What Are Belgians Doing In The Amargosa Desert?

                                                     There's something eerie about ghost towns
 

We did country reports for a few years in school, and mine for 6th grade was about Belgium.  I figured because it is a small country, it could be covered fairly well without leaving too much un-reported on.  The cover sported a hand painted national flag in shiny enamel and the title carefully lettered in white (it was only seven letters; glad I didn't pick Turkmenistan!).  Inside were postage stamps, a Belgian coin or two, and a recipe for brioche along with as much entertaining data as would fit -- my first multimedia production, considering the limited resources available at the time.

So it was quite a thrill for a much older former 6th grader to visit this jewel of a country a few years ago; the absolute highlight being a few days in the small medieval city of Bruges where the people were as mannerly, helpful and obviously intelligent as one could hope for.   We would gladly just have stayed and not come back at all.  However, Charles Albert Szukalski, a sculptor, did leave this green and delightful nation to go to what seems the unlikeliest place possible: the ghost town of Rhyolite in the vast Nevada desert (the town was named after an igneous rock, but a 1904 gold discovery was its reason for being out there). And Charles Albert's reason to be there?

In 1984, he installed "The Last Supper," a group of white, ghostly figures made of plaster, fabric and fiberglass arranged as in the daVinci fresco.  Szukalski purchased almost eight acres of land to establish the Goldwell Open Air Museum and then  recruited three other Belgian sculptors to add their inspirations.  As he created two more works, the spooky bicyclist "Ghost Rider" and "Desert Flower" (made of car parts), they contributed:

"Lady Desert" - Hugo Heyrman

"Icara" - Andre Peeters

"Tribute to Shorty Harris" - Fred Beruoets. (Shorty was the prospector who made the gold discovery)

"Sit Here!" by Solie Siegmann was moved from a Las Vegas museum to join the quirky outdoor gallery.

   

In 2000, after the founder's passing, an artists' work space, gallery and visitors' center was established in a new red barn-like building. 

 After watching "Breaking Bad" or the movie "Casino," we always say, "Nothing good happens in the desert!"  But sometimes, something good does.  

  

Headroom

 

                                        Our old friend Max

A few years ago, an organization called TreeVitalize planted trees along one side of 10th Street in the next town to the north, and it was quite an improvement for that light industrial/retail strip which before did not have much to brag about aesthetically.  But...they were planted on the side with the power lines.  They have since grown, as one would expect them to, right up through the telephone cables on their way up to the electrical ones at the top.  In a few more years, the trimming trucks and crews will be at work chopping them down to size (that is, mutilating them).  Trees need headroom, as do people and even businesses

Businesses usually have to grow and evolve to survive, sometimes becoming very different in the process -- Toyota began with making looms! Harley Davidson just introduced a line of electric bicycles, seeing a growing market where their traditional one is shrinking.  The railroads, faced with a major change in freight movement with the advent of the Interstate system, forgot they were in the transport, not just rail, business for a while but eventually learned to move cargo containers and even the trailers from semi trucks on their flat cars.   Others just can't adapt. The formerly premier auto brand Packard sold a few of their last model in 1956 then sadly left the stage.  They did have new product ideas, but not soon enough, and lacked the capital to implement them in any case.   No headroom, like the trees. 

Humans can start life with opportunities or make them for themselves. They can be limited to little growth by their economic or social situation, the latter often being a matter of religious or political restraints throughout their environment wherein everything is prepackaged; further exploration or thinking not being encouraged or even tolerated.  A few, regardless of where they came from, like daVinci, Alexander the Great, Michael Jordan or even entrepreneurs Musk and Branson, are phenomena, seemingly never running out of headroom.  Wildly successful artists like Picasso, the Beatles or Zane Grey (90 still-popular books to his credit) sought out new experiences, forms of expression and life experiences in order to keep growing and remain vital, brushing limitations aside.  All of them had a rough beginning in poverty and/or rejection, but saw the blue sky above them, and not a ceiling.

 

 

The Tontine

I found, a few years ago, a life insurance certificate showing a $1000 policy taken out on my mother by hers in the early 1930s.  The practice back then was for an agent to stop weekly and collect 25 cents or so.  I guess it was allowed to lapse, because the successor company had no record of it (the result I expected).  The certificate was fancy enough to keep, it seems.

We might think of personal security plans such as retirement funds, life insurance and annuities as rather modern, but various forms have been developed over hundreds of years.  Benevolent societies have provided security in the form of burial insurance and old-age homes before Social Security, and those of more substantial means have had access to trusts, inheritances and such devices as the Tontine.

What?  That word sounds like it refers to a local church officer, like a beadle or sexton.  It is, however, a strange stew of lottery, insurance and annuity, and has been around since before Lorenzo Tonti (now we get the name) proposed it to the royal government of France in 1653 as a fund raising idea (Louis XIV spent huge sums on continental wars and was always in search of cash)  It was officially offered to the public in the Netherlands in 1670 and in France in 1689, unfortunately for Lorenzo, after he had died.

The idea is that subscribers contribute an amount to build the fund and the government paid out regular interest as with the Treasury bonds we are familiar with.  Due to growth of investments, the annuity increases as participants pass away and are paid no more.  The macabre end of the scheme is that the last surviving subscriber takes everything remaining.  That this process might induce some to bump others off before them was actually the storyline of a 1996 Simpsons episode, in which Mr. Burns attempts to do exactly that to Grandpa Abe.

