Dispatch

So here I am, 62 years old, writing from the front lines of early retirement on Memorial Day. But it's not the real Memorial Day. I'm old enough that I remember when Memorial Day was on May the 30th. That was before the United States Congress changed it to a 3 day weekend shopping extravaganza intended to kick off the summer vacation spending season.

I've lived in New England for over a quarter of a century now. Here, the summer season used to be July 4th to Labor Day in September (that's the phony Labor Day; the one the rest of the world celebrates is on May the 1st and honors events that happened here in the U.S. of A., which big money interests don't want people to know about let alone remember). With the change in the weather the summer season starts earlier here now. This year has been a little more like the old days, with the result that newscasts bemoaned the rainy and cool weather we had Saturday and Sunday - so many open campsites, so many unused barbeques.

Memorial Day started when the widows of the Civil War (or the "War of the Insurrection of the Southern States" as it used to be known in these parts) brought flowers of remembrance to decorate the graves of soldiers, "Decoration Day". After other wars it became "Memorial Day". There used to be parades; people used to display the flag. When I was a kid, it was a mixture of honor to the fallen and patriotism with the jingoistic flavor of the Post World War II era.

By the time I was a teenager, the War in Vietnam was oh so au currant. But just as television and its news programs had shown the lies of prosperous equality versus the malarkey we were fed through civics classes and entertainment, it also told uncomfortable truths about Vietnam. It became more and more difficult for me to accept the unquestioning flag waving exemplified by a mirror I found in 1969 with a painting on it of Stephen Decatur with the Carl Schurz quote (attributed to Decatur), "My Country right or wrong, My Country!"

The other day, I found a movie coming attractions trailer on the internet which I decided to play. One of its stars is a young man whose career choices have interested me more than any talent he has displayed (which is considerable). He played Harry Potter in a stage musical he co-wrote and co-produced in his teens. He showed up on the tv show "Glee", playing a gay teenager in his first relationship - it is a main story thread. Such things were unthinkable once. Anyway, as the trailer played there was one quick shot that made me pause it. I was right, it was the boardwalk of my once beloved Ocean City, NJ where summers started on Memorial Day weekend.

There's a "Subway" on the boardwalk now. A chain store. When I lived there, chain stores had names like A & P, or Dairy Queen. And they weren't on the Boardwalk. And now there's junky signs. It's actually worse than how it looks in the frame grab. Here's another contemporary view:


























Back when I lived there, back before there were giant cheap backlit plastic signs, back before there were BigBucksMarts, before there were chains of inedible overblown thin hamburger patty plastic arches, back when gaudy wasn't acceptable unless you were whoring on 8th Avenue in New York City, back when Memorial Day had just been changed to a Monday, it looked more like this:

The last picture is a little out of focus, like so many memories tend to be. But you can see that the hard sell isn't there, signs are on a human scale. By today's standards you might say it's 'quaint'.

 

In the 1970's or so, Memorial Day Weekend became the opening of the Hollywood extravaganza season. When I was in the business, a few of us used to say that a good picture would play in any season. When one studio dared to open a big budget picture at the beginning of May, the other studios thought they were crazy. It played. The old patterns (which had been new patterns maybe a decade before) started changing. Now it seems like almost every movie has a budget well over one hundred million dollars - and that's before advertising. Twenty years ago, an extremely successful movie might gross one hundred million dollars. "Iron Man 3" opened 3 weekends ago and has already grossed $1.15 Billion worldwide. And that's before cable, tv, DVD, Blue-Ray and streaming internet sales, before merchandising tie-ins. It's a live action cartoon. They all seem to be live action cartoons anymore. Well, this year there was a new adaptation of "The Great Gatsby", which has grossed over 100 million domestically, but in Brattleboro it was pushed off screen after two weeks to make way for "Fast and Furious 6" and "The Hangover Part whatever". Basically, live action cartoons. Don't get me wrong, I like live action cartoons. And these are usually very well made special effect bonanza live action cartoons. I can't often afford to part with close to ten dollars to go see one, though. And here it's not even in 3-D. But what happened to the other movies, you know, the ones that just told stories and attempted to uplift the spirits? Oh, we get the occasional art film about 90 year olds facing death with dignity, but that's not what I mean. We just don't live in a world where they make beach party movies with guest musical stars anymore. They don't even make suggestively dance your asses off in the Catskills summer movies anymore. Unless the dancers have superpowers and their pasodoble is used to kick the villains into the stratosphere.

 

A news article I read this morning reported on a study which revealed that the IQ's of people in western civilizations have declined by an average of 14 points since the Victorian era. That would include the Civil War, the Insurrection of the Southern States against the idea of Union.

 

And that brings my little roundelay back to Memorial Day. I don't like standing armies. I don't like the idea of conscription. Just today, in a guest editorial in the New York Times, a writer called for a return to the draft. The aftermath of the Vietnam War left us with a volunteer army. There are now army families. It's a job. It's a job the undereducated and the underclass can get. It's a profession-al army. If another marine holds an umbrella over the President, will Fox news call them the Praetorian Guard? Will the Fox News readers even know what the Praetorian Guard was?

