Justice Baldwin's Dueling Past

"Duels were not altogether uncommon among these men in this day. ... Henry Baldwin had fought a duel against another lawyer, Isaac Meason, Jr., over a grievance that has been described as either political or romantic in nature – possibly both. During the first round of pistol-fire, Baldwin was hit in the chest and began spitting up blood, so witnesses feared he had been shot through; but apparently a Spanish silver dollar in Baldwin’s waistcoat pocket deflected Meason’s bullet. The parties were scared off by a posse sent by Judge Riddle before they could lob a second volley." Henry Baldwin later became an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

See The Steel Bar: Pittsburgh Lawyers and the Making of Modern America.

Yes, I'm sick and tired of the election, too ... but ...

Yes, I'm sick and tired of the election, too.  I have to confess, though, that the night before the election is just like Christmas Eve was to me when I was a kid.  Maybe it's just me, but for all my excitement, I'm going to have a hard time getting to sleep tonight, and tomorrow morning I'll be up and running down the stairs ... because after months of being talked to and talked at, of dozens of robocalls and campaign contribution solicitations, of having my daily practical thoughts interrupted at every turn by a SuperPAC campaign ad, I'm finally going to get my present.  I'm going to get to have my say.

As much as I may be completely fed up with this campaign, I do love our process.  It's a great gift, and I can hardly wait until sunrise to open it.

Natural Gas is King in Pittsburgh – Deja vu All Over Again?

I was reading an article from the New York Times the other day, and the first line of the article was, “Natural gas is King in Pittsburgh.”

The article described how much natural gas development is under way in the region; that with respect to overall enterprise cost, “gas is far cheaper as fuel than coal,” especially for manufacturing; that it is reinvigorating the economy of Pittsburgh, and attracting capital to the region; and finally, that natural gas is a clean fuel.

The date of this article was October 18, 1885.

Read more here.

And the People Hit Worst Are the Poor

As we keep the people of Haiti in our thoughts and prayers, it is perhaps an appropriate moment to give a shout out to the memory of the late Fred Cuny, who made these relevant observations about earlier disasters, and whose words may inspire us today:

Disasters hurt people. They injure and kill. They cause emotional distress and trauma. They destroy homes and businesses, cause economic hardships, and spell financial ruin for many. And the people hit worst are the poor. A natural disaster can happen anywhere, but for a combination of reasons -- political as well as geographic -- most large scale disasters occur in the region between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn. This region encompasses most of the poorer developing nations, which we call the Third World.

For survivors of a natural disaster, a second disaster may also be looming, for the very aid that is intended to help them recover may be provided in such a way that it actually impedes recovery, causes further economic hardship, and renders society less able to cope with the next disaster.

... Recognizing poverty as the primary root of vulnerability and disaster in the Third World is the first step toward developing an understanding of the need for change in current disaster responses. For if the magnitude of disasters is an outgrowth of underdevelopment and poverty, how can we expect to reduce the impact with food, blankets, and tents, the traditional forms of assistance?

Emergency relief is an essential part of the response to a tragedy such as the one in Haiti. Give generously, give now:

Oxfam America

Yele Haiti

Episcopal Relief and Development

Hopital Albert Schweitzer

There are many worthy organizations to whom you can send your money. But, with Fred Cuny's observations as our guide, perhaps we can also establish another set of objectives in our aid to Haitian people: to upgrade the standard of housing; to provide increased job opportunities; to improve or diversify local skills; and to provide alternate income to people whose economic livelihood has been hurt by the disaster. Maybe this time we can help to prevent the "second disaster."

103 Year-Old Pittsburgh Lawyer Reflects on Career

[In the course of my research for my upcoming book, I get to interview some pretty interesting folks. Some notes from my interview of Reuben Fingold, a 103-year old retired lawyer living with his wife in Pittsburgh, were published in the July 17 edition of the "Lawyers Journal," a publication of the Allegheny County Bar Association.]

Reuben Fingold, a 103 year-old Shadyside resident who was admitted to the Allegheny County Bar in 1930 and joined the Allegheny County Bar Association in 1933, was honored by the Board of Governors of the ACBA on June 2 for achieving the status of the oldest member of our Bar, and for “his Seventy Six years of service to the Allegheny County Bar Association and the legal community.”

At his side for the occasion was Mr. Fingold’s wife Helen, who is only a few years his junior. “[The inscription on the plaque] is really lovely,” she says, beaming with pride. 

Mr. Fingold’s recollections from his youth and his early years as a practitioner in Pittsburgh are like a time capsule from a bygone era. When he began his law practice, Herbert Hoover was in the White House. Fingold was 22 years old before movies had sound, and his family’s first radio was one that he put together himself from spare parts that he bought at a plumber’s shop in East Liberty. 