Tontines were quite popular for a century and a half, but as people learned how to game the system they fell out of favor.  The plan is still legal and in use today, and there is talk of broadly reviving it.  It was also widely used later on to fund building projects such as hotels and the Tontine Coffee House on New York City's Wall Street (1792) -- the first home of the NYSE, believe it or not.

                                             

                              Original home of the NY Stock Exchange

Some people are grasshoppers, living day to day, and some are ants, always planning ahead.  It's generally better for you the more the ant type you are, but as they say, people plan and the gods just laugh.

Cast Away on the Demon Isle

 

Marguerite de la Roque was a 27-year-old wealthy landowner in the Kingdom of France who in 1542 boarded a flotilla of three ships filled with 200 people, including a few other women and children, setting sail for the New World in an attempt to once again found a colonial settlement.  Previous attempts had failed miserably, and once an entire ship disappeared into the North Atlantic, with all hands, on its way.  We will not ever know why she left her comfortable life to do that, except that the expedition was headed by her uncle (some say cousin), Jean Francois de la Roque, Sieur de Roberval, a distinguished nobleman and soldier personally selected by King Francis I to be "Lieutenant-General" of New France.  Jacques Cartier, much more able and the more obvious choice for leader, was subordinated to be ship captain and pilot.

Marguerite never made it.

 On the seven week voyage westward, she became involved with a young gentleman on board and scandalized the others, but especially embarrassed her uncle, which was a big mistake. After landing on the southern shore of Newfoundland, the Sieur Roberval decided to maroon the pregnant Marguerite, her lover and her maid Bastienne on the legendary Isle of Demons as fit punishment.  It was well-known to be infested with malignant, evil spirits and ships avoided going near it after hearing the demons' howls whirling around.  The castaways were provided with muskets and some supplies, and were last seen standing on the forlorn shore as the ships left to sail down the St. Lawrence River to the site of today's Quebec City.  Punishment was harsh in those times, especially when dealt out by someone whose entire character was stern, haughty and unyielding.  During the one-year life of the new settlement, Roberval hanged a petty thief, put miscreants in irons and whipped both men and women.  One survivor of the expedition, on his return to France, said six men were shot in one day.

While the Isle appeared on maps from 1508 to 1556, it was one of many imaginary lands portrayed not as actual discoveries but as a result of mistakes, fancy and invention or outright lies.  They did make the maps more interesting; truth in reporting was pretty secondary.  Many were set between Ireland and the coasts of North America.  One of the most fantastic was Hy-Brasil, west of Ireland, depicted repeatedly  for five centuries. The enduring legend was that a sorcerer lived there, immortal, accompanied by giant black rabbits.  You can fool some of the people...

Quirpon Island

It is thought that the actual location of the marooning was Quirpon Island, to the far north end of Newfoundland.  It is quite a way from the south shore where the ships made landfall, but there are no records to explain anything to us today.

 On the rocky island, Marguerite and her small party, in no way experienced settlers or prepared to survive winters, built a hut and shot and skinned bears for food and furs.  Scurvy, due to lack of fresh food, killed many in previous attempts at colonization in Canada, and Death had many other threats besides.  Her newborn child, her lover and her maid all died in turn, leaving Marguerite on her own.  At the end of two years, a fishing boat saw smoke rising, and conquering their deep fear of the demons, the crew rescued her after two unimaginably hard years.

Roberval met his end in Paris, beaten to death in the streets during an altercation.  Marguerite did better upon returning to her old life in France, telling her story to many wide-eyed listeners.

    

.

"Feelin' Ain't Bein' "

 

You probably remember or have seen the iconic 1971 Coca-Cola television commercial about "teaching the world to sing" while sharing a Coke.  It was almost a mini-movie with a large international cast and a very cool location on an Italian hillside.  Despite being an advertisement, a brief experience generally as welcome as a pebble in your shoe, it could be called well-loved because it elicited such warm emotions, right up there with kittens, puppies and Clydesdale horses.  And once your emotions are at the forefront, your reason takes a break.  Think about that TV spot for a few moments, and all that good feeling was really about selling you a drink made of carbon dioxide, sugar, brown dye, caffeine and flavorings.  Emotional manipulation will lead or drive you to do things which are not in your best interest at all.

 The title above refers to one of the two things I remember that were on the walls of the tiny front office of WFMV-FM (classical music station in Richmond, VA, long gone).  One was a big grinning frog face ("Frog Music of Virginia" was our inside joke), the other was that hard to parse three-word aphorism.  I think our manager, Mr. Bill Massie, put it there, but I never did get the chance to ask him where it came from or really meant. I decided over the years that it meant don't be led by your emotions; use your head instead.

Scam and con artists have taken full advantage of the public this year of the viral pandemic and angry mobs at rallies and in the streets.  With all sorts of emotion engulfing us and making it hard to think clearly, we are easy targets for everyone from propagandists to ad people to that one percent of the population who are psychopaths.  And they're all very experienced at exploiting our fears and vulnerabilities.  From a recent magazine article:  Strong emotions can hijack our logical reasoning.  Fraudsters say the key to cheating people is to get them into a heightened emotional state so they can easily be manipulated.

So, what to do?  

