We continue to pore through history to find good solid conspiracies involving each of the Presidents of the United States. To recap, we need a story about a president which involves him in some deep plot, or one that seemed deep at the time. We prefer theories which are more or less contemporary with the man himself (I could make up better ones than some of these myself, but that’s cheating) AND it must be a conspiracy which is largely discounted by most Mainstream Historians. (Since it is the nature of politics to make back office deals, some conspiracy stories turn out to be true, which takes them out of conspiracy theory and into History.)
The reason this series has been on hiatus is that Benjamin Harrison, unfortunately, was apparently too dull for conspiracies. The best I can do for you is technically a Grover Cleveland conspiracy theory, put about through the workings of Harrison’s campaign folks. One of their operatives, pretending to be a British expatriot living in California, wrote to the British ambassador to the United States to ask whom he should vote for. The ambassador replied that Cleveland would be the best bet, as he would be lowering the tariffs. Which would have been true. What makes it bogus is that the campaign’s REAL intent was to make it look as if Grover would be doing whatever the British wanted. This was not especially true, but DID convince the Irish voters to turn their support to Harrison, since anything the English government favored had to be evil. This isn’t much, but will have to do for a placeholder until we can show Harrison knew Marilyn Monroe, or something.
William McKinley was assassinated so we are on firmer ground. Like Garfield’s shooting, this should not have been fatal. The doctors guessed wrong about where the bullet was, and just as the President seemed ot be recovering, he died of gangrene. His assassin, Leon Czolgosz, was an anarchist, which set off a wave of action. All the leading anarchists in New York were arrested on suspicion of being in on it, including the entire family of “Red Emma” Goldman, whom Czolgosz had mentioned meeting, to force her to turn herself in. She denied any connection to the crime, saying that if she HAD wanted to kill McKinley, she wouldn’t have picked an idiot like Czolgosz for the job. The Secret Service was accused of being part of the conspiracy for not protecting the president (though this was still just an unofficial part of their job). Despite this, and a demand by some people that protecting the President should be the Army’s job, the Secret Service was made an official protection agency for the NEXT President. The idea that Czolgosz had Not Acted Alone (remember this phrase; it’ll be coming back) led to the establishment of groups dedicated to investigating anarchists, some of which were consolidated into the Department of Investigation, which in the fulness of time became the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Czolgosz accomplished a lot, actually, for someone who basically accidentally killed the President
As for the next president, known to some supporters as “That Goddamned Cowboy”, we have to save him for next time.
Nubry’s eyes had been fixed on the big screen for some time now. Broken buildings were all that remained of Near Schloggina. Old stone stalls they seemed to be, roofless and doorless, a refuge for fog and shadows.
“Probably they had to shut down the conventions after the Great Weed,” she sighed. A hand went out to the touchpad on her chair.
Bott sat now in the co-pilot’s seat, his own hands close to the grenades on his belt. He was not entirely easy about having left the Drover uncrewed in orbit. He was mostly certain that, despite the ship’s opinion of him, it still had to do what he said. But this went against all his training.
The library ship skimmed along above the dead city. Cubicles in stone rows, roofless buildings everywhere the same: Nubry went on shaking her head.
She flew pretty well, he thought, though of course this was a pretty short, straight trip. The dof was tricky, though. Easy to see she had a few years’ experience.
She had changed her uniform while tidying the books, and now wore purple over a white bodysuit. Bott hoped this wasn’t required protocol; he had nothing to change into, and he wanted to make a good impression on these librarians. They could deal. No planet could susbsist entirely on its own resources; a hidden planet, especially, would need suppliers, especially illicit ones. If he managed to master the Drover, he could be a very efficient one.
Blinking lights indicated a landing site beyond the empty city. Bott watched Nubry closely; she showed no sign of noticing this scrutiny as she maneuvered the Dragonshelf toward this, going swiftly through the routine of settling a BBB-44 onto the surface. The Dragonshelf obeyed her perfectly, and without comment. The landing circle lowered too, somewhat more slowly than the ship, so that when the Dragonshelf finally touched down, the platform was completely below the planet’s surface. The roof closed over them. Bott had a grenade unhooked from his belt.
Nubry didn’t notice this, either. Once she had settled the ship, she rubbed her palms on the thighs of her suit. Ibe hand came up to hit the release for the main exit hatch. “Let’s go see!”
Reaching the bottom of the exit ramp, she [paused, forwing around at the big, empty cargo area as though she’d been expecting floor to ceiling bookcases. Bitt turned his eyes to seek out more threatening anomalies. He was the first to hear the low hum, though he had not identified the source before it turned into a voice,
“Wecolme to the library! Come any time; come many times!”
Two travelling squares were gliding toward them. The first bore a tall, regal woman in a long grey robe. Red braids hung down her back, red eyebrows shot up in rays halfway across her smooth forehead. A faint golden glow surrounded her.
“I am Opio,” she said, as the square settled in front of the ramp. “Head Librarian here. This….” She indicated the short white-haired man with a monocle. “Is Chief Deputy Libraroan Wanure Smalen.”
The deputy nodded. Nubry bowed. Pirates don’t bow, so Bott didn’t. He settled his hands to his hips, letting the grenade slip into a pocket for future reference.
“Head Librarian Opio, this pirate captain and I have come to offer the Dragonshelf’s 530,000,000 items to refill the Great Library’s once legendary holdings.” Nubry bowed again, gesturing to Bott as she did so.
The Head Librarian inclined her head with all the dignity of her ancient post. “A magnificent gift. But what did you intend to do once you had turned over your library. Had you any thought of becoming one of our docents?”
Nubry’s ears went a bit red. “I’m sure I would not claim….”
Hr smile warm, the Librarian extended a hand. “There are examinations to be endured, to be sure, but certainly one who has tended the library of the Dangerous Rebels would pass those.” She stepped to the side, making room on her square. “Come! Many I offer you a tour of the facility?”
