The Public "I"

THE MARY CELESTE

2009-12-27T05:55:00.000-05:00

I like to think the rafts washed up on the beach at Playa del Silencio. It seems a fitting place for a mystery to end, swept by the stormy Basque Sea, along the lonely Astrurian northern coast of Spain. According to a report in a Liverpool newspaper, there were two makeshift rafts found by fishermen off that coast. One was flying the American flag. Lashed to that raft were the decomposed remains of a human being. Lashed to the second raft, were five more badly decaying bodies. It was the spring of 1873, and this may have been where the mystery of the Mary Celeste washed ashore.

She was big; a 282 ton sailing brig built for the prosaic business of the North Atlantic, and launched in Nova Scotia in 1861. But she was always a sad ship. Her first captain died of pneumonia on her maiden voyage. Her second captain struck a fishing boat and was dismissed. In 1867 a storm ran her ashore and her owners sold her for salvage. She was bought for $11,000. Repaired and refitted, she went back to work.

And at anchor at Staten Island, New York City, on November 3rd, 1872, her new Captain, Benjamin Biggs, wrote a letter to his mother in Marion, Massachusetts .“My Dear Mother:…It seems to me to have been a great while since I left home, but it is only over two weeks…For a few days it was tedious, perplexing, and very tiresome but… It seems real homelike since Sarah and Sophia (his wife and 2 yr. old daughter) got here, and we enjoy our little quarters…We seem to have a very good mate and steward and I hope I shall have a pleasant voyage…We finished loading last night and shall leave on Tuesday morning if we don't get off tomorrow night, the Lord willing. Our vessel is in beautiful trim and I hope we shall have a fine passage, but I have never been in her before and can’t say how she'll sail. (You) shall want to write us in about 20 days to Genoa, care of the American Consul… Hoping to be with you in the spring with much love, I am yours, affectionately, Benjamin.”

Captain Biggs sailed on November 5th with a crew of eight, (three Americans, four Germans and one Dane), and two passengers - his wife Sarah and little Sophia. His cargo was 1,701 barrels of commercial alcohol bound for customers in Italy. The ship docked next to the Mary Celeste at Staten Island had been the British merchant brig Dei Gratia, captained by a friend of Briggs, David Morehouse. The Dei Gracia left New York Harbor ten days later, on November 15, bound, like the Mary Celeste before her, for the straits of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean beyond.

The Dei Gratia had a smooth voyage and three weeks later was approaching the coast of Portugal on December 4th, when a lookout reported a ship at five miles distance which was sailing oddly. The sails, two of which were fully rigged, appeared to be slightly torn. As Captain Morehouse moved closer he realized she was the Mary Celeste. There were no distress flags flying and everything otherwise appeared normal except in two hours of observation not a soul appeared on deck. Three men were sent to board the Mary Celeste.

The bording crew reported “…the whole ship was a thoroughly wet mess”, but fully seaworthy. She still carried a six month supply of food and fresh water. The crew’s personal possessions appeared untouched, including their valuables, and their foul weather gear. There were no signs of a struggle, although the Captain’s cabin was in considerable disarray. No flag was found.

The log book, the sextant and chronometer were all missing, as was the 20 foot life boat with sail. A thick line had been tied to the Mary Celeste’s railing. The other end was frayed and dragging in the current. And there was not a single soul on board, not even a cat. The 3 man crew sailed the Mary Celeste to Gibraltar, where an Admiralty’s court was convened and a commission was appointed to investigate the mystery.

The investigation found that nine of the barrels of alcohol aboard the Mary Celeste were empty. But the boarding party had reported smelling no fumes. The last entry in the captain’s log was dated November 24th, 1872 - when the Mary Celeste was 100 miles off Santa Maria, the southern most of the Azore islands. This seemed to imply that the ship had sailed another 370 miles in nine days with no one at the helm.

Frederick Solly-Flood, the Attorney General for Gibraltar, seems to have suspected the captain and crew of the Dei Gratia of some involvement, but all suggestion of evil was shown to be baseless after a suspected blood stain on a knife was proven to be mere rust. A diver found the hull did not “…exhibit any trace of damage or injury or…had any collision or had struck upon any rock or shoal or had met with any accident or casualty.” The commission’s final judgment was that there was no evidence of foul play, piracy, mutiny or violence.

But if that were so why would a healthy crew abandon a seaworthy ship in the middle of the ocean? The British suspicions undoubtedly influenced what the Admiralty’s court did next. The crew of the Dei Gratia was awarded $46,000 in salvage rights for the Mary Celeste (the equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars today). But this was barely 20% of what the ship and cargo had been insured for.

Over the next year the owners and American authorities offered a reward and conducted a search in ports large and small around the Atlantic rim, for anyone matching the description of Captain Briggs, his wife and child, or any of the crew members from the Mary Celeste. Not a trace was found. It was as if they had simply vanished from the face of the earth.

The Mary Celeste was returned to her owners in New York and sold 17 times over the next 13 years. Finally, in 1885, she was driven onto a reef off Haiti and then set afire in an insurance scam. But she refused to sink and the owner was jailed. The sad, unlucky Mary Celeste slowly decomposed on the reef until a storm finally freed her last timbers to slide into the sea.

This leaves me to ponder the fate of the human cargo of the Mary Celeste; a woman and child and eight men - ten souls in a twenty foot single mast-ed yawl life boat. Whatever their reason for abandoning the Mary Celeste, once they did they were fully exposed to the winds of fate.

The weather service on the Azores records that on the morning of November 24th , the date of the Captain's last log entry, a gale blew up with torrential rains, a gale which finally blew itself out only on the morning of December 4th, the morning the lookout on the Dei Gratia spotted the abandoned Mary Celeste.

The Azores current travels eastward at 2 knots an hour away from the islands. Suppose, for some reason - perhaps because of a leak of explosive alcohol fumes, or crew members driven mad by drinking the pure alcohol - the crew had abandoned the Mary Celest in good weather. And suppose that a gale had suddenly blown up, seperated the life boat from the ship, and had driven the desperate little yawl northeastward for three or four days while breaking the little life boat to bits. And suppose the survivors had gathered the flotsam into a pair of rafts. Without food or water, suppose those rafts, carrying the remains of the crew, and still tied together, had drifted for five months into Biscayne Bay. And suppose the rope joining those rafts had finally seperated, just before they were driven in toward The Beach of Silence, on the northern coast of Spain. Suppose all of that happened. That may have been what happened to the crew of the Mary Celeste.

I think it was. And I think little Sophia would have grown into a very lovely young lady.

- 30 -

DECEMBER 23, 2009

2009-12-22T16:47:00.003-05:00

TWAS THE HEALTH CARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS

(With Apologies to Mr. Clement Clarke Moore)

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the House

Not a creature was stirring, nor in the White House.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with flair,
In hopes the CBO would fill them with a deficit neutral
Reform of Health Care.

The represenatives were nestled all snug in their beds,

While visions of re-election danced in their heads.
And Nancy Pelosi in her ‘kerchief, and John Boehner in his cr-p,
Had just settled their brains for a long Christmas nap.

When over in the Senate there arose such a clatter,

Twas hundreds of GOPers, all a twatter.
They called Glen Beck up in a flash
And twittered their brains out.
Twas nothing but trash.

The moon on the breast of Olympia Snowe

Gave a brief luster of press coverage to her endless blow.
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But the Blue Dogs flexing muscles, and discovering
the power of schmear.

With a little old trick, from history’s youth.

Hands washing hands, remains political truth.
I knew in my heart, with a choice of carrot or abstain,
Carrots improve vision, and vision's always a gain.
Leaving Lindsey Graham’s complaints sounding quite lame.

"Now Cantor! now, Hatch! now, McConnell and Luger!

On, Ensign! On Collins, on Bennet,. DeMint and the Vitter!
On, McCain! On, Roberts! On Sessions and Shelby!
Party unity over constituents healthy!
And dash, dash away, dash away hope for any!”

As sad polls that before the hurricane fly,

When politicians fail to respond when health ills mount to the sky.
But up to the house-top the Blue Dogs they flew,
With their sleighs full of pork, and health care, too.

And then, in a twinkling, I heard the reproof

The hemming and hawing of each Republican goof.
As they drew in their horns, and were turning around,
Down the chimney the Democrats came with the blue hound.

They were garbed in glory, from their head to their foot,

And their achievements were not tarred by insults or soot.
A bundle of goodies they flung from their sack,
And they looked like peddlers, just opening their PACs.

The voters eyes-how they twinkled! Their responses how merry!

Their checks were like roses, as they paid the apothecary!
The Republican strategy had blown up in their faces,
As they faced falling numbers, and competitive races.

A towering spire ground flat, is a base.

And a base only wins if there is no race.
This may be ugly, but it's politics, the Blue Dogs explained with their smirks.
And this is how ugly it gets when the system works.

It could have been Republican pork that filled the pot,

Instead it was the blue dogs who were johnny-on-the-spot.
Call it pork if you must, fie and curse the lack of principle.
But government of the people, means government for the people

So speak not of evil, but stick straight to your work,

And fill every stocking, and ignore all those jerks.
And show a finger - for those who refuse
To compromise, are destined to lose.

While seeking perfection, it is best to remember,

A “more perfect union” is all we get each November.
And as the Republicans scattered, like chaff from the riddle,
I beg you remember, as we continue to fiddle,
For democracy we need both the left and the middle.
Merry Christmas to all, and come the new year, out of the fire and back in the griddle.

Kimit A. Muston

MR. LYNCH'S LAW

2009-12-20T04:53:00.001-05:00

I am amazed by the number of prominent men named Lynch hanging around the Piedmont country of Virginia in 1781. There was a William Lynch from Pittsylvania County who became a militia captain. Lynchburg was named for John Lynch who in 1781 had a stranglehold on ferry service over the James River. There was a James Lynch who had died in March at the battle of Guillford Courthouse, just 40 miles south of the Virginia border. And in October of that year, about a hundred miles to the east, James Head Lynch hung out his shingle, identifying his tavern, near the camps occupied by French troops during the battle of Yorktown. But the Lynch I get breathless about was a Quaker who lived 13 miles due south of Lynchburg.

At 19 years of age Charles Lynch tied the knot with Miss Anna Terrell and moved into a log cabin that he called Green Level, and which he roped into more than six thousand acres between the Roanoke and Otter Rivers. To work his fields Charles kept up to 24 human beings tied in bondage, which required dancing quite a moral jig for a Quaker, and something we know Charles was bothered by – just not bothered enough to stop profiting from it. The tobacco Charles grew was exported to England. And in cash poor Virginia that made him a local economic power. Charles was now in the loop of the planter-class society; no more mood swings for Chuck.

In 1766 Charles became a Bedford County Justice of the Peace, tied to the courts in New London, the county seat, and the House of Burges in Williamsburg. With the coming of the American Revolution, the now forty year old Charles was appointed a Colonel in the Virginia Militia. And as a militia leader his immediate concern was not the British, but the Cherokees.

While the Minute Men in New England were killing red coats at Bunker and Breed’s Hills, Virginia politicians were worried that this was noose time to leave their isolated frontier settlements out on a limb. So in October of 1776 a force of 1,600 Virginia and North Carolina militia, including Colonel Charles Lynch and his men from Bradford and Pittsylvania Counties, mounted a preemptive strike. They burned over 50 Cherokee towns, murdered their male inhabitants, ravaged their crops, slaughtered their livestock and left the women and children survivors to twist slowly in the cold winter winds. In desperation the frayed survivors retreated over the mountains into Kentucky and Tennessee, surrendering five million acres to their American executioners. This one expedition secured Virginia’s open flank, and for four years the state felt safe.

But, as they say, no noose is good noose. And in the winter of 1780 came word that the scourge of Independence, Benedict Arnold, leading a mix of red coats and Tories (loyalists), had arrived to choke off the revolution by giving Virginia the same treatment Virginia had given the Cherokee. The towns of Williamsburg and Richmond were captured. The state's new Governor, Thomas Jefferson, missed the gallows by a hair’s breath. Half the Virginia legislature was lassoed. Their plantations were burned. At the same time General Cornwallis was approaching Virginia, chasing Nathanial Green’s little Continental army northward across the Carolinas. The Tories were in every patriot’s pocket, as the region was suddenly awash in counterfeit Continental dollars. Virginia was suddenly standing on a trap door, and the British were ready to pull the lever and drop the patriots into eternity.

The local Tories saw this as the opportunity to strike at the Patriots who had been bullying them for 5 years, or so the bullies assumed. Rumors strung across the piedmont of Tory plans to sabotage the lead mines owned by Charles, the iron works outside of Lynchburg (in which Charles was an investor), free the 4,000 British and Hessian prisoners held at present day Charlottesville, and worse, capture the Patriot arsenal at New London, Virginia, which Charles had invested in.

Every sickened horse was presumed to have been poisoned by Tories. Every house and barn fire was assumed to have been Tory arson. As the newly appointed sheriff of Bedford County, Charles Lynch decided he was at the end of his rope. He had to act, if for no other reason than to galvanize the frayed Patriot nerves. He deputized a core of supporters and began throwing a noose over the countryside, roping in suspected Tories and bringing them to trial before a rump court in his own front yard, at Green Level.

The trials were brief while the punishments were swift and brutal. None of those arrested were strung up, but they were forced to either swear allegiance to the patriot cause or be tied to a tree and receive 39 lashes on their bare backs, followed by imprisonment. It seems to have been effective, as no Tory uprising occurred - if there had ever been any real possibility of such an uprising.

As spring approached, and the courts at Green Level continued, Governor Jefferson asked Charles to lead a regiment of riflemen to support Nathaniel Green in North Carolina. Did Jefferson make that request, at least in part, to bring an end to the Mr. Lynch’s courts? Jefferson never said so. He did send a letter thanking Charles for his "defense of liberty". But the Lynch courts also dropped off the agenda of the new sheriff.

When General Green made his stand at Guilford Courthouse Charles was in command of the Patriot right flank. After Cornwallis’ costly victory there, Green kept Charles in North Carolina; even after Cornwallis’ wounded army limped north across the Virginia border and into the trap at Yorktown.

In 1782 the Virginia legislature voted retroactive approval of Colonel Charles Lynch’s courts. The punishments Charles had rendered in his front yard were now called “Lynch’s Law”. But the House of Burghers set up no mechanism to repeat such 'Lynch courts' during any future crises.

In 1793 Charles freed five of his slaves, writing by way of explanation, that it was, “…our duty to do unto all men as we would they should do unto us.” However he freed only those five and left the rest in bondage to be inherited by his children, like a barn or a favorite chair. Charles Lynch died in his home at Green Level in 1796. He was sixty years old.

Some years later a Captain William Lynch, then living just over the Virginia border in North Carolina, stepped forward to claim that he had been the origin of the phrase “Lynch Law”. But there is no evidence William Lynch ever issued any pseudo-justice which would have inspired such an appellation. The vigilante compact of the Pittsylvania County Alliance he supposedly signed seems to have been an invention for an 1836 magazine article by Edgar Allen Poe, a known writer of invention (see “Tell Tale Poe”). And anyone who would claim credit for such a ga-rotten conception should be lynched, because that is just not puny.

http://www.avocamuseum.org/index.html
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-lyn1.htm

- 30 -

WHY NOBILITY DIED

2009-12-18T04:56:00.001-05:00

I offer you the poster child for why history has regulated noble blood to the dust bin: Richard Plantagenet, the biggest fool in Europe at a time when Europe was just overflowing with fools. To know Richard was to despise Richard. The better you knew him, the better you despised him. He was the kind of violent lunatic thug that only a mother could love, and she had moments of doubt. If he had been born in the twenty-first century Richard would have been confined in a mental institution as a child. But he was born in the Middle Ages, so they made him a King.

Physically, Richard was gorgeous. He spoke fluent French. He even wrote poetry in French. In fact he didn't speal English at all. He was tall and athletic, with red hair and soft grey eyes. He also had a passion for violence and poetry that was the romantic ideal in the 12th century. And most of the press in the English speaking world remains enamored of Richard even now - but then he only spent 6 months in England in his entire life, so they never got to know him in person.

Richard was the favorite and eldest son of Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the smartest, most lovely, most duplicitous women of her age and clearly one of the worst mothers ever born. This woman should never have given birth to a living human child. Doctor Phill could have done an entire series of shows on her.

Richard was also the second son of Henry II, the smartest of the smart and violent Plantagenet Kings. Richard was like his father in every way, except he was more violent and less smart.

With the help of his mother, Richard finally cornered his sick and elderly father and took him prisoner. Richard then had the satisfaction of hearing his father call him “a bast-rd” from his death bed. And you thought you didn't get along with your old man. But it was the entitlement of nobility that raised Richard's simple neruoses to the level of a full blown psychosis.

Placing a crown on his head instantly converted Richard Plantagenet into Richard I, King of England, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine and Gascony, Lord of Ireland and Cyprus, Count of Anjou and Nantes and Overlord of Brittany, also known as Richard Coeur de Lion, or Richard the Lion Heart.

Richard celebrated his coronation in June of 1189 by having the local Jews, who had showed up bearing gifts for him, whipped and flogged. He followed this by a general massacre of all the Jews in London and in York. Baldwin d’Eu, the Archbishop of Canterbury, summed up Richard's theory of nobility this way, “If the King is not God’s man, he had better be the devil’s”. And Baldwin should know, being the son of a liaison between an Archdeacon and a nun.

The first thing the new King did, after cleaning up all those Jewish corpses, was to lay heavy taxes on everybody to pay for a Third Crusade, to rescue the Holy Land from the Muslims, because they were so bad. To pay for that Richard announced “I would have sold London if I could have found a buyer." Of course Richard's loyal subjects in England never heard that particular royal comment.

In May of 1191 Richard’s army of 40,000 knights and 40,000 footmen arrived on the island of Cyprus, where Richard threw the local Christian ruler into a dungeon in chains, pillaged the island for even more money and slaughtered any Christian who objected. Being on crusade not only cleaned up Richard's past sins, it earned him a pass on any sins he might committ while on crusade; the Pope had said so.

After annexing Cyprus as his personal property, Richard then moved on to the Holy Land, where he joined the King of France and other European nobility in slaughtering Muslims, Christians and Jews without discrimination as to race, religion, age or sex. During the siege of Acre, Richard fell ill and had servants carry him about the fortifications in a sedan chair while he took pot shots at the defenders with a crossbow.When Acre fell, (and while its citizens were being slaghtered) Richard’s banner and that of Phillip of France were planted on the cities’ walls. But so was the banner of Leopold V, of Austria, who figured he was entitled as the sole representative on this crusade of the Holy Roman Emperor, who had died enroute.

Richard however, disagreed and had Leopold’s banner torn down. Well, Leopold already had a problem with Richard because Leopold was related through his mother to the ruler of Cyprus, whom Richard had overthrown and imprisoned. And the instant his banner fell to the gutters of Acre, Leopold pulled his entire army out of the Crusade and sailed for home.

Within a month Phillip of France had also gotten fed up with Richard's ego and he sailed for home, leaving the Lion Heart with only about a third of his army left, and burdened with more than 3,000 Muslim prisoners captured at Acre. The Muslum leader, Saladin, wasn't willing to pay the ransom Richard was demanding, so Richard had all the prisoners executed.That little faux paux ensured that Saladin, who had been trying to negotiate a peace treaty with the Christians, would continue the war just to make Richard bleed as much as possible. At the same time Richard’s overbearing rule even at a distance had produced a rebellion back on Cyprus, which eventually forced him to sell his island conquest to a cousin.

Richard's arrogance and ignorance also led to the election of an anti-Richard crusader, Conrad de Montforrat, as the new King of Jerusalem. That made Conrad the leader of the Christian army, which made him Richard’s boss. And Richard did not like bosses. Richard's participation in the crusades came to a bloody end on April 28, 1192, when Conrad was stabbed to death on the streets of Tyre by two Muslim assassins. So low had Richard’s reputation fallen that everyone assumed (and still assumes, I must add) that Richard had financed the murder. It was all based on flimsey evidence, but with Richard it was always the wise choice to believe the worst. His ego had finally run out his string.

In September 1192 Saladin finally decided to provide Richard with enough of a fig leaf to cover his escape. Salidin agreed to allow Christians to visit Jeruselum at anytime of year, something he had secretly negotiated with Conrad de Montforrat, before Conrad had been murdered. Richard could now claim he had secured the religious freedom of the Holy Land, even if nobody outside of Richard's sycophants believed that he was responsible for it.

Richard had gone on Crusade with a full war chest, 80,000 men and strong allies in France and the Holy Roman Empire. That money was now gone and most of the army was dead. Richard was leaving the holy land with just a handful of personal bodyguards and with every political power broker in Europe gunning for him. He had to sneak back home. And he didn't make it.

Just before Christmas 1192, at an inn outside of Vienna, his old enemy Leopold V caught up with him. Richard was arrested while dressed as a lowly pilgrim. And it is interesting to note that there was not even a rumor that "the Lion Heart" so much as slapped the men who captured him.

Richard was hustled off to Durnsetin castle, high above the Rhine River. And once he was safely under lock and key Leopold set the price for his release at 65,000 pounds of silver. Who, the nobility of Europe must have wondered, would pay three times the annual income of the English crown to free the most pompous, most arrogant and most violent English King there was?

His mommy, that’s who; Eleanor of Aquitaine laid out her personal fortune, and put the squeeze on English churches, English nobility, English merchants and peasants from the white cliffs of Dover, to the mountains of Scotland. Of course, at the same time, Richard’s own younger brother, John, together with Phillip the king of France, were offering 80,000 pounds of silver if Leopold would just hold on to Richard for another year. I guess you could say that Eleanor won this contest, in that, in February of 1194, King Phillip sent brother John the following terse note, “Look to yourself. The devil is loose.”

And so he was. Richard might have wanted to pay back the entire continent for his bad treatment, but his huge ransom and his own boorishness and love of destruction had bankrupted him. He could no longer afford to make war on his neighbors. For the last five years of his life Richard the Lion Heart had to be content with butchering his own subjects, slaughtering them with all the zeal and blood lust he had once displayed on the international stage.

