Tico Tico

We're snowed in today, so I went down in the basement and made this video. You can see more stuff like this at http://luthiertube.com/.

Sycamore Ditson

Here's a video of me playing the Reverend Gary Davis song, "Sally, Where'd You Get the Liquor From."

Are There Other Things?

Well, it's been over a month since I've posted here. The heading of this post hearkens back to my days on the faculty at Indiana University, when the chairman of our department would say at monthly department meetings, after he had talked about what he wanted to discuss, "Are there other things?"

There are always lots of other things. I haven't posted on the blog lately, but I have been writing. My current project is to write a letter, however brief (and many of them are quite brief), to dear little Magnolia. I'm going to try to keep that going for a year, at least. I've only missed one day since she was born on October 22.

I devoutly wish that some of my ancestors had done something similar for me. I have done a lot of genealogic research, but I would love to know more about what was going on the in world of my ancestors and what they thought about it.

Magnolia Blue

I'm a little tardy posting this, but we are overjoyed to have our first grandchild, Magnolia Blue Cory, born Oct. 22, 2007. For further details, see her blog at http://magnoliabluecory.blogspot.com/

Gems From the Writer's Almanac

The following quote appeared on the Writer's Almanac on Thursday, September 13, the birthday of Roald Dahl, author of, among other things, James and the Giant Peach:

Roald Dahl said, "A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom."

I also heard recently on the Writer's Almanac that Robert Persig submitted the manuscript of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to 121 publishers before it was accepted. This has inspired me to start submitting my short story "Josephine," a sort of parody of a Franz Kafka story, to another half dozen literary magazines.

Elvis is Dead But I Don't Feel That Bad Myself

Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of the King. In honor of the event I downloaded his Ultimate Gospel album from the iTunes store. I learned today that Elvis won 3 Grammys during his life, all for gospel music. In 1967, Elvis won the Grammy for best sacred performance for the album "How Great Thou Art." His second Grammy, for best inspirational performance, came in 1972 for his gospel album "He Touched Me," and he won a third Grammy in 1974 for best inspirational performance (nonclassical) for "How Great Thou Art."

Amen.

Another Piece of Evidence in the Arthur Griffith Case

While going through some family photos and papers, I went through a small ledger book which my grandfather kept. One entry in particular, for April 15, 1918, caught my eye. Grandpa received 30 cents in drill (probably referring to a device for planting seeds) rent from H. Griffith, who was no doubt Harvey Griffith, father of Arthur (Pooze) Griffith, famed Milford calculating prodigy. So here is more evidence that my grandfather knew Pooze Griffith's family.

Independence Day 2007

July 4, 2007. Independence Day. This summer, I devote a significant portion of my days to expediting the defecation of two large canines—our son’s dogs, entrusted to our care for the summer while he does an internship at an Indianapolis law firm. But the multiple walks each day are not wasted, thanks to my iPod. Today I caught up on a week’s worth of podcasts of Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. I learned that Helen Keller, prone to temper tantrums, knocked out a tooth of Annie Sullivan at their first meeting. Things improved from there. I also learned that Ernest Hemingway was in two plane clashes in Africa and suffered a skull fracture and concussion. The implication was that his depression and suicide were linked to the head trauma, which may or may not be true. He was asked to write a tribute to JFK for Kennedy’s inauguration. It took Papa a week to come up with four sentences.

Finally, I heard on the Writer’s Almanac for today a poem entitled “Pastoral” by physician-author-poet William Carlos Williams:

When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.

No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.

How to Avoid Writing

Those who are compelled by temperament, neurosis, or outright psychosis to put pen to paper or to peck at a keyboard may suffer from an even stronger compulsion, which is to avoid writing. Why should this be? Perfectionism may be a factor. If I cannot sit down and produce verbiage on a par with John Updike, with flawless use of metaphor, plot, subplot, and complex characters, why bother? Yet if I do not attempt to write, I may feel even worse than if I do.

There are of course, myriad reasons one should not write. One must be prepared. One must understand, must formulate, must compose before putting thoughts on paper. One should know which of those little sliding things to move on the computer screen to get a hanging indent. Indeed, one should know what a hanging indent is, and when it should be used. Research such as this takes time. Should one launch into an essay or short story without knowing how to turn off that annoying cartoon paper clip that thinks it knows what kind of document you are typing and offers its help? I think not, and wading through help menus takes time.

