The Reluctant Famulus 100

The Reluctant Famulus # 100July/August 2014

Thomas D. Sadler, Editor/Publisher, etc.305 Gill Branch Road, Owenton, KY 40359

Phone: 502-484-3766E-mail: tomfamulus@hughes.net

ContentsIntroduction, Editor 1Rat Stew, Gene Stewart 7Courtney's Boat, Eric Barraclough 9Kentuckiana, Alfred Byrd 12Battle of Wabash, Matt Howard 16The Crotchety Critic, Michaele Jordan 25Attempts at Utopia, Geoff Lardner Burke 27Goose . . ., Sheryl Birkhead 29LoCs 31A Promise 42It's Covered 43

ArtworkT. D. S. Front & Back covers, 5Sheryl Birkhead 26, 29, 30, 33, 37, 41Brad Foster 6, 41Spore & Toetoe Hodges 31, 35, 39Internet 12, 13, 14, 25, 41 (right col)Tracy Mintzer 11Henry Stroud 10Illustrated London Times 27Unknown 21, 28Charles Wilson Peale 16, 23 (left column)Major Jonathan Heart 17Lucien C. Overpek 18William Beckwith 19William Walker Sr. 20Gilbert Stuart 22 (top left column)John Trumbull 22 (right column)Frederick Kemmelmayer 23 (right column

The Reluctant Famulus is a product of Strange Dwarf Publications. Many of the comments expressed herein are solely those of the Editor/Publisher and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts of any sane, rational persons who know what they are doing and have carefully thought out beforehand what they wanted to say. Material not written or produced by the Editor/Publisher is printed by permission of the various writers and artists and is copyright by them and remains their sole property and reverts to them after publication. TRF maybe obtained for The Usual but especially in return for written material and artwork, postage costs, The Meaning of Life, and Editorial Whim.

The Reluctant FamulusIntroduction: Some Way Out Thoughts

About the cover. In my usual lack of fore-sight and procrastinatory nature regarding such matters I had no idea what I was going to do for the 100th issue even though I knew it was inevitable. For the most part, the idea of acquir-ing a cover never enters my mind in a timely manner. When the need for a cover showed itself I was at a loss. Then, from two of my trusty fan-friends suggested almost the same idea for a cov-er I decided it was a good idea (Naturally, when I have no ideas for a cover appears in my mind, anything is a good idea. The suggestion was to have a cover that featured covers from past issues. Great. That was something I could do in spite of my lack of artistic ability.

So I got busy working it up with the inten-tion of including thumbnails of every cover up to number 100. I worked diligently and, I thought, carefully sizing the cover images properly even though I had to add an additional page to the front and back covers. Everything was done and looked pretty good, so I saved my work up to that point along with much of the written materi-al intending to work on it after I had more materi-al to add. But when I went to open the saved file . . .

Well I don’t know if it was a true disaster or not but what happened, or didn’t happen, sure seemed like it. I could not get the publishing pro-gram I use to open the file. All I got as an “insufficient memory” followed by a “Publisher has stopped working properly”, followed by the program instantly shutting down. I tried multiple times to open the file, to no avail. It just would not cooperate and so far the file is unavailable, for what technical reason I have no idea. I sus-pect, now, that the fact the file size was 638 MB (or megabytes) might have something to do with it. None of the previous issues have been any-where near a large. The closest has been 259 MB, a difference of 379 MB and substantially smaller. I don't know what the exact point would be when a file becomes too large for the program to handle and I'm not even going to waste my

ing to find out. I'll just make sure subsequent issue sizes don't exceed 250 mb. That might save me some frustration. I very much hope.

Fortunately for me, I had saved a version of TRF 100 which didn’t have all the thumbnail cov-ers in it and included the written material so I was able to work on that. But I still needed a cov-er and it was much too late to ask for one. To keep this already long explanation from getting longer, you see the result of my beleaguered mind. I know it’s a pitiful and pathetic alterna-tive but it is better than nocover at all or having the issue delayed long enough to get a real artist to do one for me.

It’s curious how, on rare occasions—at least with me—the brain works in mysterious ways to perform its many functions. As noted, after hav-ing given up all hope for my original cover, I went with the alternative since I had the issue nearly complete. I was resigned to defeat. Then a day or two later, late at night during one of the periods when I would awaken for no real reason and remain awake for a while until sleep returned. It was then, unexpectedly, that I felt all wasn’t lost after all. A possible solution occurred to me. It was, admittedly, a long shot but it was worth a try. After all, I couldn’t be any worse off. So, in the morning I tried an experiment more out of curiosity than any hope for success. As someone once observed, there’s always a solu-tion (to many problems, I suppose). My solution worked, much to my surprise and relief! Even so, after having thought of and created alternate front and back covers I was reluctant to discard them. I decided a compromise was in order. Whether or not my original cover was worth all the time and effort, it’s in this issue after all. Enough said. On with the rest of this issue.

As the cover proclaims, this is the 100th issue of The Reluctant Famulus (The editor and publisher of which who, owing to all the ver-biage he has committed over the years, doesn’t seem to be particularly reluctant about subjecting readers to

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it whether they wanted it or not.) When I first started this attempt at amateur journalism—if it can be called that—I had no real plan in mind, only the decision that since other fans has pro-duced fanzines over the years I might as well take a shot at it.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking far ahead, only about a potential second issue should those who received the first read it and found something worthwhile in it. That was a dodgy move at best because my first issue was of questionable quali-ty (to me, at least). But I went ahead and planned a second issue—just in case. Then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. I don’t think I need to go any further in that direction. I want to thank all of you who patiently put up with me, my often ram-bling articles, and my fanzine and thanks to those who have generously supplied me with arti-cles, artwork, reviews and locs which made TRF better than it would have been if my stuff had been the sole contents.

You have been the main reason I continued publishing in spite of my doubts and my occa-sional thoughts of giving it all up as a hopeless cause. It has been just a bit over a quarter of a century that I’ve been putting out The Reluctant Famulus. The future, of course, is much too uncertain for me to make any promises of TRF seeing a second quarter century but I hope we’ll all still around for that long a period anyway, with or without TRF.

Enough with the schmaltz already. Onward and, uh—somewhere.

Like the Universe.The following subject relates, at least tenu-

ously, to part of the introduction to TRF 99.According to a fairly recent news article a

large number of Americans don’t believe in the Big Bang theory. The original one, not the TV series. I wonder why that is. Is it a religious mat-ter or a lack of scientific knowledge. Or is it because, according to the theory, everything in the observable universe was once condensed into a microscopically small point floating in . . . Something. That pinpoint existed—well, for who knows how long since there was no such thing as time. Or so I presume. Anyway, there it was, that pinpoint minding its own business whatever it was. Then, all of a sudden for no reason—well, scientists do have a theory about that— bam or,

rather, bang it expanded outwards in all direc-tions until it finally became the size it is now and may or may not still be expanding. Rather remarkable isn’t it?

It’s sort of reminiscent of the old testament’s book of Genesis where, in the beginning there was only darkness; well, except for “earth with-out form” and “. . . the face of the waters”, then in an instant there was light. But there is a differ-ence in that according to Genesis this omnipo-tent, omniscient being no one has actually ever seen, unless you count the burning bush Moses spoke with, started the whole thing. I also find myself wondering something I don’t know if any-one else has wondered,: where was God before He said fiat lux (I know: it’s not Hebrew but Latin)? He had to be somewhere, didn’t He? Was He in darkness all this time, or what? I apol-ogize if I seem sarcastic in some degree. I don’t mean to be. It’s just that these oddball questions occur to me spontaneously.

The preceding last two paragraphs tie in with the first part of my introduction in TRF 99 regarding multiple universes. The conventional Big Bang theory has me wondering about some-thing else or, rather somethings else. One: was our universe and all the others produced from that one big bang? Two: or were there actually multiple big bangs all occurring at the same instant, each big bang producing its own expand-ing universe. And, three: are my questions idiot-ic, nonsensical and completely unscientific as well as moronic? I readily admit I lack sufficient brainpower to comprehend completely either the Big Bang or Genesis versions. I’m just a clueless fool looking for something I can understand and which makes sense to me with my limited intelli-gence. Providing, that is, I have any intelligence at all.

Of the two versions the Big Bang has a large amount of observed data and conjectures to sup-port it than does the alternative. That may upset and anger those who believe in the Bible and have much stronger faith in it.

Maybe there will eventually come a time when we humans finally learn the real truth (if there is such a thing) about the origin of the uni-verse. I strongly suspect, however, that won’t happen until long after I and millions of others have long ceased to exist. What a great pity and a disappointment for me personally as I’d really,

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like to know. I feel certain that a great many oth-er people feel the same way.

Then there are the subjects of dark matter and dark energy. But I’ll be damned if I’ll write anything more about those topics. I’ve probably made a big enough fool of myself as it is. The damage has been done and I’m not going to exac-erbate the situation. So there.

Now, off in another direction.I’m not a follower of conspiracy theories but

I do know they exist and have existed for decades certainly and centuries most likely—and maybe even millennia. Or at least since we crit-ters developed languages in order to communi-cate better (or more likely to insult, anger, and demean each other). Probably one of the best known of the conspiracy theories is the one sur-rounding the assassination of J. F. K. about which there are variations and disagreements. Possibly almost as well known is the theory about what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico and what the government has been con-cealing. Then there’s another, fairly more recent one, relatively speaking, that was the subject of the item called ?, about the events on September 11, 2001 that appeared in TRF 98 and has gener-ated much controversy (as most do) and strong disagreement.

The interesting thing about conspiracies is the wide-ranging kinds of subjects theorized by people. Some of those theories seem rather sensi-ble, rational, and believable. Others are scary as hell in different degrees and yet almost convinc-ing enough to make a person wonder if there real-ly is truth to the theories and if so what a nasty and devious bunch are those (including the Feder-al government) behind the conspiracy.

Then there are others so wacky, absurd, and way out that no reasonable, rational (of which, I hope, there are many) person could take them seriously. Recently I encountered one that I’m not sure of which category it fits into so I’ll let you be the judge of the following and where it belongs.

According to the claims of some peo-ple—and assuming the veracity of what they relate—our government has been involved in some strange, odd and unusual projects which have been kept secret for a long time.

Take, for example, aside from Project Serpo mentioned in a previous issue of TRF, the claims

of Andrew Basiago, a lawyer who lives in Seat-tle, Washington. Many people look upon lawyers as trustworthy persons; others regard lawyers as . . . Well, there’s the old appellation “shyster lawyer” which hints at a lack of truthfulness of those members of the Bar.

What would you or anyone think if they were told the U.S. Government was working on a secret project involving time travel? Skeptical, maybe? That’s what Basiago is asserting. And he should know because, since 2004, Basiago has been publicly claiming that he participated in “Project Pegasus” a secret U.S. Government pro-gram periodically from the time he was 7 to when he was 12. According to his claim, Project Pegasus was a program involving not only time travel but teleportation through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, aka DARPA. Some of you readers may have heard of DARPA before. I have but I didn’t know exactly what that agency did, only that it was a super secret organization.

Basiago alleges that the DARPA people run-ning the project trained children as well as adults so they could test the mental and physical effects of time travel on children. He says that children had an advantage over adults in adapting to the stress of moving between past, present and future. If you’re skeptical of that, as I am, we’re not alone. A Hong Kong physicist named Sheng-wang Du published a paper sometime last year stating that time travel is impossible due to the constraint that noting moves faster than light.

In spite of that, Alfred Webre, a lawyer spe-cializing in something called exopolitics supports Basiago’s claims. Exopolitics involves the politi-cal implications surrounding an extraterrestrial presence on Earth. According to Webre, telepor-tation and time travel have been around for 40 years, but are restricted by the Defense Depart-ment instead of being used to transfer goods and services faraway distances. Webre claims it's an inexpensive, environmentally friendly means of transportation. Allegedly, former Defense Secre-tary Donald Rumsfeld used it to transport troops to battle. [Editor: Now that should make skeptics doubt the veracity of Webre and Basiago.]

But back to Basiago. He claims to have expe-rienced eight different time travel technologies during his participation in the program. He said

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that mostly his travel involved a teleporter based on technical papers supposedly found in pioneer-ing mechanical engineer Nikola Tesla’s New York City apartment after his death in January 1943. [Editor: There’s another claim to take with a grain of salt. I’m sure Tesla was involved in some unusual projects but was teleportation real-ly one of them?]

Basiago states that the machine consisted of two gray elliptical booms about eight feet tall and about 10 feet apart where a shimmering cur-tain of what Tesla called ‘radiant energy’ was broadcast, Radiant energy is a form of energy that Tesla discovered that is latent and pervasive in the universe and has among its properties the capacity to bend time-space.

He further said project participants would jump through this field of radiant energy into a vortal tunnel and when the tunnel closed, we found ourselves at our destination. One felt either as if one was moving at a great rate of speed or moving not at all, as the universe was wrapped around one’s location.

Basiago also claimed he can be seen in a pho-tograph of Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg in 1863, which he said he visited in 1972 via a plas-ma confinement chamber located in East Hanover, N.J. “I had been dressed in period cloth-ing, as a Union bugle boy. I attracted so much attention at the Lincoln speech site at Gettys-burg, wearing over-sized men’s street shoes, that I left the area around the dais and walked about 100 paces over to where I was photographed in the Josephine Cogg image of Lincoln at Gettys-burg.”

In addition, Basiago claimed that on five or six occasions he traveled to Ford’s Theater the night of Lincoln’s assassination . “I did not, how-ever, witness the assassination. Once, I was on the theater level when he was shot and I heard the shot followed by a great commotion that arose from the crowd. It was terrible to hear.”

Basiago said each of his visits to the past was different, “like they were sending us to slightly different alternative realities on adjacent time-lines. As these visits began to accumulate, I twice ran into myself during two different vis-its.”

Being sent back in time to the same place and moment, but from different starting points in the present, allowed two of himself to be in

Theater at the same time in 1865.“After the first of these two encounters with

myself occurred, I was concerned that my cover might be blown. Unlike the jump to Gettysburg, in which I was clutching a letter to Navy Secre-tary Gideon Welles to offer me aid and assis-tance in the event I was arrested, I didn’t have any explanatory materials when I was sent to Ford’s Theater.”

What Basiago claims makes one wonder how these alleged time travelers returned to the pre-sent day or their point of origin. According to him, it was some sort of holographic technology that allowed them to travel both physically and virtually. “If we were in the hologram for 15 min-utes or fewer, the hologram would collapse, and after about 60 seconds of standing in a field of super-charged particles we would find ourselves back on the stage, in the present.“

Basiago said the technology should only be used for real-time teleportation, not time travel, because, “It would be chaos.”

They recently held a seminar in Vancouver, B.C., focusing on the need to disclose, deploy and declassify the technology, as well as the pub-lic policy decisions that would be needed to use it.

Webre said he wants teleports installed in every major city where people and products would be transported through the time-space con-tinuum. “This would free up a lot of urban space that is currently being used by train yards or air-ports,” he said.

It seems that there are risks to the traveling, however. Basiago remembered feeling extreme turbulence while going through the vortal time tunnel. Webre said one tragedy occurred in the early days of the technology in which a child in Project Pegasus arrived a few seconds before his legs.

“He was writhing in pain with just stumps where his legs had been,” Webre said. [Editor: That sounds like a very gruesome experience. That is, if the claims were true and real. Some-thing that seems doubtful to me. ]

Webre said problems like that have since been solved. Even so, he said that teleportation needs strict legal controls to prevent it being used for “for political control, economic control or illegal surveillance.”

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It sounds like fascinating stuff—that is, if it’s true. Some experts, including retired Army Col. John Alexander, former director for the Advanced System Concepts Office, U.S. Army Laboratory Command, are skeptical at the least.

”If this could be done, if anyone could go even one second into the future, we'd own the world,“ Col. Alexander says. “There are comput-er programs on Wall Street that are hundredths of a second faster and provide a tremendous advantage.”

Basiago claims that as many as 100 people worked on Project Pegasus. Col. Alexander doubts that many people could keep the secret for 40 minutes, much less 40 years. He said, “There’s a saying in Washington: If two people know something, it’s not a secret,” Col. Alexan-der is the, author of UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities. He asked,“If this was used by the Department of Defense, how did we miss the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq or the fall of the Shah of Iran?”

