Notes from the Concordance to THE COMPLETE WORKES OF QUIN--entry 30 November 2003
from the text--
walk through union square last night
everything is beautiful, all the people are beautiful like they just
walked off the set of friends
the vibe is funky, and
prosperity has returned with perpetual war
a poster for wired tells me
that philip k. dick has ressurected.
i dare say (1)
(1) The majority of this poem is self-explanatory. The mention of philip k. dick's ressurection refers to a poster for and by Wired Magazine which announces this fact.
(2) From the text--
(i'm ten and on the front steps of our caroline street house in nacogdoches when my daddy warns me that since our house has been the meeting place of local civil rights advocates it is possible we might get bombed and so he wants me to look out. (2a) that wouldn't have been klan, but what they called, as i remember, 'minute men'. birchers. insofar as you care to distinguish twixt the various sub-plots of rural fascism.) (2b)
Quin's father, John Frederick Withey, also marched in Civil Rights marches in Nacogdoches, Texas in the middle to late 1960s. Twenty years later, in front of the Nacogdoches Public Library, a young African-American woman in her early twenties recognized him and embraced him.
(2b) For those unacquainted with the Birchers Quin mentions, please see the brief description below, from The Reader's Companion to American History. As a further note, we know that truckloads of men with various weapons [believed to be shotguns] arrived in Nacogdoches, Texas one night in 1970 as the schools were attempting to desegrate. We learned anecdotally that these men were John Birchers and or minutemen. [We have declined to enter a link to Minutemen because the major sites regarding them appear to be their own, and we do not want to be referrers for these sites]. In the summer of 1986, Quin was approached by a young journalist who was founding an alternative newspaper in the Nacogdoches area. Quin chose to write about that evening in 1970, at which he had not been present, his family having already joined the Community mentioned in a previous note, and moved abroad. Sherrif Roebuck agreed to be interviewed by him at Shepherd's diner. The sherrif's primary statement to Quin in this interview was, "Boy, you want to go starting all this up again?" By this, we believe that he meant that the African-Americans of the town might attempt to move out of their primary enclave, known as Shawnee Street. We will not describe Shawnee Street, but encourage our readers to go and have a look. We also refer you to the African American Heritage Project, at: http://www.cets.sfasu.edu/aahp2/Pages/activity.htm.
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JOHN BIRCH SOCIETY
The John Birch Society, an organization of the radical Right, was established in Indianapolis in 1958 to combat what was perceived to be the infiltration of communism into American life. Its founder, Robert H. W. Welch, a Massachusetts businessman, named the society after a Baptist missionary who had been killed by Chinese Communists in 1945. Starting with only eleven members, the John Birch Society grew rapidly, drawing considerable support from rich conservatives; by the early 1960s it had an estimated annual income of $5 million and a membership of 60,000 to 100,000. John Birchers placed their principal emphasis on the extent to which communism had established control over the U.S. government; among those they accused of being "dedicated, conscious agents of the Communist conspiracy" were President Dwight D. Eisenhower, cia director Allen Dulles, and Chief Justice Earl Warren. The society has produced an extensive list of publications, offered cash prizes for college essays on topics like the impeachment of Warren, and maintained that the United States must become as conspiratorial as the communists in order to combat their subversion of American society.
The editor apologizes for this brief entry to the Concordance. We will resume tomorrow. |
10:17:03 PM 
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