His parents lived in McKeesport when they were first married, where his father made men’s suits, drawing patterns for them on large rolls of green paper. “My mother used to tell us how she’d put the two [oldest] babies in a carriage, wheel them down to the wharf in McKeesport, and push the carriage onto a boat” that would take them along the Monongahela River to Pittsburgh, where they would visit his mother’s sister. Eventually, the Fingolds moved to the Hill District, where Reuben Fingold spent his earliest years, and then to Shadyside. 

“One of the things I remember,” Mr. Fingold says, “was when the newspaper came in and it said ‘TITANIC SUNK!’” The year was 1912. “My mother sat down and cried. I was pretty young then, and I didn’t know what the Titanic was, but my mother had come over from Europe” aboard an ocean ship, Fingold explains, and she instantly knew what the passengers on the Titanic must have experienced.

Mr. Fingold’s older brother, A.S. “Abe” Fingold, entered the Bar in 1926; but even before then, Mr. Fingold was fairly certain that he, too, would become an attorney, since he always had a penchant for “asking people all kind of questions.” After undergraduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Mr. Fingold enrolled in the Law School at Duquesne. In his first year, he had to take oral final exams, facing the entire Duquesne faculty – which consisted entirely of full-time practicing lawyers at the time – and fielding questions on each of the courses he had studied that year. His would be the last class of Duquesne law students to have to endure the oral exam gauntlet.

On the day Mr. Fingold found out he had passed the Bar, he and his brother Abe happened upon an Allegheny County judge while walking downtown. Abe Fingold greeted the judge and introduced him to his brother, announcing that Reuben had just passed the Bar. Mr. Fingold showed the judge his notification letter, whereupon the judge instructed Mr. Fingold to raise his right hand. “He swore me into the Bar, right then and there on the sidewalk,” Mr. Fingold explains, although he later formalized the event by signing the County registry.

Mr. Fingold set himself up as a sole practitioner in the Jones Law Building, sharing offices with his brother Abe and several more senior lawyers, including W.C. McClure and the John Metzes, father and son. The year 1930, amid the turmoil the Great Depression, was a difficult time to establish a new practice, but Mr. Fingold managed to earn a small living by doing title searches for other lawyers for $10 a search – sometimes accepting even less. “The [deed] books weighed almost as much as me,” he remembers. 

At the age of 36, Mr. Fingold left his Pittsburgh practice behind briefly and volunteered for World War II duty, attaining the rank of Major in the U.S. Army Air Corps and serving in the Judge Advocate General Department. He also designed a few inventions during this period, including some patented improvements to mason jar lids and electrical switches, and a bag holder for blood and plasma that he proposed to Army doctors during the War. 

Before his retirement from the law in the late 1970s, Mr. Fingold had built a comfortable general practice that included a few clients who paid him an annual retainer. Sometimes his job as a lawyer, however, would be merely to convince the right official to pay attention to a problem. One of his clients complained about garbage being thrown down a hillside owned by the client’s aunt; while it was fresh on his mind, Mr. Fingold happened to spot Mayor David L. Lawrence waiting for a streetcar, and he explained the situation to him. The Mayor made a note of the lawyer’s concerns, and the next morning, city maintenance men came and cleaned up the hillside. “Anybody could see David Lawrence,” Fingold remembers. “And he cleaned the city up.”

Reuben Fingold’s experiences recall a time when Pittsburgh was smaller, when streetcars could take you anywhere, and it only cost 15 cents a day if you wanted to park a car downtown. His unheralded career is another illustration of some of the simple virtues that were important to Pittsburgh’s lawyers during the first half of the 20th century, when both life and practice were filled with face-to-face, hands-on experiences – the arts of greeting, conversation, casual persuasion and straight-forward problem-solving, in broad daylight.

The Disappearance of Agnes Lowzier

The last time I saw Agnes Lowzier, it was a misty night in L.A. She had just bargained a dowdy shamus out of a couple of Cs in exchange for some information on the whereabouts of the blonde wife of a mob boss. After performing her part of the bloodless exchange and asking the detective to wish her luck, she simply drove away into the night in her gray Plymouth, never to be seen again. Until now.

“Wish me luck,” she said, before she put her pointed toes down on the gas pedal. “I got a raw deal.”

“Your kind always does,” said the detective.

The detective was Philip Marlowe, played by Humphrey Bogart in Howard Hawks’ 1946 adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s novel, The Big Sleep. The movie has grown in stature over the years. It was initially faulted by critics for the untidiness of its labyrinthine plot, but now it is seen as a classic example of film noir, in which story takes a backseat to process, mood and atmosphere. Another way of describing the film, which is one of my favorites after all, is that it is a canvas for a collection of cold-blooded murders and beatings, some fascinating character encounters, and a constant volley of wisecracks.

And who was Agnes? Agnes Lowzier was a slender, pretty “brunette with green eyes, kind of slanted” as Marlowe describes her (Chandler had her down as Agnes Lowzelle, a blonde), who cracked wise in her every scene. The first time we see her she is pretending to be a sales clerk at Geiger’s Rare Books, a shop that Marlowe supposes is actually a front for a bookie’s joint. Marlowe comes in to check things out, and poses as a collector. After establishing that Agnes doesn’t know too much about rare editions and anyway doesn’t seem to have any in stock, thus confirming his suspicions about the place, Marlowe asks, still in character as a collector, “You do sell books, hmm?” Agnes replies, gesturing carelessly at a random row of books: “What do those look like, grapefruit?”

