She planned to paint the meals until capital punishment was abolished, or until she had made 1,000 plates, whichever came first. In September, she painted her 1,000th plate, an oval platter with a single familiar image: the bottle of Coca-Cola requested by a Texas man in 1997. She died a few weeks later....
The plates are white china with the image of the food done in cobalt blue glaze. She got the idea to do this project when she read about a man whose last meal choice was glazed doughnuts. The obituary writer does not note the glaze/glaze inspiration/coincidence. It's just put there for us to see.
Nor does the obituary discuss race, even though — out of all those 1,000 plates — one of the choices it highlights is the fried chicken and watermelon that 2 black teenagers wanted. For many years, it has seemed verboten to mention fried chicken or watermelon in connection with black people. What is it about this context that made it seem okay?
Is it just that Julie Green — who looks white in the photograph — has died? Is it that she meant to express empathy for the condemned? But she systematically commemorated any condemned person who was given a meal choice. The obituary chose which examples to isolate. I was surprised to see this breach of taboo.
The author of the obituary is the NYT style writer Penelope Green. No relation to Julie Green, I presume. I see I have a tag for Penelope Green, and I see that I have especially enjoyed her writing — about Marie Kondo (here), Cat Marnell (here), and new urban communal living, blogged here: "And another thing I like about Penelope Green is: She put 'social justice' in quotes."
I wonder what Penelope Green really thought about Julie Green's art project. An obituary writer can't inject criticism. Or can she?
Posts
74 comments:
How did she die at age 60? Paywall.
"An obituary writer can't inject criticism."
Ever read an obit of a right-winger, Althouse?
Julie Green has a website. Her Last Summer dinner plate project is arranged by state. Nebraska had three. Infamous mass murderer Charlie Starkweather had cold cuts. Oddly, there are no names; just the date of execution.
I raised my right eyebrow for the last line.
In the eyes of some, all past humans are forever guilty - the executors as well as the executed. I would like to remind people that life is hard and we aren't as smart or clever as we think we are today.
We weren't there, were we? Do the people who condemn the dead so easily consider for a second how their lives will be reviewed by others in the future under an unimaginable set of moral strictures? Christ has only been gone from this earth for a couple thousand years, after all. We could all try on some humility and see how it fits.
That's a pittance of time.
With regard to this context making it ok [fried chicken and watermelon]: why was it ever not ok? I saw it as a southern cultural thing, not necessarily a black thing. Then the association became taboo. Why?
It's a shame Professor Green didn't memorialize the weapons the criminals used to commit their vicious crimes ... a butcher knife in glaze on a plate, a 9 millimeter Ruger welded to a steel plate. Or maybe memorialize pictures of the victims with their throats slashed. So many choices here.
Ovarian cancer.
From Oregon Live. “was 60 when they died Oct. 12 at their home in Corvallis, Ore. Their brother, Scott Green, said that Professor Green died by medically assisted suicide under Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act.”
She was only one person. But how can a “they” die of ovarian cancer? I thought only a she had ovaries?
Not trying to be mean here. Serious question.
And since her death was planned, what was her Last Supper?
I am not sure how fried chicken and watermelon became associated with black people. In my experience, it is a southern rural phenomenon. It was a summer thing. The time of plenty. Plenty of chickens, and plenty of watermelon. It was good times for all of us. And how the hell did it come to be derogatory? Both fried chicken and watermelon are wildly popular across the US today. Just took the rest of y'all longer to figure it out is all. Racists are going to racist, and leftists are going to leftist, and the rest of us should ignore all of them.
NPR report, “Julie Green died this month of cancer at the age of 60.”
Another reason why NPR must be defunded. Liars.
"For many years, it has seemed verboten to mention fried chicken or watermelon in connection with black people."
Well, those two black teenage boys were convinced and convicted of - as well as satiated by - the connection.
Probably because eating fried chicken and watermelon is not taboo, and won't ever be taboo, in Mississippi.
Wow. Sometimes I see an article that just makes me say..."Wow". This had my curiosity so high I used the Brave browser in private window, with my VPN to access the article from the Times (because my monthly allotment of free stuff was up). It did not disappoint.