“Oh, yes!” Nubry took the hand and stepped up.
“I can’t stay long,” Bott glanced up at the closed ceiling. “I have to get back to my ship.”
Nubry frowned, but the Head Librarian inclined her head again. “I understand. But can you not stay long enough, to accept our hospitality, in gratitude for your work?” She gestured to her deputy’s square.
Bott was perfectly willing; he had merely sent a message to these librarians that he would like to get around to business as soon as possible. He was sorry to think that, in delivering the Dragonshelf to this haven, he was losing someone who had shown promise to be a great crew member. But librarians, he supposed, belonged in libraries.
He stepped up next to the deputy, and the two squares moved off in different directions. He could hear Nubry saying , “He’s a very amiable pirate. He could probably hunt books for you.”
Bott had been hoping to do that, and a number of other things, for the Great Library if the Great Library was willing to pay. From the looks of things, they could afford it. The cargo bay was well-jept and well-lit, and these travelling squares moved smoothly, unlike the ones he’d used back home.
Moving into the corridors of the building itself enhanced this feeling: the creamy brown walls were recently polished, and the carpet below their squares was in perfect condition. Lighting was gentle and indirect; everything that could shine shone. The designers of this building had shared the same taste for elegance as the Drover’s architects, and designers with such tastes were not cheap.
Specifics were necessary before negotiations could start. “An expert cloaking device,” he said to the deputy, as if just making conversation. “How do you get supplies through?”
The Chief Deputy’s nose went up a bit but he answered, civilly enough, “We have our ways sir. Would you like to stop and freshen up before going on to the lounge?”
“All right with me. Do you get many ships stopping here Libraries and things?”
Wanure looked away. “That sort of information is naturally classified, sir.”
“Is that glass in your eye for seeing things?” Bott inquired, “Or for making sure nothing that gies in comes back out?”
The deputy smiled, and brought the square to a halt before a light orange door. “I must go supervise the transfer of the Dragonshelf to the Deaccession Chamber, sir. The Reader’s Lounge is at the far end of this lounge. If you will wait there, Her Organized Honor will be joining you presently.”
Btt nodded and stepped down. The deputy guided his square along the corridor. After the man was gone, Bott checked the door for traps and security devices. The cameras and snares were well hidden, but he had plenty of experience with them. They were very good ones, built along the same principles as the ones on the Drover. If he and Opio couldn’t come to terms, it might be fun to try and steal them.
The mirrored room beyond the door was very well stocked. Bott studied the array of soaps and colognes. That spiral bottle held a very popular new scent; he’d hijacked a load of it not so long ago. The Library Planet already had pirate connections, then. He hoped it wasn’t Jaller Parroll. Of course, they might have had it from the dealer Bott supplied, in which vase they might be interested in eliminating the middleman.
He picked upthe bottle to look it over and then, with his free hand, reached down and bunched up a big handful of his jacket. Raising this to his nose, he took a deep sniff and was nearly knocked down by the cold and gritty aroma of the cloth. It still smelled like a spring morning on his home planet. He set the cologne back.
The Reader’s Lounge was almost obnoxiously clean and bright, with small tidy terminals for those who knew how to use them. The smooth lines reminded him again of the Drover. He reached down for his collection of cards.
“Ship?”
“Are you still alive?” “Sorry to disappoint you. Is the Rhododendron still coming on?”
“Yes, but they can’t see through the planet’s cloak. They are following our last course and should miss us by a wide margin.”
“Don’t signal them.”
“I can’t. They could not receive any message unless they come within range of the buoys. And that depends on how clever their ship’s computer is.”
“I’d hate to think it’s smarter than you.”
“You’d never know. We are both advanced too far beyond your brain.”
Bott had more to say, but put the card away and turned as a door opened.
“Such a library!” Nubry slapped her hands together. “The community meeting rooms, the processing center, the…I never saw anything to beat it! Did I? I did not!” She cleared her throat. “Elevator access to all…and the executive offices! You should see the exhibition of bookmarks!”
Bott grinned: she’d like it here. “Do they have as many books as you do?”
Ihe ball if hair bounced left and right. “They didn’t show me that///security./ I used to think I’d hate…but it’s such a beautiful facility! Where’s Wanure? I want to show him where things are. Oh, not the classification system, but which sections are where. They might already, of course….”
She had to pause to catch her breath again. “The deputy said he was going to see the Dragonshelf into the Deaccession Chamber,” Bott told her.
Mintu spread her hands wide. “Well, I guess they would have a special place….” She frowned.
“Deaccession? Are you sure he said that? Not Accession?”
“Yeah,” said Bott. “Why?”
The flush was gone from her cheeks. “But that means weed!”
“That means we’d what?”
“No!” she cried. “Weed! Deaccession!” She looked helplessly at the pirate for a moment and then added “Throw away!” She turned and ran out the way she’d come in.
Responses to my most recent column were evenly split, about half using the word “Scrooge” and the others using “Grinch.” (There were a few other words which are new to me, but I got the general gist.) It occurs to me that perhaps I was a little hard on those people who announce startling new Christmas trivia that I have heard every year since my increasingly distant childhood. There is, after all, always someone who HASN’T heard about Benjamin Franklin and the turkey, and I myself have been known to quote the aphorism that “Every joke is new to someone who hasn’t heard it before.”
I have ALSO been known to say (as noted by everyone who pointed out that I have also been known to tell the same stry numerous times: and here I thought you weren’t paying attention) that instead of censoring or rewriting things you don’t like, you should just offer something better. So I shave made up a list of Christmas trivia I have NOT s een sufficiently covered. Next time you want to give us the shocking news that eating poinsettias can make you sick, add in the answers to some of these burning Christas issues.
Where DOES that comma go in “God Rest Ye, Merry Gentlemen”? I repeated for many years the tidbit that in the original printing of this song, the comma is moved one word over, making it “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”, making the song about how Christmas should make you relax about your afterlife. Then an institution published what they claimed was the earliest known printing, and there IS no comma in the title. Find that first lyric sheet and come to the point. (Yeah, punctuation puns get me right in the colon, too.)