There are ways to carefully and thoughtfully find a healthy balance to resist this onslaught.  Work on consciously repressing and controlling your negative emotions.  Back off and refresh yourself (I find nature, animals and music -- not all types, for sure -- do work).  And you, in distancing, can find some humor in others' crude attacks.  Keep your armor on. Make the effort to learn, adapt and change in order to put today's conditions into perspective and master your own reactions.  If you have a big purpose in life to propel you forward, great; if you can't quite think of one, just plant, improve or fix something. Thousands of waving flags, whether in North Korea, Nazi Germany, Red Square or on pickup trucks recently can't have any power over you if you are master of your domain (not exactly what they meant on Seinfeld, but I think that describes you in your armor).

"Listen to Your Heart"  was a popular song you probably heard on the car radio. But also know where your lane is and don't be fooled into driving into the ditch.

 

 

Go Time

 

I remember a quote from the Cold War era in which an American military official stated that while the Soviets played chess in war, the U.S. played poker.  Chess is a tactical game, where the action is visible and domination is key.  I guess that individual was thinking that flexibility gives an edge that is more difficult to counter.  Sun Tzu had a lot of insight into strategy above and beyond tactics which he developed after much experience on the ground. This sage general hasn't been proven wrong over the centuries, either.

Chinese gentlemen scholars had to master four arts:  painting, calligraphy, the guqin (a 7-string zither) and wei ch'i ("the surrounding game"), which we know as Go, after the Japanese word for it. It has a 3000 year history and a long and deep cultural influence  Someone else, I wish I remembered who, said that the revolutionary leaders of China and Vietnam understood strategy and tactics through the lens of this game.  I wonder if they had studied it at our service academies and senior colleges, whether it would have better prepared the military for Asian land wars (which General Eisenhower said we should avoid).  

Unlike chess, Go begins with an empty board with a grid of lines, the boards ranging from full-size 19"x19" to a compact 9"x9".  Black or white stones are placed in turn by either player anywhere on this grid (there are 361 intersections on the large board).  The point is to claim and expand territory, attacking weaker groups while surrounding and neutralizing your opponent's forces.  (Once placed, unlike in war, a stone cannot be moved again until it is captured). Does this maneuvering  remind you of Grant's Vicksburg campaign, the Chinese Civil War in 1948/49, Vo Nguyen Giap's victory at Dien Bien Phu or Hannibal at Cannae?  Cover the battle area with dense vegetation and mountain mist, as in Vietnam, and you have a lethal combination of Go and poker.  

There are several interesting states the play can go to in some areas of the board such as seki, or mutual life, in which neither player wants to move any of his group due to danger of capture.  Both groups remain alive but in stasis.  The Japanese term atari (sound familiar?) means a successful attack, or literally "to hit the target," when the fatal blow to a threatened group is stuck.  And there are old traditions to be observed, like picking up the stones between the fore- and second fingers, delicately and deadly like a spider moving in.

So, future strategists, don't pass Go.

 

Blocking one side at the DMZ, and attacking from one other side:  one of the principles of Go.

 

 

The Destroying Angels

 

                                            The assassination of Joseph Smith

Vigilantes, posses, paramilitaries, militias, armed clans' vendettas and feuds, range wars, murderous mobs...

Warlords, dictators, would-be dictators and cult leaders have used mayhem, terror and murder over and over again to further their greed for power.  Civilization, it seems, just cannot end mindless tribal behavior.  

In 1838, a secret society was established in Missouri by Mormons to protect themselves from attacks and to carry out reprisals -- the Danites, or as they were also called, the Destroying Angels.  Their early leaders such as Sampson Avard, Porter Blackwell and Bill Hickman left their violent mark on American history, from the Missouri War of 1838 up to the awful climax of the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 120 innocent pioneers near present-day  St. George, Utah, in 1857.  The LDS church disavowed them officially, and eventually by 1870 the armed militia had dwindled.  A predecessor group, the "Armies of Israel," was somewhat organized in 1834 under founder Joseph Smith, when the attacks against their sect began and went on unrelentingly, forcing their moves westward year after year.  Smith himself was assassinated.

                                             Mountain Meadows massacre
 

 It is one thing to counter violence with the same.  But today we see the unfortunate result of a frontier tradition of individualism becoming an unthinking belligerence and expressing a hatred of a rational civil structure by means of promoting armed resistance to...what?  Misdirected rage is easily manipulated by cult leaders (political and religious) who demand conformity, surrender of individual thinking and basic human rights in a climate of antisocial disdain for all decent norms.  The inherent hypocrisy and blatant contradiction are not even noticed by their zombie-like followers.

In the course of history, light is periodically extinguished by the darkness.  We're not intelligent enough to light a candle and dispel it. 

 

 

Wilhelm's Eleven

 

Friedrich Wilhelm Voight was born in Prussia in 1849 and learned the shoemaking trade from his father.  But at the early age of 14, he began his criminal career with a two-week jail stay for theft.  He did not learn much from that: during a 27-year period, he spent 25 of them in prison.  Out in early 1906, he came up with a caper that Danny Ocean would have appreciated.

Wilhelm bought an army captain's uniform in a pawnshop, collected ten local soldiers solely on the authority represented by his uniform, and marched into the city hall of Koepenick, Prussia.  There the cowed city officials handed over 4,002 marks and change to the "captain," who obligingly signed a receipt (with someone else's name, of course). He sent his troop on their way back to duty, and disappeared.

