Mary Todd

 Mary Todd was born December 13, 1818 (202 years ago today) in Lexington, Kentucky, the fourth of seven children.  Her father was a wealthy banker, who owned slaves who worked in their fourteen room house.

At school, Mary studied French, literature, dance, drama and music.  After graduating in 1839, she moved to Springfield, Illinois to live with her married sister, Elizabeth Edwards.

That same year, Mary met a tall, prominent, but poor lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.  After an on again, off again, on again relationship, they married November 4, 1842 at her sister's home.  The marriage lasted more than twenty-two years and produced four sons.  

My mother, Margaret (Karch) Lasky, also produced four sons: Joel, Paul, Ted and me.

Mary's eldest, Robert Todd Lincoln, born in 1843, was a lawyer, businessman, US Secretary of War in President James Garfield's Administration and an Ambassador to the Court of St. James, appointed by President Benjamin Harrison.  He died in his sleep in 1926 just shy of his 83rd birthday.

Mary's second son, Edward Baker Lincoln, was born in 1846, but died four years later of tuberculosis.

The third was William Wallace Lincoln.  He was born in 1850 and died 1862 of typhoid fever while living at the White House while his father was president.

Mary's youngest child was Thomas (Tad) Lincoln who was born in 1853.  He died at 18 years of age from an undetermined cause.

After Mary was widowed in 1865, she returned to live with her family in Illinois.  In 1875, Robert Todd Lincoln had his mother institutionalized because of her erratic behavior.  Mary was later released into the custody of her sister.  

Mary then moved to Pau, France for four years.  Afterwards, she moved back to her sister's home in Springfield, Illinois where she died of a stroke in 1882 at the age of 63.      

Charade

The dictionary defines charade as "an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant or respectable appearance."

There is a connection between the above definition and the 1963 romantic mystery film Charade, produced and directed by Stanley Donen, written by Peter Stone and which starred Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Walter Matthau, James Coburn and George Kennedy.  

Henry Mancini's original song (Charade) was nominated for an Academy Award  (won by James Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn for Call Me Irresponsible in Papa's Delicate Condition).

What a cast!  Hepburn (Roman Holiday), Matthau (The Fortune Cookie), Coburn (Affliction) and Kennedy (Cool Hand Luke) are all Academy Award winners.  Grant (a two-time Academy Award nominee) received an honorary Academy Award "for his sheer brilliance in the acting business," according to his presenter, Frank Sinatra. 

Filmed on location in Paris, Charade tells the story of five former American soldiers who stole a quarter of a million dollars ($2,100,000 today) from the U.S. government during WWII and twenty years later try to retrieve it from a hiding place, each for themselves.  One of them, Charles, is found dead at the beginning of the film.  He had the money, but hid it from the others.  But where?  That is one of the film's mysteries.  

Three of the remaining four ex-G.I.s, Herman (Kennedy), Leopold (Ned Glass) and Tex (Coburn) are desperate to find the stolen loot, but are murdered, by whom?  A CIA administrator (Matthau) and a mystery man (Grant) are also looking for the money.  And they all believe Charles's widow (Hepburn) knows where it is, but she claims ignorance.

At the film's climax, the CIA administrator is really one of the original group of thieves (Dyle) who murdered the other four.  The mystery man is really an American government official (Brian) whose job it is to find stolen U.S. government property.  

Caught between the above two (Dyle and Brian), the widow doesn't know whom to believe.  Finally, she correctly trusts her romantic instincts to believe Brian, who saves her from the murderer (and later asks her to marry him).

And where is the money?  In plain sight.  On a plain ordinary envelope addressed by Charles to his wife are three rare postage stamps worth a quarter of a million dollars.  

   

     

High School, Chapter 11

 It's Saturday morning and I'm in a great mood.  Who wouldn't be after Ann's party last night?  And the kiss.  Maybe I should call her.

The phone rings.  Could it be Ann?  Unbelievable!

"Bennie?"

"Yeah."

"It's Beulah.  How are ya?"

I'm surprised.  I wasn't expecting this.  

"Fine.  What's goin' on?"

I hear giggling in the background.

"Look, Alexandra and Carla are here and we're gonna make some chocolate cakes for a bake sale at the church.  Wanna come and help?"

Wow!  Chocolate cakes and girls!  I can't miss this.

"Sure.  I'll be right over."

More giggling in the background.

After I arrive, they put an apron on me and I'm put to work.  Together we bake three big chocolate cakes with plenty of chocolate frosting.  We eat and lick some of the leftovers.  There's a lot of giggling goin' on.

I woke up this morning, 

I had to laugh 

  

Lucky

One of the old black-and-white movies I saw on TV in my youth was the 1943 Cary Grant romance, Mr. Lucky, in which he portrayed a professional gambler.  From early in my life, I have considered myself lucky as well.