 

I dislike the world we got, for which the honored dead allegedly fought. There is no real depth to it, it's a plastic chain store corrupted cartoon version of the American Dream. Which we once tried to sell as part of our presence in that miserable war in Vietnam. There was a summer movie I saw with friends here in Brattleboro the summer before I moved here called, "Forrest Gump". When the movie was over, one could have easily thought we'd won in Vietnam. A friend who was with me leaned against the Latchis' old outdoor box office and said, "We're getting ready for war again, aren't we?" Is that the real American Dream?

 

 

Over the years, I've made my peace with this day. I memorialize the very honored dead who fought the wars of government. Wars against evil. Wars of conquest. Wars of expansion and corruption. Wars of greedily grasping corporations hungry for oil. I also honor those who fought and those who died in our other wars. Economic Wars - the fight for the 8 hour workday, the end of child labor, the minimum wage, the end of hunger, health care. There are martyrs there too, non-military soldiers who fought on at the Haymarket, at the Hoovervilles, at the mills. Not all were killed - Inez Milholland collapsed and died of pernicious anemia at the age of 30 while giving a speech. Her last words were, "Mr. President, how long must women wait for liberty?" That was in 1916. And then there is Charlie Howard, who has been forgotten. He was killed, martyred, in the late 1980's in Bangor, Maine by teenagers who threw him over a bridge into a river because he was gay and walking alongside his boyfriend. He was 23 years old. Or Matthew Shepherd who was literally crucified on a split rail fence because he was gay. Or any of the unknown soldiers of this nasty little war - did you miss the news story in April of three teens who were tortured and killed at a "camp" to turn them into "men"? Oh, that's right the camp was in South Africa, so who cares? Who cares about the gay dead in Uganda and the gay dead and women dead in various Muslim countries? Who cares about Bradley Manning? It's been a long war, this war for simple human dignity. Times are changing. They always are. But now there's a President who is African American, women have rights if not yet equal pay, and there is a tv show with two main characters who are gay male teenagers who kissed right there in front of all America. Imagine. And so, on Memorial Day, the soldiers whose memory I honor are more varied than most might accept. The world, the changes, the Dream they fought and died for wasn't and isn't a plastic cartoon. These are the people I choose to remember. These are the soldiers I honor.

 

Requiescat in Pace.



 



A Toast for Taylor Mead

It's a sad morning here at the Auto de Fey. I've just learned of the passing of one of the great characters of New York City, the very bohemian Taylor Mead.

If ever there was someone who sashayed to a different drummer, it was Taylor. He was born in Grosse Point, a child of wealthy parents. He referred to his private school education as "brainwashing for the bourgeoisie". Back in the day he lived in a tiny cramped apartment on Ludlow Street and was known in all the worst places. You might stumble upon him reading his poetry at some dive, or you might find him feeding cats in cemeteries. He was often described as the first underground movie star. He was involved in the San Francisco Beat Poet scene, when a filmmaker saw him shouting his poetry over a crowd of drunks in a bar. The filmmaker, Ron Rice, started following Taylor around, filming him with a hand held 16mm camera. The result was "The Flower Thief" (1960), in which Taylor played a befuddled and wide eyed mystic who wandered around San Francisco carrying his three most precious possessions - a teddy bear, a flag, and a stolen gardenia. In other words, he played himself.

He moved to New York City because he thought it would be easy to be anonymous there. But Taylor wasn't the kind of guy who could be anonymous for long (he tended to attract attention) and was soon asked to be in a play by poet Frank O'Hara. He won an Obie. As a regular on the fringes of the Lower East side arty scene, he became involved with Andy Warhol and the gang at the Factory. He played Tarzan in one of Warhol's first movies; as he climbed around in the trees his loincloth kept falling off, leading one critic to complain of the film's featuring two hours of Taylor's derriere. Warhol wrote a letter to the Village Voice noting that no such footage existed, but that he would try to rectify the situation - he made an hour long film called (ahem, my more gentle readers may wish to avert their eyes) "Taylor Mead's Ass".

Dennis Hooper and Taylor Mead in "Tarzan and Jane Regained... Sort Of"
a film by Andy Warhol (1963)

In the late 1970's and early 1980's, in a world before cable tv, the most outrageous program on the air was "The Anton Perich Show" which appeared well after midnights on NYC's own UHF channel 31. Perich was another of the Factory regulars, and his outré avant-garde show featured a number of the Lower East Side crowd like the punk rock country western singer Wayne County (before he was Jane County). The show was vulgar, crude, and absolutely hysterically funny. The funny part was usually Taylor being flamboyantly gay in an era when such things simply weren't done.

For the last several years, Taylor had been in a fight with realtors who were trying to force him out of his long time (and rent controlled) apartment so they could convert it to a high priced market rental. He'd just made a settlement with them and was visiting a niece in Colorado when he passed. He was 88. I want to write "Rest in Peace", but he wouldn't do that. If there is an afterlife, I suspect he'll be busy writing poetry and being very, very, deliciously naughty.



(Bill Rice and Taylor Mead in a scene from Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes".)

"You Can Buy a Dream or Two..."

Every now and again, the almanac information for a particular day contains something that makes me stop whatever I am doing (usually perusing the almanac listings) and leads me down paths of imagination or reverie. Needless to say, today's listing of the famous, the infamous, the worthy, the athletes, and the entertainers contained one name in particular which caught my attention and started me thinking of musical and other memories.

