PHOTOGRAPHER ~

Francesca Woodman


Francesca Woodman (1958-1981) a life gone to suicide at the age of 21, this opulent volume attempts to capture the nine years of a life's work by this compelling photographer.


Beautifully presented with none of the mystery, immediacy, or harrowing edges of the photographer's eye lost to the immaculate layout. The text is informative and wise, but gladly, over 3/4 of the book depth is given to her photographs.

Francesca Woodman
edited by Corey Keller
w/ essays by Jennifer Blessing and JuliaBryan-Wilson
San Fransico Museum of Modern Art
D.A.P. (2011)





Once In Vermont films
© bob arnold

SUMMER CLOUD ~

atop Sugarloaf
Deerfield, MA.
29 July 2012
7:15 pm

photo © bob arnold



He takes her in his arms
Bright gleams for a second playing
On the shoulder-blades the shoulders and the breasts
Then hidden by a cloud

PAUL ELUARD
trans. SAMUEL BECKETT

BIRTHDAY ONE ~

(I slipped this in the next day, because I can!)

In A Cabin, In A Wood



It’s a good day —
my work boots are off
socks too


I have rolled up
5 inch cuffs
on my jeans


I’m in a short sleeve
green shirt
no belt


we cut the grass
now heavenly
barefoot


my love is wild ex-
cept for the sun dress
she’s thrown on


waiting for a rain
that never does
come


we draw buckets of
water for new plants
from the farm pond


cordwood
we cut crackles dry
in all this sun


let the satellites that
circle the earth
try to find this

happy birthday susan!
29 july 2012

drawing © bob arnold

SATURDAY NIGHT ~

John Mayall

J.B. Lenoir

___________


The great J.B. Lenoir (pronounced not like I have or Mayall has for decades, but like he himself has said it "la NOR") has a classic driving blues song sung by his good friend John Mayall at the time Lenoir died of a heart attack three weeks after a bad car wreck in Urbana, Illinois. He was 38 years old, just a few years older than the British bluesbreaker Mayall. Today, somehow, John Mayall is 78 years old and still at it. 50 years ago, at the foot of a ferris wheel (why not) a friend and I paged through a teen music magazine (cheesy great stuff then) and we're captivated by this guy (Mayall) who already seemed a very old man in a young man's game. He ran most of them into the ground.

________________

GYPSY RADIO ~

Sam kopper, program director for WBCN Radio, broadcasting from his bus "Gypsy Dancer"

