HAVING FAITH Chapter One - Drowning

 

I believe the watch made the lady a liar. She vanished into the Venice, Californian surf attired in a modest one piece green bathing suit and cap.  She miraculously reappeared five weeks later and five hundred miles away, dry as a bone. She said she had been kidnapped. But in the intervening five weeks the lady had acquired new shoes, a new dress and a corset...and her own wrist watch. 

Now, why would a kidnapper risk attracting notice by entering a busy hotel, break into a locked hotel room, just to steal an inexpensive watch with a plain leather band, all for a victim they professed to despise? To me that watch on her right arm is proof the popular evangelical radio minister Aimee Semple McPherson (above) had not been kidnapped. But that remains just my personal opinion, because in 1926 the Los Angeles County Prosecutor was a major league sleaze ball.

“Through green-white breakers swift I leap,

Sun-sparkled seas by body keep;
Bearer of Gospel-Glory I
With singing angels in my sky...”

At just about 3:30 in the afternoon of Tuesday, 18 May, 1926,  a rather plainly dressed middle aged woman, wearing no makeup, walked up to the front desk of the Ocean View Hotel, in Santa Monica, California. She gave her name as Miss Emma Shaffer (above), and explained to the deskman that she was the  private secretary to Sister Aimee Semple Mcpherson.  Sister Aimee had earlier rented a room, where she changed into her modest bathing suit. Aimee also left her wrist watch on the dresser before they exited the hotel. 

After crossing the Venice Boardwalk, the two women settled on a large towel under a rented umbrella. Sister Aimee had immediately gone into the ocean for a swim, while Miss Shaffer remained onshore.  When Aimee returned, she dried herself, sat on the sand and begun to dictate to Emma notes for her Sunday sermon  Then, just before three,  she sent Miss Shaffer into the Ocean View to phone Sister Aimee's Church of the Four Square Gospel to see if there were any urgent matters which required her attention.

There were none, but when the Emma returned to their umbrella on the crowded beach, Sister Aimee was gone. Assuming her employer was taking another swim, Emma waited perhaps twenty minutes, before running into hotel and asking for help.

“The cripples to my temple crowd,

I heal them, and they shout aloud.
A thousand miles my raptures go
Upon my magic radio.”

Hotel staff searched the beach and the surf,  but there was no sign of Sister Aimee. The police were called. A tracking dog had no trouble finding the missing evangelist’s towel, but only Aimee's scent remained on the sand.  One of the most famous women in Los Angeles was missing.

It was too late to make the evening editions of the battling daily newspapers. But overnight The Los Angeles Times, and William Randolph Hearst's  Herald American assigned dozens of reporters to the "beat".  Within 24 hours 500 reporters from across the nation would be chasing this story.  The morning headlines back east shouted, “Evangelist Feared Drown.”

“What's this? A terror-spasm grips

My heart-strings, and my reason slips.
Oh, God, it cannot be that I,
The bearer of Thy Word, should die!...”

It is hard to overstate Aimee Semple McPherson's influence in 1926. One in ten of Los Angeles' one million citizens claimed to be a member of her evangelical Pentecostal Church of the Four Square Gospel (above), with perhaps three quarters of a million adherents nationwide, thanks to her nation wide radio broadcasts.

That Tuesday evening Aimee's mother, Mrs Mildred Kennedy (known as Sister Minnie), preached in Aimee's stead at the Temple on Glendale Avenue (above), delivering the same muscular vibrant faith healing fundamentalist theology, but without the theatrical flair the faithful had come to expect from Aimee. And the first public acknowledgment of Sister Aimee's absence came at the end of the service, when Sister Minnie told the congregation that “'Sister went swimming this afternoon at 20 minutes to three, and she has not come back. Sister is gone. We know she is with Jesus.”

“My daughter's voice, my mother's kiss!

My pulpit-notes on Genesis!
Oh, count the souls I saved for Thee,
My Savior-wilt Thou not save me?”

The next morning, two air planes crisscrossed the stretch of sand (above), a half dozen life boats scoured the waters. A Coast Guard Cutter even sent down divers. By noon the worried crowd was reported at fifty thousand.  The Los Angeles Times reported in its Wednesday evening edition that overnight, “To the hundreds of men and women who wait in a huddled and silent mass beneath the open sky...Through the fog-bound, chilling night and then through the weary scorching hours of the day, the followers of the evangelist have kept their places on the sand..."She can't be dead. She can't be dead....God wouldn't let her die. She was too noble. Her work was too great. Her mission was not ended. She can't be dead."...

“Ten thousand to my aid would run,

Bring me my magic microphone!
Send me an angel, or a boat…

The senseless waters fill her throat.”

“In some manner word was spread about,” reported the Times, “that promptly at 2:30 p.m. Mrs. McPherson (above) would arise from the sea and speak to her followers. The appointed time came and many arose to look further out to sea. But it passed without the miracle... At noon, search of the sea was halted as hopeless. The long seine nets stretched from boat to boat which had dragged the ocean floor since Tuesday night were taken in.

