is what we're getting. You wanted this!

There's been (so far) little cohesion on the Left. Democratic Party leadership is the party of closing their eyes and plugging their ears, and "buh buh buh some day it will all go away some day, and don't look at us, it's what all the polls say".

Meanwhile, Elmo Husk is playing with all the data stolen from government departments he's broken and bludgeoned. He bribed Crazy Donny with campaign money, so Donny let him copy databases of personal information, which Old America had spent years and billions to protect from hostile foreign states and cybercriminals. But in New Golden Age America, The call is coming from inside the house. 

So, who will Elmo sell the data to? Yakuza, Triads? Sad Vlad, the Putin? DJ Jim Ping and his CCP All Night Long Band?  Jeffy The Magic Bezos?  Peety Thiel, or Larry, or Zuck, or Sam What AI Am; Lil' Beckah Mercer and Her Daddy?  Even Rupert and Lack Lan too?  So many choices ! 

Crazy Donny can't wait to issue that Declaration Of A State Of Emergency, and Lil' Stevie Reinhard Heydrich Miller can direct protestors and critics and judges and journalists, and you and me! to be deported to Russian prisons. Or worse.  Because Freedom ! Praise Jeesuz!

Good News About Hell

And, applause! for everyone who voted I Am Lovin' me Some Crazy Donny !  I hope you enjoyed the past five months.  When all this shit really hits the fan -- and it will -- just remember: Every time you switch on Fox and Newsmax and OAN, you are sucking Joseph Goebbels' underwear. You wanted this; now you have it. How does it taste, Bobo? 

And, to Democratic party leadership: This is what you wanted, too. You are too frightened of appearing "divisive" "extreme" "radical" to fight back -- because it means you will be criticized by a dozen special MSM Beltway journalists who are busy writing their book of the moment, before the publishing houses are shut down. Why, you might lose influence, appear less relevant. Then what are you good for?

Every time you shut down Progressive voices -- you're licking Donny's adult boo-boo undies. You say only you can make special back-room 'deals' with your 'counterparts' in the Thug party -- people you know will fuck you every chance they get? And you never learn -- so what are you good for? I'd like to know.

And Oh yes Gaza: You won't say 'stop'? Won't turn off the military hardware gravy train? All because criticizing Israel is Bad? Antisemitic?? Please to be giving my dog a blow job, Chuck. Send another strongly worded note to Lil' Pastor Mikey, or Loco Marco, the nazi Ambassador. Maybe Susan Collins will even help you compose it.

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Ah; but there is good news about Hell:  You repugnant, Orc, nazi degenerates -- You neoliberal goat-fucking scumbags -- you'll all be in it with us.

Damn; if that twerp back on Bluesky wasn't right when they accused me of being an angry, ranting, Downer Dog. Well; losing your World by yards each day will do that to you, kiddo. 

[The] great age of European civilization was an edifice of grandeur and passion, of riches and beauty and dark reliance... The Old World had much that has since been lost, whatever may have been gained. Looking back on it from 1915, Emile Verhaeren, the Belgian Socialist poet, dedicated his pages, “With emotion, to the man I used to be.” 

                      -- Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower (1966) 

Obligatory Cute Small Animal Photo At Close Of Blog Rant

Thank You for your attention. And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

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Transition Paragraphs After Blog Rant

I think about the past, more than is good for me. I think about America, that we're at yet another inflection point in our history.

It's important to remember details about where we all came from, not so long ago, and how far we've come as a society -- particularly when it's so clear there are people who want to take away everything we've been able to force our Billionaire owners to give up since the early 1930s.

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"Cushmans; Meet The Cushmans

They're a Post-Depression Family"

Historical story-telling is a really like a Spaulding Grey monologue, a step up from the campfire story, the hero's tale. If an Historian is gifted, we might understand better the world and the people who came before us. Because the value for people like us, the Little People down in the streets, really is in the details.

In a broader social and political context, the story-telling can show us who We, The People, once were -- and by comparison, where we are now. What we've gained, and stand to lose.

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Ford 1938 De Luxe Tudor Sedan

In the early 2000's, I was surfing the then-Web, and stumbled across a blog post with photos recording a trip taken by a Charles Weever Cushman (1896 - 1972) and his wife, Jean Hamilton Cushman, across the United States in 1940. 

Since I was trained as a historian, and spent a lot of time one way or another as an investigator, I wanted to know more about the Cushmans, and started digging. Much of what I know is relatively recent information; it's taken years to digitize various public sources and make them available online for all of us.

Charles Cushman was born in Indiana. He graduated from the state university; found a job as a Business Analyst at a public relations firm in Chicago in the early 1920's, where he met his wife, Jean -- the boss' daughter. 

Charles and Jean were married in 1924 -- his father-in-law, Joe Hamilton, was a nationally prominent advertising copywriter and innovator in visual media. He was wealthy, connected -- and the uncle of an aspiring writer, John Steinbeck.

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(It is, sometimes, the strangest of worlds. In 1930, Hamilton called in a favor to wrangle his nephew a newspaper reporting job in New York City. Steinbeck had published one novel, Cup Of Gold, in 1929, but after the Crash had to take work on a road maintenance crew. The newspaper job allowed Steinbeck to continue writing, and live closer to the New York publishing world.

Twenty-Eight Year-Old John Steinbeck, NYC; 1930

(In the mid-30's, Hamilton was tapped by FDR to become Director of Information for an increasingly embattled Works Progress Administration, defending the Federal Theatre Project and photographers from charges of Leftist bias by right-wing politicians.