Basiago said Alexander’s questions can be explained by the paradoxes of the time-space con-tinuum. “I only know about how the time travel technology was used during my involvement with Project Pegasus, so this is only speculation. But it’s possible that ‘forward intelligence’ showed [Iraq leader Saddam] Hussein using the weapons of mass destruction, but our military went in and toppled him before he could use them.

And that’s how the article ends, leaving an unanswered question or two. That last sentence creates a bit of a puzzle. There seems to be a flaw in Basiago’s speculation and a possible para-dox in what he claims .

So much for that conspiracy. Finally, Here follow, briefly stated, three other conspiracies which surely must fall into the absurd and silly category and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Well at least by rational, intelligent people who aren’t gullible and prone to believing anything.

Giant lizards rule the worldDavid Icke, who is an ex-BBC presenter

turned conspiracy theorist and science fiction writer has an unusual theory and possibly one of the most scary conspiracy theories so far. In his book The Biggest Secret, If he is to be believed,

the world is run not by the illuminata or aliens but, depending on which version one hears, either by lizard people from beneath the surface of the earth, which is supposedly completely hol-low and lit by a central second sun; or we’re secretly ruled by blood-drinking, shape-shifting, flesh-eating reptilian humanoids from outer space. In either case, he suggests they have been rather successful in taking the top jobs in big business, the entertainment industry and politics. According to Icke, the British Royal family, the Bush family and other powerful persons are lizards in disguise, working together to achieve absolute power over the world of men. For thou-sands of years they posed as gods, explaining the fixation that many ancient cultures had with lizards, but they have since modified their approach to human domination and taken key roles in political parties, the media and other organizations we just love to hate. How can we tell if somebody is one of the lizard people or not? Apparently it’s all in their eyes, as is the only evidence for this insane theory.

As wild as they may seem, Icke’s conspiracy theories have attracted considerable attention and have many believers. Who knows . . . When peo-ple say some politicians are just slimy reptiles, they might be right.

Cthulhu is real and he lives off the coast of Chile

Back in 1997 an ultra-low and extremely powerful underwater sound was detected in a remote point in the Pacific Ocean. The noise resembled that of a living creature, but several times louder than the loudest recorded animal, the blue whale. It also occurred unsettlingly close to H.P. Lovecraft’s fictional city of R’lyeh, the lost underwater mecca where malevolent cos-mic entity Cthulhu supposedly sleeps.

Through the PortalSome of you may have watched the 1994

movie Stargate, about dimension-hopping aliens. That has a tenuous connection to the following. As some of you may be aware, the Iraq War was a 2003 military action that killed hundreds of thousands of people, the effects of which drag on to this day. Most of us would accept that only one of them really happened. But conspiracy theo-

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rists aren’t most of us. What’s the connection between the movie and the Iraq War? What fol-lows may prove the connection. Or, more likely, not. Personally I tend to the latter.

According to certain websites, there is a theo-ry that the real reason we bombed a Middle East-ern country had nothing to do with oil or remov-ing a despot from power, but to get our hands on a Stargate personally owned by Saddam Hussein. The story goes that Saddam was in contact with the Anunnaki on planet Nibiru and was about to use the device to trigger an alien conquest of Earth when the New World Order intervened. So you can personally thank Bush and Blair for the fact that you’re not currently working in the salt mines of Zeta Reticuli.

Editor: Notice, too, a slight resemblance to the theory propounded by Andrew Basiago re- garding Saddam Hussein. So much for some con-spiracy theories.

One last thing and then I'm done with this introduction.

Once every so often I receive in the regular mail and unexpected but welcome piece of mail that makes up for all the junk mail I receive. While I was putting together this issue I was pleasantly surprised to receive something Mark Twain related. In this case it was an autographed copy of Mark Twain’s 10002nd Arabian Night, A Play In Three Acts, adapted for the stage by Nicoletta Karam. It was sent to me by one of TRF’s readers and occasional contributor, Ray Nelson, who illustrated the book. According to the Plot Summary, “This play blends together three Twain short stories, transforming them into inter-connected one-act plays.” Also, according to the back cover blurb, it celebrates “ . . . Mark Twain’s little-known (and long suppressed) gen-der-bending femininst fiction . . .” (Published by Beatitude Press, Berkeley, California) Once this issue is completed and all copies mailed out or PDFs sent by e-mail, I intend to settle back to enjoy the “. . . Cross-Dressing Burlesque Farce”

A quick note and then I'm really through. Dave Rowe gets irked by my placing a fillo that has nothing to do with a nearby article. But when one of the notable fan artists sends me something I feel honor bound to show it off anyway.

Now on with the good stuff.

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Rat Stew Ben Franklin: Space Alien Psycho KillerA Column by Gene Stewart

Ben Franklin stood out. Even set against the blazing lights of the Founding Fathers, brilliant men all, he dazzled. He was so brilliant the likes of Jefferson and Madi-son consulted him. He was so clever he talked the Continen-tal Congress into forming a colonial government to pre-sent a united front, then led the cause of writing and distributing the Declaration of Independence.

The writers of the Constitution kept Franklin at arm’s length fearing he might hide things in it that would become evident only years or decades lat-er.

Franklin was a writer, printer, and inventor. He gave away his inventions for the good of mankind, useful things such as the lightning rod, the lending library, and the volunteer fire company. He was a scientist, studying electricity when it was found mainly in lightning and leyden jars.

In London Franklin represented the colonies as it petitioned the court of King George III for independence. When that fell through Franklin decamped to France, where he spent the greater part of two decades cultivating support and good will for the newly-minted United States of America.

Incidentally, while in London he sup-ported, covertly, the study of anatomy by allowing rooms of his in London to be used for dissecting cadavers, then a crime. This latter information came to

light only recently and led to murmurings and rhetorical questions: Was Ben Franklin a serial killer?

Not bloody likely, no. He was supporting the Enlighten-ment pursuit of actual, empir-ical knowledge over supersti-tious twaddle. Seeing for one’s self is what autopsy means, and Franklin was all

for that in every of life’s endeavors. He stood out brightly in so many ways

it is difficult to encompass him in a single biography. Each of his many facets deserves at least one fat book of its own, or a long-winded, repetitive examination of his space alien connections on History Channel. Yes, there are some who claim Franklin simply must have been a space alien himself, to have been so much smarter than all those other chimps in powdered wigs, and if not an alien him-self, then certainly in contact with aliens. After all, no mere human can so much as take an air bath without collapsing into calamity and disaster, as all good History Channel viewers know.

If not a space alien or contactee, then, and if not a psychopathic murderer, what was Ben Franklin?

He tells us he was born on Milk Street in Boston and ran away from being apprenticed to his cruel brother James at age 17, going to Philadelphia. There he worked as a printer’s devil and was, some-how—evidently by cultivating the right connections—sent by the Pennsylvania governor to London ostensibly to buy an-

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other set of presses to start up another newspaper. When that fell through, Franklin worked in London and, later, back in Philly at his trade of printer, all the while also writing and reading and seeking to better himself.

Readers of his excellent Autobiogra-phy will know his advice on managing time and dealing with people. Such gems as, “You can add an activity to your day even if it is a mere ten minutes a day, and the cumulative work will advance you,” and “always let them see you in to work early and leaving work late, especial-ly if that work comes easily and quickly to you when not being observed.”

He wrote that horny young men want-ing to get laid should target widows and older women, who will, he said, “be both discreet and grateful.” To any objections he issues the old saw, “all cats are grey in the dark” so don’t be too picky; the lads who chase the pretty young things fail miserably most of the time. Let them.

Practical is one way to look at this and many other items of his advice. His method for advancing in society is to gain charter, (permission or even con-tracts), to set up mutually-beneficial endeavors such as libraries, hospitals, and fire departments. In this way you gain the power of backers and the excuse to approach folks higher on the social ladder. You are seen as both industrious and responsible.

His methods of manipulating people did not stop there. While in France he was often called the “wild” American, and to charm them would dress in what he called his Frontier Outfit. This includ-ed deerskin leather trousers and jacket, both frilled, moccasins, and a large fur hat of

either beaver or woodchuck. This delight-ed the French, who found it barbaric on such an obviously erudite, well-spoken man.

He kept mistresses and fathered at least one illegitimate child, a son. He did not see his wife, left back in Philadelphia, for 20-odd years, his sojourns in France being so “urgent”. That may well have been code for “enjoyable”.

Was Ben Franklin, then, perhaps a sociopath?

Diagnosing someone after death is a churlish pursuit best left to the History Channel’s many contactee geniuses. Meanwhile, pick up a copy of Walter Isaacson’s excellent, readable biography, Ben Franklin: An American Life. You can grab a trade paperback for like ten bucks these days, for instance, and you’ll find it’s an engrossing, amusing, and educa-tional book.

This Rat Stew column barely touches on all Franklin was. He should be men-tioned in the same company as folks like Da Vinci, Newton, Goethe, Einstein, and Tesla. He was every bit that kind of amaz-ing, so go check into him. You’ll laugh and you’ll learn.

The best thing about Franklin is men-tioned in the blurb to that book: He is the one Founding Father made of flesh, not marble. He’s not a carved face on a mountain. He’s not a statue. He’s a wom-an-chasing, Hellfire Club attending, air bath-taking, wine appreciating, living, breathing human being and has remained so despite his legendary status in so many fields.

That alone is quite an accomplish-ment.

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Who DID Saw Courtney’s Boat?

Eric Barraclough

We have these little “in-house sayings” in fandom, foremost of which is “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” which comes not from Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land but from a 1917 U.S. Congressional debate.

And then there’s the mysterious “Who sawed Courtney’s boat?” which in sporting circles replaced the even more mysterious “Who hit Bil-ly Patterson?” and dated back to exactly the 16th of October, 1879.

The reference comes from professional Sin-gle Scull racing (or Shell racing) which was a very popular sport where manly gentlemen with muscles rippling in coordination glided rowing-sculls across the waters like an arrow through the air.

Throngs of ladies and gentlemen would stand by the river and lake sides cheering on those won-derful displays of sportsmanship and masculinity but the scandal of the 16th of October, 1879, would soon reduce its level to below that of mod-ern day professional wrestling.

That was the date. The place was Mayville, New York state, on the banks of Chautauqua Lake.

Mayville was just about to “shut down” at the end of the vacation season when A. T. Soule from Rochester arrived with an offer Mayville couldn’t refuse.

Soule was a minor Eli Lilly and had made a fortune with Hop Bitters (a “stomach tonic”). In the sports world he was known for the Hop Bit-ters Baseball Team who had trounced the favorites, Mormon Nine.

Soule’s offer was this: If Mayville stayed open, he would bring together the two leading professional North American single scull racers for a single race at Mayville with a purse of a walloping $6,000. The railroad would have to build a spur. It did. Steamboats and trains would have to run special excursions from major cities and Canada. They did. Top newspaper reporters (and not just sports reporters) would have to be sent

in. They were. And Mayville would be invaded by hoards of free spending tourists and sports fans who would pay a pretty penny for anywhere to eat and stay. Mayville was, and they did.

Soule’s cut for putting Mayville on the map was a mere five percent of all takings and Mayville gladly agreed to pay.

And who were the two leading professional North American single scull racers? Courtney And Hanlan.

Charles E. Courtney (the American) was thir-ty years old and first came to the attention of the sports world 11 years earlier when he rowed in a new fangled “needle boat” (thirty feet long, twelve inches wide and reputedly just thirty pounds in weight). The race was two miles long and Courtney bested the field by at least six lengths.

As one spectator put it “We saw an awkward nineteen-year-old lad paddle up to the line in a nondescript, homemade craft that weighed eighty pounds if it weighed an ounce. It looked more like a miniature canal boat with oars than any-thing else. At the word ‘Go!’ it made a jump like a grasshopper and began to run like a snake. All the other rowers saw of it after that was three par-allel lines of foam.”

From then on Courtney won seventy-three consecutive races, after which he turned profes-sional.

Edward (Ned) Hanlan (the Canadian) known as “the boy in blue,” was twenty-four years of age but had gone professional before Courtney and was champion in both Canada and the Unit-ed States.

They had raced the year before in Quebec. Hanlan was victorious but only technically so. Courtney was disqualified for illegally encroach-ing into Hanlan’s water lane. Some thought this was done purposefully. An above-board rematch was sought by many a fan and now it would be at Mayville where a 2,000 foot long grandstand was built to seat 50,000 spectators. And a half-mile

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long “observation train” was in operation. And ancient barges and “flats” were made water-wor-thy (if questionable so), fitted with seating and charged a princely five dollars a seat.

The day of the race arrived. Hanlan launched his “shell” onto lake waters whereupon the “shell” promptly broke in half.

Hanlan asked for the race to be postponed for ten days. Courtney agreed. So did the township of Mayville. The spectators were disappointed but the entrepreneurs of Mayville were delight-ed. An additional ten days of racking in the moolah was very much to their liking.

One dollar hotel rooms went for twelve. Or travelers could stay in a rented dry-goods crate for twenty-five cents a night. One outsider rented a barn for ten dollars a week and made fifty dol-lars a day renting out space in this cold harbour accommodation.

And then there were the gamblers and petty criminals The betting odds were constantly jump-ing in favor of one rower then the other. The legit bookies, Quimby and Forse, described the odds as “jumpier than a terrier in a rat pit.” Big money was moving into the town and the race.

It was said later that Hanlan had agreed to throw the race for half the purse, in an effort to just get Courtney there (but then row to win). As one backer put it “How else could we get Court-ney to the scratch? A log chain wouldn’t have dragged him there unless he could win.”

Hanlan was also said to have foot-operated bellows in his scull to jet the craft. Although there was no recorded evidence of such when it broke in two.

Nevertheless, all that money in the wind had Referee William Blaikie worried, especially when he found out both competitors had been given offers to throw the race.

He went to the sheriff, asking that all gambling be stopped. The sheriff went to Mr.

Soule. Mr. Soule was unequivocal, the gambling would go on. He himself was in on the take “on all the games, straight or skin.”

Blaikie was threatened with death but kept up his demands. To no avail, alas.

The day before the race the betting odds swung to Courtney, 100 to 90, 100 to 80, 100 to 75. Then swung back to Hanlan, then to Court-ney, etc., etc.

Finally the sheriff had had enough and closed down all betting. Only to reopen the gambling two hours later.

Then at nine in the morning of the day of the race there was devastating news. “Never since the firing on Fort Sumter did an event so arouse the anger of the American people.”

In full late-Victorian fashion it was cried out by a “tin-horn thimble rigger” called Galby, who raced up Mayville’s Main Street on a penny-far-thing bicycle to the post office. On the steps of the Post Office he announced to the sporting world “Boys, it’s all off! Charley Courtney’s boat’s been sawed!”

The town went into uproar. Seventy-five newspaper men fronted an angry mob and descended on Courtney’s abode. Where they met a bulwark of Courtney supporters. Courtney would not come out. He was “prostrated.”

The newspaper men counterattacked by gath-ering a list of Courtney’s past “questionable per-formances” (Did they mention he was a carpen-ter before becoming a rower?) and demanded that “if he ever expected to race again” he’d do well to face the press.

A handful of reporters were allowed in and started peppering Courtney with questions. Court-ney quickly referred them to his trainer, Frenchy Johnson. Johnson was an African-American and this was not a good situation for an African-American to be in.

The tale he told went as follows: The night before, the scull’s two watchmen had locked-up

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the boat house and walked to town to “play a lit-tle casino.” Returning between eight and eight-thirty in the evening they found the watergate forced and all of Courtney’s boats “irreparably damaged.” They then informed Johnson who inspected the vandalism but he didn’t tell Court-ney until the morning because “Mr. Charley is a mighty nervous gentleman.”

Courtney asked that everyone wait until he had a new boat. He’d race anytime and his friends would put up an extra $5,000 to say that he would not only beat Hanlan but also beat the world record!

Later in the day he changed his tune and bemoaned that “he hoped he would go to hell if he ever went into a boat race with anyone. He was sick of the business and would tell… enough of boating rascalities to fill a dictionary.”