Maybe you had to have to have been a child in the 1950's, and remember music before Elvis, an era when the last of the big bands and the likes of the McGuire sisters, or doo wop anthems like "Sh-Boom" caught and/or created the public mood to really appreciate the name which caught my attention. Today is Ricky Nelson's birthday. I just called him Ricky, even though at age 21 he became Rick. I wonder if my calling him "Ricky" has to do with nostalgia or habit.

Rick Nelson was the son of big band leader Ozzie Nelson. His mother, Harriet Hilliard, had been the band's "girl singer", and gave up a potential career in the movies to continue with the band. (She'd sung "Get Thee Behind Me Satan" in the Fred Astaire - Ginger Rogers movie, "Follow the Fleet". The song had originally been intended for Rogers to sing in "Top Hat".) The band had been on tour in Los Angeles when they were signed as the house band for a radio show hosted by Red Skelton. When Skelton was drafted during WWII, Ozzie was given the chance to create his own show. The most popular radio program in the country at the time was "Fibber McGee and Molly", which had a recurring cast of characters who moved through Fibber and Molly's lives - it's regarded as the first situation comedy. Ozzie created a show about his family's life. His two sons were played by professional actors for several years before the boys were considered old enough to take on the roles themselves. After a successful movie version, Ozzie moved the show to tv, where it premiered in 1952. It must have been a trifle strange for the boys to go to work everyday pretending to be versions of themselves, working in a set that was a duplicate of their real life home. Ricky was often described as an odd little kid who suffered from asthma, and who encountered problems fitting in at his school. He got into trouble a lot. In 1957 when he was 16, he wanted to impress a girl who liked Elvis Presley. He bragged that he could make a record, too, and used his Dad's connections to do it. Ozzie was happy to see Ricky channel his energies, and wrote the song into the show. It was a Fats Domino's, "I'm Walking".



The episode aired in April of 1957. America changed a little bit that night.

Rock and Roll was still considered something wild and unruly. Preachers condemned it as an evil influence from their pulpits, and held public burnings of Elvis' records. Suddenly here was that nice Nelson boy, a kid who was growing up in front of America, a kid everyone liked, singing rock and roll. If Ricky Nelson liked it, if Ozzie and Harriet liked it, well then - it must be all right. Elvis, Bill Haley and the rest may have made rock and roll popular, but it was Ricky Nelson and his rock-a-billy infused style which made it acceptable. I was 6 years old at the time, and bought the 45 rpm record of "I'm Walkin" from the allowance I received for doing household chores.

Ricky didn't care for the musicians his dad had hired to back him so he put together his own band, starting with a kid around his own age, 18 year old James Burton, who became one of the great guitarists of rock and roll. Hit followed hit, with Ricky and his band preforming every couple of weeks on the show. During the 1958-1959 season (the year Elvis went into the army), Ricky Nelson had 12 big hits, one more than Elvis. Here's one of his biggest hits, "Hello Mary-Lou". Sadly, I  couldn't find a good copy on You Tube of the first version from the show, with Burton's electrifying guitar solo.



Ricky was a good looking kid, and there was something about him. There was a slight touch of a sneer that could turn into a smile, or which could hint at something slightly dangerous - but in a "nice" way. And, while he could really rock when his Dad would let him, he could also handle a ballad with style. For one big hit, Ozzie added a little bit of film imagery which some argue was a precursor of the first music videos.



The big hits, around 60 of them, continued until 1963, when the "British Invasion" moved rock and roll away from its rockabilly roots, girl groups, and doo-wop. Times were a'changing; the family tv show ended in 1966. Rick Nelson moved on to pioneer a blend of rock and country that paved the way for groups like The Eagles.

There would be one last big hit. In 1971, Rick was booked into a rock and roll revival show at Madison Square Garden. He made his entrance wearing long hair and bell bottoms, and launched into a couple of the old songs. For his third number, he performed a country tinged version of the Rolling Stones' "Honky Tonk Woman". The audience began booing. Some say the audience had expected young Ricky, but got Rick. Some say it was due to a police action against concert goers in the back of the auditorium. Whatever really happened,  the booing was loud and Rick left the stage. He wrote a song about it called "Garden Party" :



Over the next several years, Rick had his share of personal problems, including the very public break up of his marriage. He and his wife tried to reconcile, but neither were able to curtail the style of spending they had once enjoyed during his years at the top, which meant that he had to constantly tour to pay the bills, which further affected their marriage. When they finally divorced the financial settlement left him with no choice but to continue his life on the road, playing engagements in small clubs where he could still get bookings.  He acknowledged his predilection for marijuana (he used to bury his stash in his back yard), and publicly supported legalization (as did other 'smokers' like Bing Crosby). In interviews on tv he was always quiet, soft spoken, a little hesitant, often very funny, and quite modest. He usually made sure he gave credit to the people who performed with him or who wrote the songs he sang. On New Year's Eve in 1985, he was on his way to the last stop of a three concert tour when his rented plane crashed, killing everyone but the pilots. He was 45 years old.

While I've been putting this post together over several stops and starts, I can't help but notice that the little globe on my blog page shows my point of origin as "Nelson, NH"...