photo : Bryce Vickmark for The New York Times

http://www.samkopper.com/FreeFormBCN.shtml#phil



FreeForm BCN

To Go Straight to Phil Olenick’s URL and SmartPhone instructions, click here FreeformBCN's mission is to take what we were doing in the late 60s through the early 90s and bring it firmly into the 21st Century. We are streaming at WBCN.com, click Continue, then click on the FreeformBCN “Listen Live” button. Or, hear us in the Boston area on an HD radio at 100.7, HD3. The approach to music is, simply put, extremely eclectic, a Progressive Rock “We Play Everything” station. With a definite Rock base/core, as in the "old days" we will go off in every direction, playing all of Rock's "relatives:" relevant Country, Blues, R&B, Reggae, Art, Punk, Southern, Grunge, Folk, Alternative…you name it. We’ll even play what we call crossover HopHop. With HipHop and Alternative we certainly won’t be playing the hard core stuff, but we know that there is great music within every genre! Our ears and hearts are wide open and they didn’t freeze up in the 1980s, so for sure we play new music. As in WBCN’s greatest years, we will look for, and listen to the audience for good new music. The average radio station plays 800 to 1200 songs. Our library will have 6000! During our early months we are necessarily “robotic,” with a few of us “heritage” BCN people doing “liners,” short announcements now and again between songs. Ultimately, hopefully within just a few months, we will bring back live disc jockeys who: a. will NOT talk too much, b. will talk when they have something worthwhile to say, c. will have progressive music and social attitude, d. will be drawn from a few of the old staff AND some of the top young just-out-of-college radio people. We’ll be starting the live dj programming on a part-time basis and it’ll grow organically, based on success, audience reaction, and availability of the right air talent. Audience response will be, as it was in WBCN’s glory years, our main motivation. Our Facebook and Twitter sites and direct e-mails will be our 21st Century “Listener Line.” And now here’s Phil Olenick’s tutorial on programming various types of SMARTPHONES…. Here's how to get Free Form BCN on a phone other than an iPhone or Blackberry, or with another Internet radio player, like a Squeezebox. You can do this as long as your device is able to play streaming Windows Media Audio (".wma") files. However, if you can listen through the player launched by the WBCN.com website, please do. You don't actually have to go through two pages on the website to start the player - a shortcut aimed directly at http://player.play.it/player/player.html?v=4.7.124&id=20630&onestat=wzlxhd3 will bring up the CBS Radio player playing Free Form BCN, just like going through the website does. Once it's playing, just drag the icon to the left of the address in the browser's address bar down onto your shortcut bar. Why should I listen with the player? It shows the names of the artist, the song, and the album, and even the album cover in most cases - but much more importantly, because that way, you'll be included in the count of how many folks are listening to the stream.Why does that matter?Because we need to be able to show that there are a lot of people listening. That's how we'll be able to convince CBS to invest in making Free Form BCN a live radio station again, with disk jockeys - not computers - picking songs that make sense together and talking about what's going on in the world, with a news staff that covers current events from a progressive perspective, and with a high quality stereo signal over the air (not just on the internet).So if you can listen through the CBS player, please do. (That'll actually help us more than listening on an HD radio.) But if you can't, or want to listen on the go with a smartphone other than an iPhone or a Blackberry: Open up the place where your player lets you put in the web address ("URL") of a new stream you want to listen to. There are two URLs you can try. The first URL to try is:http://provisioning.streamtheworld.com/asx/WZLXHD3.asx The advantage of this URL is that the first part of this address ("provisioning.streamtheworld.com") will automatically be translated by an internet "domain name server" (the mysterious "DNS" initials you've run across) into the real numeric address of the site that's putting out the stream. If the site's numeric address changes, an update will be sent to the domain name servers very quickly, so the verbal address will resume working. (Such changes don't happen often, but they do happen.)However, many devices don't know how to deal with that URL because it relies on an ".asx" playlist file. So if the first URL doesn't work, you can try telling your device to go directly to the stream's current numeric address and real filename with this URL:http://208.80.52.168:80/WZLXHD3CMP3?.wma I'm using this URL on my 6 year-old Windows Pocket PC phone, with a music player called the GSPlayer, from an outfit called Green Software, which put it up as freeware a few years ago. The most recent version is available for download here: http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA032810/ You'll need the version of the player for your phone's version of Windows Mobile, plus the Windows Media Audio plugin. Both are free downloads from that page.The GSPlayer has a built in 10 band equalizer and will show the artist name and track title with this stream - pretty good for freeware.Once you get the stream playing, use your player's feature for creating a bookmark, playlist file, or whatever it calls a shortcut to make it easy to play a favorite stream later.If your shortcut stops working, it will probably be because we've succeeded in getting our over-the-air signal moved from WZLX's HD3 channel (which is mono) to one of CBS' stereo HD2 channels - and you can see from the URLs above that they're "hard coded" to ask for WZLX HD3.When we succeed in pulling off such an upgrade, we'll be delighted to put up new URLs - it'll mean that we'll be sounding as good over the air as we do on the web! Phil Olenick Chief Stream Hacker http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/16/business/media/wbcn-progressive-rock-station-returns-on-hd.html

CITIZEN ~

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders

Vermont Sen. Bernard Sanders, an independent, said the democratic foundations of the nation are currently enduring their most severe attack in history on both economic and political fronts.