And then in the spring of 1199 Richard heard a rumor that a cache of Roman gold had been discovered in the Limousin region of the Aquitaine, a region so wealthy (before Richard) that luxury autos of a later age would later be named for it. There was no gold, and everybody told him so. But Richard the Lion Heart, Richard the Dunder-Head, Richard the Rush-in-where-angels-fear-to-tread, laid siege to the walled city of Charlus anyway and demanded payment of the non-existant gold. And it was during that pointless siege that a brave young defender named Bertrand de Gurdon pierced Richard’s shoulder with a crossbow bolt.

You know how you say to yourself about violent and dangerous lunatics, "I wonder why somebody doesn't just shoot him?" Well, somebody finally shot Richard. Gangrene set in and the arrogant jackass was finally dead on Tuesday April 6, 1199, dying in his mommy's arms. As a final insult they buried the "bas-ard" at his father's feet, in Rouen Cathedral at Fontefrault.

On his deathbed Richard had insisted that the young crossbowman Bertrand was to be pardoned and set free with 100 shillings, but of course he didn't mean it. In his whole life Richard never chose nobility over violence. And it didn’t happen here. Instead one of Richard’s captains had the sure-shot cross-bowman skinned alive and hanged. That man's horrible death was a fitting legacy for one of the most violent lunatics of the middle ages, a raving psychotic who was made a King, as the thinking at the time insisted, by the grace of God.

God must have been rolling over in her grave.

- 30 -

THE FIRST JOKE

2009-12-16T05:39:00.000-05:00

I believe this was the first American joke of World War Two: holding up a newspaper headline that read "Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor”, the hung-over volunteer in boot camp sadly announced, “I thought Pearl Harbor was a girl!” It was a good joke. And despite holding a ten year lead, the best Japanese gag of the war has largely been forgotten, because somehow many of the Japanese never got the joke themselves. Typical of the humorless sons of Nippon was Lt. Col. Kingoro Hashimoto, who wore the Japanese neo-con mantle long before such right wing ideologies could have been called “neo”.

Kingoro was known for being “… arrogant and insubordinate,” as well as “…ignorant and dangerous” and “a publicity hound”. And that was the way a Japanese general described him. Robert Butow pointed out in his 1961 book “Tojo and the Coming of War”, that Kingoro “…seemed to reappear on the national scene - whenever crises threatened – like a jack-in-the-box when the lid is released.” And that is actually my favorite image of this Japanese anti-social psychopath, as a jack-in-the-box, popping up to play martial music to drown out the punch line.

It was Kingoro who helped plan two attempts to overthrow the elected government in 1931. Both attempts failed, and in response the public elected a moderate Prime Minister. So in 1932 Kingoro supported the assassination of that Prime Minister. In September of 1933 Kingoro help manufacture the Japanese takeover of Manchuria. And it was Kingoro who, during the 1937 infamous “Rape of Nanking”, in China , ordered the attack on the American gun boat Panay, which killed three American sailors and wounded 48 others. That little joke cost the Japanese $2 million in indemnity paid to the United States. (http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/features/0007/01.htm)

However it provided yet more proof that many others in Japan did not favor the lunatics like Kingoro. Public pressure forced Kingoro’s recall and the American ambassador to Japan noted that his embassy was deluged by “…people from all walks of life, from high officials, doctors, professors, businessmen down to school children, trying to express their shame, apologies, and regrets” with the Panay sinking. The Ambassador noted that “never before has the fact that there are 'two Japans' been more clearly emphasized.” There were two Japans, and as the war with China dragged on year after year, the lunatic one remained not amused and unamusing.

According to the humorless plan of the Japanese ultranationalists, China was supposed to supply workers for Japanese industry. But instead of a pool of unlimited manpower, China became a swamp, a drain on Japanese resources, both human and industrial. Could the ultra-nationalists like Kingoro Hashimoto have been wrong? By 1940 there was nobody left alive in a position of authority to suggest so. In September the nationalists doubled-down their bet by invading French Indo-China, looking for natural resources to support their war in China, which was supposed to have made Japan industrially independent

The American response to this invasion was to cut off all oil shipments to Japan: just not right away. We were one of the world’s great oil exporters back in those days. And the American oil companies fought the crimp in their profits tooth and nail. Congress did not approve the embargo until July of 1941, which gave the Japanese time to plan their response. The Japanese navy was burning 2,900 barrels of oil every hour, 11,600 barrels every day. By September their reserves had dropped to 50 million barrels, about a six months supply.

The Japanese neo-ultra-nationalists now faced a choice. They could admit they had been mega-stupid. Or they could invade the Dutch West Indies, to capture the oil fields on Borneo. To protect the flank of that massive operation, the Japanese were forced to include the invasion of the American protectorate of the Philippines, and Operation Z.

While Americans were sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner on November 20, 1941, six fast Japanese aircraft carriers and their escorts were taking on a full load of fuel oil. On November 26 they steamed for Oahu. And in the pre-dawn hours of December 7, 1941 they launched almost 400 aircraft in two waves to attack the naval base at Pearl Harbor. The attack sank four battleships, damaged four others, damaged three cruisers, three destroyers and one mine layer, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,402 and wounded 1,282 American servicemen. And for Japan the attack was a complete and total failure.

To quote from Ted Mahar, and his article on the History Net, “The Battle That Ignited America”( http://www.aracnet.com/~histgaz/pearlharbor/7dec1941.html); “The attack on Pearl Harbor modernized the U.S. Navy in two hours, neutralizing our battleships and forcing us to use the weapon we should have been stressing all along, our carriers, none of which was even damaged, since none was there. Political wrangling between carrier admirals and battleship admirals could have slowed our retaliation. The Japanese streamlined the discussions.”

But more specifically, as was pointed out by U.S. Air Force Major Patrick Donovan in his 2001 paper “Oil and Logistics in the Pacific War”, “By far, the more surprising target oversight of the Japanese attack was the oil and gas storage tanks. The entire fuel supply for the Pacific Fleet was stored in above-ground tanks on the eastern side of the naval base. These tanks were perfectly visible to the naked eye and, ergo, perfect targets. These tanks were particularly susceptible to enemy action…Even a few bombs dropped amongst the tanks could have started a raging conflagration.

“The US Navy had just finished restocking Pearl Harbor to its total capacity of 4.5 million barrels of oil. …The Japanese strategic disregard of the fragile U.S. oil infrastructure in the Pacific was an incredible oversight on their part.”

In other words, the entire raid on Pearl Harbor could have been substituted with a dozen strafing attacks over those fuel tanks with incendiary bullets. Without the oil in those tanks the U.S. Pacific Fleet would have been forced to withdraw to California and Washington State. Hawaii would have been indefensible. And, in the words of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the man who won the war in the Pacific, “Had the Japanese destroyed the oil (stored at Pearl Harbor), it would have prolonged the war another two years.”

It displays an underlying truth about the ideological hawks who preach “preemptive strikes” and wars: they usually prove to be incompetent idiots once the shooting really starts. Kingoro Hashimoto was a perfect example. The man who once warned the world, “Watch me, Hashimoto. I am no man to sit still and talk”, was never promoted within the army. Instead he went into politics. He was convicted in 1948 of crimes against humanity, and was sentenced to life in prison.

He thus provided the best Japanese joke of World War Two. Did you hear about the super patriot who sent tens of thousands of young Americans and millions of innocent young Chinese and Japanese to their deaths? He died in his own bed, at 67 years of age, from lung cancer.

- 30 -

WHY WE FIGHT

2009-12-13T06:57:00.000-05:00

I am tempted to call Thutmose III a mummy’s boy. He had two. His actual birth mother, Iset, had been a "lesser" wife of Thutmose II, the boy's father. His official mother was actually his aunt, Hatshepsut. She had been the "Great Royal God Wife" of Thutmose II, who was her own half brother. Egyptian royal family trees tended to have very few branches. After Thutmose II died in 1479 B.C. Hatshepsut ran the two Kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt successfully for twenty years. She was Pharaoh, while Thutmose III remained the Pharaoh-in-waiting. And living with Hatshepsut for all those years must have been difficult, because I don't think she was a happy woman.

Examination of her mummy in the Cairo museum reveals that besides menopause (she was in her mid-fifties) Hatshepsut suffered from arthritis, diabetes, liver and bone cancer, and really bad teeth. Of course everyone in ancient Egypt had bad teeth, a by-product of chewing sand in every mouth full of food. But what finally killed Hatshepsut, on March 10th, 1459 B.C., was blood poisoning, brought on by an abscess in her gums. It is shocking how often history has been influenced by bad teeth.

Immediately after the old ladies' death, Thutmose III felt the need to invade somebody. Evidentally the young man had been stiffling his anger for a few years, because within days of ascending to the Throne of Horus, Thutmose III ordered his general-in-chief, Thanuny, to gather troops and supplies at the border fortress of Tjaru by the last week August, 1458 B.C.

Clearly Thutmose intended to march into Canaan, and that meant trouble for the kingdom of Kadesh, which was in what is today western Syria. The Kadesh had been an Egyptian ally for over a century. But while Hatshepsut was slowly dying the kings of Kadesh had taken the opportunity to realign themselves with the powerful Hittites, centered in Turkey. The Kings of Kadesh were playing a high stakes poker game, betting their kingdom that Thutmose was a pansy moma's boy who would rather hold court at home than suffer the deprevations of a campaign 300 miles from home.

There was a delay in gathering Thutmose's army, and the Egyptians did not leave Tjaru until February of 1457 B.C. They comprised about 10,000 infantrymen, divided into platoons of six to ten men each, divided between bowmen and lancers. There was no cavalry. Nobody in ancient Egypt rode a horse. The mobile force consisted of two-horse chariots, which, since there were no hard wood trees in Egypt to provide load bearing axles, were light and not built for long distance travel. The advantage was that the chariots could be easily carried by one of their own crewmen.

On this march across the northern Sinai (the Red Desert) skirmishers advanced to the front while raiding parties ranged along the flanks, stealing cattle, grain and water for each night’s camp. Behind came the baggage train of ox carts carrying supplies, repair tents and blacksmiths, soothsayers, priests and musicians.These people were used to walking. Even Thutmose walked at least part of each day's 8 mile march.

The great column didn't reach their Philistine allies' fortress of Gaza (“The key to Syria”) until mid-March. After another 11 days of marching up the coastal plain (covering about 45 miles) Thutmose’s army entered the port of Jamnia, near present day Tel Aviv. Here Thutmose rested his men until the scouts brought word that the Kadeshite armies had advanced to meet him on the Plain of Esdraelon, at the hill fortress of Megiddo.

So in early May, with his communications back to Egypt secured by his navy, Thutmose swung inland, to the small village of Yaham. In front of him now rose a line of low hills, stretching from the northwest (Mt. Carmel at 1,740 feet) to the southeast (Mountains Tabor and Gilboa, 1,929 feet each). Megiddo and the Kadeshamite army were on the north side of these hills.

General Thanuny and his staff explained to Thutmose that there were only two roads to reach Megiddo. The most direct route headed due north from Yaham and then turned northwestward on the Via Maris (the sea route) to the village of Taanakha, before reaching Megiddo. The longer path immediatly headed northwest from Yaham along the southern flank of the mountains before crossing them to reach the Via Maris at the village of Yokneam. From there it was an easy backtrack southeastward to Megiddo.

The Kadeshamite army had divided their infantry, with almost half guarding Taanakha and the other half Yokneam. Stationed at Megiddo (in the center) were their chariots with some infantry support, ready to fall upon either approach the Egyptians made.

However there was also a third choice, which General Thanuny had not mentioned. On the road north toward Yokneam there was a cutoff, a path less traveled, that ran through the village of Aruna and then through a narrow defile. It was so constricted that at the time the army could only march through it in single file, before debauching onto the plain directly in front of Megiddo. It was the most direct route, the shortest route, but his men could only pass through it piecemeal, and they could be destroyed “in detail”, one unit at a time. But Thutmose had already decided to take this route. And anything the Pharoh wanted, the Pharoh got.

Thanuny was able to convince Thutmose he should use 2/3 of the army by feinting an
attack along the two main roads, leaving a third of the force for the direct attack. This made sense since so few men would be able to deploy through the pass, a larger force would just jam things up. Luckily Thutmose agreed. So, before dawn, Thutmose sent perhaps 3,000 men through the pass, single file. They marched quickly and quietly, each man passing his God King Pharoh until they stepped out into view onto the plain at about 1:00 p.m., May 9th , 1457 B.C.

The Kadeshamite chariots, surprised at their enemie's sudden appearance, hastily charged the Egyptian spearmen and let loose a barrage of arrows. But defended by their shield men, the Egyptian formations stood firm. And then, as the Kadeshamites withdrew to reform and attack again, the Egyptian ranks opened up and from the defile appeared the Egyptian chariots, carried through the pass and now reassembled. They fell on the Kadeshamite soldiers like a whirlwind. Okay, a clumsy whirlwind.

“Even when moving at a slow pace, …(the Egyptian war chariot) shook terribly, and when driven at full speed it was only by a miracle of skill that the occupants could maintain their equilibrium…the charioteer would stand astride the front panels, keeping his right foot only inside the vehicle…the reins (were) tied around his body so he could by throwing his weight either to the right or left…pull up or start his horses…he went into battle with bent bow, the string drawn back to his ear…while the shield-bearer, clinging to the body of the chariot with one hand, held out his buckler (shield) with the other to shelter his comrade.” (History of Egypt Chakdea, etc. G. Maspero. Groilier Society)

The Kadesh charioteers panicked at the sudden Egyptian charge, and their causalities tell the story; with just 83 killed, there must have been little fighting. But 240 Kadesh soldiers were taken prisoner, along with 924 chariots and 2,132 horses captured. It would seem that the Kadesh army was largely overrun. The Kadeshite infantry on the wings, now divided by the Egyptian army, abandoned Megiddo and scattered in retreat, no doubt wondering where their Hittite allies were.

Of course the Egyptians had no siege equipmement. It had not yet been invented. So the fortress of Meggido held out for seven months before finally surrendering. The delay did not matter. From the moment Thutmose III spread his tiny force on the Plain of Esdraelon, he had ensured his capture of the hill fort of Megiddo, in Herbrew "har megiddon" (the mountain district of Megiddo), or, in the Canaanite language, Armageddon.

And thus ended the first battle recorded in history, fought largely to prove that Thutmose III was no longer a Mummy's boy.

- 30 -

THE WHITE ALBUM

2009-12-11T07:12:00.000-05:00

I doubt that you have ever heard of Robert Dean White, but he sings very well. Federal prosecutors have an extensive library of his tunes. My personal favorite from the "White album" is the “cut” when he describes the corporation he worked for, “The Petters Group Worldwide”, as “…a Ponzi scheme.” It has been the Musak of every Bush-era Neo-con hedge-fund dead-end investment club in from Greenwich, Connecticut to Moscow. But even before it was set music it was the punch line to one of the oldest jokes in the world.

Charles Ponzi (AKA Charles Ponei, AKA Charles P. Bianchi) was far from the first to invent this dance tune. He just put his name on it. He was an Italian immigrant who stumbled upon the International Postal Reply Coupon, a now defunct system of international postage. The price of IPRC stamps varied from nation to nation, and Ponzi convinced investors that by buying the stamps cheaply in Italy, in huge bulk, and selling them for a profit in America, he could offer a 400% profit. He was such a good salesman that victims actually paid him to take their money. Ponzi went from a penniless ex-con in 1919 to a millionaire in 1920: in July alone he made $420,000. And that was in 1920. Today's equivilent would be over $4 million - in one month!

Then in August "The Boston Post" newspaper asked the U.S. Post Office how many IPRC’s Ponzi had actually exchanged and found out that the number was zero. Ponzi, it seemed, was using new investments to pay off old investors, after pocketing a substantial profit. By September of 1920 Ponzi was in jail. The vast majority of his investors lost everything. A team of accountants searched valiantly for months but were never able to reconstruct where all the money had disappeared to. After serving his sentence and being deported, Ponzi told an Italian reporter not to feel sorry for his victims. “Even if they never got anything for it, it was cheap at that price,” he said. “It was easily worth fifteen million bucks to watch me put the thing over.”

I wonder what Tom Petters thought he was worth? Tom dropped out of high school after founding his first company when he was just sixteen. He leased an office in downtown St. Cloud, Minnesota, out of which he sold stereo equipment to college students. When his father found out about the venture he forced the budding entrepreneur to close it all down. But Tom was getting started.

In 1988 Tom had formed "The Petters Group World Wide", a self described $2.3 billion investment group, which billed itself as “Partnership Defined”, with 3,200 employees. In June of 2002 PGWW and a partner bought the name and inventory of “Fingerhut” from Federated Department Stores. A year later he bought s"eBid.com".

Two years later he shelled out $246 million for "Polaroid". In October 2006 he joined with Whitebox Advisors to buy "Sun Country Airlines". In February 2007 he bought the marketing company "Juice Media Worldwide", and in November he became sole owner of "Sun Country".

In 2008 his acquisitions accelerated. He bought "EducAsian" in January, the magazine conglomerate "Metropolitan Media Group" in July and the charter airline "Southwest Aviation" and "Enable Holdings, Inc.", both in August. Then in September of 2008 the F.B.I. raided John’s offices, his home, and the home of Mr. Robert Dean White. Tom’s entire house of cards folded like…well, like a house of cards.

The companies Tom had bought were all real with real assets, but they were all in trouble. And Tom fixed them. How did Tom, the financial wizard, fix them? Corporate Vice President Michael Catain explained later, "Tom Petters had me set up a company that acted as though it bought merchandise. ... I was supposed to be the middle man providing the inventory in case an investor called....We'd get an e-mail of what deposits (meaning investments) were coming in. We would do the wires. Deanna (Colman, corporate accountant) handled the other end."

According to Robert White, he was urged to help Tom out of a short term money crunch. "I came up with some phony bank statements to make it look like money was spent the way it was supposed to." After committing this fraud, it dawned on Robert
that some of the other corporate paperwork might have been faked as well. White asked
Deanna Coleman which of the companies' promissory notes were real. White said,
"She laughed at me and said there are no good notes there." And why did Ms. Coleman go along with this scheme? "Tom promised me over and over again that he'd get us out of this." Then in September of 2008 the F.B.I. raided John’s offices, his home, and the home of Mr. Robert Dean White. Tom’s entire house of cards folded like…well, like a house of cards. (Its happened before, you see.)

Just a month prior to his personal Goetterdaemerung, Tom explained to the fawning students of the Carlson School of Management, “You’ve got to figure out how to leverage and move things forward and not backwards. Sometimes sideways and left and not always how you had anticipated.” The budding business garduates were enthralled. But evidently Tom did anticipate what was coming because he is heard on one of the F.B.I tapes admitting that he cheated on his taxes, and used an employee to create false documents for investors, but that he “didn’t know what choice” he had. I guess honesty was not a viable choice.

The Feds alleged that for ten years Tom has been showing investors purchase orders to prove he was selling merchandise to Walmart. But when one investor finally checked with Walmart, the discount chain said the P.O. numbers were fake and they had never bought anything from any of Tom’s many, many companies. This revelation led to a Federal audit of PGWW which showed $1.9 billion in the “in” drawer and $3.5 billion in bills, meaning the “out” drawer. And since the Feds lack the imagination of the Wall Street types, owing more than you own equals bankruptcy. Ah, if they only had the imagination of Tom Petters, or of Charles Ponzi, they would know that being in debt was just another opportunity to buy stuff. Have you ever noticed that none of these wise guys have any interest in history? To me that explains a lot.

Tom's explination to the jury during his 18 day long trial, was that three of his junior officers had tricked him. But the tapes, the testimony of his junior officers (all of whom went to jail) and according to the jury, the prolific e-mails Tom sent, told a different story. After thirty-one hours of deliberations they convicted Tom, on December 2, 2009, of 20 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

It all reminds me of the joke about the traveling salesman who stopped at a farmhouse, seeking a drink of water. As he stood at the kitchen sink he saw a chicken outside wearing a pinned-up pair of blue jeans. The farmer explained, "We had a tornado about two months ago. Killed all my other birds. She and our rooster were the only ones who survived. But it plucked every feather off that poor chicken. My wife felt so sorry for her, she sewed her up that pair of pants." The salesman can't stop laughing, until the farmer put a hand on his shoulder and confided, "If you think that's funny, you ought to see that rooster trying to hold that chicken down with one leg, and get those pants off with the other."

A Ponzi Scheme is all about getting the investor's pants off. And that dance has been going around since before the chicken or the egg.

- 30 -

GETTING A HEAD

2009-12-09T06:38:00.000-05:00

I would call it the definitive way of dealing with a swelled head. Oh sure, Oliver Cromwell had some doubts while he was dying. And it was about time he did. All his life Oliver had been such an imperious narcissistic autocrat that in retrospect, the despotic and conceited Charles I now seemed reasonable - once Oliver had beheaded Charles. But then Oliver went on the ultimate ego trip, launching a bloody war trying to eradicate Catholicism from Ireland. He would have had better luck trying to reintroduce the snakes. Oliver was so supercilious that in 1650 he wrote to a Scottish opponent, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken,” and just three years later he suffered no such introspection while making himself dictator, because, “…the spirit of god (was) so strong upon me, I would not consult flesh and blood.” Flesh and blood has bowels, Oiliver, it seems, did not. It turns out the one nation Oliver never even attempted to conquer was gall

And then at the age of 59, on his death bed, on the afternoon of September 3, 1658, Oliver was beset by humility at long last (as well as a urinary tract infection – which is what kills you when you don’t have antibiotics). Oliver whispered, “My design is to make what haste I can to be gone.” But it was too late to be hasty. Even dead, Oliver could no longer escape the judgment of those who had suffered under his turgid arrogance.

His corpse was entombed in Westminster Abbey, along with all those kings and queens he thought himself superior to. His followers attached a plate to his coffin reading “Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland”, so that on Judgment Day there would be no chance Oliver would be overlooked. They might as well have planted a big arrow above his crypt that read “Dig Here!”

