Friday, May 01, 2020

Today -100: May 1, 1920: Object, matrimony


Panicked Headline of the May Day -100: 


Also, this one:


And another one


(A typo in the NYT Index had me pondering what it meant to “forest all radicals” for longer than I care to admit). For some reason, the authorities thought the forestalled radical plan, or part of it, was to shoot a bunch of black people.

But, on the other hand, this headline:


That does sound like Palmer, doesn’t it?

The US hears that Mexican Pres. Venustiano Carranza is going to flee Mexico for the US. Which will probably let him in if he makes it to the border (he won’t). Meanwhile the State Dept authorizes Americans doing business in Sonora and in the other states in rebellion against the federal government to pay taxes and customs duties to those states rather than the feds.

Old Guard Republican congresscritters are trying to boom senator and former secretary of state Philander Knox, because they really don’t like Gen. Wood and they don’t like the League.

Canada would like to have its own ambassador to the United States, rather than having Britain represent its interests.

James Watson aka “James Huirt” among other aliases, confesses to the LAPD to the murders of two of his wives and to having been... present... at the “accidental” deaths of 2 others, both of whom fell out of boats and drowned. He admits to having been married 10 or 20 more times, honestly he can’t even remember them all, even their names, but some of them he didn’t actually kill. He found them by placing classified ads. And this was all in just a few years. He often had several wives on the go at once; he told them he was in the Secret Service and had to be away a lot. His most recent wife got suspicious and hired a PI, who discovered his stash of correspondence, marriage licenses, wills, jewelry, etc. While definitely a con man who  got money from his wives and their families, some of the women he fake-married had no money and some he murdered on impulse. Just liked drowning women, I guess. He won’t be executed because of the deal that resulted in his partial confession. He died in San Quentin in 1939, the full extent of his matrimonial and homicidal career never entirely clear.

The Saturday Evening Post publishes the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” (text, audio book,

Some quotes, from whenever I last read it:
youth in this jazz-nourished generation is temperamentally restless
At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
"Oh, please don't quote `Little Women'!" cried Marjorie impatiently. "That's out of style."


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