Twilight Language: December 2013

Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Did The Nazis Steal Christmas?

In recent years, the topic of Nazis and Christmas has been re-visited a few times. Why?

Swastika Christmas tree ornaments, "Germanic" cookies and made-up traditions: A new exhibition highlights how the Nazis tried to take Christ out of Christmas. But their attempts to hijack a festival that began with the birth of a Jewish child weren't entirely successful.

Read...here.

If the Nazis were sworn enemies of Christianity, why were they so obsessed with Christmas? And how did they square celebrating the season of goodwill with their racialist policies?

And read on here.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Santa Terror

Santa baby, just slip a Sable under the tree for me;

Been an awful good girl, Santa baby,

So hurry down the chimney tonight

...

~ "Santa Baby" was written by J. Javits, P. Springer, T. Springer.

Santa Claus is coming to town.

We have grown to expect some dark news associated with Santa in most years.

On two of my "evil clown" lists, Santas were part of the story.

My 2008 list ended with the ultimate evil twisted clown-like finale to the year of 2008, when a costumed man, Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, plotting revenge against his ex-wife, dressed up in a Santa Claus suit, went to his former in-laws' Christmas Eve party and slaughtered nine people. He then burned their house down before killing himself hours later. The Killer Santa killings took place on East Knollcrest Drive, Covina, California.

It happened again, in 2011.

Grapevine, a Dallas suburb, is dubbed the "Christmas Capital of Texas." It was there where a Christmas Day rampage occurred. A gunman who killed six people and himself at a family Christmas celebration was dressed in a Santa Claus suit when he opened fire, local police said. The dead were four women and three men, ages 15 to 59. The victims appeared to have just opened Christmas presents when the shooting started in the Lincoln Vineyards, a middle-income complex near Colleyville Heritage High School, one of the area's most highly regarded schools.

Authorities later identified the shooter as a 56-year-old Persian man, Aziz Yazdanpanah, who died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His wife, with whom he was having marital and financial problems, like Aziz, was born in Iran; their children were American-born.

Welcome to bad Santas in 2013:

This year, the drunken fights issuing from the ill-advised SantaCons, continue. In New York City, the Union Square videos of the fist-a-cuffs went virtual. See here.

Then, on December 19th, the fear many people have about school shootings and weird pedophiles combined in a bit of "Santa Terror" in Hollis, New Hampshire.

Police in New Hampshire said a Santa Claus whose presence at a school prompted recesses to be canceled in the district was trying to spread "holiday cheer."
Hollis police Lt. Rich Mello said officers were called to Hollis Primary School just before 10 a.m. Thursday [December 19, 2013] after a report of a mystery Santa tapping on windows and waving to students from outside the school, the Nashua (N.H.) Telegraph reported Friday.
The man was gone before police arrived and other schools in the district were notified. Interim Superintendent Dr. John Moody said students were kept inside for recess as a precaution and parents were notified of the incident.
Mello said the mystery Santa contacted police around 12:30 p.m. to identify himself. Mello said the man, whose name was not released because he is not being charged with a crime, told officers he was trying to "spread some holiday cheer."
"He just thought it would be a cool holiday thing for the kids to see Santa wave through the window," Mello said. "He kind of set off a firestorm of precautions."
...Source.

Santa is not all he appears to be. The origins are in the Wildman, as I noted recently.

For a detailed read on the realities behind the legend of Saint Nicholas/Santa Claus and kin, you will need to digest "Re: 'Alias St. Nick'" by Matthew Bell with Jim Brandon. The essay is worth just the footnotes, actually. So don't skip those.

Just like Burning Man in Nevada, there is a tradition in Sweden that is annually followed.

The burning of Sweden's Gävle Goat has occurred 26 times before 2013, and a few days ago, it was still standing.

But on December 21st, AP shared this:

Vandals in Sweden have burned down for the 27th time a giant straw goat meant to symbolize Christmas spirit.
The 13-meter (43-foot) high and 3.6-ton heavy straw goat was engulfed in flames early Saturday after unidentified assailants attacked it in the Swedish town of Gavle, 150 kilometers (90 miles) north of Stockholm.
The straw goat is a centuries-old Scandinavian yule symbol that preceded Santa Claus as the bringer of gifts.
Since 1966, when the tradition of erecting the giant straw goat in the town square was introduced, Vandals have burnt it down 27 times.

Elm Guest House: Sex Abuse and the Name Game

"Elm House" or "Elm Guest House" is a British phrase that has become a larger than life scandal in the United Kingdom, during 2013. In terms of completeness, I felt the need to mention it here before the year's end. This seems especially true as the name game is working overtime with this one.

Elm House

In November, you will recall, I posted "Elm Street: The Mason Road of JFK/King-Kill/33," and that may be consulted for more on the background significance of "Elm."

The news of Elm House, first coming in 2012, broke out more in February 2013. It was a modern version of the Hellfire Club, apparently.