Judgment day arrived less than three years later, As soon as Charles II was crowned king, he had 12 of those who had participated in his father’s trial tried for high treason. The inevitable executions which followed produced a macabre precursor of Super Bowl Week. From Monday October 8th through Saturday the 13th , 1660 (on the old Julian calendar), the twelve were each subjected to what contemporary witness William Harrison described as “The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England….drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down…”. It wasn’t until after the hanging that the festivities really got started.

The guest-of-dishonor was stretched naked on a butcher block table. First, his genitalia were removed and displayed to him. They were then thrown into a fire. Then, according to English Wikipedia, “A splash of water was usually employed to wake the man if unconscious…A large cut was made in the gut…and the intestines would be spooled out on a device that resembled a dough roller. Each piece of organ would be burned before the sufferer's eyes, and when he was completely disemboweled, his head would be cut off.” And not quickly removed, with a single swipe of a massive sword or an axe, but via repeated whacks with a meat clever. The idea was not to kill the unfortunate honoree, but to torture him, and thus to entertain the crowd.

This was a spectator sport, drawn out for hype and hyperbole. Samuel Pepys was there for the anticlimax. He noted in his diary, “Saturday 13 October…went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered…He looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy…After that I went…home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it.” Death, where is thy operant conditioning?

Oliver Cromwell, being legally and retroactively the villain-in-chief would not be spared these humiliations just because he was deceased. He was spared the pain, but then there had been the urinary tract infection. On the morning of January 30, 1661 Oliver’s corpse and those of two of his fellow deceased co-conspirators, were hung by their necks at Tyburn, the traditional place of execution for “commoners”. Ouch, that little insult must have hurt. The un-dearly departed hung in public, like hams in a smoke house, until four in the afternoon. Then their heads were removed; I presume they cut off Oliver’s last, as we are told it took eight chops. The poor executioner must have been shagged out from removing the first two heads.

Oliver’s corpse was then discarded into a pit and his head was raised upon a 20 foot wooden pole above the south side of Westminster palace. Finally, Oliver was as aloof as he had always imagined himself to be, head and shoulders above all other contenders...except he no longer had any shoulders. And there he bobbled about in heavy winds until at least 1672, when, it seems, people had begun to forget just whose head was which head.

Legend claimed that Oliver’s pole was blown down in a storm and Oliver’s dome fell into the hands of Mr. John Moore, a guard, who snuck the coconut home and stuffed the noggin in his chimney. When it was realized that the arch villain Oliver Cromwell had somehow escaped, rewards were offered and notices posted demanding and threatening punishments unless he were returned. So Mr. Moore gave the head to an apothecary in King Street, who then sold Oliver’s skull to a Mr. Humphrey Dove, Esq. Lawyer Dove kept Oliver confined to a chest until his death in 1687 – Mr. Dove’s death that is. After this it appears that Oliver made a clean getaway, no mean feat for a man with no feet...or legs.

In 1710 a Claudius Du Puy opened a museum of curiosities in London containing as its most curious curiosity of all, the head of Oliver Cromwell. That the exhibit was a financial failure was no fault of Oliver’s. He did his part. He was still dead. He still had no body to support him . But was this head really Oliver’s head? Or was it an imposter’s skull masquerading as the demon Protestant?

It would not be until the 1930’s that two scientist issued a 109 page report authenticating to a “moral certainty” that the head in question was unquestionably the head of Oliver Cromwell. And on March 25, 1960 Oliver’s morally certain head was finally buried somewhere near the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, England. And nobody knows exactly where.

And that anonymity must be driving Oliver out of his mind!

- 30 -

THE MUSICAL KING

2009-12-06T06:39:00.000-05:00

I have always thought of Joseph II, Emperor of Austria, as a bit of a schizophrenic, half enlightened revolutionary and half unsighted dictator, and totally a legend in his own mind. He explained himself this way; “I am a royalist by trade”, a truly conflicted description by a man whom, I suspect, did not fully understand what a tradesman was or did.

But Benedict Anton Michael Adam Hapsburg (his real name) was astute enough to hire Amadeus Mozart to waltz his court, and turned him lose to produce his greatest opera, Don Giovanni; and for that we all should be grateful to the man they called the “Musical King”. I prefer Mozart’s “The Wedding of Figaro” myself, but then it is a generally accepted truth that I have no taste in opera.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ7PKtS2BR8&feature=related)

But I love the “il catalogo e questo” when the servant Leporello comforts Donna Elvira by listing Don Juan’s feminine conquests. “In Italy, six hundred and forty; In Germany, two hundred and thirty-one; A hundred in France; in Turkey, ninety-one; But in Spain already one thousand and three.”

Joseph’s catalog of failings came into sharp focus in 1787 when, displaying a miserable sense of geopolitical timing, Joseph declared war on the Ottoman Turkish Empire. He was just trying to live up to a treaty with Catherine the Great of Russia, but it was not a popular decision with the ruling elite in Vienna. The conservatives were unhappy with the new taxes levied to pay for the war. The price of bread in Vienna went so high that bakeries in the capital were actually looted. And that simply encouraged the young liberals to see the war as a betrayal of the democratic ideas Joseph had seemed to support. They found reasons to travel abroad and avoid their draft notices.

The rest of the polyglot empire had fewer options. While the army was officered almost solely by German speaking Austrians, the bulk of the soldiers were divided between Italian speaking Lombards from south of the Alps and Slavic speakers from the Balkans. And no attempt was made to bridge the divides between them. When Joseph took the field in the summer of 1788 to join his 100,000 man army in laying siege to Belgrade, disaster seemed inevitable to everybody except Joseph.

The decision to lay siege to Belgrade was logical. The Turkish city on the Danube had been captured by Austrian armies in 1688 and again in 1717. Each time it had been lost again, the last time in 1739, but there was a young leader on the throne in Turkey, and Joseph was looking to grab a quick trophy to assuage his critics.

Unfortunately Joseph encamped his army on mosquito infested marshland outside of Belgrade, and over the next few weeks 33,000 of his troops contracted malaria, including Joseph. He had lost a third of his army and he hadn’t even fought a battle yet. And then in early September Joseph received intelligence that the Turks were sending troops to reinforce the fortress of Vivda, on the Timas River, a tributary of the Danube.

The fortress was called Bada Vida, or Grandma Vida, because it had been a border fort since before the Romans. Clearly the Turks were intending on opening a supply line to Vida, down the Timas and then up the Danube to Belgrade, breaking the seige. Joseph decided the best way to counter that move was to take Bada Vida, before the Turkish reinforcements arrived. So between attacks of debilitating fevers, Joseph ordered an immediate forced march to capture Vida, and the nearby village of Karansebes.

You see, Joseph had a logical reason for doing everything he did. On paper Joseph was a genius. It was only in reality that he was a complete fool. Having been raised to be a King, Joseph expected his army to have blind faith in him. In reality his army lacked faith in them selves, faith in their leaders and they certainly had no faith in Joseph. That just left everybody blind.

The troops dispatched to Vida had no idea why they were marching away from Belgrade so quickly. In a few hours their joy at escaping the stinking marshes was replaced by exhaustion. And still their Austrian officers drove them onward, without stopping for food or rest. By September 17th the forward cavalry scouts had reached the Timis River. Crossing over the bridge late in the afternoon, the fatigued scouts fell upon a camp of tzigani, commonly called gypsies. The tzigani were well stocked with schnapps, which they reluctantly sold to the cavalrymen. Suddenly things were starting to look up in this crummy war.

An hour behind the scouts in the gathering dusk came an equally weary infantry battalion. The cavalrymen, well drunk by this time, decided the infantry were after their booze. They constructed a makeshift fort from the gypsy wagons and, as the infantry approached, fired a warning shot or two. The infantry officers, unsure what was going on, shouted for their men to halt, pronounced in German as “halfte, halfte”. What the Slavic infantry heard was “utisit, utisit”, which is Czech for “Allah”. They thought their own officers were warning them the shooting was coming from Turkish Muslims.

Some returned fire. When the infantry fired back, more of the drunken cavalry fired. This exchange of gunfire, first, convinced the officers it was Turks to their front, and second, stampeded the tzigani’s horses, which convinced the officers they were about to be attacked by Turkish cavalry. The Austrian officers ordered a retreat, wondering why their scouts had not warned them the enemy was so near. The retreat immediately turned into a rout.

As the following battalions crossed the bridge they heard shooting to their front. Understandably they mistook the retreating solders for advancing Turks. They threw their men into firing lines and let go with volley after volley. And still the attackers came on, charging through the darkening shadows. From the “Turks” point of view, they were not attacking they were retreating, under heavy fire. They had to get to the bridge, to escape the Turkish trap they had obviously stumbled into. And like dominoes the Austrian battalions fell over, one after the other.

On the other side of the bridge, officers were throwing up a defensive line to hold back the Turks, of whom there were actually none within fifty miles.

Meanwhile the drunken scouts had begun to suspect they might be in some trouble. They grabbed their booze and went galloping for the only escape route. As they thundered over the wooden bridge, the Austrian artillery opened up. The cavalry overran them, and the entire Austrian army melted away, pausing only to plunder a few villages and rape a few peasant women. The retreat reached such levels of panic that Joseph was knocked off his horse and fell in a stream, not a recommended treatment for a man recovering from malaria. The army did not stop until they returned to their siege lines outside of Belgrade and the perception of safety.

Forty-eight hours later a small part of the real Turkish army, sent to secure the fortress of Vida, stumbled upon the remains of a great battle. Ten thousand dead and wounded Austrian soldiers, with their equipment, were scattered across the fields around the village of Karansebes. It was a great victory which didn’t cost the Turks a dime. They weren't even there. The only other losers,, besides the Ausrians, were the tzigani who lost their horses, and an unknown number of human casualties.

Joseph abandoned the army in front of Belgrade, turning it over to retired Field Marshal Gideon von Loudon. Loudon would capture Belgrade the following year. By then Joseph was near death, weakened by malaria. He died in November 1788, broken by his failures. And by dying, Joseph now abandoned Mozart.

Amadeus Mozart lost his cushy court job. He never wrote another opera, and spent the next two years spending more time writing letters begging for money than he spent writing music. He died in 1791, famously buried in a pauper’s grave. Realizing this makes watching the the final scene in “Don Giovanni” all the more poignant. The aging reprobate hero is challenged to either repent or burn in eternal damnation. Don Juan has the chutzpa to sing, “To none will I succumb! For me there's no repentance.” How refreshing to meet an honest liar, if only in on the stage.

It was almost as if Mozart was trying to send a message to Joseph. I wonder if the Emperor never got it?

- 30 -

LUCKY PEOPLE

2009-12-04T06:07:00.000-05:00

I must tell you that your parents were right; the world is not fair. Some people succeed while you fail because they are more talented than you are, or more persistent or prettier, and some are smarter...and some are just so lucky they could walk through a car wash and not get damp. Jacob Waltz, on the other hand, almost drowned in the middle of a desert.

To be fair it was a once in a hundred year rainstorm. The clouds above central Arizona opened up on Wednesday, February 18, 1891, and by the next morning the Salt River, which ran past Jacob’s property north of Phoenix, had risen 17 feet. The channel had grown to a mile wide. In the Rio Satillo Valley, the eighty year old retired miner was forced to lash himself to a tree and spent that night, and the following Friday, day and night, with just his head and shoulders above the cold pounding waters.

The Sacramento, California "Sunday Union" reported on the 22nd, that “The northern edge of this flood…entered the city of Phoenix, flooding out many of the poorer families….About a hundred adobe houses fell in…The churches and public buildings have been thrown open to the shelter-less, and a subscription started for their benefit, but many families are still without protection. The river began to fall Friday afternoon…”

That Saturday, February 21, 1891, one of Waltz’s neighbors found the old man shivering in the ruins of his home, crouched atop his soaked bed. He refused to leave unless his heavy candle box came out with him. The Samaritan brought Waltz and his meager possession into Phoenix. Luckily, the now destitute Jacob was matched with a compassionate small businesswoman named Julia Elena Thomas, who had a spare room and a bed. In fact, Julia was probably the only lucky thing that ever happened to Jacob.

Because, besides being compassionate Julia was curious, and susceptible. She cared for the difficult old man as best she could, in part because Julia became intrigued by the heavy candle box Jacob insisted on keeping under his bed.

Before the development of electricity, oil for lamps was expensive to buy and transport. So farm and ranch homes were usually lit by candle. Tallow candles were made from farm animal fat, and every rural home had a candle box. Strength was not a requirement, merely protection from the rats and mice attracted to the tallow’s odor. So the wood was thin but coated with a paint or varnish. The boxes were usually a foot to a foot and a-half long and a foot deep, but usually no more than six inches wide. The top slid into place, making for a nearly air tight closure without the need for weighty hardware.

But Jacob’s box was too heavy to be holding candles, or papers, or keepsakes. What could a broke, sick, old man hold so dear that he risked his life to stand guard over it, while soaking wet, in a collapsing flooded adobe? Eventually Julia peeked, but all she found inside were about 50 pounds of rocks. But it was enough to start her imagination racing. As the months passed Julia teased out Jacob’s story, and it seemed the old man had spent most of his life chasing gold.

He had been born in Germany. And he had chased the shinny metal across the Atlantic. He had worked in the gold mines of North Carolina and Georgia and Mississippi. He could not mine for himself, however, because only an American citizen could own a mineral claim. In 1848, at 38 years old, in Natchez, Mississippi, Jacob had filed a letter of intent to apply for citizenship. But his intentions were put on hold when he chased the California gold strike of 1849. But again, Jacob was unlucky. Like most of the 49ers, he found no gold.

In July of 1861 Jacob finally became an American citizen, in Los Angeles. In 1863 Jacob joined a wagon train bound for the new gold fields around Phoenix, Arizona. Over the next few years he filed three claims for mines in the Bradshaw Mountains. But they produced nothing. In 1868 he homesteaded 160 acres in the Salt River Valley. Every winter Jacob would wander the bitter wilderness of the nearby Superstition Mountains, searching for gold. And, like a lot of other bearded prospectors in the area, Jacob made ends meet by working the Vulture Mine every summer.

Henry Wickenburg had traveled in the same wagon train that had brought Jacob Waltz to Arizona. But unlike Jacob, Henry was lucky. Within a few weeks of arriving in the Phoenix area, Henry stumbled upon a vein of quartz that eventually produced $200 million worth of gold and silver, the Vulture Mine. But very little of that fortune went to Henry, in part because Henry sold the mine after a few years (and eventually died broke), but mostly because of something called “highgrading”.

“Freighters would line up at the mine with wagons to transport the gold ore. As soon as they were out of sight of the mine, the freighters would begin picking through the gold, pocketing the best nuggets. "Highgrading" was the name of this practice, stealing the highest grade pieces of ore. In fact, freighting for the Vulture was more profitable than mining. Several nearby mine owners closed down their mines to become freighters for the Vulture…It was widely known among the prospectors that working at the Vulture for a few months could provide them with a grubstake for the rest of the year…Miners would often work the mine during evenings and weekends for their own benefit. The early owners of the mine treated harshly anyone caught doing personal mining. Later owners may have silently condoned personal mining when they were not able to pay their workers.”

(http://www.jpc-training.com/vulture.htm)

Every successful hard rock mine in the nineteenth century suffered these deprivations, and that is why all modern mines include stamps and smelters on their premises. Nothing leaves the mine site except for refined gold - under guard.

Jacob never told Julia he highgraded the ore in his candle box from an established mine like the Vulture. If he had, she probably would not have believed him, for Julia, like Jacob, had been bitten by the gold bug. Instead, she pressed the old man for more details about his hidden mine in the mountains. Eventually the sick old coot was forced to admit that he had a mine. But where was this bonanza? Although he never produced a map, in infuriating slowness the old man confided obscure details, almost as if he were stringing Julia along to ensure he kept a roof over his head. He told Julia that with a short climb from his mine you could see the peak known as Weever’s Needle, but from the Needle you could not see his mine…You could see the military trail that ran through the Mountains from his mine, but you could not see the mine from the trail…You had to crawl through a hole to see the gold in his mine…that near his mine was a rock shaped like a face…and that the setting sun shown on the entrance of his mine. This was about all that Jacob shared about the source of the ore in his candle box, before he died of pneumonia in Julia's spare bed, on October 25, 1891.

The ore in Jacob’s box brought $4,800 from the assay office – a lot of money in those days. And that proved the case for Julia. Jacob had a mine hidden in the mountains; where else could the ore have come from? A year later the "Arizona Enterprise" noted in its pages that Julia had sold her business (an ice cream parlor) and was actively prospecting the Superstitions, searching for Jacob’s “missing” mine. She even attracted a few financial backers. But after a few more unproductive seasons, Julia lost her financing. I guess Julia was just not very lucky.

But she finally made money off Jacob’s mine, once she gave up trying to find it herself, once she switched to selling maps to Jacob’s “Lost” mine, for $7 apiece. And because Jacob had been born in Germany, making him a “Deutsch man” or ‘Dutchman’ to parochial American ears, the magical mystery was marketed as the “Lost Dutchman Mine.”

You too can find the Lost Dutchman Mine. All you need is a map and an understanding of the intricate and complicated stories weaved to explain how once located, a source of immense and instant wealth could have become lost again, and why, with some 2,000 people every year searching for it in the Superstion Mountains Wilderness Area, "The Lost Dutchman Mine" could have remained lost for a hundred years. Maybe, just maybe, the answer is that all those people before you have just been more unlucky than you. And just around the next bend, the next canyon, the next turn of the card or the next scratch off lottery ticket, you too could be the luckiest person in the world. It could happen.

- 30 -

WHO ARE THESE GUYS?

2009-12-02T06:14:00.000-05:00

I would not have gotten along with John Birch. Probably, whatever your politics, neither would you have. One of his college professors described Birch as “a one-way valve; everything coming out and no room to take anything in”. Honestly I think the odds were pretty good that eventually somebody somewhere was going to shoot him for shooting his mouth off at the wrong time. Politics had nothing to do with it. It just so happened that the bull finally met his china shop on a road in northern China, and that the hot head that pulled the trigger happened to have been a communist. It was just as likely the shooter would have been his next door neighbor.

“Oh, we're meetin' at the courthouse at eight o'clock tonight. You just walk in the door and take the first turn to the right. Be careful when you get there, we hate to be bereft. But we're taking down the names of everybody turning left. Oh, we're the John Birch Society, the John Birch Society. Here to save our country from a communistic plot. Join the John Birch Society, help us fill the ranks. To get this movement started we need lots of tools and cranks.” (lyrics and music by Michael Brown) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pG6taS9R1KM

His commanding officer in the forerunner of the CIA, Major Gustav Krause, described the situation rather simply; “Militarily, John Birch brought about his own death.” Birch was a life long missionary on a military mission on August 25, 1945, when he ran into a patrol of Mao’s Red Army. The commander asked Birch to hand over his revolver, and, surrounded by nervous soldiers, Birch decided to argue about it. Eventually, embarrassed and frustrated, the officer shot him. The other members of Birch’s group were held for a few hours and then released unharmed. But the missed opportunity for the application of simple common sense did nothing to stop candy-king Robert Welch from building an elaborate conspiracy theory around Birch’s death; a virtual black hole of paranoia and invective that eventually sucked into it everything Welch came in contact with, including the Republican Party, the Republican President and former five star general and war hero Dwight David Eisenhower –whom Welch accused of being a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy” - tooth decay and, believe it or not, the state of Alaska.

I’m not kidding about the Alaska thing. Conservative deity William F. Buckley even mentioned it in a column posthumously published in March of 2008, entitled “Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and Me.” In discussing how to distance conservatism from Welch, Buckley made a joke, which he explained this way; “The wisecrack traced to Robert Welch’s expressed conviction...that the state of Alaska was being prepared to house anyone who doubted his doctrine that fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.” I like to think of Alaska as the new Texas, that way.

There is a celebration of insanity that stains the American psyche, from the anti-French and anti-Irish ‘Alien and Sedition Acts’ of 1798, through the “Order of United Americans”, the “Know Nothing Party”, the Immigration Restriction League, the anarchists scare, the “Yellow Peril”, the imaginary Pearl Harbor betrayal plots, the Black helicopters hiding in our national parks, the militia movement and the mythical bombs planted in the twin towers. Well, the John Birch Society cemented all that lunacy together on a firm foundation of anti-Semitism. And this legacy of lunacy and head up your exclusion duct paranoia officially began in Indianapolis on December 9, 1958.

Welch organized and financed the meeting. He had made his fortune by inventing “Sugar Babies”, “Junior Mints” and “Pom Poms”. And that wealth gave him the authority to lecture to 12 true believers for two days straight. Welch spewed out such gems of wisdom as, “When Woodrow Wilson, cajoled and guided even then by the collectivists of Europe, took us into the first World War, while solemnly swearing that he would never do so, he did much more than end America's great period of happy and wholesome independence of Europe. He put his healthy young country in the same house, and for a while in the same bed, with this parent who was already yielding to the collectivist cancer. We never got out of that house again. We were once more put back even in the same bed by Franklin D. Roosevelt, also while lying in his teeth about his intentions, and we have never been able to get out of that bed since.” In fact there is disturbing repetition of bed (and parent) analogies throughout Welch’s ideology, whether the commies are in the bed or under the bed, alone in the bed or sharing the bed, there are a lot of beds. And cancer - he refers to cancer a lot.

Warned, Mr Welch, “…both the U.S. and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians. If left unexposed, the traitors inside the U.S. government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist New World Order, managed by a 'one-world socialist government.'” Did I mention that the JBS was anti-Semitic? Ayn Rand, no Semitic lover herself, complained, “What is wrong with them (the JBS) is that they don't seem to have any specific, clearly defined political philosophy.” She might have been talking about the Tea Baggers, who, in fact, have been encouraged by the JBS. In fact, ideologically, the John Birch Society was (and is) a sort of thinking man’s Klu Klux Klan, where the KKK remains a sort of the thinking bigots version of the “Tea Baggers”.

In 1966 the New York Times described the JBS as “…the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country”, which, if you think about it, is the equivalent of being named Miss Congeniality in a mental institution; she even brings smiles to the faces of the invisible people. Robert Welch died in 1985. He left most of his still accumulating fortune to the JBS, which continues to produce cadres of indoctrinated Johnny Apple Seeds, planting fear in every dark nook and cranny where it might take root – sort of like tooth decay.