(In 1952, Steinbeck put Joe into East of Eden, the youngest of the Hamilton family children, living in Salinas, who goes on to find his calling in advertising, "where his very faults were virtues".)

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Cushman's father-in-law Hamilton made sure he had a job (and his daughter, security) in Chicago after the Crash. In 1933, Hamilton became a principal in a new business -- a subsidiary of a Canadian distillery -- which, if Prohibition were repealed, would be positioned to make a ton of money. Hamilton made his son-in-law the business' secretary-treasurer. 

Prohibition was repealed on December 5, 1933. The distilling company, after making several tons of money, and was sold in 1938 at a substantial profit.  Aber Natürlich, the company's directors and officers -- Joe Hamilton and Charlie Cushman (and Jean) -- made bank.

To celebrate their good fortune, they decided on a road trip from Chicago to the West Coast; then, they would drive east to Florida. It was the first in what became the Cushman's annual routine -- vacations that lasted several months, driving around and across America. 

Cushman had purchased a new 35mm camera, along with rolls of  Kodak's new 'Kodachrome' color film, and was anxious to use them.

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"Happy Days Are Here (Again)

The nazis, we'll all fear again"

( Note: One U.S. Dollar in 1940, adjusted for inflation, had the purchasing power of $22 in 2025. You'll see both sets of costs as I work through the economics of this post. It's meant to give a real sense of both how well-off the Cushmans were, and living costs in America, 85 years ago.)

In 1940, the Cushmans purchased a brand-new Ford hardtop Tudor De Luxe Coupe for $665 -- that's   $14,630 today. Standard financing for a new automobile was a one-third down payment of $225 ($4,900), with the balance carried on a loan, direct with the auto dealership -- not with a bank. Including interest, the loan would be paid in $30 - $40 monthly installments ($660 - $880 now) over three years.

Charles and Jean drove their new red Ford from Chicago to the Northwest Pacific coast, then, down the length of California. After, they travelled east across the American Southwest, and finally back to Illinois. 

Charles and Jean Cushman: Portland, Oregon; September, 1938

In 1940, America's Interstates didn't yet exist. The Cushman's trip was taken on 3,000-plus miles of blacktop, gravel, or dirt roads. Many roads would be new, built through New Deal WPA / CCC / NRA projects by the kind of road crews John Steinbeck had worked on. With layovers at major stops, the Cushman's trip could easily take thirty days or more.

Their Ford Coupe ran at an average 20 MPG. Gasoline sold in 1940 for ~$0.20 per gallon. A 3,000 mile trip in the Ford would take ~200 gallons and cost forty dollars -- $880 in 2025  (At the current national average of $3.18 / Gal., two hundred gallons will cost you $635 today).

Another fact of interstate driving in the United States in 1938 were Toll Roads. They're nearly extinct, now. But once, roads -- not all, but major 'Turnpikes' -- were privately owned. Wagon, then auto drivers paid to use them. We don't know which, if any, Tolls the Cushmans may have had to pay as they drove around America, or how much.

The Cushman's Tudor Coupe,

On The Marin Side Of The Golden Gate Bridge, 1940

A moderately-priced Tourist Court or hotel room would run an average of $4.50 a night for two people, -- about $120 for 30 days. A decent breakfast, lunch, and dinner in 1940 would run $7.50 per person, per day (including beer and wine) -- altogether, lodging and food for Charles and Jean would cost ~$450 -- almost $10,000 in 2025.

40th Street At 6th Avenue, NYC; June, 1940

(Identified by the newspaper headliner,

"Nazi Army Now 75 Miles From Paris"). Note food item prices.

When you include 10-15% for inevitable add-ons and extras (not including the cost of any clothing, tchotchkes, art, tickets to museums, etc.), their vacation cost ~ $660 ($15,600 today).

Multiply that by 15 other trips between 1939 and 1954, and in 2025 dollars, the Cushmans may have spent $230K -- a quarter of a million dollars -- in their decade-and-a-half of almost continual travel. 

Given that most Americans still struggled with the Depression until 1942, then were swept up in a World War, I'm not completely sure how I feel about all this. The Cushmans were lucky about the money. They were white, upper-middle-class Americans with the relative freedom their 1938 windfall could provide. They were lucky about a lot. 

Fortunately, that has little to do with the photographs.

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OCD Can Be Good For You And Good For Me

Charles Cushman was an avid amateur photographer -- no; he was obsessive about it, starting in 1919 at Indiana University when he acted as photographer for the student newspaper. He took photos -- mostly Box-Brownie-style 120mm-film snapshots -- whenever he had the chance.

Kodak released its groundbreaking Kodachrome color film for 35mm still cameras in 1935. A single, 18-exposure roll in 1940 cost $3.50 ($77 today) -- which included developing and printing by Kodak, something they did for decades (I'm so old I can remember our family mailing rolls of Kodak film in prepaid envelopes to Rochester, New York, and within a week, prints or slides of your photos would be delivered).

In the early 1930's, Charles bought a Contax II 35mm rangefinder camera, with a basic 50mm lens, for $250 ($5,500 today). The Contax was produced by the German firm, Zeiss-Ikon, and among the most expensive 35mm rangefinders available at the time (e.g., made by Leica, Argus, and Kodak).