In all of his hits, both the rockers and the ballads, there is one song that I rediscovered as an adult that haunts me. I don't know why, maybe it's feelings of lost youth, or the passing of time, of an era when life was allegedly simpler. I grew up without a mom. My Aunt Lorraine filled that role for a few years. The tv shows I liked to watch had families with moms. I identified with two particular characters - the Beav, and Ricky. Both were younger brothers like I was. Maybe this song haunts me because it was one of the songs to which I first "slow danced", holding someone close. Maybe it's because I think the song catches something of the kid who didn't fit in, the real Ricky Nelson. Maybe it's the stirring of long lost feelings of another kid who didn't fit into his own small town in the southern part of New Jersey, who now finds himself writing from a place called "Nelson"...



So Happy Birthday, Rick Nelson. Thanks for the music, and the memories. Miss you.

May the fourth be with you

Life has been far too busy to allow time to post on my blog. I've had several things I've been meaning to get around to, but since I'm retired now... (heh, heh).

Today, May the 4th, is Star Wars Day. It's been celebrated for a few years now. It should really be bad pun day as a tribute to its origins. Needless to say, I was (and still am) a Star Wars fan, as attested by the little round graphic over in the right hand column of my blog page. That is actually a scan of the wearable button that was given out on the very first day of the Star Wars engagement at Loews Astor Plaza Theatre in New York City. They ran out of buttons during the matinees - I managed to get one of the last ones.

I also have the original 1977 Star Wars movie poster, an original Empire Strikes Back "Gone With the Wind" style poster, the Star Wars reissue poster with "coming soon : Revenge of the Jedi" in a banner in the lower right hand corner, the original Variety color insert for "Revenge of the Jedi", etc. (Lucas later decided that "Revenge" wasn't a Jedi concept, so the title was changed.)

It was Wednesday May the 25th, 1977. At the time, I was running the Bookmasters store at 33rd and 7th Avenue, across the street from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. It was a very large store, and I had hired a friend from my days at Doubleday, Harold Biddle, to run the children's books and remainders departments. That morning, I'd read the review of Star Wars in the New York Times. I decided I had to see it right away as I would hear too much about it otherwise, and never go. Harold and I left work a little early and went off to the 4pm or so late matinee.

Loews Astor Plaza, which opened in 1974, was one of the last of the large screen movie theatres. It was deep underground at the site where the Astor Hotel and Theatre had been. There was an long escalator ride down to the auditorium, which was under the already underground Minskoff Theatre (where I would be fortunate enough to attend performances of "Sweeny Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street a few years later). There were 1,440 some seats, and the screen was said to be as long as a football field. When the movie started, there was a "story so far" kind of scroll as though it were an old Saturday matinee serial. To the best of my memory, the text did not start with "Episode 4: A New Hope". Somewhere I have an (ahem) "private" Betamax video tape of that vintage. When I get my Betamax working again I shall dig it out just to check and see if my memory is correct. The Astor Plaza movie theatre closed some years ago and was converted into a concert venue.

In one of those odd little synchronicities of events, "Pippin", whose advertising
poster can be seen next to the Loews marquee, is currently back on Broadway.

At any rate, the 'story so far' scrolled by, and then a spaceship or two flew around, and then there was this incredible rumbling (the theatre had the sensurround sound system designed for the movie Earthquake - then again, it could have been the rumble of the subway line which was very close by the auditorium). As the rumbling continued a starship began to appear on screen - and it kept going - and going - and going. It was huge! I literally found myself bouncing up and down in my seat. I had ceased to be a 26 year old bookstore manager, and become a kid again. The magic of the movies.

This will probably get me into trouble, but I even like the "special" editions Lucas prepared for the original trilogy's re-release on the original Star Wars (now Episode 4) 20th anniversary in 1997, and which are the official DVD's. Of course, I have the original trilogy on laser disk which are unaltered - and in which Han properly shoots first.

Within a year or two, I'd be out of the book business and in movie distribution. One of the stories I eventually heard was that at the time of the first movie, 20th Century Fox had no confidence in Mr. Lucas' little over budget production. They thought the big hit was going to be a different movie they released that month, "The Other Side of Midnight". In the Boston market, "Star Wars" was relegated to lesser theatres in the suburbs. Allegedly, many distributors were told that if they didn't agree to book Star Wars to follow "Midnight", they wouldn't get either film. This was against the old Columbia consent decree which prohibited 'block booking' - i.e. it was illegal. There were lawsuits over it, there were lawsuits in Boston trying to get Star Wars into the big in town houses. "Midnight" grossed a little over 18 million dollars. "Star Wars" spawned several industries from special effects companies (Industrial Light and Magic), to sound processing, toy tie-ins, and etc. ad infinitum - which have grossed billions.


Over the last few years, as my life hit personal and financial skids, I found myself having to move several times. So, back in 2007, in order not to lose track of my precious first day matinee button, I attached it to a Mickey Mouse Sorcerer's Apprentice doll I had picked up somewhere along the way. As it turns out, that was rather prophetic. I hope the series fares well.

A couple of years ago, when I signed up for Facebook, there was a questionnaire which Facebookers are asked to fill out (one can leave most things blank). One question asked my religious views. I put, "Learn about the Force - and may the Force be with you".

 Oh, one last thing, Thank You for everything Mr. Lucas - but Han shoots first.

Austanspace temporarily offline

As several of Austanspace's readers are kind enough to visit my page from time to time, I'm letting everyone know that Laura's computer is being quite naughty and refusing to cooperate with her. A healer versed in electronic minutiae is scheduled to reach the Shire on Tuesday afternoon for consultations and, one hopes, immediate results.

