Don't Fade Away

After privately made postal cards were legalized in 1898, they were a craze, up to 1912.  Photographers and tourism sites benefitted.

What a difference colorization makes.  They were often done in Italy or India, and the actual colors were not known, so imagination reigned.

Stock or old B&W photos were colorized beginning in 1893.

"Dear Honey,
This is supposed to be down here some place But I don't know where
--Snitz"

On the postcard's face side is a glossy black-and-white photo of Laurel Falls in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Snitz got around.

He was Paul B. Johnston, who called Dalmatia Pennsylvania home (it's due north of Harrisburg along the river), but by the postcard record he and his family left behind from the 1940s through the 1960s, home was where their hats were.  You wouldn't think that ordinary small town folks would have been such travelers, but over the years they visited Massachusetts, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ausable Chasm in New York State, the Big Apple itself (including the Empire State Building and the U.N., of course), the St. Lawrence Seaway, a cabin in Sullivan County, PA (I've been in one there, and on the covered bridge depicted), Alabama, Philadelphia, Niagara Falls, Waycross, GA, Florida many times ("it was about 120 degrees!") , and even Booger Hollow, Arkansas, which claimed a population of 7 countin' one coon dog.

World War II brought a lot of people out of their isolation in the countryside or within a square mile of a city, and took them to places they had never heard of.  Some, with cars newly available and small travel trailers, wanted to see this bigger world after 1945 and enjoyed sending back pictures of where they were to the home folks and how they wished they were there too.  Some G.I.s had passed through Hawaii or California, and didn't go home at all after discharge -- they wanted to live that postcard picture.

Paul B. spent 1944 at Camp Croft, South Carolina, writing to Mrs. Paul B. (mother? wife? hard to tell); the last one was obviously written in a hurry and began, "Honey get the coffee & Hot Dogs on the stove I'll be there to eat them before you know it tell Butchie to watch the Busses & I'll surprise him & step off of one..."  The area is a peaceful state park now, but was an infantry replacement training center then, whose graduates could well have expected short careers (the vets often survived, the green replacements didn't).  Paul B. got lucky somehow and returned home to those hot dogs and many memorable vacations.  A year earlier, in 1943, one L. A. Johnston sent a card home from the U.S. Naval Training Station at Sampson, NY, advising Paul "if they call you, you better join the Navy."  The last military-related card was sent in 1961, when the family received it from SGT Michael Weiss at Grafenwohr, Germany, saying he missed being home for Christmas, but appreciated their card.

Paul B. might have worked, when not traveling, for Capitol Iron & Steel in Harrisburg since a pocket memo booklet from that company was with the bag of old postcards all these were in.  The writer kept gas mileage records and three pages are taken up with notes on car purchasing: a Dodge with vinyl roof (1970s?) and air conditioning, payments after trade-in of $88 a month at 5.5% interest.  A "four-door automatic," brand unknown, at Keith Motors in Newport, PA was also under consideration.  It sported undercoating, a hood pad, plus the radio and light groups; $2250.  Whichever one, it probably was on its way to Florida within the year.

I wish there were a date on a unique nine-panel panoramic super post card depicting, in saturated full color, Bayfront Park in Miami.  It was more of a souvenir, not written on or meant to be mailed.  Surely, the printed caption deserves a quote:  "The great Pan American Airways System has its terminal here.  Its huge Clipper Ships make regular trips to the countries of South America, Havana and the West Indies.  Miami is truly a City of Allurement, whose spell enthralls all who have proved its charms and joy of life."  (Produced by the Eli Witt Cigar & Tobacco Co., Miami).  They could have used an editor at Witt, but the photo is luscious.

Believe it or not, a major postcard dealer has a card sent by Paul B. Johnston in 1966 depicting the Hershey Chocolate plant (Lotsofcards.com).  It's yours for $1.

Snitz sure got around.