By afternoon that day would pass into the sur-real. With only Hanlan and his scull at the start line, Referee Blaikie cried out “Ready, Mr. Han-lan?”

Hanlan politely replied he was ready.“Ready, Mr. Courtney?” Reply there came

none. Not too surprisingly.At the word “Go!” Hanlan and his shell

moved like a single machine, cutting through the lake’s waters and in just less than thirty-four min-utes cleaved an incredible one minute and four-teen-and-a-quarter seconds off the world record.

During this magnificent display of very sin-gle sculling, Courtney and his entourage had managed to high-tail it out of town unnoticed.

So had Mr. Soule, who refused Hanlan the $6,000 purse. No competition, no race, no reward.

The bookies were of the same mind, declared all bets off and refunded all, minus one percent for handling. Had they charged anymore there

might well have been a riot.Hanlan called Courtney a coward.Courtney countered that Hanlan was afraid

of him.Sportsmanship had gone out the window.Somehow, Mr. Soule, of all people, got them

to race again.It was on the 19th of May, 1880, on Washing-

ton D.C.’s Potomac River.The event was so huge that the U.S.

Congress was adjourned and the crowd of on-onlookers totaled around 100,000, and included the U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes.

This time Courtney complained of a “blinding headache.” This time his own team forced him to the start.

Despite the “blinding headache” Courtney took an early lead but as soon as Hanlan was snapping at his heels, Courtney floundered. He actually stopped rowing to wet his brow. Taking up the oars again he continued to lose ground, wobbled off course and turned back to the finish-ing line. Some spectators who didn’t see his ear-ly turn thought that he had won.

So Hanlan received his $6,000 at long last.Courtney got out of single scull racing and

went on to be snatched up by Cornell University, where he coached the eight-oar team to seven-teen consecutive annual varsity victories.

Hanlan went on to beat the best of British at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, making him world cham-pion. Of the three hundred races he rowed in his lifetime he won an astounding two hundred and ninety four.

But with the “Who sawed Courtney’s Boat?” scandal, professional single scull racing in the U.S.A. went into the toilet and flushed itself away.

11

Kentucky Scandal: The Life and Death of William Goebel: Part One

by Alfred D. Byrd

I’ve heard that Robert Penn War-ren denied that All the King’s Men was about legendary Huey “Kingfish” Long of Louisiana. Penn Warren may have told the truth. As a native Ken-tuckian, he could have based his novel of cutthroat politics on the outrageous career of progressive Democrat Will- iam Goebel, the only American gover-nor to die in office of an assassin’s wounds.

William Goebel was an unlikely prospect to become Kentucky's governor. Born in Pennsylva-nia in 1856 as Wilhelm Goebel and speaking only German until he was six years old, he was the firstborn son of immigrants struggling to make ends meet in the New World. His family’s fortunes rose when his father, returning from ser-vice in the Union army in the Civil War (I can’t get away from that, can I?), moved his household to Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.

In the late 1800’s, Covington was Ken-tucky’s second-largest city, a thriving center of manufacturing and shipping. Here, William’s hard work and his family’s sacrifices for him got him into Cincinnati Law School. When he was graduated from this in 1877 (precocious fellow, no?), he became a partner in series of pres-tigious law firms, including those of for-mer Kentucky governor and future U. S. Senator John W. Stevenson and future U. S. Senator John G. Carlisle.

In court, Goebel, like Abraham Lincoln, spe-cialized in railroad law. Unlike the corporate lawyer Rail-Splitter, Goebel litigated against rail-roads. Taking workingmen’s cases on contingen-cy, he’d almost invariably win judgments and take half of his clients’ settlement as his fee. Sometimes taking only a third or even a quarter from poorer clients, he earned a reputation as a defender of the working class against unchecked corporate interests.

Goebel’s favorite target was the Louisville & Nashville Railroad (the L & N). This, after having been torn up repeatedly by Morgan’s Raiders during the Civil War (dear me, that again?), had hired John Hunt Mor-gan’s right-hand man, General Basil Duke, as its chief counsel and lobby-ist, maybe because no one knows more about railroads than one who's learned how to destroy them. By hir-

ing Duke, the L & N cemented a relationship with Kentucky’s most powerful political group, the Bourbon Democrats.

Now, you may be thinking that they got their name from guzzling bourbon whiskey. They may indeed have imbibed Kentucky’s flagship potable, but they got their name because they organized themselves in Paris, Kentucky, county seat of Bourbon County, where, during much of its history, it’s been illegal to buy, sell, or drink bourbon whiskey. Yes, only in Kentucky would Bourbon Country outlaw its own chief product!

Be Bourbon County as it may, the Bourbon Democrats consisted mainly of former Confeder-ate soldiers led by Duke and by a fellow ex-Con-federate General, Simon Bolivar Buckner. The Bourbon Democrats were fiscal conservatives

(“Gold Democrats”) and states-rightists, holding Kentucky’s black population in its place, as they saw things, by measures such as the Separate Coach Law, which required trains to provide separate pas-

senger cars for blacks and whites.By taking on the L &N, the politically ambi-

tious Democrat William Goebel had estranged the Bourbon Democrats. He was himself becom-ing a standard-bearer of new arrivals on Ameri-ca’s political scene, Progressive Democrats. These, during Goebel’s heyday, were led by redoubtable William Jennings Bryan, who, far from being the fossilized villain of Inherit the Wind, was a champion of blacks’, women’s,

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workers’, and debtors’ rights to be secured through “free silver.”

Before we follow Goebel’s career further, let's look at other political factions active in the Commonwealth in his day. Persistent, but hang-dog were the Republicans, who were then like the “Rocky” Republicans of our vanished youth:progressive on civil-rights issues, but con-servative on fiscal issues. There was the Green-back Party, advocating paper money unsupported by gold to eliminate debt.

Oh, yes, there was also a nativist party, anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-Masonic, descended from the old American “Know-Noth-ing” Party. That party is ever with us.

In Kentucky, Progressive Democrats soon became “machine” Democrats, headed by urban “bosses” overseeing teams of organizers who chose candidates and got out the vote for them. In Covington’s political machine, fearless litiga-tor William Goebel quickly became the chief organizer. He was no charmer, but he was a fight-er. As a reward for his services to the machine, it got him elected state senator from Kenton Coun-ty in 1887. He’d retain this office until shortly before his death in 1900.

In Kentucky’s General Assembly, Goebel spearhead-ed Progressive Democratic reforms. He fought for civil rights for blacks and women, regulation of the railroads (yes, the L & N just loved Goebel), removal of tolls from toll roads (these, common in Kentucky back then, made it costly for poor folk to travel in-state), protection for the workingman, an end to the state’s monopoly on textbook sales, and out-lawing of lotteries and pool halls.

(“How was outlawing lotteries and pool halls progressive?” you may ask. In the Bryant-Goebel way of thinking, these were institutions that lured down-on-their-luck workingmen into squandering their time and money, and locked them into a cycle of poverty and crime.)

As a member of Kentucky’s constitutional convention in 1890-1891, Goebel tried to get his reforms enshrined in the Commonwealth’s consti-tutional law. He met some success in his effort,

but most of it was vitiated by the convention’s final product, a bloated, unwieldy document that tried to micro-legislate every issue of the day for all time. As Kentucky has never since held a con-stitutional convention, it’s still living with the monstrosity birthed by its last convention.

Still, the monstrosity wasn’t Goebel’s fault. If only he’d retired from politics in 1891, Ken-tuckians might recall him fondly as a champion of social justice. Sadly, his political career went on and grew ever more scandalous with time.Next up would be a killing.

As an outsider, a hard-hitting litigator, and a Progressive Democrat, Goebel made enemies among the Bourbon Democrats, as I've said. One of his enemies was a politician named John San-ford (or Sandford), scion of a powerful family and a popular ex-Confederate who'd ridden with Hunt Morgan. Sanford boasted of having blocked Goebel's appointment as associate jus-tice on Kentucky's Supreme Court. Goebel, in turn, wrote an anonymous newspaper article char-acterizing his opponent as “Gon_h_ea [sic] San-ford.” Clearly, relations between these two men were diseased.

One day in 1895, the two men saw each oth-er in a public square in Frank-fort. Goebel crossed the square to meet Sanford on the steps of a courthouse. The two men exchanged words (“I under-stand that you assume the authorship of that article.” “I do.”) and then produced pis-tols.

Two shots rang out. San-ford fell mortally wounded

from a bullet in the forehead, and a bullet had passed through Goebel’s clothes. Traditionalists tried to pass off the Sanford-Goebel encounter as a duel, though, even in Kentucky, duels were ille-gal in 1895. The powerful Sanford family alleged that Goebel had murdered its son. Goebel stated that he’d fired second, in self-defense.

Who knows? Maybe, Greedo really did fire first. In any case, CSI: Frankfort never estab-lished grounds for an indictment for murder, so Goebel walked. The Sanford family, however, would remember his offense against it, and ex-Confederates would resent a Yankee soldier's

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son who'd gunned down one of their own…

Yeah, but politics goes on. Goebel’s political ambitions now encompassed the governor’s man-sion—maybe, even the White House? In any case, a man who’d won elec-tion by machine politics in Covington now tried to extend those politics throughout the Commonwealth. Dur-ing his quest for higher office, Goebel, who’d become president pro tempore of Kentucky’s Senate in 1896, enacted the defining piece of legislation of his career: the Goebel Election Law.

No one who knows Kentucky politics would deny that elections needed to be reformed in 1896. Before then, elections were overseen by election officials appointed by county courts, the members of which were elected by partisan poli-tics. There was a marked tendency for electoral disputes in a given county to be decided in favor of the majority party in a county court. Too, there was intimidation at the polls, bribery, ballot-box stuffing…

(The old joke about the little boy who’s crying his eyes out because his grandfather came back from the grave to vote, but didn’t stop to see him, is likely not original to Ken-tucky, but is certainly told here.)

Yes, the Commonwealth’s elec-tion laws certainly needed to be correct-ed, but the General Assembly’s Democrats may have had in mind a greater offense: in 1895, for the first time since the Civil War (that again!), the governor’s mansion was not occu-pied by a Bourbon Democrat. Instead, it had fallen to a (horrors!) Republican, William O’Connell Bradley. What was Kentucky coming to when a Republi-can could lord it over Frankfort?

In any event, Goebel’s Election Law provided that the General Assem-bly would, every four years, appoint three mem-bers to the Board of Elections Commissioners, which would appoint the election officials in each of Kentucky’s many counties. The election officials would in turn appoint precinct officials. The election law, Goebel claimed, was reform,

ensuring honest elections in Ken-tucky…

Democrats voted the law through; Republicans, crying foul, alleged that Goebel was in effect trying to appoint the election officials for his own upcoming gubernatorial election. Republican Governor Bradley vetoed Goebel’s bill; the General Assembly overrode Bradley’s veto. Suddenly, Bourbon Democrats were feeling buy-er’s remorse…

Yes, sir, Senator Goebel really was running for governor! To become that, he must first win the nomination of the Democratic Party. Enter the Music Hall Convention, held in friendly downtown Louisville in June 1899. The music would grow raucous…

The Bourbon Democrats would’ve had no trouble with Goebel if they’d settled on a single candidate. Instead, they split their strength between two men. P. Wat Hardin, a former state attorney general, had the support of big business, the Commonwealth’s leading newspaper, and the L & N. William J. Stone, an ex-Confederate sol-dier, had the backing of agriculture. Goebel, with the backing of city machines, lagged behind his opponents because of backlash over the Goebel

Election Law, and let's not forget the Sanford killing.

Enter a deal. The day before the convention would begin, Stone and Goebel signed off on an arrangement for Goebel to give Stone half of his del-egates from Louisville and to support Stone if Goebel withdrew, and for Stone to support Goebel if Stone with-drew. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? Maybe, a better deal for Stone than for Goebel…

In any case, when the convention opened on June 21, the deal drew first blood. The Stone-Goebel alliance elect-ed Judge David Redwine, a supporter of Goebel, as the convention’s chair-

man pro tempore. He appointed in turn a commit-tee on credentials to rule on disputed delegates to the convention. Mirabile dictu, the committee awarded all but two of the disputed delegates to Stone or Goebel.

In what’s technically known as a snit, Hardin

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temporarily withdrew his nomination. With him gone, the Stone-Goebel deal broke down. Stone expected Goebel to withdraw, but Goebel let his name be put into nomination anyway. When the roll call reached Louisville, all of its delegates voted for him. Back into the race came Hardin, for whom many of Stone’s supporters now vot-ed, rejecting Goebel. The convention was dead-locked.

As things began to get ugly in it, Judge Red-wine called in Louisville’s Finest to keep order. Angry at the presence of police in a Democratic convention, Stone’s and Hardin’s supporters riot-ed, standing on chairs, shouting slogans and insults, blowing tin horns, and singing satirical campaign songs. (Hey, what are Mayor Daley and Dan Rather doing here?) Newspapers accused the L & N of fomenting the disturbance.

Votes took place amid it, but none were con-clusive, as most of the delegates couldn’t make themselves heard over the uproar around them. At last, after three days of madness that the national press mocked with satirical cartoons and editorials, the convention hall calmed down on June 27. Both Stone and Hardin led Goebel on the convention’s twenty-first ballot, but, by the twenty-fourth ballot, he took a lead of three votes.

Before the next ballot, he engineered the pas-sage of a resolution to drop the candidate with the fewest votes, who happened to be his old part-ner, Stone. On the next ballot, with the switch of sixteen delegates from Union County, Goebel came out ahead of Hardin. The reformer had won a majority and with it the nomination!

Not to mention a passel of new enemies. Many of the Bourbon Democrats refused to take Goebel’s nomination lying down. Organizing their own political convention, they nominated as their candidate for governor former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown. (He’s not to be con-fused with Governor John Y. Brown, Jr., who married Miss America Phyllis George. The latter Governor Brown is an unrelated namesake of the former.)

In the general election for governor, Goebel faced, besides ex-Governor Brown, the Republi-can candidate, William Sylvester Taylor. (What's with all of these Williams? Couldn’t anyone think of another first name back then?) There

were also candidates from the Greenback and nativist parties. Of the other candidates, both Brown and the Greenback candidate siphoned from Goebel votes that might otherwise have been his.

Space won’t let me recount all of the dirt thrown in the Goebel-Taylor election. Oddly enough where black voters were marginalized, the election turned on the Separate Coach Law. Goebel, who’d voted against it in the General Assembly, zealously courted black votes at first, but, when questioned on the law, said, to win back Bourbon Democrats, that he supported it. Taylor, in a tour of western Kentucky, claimed that he was “lily white,” but, in a tour of Louisville, repudiated the act.

Let me review. Goebel was against the Sepa-rate Coach Law before he was for it. Taylor was for the Separate Coach Law before he was against it. Have I made myself clear? Let’s go on.

Goebel, who’d alienated many with his killing of Sanford, with the Goebel Election Law, and with the Music Hall Convention, alien-ated many more with his flip-flop on the Sepa-rate Coach Act. (Why voters overlooked Taylor's anti-parallel flip-flop is a good question.) On Election Day, most knew that Goebel’s margin of victory would be razor thin. More than likely, in terms of actual votes, he’d lose to Taylor. Still, who needed actual votes when he had the electoral commissioners in his pocket—

Hold the presses! The Board of Elections Commissioners was honest. (Many Kentuckians will need CPR at a report of honest politicians.) By a vote of two to one, the board certified that Taylor had won the election by a narrow plurali-ty of 193,714 votes to 191,331. Brown and the Greenback Party had truly cost Goebel the elec-tion. He was still only a state senator, while Tay-lor sashayed into Frankfort to claim the gover-nor’s mansion—

Yes, but an old saw says, “You can’t keep a good man down.” I don't see how that saw applies to this article’s subject, but you certainly couldn’t keep William Goebel down. “If you don’t like a law, change it,” he might have said. Much was about to change in Frankfort.

Stay tuned, folks! The party is just getting started.

15

Ohioania: The Battle of the Wabash

Matt Howard

This is the story of the biggest battle to take place within the United States before the Civil War’s slaughter fields, yet it remains unknown to most Americans.

