Our seemingly interminable presidential campaign rattles on. Perhaps you’ve noticed. But don’t fret: I won’t add to the gab about the candidates.

I would only like to remark that millions of dollars are collected and spent in the process. We often worry about the source of those millions, and take pains that no one udder be milked too much, so that our public servants will remain incorruptible. We seem less concerned with how those millions are spent.

Our government is an odd hybrid: part oligarchy, part republic (with a few sprinkles of theocracy and synarchy for spice). It’s mostly an oligarchy, efficiently rigged to operate for and by the wealthy, but elections are still crucial to it. After all, cheap labor without representation would be tyranny, wouldn’t it?

And so it is that the millionaires who run for office must solicit millions for their campaigns. As far as I can tell, these funds are spent mostly on promotion: consultants, advertising, and travel.

Given our current problems, economic and otherwise, is that really the best use of those millions? Are those really the best places in our economy for the influx? And, incidentally, do we really need all those carbon footprints, as candidates jet from photo-op to photo-op?

No, of course not. I suggest, then, that those millions be put into escrow, and a tally kept on a website. Citizens can then follow the contest, and vote for whoever racks up the most dollars. After the winner is installed as spiritual pooh-bah, the money can be spent on the deficit, disaster relief, our crumbling infrastructure, and other expenses formerly covered by the federal government.

I’m sure there will be objections to this plan; that some citizens won’t find it flashy enough. Thanks to YouTube, however, candidates can still air sex scandals, spout scripture, bear false witness, and cut up in all the usual ways that jollify voters and spark contributions. We may have to tighten our belts, but our eyes can remain glazed. It’s worth a try. After all, millions are at stake.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

Slatter’s Court was once a motor court on the old Lincoln Highway, serving travellers who passed through Davis, California and needed a place to rest their weary heads.

Along its winding lanes, a handful of well-ensconced mobile homes and trailers are nestled among tiny clapboard and stucco cottages (which range from a single room to deluxe two-bedroom suites). The relatively mild Central Valley winters make for fairly comfortable shack-living, and even in the blistering-hot summers, the air cools down nicely after dark.

The people who live in Slatter’s Court include long-time Davis residents, cash-strapped students, artists, families, and opossums. (Over the years, several of my friends have passed through there as well.) Despite the trains that frequently rumble past the back fence, it’s a quiet, sleepy little hamlet on the other side of the tracks, and probably still exists only because it was bypassed long ago by Interstate 80, Davis’s modern suburban thoroughfares, and the Information Superhighway.

(posted by Lisa Hirschfield)

Sometime after many debits, credits, and payments in trade and cash for dry goods and groceries were recorded in an 1857 ledger book, one of the early residents of Georgetown Township in Ottowa County, Michigan, made thrifty use of it in pursuit of her literary ambitions.*

Beautiful ink script chronicling purchases of shoes, flour, candy, and Castile soap shares space with the first penciled chapters of a novel entitled Too Homely to Live. Rachel Loring, the (presumed) protagonist, is employed as a stenographer and “type-writer” at a large department store — that must have been a real step up from the Georgetown Township general store.

Because the now-obsolete typewriter did not become commercially available until the 1870s, the author must have begun writing sometime after that.

Was she also the author of the original entries? Was she a daughter, sister, wife, or widow? Did she dream of working, like her character, in the big city? (In this case, probably Grand Rapids.)

The handwriting is not dissimilar, but back then, good penmanship was something everyone could strive for.

*Considered in its mid-19th century historical context, the style and subject matter suggest to me that the author is a woman.

(posted by Lisa Hirschfield)

“Spoof, the Cheer-Up Game” was published in 1916 by Milton Bradley.  According to the rules booklet, the images on the cards “represent excellent examples of early Peruvian art, as practiced by the Inca Indians.”

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

The current issue of “Fate” (June 2008) contains my literary outburst “Fort and Those Damned Books of His.”  In it, I link Charles Fort to Pyrrhonism and ‘pataphysics, celebrate his eccentric style, and thread together other words to debunk the dogma that he was a credulous crank.  The occasion is the release of Jim Steinmeyer’s excellent new biography of Fort: he too contributed an article, and, wonder of wonders, Fort himself appears for the first time on a “Fate” cover.  The current issue of “Fortean Times,” while we’re on the subject, also contains a couple of Steinmeyer articles on Fort, as well as a history of “Fate” by Jerome Clark.  Dear old “Fate” is now sixty years old; lift your ullage in a toast.