                                                             City Hall, Koepenick

But, he was arrested a few weeks later in October 1906 and sentenced to two years.  While serving his time, the story spread around Germany and even the Kaiser was amused ("he seems like an amiable fellow") and pardoned Wilhelm.  Quickly becoming a folk hero, a wax figure was made for a museum, and he wrote a play  about his hijinks and toured central Europe.  Subsequently, in 1909, he published a successful book.  Over the next three-quarters of a century, another play, movies and television retold his story, a Clyde without a Bonnie, a Jesse James, a Robin Hood, and yes, like Zorro too.  The tried and true course of criminal to popular hero to media figure.

The ruse of using a false uniform has been employed for more sinister purposes.  One hundred and fifty Austrian Nazis did so in the first, unsuccessful, putsch in Austria (1934); the Wehrmacht did during the World War II invasion of the Netherlands and later impersonation of American MPs during the Battle of the Bulge, and it works in Afghanistan today.

Nothing is stranger than a true story.

Legends Are Made of These

 

In the Sunday newspaper, I saw a short review of a new book, Zorro's Shadow: How a Mexican Legend Became America's Superhero by Stephen J. C. Andes.  Thus the inspiration to look into the Zorro story, especially because of growing up with the well-produced Disney television show beginning in 1957 and starring Guy Williams (who personifies Sade's "Smooth Operator" song).

Television's "The Lone Ranger," we find, was based on a lawman in the Old West named Bass Reeves who was actually Black.  But that would not have played with the mid-century American audience.  Neither would the real-life characters behind the legend of El Zorro (The Fox).

 In 1919, a pulp magazine (above) published a five part serial by Johnston McCulley on the exploits of   Californio Don Diego de la Vega during the Spanish era in Alta California (1769 - 1821).  It was an immediate hit, followed by 65 more pieces by McCulley and a movie in 1920 starring Douglas Fairbanks.  Tyrone Power, Alain Delon, Antonio Banderas and many others over the next century appeared in successful Zorro films, not to mention plays, a musical, television shows both acted (one in Spanish) and animated, and a comic strip and books.  The character was irresistible, possessisng all positive human qualities along with superior skills, wit and daring.  Batman was, some think, based on Zorro (mask, cape, adventures at night, a daytime identity, fighting for justice and not gain), but already the superhero mold was being cast, as Batman was above the restraints of gravity and the limits of human ability.

 The two main historical personages our fictional hero was based on were not such fine gentlemen.

Salomon Pico (1821 - 1860) from central California was related to the last Mexican governor and his father was the manager of Rancho del Rey San Pedro.  He was given a large Mexican land grant in 1844, but the fateful year of the Gold Rush arrived soon after and he lost his land to squatters as well as his beloved wife.  Proud and wronged, he vowed vengeance, trading cattle and horses by day but riding at night down a path of violence, claiming to have killed 39 Yankees.  He was protected by fellow Californios who also were being dispossessed, seemingly disappearing into the air when chased.  Pico fled to Baja California where he held posts under an official who was an old military colleague.  But a new governor succeeded who was bent on ridding the state of outlaws, and Pico's eventful life was ended by a firing squad.

Joaquin Murrieta (1829 - 1853?) was as aggrieved by the invading Americans as Pico.  Arriving from Mexico to participate in the Gold Rush with numerous members of his family, his claim was taken away and he was falsely accused of stealing a mule. Solid facts about Murrieta are sketchy, but his legend in California, Mexico and Chile (because of a fictional claim he was born there) reverberates today as an avenger of wrongs.  Not that he didn't thereafter commit many of his own, from horse thievery to robbery and murder of ranchers, travelers and many Chinese miners.  One by one, his gang members fell: a stepbrother hanged early on, a brother-in-law killed during a shootout; even the notorious Three-Fingered Jack went down with him in the final face off, gunned down by a posse. His severed head was preserved in a large glass jug filled with alcohol as proof in order to collect the reward.  The grisly display was last seen at the Golden Nugget Saloon in San Francisco, before disappearing in the 1906 earthquake.

Their stories were embellished and published over and over again by newspapermen and sundry other highly imaginative writers, eventually coalescing into the Spanish-American Robin Hood/Scarlet Pimpernel folk hero we know as the dashing Zorro.  

    

What Have We Learned?

 

Lifelong learning is like the hamster wheel.  It never ends; there's always more to come!  (After all these years, I still think homework, however, is a waste of effort and time.  I only remember one assignment that was interesting.  We were tasked to write ten stories in Spanish.  Didn't want to stop at ten).  Here are some things I've learned after schooling ended.  And let's hear yours!

 Buddhism proposes that you must let go of regrets to achieve peace.  In theory, okay, but that is not realistic.  Only psychopaths have no regrets.  The greatest one is not being able to fix very much of what you messed up in the past.

 Nothing much good for you happens after midnight or in the desert.

"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."  Take charge of your own mental and physical health.  

Work on not paying rent or interest any longer than necessary.  Read  Your Money or Your Life  to get started on that.

Buy quality.  These days that is easier to do using consignment stores, library sales and local marketplace web sites.  You can pick up all the hand tools you would want at an estate sale for the retail price of one.