A victim of the VIP paedophile guest house has told the Sunday People of the horrors that went on there.
The former care home orphan says he and his 12-year-old brother were sent by staff to the Elm Guest House for “a treat”.
There they were lured into cider and beer-drinking races to get them drunk and ordered to dress in girls’ fairy costumes while their pictures were taken.
Finally they were forced to take part in vile sex acts after phoney games of hide-and-seek.
The victim, now a family man, broke down in tears as he told the Sunday People of his nightmare at the Elm – and how his tormented brother killed himself a decade after leaving care. Source.

Peter Hatton-Bornshin, who was in the care of the Grafton Close Children's Home as a teenager and abused at Elm House, took his own life at the age of 28. Source.

Even Jim Brandon's Fayette Factor name game raised its head:

A former child protection officer claimed...a Special Branch detective held a gun to his head to stop him investigating a VIP paedophile ring.
Chris Fay said he was pinned to a wall and throttled before being given a chilling warning to “back away” from allegations surrounding the notorious Elm Guest House in Barnes, south-west London.
Young boys in care were allegedly taken there in the Eighties to be abused by high-profile MPs and other powerful establishment figures.
Mr Fay, who worked for the now-defunct National Association of Young People In Care, accused the Metropolitan Police of acting like “gangsters” when news of the scandal broke in 1990. He revealed how some Special Branch members routinely threatened him and his colleagues and even victims over a three-month period of intimidation.
His shocking claims come as West Yorkshire Police faces accusations that the force protected paedophile Jimmy Savile. Source.

More summaries of this Elm House scandal can be found in "Elm Guest House and the Can of Worms," "The Friday Morning Club," and Wikipedia's "Elm Guest House Child Abuse Scandal."

Friday, December 20, 2013

The Curious Incident of the Collapse of the Apollo Ceiling

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, which was adapted to the theater from the 2003 mystery novel by British writer Mark Haddon, is about a 15-year-old boy's investigation into the death of a neighborhood dog. The production about a boy mathematician with Asperger syndrome is also among the most popular plays currently running in the West End.

That play was being performed when the ceiling of the Apollo Theater fell on the evening of December 19, 2013.

Hundreds of theatergoers who packed into Central London's historic Apollo Theater were expecting to watch a comedic canid mystery.

But about 40 minutes into the play, around 8:15 p.m. local time, the audience became part of their own melodrama instead.

"One of the actors said, 'Watch out!'" said one woman. "We thought it was part of the play."

The London Fire Brigade's Kingsland Station Manager Nick Harding said about 720 people were inside when a section of the ceiling collapsed on the theatergoers, taking parts of the balconies with it.

An ambulance official said a total of 76 people had been injured, though many of them were treated at the scene and released. No one was killed.

Friday, December 13, 2013

A Year After Sandy Hook Shooting, Another Colorado School Shooting

Update: December 21, Colorado high school shooting victim Claire Davis dies in hospital, according to CBS Denver.

Updated: The deceased suspect of this incident has been identified as Karl Halverson Pierson, 18, who had recently been removed from the debate team.

Pierson was targeting Tracy Murphy, the school's librarian and Speech and Debate coach.

Karl, in the German form of Charles / Carl (Old German) means "free man" and Karl, from the Old English churl, means "man, serf."

Halverson is an English patronymic surname from the Old English given name Halvor, meaning firm and prudent. As always, the -son suffix indicates that the bearer was the son of Halvor, or at least someone along the line was once surnames became heriditary. Halvorson family history enters the books in 1748, when Peter Spence married Ann Halvorson at St. James Church in London. Halvorson genealogy boasts of several notable people, such as director Gary Halvorson and Papillon Airways chairman Elling Halvorson.

Pierson is a variant of Pierce (English) and Piers (Greek), and the meaning of Pierson is "rock."

Two people were reported injured on Friday the 13th of December 2013, a year after the Friday the 14th of December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Today's afternoon shooting at a suburban Denver high school left the suspect dead from a self-inflicted gunshot, according to the sheriff.

The shooting occurred at Arapahoe High School, in Centennial, Colorado. It is located 6 miles from Littleton, and is in the Littleton School District. The mascot of the high school is the Arapahoe Warrior.

One teen has a gunshot wound. Another student has an injury of unknown origin.

Police, who surrounded the school, described the scene as a "active shooter situation" until the suspect student shooter was found dead.

Students were seen calmly exiting the building single file with their hands above their hands, gathering on a school track, at about 1:30 local time.

The Denver Post said there are reports of a fire at the school, home to about 2,200 students.

A student carrying a shotgun entered the school, and gave the name of a specific adult he was after. The alleged target was Mr. Murphy, the school librarian.

Considering this blog's attention to the name game, the copycat effect, and especially the name Aurora, this entry about Centennial from Wikipedia is intriguing:

Since the city is relatively new, many people in the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area do not recognize the area by the name “Centennial,” especially since neighboring Aurora, Englewood and Littleton are assigned by the United States Postal Service as the “default” place names for the ZIP codes serving Centennial. Thus, mailing addresses in which “Aurora,” “Englewood” or “Littleton” appear may actually be in Centennial. This causes considerable confusion, as Centennial and Englewood do not even share a common boundary, while some portions of Centennial are surrounded by Aurora and vice versa.