     

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America, America

"O Blinding Light / O Light That Blinds / I Cannot See / Look Out For Me"

Cushman shot multiple rolls on each trip, and kept detailed notebooks with entries about every exposure. They weren't just tourist snaps. Whether he realized it or not, he was recording what the United States looked like -- even more, what it felt like -- at an inflection point in history. 

The United States settled into isolation after our one, great spasm of colonial Jingoism, the Spanish-American War and the "conquest of the Philippines" in 1898. After our involvement in WW1, the country had rejected Wilson's vision of a global role for the USA and retreated into itself again.

Technology continued changing society. So did the Great Depression -- right down to our foundations. America was divided in 1938 -- Left / Right, Rich vs. Poor. Spain was the Ukraine of the 1930's, torn apart by a war between Fascism, Hitler and Mussolini, and Stalinist Communism. 

FDR had been President for six years, trying to save American democracy and economic markets. He could see the broader world was likely going to pull the U.S. into a major war -- Lindbergh and the America Firsters (some of the same people who had plotted an armed coup to remove Roosevelt in 1934) be damned.

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Cushman's photographs made a record of how people lived -- in rural communities, small towns and large urban areas; how they dressed; their posture and physical condition; where they lived. He could have enjoyed landscape photography, or older architecture studies -- but whether he consciously chose to do so or not, Cushman's real subjects were America, and Americans.

Unemployed Men Near Lower East Side Flophouse, NYC; 1940

He and Jean were in the right places at the right time. He had the right level of obsessive behavior when it came to photography. On their annual excursions, Charles Cushman shot nearly 790 rolls of Kodachrome film over 35 years. In 2025, that's $32,000 -- almost a thousand dollars a year.

And, they travelled during the war (1942-45) despite gasoline, oil, and tires being strictly rationed. Most Americans with autos severely restricted their travel ("Is This Trip Necessary?" was the catchphrase on posters and in advertising), or put their cars up on blocks "for the duration". But not the Cushmans.

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Laguna Beach, California; Sunday Afternoon, June 1940

Jean and Charles Cushman, Miami Beach, FL; March, 1939

In 1954, Charles and Jean moved from Chicago to San Francisco. Polk's City Directory shows they lived in two leased apartments over the next fifteen years. They had been mobile most of their adult lives -- that they rented flats, as opposed to putting down more permanent roots, makes sense. 

They continued making long trips -- to Europe, this time -- and Charles took more photos. The last trip he and Jean took appears to have been to Greece, Austria, and Germany in 1965. A bit later, out for a walk in San Francisco, he took pictures with his ever-present camera in the Haight-Ashbury; just a silhouette on the sidewalk.

       

                              Intersection Of Haight and Masonic, San Francisco; 1967

In 1969, the Cushmans disappear from public records. Charles died in 1972, age 76; no record of Jean.

Charles In Retirement, Snapped By Jean;

San Francisco, Date Unknown

Cushman bequeathed to his alma mater, Indiana University, over 2,200 black-and-white photos, 14,000 color slides, and notebooks. The university had a photography department, and added the bequest to their archives.  

Twenty years later, needing space for their collection, Cushman's photos were deemed nothing more than tourist-level snapshots, and tossed Cushman's photos into a dumpster. An associate professor in the department, by chance, walked past the garbage bin, spotted and literally rescued them. 

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The Photos

Reviewing the color slides, the instructor saw their value as a unique color archive about ordinary America. They showed more than Cushman's good eye for detail and composition. They were a cultural record. You can see them all, online, here.

What stands out in these photos is how much people did not have. There was no broad Middle Class in America.  People didn't have disposable income to spend on consumer goods; it shows in the clothing, shoes, even the facial expressions and physical postures of people we know instinctively are lower on the economic ladder -- and per the 1930 and 1940 Censuses, most people in America were 'working class' or below.

The Second World War, and economic expansion, would change all that. But before 1942 the reality was, a significant number of people worked at jobs which didn't pay much money. Unemployment in 1940 was high - sixteen per cent; there were not that many jobs to be had. We were a nation of people traumatized -- by years of drought, failure, loss; good and bad politics; uncertainty and fear. All of it marked their lives, and our collective national psyche.

(It's not hyperbole. My mother came of age during the Depression and appeared to make a basic underlying assumption about the world: "You never know". Something terrible was about to happen at any moment. Superstitious ("Go outside; turn around three times, and spit. Go."), obsessively careful about money, and everything else. Little new was ever bought. Everything was repaired, resewn, to "make-do". It wasn't until forty years later, sometime in the 1960's -- that she tentatively began to believe she was relatively safe.)

Most people couldn't afford a home. Many who did had to take in lodgers to afford their rent or mortgage payments. Large pieces of furniture were inherited; there was no Ikea in the 1930s. Many rural families didn't have indoor plumbing, electricity, or hot water. 

Vieux Carre, New Orleans LA, 1940

If you rented an apartment in a city, there might be a single communal toilet on each floor; no bathtub. Many people only 'bathed' once a week, with a designated "bath night" -- tin basin to squat in; water heated on a stove, and even then it was only a modified sponge bath. Having a shampoo was a luxury.

Even in 1940, many Americans lived and died within fifty miles or less of the place they were born. Going to visit relatives in another town or state, by train or bus, was done, but flying somewhere in an airplane was unheard of. Or travelling by ship to Europe. 

It wasn't just expense. It was also having the free time from work to make a journey. 'Vacation days' granted by an employer didn't exist. Neither were mandatory rest breaks, paid lunch breaks, sick time, maternity leave, healthcare, or employee savings plans. No regulations about discrimination in hiring involving women, minorities, the disabled; the Deaf Community. Work in America of 1940 was not Woke.

