B Wardlaw’s Masterful Beginning

William C. Wardlaw III, known around Atlanta, the Southeast and San Francisco as B Wardlaw, published COCA-COLA ANARCHIST early this year. Anyone who loves Atlanta and longs for justice in that city wants to read COCA-COLA ANARCHIST. And everyone who is a perpetrator of the injustice and the corruption of downtown Atlanta needs to ingest COCA-COLA ANARCHIST.

B’s “masterful beginning” rests in his first sentence. My friend, the Reverend Dr. Tom Are, an accomplished writer himself, told me once that the most important sentence in any book is the first one. If Tom Are is correct, and I have no reason to doubt him, B has a winner. I read this first sentence and studied it for a fortnight before I read another. Many equally gripping sentences follow. The words, sentences and pages of this book give us the heart of this giving man.

Please indulge my need to examine the first sentence of COCA-COLA ANARCHIST exactly as I would in my English classes. The first sentence reads:

With a push of memory and words, I’m opening a heavy door resting on old hinges.

The first seven words string together two prepositional phrases, “With a push” and “of memory and words.” Every prepositional phrase modifies or describes another word or words in a sentence. A preposition phrase best defined is a word that joins its object to the rest of the sentence. The words “With” and “of” respectively are the prepositions that join their noun objects to the rest of the sentence. Both these prepositional phrases serve as adverbs as they describe the verb in the clause “I’m (am understood) opening.”

The word “door” is the direct object of the verb “I’m opening.” Direct objects answer the question, What word receives the action of the verb? The comma after the word “words” is correct because there is a comma rule that asks that writers place a comma after a LONG introductory clause or phrase. Grammar texts hold that six (6) or more words constitute what is LONG. B’s two prepositional phrases contain a total of seven (7) words, thus the need to place the comma. The last four words form a phrase that describes the noun “door.”

This is a simple sentence, containing only one independent clause (one subject/verb cluster).

The metaphors make it masterful. I teach that the message of the metaphor is always stronger than the metaphor itself. B states that he is pushing something; memory and words are his way to do this. This is a perfect metaphor. This good writer is using a figure of speech, not one image is literal. He is not literally pushing a heavy door. But, oh, as you read on in these pages, he is pushing a very “heavy door” that with memory and words opens into a world not previously revealed.

It could be argued that his “memory and words” are literal; however, there is no literal pushing of them.

The heaviness of the door symbolizes the onerous weight that so many of these pages carry. And those pages transfer that burden to the shoulders of the anarchist. The participial phrase, “resting on old hinges” joins with the adjective, “heavy” to convey all that the door symbolizes. And what it symbolizes has been there waiting to be egested.

The master of beginnings in all literature is Charles Dickens. I recall A TALE OF TWO CITIES with the best of times and the worst of times. I remember the early going of LITTLE DORRIT where Marseilles lay burning in the sun. GREAT EXPECTATIONS explains why the main character says, “So I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.” OUR MUTUAL FRIEND opens in the Thames with Lizzie rowing for her father as they tow another corpse in the water just aft their boat. Dickens captures his reader with his beginnings.

I congratulate this writer for the gripping, poetic first sentence. Don’t fail to give yourself a treat. Read COCA-COLA ANARCHIST. I didn’t believe sentences after the first one could get better. They do. Well done William C. Wardlaw, III.

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
July 30, 2010
Jeremiah 22.16

Don’t forget lying little Debi

Dear TEAMS, GOLIATH and David,

Writing my last blog seconds ago reminds me of the preacher who while preaching remembered where he had left his bicycle. I just remembered a recent moment with Debi Starnes that I want to blog. On July 8 the Task Force Board met at Manuel’s Tavern, North Highland at North Avenue. Debi Starnes and some ten other people gathered around tables several feet from where our little board sat. Debi happened to be sitting with her back to us. She was no more than five feet away. She could have touched us with her broom. I asked board members if I could go speak to the Czar and give her a little hug.

My request was denied. However, some 30 minutes later as I exited the tavern, there stands Debi in the entrance way talking on her cell phone. Starnes looked at me and spoke into the phone, “Here’s Jim Beaty and he hates my guts.” I said “Debi, it’s not personal; it’s spiritual.” She said, still talking into her phone, “Well you call me the anti Christ in your blog.” I said, “One more example of your inability to tell the truth; I have never called the Czar the “anti Christ.”

We hugged. I left. As I drove away I thought what a tragedy that the power players like Starnes and her fellow conspirators didn’t have it in them to really support Peachtree Pine and make Atlanta a City that cares. No, she and her bedfellows spent $50,000,000 on a limp charade to help homeless people while all the while were dedicated to disappear homeless people from CAP and TAP and ADID and Peachtree Street.

Now they find themselves on the spear-point end of a RICO lawsuit and a HUD Fair Housing Complaint that may change the corrupt complexion of downtown that we endure just now. This lawsuit and federal complaint may shake their rotten foundations. Oh Lord, what a morning when the stars begin to fall. You’ll hear the sinners mourn. You’ll hear the nations underground looking to my God’s right hand when the stars begin to fall. Burning rain coming!

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16
July 28, 2010

Just A Little Break

Dear Conspirators and Team David,

So many of you have called asking if I am ill or deceased or kidnapped by CAP or frightened off by Eve Sibley. None of the above is the case. During the last month I have sent to my publisher my grammar text, SACRED GRAMMAR. It’s a unique piece in that it uses only the Bible to teach the basics of writing skills. I’ve dedicated it to Richard “Crap Sniffer” Orr who labeled the writing of Dr. Charles Steffen such. SACRED GRAMMAR should be available in stores by mid September. Rich also stated in one of his subpoenaed emails that his writing style was quite different from A. J. Robinson. I’ve not detected a style. I wrote earlier that Orr’s style reminds me of my golf swing. Their responses under oath are identical.

Also at the encouragement of several people, I have pulled out an old manuscript of South Carolina mass murder, Pee Wee Gaskins, and will finish it DV by the end of the year. Pee Wee murdered some fifty people: in 1991 the state of South Carolina murdered him.

Eve Sibley asked me a favor concerning her father, Horace. I will dedicate an entire blog to Eve in the near future. Ms. Sibley is a lovely young woman and an extremely talented artist.

Stay tuned, little ones, the Lord has not taken me yet. We have subpoenas for depositions forthcomiong, we have fat cats running from depositions, we have worms that squirm. Good night, Judy.

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16
July 28, 2010

General Robert E. Lee on Stonewall Jackson

When Robert E. Lee learned that Jackson had lost his left arm in battle, Lee said, “I have lost my right.”

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah 22.16
July 12, 2010

From James Wilson Beaty to A. J. Robinson, CAP Master

Massa,

The bottom rail is on top now!

Yahweh save you, my man!

Jim Beaty

James Wilson Beaty, PhD
Jeremiah22.16
July 11, 2010