The Archivist

I could have used Pepper the cat's services these past few days.
Some early Spring-like days have, as they usually do, temporarily inspired us to get into some clean-up project.  This urge usually fades away before any window-washing occurs.  Let's not get crazy.
It's a good thing that the financial heart of the Rice enterprise is physically located in the basement, in, on and around the big wood desk, because appearances do matter.  Since it is out of sight, we have tended to do less than diligent filing; it's been what is more accurately described as piling and jamming (wherever there's a little crack to put a paper in).
What started it all was not being able to find the file folder to put the latest life insurance statement in.  It had slumped out of sight, fat with previous statements that are rendered useless once a new one arrives.  But are the old ones removed and smartly shredded?  No...
So it began.  Each file was removed, purged, relabelled or replaced as required, and returned to a soldierly upright position.  Consolidation was called for:  medical records alone were in at least four separate folders.  Eye exam results from 2004 and other treasures from the near or distant past soon made a considerable reject stack.
The worst was the checkbook registers, bank statements and old checks -- going back to 1981!  Long-forgotten daily events floated into view as they went into the shredder a half-dozen at a time:  Baby's Dy-Dee Service, $5 to $7 weekly, cable TV bill payment of $12 (!), mortgage of $432 (!), names of individuals I couldn't recognize at all, and businesses long gone like Murphy's Mart, Drug Fair, Hills Department Store, Pathmark grocery and Rea & Derick.  I can't even recall where they were except for Hills, which is now a cinema multiplex.
I filled six cardboard boxes with shredding, and our plucky machine did not falter.  The red light did come on three times, so I gave it and myself a deserved rest.
We put the old typewriter out with the trash.  Missing a "5" key and an "e," it really had more past than future.  And where would you get a ribbon?  Threw out a box of carbon paper also, although maybe a museum of American Office Life would have wanted it.
We use the safe (not NCR paper, for example) shredded paper as filling for B.B. Bunny's litter pan.  And we need a lot of it, because he's a big eater.  But he is eleven years old, and I doubt we'll use all six boxes (but he may surprise us -- he's never been sick).  The cats -- fuggedaboutit.  They require expensive stuff.
I guess we're good for a while, since it took thirty years to accumulate that hoard.
As for Spring cleaning projects, I think we're done.
  

