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January 16, 2023

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)

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Above: King, about 28, in 1957 at his home in Montgomery, Alabama. Had he lived, King would have turned 94 yesterday. In 1964, at the age of 35, he won the Nobel Peace Prize. He was 39 when he was killed.

Posted by JD Hull at 11:59 PM | Comments (0)

The London Stone.

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We've written about it before. I have a thing about it--probably because for now I live a lot of the time in California in an "old" 22-year-old home. Back East, in DC, NYC and Nantucket, and other parts of the U.S. where people do not use "party" as a verb, there's much older stuff, of course, sometimes going back to the 1600s--but nothing like you stumble upon every moment in dear old Albion and Western Europe. Sorry, rock and cave paintings and U.S. mound-builder relics don't cut it for me as much; so alert the Oberlin College faculty, the BIA and NPR--and then sue me. I like old books, old homes, old things; but they need to be the relics of real goofy-looking Europeans like me.

The Stone is important to me because it's mysterious and fires the imagination--not because it's way old. There's a myth that the Stone was part of an altar built by Brutus of Troy, the legendary founder of London. Not true in any respect--but the Stone is Dang Olde, older than Boudica, Tacitus, Disraeli or Keith Richards, and at the very minimum, an enduring symbol of the Authority of The City since London Roman times. So we're talking about at least 2000 years of Stoneness. Some scholars think 3000 years.

Anyway, finding It is easy: you head east, down Fleet Street, past Dr. Johnson's house, past St. Paul's a block north, staying on Fleet Street (not Lane) which becomes Ludgate Hill (past intersection with Old Bailey), which becomes Cannon Street, to 111 Cannon, across from the tube station.

Got it? You'll miss It if you're not careful. You may give an oath to It if you like. The Stone likes that.

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Original: 8-29-08

Posted by JD Hull at 11:39 PM | Comments (0)

Geoffrey Arnold Beck 1944-2023

First heard you Jeff on vinyl when I was 14. You were a virtuoso innovator and genius who always suprised. Thanks for being in my life’s soundtrack. Everywhere all the time. Ohio. North Carolina. Pennsylvania. Europe SoCal.

Posted by JD Hull at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)