Saturday, May 14, 2016

War Name - part 2 - a confederate flag on a confederate grave

In Fagin's article, he has a photo of a confederate flag next to the fence surrounding the Jewish graves at the cemetery.  He writes:
In this photo, it’s hard to tell whether the flag attends grave or fence. Maybe it’s just a trick of perspective, but this ambiguous placement enables two interpretive possibilities: support for the Confederacy and its white-supremacist ideology. Or wry commentary on Saltiel’s Confederate past as it relates to the death of these children. Which possibility is more ironic? Either way, this spatially dislocated symbol of racism is, for me, punctum, waving-in-the-wind ellipse in the ongoing narrative of the Cotopaxi settlers.
Hmmm.....time to do a little more research?  Here's the photo with the flag that he used (did he take it from this angle to purposefully make it appear to be next to the fence?  Did he intentionally shade the headstone so you couldn't see who it belonged to?  Does he not know about photoshop software?)


I looked at this photo in photoshop, cropped it and enhanced it - this is what I got.  You can clearly see the shadow of the menorah across the upper left hand corner of the stone.  You can clearly see that the flag is placed at the base of this headstone, not at the base of the fence.  Feel free to double-click on any photo to enlarge it and then zoom in for a closer view.)


And you can now make out an O, E, P, H, G and the numbers 9, 1, 8

Could it be this headstone?  Right next to the Jewish fence?


 JOSEPH G. Dyer  1847 - 1918
(compare the underlined to what we can see in the prior image)


Thanks to Nelson, a simple google search of Joseph G Dyer at Cotopaxi and look what appeared.....




Oh my gosh!  Joseph Dyer is a confederate soldier, buried in the Cotopaxi Cemetery, right next to the fence where the Jews are buried!!!  And someone placed a confederate flag next to HIS headstone!

I'll be!   This flag has absolutely nothing to do with the Jews buried at Cotopaxi.  It has nothing to do with the Jewish settlers who were in Cotopaxi between 1882 and 1884.  And it is certainly NOT "spatially dislocated symbol of racism is, for me, punctum, waving-in-the-wind ellipse in the ongoing narrative of the Cotopaxi settlers." as stated by Adam Fagin in his article!!

This is 2016.  You would think with all the resources available to us that a writer would do a little bit of research.  Fagin had the name on the headstone.  All he had to do was google it.  He is a ph.d candidate!   But no - he would rather write fantasy and make up a story about this flag being placed next to the Jewish graves as a mark of antisemitism.  Then put his story under the category of creative non-fiction.  I suppose that was much easier than trying to find out the truth.

Starting to think I should go for a ph.d.  But what's the point?  I'd much rather spend my time researching the Cotopaxi Colony and making sure the world knows the true story....not fabrications and outright lies such as this.

update:

Nelson sent me this photo he took on May, 18, 2016


He wrote:  "The confederate medallion by the Dyer grave is still there, it has its own support, but is right next to the flag. In order for the medallion not to appear in his photograph, he covered it with the confederate flag.  If you look close at his second photo, you can see the shiny support of the medallion...it is straight/vertical just at the grass level, vs the slanted wooden support of the flag.  Both the flag and medallion have been in place since at least last Memorial Day, if not longer."

Did Fagin actually cover the medallion with the flag for the photo in his article?

as a reminder, here's what Fagin wrote about this flag.....
A Confederate flag is planted in the pale, gold grass.  In this photo, it’s hard to tell whether the flag attends grave or fence. Maybe it’s just a trick of perspective, but this ambiguous placement enables two interpretive possibilities: support for the Confederacy and its white-supremacist ideology. Or wry commentary on Saltiel’s Confederate past as it relates to the death of these children. Which possibility is more ironic? Either way, this spatially dislocated symbol of racism is, for me, punctum, waving-in-the-wind ellipse in the ongoing narrative of the Cotopaxi settlers.Jews wanting to honor the fact that a Jewish cemetery is located at Cotopaxi.
"it's hard to tell whether the flag attends grave or fence"

Fagin KNEW it attended the grave of Joseph Dyer, a confederate soldier.  He KNEW!!!  Yet he told a whopper of a lie to promote his agenda.  Who then is the real racist?


***** c2016Cotopaxi-Colony.blogspot.com  All content is copyright protected and may not be copied, reproduced, reused or reposted in any manner without permission.











No comments:

Post a Comment