Poetry is timeless and can be retroactively, heartwrenchingly, predictive, as this haunting circa 1970 piece by James Tate divulges

James Tate (1943-2015) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning poet who had a prolific career, publishing collections in six different decades, starting in the late 1960s. The Oblivion Ha-Ha, from Little, Brown and Company, became his second published collection, in 1970.

Examining the collection with a fresh pair of eyes in 2016, Lisa Russ Spaar wrote this for the Los Angeles Review of Books: "What strikes me about The Oblivion Ha-Ha is less its surreality than its blend of desire and indifference, the terrible and the humorous, the cliché and the revelatory, the comedic and the tragic."

Tate's work, she adds, "offers the consolation of absurdity, of the ludic, of the collision of worlds, of the intrusion of one world into another."

It's interesting that Spaar, herself a poet, wrote that piece in 2016, the year in which we were fully amid a collision of worlds, a devastating intrusion that drives deeper and crueler by the hour now, a decade later. And so it was that I was inspired by a recent Bluesky post by Peter Montgomery to reshare the Tate poem from page 71 of The Oblivion Ha-Ha that appears in the above photo. You can listen to it here and I'll also type it out below:

The President Slumming

In a weird, forlorn voice

he cries; it is a mirage!

Then tosses a wreath of scorpions

to the children,

mounts his white nag

and creeps off into darkness,

smoking an orange

I hardly think you need me to point out the modern allusions that now seem to emanate from those seven lines, those 32 words, penned more than a half-century ago. It's actually spine-tingling.

The whole collection isn't like that, of course. So if you're looking for a pleasant, thoughtful diversion, I highly recommend Tate's volume. Or perhaps you'll look up one of his much-praised later collections. Three more snapshots of poems from The Oblivion Ha-Ha follow; I especially especially love the last one, which is why I put it as the closer.

Mommy Orange is the only Orange one I acknowledge.

Vintage postcard of Barrose Terrace in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania

This vintage postcard showcases a sprawling estate once known as Barrose Terrace, in West Lampeter Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Some background information about the estate appears on Extraordinary Stories from an Ordinary Guy, a blog by a Lancaster County resident who goes by LDub.

LDub writes of the exterior: "The garden was built by Ulysses Grant Barr who was also one of the organizers of Lancaster's Meadia Heights Golf Club. The garden was located just past the golf club where Mr. Barr resided. ...  In 1928 workmen began to blast rock to form the different levels of the flower garden.  It took four years to complete the entire garden. ... In 1933 fountains and lights were added."

A 2022 article by LNP | LancasterOnline's Erin Negley adds: "People could come here from Lancaster city, often by trolley, to see the terraced gardens and fountain or the neighboring golf course." Negley adds that when the house was purchased by its newest owners in 2018, the main structure on the 8.5-acre property had nearly 8,000 square feet of space. Some smart and needed renovation downsized that figure.

There's no year legible on this postcard's postmark, but the one-cent stamp used was first issued in December 1936. It was mailed to an address in Lancaster and the cursive, pencil message states:

Dear Billy,

I am having a swell time. I'm taking horse back riding this year. Try and come to see me. Please write my address is:

Camp Winnemont

West Ossipee

N.H.

I will write again but not so soon.

Lovingly,

Your Make Believe Cousin, Polly

Camp Winnemont was a summer camp for girls in New Hampshire founded by Walter H. Bentley, who died in 1945. The camp kept going for nearly two more decades after this death. A 2006 post on Winnipesaukee Forum states: "I went to that wonderful camp in... '62 and '63 - that was the very last year that the camp was going to exist and we were all devastated!!"

Another post on that forum contains this cute Winnemont song that dates to the 1930s:

Oh I'm a hayseed

My hair is seaweed

And my ears are made of leather

And they flop in rainy weather.

Gosh-a-hemlock

Tough as a pine knot

I'm from Winnemont you see.

Guest post: Ashar's awesome shelfies and work as a collector

Ashar, who turns 25 next month, has been creating content on the internet since at least as far back as 2012, and probably earlier. He said I could repost his latest Instagram post onto Papergreat for posterity, and I'm proud to do so...

The long awaited Ryan, Blake, and Colleen Hoover movie/book and Deadpool shelf update ⚔️ \|/

Anyone who knows me well enough knows that I love, admire, adore, and respect Ryan and his wife Blake a whole bunch. They are extremely talented, caring, hardworking people that are both extremely good at what they do not only as actors but as business owners.

This collection has been on of my proudest achievements and I’m so immensely proud of it. No words could possibly describe the amount of work, money, and dedication something like this takes especially since some of Ryan’s older movies are extremely hard to find.

Mind you I don’t even own EVERY movie Ryan has been in on DVD yet but that is my end goal. I will admit I honestly don’t really have enough room for anymore of his movies right now because my DVD shelf alone is at capacity since the DVDs alone touch the top of the shelf. You may be wondering if that will stop me from getting or finding more of his DVDs and the honest answer is no it will not. Even if I constantly have to keep reorganising this shelf to make everything fit I will even if it does my head in because it brings me so much joy and gets me ever closer to my ultimate goal.

Also if you’re wondering I have not opened either the Wolverine or Deadpool Limited Edition Aviation Gin bottles nor do I really plan on doing so because I like how they look and they cost me a ton of money so I want them to last for as long as possible even though it has been tempting to open one and have a shot of my fav gin more than once.

This collection has been a big group effort because my friends have significantly helped me grow my collection and I couldn’t be more grateful because this collection is something I’m immensely proud of in every way possible.

I even got a Deadpool sticker decal for my PS4 controller which looks badass af.

I hope Ryan sees my collection and is impressed by it because in all honesty it just shows how big of a fan of his I am.