Beyond the mere mechanics of writing, it is necessary to have in mind something to write about. Aye, there’s the rub. Should one play the role of the politician and pontificate on any topic whether informed or not? The answer is a resounding “No!”

Take this morning, when I thought I would sit down and write about a letter that my great uncle had written to his sister, my grandmother, early in the twentieth century. He ended the letter by saying that his scalp was itching because he had rabbits, and that my grandmother should be careful because there may be rabbits in the letter. Apparently, rabbit was a slang term for head lice. Is this common knowledge? Not to me. What a wonderful opportunity to research and avoid writing.

Back in the day, as the young folks are so fond of saying these days, research involved going to the library, riffling through card catalogues and poring over The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature. Those quaint practices have been rendered obsolete by the internet. It is interesting that as I type this essay on a laptop computer wirelessly connected to the internet through my home network, the word processing software puts squiggly red lines under the words internet, wirelessly, and even squiggly, indicating these words are unrecognized by the software and potentially incorrect. I can understand how squiggly may be suspect, as it is a lame word, but in 2007, internet and wirelessly should be accepted parts of the lexicon. Perhaps I need to upgrade from Word 97.

But I digress. Being connected to the internet, I go to the modern equivalent of the card catalog and The Reader’s Guide—Google (another red squiggly line appears). I type in “rabbits lice.” References to scientific experiments involving the two species appear, but not too far down the list is a link to an article by P.J. O’Rourke published in The Atlantic in 2003. The essay is an account of his daughter’s infestation by head lice and includes facts he had gathered by researching the topic in the New England Journal of Medicine and other sources. One of his sources was The American Thesaurus of Slang, published in the 1940s, which gave the following synonyms for lice: seam squirrels, shimmy lizards, and pants rabbits. I believe these sobriquets apply to pubic lice, more commonly known today by the trans-species appellation crabs.

Ah, now, armed with knowledge, I am ready to write. Or am I? Should I not go to the primary source myself? Of course. Perhaps The American Thesaurus of Slang is in the public domain and available online. I Google the title. Alas, no electronic version is available, but there appears a link to Worldcat.com, which tells me that a tangible copy sits on a shelf at the local campus of Indiana University, a tantalizing 13 miles away. Should I go? No, wait. In the endless list of links produced by Google is a review from a librarians’ journal. I must read it to know if it’s worth the effort to go on a quest for the book. The reviewer is ga-ga over the book. I must have it, but I don’t have checkout privileges at the university. I go to the public library catalog online. They don’t have The American Thesaurus of Slang, but they have a copy of the more recently published Thesaurus of American Slang. Maybe that’s close enough. Another blessed respite from writing calls to me. I could drive to the library, find the book, perhaps browse the CDs in the Sights and Sounds section, maybe read a magazine. No, I think, I must write.

But first, I’ll see if a copy of the older book is for sale. After all, any writer worth his salt should have his own copy of this invaluable reference. A search at Amazon.com reveals that the book is out of print, but a few used copies are available, ranging in price from less than eight dollars to more than a hundred, depending on condition. Thirty to fifty dollars would buy a copy in good condition. Hmmm, have to think about it.

And so, I can arise from the keyboard with all the pride of George W. Bush when he stood in a flight suit on the deck of an aircraft carrier and declared an end to major combat in Iraq four years ago. Mission accomplished! I have avoided writing—sort of.

An Answer to Doctors Behaving Badly

Below is a letter I sent in response to a copy of a policy I received from one of the hospitals where I work:

Dear Sam:

Congratulations on your ascent to the presidency of the medical staff. While any interest I might have had in the administrative aspects of modern medicine was extinguished by my four years as chairman of the radiology department, I salute those who heed the call to medical staff leadership, however thankless and poorly remunerated the job may be.