Eutaw, Alabama; 1941

Americans in 2025 have high expectations of the society we live in. We have blogs and substack and Lil' Tukker Sucking Goebbels' Underwear; email and fax and .pdfs. We stream films, episodes of White Lotus, or The Last Of Us, 'South Park', or a Bill Burr special. 

Our general consciousness takes for granted all the technology at our fingertips; our ability to see almost anything, buy almost anything, travel in hours to the other side of the world. Last Thursday, I bought an item on EBay from a seller in Japan. Less than a week later, it's just been delivered as I'm typing this. And I've been listening to a long string of music and podcasts via Bluetooth earbuds, all day.

   

                     

Lower East Side, NYC; 1941

Consider: the people in Cushman's photos have completely different expectations about how their world functions. You didn't hear music unless someone had a record player, which cost $20 - $150 ($440 -  $3,300 today). The records were ~$1.25 ($27.50) each. People listened to radios (cost, new = $20 - $40; $440 to $880).  The world of these people wasn't silent, but no streaming music-on-demand.

USPS would deliver a letter in the 48 States, within days -- a little longer for the Alaskan or Hawaiian Territories. A long-distance telephone call required assistance from Operators, and could cost $0.50 to $2.50 (that's ten to fifty dollars today) -- for three minutes. 

Chicago, IL; 1941

Western Union Telegraph -- delivered by messenger -- could run you up to $20 ($440 today). You can buy clothing and other items from a physical catalog (Marshall Fields; Montgomery Ward; Sears & Roebuck) but USPS shipping could be expensive, and would take a week or more to arrive.

             

Salvage Crew, Teenaged Boys Picking Up Junk; NYC; 1941

My point: A major difference between life in 1940, and our world in 2025, is the instantaneousness of our lives. We swim in an ocean of communication; of consumerism. For the people we see in Cushman's photos, everything which makes up our collective reality, our Now -- hasn't happened yet. 

Black Women And Children On The Street; Annapolis, MD, 1941

The most obvious thing here is how much the women do not want their photograph taken. They acquiesce, because it's a white man's world. But how they feel about it is plain as day.  The children above might be alive today in their late Eighties or Nineties, but statistically it isn't likely.

Saturday-Night County Dance; MacKintosh, OK; 1939

This grabs the sense of every awkward school- or organization-sponsored dance, ever. These mostly young people are sharecropper, farm family kids. They're wearing their 'for-best', their Saturday Night clothes -- dancing in a room with walls of wooden studs, no drywall; literally papered over. 

No idea how Cushman was invited to observe this event and take a flash-photo -- but it happened in Oklahoma, one of the states literally blown away in the Dust Bowl of the Thirties. It feels like something Steinbeck could have described in Grapes Of Wrath -- just history, for us.

Most of the people in the photo were born between the mid-1910s and 1920s. Most of the men would be in the U.S. military, serving in the European or Pacific Theaters, within another two years.

Company Housing Across From A Steel Mill, Johnstown PA; 1940

(Close-Up Of Steelworker's Children, In The Photo Above; 1940)

Indiana Farm, 1941

Latino Boys; Texas, 1941

Lower Clinton Street, NYC; 1940

Not impossible for this man to have been born in the 1860's

Brand New Boeing 307 Stratoliners Being Fueled At O'Hare Airport, Chicago, 1938 

(In WW2, They Would Become The B-29 Bomber)

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MEHR, MIT ANALYSE

In 1940, per the Brookings Institution, seventy-five per cent of adults 25 and over were high school dropouts, or had no education beyond the 8th Grade. 

Only 5 per cent of adults attended college, had a Bachelor's or a graduate degree -- and the majority of them were male.

Unemployment was still high: 16%.  The census showed 53 million persons, 14 and older, as employed. Of them, ~17 million had white-collar jobs -- which typically represented a higher income, compared to 36 million 'blue-collar' workers.

The 1940 Census showed  35,087,440 families in America. 

      Average family income was  $950  ($21,000, in 2025 -- This is net income, not net assets.)

     Lower / Working-Class:  51% of families had income of $1 - $900 ($20,000) / year

     Middle Class:  23% of families made $1-3,000 ($22,000 - 66K) / year

     Upper-Middle Class: 24% of families made $3-4,000 ($66K - $88,000) / year

     Upper Class: 1.59% reported income of $5,000 or more ($100K+) / year

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Reprint Heaven Forever: Moby-Dick, Or, One Big Fuckin' Whale

 Hoo Boy The Birthday of Big Marine Mammal Avatar Creators

Moving through life, we find ourselves on occasion in the midst of experience or the presence of a thing which resonates and reminds that something, more than what we think we know or can perceive (if we would just stop and shut up and pay enough attention to see), exists.

Principally, this happens when we're 'out in nature', but it also happens when we encounter some art -- in particular, when it's been created by someone who made deep and illuminating connections and Brought Them Back To Tell Thee. 

I blew it this year and did not remember the anniversary ("Shame over you," said the Whale).  So from August 1st in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022 and 23.

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There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.
-- Herman Melville / Moby-Dick, or, The Whale

Over at the Soul Of America, it's a celebration of Herman Melville's 206th birthday (!), and things of the Sea, and a Whale, and other notables which Herman brought back, To Tell Thee.

I keep considering writing a post from the viewpoint of the Whale just for the potential Yucks (because, god knows, We Need The Yucks Wherever We Can Get Them), but gave it up and settled for the Humorous Image.

