Chaos Theory

7-11

Free Slurpee Day.

Kaboom

Guess what you do with the cremains of a fireworks guy.

The dilemma.

On the one hand, someone died. On the other hand, he was a colossal asshole. What do you say? GO.

Happy wedding

Ben and Betsy.

How To Plan a Fireworks Show

FYI.

I'm with Aubrey...

Meh, adulthood makes holidays dull :P

Happy solstice!

I wish I could celebrate like this. Alas, 98% of my friends are out of town right now, the lone remaining friend wants to get together, and I'm still feeling the post-vacation-tired-sit-on-ass-watch-television hangover.

Erk. That's not good.

Today is Blog Like It's The End Of The World Day

Sadly, I'm posting the link to this way ahead of time, and won't be able to do it myself. Sniffle sniffle. Oh well, go read other people's.

Happy fucking Father's Day

"Kevin Federline is the new father of the year!
Just in time for Father's Day, Prive Las Vegas will award the proud papa of four his "father of the year" status at a party he is slated to host there June 13."

To the date of that, I can only say "of course."

"Looking back, Calhoun and Noble may not have been the best two people to create that memorial."

(Again catching up from the weekend...)

A Mom-umental Failure: The spectacular flameout of the mother of all D.C. memorials. (Washington Post) This is kind of a hoot to read about, especially the character of Daisy Calhoun. And it just gets funny in general at times.

"There's arguably a creepy, smothering, borderline-necrophilic tinge to Mother's Day as envisioned by Anna Jarvis. She suggested that the carnation be the symbol of the holiday, as "the carnation does not drop its petals, but hugs them to its heart as it dies, and so, too, mothers hug their children to their hearts, their mother love never dying."
Woodrow Wilson signed Mother's Day into law in 1914, but whatever joy Jarvis felt at her accomplishment was soon overtaken by rage, as the holiday quickly became an excuse for merchants to peddle posies and greeting cards. Jarvis spent the rest of her life trying to undo the damage. She lashed out at sons and daughters who would rather buy a card than write a letter. She formed something called the Mother's Day International Corporation and sued retailers and festival organizers who she felt violated her copyright. Like all good wild-eyed visionaries, she died penniless in a sanitarium. Naturally, she was buried next to her mother.
As for children, she never had any.

Margaret had children by both men, and the testimony as to what sort of mother her mother was depends on which branch of the family you talk to.
"We never speak poorly of her at all," Andrew Drury, Calhoun's grandson, told me. "My mother absolutely loved Daisy, thought she was an absolute blast, always very affectionate. I never heard of any problems there at all."
The widow of Andrew's half-brother, Charles Waring, has a different memory. "She was a horrible mother," Jane Waring said of Calhoun. "I mean, she was the antithesis of what you'd want for a mother."
Margaret, Jane Waring said, was raised by nannies. "Her mother was always gallivanting around, having her fine ideas. I find the whole [Mothers' Memorial] thing ironic."
Jane Waring summed up her mother-in-law's opinion of Calhoun with an anecdote about a phone call she received from Margaret: "She called me and said: 'Jane, tell your husband to come get the bitch. Daisy fell off the wall. That damn portrait came within inches of killing me.'"

Noble spent the next three years trying to pry money out of Daisy Calhoun and the Woman's Universal Alliance. On August 7, 1929, it looked as if he was finally going to get paid. He agreed to meet with the Calhouns in his lawyer's office in the Munsey Building at 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. A check for $30,000 was produced, and Noble was told it was his if he signed a document agreeing not to publish charges derogatory to the character of the Calhouns.
Noble thought that odd, but he signed. So did his third wife, Emilie, their lawyer, James Bird, and two people who had entered the Nobles' orbit in the previous two years: a businessman named Stephen A. Armstrong and a nurse named Anna Hillenbrand. Hillenbrand was the head of a women's group called the Alma Mater that was supposedly interested in building Noble's design. Washingtonians with a good memory might have recalled she'd once been accused of coercing an elderly woman she was caring for into changing her will, making Hillenbrand the beneficiary.
These, then, were the characters assembled in the conference room when, at a prearranged signal from an undercover officer the Calhouns had brought along ("Quick, get my glasses"), three deputy marshals burst in. Bird, the lawyer, started ripping up the agreement, but a deputy grabbed it from his hands. As Noble and his supporters were arrested for extortion, Daisy Calhoun jumped up and down, clapping her hands and shouting, "We caught you just like mice in a trap."

 

"Mrs. Calhoun said her husband is a Southerner and shoots to kill. She said if I tried to collect my debt from her, he would shoot me. I told her if he came to my house with a pistol, I'd punch it down his neck, and that, anyhow, he didn't look like he'd carry a very big gun."

This being the Post, there's a chat about it.

John Kelly: "I wrote in the Magazine yesterday about what I found: no physical memorial, just traces in archives, libraries and morgues of What Might Have Been. And probably What Shouldn't Have Been. (The memorial design was pretty hideous.) But what characters: A flaky debutante! A boxing art student! I got kind of fond of Daisy Calhoun and W. Clark Noble."

"Upper Marlboro, Md.: What is this hatred of parents or rather, a desperate need to be hip, that the Post shows every mother's and father's day in the Post magazine? Why did they think it appropriate to print this article on this day? For the past several years, every Mother and Father's Day, one can depend on the magazine running articles on how horrible someone's parent, or step-parent was, how they abused, or misused, or ignored, or otherwise screwed up their childhood, and how the author felt ambivalent about the person at separation or death. The contrivance has been used enough! Let it go! It's okay to have a well-researched story about a pretty freaking good parent for a change!!!"

"John Kelly: I don't think my story was anti-Mother. I love my mother. I just thought it was such an interesting tale, and one I hadn't seen before. Yes, the characters weren't exactly the best parents. But not all parents are. And I think that maybe explains why this thing imploded. Did they REALLY want to honor mothers? Or were they trying to do something else?
What did Tolstoy say? Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. I also believe that sentiment I ended the story with (if you got that far): We don't need memorials to remember our mothers. Or we shouldn't, anyway. As for why it ran on Mother's Day, well, that's the whole point."