I am responding to your memo of April 18 requesting comment on the draft Medical Staff Code of Conduct Policy. As I read through this substantial document of eight pages, plus the additional page covering the Retaliation and Retribution Policy, I was struck by the complexity of our efforts to regulate human behavior. Perhaps this is necessary, given the complexity of human beings. I think it’s unlikely these policies will be widely read, particularly by those most likely to violate the standards contained therein. At least they won’t be read until it’s too late and the offenders are called on the carpet. I’d like to suggest that instead we distribute to all members of the medical staff a single sheet of paper bearing a single statement:

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Each member of the medical staff would be required to return a signed copy of this document to be placed in his or her file as an indication that he or she read this sentence, and that he or she understands there will be consequences if this admonition is ignored. It may be somewhat controversial using this principle as a medical staff policy, since it was uttered by Jesus. However, since we work at a Catholic institution, we may be able to pull it off. We could produce a more ecumenical version if necessary. For instance, Buddha said, “Consider others as yourself.” Confucius said, “What you do not wish upon yourself, extend not to others.” Passages in the Koran, the Torah, and the Bhagavad Gita all contain similar sentiments. Even atheists would have trouble mounting an argument against this principle. We wouldn’t have to tell them it comes from the Bible, unless corporate counsel feels full disclosure is required.

Thank you for considering this proposal.

Yours truly,



David A. Cory, M.D.

Robot Redux

I just bought a book entitled Robots of Westinghouse, 1924-Today by Scott Schaut, the curator of the Mansfield Memorial Museum. It started me thinking again about good old Elektro. I submitted the piece below to a few magazines. The editor of a small publication in Ohio called Bend of the River showed interest, but wanted revision, so I reworked the whole thing with more facts and less personal observation, and he accepted that. Since it doesn't look like anyone is going to accept the original article, I'm posting it here.




My wife and I are not in church on Palm Sunday, a day of paradox, when the Son of God, born of a virgin, rode into Jerusalem on a donkey, where he was greeted by cheering crowds, where he would be betrayed by a friend, where he would be scourged and crucified. Palm Sunday is tainted by the tragedy of tornadoes that tore through northern Indiana in 1965, not far from my boyhood home, cutting a swath of death and destruction, but on Palm Sunday, 2006, the world is full of the promise of spring. The skies are clear, trees are in bud, and daffodils are blooming. We are driving through Ohio Amish country, on our way to see not God incarnate, but a robot resurrected, or at least reassembled.

Paul Simon wrote of his pilgrimage to Memphis, “for reasons I cannot explain, some part of me wants to see Graceland.” For equally obscure reasons, we are rolling through the heartland to see Elektro, the Moto Man. Maybe it’s due in part to robots I knew as a child—a little windup toy, Robbie the Robot on TV, and Gort, from the movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” My need to see Elektro has something to do with the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where Elektro was a star attraction at the Westinghouse Pavilion. He was joined by the robot dog Sparko for the second season in 1940, when a girl of eighteen and a boy of twenty-one, who would later become my parents, drove from Indiana to New York to see the fair on their honeymoon. I don’t know if they visited the Westinghouse Pavilion, but I’d like to think they did. They’re dead now, and the fair is just one of many things I never asked them about when I had a chance. We can’t see my parents on this Palm Sunday, but we will see Elektro.

As we drive through the countryside on our way to Mansfield, Ohio, where Elektro was built at the Westinghouse factory, we pass an Amish farm, where Sunday service has just ended and families are walking or riding in buggies to their own farms. The Amish farms, with their neat white houses and barns, stand in stark contrast to the unkempt homesteads of some the English, as the Amish call their non-Amish neighbors. We pass houses with porches littered with plastic toys, old appliances, and other detritus of the modern America from which the Amish have set themselves apart. We pass junk cars and boats under blue plastic tarps. We see a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle parked in a neglected barn that is slowly collapsing and offers no overhead protection.

As we enter Mansfield, signs of rust belt decay alternate with signs of hope. A huge factory which looks abandoned sits on the far side of the railroad tracks which once brought raw materials in and finished products out of Mansfield. Murals are painted on some of the old brick buildings downtown. One, labeled “Johnny Appleseed Country,” depicts John Chapman, who lived here and grew apples between 1810 and 1830. Well known for planting apple trees on the frontier, Chapman is also honored by a plaque in downtown Mansfield for running the twenty-six miles from Mansfield to Mt. Vernon for help when the local settlers feared an Indian attack during the War of 1812. Unlike Pheidippides, who dropped dead after running from Marathon to Athens to announce the victory of the Athenians over the Persians in 490 B.C., Chapman survived.