But the thing about Johnny was that the all the apples which grew from his seeds were sour. Edible apples are possible only through a knowledge of grafting – which puts a whole different light on the apple in the Garden Eden, doesn’t it?

- 30 -

A PROFESSIONAL

2009-11-29T05:55:00.000-05:00

I hate the image of Lincoln that most Americans hold, the five dollar profile of “The Great Emancipator”. You see, Abraham Lincoln saved the Union and ended slavery not because he was a saint but because he was the greatest politician who has ever occupied the White House. And to those who despise “professional politicians”, my response is they have probably never seen a real professional in action. Such Pols don’t come along often, but when they do, they make the puny impersonations that must usually suffice seem like clowns.

And Lincoln’s professionalism was best displayed in his handling of the biggest clown in his cabinet, a man you have probably never heard of but whose best work you see every day of your life, Salmon Portland Chase. If Chase had been half as smart as he was ambitious, he would have been President instead of Lincoln. That to his dying day he continued to think he deserved to be so, shows what a clown he was.

Doris Kerns Goodwin has called Lincoln’s cabinet “A Team of Rivals”, but I think of it as obtuse triangle. At the apex was Lincoln. He was the pretty girl at the party. Her suitors didn’t really want to know her, but they all wanted to have her. On the inside track was the brilliant, obsequious William Seward - the Secretary of State who thought of himself as Lincoln’s puppet master. And the right angle was Salmon Chase, Secretary of the Treasury, born to money and brilliant but with a stick up his elementary canal. And on Tuesday, December 16, 1862 the competition between these two paramours of Old Abe came to head in the head of Senator Charles Sumner, the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and leading Senatorial Cassandra.

Sumner had come into procession of a letter written by Seward to the American Ambassador to France. In the letter Seward complained that “…the extreme advocates for African slavery and its most vehement opponents are acting in concert together to precipitate a servile war, the former by making the most desperate attempts to overthrow the federal Union; the latter by demanding an edict of universal emancipation as a lawful and necessary if not, as they say, the only legitimate way of saving the Union.” To Sumner this passage was proof that behind the scenes Seward was not fully comitted to destroying the confederacy. And it confirmed what he already heard from Chase.

Stephen Oates writes in “With Malice Toward None”, “Chase in particular felt snubbed and resentful…what bothered Chase the most was the intimacy between Lincoln and Seward…In talks with his liberal Congressional friends, Chase intimated that Seward was a malignant influence on the President...that it was (Seward) who was responsible for the administration’s bungling. So it was that Seward became a scapegoat for Republican discontent.” (pp 355-356)

Sumner convened what I call "The Magnificent Seven", the Republican Senate caucus. Once the Seward letter was read out loud, Senator Ira Harris from New York recorded the reaction. “Silence ensued for several moments, when (Senator Morton Wilkinson of Minnesota) said that in his opinion the country was ruined and the cause was lost…” Senator William Fessenden from Maine added his two cents worth. He had been told by a member of the cabinet there was “…a secret backstairs influence which often controlled the apparent conclusions of the cabinet itself. Measures must be taken”, Fessenden concluded, “to make the cabinet a unity and to remove from it anyone who does not coincide heartily with our views in relation to the war.”

It is sad to say there was not a first rate mind in that room. There might have been, but arrogance drops a smart person’s I.Q. by forty points or more. It can drop the average mind to zero. Not one of the seven seems to have suspected they were being manipulated by Chase. It is startling to think that men who used an outhouse every day could be that arrogant.

They skewered up their courage for two days before saddeling up and calling on the President at 7 P.M. on Thursday, December 19, 1862. For three hours they harangued poor Mr. Lincoln on the dangers of Seward. Lincoln remained agreeable but noncommittal, and proposed that they meet again the next night. And the amazing thing was that throughout the meeting Lincoln actually had William Seward’s resignation in his coat pocket.

Understand, Seward had not offered his resignation out of nobility. He was a politician.
After hearing of the intentions of the Seven, Seward had a flunky deliver his resignation in private as a demand that Lincoln pick Seward over Chase, the genial New Yorker over the prig from Ohio. Of course, the loss of support from New York would poke a fatal hole in Lincoln’s ship of state. So Seward was not expecting Lincoln to pick the prig for the poke

Lincoln’s problem was he needed the prig. Chase’s handling of the Treasury was brilliant. He was financing the entire war. It was Chase who had begun issuing official U.S. government backed paper currency, greenbacks. That had not been done since the revolution. It was Chase who had put the words “In God We Trust” on every bill, and its still there today. Of course, Chase had also put his own face on every $1 bill, as a form of political advertising, but Lincoln was willing to tolerate that because Chase was honest, doing a good job, and because without Ohio the Union would lose the war.

The other factor was that the whispers about Seward’s “backstairs influence” were false. By December of 1862 it was dawning on even Seward that Lincoln was thinking for himself. When Lincoln had first heard about the Magnificent Seven’s deliberations (from Senator Preston King, the flunky who had delivered Seward’s resignation), the President had exploded. “Why will men believe a lie, an absurd lie, that could not impose upon a child, and cling to it, and repeat it, and cling to it in defiance of all evidence to the contrary?” Lincoln was beset by arrogance from all sides. It seems that everybody in Washington thought they were smarter than Lincoln. But the skinny lawyer from Illinois was about to prove them all wrong.

At ten the next morning Lincoln told his cabinet about the previous night’s meeting. He made no accusations, but Chase immediately blubbered that this was the first he had heard about any of this matter. The President, who had mentioned no names and made no allegations, asked them all, except Seward, to return that night to meet with the Seven. Seward felt the ground giving way under his feet. He had never expected Lincoln might pick Chase. And Chase was not entirely certain he had.

That night the Seven were now the audience to a bravo performance. Gideon Welles, the Secretary of the Navy (then a cabinet office) recorded the festivities. The President “…spoke of the unity of his Cabinet, and how although they could not be expected to think and speak alike on all subjects, all had acquiesced in measures when once decided. ...Secretary Chase indorsed the President's statement fully and entirely…” There were hours more of talking but right there was the end of Chase's mutiny. As the Magnificent Seven were leaving the White House a stunned Senator Browning of Illinois asked one the leaders of the mutiny how Chase could tell them that the cabinet was harmonious, after all his talk about back stairs influence. The reply was simple and bitter; “He lied.” Chase was done as a malignant political influence in the cabinet. No Republican was going to believe anything he ever said again.

The next morning Lincoln called both Seward and Chase to the White House. Welles was again present, I suspect as a witness for Lincoln. “Chase said he had been painfully affected by the meeting last evening, which was a total surprise to him, and…informed the President he had prepared his resignation…“Where is it?” said the President quickly, his eye lighting up in a moment.

“I brought it with me,” said Chase, taking the paper from his pocket…”Let me have it,” said the President, reaching his long arm and fingers towards Chase, who held on, seemingly reluctant…but the President was eager and…took and hastily opened the letter. “This," said he, looking towards me with a triumphal laugh, “cuts the Gordian knot.” An air of satisfaction spread over his countenance such as I have not seen for some time. “You may go to your Departments,” said the President;…(This) “is all I want…I will detain neither of you longer.”

Both Seward and Chase spent a nervous night, not certain as to what Lincoln would do. They had both just been reminded who was in charge of this game. And it was not until a few days later that Lincoln sent a message to both Chase and Seward, saying that the nation could not afford to lose either of their talents. And it did not. Seward never tried to pull Lincoln's strings again. Chase petulantly continued to resign annually until late 1864, when Lincoln could finally afford to take him up on the offer. But never a man to waste talent, Lincoln appointed the clown to the Supreme Court, where Chase’s firm stance for racial equality would have the best influence on America’s future.

And that is what it looks like when a professional is on the job.

- 30 -

A LITTLE HELP

2009-11-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

I apologize, but the closest I can come to describing the drama in the board room of the New York and Erie Railroad on that crisp November afternoon is to recall one of the concocted tribal councils on the “reality” television show “Survivor”. Now, because of the time compression, deleted conversations, subtle “background” music additions and the myriad of other minor manipulations that fall under the label of “editing”, the only common element between a modern day “Survivor” contestant and Mr. Jacob Little, the Antebellum Napoleon of the Board Room, was that over the span of just a few moments they both stood to win or lose a great fortune. And that has not been a reality for corporate managers in America for so long as to make it hard for modern readers to imagine it was ever true. It ain’t a real game if you are “too big to fail” because then, you can’t lose. And Jacob could.

Jacob Little was called “the original Wall Street Bull”. That was not quite true. The ancient traders, who bought hides from butchers, invented the ‘futures market’, by buying and selling the hides of cattle that had not yet been born. And if farmers thought the prices for hides were approaching the bottom they might hold onto more of their bulls, thus ensuring more cows for next season, when the prices might be better. So, those who expected prices were going up, were expecting a “bull market”. A bull in the stock market is a gambler, aggressive and willing to use his horns to get his way. And that is an apt description of Jacob Little.

Jacob’s contemporary, Henry Clews, claimed that Jacob “…made and lost” nine fortunes on Wall Street. And Matthew Smith, in his book “Sunshine and Shadow in New York” recorded a moment of introspection which Jacob experienced while walking past the mansions surrounding Union Square. “I have lost money enough today to buy this whole square. Yes, and half the people in it,” he said. And that was probably not an exaggeration.

At a time when railroads were the high tech, Jacob Little, tall and slim and “careless in his attire, wearing a hat like that of a farmer, and not a very prosperous one”, was known as the ‘Railway King’. He had realized there was far more money to be made in railroad stock than in running railroads. Between 1830 and 1855, when the nation quadrupled its miles of railroad track, 125 railroad companies issued stock but never laid a single mile of track. They sold preferred stock and common stock, and several varieties of bonds. And then there was the "futures’ market" in railroad stocks and bonds. There was even an ‘options’ market, which was the buying and selling of promises to buy or sell stocks in companies that might not even exist. This was the Wall Street version of the Wild West; have printing press, will fleece all suckers. And even those railroads that were real, suffered from endless manipulation.

Consider the profitable Norwich and Worchester Railroad in Massachusetts, whose largest stockholders signed a secret agreement to sell their Norwich stock only to each other. This created an artificial shortage of the stock, which drove the price up. The partners agreed to hold their shares until Norwich topped $90 a share. They would then dump the stock and leave the suckers owning a suddenly broke and worthless railroad; As the lawyer Tom Hagan explains in “The Godfather”, “Its just business, Sonny.” Just to keep all the crooks honest, any member of the “cartel” who sold below $90 a share pledged to pay a $25,000 fine to his fellow conspirators.

Jacob Little was one of the largest conspirators in the Norwich stock scam, but he was the smart one. As the stock began to rise, Jacob quietly offered to sell his fellows a portion of his stock at $89 a share. Well, perhaps offer is the wrong word. Because after Jacob had done this several times it dawned on the crafty New Englanders that they had to buy his stock in order to avoid a price collapse of their stock. And once Jacob had unloaded all his Norwich stock at $89 a share, he dutifully mailed a $25,000 check to his “partners”. By then he had profited several times that amount by shafting his partners exactly as they had planned on shafting the suckers. The partners let it be known that if the Bull of Wall Street showed his face in Boston again, they intended on claiming his ears.

It was maneuvers such as that which inspired a handful of the lesser wizards of Wall Street to plot Jacob’s demise. They were his fellow board members on the New York and Erie Railroad, and it seemed to them that Jacob was overextended. Besides owning a large chunk of Erie stock of course, Jacob had recently bought several thousand ‘options’ pledging to buy even more. When those options matured in six months, if the option holders demanded it, Jacob would have to deliver the stock at whatever the price.

Jacob was betting, of course, that the price would go down, and as a board member he had the power to help that happen. But the wizards decided to use Jacob’s genius against him. First, they quietly bought up all of Jacob’s options. And then, as the six months ran out, they began to buy every share of Erie stock they could find, bidding the price up 15 points above the price of Jacob’s options. And Jacob remained so blissfully unaware of the doom that was impending, he actually bought even more options.

The ultimate “Survivor” moment arrived on at the 2:00 p.m. meeting on Friday, November 16, 1855. It was the maturity date for Jacob’s options. Jacob was late arriving, and the meeting droned on until the board room clock struck 3:00 p.m. The market was closed for the day. It was no longer possible for Jacob to buy stock to meet his options. And in the best tribal council fashion, one by one the wizards presented their options to their cornered prey. The stack got very impressive. The Napoleon of the Board Room had been broken and broke right before their eyes. But just as Jeff Probst was about to say, “The next person voted off “Survivor”, Jacob Little pulled an immunity idol right out of his derrière.

Actually he pulled it out of London. Jacob was late to the board meeting because he had stopped in the Erie’s stock transfer room to convert Erie Railroad “convertible bonds”, bought weeks earlier on the London Stock Exchange, into Erie common stock. Such bonds are usually not worth the premium they sell for. If you are going to pay that much, you might as well buy the stock. But in this case the wizards had helpfully bid the price of Erie stock so high, they made the premium more than worth the price. And as Jacob fastidiously signed over each share required to fill the options, he was also diluting Erie Stock so that, come morning, the stock took a nose dive. The wizards had been so intent on cutting off the limb that Jacob had climbed out on, that they failed to notice they were on the same limb. And Jacob had even climbed down first.

Clearly somebody had leaked the plot, and, in retrospect that was inevitable. During his 12 years as an independent broker Jacob had built friendships and done favors for local bankers from San Francisco to New Orleans. Somebody was bound to warn Jacob about the brewing coup d’etat. But so brilliantly had Jacob gamed the system that generations of Wall Street bulls used his trick to transfer future fortunes into their bank accounts at the expense of future generations of suckers, until the rules were changed to require a convertible bond be held for at least sixty days before it could be transferred into common stock.

Most Wall Street fairy tails end the story here, with The Napoleon of the Board Room winning until he faded into history. But inevitably Jacob lost one more fortune than he made. He died broke on Sunday, March 28th, 1865. The Board of the New York Stock Exchange adjourned for the day to attend his funeral, but I can not say for certain whether they did this out of respect, or to confirm that Jacob was finally really dead. But I can say it has been the goal of Wall Street brokers ever since to rig the game so that they never run the risk of dying broke, ever again. And that makes it a very different game than the one that Jacob played.

- 30 -

BADGERS MAKE STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

2009-11-25T07:56:00.000-05:00

I have always admired Alexander Hamilton. How could you not admire a man who could write, “A well adjusted person is one who makes the same mistake twice without getting nervous” That kind of self knowledge belies the life of a boy who was abandoned by his father at the age of ten, at twelve watched his mother die in the bed next to him, and was then adopted by a cousin who shortly thereafter committed suicide. Hamilton not only survived this horror show but within ten years became one of the most successful and powerful men in America, the man who invented the American economic system. But that childhood also goes a long way to explaining how such a smart man, a happily married man and a devoted father could fall for something as old and obvious as the Badger Game.

In 1791 in Philadelphia, twenty-three year old Maria Reynolds, a lovely and avaricious mental midget, approached Hamilton, who was the Secretary of the Treasury. She told Hamilton that her husband, James Reynolds, had abandoned her and their daughter. Could the noble and handsome Secretary Hamilton provide her with the funds to return to New York? Smitten and horny, with his wife living in far off Connecticut, Hamilton agreed to deliver $30 to her rooms that evening. Let the games began.

The original badger game involved sticking a live badger in a box and then sending in a terrier. After a few seconds the owner would pull the dog out. If the dog held the badger in its jaws, it was marked as a plus. Then the badger would be returned to the box and the dog would be sent in again. This was repeated several times in front of a crowd of Neanderthals, with the shouting and betting building to a crescendo. The similarity between the original sport (outlawed in England in 1835) and the blackmail sting performed on Hamilton is that the dog could be counted on to grab the badger every time, even though the pooch was never allowed to actually keep the badger. The same goes for the mark in the human game.

Shortly after Hamilton’s first liaison with Mrs. Reynolds, Mr. Reynolds made his re-appearance in the role of the wronged husband. He wrote Hamilton, “You have deprived me of every thing that’s near and dear to me. … You have made a whole family miserable.” James was a born conman who had been one of Hamilton’s commissariats during the revolution, scrounging food, clothing and ammunition for the Continental Army despite the penury of Congress. But he was also a wife beater – if we believe Maria. Although why we should do that I have no idea.

Eventually James got to the point. “…give me the sum of (a) thousand dollars and I will leave town and take my daughter with me…”. Hamilton paid, and James then wrote, “I have not the least objections to your calling (on my wife), as a friend to both of us”. The dog now had the scent and Hamilton continued to visit Maria and pay regularly – in April, $135, in May and June, $50, in August, $200.

The game went on for two years, with Hamilton enjoying the nubile Maria in Philadelphia, while urging his wife to stay in Connecticut. Hamilton even borrowed from friends in order to keep James silent. But the end of the game was predictable, given James’ character.

James Reynolds and his partner Jacob Clingman were arrested for cheating revolutionary war veterans out of their back pay, which Congress had been cheating them out of for years. Naturally James expected his “friend” Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, to rescue him. Hamilton, however, was not willing to use his official office to cover up his personal peccadilloes. He refused to help the crook. Angry, James started singing to anybody who would listen that Hamilton had given him inside information on Government bond sales. In particular Jacob Clingman sang to Hamilton’s arch enemy, Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson thought it was Christmas. He gleefully dispatched Congressmen James Monroe and Fredrick Muhlenberg to confront Hamilton in person. And to their stunned surprise Hamilton admitted to the affair, but he denied everything else. He even provided proof in the form of letters between himself and both of the enterprising Reynolds’, James and Maria. Muhlenberg and Monroe were so nonplussed they agreed to keep the affair secret. Needless to say, Jefferson was not happy that Christmas had been canceled.

Hamilton resigned from Washington’s cabinet in January of 1795. But Jefferson had made no promise of secrecy, and he filed the information away for use at some opportune future moment, which came in 1797, which is how we know of the entire sordid tale.

Shortly after Jefferson leaked the entire story, the lovely Maria divorced her imprisoned husband James, and immediately married his partner in crime, Mr. Clingman. The newlyweds then moved to Alexandria, Virginia and dropped out of history. Her divorce attorney back in New York was Aaron Burr, who would in a very few years shoot Alexander Hamilton down in a duel. And that, one way or another, is the way most badger games end.

In contrast there was William A.E. Moore, a “friend” of President McKinley who appointed him U.S. Counsel to Durban, South Africa. Mr. Moore was in route to Durban with his wife, Fayne Strahan, when, while spending the night in Paris, he surprised the lovely Fayne “flagrante delecto” with a Russian nobleman. Mr. Moore offered to swallow his insulted pride for a mere $2,000, but the Russian chose instead to call the police. Mr. Moore’s diplomatic appointment was revoked and he was forced to return to the United States.

Then in 1898 the pair tried the same gag on Mr. Martin Mahon, proprietor of the New Amsterdam Hotel, in New York City. (a bit of a comedown this, from a Russian nobleman to a hotel owner.) This time, when William burst into the room he took the trouble to beat up the mark, poor Mr. Mahon, and steal $175 from his wallet. William then stuffed a cigar into Martin’s mouth and walked him up and down Fifth Avenue as if they were bosom buddies. Again, the mark went to the police and this time William Moore was sent to Sing Sing for several years. Fayne, meanwhile, went to South Dakota where she got a divorce. Some years later she moved to London where she took to the stage, as a chorus girl in the hit musical, “The Messenger Boy”. William was eventually released from jail and inherited $125,000 from an uncle. Last heard of he was living in luxury. And thus were the wages of sin for what today would be called “Gifters.

And in case you are thinking that these are dusty historical footnotes, a couple of years ago, in San Antonio, Texas, Ted Roberts, attorney at law, was convicted of three counts of theft for a badger scam he ran with his wife and fellow attorney, Mary Roberts. She was convicted of 5 counts of fraud. Mary trolled the internet looking for married men who were seeking sex. She engaged them in chat rooms until they either revealed their fantasies or actually met her for sex. There upon Ted would knock on the door and quietly inform the marks that he was going to sue them for “alienation of affection”, unless they agreed to “settle”.

The couple netted something around $160,000 from five marks before they were caught. Testifying for the defense past president of the Texas Bar Association, Broadus A. Spivey (No, seriously, that was his name), said that the badger game as played by the couple from law school was not illegal because it was not substantially different than a lawsuit. Under oath Broadus insisted, “Litigation is coercive.”

I leave the story there, in case there is anybody left in this nation who does not already despise lawyers.

- 30 -

THE ART OF THE POLITICAL INSULT; TO WIT.

2009-11-22T05:47:00.000-05:00

I can say without fear of contradiction that Abraham Lincoln was the most hated American politician in history. About one in four Americans spent four years trying to shoot him, for heaven’s sake.

“Honest Abe” was described by one contemporary magazine as a “Filthy story-teller, despot liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus, scoundrel, perjurer, robber, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, (and) land pirate.” And a Chicago newspaper denounced one Lincoln speech by saying, “We did not conceive it possible that even Mr. Lincoln could produce a paper so slipshod, so loose-joined, so puerile, not alone in literary construction but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp. He has outdone himself.” Wow; well at least the paper deigned to call him “Mister Lincoln”. Of course, the criticism is softened somewhat when you realize the Chicago Times was reviewing Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.

But then you come across the criticism of Mr. Lincoln offered by Mr. Peter Muggins, a private citizen from Ohio. He wrote the President the following letter: “G-damn you, and your G-damned old, hell fired, G-damned soul to hell. G-damn your G-damned families’ G-damned souls to hell. And G-damn your G-damned friends to hell.” After reading an outburst such as that what else is there to say except…everything?

It is easy to insult someone if you are willing to be reduced to vulgarity. The first recorded insult was carved on the walls of an Egyptian tomb 4,300 year ago, when one fisherman ordered a second, “Come over here, you copulater.” And it probably wasn’t original, even then.

Lincoln occasionally gave as good as he got, of course. He described one opponent as a man who could “…compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know.” But mostly, his wit was addressed to self depreciating humor. When accused of pandering to voters, Lincoln quickly replied, “If I were two faced, would I be wearing this one?” Compared to the horrible things others said about him, Lincoln’s venom toward himself couldn’t hold a candle.