Nearby Columbine High School, Littleton, Colorado, was the site of a 1999 massacre in which two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students, a teacher and wounded several others before the pair committed suicide.

On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza shot his mother at home and then went to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 26 people (20 children and 6 faculty and staff) before killing himself. It was the second-deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, after the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre.

(H/T SM + MCC)

Saturday, December 07, 2013

Pearl Harbor: A Synchromystical Place?

Americans tend to brutally and concretely remember the "Pearl Harbor Attack." I find great affection for the Japanese today, but my mother (born in 1927) grew up hating them. This generational split about "December 7th" is disappearing, and we can now speak to the fact that the location is mystical. There is another side of Pearl Harbor. I'm not talking about the many myths associated with the actual 1941 military action (see here). It was a place of legends before 1941, and has developed its own new tales since then.

Legends of ancient Hawaii tell of waters called Puuloa, which was the home of the beneficent Shark Goddess Kaahupahau. Her sharks were man's protectors against many evil spirits and also against the other "man-eating sharks."
The legends, when first recorded in the 19th Century, refer to Ewa as the first area populated on Oahu by the immigrant Polynesians. One Ewa king, Chief Keaunui, is credited with deepening the entrance of the harbour to 15 feet in about the year 1650. During those years and into the 20th Century numerous fish ponds and fish traps were in the entrance and in the many lochs of that body of water. Most were maintained for royal use only.
As early as 1796 European visitors recorded that those waters produced oysters which were used for food, and that pearls were frequently found in them. The pearls were milk white, spherical, and of exquisite lustre. By 1810 the king had found the trading value of the pearls and kept them under royal control.
In the same year (1810), the river leading into the bay was referred to as Wymumme, and in 1819 as Wy Momi which, translated to English, is Pearl River. (The difference in spelling is that of the person recording the spoken word.) Again in 1836 it was recorded that the small pearl oyster was quite abundant and common on the table. From about that time on, the large area of water at the mouth of the river was called Pearl Harbour.
For generations the land surrounding Pearl Harbour was subject to natural erosion and the attrition of "civilization" which allowed much of the harbour to be filled with mud. The oysters could not survive in the mud and were nearly extinct by the late 19th Century.
A visitor from the United States noted in 1840 that there was a depth of 15 feet over the coral bar at the harbour entrance. He suggested to the U.S. Government that they attempt an agreement with the Hawaiian king for the use of the harbour for U.S. ships. This was not acted upon until 1873 and not agreed until 1898. Then the actual work of deepening and widening the channel wasn't started until 1901, at which time a coaling station for the fuelling of ships was erected just inside the entrance. Source.

Pearl Harbor was originally an extensive deep embayment called Wai Nomi (meaning, “pearl water”) or Puʻuloa (meaning, “long hill”) by the Hawaiians. Puʻuloa was regarded as the neighbor of the dolphin god, Kaʻahupahau, and his brother (or father), Kahiʻuka, in Hawaiian legends. According to tradition, Keaunui, the head of the powerful Ewu chiefs, is credited with cutting a navigable channel near the present Puʻuloa saltworks, by which he made the estuary, known as "Pearl Lake," accessible to navigation. Making due allowance for legendary amplification, the estuary already had an outlet for its waters where the present gap is; but Keaunui is typically given the credit for widening and deepening it. Source.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a story in their mythos that a Japanese bomber refused to bomb the Laie Hawaii Temple during the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

The temporal importance of Pearl Harbor Day was reinforced immediately, and lives on today.

USS Wisconsin (BB-64), "Wisky" or "WisKy," is an Iowa-class battleship, the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. She was built at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and launched on December 7, 1943 (the second anniversary of the Pearl Harbor raid), sponsored by the wife of Governor of Wisconsin, Walter Goodland. That was during the time of the Philadelphia Experiment, allegedly. Was Pearl Harbor the motivation behind the Philadelphia Experiment, if it even existed?

What special synchromysticism do you associate with Pearl Harbor?

"Look with horror in your mirror at the eyes without curiosity;

at the lips which never question."
~ Tiffany Thayer, in his Introduction to Charles Fort's Lo!

Friday, December 06, 2013

The Goblin Universe's Colin Wilson Dies

December 5th is the day on which Nelson Mandela, and, now we learn, Colin Henry Wilson, 82, died. He suffered a stroke in June 2012 and lost his ability to speak. He passed away on Thursday.

Wilson (26 June 1931 – 5 December 2013) was a prolific English writer who first came to prominence as a philosopher and novelist. Wilson also wrote widely on true crime, mysticism, the paranormal, and other topics.

In terms of a fiction writer, Wilson sometimes critiqued or commented on H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos.