Punto e Basta

I'm about to sally forth from the lobby into my last night in Rome.  Some small event in the adjacent salon is either gearing up or dispersing; ladies in red chat with silver-haired gentlemen, glasses in hand, draped in that effortless Old World style that cannot be learned in less than a hundred generations.
I am right where I want to be, both weighted and freed by the knowledge that in the morning I must leave.  One last indulgence, like the bijou you pick on instinct from the dessert plate hoping very much you won't be disappointed.  This city, or this golden pile of cities stretching back to prehistory, is the Platonic ideal of dessert plates -- it is a place and time in life when disappointment is not possible.
The early summer air outside the heavy bronze doors is light, suspended by the glow of the Colosseum down the street slope.  I'm a ghost, and cannot affect, change, add to, or subtract from anything here.  All the work has been done; the tides of time and the millions who had a name, or did not, leave me their best.  But only for a little longer.  When the gods deign to be generous, you're well advised not to be greedy.
Tonight I feel free to get lost in the Subura, the oldest and most disreputable area of  ancient Rome, under me about ten or twenty feet.  It would of course be an accident, and I would not know it, but I want to be on the spot where Gaius Caesar was born to the exceptional Aurelia in a tenement.  Unless long ago swept to the northern home of the Goths or the silken court of the Celestial Emperor in the east, the air I breathe might well be that which animated that mother and son.
I round a corner and am on the Via dei Serpenti, thinking it a good start, the serpent being such a powerful symbol of the earth to the ancestors of the first nameless tribe to build their huts on these strong hills.  A few blocks along, the lights and sounds of two piazzas grace the night with perfect music.  In the lyrics, the speech, I hear no English, French or German; even a short distance from the main corso visitors like me have not found their way.  I glance but am not regarded.
I turn east and turn again.  Slicing through the city not all that far away, the broad busy boulevards with grand names sparkle like backlit champagne, but these streets are lit by the half-moon and a few streetlamps only.  Vicolos, alleys, begin and end in angles that would confound any geometer.
There are no two maps of Venice that agree, and I am doubting that even if I had one of the Subura now it would be of any use.  But ahead, some light spills from an open ground-floor door, and I believe someone's there.  Romans aren't the least apprehensive of strangers, and I'd like to say,
"Buonasera!" The old fellow beat me to it.  He may have been hoping, with everyone seemingly asleep or away, for a little company too.
I returned the greeting, gave my name (I felt some confidence in my casual Italian, less in my verb conjugation ) and praised the lovely night.
 "I am Ermarco, and glad to make your acquaintance.  Nine million stranieri come to Roma yearly, and I rarely meet even one.  I love the quiet, but enough!  Tell me, if you will, where you are from and what -- I must admit my curiosity along with my poor manners -- brings you here?"
I spared the poor fellow most of an explanation of years of preparation, internet searches and study of books and maps in order to penetrate and know just a few parts of the city in some kind of depth.
"But," I joked, "it's like sending myself to hunt bear in the Urals with a .22 revolver.  It's exciting, but I am not prepared."
"Ha!" He grasped my arm, but lightly.
"Please come inside.  Have you eaten? You could benefit from a rest, I think."
"I would, thank you, but I couldn't impose" (I wasn't sure I had the right word).  I did, however, smell something irresistible and decided immediately to give in to the least persuasion.
"I eat alone far too many days; I insist! Friends and family eat together, do they not?  The only difference is the amount of shouting! Ha!"  He gestured for me to get off my feet and turned into a pantry-sized room.
I slid, gratefully, onto one of the two chairs hugging the round wood table, my fingers making cirlces on the surface (how old?) and I surveyed, without focusing, the uneven walls filled with pictures, books and a calendar.  Ermarco set a  slightly dusty half-full bottle on the table with one hand while he removed the cork with the other.
As I looked up to acknowledge this undeserved but very welcome gift, with evident pride he announced, "Rocca di Mondragone!  From the fields where the ancients made the bellisima Falerian.  Why must the best be lost?  But - ha! - this one is not bad."
He filled the glasses a little overfull, to my delight, and we lifted high a toast to the sweet life.
Then he rose and held up a finger, saying with no words:  wait for it.
From the pantry, which I assumed must serve well but minimally as a kitchen since I could not see around the curtain, he returned with a bowl of exactly what I was looking for without knowing it --
Caponata!
 If you set your scribe (already, I think like a Roman patrician) to list all the foods, just in the province of Lazio, that are each in order more memorable than the previous, well, the fellow would be old before his task was finished.  And I would expect that this simple marinated vegetable salad in which the eggplant achieves its apotheosis would be, without argument, high on that list.
We lingered over it; all the time in the world was ours.  The generous Ermanco had other bottles for us to explore and we neither abused nor neglected them.
Not having nearly the story to tell that I suspected he did, I asked my host, my friend, about his family and its roots here. 
"The beginning, the tradition about our beginning, as I was told, was with a man from Greece who was a teacher; he had himself been a student at The Garden in Athens -- the school founded by the philosopher Epicurus." 
I resisted a strong urge to interrupt and say, oh yes, I know of him, and Aristippus and how all their works would be lost if Lucretius...fortunately, wine can make you a little wiser before it makes you stupid.
"Even I am named after Hermarchus, who led the school after the death of Epicurus.  We have, over twenty-two centuries, remained true to the principles of rational materialism.  But no school, no teaching."
"Persecution?"
"Si, even before the Christians.  The Stoics, the new Platonists, the state religion, they did not care for us much either.  But it is one thing to deny you a place to teach and it is another to stone and burn you.  Even the poet of our nation, Dante Alighieri, placed Epicurus as the first heretic encountered in his journey into the Hells.  He would have been amused, I think, as no practicioner of religion, to be thought of as a heretic.  Not logical, no?"
I sank back and leaned the chair against the wall, looking for support.
"As I understand it, the Epicurean subjects all things that come to the human mind --  ideas, passions, beliefs, suppositions, fears, revelations --  to verification against experience" (Italian vocabulary is failing me here, but I try). "But this infuriates people and authorities -- they love their superstitions."
"So we do not write new books, not only because it is dangerous or futile, either one; what has come down to us cannot be said any more clearly.  With trusted friends, it is always a joy to discuss the ideas of living modestly, comparing abstractions with the observed laws of nature, and the way to tranquility of the mind..."  Ermarco almost sighed as his voice trailed off.
I tried to lift the weight of centuries off the old fellow's shoulders a little.
"You have heard, no doubt, of the discovery at Ercolano -- the papyrus manuscripts?"
"Si si!  It was always said that Philodemus had original Epicurus in his library, but all was of course lost with the explosion of Vesuvius.  Then, in our lifetimes, some are found under many meters of lava ash!  The work to restore even a little will take so much time, though...so much expense..."
We were silent for a while, and contemplated our hands. 
I violated the quiet: "The ancient gods of Egypt, Persia and Rome died when people stopped believing in them, even though they were very powerful before.  But, you know, the words, the ideas, of the old master, and his inspiration, Democritus, live on.  Science is both powerful and humble -- it asks to be questioned.  No gods can tolerate that."
"My ancestor brought the thought of Epicurus to this place from the home of philosophy.  I have tried to understand it, and live it.  And we have done that tonight, amico:  the pleasures of friendship, of the table, of the open mind -- well, the gods, may they have peace, knew no better than these."    