General George McClellan, who spent almost two years in close contact with Mr. Lincoln, described him as “…nothing more than a well meaning baboon”, and “An offensive exhibition of boorishness and vulgarity.” Of course history has since judged McClellan to be one of the biggest horse’s behinds in history, so the source of the insult must have some bearing when judging the quality of the insult.

Because the issue here is not accuracy, nor political propriety or even civility; it is wit, to wit “The natural ability to perceive and understand – intelligence; keenness and quickness of perception or discernment; ingenuity, as in to live by one’s wits; the ability to perceive and express in an ingeniously humorous manner”; to wit:

In my subjective search for the wittiest political insult I have been disappointed by most modern commentators on George W. Bush, for various reasons. Most fall victim, as Ron Reagan Jr. did when he asked of our former President before he was our President, “What is his accomplishment? That he’s no longer an obnoxious drunk?” Mr. Reagan gets points for bitterness and perhaps accuracy (he did know the younger Bush personally) but I must correspond with the adage that “He who has never been an obnoxious drunk at least once in his life, has not lived”. And the missing element in Mr. Reagan’s observation is that elusive quality of “wit”.

I have eliminated most professional commentators from my search because they have staffs who daily submit attempts at wit, which are then weeded through for prize examples, to wit: Jay Leno on Bush being caught by a microphone using an obscenity at an international conference, “It’s not a big deal, President Bush using a four-letter word. Now if Bush used a four-syllable word…that would be unbelievable”; or David Letterman on the results of a poll; “One percent of Americans participating in this poll believe Dick Cheney is the best Vice President ever. Everybody else in the poll believes that one percent should be wearing funny hats”.

The same commentators are eliminated from contention as regards political insults in general, and for the same reason. To wit, Letterman’s riff on one of his favorite targets, Senator John McCain; “He looks like the guy who’s backed over his own mailbox. He looks like the guy at the supermarket who is confused by the automatic doors. He looks like the guy at the movies whose wife has to repeat everything”, and Stephen Colbert on the same subject, to wit: “John McCain may be behind, but the man is a fighter. He doesn’t know the meaning of the word quit. He used to, but it was stored in the same part of his brain that remembered to vet his running mate.”

So I have broadened my search to the world stage but limited it to actual politicians, and for a time I had hopes I had found a choice subject in that indomitable woman, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, known to her fellow politicians as “Attila the Hen” (Clement Freud), “Petain in petticoats” and “La Pasionaria of middle-class privilege” (Denis Healey), “The Immaculate Misconception (Norman St. John-Stevas) or simply “Virago Intacta” (various sources.)

Ms. Thatcher was described by Lord St. John of Fawsley this way: “When she speaks without thinking, she says what she thinks”. Clive James described her speeches as sounding, “…like the book of Revelations read out over a railway station public address system by a headmistress of a certain age wearing calico knickers.” Johnathan Aiken questioned her grasp of international events. “She probably thinks Sinai is the plural of sinus”. And Denis Healey compared her rages to “…charging about like a bargain basement Boadicea.”

The depths were surely plumbed however when Tony Banks accused her of behaving “…with all the sensitivity of a sex-starved boa-constrictor.” In fact the only drawback to Ms. Thatcher as a contender in my search is that she was not as good a wit as the wits she inspired.

The reverse was true of the prince of the British political witticism, legendary Prime Minister Winston Churchill, not for the way he was described but for the way he described others. He spoke of the man elected to replace him in 1946 this way; “An empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street, and when the door was opened, (Clement) Atlee got out. He is a modest man who has much to be modest about”. Of another opponent Churchill said, “I wish Stanley Baldwin no ill, but it would have been better if he had never been born. He once stumbled over the truth, but hasty picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.”

Winston described his predecessor, Neville Chamberlain, as looking at foreign affairs “…through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe.” And he observed that “Harold Wilson is going around the country, stirring up apathy.” And at the award ceremony where Lord Mountbatten was promoted and presented with a medal for bravery after his destroyer was sunk in the Mediterranean, “What could you hope to achieve except to be sunk in a bigger and more expensive ship next time?”

An ever dutiful socialite, Churchill once bumped into his hostess, Bessie Braddock, at a party. He excused himself, but Ms. Braddock scolded, “Winston, you’re drunk!” To which Winston replied, “Bessie, you’re ugly. And tomorrow I shall be sober.” At another party Lady Astor told him, “Winston, if you were my husband I would flavor your coffee with poison” Churchill told her, “Madam, if I were your husband, I should drink it.”

But Churchill’s best rejoinder may be apocryphal. While he was sitting on the toilet an aide supposedly knocked on the door to remind him that the Lord of the Privy Seal wanted to speak with him. Now, the Lord of the Privy Sea is not a Lord, is privy to nothing, and holds no seal. He is an advisor to the Prime Minister without a cabinet position, and so a person with no real power. This may explain why Churchill responded to the interruption as he supposedly did. Through the closed bathroom door he told the aide to, “Tell the Lord Privy Seal that I am sealed in my privy, and can only deal with one s—t at a time.” The story may be myth, but it is clear that Winston stood head and shoulders above his contending wits while on the attack.

The Brits have an advantage in political wit-ery because of the weekly “Question Time” which forces their Prime Ministers to submit to cross examination directly from their opponents in full public view, requiring both sides of the aisle to live by their wits. This has given rise to such lifelong political duels as the one-sided war between Benjamin Disraeli, who called his great adversary, William Gladstone , “…essentially a prig…All the prigs spoke of him as the coming man”. Disraeli noted that “If Gladstone fell into the Thames, that would be a misfortune. And if anybody pulled him out, that, I suppose, would be a calamity”.

And the best that Gladstone could respond with was to complain that he lost an election because, “We have been borne down in a torrent of gin and beer”. I guess Gladstone was a prig, after all. It’s no wonder then that Queen Victoria complained that Gladstone, in private conversation with her, always spoke to her as if she were a public meeting.

The only nation that comes close to the erudite viciousness of the English is the Australians, and they place heavy emphises on the visciousness. And the Australian one-man Olympic insult team – one time Labor Party Prime Minister, the right honorable Paul Keating, who once said that most politicians have brains like a sparrow’s nests - “all s—t and sticks”. Clearly he meant to exempt himself.

It was Keating who described an opposition member as “..a shiver waiting for a spine”, and labeled another as “a desiccated coconut”, “…a lizard on a rock, alive but looking dead.”, and “…the brain damaged Leader of the opposition.” Keating described listening to a speech by John Hewson as similar to “…being flogged with a warm lettuce” and Andrew Peacock as “…an intellectual rust bucket.” And when Peacock repeated an old charge against Keating, the P.M. described the attack as “A dog returning to his vomit.” Keating even described one opponent as “All tip and no iceberg”, and a “pre-Copernican obscurantist”, whatever that is.

But best of all of Paul Keating’s insults is, in my opinion, his comparison of Malcom Fraser to “…an Easter Island statue with an arse full of razor blades.” Ouch.

Yes, the world is filled with political insults that display wit, verve and élan, as when one British M.P. called another “..a semi-house trained polecat.”, or when Loyld George described Neville Chamberlin as “A retail mind in a wholesale business.”. An Italian politician described Prime Minster Silvio Berlusconi as clinging to data “…the way a drunkard clings to a lampposts, not for illumination but to keep him standing up”. Sam Huston said that Thomas Jefferson processed “…all the characteristics of a dog, except loyalty.” And when told that Dan Quayle had announced his intention to become George H.. Bush’s “Pit Bull”, Bill Clinton observed that Quail must have “…every fire hydrant in America worried.”

The supreme American professional political wit (although he never ran for office) was and always will be H. L. Mencken, the man who described democracy as "...the pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.” It was Mencken who said that if Franklyn Roosevelt became convinced that supporting cannibalism would help him win an election “he would be fattening a missionary in the White House backyard come Wednesday.”

When describing President Warren G. Harding, Mencken wrote, “He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm pish and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.”

It was Mencken who said that “A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar”. But Mencken hit his stride when he stooped to describe Calvin Coolidge. “He slept more than any other president, whether by day or night. Nero fiddled, but Coolidge only snored.”

But did Coolidge inspire Mencken to deliver the deftest, wittiest political insult in history? I fear not. Nor was it delivered by Dorothy Parker, the fem-fatalist writer and razor wit, who, on being told that Coolidge was dead, immediately asked, “How can they tell?”

Nor was it the old Frenchman Georges Clemenceau, who sat through a bombastic speech by British Prime Minster Lloyd George, even though Clemenceau understood not a word of English. At the end of the speech the septuagenarian Frenchman shook his head in awe and whispered to an aide, “Oh, if I could only piss the way he speaks”; point taken. But still it falls short.

No, I believe the best, most accurate, most vicious witticism ever uttered by any politician sprang from the lips of Bob Dole, Republican workhorse and American Presidential candidate. Well before his own failed Presidential campaign, Dole attended a 1980 White House reception for former Presidents Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford and Richard Nixon, before they flew off to attend Anwar Sadat's funeral. Looking over the White House's Blue Room crowded with ex-Presidents, Dole was heard to comment, “There they are. See no evil, hear no evil and…evil.”

Accurate, biting, funny and inventive; and the very definition of wit.

- 30 -

HOW TO GO BROKE IN A HURRY

2009-11-18T05:45:00.000-05:00

I heard about a guy who came up with a brilliant idea, convinced some money people to invest in his dream, and made a billion dollars. He built himself a huge mansion and lived happily ever after. It happens. Of course you never hear about the fifty or sixty guys who came up with exactly the same idea and then went broke. The text books call this capitalism. I call it the “Savannah Effect”, that being the name of the first ship to cross the Atlantic using steam power. And if you were wondering why Detroit doesn’t have an electric car ready for sale right now or why the U.S. spent billions on a Space Shuttle that is now considered a white elephant, the answer is the “Savannah Effect”.

It happened in 1819 and if you check the history books you will discover that the first steam ship to cross the Atlantic was the “Great Western” or the “Cape Breton” in 1833, or the “Siruis” in 1838. It depends on which book you read. But whichever book you read you will not read about the “Savannah” because, well, because it never made a dime. And in a Capitalist culture this is the big secret, I mean besides the secret that advertising lies and that girls like sex. Failure, is the big secret.

The alternative engergy folks are now selling the idea that sailing ships can cross the ocean powered by the free fuel of the wind: except the wind is not free. It requires masts and sails and a lot of rope and it once required a large crew to handle it all. And even with all of that you could only move when the wind was blowing.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century the world had five thousand years invested in sailing technology. And living with wind technology meant that the advantages of steam power were obvious.

A steam ship could leave port when it wanted to, and even travel against the wind. The crew could be a tenth of the size needed on a sailing ship, which meant more of the power was used for moving cargo and less for moving the crew. The crew are expenses. The cargo is the profit. And the new nation of America had a shortage of manpower, meaning a shortage of sailors. Steam ships were the obvious way to increase profits. And that is what capitalism is all about. Because it sure ain't about efficency. That is the other great secret of capitalism, that, and "the check is in the mail".

Anyway, in 1818, the successful cotton merchant William Scarbrough of Savannah, Georgia paid $50,000 for a 319 ton packet ship then under construction at the Fickett and Crockett shipyard, on the East River, in New York City. Mr. Scarbrough was convinced that the future of naval commerce was in steam, and he was president of (and principle investor in) the newly formed Savannah Steamship Company. Do you like they way they worked the hi-tech product into the company name? Sort of like calling your new electric car "The Volt". Mr. Scarbrough was intent upon establishing a regular steam ship service between America and Europe. And to shepherd that intention into reality Scarbough sought out Captain Moses Rogers.

Moses Rogers seemed to have been born at almost the perfect time and place for a young man with a maritime heritage, a mechanical bearing of mind and an adventurous spirit. Fifty years earlier those talents would have been wasted. But at the turn of the 19th century he seemed to be perfectly positoned - seemed to be.

He was pure Yankee, born in New London, Connecticut. He had been one of the first captains of Robert Fulton’s “North River Steamboat” (Later called the “Claremont”) and in June of 1808 he had shared command of John C. Steven’s steamboat “The Phoenix”. Now, Stevens had missed beating Fulton to the honor of first steamboat in America by just a month, and missed profitability by not having the Governor of New York as his partner.

While Governor Livingston had granted Fulton (his partner, of course) the sole right to operate steamboats on the Hudson River, Steven’s designs were forced to make the riskier runs between New York and Philadelphia. And it was in costal waters that Rogers built his reputation as a navigator and an engineer, cause the engines kept breaking down. It was, at the time, a relatively rare combination of skills. Also, Captain Rogers had already discussed the idea of oceanic steamships with Stephen Vail.

Vail owned an iron works in Moorestown, New Jersey. Vail employed engineers who had worked with Watson Watt, the developer of the steam engine. Vail’s engineers not only had personal experience at building steam engines but they had also managed to smuggle vital data about them out of England. It seemed like a partnership of these three men was made in heaven. How could they fail? I shall pause now while we all snicker.

On August 22, 1818 the newly named “Savannah”, 98’6” long by 25’10” wide, with three masts and a man’s bust for a figurehead , slid off the ways in upper Manhatten and immediately sailed to Vail’s Speedwell Iron Works, at Mooristown, New Jersey where a 90 horsepower 30 ton steam engine, removable side paddlewheels and a 17’ bent smokestack were installed. The work took six months. On March 29th 1819 the Savannah sailed on her shakedown cruise to her namesake port. Then on May 22nd, she set sail for Liverpool, England. Scarbrough could already smell the money piling up in his pockets.

The correct word here is “sailed” as the Savannah’s engine gobbled up 10 tons of coal a day. She could only carry 75 tons (with about another 5 cords of wood as an emergency backup). Besides, under sail, the Savannah could make 10 knots an hour, while under steam alone she could only average about 5 knots. So the steam power was used only when the winds failed. She used her steam engine less than 80 hours in total during her crossing.

The Savannah broke no speed records. She covered the 3,000 miles in a mediocre 22 days, and ran out of coal in the process. The boilers had to be fed the wood so the Savannah could make her "grand entrance” into Liverpool under steam.

The British were not impressed. In the first place they had not invented the thing, the Americans had. Pish posh, and poo hoo. It seemed to the Limies that the limited power of the steam engine was not worth the loss in the cargo space the engine took up.

Given the cold shoulder in England the Savannah sailed for Copenhagen, where the King of Sweden offered to buy the ship for $100,000. But not having been authorized in advance to sell the ship, Captain Rogers said no. Ah, if he had only said yes, this story might have had a happier ending, because back home in America, the nation was being rocked by the Panic of 1819, and Mr. Scarbrough needed the cash infusion.

Record numbers of people in Boston were sent to debtors’ prison. In Richmond, Virginia, property values fell by half. Farm workers, making $1.50 a day in 1818, were only earning fifty-three cents a day a year later; wood cutters were being paid thirty-three cents for a cord of wood in 1818, but only ten cents for a cord by 1821. (Does any of this sound familar?)

And one of the bigger victims of the panic was William Scarbrough, of the Savannah Steamship Company. On June 5, 1819 Scarbrough had to take out a mortgage on his new mansion to secure his debts, which then totaled $87,534.50. A year later, May 13, 1820, Scarborough was forced to sell his beautiful home to Robert Isaac, his brother-in-law, for $20,000. He had to sell his house to his brother-in-law; that must have stung! Oh, Isaac allowed William to continue to live in the house. But the very next day he laid claim to everything else that Scarborough still owned, including his shares of the steamship Savannah.

The Savannah was stripped of her boilers and put back into service as a standard packet ship. She was a failure at that too. In November 1821, in a gale, she ran aground and broke up off of Long Island, New York. Gee, I hope she was insured.

Stephen Vail, whose Speedwell Iron Works had installed the engine on the Savannah, was still owed $3,527.84 for his work. He never got paid. Moses Rogers went back to work running a dull coastal steamer, the “Pee Dee”. He died of yellow fever at Georgetown, South Carolina on November 15, 1821, at the age of 42. And somehow I am sure a contributing factor to his early death was his loss of faith in the Savannah.

William Scarborough, the inspiration for this noble misadventure, lived out the rest of his life in his own home, (thanks to his brother-in-law), even leaving it to his daughter in his will, just as if he still owned it. He died in 1838, at the ripe old age of 62 and is buried in the Colonial Park Cemetary in Savannah. His home is still standing. It's address is now 42 Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, an address which might take some explaining to an old slave holder from 1818. But the building now houses "The Savannah “Ships of the Sea” Maritime Museum", featuring a model of that amazing failure, the steamship Savannah. And that should make the old man proud.

The steamship Savannah was a good idea. But like most ideas, good and bad, it was judged a failure. Nobody got rich off the Savannah and most people associated with her went broke. And that is why they should be remembered. It's the way capitalism moves forward, the way it's supposed to move forward. If death is required to give life meaning, then failure is required to give capitalism meaning. And somebody should explain that to the Wall Street Bankers and the Health Care Leeches who think they are entitled to suck America dry so they can avoid going broke. Please remember, luck is always part of the balance sheet. The Savannah should serve as yet another reminder of that.

- 30 -

CRIMINAL MASTERMIND

2009-11-15T06:26:00.001-05:00

I hasten to point out that the men who sought shelter at the Inn were not a harmonious quartet of criminal masterminds. It turns out they were not masterminds of any kind. But then, how many people are masters in any line of work? The lead voice in this group was Charles Gibbs, a diminutive thirty-six year old fire plug - and the last pirate in New York City who did not work on Wall Street. His Achilles in crime was the baritone Thomas Wansely, a tall and powerfully built black man too curious by half. The bass was voiced by Robert Dawes, cook and nonentity, a plump man with no criminal record, as of yet. But tenor and ringer was John Brownrigg, who possessed a fatal combination of a conscious and stupidity, which caused him to first commit a crime and then to confess it unbidden to a complete stranger.

Perhaps it was the warm food, or the hot rum or perhaps it was the flames of purgatory which drove John Brownrigg to draw innkeeper Samuel Leonard aside and spill his tale on that stormy afternoon of November 24, 1830. The four men, explained John, had been crewmen of the small brig Vineland, docked at Vera Cruz, Mexico, loaded with a cargo of cotton bales, and casks of molasses and rum.

Late in the day Thomas Wansely had been ordered by Captain William Thornby to stack a half dozen heavy barrels in the Captain’s quarters. The strain and curiosity drove Wansely to pry open one of the leaden barrels for a peek. Inside he found newly minted Republican silver coins – Mexican pieces of eight. And as the tide pulled the Vineland into the Gulf of Mexico, Wansely shared his discovery with first mate Charles Gibbs.

By Gibb’s figuring the barrels together held today’s equivalent of over one million dollars in untraceable cash. It was untraceable because, without a standardized national currency of their own, Spanish and Mexican coins circulated so commonly in America, that prices were figured as the equivalent in Spanish (and Mexican) currency, to the point that today’s ubiquitous American “$” sign was borrowed from its Spanish inventors.

In the morning, Gibbs and Wansely opened one of the barrels of rum and shared it with Dawes, Brownrigg and the other crewmen. And once they were all well intoxicated, Gibbs told them of the cargo of silver, and confessed that last night he had thrown Captain Thornby overboard. With that much money at stake, explained Gibbs, they were now all under suspicion for murder. So, Gibbs suggested, why not share the crime and the silver between them. One crewman balked and joined the captain in the briny deep. The others quickly agreed to become pirates. As the vessel crossed the gulf bound for New York, a second man sobered up and expressed regret. He joined the other two in the sea.

Their doubts thus drowned, on November 23, 1830 the Vineland reached the westernmost barrier island off New York. Its name derives from the Dutch ‘Conyne Eylandt’, meaning Rabbit Island. They anchored in an isolated corner of Jamaica Bay. There, with a nor’easter brewing in the gathering darkness, the four men struggled to lower a skiff and fill it with their burdensome barrels of silver. They then scuttled the Vineland and set her afire. As she sank into the muddy waters of the bay the four men in the low riding skiff set off for shore, at what is today Rockaway Beach.

It was not beach weather. The surf was pounding. A gale was approaching. The landing was a disaster. In the crashing waves the four seamen lost most of their booty, and were able to save just 10% of the coins. Wet and cold and exhausted, soaked by a pounding downpour, the gang of four came to the realization they had not thought things through as well as they thought they had. While Wanesly and Brownrigg stood guard over what was left of their loot, Gibbs and Dawes walked to a tavern Gibbs recalled in the isolated village of Carnarsie.

The tavern was run by the Johnson brothers, John and William. The youngest, William, who answered the door that night, recognized Gibbs and was willing to loan him a horse and wagon for an hour or so. Gibbs explained he had a heavy load to transfer from a boat.

Having thus obtained the tools required, Gibbs and Dawes returned to the beach, and, according to Brownrigg, the four men buried the remaining $5,000 in Mexican silver, marking the spot with a strand of ribbon tied to the saw grass. They then returned to Johnson’s house and Gibbs paid for the rental with a generous bag of new Mexican coins.

The four men were headed for lower Manhattan, where they would claim the ship had been lost in the storm. But their convenient alibi was by now pounding the coast, and after having crossed Coney Creek, the quartet was forced to seek refuge in John Leonard’s Sheepshead Bay Inn, where John Brownrigg spilled his guts.

Leonard was nothing if not decisive. Quietly he gathered his staff and they fell upon the three villains. Well, two of the villains. Gibbs and Dawes were quickly tied to their chairs, but Wanesly broke for the woods, followed by the courageous waiter Robert Greenwood who was armed with an unloaded flintlock pistol. An hour later Greenwood returned with Wanesly in tow.

The justice of the peace, John Van Dyck, was summoned, and next morning Brownrigg lead the authorities to the buried treasure. Only the treasure was not there. Under questioning Dawes decided to cooperate, and related the tale of the visit to the Johnson brothers tavern. Under questioning the brothers confirmed the details but, no, they insisted, they knew nothing else. Van Dyck was certain that they did. And Van Dyck was correct.