Some people leave a mark. They grab hold of something and just do it. For the rest of their lives. And sometimes its remarkable. (like this blog). You may not agree with it. You may not understand it. You may think it a waste of time or some sort of tilting at windmills, but to this person it was her life. I find it strangely beautiful. I'm not sure I totally agree with it, but it was her solo crusade fought in her language (art), and fought for almost a lifetime.
You have to admire that kind of stay-with-it doggedness knowing that it, by itself is not changing a thing.
PS- she was very talented. Her gessoed paper plates are remarkable.
"You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” Bette Davis
Fetishizing murderers is sickening.
I wonder what their victims’ last meals were. Probably sperm forced down their throats from their rapist’s dick in several if not most cases.
But that would be ouchy to consider.
What a bunch of sick whores get off on killers. And the museum and gallery types who validate them.
Amen Tina.
Re use of “their”…. She preferred gender neutral pronouns.
There's nothing wrong with fried chicken and watermelon and black people. Who was the first one who said there was?
Fried chicken is too fatty for me and watermelon too inconvenient but that's just me.
Regarding questions as to why these foods became taboo, see the historical art and illustrations below. Some people want to avoid negatives and things that cause discomfort. The logical reasoning is akin to why some people today say the "N word" constantly in music while others lose their jobs and are hounded for saying the "N word." These (self-contradictory) logical distinctions explain why some children become adults with poor knowledge of sex: their parents were uncomfortable with birds and bees conversations and thereby said nothing. In turn, their children created a taboo to avoid discomfort and conversations that go nowhere. They then taught the same to their children. It's pretty easy to introduce taboos and superstitious behavior in humans or other animals.
An expired Etsy listing:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/124495222/black-americana-girl-watermelon?show_sold_out_detail=1&ref=nla_listing_details
And this historical illustration:
https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/12/26/slavery-and-the-watermelon/
And this history website:
https://sittingbull1845.blogspot.com/2012/12/black-social-history-stereo-typing-of.html
Also in error in the obituary: Warren Lee Hill was not retarded. He had minor learning disabilities, purportedly. He tortured and murdered his girlfriend and got a mere life sentence. Who cares; it’s just torturing and killing a woman. He later got the death penalty in prison for beating his roommate to death with a wooden board studded with nails. Seems like that would take so,e forethought and planning.
The EU made several appeals to the U.S. to commute Hill’s death sentence on the grounds that he was “presumed mentally disabled.” Even those professional liars couldn’t bring themselves to lie well about that lie. The nonsense about his desire to save half his last meal for later, presented by murderer fetishists as proof that he was too mentally slow to kill, is a discredited defense bar ploy, dumbly repeated by liars like Julie Green and Times journalists like Penelope Green, who wrote the obit.
May she not Rest In Peace. And may one of the thousands of survivors of the hundreds of victims she dehumanized get into that museum and destroy every last shard of that sicko’s “art.” I’ll personally raise money for the defense.
Maybe black people have the most taboos surrounding them today.
If it seems necessary, maybe it's not helping. Every effect (direct action) has a countereffect (perverse consequence, here the perception that blacks are an unusually stupid race).
Her husband's quilts are big on swastikas - go figger.
I wonder what their victims’ last meals were.
I wondered the same thing.
Probably sperm forced down their throats from their rapist’s dick in several if not most cases.
Well, probably not "most", since about 80% of murder victims in the US are men - that's why we have a federal Violence Against Not Men Act.
Almost as sick as VAWA is the MMIWG (Missing Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls) Amerindian movement, when three times as many Amerindian men and boys as women and girls are missing or murdered. It's "almost" as sick as VAWA because the ratio for the general population is four times as many men murdered, rather than three.
As for anecdotes, I know one Navajo women who has one murdered son and one missing son.
... because somebody else already took the idea of making plates purporting to show their sexual organs ...
That is Disgustingly RACIST!!
Not Only, did the state MURDER this poor children, for them having committed Minor crimes*
But, THEN! the state FORCES them to eat stereotypical foods!!!
RACISM!!!!