A mural on another building shows a locomotive built by Westinghouse. The power of the image is diminished by a “Building For Sale” sign pasted over a corner of the mural. Down the street a carousel sits in a well-maintained building with glass doors closed on Palm Sunday morning. In what looks like a successful attempt to save downtown after Westinghouse pulled out in 1990, the City Council of Mansfield not only had an old-fashioned carousel built, but convinced the company that built the ride to move from Connecticut to Mansfield, Ohio. Subsequently, the city convinced another carousel company to relocate from Idaho. Now Mansfield has the distinction of being home to the only two companies carving and restoring wooden carousel horses in America.

We turn the corner onto Park Avenue West, formerly known as the Miracle Mile of retail in Mansfield, and park in front of a tattoo parlor, once a manifestation of urban decline, but in an era when body modification is more socially acceptable, perhaps now a symbol of urban renaissance. Mary and I walk down the street and climb the substantial stone steps of the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Building and swing open one of the old oak and glass front doors. Stepping into the foyer, we wonder if we’ve come to the wrong place, despite the fact that the sandwich board on the sidewalk out front advertises the Westinghouse robot exhibit. People, including two young men in uniform, are standing in the foyer or sitting at a sturdy oak table in the next room, which once served as the reading room for Mansfield’s library. On a table in the foyer sits a partially eaten sheet cake with white frosting and an inscription in icing that we can’t read from where we stand. Taking the path of least resistance, I suggest we go upstairs. We ascend the wide staircase illuminated by stained glass windows. On the second floor, we find display cases filled with mammals and fish of all kinds, stuffed and put on display over a century ago. Among the obligatory exhibits of weapons of war, I pause before the case of rifles made at the Harper’s Ferry armory. My ancestor, George Zollinger, had been a gunsmith there during the war of 1812, and I hope against astronomical odds that I might see his name on one of the guns hanging in the display case. There is no indication of the maker on any of the guns, and we move on.

As Mary correctly predicted, we found no robots on the second floor, so we descended the stairs back to the foyer. We proceed to two rooms that once served as Mansfield’s library. Here we find the robot exhibit. We are greeted by the museum director, who is wearing a sweatshirt imprinted with a picture of the object of our quest, Elektro the Moto Man. As the crowd begins to thin out, we ask if we are intruding on a private function, and he assures us that we are not. The local citizens have gathered to honor a Mansfield boy who died in Iraq. Military history continues to unfold. The building in which we stand was erected as a memorial to boys killed in the Civil War. Weapons and uniforms from other wars are displayed upstairs, and future generations will create similar displays to commemorate boys and girls who went to war and never came back, or came back disabled. The Disabled American Veterans have an office in the basement of the museum where we stand. I wonder if they still sell poppies made of red crepe paper as they did every Memorial Day of my childhood.

The displays in the first room recount the origins of the Westinghouse robots, beginning in 1921, when Czech writer Karel Capek introduced the word robot in his play “RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots).” In 1927, a Westinghouse employee attached a two-dimensional human cutout, like a larger-than life paper doll, to the front of a piece of equipment called the Televox, manufactured by Westinghouse. Named Herbert Televox, the robot could pick up a telephone, and then turn appliances on and off via tones transmitted via the phone. The story of robot genesis continues, without knowing and begetting in the biblical sense, through Katrina Televox, Rastus Televox (an African American robot with a body of Goodyear rubber that didn’t stand up well to the heat produced by his electric circuits), and Willie Vocalite.

But the real object of our pilgrimage stands, cordoned off by chains, in the next room. Elektro looks different than he did when he left the Westinghouse plant for New York in 1939. Then he was a seven and a half foot tall humanoid with an aluminum body painted gold, almond eyes, and a round hole in his chest where lights glowed when he received a command from his operator through a telephone handset. Now he is painted gray, his eyes are enlarged and have pupils, and the opening in his chest is square. These modifications were made before Elektro appeared in that classic of the silver screen, “Sex Kittens Go To College,” released in 1960 and featuring Elektro as Sam Thinko, the campus computer.