Maybe you think that’s nitpicking; that’s what trivia is ABOUT, mistletoe goulash. Consider, the Island of Misfit Toys in the classic Sixties Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. My mother had an issue early on; at the end, when the elves are dropping the toys to houses below, handing each one a parachute umbrella, the toy bird refuses the umbrella and just flies down. But, as she pointed out, the reason the bird was ON the island was that it couldn’t fly. So how…. A recent TikTok expert addressed another question: why is that winsome doll on the Island? She has no obvious flaws, like the cowboy who rides the ostrich.
I, personally, look to another part of the story for my own question. Where did Yukon Cornelius keep his guitar? You recall that when we meet him, he is heading out to replenish his “life-sustaining supplies: gunpowder, corn meal, hamhocks, and guitar strings.” Are the guitar strings what he uses as a harness for the dogs on his sled? I do not see a guitar sticking out of his supplies. And did he or Sam the Banjo-playing snowman write “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas”, which completely obliterates the elf-written “We Are Santa’s Elves” by the end of the picture?
Luther’s Cradle Hymn, better known to Sunday School alumni as “Away in a Manger”, is so popular a poem that it has been set to at least three different melodies. We are frequently being told by Christmas trivia mavens that Martin Luther had nothing to do with it. He DID write some hit hymns, but not this one, which firat appears somewhere in the late nineteenth century. So who DID write it? My own theory is that it comes from some forgotten pageant about the life of Luther, but no one seems to know. Go find out.
When did it become fashionable to hate fruitcake? There are a lot of desserts our ancestors, for whom sweet things were a novelty except when fruit was ripe, adored that we avoid. But I have eaten some really good fruitcake, some of which were mainly cake and some of which were mainly fruit. At what point did fruitcake become the quintessential unwanted Christmas present, beating out old favorites like socks and long underwear?
How did red and green become the Christmas Colors? Santa’s suit was not originally red—another thing the Christmas trivia folk tell me every year—and Christmas trees were frequently brown, being made of carved wood. Do we just like seeing cardinals in spruce trees that much?
There are other possibilities, some of which may be unanswerable. Who invented the term “Stocking stuffer”? What WAS wrong with Tiny Tim? When did the Three Wise Men become Three Kings? (Is “Magi” just too hard to rhyme?) Mix a few of these in with your Christmas trivia next year, and maybe I will only grumble “humbug” to myself the next time you break it to me that Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” for the annual royalty check.
This will give me more time to write that blog about the Christmas SONGS that really tick me off.
Okay, it is just three weeks until 2025, so I may be considered late. But have you considered the possibility that I am just really, really early for NEXT ear? (Yeah, the IRS never buys that one, either.)
Anyhow, I thought I would take this opportunity to promote a holiday moratorium. I have had no luck so far with Thanksgiving. My tactic of jumping in on the “Frank” when someone starts to say “Did you know Benjamin Frank….” by screaming, “YES! Yes, I do! I have been told Benjamin Franklin suggested the turkey as our national bird instead of the bald eagle! I have been told that four times a year since Kindergarten, and twenty times a year since the invention of the Interwebs!” has done very little good to change the situation. (And all those appearances in court for disturbing the peace cut into my time for eating leftover pie.)
But if, in some slight way, I can divert a few people from those social media posts and conversational gambits, I MIGHT be able to stay out of court during this festive season. (It isn’t the judges and lawyers so much: it’s whoever decided to send a Yuletide gift to the holding cell which included mistletoe.) If you’re doing little known facts about Christmas this year, how about some new ones, like the long hidden story that “Blue Christmas” is really a reflection of Elvis’s unrequited passion for Smurfette? (Long hidden because I just now made it up.) So could we kind of hold back on letting everybody know that:
Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” to make money. Um, yes. Writers do write things to make money, a concept frequently forgotten by today’s publishers. So why pick on Dickens? A Christmas Carol is NOT an anti-money tract. Ebenezer Scrooge makes the Cratchit Christmas happier by promising Bob more money.
Judy Garland made the lyricist change the words of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”. Yep, heard that one two or three times a year for most of this century. I AM grateful to the person who posted this and sang us the original lyrics, showing Judy absolutely knew what she was doing. (“Have yourself a merry little Christmas: it may be your last.” Not Top 10 material.)
In many cultures, instead of leaving coal, Santa Claus whips the naughty children. Okay, maybe our mass market homogenized way of celebrating the holiday DOES miss the True Meaning of Christmas. The Santa character in some cultures, in fact, spent a LOT more time walloping kids than distributing candy. Other cultures split the job into halves, using a second character to do the whipping; there are even cultures where one figure brings goodies and two or three chastisers concentrate on different childhood sins. (That gigantic Christas cat who devours kids who won’t wear the new clothes they got for Christmas strikes me as interesting, but over-specialized.) Krampus, one of these chastisers, gets a lot of coverage these last twenty years or so, and no one, telling me about him as if he’s totally new to me, has explained why he’s so popular. I’m sure Santa Claus is better for the economy.
The poinsettia is poisonous. I used to sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with the world’s greatest expert on botanical poisoning, who got calls every year to help out reporters writing about the dangers of decoration. The fact is that the poinsettia isn’t THAT poisonous, coming in around 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, ten being “goodbye” and one being “Maybe you should sit down for a while.” I will cut some slack to people who insist on telling me the plant with the bright red foliage is name for Joel Poinsett, our first ambassador to Mexico. If you keep reminding me, I MAY someday remember how to spell “poinsettia”. (Admit it: you want to make it a POINTsettia, too.)