I am back home now.  Tony Bennett left is heart in San Francisco, and I am sure you know where mine is.  Will I ever see my friend again?  I never asked his surname and he did not offer it.  I searched old books and articles on the Rione Monti, as the modern Subura is known, and of course maps (internet and paper), and still have no idea where his home is or how I got there after wandering off the Via.
I only found my way back by going uphill on the Viminale until I saw the glow of the modern city.   I remember, it struck me as I left the boulevard to its brief late-night rest and ascended the stairs to the silent bronze doors, that Rome and all Italy live, in many ways, the Epicurean life.  It's hiding in plain sight.
  
     


      

No School Like Old School

The Millenial generation's hipsters, the latest in more than a century of counterculture movements, seem to be a melting-pot of all those since the '40s:  existentialists, beats, situalationists (remember the May 1968 tumult in France), folksters/hippies, punk and grunge.  With no organizing philosophy, they are like well-versed fans at a retro film festival; the creative element so prominent in their predecessors is lacking.  There won't be world-changing books, songs, art or events produced.  One observer said, they only type of artist you will find is of the tattoo variety.  It's style, attitude, apathy and irony, and immediate experience only.  Because I like retro without reservation, they're still all right with me, though.
Even the Nihilists of late 19th-century Russia did try one grand project ("going to the people" -- educating the deprived rural population of their country); hipsters, having found that education is no longer any guarantee of success and unemployment is only going to expand, get into costume and then into the Way-Back Machine, escaping reality while being acutely self-aware.
You can see how growing up in the soup of all-prevasive media and hyper advertising has led them to abandon anything quickly that gets too much exposure (I suppose the pursuit of cool is a theme in all these movements).  To maintain loyalties would mean losing relevance. 
And just like the beats and hippies, they were sucked up by the ad and entertainment industries, but so much sooner.  I thought that the silhouetted dancing characters in those Apple ads (and now McDonalds and others) were probably a reflection of something new, but didn't know what.  To stay ahead of the pop culture curve, ad agencies pay "cool hunters" in trendsetting areas like New York and L.A. to take note of what's new in dress and consumption.   The party promoters are there at the very beginning of each phase of co-opting youth culture so it can be re-sold worldwide, pre-packaged, at a profit.
The centers of this movement of 25 - 34-year-olds are Atlanta, Silver Lake in L.A., Denver, San Francisco, Portland, Austin and Brooklyn.  I know where they are around here:  since its beginning, the local Neato Burrito restaurants have employed hipsters almost exclusively.  The owner also has a retro clothing and decorating items store and designs his places to look like the 50s on acid.  The employees can dress however they want and blast alt-rock while they assemble the humongous and quite healthy namesake burritos.  A pretty non-demanding job, but the turnover seems swift -- I wonder about that, since there are only so many record stores and Goodwills to work at which would have a similar vibe.  I hope the funny and enthusiastic young burrito barista who served us the other day in the flagship Lemoyne store is there the next time.
Hipster style is more working-class than that of the student counterculturists in the 60s:  faves are cigarettes, PBR and Colt .45 beer, old Polarioid cameras, tank tops and leggings, flannel, big glasses (like Buddy Holly's, so nerdy they're cool), knit hats, skinny jeans, and what I think of as Frank Sinatra hats.  Other must-haves are the American Apparel V-neck T-shirt, scarves and strangely enough, empanadas.
Vice and Papermag are their publications, like our East Village Other and Rolling Stone -- but they of course communicate mainly electronically.  A "fixie" -- a fixed-gear bike with no brakes -- is another defining item, and I have no idea where that came from.