Elektro is inanimate now, but in 1939, he walked, he talked, and he smoked, thanks to an air compressor inside him. Two cords were attached to his foot, one for power, and one for carrying sound from a 78 RPM record player backstage. When his operator gave a command with the proper sequence of words and pauses, Elektro would walk, talk, smoke, or count on his fingers. Part of the exhibit includes information about the three Elektro operators still living. One is a 94-year-old woman. The museum director staged a reunion between the two at the museum, and he told us that the woman nearly fainted when her brain was flooded with memories on seeing Elektro again.

We see and hear Elektro’s history. After the fair, he went back to the Westinghouse plant in Mansfield. During World War II, when he was at risk for being scrapped, an employee who had worked on his creation took him home and stored him in his basement, where his son played with Elektro. After the war, Elektro traveled the country in a van, promoting Westinghouse products. During that period, a collision with another vehicle resulted in enough damage that his aluminum torso had to be replaced. His original gold color was covered with copper paint. In the 50’s, he went on display at Pacific Ocean Park in California and was painted silver. From there, he endured the ignominy of being in the cast of “Sex Kittens Go To College.” Surprisingly, a number of performers who appeared in that film, including Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, Louie Nye, Martin Milner, and Conway Twitty, went on to reasonably successful careers. After the movie, Elektro was disassembled, and his head was given to a retiring Westinghouse employee. I’ll bet he went to his decapitation willingly after appearing in the movie. Years later, the little boy who had played with Elektro in his father’s basement, now all grown up, reunited his head and body and loaned him to the Mansfield Memorial Museum for display.

And so now I stand with my long-suffering spouse, posing for pictures with a symbol of a time gone by—a time of innocence, when the world stood on the brink of war, when a mechanical man with forty-eight electrical relays for a brain promised a brighter future, and when two kids from Indiana with their lives before them came to the big city.

The Tragedy of Cora and Pardner

Pardner Cory

For several months, I have been contemplating, and even started writing, a fictionalization of the story of Pardner and Cora Cory. Pardner was a brother to my great grandfather, Harvey Vaneman Lincoln Cory. I took inspiration from an article in the November 13, 2006 edition of Time, which I happened to pick up from the waiting room to read while I waited for an MR scan to be completed on call one night. The article, by Pico Iyer, is entitled, "How to Write a Short Story," and talks about Alice Munro's book The View From Castle Rock, wherein she transforms her ancestors' lives into fiction.

So far I haven't succeeded in converting my own ancestors' lives into fiction, so I just present the facts.

Item: From the Indianan Republican (yes, it's spelled correctly--the result of a merger of the Daily Indianan with the Warsaw Weekly Republican newspapers), July 24, 1890.

SUICIDE: Cora, the wife of Partner (sic) F. Cory, of Syracuse, committed suicide at that place on Sunday by taking poison. She was only 17 years of age, and previous to her marriage she resided in New Paris and was the daughter of Elias Wright. Cory married her last spring and it is said that the marriage did not prove a happy one and while she was visiting her old home, her husband wrote that she need not return. She did return however, and later committed suicide.

Item: From a collection of Elkhart County, Indiana obituaries at Rootsweb, submitted by Terri Clemens. There is no further attribution. I assume "The News" refers to the Goshen (Indiana) News.

Our readers will remember the talk about a letter from Pardner Cory at the time of his death a couple of weeks ago. The News correspondent at New Paris sends us the letter which reads as follows:

At Home, Nov. 13th, 1890.
To the family, and Mr. and Mrs. Wright,
When I talk to one I mean all. This beautiful morning Nov. 13th gives warning to me to be ready to meet my God in peace. As you know I have been in bad shape ever since dear Cora went home and as I told her many times I could not stay in the world without her, and as it seems as God has a wonderful power and he seems to tell me it wont be long until I can again say good morning dear as I did every morning in this life. And to all who seem to think she and I did not love each other as dear as our own lives, it is a wonderful mistake, for the Sunday she took the arsenic we agreed to love and cherish each other as long as time should last, and O my God, my God, did we not?

I am so much pleased to go and be where man should be, with his companion of course. To those of Syracuse who said I was not half a husband God bless you and help you to be better to your own wife.

To Mrs. Wright, you ought to change your mind if you think I did the work with Cora, when you come home it may be we can talk over it together. But indeed I can not tell you how dear my daughter was to me, but O be a good woman and meet me in Heaven.

Good by Ma & Ma & Pa & all.

Pard.