But I was mostly interested in his history and development, in the nonfiction realm:

Wilson became associated with the "Angry Young Men" of British literature. He contributed to Declaration, an anthology of manifestos by writers associated with the movement, and wrote a popular paperback sampler, Protest: The Beat Generation and the Angry Young Men. Some viewed Wilson and his friends Bill Hopkins and Stuart Holroyd as a sub-group of the "Angries", more concerned with "religious values" than with liberal or socialist politics. Critics on the left swiftly labeled them as fascist; commentator Kenneth Allsop called them "the law givers".
After the initial success of Wilson's first work, critics universally panned Religion and the Rebel (1957). Time magazine published a review, headlined "Scrambled Egghead", that pilloried the book. By the late 1960s Wilson had become increasingly interested in metaphysical and occult themes. In 1971, he published The Occult: A History, featuring interpretations on Aleister Crowley, George Gurdjieff, Helena Blavatsky, Kabbalah, primitive magic, Franz Mesmer, Grigori Rasputin, Daniel Dunglas Home, and Paracelsus (among others). He also wrote a markedly unsympathetic biography of Crowley, Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast, and has written biographies on other spiritual and psychological visionaries, including Gurdjieff, Carl Jung, Wilhelm Reich, Rudolf Steiner, and P. D. Ouspensky.
Originally, Wilson focused on the cultivation of what he called "Faculty X", which he saw as leading to an increased sense of meaning, and on abilities such as telepathy and the awareness of other energies. In his later work he suggests the possibility of life after death and the existence of spirits, which he personally analyzes as an active member of the Ghost Club.
He has also written non-fiction books on crime, ranging from encyclopedias to studies of serial killing. He has an ongoing interest in the life and times of Jack the Ripper and in sex crime in general. Source.

The books that Wilson wrote were earth changing within the world of what he called phenomenological existentialism, included The Outsider, The Occult, and The Goblin Universe.

I once worked, as the fact-checker and photographic researcher, with Colin and Ted Holiday on the 1982 book, The Goblin Universe, the one cryptozoology-styled book to which Wilson seems to have contributed. My blurb, along with ones from John A. Keel, Janet and Colin Bord, and Hans Holzer appeared on their bottom.

Colin Wilson was able to work with so many people, writing scores of introductions to others' books, seemingly because his view of the field was so broad.

Colin Wilson was the author of many works. The following list is the generally accepted bibliography of Wilson's.