"Nothing says 'I love you' like avoiding eye contact."
                                    -- Lola Wakefield, 20-something blogger


             

Dream States

Take the money and run

One of many abandoned developments in CA and FL

Where you can live your crazy dream

Like immigrants who left the stratified old world seeking a new life, looking for opportunities, we of the colder latitudes dream of places where the sun shines and fruit hangs from the trees.  Where the horizon is blue sky meeting vast seas, not interstates chopping up the exurban sprawl.
That new life on the frontier has been pushed to the continent's shores; the only places where Americans can reinvent themselves, shed their old skins, are Florida and California.
The climate creates a new emotional reality; you feel your feet belonging to the sandy ground and your being is part of the ecosystem of flora and fauna, the gecko and you enjoying the sun and shade as easy partners.  Those beautiful dinosaurs, the waterbirds, go about their business as they have for a million years; the fish are plenty and business is good.
You abandon, more quickly than you would have guessed, your usual escapes into television and media, mostly forget the clock (the sun tells you of the day's waxing and waning) and think this is a place where you can actually trade dependence for simplicity...yes, it would work here.  Can you ever be a budding Buddhist in Boston?  Not-wanting is easy here, impossible there.
Careful -- things are different here, in many ways.  Dreamers without scruples have, for over a century, promoted boom and bust, trashing nature and fleecing naive northerners who can't wait to leave those winter coats and boots behind.  In the process, Florida went from the least populous Southern state (only a third are natives today) to one of the most populous in the nation.  But since the twin terrors of the 2004 hurricanes and the 2007 real-estate bubble-burst, you can see suburban developments of hundreds of acres eerily empty, and like California, people are leaving in increasing numbers.  The story of Lehigh Acres, in southwestern Lee County, is of epic, not recent, failure:  lots were advertised for only $50 down and $10 a month in faraway places like Detriot beginning in 1954.  It is still mostly uninhabited since the promised utilities were never installed; the poor roads the developer slowly put in over 20 years will cost the taxpayers $70 million to rebuild if it is ever done.  The chief salesman then shamelessly went on to promote the Jim Walter/Del Webb project, Sun City Center, where my parents live.  If you want to pick up a lot or abandoned house cheap, you can actually take a foreclosure boat tour courtesy of a local realtor.
The land is low, within a foot of becoming swampland if sea levels rise (and they will).  The retention ponds mandated in modern developments look like a great place to kayak, but any one of them might have an opportunistic alligator in it.  Retirees have learned not to let small pets outdoors or to walk within several yards of the deceptively quiet shoreline.
Communities for the more prosperous are gated for a reason: Orlando and Miami are in the top ten most dangerous cities.  But if a little humor is needed to diffuse anxiety, contemplate this:  the state is listed 47th in intelligence!  The goings-on are chronicled in the popular "FloriDUH" column in the Sun-Sentinel and other newspapers -- a tabloid writer would never have to resort to fiction here.  Humorists and observers like Dave Barry, John Grogan and Carl Hiassen have more bizarre material to mine than their counterparts a thousand miles north could ever hope for.  For instance:

Two teenagers tried to rob the Port St. Lucie police station with a pretend gun.  What they hoped to accomplish, no one knows.

James Fuqua sneaked away after his arrest this Fall in Panama City -- then went to Coyote Ugly for a drink with his handcuffs still on.

Traci Batcher, enjoying a few cool drinks in a Sarasota bar, went to the men's room by mistake and returned completely bare.  She had no explanation.

Seffner is a small community near Tampa Bay where you would expect nothing much to happen, but recently a swingers' pad, with a spanking table, was shut down after dozens of people a day paid a visit.  The owners and operators of the house, in their 50s, were so unattractive it just makes you wonder.
Also in poor Seffner, aggressive Asian cockroaches have multiplied to the point they are swarming in yards and crawling up people's legs; they don't  hide and avoid light at all.

Despite all that, while we were very much enjoying walking around the stalled resort development of Little Harbor on the south shores of Tampa Bay where we spent last week, I wondered about small apartment-sized condos that sold in 2004 for a quarter-million dollars and were now listed at $32,000 (four of them!).  There are two marinas, with very impressive powered and sail boats bobbing peacefully, and canals and lagoons full of wildlife everywhere.  Many waterfront houses with boat docks were for sale; a bargain-hunter's paradise, in paradise. 
So, Florida has both Rush Limbaugh and Jimmy Buffett.  Nature both beautiful and dangerous.  It's extreme, and it's heavenly calm.  A dream and a nightmare.