"Did you ever undress in front of your dog?"

For several years now, I've been one of those people who wakes up repeatedly during a night's attempt at sleep. Early this morning, at 4:20am, I woke up with one thought on my mind, "why did I take the pork chop out of the freezer before I went to bed? That wasn't what I'd intended to make for tonight's dinner." I was perturbed, but I'm not sure if it was over the waking or the pork chop.

The news finally reached the online services I read this morning. Jonathan Winters passed on Thursday. I hate writing phrases like that. Words like "died", or "dead", euphemistic terms like "passed away", are all so final. "Passed" is not much better, but it leaves things a little more open. See, the thing is this; Jonathon Winters can never die. He lives every time a comedian takes an off the wall chance to either succeed or fail, and quickly changes the subject no matter the reaction. He lives every time Robin Williams performs in public. Williams famously referred to Winters as his "mentor", to which Winters replied he'd prefer "idol".

When he was 7, his folks broke up and Jonathan was taken to live with his grandmother. You can just tell he didn't fit in anywhere, and must have spent a great deal of time alone in his room. I can relate. He left high school to join the Marines and fight in the second World War. He married in 1948, and shortly thereafter found himself in need of a watch. Watches were much more expensive in those days than they are now; the young couple couldn't afford one. His wife challenged him to go to a local amateur contest and win the needed funds. He did, and got a radio show out of it. Sometimes there weren't any guests. He made them up. He soon found himself in New York working at a comedy club.


One night a janitor sweeping up at the club told him that doing imitations of famous people and making fun of them was okay, but asked him why he didn't make fun of regular folks, the people he'd left behind in small town America. The odd ball characters in his head were let loose. One of those characters, Maude Frickert , was basically stolen by Johnny Carson as a recurring character on the Tonight Show as "Aunt Blabby".

In the later 1960's, I heard that Winters had been institutionalized, locked up in a sanitarium. They only let him out to perform. There was some truth to the rumor, and in later manic sketches if a character was too much or didn't work there might be a quick aside, "No, not that one, they might put me back in." It was typical Winters.

Winters could throw out a punch lime, but his real humor was in his characters. All of it seemingly improvised on the spot, and quite "off the wall", a trait that only his contemporaries Jean Shepherd and Ernie Kovacs shared.

Like Kovacs, Mr. Winters gallops through many of my early tv memories. He was a guest on any number of shows, particularly when Steve Allen or Jack Paar was the host. Paar once gave Winters a piece of wood and challenged him to do something with it. For a few seconds he used it as a fishing rod, then a judge's gavel, then as baseball bat, then a lion tamer's whip - cracking it over the heads of the audience before a quick look at one person with an, "Oh. Sorry." And it was on Jack Paar that he famously asked the audience if they'd ever undressed in front of their dogs. (Pause.) “You think about that for a minute. A bird somehow doesn’t count. Or a cat. But a dog.” (Pause.) “They really stare.”





While it's true that almost every comedian or comic writer of the last 50 years, right down to those working in the business today learned form him (whether they know it or not), I don't like to think of a world without him. This morning's pork chop incident suddenly plays in my mind, and I giggle. Jonathan Winters taught me that. In one of his few movie appearances, he played twin brother undertakers in the film adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's "The Loved One". One of the brothers devises a plan to cope with a crowded cemetery by launching coffins into space, labeled "Resurrection Now!" If only.

Annette

She was a Mouseketeer. She was the girl on Spin and Marty. She was a young teenager visiting Los Angeles who met Senor Zorro. And she was a beach bunny who was always the sensible girlfriend of Frankie Avalon. There were songs like "Pineapple Princess", and "Tall Paul".

The "Iron Lady", Margaret Thatcher, may have passed away earlier today, but she only ruled a country in an era when it was a boy's club (and still is for the most part). Her polices did much to harm her country, and the people of her country, and the countries which followed the lead she and Ronnie provided.

Annette ruled our hearts. She partied on the beach like every teenager since wanted to do, following the lead she and Frankie provided. She solved all of the gang's problems, and triumphed over bullies and her often thick headed boyfriend. And she had a sense of humor about it all, even appearing as herself with Frankie on Pee Wee's Playhouse, and in a "Back to the Beach" movie.

In the late 1990's there were rumors that she had a problem with alcohol. Usually a private person, she went public and announced that she had MS. She took it on in typical Annette fashion, and started The Annette Funicello Fund for Neurological Diseases . My Uncle had MS. When it's in the family, one tends to notice things like this.

I hope the youth of today discover her now, and follow the lead she provided. It's a much better path than the other woman who passed on today.







Rest in Peace, Lady. Rest in Peace.

Emma Smith

April the 3rd was a Tuesday that year. The banks had been closed the day before as part of Easter Holiday. People had a little extra money on them. It was an old neighborhood, the large houses the main remnant of the days when it had been fashionable. The French who had built them had moved out to the country. The Irish had come, and then the Jews. The jobs had gone. The big old houses built by and for wealthy merchants had been carved up into rooms.

In the early hours of the morning, Emma Elizabeth Smith was assaulted and robbed on the corner of Osborn Street and Brick Lane. No one knew much about her. There was something in the way she talked that hinted at a cultured and educated life; she might have once been well off. Someone said that she had two children, a son and a daughter who lived in another part of town. Even though she had been injured, she managed to walk the block to her rooming house at 18 George Street. She told Mary Russell that she had been attacked by three men, one a teenager. With the help of another tenant, Annie Lee, Russell took Smith to hospital where she was treated by surgeon George Haslip. Smith fell into a coma and died the next morning.