In the year 1791 the United States of Ameri-ca was in trouble. Bordered by British Quebec to the north and Spanish Florida to the south, the U.S.A. stretched from the Atlantic shoreline all the way to the Mississippi, but almost all of its citizens huddled within 100 miles of that Atlantic shore. To prosper, the U.S.A. needed to move its populace out into the woodlands to develop the country and provide the wealth that was so badly needed to keep it going.

However, within those woodlands were those native savages who refused to curl up and die or be herded westward. In fact their raids on settlers had most white folks too worried to move into such a dangerous and untamed area.

Those redskins needed to be reined in, and George Washington knew just the man to do it.

Major-General Arthur St Clair, Commanding General of the U.S. Army had been among the elite of Washington’s senior commanders, had paid out of his own pocket for an entire Pennsyl-vanian regiment which was given to Colonel William Butler to led. And in his pre-Indepen-

dence War days St. Clair had been commended for special bravery for his part in the Plains of Abraham during the French and Indian War, when a surprise attack up a steep cliff under cov-er of darkness grabbed Quebec from the French in only thirty minutes.

In fact, at the Battle of the Wabash, St Clair would be one of seventeen officers who were also present at the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781.

On March 28 1791, financed and approved by the U.S. Government, St Clair departed Philadelphia for Fort Washington which is on the Ohio River just east of Cincinnati.

Two days later he came down with a massive bout of gout which left him in near constant pain.

Not that gout was going to contain a man like St Clair who had been the last but one President of the Continental Congress just four years before, and to quote himself, had “a laudable ambition, that of becoming the father of a coun-try, and laying a foundation for the happiness of millions then unborn.” On May 15, having float-ed along the Ohio River and seen first-hand the burnt out cabins that were devastation of Indian raids, he arrived at Fort Washington.

To avoid any confusion it should be noted that the Battle of the Wabash took place in Ohio, or, rather, what is now Ohio, not Indiana. Although the Wabash river is forever linked in the public mind to Indiana, thanks to that dirge of a State song “On the Banks of the Wabash”, the river itself starts in north Ohio traveling west across that state and then into Indiana where it curves to the south and forms the south-west bor-der of Indiana.

1790 had seen humiliating defeats with “Harmar’s Campaign” and “Strong’s Defeat” so much so that when St Clair met the 1st Infantry Regiment at Fort Washington they were reduced to just 299 noncommissioned officers and men around which he was to form his army.

Major-General Charles Scott had promised to

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provide a Kentucky militia but seven days after St Clair’s arrival Scott led the 750 on a revenge raid, which although successful with its scorched earth policy, robbed St Clair of manpower and caused the British to supply the natives with ade-quate food and munitions.

This was war without mercy. Women and children would be killed, prisoners would be tor-tured to death. Crops and orchards would be burnt and destroyed. And the Indians had copied scalping from the French and when collecting these trophées de guerre had no scruples as to whether the victim was dead, unconscious or ful-ly aware.

Also, do not think that the woodland tribes were nomads who survived on some form of paleo-diet. Some chiefs lived in log-cabins. And so many hectares was given over to orchards and crops that when a spy of Major-General Wayne was captured by the Indians he was released in the belief that tales of such an empire of agricul-ture would prove they were unconquerable. In- stead, Wayne sent his army in to completely burn and destroy the crops and orchards, which tore the heart and stomach out of the woodland tribes and left plenty of cleared and fertile ground for invading white farmers.

St Clair’s orders were simple enough, take the U.S. Army 115 miles north from Fort Wash-ington to Kekionga and there build a fort from where the Army could take on and defeat those savages.

And here there were two very different philosophies of war. For all their knowledge of military tactics the whites basically conducted their wars by lining troops up against each other and whoever ended up with the most men still

standing won. The Indians, however, were less grandiose and their main form of battle was guerilla skirmishes, going in by surprise, doing as much damage as a short time would allow, and then getting out of Dodge double-quick, pre-serving as many as your own men as possible.

From the outset everything seemed to be going against the American Army. St Clair’s sec-ond-in-command, Richard Butler, was stuck at his station at Fort Pitt on the Allegheny River, Butler was gathering supplies for St Clair, to be shipped to Fort Washington but in the main But-ler was receiving defective gunpowder, defective saddles, shoes, tents, uniforms, and defective or not, they were often mislabeled.

Richard Butler was brother of William who had commanded the Pennsylvanian regiment financed by St Clair. the famous Shawnee female chief Nehalem (the Grenadier Squaw) had born Richard Butler a son, Tamanatha, who would fight at the Battle of the Wabash as a Shawnee warrior. During the War of Independence, Butler himself knew most of the Delaware, Mingo, Shawnee and Wyandot chiefs.

St Clair had it no better. At Fort Washington men were put to work repairing broken muskets, and making harnesses and wagons, while waiting for much needed paper for cartridges as well as brass (for horse bells). The Quartermaster Gener-al Samuel Hogdon, should have taken charge of receiving the shipments, but was still in Philadel-phia.

The campaign was supposed to start on July 1st. Four days before that saw the arrival of the Maryland Battalion of the 1st Levy Regiment and the New Jersey Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment, who found nothing in readiness at Fort Washington.

Lieutenant-Colonel James Wilkinson with 500 Kentucky mounted militiamen found the same tardiness. On observing the state of unreadi-ness, Wilkinson decided to copy Scott, executed some scorched earth raids and then returned to Kentucky.

Wilkinson had become an honored son of Kentucky for securing, from the Spanish, the rights of Kentuckians to use the Mississippi Riv-er. What was not known at the time was that he had also become a spy for the Spanish.

On August 14, St Clair decided to send some

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of his small army five miles north to Ludlow’s Station (their 1st camp), from there they would lay out a road traveling north to the Miami River. At the river (and their 2nd camp) they would build Fort Hamilton which could be supplied via that river.

August 29 to September11, much to St Clair’s relief, the flatboats arrived, filled with supplies and men who were immediately sent north to help with the construction of Fort Hamil-ton.

If the previous lack of supplies and men had made for much gloom at least the weather had been bright and sunny, but even that suddenly changed. A long, continuous, torrential rain storm swept the land. Constructing the new fort became a temporary impossibility, the tents leaked like sieves, and flu broke out.

By October 3 St Clair had less than half the men he’d been promised, and of all of those there was only one Captain well enough to do duty.

But as of October 4, the army under the lead-ership of Major-General Richard Butler headed north from the incomplete Fort Hamilton. That was supposed to start at daybreak; however, their one thousand horses had been allowed to roam free and it took until noon to gather them all in. Finally underway the army would pitch a new camp every night until October 13.

When the full army was assembled, the infan-trymen would carry .69-calibre muskets, which could kill at 1,000 yards but even trained men preferred their target to be as close as 50 yards. Those trained could re-load and fire every 20 sec-

The militia had tomahawks and .40 to .48-cal rifles (without bayonets), which took 40 seconds to reload and fire, constantly needed cleaning, but were near-accurate up to 100 yards.

St. Clair’s army also included two U.S. Artillery Battalions with six 6-pounder (3.66-cal) cannons. The true word for them is guns, but despite infuriating artillery experts and military historians, they will be referred to as cannons to save confusion.

And there were two 3-pdr (2.91-cal) cannons but they didn’t make it to the battle.

St Clair’s ordered the building of two parallel 40 foot wide roads, 250 yards apart. Butler found this to be totally impractical. Progress was slow because they had to cut their way through the woodland and although there were 1,700 soldiers plus civilians they had only 80 axes and one crosscut saw between them.

October 7, St Clair rode north to take com-mand. Still racked with gout that caused unbear-able pain when any of his joints were under pres-sure, St Clair maintained the willpower to ride. Brigadier-General Josiah Harmar, whose cam-paign to Kekionga the previous year had suffered disaster, looked on St Clair’s departure with all the attitude of a clinically depressed Cassandra. His former aide-de-camp reported “It was a mat-ter of astonishment to him that the commanding general, who was acknowledged to be perfectly competent, should think of hazarding, with such people, and under such circumstances, his reputa-tion and life, and the lives of so many others.” Harmar predicted a defeat.

St Clair soon found his parallel 40 foot wide roads were nothing but a single twelve foot wide. Progress was too slow, just 20 miles. Supply con-voys had not arrived. Flour would run out by Oc- tober 18 and beef by November 5. As a result he made the calculated risk of sending 290 horses back to Fort Washington for supplies, while acquiescing that Butler’s single road was the only way to go forward.

By October 11 they were at the end of the sur-veyor’s line and sank one scout’s horse into athree feet depth of rain-sodden mud. That was Maple Swamp and it was left for the soldiers to find the route around it.

October 12 was cheered by the discovery of an Indian trail on elevated ground heading north.

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October 13 at the 12th Camp, St Clair decided to build Fort Jefferson. But this was without cheer. The morn-ing had brought the first hard frost. It was bad enough that their tents were sieves, their uniforms too thin, their sleeping grounds were mud and their shoes were coming apart but the frost meant that the time of foraging was over. As Napoleon would later decree, an army marches on its stom-ach, and from now on this army’s stomach would be increasingly emp-ty. And a cold, cold rain fell all day.

By October 17, despite needing all the energy they could muster to build the fort, everyone was on half-rations. Underfed and freezing, the desertions started, by levies, militiamen and regulars.

October 18 saw a convoy of packhorses final-ly arrive. So did a hailstorm. Rancor was rife between even the highest officers. St Clair’s gout became even worse.

October 19, under continuing hail, both the Company of the Virginia Battalion and Faulkn-er’s militiamen calculated their time of service had expired and headed south.

October 22, sixty Kentuckians arrived with a small convoy of supplies. The packhorses were so few because they could not forage and in both forts to the south and Ludlow’s Station they were too weak to haul, or just plain dead.

Fort Jefferson saw its completion on Sunday October 23 but reveille that day was not a joy, as the army watched two of their own hanged for desertion. A ceremony that St Clair took no plea-sure in. Now he had the choice of either trusting that supplies would arrive in the near future and advance, or call off the campaign for 1791 and retreat. Realizing the true capabilities of the U.S. Army, St Clair chose to advance.

Like a blessing from above October 24 was dry and comparatively warm as 2,050 soldiers and 200 civilians headed north to Greenville Creek. At Fort Jefferson, Captain Joseph Shaylor took charge of those two 3-pdr cannons and 120 men, most of whom were too ill for the march.

St Clair’s gout was now so bad he was inca-pable of either walking or riding and had to be strung in a sling between two horses.

That night the army pitched camp, planning to stay put until sup-plies arrived.

By October 26 there were still no supplies. St Clair ordered the Ken-tucky militiamen to camp on the far side of Greenville Creek in the hopes it would prevent them from desert-ing.

Next day, the last of the flour was consumed but a report came that a third convoy was only a day south and heading towards the creek. And for the first time since the campaign began they saw their first Indians. Friendly Indians. Chief Piamingo

and twenty other Chickasaws came at the request of Colonel John Sevier to act as scouts.

It was Colonel Sevier who recruited the “Over-mountain Battalion” and was best known for defeating the Cherokee at Boyd’s Creek, North Carolina.

October 28, the convoy arrived with enough flour of four more days.

October 29, the time of service was up for what was left of the levies of the Virginia and Over-mountain Battalions. As they headed south St Clair sent with them every packhorse he could spare so that they could help speed the two up-coming flour convoys.

The next day it was realized that the remain-ing horses were too weak to carry a normal load. A lot of the baggage was abandoned, including the wretched tents. Each man carried his own flour. Three days worth. The men advanced sev-en miles.

That night a fearsome storm raked the wood-lands, branches came crashing down and even large trees were uprooted.

The morning of October 31 revealed the dam-age. It also revealed the desertion of 60 Kentuck-ians. Despite his gout St Clair showed his swift and keen mind of a Commanding General and risked sending a whole unit of his best men south to meet and protect the flour convoy from pillag-ing deserters. 300 men of the 1st Infantry Regi-ment, commanded by Major John Hamtramck and Major David Ziegler, headed south and met with the fourth supply convoy under the protec-

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tion of Faulkner’s riflemen. That evening, 212 hors-es arrived at the camp with twelve days of much need-ed supplies. Mean-time St Clair sent-men back to retrieve the tents while axmen cleared a trace sev-eral miles north-ward. Now the U.S. Army could move with due speed.

But St Clair’s gout only got worse. The only hope of alleviating it was rest, so the advance was delayed. This was not as disreputable as it appeared. The army was now well supplied and not so much as one Indian warrior had showed his head.

It was not until four days later that the rested U.S. Army headed north to the Mississinewa Riv-er, a march of seven miles through snow. There they camped for the night.

Three miles north of the Mississinewa scouts had discovered an Indian trail leading in the direction of Kekionga. Up until this point many of the officers had abandoned any hope of engag-ing the enemy. Only a few days before, Captain Joseph Darke had written home to his wife “I expect we shall march early on towards the Indi-an towns, where we, I believe, shall not find an Indian.”

Four miles along that trail was another river where the Army camped on the night of Novem-ber 3. Its ravine was about thirty feet deep but if they followed the St Mary’s River for only 15 miles they would be in Kekionga. The scouts had seen fifteen woodland Indians beyond the river, but this was almost meaningless to the seasoned Major-General who had said “The savages if vio-lently attacked will always break and give way and when once broke, for want of discipline, will never rally.”

Here, in the woodland, St Clair camped his forces in an oblong encampment. Short ends fac-ing north and south, long columns east and west, about 1,100 feet long and 200 feet apart, with the

cannons midway. Six outposts where placed from north-east clockwise to south-west, and as the loyalty and gumption of the Kentucky Militia Companies was still in question, St Clair again placed them on the far-side of the ravine in the north-west, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel William Oldham.

That night was restless. Sleeping on hard ground and snow, in thin uniforms, rotting shoes and leaking tents was hard enough. But that night the small Indian parties would come close and try to steal horses, only to incur musket fire from the sentries. Such actions kept the Army fit-ful and awake.

November 4, 6:45 a.m.. As the cold blue-gray of a November dawn stole through the trees, the Army ate its breakfast to the accompani-ment of the calls of bears, turkeys and wolves. As any savvy soldier would have known those were the Indians signaling to each other. Three Kentuckians, scouting to the north-west of their camp came in sight of a group of Indians. Figur-ing the Indians were scouts, the Kentuckians fired upon them and immediately found them-selves under a hail of musket fire. Suddenly a tsunami of hostile Indians came crashing towards the camp. Experienced Kentuckians returned fire once and then immediately took to their heels and headed across the ravine to St Clair’s main camp. The inexperienced paused to reload and were cut down.

The river was not St Mary’s. It was the Wabash. St Clair and his 1,700 men were thirty miles off course. And they were being met by an unprecedented force of 1,400 woodland Indians. That was the beginning of the Battle of the Wabash.

What had happened was this: After Major-General Scott and Lieutenant-Colonel James Wilkinson with their Kentucky militia had raided Indian territory in the summer, the woodland tribes had demanded more supplies and ammuni-tion from the British. These were collected at Maumee Rapids, near what is now Toledo, Ohio, just south-west of Lake Erie, by the Mohawk leader Joseph Brant who was also a Christian, Freemason and well educated. He was also fierce-ly pro-British and wanted to see the Ohio Indians negotiate as a block, not as individual tribes.

After he delivered the goods in September to

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the nine tribes who had gathered togeth-er, he departed, planning to return for the battle, and probably leaving them with British Military advisors in tribal garb. But when he did return, his com-patriots were gone.

Those compatriots included such leaders and chiefs as John Ward (or White Wolf), a white, captured as a child by the Cherokee who he went on to lead.

Buckongahelas and Captain Pipe, who was almost 60, of the Delaware, with Big Cat who had previously fought on the side of the American Army.

The Miami included Little Turtle and his son-in-law, William Wells, whose older brother was Captain Samuel Wells of the Kentucky Militia (the civil war was not the first to pit American brother against brother). A year later William Wells would change sides.

Simon Girty, kidnapped by the Mingo when a white boy, had gone on to become a Revolu-tionary War American Officer and then returned to the Mingo. To the whites he became the most hated and feared of men.

And while Wapacomegat commanded the Ojibwa, the Ottawa had Little Otter and Egusha who had succeeded Pontiac as chief.