I voice The Whale elsewhere on social media. He's thoughtful, makes Pontiac GTO noises in the water (" 'Vroom Vroom', said the Whale") and is honestly amazed at the delusional stalking being done to him by Ahab, "that crazy old genocidal fart."

The best thing about BLCKDGRD's annual post, and the reason I mention it here, is -- Herman tends to be overlooked in a culture whose highest expression is a Taylor Swift remix (I take your bullets, I take your bullets). 

It's good to be reminded that the Whale is still there -- as he reminds us that we are chased by our mortality, the fate we make through our emotion and actions; and that sometimes the Form Of The Destructor is large, albino, and aquatic.

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I was introduced to Melville when I was fourteen -- not through the novel he's most often identified with, but in the short work, "Bartleby The Scrivener" (1853), a classic in its own right. Ishmael's tale was next, and I was, uh, hooked. Later, I wasn't able to read anything by James or Conrad where the voice of the narrator was almost identical to the one conjured up when I encountered first with Melville. 

"Moby Dick: Or, A Whale" is ubiquitous. There is No Whale before He who populates a portion of that book (Yeah, okay; 'Shamu'  and 'Willy' are not the same thing). 

The Whale at least lurks, an unseen presence, in the background of all the on-ship action -- like Death, or Fate, or reruns of Fringe.  As if you might hear the Whale chuckling and snickering in the dark during certain scenes, because the Whale knew what was coming:

" 'What is it, what nameless, inscrutable, unearthly thing is it; what cozening, hidden lord and master, and cruel, remorseless emperor commands me; that against all natural lovings and longings, I so keep pushing, and crowding, and jamming myself on all the time; recklessly making me ready to do what in my own proper, natural heart, I durst not so much as dare? Is Ahab, Ahab? Is it I, God, or who, that lifts this arm? But if the great sun move not of himself; but is as an errand-boy in heaven; nor one single star can revolve, but by some invisible power; how then can this one small heart beat; this one small brain think thoughts; unless God does that beating, does that thinking, does that living, and not I. By heaven, man, we are turned round and round in this world, like yonder windlass, and Fate is the handspike.'   

" 'Heh heh heh heh,' " came a deep basso rumble out of the darkness which hid the waters. Ahab started, but did not otherwise acknowledge the presence of that upon which he had focused for so long."

That Big Marine Mammal is archetypal, now.  And, aber natürlich, the moment something makes an appearance on "Family Guy", it's an absolute certainty that, whatever it is, it's now hard-coded into our DNA.

 Herman Left Out The Part Where Whales Prefer Raisin Bran

You Will Not Be Able To Un-See This Travesty

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UND DA IST NOCH IMMER MEHR:  Once I saw this, I could not un-see it, either. It is an actual book. Swear to god.

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UND: WAS IST AUCH SCHON WIEDER LOS? MEHR:  At one point, if you had $39.9K, Jim Morrison's Moby could have been yours.  At that price, you'd think the seller would have provided free shipping -- but, remember: this is Aremica, Land Of The Free and Home Of The Hip.

Your Thanatological Vacation Guide

The Existential Question

(Much Shorter Barking. Okay; Maybe Not.)

Russ Chole / Marty Hart (Matthew McConaughey; Woody Harrelson)

   True Detective, Season 1 (2014)

This is a topic never far from my mind in These Days. Not only am I chronologically closer to death, it seems the circumstances in life I've taken for granted may be changing to include a higher level of risk; a lot more rapidly than I'd thought.

I've been in immediate danger of dying, of death right in my fucking face, four times. In each case, it was only clear immediately after: Holy Shit; that almost took me out. I didn't have time, in the moment things were going down, to realize, this is Last Day.  I checked in with the Last Of The Old Unit about this and their experiences are roughly the same. So: I not crazy.

In terms of death as loss, I've had my share. Only one or two had coincidental events, what I think of as 'echoes', after, which might appear to some like a message or a parting word. But I'm not sure -- so I use the word 'coincidental' as a hedge, a cheat; an out. Because there isn't any way to know.

The short, sharp shock -- out of the Blue; into the Black -- is how death happens for so many people around the world, in These Days. It's only by the luck of the draw that I've lived more than seven decades and have the capability to contemplate my physical end from a smallish apartment in a major Blue city at the western edge of the North American continent, beside the broad Pacific, now heating up like oceans everywhere.

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And when I think about life, all our lives, how brief some of them are (and, let's face it: It's always going to seem too brief) I remind myself about the Iceman.

In 1991, the preserved, effectively mummified physical remains of a Bronze-Age human were found on a glacier. He was dubbed "Ötzi The Iceman".  Ötzi. It sounds friendly, like a nickname for some your slightly daffy uncle, if you come from a German family; an attempt to turn this fellow -- preserved by chance and climate -- into a mascot for tourists, a name to print on tee-shirts and mugs and lunch boxes.

Ötzi died 5,300 years ago (about 3,300 BC) in the mountain pass where his body was found, between current-day Italy and Austria, shot with an arrow by an unknown assailant. He was found with possessions and clothing. His body was found with intact genitalia, but at some point between discovery and transport to a climate-controlled environment, some modern-day fuckwad stole his penis; of course they did.

Eventually, his facial features were reconstructed -- as forensic anthropologists do with modern-day murder victims -- and we found he looked, more or less, like Charles Bukowski:

Ötzi (Not His Real Name)

The man with this face lived and died Five Thousand, Three Hundred Years Ago. This places him in the Prehistoric era (from ~3 million years BC until 1,200 BC). Specifically, in the Bronze Age.

