'sometimes the paranoid really do have enemies' ( reconstructing the lives of people not seen as valuable)

bitching on the blues (scholar) scene. the younger generation versus 'the blues mafia'. 

america eats its young (but it also eats its scholars and musicians too). 

mack mccormick's 'lost' robert johnson biography (biography of a phantom) just got published after a delay of 50 years. the author and researcher of this book lived a lot of his life in poverty and with bipolar disease. 

'john jeremiah sullivan and caitlin love wormed their way into the home of an elderly invalid under the guise of ‘helping him', then proceeded to rifle through his files and help themselves to his research, his photographs and his personal possessions. there is no disputing these facts because sullivan admitted as much in his own article.' - mack mccormick's daughter.

the problem is one of reconstructing the lives of people who were not seen as valuable from a time when people were pretty much undocumented anyway.  one day the jobs just dry up, even recently henry grimes, the  jazz bassist, pawns his bass, vanishes for 30 years and is assumed to be dead. robert johnson, geeshie wiley (see this is already a nickname), elvie thomas they are recorded, they take their payment, they have live  'careers', eventually their careers are over and they drop back into the work available to black people in the economy of 40s, 50s america. son house was a preacher for a while, and then he became a chef.

it is a battle to ensure anything survives from this wreck of poverty, marginalisation and racism. 

mack's archive has been acquired by smithsonian folkways (that at least is good). 

the sullivan of itself article is a marvelous piece of work.

the older blues scholars are seen as being in the way and selfishly holding on to vital material - they stand accused of loving the music for the wrong reasons, of not understanding modern times. and yet the material is still here because they held on to it. something of that ambivalent attitude to the earlier blues scholars makes its way into sullivan's account of john fahey in his article.

the guardian is (bravely) attempting to dig its way out of the fact that it was founded on the profits of the  cotton mills (that required the commodity grown in the united states by enslaved people - cotton). it has run a piece on the georgia islanders - where geeshie wiley's nickname comes from (probably). 

now the georgia islands are threatened by gentrification and climate change.

yesterday horsemouth went to a zoom meeting - to ensure a good connection he traveled. he may have to do the same this evening (and arrange something for friday). he got the train to the homestead and then walked to the office from there. after the meeting he bravely set off to walk back to the cloud forest (but about half way there he gave up and got the bus). 

today a bright beautiful morning horsemouth will wander down the hill in search of second hand books.