Two days went by before the police were notified. At the inquest, Dr. G. H. Hiller found that she had  been brutally raped  with a blunt object which ruptured several internal organs. The police report described her clothing as being comprised of rags so dirty that it was impossible to tell if there had been fresh tears in them. The official cause of death was listed as peritonitis. The police investigation noted that though she was poor and friendless, every effort was taken to find her assailant. Smith and been a prostitute. She was most likely attacked by her pimp or a gang of pimps as intimidation or for refusing to follow orders, they decided.

Several months later detective Walter Dew developed another theory. On the 7th of August, the day after another bank holiday, Martha Tabram was murdered in the same neighborhood. She was a prostitute and had been stabbed many times. At the end of that month, Mary Ann Nichols was murdered. A reporter from the Star may have talked to Walter Dew for the paper soon began to note theories similar to his: all three women had been prostitutes, all in their mid 40's, all from the same area, their murders thought to be the work of gangs of pimps. Perhaps the deaths were the work of the same person.

It was 1888, and in the slums of London, the legend of Jack the Ripper was born.

Whatever Became of...

So there I was, about an hour ago, looking up today's date in an online Almanac. I believe that I have
previously mentioned that several years ago I started an illustrated online daily almanac for a discussion board type website. I enjoy this sort of thing. In the entries I found for this date, two things caught me by surprise.

Today is the birthdate of Ron Palillo, the actor who played the role of Horshack on the ABC sitcom "Welcome Back Kotter" (1975 - 1979). I can't say that I was a fan of the show, or watched it much, but I sure remember his goofball character. I was taken by surprise to note that he passed away last year. I had a vague memory of reading this, but I had to look this up - so easy to do now in these days of an information overloaded internet. As it turns out, he felt his later career was hampered by his identification with that role. He was on the sitcom "Ellen", which I enjoyed watching - but I can't remember his being on it. At one point in his career, he taught at the University in Storrs, CT - the hometown of a friend of mine. Palillo had been living in Florida with Joseph Gramm, his partner of 41 years, when he suffered a heart attack and passed at the age of 63.

Also noted in the birthday list was Debralee Scott, who played "Hotsie" Totsie on the same tv show. I was surprised to note that she passed away in 2005. She played the younger sister on "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman", a 1976 - 1977 oddball tv show I greatly enjoyed. In her bio, it mentioned that her fiancée, a NYC policeman, died in the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. She moved to Florida to care for an ailing sister. One day she collapsed, went into a coma, and woke a few days later on her birthday. Three days later she went to take a nap and never woke up.

This flow of information suddenly made me remember the "Whatever Became of..." book series by Richard Lamparski. Each of the various editions used to sell quite well back in the 1970's when I was running bookstores in NYC for a living. Lamparski had been a PR guy, and had a radio show on WBAI on the same topic. His comments on the folks in his books were often somewhat pithy (today we would say "snarky"). One memorable remark noted that an actress who once had a famous early tv show, "... by no means considers herself retired and greatly resents being considered a has-been." Of course, I had to look up Lamparki. He seems to be one of the people who hasn't made it into Wikipedia. Imagine that. I did find, however, that he is now in his 80's and has been living in retirement in California. Radio station WFMU (Hi, Wendy!) has a nice entry about him on their blog.


Oops, look at the time. Gotta go.
 

The April Fool

Most of my morning has been spent working on this post. Everything looked great, lined up the way I wanted, etc. That was in the Chrome browser that Blogger allegedly prefers. When I looked at it in the Internet Explorer Web Browser, it was a bit of a mess. I've spent two hours fighting to get the text and photos to line up properly. And I just can't seem to win this one. Sorry, I have other things to do and I'm leaving it the way it is.

The morning was appropriately groggy. So was I. The very first email I opened contained news that at the last minute the Vermont Views website, which was listing our community radio station (which I run) as "non-profit of the month" had changed its mind. As I sank into a resigned sigh, the words "April Fool!" entered in my consciousness. There was an audible low guttural growl which emerged from somewhere within my being. It's April. The poet called it "the cruelest month". The poet may have been right.

Over the last two weeks, I've started many a post for the blog, only to abandon them all for various reasons. I had a cataract removed and was laid low for three days by reactions to the surgery. One partial post was forsaken when there were problems at the radio station which resulted in the rest of my day, and most of the next, being spent in email correspondence. I no longer feel in control of my time. I wonder if I ever really was.



Unpacking at the new WVEW studio

Yesterday was Easter. I became a bit lost in reverie. I spent most of last Easter working with the radio station's engineer wiring our new studio It had been almost a year since the fire at the Brooks House which had taken us off the air.

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012 - logging into a computer to
turn on the transmitter and return WVEW to the air. 