The Potawatomi were led by Mad Sturgeon and included Blackbird and Main Poc, whose Indian name was Wenebeset, which meant Crafty One.

Shawnee chiefs included Black Fish, Black Hoof, Captain Johnny and Tecumseh, whose Indi-an Confederacy would be shattered eleven years later at the Battle of Tippecanoe.

And there were the Wyandot with Round-head and Tarhe, known to the whites as The Crane.

The tribes knew of St Clair’s coming and were prepared to simply wait for his arrival at Kekionga. But even the Indian’s legendary pa- tience grew thin and on October 28 they moved forward to find where St Clair and his tardy sol-diers were.

Having found them at the Wabash, the plan of action was conceived by council but lead by

the Miami commander Little Turtle. The plan was passed by word of mouth through 1,400 tribesmen, yet through all its repeats it remained unchanged, and was carried out with accurate preci-sion.

The Indians, in the formation of a crescent, descended from the north-west upon St Clair’s encampment. Their center or base was formed of Delaware, Miami and Shawnee. Their north horn was Cherokee, Mingo and Wyandot, their south horn Ojibwa, Ottawa and Potawatomi. These horns encircled the camp, coming as close as 100 yards, and overran all of the out-posts.

With the shots and cries of the Indi-ans sounding like an infinitude of horse bells, the Army’s drums beat “To

Arms” as the officers formed their men into bat-tle ready companies. A task made all that much harder by the Kentucky militiamen racing through the camp, some stealing horses to sped their desertion, while the women and children swooned, shrieked, prayed, and ran back and forth, until some militiamen tried to hide in their midst. Then the women drove them out with fire-brands and “the usual weapons of their sex.”

Horse and Oxen stampeded east into the for-est.

Some of the Indian’s center made it as far the 6-pdr cannons and were only beaten back by mus-kets and bayonets.

The woodland Indians were armed with mus-kets, mostly the British “Brown Bess” which was .75-cal and equal to the U.S. Infantry‘s .69-cal, accurate at 50 yards and still lethal at 1,000, oth-er Indian muskets could be as small as .25 cal. Their rarely-used bows were 4 to 6 feet long, had a range of 150 yards, and were slightly more accurate than the muskets. And then there were the knives and tomahawks.

7:13 a.m. The sun rose. In just half-an-hour of battle, many of St Clair’s men were either dead or useless, the dragoons had lost half their horses, and the enemy was at their doorstep.

St Clair was so riddled with gout he couldn’t even dress for battle. Instead he threw on an old black coat. By the end of the battle it would have eight shot holes in it. Twice he somehow man

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aged to mount a horse. Twice his mount was shot from under him. From then on, in constant pain, he commanded on foot.

The loss of his mounts was probably fortu-itous for him. Mounted offi-cers became the prime targets of the Indians,

while the trees made the Indians almost invisible to fire upon.

The cannon crews formed and began firing but with the enemy concealed by trees the fired shots did little more than shower them with branches and twigs. Worse, the guns created large clouds of smoke that the gunners couldn’t see through, while the Indians could readily see the flames of each discharge and knew just where to aim their muskets.

The cannonade was heard up to 30 miles away. Hamtramck and Ziegler with the 1st Infantry Regiment heard it at the 11th Camp. Struck camp and immediately marched north,thinking they would be engaged in “mopping up operations” after an assured victo-ry.

Realizing the uselessness of the Army’s shots, St Clair made a bold and desperate deci-sion to have Lieutenant-Colonel William Darke lead a bayonet charge from the east column head-ing south. But the Wyandots just fell away, skipped around the charge until the charge itself lost its formation, then the Wyandots joined the Shawnee and invaded the camp from the east.

However, as the cannon smoke started to clear, the Shawnee outside of the encampment began to recognize how many of their own had been killed and started a retreat but Black Fish rallied them. His bellowing voice demanded to know who had ordered the retreat and then advanced back on Darke’s own tactical retreat with the words “You who are like minded, fol-low me!”

Meantime, the Shawnee had also overrun the Dragoon Company and Virginia Battalion,1st US Levy Regiment, in the south and had reached into the heart of the encampment, looting the sup-plies and killing soldiers and civilians.

St Clair ordered a bayonet charge from the north within the camp to rout the Shawnee. This was carried out by the 2nd Infantry regiment led by Major Jonathan Heart and the 2nd Infantry companies of Captain Samuel Newman. To their horror, both men had left sons in the encamp-ment, believing it to be the safest place.

The “safest place” had become a butchery. With the Indians collecting around a hundred scalps from soldiers, women and children.

Infantrymen were running in all directions. On higher ground, some unarmed soldiers could do nothing but watch the carnage from a dis-tance.

One plucky cook, “Redheaded Nance” Miller, managed to defend herself and her baby, while armed only with a frying pan.

As Heart and Newman’s men advanced, Shawnee commander Black Hoof ordered the woodland Indians out of the encampment with their spoils.

Heart and St Clair then managed to gather together a force mainly consisting of Kirkwood’s 2nd Infantry Regiment company and charged south with fixed bayonets, running out the Indi-ans and shoring up the south end that the Indians

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had breached.

By 8:30 a.m. St Clair had secured the encampment’s perimeter but Darke had a musket ball in his leg, Butler had a broken leg, and Heart, Kirkwood and Newman were all dead. And soon over half of St Clair’s force would either be dead or wounded and many of those alive were totally demoralized.

Again, the Indians, using the cover of the trees and presenting little or no targets, rained musket fire down on the Army. The Delaware and Miami had held back from the fray and then came in with full force against Butler’s men in the southern section of the west column. St Clair countered by reinforcing Butler with Captain Patrick Phelon’s company, which was the last intact 2nd Infantry Regiment unit. They drove the Indians back into the ravine and then charged after them, only to be met with a torrent of mus-ket shot which killed almost all of the company. Butler was wounded in his other leg and was somehow carried back to the encampment.

It was then the fighting stopped and St Clair appeared pleased that the savages had been repelled and the ground kept.

Fifteen minutes later his self-deluded plea-sure was shattered when the Indians attacked again. Knowing he had not enough men left to defend the camp as it was, he ordered the can-nons to be spiked [made useless] and then had the men retreat to the camp’s north end. Darke objected, pointing out that it was “bringing us all together to be shot down like a flock of par-tridges.” But he followed orders.

The U.S. Army contracted itself into an area

of less than three acres, while crossfire from all directions picked off man after man. The Indians were so close that some of them switched to using bows and arrows and Darke’s prediction had become all too real.

By 9:30 a.m. the only hope was retreat. St Clair told his three battalions, or what was left of them, to hold their positions. All others would charge east and feint a clockwise turning. Fire from the stationary battalions would protect the feint and then become a rearguard as everyone retreated through the opening left by the charge. They would then continue a wide clockwise turn and eventually reach the trace one mile away to the southeast.

Darke ordered the men to charge. Stupefied and demoralized, the men stayed where they were.

But Captain Henry Carberry knew what to do. He’d been a Mary-land cadet at the Battle of Long Island in the War of Independence, where a bayonet charge had made an opening for Washington’s army to retreat through, even though the charge had cost the lives of nearly all the Maryland compa-ny. Carberry yelled out the pur-

pose of the charge and the result was almost mag-ic. The men instantly fixed bayonets and broke through the Indians like a torrent.

That was 9:45 a.m.. St Clair left the battle-field with the rearguard. Leaving behind those wounded and unable to walk. And leaving behind freshly scalped heads reeking with smoke, which in the heavy morning frost looked like so many pumpkins through a cornfield in December.

Included among the abandoned wounded was Major-General Butler. Unlike many others he

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had enough time to present his ring, sword and watch to a fellow officer and was given a pistol, cocked and loaded, to be aimed at one last Indi-an, and then Butler was left to his fate.

It was as though nothing had been learned from the War of Independence. Like the British, the U.S. Army had simply lined up its men to be shot down by guerilla warriors.

And once the trace was found the retreat became little more than the survival of the fittest. Those who still had strength took the lead. The weak stumbled behind with the Indians closing in on them as the column grew longer and longer. The trace was littered with discarded car-tridge boxes, flintlocks and “regimentals.” The abandoned bayonets proved dangerous to those still mounted. St Clair had been put on a horse which refused to go any faster than a walk but still managed to get to the head of the retreat.

Holding back the Indians was too much for the rearguard which collapsed after its Major Clark was wounded. The Indians tomahawked the slow, the old and the wounded. Soldiers who had valiantly carried wounded comrades, aban-doned them. Army scout William Kennan was carrying a wounded man piggy-back style, when the man refused to let go, Kennan took out his bayonet and cut the man’s fingers off. Private Stephen Littell got lost and meandered back into the remains of the encampment and into a dark nightmare scenario where wounded men and-women begged him to kill them before the Indi-ans returned. “Redheaded Nance” Miller, who had fought so bravely to protect her baby no longer had the strength to carry the child and abandoned it by the side of the trace.

By the dark of 7:00 p.m. the first of the col-umn reached Fort Jefferson where the immobile wounded were left in the hope that the Indians would not travel that far south. It proved to be a righteous hope. The rest were kept marching southward.

November 5, 9:00 a.m., they were met by a northbound supply convoy and fed with double rations.

St Clair did not reach the safety of Fort Wash-ington until November 8.

His men, who had little more than their thin uniforms, were told to camp on the cold fields to the north. Frozen, demoralized and defeated, they

instead went to the taverns of Cincinnati, desper-ately trying to drown their memories with as many flagons of ale as they could afford. Great excesses were committed but St Clair and his offi-cers did not bring one single man to book. “Their situation was truly distressing, and could only be justly conceived of by experiencing it.” So wrote Colonel Winthrop Sargent who had the misfor-tune to experience it.

However, at Fort Washington, an 18 year old Ensign William Henry Harrison and other offi-cers who were stationed there, paid out of their own pockets for clothes and blankets for St Clair’s men. Harrison would go on to defeat Tecumseh’s forces at Tippecanoe and become the ninth President of the United States.

But just as with the Sioux at Little Big Horn, and the Zulus at the Battle of Isandlwana, the woodland tribes had won an overwhelming battle but lost the war. The whites would not stand for such a defeat, so better trained and greater num-bers of the U.S. Army were sent in to deal with the then disjointed natives. At the Battle of Fall-en Timbers, Major-General Anthony “Mad” Wayne would extract a revenge that the wood-land Indians would never recover from.

And that is the story of the Battle of the Wabash, also known as St Clair’s defeat, the biggest battle to take place within the United States before the Civil War, yet it remains un-known to most Americans. Probably because the Native Americans won.

*****Selected Sources:

Wabash 1791, John F Winkler, Osprey Publish-ing 2011

“Bluegrass Beginnings”, Al Byrd, The Reluctant Famulus 92 2013

“St Clair's Defeat”, Theodore Roosevelt, Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Issue 549, 1896

This was the first full account of the battle, writ-ten 105 years after the event and just four years before Roosevelt became President.

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The Crotchety CriticBy Michaele Jordan

The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates

I would have liked to write some-thing to honor the hundredth issue of our dear TRF. But I couldn’t quite fig-ure out how to work anything like that into a book review. I considered reviewing A Hundred Years of Soli-tude by Gabriel García Márquez but, even aside from the fact that it’s nei-ther current nor SF/F, I worried the association might not be taken as a compliment. So instead, I will simply wish you all a very happy 100th anniversary, and get on with my regu-lar review. I did, at least, choose a book by a really big name author, The Accursed by Joyce Carol Oates

Ms. Oates is a more prestigious author than I usually tackle in these reviews (or, in all honesty, in my day to day reading). She teaches at Prince-ton, where her office wall is decorated with a dozen major awards, and she’s been nominated for a Pulitzer. Naturally her books are routinely issued in hardcover, and she gets cover blurbs from such well-known names as Steven King.

She is also prolific. The cover insert lists 38 previous novels from With Shuddering Fall in 1964 to Mudwoman in 2012, but that’s not a com-plete list. When I checked the library in search of detailed publication data for The Accursed (2013, from Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins), I stumbled on two more right away: Daddy Love from Mysterious Press and Carthage from Harperluxe. In fact, the library displayed 337 items. They weren’t all novels, of course. Paper-backs and large print editions were listed sepa-rately, not to mention audio tapes and DVDs. There were also numerous collections of shorts. I had to check Wikipedia to confirm the total at 42. (Plus 37 collections of shorter works.)

I do not pretend to have read them all. A lot of them are mainstream. I’'s not that I object to mainstream—I most emphatically do NOT—but SF/F is my first love, and when

that’s not to hand, I usually have a fat historical waiting, so the main-stream has to stand in line.

Ms. Oates is not solely a main-stream writer; she’s an acknowl-edged mistress of horror, having won the Bram Stoker award twice, first for Zombie (1995, Dutton) and then for her 2012 collection Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories. She got into horror early. The short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” which appeared in “Epoch” in 1966, was only her second publica-

tion. It was dedicated to Bob Dylan, having been inspired by his song “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue.” The story—loosely based on Charles Schmid, “The Pied Piper of Tucson”—is not gris-ly. It is heart stopping. It contains no violence. It simply shows you a young girl surrendering to a serial killer.

When Ms. Oates writes horror, she tends to avoid the supernatural, preferring to focus on shadows, mindsets and subtle suggestions. She exemplifies this technique in The Accursed (which is a finalist for the 2013 Shirley Jackson Award). Ghosts, vampires and the Faerie, curses and black magic are all hinted at frequently and obliquely referenced in numerous events. But only twice in 667 pages are they presented overt-ly, and then, by characters whose credibility is compromised in the extreme. Some characters believe passionately in ‘the curse’, others dismiss it as superstition. Nothing is ever told to women or negroes, who compensate by substituting wild speculation. Newspaper clippings report rational-ized versions of disturbing anomalous events, but nothing is ever proved.

The Accursed is a classic Gothic novel. It takes the form of an historical paper, written by an intrusive narrator, who—we eventually learn—is the son of one of the peripheral charac-ters. It takes place in Princeton, NJ, in late 1905

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and early 1906, but was supposedly written well after the fact, as the narrator acquired much of his research material in an estate sale in 1952. It purports to be a study of known historical events—not well known, perhaps, but document-ed and presumably recognizable to its intended audience.

The story circles around one Winslow Slade, a wealthy retired minister, who has devoted his life to public service. He served as the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church on Nassau Street. (This is a real church, founded in 1766 and still in operation.) He served as the president of Princeton University. (I hope I need not mention that Princeton is an actual school.) He even served a term as Governor of New Jersey. These environs are not just authentic. Ms. Oates has researched them and brought them entirely to life.

Princeton is a small, but affluent, village in 1905. The reader strolls its quiet, tree-lined streets, noting the homes of Rev. Slade’s neigh-bors: the Burr’s, the Fitz-Randolph’s, the Van Dyck’s, the Wilson’s and the Cleveland’s. The college has not yet achieved eminence, and is generally viewed as a party school for rich men’s sons, especially rich Southern men. (The school has close connections with Virginia.) The build-ing of a separate graduate school is still under dis-cussion, and is a bone of bitter contention between the Dean of Graduate Studies, Andrew West, and President Woodrow Wilson.

When I say President, I mean President of Princeton. Yes, Mr. Wilson went on to become President of the United States, but he did not enter politics until after retiring from his academ-ic career. Dean West, by the way, was also a gen-uine historical personage, and his feud with Wil-son was legendary. Also present in The Accursed is another player in local politics, former presi-dent Grover Cleveland and his (much younger) wife Frances.

In fact, The Accursed is crawling with authen-tic historical characters. Upton Sinclair, with his first wife Meta and son David, lives in a shack outside town. The profits from The Jungle have not yet materialized and their extreme poverty is taking a heavy toll on their marriage. (Wikipedia did not confirm Sinclair’s Princeton idyll, or his membership in the Socialist party, but Ms.

Oates lives and teaches at Princeton and proba-bly confirmed his presence there.) Jack London appears, as an acquaintance of Sinclair and fel-low Socialist. I should mention that the various above-mentioned notables are not treated kindly. Apparently Ms. Oates has a delicious mean streak.

