BITS & PIECES OF A MISPLACED LIFE: AMERICANA #5

Emily Dickinson’s hair was for sale on eBay, for an asking price of $250,000. 

AMERICA'S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE HOT DOG

"By 1894 college publications at Yale
may have been the first to jokingly call
vendors' carts 'dog wagons' that sold
"little dogs' or 'hot dogs.'At the time,
there was a popular belief that dog meat
could turn up in sausages (not totally 
without reason), so the Ivy League origins
of the term are satirical, the scholars
say. The dog-meat rumor prompted the Coney
Island Chamber of Congress in 1913 to forbid
vendors from using the term 'hot dogs' --
evidently without long-term success."

Juan Jose' Sanchez."The Hot Dog: American
Icon" in National Geographic History, vol.7,
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JEWISH SOLDIERS IN WORLD WAR II

                G.I. JEW: EATING HAM
                   FOR UNCLE SAM

The title of Chapter 8 of Sidney Lumet: A Life
by Laura Spiegel (NY: St. Martin's Press, 2019)
                  
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THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURES

“My view of history is that trusting the better angels of our natures is a bad bet. The founders didn’t believe in the better angels: they created a constitution which was designed to deal with imperfect humans.”
                         Joseph Ellis
**

OKLAHOMA O.K.
The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw language phrase okla, 'people', and humma, translated as 'red'.[10][16] Choctaw Nation Chief Allen Wright suggested the name in 1866 during treaty negotiations with the federal US government on the use of Indian Territory. He envisioned an all exclusive American Indian state controlled by the United States bureau of Indian Affairs. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was officially approved in 1890, two years after that area was opened to American settlers.[17][18][19]In the Chickasaw language, the state is known as Oklahomma', in Arapaho as bo'oobe' (lit. 'red earth'),[20] Pawnee: Uukuhuúwa,[21] and Cayuga: Gahnawiyoˀgeh.[22]**

WIKIPEDIA

DOUBLE DACTYL by the late NEIL HICKEY

Higgledy piggledy
General Washington
Dallied with Sally and
Mortgaged the farm.
Martha took washing in,
Cursing the day that she
Incomprehensibly
Fell for his charm.
**

SCOTT SHANE DISCOVERS THE ORIGIN OF THE TERM "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD" -FIRST USED BY THOMAS SMALLWOOD IN 1842

"Addressing in his usual antic style a Washington slaveholder whose 'walking property walked off.' 
as he once put it. Mr. Smallwood told the man 'It was your cruelty to him that made him disappear by the same 'underground railroad or 'steam balloon,' about which one of your city constables was  swearing so bitterly a few weeks ago, when complaining the 'd--d rascals got off so, and no trace of them could be found."

Scott Shane. " The Man Who Named the Underground Railroad" in Sunday Opinion, The New York Times (September 17,2023),p.10.
**

ON WALT KELLY'S COMIC STRIP "POGO"

"Senator Joe McCarthy’s appearance in the strip in 1953, as a malicious wildcat named Simple J. Malarkey, was a particular “hot potato.” In October of 1954—just before the actual McCarthy would be censured by the Senate—Malarkey made another appearance. This time, the editor of the Providence Bulletin told Kelly that if Malarkey’s face appeared in the strip again, the paper would drop the strip.
"Kelly finessed this by introducing a character from Providence, giving Malarkey the line “nobody from Providence should see me!” before he pulls an empty bait bag over his head. This had the double effect of getting rid of Malarkey’s face and making him look like a Klan member. “Now we find we are kidded”the Bulletin’s editor admitted, moving the strip to the op-ed page, where satire was evidently permitted.'

from JSTOR, nonprofit library for the intellectually curious
**

SEATTLE
   
"In downtown Seattle, for some reason, most of the excess buildings are beige. Seattleites complain of beige a vu: the sensation that they’ve seen that color before."
               Tom Robbins
**

FLEEING THE BRITISH, DOLLEY MADISON LEAVES THE WHITE HOUSE, CARRYING WITH HER THE ROLLED UP CANVAS OF  GILBERT STUART'S PORTRAIT OF GEORGE WASHINGTON

"After leaving the President's house, Dolley hurried 
across the Potomac in a carriage looking for her husband. 
At one point she sought refuge in the house of an aquaintance. But she had just gone upstairs when the
mistress of the house screamed out, 'Miss Madison! Your
husband's got mine out fighting and, damn you, you 
shan't stay in my house; so get out!' Dolley eventually
ended up in Wiley's Tavern in Virginia. There the President, who had been frantically looking for her,finally joined his wife after thirty-six hours' separation."

Paul F. Boller,Jr.  Presidential Anecdotes (New York:
Penguin Books, 1981)
**

THE WEALTH OF J.P. MORGAN

On February 25, 1901, financier J. P. Morgan’s men filed the paperwork to incorporate a new iron and steel trust, and over the weekend, businessmen waited to see what was coming. Five days later, on March 2, the announcement came: J. P. Morgan was overseeing the combination of companies that produced two thirds of the nation’s steel into the United States Steel Corporation. It was capitalized at $1.4 billion, which at the time was almost three times more than the federal government’s annual budget.  "

Heather Cox Richardson (March 3, 2024)
**

AUTOMOBILES IN THE ALAN LADD MOVIE --THE BLUE DAHLIA

Many of the cars in the film have a "B" sticker on the windshield. This is a reflection of the wartime rationing of gasoline. Gas was rationed primarily to save rubber, because Japan had occupied Indochina, Malaysia, and Indonesia. (There was a shortage of gas on the East Coast until a pipeline from Texas was constructed to replace the transport of crude oil by sea.) The B sticker was the second lowest category, entitling the holder to only eight gallons of gas a week.

iMBd Trivia -- THE BLUE DAHLIA

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ODE TO POLAROID

In 60 seconds,
You shall see
How this poem
Comes out.

Louis Phillips
***