Marlowe returns to the bookshop and reveals himself as he sees that the back of the store is being emptied. Agnes tells him to come back “tomorrow” if he wants to see Geiger. “Early, then?,” Marlowe asks with a note of sarcasm, letting her know that he knows the place will be empty tomorrow. “Yes, early,” she snarls, disgustedly acknowledging Marlowe’s cleverness.

Critic David Thomson calls what transpires between Marlowe and Agnes as a kind of “nagging marriage” – providing the film with one of its funniest subtexts. Marlowe sees Agnes’ shoes behind a curtain leading to another room in the apartment of a grasping, small-time hood named Joe Brody (Louis Jean Heydt). “Why don’t you ask your friend with the pointed toes to come out of there – she must get awful tired of holding her breath.” He calls her “Sugar” over and over again, because he knows it annoys her.

By the time Marlowe has disrupted Brody’s attempt to blackmail the Sternwoods and has generally humiliated everyone involved, Agnes almost seems willing to trade sides, registering her impatience with Brody’s incompetence. “Hm!,” she grunts. “What’s the matter, Sugar?,” Marlowe asks. Agnes replies: “He gives me a pain in my –“ and she is interrupted by Brody. “Where does he give you a pain?” Marlowe asks. “Right in my –“ and again, Agnes is interrupted by Brody. “That’s what I always draw,” Agnes says, “Never once a man who’s smart all the way around the course. Never once.” Referring to an earlier moment when he wrestled a gun away from her, Marlowe asks Agnes, who is rubbing her wrist, “Did I hurt you much, Sugar?” “You and every other man I’ve ever met,” she says.

Brody is killed by Geiger’s bodyguard a few seconds later, and Marlowe is on to other things, but Agnes comes back into the story when one of Brody’s associates, a dour little man named Harry Jones (Elisha Cook, Jr.), comes to Marlowe with a proposition. “So Agnes is on the loose again,” Marlowe cracks. “She’s a nice girl,” Jones says, “we’re thinking of getting married.” “She’s too big for you,” Marlowe says, but then thinks better of the remark and apologizes. He’s still wary of the way she insinuates herself into the schemes of one small-time grafter after another, hoping to make a quick buck, and when Mr. Jones suggests he’d be willing to stand up to a police grilling for Agnes’ sake, the still skeptical Marlowe remarks that “Agnes must have something I didn’t notice.”

Witnessing Harry’s murder at the hands of a mob brute named Canino (Bob Steele) while protecting Agnes’ whereabouts is Marlowe’s last straw where Agnes is concerned. “Your little man died to keep you out of trouble,” he tells her over the phone. He squints contemptuously and says, “I got your money for you. Do you want it?” When Marlowe meets her near the corner of Rampart and Oakland to give her the two Cs, she asks him, “What happened to Harry?” “There’s no use going into that – you don’t really care anyway. Just put it down your little man deserved something better.” At the moment that Marlowe seems to hate her the most, Agnes has never looked lovelier.

There are a small bevy of both credited and uncredited actresses who make splendid little impressions in the movie, but Thomson and numerous others single out the work of Sonia Darrin as Agnes. Thomson writes:

There is Agnes Lozelle [sic], in Geiger’s shop, dumb on books but hip with grapefruit, and later the dreamgirl for Joe Brody and Harry Jones, both of whom (if you’ll pardon the remark) are too small for her. Indeed, Marlowe has sized her up and knows how to whip her with words – he understands the b*tch, and she looks at him with the bruised gratitude of someone who knows she’s been understood. What ever happened to Sonia Darrin, who played Agnes?

Darrin is officially uncredited in her role. As Hawks’ biographer, Todd McCarthy, tells the story, Darrin was originally a contender to appear in the film as Carmen Sternwood, the nymphomaniacal sister of Lauren Bacall’s character, Mrs. Rutledge. Ultimately, however, the mercurial Hawks settled on a former model, Martha Vickers, for the Carmen role, relegating Darrin to the supposedly smaller role of Agnes. Although Carmen is pivotal within the film, some of Vickers’ work ended up on the cutting room floor due to censorship concerns and other reconfiguring. As a result, perhaps, Agnes becomes a much more memorable character, especially as she is played by Darrin.

Roger Ebert writes:

One of the best-known of all Hollywood anecdotes involves the movie's confusing plot, based on the equally confusing novel by Raymond Chandler. Lauren Bacall recalls in her autobiography, “One day Bogie came on the set and said to Howard, ‘Who pushed [Owen] Taylor off the pier?’ Everything stopped.” As A.M. Sperber and Eric Lax write in Bogart, “Hawks sent Chandler a telegram asking whether the Sternwood's chauffeur, Owen Taylor, was murdered or a suicide. ‘Dammit I didn't know either,’” Chandler recalled.

