Stimso Adid
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| - | Born May 27, 1920 in Cairo, Egypt. | + | ''Born May 27, 1920 in Cairo, Egypt.'' |
| Stimso Adid's father Ali was an Egyptian who had voyaged to India and became a soldier in the Royal Army. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant Major, 1st Class. There he met and fell in love with Miss Veronica Stimson, the pretty young daughter of a spice merchant who had taken up residence in New Delhi. Though Barnabas Stimson didn't object to his daughter's marriage to a Muslim, others were less forgiving. The elder Adid was transferred to a diplomatic post in his native Cairo. After the War he retired and became a guide and outfitter for English archeologists working in Egypt and North Africa. His son was born in 1920 and he and his wife chose to honor their open-minded father by naming him Stimson. Their Egyptian doctor, however, made an error on the paperwork and thus, the name Stimso entered the world. In 1922 a sister, Fatima was born. | Stimso Adid's father Ali was an Egyptian who had voyaged to India and became a soldier in the Royal Army. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant Major, 1st Class. There he met and fell in love with Miss Veronica Stimson, the pretty young daughter of a spice merchant who had taken up residence in New Delhi. Though Barnabas Stimson didn't object to his daughter's marriage to a Muslim, others were less forgiving. The elder Adid was transferred to a diplomatic post in his native Cairo. After the War he retired and became a guide and outfitter for English archeologists working in Egypt and North Africa. His son was born in 1920 and he and his wife chose to honor their open-minded father by naming him Stimson. Their Egyptian doctor, however, made an error on the paperwork and thus, the name Stimso entered the world. In 1922 a sister, Fatima was born. | ||
Revision as of 10:13, 31 Jul 2004
Born May 27, 1920 in Cairo, Egypt.
Stimso Adid's father Ali was an Egyptian who had voyaged to India and became a soldier in the Royal Army. He rose to the rank of Staff Sergeant Major, 1st Class. There he met and fell in love with Miss Veronica Stimson, the pretty young daughter of a spice merchant who had taken up residence in New Delhi. Though Barnabas Stimson didn't object to his daughter's marriage to a Muslim, others were less forgiving. The elder Adid was transferred to a diplomatic post in his native Cairo. After the War he retired and became a guide and outfitter for English archeologists working in Egypt and North Africa. His son was born in 1920 and he and his wife chose to honor their open-minded father by naming him Stimson. Their Egyptian doctor, however, made an error on the paperwork and thus, the name Stimso entered the world. In 1922 a sister, Fatima was born.
Young Stimso was one of those young lads caught between worlds, never quite fitting in with the Muslim population and rejected by the snobbery of the English. He wasn't entirely unhappy though. His mother bequeathed to the lad a love of art and literature. An unusual woman for the time, she exposed him to the avant-garde currents of European literature, painting and cinema. His father introduced him to Sufism, the Arabian Nights and military history.
When England entered the Second World War, young Stimso did not hesitate to join. He wasn't a great lover of England, but he was looking for adventure, so in 1939 he joined the Royal Marines. That same year a training accident damaged his hearing and his right leg enough to get him a medical discharge. He then obtained a visa and travelled to the United States to follow a course in anthropology at NYU.
Adid took a room at a boarding house at 27, 27th Ave., where he whiled away his time studying lazily and smoking hashish with a small circle of Tunisian friends. One day in the Spring of 1940 he received a curious visitor. A distinguished-looking young WASP about his age appeared at his door bearing a letter from his mother. The man was Stimes Addisson. He had received the letter by mistake, for he lived at 27, 27th St. The coincidence was startling and they got to talking.
The pair hit it off immediately. Addisson was also a student at the NYU and the pair found that they had many other affinities and interests in common. Not long after their acquaintance the two became an almost inseparable pair, drinking late into the night discussing aesthetics, morality, philosophy and a shared love of fine pants. By 1941 this had begun to coalesce into the ideas they came to call Accidental Associationalism, or AA.
The AA was informal from the get-go, even after they had launched the "movement" in the Summer of 1942 with the journal Reticent 27. By this time the group included William Flintrock, Jonathan Trenchwheat, Wilhemina Forkes and Jorge Suarez. Science fiction writer Alfred Bester is believed to have taken part in some of their early sessions.
For some reason they attracted the animosity of almost every group in the city. Villified by "respectable" people and the bohemian communities alike, the young AA partisans faced difficult times. They were honored when a John P. Merriweather formed the League of Gnomes in response to their activites. For some reason he heaped the lion's share of his vitriole upon Adid, or as Merriweather put it, "That half-mad Kaffir!"
The group was especially united at this point. By the end of ten years however, infighting, especially among the next generation of AA membership, had thoroughly broken the circle. The splits and schisms reached a crucial point by 1965. This was the date of the ridiculous 3rd AA International Conference at which delegates, citing unreconcilable differences, decided to officially split the movment into Associationalism and Accidentalism. Adid was not even present, but the Accidentalist faction claimed him as their patron saint and most obnoxiously insulted Addisson.
After the debacle in 1965, Adid withdrew from public involvement in the movement. Although publicly he and Addisson were thought to be estranged and bitter, they were still fast friends. They both despised and revelled in the factionalist excess of their protegés and went to great pains to downplay and inflame the conflict, whichever seemed more necessary at the time.
From 1970 until 1980, Adid was often on the road lecturing on various arcane subjects germane to anthropology, art history, drugs, Sufism, Guvernor Morris and of course the AA. During the period he went to Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, France, Italy, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Germany, India, and Japan, where he finally realized his dream of releasing his own line of men's pants.
In 1990 he "retired" to his ranch near Waco, Texas, where he still lives with his third wife. Addisson is still a welcome visitor.