Want some examples?  In December 1952, I had a very bad infection in my right knee and penicillin (see post) saved my life.  A mere eleven years earlier, penicillin wasn't available.  Nothing could have saved me.  I was lucky.

In 1954, I was a Polio Pioneer.  I was in the age group where the experimental Salk vaccine was injected into thousands of guinea pig children.  Not only did the vaccine work, but I was lucky I was not in the placebo group.

In the summer of 1955, my mother and I visited the New York State Fair in Syracuse.  At one exhibit I put my name on a paper for a chance to win a bust of Christopher Columbus.  I was lucky the first name drawn wasn't present.  Mine was second and I took home the bust.  Where is that bust?

In April 1963, I was one of three males participating in a dance contest at a night club at the Doral Beach Hotel in Miami Beach (The Greatest).  I did the twist and was lucky enough to be chosen the winner.  I still have the picture of me with the trophy, but not the trophy.  Where is it?

In October 1969, I was lucky to win a ticket to the third game of the World Series (see post) between the New York Mets and the Baltimore Orioles.  There were two tickets and three wanted one.  We drew straws and my luck came through again.  

But my biggest piece of luck came in 1978.  My ex-wife Bonita and I decided to buy a brand new Toyota Corolla station wagon.  

I financed the purchase of the car at a branch of the Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company across the street from my office at 375 Park Avenue in Manhattan.  The bank's loan officer told me I would receive a coupon book I would use when making the monthly payments.

Shortly thereafter, Bonita's mother died and she flew to Michigan with our daughter Rachel for the funeral.  Days later, I picked up our new car and drove by myself the 600 mile trip to join them.

Thirty days after taking out the car loan I had not yet received the coupon book.  I went to the bank to see the loan officer, ready to make my first payment.  She told me it was not possible to do it without a coupon.  I should be patient.

Sixty days after taking out the car loan I had not yet received the coupon book.  I went back to the bank.  The loan officer reiterated that I should patiently wait for the coupon book to arrive, which "it inevitably would."  She told me it was "not necessary to come back" to the bank until the coupon book arrived.  

The coupon book never arrived.  I never returned to the bank.  Years later, with the car I never paid for falling apart, I junked it.  In 1992, Manufacturers Hanover Trust Company was acquired by Chemical Bank (now known as JPMorgan Chase Bank), ceasing to exist.  Again, I was lucky, very lucky.  And I think, at 75 years of age, I still am.

Brevig Mission

 Brevig Mission is a very small village in western Alaska, bordering on the Bering Straits which separate that state from the Russian Federation.  It is named for the Norwegian Lutheran pastor who served the mission at the beginning of the 20th Century when it was founded.  In the 2010 Census, Brevig Mission had a population of 388 people, 90% of whom were from the Inuit tribe of indigenous people.

In 1918, Brevig Mission had a population of 80 people.  In only five days in November of that year, 72 of them died as a result of the so-called "Spanish flu."  Around the world about 50 million died over a two year period as a result of the deadliest pandemic in modern history.

"Lasting from February 1918 until April 1920, it infected about one-third of the world's population.  The first observations of the illness were documented in the United States in Fort Riley, Kansas and New York City, as well as in France, Germany and the United Kingdom."

"Historian Alfred W. Crosby stated in 2003 that the flu originated in Kansas.  In 2004, Author John M. Barry described a January 1918 outbreak in Haskell County, KS as the point of origin."  

As the USA, France, Germany and the UK were engaged at the time in The Great War (WWI),  their newspapers minimized reports of the influenza to maintain public morale.  However, in neutral Spain, news of the epidemic was so widespread, even King Alphonso XIII was gravely ill, that it gave rise to naming it the "Spanish Flu."

"As there were no antiviral drugs to treat the virus, and no antibiotics to treat the secondary bacterial infections, doctors would rely on a random assortment of medicines such as aspirin, quinine, castor oil and iodine."  

In the USA, between 500,000 to 800,000 people died as a result of the "Spanish Flu."  In Brazil, the number of fatalities was 300,000, including President Rodrigues Alves.  One of those American victims was Frederick Trump, a German immigrant and the grandfather of President Donald Trump.  

    

Betty, Girl Engineer

Growing up, one of my (and America's) favorite TV shows was Father Knows Best, a situation comedy (1954-1960) about the fictional middle-class Anderson family who lived in the fictional town of Springfield, somewhere in the American mid-west.  The title referred to the "head" of the family who seemed to know best or at least the rest of the family let him think he did.  The show was also popular in Brazil, dubbed into Portuguese (Papai Sabe Tudo).