What's That? The boys picked Their Own Last meals? Never Mind
Minor Crimes* i don't know Which minor crimes, do you?
found their minor crimes! http://deathpenaltyusa.org/usa1/date/1947.htm
13276 TRUDELL CHARLES 17 BLACK MALE FARM HAND MURDER ELECTROCUTION JUL 23 1947 MISSISSIPPI
13277 LEWIS JAMES 16 BLACK MALE FARM HAND MURDER ELECTROCUTION JUL 23 1947 MISSISSIPPI
So, ALL THEY DID, was Murder a white farmer (their boss)... Like THAT should be a crime!!
If you are like Ann and haven’t figured it out yet the race thing is elite whites trying to keep blacks voting for liberals. I suspect it never occurred that the meal reference wasn’t A-okay. Such people never believe they are the baddies…
…and now, based off Temujin’s recommend, I’m off to hack the NYT story for a peek…
"It's a shame Professor Green didn't memorialize the weapons the criminals used to commit their vicious crimes ... a butcher knife in glaze on a plate, a 9 millimeter Ruger welded to a steel plate."
I propose this performance art: You take Green's 1,000 plates, lay them out on vast tables in the largest room of the museum, and put on each one a piece of real meat to symbolize each murder victim. Not human meat, just the meat of other animals — maybe beef or, for the children murdered, veal. Don't worry about refrigeration.
It's hard to do derivative work based on art objects. With writing, you can just copy the words and edit them into your parody. So let my proposal stand as the performance.
To those who think I'm not being respectful enough in the proximity of the artist's death, the artist put the death of the victims aside in her demonstration of empathy for condemned murderers. Does the obituary have one word of compassion for the victims?
Executions by Race and Race of Victim
Blacks are under-represented (34%) in comparison to the fraction of murders they commit (over 50% now, probably 40% since 1976). 75% of the victims are white.
The sub-headline there is misleading: "those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."
"Those who murdered whites" are probably also white since about 85% of murdered whites are murdered by other whites. So it should really say "whites are more likely than blacks to be executed".
I seem to recall that at least one state (Texas?) abolished the last meal tradition after some condemned inmates abused it, ordering expensive multi-course meals and not eating a bite, in a final FU to the State.
After Mystal claimed in the show's first hour that blue-collar whites only care about "using their guns on black people and getting away with it." And in the second hour, Martin declared that he was "sick of white men" like veteran Democratic strategist James Carville criticizing the far left, adding that he should "shut the F up."
The media has been trying to start a race war for the last 15 years.
Thanks for sharing your demons with us Tina. We all hope it provides the catharsis you so desperately crave.
Had my rapist succeeded in strangling me — he was young, like me, and working himself up to killing his victims — my last meal would have been his sperm forced down my throat on his penis which was covered with honey from a plastic honeybear he found in my kitchen as he dragged me by my hair from room to room looking for things to shove into me. I was sure I was dead when he dragged me to the kitchen. I was sure he was getting a knife. Anyone want to talk about the cunning aesthetics of that? I have no shame discussing it. Why should I?
Can you imagine a museum that would accept a dinner plate of that scenario, or the millions of other that could be made?
Or is that too icky to contemplate? Get it: “contemplate?” Why do we find it too icky? Too hard to face? It’s not half of what each of those men did. Jesus it’s been decades, and yet every time I see one of those honey bears, I am right back on that kitchen floor, choking and begging for my life.
I’m especially surprised by your response, Temujin. This isn’t about aesthetics. It’s about erasing the suffering — erasing the very existence of the victims. It’s like Holocaust denial, done one by one, in ceramics. Hitler killed lots of people, and his death was tantamount to official execution. Would that museum accept a piece designed to humanize him by depicting his last meal (reading their purpose statement, they just might).
The idea of putting slabs of red meat on each plate and making that the exhibit is brilliant, especially letting the meat rot and using veal for the little murdered ones. Maybe two morning runs tomorrow.
A well-known retired officer in Georgia is pressuring newspapers and tv stations to stop naming (captured) offenders in mass murders. Years ago, I talked the then-AJC editor into stopping publishing feature stories about killers’ last meals. They did, for a while at least. They still might. I don’t know: my parrot is dead.
Aren't most executions at dawn, which reveals "Last Supper" as nothing more than an attempt to invoke a false equivalence to Christ.