Santa’s reindeer are all female. It seems to be one of this year’s particular favorites: male reindeer, see, shed their antlers in winter, so those pictures of antlered reindeer pulling the sleigh MUST denote an all-female crew. Show me your data on the antlers of FLYING reindeer, and I may believe you. Personally, I believe it’s a plot to show Santa Claus is a multinational trillionaire using his money for social modification. (See, because he has lots of doe. Yeah, if you stop posting these things it’ll cut back on MY posting jokes like THAT. Sounds like a better cause now, eh?)
Bott’s eyes snapped open and he jerked upright, fully expecting to find himself surrounded by a few dozen Imperial troopers.
But no, this was the dim, elegant bridge he’d come to know, the same smooth, graceful, unbearable lines he’d seen all along, and no more.
Wait. He blinked. Some lines were different. He rose from his seat, rubbing sleep from his eyes. The navighator’s chair was turned to the side, and someone was in it. A few seconds were required for the memory that he had a passenger to surface. He supposed, with the troubles aboard her own ship, that she hadn’t had much sleep lately either.
She curled into an impossibly small bundle, one knee almost right under her nearly nonexistent nose. One hand clutched her prayerstone. Bott settled back into his seat and checked the monitors.
He’d been out for hours, but not so many as he’d feared. As far as he could tell, the Drover was still following the course he’d set.
Reaching up to remove the cards he’d inserted, he inquired, “Ship?”
“What is it, lummox?”
“Speak up.” That voice had never been so gentle. “I can barely hear you?”
“Have you no manners at all, you grubby pirate? It’s naptime.”
“Oh!”
Swiveling, Bott found Nubry uncurling in a hurry. Her head whipped right to left, and she was lifting her prayerstone to her forehead when she spotted her host.
“Ph!” he said again. She smiled. “I thought it was all a dream. Did I? Yes, I did!”
“Mightmare, really.” The ship’s voice was normal again. “With that pirate involved.”
“And a slave ship.” murmured Bott.
“Now now,” said the librarian, stretching her arms high above her head. “There are plenty of NICE pirates.”
“Possibly,” the computer replied, “But irrelevant in this case. Was there something you wanted, Wafflebeard the Nice, or were you just making conversation?”
Bott felt his cheek, which turned out to be covered with small square dents from the console he’d been using as a pillow. Nubry laughed.
“Do you want this back?” One hand extended a slim, delicate cushion from the captain’s chair while she used the other to pat her hair back into place. “I stole it from behind you since you were lying forward.”
“No, keep it. What else could I expect from a Dangerous Rebel?” He grinned to show this was meant as a joke and, when she laughed, turned back to his console. “Ship, are we still bound for the Library Planet?”
“And where is Sheriff Parimat?” Nubry put in.
“Yes, we are, and yes, she is, if you were going to ask whether she is still following us.” The main screen blipped on to show the Rhododendron again. “She is, however, falling farther and farther behind. She’d do better without the Imperial Transport hanging on her side that way.”
“Did you activate the cloaking device?” Bott asked his passenger.
“No.” She put her feet on the floor and looked under the chair. “I didn’t like to, since this is your command. Oh, here’s the manual.”
“Do you hear that, lummox? That’s manners, in case you have not encountered them before. A less thoughtful person would have called this ‘your ship’.”
“Activate it now, then.” Bott considered his console for a moment and then looked up. “Please.”
“Oh, very nice,” the ship said. “It may take years of effort, but we make progress. Speaking of which, I suppose you are both perfectly certain you want to go to this Library Planet?”
Nubry planted a finger on the Table of Contents of the ship’s manual. “Are we? Yes, we are!” Her hair bobbled as she turned her head up. “Why not?”
“If it has been hidden since the Great Weed, it must have some fairly potent security devices, mustn’t it?”
Nubry looked to the captain, whose eyes narrowed. “It’s a trick,” he told her.
The main screen shifted the Rhododendron to a smaller auxiliary and now showed a segment of space which included a dozen flat whit ovals. “See those buoys, boy?”
“Ot’s a trick,” Bott repeated, louder this time. “I’d bet my breakfast that it’s another trick of yours. I can smell a weapon at a hundred shiplengths.”
“They can smell you long before that,” the computer replied, voice light and airy.
Nubry closed the instruction manual on her finger. “Can’t you signal them? If those are automatic, a cloaking device wouldn’t conceal us completely.”
“They’re probably using a very archaic code; the Weed was eons ago.” The computer seemed to be thinking it over. “Should I bother?”
“You must have all kinds of codes,” Nubry said, leaning farther forward. “Can you, please? We could all be blown up!”
“That may matter to YOU,” the ship replied.
“You’d go to pieces with us,” Bott reminded the ship.
“I may have mentioned this before,” the computer told him, “But I don’t know how long it would take to live down a reputation for having helped a pirate and, I beg your pardon, a book trafficker.”
Nubry, who didn’t seem the least offended, nodded, the ball of hair bouncing on her head again. “A book trafficker with all the records of the Interstellar Wrestling Federation.”
“No! Really? They gave me only twenty years’ worth, for settling arguments among the crew.”
Bott got the idea. “Well, you won’t get a chance to see the rest if we’re blown to smithereens.”
“I’ll signal them, then.” The computer’s voice sounded a little weary. “I’ll ask if they could just blow up one of us and I know which they can have.”
Nubry laughed again. “Oh, Dassie, you’re….”
A white flash filled the main screen. “Full stop!” Bott ordered.
The whiteness vanished, leaving a row of red characters hanging where one of the ovals had been. “Is that something you can read?” he asked Nubry.
Nose and forehead wrinkled. “It’s a very old font….”
“I think it says ‘Breakfast for one’,” suggested the computer.
“Don’t be dumb,” Bott snapped. “That was so fr ahead of us it must have been a warning shot.”
“It’s still a weapon, then,” grumbled the computer. “Incoming message. Decoding. Here it is.”
“Ahoy the ship!” A new voice came from the computer. “Have you a card?”
Bott raised his plastic arsenal. “All kinds of cards. Which one do you want?”