Even those characters I could not easily docu-ment bore the names of the local families, and resided in neighborhoods associated with those families. Winslow Slade, at least, is fictional, along with his descendants. He does not, himself, participate in most of the events of 1905-06. But he is the grandfather of the three main protago-nists: Annabel, Josiah and Todd, and the mentor of Woodrow Wilson and Reverend Fitz-Ran-dolph, who succeeded him at the church. He is personal friend to, and occasionally near kins-man of, nearly everyone else in the cast. His influence is omnipresent.

I've told you little of the actual story, largely because—in true Gothic fashion—it is too sprawling to be readily summarized. I could say that there appears to be a curse on the Slade fami-ly, playing out across multiple generations. but that does not begin to capture the scope of the narrative in The Accursed. The Slades are an important family and, as such, tied up intimately with most of the townspeople. Their plight can not simply be extricated from the well-being of the community. Therefore, the curse—if curse there is—may—or may not—extend from a hor-rific lynching just outside town to an attack of mass hysteria at a New York art school. As I said above, Ms. Oates writes about shadows and mind-sets. I can warn you that the ending is quite startling, even jarring. But I can still recommend the book wholeheartedly.

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Attempts at Utopia:The AgapemoneGeoff Lardner-Burke

What with dear old TRF scoring 100 Not Out, it should be deemed that this is the time to turn our mutual beaks away from the usual tales of doom and gloom that are the final lot of so many a commune and raise a glass of champers to one that actually succeeded.

The establishment in question being The Agapemone and the year 1846. That year the U.S.of A. politely declared war on its neighbor Mexico and swiped New Mexico. Ether was first used as an anesthetic. Charles Dickens edit-ed the Daily News (England’s first cheapo newspaper). The totally wretched Potato Fam- ine broke out in Ireland and Elias Howe patent-ed the sewing machine only to have I. M. Sing- er build a better sewing mousetrap three years later.

And in Somerset, England, where those wonderful cider apples grow so did the ego of an odd bod by the name of Rev. Henry Prince who declared that the Day of Judgment had already arrived (despite there being not so much as a soupçon of evidence to support that assumption) and added with dripping malevo-lence that only the suckers that chose to be in his commune would sup the goodly fruits of salvation.

Prince’s wheeze was to call together some artful like-minded Revs. plus laymen “trained in the church” (most of whom came from a dodgy outfit known collectively as the Lam-peter Brethren), have them each tie the old mar-riage knot with wealthy spinsters and use their new brides’ worldly wealth to build the com-mune’s buildings and live very high on the hog.

According to the Agapemonites, those wedding bands were commanded by no one lesser than God himself and as Judgment Day had been and gone no one was, ipso facto, capable of sinning. So much so

that they even played hockey on Sunday!And Prince himself could be contacted

from anywhere in the English speaking world by simply addressing a missive to God, Somer-set, England.

His second banana was George Thomas. This bird had been given the order of the boot by the Church of England for his preferment of making “prophetic pronouncements.”

Now the Agapemonites gave themselves the moniker “The Family” and grew to about 60 strong. About half their number were mar-ried and about half (if you’ll forgive the mathe-matics) were not. The un-weds were referred to as Children which was somewhat thick as their ages ranged from 24 to 40.

The days of their halcyon lives were filled with riding, hunting and games. As one of their number was given to put it “If God be not life, happiness and love, then we do not know what God is.

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Or as one London hack wrote with flowing pen “They act as God tells them to act, and do everything for his glory. They renounce prayer; they sing the praise of the Lord sometimes in open air, and sometimes in intelligible gibber-ish. They act as their feelings prompt them.”

Mostly free of dogma, one of the few re- strictions was on the commodity of hair. Ne’er would it be soft-lifted by the winnowing wind or any other zephyr for that matter. Ladies had to have close shorn hair which could hardly help the ex-spinsters look sweet, young and soft. The males of the species had it no better. Suede-heads like “charity boys” and no whis- kers.

As for the old bricks and mortar of the commune, Prince had the best house of the whole binge while lesser brethren dwelt in more modest dwellings. A chapel whose door-way was topped with the words “Hail, Holy Love” was converted into a banqueting hall where the family’s communal consumption of nosh was held three times a day. There was also an aviary, conservatory, coach house with coaches and horses, a lawn known eloquently as the “Pleasure Ground” and a farm.

While the family’s “Chiefs” managed the whole shebang, the actual hard-graft was put on the shoulders of the “serious, caretaking community” otherwise known as the working class who cheesed it courageously, did not par-take of the goodly fruits of salvation and kept the whole pile running. Meantime the Agape-monites lived “at their ease in much enjoyment

and rather mock(ed) at solemn professional men for their seriousness and their care.” That observation came from the redoubtable Illus-trated London News of the 29th of March, 1851.

Prince and his chiefs would hoof it abroad sometimes, to drum up converts. Especially giv-ing “their lessons to ladies of a certain age, who possess property, and have no objections to some wives, transferring their property to some of the brethren.”

Having hit the right quarter and continuing to buzz along quite satisfactorily for 53 years, Prince finally came to an irresistible halt when he met beauteous death in 1899.

His stand-in was the Rev. J. H. Smyth-Pig-gott who in three years time had the dashed nerve to proclaim himself the Messiah. For this the old egg was cast out of the C of E quicker than you could say excommunication.

He then encouraged “spiritual wives” to join the commune and having indulged in the property of the spirits left this world with a smile on his face in 1927.

The Agapemonites carried on for a grand total of 116 years. Finally shutting up shop and selling off the properties in 1962.

Those properties still stand. At last look Prince’s house had become flats (that’s apartments, to our American cousins) and the banqueting hall was a puppet workshop. Mind you, that last look was a decade or four ago.

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(not what you might be thinking…)

We are entering the very dangerous high GOOSE ALERT season. To understand just how serious this is, let me give you a bit of back-ground.

Montgomery Village is a “large” planned community that was begun the the 1960s. There are no natural lakes in Montgomery County, but three man-made lakes were created for the community. Very quickly the wildlife started taking advan-tage of the new aquatic facilities. Within a year or two, wild geese started hanging out in there travels and Villagers started feeding them.

The geese are not stupid--a free meal is a free meal…. By five years what had been a layover became permanent digs when they came north.

The main road through the Village (Montgomery Village Avenue) is at least two lanes each way with a grassy divider. I suppose many driver attempt to follow the speed signs, but all that lane space is too tempting (This is our Main Street --35 mph). As the Village has grown, so have the traffic problems.

The geese spend quite a bit of time on those grassy dividers hoovering up the multitude of bug that live there. Once sated, the families (geese, not human) head back to the waterside accommodations. Of course this requires a stroll across at least two lanes of packed and rapidly (despite the signs) traffic. This gauntlet running occurs at least daily once the goslings are big enough.

Using telepathy, one or two of the geese vol-unteer to become martyrs for the flock and valiantly step out in front of the smoke belching behemoths. Most are squashed, but every now and then a brave volunteer will make the cross relatively unscathed. It turns out there is a $500 fine for running over a Canada Goose, but I don’t

know if any miscreant has actually been caught in the act. If the act is covered by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act conviction can lead to jail time and up to $15,000 in fines. Ouch (in more ways than one).

What this sacrifice does is to guilt trip every human on the road at the time of the squashing. If it happens to be a gosling, you can quadruple the amount of guilt. For the next while (length

determined by the depth of guilt) all the traffic will obediently crawl by at under the speed limit. As the goslings reach independence age and desire to spend a lot more time on the water, the GOOSE ALERTS become less frequent and average speed gradually inch-

es back up.Because the winter was such a heavy hitter

this year, it seems the geese were a bit late in appearing at the roadsides. A week ago, as I was heading down Montgomery Village Avenue I glanced over at, across the intersection, the edge of the divider to see two geese, Mom and Dad presumably, trying to shuttle their brood across the street. The driver just to my left saw them at the same moment and between the two of us slowing down to a crawl with intermittent stops, we only had to worry about that farthest left lane. That lane merges, but drivers try to jump the light and sneak in ahead of the pack. Remember that guilt factor- the driver suddenly realized he was being boxed in and- holy cow (goose?)- his only choices were to stop or to squash a parent or a baby in the midst of chaperoning or being chaperoned across the street back to water's edge. He stopped.

The geese continued walking along the divider edge -but far enough into the road that traffic had to almost stop. Then they decided they wanted to take the scenic route and go down the street, not across. Only the rightmost (mine) lane was totally clear and not in the (apparently)

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planned trajectory. We started inching a bit faster when it seemed safer and the birds were concentrating on their route - not jay(hmm) walk-ing.

It is always heart warming when police offi-cers happen to the the first on the family “migration” scene. They stop and start giving the birds convoy coverage--and no one argues or pushes the speed on that. There is usually a roar of approval from the onlookers as the little fami-lies make it across (and many appear to acciden-tally try this at a crosswalk!) and everyone feels good about it.

Sometimes it is even more dramatic when a motorcycle officer is the one first one the scene. He/she will verrry slowly weave across at least one lane of traffic (more lanes as needed) if the geese are moving down the road instead of mere-ly across it. Absolutely no one challenges the snail's pace even if there are a lot of very angry motorists trying to get home during rush hour!

In an attempt to cut down on the number of sacrificial lambs geese, the Village put up signs. Nice try, but people still don’t slow down until it is usually too late for the Canadian visitor.

This year I haven't seen “evidence” of the road crossing volunteers--so it would appear the population is pretty safe so far. Once again, the driving populace seems, grudgingly in many cas-es, to be cutting the geese a break brake. For now, at least, the goose population seems motor vehicle safe.

So I leave the built up areas. I turn off the sec-ondary road to the very small road that ends in this enclave (only about 20 houses total), and am to my driveway...almost. I make the last turn onto the piece that goes past my door and past an overgrown treed lot that has big trees canting alarm-

ingly over the asphalt. I never get up much in the way of speed and- slam on brakes. In the back of my head I hear vintage Clint Eastwood music. Brazenly staring me down are two rab-bits. One sits squarely in the middle my side of the road (no lane markers) and the other smack dab in the center of the other side. Nobody moves. A white panel van inches up from the

other direction and both vehicles sit expectantly, waiting for someone to break the standoff. The van driver revs its engine and inches forward.

Vroom vroom . The bunnies are not budging.Both vehicles crawl closer, waiting to see

who will give in first. Once more we both stop. The bunnies stare off into space, seemingly obliv-ious to our presence. Suddenly, as if the spell is broken, with a smirk—both rabbits hop into the undergrowth.

As the van and I pass, we give each other a thumb’s up. I see he is grinning.

The goose telepathy seems to be spreading. I’m already suspicious of the squirrels and heav-en help us all if the deer are brought in on this.

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A Trickle of LoCs

May 25, 2014From: John Purcell

Well, Thomas, the first thing I noticed in this issue was that the lettercolumn was 14 pages long. That, my friend, is excellent, and a direct product of mailing paper copies of your fanzine to folks who are likely to respond in some way. By the end of next week I will be printing contributor's copies of the latest Askance, which is posted on efanzines.com already, and some extras to ship off to selected recipients. I definitely would like to grow the zine's lettercolumn, and sending out hard copies definitely is the way to do that.

You should be pleased to know that I have been working on that Twain article, and my goal is to send it to you by the end of June. That should give you enough time to work with it for TRF's 100th issue in August. I am still impressed by that fact, too. You have done a fine job with this fanzine, Tom, and I reviewed this particular issue - the 98th - in Askance #31, the issue just posted to efanzines. Yes, I did say nice things about it, too.

Since Mark Twain was just briefly men-tioned, thank you for that Vanity Fair reproduc-tion on page 3; granted, it is hard to read, but good job in discussing it in your editorial. And don't apologize for your “obsession” with Twain: if you're going to be focused on one writer, he's an excellent choice. He is one of my two favorite American authors, the other being Herman Melville. At last year's World SF Convention in San Antonio, I was on a panel discussing Mark Twain's science fiction and his influence on the genre's writers, and a lot of our discussion cen-tered on the short story “From the London Times of 1904” because it is easily one of the most “science” fictional story he wrote.You know as well as I do that Twain was a technophile: he

loved science and technology, one of the first people to install a telephone in his Hartford house, promoted electricity, invested in technology (notably in a printing endeavor that fell flat and lost a lot of money), and Clemens con-stantly read magazines and books on history and science. Those subjects fascinated him, and how they affected people, so it's not surprising that he wrote

stories like “From the London Times of 1904,” A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and some stories featuring lighter-than-air flight. Clemens/Twain incorporated a lot of contempo-rary scientific findings in his fiction, which was likewise a discussion point of ours. I was sur-prised that the panel was so well-attended - the room was full, and it was at 11:00 AM on Sun-day of the WorldCon - with a lively discussion and interplay among panelists and audience. Besides myself, the panel consisted of Walter Jon Williams, Michael Swanwick, Gardner Dozois, Eileen Gunn (moderator), and Takayuki Tatsumi. Afterwards Dr. Tatsumi asked me to contribute to his journal Mark Twain Studies, which will receive a longer version of the article I'm sending to you. Too bad you weren't there because you would have enjoyed it.Unless you were and I missed meeting you.

So the truth is out about Dalmer Shasto's secret identity. Kudos to Ned Brooks for figuring that out. I hadn't thought about that - shows where my mind is sometimes - but as soon as Ned mentioned it, the linkage leaped out at me. Fortunately I ducked, grabbed a nearby Louisville Slugger and beat it back. Those ana-grams can be pesky critters, you know.

Overall, this was a fun issue; I even got a kick out of that “?” article by A. N. Onymous. Conspiracy theorists have had one helluva field day with the 9/11 attacks, some claiming that our

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own government was behind it to create an excuse to go to war against Iraq again, others say-ing space aliens did it, and so on. This particular article is more of a conspiratorial screed against the Bush Administration, especially Dick Cheney. Much like the JFK assassination, Area 51, and the Curse of the Bambino, we will never know the Truth, even if it is Out There.

Personally I think that rat terrier Dalmer Shas-to is behind it all. Never trusted him, not with a name like that. An obvious pseudonym fronting a clandestine alien operation based under the Sar-gasso Sea where Jonny Quest has been held cap-tive since the mid-1960s. Just ask Bandit, who never trusted Hadji, that turbaned turncoat. (I like alliteration.)

At any rate. I am going to stop here before I cause any more trouble. Besides, I'd like to spend some time working on a short story before I mow the yard. That will be a good way to burn off some energy.

All the best,

John Purcell

[[Due to your impeccable (?) timing, your loc will—again—lead off the locs section of TRF 100 as you will have discovered after receiving a copy. After having read nine biographies of Mark Twain, on dealing with him and his broth-er Orion, Volume I of the “suppressed Autobiog-raphy and being more than halfway through Vol-ume II along with reading various articles at Mark Twain sites and some recently discovered facts I’m pretty much up-to-date on things Mark Twain. At least until Volume III appears and something new turns up. Also, having toured Mark Twain’s Hartford, Connecticut home and seen the telephone he had installed, electric light-ing and the failed Paige typesetting machine with my wife and now adult children were chil-dren I have been well aware of the facets of his life for at least three decades or more. Also, I’m constantly on the lookout for anything new relat-ed to Mark Twain. Most of what I’ve published in TRF I’ve known for a long time and have only fairly recently started including it in TRF in case the readers might find the articles of some inter-est. Even so, I admit to being a relative newcom-er compared to the Twain experts you’ve met and

not at all in their league. I’ve just been present-ing certain interesting basics for people who have read some of Twain’s works or who have at least heard of him and might appreciate learning something about him.// It was inevitable that Dalmer’s true identity would be exposed. Now he can return to his obscure life watching grass grow, paint drying and snail races.// Using a Louisville Slugger to fight off a semi-harmless linkage seems rather brutal and excessive. A shot of mace would have been as effective and kinder.// I’m not going to touch that 9/11 theory controversy with . . . Well, I’m not going to touch it.// Now, now. You shouldn’t be so hard on Dalmer. He’s a harmless, mostly, inoffensive guy without a conspiratorial bone in his body. But he is acquainted with a few shady characters of a dubious natures who have been known to perform nasty, unsavory acts with sharp instru-ments, firearms, and explosives.// Ah yes. Alliter-ations are always amusing, arcane and aggravat-ing.// “. . . more trouble.” ? Maybe it’s too late. If I were you I’d be careful opening the front door late at night or receiving packages that you don’t remember having ordered from any-where.]]