The instant Gibbs had crossed William Johnson’s palm with the silver, the mastermind William knew that something serious afoot. Perhaps if the payment had been less generous, or if Gibbs had paid in any other currency, his secret might have remained secret. As it was, 19 year old William immediately woke up his older brother John, and after examining the weary horse’s hooves, the brothers searched the beach. They quickly found the cache of stolen silver and re-stole it. They dragged it inland a few hundred yards, divided and re-buried it in two new caches, one of $40,000 and the second of $16,000. And then they returned home for a hearty breakfast.

JP Van Dyke suspected this, or most of it. But he could prove nothing. And once a beachcomber had discovered Mexican eights rolling in the surf, and was joined by hundreds of others combing the sand, there was no way of proving where the crazy eights had come from, the cache or the surf. Van Dyke could only choke the four birds he still had in his hand, held for now in the Flatbush Jail.

And then something curious happened. William Johnson began to have second thoughts. He approached the insurance company (yes, even in 1830 there were insurance companies), and inquired what they might pay as a reward for the return of some of the silver. The insurance company replied that they would be willing to make a generous settlement which might not leave the brothers filthy rich, but at least they would be free from worry of future legal entanglements. Encouraged, William returned to the Coney Island Beach to confirm the security of the cache, whereupon he made a most distressing discovery.

The larger cache was gone, as was older brother John. Had he stolen the silver from his own brother? Well, John was married, so there was John's wife’s incipient criminal mastermindy-ness to consider as well. Clearly John or his wife had reached the conclusion that even though John had not heard opportunity knock, but had to be awakened to it, he was deserving of the larger share of the stolen silver. So he took it. And the 21 year old Willaim Johnson returned the $16,000 in pieces of eight left behind in exchange for a very small reward.

On April 22, 1831, on the site that would one day support the Statue of Liberty, criminal masterminds Charles Gibbs and Thomas Wansley climbed the thirteen steps of a scaffold, where they were both hanged by the neck until they were dead. Gibbs had been convicted of piracy, and was the last man hanged for that crime in America - so his death was not entirely without meaning. Wansley died for the crime of murder. Dawes and Brownrigg served short jail terms, and disappeared from history. William Johnson lived in Brooklyn until 1906. He married and produced at least one son and a daughter.

But of the two remaining masterminds, John and Mrs Johnson, who were heard of escaping with today’s equivalent of $800,000 in cash, nothing more was ever heard. But I would very much like to know what became of them, because if, as I suspect, he or she later turned up dead, then we would know if the percentage of criminal masterminds in this affair was 20% or less - less being the historical average.

-30 -

BITE ME!

2009-11-13T06:28:00.000-05:00

I want to immediately pierce to the very heart of this issue. If the little prince had been remembered by his real name, Vladimir Basarab, he would have been a lot less infamous. He might still have been celebrated as Vlad Bsasrab the Transfixer, or, in the same vein, immortalized as Vlad Tepes the Inappropriate Marriage Counselor. The bloody shame is that his own baptized appellation has so faded against his myth that you are far more likely to say, “Oh, Vlad the Impaler”, I know who that is. That is Dracula, the vampire from Transylvania.” And you would be dead wrong. Well, wrong, anyway.

For some reason we are up to our necks in vampires these days. Truly, it is the genre that won’t die. There was “Buffy” and “Angel, and “Blade” and “True Blood” and “Blood Ties” and “Twilight” and “Interview with a Vampire” and the “Underworld” series and “Nosferatu” and a few million Dracula movies. Back in the 1990’s Josh Whedon even created “Spike” a vampire with a nicotine habit – Why would he smoke, when he doesn’t breathe? Worse, these days the hard bitten hickey artists, in fact this entire ethos of ensanguined extortionist, lusts not merely for blood. I could write a treatise on the lack of the appeal of sex to those who do not live. And more pointedly there is the great unstated reality that these lively undead, if they exist at all, must secrete an anticoagulant to digest their meals, else the blood would form a huge, hemoglobin hair-ball clot in their tummies. Has anybody given this any thought? I have.

Every week or so a real vampire would suddenly be rendered helpless while they gagged up and then deposited a foul smelling black mass on the carpet. First, that should make it easy to escape from a vampire; second it should make them easy to locate; and third, how is that sexy? - Because this current fascination with fangs seems to be about the sublimation of sex with a succubus and or a succuba, or both. And to think, it originally started out as the sublimation of nationalism. Who would have thunk it?

Dracula is Romanian for “Sons of the Dragon”. They were an order of Christian Knights, which honored Vlad’s father with the title. And Vlad occasionally laid claim to it as well, but only at formal occasions, such as banquets and bloodlettings, which were often the same occasions for him. Yes, he was a capricious mass murderer, but Vlad was never ever accused of being a vampire, not to his face, not in his original lifetime, anyway. He would not have even known what a “vampyre” was. He would have known what a vrykolakas was. That was a Greek invention, a sort of Slavic vampire without dentures, one of the undead motivated by a necrotic sense of humor. But, of course, there has been bad blood between the Greeks and the Slavs for the last 3,000 years and the dentile demon is just the latest addition in this blood feud.

Only a vampire can make a vampire. But a vrykolakas is created when a dog or a cat jumps over a grave. Should they pause to urinate on the crypt the occupant will get a little wet; but they’re dead, what do they care. However it seems to be the bound that boils the banshee bicuspid. Driven by the sanguine leap the vrykolakas makes the inhuman effort to clamber from its tomb and engage in a mortiferous game of “Knock, knock”. In Slavic lands, a tap on the door after dark should never be answered. Not because a salesman may put the bite on you, but because it just encourages the vrykolakas to keep on knocking. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vrykolakas)

Vlad was no mere vrykokakas. Legend has it that Vlad once sat in judgment of a wife suspected of adultery. He awarded the husband a divorce, and provided child support by impaling the mother and child on the same spike. His social programs were saturated with the same carnassial logic. The invalids in his realm were invited to a feast, at which Vlad bolted the doors and windows and set the hall on fire. Once the flames died down Vlad announced he had eradicated poverty in his realm. Technically he was correct, but it did little to improve his public image. But there was a reason for Vlad’s fiendish behavior.

At the tender age of five Vlad’s familiar bonds were severed when he was offered up as a hostage to the Ottomans. During his six years alone in a Turkish prison, Vlad’s only playmates were bats and spiders, who he tortured to his heart’s content. When he was eleven Vlad’s father and older brother were both murdered by Boyars, the local landlords. You can understand, then, that when Vlad was finally able to resurrect his father’s empire in 1456, he perforated every Boyar he could lay his bloody hands on. Unfortunately he skewered his economy as well, but you can’t have everything.

In 1462 the Sultan decided he had enough of Vlad’s savage vindictiveness, and he invaded Transylvania with a 90,000 man army. Since Vlad only had about 30,000 men his cause seemed a dead letter. Still Vlad made it interesting by puncturing 20,000 Turkish prisoners at the border. This act of mass murder managed to impress the Sultan who was no slouch in the mass mayhem department, himself. Still the outcome was the same; Vlad was forced into exile, and the Sultan placed Vlad’s half brother on the throne.

And it turned out that Vlad’s allies were no more comfortable with a lethal poltergeist potentate in their midst than the Sultan had been. Vlad was locked up in the 13th century equivalent of a mental ward for 12 years, by which time the memories of his murderous malignant management style seem to have faded to black. So, in 1476 he was able to attempt to recapture his little empire. But Vlad was cornered by Turkish troops and killed in a battle outside of Bucharest. And to prove that he was ‘morally, ethic'lly, spiritually, physically, positively, absolutely, undeniably and reliably dead’, the Turks decapitated Vlad’s corpse and sent his head ahead to Constantinople as proof for the Sultan that the demon was not merely dead, but certainly, assuredly and really most sincerely dead’.

Except, that he wasn’t; enter the Irishman Bram Stoker, business manager for the actor and owner of a London theatre, and part time writer of lurid adventure stories and novels. Chapter two of Stoker’s “Dracula”, which was published in 1897, records the first meeting between English lawyer and the Count. “A key was turned with the loud grating noise of long disuse, and the great door swung back…Within, stood a tall old man, clean shaven save for a long white moustache, and clad in black from head to foot, without a single speck of color about him anywhere….The old man motioned me in with his right hand with a courtly gesture, saying in excellent English, but with a strange intonation. “Welcome to my house! Enter freely and of your own free will!...I am Dracula…”

But was Stoker inspired by the real Dracula? Elizabeth Miller who has made a study of the issue (“Dracula: The Shade and the Shadow” – 1998) does not think so. “…(Stoker's) research seems to have been haphazard (though at times fortuitous) rather than scholarly. What he used, he used “as is,” errors and confusions included….After all, Stoker was writing a Gothic novel, not a historical treatise. And he was writing Dracula in his spare time, of which I doubt he had much.”

Writing in his spare time? Who ever heard of such a batty idea?

- 30 -

THE GREATEST POLITICIAN OF ALL

2009-11-11T06:42:00.000-05:00

I hear constant complaints about crooked, two-faced, lying politicians, and it seems to me that the objections and the job description are nearly identical. The obvious rules for the participants of a democracy were first laid down 2,400 years ago, and they have not been improved upon since. Rule number one is that unless employed as a politician, a politician is not a politician. Thus to be a successful politician, a politician must first be elected. Second, the successful politico must be re-elected, as often as possible. You can understand, then, how easy it is for a politician (and the electorate) to confuse the objective with the means to the objective. It happens all the time.

The proof of these rules was firmly established by the golden boy of ancient Greek democracy, the man who turned hypocrisy, sycophancy and prevarication into an art form, the greatest politician of all time bar none, Alcibiades Alcmaeonidae. It wasn’t that Alcibiades broke the mold, it was that Alcibiades was the mold.

His world was shaped by his uncle and guardian, Pericles, who defined a great leader as someone who “…knows what must be done and is able to explain it; loves one’s country and is incorruptible.” That was baloney, of course. A great leader first needs to hired as the leader, and then rehired as often as possible. And in order to do that the leader-want-to-be must tell the voters what want to hear, as opposed to the truth. Allow me to explain.

Having decided that Athens and Sparta were destined for war, Pericles devised a most unusual strategy for winning that war; no fighting. Between 430 B.C. and 429 B.C. Spartan armies invaded Athenian territory (called Attica) repeatedly. Their objective was to defeat the Athenian army and then take pocession of their crops and farmers, who would be redefined as slaves. In order to achieve this objective the Spartan armies burned Athenian crops and villages and took hostages. The Athenians farmers would have never agreed to follow ta plan not to oppose the Spartans, so Pericles never suggested it to them. Nor did he explain that he intended Athens to rely on their fleet to bring in grain from Egypt and the Ukraine to replace the lost crops burned by the Spartans.

Pericles' idea was to frustrate the Spartans, whose approach was geared toward a quick victory at any cost. Delaying that victory would feed internal dissent in Sparta over a seemingly endless war and encourage them to make peace on Athenian terms. It was a brilliant idea. And it might have worked but for one unanticipated event. The plague arrived on the grain ships from Egypt in 428 B.C. and the plauge killed perhaps a third of the population of Athens, including Pericles.

The abrupt vacuum at the top of Athenian politics was an opportunity for the young Alcibiades. He was looked the part of a superstar, a cross between John Edwards and JFK. And in politics, image is reality. First Alcibiades was a real Olympic athlete, considered “the Adonis of Athens…tall, shapely, remarkably handsome, fond of showy attire and luxurious surroundings…” (p 221, Baldwin Project) He was a powerful public speech maker, whose slight lisp made him all the more endearing. And he had that Bill Clinton appeal; he seduced women and men with equal ease and equally often. But Alcibiades really seduced them. No, I mean really. All the way.

The 19 year old Alcibiades even beguiled the old pedophile, Socrates. Reading Plato’s version of their dialogs is like watching a snake charmer with arthritis toying with a hungry python. Socrates began by berating Alcibiades’ youthful arrogance. “You say you do not need any person for anything …For you think you are the most beautiful and greatest” – and then later he fell under Alcibiades' spell, calling him “…the greatest of the Greeks.” Still, Socrates shared Alcibiades bed only once; if Athens had only been that wise.

It seems that all that Alcibiades learned from Socrates was that in order to become the next Pericles he needed a project worthy of his ambition. And in 415 B.C. Alcibiades suggested a cloak and dagger strike on the island of Sicily, a commando operation - perhaps even capturing by subterfuge the port city of Syracuse, Sparta’s strongest ally ouside of Greece. Athens was buying their grain from Egypt, and Sparta was buying theirs from Syracuse.

Now, Alcibiades’ priniciple political opponent was Nicias. Obviously Nicias could not afford to let Alcibiades' invasion succeed. So Nicias warned the citizens of Athens that Alcibiades' expedition would end up being twice the size he was claiming, and far more than twice as expensive. The plan would, claimed Nicias, require 140 ships and 6,000 men. And that was about twice the size that Alcibiades was suggesting. And maybe Nicias was right, maybe Alcibiades was hiding the truth. Pericles had. And maybe Alcibiades' was teling the truth. It's been 2,000 years and the arguement seems a little redundant by this time. But what ever the truth, when the arguement was submitted to the city council, both Nicias and Alcibiades were shocked by their decision. The Athenian council bought the whole thing, the 6,000 men and the 140 ships. And then they placed both Alcibiades and Nicias in charge of it. In other words they decided to deliver Alcabiades' dagger strike with Nicias' hammer, with both men guiding the weapon.

It couldn't possibly work. But neither man wanted to surrender the project to the other. So somehow the two foes managed to assemble the huge force. But Alcibiades should have been more worried about Nicias' willingness to cooperate. On the way to Sicily the huge fleet was intercepted by a fast trireme from Athens. By leaving Athens, it seemed, Alcibiades had sailed into a trap.

The night before the expeditian had set sail, someone had crept through the darkened streets of Athens and attacked the small statues of the God Hermes which stood outside of ever Athenian home, and by attacked I mean they had wacked off the phalles which jutted from each figure. Touching Heme's phallus was supposed to ensure good luck and it was standard practice for the citizens to grasp the phalles firmly everytime they left or returned home. Visitors were expected to "chock the snake" as well, as a sort of extended handshake - of sorts. Bill collectors were not similarly invited.

Now, I am certain this kind of vandalism had happened before. In fact, if Athenian thirteen year old males were anything like American thirteen year old males, I imagine those phalles were getting wacked off as often as mail boxes on country roads. They would be the perfect target for teenagers waiting for Wii to be invented. But, of course, Nicias' allies back in Athens were eager to make the most sinster suggestion possible, that it had been Alcibiadies who had wacked off the phalles, to mock the God's. Why a politican as skilled as Alcibiades would have done this was never explained, I suspect because the polticians ranting about his disrespect of the Gods were no more religous than Alcibiades. But, then, how many rational people actually believe in Obama Death Panels, or that Bush and Cheney plotted 911? As stated before, in politics, image is reality.

As soon as Alcibiades had sailed away Nicias' allies on the Athenian council had raised such a stink that the council caved in to them and ordered Alcibiades home to stand trial for heresy and treason. It seemed that Alcibiades had been outflanked. He knew instantly that Nicias was behind this, and Alcibiades had no intention of leaving his fate in the hand of his enemies. But the way Alcibiades avoided Nicias' trap was sheer genius.

On his way back to stand trial in Athens Alcibiades jumped ship at Thurii, and boldly contacted the Spartans. You remember the Spartans; big strong guys, not too bright, sworn enemies of Athens. Well, Alcibiades offered the Spartans information on the Athenian expedition’s plans to capture Syracuse. Only after that information proved correct did the Spartans warily agreed to allow Alcibiades sanctuary in their city. Alcibiades had just made his first betrayal.

Once in Sparta, Alcibiades became a new man. He converted from a luxury loving Athenian into a prime example of Spartan brutality and sadomasochism.

Like any good Spartan politician he began wearing simple clothes and eating cold gruel and exercising in public with the other sadomasochistic Spartans. He advised the Spartans on a strategy that led to the complete defeat of Nicias and the slaughter and capture of his entire Athenian force. In fact Alcibiades had become one of the most respected and trusted men in Sparta - until one morning in 412 B.C. when the Spartan king Agis II came home unexpectedly to speak to his queen and Alcibiades was seen jumping out of her bedroom window. Okay, maybe Alcibiades had that other failing of many politicians - he wanted everybody to love him. He wouldn't be the first politicain to carry that to an extreme, either.

Agis II put out a contract on Alcibiades' life , and our hero immediatly disappeared again. This time he turned up in Persia, as an advisor at the court of the satrapy Tissaphernes, who had been funding the Spartan war effort. Alcibiades had just made his second betrayal.

Buy funding the Spartans Tissaphernes had been hoping to weaken the Athenians. But he had lately begun to worry that the Spartans were getting too strong, which is exactly what he was told by his new political advisor, Alcibiades. On his advice the Persians cut back their cash support for Sparta. Things were getting complicated, weren't they.

Ever the plotter, Alcibiades put out peace feelers to his old friends in Athens. He convinced them that he could bring the Persians into the war on Athens’ side. Of course Tissaphernes had no intention of committing his forces until both Greek cities were exhausted, but by the time the Athenians realized this, according to the poet Aristophanes, they yearned for Alcibiades even while they hated him. This was to be Alcibiades’ third great betrayal.

Against their better judgement the Athenian generals made Alcibiades an Admiral, and he engineered an Athenian naval victory at Abydos, near the Hellespont, and burned the little village of Byzantium. After another Alcibiades victory the Spartans in the area sent home a desperate note. “Our ships are lost. Mindarus (the commander) is dead. The men are starving. We do not know what to do.”

In 407 B.C. Alcibiades made his triumphal return to Athens itself, to cheering throngs and the return of his property, which had been seized when he had joined Sparta. All charges against him were dropped; but not forgotten.

This last betrayal had convinced the Persians to again fully fund the Spartan war effort. And in 406 B.C. Alcibiades sailed with 100 ships on a mission to assist the city of Phocaea, near the Hellespont, which was under siege from Spartan forces. While making a scout Alcibiades left 80 ships at anchor at Notium under his second in command. But while he was away the fool brought on an engagement with the Spartan fleet, and was soundly defeated. His enemies in Athens blamed Alcibiades for the disaster, and he was forced into exile once again, and this time it looked final.

In 404 B.C. Alcibiades was living in retirement with a mistress in Phyrgia, in what is today central Turkey, in a mountain cabin. In the dark of night assassins set the house on fire and murdered Alcibiades as he rushed out side. Says the Baldwin Project, “Thus perished, at less than fifty years of age, one of the most brilliant and able of all the Athenians.” His death also proves the final rule in politics. If he had been a total fool, Alcibiades would have never become a politican, and probably lived a long and happy life. If he had been half as smart, Alcibiades would have been killed right away. It takes a real genius politician to be as smart Alcibiades, and live as long as he did.

Some say it was the Spartans who killed him, and some that it was his Athenian enemies, and some say it was the brothers of a Persian woman he had seduced. If Alcibiades did not fit his uncle’s definition of a great leader, still he had been a successful politician for each of the three great powers of his time – Athens, Sparta and Persia. How could you not consider him the greatest politician of any age?

- 30 -

OH, HENRY!

2009-11-08T06:31:00.000-05:00

I have long held the view that "anarchist" as a label which became passé with the invention of psychiatry. Of course it has stuck around as a vestigial etymological fossil, but any current criminal shrink can now vouch that the loonies who espoused anarchy were really just pathological egotistical narcissists. As proof of this contention I now present you with the head of Emile Henri, who lost his head over the injustice he suffered because of another inarticulate Frenchman who sought to challenge the establishment and managed only to blow his nose at them.

Everything about Auguste Vaillant screams of irony. He was a kin of Lee Harvey Oswald, a little man who wanted to be important, but lacked the necessary attention span. He was the leader of a socialist group but seems to have been the only regular member. While waiting for the revolution he was ironically employed sewing expensive handbags and wallets for rich people to store their money in.

Concerned about justice for the poor he had abandoned a wife and two children, and then lived with a deaf woman. For a political revolutionary to be living with a woman who could not hear his rants against capitalism passes beyond ironic into the realm of absurdity. And that is where we find Auguste on Saturday December 10, 1893 entering the public gallery above the Chamber of Deputies, the French congress, carrying a sauce pan bomb in his overcoat. Ce n'est pas ironique, c'est le plus absurde

Auguste had constructed two sauce pan bombs, but discarded the larger one after realizing he could never sneak a 3 quart sauce pan past security. Spotting his intended target, the President, on the Chamber floor, Auguste revealed and armed his 1 quart sauce pan. This attracted the attention of the woman sitting next to him. (“Excuse me, but is that a sauce pan bomb in your pocket or are you just unhappy to see me?”). She was able to deflect his throw so that the sauce pan bounced off a decorative cornice before exploding. The blast shattered Auguste’s right arm. The nuts and bolts packed around the explosive, shrapnel intended to kill 150 deputies, instead lacerated Auguste’s neck and chest. And the explosion blew his nose completely off his face. Unfortunately, the quick acting heroine was also badly wounded, as were at least 20 politicians. But the only person who died, if not immediately, was Auguste, Ce n'est pas tragique, c'est le plus absurde.

Auguste’s trial was brief. And on February 3, 1894, the guillotine finished what Auguste’s own bomb had started. His last words, before the blade severed his head completely from his body, were, “Mort à la société bourgeoise! Vive l’anarchie!”
( “Death to the Bouergeoisie! Long live Anarchy!”) Even his last words turned out to have been ironic.

Because, of the millions who were outraged by Auguste’s departing utterance, the most significant turned out to have been another nobody anarchist fanatic, this one named Emile Henri, a 21 year old who was consumed with envy. Henri was convinced that Auguste’s noble death scene should have been his. After all, just over a year before had not Henri stricken a much more effective blow against the bourgeois but had received little of the press coverage afforded the now headless incompetent.

Henri had decided to strike his blow for striking miners. So he packed 20 sticks of dynamite into sauce pan rigged to explode if it was jostled. He carefully left this “infernal device” outside the second floor offices of a mining company just before lunch on November 8, 1892.