He died 3,000 years before Greek civilization developed, or the Roman empire -- and hundreds of years before the 'Old Kingdom' Egyptian civilization began and the first Pyramids built.

He died four thousand years before the Buddha. At least 2,300 years before either Jesus or Mohammed are reported to have lived. 

When Ötzi was alive, the earliest human written languages had just begun to appear.

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My Dog Trainer advises that packs of Ibex meat were found in Ötzi's carrying bag -- and, while he was in excellent physical shape, his arteries showed significant Atherosclerosis. Some Vegans have said this is evidence that a presumably meat-based, Prehistoric 'Paleo' diet, eaten by an actual Bronze Age human, is a bad idea.

And: He was discovered because the glacier which had held his body over thousands of years was melting.

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Thanatology:

Study of death and practices and beliefs attached to it

1.  Life is finite. Every single one of us will die.

The Population Reference Bureau estimates the current population at 7 billion humans.  They estimate only 107 billion people have ever lived -- meaning, some 15 humans have died for every person currently living.

2.  We have no idea if, as individual consciousnesses, humans continue in any form after death.

Some people have beliefs, or faith, in specific outcomes. But (all the YouTubes about NDEs aside) feelings are not facts. No human being alive knows what happens to us. Anyone who says they do is comfortingly deluded.

This existential problem -- what is this, why are we, and what happens to us when we die is the Ur-question of human existence. 

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3.  There is a cave system in South Africa, showing proof of its use as a burial site by an ancestor species, Homo Naledi. Designs were also found scratched into the rock near the burials. We have no idea what they mean. 

But it appears that 300,000 years ago, Naledi buried their dead, laying them out in a specific way, with stone tools and other items. It suggests the Naledi had concepts of Self / Something Else, and Self / Here; that they believed being somewhere else after death. We don't know. There was no written language three hundred thousand years ago.

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Neolithic Homo Sapiens buried their dead with possessions, with food, weapons and utensils, which would seem to indicate a belief that the deceased existed after death, going somewhere, though the body decayed. We don't know. There was no written language in the Neolithic.

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If This Is Friday, It Must Be The Afterlife

         

          A.  It isn't clear where the idea of an afterlife first appeared in human religion. Humans began organizing in villages, towns and cities, around 10,000 BC.  Per Wikipedia, The earliest undercurrents of Mesopotamian religion developed in ~6,000 BC, coinciding with the region being permanently settled -- and the earliest real evidence of organized religion dates to roughly 4,000 BC, coinciding with the invention of writing. 

The forces of nature were worshiped as providers of sustenance. About 3,000 BC, the forces and objects of worship which used to be essentially nameless were given names and personalities. Multiple divinities, each with particular functions, appeared.

Around ~2,000 - 1,000 BC, the last stages of Mesopotamian polytheism developed. It showed greater emphasis on personal religion, with the gods structured into a hierarchy; the national god of whichever  (Babylonian, Akkadian) being the head of the pantheon.

Walk Like An Egyptian

          B.  By 2,000 BCE (or, 1,300 years after Ötzi died), the Egyptians had developed their own polytheistic religion around the notion that humans possessed a soul and, at death, that soul's place on a spectrum of good and evil would be judged.

Per Wikipedia, "Upon death, one entered the underworld, where Anubis, God of the dead, weighed the person's heart on a scale against a feather... of order, truth, and righteousness." If the heart weighed more than the feather (like the 'Witches weigh as much as a Duck' scene in Monty Python's Holy Grail), then the heart would be devoured by a waiting demon. You "would die a second death and be eliminated from existence", forever.  

If your heart weighs as much as, or less than, the feather, you are allowed to pass into the Land of the Sun. This was someplace else, mythic or extra-dimensional, not a physical place on Earth. A comfortable, abundant land -- essentially, the best aspects of life as experienced in the Kingdom of Egypt.

Tewaret, Hippo Moon Goddess You Bet, Guides The Departed. Or, You Know, Not.

This Eschatology was supported by a complex set of beliefs, involving prayers and rites. At the height of ancient Egyptian culture -- the Middle Kingdom -- after death, funerary rites lasted over a month. There was an elaborate process of embalming and mummification; tombs filled with decorations and hieroglyphic ritual prayers, and items for the deceased's existence in the afterlife -- possessions, food, weapons; statuary representing servants.

Surviving family members performed regular ancestor rites to pray and make offerings to the gods on behalf of their deceased. When a Pharaoh died, they had attained status as a god; all Egyptians could pray and make offerings at their temples in the necropolis of the Valley of the Kings.

Egypt had developed all this at least a thousand years before the rise of ancient Greece, and Rome.

Grecian Afterlife Thirst Trap

          C.  In Greek Eschatology, Hermes, the Messenger, delivered departed souls to the banks of the river Styx, where they waited until a boat operated by Charon the Ferryman appeared to take them across and into Hades -- which, to the Greeks, was another physical place on earth; the land of the dead. Charon demanded compensation; Greek funerary rites included putting a coin under the deceased's tongue so they could pay that last passage.

In Hades, three legendary kings judged a soul's conduct in life. Those who had lived pure lives, or were relatives of the gods (who always seeming to be having sex with humans), went to The Elysian Fields -- green valleys and mountains, where all was peaceful, and the Sun always shone for the guiltless and connected.