From: Ned BrooksMay 28, 2014

Hi Tom - What will you do for the 100th issue....

We had the warm spell - I took the cover off the A/C unit - and then ran it only once as it turned cold again. But it didn't get as low as freezing in the Atlanta area.

I am familiar with the parallel universe theory, which in SF was well explained by Mur-ray Leinster in SIDEWISE IN TIME in 1950. But that form of the theory would not include uni-verses bumping and bruising each other - they were to be imagined as laying as close to each other as the pages in a book, and the adjacent ones would vary only slightly - where do you think you lost socks go? Just the other day I print-ed a sheet of paper - and never found it again. These parallel universes are created at points where the probability of outcomes is so close to equal that both occur.

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Speaking of Indiana, I just saw a car with a bumper sticker for the “Indiana University of Penn-sylvania”. I googled and dis-covered that IUP is indeed a large university in Indiana County in Pennsylvania....

Your list of Toms misses St.Thomas More (1478-1535) - who had dis-senters burned at the stake. But he got his - Hen-ry VIII had his head removed for not agreeing to the king's matrimonial ambitions.

And then of course there was Doubting Thomas, and Peeping Tom - I am just reading a novel titled PEEPING TOM, where a critic who loathes Thomas Hardy gets hypnotized for age regression, and discovers not only that he WAS Thomas Hardy in a previous life, but that Thomas Hardy was a “peeping Tom”. After that it gets silly.

Six weeks after I started nagging the county about the large dead tree, they got it removed. I don't know how the removal was paid for - I couldn't tell just whose yard it was in, it was about on the line. When I had a similar tree removed, it cost $1000 - but GEICO paid for it. It would have cost them a lot more if the thing had fallen on my house or the neighbor's house.

Best,

Ned Brooks

[[ My impulsive reply to such a question as you ask would have been, “I have no idea at all.” But since your loc will be in TRF 100 that response would be wrong and the issue itself would be the actual answer.// I have to admit that while I’ve read a lot of Murray Leinster’s fic-tion (In fact, the first paperback SF novel that I bought was Leinster’s Four From Planet Five.) I haven’t read Sidewise In Time. I’ll have to make up for that failing. For me, any theory of parallel universes of any kind is difficult to understand. My brainpower just isn’t up to it, sadly. It occurs to me that parallel universes and and multiple universes might be two different things. Parallel

universes could be those in which all those who have lived and are living in our universe also existed and exist in other universes but with all sorts of possible dif-ferences or divergences. For example, in our universe John Doe is a garbage collec-tor, married with several chil-dren. In another he’s the

CEO of a large company, several times married and divorces and childless. In another he might be the minister of a mega-church, married with two children. In yet another, a neurosurgeon or a bank robber, the dictator of a small country, and so on. Whatever the imagination can con-ceive. But in the case of multiple universes, none of us in our universe exist in any of the others; in some there might be life forms that aren’t any-thing like us or universes where no life exists and so on.// Yes. I completely forgot about St. Thomas More. Also Tom Thumb, Tom Jones (the singer) and . It seems to me that novel started out silly and and then compounded it.// That the tree was finally removed should be an occasion for rejoicing. As the saying goes, “Don’t look a gift tree remover in the mouth” (Well, something like that.) and hope you don’t get a bill. But then why should you?]]

From: Milt Stevens

May 30, 2014

Dear Tom,

While reading Reluctant Famulus #99, it occurred to me that the universe was a very large place. The multiverse is even larger than that. The universe has been growing at an increasing rate for the last several centuries. As things are going, we will soon need a cosmology section on the evening news. You wouldn’t want the weath-er girl to do that part of the program. You would probably need a Gandalf lookalike with a long white beard.

My notion of the multiverse comes from mis-cellaneous statements from miscellaneous sources. In one model, the universes are mem-

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branes stacked a quarter of an inch apart. This sounds like a risky model. With tolerances like that, some entity might fart and cause universal disaster. In another model, you might have a uni-verse the size of a breadbox in your living room. This seems to imply that universes come in vary-ing sizes and overlap each other.

The multiverse should contain infinities of whatever we might want. There must be an infini-ty of earthlike planets where humans never devel-oped. That would give us a whole bunch of space for expansion. Unfortunately, there must also be an infinity of planets which are far more overpop-ulated than we are. People from there might want to move here. We might have an inter-dimension-al illegal alien problem.

There might also be planets where all the creatures which might have developed intelli-gence if humans hadn’t developed did develop intelligence. It would follow that some worlds had creatures which developed intelligence before we did and prevented us from doing it. The worst thing about infinities is that there are so many of them.

I suppose you could send copies of Reluctant Famulus to Greg Benford. I think his mailing address appears in Trap Door. If not, you could ask Robert Lictman for it. However, an answer on a physics question from Greg Benford might leave you with more questions than you started with. I remember one convention where he was talking about vacuum spontaneously generating matter. Really!!!Yours truly,

Milt Stevens6325 Keystone St.Simi Valley, CA 93063miltstevens@earthlink.netPS: When you send me a pdf file (which you did) I don’t need a printed copy of the zine.

[[ Yes indeed. Our universe is a very large place and maybe even larger than astronomers have calculated?and still growing. If all other univers-es?and who knows how many there are??are equal in size, then the Multiverse is mind stagger-ingly huge, far beyond our poor ability to con-ceive or believe. Not just a Gandalf look-alike but multiple look-alikes. Your thoughts about Multiverses are similar to ming. Whatever

imagination can conceive might exist in other universes. Then too there may be universes con-taining things we humans never thought of or could think of. It would be interesting to see a universe the size of a breadbox in any room in my house. Heck, our universe might be the size of a breadbox in some other, far larger universe. It’s too bad that we’ll likely never see any of those universes. What an experience that would be.// I know that Greg Benford read at least one issue of TRF because he had a brief comment on it. I wouldn’t need his physical address because I have his e-mail address from when he sent the e-mail. It would be possible to send him a PDF copy by e-mail but I lack the temerity to do so. He probably wouldn’t appreciate having his inbox cluttered by un-requested TRFs. But then he could easily delete them from his inbox or mark them as spam. Besides, I’d much rather have him spending his spare time writing SF for us to read.// I’ve read an article or two about matter spontaneously appearing from nowhere in a vacuum. Trying to picture such a thing almost causes brain seizures. My poor brain can’t take too much of that. Contending with the concept of a Multiverse is daunting and unnerv-ing enough. ]]

From: Brad FosterJune 1, 2014Greetings Tom ~

Just a quick note to let you know issue 99 got in safely, but am having to keep my fannish efforts a bit low for a while, trying to catch up on multiple projects, taking care of unexpected prob-lems that have cropped up, etc.

I see you still have one fillo left from me, so here is a new one to keep the stock up, and my subscription current. (I've got to finish off a few more small pieces as well, getting low on those!!!)

Looking forward to #100- hey, maybe you could do it as a look back over 100 issues, pull out your fave articles, art, whatnot? Or give us an overview of what was going on while you managed to get 100 issues of a fanzine together and out!

Sorry this isn't a better loc for the issue. Some

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times it's magic, and some-times... well, got to get to work! :)stay happy~Brad

[[ Sorry to hear about the unex-pected problems that cropped up. Such things are unavoid-able. The multiple projects must be time consuming enough as it is without making other commitments. Thanks for the fillo; they are always wel-come. As you will have seen, the 100th issue wasn’t anything outstanding or spectacular. It’s probably disappointing more than anything else.// You needn’t apologize for the koc. At least you took the time to send a fillo and a few kind words. There’s always next time.]]From: Joseph T Major1409 Christy AvenueLouisville, KY 4024-2040jtmajor@iglou.com

June 1, 2014

Dear Tom:

To my horror, when TRF #99 arrived, I noted that there was nothing in it from me! Oh, the shame, the vacancy . . .

I was laid off from work in May. Since I was the senior person there, that somehow did not seem right. They changed my job description without telling me. I have appealed, but this is bureaucracy and affairs are painfully slow.

So, I was unable to focus, to concentrate, and I let an entire issue of TRF go by. It feels like a failing . . .

Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch appeared together in a syndicated TV show. They and a gorilla went about hunting spirits. When a cer-tain movie was a big hit, an animation company produced a quick line of knockoffs. Which is why the animated sequel to the movie with Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd, and Bill Murray is titled The Real Ghostbusters. (It’s a better sequel than the live-action movies, I think.)

Some of those Thog’s Masterclass items

sound like lines from pulp hard-boiled detective fiction.

One of the results of the work on bypassing the Falls of the Ohio was that Corn Island was submerged (and eventual-ly dredged away). Corn Island was where the original settle-ment was at what would become Louisville. Someone bought the island and paid property tax on it for years, even when it was completely underwater.

I tend to think of Tesla as the patron saint of vaporware. After losing the War of Currents with Edison, he seems to have become somewhat dis-connected from reality. As I recall it, he would give an annual press conference to describe the technological wonders he was about to release. And another one next year. After a while, the reporters came for the amusement value.

I’ve read that Edison had problems with alter-nating current because the math for expressing it requires imaginary numbers and he could not make sense of those. But Westinghouse (and Tes-la) got the last laugh; Consolidated Edison even-tually quit distributing DC in New York. In 2007.

Finnegans Wake is one of those books more appreciated at a distance than read, I believe. I have run across perhaps four refrences to it in SF. In A Case of Conscience the protagonist, Fr. Ramón Ruiz-Sanchez, when not getting messed up in biology or the affairs of a giant lizard play-ing Rush Limbaugh, is studying Finnegans Wake to figure it out. (Blish liked the book, so his char-acters did.) In Spock Must Die!, when the Enter-prise is cast far away from the Federation, Uhura sends home a message in “Eurish”, which she says is the language in which Finnegans Wake is actually written. (And Spock Must Die! was list-ed as the first Star Trek book when it was actual-ly the second, the first having been written by Mack Reynolds with his usual obsessions.) In Philip José Farmer’s story in Dangerous Visions, “Riders of the Purple Wage”, the climax of the story involved a wretched pun linked to the book, along with the destruction of several bil-lion dollars of worthless currency that the antago-nist has been seeking for the past twenty years,

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ably for lack of something else to do. And in Samuel Delaney’s “Time Considered as a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones”, the protagonist’s pseudonyms all have the initials “HCE”, the sup-posed initials of the dreamer in Finnegans Wake. Whether any of these add anything to the stories in which they appear is another matter.

Namarie,

[[When I didn’t receive a loc from you I won-dered what had prevented it and how serious it was. Sorry to hear about your layoff. That had to really hurt in various way. Oh yes, bureaucra-cies are notoriously glacially slow and refuse to be prodded into quicker action until they’re good and ready. I hope you get good news about your employment soon.// That TV show pairing For-rest Tucker and Larry Storch (Corporal Agarn) must have been a crazy one. The gorilla was probably the brains of the group. I don’t recall seeing or hearing about that show?it sounds like the sort of thing I’d have watched and remem-bered. Maybe the show had a short life. // Those Thog examples were from a variety of genres, SF, fantasy, etc. And were committed by some well-known writers. Stephen Donaldson, for one; Steven King for another. The thing I find perplex-ing is that editors, proofreaders, typesetters and others let such things remain in the published product?and they’re supposed to be experienced professionals.// It does seem as if Tesla became disconnected from reality, as you note. And to think that there’s an automobile manufacturer called Tesla Motors. With a line of expensive electric cars. It seems to me that. Despite. It seems to me that I read somewhere that, despite Edison’s stature, AC became the standard rather than DC.//I get the impression that Finnegan's’s Wake is more talked about than read. It’s sort of like Delaney’s Dahlgren?and much to his dis-gust, I imagine. ]]

From J A Kaufman

June 11, 2014

Thanks for sending this issue and #98. I grew up in Cleveland, Shaker Heights, and

Cleveland Heights, Ohio. We learned a little about the Shakers in school because there was a Shaker colony in the area in the 19th century from around 1822 to 1889, with the peak of the colony in 1850, with 300 members. (I remember nothing from what we learned, and had to look these dates up in Wikipedia.) So I enjoyed read-ing Al Byrd's articles about the Shakers in Ken-tucky.

I'm another person who does not believe that our government colluded with the 9/11 conspira-tors (the ones who flew the planes and those who funded them). Some of the claims in the article you ran seemed entirely bogus. I don't have the time to read all the material in the conspiracy websites to find out where these claims originat-ed, but I did boggle at one statement that Google Earth showed a farmer digging a hole in the field that Flight 93 crashed into, weeks later. Google Earth didn't even exist in 2001. I found that there was a predecessor to Google Earth called Earth-viewer 3D that started in June of 2001, and that Google bought in 2004.

But I wonder how someone would be able to access views of Earth from Earthviewer 3D from the right time frame. Was this program available to the general public? Did it archive views of all parts of the globe that people could look at later? Did someone then decide to view that field until they located the farmer busily contributing his part to the hoax? What was the resolution of the images viewed?

I suppose someone on your mailing list can direct me to the exact part of the various conspir-acy sites that includes all this information. But to me, the claim seems more like a hoax than what it questions.

I love Karen Joy Fowler's work, so I will take Michaele's recommendation to heart.

I was very interested to read of the connec-tion between Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla. Two fascinating characters.

That's it for this letter. Yours, Jerry

[[ Until Al’s article on the Shakers about all I knew of them was that they were a religious

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group who got their name from their behavior during services, literally shaking.// I’m not one who follows conspiracies and for the most part have been ignorant of them and how many there are. I find it diffi-cult to believe that people high up in the U. S. Government got together and concocted a plan to destroy the World Trade Center for some political purpose and in doing so killed nearly 3,000 (estimates seem to vary somewhat) innocent people and an attack on The Pentagon. That just doesn’t make sense to me. Maybe I’m naive to think that way but I’m sure I’m not the only one. It seems to me to be stretch-ing credibility that a group of government higher-ups could conceive such a plot and keep it secret all the way to putting it into action. I know there are many people who don’t trust our government but I think they’re taking paranoia to a new lev-el. I’ll probable be castigated and ridiculed for thinking that way but I have as much right to dis-believe as those who believe the conspiracy. It all sounds like something out of a l “thriller” novel, more fiction than fact. In spite of all the evidence the conspiracy folks provide there are plenty of questions about the validity of the evi-dence and the truth of them. Out of curiosity I googled 9/11 conspiracy theories and was provid-ed with several detailed accounts of what the the-orists proposed. I suppose some of it makes sense.// Indeed, Twain and Tesla were fascinat-ing characters and, I think, larger than life ones at that; each adept at self-promotion.]] ]]

Dave ROWE8288 W Shelby State Road 44 FRANKLIN IN46131-92112014-June-10

Dear Tom,

You were hinting that Matt Howard might like to write a piece on the screen actor Forest Tucker because he comes from Indiana...

As one of your three regular correspon-dences

living in Indiana, the thought occurs that-Hoosiers James Dean,-Ilrendan Fester, WILl Geer, Greg Kinnear, and Steve McQueen would all make interesting subjects. And what about Marjorie Main who played Ma Kettle? But oddly enough, would have thought that Matt would have (more likely) written about

Karen Joy Fowler's quasi-SF novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, had not Michaele Jordan got there first. The simple reason for this supposition is that the book is placed firmly in the university town of Bloomington, Indiana. As are several of Fowler's short stories.

While on about Matt... remember his piece on the Chitlin' Circuit in the 1940s & 1950s? Heard an interview yesterday with Shep Gordon who is the subject of Mike Myer's documentary Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon. He was a agent whose clients included Terry Pender-grass who was playing the Chitlin' Circuit in the 1970s to 1980s. Gordon says that by then the Cir-cuit worked by having the bands play for nothing but the publicity and the organizers raked in all the cash. Gordon set out to break that, and says he did.

You're being a little hard on Garrison Keil-lor. His slow, laconic humor was a ampule anti-dote to the fast-fire, in-your-face repartee that many comics were dispensing. What went wrong was in the late 1980s a Minnesotan reporter broke the rules of journalism and published Keil-lor's address in an article. Keillor found his priva-cy shuttered so uprooted himself and his family and went to New York. From then on his real magic was lost. Lake Wobegon became slightly more realistic and even had a small edge to it.