“I tink they mean a library card,” said Nubry raising a hand.
“What would I be doing with a library card?” Bott demanded.
“Probably using a corner of it to scratch fleas.”
Nubry leaned forward, calling into a patch on the arm of her chair. “No, please: we’re here to make a delivery.”
There was a pause for transmission and translation. “Ah! Were we expecting a delivery?”
“It’s books!” Nubry bounced a little in the chair. “It’s the library of the fleet of the Dangerous Rebels, to add to your collection. We have….”
The voice broke in with “Excellent. Proceed by proper course to Landing Area 5, on Near Schloggina. We’ll meet you.”
“Near Schloggina!” Nubry fell back against her chair.
“Hail libraries!” the voice replied, “Over and out.”
“I don’t even see that planet,” Bott complained.
“A planet-sized cloaking device,” noted the Drover. “That’s tech ology nearly as nice as mine.”
“Near Schloggina,” murmured Nubry, raising her prayerstone again to her forehead.
Bott was studying his monitors. “What’s Near Schloggina?”
She sat up. “It was the great library bazaar city. The conventions they had there are a library legend! They had…oh, free bookmarks and toe bags, and posters, and rulers, and coffee mugs, and…and…oh, Dassie, how soon will we be there?”
“Estimated time of arrival, thirty minutes,” the Drover informed her. Bott looked in vain for any indication of this on his monitors.
“I’d better go redd up the shelves.” The librarian rose and hurried from the bridge without another word.
“Do what?” Bott demanded. But the door had sooshed shut behind her.
“It has to do with brains and a sense of tidiness,” the computer informed him. “You wouldn’t know a thing about it.”
Bernard was one of those shoppers who spends more time than money. A friendly chap who liked to talk, had a treasury of stories which were not all pointless: he was pleasant enough on a slow day but at other times kept work from being done.
The keeper of the dark, dim antique shop watched him enter; but went on sorting the old postcards.
Bernard glanced at the heavy-lidded woman, with somewhat heavy body parts festooned with tattoos involving black cats and bats. Many sorority girls in his college days had such tattoos. In fact, Rebecca…maybe she’d be interested in that story. But he needed an excuse to start a story. Having no ink art himself, he could hardly lead with tattoos
His eyes fell on a little glass case at the center of a table filled with art objects. He’d seen it every time he came into the store, guarding a statue about two feet tall of a young woman on her knees, looking back over one shoulder.
He tapped gently on the case to attract the proprietor’s attention. “Do you think you’ll ever sell this?”
She smiled her usual broad smile, and added a warm chuckle. “I do sell it.”
Bernard nodded. “You have more than one, then?”
“No,” she said, inclining her head. “It’s ensorcelled.”
Bernard regarded the statuette. “Under a curse, is it?”
She lowered her head so she could look up at him through dark, ling lashes. She was not smiling now. “Do you believe in curses?”
“No, not really.” Bernard moved closer to the counter, feeling a story (and an excuse to tell one of his own) on the way.
She gave him a quick nod. “It isn’t. An uncle of my great-grandfather made it years ago. When the person who bought it dies, it returns to the family.”
“Ah, you sort of rent it out,” Bernard looked at the case with new interest.
“True enough.”.
“Nice statue, at least.” Bernard thought the style crude and sentimental, the sort of trash a previous century loved. “Do people buy it just to test out the spell?”
“The maker gave it other powers.” She set down the last card of the handful she’d been working on, and reached into the battered shoebox for more. “Its main function is to return curses.”
“Return to sender?” said Bernard, chuckling.
“Exactly. If you perform the ceremony, any curse put upon you by an enemy will bounce back and befall that enemy. You can see why people who believe in curses would find it useful.”
Bernard looked from her to the statue. “People believe that?”
She nodded. “It’s nice, really, to have something to blame your problems on. When there’s an accident, or a sudden financial loss, or unexpected health problem, superstitious people find it easy to believe in curses.”
Bernard understood. If he believed in curses at all, then the diagnosis of fast-acting cataracts which had come out of nowhere…. And his supervisor would be glad…. He shrugged.
“It’s attractive enough.” He picked up the heavy case. “And I don’t need to believe in its power to like it.”
“That’s true.” She watched him turn the case around, thought things over, and added, “Don’t look in the eyes, then.”
Bernard studied one shoulder and then the other, considered her deplorable hair style, and then her collar bone. It would be an interesting story to tell people, of course. He looked at the price sticker, the metal corners of the glass case, and then, giving in, the statue’s closed eyes.
They looked back at him open without the lids moving. He felt the gaze as a warm coat, a blanket of protection. Any enemy of his was an enemy of hers, and she would do her best to see that their evil deeds would be visited on them tenfold. He knew this to be true
“I’ll take it!”
In return for a visit from his plastic card, she gave him a bag, the statue—case and all—and a cheap booklet which contained the ceremony to be performed to start the process of returning curses. The ceremony was no less crude than the printing of the booklet but, after all, it made the story he could tell that much more interesting. He mentioned this, at length, to the proprietor, but finally moved back into the sunshine, allowing her to continue sorting the old cards. She did not get up to rearrange the display the glass case had dominated.
The following Tuesday, the young lady and case were back at the center of the display. The proprietor wondered how it had happened this time. He hadn’t seemed like a man who owned guns (and he had never looked at her display of fine antique firearms, not all of which were counterfeit.) She hoped he had taken swift poison, and hadn’t hurt other people by jumping out of a window or off the platform in front of a train.
It usually took longer. But once they figured out their problems weren’t caused by a curse, but by their own stupidity or dumb luck….
With a sigh, she took up another shoebox of old cards and sat down behind the counter. Maybe a few good baseball cards had gotten mixed in this lot.
I would like to join those voices who have grown louder about massive government coverups. It is as if at some point, leaders who cannot agree on borders or human rights or the environment got together and agreed to hide all evidence they have on a phenomenon they have decided (or have been told, by a stronger Power) to leave alone. Only a few of us dare speak our suspicions out loud, largely because we know we will be laughed at for our credulity.