“We are well on our way to see our country move to an oligarchy, where power rests in the hands of a few families,” he said.

Senator Sanders said inequality in the US is worse than it has been at any time since the 1920s. He noted that 23 billionaire families have contributed at lease $250,000 each so far in this year’s campaigns.

He added that the wealthiest 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans – roughly half the country.

“What the Supreme Court did in Citizens United is to say to these same billionaires and the corporations they control: ‘You own and control the economy, you own Wall Street, you own the coal companies, you own the oil companies. Now, for a very small percentage of your wealth, we’re going to give you the opportunity to own the United States government,' ” Sanders said.

“This is the essence of what Citizens United is all about – and that’s why it must be overturned,” he said.

~ Bernard Sanders

http://www.minnpost.com/christian-science-monitor/2012/07/constitutional-amendment-required-undo-citizens-united-senate-pane

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/opinion/blow-wheres-the-outrage.html?hp

BANSKY OLYMPICS ~

Bansky's street art of missile javelin thrower just in time for the summer Olympics

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/07/will-london-really-erase-banksys-new-olympics-art/54905/

http://www.banksy.co.uk/QA/qaa.html







Bansky's pole-vaulter approaching a homeless mattress





Banksy is a pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, film director, and painter.

His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humour with graffiti done in a distinctive stencilling technique. Such artistic works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.

Banksy's work was born of the Bristol underground scene which involved collaborations between artists and musicians. According to author and graphic designer Tristan Manco and the book Home Sweet Home, Banksy "was born in 1974 and raised in Bristol, England. The son of a photocopier technician, he trained as a butcher but became involved in graffiti during the great Bristol aerosol boom of the late 1980s."Observers have noted that his style is similar to Blek le Rat who began to work with stencils in 1981 in Paris and Jef Aerosol who sprayed his first street stencil in 1982 in Tours (France), and members of the anarcho-punk band Crass, which maintained a graffiti stencil campaign on the London Tube System in the late 1970s and early 1980s. However Banksy himself stated on his website
that in all actuality he based his work on that of 3D from Massive Attack, stating, "No, I copied 3D from Massive Attack. He can actually draw."

Known for his contempt for the government in labelling graffiti as vandalism, Banksy displays his art on public surfaces such as walls, even going as far as to build physical prop pieces. Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti directly himself; however, art auctioneers have been known to attempt to sell his street art on location and leave the problem of its removal in the hands of the winning bidder. Banksy's first film, Exit Through the Gift Shop, billed as "the world's first street art disaster movie," made its debut at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival.The film was released in the UK on 5 March 2010. In January 2011, he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary for the film.


Regarding personal fame, Banksy has stated that "We don't need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling." However, in addition to his artwork, Banksy has claimed responsibility for a number of high profile art pieces, including the following:

At London Zoo, he climbed into the penguin enclosure and painted "We're bored of fish" in 7-foot-high (2.1 m) letters.

At Bristol Zoo, he left the message "I want out. This place is too cold. Keeper smells. Boring, boring, boring." in the elephant enclosure.

In March 2005, he placed subverted artworks in the Museum of Modern Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

In May 2005 Banksy's version of a primitive cave painting depicting a human figure hunting wildlife while pushing a shopping trolley was hung in gallery 49 of the British Museum, London. Upon discovery, they added it to their permanent collection.

In August 2005, Banksy painted nine images on the Israeli West Bank barrier, including an image of a ladder going up and over the wall and an image of children digging a hole through the wall.

In April 2006, Banksy created a sculpture based on a crumpled red phone box with a pickaxe in its side, apparently bleeding, and placed it in a side street in Soho, London. It was later removed by Westminster Council. BT released a press release, which said: "This is a stunning visual comment on BT's transformation from an old-fashioned telecommunications company into a modern communications services provider."