It is refreshingly consistent with the on-screen persona of Agnes that, as told by McCarthy, Sonia Darrin also had a wry sense of humor:

A sarcastic young woman herself, Darrin was on the set when it was asked who killed Owen Taylor, and she burst out, “It must have been Hawks.”

Thomson’s curiosity about Darrin is echoed by other fans of The Big Sleep. On the IMDB message board for Sonia Darrin, for example, one fan writes: “This is one of the big Hollywood mysteries, considering the importance of The Big Sleep. Note also that she did not receive any credit in the movie, despite the fact that her role was infinitely more important than e.g. Dorothy Malone's, and despite the fact that only Bogart and Bacall (I think) got more screen time than her!! Something really smells here...” Others chime in with similar sentiments, and there are other websites that raise the same question: what happened to Sonia Darrin?

The annals of film history – carelessly curated by the Hollywood studios and pressed piecemeal into tawdry scrapbooks by adoring fans like me – have left us few clues to the identity of Sonia Darrin. She appeared in minor roles in a few more films, but after 1950, she is gone. For awhile one of the only clues was a reference I found to her being involved as a “guest artist” at the Los Angeles Labor Zionists' 4th annual Bikkurim Festival in Griffith Park, held June 10, 1945, in support of a free and democratic Jewish state in Palestine. Other guest artists at the event included Bette Davis, Ernst Deutsch and Joseph Szigeti. I dutifully entered the reference into the Internet Movie Database, hoping that some other Sunday researcher would be able to make something out of it. They never did. Another clue came up in a bit of syndicated gossip from the summer of 1946, in which it was reported that Sonia Darrin, “Warner fledgling,” was seen in the company of press agent Arthur Pine and was “coming East to see him soon.”

I could write my own Big Sleep about how I found Sonia Darrin, but it lacks mood and atmosphere. There’s no misty L.A. in it. There are no unsolved murders and no bookies; I don’t get beat up in it; and frankly, I don’t look so hot in a fedora.

Rock critic Gail Worley writes in her blog in 2007:

If you were, say, over age ten in the early to mid '70s and living in the United States, you will remember [Mason Reese] as the adorably precocious 7 year old spokesperson for Underwood Deviled Ham in the commercial that swept the nation by storm and had everyone mispronouncing the word ‘Smorgasbord.’

Our scene switches from “EXT. MISTY LOS ANGELES STREET - NIGHT” to “INT. ON THE SET OF A DAYTIME TALK SHOW. It is Halloween, October 31, 1973. Mason Reese, a red-headed 3’-8” gnome who talks like he’s a 32-year old trapped in a little boy’s body – using big words and the attitude of a seasoned commentator – is co-hosting for the fourth time with the reigning king of daytime variety/talk, Mike Douglas. Today’s guests are Leonard Nimoy, astronaut Buzz Aldrin, game expert John Scarne, and the beatnik poet/gadfly Tuli Kupferberg and his partner in pop/countercultural crime, Sylvia Topp. Before the week is over, Mason will have the opportunity to quiz the likes of Art Buchwald, Ralph Nader and Theodore H. White, author of The Making of the President 1972.

Mason Reese became a bit of a TV phenomenon in the early to mid-1970s, doing commercials not only for Underwood Deviled Ham (through which “Borgasmord” became a household word), but for Dunkin’ Donuts, Ralston Purina, Ivory Snow, Birdseye Frozen French Fries and Thick and Frosty, winning seven Clio awards for his work. Mike Douglas took him on, first as a one-time guest, and later as a temporary co-host, finding his appeal irresistible. He became a children’s reporter for WNBC-TV, worked on a prime-time show with Howard Cosell, and even did a pilot for his own TV series.

Also on hand for some of the Mike Douglas appearances was Mason’s mother, Sonia (see photo below). As Mason writes in his “autobiography,” published at the height of his fame in 1974:

Mommy has red hair, too. When she was a little girl, she lived in Hollywood and became a beautiful actress. She doesn’t act any more, but she’s still beautiful.