We will never figure out why the music and electronics were so great in the 70s and the clothing and hair styles were so hideous.

Bob Dylan was right:  "Don't follow leaders but watch the parking meters."

Don't do anything that will result in your being on "Dateline."

Don't fall for every new medium, which will probably be obsolete in a few years (remember laser discs?).  The mountain of audio cassettes still residing here is a constant reminder of that.

The best no-calorie treat is a tree's shade on a hot sunny day.  And it's free to all.

"No one knows anything."  So said writer William Goldman of Hollywood producers.  But think how widely that applies.

 

 

 

 

Life Stories

 

Hiding, inside, behind her eyes, 

There was no old person.

No need takes up her time.

So she does the chores

Then daydreams.

"Now my heart is full as the moon,

but no one asks."

 ***

The parrot, 

Life long and green,

Blinks as an unnumbered year goes by.

The ones outside the wires:  shadows talking

(With less time than they know).

Blink.

"The  sky is out of reach, but a seed is always a seed."

***

The egg dreams,

Being timeless and perfect

In gratitude:  no rain, no hunger, no fear.

No one answers its only question:

"Is life worthwhile?"

 

 

 

Thorn in the Paw

Ancient city-states of the Peleponnese

Have you been daydreaming of exotic places to go when we're sprung from this long term of house arrest (and the rest of the world will let us travel there again)?  Well, I've got one for you.

You would think that since Greece has been heavily visited by tourists since even the Roman era it has been pretty much been traveled, explored and photographed.  But take a look at those three strangely shaped peninsulas than hang from the southern shore of the Peleponnese.  The central of these three prongs is formed by the ridge of the Taygetus Mountains and is known as the Mani.  It was still mostly inaccessible when Patrick Lee Fermor boldly went there in 1958 despite no good roads and its fearsome reputation.  The area had been forgotten for centuries before he published Mani, Travels in the Southern Peleponnese.  He and his wife loved it so much they settled permanently in 1964.

The unoccupied remains of stone tower houses were to be found all over, and as in other lands beset by violence like Corsica, Sicily, the Balkans and the Caucasus, they mutely made it clear this was no Elysium or Acadia.  Other than column parts and building stones that have been continuously recycled, nothing remains of ancient Grecian civilization.

Although the Ottomans had conquered Constantinople in 1453, a fragment of the Byzantine Empire held on in the Mani until 1460.  However well they had secured so much of the known world, the Ottomans never did effect much control in this peninsula, either military or civilian.  They made a big push to do so in 1477 and suffered a large defeat from the locals and Venetian mercenary forces in 1481, but when they renewed their efforts, the mercenaries had to flee by ship.  Despite this, the Mani always remained a thorn in the paw of the mighty beast that was the Ottoman realm.

Year after year of war between the Turks and Venetians and local allies with both or neither left a devastated landscape and a poor economy.  Overpopulation was a constant drain despite the worsening lack of resources, and the Maniots emigrated worldwide (even to Florida).  Those who remained lived with banditry, constant vendettas (fueled by a persistent superstition that the dead, if not avenged, would return to haunt their families) and pirate attacks.  As elsewhere in the Mediterranean, they moved their towns and villages to the interior, away from the dangerous coasts.  Another way to deal with raiders was to become pirates themselves:  as a visitor noted, "boats...abounded in every creek...long and narrow like canoes, with ten...even thirty men armed with rifle and pistols..." 

These unbowed people could be an example for us on living through difficult times.

Friends of the Devil

Sailors ashore do it.
Students do it.
Good ol' boys in pickup trucks do it.

And bored aristocrats do it.  Getting up to mischief, that is.

In 1718, Duke Philip Wharton began the Hell-Fire Club in London, starting something which not only spread to Scotland and Ireland, but continues today.  The Club met at the Greyhound tavern and at members' homes on Sundays; it was meant to be a satire of the usual gentleman's club where cultural discussions were politely held. Its purpose was rather to shock and ridicule.  The Duke was called "a drunkard, a rioter and a rake," but was also a member of Parliament and quite literate.  We know the names of very few club members and what they were really up to except that they were all peers of the realm. Accused by political enemies of "horrid impieties," he was removed from Parliament.  The Club disbanded in 1721.

Sir Francis, up for a good time

Baron Francis Dashwood picked up on the idea, and led meetings of libertine companions at the George and Vulture tavern in Castle Court, London.  A creative sort, Dashwood coined their motto ("Do what thou wilt") and gave the society the grandiose title of The Order of the Friars of St. Francis of Wycombe.  Women were welcome, free-spirited ones at least, which was unheard of at the time.  They could not attend at the tavern, so the group moved the festivities to Francis' home outside the city. Over the years, some distinguished visitors risked their reputation by attending, among them royals and Benjamin Franklin (in 1758).

The Hell-Fire Cave is open for tourists today

Dashwood had caves and tunnels excavated in a hill above West Wycombe, decorating the walls with scandalous pictures and the gardens outside with statues of pagan gods.  Chambers for meetings were named The Banqueting Hall and the Inner Temple.  A small underground stream inside was titled the River Styx.  It was best to keep these things a little out of sight (and all records were burned in 1774), because the general population and the royal government were decidedly more strict and pious; the last witch execution in Great Britain was as recent as 1727.