In June 2006, Banksy created an image of a naked man hanging out of a bedroom window on a wall visible from Park Street in central Bristol. The image sparked some controversy, need quotation to verify] with the Bristol City Council leaving it up to the public to decide whether it should stay or go. After an internet discussion in which 97% of the 500 people surveyed supported the stencil, the city council decided it would be left on the building. The mural was later repainted with blue paint by fellow graffiti artists.

In August/September 2006, Banksy replaced up to 500 copies of Paris Hilton's debut CD, Paris, in 48 different UK record stores with his own cover art and remixes by Danger Mouse. Music tracks were given titles such as "Why Am I Famous?", "What Have I Done?" and "What Am I For?". Several copies of the CD were purchased by the public before stores were able to remove them, some going on to be sold for as much as £750 on online auction websites such as eBay. The cover art depicted Hilton digitally altered to appear topless. Other pictures feature her with her chihuahua Tinkerbell's head replacing her own, and one of her stepping out of a luxury car, edited to include a group of homeless people, which included the caption "90% of success is just showing up."

In September 2006, Banksy dressed an inflatable doll in the manner of a Guantanamo Bay detainment camp prisoner (orange jumpsuit, black hood, and handcuffs) and then placed the figure within the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad ride at the Disneyland theme park in Anaheim, California.

He also makes stickers (the Neighbourhood Watch subvert) and was responsible for the cover art of Blur's 2003 album Think Tank.

In September 2007, Banksy covered a wall in Portobello Road with a French artist painting graffiti of Banksy's name. The piece was allegedly sold on eBay for £208,100.

In July 2012, in the run up to the London 2012 Olympic games he created several pieces to based upon this event. One included an image of an athlete throwing a missile instead of Javelin. Evidently taking a poke at the Surface to Air missile sites positioned in the Stratford area to defend the games.


~ for footnotes and more see
Wikipedia

BREAKING ~

Breaking Bad's Bad Boys

"Breaking Bad" (AMC-TV) doesn't get any better in its fifth season, just louder and meaner. It's completely lost its local mythos of Mexican cartel and bumbling Albuquerque players to something more cinematic and outrageous. One can almost point to each actor now having his or her promoter lengthening their time on screen (or not), thus changing the earlier rip-snorting scripts of the writers and even the director. Its initial charm was the glorious simple inventions from the neighborhood; now it's hip and welcoming in the Germans. End game. While we are watching the new crop of shows we are re-watching the earlier seasons to balance our wishes. Those wishes are always looking for the genuine. There never was another boogeyman quite like Tuco Salamanca.


Meanwhile, we have the Aurora Colorado shootings, an inch away on the map from the Columbine shootings, both stuck in our same brain-pan of disbelief, denial, excuses, neglect, 9/ll and its similar tragedy (any killing is excessive, including war), on top of denial by murderous business creeps, politician creeps, media creeps, it just gives one the creeps.


Why six year old Veronica Moser-Sullivan, and now dead, was at a midnight showing for The Dark Knight Rises (with its prophetic title) and allowed a ticket inside for such a violent film at such an hour, along with other very young children, remains part of the questions, the problem, the denial, the continued heartache, which will only continue. Don't fool yourself.


6,000 rounds of ammo is bought for the slaughter via the free flow of the Internet and a seasoned gun lover will admit to you that 6,000 rounds is really "starting to run low." When we ship out books from our small bookshop at our local post office we often are in front of or behind a stocky and thorough fellow who is shipping out cinder-block-size packages, and just as heavy, of ammo. Bullets. To god knows where.


When I listen to the commentary for the start of the "Breaking Bad" fourth season, and many of the actors and other players are in the studio all chummy and sharing their thoughts, I wonder what happens to their brains when they watch in fantasy-time the show but speak in real-time, when "Gus", methodically, and of course unemotionally with pristine professional cool, cuts the throat of another, in full glory, with a box cutter. The box cutter — the tool of simple choice — ever since 9/11.


Which denial have you chosen?