Somewhere along the line, Sonia Darrin left Hollywood and did, in fact, go East, meeting and marrying Bill Reese, a one-time theater set designer who eventually ran his own marketing services company, specializing in 3-D design work. She and Bill raised at least 4 children in a stylish place on West End Avenue in Manhattan – Mason, the youngest; daughter Suky; and two older sons, Lanny and Mark.
Mason’s fame faded as he grew older, and eventually he and his family settled into a less visible existence. Mason eventually went into the restaurant business, owning and co-owning a number of places around lower Manhattan, including Nowbar on Seventh Avenue South, Mason’s on Amsterdam Avenue, and Paladar on Ludlow Street.
Hollywood bad-boy director Brett Ratner briefly brought both Mason and Sonia out of retirement in 1990. When Ratner was a film student at NYU, he had a chance meeting with the instantly recognizable Mason Reese on the street. This led to the creation of a bizarre 12-minute film Ratner made as a student project, Whatever Happened to Mason Reese (1990) in which Reese appears as an ex-child star who hangs around with models in limousines and eventually gets gored by a fan whom Reese has humiliated. Reese hurt his leg during the filming, got into some kind of fight with Ratner, and allegedly threatened to tie up the film in litigation; Reese’s voice was later dubbed in by Anthony Michael Hall when the film was finally finished, apparently with dollars begged from Steven Spielberg. It can now be seen as an “extra” on the DVD of Ratner’s hit Hollywood movie, Rush Hour. And Sonia Darrin even got a film credit out of it – “Thanks … Sonia Reese.”

While all of that gives us an inkling of what Sonia Darrin has been up to since The Big Sleep, we’re still left to wonder – where did she come from?
“EXT. – A SAN DIEGO BEACH – THE 1930s.” Sonia Paskowitz sits in the sand and watches as her eldest brother Dorian, a lifeguard, looking like Charles Atlas, chats up a few adoring female sunbathers. “You know, the girls would be drowning,” says Sonia. “They wanted to be rescued by him.”
Louis and Rose Paskowitz landed at Galveston, Texas in the early years of the 20^th century, when Galveston was a common port of entry for Russian Jews. They married and had three children: two sons, Dorian and Adrian, and a daughter, Sonia. Louis opened a dry goods store, but it didn’t survive. Dorian claims that he convinced his parents to move to San Diego after seeing a postcard of some San Diego surfers. In any event, the family moved there in 1934, and Louis found work as a shoe salesman.
Dorian went to Stanford and became a doctor. Adrian studied music, and became a respected music teacher and violinist. Sonia drifted toward Hollywood, and acting.

The realization that Sonia Darrin has been hiding in plain sight all these years, even a couple of years after I managed to draw the connection between Sonia and her son Mason Reese, really hit me with the release of Doug Pray’s documentary Surfwise (2007), in which the unorthodox life of Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, his wife Juliette and their 9 children is chronicled. In it, we learn that Doc Paskowitz led his family on a relentless quest for freedom and health, moving from beach to beach in their 24-foot camper and eventually opening a surf camp in Southern California. We watch as Doc, Juliette and each of the 9 children tell us, from their own individual perspectives, about their nomadic, bohemian lifestyle, their strict “health food” diet (no fat, no sugar, no exceptions), and the requirement that each and every one of them surf, as often as possible.Also on hand, providing her outsider’s view of Dorian Paskowitz and his family, is Sonia Darrin, Dorian’s little sister. Sonia talks about her brother’s stubbornness and the harsh conditions his family sometimes suffered, and explains how she took in two of Dorian’s sons in New York when they decided to rebel against their father’s iron regime.She has red hair now – just like her son Mason wrote in his autobiography. Her green eyes light up with that sly intelligence when she smiles, and the years cannot hide that melodic quality in her voice, the one that you can hear in each line she delivered in The Big Sleep, over 60 years ago. Sonia Darrin – truly hiding in plain sight -- appearing on The Mike Douglas Show in the 1970s and in a documentary film about her brother in 2007, risking detection but somehow escaping it.The word on the street is that Sonia Paskowitz Reese, better known as Sonia Darrin, is around 80 years old (which would’ve meant she was around 17 when she was making The Big Sleep) and that she is now living in New York. I’m sure she has even better stories about her life than the ones we can glean through public sources.It is kind of tempting to think of Agnes Lowzier speeding off into the desert on that misty night in L.A., meeting up with a traveling theater troupe as the clouds parted somewhere outside of Barstow, sidling up to a tall, handsome stage carpenter and eventually settling down and having a child who would be known for his expressive wisecracks … ah, but that is conflating fiction with reality -- and really, do we need to do that here? Sonia Darrin’s reality has enough twists and turns and notes of interest that there is probably no need for it.

Ted Stevens' Harvard Law School Yearbook Photo

Apropos of nothing ...

Oz

L. Frank Baum was born on this day in 1856 in Chittenango, New York.

A failed theater owner, dry goods seller and magazine editor, and a some-time breeder of fancy poultry, Frank Baum began writing books for children in 1899, publishing the modestly successful Father Goose. The following year he wrote the book which would make his name in pop culture, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), a fantasy tale with decidedly Nietzschean undertones about a Kansas girl and her adventures with a scarecrow, a tin woodsman and a lion in a magical other-world. Baum took the name for his other-world from the letters on the bottom drawer of his filing cabinet: "O-Z."

Wildly popular, the book was almost instantaneously turned into a musical, but the most familiar musical version, preserved in MGM’s classic film, The Wizard of Oz (1939; directed by Victor Fleming, with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Jack Haley and Bert Lahr), did not take shape until shortly before that movie was made, when Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg collaborated on such songs as "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" and "If I Were King of the Forest."