The Outsider (1956)
Religion and the Rebel (1957)
"The Frenchman" (short story, Evening Standard 22 August 1957)
The Age of Defeat (US title The Stature of Man) (1959)
Ritual in the Dark (Victor Gollancz, 1960) (Reprinted, Ronin Publishing Visions Series, 1993)
Encyclopedia of Murder (with Patricia Pitman, 1961)
Adrift in Soho (1961)
"Watching the Bird" (short story, Evening News 12 September 1961)
"Uncle Tom and the Police Constable" (short story, Evening News 23 October 1961)
"He Could not Fail" (short story, Evening News 29 December 1961)
The Strength to Dream: Literature and the Imagination (1962)
"Uncle and the Lion" (short story, Evening News 28 September 1962)
"Hidden Bruise" (short story, Evening News 3 December 1962)
Origins of the Sexual Impulse (1963)
The World of Violence (US title The Violent World of Hugh Greene) (1963)
Man Without a Shadow (US title The Sex Diary of Gerard Sorme) (1963)
"The Wooden Cubes" (short story, Evening News 27 June 1963)
Rasputin and the Fall of the Romanovs (1964)
Brandy of the Damned (1964; later expanded and reprinted as Chords and Discords/Colin Wilson On Music)
Necessary Doubt (1964)
Beyond the Outsider (1965)
Eagle and Earwig (1965)
Sex and the Intelligent Teenager (1966)
Introduction to the New Existentialism (1966)
The Glass Cage (1966)
The Mind Parasites (1967)
Voyage to a Beginning (1969)
A Casebook of Murder (1969)
Bernard Shaw: A Reassessment (1969)
The Philosopher's Stone (1969) ISBN 978-0-213-17790-4
The Return of the Lloigor (first published 1969 in the anthology Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos; revised separate edition, Village Press, London, 1974).
Poetry and Mysticism (1969; subsequently significantly expanded in 1970)
"The Return of the Lloigor" (short story in Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, edited by August Derleth, 1969; later revised and published as a separate book)
L'amour: The Ways of Love (1970)
The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (with E. H. Visiak and J. B. Pick, 1970)
Strindberg (1970)
The God of the Labyrinth (US title The Hedonists) (1970)
The Killer (US title Lingard) (1970)
The Occult: A History (1971)
The Black Room (1971)
Order of Assassins: The Psychology of Murder (1972)
New Pathways in Psychology: Maslow and the Post-Freudian Revolution (1972)
Strange Powers (1973)
"Tree" by Tolkien (1973)
Hermann Hesse (1974)
Wilhelm Reich (1974)
Jorge Luis Borges (1974)
Hesse-Reich-Borges: Three Essays (1974)
Ken Russell: A Director in Search of a Hero (1974)
A Book of Booze (1974)
The Schoolgirl Murder Case (1974)
The Unexplained (1975)
Mysterious Powers (US title They Had Strange Powers) (1975)
The Craft of the Novel (1975)
Enigmas and Mysteries (1975)
The Geller Phenomenon (1975), ISBN 0-7172-8105-1
The Space Vampires (1976)
Colin Wilson's Men of Mystery (US title Dark Dimensions) (with various authors, 1977)
Mysteries (1978)
Mysteries of the Mind (with Stuart Holroyd, 1978)
The Haunted Man: The Strange Genius of David Lindsay (1979)
"Timeslip" (short story in Aries I, edited by John Grant, 1979)
Science Fiction as Existentialism (1980)
Starseekers (1980)
Frankenstein's Castle: the Right Brain-Door to Wisdom (1980)
The Book of Time, edited by John Grant and Colin Wilson (1980)
The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff (1980)
The Directory of Possibilities, edited by Colin Wilson and John Grant (1981)
Poltergeist!: A Study in Destructive Haunting (1981)
Anti-Sartre, with an Essay on Camus (1981)
The Quest for Wilhelm Reich (1981)
The Goblin Universe (with Ted Holiday, 1982)
Access to Inner Worlds: The Story of Brad Absetz (1983)
Encyclopedia of Modern Murder, 1962-82 (1983)
"A Novelization of Events in the Life and Death of Grigori Efimovich Rasputin," in Tales of the Uncanny (Reader's Digest Association, 1983; an abbreviated version of the later The Magician from Siberia)
The Psychic Detectives: The Story of Psychometry and Paranormal Crime Detection (1984)
A Criminal History of Mankind (1984), revised and updated (2005)
Lord of the Underworld: Jung and the Twentieth Century (1984)
The Janus Murder Case (1984)
The Bicameral Critic (1985)
The Essential Colin Wilson (1985)
Rudolf Steiner: The Man and His Vision (1985)
Afterlife: An Investigation of the Evidence of Life After Death (1985)
The Personality Surgeon (1985)
An Encyclopedia of Scandal. Edited by Colin Wilson and Donald Seaman (1986)
The Book of Great Mysteries. Edited by Colin Wilson and Dr. Christopher Evans (1986), ISBN 0948164263
An Essay on the 'New' Existentialism (1988)
The Laurel and Hardy Theory of Consciousness (1986)
Spider World: The Tower (1987)
Spider World: The Delta (1987)
Marx Refuted - The Verdict of History, edited by Colin Wilson (with contributions also) and Ronald Duncan, Bath, (UK), (1987), ISBN 0-906798-71-X
Aleister Crowley: The Nature of the Beast (1987)
The Musician as 'Outsider'. (1987)
The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (with Damon Wilson, 1987)
Jack the Ripper: Summing Up and Verdict (with Robin Odell, 1987)
Autobiographical Reflections (1988)
The Misfits: A Study of Sexual Outsiders (1988)
Beyond the Occult (1988)
The Mammoth Book of True Crime (1988)
The Magician from Siberia (1988)
The Decline and Fall of Leftism (1989)
Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection (1989)
Existentially Speaking: Essays on the Philosophy of Literature (1989)
Serial Killers: A Study in the Psychology of Violence (1990)
Spider World: The Magician (1992)
Mozart's Journey to Prague (1992)
The Strange Life of P.D. Ouspensky (1993)
Unsolved Mysteries (with Damon Wilson, 1993)
Outline of the Female Outsider (1994)
A Plague of Murder (1995)
From Atlantis to the Sphinx (1996)
An Extraordinary Man in the Age of Pigmies: Colin Wilson on Henry Miller (1996)
The Unexplained Mysteries of the Universe (1997) ISBN 0-7513-5983-1
The Atlas of Sacred Places (1997)
Below the Iceberg: Anti-Sartre and Other Essays (reissue with essays on postmodernism, 1998)
The Corpse Garden (1998)
The Books in My Life (1998)
Alien Dawn (1999)
The Devil's Party (US title Rogue Messiahs) (2000)
The Atlantis Blueprint (with Rand Flem-Ath, 2000)
Illustrated True Crime: A Photographic History (2002)
The Tomb of the Old Ones (with John Grant, 2002)
Spider World: Shadowlands (2002)
Dreaming To Some Purpose (2004) - autobiography
World Famous UFOs (2005)
Atlantis and the Kingdom of the Neanderthals (2006)
Crimes of Passion: The Thin Line Between Love and Hate (2006)
The Angry Years: The Rise and Fall of the Angry Young Men (2007)
Manhunters: Criminal Profilers & Their Search for the World's Most Wanted Serial Killers (2007)
The Death of God' and other plays (edited by Colin Stanley) (2008)
Super Consciousness (2009)
Existential Criticism: selected book reviews (edited by Colin Stanley) (2009)

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

Van Winkle Dies In Oz: Death in the Kansas City Chiefs Parking Lot

A man is sleeping, wakes up, gets in a fight, and dies. It does not seem remarkable, at first, until you begin to look at the name of the individual, the date of the incident, and the location.