But there HAVE to be pictures which show a residential industrial-agricultural complex as big as the one Santa has at the North Pole. THINK about it: give it serious thought. Do you read books, go to movies, watch television? Santa Claus not only has to feed and house an army of Elves, but he has also, through the years, taken on any number of other dependents, who must also take up space.
Consider reindeer. We know, because we have been told, that the Varsity squad is made up of Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner (sometimes Donder) and Blitzen (occasionally Blixen.) But we have also been told, over th years, about Rudolph, and (best of all Christmas wordplay) Olive the Other Reindeer. Songs and books have brought us the news about the brown-nosed reindeer (Bradley, who is the type who speaks sweetly to the boss and gets the easy jobs, and Randolph, who flies right behind Rudolph, who is inclined to make sudden stops…not all Christmas lore is tasteful), And Twinkle Toes, a young reindeer who gets a ride in the sleigh and wreaks havoc, explaining why presents are sometimes wrong, or delayed. I am not counting Leroy the Redneck Reindeer, who simply visits when needed, preferring to live in warmer climes, or Nervous, who is given credit on a record as one of Santa’s reindeer, since he is clearly asked on the record: “Are you Nervous?” and replies “Nope.” I have ALSO seen Clyde credited as one of Santa’s team, even though Ray Stevens clearly explains to us that Clyde is the camel from Ahab the Arab, just joining the team out of a feeling of pitching in. The documentation in some of these cases does NOT help us bring this story to the public.
Too many elves have been named in stories for us to cover even a majority of them, and, anyway, we EXPECT elves. I will pause just to mention Sandy Sleighfoot, whose story Jimmy Dean brought us, who takes the Rudolph story one step further, so to speak, by noting that the big feet which made the other elves laugh at him were part of God’s plan, so he could save the reindeer barn when it caught fire (see, he could move faster on snow than the other elves because his feet were so long he could use them as skis. Look it up.) And we mustn’t lose sight of Joe, part of the three-elf team of Hardrock, Coco, and Joe. J oe serves no purpose in the sleigh, but Santa likes to have him around.
It is a little sad that the only people really bringing us the truth about the extent of Santa’s operation are the songwriters and screenplay artists desperate to bring us some new story for Christmas. It is only thanks to them that we are aware of Boofo (a dog who not only keeps Santa’s feet warm by sleeping on them, but whines in distress when the sleigh goes over a naughty kid’s house), Earl the Christas Squirrel (responsible for picking out the nuts you find in your stocking), Dominick the Donkey (who gets the sleigh over the steep hills in Italy), and Frosty the Snowman, who apparently now lives fulltime at the North Pole except when he goes home for a visit in December.
You can see we must be discussing an operation large enough to put most governments to shame (which may be why it’s being covered up.) And we have not yet discussed Santa’s extended family. Mrs. Claus has had her own television specials and songs, and every now and then we hear about his evil twins (he must be the only good one out of octuplets, by now), that brother of his who convinced him to dump the reindeer and use a high tech solar-powered sleigh (spoiler alert: Santa travels at night), and the numerous sons and daughters who have been featured in stories and cartoons (I have lost track, but, just as a group, his daughters seem to be more interesting than his sons…as well as occasionally even less tasteful than Randolph.) His list-making assistants have been featured, and he has a large Help Desk to handle visits by, say, the Bell That Couldn’t Jingle and others in holiday distress. AND this list does not even begin on those characters—some visiting and some fulltime residents–who Save Christmas. (Because by now EVERYONE has Saved Christmas. Still trying to find a buyer for my own screenplay about a Man Who Saved Christmas because he cut the word “Christmas” out of every ad and magazine cover he found, and saved these in a scrapbook.)
Sheriff Parimat and her Chief Deputy were the last of the playmates released from the Panoply when His Imperial Worship’s pigherds decided the Imperial pets were ready for a new assortment of friends. They stepped slowly, stiffly, through a darkened cargo bay from which all the ornaments had now been removed. The Sheriff stooped to press down a broken floor tile.
Chief Deputy Brust stopped when she did. In a voice that was flat and devoid of emotion, he said, ”I do not like to seem to criticize Your Grace’s decisions….”
“Then-hic-don’t,” she said, not looking up. “I am not-hic-in the mood.”
“But one of us should have stayed on the bridge,” he went on.
“If I-hic-was not to be denied the-hic-honor, then neither were you-hic. Besides-hic,-His Imperial Worship’s-hic-people are in command on the-hic-bridge.” These two reasons were not, in fact, the only ones she had assigned him to the venture. But it was not a Sheriff’s way to admit a need for moral support.
She stepped forward, and, forgetting not to put her whole weight on that left leg, stumbled. Regaining her balance without touching the hand her deputy extended, she demanded, “And where-hic-is His Imperial worship-hic-now?”
“I have no idea, Your Grace. I was with you.”
Now she fastened her eyes on him. “Get an-hic-idea, Brust.”
Briskly but gingerly, he stepped over to a display terminal and inserted a card into the proper slot. Sheriff Parimat winced as the first image appeared, showing the Imperial ship clinging to the side of the Rhododendron like a tick. Brust pressed in a number of commands and looked at a serie of charts.
“His Imperial Worship is moving to the labs, Your Grace.” “Ah! Hic! Thar may put him in a good mood. I’ll just go see that Pirgy shows him all the newest tricks. You proceed to the bridge and find out what’s being done there. And remember not to sit down for another hour.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” The deputy watched her wince as she stepped up onto a travelling square, her weight resting for a moment on that sore leg. “Your Grace….”
But then she was off. He shrugged, and called up another travelling square.
At the correct level, the Sheriff found that the security bats which prevented transport vehicles from moving directly into the lab had been removed to allow the Imperial Chair to pass. She parled her travelling square in the designated spot anyway: she would not presume to Imperial privilege.