Following the book’s success, Baum wrote 13 more Oz books, none of which came close to matching the first in its irresistible, mythically pregnant plot or its lasting popularity. He unsuccessfully tried to promote his books with a traveling vaudeville slide show and toured in Europe for a time before filing bankruptcy in 1911 and settling in Hollywood on his wife's money in a home he called "Ozcot." He died there on May 6, 1919.

Moving Staircase

Charles D. Seeberger, the "inventor" (sort of) of the escalator, was born on this day in 1857 in Oscaloosa, Iowa.

Seeberger was a Yale-trained engineer who obsessed over the prospect of a moving staircase while working in the family hardware store in Chicago. In 1895 he left the family firm and filed a patent for an "escalator," a name he coined; the Patent Office was a little mixed up by the time it granted Seeberger's patent under the title "elevator."

Seeberger wasn't satisfied with his own design, however, preferring George Wheeler's "flat-step" design. He acquired Wheeler's patent in 1898, meshed it together with bits and pieces of what he had designed himself and engaged the Otis Elevator Company (founded by Elisha Otis in the 1850s) to build the prototype. The Otis Company and Seeberger unveiled the escalator at the 1900 Paris Universal Exposition, where it competed for attention with Jesse Reno's "inclined elevator," a conveyor belt with step-like rows of iron cleats to support the feet of the passengers as they leaned forward precariously. Although Reno's design was a lot less comfortable than Seeberger's, it did have a comb of fingers at the landing which passed between the cleats and kept stray shoelaces and skirts from getting caught in the machine.

The Otis-Seeberger and the Reno moving-staircases competed against each other until 1910, when Otis purchased Reno's company. Even as late as 1911, however, the Otis Company had to go to extreme lengths to reassure customers of the safety of the escalator; when the first Seeberger escalator was installed in the London Underground, the Otis Company hired a man with a wooden leg, "Bumper" Harris, to ride the escalator all day to demonstrate its harmlessness.

Seeberger left Otis in 1915; and in 1920, the Otis Company combined Seeberger's modified flat-step escalator with Reno's combed landing, producing what was to become the most popular model of moving-staircase, selling more units in the 2 years that followed than it had ever sold of the either the Seeberger or Reno designs alone. None of them perfected a way of keeping people walking instead of standing in my way on escalators, however.

Seeberger passed away in September 1931 in Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts.

Categories: Inventions, Technology

Barack Obama at Greensburg Town Hall Meeting

... on March 28, 2008, at the Hempfield Area High School gymnasium.

Monopoly Sights: St. James Place, 2007

Oh, yes ... I've spent one or two evenings in this generically named tavern on St. James Place in Atlantic City. Enough to know that everything in there seems to have been shellacked with 18 coats of old varnish. I must confess that I don't remember much else, when all is said and done. Our bar tab could've gotten us a couple of houses on this block, though, apparently.

Categories: Monopoly

Monopoly Sights: "Marvin Gardens," 2007

"Marvin Gardens" was the name that Charles Darrow used in his original 1933 Atlantic City Monopoly game board, but it was in fact a misspelling of the name "Marven Gardens," a small residential neighborhood located near the boundary of Margate City and Ventnor City, just south of Atlantic City. Parker Bros. issued a formal apology to the residents of Marven Gardens for the misspelling in 1995. Some people around there are still sore about it, though.

Although a house in "Marvin Gardens" costs $150 in the classic version of Monopoly, today they seem to be going for upwards of $699,000.

Categories: Monopoly

Monopoly Sights: Vermont Avenue, 2007

Categories: Monopoly

Local Notes #3

• On Friday, the 28th, we had an opportunity to see two entertaining bands on the "Downstairs Live" stage at the World Cafe in Philadelphia: Golem and Toubab Krewe. (Muchas gracias to Krewe kora-and-12-string-kamelengoni player Justin Perkins for the tickets!) The opening act, Golem, is an irrepressibly lively five-piece klezmer band, led by Annette Ezekiel on vocals and accordion. "This is not your father's klezmer band," according to a review in Jewish Weekly, posted on the band's website, "[u]nless, of course, your father was Sid Vicious." The band's repertoire is a spun-out and recoiled mélange of Jewish, Gypsy and Slavic folk songs, collected and reworked by Ezekiel and her cohorts somewhere between Lower East Side bagel shops and summers in Eastern Europe. Ezekiel and fiddler Alicia Jo Rabins (decked out in shimmering, bright red mini-tunics and long leather boots for Friday's performance), tromboing-boinger Curtis Hasselbring, drummer Tim Monaghan and upright bassist Taylor Bergren-Chrisman put some furious, crazy and intense musicianship on display, while muttering vocalist Aaron Diskin adds some Yiddish burlesque flavor to the whole affair. Toubab Krewe -- an Asheville, North Carolina-based fusion instrumental jam outfit, blending West African sounds (learned while studying with masters in Mali, Guinea and the Ivory Coast) with various facets of Southern-tinged rock 'n roll -- took the stage around 10pm, and they were worth the wait. On many of their tightly-meshed numbers, while Perkins bangs and plucks away on electrified West African gourd-harps (creating a sound that swings from steel-string axe-work to the effect of a light breeze on backporch chimes), percussionist Luke Quaranta, who plies a collection of traditional West African percussion instruments, and drummer Teal Brown, engage in some startling, fascinating cross-talk; and guitarist Drew Heller and bassist David Pransky (an ex-mandolinist) provide a supple, silky bed of electronic sound. Heller and Brown deserve special mention; Heller's guitar is surely accessible to uninitiated American rock audiences, but it straddles the soldered core of the group's sound by introducing us to the lightning, flat-pick sound of West African masters such as Zani Diabate, and Heller's own teacher Lamine Soumano. Brown may sit at the back of the group, but he is, in a sense, the Krewe's ringmaster, leading the band with a wide, white grin in some cliff-hanging tempo shifts while flashing in and out of straight-ahead rock drumming and West African rhythms. As the World Cafe's David Dye says, "Toubab Krewe are where Ali Farka Toure and Led Zeppelin meet." Check out their eponymous 2005 release when you get the chance -- regrettably, it is hard to find.