The story:

A man who owned a Jeep and his son returned to their vehicle in a football stadium's parking lot after Sunday's game. They find a sleeping man "who did not belong" inside the Jeep. This discovery resulted in a fight between the specific owner of the vehicle - the father - and the man inside. The person in the car, described as a white male in his mid-20s, collapsed during the struggle. When paramedics arrived, the man was found lying unconscious on the pavement. The person was then taken from the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot in Kansas City, following the Chiefs' loss to the Denver Broncos (35-28), on December 1, 2013, and declared dead at a local hospital.

The name:

The sleeping man was identified as Kyle A. Van Winkle (also spelled VanWinkle and Vanwinkle in media reports), 30, of Smithville, Missouri, located just on the border with Kansas. Van Winkle was a loan operations specialist for the $1.8 billion CommunityAmerica Credit Union in Lenexa, Kansas, revealed the Credit Union Times. Van Winkle was the son of Dean Van Winkle, a detective sergeant in the investigations unit of the Grandview Police Department, according to the Kansas City Star.

New information indicates that Van Winkle appears to have fallen asleep in an unlocked Jeep that looked like his.

An examination of Van Winkle's body did not show obvious signs of trauma, Kansas City police spokesman Darin Snapp said. Police Chief Darryl Forte said the death is being investigated as a homicide and that two suspects have not been identified yet.

The name Van Winkle is from the Dutch (also given as Vanwinkle, Van Winckle, Van Winkel). It is a moniker originating from the topographic name for someone who lived on a corner (either a street corner or a corner of land), from Dutch winkel, "corner," "nook," or a habitational name from a place named with this word, for example in North Holland. (Source.)

The traditional story of Rip Van Winkle is well-known in America. It tells of a man named Rip Van Winkle who lived in a village in New York State during the American Revolutionary War, when it was still ruled by the British. Rip Van Winkle fell asleep for 20 years and woke up to find he wasn't in the world he remembered.

"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819, as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. Written while Irving was living in Birmingham, England, it was part of a collection entitled The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.. Although the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains, Irving later admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills."

(See the end of this posting for the plot to the short story.)

The date:

Kyle Van Winkle's death came one year to the day after Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher shot and killed his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, on December 1, 2012, at a home not far from the stadium. Belcher then drove to the team's practice facility and fatally shot himself in front of then-coach Romeo Crennel and general manager Scott Pioli.

As I mentioned a year ago, Kansas City, Missouri, police spokesman Darin Snapp was the person who identified the player as linebacker Jovan Belcher, 25. Belcher, from West Babylon, New York, played football at the University of Maine from 2005-08. He graduated from Maine in December 2008 with a bachelor's degree in child development and family relations.

Jovan as a boy's name is of Latin origin. Variant of Jove, from Jupiter (Latin) "the supreme God." Jupiter was the supreme deity of Roman mythology, corresponding to the Greek Zeus.

The surname Belcher has its roots in medieval England, and, before that, in France. The name Belcher is composed of two syllables: Bel and cher. In Old French, Bel meant "beautiful or fine." The Middle English word cher (also derived from the Old French) meant an "an expression on the face." the Belcher name refers to a beautiful or fine expression on the face, hospitality, or, in summary, Bel = "good" + cher = "cheer."

See this blog's detailed discussion of the December 1, 2012 event, "KC Chiefs Player Suicide at Arrowhead."

The location:

Arrowhead Stadium parking lot, December 1, 2013.

Besides the suicide death of Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher on December 1, 2012, in this parking lot, a previous incident occurred there.

In September 2012, a gunman attacked a Kansas City Royals employee in the same parking lot, which also services Kauffman Stadium. The shooting took place several hours before the scheduled start of the Royals' game, which went on as scheduled.

The summary of the plot of Rip Van Winkle:

Statue of Rip Van Winkle in Irvington, New York,

not far from "Sunnyside," the home of Washington Irving.

The story of Rip Van Winkle is set in the years before and after the American Revolutionary War. In a pleasant village, at the foot of New York's Catskill Mountains, lives the kindly Rip Van Winkle, a colonial British-American villager of Dutch descent. Rip is an amiable man who enjoys solitary activities in the wilderness, but is also loved by all in town—especially the children to whom he tells stories and gives toys. However, a tendency to avoid all gainful labor, for which his nagging wife (Dame Van Winkle) chastises him, allows his home and farm to fall into disarray due to his lazy neglect.
One winter day, Rip is escaping his wife's nagging, wandering up the mountains with his dog, Wolf. Hearing his name being shouted, Rip discovers that the speaker is a man dressed in antiquated Dutch clothing, carrying a keg up the mountain, who requires Rip's help. Without exchanging words, the two hike up to an amphitheatre-like hollow in which Rip discovers the source of previously-heard thunderous noises: there is a group of other ornately-dressed, silent, bearded men who are playing nine-pins [kegelen]. Although there is no conversation and Rip does not ask the men who they are or how they know his name, he discreetly begins to drink some of their liquor, and soon falls asleep.

