Balladeer’s Blog continues reviewing the 1927 book Trader Horn, the quasi-autobiographical account of the British Trade Agent Alfred Aloysius Horn’s adventures in Africa during the late 1800s. For Part One click HERE.
PART FIVE – Horn recounted an incredible event he attended in Angola, which was not yet the name of the country, just a populated region. He and his subordinate Trade Agents were guests at a conjo – a performance of traveling entertainers called the Akowas.
Alfred praised the precision routines of the acrobats, sword-dancers, trick shooters and their colleagues. The Akowas displayed excellent stagecraft and made Horn and his men gasp in awe as the performers pretended to shoot each other through with arrows, complete with seeming penetration, only for the finale to present all of them getting up just fine for the audience to see.
The next day, Trader Horn and his aides were making contracts with the tribe for the trade in wood, large canoes, dried fish and farina. One of Alfred’s indigenous employees was a son of a Camma chief and engaged him in further conversation about the Izoga – the Holy Person hidden from common view several villages back. Continue reading
JANUARY 1910 – James Larkin Pearson, poet and newspaper man, carried on the Fool Killer tradition from 1910 to 1917, then again from 1919 into the 1920s. Pearson’s fellow North Carolinian Charles Napoleon Bonaparte Evans had written the Fool Killer Letters of the 19th Century so it’s appropriate that another Tar Heel continue the lore for so many years of the 20th Century.
Pearson’s Fool-Killer was the mascot of the entire publication, which was merely 4-6 pages anyway, not simply the supposed author of letters regarding his body count of “fools.” Think of this Fool Killer (I prefer no hyphen) as the written word equivalent of Puck (1876-1918), the political cartoon mascot of the humor magazine of the same name.
*** Frederick Cook, who, the previous December, had seen his claim to have reached the North Pole ruled invalid and possibly fraudulent by the University of Copenhagen. (The Fool Killer was unable to locate Cook, however.)
THE FEARSOME ISLAND (1896) – Written by British author Albert Kinross. An unusual work with a multi-layered narrative. The entire novel was penned by Kinross, but it is one of the countless works of fiction presented as if it is a rediscovered manuscript relating the “true” adventures of Silas Fordred from the 1500s. Kinross adds another layer by explaining the sci-fi devices that Fordred could not comprehend and put down to sorcery and the supernatural. 
BLACKE’S MAGIC (1986) – HAPPY FATHER’S DAY, GENTLEMEN! Last Father’s Day I reviewed the neglected television series 
Hal Linden played Alexander Blacke, a big-name, big-money stage magician. While investigating the seemingly impossible murder of an old friend, Alex gets help from his former conman father Leonard, portrayed by Harry Morgan. 
REQUIEM FOR THE DREAM – CAITLYN CLARK and the INDIANA FEVER (4-10) welcomed the ATLANTA DREAM (5-6) to Gainbridge Fieldhouse in this game. 
DAZZLER Vol 1 #1 (March 1981) 
Many readers have been asking me about my take on the latest Disney show by Harvey Weinstein’s former personal assistant Leslye Headland – The Acolyte. I checked out of Star Wars quite a few years ago, so I’m not up to date on all the Disney debacles. 
This pathetic series is apparently every bit as horrible as we’ve heard, but Michelle is much less sarcastic than I am when I write reviews, so her approach may be more appealing. Below is her take on the first two Acolyte episodes, but for Michelle’s review of the execrable third episode AND to subscribe to the channel Force of Light Entertainment, click 
PART TWENTY: In a surprising development Balladeer’s Blog was contacted by THE actual Fool Killer. Using Jimmy Neutron-level science I determined that this correspondent was indeed the actual supernatural figure who had been at large in America since the 1830s. 
Coming to you as I wander in search of fools to kill, as usual a murder of crows following in my wake to feast upon the ample corpses I leave behind me in my travels.
AFTER LONDON aka WILD ENGLAND (1885) – Written by Richard Jefferies. A post-apocalypse saga in which the shifting of the Earth’s axis has reduced the British Isles to a medieval level with feral animals and pockets of toxic wasteland. There are scattered “kingdoms” and roving bands of marauders but no contact with the world outside the area. 
The Thames and Severn Rivers have backed up, forming a large central lake in England. What was once London is a toxic marsh so deadly to human life that its gases and vapors, when carried by the winds, kill or drive mad humans exposed to them. 
Balladeer's Blog 