Rant: The Oral History of Buster Casey

The term «bogeyman» is derived from "Boney," the British derogatory nickname for Napoleon Bonaparte. Over time, the name evolved into «boneyman» and later "bogeyman," but it was always used as a threat by the British in order to keep their children obedient.

Generally speaking, liminal versus liminoid is defined as follows. The term «liminal» refers to a ritual that marks passage from one phase of life to the next: a baptism, a graduation, a honeymoon. In contrast, a typical «liminoid» event such as a rock concert, a rave, or a polyamorous consensual group sex party occurs outside of the mainstream, but a liminoid event marks no such life transition. The defining characteristic of the liminoid space is that all participants act as equals. Social or caste rankings are discarded, and all present enjoy an egalitarian mutual affection for one another. Turner's name for this spontaneous solidarity and love was the Latin word communitas.

As defined by the anthropologist Victor Turner in his book The Ritual of Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (1969), liminal spaces occur at the interstices between two distinct phases of life. According to Turner, absurdity and paradox define regularity. The regularly occurring chaos of liminoid space is what allows for an otherwise organized civilization.

Her name was Hattie, and she was pretty the way folks you love are pretty in old snapshots. When they're still young and excited about life. Before time and work and you have destroyed their youth.

In the mid-1960s, the American anthropologist James Neel inoculated members of the Yanomami tribe in Venezuela with a virulent strain of measles. Neel and his team of researchers refused to treat the sick; instead, they documented how the disease spread, killings thousands, in order to test a controversial theory of eugenics.

Beginning in 1963, officials at the Willowbrook State School, a residence for developmentally disabled children in Staten Island, New York, intentionally infected healthy children with hepatitis in order to test the effects of gamma globulin on the disease. For three years, school officials repeatedly injected the children with viral agents, until public outcry stopped the program in 1966.

there's worse ways to be dead than dying.

"The big reason why folks leave a small town," Rant used to say, "is so they can moon over the idea of going back. And the reason they stay put is so they can moon about getting out." Rant meant that no one is happy, anywhere.