"A boat containing life guards continued the search alone for a little while longer and then also gave up. The tide was left to do its own work....Only an occasional swimmer ventured into the water near the spot where Mrs. McPherson is supposed to have been drowned during the day. The place seemed to be shunned by bathers...”

“Ten million tons of waters hide

A woman's form, her Faith deride;
While thousands weep upon the shore,
And searchlights seek…and breakers roar…”

That Wednesday, a teenage girl saw Sister Aimee struggling in the waves, and raced into the surf to her rescue. But there was no Aimee, and the girl drown. After that the desperate amateurs were replaced by professional hard hat divers, who walked the sea bed from the Santa Monica Pier to the north, to Ballona Creek, three miles to the south. One of the frantic hard hats, a diver named Ed Harrison, succumbed to exhaustion and died. That meant two had died searching for Sister Aimee, but still the search continued and no body was found.

By the first of June, the desperate Minnie (above, left) had calculated the exact location of her daughter's remains, and in defiance of California Fish and Game regulations, four dynamite charges were set off in the waters, hoping to free Sister Aimee's body from the bottom sands. Nothing floated to the surface except a few sacrificial fish. The faithful lined the bay for weeks, spaced a hundred yards apart, walking back and forth, waiting for the sea to give up her dead. 

And then, 33 days later, Aimee's body reappeared five hundred miles away, in the middle of the Mexican Sonora desert. And as was to be expected, miraculously, she was alive.

“Oh, gallant souls that grope for light

Through matter's blind and lonely night!
Oh, pity our minds that seek to know
That which is so—
And piteously have forgot
That which is not! “

Upton Sinclair, “An Evangelist Drowns”

The New Republic, June 30, 1926

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FAKE HISTORY - The Bridge at Lodi

I begin with the event, as described in 1858 by John Stevens Cabot Abbot. “The line wheeled instantly into a dense and solid column, crowding the street with its impenetrable mass. Emerging from the shelter upon the full run, while rending the air with their enthusiastic shouts, they rushed upon the bridge...."

"...They were met by a murderous discharge…the whole head of the column was immediately cut down like grass before the scythe, and the progress of those in the rear was encumbered by piles of the dead. Still the column pressed on,…until it had forced its way to the middle of the bridge. Here it hesitated, wavered, and was on the point of retreating…"

"...when Napoleon, seizing a standard…placed himself at the head of the troops, and shouted, “Follow your general!” The bleeding mangled column, animated by this example, rushed with their bayonets upon the Austrian gunners….The French army now poured across the narrow passage like a torrent…” The great Prussian general and student of Napoleon’s methods, Karl Von Clauswitz, announced at the time, “There was no feat of arms which excited such amazement in Europe.” The audacity and courage of the attack across the bridge at Lod quickly made Napoleon famous in Germany and England as well as France. 

A century later the English poet Thomas Hardy would write;

“On that far-famed spot by Lodi, Where Napoleon clove his way

To his fame, when like a god he, Bent the nations to his sway…
Even as when the trackway thundered, With the charge of grenadiers, And the blood of forty hundred, Splashed its parapets and piers…”

Napoleon always contended that the Bridge at Lodi marked a transition in his life. “From that moment", he wrote, "I foresaw what I might be. Already I felt the earth flee from beneath me, as if I were being carried into the sky.”  The very night of the battle Napoleon told one of his generals, “They haven’t seen anything yet. In our time no one has the slightest conception of what is great. It is up to me to give them an example."  And an historian would later write, “The battle at Lodi convinced Napoleon Bonaparte that he was a man of destiny.” That conviction propelled him, in just six years, to declare himself Emperor of France, conquer of Europe.   But…

Forget the painting of crossing the French Alps. In 1796 the 27 year old Napoleon crossed the Alps on a mule not a stallion. The revolutionary government in Paris had given him command of the stalemated war in Italy because, as an official warned, "Advance this man or he will advance himself without you." Within an hour of taking command of 37,000 starving men in the Alpine foothills, Napoleon issued his first order. “I seek to lead you into the most fertile plains in the world…There you will find honor, glory, and riches.” And they did. Within a month and with a minimum of fighting Napoleon had outmaneuvered the 50,000 man Austrian army and cleared Italy south of the River Po.

That broad river now protected the Austrian Army under General Beaulieu and it did not seem possible that the outnumbered French could force their way across without suffering debilitating losses. But without pausing to consider the odds Napoleon feinted toward the bridge at Valenza. Then, “When certain that Beaulieu had his eye on that point, Bonaparte marched rapidly down the river, and crossed at Placentia…. Beaulieu took alarm, and withdrew the body of his army, …Bonaparte was jubilant. " ...Another victory," he declared, "and we shall be masters of Italy." (“A Life of Napoleon” by Ida Minerva Tarbell). That next victory was to be the Bridge at Lodi, on 10 May,  1796.  However…

The Austrians lost 355 men killed defending the bridge at Lodi, while estimates of the French dead run as high as 2,000. Also, the Lodi bridge (over the River Adda) was at most 200 feet long, not 600 as Napoleon claimed in his dispatches.  And even David Chandler, in his massive “The Campaigns of Napoleon” was forced to admit, “In sober fact, of course, the result was another disappointment…for once again Beaulieu had evaded his clutches and made good his escape.” 