The Dublin Hell-Fire Club looks the part

Dublin, Ireland, can claim to be the most notorious associate in the Hell-Fire Club tradition, with the worst reputation.  "A brace of monsters, blasphemers and Bacchanalians" was what Jonathan Swift had to say about them in the 1740s.  There is still one at Trinity College and others at two Irish universities today.  With costumes, mock ceremonies and life-risking drinking, the venerable Skull and Bones at Yale appears to be quite the same thing also.

Now, behave!

A Capital Idea, or, Playing Real Life Monopoly

Pivotal moments in commercial history:

The first transnational corporations take off in the 17th Century, financed by share sales:  Hudson's Bay  Company (once the largest land owner in the world) and the Dutch and British East India Companies...

Charles "Lucky" Luciano, ably assisted by Meyer Lansky, organizes crime as a business with a board of directors and semi-autonomous branches in the United States and Cuba...

Harry Sonneborn brings the struggling Ray Kroc a brilliant idea...

"We are not basically in the food business; we are in the real estate business.  The only reason we sell hamburgers is because they are the greatest producers of revenue from which our tenants can pay us rent."

Mr. Sonneborn was exactly right and was rewarded with the presidency of the corporation (he stayed for ten years until Kroc irritated him too much).  Today, McDonald's real estate assets are pegged at $37.7 billion.  Originally, the plan was to buy and own cheap land freed up for development potential by the newly built Interstates (at exits), but a lack of the large amount of capital required shifted the grand strategy to leasing land, then subletting it to franchisees.  Initially they charged the franchise holders 20% over their own lease cost, raising that to 40% later. And the locations had to pay all the insurance and taxes, as well as a $45,000 up front fee and 4% of gross sales.

Costs for construction and equipment for a new McDonald's range from $1 million to $2.2 million, depending on location and size.  Half of that amount, up to $750,000, must be cash, that is, non-borrowed funds.  The bait for all this is an average annual net profit for the operator of $150,000.  That amounts to working for free for five years, but actually longer given the corporations' fees listed above.  A McDonald's general manager would make $315,000 gross, on average, during a similar seven year period  Now, that job would probably send you to an early grave, but you would do better than the owner by far.

Today, McDonald's stock was at $199.36 a share.

Westward with Petunia

Over the course of 382 posts here, there seem to have been a few recurring themes:  Odd Places and Quirky Corners of History; The Occasional Thought and Plucky Women.  If we just continued with the last one, we'd never run out of stories. And there are a lot of them about women who headed out to cross the continental United States in the very early days of automobiling.  It's surprising how many, considering how bad the cars and tires were, and the roads were not only bad, often they weren't even there.  Intrepid drivers had to cut fences out West, ford streams and roll across farm fields.  Especially in the Spring, there was mud to contend with.  Either cars got stuck up to their hubs or they just slid off sideways into ditches. Farmers pulled them out, even more convinced about the superiority and utility of horses.  In fact, around 1919, there were 17 million horses and only 13 miles of Federally financed roadway.  Towns were isolated by the lack of roads between them, and the cost of transporting farm products was many times higher than in more developed European nations.  Services were absent, as was even gravel; dirt roads were graded by horses pulling a log crosswise behind them.  Did any of that stop the enthusiastic ladies eager to experience freedom, something new and amazing and revel in their self-reliance?  Alice Ramsey in her Maxwell, Winifred Dixon (Westward Hoboes, 1921), Letitia Stockett, Kathryn Hulme and Emily Post took the challenge on and cheerily wrote about their adventures.

Emily Post?  Mrs. Post, before she was the Emily Post, took her son out of Harvard to drive from New York to San Francisco  in 1915.  Overburdened at first (being new to this thing), they had to jettison weighty items like a silver service.  Unlike most such early travelers, she preferred nice hotels to camping, and reviewed each city like a newly published novel, approving heartily of Chicago and Cleveland ("great coffee") and not so much about lesser sites ("bad food in queer places").  She did, however, have to complete the journey via train from the Southwest to California after her European automobile gave its all.

Not only Emily Post went on to fame after her youthful adventure.  In 1923, Kathryn Hulme (above) logged 6000 miles on the same New York to San Francisco jaunt, detouring frequently, even up into British Columbia, with her friend Petunia ("Tuny" for short).  Unfortunately, since Ms. Hulme's 1928 chronicle How's the Road is unavailable except on microfilm at a university, we can't find out anything more about someone with such a delightful name.  The two pursued a life of freedom and new experiences that usually only men could at that time, although that was to change dramatically during the decade.  They explored a blacksmith's forge in Montana, camped with cowboys and visited traveling salesmen's hotels where women were not expected.  In fact, although they took a pistol along anticipating danger, the men along the way were chivalrous (and curious).  The women they asked directions of, however, often showed their "rank disapproval."  Not ever apologetic and fully aware she was being rebellious, Kathryn laughed it off.

Her life was a continuation of the adventure.  After attending the University of California and Columbia, she was a reporter, an expatriate writer in Paris, a ship welder again in California during the War and then relocated displaced persons after 1945 for a U.N. agency in Bavaria.  At age 71, she went on safari in east Africa. Ms. Hulme is best known for The  Nun's Story, which was a best seller and  made into a movie starring Audrey Hepburn.  That success allowed her to live out her years on Kauai, Hawaii.  With less mud, I hope.

    

The Options List

You can't always get what you want...