Did the article mention the mentally ill black man, Ricky Ray Rector, Bill Clinton had executed who asked to save his desert "for later" after his execution.
Maybe Green could have done a commemorative Tupperware?
And Italians like spaghetti and Germans like sausage and Japanese like sushi...
Not sure why ethnic food choices are so verboten.
Besides, who doesn't like fried chicken and watermelon?
Am I now black?
For many years, it has seemed verboten to mention fried chicken or watermelon in connection with black people. What is it about this context that made it seem okay?
How about because it's the truth and an objective fact?
When you realize that things that make you uncomfortable are not necessarily evil?
I know, I know...
No woman must be made to feel bad about, or responsible for, anything, ever.
There used to be a race in World of Warcraft (I think mot of them have been removed) called the Worgen. The Worgen were werewolves. When you killed the Worgen they dropped fried chicken and watermelon as part of their loot.
Spell Worgen backwards and try to pronounce it.
"She died a few weeks later, on Oct. 12, at her home in Corvallis, Ore., by physician-assisted suicide"
She was memorializing a situation which she considered inhumane. Little is more humane than the death penalty, as practiced in today's United States. It is our value placed upon unlawful taking of Human life which compels us to take the huge effort involved in tis ultimate form of justice.
There is far more and better process in death penalty cases than there is in physician-assisted suicide.
I find it more than a little ironic, that this lady, who protested killing by the state, was complicit in a killing by an agent of the state.
Executing black teenagers? That's so barbaric! Couldn't we have just had them apologize?
Fried chicken and watermelon remind me of Lenny Bruce's Father Flotsky/Death Row routine. I found Bruce mostly unfunny, but the Father Flotsky bit made laugh.
Mentioning fried chicken and watermelon is a breach of taboo, but it seems like that taboo is fading. It's fading because there's been a push to incorporate those foods (as well as okra, barbeque, and black-eyed peas) as part of the black diaspora -- examples of thrift, economy, and perseverance. This of course still ties such dishes and foods to black people, but the spin is positive -- in some cases, it even makes claims that black food fed the South, as in the link below: https://wlrh.org/NPR-News/black-food-historian-explores-his-bittersweet-connection-robert-e-lee
If your rapist saw your hateful venomous posts Tina, it would make him very excited to know he is still controlling you through emotions. Maybe creating art about it would help letting go. It seems to be working for Hunter S Biden.
I am reminded of the distinction between killing and murder. Advocates of capital punishment believe it is a morally justified killing.
I wonder what the artist’s opinion was of murdering little babies in the womb?
Would be an impossible task to make a plate for each at current rates of abortion.
"And another thing I like about Penelope Green is: She put 'social justice' in quotes."
That was 2009. By 2015 (Ferguson) the quotes were surely gone. Inside of five years after that, "systemic racism" and "white privilege" were also - despite ongoing debate - endorsed as fact and shed their quote marks.
I promise you that we common honkies in Iowa eat just as much fried chicken and watermelon as do Blacks in the South.
Howard said...
Thanks for sharing your demons with us Tina. We all hope it provides the catharsis you so desperately crave.
Condemnations of murderers and rapists makes Howard uncomfortable.
He thinks rapists were mostly good people.
His political tribe is led by and glorifies rapists.
Cobalt blue watermelon? Not too tasty.
Unfortunately, Howard, my rapist's life sentence was overturned on a technicality, so my trauma has no end point, because if and when he gets out thanks to people like you, he'll go back to fist-raping elderly women to death. And someone will have to do something about that.
So I still have to check every few weeks to see if he is still incarcerated. I'm glad you took glee in my story. It so efficiently speaks to your character. And efficiency is a virtue, perhaps your only one, so guard it well.
I don't like talking about this. I do it to balance the cultural caterwaul of criminal fetishists like you. I'm always curious as to what piece of humanity you are missing. I've never understood why it's OK to whinge on bathetic about the ouchies of killers, but real victims of crime are supposed to act like Lavinia. Or any of the other dozen or so non-fictional victims I keep track of whose tongues were cut out. And that difference between who can speak and get tenure and prattle on about the humanity of murderers and who is disciplined to keep silent makes a real and devastating difference in our criminal justice system.
There's a reference from l'trature in there, so be sure read real slow.