The cinematic violence in each Dark Knight film has gradually inducted a real life player and brought this true to life 'actor' (''in tonight's episode James Holmes plays the shooter") into the multiplex theater. Water plants they grow. Pet a cat it purrs. Paint a house it resonates. Throw a stone it lands. Show continuous violence via the media, television shows, films, advertising, war doctrine, politics, hunger, bankruptcy, neglect, drought, fires, floods, liars, ad nauseam, and every excuse in the book how things can't be repaired or fixed and budgets are busted, but an open pipeline of money is there for wars and more wars. It's been this way my entire life, yours too.


It's all gore, eventually.


Little peace.


Expect more shooters.






http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175566/


photo:
Aaron Paul as Jesse Pinkman and Bryan Cranston as Walter White in Breaking Bad
(Frank Ockenfels/AMC)

CLASSIC AUDIO ~

Les Crane with guest Bob Dylan

( 1965 )

Les Crane (December 3, 1933 – July 13, 2008), born Lesley Stein, was a radio announcer and television talk show host, a pioneer in interactive broadcasting.


Maybe the greatest talk-show (and radio-show) host you never saw or heard. Crane is remembered now for his "shotgun method" mic, where a microphone was swung out to the audience members to join in. . .a daring precursor to the likes of Phil Donahue, Don Imus, Howard Stern. A pioneer in the development of talk radio, Crane sparked and riled up his listeners and callers with his forthright style and confrontational techniques which seemed to also attract his guests, and he had beauties: the rarely seen on television Bob Dylan (shown here), Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, George Wallace, Richard Burton, the first openly gay guest Randy Wicker (1964), and many other civil rights advocates of the time. He was loved by his followers and a thorn in the side to his promoters.


He began his radio career in 1958 at KONO in San Antonio, later moving to Philadelphia at call numbers WPEN. By 1962 he was steering KGO(AM) San Francisco with its powerhouse far reaching signal. It was Crane who was responsible for creating "the Top 40", so says none other than Casey Kasem. By 1963 Crane had shifted to a talk show on WABC—TV (NYC) where the first American TV appearance of The Rolling Stones took place, though only caught by New Yorkers. Leave it to Les Crane.


The late fifties and all of the sixties were his run and influence. By the late sixties he was hosting a talk show at KLAC (Los Angeles) now dressed in turtleneck and moccasins; by the 1980s he had shifted his talents as an innovator in the software industry. For whatever reason, perhaps neglect and stupidity on the part of owners, many of Crane's shows have been lost, or only the audio track has been left. After three marriages, including to Tina Louise from "Gilligan's Island" (Ginger), Crane died in California in 2008 at the age of 74. He was a handsome man.

LETTERPRESS FELLOW ~

In Memoriam: Daniel Carr

Julia Ferrari =Dan Carr

The Keene State College community, and the larger world community of typographers, is saddened to learn of the passing of long-serving adjunct Art faculty member Daniel Carr at the end of June.

Professor Carr came to Keene State College in 1996 and taught Typography ever since. He was known as a kind-hearted talented member of our campus community who lived art and was very committed and connected with his students. In addition to his position at the college, Carr and longtime partner Julia Ferrari (also an adjunct faculty member) operated Golgonooza Letter Foundry & Press where they designed and printed fine press books exclusively with metal types. In 1999 Carr was elected a Master Typographic Punchcutter of France for his metal typeface Regulus.

ATypI’s Leipzig 2000 conference program included this biographical note:
Dan Carr is a punchcutter, type designer, poet and printer. His hand-cut typeface “Regulus” won him a Diplome de Maitre-graveur typographe awarded by the Maitre-graveur typographes francais. His digital typeface “Cheneau” was chosen for a judges’ choice award by the Type Directors Club in 2000. With his partner J. Ferrari he publishes, designs, and prints fine limited edition books. These books, set and printed with metal types cast at their atelier Golgonooza Letter Foundry & Press, are widely collected and exhibited. Gifts of the Leaves a book printed with Carr’s hand-cut “Regulus” was chosen as one of the top ten acquisitions of the last decade by Stanford University in California; it was also chosen for a special design binding by D. Glaister for the collection at the Hague this last year.