A lowly Porter noticed the sauce pan, and realized immediately what it might be. But rather than evacuating the offices he ordered an office boy to carry the suspect sauce pan down to the street. Somehow the office boy made it in once piece, but he felt a little uneasy about just leaving it on the sidewalk, in case a passing pedestrian should be injured. So he alerted a nearby school crossing guard. Two policemen responded. They tied a napkin around the bomb and then the three of them, the cops and the office boy, carried the bomb suspended between them to the local police station at the rather mis-named Rue des Bon Enfants (Street of the wonderful children.) There the bomb exploded, killing four cops and the office boy.

Henri had to lay low for awhile, but he was still living in a crummy apartment when he opened his anarchist newspaper on February 4, 1894 to read of Auguste’s dramatic speech at his trial. And Henri was spurred to action.

Now, there might be some who feel my tone slights the victims of such attacks; baloney. Murder has been anathema for at least six thousand years, when the ancient Egyptians made “Thou shalt not kill” their first commandment, predating Moses by at least a thousand years. If a human being is murdered by a serial killer, a lunatic at the controls of a hijacked jet, a deluded doctor, a drunk at the wheel of a car or a waiter too busy to wash their hands, the result for the victims is the same; tragedy. Fundamentalist Islamic-Christian-Marxist- Socialist-cultural-political justifications matter only to the perpetrator; I say again, baloney.

As if to prove my point, one week after the execution of Auguste, Henri entered the restaurant at Hotel Terminus, next to the Gar Saint Lazare train station in Paris. He had stopped at two other bars earlier but, he claimed later, they weren’t crowded enough. My guess is he had not yet drunk enough courage. He nursed two drinks for an hour at the Terminus, and then as he staggered out the door, tossed his bomb back into the café. A waiter ran after Henri, who shot him. Two policemen took up the chase. Henri shot one. The other knocked him down and restrained him. Henri’s toll was now eight dead – five at the police station and three at the restaurant.

At his trial Henri was defiant and bombastic, until his attorney put Henri’s mother on the witness list. Henri objected. He told the judge, “It never occurred to me to inflict such pain on my mother.” In fact I suspect Henri was more concerned about sullying his image as a heartless dedicated anarchist with the truth about his commonality.

According to the New York Times, On May 21, 1894 at“4:07 a.m.…the iron doors swung apart…Henri was ghastly white, but walked with a firm step. As he approached the platform he shouted, “Courage comrades. Long live anarchy.” His voice…trembled noticeably…As they pushed him against the plank he shouted again, ““Courage comrades. Long live anarchy.”…The click of the knife was heard the next moment, and Henri’s head dropped to the ground. The blood from the trunk spurted high as the body revolved into the basket. (The executioner) himself picked up the head from the sawdust and threw it viciously into the basket with the body.”

Anarchy, it turned out, was not long lived. History proved it to be a temporary delusion, to join those other temporary delusions people have claimed as justification for random murder; communism, fascism, Black power, White power, the Basque Independence Party, the Irish Republican Army, the John Birch Society, the Confederacy, and the myriad other stupid rationalizations.

Hatred is a lot like love in this respect - reduced to its core it is all about self.

- 30 -

TINY BUBBLES

2009-11-06T05:52:00.000-05:00

I guess it all goes back to the bubbles. They are what attracted that feckless paranoid lunatic Philip IV. As King he was responsible for the economic collapse of medieval France. And the recovery, which finally came after 700 years of travails, can be traced directly to the Blanc de noirs stained front door of the Abby of Hauntvillers, bottlers of the monastic barfly’s inebriate of choice, the cheap bubbly booze of the pre-bubonic Benedictine generation, champagne.

You see, the Champagne plateau (about 100 miles Northwest of Paris) is so far north that the grapes ripen very late in the year. Now, in standard fermentation, the yeast eats the sugar in the grape juice. The sugar is converted into alcohol and the yeast farts cabon dioxide, until all the sugar is consumed and then the yeast dies. But the wine produced in Champagne was different in two ways. First, the grapes were very sweet, so sweet that the yeast farted so much CO2 that the wine was filled with bubbles. And second the wine was bottled so late in the year that there was always yeast still surviving when temperatures dropped low enough to stop the fermentation in each bottle.

Usually the monks drank the juice while it was still saccharine, and what a sad bunch of alcoholics they must have been. But in the bottles and the casks the monks could not consume over the winter (and they tried), the spring temperatures re-started the fermentation. Occasionally so much more CO2 built up that the bottles that come summer, they exploded.

Also the stuff just did not taste very good. And other than the few souls who would have drunk aftershave if aftershave had been invented yet, the residents of Champagne mostly drank Burgundy. Even the vino impaired English resisted consuming the “weird and foaming” wine the Counts of Champagne tried to unload on them. I suspect the vines themselves only survived because of tradition.

Once every generation a new French King was crowned in Reims, 37 Kings in all between 816 A.D. and 1825 A.D. They used the local effervescence to anoint their new monarch, and to drink a toast in his honor, a real test of their gag reflex, no doubt. But beyond that passing tribute, “dry and beggarly” Champagne remained a stagnant social backwater –until the importation of capitalism.

Did you know that the Muslims invented capitalism? The original dollar was the dinar. Muslims formed the first stock companies, the first banks and offered the first lines of credit. Very astute, these Muslims; because they were promoted based on talent rather than on blood lines. So the hereditary kings of Christendom were behind the eight ball on this one. Which is why it wasn’t until after the Northern Italians profited from the capitalist tricks they picked up from their Islamic trading partners that Northern Europe was finally opened for business.

The Champagne Fairs really got running smoothly about 1270, and they resembled the NASCA season. Every January the season opened at Lagny. This was followed by the Fair at Bar-sur-Aube, the May Fair in Provins, the “hot air” Fair at Troyes, then back to Provins for a second fair, a fair at Reims, and the “cold air” Fair at Troyes in November. Six towns and about a five weeks for each fair - a week for the set up; stocking the warehouses (the Fairs were strictly wholesale), establishing bank credit (everything was financed by the Italians), partnership contracts were signed, rates of exchange were agreed upon and stalls set up, where the actual business would be conducted. Then there would be a week concentrating on cloth sales (60 European towns sold their wool only at the Fairs), followed by a week of leather sales, a week for spices, and a closing week of hard commodities, grains, salt and metals. Then there would be a week taking delivery and paying debts and sharing profits, before moving on. It was a huge clockwork enterprise that developed over a century. But what made it all possible was that evil, evil, evil horror of all horrors to any modern capitalists – BIG GOVERNMENT!

As is noted in Wikipedia, the Counts of Champagne guaranteed “security and property rights of merchants…ensuring that contracts signed at the fairs would be honored throughout (Europe). The Counts provided the fairs with 140 Guards who heard complaints and enforced contracts…weights and measures were strictly regulated.…” The French King even granted free and safe conduct to merchants traveling to and from the fairs, for a cut of the profits, of course. It all functioned because the Counts of Champagne established the fundamental structure without which capitalism cannot exist; regulation.

It seems, having grown up in a capitalistic system, we assume a free market is the natural state of affairs. It isn’t. Regulations create the market. Regulations define the market. Regulations maintain the market. And when the regulations are not maintained and enforced, the market collapses. And the dinars hit the fan when control of Champagne passed from the reliable Counts to the King of France, Philip IV; the George W. Bush of medieval Europe.

You see Philip was drunk on his own hot air. To finance his dependency he spent his entire life looking for the next bank account to plunder. He gained control of Champagne province when he married 13 year old Joan I, the Countess of Champagne, in 1284. The Fairs supplied him with enough money for wars against the English and two wars in Flanders, one of which he won. The Guards became political appointees, who bought their offices from the King, and who became addicted to bribes just like the King. Tariff’s were now levied on every wagon load of goods bound to and from The Fairs. And internal border crossings, each exacting a tariff, began to multiply across France as Philip’s losses increased. Philip destroyed the Fairs by removing the regulations that defined the market, and piling on taxes not tied to their profits. And just as the profits from the Fairs began to drop off, about 1306, Joan died. There is some mystery about why. Some say it was while giving birth; some say that Philip had her poisoned. I’ll bet it was both.

A year later, Philip expelled the Jews from France - after seizing their property of course. A year after that, on October 13, 1307, Philip wiped out his debts to the Knights Templers by arresting all of them – and seizing their property, of course. Later, when their Grand Master refused to admit to even more hidden wealth which Phillip was certain the Knights had, Philip had him slowly barbecued, Texas style.

And then, because there wasn’t anybody left still doing business in France to steal from, Philip began seizing Church property. The church objected but that only slowed Philip down, it did not stop him. And when a French Cardinal was elected Pope, Philip had him placed under house arrest in Avignon, thus ensuring Philip could now plunder all the church accounts he could reach.

By the time Philip died of a stroke in 1314, he had reduced France and Champagne to a disaster area. The Fairs were history, France and the Champagne were broke. A bright, brief shinning light had been snuffed out by greed and stupidity wearing a crown.

Things did not begin to improve again for the backwater province until 1688, when the Abby of Hautvillers received a new treasurer and cellar master, Dom Pierre Perignon. Pierre did not invent champagne. He did not discover it. In fact he saw it as his personal obligation to turn it into a dull flat dark wine. He failed miserably – Thank God. But it was Perignon who made champagne drinkable.

I should point out here the obvious, which is that until the 20th century far more people died drinking water than from drinking booze. Every drop of water was filled with pathogens, bacteria and assorted filth. ‘Passing water’ was not an idle description. You were safer drinking your own urine than from a clear rushing mountain stream. You still are. Without the addition of alcohol or chlorine, quenching your thirst with water is playing Russian roulette with bullets in five chambers.

Farmers, working the best soil available, grew wheat and hops to brew beer. And monks, who usually established their monasteries on poor soil, grew grapes and fermented wine. Without a source of potable water, meaning a drinkable fluid, a monastery could not survive. Without a decent tasting wine to sell, a monastery could not thrive.

After 47 years of – dare I say it? – religious attention to detail, Pierre turned the haphazard blending of wines in the Champagne region into an art. He perfected the making of a white wine from the best of dark grapes, the Pinot Noir mixed with the Chardonnay. Under Father Perignon the cuvee, or the vat, in which each blend was made, became the measure of Champagne, the equivalent of its vintage. He added an English bottle, stronger than the French ones, to restrain the 90 pounds of pressure per square inch generated by all that carbon dioxide farted out by the yeast. And by the time he died in 1715 Dom Perignon had created something close to the Champagne we drink today.

Today, just down the road from the Abby of Hauntvillers, lies the village of Epernay, on the banks of the river Marne. Within a few square miles of L’Avenue de Champagne in Epernay, in ssome 200 million bottles yeast is happily frarting away. Those bottles of that “weird and foaming” wine, make Epernay in “dry and beggarly” Champagne, the richest little village in France.

And they might have made it there sooner if Philip IV had just stuck to the rules, and gotten drunk on the vino, instead of the bubbles.

-30-

A LIFE IN SERVICE

2009-11-04T06:44:00.000-05:00

I would say the 1870's were a very hard time for the women of Fort Abraham Lincoln. First there was the Saturday of June 25, 1876, when over two hundred and twenty of their husbands were left dead and mutilated on the windswept hills overlooking the Little Big Horn River. They called that Custer's Last Stand, but it killed several of the Custers. But the horror of that day would have been simple to deal with compared with the later problem. That happened in 1878 when the fort's women gathered to bury one their fellows, a wife and resident of "Suds' Row". And on that day those poor women saw something which they had never expected to see where they saw it. And they must have been very confused. Very confused. When someone dies you wear black. But what do you wear when you find testicles on a dead mare?

Picture America as she was approaching her centennial year. She was a nation of about 45 million people. And even though they had no internet, no ipods, no eletricity, no running water, no antibotics and no gummy bears, they were not that much different from the 300 million who reside in America today. On May 5th, 1875 pitchers for the Washington baseball team surrendered twenty runs to their opponent. This was the fifth time they had achieved that mirserable distinction, in just the last five games. They could have been the direct ancestors of today's Washington Senators. But, perhaps in response to those and similar debacles, that same year Boston first baseman Charles Waite introduced the first baseball glove. The vast majority of machismo players, who caught bare handed, mocked Waite as a member of the 'kid-glove aristocracy', much as owners of the N.F.L. have resisted the idea that repeated blows to the head might be reducing the long term intellect of professional football players.

In 1875 the moralizing "Our Boys" opened on Broadway. It followed the adventures of an Englisman and his butler and their pair of disapointing sons. A century and a quarter later the sitcom "Two and a Half Men" mined this same comedic vein, but better. And like a latter day "Lost", Jules Vernes' 1875 novel, "The Survivors of the Chancellor" told an episodic science fiction adventure story of a British passanger ship, lost at sea. The most popular song of the day consisted of the repeated lyrics, "Carve dat possum, carve dat possum, children. Carve dat possum, carve him to de heart." Ala "Who Let the Dogs Out", this 19th century chart topper was offically entitled, "Carve dat Possum".

Oh, the future was coming. Just the year before, in far off Germany, Dr. Ernst von Brucke had suggested that all living organisms obeyed the laws of thermodymamics. He was wrong, course, since very few humans, other than politicians, behave like big clouds of hot gas. But Doctor von Brucke did invent the field of psychodynamics, which, while a medical dead end in itself, was to have a great impact on his student, Sigmund Freud.

But Freud's discovery of the subconcious mind and repressed psychosomatic phobias and dreams about locks and keys and mik maids and bows and arrows was still a decade in the future in 1875 - which was shame because a little Freud sure would have helped those poor ladies at Fort Abraham Lincoln in 1878. Or maybe not.

The fort was on the west bank of the Missouri River, across from Bismark, North Dakota, where the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks and the telegraph lines ended because the "Panic of 1874" had bankrupted the company. The army post was at the very edge of the famous "Frontier West", and home to about 650 men and some 300 women attached to the U.S. Seventh Cavalry regiment. Robert Marlin tried to describe what kind of desperate people who would sign up for a year's service in such a place. “Immigrants, especially those from Ireland and German, filled the ranks. Others came from England, France and Italy. While most of the American recruits did not read or write, the immigrants who did not speak English compounded this problem…."

A trooper started off at the pay of $13 per month. Should he be such a glutton for punishment as to re-enlist, this was raised to $15. The trooper was now a “50-cent-a-day professional” soldier. And it was a very long day, starting "...at 5:30 a.m.,” wrote Marlin, “with the dreaded call of Reveille, and ended at 10:00 p.m. with the bugle sounding Taps.”

The average recruit in the Seventh was in his mid-twenties, and stood about five feet eight inches tall. He suffered from bad teeth, a bad back, and about 10% had suffered from some form of healed head trauma, making him eligable to play in the NFL. Twenty-two percent of the privates had been in the service for less than a year. And few of them would re-enlist. Lord knows, the diet did not help.

Each soldier received each day 12 ounces of pork or bacon, 22 ounces of flour or bread and less than an once of ground coffee. Every ten men were to receive per month; 15 lbs of beans or peas, 10 lbs of rice or hominy, 30 lbs of potatoes, 1 quart of molasses, 15 lbs of sugar, 3 lbs 12 ounces of salt, 4 ounces of pepper and 1 gallon of Vinegar. This was not a diet, it was a ration, and had as much flavor variation as "Spam, spam, spam and spam".

As the army needed soldiers, it also needed laundresses. They were as much in service of their country as the soldiers they served. And the reasons a young man might join the cavalry were similar to the reasons a young woman might become a laundress; a roof over her head, food in her belly and a new start in life. And even tho it needed them, the army was not likely to encourage the women to stay a single day longer than necesessary.

Linda Grant De Pauw lays out the vulnerbility of such women in “Battle Cries and Lullibies; “…a laundress wrote to Major L.H. Marshall at Fort Boise, Idaho describing how she had been arrested, charged as a murderess, and confined in a guardhouse for hitting her husband with a tin cup that he claimed (afterward) was an axe…(she was) sentenced to be drummed off that post at fixed bayonets …she and her three children had to live in a cold house, without the food ration they depended upon."

But the scramble to hold onto the fragil level of security a blue uniform provided only partly explains the woman known to history only as "Mrs. Nash". Shortly after the Seventh Cavalry regiment was formed in Lexington, Kentucky, in 1866, she took up residence along “Suds Row” as the laundresses’ quarters were commonly called. She always wore a veil or a shawl, and it was assumed this was because of scaring from smallpox or one of the many other skin diseases common at the time. Besides earning a small income as a washer woman, Mrs. Nash showed talent as a seamstress and tailored officer's uniforms for extra money. She was a noted baker and her pies were much sought after. After she built a reputation as a dependable mid-wife “few births occurred (on the post) without her expert help”.

But there is no record Mrs. Nash ever served as a prostitute. This was something not uncommon for the laundresses who needed the extra income but who could neither bake nor sew, and who showed more talent for the other half of the midwife equation. And as a practical matter prostitution by laundresses was not activily discouraged by the officers. This was the frontier and the only other option for amorous release by a trooper was with either his fellow troopers or the horses. Homophobic troopers tended to shoot first, and just say no afterward. And although the horses never complained, they were kind of important to survival on the plains and animal husbandry was discouraged. So prostitution by the laundresses was tolerated as long as the woman did not become really good at it or "notorious".

In short Mrs. Nash was a valuable member of the unit, and the rumor was that she had amassed a tidy little nest egg, too. In 1868 she married a Quartermasters Clerk named Clifton. But a few days later he deserted with her money and was never seen again.
Still it was natural that Mrs. Nash would be encouraged to follow the regiment when it moved to Fort Abraham Lincoln, in Dakota Territory, in 1872.

That was the year she married Sergeant James Nash, the “striker”, or personal servant, to Captain Tom Custer, younger brother of the regimental commander George Armstrong Custer. Although James and Mrs. Nash were seen to argue a great deal, still they seemed happy enough for a year or so. During that year Libbie Custer, wife of the General noted “…a company ball...(was) organized...Officers and ladies attended....Mrs. Nash wore a pink Tarleton (which she sewed herself) and false curls, and she had “constant partners”.

Then, unexpectedly, Sergeant Nash stole his wife’s savings and deserted her and the service. Libbie wrote that Tom Custer was very “put out” by this desertion. Persumably so was Mrs. Nash. But she did not remain so for long. In 1873, the lady, now called “Old Mrs. Nash”, married Corporal John Noonan. She kept a bright and tidy home for John, planting and maintaining flowers in front of their modest quarters. And she restored her nest egg. And for five years they were a contended and happy couple, the center of the social circle of Suds Row east of the Fort Lincoln parade grounds, and they were both a significant part of the post’s social life.

Then, in the fall of 1878, while Corporal Noonan was out on patrol, Mrs. Nash fell ill. As her conditioned quickly worsened she called for a priest, and after seeing him she told the ladies caring for her that she wanted to be buried as she was, without the usual washing and re-dressing. The ladies reluctantly agreed. Who would dare to argue with a dying woman, to her face. But after “Mrs. Nash" died on November 4th the women decided they could not show her such disrespect.

Two of her closest friends began to strip her, in preperation to washing and re-dress her body. And that was when they made a most unexpected discovery. Underneath the veil and the dress and the petticoats Mrs. Nash was a man. The Bismarck Tribune went so far as to headline a story, “Mrs. Nash has b---s as big as a bull!”

Dispite the story being gramatically incorrect (Mrs. Nash no longer had any testicles at all, ownership having been returned to the manufacturer) and since the story was clearly based on hearsay and unqualified medical opinion, the eastern papers picked the story up, and you know how that goes. Every yahoo with access to a printing press felt obligated to pontificate. The less they knew of the facts the more opinions they had. Public morality is, it seems to me, an excuse for being ignorant, loudly. And in this case the volume was a thunderclap in a drought.

When poor Corporal Noonan returned from patrol all his protestations of innocence and ignorance fell upon deaf ears. Quickly his grief, and the ridicule and the questions, asked and unasked, became too much to bear and two days after returning from patrol to find his wife”dead, John Noonan deserted his post and on November 30, 1878, shot himself to death with his rifle.

John Noonan now lies buried now in the National Cemetery adjacent to the Little Big Horn Battlefield, his tombstone identical to all the others who died in the service of their country on the Western Frontier. And rightly so.

But there is no headstone (no grave) for Mrs. Nash. There is no memorial of her years of service to the unit, of the babies she delivered, of the hardships she endured. And there is no recognition today that without a "liberal" media to encourage her, at least one human being found it preferable to live in constant fear of being revealed, in exchanged for the privilage of living as God made her, internally and externally, perfectly and imperfectly. She was proof that with all our technology and insights and smothered under blankets of public morality, we are today just as screwed up as our ancestors were.

- 30 -

NOT SO FAMOUS LAST WORDS

2009-11-01T06:30:00.000-05:00

I think Gaius Caligula was the stupidest Roman Emperor of them all. According to Tacitus, who was never wrong about these things, in 41 A.D., after having been stabbed by his own bodyguards, the sovereign lunatic’s last ravings were a statement of defiance; “I am still alive!” Playing opossum never seems to have occurred to him. Neither did offering money to his assassins. Listen, if you are already falling to your death, what could be the harm in trying to fly? It's probably not going to work, but what are you afraid of - looking foolish? If your own bodyguards have just stabbed you why not at least try keeping your mouth shut until some guards who don't know you well enough to hate you yet, happen by. Needless to say, the instant his highness issued this update on his peronal health the bodyguards finished the job. What an idiot.

Last words such as those are self defining; you are dead because you deliver them. Consider Billy the Kid’s last words, delivered into a darkened bedroom he had just entered. Billy was looking for a little comfort in the arms of Paulita Maxwell. But Paulita was bound and gagged on her bed. And sitting in the dark next to that bed was Sheriff Pat Garritt and Paulita's brother, Pedro. As Billy stepped through the door somebody made a sound. Billy asked, “Who’s there?” And Garritt responded with both barrels of his 12 gauge shotgun, at close range. That may be the ultimate definative answer to that particular question.

There is a school of thought that last words reveal some insight into character. I’m not referring to suicide notes or pompous words meant for posterity, but the spontaneous utterances of those who know they are facing an imminent death. As one example consider Thomas de Mahay, the Marquis de Favras, who in 1790 was handed his death warrant as he climbed the steps to the guillotine. Thomas actually spent his last moments on earth reading the document, as if he were looking for a loophole. And his last words on earth were addressed to the clerk who had handed him the legal justification for his execution. The Marquis interupted his own demise long enough to point out the offiical, “I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.” That was not a helpful remark if he was hoping for a delay in the proceedings, but it did tell us a great deal about Thomas. As did the immediate observation of the clerk, who must have been heard to utter, "Touche".