 





   

Too Much Monkey Business

The First Music Video, and a Lot More

When Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" hit us in 1965, we had a hard time understanding the rapid-fire lyrics, but we did understand  it was no novelty and that something significant had happened.  Looking back, we can see how it was an essential bridge in the continuum from the "talking blues" to rap.  It seemed unique at the time, but as one commentator noted, its blues structure and closeness to Chuck Berry's "Too Much Monkey Business" put it securely in the American popular music tradition.
A classic always rings true and is always current -- and this composition is as relevant this day as it was decades ago.  At the end of 2011, contemplating those societal, natural and economic changes that periodically build up to a turning point, this song makes me wonder if Bob Dylan's subconscious was roaming around in the future when he wrote it.

Johnny's in the basement
Mixing up the medicine

It was LSD then and it's meth now, and it was bathtub gin in 1922, but it's always something

I'm on the pavement
Thinking about the government

People are on the pavement all over the world -- Arab Spring and O.W.S. now, civil rights and stop-the-war then.  But we've learned that authoritarian repression always seizes power after revolutions.  Meet the new boss.

Six-time losers

He might have been thinking of Nixon and his McCarthyites hungrily eyeing the 1968 election; we still have a cast of perennial losers who just won't go away.

Look out, kid
It's something you did
God knows when
But you're doin' it again

The phone's tapped anyway

The Constitution-busting recent law allowing indefinite detention without charges if you're called a terrorist (do the Arab Spring and OWS people look like terrorists?  No, they look like you and me), the quickly-developing Security State after the Patriot Act, the ubiquitous surveillance and communications monitoring -- Bob, it got a lot worse than the FBI hounding the civil rights people.

Wants eleven dollar bills
You only got ten

Your income is basically where it was 40 years ago, but the cost of housing is ridiculous and those poor Millennials have $60,000 worth of student loans to pay back while unearned capital gains are taxed at 15%.

You don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Industry's lobbyists spend millions to support the climate change denial front, and most everyone votes for their puppet candidates while watching their trailer home washing away in a flood or blowing away in a tornado.  You don't need a weather man if you can't put two and two together on your own.

Get jailed, jump bail
Join the Army if you fail

Twenty years of schoolin'
And they put you on the day shift

Automate all the jobs or send them overseas, then offer the young these alternatives:  be cannon fodder or a fast-food cashier.  And remember -- with computerization, everyone's got a permanent record more durable than the inscriptions at Karnak.

Don't follow leaders
Watch the parking meters

Good advice for those in Soviet Russia.  Good advice now.  Remember everything goes on your credit report (as it did in the KGB dossiers) and it will be used against you, even if someone else made an error and you can prove it.

Don't wear sandals
Try to avoid the scandals

Stay away from those
Who carry around a fire hose

Referring to the police dogs, batons and fire hoses turned on the civil rights demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama back then; now they're pepper-spraying grandmothers and young people kneeling silently in New York and Berkeley.

So Dylan was saying that when you emerge from your subterranean life as a minor or a student to full participation in the social and economic mainstream, you're probably going to find that the system's been gamed ?   
 







 

Aida in the Air

Aida de Acosta Root, 1915

Flying the "IX"

We haven't had a spunky lady here at Just Sayin' in a while, so after finding her in the excellent blog, Obscure American History, I'd like you to meet the lady who beat the Wright Brothers in the race of history, only to have her story supressed for decades.
Aida was born to a Cuban father, a shipping tycoon, who joined the rebels in 1898 to drive out the Spanish, even though he had been raised in Spain.  Her mother was a descendant of the famous Spanish Dukes of Alba.  While in Paris in the summer of 1903, Aida discovered the Brazilian aviator Santos-Dumont's dirigible "IX" ("Nine").
The nineteen-year-old talked her way into lessons before piloting the airship solo at the end of June; the first of three such flights was for a half mile at 15 m.p.h.  The first woman to fly a powered aircraft, she took to the air six months before the Wrights.
The story was hushed up, though, because her parents thought it would scare away any suitable potential husbands.  She did marry twice, first to magnate Oren Root II and then to Col. Henry Breckinridge, but divorced them both.  Probably too slow for her.