We lost everything in the fire - our transmitter was in the studio and our antenna was on the roof. When something like that happens, the station is given one year to get back on the air or lose its broadcast license. Before we left the studio that day, I logged onto one of our new computers and used it to turn on our new transmitter which was now located (with our antenna) at a school on a hill on the outskirts of town. For a few brief minutes, we were on the air. I called Laura over at Austanspace and asked her to tune us in. She heard us. It was real, it worked. While we were working in the studio, the Easter Zombie Walk made its way through downtown. It's an annual local tradition. I hope it was held this year, I haven't been able to find anything on it - I had wanted to go out and photograph it. I made my way out to Austanspace's Shire for Easter dinner. That morning, I'd also put up an Easter blog post which addressed my love for those absurd biblical era movie spectaculars. I'd intended to do another one this year. How on earth did I get all that done? And that list of accomplishment is decidedly meager compared to what I used to accomplish on any given day  during my years in New York City. At any rate, two days later, after calling an early halt to the station's Board meeting, I ushered the Board members into our new studio, logged in once more to the transmitter, and returned our station to broadcast mode. This year, I accomplished - nothing much. And I was busy from the moment I got up until the moment I went to bed.


"Jubilee" Jim Fisk

Today is the birthday of James (Jubilee Jim) Fisk. He was one of the Robber Barons of the Gilded Age. Born on the other side of the state, his family moved to Brattleboro when he was a child. His father became the owner and manager of a hotel on the corner of Main and Elliot Streets, known as the Revere House, in the days when Brattleboro was a resort town famous for its "water cure". At the age of 15, he ran away and joined the circus. There are reports that he made a fair amount of money by smuggling cotton during the US Civil War. He became a stockbroker working in the office of Daniel Drew, another famous thief of the financial world. (Drew's money founded a Methodist Seminary which expanded to become Drew University, which I attended in 1968-1969.) Daniel Drew was the kind of guy who used to have his cattle drink water to increase their weight just before their price per pound sale. His shady deals became known for using phony and unauthorized stocks, thereby lowering their value. Such stock were soon called "watered down" in his dubious honor.

At the offices of Daniel Drew, Jim Fiske hooked up with Jay Gould. Together they assisted Drew in manipulating the price of Erie Railroad stock, which they swindled away from Cornelius Vanderbilt. They eventually swindled the Erie away from Drew for good measure. They were openly allied with New York City's notoriously corrupt mayor "Boss" Tweed in the bribing of judges and legislatures. They also caused a financial panic which ruined many investors when they convinced President Grant to purchase and hold on to gold; they had the United States Assistant Treasurer in on the deal while they manipulated the price. For their offices, Gould and Fiske bought the Pike Opera House building at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue in NYC.

Samuel Pike had purchased much of the old Clement Clark Moore estate and built upon it a five story opulent 1,800 seat opera house which cost over a million dollars, unheard of at the time. Although the area quickly became a theater district, Pike was never able to lure patrons away from the Academy of Music on 14th Street. Within a year of its opening, Pike closed it. Fisk and Gould bought it and spent another million renovating the building, renamed it the "Grand Opera House", and became theatrical impresarios as well as financiers.

Pike's Opera House

Josie Mansfield

Now, Fisk had married young, and lived apart from his wife. She stayed in Boston with a close female companion. He also purchased a building close to the Opera House and had a secret tunnel built to connect the two. The apartment was for his mistress, Josie Mansfield, an actress.

Edward Stokes

  Mansfield's affections were soon shared with one of  Fisk's employees, Edward Stokes.  Stokes left his wife and children and moved in with her. Together, they attempted to bribe Fisk through the use of letters which detailed some of his underhanded dealings.  Fisk refused to pay up, and started a public relations battle. Stokes was arrested on charges of embezzlement. (It's a long story.) One year to the day of his arrest later, nearly bankrupt and ruined, Stokes shot and killed Jubilee Jim Fisk on the staircase of the Grand Central Hotel. Fisk was 36 years old.

Fisk's body was brought back to Brattleboro for burial in the Prospect Hill cemetery where a large monument was erected to his memory. The monument's central stone is surrounded by four scandalously underdressed (i.e. bare breasted) women, each of whom holds something connected to Mr. Fisk. One holds pieces of railroad track. One, a money bag. Another holds a steamship (another Fisk story). The last holds an emblem of the Opera House.

Fisk's story became the subject of a 1937 movie, "The Toast of New York", bears a great resemblance to part of the plot for the movie "Citizen Kane", and was the subject of several best selling books. Edward Stokes served four years of his prison term before being paroled. Fisk had given freely to charity and was in held in esteem by many - upon his release, there were numerous threats made against Stokes who spent the rest of his life looking over his shoulder and feeling hunted. Fisk's wife died in poverty in Boston. Josie Mansfield made her way to Paris where she married before returning to the states. The rest of her story is unknown. She was rumored to have lived under assumed names in Boston, and in New Jersey where she allegedly died, as per a report in the New York Times. There is one published report that she found her way back to Paris where she died at the American Hospital. There are also newspaper reports that, paralyzed and in dire poverty, she entered a convent in South Dakota to avoid the poorhouse, passed and was buried in an unmarked grave.

The Grand Opera House puttered on for many years, never very successfully. It was purchased and turned into a movie theatre, the RKO Grand in 1938. It continued operating until 1960 when it was  closed, slated for demolition when the Ladies' Garment Union began  redevelopment of the area into the Penn South residential apartments for union members and their families. Two weeks later, it burned to the ground. It was eventually replaced with a nondescript three story office building, the memories of Robber Barons, the Grand Opera House, Jubilee Jim, his mistress, and the Gilded Age long gone.