Father Knows Best starred Robert Young (Jim, father, insurance salesman), Jane Wyatt (Margaret, mother, housewife), Elinor Donahue (Betty, teenage daughter), Billy Gray (Bud, teenage son) and Lauren Chapin (Kathy, young daughter).  I especially identified with Kathy as Lauren was almost exactly my age.  

I always wished my family would have been more like the Andersons.  Margaret, my mother's name, was the "voice of reason" who didn't hit her children like my mother, while Jim made time to be with and talk to his children, unlike my father.

Of the 203 episodes of Father Knows Best, the one I remember the most aired on Wednesday, April 11, 1956 (when I was 10 years-old), Betty, Girl Engineer, written by Roswell Rogers, with guest actor Roger Smith, who later starred in the series 77 Sunset Strip (1958-1964) and then was married to Ann-Margret (1967-2017).

The story: darling Betty signs up for a vocational program at her high school. Lots of girls are signing up for their chosen careers, and the counselor helps each of them write down "secretary". But Betty writes down "engineer" because she's good at math and did well on aptitude tests... and that's where the chaos begins!

She's assigned to work with a surveying crew for a week. Her family panics and tries to speak some "sense" into her. Her brother asks if she'll need chewing tobacco, her mother worries that she won't know whether to hang up "his" or "hers" towels in the bathroom, her father worries that he's losing his daughter.

At Betty's worksite her boss, Doyle Hobbs (Roger Smith), is an intolerant jerk. Doyle is a young upstart engineer who can't stop asking her what she's running from, or whether she's doing this to get back at her boyfriend. She challenges him, explaining that times change, women can vote now! And he says voting is just fine as long as you're home in time to cook supper, or something like that, and continues belittling her until she gives up and walks home.

To smooth things over, Doyle comes to Betty's house later with a box of chocolates.  He apologizes to her father that Betty seems like a nice girl, but boys want to be engineers so they can work hard and come home to girls that remind them of their mothers, and if girls start becoming engineers then what's the point?  Betty overhears this, runs upstairs, puts on a dress, and comes down to visit Doyle and agrees to go on a date with him.  And the whole family has a good laugh about how "silly" it would be for Betty to be an engineer.

As a ten year-old, this episode made me think.  Should girls be engineers?  That was a man's job...wasn't it?  Girls should be teachers, nurses, secretaries...right?

Gender stereotypes are hard to eradicate.  In the 1950s, there was a Society of Women Engineers.  Today, only about 13% of engineers in the USA are women, although in Brazil the number is closer to 50%.

I remember as an accounting major at Penn, my classmates were all male...or almost all.  One of my professors commented how cute it was that three of us were women.  What they must have felt?

When I started out my career as an accountant 53 years ago, there were almost no women accountants.  Today, 62% of accountants are female, while 50% of the full time staff at CPA firms are women.  That's progress!

A female friend from high school told me how difficult it was for her to become a doctor 50 years ago.  Today, 36% of doctors are women.  

When the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg entered Harvard Law School 64 years ago, she was one of 9 women out of a class of 500.  When my daughter went to the University of Pennsylvania Law School 23 years ago, women made up about half the class.  More progress.       

The Manchurian Candidate

The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 political thriller, directed by John Frankenheimer, written by George Axelrod and which starred Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, Angela Lansbury and James Gregory.  Lansbury was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress (won by Patty Duke for The Miracle Worker).

In the film, a platoon of American soldiers, including Captain Marco (Sinatra) and Sergeant Shaw (Harvey), are captured during the Korean War and brought to Manchuria (northeastern China) to undergo brainwashing by Russian and Chinese agents.  After three days, all but two of the soldiers (killed by Shaw under Chinese influence) are returned to American lines.  Unbeknownst to Shaw, he has been programmed to act as a sleeper-agent assassin for America's enemies.

Shaw's mother, Eleanor Iselin (Lansbury), is married to U.S. Senator John Iselin (Gregory), a prototype of Senator Joseph McCarthy (see post), who believes there are 57 known communists working in the Defense Department (but won't identify them by name).  He chooses the number 57 after looking at a bottle of Heinz ketchup.

Eleanor is also an American co-conspirator whose job it is to handle her son, the Chinese programmed assassin.  She's angry the Chinese chose her own son for this role and vows revenge.  

Eventually, Senator Iselin is selected as a major party's vice presidential candidate.  He and his wife will be at Madison Square Garden in New York, along with the presidential candidate, on the night the party's candidates will be officially nominated.  

Eleanor programs her son to assassinate the presidential candidate at the above event.  This would automatically make her husband the new presidential candidate with an excellent chance of becoming the next president of the United States and someone under the control of a foreign government.

However, Shaw kills his mother and Senator Iselin instead of what had been planned.  He dies a patriot after committing suicide.  

Is it possible Russia or China could put their own man/woman in the White House as portrayed in The Manchurian Candidate?