My long-time collaborator, Michael Smith, has a large and entertaining retrospective, “Mike’s World,” at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.  Included is that puppet stage the two of us dragged around in the ’90s, as well as a monitor showing Doug & Mike bits.  When I was there, the security guard was dancing to the Mr. Woodie song.  Maybe she’ll dance with you.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

During a dark night — both literal and figurative — I came across this passage, which I now translate:

“Those who say that life is no more than an assemblage of misfortunes must find life itself a misfortune. If it is, then death is a blessing. People do not write such things when they have good health, purses full of gold, and contentment in their souls, having just had their Cecilias or Marinas in their arms, and sure of others to follow. They are a race of pessimists; who must live only among beggarly philosophers and rascally or atrabilious theologians. If pleasure exists, and if we can only enjoy it while alive, then life is a blessing. There are also misfortunes; I know all too well. But the very existence of these misfortunes proves that the good carries greater weight. I am infinitely happy when I find myself in a dark room, and see light through a window that faces a vast horizon.”

That’s Casanova, from his memoirs. Thank you, Casanova, for the pick-me-up.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

I recently indulged in an old childhood pleasure — looking through my mother’s own childhood scrapbook.  Its contents are both long-familiar and long-forgotten. But each time I reacquaint myself with the birthday cards, Brownie badges, telegrams, and programs from many Glee Club recitals, something “new” stands out. Just like memory, we see what we need to see, and are blind to what we can’t use. Is this the ullage?

For some reason (to which I am also blind) my mother’s Eagle’s Inn teen club membership card caught my eye.  Could it really be that, in the days of backyard bomb shelters and “duck and cover” drills, equally unspeakable dangers lurked within Levi’s dungarees and Black Pants?

Perhaps so.

(Posted by Lisa Hirschfield)

I assume this isolated card is from an early edition of “Authors.”  There have been many versions over the years; they chart not only changing tastes in design, but in those authors a child was taught were canonical.  I haven’t seen any later editions that include George Bancroft; I guess he was usurped by younger writers.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

[I wrote this brief appreciation of George Jean Nathan’s immortal compendium, The New American Credo, for the “Classic Bookshelf” column of “Fortean Times” back in June 2001.  I’ve pulled it from the boneyard, just so you can chew on it.]

George Jean Nathan and his fellow iconoclast H. L. Mencken spent much of the 1920s collecting the superstitions, urban legends, and stereotypes that informed the American belief system.  They published editions in 1920 and 1921; the enlarged 1927 version appeared under Nathan’s name alone.  This last contains 1,231 entries.  I’ll confine myself to quoting the first: “That the elephant tusks, swamp moss and specimens of old arrowheads periodically brought back by explorers from the African jungle are of great value in adding to the store of human knowledge.”

This is cold, funny, clearly observed stuff — even a few pages automatically foster critical thinking.  The cumulative effect is exhilarating.

The Credo has two remarkable antecedents, both worth plugging here: Flaubert’s Dictionary of Received Ideas (left unfinished at his death in 1880) and Swift’s Complete Collection of Ingenious and Genteel Conversation (1738).  These, too, were long labors of outrage, stockpiled over many years.  All three works share a bracing contempt for the lazy word and thought, and a determination to pin them squirming onto the reader’s cortex.  Many of the details are particular to their time and place; it hardly matters. 

[I’ll quote five more, just for the pleasure of it.]

70: That when a comedian, just before the rise of the curtain, is handed a telegram announcing the death of his mother or only child, he goes on the stage and gives a more comic performance than ever.

233: That if a dog is fond of a man it is an infallible sign that the man is a good sort, and one to be trusted.

441: That street-corner beggars have a great deal of money hidden away at home under the kitchen floor.

753: That most great men owe their success to their wives.

1070: That the chief pastime of young medical students is hurling human arms and legs at each other in the dissecting room.

(Posted by Doug Skinner)

This sketch comes from a notebook kept by Richard Shaver’s wife Dorothy; the notebook contains recipes (both manuscript and clipped from newspapers) and miscellaneous jottings. 

I can’t be certain that it’s by Shaver, since it’s unsigned.  The handwriting looks like his; and the artwork, although cruder than his usual style, resembles other sketches he made of what he saw in rocks.  Could it be by Dorothy?  She made ceramics (I have one of her ashtrays); maybe she drew as well.  At any rate, it’s from the Shaver household, and Chief Sun Shine is a cheery presence by any standard.  He hangs on my wall, and I’m always glad to see him.

(“Chief Sun Shine” was displayed as part of “Microlithomania”; for more on Shaver, see the earlier post, “Thinking Backwards,” as well as the indispensable website Shavertron.)

(Posted by Doug Skinner)