The perfect title for an autobiography was already taken by 1938, when British author  W. Somerset Maugham published The Summing Up. Comprised of a pretty small amount of personal information for its genre, the book instead offers a lifetime of reflections on various subjects, the best part being, I think, an examination of career choices.

Maugham was a trained physician and had worked in the secret service during World War I.  However, his ultimate vocational  pick was full time writing, despite almost starving during the first ten years.  He persisted because "an artist can be free.  In other callings (medicine, the law, etc.) you are no longer free."  Looking back on your legacy, sir, beyond the several books which became classics, you could have done a lot worse than to be a major influence on George Orwell.

Often, choosing the harder thing to do is the right thing.  Sometimes your available options look no better than Mr. Hobson's.  And often you may look back ruefully on a major missed opportunity or a wrong road taken.  Or possibly you might wonder how you had gotten so undeservedly lucky.

I can't say it any better than Amor Towles did in his 2011 book Rules of  Civility (Viking Press):

Life doesn't have to provide you any options at all.  It can easily define your course from the outset and keep you in check through all manner of rough and subtle mechanics.  To have even one year when you're presented with choices that can alter your circumstances, you character, your course -- that's by the grace of God alone.

Life is less like a journey than it is a game... In our twenties, when there is still so much time ahead of us, time that seems ample for a hundred indecisions, for a hundred visions and revisions -- we draw a card, and we must decide right then and there whether to keep that card and discard the next, or discard the first card and keep the second.  And before you know it, the deck has been played out and the decisions we have just made will shape our lives for decades to come.

 

 

The Princess and the Corpse

At age sixteen in 1824 Italy's richest heiress, Cristina Trivulzio, married her prince and acquired the name she would be known as -- even though they separated soon after -- Principesa Cristina Barbiano di Belgiojoso, throughout an adventurous life, which she was lucky to escape with several times.

Cristina associated with the revolutionaries attempting, for decades, to expel foreign rulers and unite Italy.  Living in the Austrian Empire's territories in northern Italy, that attracted the attention of the Empire's police, and the principesa fled to France.  There she wrote articles in support of the struggle for independence and met with exiled rebels along with the leading intellectuals and artists of the time such as de Tocqueville and Franz Liszt.  There was time for other diversions, though, as she had a daughter (Maria) in 1838, probably fathered by her personal secretary Bolognini.

When Europe erupted in revolution in 1848, Cristina organized soldiers in Milan and supported the short-lived Roman  Republic by establishing a corps of nurses and administering a hospital.  Not pleased with her once again, the Austrian secret police meanwhile searched her villa in Locate (south of Milan) for evidence they could use to arrest her.  They did not find it, but what they did find, in a wardrobe, was the body of her secretary Gaetano Stelzi who had been deceased (from tuberculosis) for about a year.  Rumor has it the princess and her maid had embalmed Signor Stelzi in the kitchen, dressed him and hid him.  It seems she had a thing for male secretaries.

Again a step ahead of the Imperial police, Cristina escaped on a ship to Istanbul, Turkey.  She settled on a farm she had purchased, and supported by a successful opium poppy harvest, spent the next ten months touring Syria and Palestine.  Rather shocked by the subjugation of women in these lands, she wrote two books, Oriental Harems and  Scenery, and Of Women's Condition and Their Future.  

Returning to  Italy in 1856, our intrepid princess continued her work with the independence movement and finally saw unification in 1861.  What a gal.

Divided Italy in 1848

Thinking About 1066

"At the base of many a great fortune there was a great crime"

You don't have to be a history fan to know about the year 1066 A.D., when William, Duke of  Normandy, crossed the English Channel and after one battle on its southeastern shore, ended Saxon rule and rather quickly and efficiently took over the whole country.  Those who had served him were given the demesnes of the evicted Saxon lords and all the poor souls who had worked the land for them (meet the new boss!).  It was a perfect crime, and the perpetrators benefited for many generations.

There were many other well-executed thefts before and after.  Early in the First Century B.C., Roman proconsul Caepio, during the confusion of the Cimbric War in southern Gaul, found the hoard known as the Gold of Tolosa and made off with it. Where did this trove come from?  It had previously been stolen from the Temple of Apollo at Delphi in Greece by raiding Gauls. Caepio's family back in Rome, which was noble but usually short on funds, were soon known for their great wealth.  The last heir was Marcus Brutus, main assassin of Julius Caesar.

Two later thefts kept the early Empire solvent.  In 70 A.D., Titus took away the treasures of the Temple in Jerusalem after suppressing the Jewish Revolt, proudly commemorating his appropriation on the Arch which bears his name.  At least a more useful Coloseum got built also.  Emperor Trajan went after the Dacians in what is today Romania , subduing them in 107 A.D.  Do you think he probably didn't want much more from them than a cessation of their frequent raids?  Not a chance.  He relieved them of 165 tons of gold and 330 of silver.  As valuable as precious metals were the captured unfortunates who became slaves.  It is estimated that over a million Gauls suffered their liberty being stolen from them during Caesar's campaigns in what are today France and Belgium.