A current view of the corner of 23rd Street and 8th Aveue, New York City

The Spring Bulb Show

It's that time of year.

The clocks have sprung ahead by an hour and nothing seems quite right yet. There were two surprisingly sunny days which warmed into the low 50 degrees Fahrenheit. I was too busy to truly enjoy either of them. Saturday was spent working on my radio show. The first 'official' broadcast of my program was on March the 11th, 2000. I'll tell that story another day, maybe tomorrow. You have been warned. Sunday morning was spent working on setting up the handicapped accessible production room for the station. I'll probably get around to that story, too. Why do I think of all these when I haven't had an idea for weeks and I've already decided upon this entry into the blog? Probably because it's that time of year.

See, here in New England, and especially here in my little corner of Vermont, the skies turn gray in October. And it lasts until April, sometimes May. Over the last week or so, the odor of skunk has reappeared, a sure sign the mating rituals are on - Spring is coming. Unwanted email advertising messages, blessedly filtered out by Norton, have returned in quantity so reminiscent of pre-Easter bunny rabbit litters that one checks to make sure that anti-spam programs and firewalls are still active. At the moment, offers to help me spend monies to be garnered from my new improved credit rating are slightly outnumbered by offers to help in the bankruptcy sure to be caused by my suddenly lowered credit rating. At this time of year, the itchiness rises. Cabin Fever sets in. Meek little housewives finger the carving knife while studying their husband's necks - oh, wait that's hot dry Santa Annas. Sorry 'bout that Raymond Chandler. The where are the snows of yesteryear begin to vanish exposing brown or green grass like so much promise of a smile on a summer night, or the whisper of a "yes". But the promise is as yet unfulfilled. The chalice has been raised but the miracle has not yet happened. "Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate".

One of my coping mechanisms is to go off to Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Every year around the first two weeks of March, the horticulture department uses the first two rooms of the college's 118 year old Lyman conservatory for a display of tulips, daffodils, and other bulbs which can be tricked into early bloom. There are other rooms to explore, devoted to plants from cool temperate climates, the palm house, a room of succulents, etc.

The Lyman Conservatory (and a late snow covered magnolia) from a picture I took so long ago I don't remember the year. The magnolia is gone now. 

When you enter the Conservatory, it is through a brick visitor's entrance. Admission is free, but a $2.00 donation is requested. The door to the greenhouse complex leads you into a riot of color and scent. Nearing the end of a New England winter, the perfume of daffodils and tulips upon entry is so overwhelming I can easily imagine being knocked over backwards by its force.

You have to wait a bit, or be exceptionally lucky, to be able to get a shot of the first two rooms (i.e. the bulb show) without people crowding the aisles. Over the years I've been there at various times of day, and I have never entered into an empty room. You might think that since these are very old greenhouse rooms, they aren't all that big. Which, I suppose, is true. But one does not notice as the senses take awhile to recover from the effect of entry; after a Brattleboro winter, the experience approaches lush decadence. The right hand side of the entry way is, in itself, a start down a primrose path...

Once you recover your bearings, you begin to notice that there are wonderful details everywhere. It is easy to once again become overwhelmed. There is so much to see, and so many people you worry there won't be time. Really. We have only taken a few steps inside. Take a few more steps, and the view changes:

The other rooms of the conservatory are also worth every moment one can spend there:

If you wander down the short path in the Cool Temperature Plant Room, there is a waterfall:

I could use a nice sit on the bench across from that waterfall just now. This post is in its second day. To post to the blog, I use the Chrome browser after Blogger decided it did not wish to work with my usual browser. There was a potential security issue with Java, so I updated. The browser now frequently freezes. I've re-installed it twice to no avail. This morning, there was a new version of my usual browser (Explorer) available, so I downloaded and installed it. It opened, but refused to load any pages. Normally, I'd check for reviews and reactions before downloading something important. I guess it was the heady onrush of the promise of Spring that unhinged me so that I took such leave of my normal procedures. Perhaps a visit to the Tropical Room will help.

The following is from my last visit to the Spring Bulb show, back on March the 12th of 2006. The bananas hadn't started ripening yet this year...

There are still other rooms to visit:

This year the hallway of orchids didn't have its usual display, so I've reached back to 2006 for this one:

The hallway did have a few things in it, though:

Of course, the only way to exit all of this is to retrace your steps and go back through the bulb rooms (and see everything you missed the first time).

Well, the parking meters near the college only last two hours, so it was time to leave and go off for lunch. Which, by my 'breath of spring' ritual is at the nearby Miss Florence diner.

On my last visit there in 2006, I was sitting in one of the booths when I realized that my my little digital camera had fallen out of my pocket. I left my contact information with the owner just in case, retraced the days path to the greenhouses, all to no avail. Three days later, I got a call from the diner's owner. He'd been moving the wooden booth seats to clean, and there was my camera! It was picked up by a friend and returned to Brattleboro, as I didn't have a car at the time. I've also been without a car for the past few years; my trip to the bulb show was made on both occasions with my friend, driver, and camera rescuer Ralph Kunkel. Ralph has a great show on our Community Radio Station, "And How That Rhythm", every Sunday morning from 10am until noon. He's very good, by the way, at stepping out of a picture in that moment between pressing the camera button and the movement of the shutter. Still, I did manage to get one taken. Thanks for the excursion, Ralph!