KSC has lost a rare treasure.

By Mark Reynolds on 05 Jul 2012

JOY ~

Richard & Mimi Farina

Driving home late in the afternoon after a day bicycling in pastures and cornfields 8 feet high — look at! the ears of corn about the size of tubes of toothpaste. It's hot as blazes in there, earth cracked, no sign of rain for weeks. Up in the village where we rested in the shade and gulped water from our canteen, there was corn for sale, 50 cents each. We put two in our bicycle basket and took off. In another town yesterday, where we were also visitors, we bought four ears for 35 cents each at the side of the road and we'll see tonight for supper which village has the finest corn.


(And then rain did come in the middle of the night, almost half-filled our rain buckets in a long line at the back steel roof drip line. It's been three weeks a stranger. Nothing compared to the midwest drought).


On our jukebox coming home, driving slow as the river we're along, this very favorite song came up to play, windows open. Ah, me O my whatever happened to such songs? Where did they disappear to? We know Richard Farina disappeared to a bend in the road (Carmel Valley Road) along the Pacific on the California coastline as a passenger on a motorcycle going 90 mph. The cyclist, with Farina as passenger, flew off the road into a field, cut through barbed wire, and while the cyclist lived, Farina was dead on the spot at age 29. It was his wife's Mimi's 21st birthday. He had attended a book signing that day (and later a b'day party for Mimi) for his first book Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me with its protagonist Gnossos Pappadopoulis, most likely a spirited image of the author himself.


Farina had friends by the names of Lush (a German shepherd companion), Bruce Langhorne (played guitar on all three of the Farinas' albums), Bob Dylan and Thomas Pynchon, and Pynchon, who had been a fellow student at Cornell University, was Farina's best man at his wedding to Mimi when she was 17. The new couple had holed up in Carmel after the wedding writing their songs which would fill two unforgettable albums; a third was released after Farina's untimely passing. As was a second book, Long Time Coming And A Long Time Gone.


Ain't that the truth.


They had played Newport, recorded with Vanguard, Mimi was the younger sister of Joan Baez, and Richard had already been married to folksinger Carolyn Hester, toured together everywhere, but now it was 1966, and the world was about to flip.

http://www.richardandmimi.com/









Bruce Langhorne just released his first solo studio album in a 50 year career. It's called Tambourine Man. Langhorne is the Mr. Tambourine Man of the legendary Dylan song.







"I did a TV show with Dylan, I think it was the Les Crane show. And Bob Dylan said -- Les Crane had on a tie. And I was just playing second guitar. And Bob said to Les Crane, he said, Les, I like your tie, man. And Les said, oh, thanks, Bob. And he took it off and he gave it to him. Bob looked at him and he said, Les, I like your boots."

OVERHEARD ~

photo : © bob arnold

DILLINGER ~

John Dillinger

(June 22, 1903 – July 22, 1934)

I'd like to have enough money to enjoy life;
be clear of everything — not worry;
take care of my old man,
and see a ball game every day.

— John Dillinger



(a life long Chicago Cubs fan)

"The Dillinger gang had directed its efforts entirely to the robbing of banks. Naturally a great many holdups were erroneously ascribed to the band. The following is a confirmed list of their depredations, although there is often a considerable variance between the losses claimed by banks or reported in the papers and what Dillinger declares he actually obtained.


July 17, 1933 — Commercial Bank, Daleville, Indiana, $3,500


August 4, 1933 — Montpelier National Bank, Montpelier, Indiana, $6,700.