He awakes in unusual circumstances: It seems to be morning, his gun is rotted and rusty, his beard has grown a foot long, and Wolf is nowhere to be found. Rip returns to his village where he finds that he recognizes no one. Asking around, he discovers that his wife has died and that his close friends have died in a war or gone somewhere else. He immediately gets into trouble when he proclaims himself a loyal subject of King George III, not knowing that the American Revolution has taken place; George III's portrait on the town inn has been replaced by that of George Washington. Rip is also disturbed to find another man is being called Rip Van Winkle (though this is in fact his son, who has now grown up).
The men he met in the mountains, Rip learns, are rumored to be the ghosts of Hendrick (Henry) Hudson's crew. Rip is told that he has apparently been away from the village for twenty years. An old local recognizes Rip and Rip's now-adult daughter takes him in. Rip resumes his habitual idleness, and his tale is solemnly taken to heart by the Dutch settlers, with other hen-pecked husbands, after hearing his story, wishing they could share in Rip's good luck, and have the luxury of sleeping through the hardships of war. Source: Wikipedia.

The story contains other names to be aware of in the telling: Wolf, Kegelen, George, Washington, Hendrick, Henry, and Hudson. Other names are involved, too.

In the 1914 movie Rip Van Winkle, "The main setting is outside the tavern of Nicklaus Vedder in the village of Falling Waters."

In reality, there is a Falling Water, and the small rural village lies along State Route 23A at the base of Kaaterskill Clove, New York.

The bizarre keglers in Washington Irving's story, playing at ninepins (a/k/a kegelen), are often described as dwarfs or goblins.

Washington Irving's companion short story is "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" (1820) - the tale infamous for Ichabod Crane and its headless horseman, of course.

(H/T to Robert Sullivan for KC news hints.)

Sunday, December 01, 2013

The Gods Will Rage: Spuyten Duyvil, Clutha, and Hercules

What has upset the gods?

Thor: The Dark World opened November 8, 2013, but it was on the weekend of November 29th when the gods wished to be heard. We are in the midst of a tension-filled time of transportation-related wrecks, some of which reflect decidedly name game linkages.

SPUYTEN DUYVIL

On Sunday, December 1, 2013, at 7:20 a.m., a Metro-North commuter train derailed in the Bronx borough of New York City, killing four passengers, and injuring 63. The derailing occurred on a curve immediately outside the Spuyten Duyvil station.

Helicopter images show at least five of the seven cars of the Metro-North Railroad train derailed — at least two of them were thrown on their side. The leading car came within feet of plunging into the Harlem River.

The train had left at 5:54 a.m. from Poughkeepsie, New York, and was due in Grand Central Terminal, New York City, at 7:43 a.m. ET.

The station name, Spuyten Duyvil, is the name of a subsection of the Riverdale section in New York City, which refers to the southernmost section of Riverdale, below West 232nd Street, or below 239th Street by some definitions.

The area is named after Spuyten Duyvil Creek, where "Spuyten Duyvil" literally means "Spouting Devil" or Spuitende Duivel in Dutch; a reference to the strong and wild tidal currents found at that location. It may also be translated as "Spewing Devil" or "Spinning Devil," or more loosely as "Devil's Whirlpool" or "Devil's Spate." Spui and spuit are still today commonly used Dutch words involving outlets for water. (See "Devil's Names and Fortean Places.")

Spuyten Duyvil neighborhood is home to The Henry Hudson Memorial Park and the Henry Hudson Bridge, which connects it to the island of Manhattan. It is also the location of the Spuyten Duyvil train station, which is served by the Hudson Line of the Metro-North Railroad, as Wikipedia notes.

Saint Nicholas Avenue in Manhattan was originally an Indian path named Weekquaeskeek, which accommodated travelers going north to Spuyten Duyvil.

There exists a weird historical report, as well, from the area. It is generally recalled as the earliest recorded shark attack in the New World.

In 1642, Anthony Van Corlaer died while attempting to swim across the Hudson from Spuyten Duyvil. A witness to Van Corlaer's death stated that "the devil" in the shape of a giant fish swam up and proceeded to "seize the sturdy Antony by the leg and drag him beneath the waves." (See the comment section below for more details on this story, from Cory Panshin.)

CLUTHA

Eight people have been confirmed dead and an additional 14 people remained hospitalized in "serious condition" after a Scottish police helicopter crashed into a crowded Glasgow pub early on Saturday, November 30, 2013.

Chief Constable Stephen House said Saturday that all three passengers in the helicopter - a civilian pilot and two police officers - were killed in the crash. The constable struggled to contain his emotion as he called the fallen officers "our colleagues."

The remaining five fatalities were patrons of the Clutha Vaults, he said. Names of the eight victims were not immediately released.

The accident involved a Eurocopter EC135 police helicopter, registered G-SPAO, which crashed at 22:25 on 29 November 2013. One witness, Gordon Smart, editor of the Scottish Sun newspaper, stated that "there was no fireball and I did not hear an explosion. It fell like a stone. The engine seemed to be spluttering".