• In sporting news ... the "Augustinian Shoot-Out" -- a four-day high school basketball tournament comprised of squads from nine elite North American Augustinian high schools -- came to a successful conclusion on Sunday the 30th. Participating in the tournament, which was held at St. Augustine College Preparatory School in Richland, New Jersey, were the hosts, the Prep Hermits; the Saints of St. Augustine High School in San Diego, California; the Friars of Malvern Prep in Malvern, Pennsylvania; the Wildcats of Villanova Prep in Ojai, California; the Mustangs of St. Rita of Cascia in Chicago, Illinois; the Celtics of Providence Catholic in New Lenox, Illinois; the Commandos of Cascia Hall in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the Knights of St. Thomas of Villanova College in King City, Ontario, Canada. We were on hand to see the Prep Hermits' JV squad, featuring our own Ryan O., beat the Varsity squad from Ontario on Friday morning, 63-35. As St. Augustine himself sayeth, "The argument is at an end."

Monopoly Sights: Oriental Avenue, 2007

Of Martinis, "Bradfords" and "Teslas"

My apologies to regular readers who may have been showing up at this space every morning hoping for a new "parlour trick." It is has been a busy season, full of deals, machinations and pre-holiday chores -- but I hope to see my way clear to writing more when 2008 begins.

One thing, however, has inspired me to put pen to paper once again ... I was out with my wife the other day, trailing behind her as she rummaged through the holiday sales at a local Sur la Table, when I stumbled upon a most disconcerting item: the Waring Pro WM007 Professional Electric Martini Maker.

First of all, we all know about Waring and his blender, and also about his Pennsylvanians. More power to the fellow, I guess, for the laser-like focus of his life and imagination upon things that rotate (phonograph turntables, blending blades, etc.). I know that, after soda fountains, taverns and bars were among Waring's first customers, but Waring was no doubt hawking his blender to poor fellows who were forced, by the preferences of their clientele, to make frozen cocktails of one type or another, such as a Frozen Daquiri or a Margarita. The venerable David Embury says as much. "Frozen cocktails require the use of a Waring Blendor or similar electric mixer of the type used at soda fountains," Embury writes in deadpan manner in his book The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks. "The egg-beater type of electric mixer cannot be used." Implicit in his observation that a "Waring Blendor" is something that is normally seen at a soda fountain is the opinion, no doubt, that frozen cocktails are for grown-ups who still have adolescent tastes. In his chapter on "Glassware, Gimmicks, and Gadgets," Embury remains pointedly silent on the necessity of keeping a "Waring Blendor" around a well-equipped bar.

Now the people who own Waring's name have unleashed this strange little device on the American consumer market, the Electric Martini Maker -- an appliance whose essential mechanism is not simply rotation (as in the machine's "Stir" mode), but also vigorous shaking (as in its "Shake" mode). Yes, that's right, the Waring 007 can give you a Martini that's either "shaken" or "stirred" at your command.

Notwithstanding James Bond's request for a "shaken, not stirred" Martini, first uttered by Sean Connery in Goldfinger and used ad infinitum ever since, David Embury is very clear on the matter. Martinis are, strictly speaking, always stirred. "If you shake the Martini," Embury maintains, "it becomes a Bradford."

Embury continues: "The real distinction between the two methods is simple. Shaking produces a colder cocktail quicker than stirring. Therefore, since frigidity is highly desirable in all cocktails, shaking is normally the preferable method. However, with some cocktails another consideration enters into the picture, and that is 'eye appeal.' A substantial part of the charm of certain cocktails such as the Martini and the Manhattan is their clear, almost scintillating translucence. A stirred cocktail will remain clear; a shaken cocktail will be cloudy or even muddy in appearance. This result is particularly noticeable where vermouth or any other wine is an ingredient. Therefore, you should never shake a cocktail containing wine unless you want a muddy looking drink. This cloudiness will clear somewhat as the drink stands, but it will never have quite the limpid appeal of the drink that is stirred. ... Incidentally, there are very few cocktails that can be made with the beautiful translucence of the Martini and the Manhattan. This is because more cocktails are made with citrus juices than with vermouths, and the citrus juices themselves are not translucent."