The only person who criticized his singing got dropped from the show and that was back in the 1980s. Have you heard what he sounds like now,9191

Today, he's back in Minnesota (altho' he hasn't regained the magic), living in a large house with a large music room containing a grand piano. After the show, the staff and per-formers go back to his place and sing the night away, each choosing a song for all to sing. The only per

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son who does not choose is Keillor himself.A friend who appeared on the show, Katie

Burk, really admires him and noted that he wor-ries about the lack of musical education is schools but as far as literature goes he's doing a little more than just writing books. He's the pro-prietor of Common Good Books, a independent bookshop in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Looking forward to TRF 100.

[[ It’s not surprising that Indiana produced some other noteworthy famous people and not just some infamous ones. The only name you listed that I didn’t realize was Brendan Foster but that’s of no consequence. I would presume that Matt would write about things in which he was most interested.// I don’t think I was “. . . Being a little hard on Garrison Keillor.” Before we moved here to Kentucky I used to listened to A Prairie Home Companion every Saturday for years. If I had had the attitude toward him that you presume I wouldn’t have listened for all those years. I did enjoy the program and remem-ber it fondly. I also understood the nature of his program very well and that was why I listened to it. Just because I don’t use superlatives doesn’t mean I didn’t appreciate him and his program. I appreciate low-key, easy-going things myself. I haven’t heard what he sounds like now mainly because I don’t know what radio stations carry his program, assuming he still does it on a regu-lar basis. I have, however, read a couple of his books. It’s interesting that an off-hand comment to Milt Stevens should generate almost half your loc. I’m not complaining though because you have a right to express your opinion and took the time to write it. I appreciate that.]]

June 21, 2014

Dear TRFers,

#98 Trying very hard to get at least some-thing off to you--and just found #98--and here I thought I was almost caught up instead of almost almost.

Like Brad’s smiling alien giving all readers a thumb’s (or at least a first digit) up. I think you ought to give some serious thought to submitting

to some Mark Twain publication. But, for the sake of one's ego, I suggest you query the publi-cation first and ask them if someone might take a look at your manuscript. This way you have tak-en a set, but not stepped off the deep end. It gives the opportunity for someone more “in” to take a look and give you feedback. Just an idea.

FYI http://www.answers.com/topic/where-does-the-terrn-mark-twain-originate

Not sure how to denote a direct quote from a site so I just put in quotation marks and bold,

“Mark twain is a riverboat term meaning two fathoms (a depth of 12 feet or 3.6 meters). A hand lead is used for determining the depth of water where there is less than 20 fathoms. The lead consists of a lead weight of seven to 14 pounds (three to six kilograms) and a line of hemp or braided cotton, 25 fathoms (150 feet or 46 meters) in length. The line is marked at 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 17, and 20 fathoms. The soundings are taken by a leadsman who calls out the depths while standing on a platform projecting from the side of the ship, called “the chains.” The number of fathoms always forms the last part of the call. When the depth corresponds to any mark on the lead line, it is reported as “By the mark 7,” “By the mark 10,” etc. When the depth corresponds to a fathom between the marks on the line, it is reported as “By the deep 6,” etc. When the line is a fraction greater than a mark, it is reported as “And a half 7,” “And a quarter 5”; a fraction less than a mark is “Half less 7,” “Quarter less 10,” etc. If bottom is not reached, the call is “No bot-tom at 20 fathoms.”

“Mark Twain” was also the pseudonym cho-sen by American humorist Samuel L. Clemens. Supposedly, he chose the name because of its suggestive meaning, since it was a riverman’s term for water that was just barely safe for navi-gation. One implication of this “barely safe water” meaning was, as his character Huck Finn would later remark, “Mr. Mark Twain E he told the truth, mostly.” Another implication was that “barely safe water” usually made people ner-vous, or at least uncomfortable.”

Unless he is going to put in an Ouija board appearance so Mr Twain can enlighten us, I guess we are all going to have to select whatever story we like and stick with it!

Gene Stewart’s take on analysis hits home. I

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keep records every day and a weekly weight record. The daily records are of both exercise and food log. Granted, I am not as meticulous as I once was, but I’ve kept them for years. Yes, all the specific and analytical data are not as catchy as a yes (good) or no (bad) or a simple color cod-ing system as he suggests.

On the topic of unsolicited magazine subscriptions . . . It is presumed that I have a clinic building with a waiting room. So, about once every three/six months I am contacted by some company that simply changes/rotates my free waiting room copies of three different maga-zines. Since I have not put any money into it, I don’t bother to tell them to stop any one (or more) magazine which is decidedly not of inter-est and just re-cycle until another title enters the fray. I have not been tempted to, personally, sub-scribe to any of the magazines, but every now and then find some interesting articles.

I’ll keep an eye out for Neptune’s Brood. Michaele makes it out to be a good read!

I believe Coke is coming out with a “healthier” version. Vaguely, I recall that there is supposed to be green on it somewhere and stevia is the added non-sugar sweetener.

Well, my choice is to cut this short (late but short??) and get it mailed or continue to go over it and not have it ready to— Heck, I’ll move on to #99

Wow. Closing in on issue #100---that’s some-thing to crow about! Just starting to read Rat Stew so maybe this is mentioned further in. I alternate soy milk and almond milk (now sport-ing 50% more than dairy milk) so it was a sur-prise when I saw Hemp Milk just sitting brazenly on the shelf. (AGH. Just realized you are using double columns and I sent single---guess I need to redo it all one more time!) Back to our regular-ly scheduled program!

Nicki Lynch forwarded me a list of things Google. The one I need to start using is the stop-watch/alarm. It goes off after you have been online any specified length of time so the time sink effect is lessened. I really need to work on that. Way back when, if I needed to look up a

spelling, I’d get sidetracked on other words and spend much more time than planned just reading the dictionary. Now I can spend ten times more min-utes going from topic to topic. I rationalize it that I am not really wasting time, just sort of using more of it to get less done!

Getting out and about is, ide-ally, a good thing. A week or so ago the UV hazardous level was such that skin without sunblock

would be substantially burned within 15 minutes. That tends to make it a bit difficult to bike or play or . . . Without serious attention to skin care, including renewal of sunscreen from loss due to sweating (the goal of the physical activity in the first place!). Sad. I wonder how our Aussie fen handle this issue? If memory serves me cor-rectly, Australia has the highest skin cancer rate in the world yet I envision them as being out and about, physically active.

I hope that Lloyd and Yvonne can make it to LonCon 3. I had also hoped Brad and Cindy could make the trip too.

My condolences to Taral on the loss of his feline companion of many years.

We all get to wait and see what fanartist graces the cover of #100. Thish you have Brad Foster (two fillos!) and Steve Stiles (again two fil-los!) TRF really rates!

I need to download the Hugo packet even if I don't get around to reading it. I need to decide about getting a supporting membership for Sasquan. As the time nears for this year's World-con, I’ll try to pay closer attention to their site. When I am the least bit tempted about making a worldcon trip, I look at the simple finances and realize I have a built-in reason today: no.Have absolutely no idea what the software did with the text of this loc and I am finally bowing to the inevitable. I give up and this is a fait accompli—more or less.Thank you, as always,

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[[ Well it’s not as if you have nothing else going on in your life but replying to this fanzine.// As I’ve noted before, my articles on Mark Twain wouldn’t be up to the rigorous stan-dards of those professional Mark Twain organi-zations. I’ve bookmarked some of the more important Twain online sites since they have a lot of material on him.// That section you quoted deals with the origin of the term mark twain (note the lowercase), as used by riverboat men and long established by expert researchers in the field. The word twain (lowercase) is simply another word for two. It simply reinforces the ori-gin of the riverboat man’s use of terminology for depth soundings on the Mississippi River in par-ticular and were used years before Samuel Clemens apprenticed himself to learning the riv-er and ultimately becoming a riverboat pilot. Mark twain (note the lower case) is just one of the indicators of water depth in the Mississippi River; there’s no controversy or confusion over that. Sam Clemens in his piloting days was famil-iar with “barely safe water” because on at least two occasions he managed to ground his river-boat in such water. Fortunately, the grounding weren’t disastrous, though other riverboat men occasionally referred to Clemens’ mishaps.]] The confusion and controversy is over who first used Mark Twain (note the uppercase) as a pen name. There was a claim that the first person to use Mark Twain (again, note the uppercase) was claimed to be Captain Isaiah Sellers. Clemens didn’t help matter by telling newspaper reporters that he stole the pen name from Sellers after Sell-er’s death. The question arises: was that deliber-ate or was it due to faulty memory? In later years Clemens admitted that his memory was sometimes faulty. All available evidence amassed by Clemens/Twain’s biographers supports the contention that Clemens was indeed the first to use Mark Twain (uppercase again since it’s a proper name) as a pen name. But I’m going over old ground again and probably sounding tedious-ly repetitive.// As you will have seen, the cover wasn’t done by any of the real fanartists (entirely my fault for not having thought far enough ahead to beg for one) but the obscure T. D. S.// Many thanks for the little fillos and the article you were able to provide in spite of your busy, hectic,

tumultuous life. I appreciate all you effort and time spent on them.]]

From: Lloyd Penney

1706-24 Eva Rd.Etobicoke, ONCANADA M9C 2B2

June 25, 2014

Dear Tom:

Thanks once again for a Reluctant Famulus, this time, issue 99. I can hardly wait to see what you put in your centennial issue, but for the moment, here’s comments on 99.

Silliness and Frivolity…a bad thing? Definite-ly not. The active mind needs to play, and S&F (SF?) is part of the play. Fandom is a result of the need for play, physical, emotional and men-tal. I know I am one of many who feel that the fandom we know is slowly falling apart and dis-solving. More than ever, I feel we need zines like Ansible and File 770, our modern-day focal point zines, to sum up what’s left of fandom, and present it to us to keep us up to date.

I keep reading that the growing of hemp would allow our forests to repopulate, while giv-ing us a perfect source of paper and oil. Also, a large solar cell complex big enough could give the world all the electricity it needs. Yet, we rely on oil and coal, and we’ve probably poisoned our planet beyond repair. Why haven’t we been contacted by alien intelligence yet? Because we are patently insane, and we are willing to extin-guish our civilization for money. I expect we will have a planet-wide epiphany, yes, we must do something!...when it is far too late.

Are any of us ever caught up in our reading? I have so much to get caught up in, and interest wanes from time to time. Now, with the new job, I can get those few books I really want, and make my ever catching up even more impossi-ble.

Comments on the financial collapse of the cities reminds me of what’s happening in Detroit, just down the highway from me. The city cut off water supplies to nearly half of its remaining population because they had not paid, or were not able to pay, their water bills. The

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water rates up 9%, which doesn’t make it any easier to pay. A citi-zen’s group has gone to the United Nations, which has said that water is a basic human right, and that Detroit and its state-appointed financial manager had no right to do what they did. This all sounds very third-world.

My loc…I will make it official here, both Yvonne and I found full-time jobs, almost at the same time, and both companies seem to like us, and we are hoping to be kept on longer than three months. I am working in publishing for Transcontinental Media, working on assorted fly-ers, and Yvonne is the accounts payable person for Crown Wallpaper. And, we are both very much relieved. You’re right the unemployment situation here is much like where you are, lots of people looking for work, and lots of jobs avail-able, but no one seems qualified to fill the jobs available. Companies make the jobs so detailed and responsibility-filled, I am sure three people would have filled that job in a past era.

Some of my free time now comes in the mornings, so here is a loc written mostly before 7am! And here you are, Tom. Many thanks, take care, and I look forward to issue 100.Yours,Lloyd Penney.

[[ By the time you’ve gotten to your loc you’ll have gotten a good view of how TRF 100 turned out. I hope it wasn’t too great a disappointment.// Silliness and frivolity on occasion makes a good respite from all the serious, somber and sometimes gloomy stuff. That’s why I try to get some in when I find the right things. I must admit that I feel much the same as you do that, :the fandom we know is slowly falling apart and dis-solving.” It’s a sad fate but, I fear, an inevitable one. I wonder . . . Is it because most fans have many other activities to occupy their time? Or is it due to the existence of the Internet

and so many fans have drifted toward online activity such as Face-book and other so-called social media?.. There are alternate sources for making

such things as paper, fueling vehicles, producing electricity, and so on that would be beneficial to humans and the planet on which they live. But there are too many people who cling to the old ways, have a vested (economic) interest in cur-rent methods or just refuse to acknowledge all the harm we humans are doing to our home world, the only livable one we have. I agree with you that we humans are “patently insane” and seemingly self-destructive. Ant planet wide epiphany is likely to occur long after we’re gone and, yes, “when it’s far too late”.// I have delib-erately been creating a backlog of books to be read in addition to the ones I already have read and intend at some time to re-read. // Your and Yvonne’s getting full-time jobs is definitely good news. May you both keep them until you’re able to retire. It doesn’t help the unemployment situa-tion here in the U. S. That Congress (and particu-larly a certain portion of it) seems unwilling to do anything to improve the situation and seem fiercely determined to continue that way.]]

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At the end of the last issue I made a promise which I am breaking. But I couldn't help myself. There was an empty page that demanded to be filled so I could end up with an even number of pages. Sadistic fiend, aren't I?

Chapter 2 of the Book of Leavings,

It came to pass in the 900th year after the appear-ance of the children of Morron, Morron found that there were no houses of worship for the peo-ple to go to to sing his praises.And so the great god made a proclamation to his people through his chief prophet, Minor, that the people should build a temple unto him and make it worthy of his presence.The people heard and they obeyed; And the tem-ple was a sight indeed.Moron saw the temple and he was greatly pleased and he said unto his people, “I am great-ly pleased with my new temple.”But then he noticed that there were other reli-gions in the land, and their gods had more tem-ples than he; And Moron was grieved indeed.So grieved was he that he slew five thousand of his followers and ordered the rest to make more temples.His followers pitched in and soon they had con-structed twelve more temples.But the god Morron was not happy and he said unto his people, “I am not very happy. You have built unto me thirteen temples, and thirteen is not a good number. You must build more temples unto me.”And his chief prophet asked of Morron, “Chief, how many more temples.do you wish”“Fool,” Moron said, blasting his prophet to small pieces: for his wrath was great indeed.“My followers,” said he, “you must build tem-ples to me until I command you to cease. And one among you must become my new chief prophet.”The people bowed to his will and built unto him temple upon temple;And when they finished they had built 738 tem-ples to Morron, for he had declared that number as the holy number.Then in celebration of that event, he slew 738 men.“Let that be a warning to all who would chal-

lenge the greatness of the great god Morron.” he told his followers.Then, upon completion of his last temple, Mor-ron declared that his followers must spend 5 hours each week in the temples, singing his prais-es and thinking good thoughts about him.

Chapter 3 of the Book of Leavings

In the 1000th year Moron chose a new prophet to relay his words to the masses.And the prophet’s name was Mattock , and Mor-ron was greatly pleased with his new prophet.Through Mattock it was was that Morron passed down his laws and commandments for all to fol-low.These are Morron’s commandments:1. Thou shalt obey me as the only true god.2. Thou shalt worship in my temple for five hours each week.3.Thou shalt do my bidding in all matters.4. Thou shalt place me above thyself and all those close to you5 Thou shalt not take my name in vain.6.Thou shalt not kill; leave that to me.,7. Thou shalt not commit adultery— unless.8.Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods; everyone has exactly the same thing. Nothing.9.Thou shalt not mess around.10. Thou shalt obey the preceding nine command-ments. These commandments were written on tablets of mud in the handwriting of the great god’s secre-tary and given unto Mattock.And the people of Moron received these com-mandments with great reverence and placed them in the hall of Dung for all to see. And Mor-ron, in celebration slew 738 men and declared National Moron Day,And the people were greatly pleased and sang Morron’s praises. throughout the entire day.

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Still The Reluctant Famulus 100

Humph . . . Makin’ a big deal outta some crazy little magazine-like thingy! It’s all a buncha nonsense, if you ask me. A hunnerd issues . . . Why not wait and make it a tousand issues? That’d be something. Just pure silliness, if you ask me. I—