August 14, 1933 — Bluffton Bank, Bluffton, Ohio, $6,000



Dillinger (wearing open vest) being led from jail to a courtroom at Crown Point, Indiana, on Feb. 9, 1934, for arraignment on the charge of killing a policeman in East Chicago, Indiana.


September 6, 1933 — Massachusetts Avenue State Bank, Indianapolis, Indiana, $21,000


October 23, 1933 — Central National Bank and Trust Company, Greencastle, Indiana, $76,000






A driver takes no chances of being suspected of harboring John Dillinger. 26th April 1934
© AP / TopFoto


November 20, 1933 — American Bank and Trust Company, Racine, Wisconsin, $28,000


December 13, 1933, — Unity Trust and Savings Bank, Chicago, Illinois, $8,700


January 15, 1934 — First National Bank and Trust Company, Sioux Falls, North Dakota,
$49,500




Members of the Dillinger Gang (from left) Russell Clark,
Charles Makley, Harry Pierpont, John Dillinger, Ann Martin,
and Mary Kinder are arraigned in a Tucson, Arizona courtroom.
Photo courtesy the Associated Press.


March 13, 1934 — First National Bank, Mason City, Iowa, $52,000


June 30, 1934 — Merchants National Bank, South Bend, Indiana, $29,890"



from Dillinger, the untold Story
G. Russell Girardin with William J. Helmer
(Indiana University Press, 1994)







During these holdups, fifteen officers of the law and private citizens were killed and seventeen wounded.




The police officers who aided in the capture of the Dillinger gang in Tucson Arizona shown above with five sub-machine guns, bullet proof vests, revolvers and ammunition taken from members of the gang of Bank Robbers and escaped convicts. From left to right standing Detective Dallas Ford ; Chief of Police Gus Wellard ; Harry Foley ; Frank Eyman ; Captain Jay Smith ; Chet Sherman ; James Herron . From left to right kneeling Milo Walker ; K. Mullaney Earl Nolan . 28th January 1934



Out of the Dillinger gang, eleven were killed and twenty-three sent to prison. This would include John Dillinger himself, killed in Chicago by federal agents and police officers on July 22, 1934.
Homer Van Meter was shot by police in St. Paul, Minnesota on August 23, 1934. Harry Pierpont was electrocuted in the state penitentiary at Columbus, Ohio October 17, 1934, and on November 27, 1934, George "Baby Face" Nelson (Lester Gillis) died from gunshot wounds given by federal agents in Barrington, Illinois.






John Dillinger, Fred Barker,
'Pretty Boy' Floyd, Homer Van
Meter, Alvin Karpis, and 'Baby
Face' Nelson


Along with the human life lost, three-hundred thousand dollars was taken in bank robberies, and a million dollars spent by federal, state and local governments, plus private organizations, at protecting the public while running this gang down.






A photograph of the exterior of the house in Chicago where John Dillinger lived prior to his death near a Chicago theater. Here, the outlaw, who had changed his appearance with the aid of a plastic surgeon, stayed only to make frequent trips to the theater where he was killed. 25th July 1934



John Dillinger was the only criminal designated "Public Enemy Number One" by a federal official.





Dillinger once more nabbed by lawmen
(will escape)



Though Girardin and Helmer state the Dillinger gang only held up banks, it's been noted they also robbed four police stations.






(click on images to enlarge)



John Dillinger was alleged to have killed an East Chicago, Indiana police officer during a shoot-out. This has since been disputed but if true would be Dillinger's only known homicide. He was charged but never convicted.







After eluding the law in four states for almost a year, Dillinger returned to Chicago, Illinois, a city he felt comfortable in, and met his end on July 22, 1934 while leaving the Biograph Theater when federal agents and police officers closed in to make an arrest. A woman companion, Ana Cumpanas, the legendary "Woman in Red" (she actually wore an orange dress that night (10:35) while with Dillinger, as a signal to the law) was the turncoat. Dillinger pulled a revolver and was shot dead by a fuselage of lawman led by federal agents Melvin Purvis and Samuel P. Cowley with three, some say four, bullets that struck home. Purvis was given credit for shooting Dillinger, but he never fired his gun. Three men fired the fatal shots: Clarence Hurt fired twice, Charles Winstead fired three times, and Herman Hollis fired once.