(Why a Bradford? I have no idea, although it does call to mind one hopelessly foggy, early morning airplane flight I took from the airfield at Bradford, Pennsylvania that forced me to admit to myself, then and there, that I was taking the worst calculated risk of my life. I'd be willing to bet, though, that Embury himself never experienced such a thing.)

Embury's distinctions seem quaint and almost archaic now, in a world of filled with muddy Mocha Fudge Latte Martinis and Apple Cinnamon Vanilla Martinis. It does, however, prompt me to wonder what the appropriate name should be for a Martini that is neither shaken nor stirred by human hands, but rather, jerked around by a Waring Pro WM007 Professional Electric Martini Maker. One is tempted to call it a "Waring," but I refuse to cast aspersions on Fred Waring without more evidence of his posthumous complicity. Perhaps we can call it a "Tesla," in honor of the unfairly maligned inventor of the AC current transmission system. Then again, I wouldn't want to further sully his memory, either.

Call it what you like -- the Waring Electric Martini Maker will not be under my Christmas tree this year or any other. I'm not a Luddite, even if I do prefer to chop my own vegetables, when making Salsa, instead of using an electric food processor. It's all about aesthetics. Give me the manually crafted beauty of a dry, translucent Martini (made with Gin, as all Martini aficionados agree), and keep the electricity out of my aperitif.

And if that isn't reason enough not to be experimenting with electricity and cocktails, try this review of the Waring Electric Martini Maker by Dave Wells:

Let's recap. You pay $99.95 (plus tax/shipping) for the machine. You measure the ingredients. You pour the ingredients. You add the ice. The machine wiggles the shaker - either up and down ('shaken') or in a circular motion ('stirred') probably for much longer than necessary. You pour the martini. You wash the jigger and the shaker. You find a place to store the bulky unitasking device. Wow, aren't modern conveniences wonderful?Indeed.

Local Notes #2

Cleveland, by the numbers, last night:

Rating of the martinis at downtown eatery One Walnut: 10 out of 10
Home Runs witnessed at Jacobs Field last night: 5
Series Game Count: Cleveland 3, Boston 1.
Time on the clock when my head hit the pillow: 3:38 a.m.

Today I Draw, Tomorrow I Jig

"I do not really consider myself a drawer, or an artist . . . I would say, well yes, I draw and I sculpt, and I do applique, embroidery and needlepoint . . . Tomorrow I want to go out and go jigging [ice-fishing] . . . Being able to do embroidery and being able to go out on the land and all those other things are not secondary to being an artist." -- Kenojuak Ashevak, 1980.

Inuit artist Kenojuak Ashevak was born on this day in 1927 at Ikkerask, Baffin Island, Canada.

When she was 19, Kenojuak's parents arranged for her to marry Johnniebeo, an Inuit hunter. She initially resisted the marriage, throwing rocks at him whenever he came near; but eventually, the couple worked out their differences, and Johnniebeo became an artist in his own right, occasionally assisted Kenojuak on her larger pieces. Together they had two daughters and a son.

Kenojuak began her career as an artist while recuperating from tuberculosis in a hospital in Quebec during the 1950s. She was the first woman of the Cape Dorset area to be recognized for her drawing and painting, which mainly centered on boldly stylized graphic depictions of wildlife, emphasizing formal experimentation rather than any strict documentation of Inuit culture. She was among the first to be honored with the Order of Canada (1967) and was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy (1974). In 1999, the Royal Canadian Mint issued a twenty-five cent piece that featured Kenojuak's "Red Owl" on one side, with her initials in Inuktitut; it marked the first time that the language had ever appeared on Canadian currency.

Will Write Poetry for Shoes

Poet James Thomson was born on this day in 1700 in Ednam, Roxburghshire, Scotland.

Thomson was best known for his collection of nature poems, The Seasons (1730; revised 1744) and for the lyrics of "Rule, Britannia" (set to music by Thomas Arne).

After he left Scotland on foot for his new chosen home in London in 1725, he was mugged and lost all his possessions. Finding himself in London without a shilling, he sold a portion of what would become "Winter," the first part of The Seasons, for a pair of shoes. He died on August 27, 1748, after catching a chill during a boat trip from Hammersmith to Kew.

"He possesses a facility, almost amounting to a genius, for holding together in loose, artificial suspension all the characteristic elements of the popular culture of his day: Augustan patriotism, classicism in diction and tone, gothic excess, sentimentalism." -- M. Wynn-Davies.

Phone Boxes, Broad Court, London, May 2006