Or consider the final words of Lady Nancy Langhorne Astor, the first female member the English Parliament. Lady Astor awoke on her deathbed to discover her family had gathered around her. Quite logically she asked, “Am I dying or is this my birthday?” Unfortunately, the family’s response was not recorded, and I am the kind of person who wonders what they replied to that question.

I have also wondered about the last words of Margaretha Geertfuida Zella, the little Dutch girl better known by her stage name, Mata Hari. She was a dancer who became a stripper because, as she admitted, “I could never dance very well.” During the First World War she became a famous spy merely because she was so bad at it. It is not clear even today who she was spying for, if anybody.

But at 5:00 A.M. on October 15, 1917, as she stood in front of the French firing squad, Margaretha was asked if she had any last words. Her reply was, "Il est incroyable."

This roughly translates as “This is unbelievable.” And then the idiots shot her. They did not even ask what she meant by that. What was unbelievable, unbelievable to whom? I would like to know. What, they couldn't take five minutes to ask?

There is a story told about the last words of Pietro Arentino, the father of modern pornography, and thus one of my personal heroes. Pietro was a good friend of the painter Titian. And it was helping out his friend that got Pietro killed. In 1556 Guidobaldo Il della Rovere, the Duke of Urbino, hired Titian to paint a portrait of his wife, Giulia da Varno. Titian needed the money, as usual, but the problem was that Giulia was not only middle aged but she was also “vain and ugly” and rich, and prickly about her looks; a very dangerous combination. If the portrait didn’t look like her she would be offended and Titian might be dead. If it looked too much like her, she would be offended and Titian might be dead. Luckily for Titian, Pietro came up with the solution.

At Pietro’s suggestion, Titian hired his favorite prostitute from a local brothel, and had her pose for the painting of the body. But in place of the prostitute’s head he painted a glamorized portrait of Giulia, based on paintings done of her as a young woman. It sounds like a bad joke but in the hands of a genius like Titian such absurdity can become a piece of great art, i.e. the Venus Urbino.

Giulia was thrilled with the finished product. But when the Duke saw the painting for the first time he was even more deeply affected. He confided, wistfully, to both Titian and Pietro, “If I could have had that girl’s body, even with my wife’s head, I would have been a happier man.” Pietro laughed so hard he had a stroke. No, he really did.

They carried him to a room out of the way and when it became clear that he was not likely to recover the Duke called for a priest to administer extreme unction. First the priest prayed for Pietro, and then offered to hear his last confession. But since Pietro was still unconscious, the priest continued, anointing Pietro with holy oil on his eyelids, ears, nostrils, lips, hands and feet, each time repeating the chant, “By this holy unction and his own most gracious mercy, may the Lord pardon you whatever sin you have committed.” As the priest finished the prayer, Pietro’s eyes flickered open and he clearly said, “Now that I’m oiled. Keep me from the rats.” And then he died. There was no doubt about what he meant, tho. And that he had died laughing.

And then there are last words for which no explanation is required because the act of dying is the explanation; such as when the great amateur botanist Luther Burbank delivered his last words on earth; “I don’t feel so good”, or the poet Hart Crane who delivered his last words, “Good-bye, everybody”, from a ship’s railing just before he jumped into the sea. What more explanation could you require from such people?

But I retain my deepest affection for the actor, poet, playwright and historian, Ergon Friedell, a physically ugly little man whose last words revealed a sweet and gentle heart, to go with the quick and facile mind he had exhibited his entire life. On the night of March 16, 1939 two Nazi thugs arrived to arrest Egron. His crime was that he was Jewish. And that he had mocked Hitler and the Nazi jackboots from the stage. While his housekeeper delayed them at the front door, Ergon climbed onto his bedroom window ledge and before he jumped to his death warned those beneath him in the darkness, “Watch out, please.” Then he jumped.

God bless him.

- 30 -

HUNTING THE BIG UMBER BIRD

2009-10-30T07:50:00.001-04:00

I have to tell you a very dull story. It relates no shootouts, no hangings, no burnings at the stake. This story would make a really bad comic book, er, sorry, graphic novel. Heck, it would make an uninspiring regular novel. And as a television series it is just a non-starter. So it must not be important, huh. And because it lacks all of those dramatic threds to string you, the reader, along, it will never make it on the news networks - which are in fact rarely new. But it really is an important story. And if I try and gin it up a little bit, you may agree. The facts, I assure you, are all accurate.

The central character is a guy named Charles Pollock. He lived in Boston in the 1890’s, a dull town in a dull time. And Charles worked in a bank; dull, dull, dull. But at least he was narcissistic. That made him a little interesting, if only to himself. And in 1894 dull Charles took a lawsuit all the way to the Supreme Court. It was that case which made Charles the hero of the modern anti-tax movement. And here let me suggest you imagine a really big explosion, a sucide bombing maybe, with piles of innocent people dead and dismembered laying all over the place, because, really, the anti-tax movement is just a looney tunes version of suicide.

I don't like paying taxes. I never have, I never will. There are somethings my taxes have helped pay for that I don't approve of; a couple of wars, subsidies to a few domestic monopolies and some foriegn dictators, to name just a few. But those pale in comparison to the sin of not having a state to protect me and you. And, call them libertarians or anarchists, those who oppose the power of the state to tax its citizens resemble, to borrow a description from Tom Wolf, “…the logician who flies higher and higher in ever-decreasing circles until, with one last, utterly inevitable induction, he disappears up his own fundamental aperture and emerges in the fourth dimension as a needle-thin umber bird.” (“From Bauhaus to Our House”) To whit:

The U.S. government has been taxing income since 1861, as permitted in the Constitution under Article 1, Section 2 ("Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several states…") and Article 1, Section 8 ("The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes,…"). But in 1862 Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, the author of the Dredd Scott decision which had helped to bring on the Civil War, became incensed that money was actually being taken out of his paycheck to help pay for the Civil War. Taney was a very strong believer in slavery and in being treated as somebody special.

And Taney’s objections to paying taxes for the Civil War also struck a cord with those who might not like slavery but who thought they were also special and did not deserve to be paying taxes. We're talking about rich people here, very rich people, who had no compunction about buying politicians to get what they wanted. Buying politicians is what is currently known as free speech, if your logic can somehow equate "buying" with "free" in the same thought without your head exploding.

Anyway, in 1872 the rich people had the income tax laws repealed. Unfortunatly for Taney he was already dead and he wasn't getting his money back. Or his slaves. For that he would have to wait until the "Inheritance Tax" could be redefined as the "Death Tax". But I digress...

For the next twenty years the Federal government struggled along supported by import duties alone, which amounted to less than 2% of the nation’s gross domestic product.
And yes, that is how we funded government before 1861. But before 1861 we were primarily an agricultural economy, where farm workers do not require much education, where populations are scattered and where all health problems are local. After 1861 we were a growing industrial economy. Factory workers require a high school education (or better), are concentrated in population centers, which make public health a regional problem. In other words, economic conditions had changed.

Now, besides being unable to support an effective government, import duties (taxes on imports), raised the price of all consumer goods, imported and domestic. In fact during the 1880's import duties added as much as 48% to the final price consumers paid, for milk, for steel, and for everything in between. This protected domestic companies and allowed them to keep their prices high enough to ensure high profits. Are your eyes glazing over, yet? Picture this; you walk into your local 'speak easy ' and discover that overnight the price of a beer has gone up 50%. You ask the owner what gives. He tells you that he has new suppliers, and the cost of beer from them is 50% higher than from the old suppliers. You ask why he switched suppliers, and he explains, "They made me an offer I couldn't refuse."

Congressman William Jennings Bryant of Nebraska labeled high tariffs “socialism for the rich”. “They weep more because fifteen millions are to be collected from the rich than they do at the collection of three hundred millions upon the goods which the poor consume.” But it ain't like they did it in secret.

Between 1871 and 1891 sixty separate bills were introduced in congress to reestablish an income tax. That's right, people were actually fighting for the right to pay taxes. The Republicans, the party in power at the time, beat all of those efforts back. And then in 1893 a new tariff reform bill was introduced by Democratic Rep. William Wilson of West Virginia. Wilson's bill was primmarily intended to lower the import duties on foreign iron ore, coal, lumber, wool and sugar. But the bill also included a minor amendment, introduced by Rep. Benton McMillan from Tennessee, which read, “That from and after the 1st day of January, 1895, there shall be levied, collected, and paid annually upon the gains, profits, and income of every person residing in the United States, derived from any kind of property, rents, interest, dividends, or salaries…a tax of 2 per cent on the amount so derived over and above $4,000” during any five year period (equal to $88,400 today).

The pundits paid little attention to Mr. McMillan’s amendment because so many income tax measures had been introduced so many times before, and none of them ever came to anything. This was because the rich and powerful had a secret weapon, sort of a human tommy gun, a Homo sapian Chicago typewriter, if you will.

His name was Senator Arthur Gorman of Maryland, and he was a tool, a tool of the rich and powerful. Gorman helped the opponents of the Wilson bill attach more than 600 amendments which reinstated almost all of the import duties the bill had attempted to lower. It was a St. Vaentine's Day Massacre on the floor of United States Capital building, right in front of God and everybody, as my father used to say.

With the “Tariff reduction” bill thus bullet ridden and bleeding, no one believed that President Grover Cleveland, who had campaigned on a lower tariff platform, would ever sign the misbegotten bill into law. And he didn’t. He simply let the bill become law without his signature. It didn't cost him anything. At least the tariffs had been marginally lowered. At least he could claim that he had done everything he could to lower prices for working class Americans, while not having to actually do anything.

Imagine the mobster's shock the next morning to discover that Al Capone had beat the rap for murdering the Bugs Moran's gang, but he was going to jail anyway for income tax evasion. There was the shock amongst the rich and powerful. America had returned to a national income tax. And the response was just what you would expect it would be from the rich and powerful. They sued.

The fine print of the accidental income tax law required that all stock companies pay the income tax for individuals before distributing any dividends to them. Dividends were income. And when he received his notice from the Farmers' Loan and Trust Company (because he owned all of ten shares of stock in Farmers’ Loan and Trust) Charles Pollock was very angry. He was angry enough to hire high priced Wall Street top gun lawyer Joseph Choate, who filed a lawsuit against the bank claiming the income tax was unconstitutional.

The Massachusetts courts disagreed, as did the Federal courts. But somehow Charles Pollock found the money to appeal his lawsuit all the way to the United States Supreme Court, which, to everyone’s surprise, agreed to hear the case immediately.

On April 8, 1895 the court ruled, 5-4, in favor of Mr. Pollock, that slim majority saying in essence that the source of income mattered; salary could be taxed but income from property – rent, interest on savings or dividends paid on stock - were not “apportioned” by population, and thus the government was denied the power to tax it.

The dissenting opinions were intellecutally devstating. Justice Brown wrote that “This decision involves nothing less than the surrender of the taxing power to the moneyed class…Even the specter of socialism is conjured up to frighten Congress from laying taxes upon the people in proportion to their ability to pay them.”

And Justice Harlan argued that the court's majority opinion, “…declares that our government has been so framed that,...those who have incomes derived from...bonds, stocks and investments...have privileges that cannot be accorded to those having incomes derived from the labor of their hands, or the exercise of their skill, or the use of their brains.” These were bother powerful arguements. But then the greedy have always been willing to lose the intellectual arguements, as long as they get to keep their money.

Working people were outraged. They were infuriated. They were fighting mad. And it would still take 11 years before the will of the people could overcome the power of the “moneyed classes”.

In 1909 President Howard Taft proposed a Constitutional Amendment (in part because he thought it would never pass) to allow a Federal Income Tax. On July 12, 1909 the 16th amendment passed the Congress and was submitted to the states, in part bcause the congress never thought the states would pass it. The amendment was brutally blunt and short. It reads in total, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Period. End of Amendment.

Alabama took less than a month to vote for the 16th amendment. Kentucky, South Carolina, Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Maryland, Georgia and Texas all passed it in 1910. Twenty-three more states followed in 1911, three more in 1912, and six more in 1913.

It was with the vote of the New Mexico legislature, on February 3, 1913, that made the 16th amendment the law of the land. Six states either rejected the amendment or never took it up, but that did not matter. The Constitution only requires that two-thirds of the states approve of an amendment to make it the law.

And so, when some lunatic or confidence man or woman tries to seduce you with a magical scheme to avoid paying taxes, you can now explain to them that, by placing the source of support for the government in the people’s hands, income taxes places the power there as well.

The relevancy of this narcissist tale to your life may become clearer when you realize that the Farmers Loan and Trust Company named in the lawsuit was established in 1822 in New York City. On June 1st, 1929 they changed their name to City Bank Famers Trust, and in 1976 they changed their name again. This time they shortened it to Citibank.

This is the same Citibank that has recently swallowed at least $320 billion of taxpayer (meaning your) bailout dollars. Oh, as of 1894, Charles Pollock was an employee of Farmers Loan and Trust in their Boston branch. And it seems likely to me that he sued his own employer with their connivance. Looking at history it seems to me that the limits to which the rich will go to avoid paying their fair share of government remains endless. These people just think they are top of the world, ma!

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PIKE'S PIQUE

2009-10-30T07:25:00.000-04:00

I have been searching for the right word to describe Zebulon Pike, and I keep coming back to the word “Shlub”. It is Yiddish word meaning a foolish, stupid or inferior person. But at least he was handsome. He was, visually, a perfect hero. He stood
“…5'8" tall, with a ruddy complexion, blue eyes and light hair…(was) a crack shot…(with) great physical endurance …” He was also a teetotaler who one biographer kindly described as “an efficient but unremarkable career officer” while another put it more succinctly; “…a puffed-up little popinjay...”. As proof of Zeb’s shlub-dom I submit his first voyage of discovery in 1805 when he was ordered to find the source of the Mississippi River. And he couldn't.

The 27 year old lieutenant set out on August 9, 1805 from Fort Belle Fontaine, on the south bank of the Missouri River, four miles upstream from its joining with the mighty Mississippi. He was accompanied by what he called a “Dam'd set of Rascels,” 20 soldiers manning a 70 foot keelboat. He included on his voyage no doctor, no interpreter and no one qualified to map the voyage, including Pike himself. Because of the low water level (it was August, after all), Pike’s men spent as much time dragging their keelboat over sand bars as they laboriously poled it northward.

Two days of exhausting work brought them to the mouth of Illinois River, near present day Grafton, all of twenty miles from their starting point.At this rate the could expect to reach the headwaters by November, 1905. The Mississippi river has been winding and looping through here for about 145 million years, following a weakness in the crust now called the New Madrid Fault. But north of the Illinois river the big river has been more influenced by ice.

A mere 130,000 years ago the “Wisconsin Ice Sheet” covered most of modern Indiana under a lake. I have the clay and sand left behind by that lake two feet under my back yard. When the ice damn collapsed the lake drained catastrophically. Called "The Kankakee Flood" it carved a valley so deep that when a similar glacier blocked the big river again 13,000 years ago, the Mississippi chose for itself the Kankakee channel, before rejoining its old course at Rock Island, Illinois, some 200 miles above St. Louis.

Another 150 miles above Rock Island, Pike found a perfect place for a fort. It was a 500 foot tall bluff (locally called 'Pike’s Peak'), across the river from Prairie du Chien, a trading post at the mouth of the Wisconsin River. Actually, no fort was ever built there, but everybody agreed it would have been a dandy spot for a fort. However, it was the spot where Lt. Pike finally agreed the 70 foot keel boat monstrosity was too much trouble. The expedition was finally shifted to two barges, which were easier to handle in the low water; easier being a relative term.

At the mouth of the Minnesota River (655 river miles from his starting point), on September 23rd, 1805, Lt. Pike took advantage of a gathering of the local Sioux Indians for a little land grab. He promised to pay them less than a dollar an acre for land on which the government would eventually build a fort, which would eventually become the city of Minneapolis. There is no record that the Sioux ever asked what a dollar was - or an acre. I think they signed the treaty because it seemed to make the shlub happy. Not that it mattered.

When Congress finally got arround to paying for their new “Fort Snelling” the price had been summarily reduced by 90%. And even that was actually paid to the French and British traders who had been feeding the Sioux rot gut whiskey on credit during the intervening two years. Commenting on the friendly welcome Lt. Pike received from the Sioux and the treaty he had duped them into signing, a modern Sioux has observed, “They gave him the keys (to the city), but they didn't expect him to think he owned the city”. I would say that seventy years later General Custer got the revised bill for this deal. Worse was to come.

The next morning Pike arose to discover his personal flag was missing. Being an intrepid explorer, he threw a hissy fit. Like a five year old in grocery store he stomped his feet and got very red in the face. Except this juvinile was an officer and a gentleman. So he had a soldier stripped to the waist and flogged for losing his flag. The Sioux were so disturbed by this display of pique that they dispatched two men downstream, where they found the flag floating in the river. The precious toteem was returned to the brave if emotionally unstable explorer. And word went up and down the river that the Lt. was as crazy as a beaver with a toothache.

Fifty miles further to the north Pike reached the 60 foot high St. Anthony Falls, where the Mississippi River passed from the hard surface dolomites of the outer edges of the Canadian Shield to the softer sandstone bedrock. It took three days for his men to drag their bulky barges around the falls. And here it occurred to Pike (finally) that the local Ojibwe Indian canoes’ were lighter and more maneuverable than his barges. But instead of asking for help, Pike instructed his men in building their own canoe. He'd seen hundreds of them by this time. He knew how to build one. You just hollow out a large log, right?

Wrong. In making a canoe, size is everything, and smaller is better. Pike however, seems to have been over compensating, because his canoe was humongous. First they loaded all their supplies into the new leviathan, including all of their black powder. Then they slid their wooden Titanic into the river…and watched it immediately sink. Pike ordered all the wet powder kegs rescued and stacked over a fire, to dry out. The resulting explosion burned down his own tent, with most of his personal clothing, supplies and notes. Pike barely saved his trunk. You can imagine the faith his men now had in their commander, especially since he was forced to borrow clothing from them.

Back into the river again, this time in two smaller canoes. But progress was slowing. The channel was narrowing every day, winding and twisting. Four of Pike’s men were close to physical collapse. Sergeant Henry Kennerman, ““one of the stoutest men I ever knew,” according to Pike, began to vomit blood. Pike wrote that his men were, “…killing themselves to obey my orders.” My personal suspicion is that the young officer was misinterpeting the looks on his men's faces, and that Pike's sick call would have been a little shorter if his "Dam'd Rascels" had any faith their "Lost Pathfinder" had the slightest idea where he actually was.

With snow already falling, on October 16, 1805, Pike ordered his men to pull into shore, where they built a blockhouse. While they worked, he hunted, supplying them with fresh meat. Sgt. Kennerman was left in charge of the men too sick to continue. Lt. Pike and a small detachment continued overland, wearing snowshoes and pulling sleds they had both borrowed from local British traders. It is important to point out at this point that Lt. Pike was not traveling into unknown territory. It was well known territory. The French had been through here beginning in the seventeenth century, and the English since the early eighteenth. Still, Lt. Pike persisted (like a typical man) in not asking for directions. He was like a ten year old exploring the neighbor's back yard.

Pike followed the river as best he could - without asking for help. On December 10th his tiny command reached the little falls of the Mississippi. On the last day of the 1805 they camped near the mouth of the Pine River. On the night of January 4th Pike suffered another black powder explosion. (Where was storing his powder, in the smoking tent?)

Finally, on February 12th , 1806, “…exhausted and worn out by cold, hunger and exposure” Pike reached Red Cedar Lake (later renamed Cass Lake). Here, I suspect out of sheer desperation, Pike wrote, “This may be called the upper source of the Mississippi River.” Yea, right.

Pike may have called it that, but it wasn’t. Twenty- six years later, in 1832, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft followed an Anishinaabe Indian guide (another approach Pike never tried - asking the locals!) to a small lake which he named Itasca, and which he declared was the actual source of the great river, and that is what most tourist today accept. But that isn’t the actual source either.

The actual source of the “father of waters” is Little Elk Lake, 9 miles further upstream. Little Elk Lake drains into Elk Lake, which drains into Lake Itasca. Ninety days after a deer pees into Little Elk Lake, it flows into the Gulf of Mexico.

Pike was not very concerned with details like that. He was exhausted. What concerned him when he got back to the blockhouse was that he found that Sgt. Kennerman had recovered. The Sargeant was feeling so well, in fact, that he had eaten or bartered away the entire companies’ supply of meat and Pike’s personal trunk as well, which had survived two explosions and at least three dumpings in the river. The mafia never cleaned out a government expedition any more effectivly. Just a few weeks earlier Pike had thrashed a man for a lost flag. Now, he quietly sighed, reduced the sargeant to a private, and ordered his men back to their canoes.

He arrived back in Fort Belle Fontaine on April 30th , 1806, just in time to avoid the high water of the spring flood. Ordered to find the source of the Mississippi, Lt. Pike went looking during the time of year when there was less of a river to find. And he had failed. In fact he had failed to locate a single stream, river or lake which had not been previously mapped, including the ones which would later be connected to the Mississippi. And yet the “Lost Pathfiner” was immediately dispatched to explore the southwestern edges of the Louisiana Purchase, during which he probably spotted a mile high peak named after him, and during which the long suffering Private Kennerman deserted, never to be seen again. Only a government agency would have kept hiring this misguided direction impared shlub as a pathfinder.

Ever a self promoter, Pike rose to the level of Brigadier General during the War of 1812. And he played a crucial if little known role in that war. It was General Zebulon Pike who led the assault on the capital of Upper Canada, the city of York, (since renamed Toronto), on April 17, 1813. When a British mine exploded prematurely, killing 42 British soldiers, among the 52 American victims was General Pike. In retribution his soldiers burned the Parliamentary Buildings in York. And it was that act of vandalism which the British repaid by the burning Washington, D.C. on August 24, 1814.

I would call that quite an impressive funeral pyre for a schlub. Wouldn't you?

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