The last DVD of Ryan’s I got was The Alarmist which I watched for the first time on January 30th 2025.

I really only have one movie left of Ryan’s to watch.

Resimplify Me: Opening the "time capsules"

Resimplify Me, an ongoing attempt to downsize my Stuff, got underway mostly as a soft launch last year. Throughout 2024, a lot of books and other nonnecessities were pruned (sold, donated, etc.), and there's still a long way to go. 

I have decided that the family "time capsule" manila envelopes, mostly filled during the 2010s, are too bulky to continue storing and hauling around. So, even though I somewhat randomly marked them to be opened on dates in the 2030s, 2040s and beyond, it's time to cut open the bulky envelopes and see what's what. 

In advance, I'm guessing that about 70% of the contents will be tossed in the trash and the rest will be either kept (as the "best of the best"), repurposed for crafting or possibly sold. Yes, I know this blog's motto is "every piece of paper tells a story," but that has never made it incumbent upon me to be the one keeping every piece of paper. Perhaps that's heresy, but I assure you I'm not going to run out of ephemera anytime soon.

The first envelope to be opened was a fairly slender one filled when Joan, Ashar and I went to the Pennsylvania Farm Show in January 2011, a lifetime ago amid President Barack Obama's first term.

The contents included the brochures and pamphlets handed out by the various Farm Show vendors, some advertising postcards, business cards, a couple of printed tweets (very odd for 2011, but that's me), and that day's edition of the York Daily Record, which I then worked for. There was also our parking stub and some recipe booklets touting Pennsylvania agriculture.

A fair amount was trashed, although as mentioned this was a skinnier envelope to begin with. Some stuff went to Joan for crafting or postcarding. And the best of the best was kept, having now been downsized to a more acceptable volume. Those going through this remaining ephemera in the future will have far less "junk" to sort through.

On to the next envelopes....

Book cover: "Monsters and Nightmares"

Here's the first Mild Fear entry of 2025. Mild Fear definitely applies, because nothing on this blog, especially regarding fictitious and literary things that go bump in the night, approaches the horror of certain things transpiring in the real world at this moment. 

• Title: Monsters and Nightmares 
• Additional cover text: "Hideous tales resurrected from tombs, decaying graves, vaults of death and the blood-soaked lips of vampires ... GRAPHICALLY ILLUSTRATED"
• Author: Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987). Other books by Hurwood were covered on Papergreat in 2024 and 2021. Hurwood also wrote under the pseudonym Mallory T. Knight.
• Illustrator: Unknown, which is a shame. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, "The cover artist is not credited, there is a partial signature [not recognized]. The interior artwork is not credited [by more than one artist], only a couple of pieces are signed."
• Publisher: Belmont (B50-735)
• Year: 1967
• Pages: 156
• Format: Paperback
• Cover price: 50 cents
• Provenance: The name Alan Giannini is written in cursive and pencil on the first page.
• Table of contents: Very colorful chapter titles! See the photo below for the full contents. There are a wer-hyena, a Russian Rip Van Winkle, a haunted vault, screaming skulls, cannibals, demon drummers, banshees, vampires and much more.
• Excerpt #1: "The count was so overjoyed at this turn of events that he refused to punish the undertaker."
• Excerpt #2: "To many it seemed as though the end of the world were at hand."
• Excerpt #3: "Fortunately the concept of therapy through terror came to an end in the 18th century."
• Excerpts from Hurwood's epilogue: "Take heart, dear reader (as they used to say in bygone day), the worst is over. There is no more need to shudder. You are safe from vampires. They have probably formed a union and would refuse to suck your blood unless it met carefully prescribed standards of purity unattainable in this century. ... As far as ghosts, and other assorted supernatural spirits are concerned, you have little to fear. At the rate the Great Society is destroying old landmarks, houses, mansions, and other assorted architectural relics, there won't be any places left for ghosts to haunt. ... What is the mere plague of the Black Death compared to the perpetual threat of nuclear warfare? ... All of our present day horrors notwithstanding — income tax, television commercials and uglification (to mention only a few) things could be worse. At least we can all still indulge ourselves in certain ways. We can still set forth on that most intimate of affairs, the one that each of us embarks upon each time we pick up a book and read it." 
• Online thoughts: There's not much in the way of reviews or criticism about this book on the internet. ... In a 2013 post on the Amazing Stories blog about Hurwood's books, the writer mentions Monsters and Nightmares in passing. And he notes: "I think it’s a great shame, but Mr. Hurwood isn’t exactly a household name. He deserves to be one though. ... Several of his books on the occult were short snappy retellings of European and Asian legends of ghosts, demons and various monsters such as werewolves and vampires. Several of the collections were cannibalized and repackaged by the Scholastic Book club under such titles as Ghosts, Ghouls and Other Horrors and Vampires, Werewolves and Other Demons." ... Separately, Lee Harper Oswald mused a little bit about Monsters and Nightmares and Hurwood in a 2020 blog post.

Speaking of nightmares

A couple of nights ago, I had a nightmare that I think was partly fueled by the post-operative oxycodone I've been taking. I usually can't remember dreams well, but what I typed up the next morning as I tried to recall/interpret the dream is both a bit creepy and a bit too on-point:

"For a long period, I had been making unsafe and unauthorized trips to the rooftop of the large building in which I lived. I was addicted to the thrill of walking or running across the rooftops. But, even more so, I was strangely addicted to the terror of the presence that followed just behind me, just out of sight, as I went across the rooftops. It was a very dangerous, and I didn't have the feeling that I was always just eluding it as much as it was letting me elude it. But then I stopped the habit and stopped going to the rooftops. But The Presence wouldn't let this stand. It was either intruding into my everyday existence in the lower parts of the house, or calling me back to the rooftops. It was no longer a thing I could resist or elude."