Travel was slower on foot, particularly with aching muscle and complaining stomach, but the Imperial party had gotten no farther than the first large display tank beyond the main entrance. Pirgy had, of course, stocked these tanks in anticipation of His Imperial Worship’s inspection. Beyond the glass a naked woman stood, holding an orange infant uneasily fascinated by the pointed spouts protruding from the walls and ceiling.
“What this, Mom?” the child demanded. “What this, Mom? What this. Mom?”
Vapor rose from a grate in the floor as instruments slid from their housings at Pirgy’s command. The Imperial party watched until the screams of pain dissolved into giggles, and the floor ran with a thick purple ooze.
“An impertinent little torment,” Said His Imperial Worship, turning his chair away. “Not the least pretentious. I give it two stars and a moon.”
“Those-hic-brushes were a gift from Your Imperial Worship on the=hic=occasion of the last-hic-visit,” Sheriff Parimat pointed out, as Pirgy clasped his hands and bowed.
The Emperor dimpled, looking over his shoulder. “Ah, our good Sheriff! I hope the pets were glad to see you again. Do you know, Stenge was actually started to loose his bristles, but between transplants and crems, they’re thriving!”
She had noticed this. “I wept with-hic=joy to find him so-hic-well, Your Imperial worship,” she said, though her eyes had not known tears ion eleven years.
Smiling, the Emperor turned back. “Now, Pirgy! What else do you have in your playpen?”
Dr. Pirgy was a short, square green man with immense eyes and white ears that drooped to his shoulders. The mustache that grew up the ridge of his nose to his eyebrows was bleached by the years he’d spent in Imperial service, becoming one of the elders of his craft.
Leading the Imperial party into his domain, he waved with a flourish at the technicians standing at attention in a cold, dim cubicle filled with green monitors. “In this area we study the isolation of the chemicals in the brain which indicate anti-Imperial attitudes. By measuring the levels of these chemicals, we can identify dangerous rebels years before any actual treasonous activity.”
“Indeed.” The Emperor yawned. Sheriff Parimat and the Chief Torturer exchanged a glance which contained not an iota of surprise./
In this area,” Pirgy went on, moving to another cubicle, “We have identified those chemicals involved in feelings of shame. By raising these levels, we have made a battle-hardened Ahrhach break down and sob, humiliated by the idea that his people all have four legs.”
Heavy Imperial hands padded silently together. “I must see that.”
“The original specimen is not of much use now,” Pirgy admitted. “But he is visible farther along, in the Adhesives Department.”
As the (mperial party moved forward, a small purple fruit rolled from a tray. One of Pirgy’s technicians caught it before it hit the floor, and was handing it to a trembling servant when the Emperor called, “Keep it, my dear! You do such lovely work here.”
The technician, going blue with delight, clutched it to her chest. Skin ripped up and down her face as she smiled.
“Oh, by the way,” His Imperial Worship went on, turning to look back at the Sherrif. “I have condemned your Lieutenant Le Tamo to death.”
“Thank-hic-you, Your Worship,” she replied. “I will notify-hic-his family that Your Imperial Worship took a personal interest in his-hic-career.”
Pirgy was having difficulty disarming the security field around the adhesives area, To fill the awkward pause, the Sheriff went on, “The Lieutenant was-hic-a very fine navigator.”
“Indeed.” Imperial thumbs were twiddling, always a bad sign. ”But I could see he was likely to be ticklish, and I have a new tickling machine which requires testing. Oh, and did you have plans for the pirate captain and the Dragonshelf’s pilot?”
Sheriff Parumat tried to will Pirgy’s fingers into the right formation: boring the Emperor was hazardous. “I would not-hic-presume to make such plans-hic-when Your Imperial Worship was present.” She was breathing carefully; she could not afford a hiccup in the middle of the Imperial title. “I would no doubt have-hic-ordered such mundane and-hic-routine procedure as the sand-hic-papering of the mucous membranes, and removal-hic-of all friction skin.”
The Imperial thumbs tapped together. “Do not, my dear. I have other devices I plan to test. Ah! And speaking of plans….”
The technician who had retrieved the fruit stepped over to help Pirgy with the combination. The doctor threw up his hands and backed away to let her handle it.
The Emperor, rummaging under Imperial thighs, drew out a small sheaf of paper. “I have been designing new uniforms for the crew of the Rhododendron.”
“A celestial honor, Your Worship.” She reached for the paper, bracing for the electrical tingle as the security field allowed her hands in and out, not without sharp electric impulses under the thumbnails. The new uniforms were what she might have expected: very bright, very colorful, and very unsuitable for the crew of a sheriff-class vessel. Still, when the Imperial party was on board, the crew was no more than hired entertainment.
She noticed, giving due attention to every single sketch, that the uniforms grew scantier with advancement in rank. “Now, for officials of high rank, such as yourself and Pirgy here, I’ve designed something rather special. Matching flowers will be stapled here and here, except for the Marcovians, who will require six, of course. Two of these long-stemmed….”
A device beeped on the Imperial chair. His worship beckoned to an attendant, who reached forward to press the proper button, sustaining a shock from the security field which made his hair smoke.
A voice from the chair announced, “We regret to inform Your Imperial Worship that Your worship’s shipment of flowers will be delayed. The Drover has destroyed a cargo pod.”
The Emperor sighed, and then smiled. “Og course, if the traitors had continued on the course you said they would, we’d have them now, and his might not have happened. You may all have to do without….”
The door to the adhesives unit finally slid open: Pirgy bowed, and gestured the Imperial chair forward. Smiling, the Emperor went on, “Sheriff, just send eight of your crew to the Panoply to be boiled alive in pig’s urine. That graceful woman who caught the fruit: she’s a F;utz, isn’t she, with the skin that evaporates if she is exposed to ammonia? I leave it to you to choose the other seven. I cannot do ALL the work in this Empire.”