The majority of Greeks, their good and evil deeds essentially in balance, or who were indecisive in life, went to The Asphodel Fields -- a sort of low-rent version of Elysium; something like Hooterville, the location of the action in TV's Green Acres, but without a laugh track.

Finally, those who had blasphemed against the gods or been consciously evil were sent to Tartarus, a place foul and stygian where they would be burned in lava or stretched on racks (definitely without a laugh track). 

When In Rome, Do As The Greeks Do

          D.  After Rome invaded Macedonia and southern Greece in 146 BC, it absorbed Greek art and culture, the Pantheon of Greek deities and their afterlife cosmology -- with its Egyptian flavor of souls being judged, and specific levels of afterlife experience based on that judgement. 

Virgil, the Roman author who created the three most important Latin poems in antiquity, described the afterlife as the Romans adopted it in his epic, the Aeneid, written around 24 BC. Virgil makes a tour of Hades, guided by his recently dead father (as Dante would later have Virgil guiding him).

(Just a note: Virgil's poetry was a Big Deal in that long-gone Roman world. The UK Guardian recently reported that a shard of pottery found at an archeological site in Spain had lines from a poem by Virgil inscribed in Latin into the clay before firing. This was in an age where poetry actually meant something.)

Because You Never Know

          E.  Sheol, the Jewish concept of an afterlife, began as the universal destination of the dead, a place of darkness to which both the righteous and the unrighteous, regardless of their moral choices in life, will go. 

It wasn't a place of active punishment, but a land as far removed from Paradise -- from God -- as possible. And in Judaism, being separated from God (the most perfect expression of existence) is a terrible thing.

In 500 BC, Sheol was being portrayed in some Jewish texts as the place where the righteous and the wicked were separated into different afterlife regions. In other texts, it was described as a place of punishment, meant for the wicked dead alone. 

In 200 BC -- roughly the same time Rome was absorbing Greece into its empire -- Hebrew scriptures were being translated into Greek in ancient Alexandria. Scribes substituted the 'Sheol' in Judaism with the Greek word, "Hades" -- and the Greek concept of an afterlife along with it. 

Make The Baby Jesus Cry And Go To Hell

          F.  Christian Eschatology focuses on the divinity of one person -- who supposedly taught about life both physical and spiritual, and was put to death for bucking the authority of the Jewish religious order and Roman occupation -- an apostate and a terrorist. They were raised from the dead, ascended to heaven... and at our death, if we had followed their teachings, kept our noses and our hands clean and believed in their divinity, then we could, too.

By 325 AD, Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman empire. Emperor Constantine I called a council of Christian heavyweights, in Nicaea -- and over two months of arguing, agreed on what the doctrine of their now official state religion would be. This was followed in 390 AD by another council, in Hippo, to determine what official scripture would support that previously-agreed doctrine. There was editing, exclusion; other texts, like the 'Gnostic Gospels', were suppressed. The result was the Bible.

At these two councils, the streams of Mediterranean / Middle Eastern religious belief and tradition which had encountered and cross-pollinated each other -- The Babylonian and Akkadian informing the Egyptian, flowing into the Greek and then Roman; the long Jewish traditions --all came together.

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One of the most influential writings, not part of the Bible, which influenced Christian ideas about an afterlife was Dante di Alighiero degli Alighier's Inferno (Hell), one part of his 'Divine Comedy' -- a long, three-part narrative poem, published through the early 1300's. 

Dante's great unrequited love, Beatrice Portinari, had died in 1290. His love for her was his north star for the remainder of his life -- and he tells his readers her death was the reason for the poem. It was a chronicle of his search for her soul, to lead her out of the Inferno, to Paradise, guided by the ghost of Virgil on the journey. 

Dante took Virgil's description of the Roman Hades, borrowed from the Greek, influenced by Judaism and the Egyptians, and expanded on it. In Dante's artistic imagination,  Hell was a funnel of nine descending 'Circles', each of which providing horrifying punishments for classes of sin and transgression, narrowing down to the final Circle at the bottom -- a plain of ice, where Lucifer, a titanic being with multiple faces, stood bound with chains and buried to the waist.

Dante was a deeply involved Player in the 14th century politics of Florence, his city-state birthplace -- and, he was no punk artist, but a first-wave fighter, rapier and blade, in open wars between factions. As a political person, his 'Divine Comedy' was as much subtle commentary on contemporary politics as an artistic expression, full of  'inside baseball' references -- some of those getting roasted in the hell he invented were easily recognizable to a sophisticated audience.

This is one of the most important aspects of Dante's work: His notions of Heaven and Hell were his invention, his artistic imagination. For seven hundred years, they have profoundly shaped the popular, public and secular notions in the Western world of what happens after death. And, dig it: He did that with a work of fiction! 

In 1321, Dante contracted malaria and died. No one knows what happened to him after that, if anything.

(Side Note:  I recommend two utterly different novels featuring the Dantesque vision as a setting -- Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's Inferno [1976], and Hell, by Robert Olen Butler [2009]. 

(The long-time Sci-Fi duo ['Mote In God's Eye', and Niven's Ringworld saga, are still popular] produced an underworld that is a bit dated but very readable.  Butler's book involves a former mega-star news anchor, now broadcasting The Nightly News From Hell, on his search for A Way Out. Butler writes well; it's worth the trip.)

Dante's Big Vacation Guide:

Click To Enlarge -- It's Easy And Fun!