Reports from the scene on Stockwell Street indicate the roof of the pub, called The Clutha Vaults, collapsed upon impact, trapping some people inside. A ska band was playing in the pub at the time of the crash and there were reported to be around 120 people in the building. An eyewitness said: "Midway through their set it sounded like a giant explosion... Part of the room was covered in dust... We froze for a second; there was panic and then people trying to get out the door."

Jim Murphy, a Labour Party MP, reported seeing "dozens and dozens of people coming out of the pub. It is a horrible, horrible scene". He was interviewed with blood on his shirt from helping in the rescue efforts.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond tweeted the first official confirmation that the helicopter was a police aircraft. He subsequently described the crash as "a black day for Glasgow and Scotland". On the day following the crash, planned St. Andrew's Day celebrations were cancelled in Glasgow's George Square, and flags were flown at half-mast on Scottish Government buildings.

The old pub on the north bank of the River Clyde was packed with 120 people, dancing to the driving bass and big brass sound of a ska band, Esperanza.

Clutha is the ancient, Roman name for a river god and the River Clyde. The media is noting pub, the Clutha Vaults, was named for the nearby Scottish waterway, the River Clyde.

Clutha is the name also of a Scottish country dance, in which the eight dancers are arranged in a square set as for the Eightsome Reel. It is a 48 bar reel. An Clutha (more often spelled An Cluadha) is the Gaelic name for The Clyde. It is one of the modern Scottish country dances and was first published by the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society in 1983.

Andy Cobley, a Fortean Times associate, emails, "We currently have 8 reported dead, but that could change (although I hope not of course)."

Elsewhere, the Clutha is the name of a gold-bearing river at the southern end of the South Island, New Zealand. It flows 213 miles (338 km) to the Pacific Ocean. The Clyde Dam, New Zealand's third largest hydroelectric dam, is built on the Clutha River near the town of Clyde.

HERCULES

Later on Saturday, well-known Fast and Furious's blond-haired, blue-eyed actor Paul Walker died on Saturday in a car crash in Southern California. The single-vehicle crash occurred about 3:30 p.m. in the 28300 block of Rye Canyon Loop.

The single-car crash occurred around 3:30 p.m. on Hercules Street near Constellation Road in the Rye Canyon Business Park, fire officials said.

First responders gather evidence near the wreckage of a Porsche sports car that crashed into a light pole on Hercules Street.

Hercules is the Roman name for the Greek divine hero Heracles, who was the son of Zeus (Roman equivalent Jupiter) and the mortal Alcmene. In classical mythology, Hercules is famous for his strength and for his numerous far-ranging adventures.

(Two Hercules movies are in the pipeline for 2014. The Legend of Hercules stars Kellan Lutz in the title role, which was recently moved up to a January 10 release. The change in the release date is to make it stand out from Hercules: The Thracian Wars, the Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson film to be released on July 25. Johnson is a close friend of Paul Walker.)

Walker, 40, who was in five of the six films about illegal street racing and heists, was a passenger in a friend's car and was attending a charity event. Two people were killed in a car accident in Valencia, a community in the city of Santa Clarita, at about 3:30 p.m. local time.

Deputies arriving at the scene found the vehicle engulfed in flames. The victims were pronounced dead at the scene. The office did not provide the identities of the dead, and said the cause was under investigation.

In Fast and Furious movies, the actor played Brian O'Conner, a law enforcement official.

Paul William Walker IV was born in Glendale, California, in 1973 and began acting at 2 years old, appearing in many commercials.

He played Professor Bennet in the 1987 movie Monster in the Closet and starred in the television series Throb.

Walker also made guest appearances on television shows, including Charles in Charge and Who's the Boss? and had a role in the soap opera, The Young and the Restless.

In terms of irony, it is to be recalled that one role Paul Walker played was Jerry Shepard, in 2006's Eight Below.

Other film appearances include Pleasantville, Varsity Blues, Timeline, Into the Blue, The Lazarus Project and Hours, which is slated for release in December 2014.

Walker has a teenager daughter named Meadow.

Roger Rodas, 38, has been named as the driver in the crash that killed Paul Walker.

OTHER WEEKEND WRECKS

Other fatal accidents occurred linked to transportation.

On Black Friday, November 29, 2013, a plane wreck killed the pilot and three passengers in the crash of their single-engine turboprop Cessna 208, at Saint Marys, Alaska.

Also on Friday, a Mozambique Airlines plane carrying 33 people crashed in a remote border area, killing all on board. The plane crashed in a Namibian national park, named Bwabwata, near the border with Angola. Several thousand people as well as elephants, buffalo and other wildlife live in the park, which covers 2,360 square miles. Bwabwata is named after a village in the reserve and means "the sound of bubbling water."

There were no survivors of the 27 passengers, including 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, and one citizen each from France, Brazil and China. Six crew members were on board. Flight TM470 from Maputo, the Mozambican capital, did not land as scheduled in Luanda, the Angolan capital, on Friday afternoon, and the airline initially said the plane might have landed in Rundu, in northern Namibia. It crashed, instead.

Ferry, train, and small plane crashes also occurred.

(H/T to RS.)

Twilight Language