Ah yes: it’s that time of year again. I say that, but I don’t believe it. For some of us, it has been that time of year since about the middle of October. This period of time, which we can call by the nebulous term “holiday season” has delighted me since I was old enough to notice it. I was taught, in my youth, about the liturgical calendar of colors, but I can’t remember much of it. But I knew by the time I entered first grade that October is orange, November is brown and black, and December rides on a riot of color, with red and green narrowly coming ahead of gold, silver, blue, yellow, and everything advertisers could think of to add to the rainbow’s original selection.
This is the time of year when we moan and drag out the decorations, the traditions, the recipes, and, of course, the complaints. The complaints are essential to making a holiday, from “Already?” to “That was it?” What is Halloween without warnings about apples with razors and costumes which are sociohistorically inappropriate? What is Thanksgiving without stern medical admonitions about overeating? And Christmas, ah, Christmas!
I have written of this hereintofore. If you look back, you find that one of the mightiest traditions of Christmas is telling everyone else they’re doing it wrong. The complaints run from the specific to the profound. What would my family Christmas have been without the reproof that tinsel is designed to resemble icicles (some manufacturers actually CALL tinsel “Icicles.) and that it should be hung delicately a strand at a time. To those of us who found that throwing a ball of tinsel at the ceiling would allow it to drift down on the tree like snow, this complaint was simply a form of applause for our artistic vision.
There MUST be warnings about conspicuous consumption (Bob Cratchit, in 1843, was drawing criticism for spending a whole week’s salary on Christmas dinner), childrearing (that Nice and Naughty list Santa uses teaches children they need to be bribed to be good, or, as an alternative, teaches them that no matter how much they pinch their pets, they still get presents), and the ever present urging to remember the True Meaning (which for something so obvious varies from speaker to speaker: ever sit down with a notepad and watch Christmas TV specials for what each said was the True Meaning? It’s as illuminating as six strings of Christmas tree lights.)
I personally get sick of all the complaints online, in the newspaper, on television, but though I grumble, I have no more desire to put an end to the Christmas Complaint tradition than I have for getting rid of gingerbread for its calories. See, my own belief is that Christmas has been around for long enough to have gathered thousands of traditions which mix together in different amounts and combinations every year to produce a singular event each year which gradually becomes indistinguishable from Christmases Past and Christmases Yet To Come. And I am aware that the traditions of the holiday are also like Christmas tree lights: if one goes out, they ALL go out.
So whether you are spending Black Friday putting up lights, or standing in line at Target to get the last Taylor Swift Advent Calendar, or simply have a Spam sandwich and a shot of Diet Dr. Pepper while you grouse about those idiots who can’t keep their holidays to themselves until you’re good and ready, I wish you a merry transition from the gravy holiday to the peppermint bark one. I may disagree with your holiday, but I will defend to the last bit of sticky ribbon candy your right to do it your way.
We continue to hunt for conspiracy theories involving each President of the United States. To qualify, the story must be more or less contemporary with the President involved, and must be discounted by a majority of Mainstream Historians. I was expecting the boring Presidents of the late nineteenth century to be fairly free of such things, but politics has been politics has been politics all along, I reckon.
A letter purportedly from JAMES A. GARFIELD was “revealed” in a newspaper shortly before the 1880 election. In it, Garfield assured a group of businessmen on the west coast that he would not limit immigration from China: this would enable them to keep wages really low, since the immigrants would work cheap. This letter was proven to be a forgery, but the scandal did cost him a few votes in working class groups, though it may have convinced a few business leaders to vote FOR him. Garfield was, of course, assassinated, but apparently no one has ever felt Charles Guiteau, his assassin, was part of any conspiracy.
CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR was not done a lot of good by Guiteau, who claimed from time to time that he had shot Garfield so Arthur, who came from a more hardline branch of the Republican Party, would be President. But he had other problems. A few writers complained about him being referred to as “General Arthur” since, although he HAD in fact served at that rank during the Civil War, he never saw combat, so calling him “General” was just dales publicity. (Look, SOMEBODY has to be in charge of housing and feeding the troops.) A few people, looking up his records, found he WAS lying about his age, claiming to be a year younger than he actually was. Historians consider this to have been a matter of vanity. One writer at the time, however, considered it a sign of a deeper, darker conspiracy: Arthur was also lying about his place of birth and even his middle name. Chester Abell Arthur, according to this writer, was born in Scotland or Ireland, and ineligible to be President at all. (Apparently, no one but that author ever found any traces of Chester Abell. But keep this conspiracy theory in mind. We may see it again.)
GROVER CLEVELAND, “Grover the Good”, was known for his clean record, while his opponent, James G. Blaine, “the noble plumed knight” had been smeared by association with political machines. So the story that Grover had produced an illegitimate son, whom he put in an orphanage while forcing the mother into an asylum, was the key to getting Blaine elected, especially when the baby’s mother produced her story of seduction and incarceration. Cleveland, however, produced another story, which voters and subsequent historians accepted. The mother of the boy was a widow who had left two previous children behind in an attempt to make a living in the big city. She attracted the attentions of four well-to-do men, any of whom could have been the father of the lad. At the time of the birth, Cleveland was the only one of the four who was a bachelor, so he paid child support and, when the lady, understandably depressed by events whichever story was true, took to drink and neglected the baby, took charge of the child, named for himself and for one of the other possible fathers, and paid for the mother’s treatment in an asylum for alcoholics. Two celebrity clergymen came to the defense of Cleveland’s character, and a certain number of voters, impressed by the fact that he had at least paid up without making a fuss, sent the (then) bachelor President to the White House. (For the rest of the story, at least one of the mother’s blackmail notes is preserved, doing her subsequent reputation no good. Grover himself eventually married the daughter of his best friend, whose name also turns up in the other woman’s story. The baby, ten at the time of the election, seems to have grown up to be a physician, who lived until after World War II.)
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