(Blogger's note: Pard was saying goodbye to his mother and inlaws. His father, Robert V. [Lucky Bob] Cory had died in 1879 from an overdose of an arsenic-containing tonic called Fowler's solution.)

Referring to the above our correspondent says: "It may seem strange to some people that he wrote such a letter two days before his death. Mr. Kitson, his brother in law, explains that. He says Pardner had some 8 or 9 sick spells since the death of his wife and every time he thought he would die. About the time he wrote the letter he had a hard spell which he thought would kill him. He did not die with convulsions as was reported in the papers, heart failure was the trouble. Pardner went to his wife's grave quite often, sometimes he would write in the sand with his fingers "Remember Me" and a few days before his death he did some scribbling on a small flat stone lying on the grave. It was reported that Mrs. Elias Wright found a letter on the grave, but she says she knows nothing about it.

Random Thoughts During a Snow Storm

It's a slow day at work. It's 17 degrees and we may be getting up to a foot of snow before the storm that started last night ends, if it ends, tomorrow morning. This is what is called system snow, not caused by moist air blowing in off Lake Michigan. That will follow the current storm. At any rate, not many patients are venturing out for imaging studies this afternoon.

I got the latest edition of Poets and Writers magazine in the mail yesterday and it includes an article by Walter Mosley, who is coming out in April with a book on writing entitled This Year You Write Your Novel. He makes the point, which I already know but don't practice, that you must write every day, or a least sit down and do something with your writing every day. Maybe you reread or rewrite, but you do something. There are a lot of people who say they are writers who don't write. Seems simple enough, doesn't it?

I am reading the memoir of Ralph McInerny, philosopher and mystery writer (the Father Dowling mysteries, among others). He became a successful fiction writer in the golden age of the 50s, when magazines like Redbook and Saturday Evening Post actually bought and published fiction for popular consumption. A new word I learned from reading the book is velleity, which means a mere wish, or the lowest form of volition. My life is brimming with velleity. McInerny, who used to live at 2158 Portage Avenue just down the road from us a piece, started out standing up typing at a bench in his basement.

Our writing group meets March 1 and I have to take something. I have been working, intermittently (how else?) on a short story from the point of view of a mouse. Blame Kafka. I recently read some of his short stories, including the last he wrote before dying of TB, "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk." Well, don't blame Kafka. I accept all the blame, and I am blatantly stealing the character of Josephine. Not so much stealing as using. She vanishes in Kafka's story and reappears in another mouse village in mine. I just need a plot. A beginning, a middle (or muddle, as McInerny says, quoting another writer whose name escapes me at the moment), and an end. Desire. Conflict. The hero's best efforts have to make the situation worse before it gets better. Etc. Etc.

Somerset Maugham said that there are three rules for writing a novel, but no one knows what they are.

Another Episode in the Strange Case of Arthur Griffith

I just received a parcel of old photographs my sister Diane had stored in the crawl space of her house. Alas, many of the old pictures, which include a number of tintypes, have no identification on them, and I have no idea who the subjects are. The most fascinating picture in the lot is the one shown above--a small picture pasted on cardboard which bears the holes of being tacked up somewhere at some time. The photo is undated, but on the back, in my grandfather Lee Cory's handwriting, is written, "Mrs. Harvey (Etta) Griffith." I know from my research of Arthur F. Griffith, the calculating prodigy discussed in earlier posts, that his parents were Harvey and Etta. Apparently, my grandfather knew the family well enough to have a picture of one of them in his possession. Oh, if only he would have written about them in his journals, instead of endless descriptions of cutting wood and how many times he chewed each mouthful of food (at least for a time he was a devotee of "Fletcherizing", a practice promoted by Horace Fletcher, who believed chewing each mouthful of food 45 times was the pathway to good health)! But he didn't, and so I can only regret that he is no longer around to ask.

I also find it a little spooky that this picture found its way to me, perhaps the one living human being with the greatest interest in and knowledge of Arthur Griffith.

This picture of Arthur appeared in the book by Lindley and Bryan. I assume it was a publicity still that was preautographed and handed out as he toured the country. Sort of reminds me of the often-reproduced photo of Blind Lemon Jefferson with the inscription "Cordially yours, Blind Lemon Jefferson" very neatly written across the bottom. If he was blind, how did Lemon Jefferson write so legibly?