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Songs From The Bardo

          G.  The structure of Buddhist belief is too complicated to articulate here in detail. But: after death, a person enters a non-physical realm, the Bardo, where they encounter the essence of their own mind, locked by habit into a series of karmic imprints. As Ram Das once described the human mind, it behaves "like a drunken monkey bitten by a scorpion". 

A person is presented an opportunity for awareness that all things are part of the great form / formlessness, all and nothing at once; are simply projections of one's own mind; and in that moment of realization attain enlightenment and become part of a greater cosmology.

Most of us, however, blow that opportunity and have to enter the Bardo of Becoming -- where we encounter our own minds: whatever we conceptualize, will be so. Basically, that scene from 'Ghostbusters', on steroids:

Stantz: What do you mean, choose? We don't understand.

Gozer: Choose; choose the form of the Destructor!

Venkman: Oh, I get it! I get it. Ohhh; very cute. Whatever we think of!  If we think of J.Edgar Hoover, then J.Edgar Hoover will appear and destroy us, okay? So empty your heads... Don't think of anything. We've only got one shot at this.

Gozer: The choice is made; the Traveller has come! 

Venkman: Woah, woah woah; nobody 'choosed' anything! ... what did you do, Ray?

Stanz: I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever destroy us... It's Mr. Stay-Puft, the Marshmallow Man.

Venkman: Aw; Mother Pus-Bucket... Good goin', Ray.

Buddhists spend much effort on meditation to discipline and focus the mind in preparation for death -- first, to have the best chance of not missing one of the opportunities the Bardo presents for enlightenment, and so step off the Great Wheel of death and rebirth. Second, to withstand the terrifying, anything-goes capabilities of our own minds.

Listen: Laurie Anderson

Then (after one last opportunity to Get It; at almost each stage in this process of The Bardo, there seem to be multiple chances to obtain enlightenment), we may be reincarnated through rebirth. No one remembers their time in the Bardo -- as long as 49 days on Earth, so the traditions say.  And, Big Wheel keeps on turnin'.

There is also a chance that you may be attracted to any of the five Realms of Samsara, illusion, and so wander in self-projection forever. Or you may continue on the cycle of birth, life, death, reincarnation, until you obtain enlightenment and step off the wheel, or perhaps if you can't will be seen as a defective part by the universe and discarded. But no one really knows.

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You Never Know

And, this is the point: No one knows what actually happens. No one.  Whenever a notable person, an acquaintance, an enemy dies, I always think: Now they know what we do not -- even if what they found was Nothing, which is a possibility. And, Detective Chole speaks for many: Sure hope that old lady's wrong...

It remains my belief that, because no one knows what happens, this Great Mystery is behind almost every aspect of human existence; we simply work hard to put it as far in the background as possible. Death is the reference point by which all other experiences are measured, considered and qualified. 

None of this is news. I'm just saying the quiet part, the real quiet part, out loud. 

But at some point, we have to stop thinking about death, and live our lives. Savor the truth that we are alive, for the moment, and hopefully in the moment. It may even be possible (as a cab driver in Germany once said to Kurt Vonnegut, "If the accident will") to accept and experience death as an answer, as adventure. It will be our last choice in living -- how to experience our end -- so; why not.

In the interim -- because we all have to play chess with Death on the beach, or give him a Melvin -- may your time be long, your shoe leather thick; your glass full and your bowels cooperative. Be well.

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MEHR, MIT SCHLAG:  This add-on from December, 2019 seems appropriate. It's what we all hope is true, one way or another, anyway.

Actor Danny Aiello passed away, age 86.  He appeared in a number of films, including one on my top ten list:  Jacob's Ladder (1990).

Set in 1975 New York, Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), divorced Vietnam vet with a PhD in Philosophy, is working in the Postal Service, and may (or may not) be slipping in and out of a series of flashbacks connected to Vietnam in 1971 [part of my time in the Southeast Asian barrel], and the accidental death of one of his three children (Macaulay Culkin, pre-Home Alone). He also begins seeing inexplicable things (demons, things out of a Lovecraft novel) in broad daylight. Reality appears to be shifting and he's frightened.

Singer has lower back issues, and sees a Chiropractor, Louis Denardo, played by Aiello ("...You look like an angel, Louie," Singer tells him, "Like a big cherub. Anyone ever tell you that?"  "Yeah," says Louis. "You; every time you come in here").

At one point in the story, Singer is struck by a car on a New York street. His lower back seizes up, his wallet is stolen by a vagrant Exmass Santa; he's brought to a hospital that becomes progressively more nightmarish, a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

Louis shows up at the hospital ("What is this, the Middle Ages?" he yells at a nurse when he sees Singer in traction in a bed) and forcibly takes him out, back to his chiropractic office. He puts Jacob on his adjustment table and begins working on his back.

Singer tells Louis what he's been seeing, that the hospital was a vision of hell. "Ever read any Meister Eckhard?" Louis asks; Jacob says he hasn't, and Louis is surprised. "How'd you get your Doctorate without reading that guy?

"Eckhard saw hell, too," Louis continues. "Know what he said? He said the only part of you that burns in hell is the part that won't let go of your life. Your memories; your attachments; they burn them all away -- but they're not punishing you, he said; they're freeing your soul.

"So, the way he sees it -- if you're frightened of dying, and you're holding on -- you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace -- then the devils are really angels, freeing you, from the earth. It's just a matter of how you look at it. So, don't worry about it. Okay?"

Now he knows what we do not. It's a decent film. Aiello is good in it. Give it a whirl.

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