Two months earlier, in Louisiana, Bonnie & Clyde were gunned down.





Biograph Theater, Chicago


A little background on Ana Cumpanas (alias Anna Sage), a native of Romania : early that year she was facing deportation to Romania, after the authorities described her as "alien of low moral character". She was the madam of a Chicago, Illinois brothel. On July 4, 1934, John Dillinger began frequenting Cumpanas' establishment which included twenty-six year old Polly Hamilton, Dillinger's latest girlfriend.




Polly Hamilton


Both Cumpanas and Polly Hamilton would be on either side of Dillinger when he walked out of the Biograph Theater that fatal night. Once AC became aware of Dillinger's criminal identity, and the large reward being offered for his capture, she fingered the bank robber as a way of obtaining permanent US residence.





Ana Cumpanas (alias Anna Sage)




Dillinger on the floor of a police vehicle as he was taken to the mortuary after he had been killed.

After Dillinger was gunned down, the FBI shuffled Cumpanas first to Detroit and then to California. She earned herself a $5,000 reward, only half of what she had been promised.
In the meantime mixed messages were occurring whether she was staying in the country or being shipped out — the FBI went so far as to admit they were powerless to stop the deportation proceedings due to shoddy communication between branches of the federal government. Little has changed! Cumpanas appealed this decision in Chicago but the court stood with the lower court and Ana Cumpanas was that same year deported to Timișoara, Romania, where she lived out of the public eye until her death in 1947 from liver disease.

The bank robber on display at Cook County Morgue






"Nash theory of Dillinger's escape —

In "The Dillinger Dossier," author Jay Robert Nash maintains that Dillinger escaped death at the Biograph simply by not being there. In his stead was a "Jimmy Lawrence," a local Chicago petty criminal whose appearance was similar to Dillinger's. Nash uses evidence to show that Chicago Police officer Martin Zarkovich was instrumental in this plot. Nash theorizes that the plot unraveled when the body was found to have fingerprints that didn't match Dillinger's (the fingerprint card was missing from the Cook County Morgue for over three decades), it was too tall, the eye color was wrong, and it possessed a rheumatic heart. The F.B.I., a relatively new agency whose agents were only recently permitted to carry guns or make arrests, would have fallen under heavy scrutiny, this being the third innocent man killed in pursuit of Dillinger, and would have gone to great lengths to ensure a cover up. In shooting this dupe, F.B.I. agents were stationed on the roof of the theater and fired downward, causing the open cuts on the face which were described through the media as "scars resulting from inept plastic surgery." The first words from Dillinger's father upon identifying the body were "that's not my boy." The body was buried under five feet of concrete and steel to prevent any exhumation. Nash produced photos that were sent to Melvin Purvis just prior to his 1960 suicide (more probably an accident) along with fingerprints of Dillinger as he would appear in 1960 (he was apparently living and working in California as a machinist) under what would have been an early form of the witness protection program."

~ Wikipedia

( DON'T WORRY ) ~

Curtis Mayfied

Curtis Lee Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999) was an African-American soul, R&B, and funk singer, songwriter, and record producer born in Chicago, Illinois. He is best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and for composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Super Fly, Mayfield is highly regarded as a pioneer of funk and of politically conscious African-American music. He was also a multi-instrumentalist who played the guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, and drums. His influence on the likes of fellow musicians of the time period, Jimi Hendrix and Bob Marley is outstanding; his influence on today's rappers, rockers and R & B artists is heroic. Mayfield was a double inductee into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted as a member of The Impressions into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991, and again in 1999 as a solo artist. He is also a two-time Grammy Hall of Fame inductee.

EARTH ~

Daylilies

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