Damn, TIna. What a horrendous experience. I'm glad you lived to talk about it...It doesn't get mentioned, but I'm sure the punishment of such offenders helps the victims come to terms with their trauma. There can be anything more maddening for the victim than to have the perp of such a crime try to claim the moral high ground.
Re watermelon: When I was a kid, eating watermelon was a challenging operation. There was no such thing as seedless watermelon, and the supermarket didn't cut it up to bite sized portions. Watermelon is far more accessible in our time. Progress is not illusory. Anyway it used to be difficult to eat watermelon in a decorous way. Maybe that's where the negative stereotype came from.....Nothing is so but thinking makes it so. No sane person dislikes Italian food, but I think people used to look critically at garlic. I recently saw the movie "That Hamilton Woman". The movie was about the love affair of Nelson and Emma Hamilton. The movie was made during WWII when England was at war with Italy. In the movie, one of the characters takes note of the fact that Italians are unreliable allies and that they sweat too much and stink of onions and garlic when they sweat. WWII was the golden age of racist movies. Italians came of relatively easy compared to what got dumped on the Germans and especially the Japanese. The watermelon stereotype was far from the most harmful stereotype extant.
The focus should always be on the victims. Anything else is disrespectful.
Fernandinande: I stand corrected viz the numbers of men versus women killed. In fact, a lot of serial killers killed both, or only killed males, though the HRC fights hard to not count those as homosexual attacks in the stats, just as they fight to prevent male on female serial killers to count. You're also right about the sexual assault stats. Prison rape is the main cause, after child molestation, which I like to just call "child rape." I am also no fan of VAWA as it exists today (mostly a funding line). I agree it should fund services with no regard to the gender of the victim. And the facilities built with VAWA money do routinely help male minor and adult victims now, so maybe it just needs a name change. It doesn't increase penalties for attacking women. In my state, I helped to removed the gendered language in our sex offense code so we could stop excluding male victims of certain crimes. There is no room for identity politics in law. If your state hasn't done this yet, ask your legislator for help. I'm happy to provide sample legislation to anyone except Howard.
Howard, unlike Hunter Biden, I didn't put my own rapist up my nose.
Geez, you couldn't cobble a metaphor to paddle out of a puddle. Seriously, what is the matter with you? Why do you like the abuse you seek here?
Tripp Hall said...
Mentioning fried chicken and watermelon is a breach of taboo, but it seems like that taboo is fading.
It was only ever taboo because once upon a time WSAPy Northeastern liberals believed that was all black people ate and were embarrassed when that notion got thrown in their faces. Now the great grandchildren of those same Northeastern liberals have decided that only white Southerners were stupid enough to believe that, so it's less taboo even though that is bullshit because white and black Southerners had/have very similar food cultures.
Tina Trent- you are right. I was very much compartmentalizing this entire thing. I was focused entirely on the artist's art. Nothing else. I was not looking at any social ramifications on this one. I was not considering either the victims or the criminals. Just the art from that artist.
Perhaps I should have, but I have this thing about people who can paint or draw. Especially those who can draw. I cannot. And I am always drawn in by those who can. Had this been presented in another way, I might have reacted differently.
"She died a few weeks later, on Oct. 12, at her home in Corvallis, Ore., by physician-assisted suicide"
So she was executed then. With the assistance of someone licensed by the state. That's one hell of a commitment to performance art.
Biden apologizes for saying African Americans 'ain't black' if they back Trump re-election
--------
Trump famously ate TacoBowl
could/should Trump have responded by eating fried chicken and watermelon?
[Hill’s death sentence] The nonsense about his desire to save half his last meal for later...dumbly repeated by liars like Julie Green and Times journalists like Penelope Green, who wrote the obit.
The pie-saving guy wasn't Hill, it was Ricky Ray Rector, who shot himself in the head after he murdered the cop; that failed suicide was the source of his stupidity. The facts he had wanted to die, and was not "retarded" when he committed the murders, are probably why they omitted his name from the article.
Executing black teenagers? That's so barbaric! Couldn't we have just had them apologize.
1947 in Mississippi?! Really, even you must admit that their chance of getting a fair trial was somewhere between slim and none.
