Turnip Rock, Port Austin, Michigan.

(Detroit Public Library)

Today in Hip Hop History:

Bun B of UGK was born March 19, 1973

USS CONSTITUTION in Port Arthur, Texas. She was newly refurbished and embarked on a thank-you tour, stopping at Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports from July 1931 to May 1932.

Texas Parks and Wildlife Department: TXPWD_1997-22-145

Date: March 1932

port arthur, lutruwita/tasmania - 20 march 2024

Street scene in Port Arthur, modern-day Lüshunkou, Dalian, China

Japanese vintage postcard

I don’t typically post things like this on my blog, but I’m absolutely fed up...

I don’t care who you are; you have to be a real lowlife piece of shit to call in bomb threats to a school. This has been going on for literal weeks, and enough is enough.

Staff and students are having to be evacuated week after week, and shocker, Thunder Bay police seem to be dragging their fucking feet with the investigation.

It’s exactly the same thing that happened with Hammarskjold a few years back -- just some fucking losers that didn’t want to go to school and made it everyone’s problem.

It’s just so frustrating because when the perpetrators do get caught, they’re only gonna get a Thunder Bay-style slap on the wrist, and they’ll carry on with their lives with zero fucking consequences. No community service, no fine, just a “don’t do it again”.

Having gone to the school that is receiving the threats and having formed relationships with the teachers that work there, my heart fucking breaks for them. It must be scary as shit going to school every day and not knowing if you or your students are truly safe. My heart breaks for the students whose educations are being disrupted who are walking the halls scared.

The community is calling for more active efforts from the Thunder Bay police investigation unit, and they are once again not stepping up to the plate.

It’s well known that those in the city police service (not all officers, of course, but a good majority) are corrupt, zealous meatheads who think having a weapon and a badge makes them immune to scrutiny and discipline. We have seen them time and time again mistreat Indigenous and homeless citizens and put zero fucking effort into investigations, such as the deaths of the 7 indigenous students and Stacy DeBungee. This attitude has cost fucking lives and has cost families closure. The recent threats towards the schools are just another example of the police failing to take action.

We NEED to put more pressure on the police service and municipal officials. We NEED them to know that we aren’t gonna put up with this lackadaisical bullshit anymore. We need a complete rebuild of the system and those in power. Our city has always been a bit of a shithole, but don't we want to make it just a little bit better?

“REDS CONDUCT TWO MARTYRS TO GRAVE,” Montreal Star. April 29, 1930. Page 6. ---- Huge Demonstration Precedes Burial of Strike Agitators ---- STREETS ARE LINED --- Communist Army Out in Full Force at Port Arthur ---- PORT ARTHUR, Ont., April 29. (CP) - Determined to uphold to the last the theory that the two lumber strike agitators, Voutilaine and Resvall [sic: should be Rosvall and Voutilainen] had died martyrs to the cause. A Communist army yesterday paraded through the streets as the two bodies were borne to the cemetery.

Out in the thousands to view the eclipse of the Sun, Port Arthur residents watched the great procession move slowly through the darkened streets. Nearly 2,000 men, women and children marched, a display of Communist sentiment beyond any ever be fore seen in the two cities of Port Arthur and Fort William.

BOTH DISAPPEARED Last Fall two lumber worker organizers, sent out to organize the men in the camps for a strike, disappeared at Onion Lake. Provincial police investigated and reported they had probably met death by falling through the ice while attempting to cross the Iake against advice. The explanation was not accepted by the Reds and letters were written to the Department of Justice at both Toronto and Ottawa asking further inquiries.

This spring the bodies were found. The talk of foul play was renewed and sensational charges made public, given circulation in red-ink circulars spread about the two cities and in a Finnish paper published at Sudbury. Three surgeons instead of one as usual, attended the post-mortem examination preceding the inquest to assure those interested on the point of foul play. One was a nominee of the Communists. The Coroner's Jury found accidental death by drowning on the basis of the medical men's report. 

Yesterday the Reds paraded in strength through the streets, taking Rosvall to the cemetery, where interment was made without religious ceremony of any kind, in keeping with the cult. The army was assembled from Port Arthur, Fort William and West Fort. 

The cortege was headed by a brass band, playing funeral dirges. [AL: Very unsympathetic news report on the largest funeral in the history of what is Thunder Bay, Ontario, that repeatedly calls the Communist Party, very influential among the Finns of the Lakehead, a cult.  Rosvall and Voutilainen’s mysterious deaths were sensational stories then, and local legend held they had been murdered by thugs hired by the logging camp bosses. Read more here.]

13th Street, Port Arthur, Texas.

Port Arthur, June 2022

Today in Hip Hop History:

UGK released their sixth album UGK 4 Life March 31, 2009

USS CONSTITUTION passing through the Pleasure Pier Bridge in the Sabine-Neches Canal in Port Arthur, Texas. She was newly refurbished and embarked on a thank-you tour, stopping at Atlantic and Gulf Coast ports from July 1931 to May 1932.

Date: March 12, 1932.

Port Arthur Public Library: PAPL_0062

Fun Facts. 100% verified.

The fifth horseman of the Apocalypse was written out of the Bible due to a dispute over oat taxes.

Betty Crocker was related to Salvador Dali.

In an attempt to better understand America, Raul Castro learned the the lyrics to "Call Me Maybe".

American author F. Scott Fitzgerald was the first person to drown in the Playboy Mansion's grotto.

The so-called "new space race" refers to the rush to be the first person watch Shannon Sharpe's Club Shay Shay on the moon.

The last time my dad had to worry about possibly being in the line of fire was when he was watching the draft, deciding how close it needed to get to his number before he enlisted in the Air Force. He was an undergraduate and a masters student during the Vietnam War and those were real calculations.

He has his PhD now and a full professorship. He teaches those masters students. He use to teach undergrads, too, but he is getting close to retiring and that has its privileges.

The most recent time he had to worry about possibly being in the line of fire was on Monday night, when Michigan State, the university he has taught at for forty years, was under attack.

There are no assignments due next week for his students.

Some twenty years ago, thanks to Michigan State, my dad was able to head on sabbatical, teaching and researching at the University of Tasmania, in Hobart. We all moved with him, literally half way around the world.

Tasmania is a small state and it was still very much recovering from its own mass shooting that happened three years earlier, at Port Arthur. It wasn't talked about much but those scars were still raw. Pretty much everyone knew someone who had lost someone that day. I did. Tasmania is a small state.

But we never had to worry about gun violence. In less than two weeks after the Port Arthur massacre the NFA and its gun buy-back provision was voted into law.

It was in Hobart, listening to the radio in my Year 8 fine arts studio, when I heard about Columbine. I was living in a country that, under a conservative government, had chosen life over lobbyists for its people. Three months later I went home to Michigan and a country that had chosen a very different trajectory.

My dad hasn't talked about what happened on Monday. I don't think he will. That is not how he processes things. But there are no assignments due next week for his students.

As a nation, we only have one assignment that matters.

Isuzan Battery in Port Arthur, modern-day Lüshun Port, China

Japanese vintage postcard