A multi-talented American lady, Lizzie Magie, was disenchanted with the unrestrained monopoly rampant in the U.S. economy, typified, for her and many others, by Mr .J.D. Rockefeller  In 1904, she published an outline of what she considered an instructive entertainment called "The Landlord's Game."  It circulated around, being changed and developed in the meantime.  A Quaker group in Atlantic City (of all places) renamed the property squares after their local streets.  Unemployed salesman Charles Dawson was introduced to the board game by his Quaker friends on a visit to A.C. and -- as you have probably guessed -- just took it as his own, selling it in prominent toy and department stores and then to Parker Brothers in 1934.  He didn't even come up with the catchier name; some Philadelphia business school students had.  Ms. Magie had to settle for a $500 quit-claim payment while Dawson became a multimillionaire.  They say there's little justice this side of the grave.  We  can only hope things are more honest on that other side.

Lizzie Magie, 1930s

    

A Ghost World

Nan Madol
House and canal

The Devil's Post Piles, Mammoth Lakes, California

Venice of the Western Pacific

My brother and his wife generously send me their copies of Archaeology magazine and special issues from National Geographic, which allow me to escape to lost worlds while wishing the contemporary one would get lost.  The usual areas are covered:  the Mediterranean basin, China and Indochina, ancient Britain, the Meso- and Incan Americas, but I never tire of them and you can always learn something new as season after season, dedicated people dig and translate.  But who would have thought of an imposing stone city built on a coral reef far out in the Caroline Islands, the loneliest dots in a vast ocean?

 Pohnpei Island (one of the four islands comprising today's Federated States of Micronesia) has been settled for over 2,000 years, but one would think its housing would have been built of organic materials,constantly  replaced after a generation or two or after a typhoon, and leaving little behind.  From around 500 A.D. to 1500 A.D. it was the capital of an increasingly stratified society, ending with the centralized and all-powerful Saudeleur Dynasty, which ruled a population of around 25,000.  And did they leave something behind.

For hundreds of years, most intensely in the 12th century, a complex of stone houses and temples separated by canals was erected for the exclusive use of the ruling class.  Artificial islands were built on a coral reef in a lagoon off the main island for their regal isolation.  There is no food or fresh water there, so it was likely built much more for psychological effect than practical reasons.  One is immediately reminded of the Aztec and Egyptian pyramid builders and the high, formidable structures of the Inca. 

On Lake Texcoco at Tenochtitlan (today's Mexico City), the Aztecs built many such islands out of organic material, not stone, for the completely practical purpose of agriculture. Nan Madol, like today's gated communities and security-encased high rise condominiums, was built for the safety and status of an elite class only. And well-built it was, from 400,000 hexagonal basalt rock columns, shaped like logs, of up to 10 tons each which were quarried from the island's interior.  These formations are found elsewhere so we know what they look like.undisturbed (i.e., at Mammoth Lakes in California and The Giants' Causeway in Ireland). How they separated and transported and then raised them to such heights is a mystery; the orally transmitted myth has it that a magician flew them to the lagoon.  As good an explanations as we have, I suppose.

One can almost hear the long-ago king and his nobles telling the nameless people who built their private city and brought them their food (to turn Eva Peron's song in Evita upside down):  "We keep no promise; now keep your distance."

Rags and Trees

Arthur Waley's "Translations from the Chinese," 1941

"Love Books of Ovid," 1930

Recently, I went back to writing these posts on an old, wrinkled legal pad (a light greenish blue one, not the flashy yellow kind),  We can't do without pixels now, but scratching on paper is really more satisfying.  As there's a lot of paper around us, we take it for granted.  But there was a time fairly recently when that was not the case at all.

When Brooklyn College scholar Alice Kober did some research at Cambridge University after World War II, she found there was still a serious paper shortage (along with everything else, like heating fuel:  the office was in the 40s F inside during the late winter).  It was not only scarce, what there was was of the poorest quality; it would not even take ink sometimes.  Back home in New York during the war, dealing with domestic shortages, she cut up scraps of paper into 2" x 3" rectangles to serve as index cards and filed them in cigarette cartons.

Bad paper quality is three things: it's  made of short rather than long fibers, is all wood pulp (cellulose) with no fabric ("rag") content, and has been mechanically rather than chemically mashed up  (the mechanical process releases lignin which promotes acid damage).

The Trouble with Acid

Acids in paper age it more quickly and make it brownish and brittle.  There is more than one way for acid to end up in paper, and it did a lot of that from the mid-nineteenth century to about 1980.  Before about 1850, paper was made from linen and cotton clothing rags and it remained stronger and more durable than paper made of wood pulp.  Paper is coated with sizing, which is necessary to reduce moisture and ink absorption, and when alum-rosin sizing was the kind used, it produced sulfuric acid when exposed to humidity.  Browning at the edges of a book's pages ("foxing") is from pollutants in the air.  Poor paper just doesn't get a break:  high-acid books, magazines and newspaper will all be gone eventually, while quality products from the rag age can survive quite a while.

Alkaline sizing, which goes a long way to preserve paper, was developed in the 1950s, but did not become widely used until the early 1980s.

Alas, if you're in need of high quality paper, you'll have to go online since the big box office supply stores have driven the local stationary shops away.  Your last resort these days is a craft/fabric store  It is comforting to look back into "art" books made during the 1930s like the two pictured at the beginning.  The pages are heavy, colored like light cream, and well suited to reproducing the excellent commissioned illustrations.  Like Ezra Pound's "old men with beautiful manners," they are, unfortunately, of the past and "will come no more.".
 .