And actually, under current law, it is barbaric and unconstitutional.
The pecan-pie story is probably false since the source was a scribbler for for the New Yorker.
Or perhaps asking the pie to be saved was just some gallows humor.
Blogger Tina Trent said...about Warren Lee Hill
The nonsense about his desire to save half his last meal for later, presented by murderer fetishists as proof that he was too mentally slow to kill, is a discredited defense bar ploy, dumbly repeated by liars like Julie Green and Times journalists like Penelope Green, who wrote the obit.
-----------
Jan. 27, 2015
ATLANTA — The State of Georgia executed a convicted murderer, Warren Lee Hill, on Tuesday night,
and Wince said...
Aren't most executions at dawn, which reveals "Last Supper" as nothing more than an attempt to invoke a false equivalence to Christ.
Did the article mention the mentally ill black man, Ricky Ray Rector, Bill Clinton had executed who asked to save his desert "for later" after his execution.
--------------
Ricky Ray Rector (January 12, 1950 – January 24, 1992) was executed for the 1981 murder of police officer Robert Martin in Conway, Arkansas.
+++++++++++++++
looks like journalistic malfeasance is an honored USA tradition - land of free speech codified in the constitution
Tina Trent:
Very glad you lived. Truly horrible. Keep fighting and speaking out!
DDB
@Howard:
Hey asshole...what's wrong with being hateful and venomous towards someone who brutally raped you?
Interesting thread.
Noted in passing, this Howard fellow sure has a strange compulsion to double down on boorishness.
You are one sick fuck, Howard.
Shameful.
Thank you for the lesson Howard. Every once in a while, we tend to forget just how low a human can sink.
Howard said...
If your rapist saw your hateful venomous posts Tina, it would make him very excited to know he is still controlling you through emotions. Maybe creating art about it would help letting go. It seems to be working for Hunter S Biden.
I really appreciate what you do here Howard.
You make democrats everywhere proud.
It is always good for people to know who and what you people really are.
William, perhaps the Italians got off relatively easily compared to the Germans and especially the Japanese because they were relatively civilized compared to the Germans and especially the Japanese. Not that they were any kind of angels in Africa or Greece, but when you compare them to what the Germans and especially the Japanese did, well.......
She died at 60. She was born in 1961-ish, but painted plates for fellows executed in 1947?
I'm guessing......she didn't have any kids.
I wonder, did she paint any pictures of the murders' victims last meals?
How about what their bodies looked like when they were found by the police.
I'm going to guess that no, this garbage human being only cared about the victimizers, and not their victims.
Howard at 11/8/21, 9:48 AM proved that he's a despicable and dummy creature.
Thanks for clearing that up, Howard.
Tina: you wear your hatred on your sleeve. I always suspected you were off in some way, thanks for telling us the reason. Does it really make you feel better to spit venom on the blog? You need help and hanging out here with a bunch of enablers will just deepen and prolong your anguish. That fucker is still raping you in your mind and only you can make it stop. Time to try something different. Good luck.
Tejumin, I like you. No biggie.
Ferdinande -- there were at least two cases I know of that were very similar and I'm sure there's more. SO we are both right. But I do this on my own time and can't track things like this on the internet now as I could a decade ago.
Here's what I need help with. There is a list of the plates by state. Anyone with local knowledge of the killers depicted, please let me know. I'm doing my own damn art project. All advice accepted for the medium, but I do have a good friend who is a forensic illustrator ... ex-military firefighter ... before they changed the test for girls ... and one pissed off lesbian.
So Howard. Show some balls. Give me one of your faked email accounts. We will continue this exchange.
Plus I know Armenian hackers from my manual labor and other jobs. So maybe do nothing. I will find you. And then we can really talk. Is this threat? Sure, I’m threatening to expose your real name.
Fernandistan: you are still confusing two different cases. Rector received his purported injury after incarceration to death row. It was also a hoax, though..
Next, name all their victims, if you know so much about these two separate cases. Do it jeopardy time.
Hi Tina. Looking forward to meeting you 😜. Everyone is afraid to tell you the truth. Get help for the drinking and stop living on the victim card. It's obvious eating you from the inside out. Your tough exterior is a fragile shell. I'm not the only one who sees it.
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