In other words,  General Beaulieu was not present at Lodi, but only a 10,000 man Austrian rear guard, which would have abandoned the bridge without a fight if only given the chance. The Battle of the Bridge at Lodi was totally unnecessary - except for its role in the creation of the Napoleonic legend.

Philip Dwyer calls the legend of Napoleon leading the charge across the bridge, “…remarkable, since Bonaparte was not personally involved in the crossing and in the memories of the day he is not even mentioned….And yet, within a month, this ‘feat’…was to become the cornerstone of the Napoleonic legend.”  So, in truth, he wasn't there, he didn't lead the charge across the bridge, and even if he had, the charge, who ever lead it, didn't matter. 

And as far as proving to Napoleon his own greatness, Steven Englund, yet another Napoleon biographer, has observed that Napoleon’s “… belief in his own superiority was strong and clear and it predated Lodi” (Napoleon, p 108). 

So the traditional story of the Bridge at Lodi, Napoleon’s version, was largely what would today be called “spin”. And a decade after becoming Emperor, after the death of three to six million souls sacrificed to him and to opposing him, the map of Europe would look a great deal like it did before his rise.  Great social forces were unleashed by the French revolution but a decade and a half after Lodi Napoleon’s empire would consist of one large house on a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic.

In the wake of the invasion of modern day Iraq, and before the full implications of its bungling had become obvious, a member of a later generation of spin makers told reporter Ron Suskind, in October of 2004, “We’re an empire now and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality…we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too…We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

“Not a creature cares in Lodi, How Napoleon swept each arch,

Or where up and downward trod he, Or for his memorial March!
And if here, from strand to steeple, Be no stone to fame the fight,

Must I say the Lodi people, Are but viewing the crime aright?”
“The Bridge at Lodi” by Thomas Hardy, Spring 1887

                                  - 30 -  

ANOTHER CRAZY POLITICIAN

 

I found myself wondering how, over my lifetime,  politicians got so crazy.  And then I was reminded of Representative Marion Anthony Zioncheck,  This combative warrior toiled for almost a decade in the lumber camps north of Seattle,  to earn his college tuition. Then, in law school,  he was elected class president, and then campaigned for a new student union building.  

His successful tactics so offended the football team, who preferred the money be spent on a new training room,  they shaved his head and dumped him in the Drumheller Fountain (above) on campus. Then, as a successful criminal defense attorney,  he was often cited for contempt, once appealing a $25 fine all the way to the Washington State Supreme Court. In November of 1932 , as a Democrat, Zioncheck won a traditional Republican seat in the U.S. House of Representatives by 12 percentage points.

"This was a sophisticated and lucrative operation with a multi-tiered management structure. It was, however, nothing more than a prostitution ring."

Governor Eliot Spitzer, explaining a Staten Island vice ring he prosecuted after using their services.

In 1934 Marion Anthony Zioncheck was a freshman in the 73^rd Congress, one of 311 Democrats to just 117 Republicans. And while this was the congress famous for the Hundred Days of New Deal legislation, the 31 year old Marion earned his reputation as an intellectual bully, calling his G.O.P. colleges “fools and jackasses”.  He was once invited to “step out into the hall” so Republican William Ekwall of Oregon could “deal with him.”  

In a 1934 floor speech he referred to the director of the F.B.I., J. Edgar Hoover (above), as a dictator and a “master of fiction”.  That was politics as usual, but Marion then had a truckload of manure dumped on Hoover's front lawn. That was not usual politics, and the folks back on Puget Sound loved it.  Marion was re-elected that year with an even larger victory margin.

"The attractive lady...dropped into my lap....I chose not to dump her off."

Senator Gary Hart explaining a photo of Donna Rice sitting on his lap

In April of 1935, as part of the normal grease which helps the House to function, fellow Democrat Thomas Blanton from Texas sought to remove some of Zioncheck's more nasty attacks on Republicans from the official record. But Marion refused to allow it. To make a point he suggested, “I want it put in the record that Mr. Blanton is a son of Texas”. Marion then offered to have the offensive word “Texas” removed, and replaced by a blank space.

"Outside of the killings, Washington has one of the lowest crime rates in the country"

Mayor Marion Barry explaining his cities' high murder rate

Fellow Democratic Congressman Blanton called Zioncheck's suggestion “ridicules and asinine”. Zioncheck protested the word “asinine” as “un-parlimentary”. The Congressional staff were forced to look up the exact definition in a dictionary. The interruption only angered Blanton more. He had been censured by an earlier congress and missed being expelled by a half dozen votes. Now he charged ahead with his reply, and in finishing he slipped and refereed to Zioncheck as the “gentleman from New York”.  Anyone else would have ignored the gaff, but Marion pounced, sneering at his fellow Democrat, “I long ago learned not to describe the beauty of a morning sunrise to a cat.” 

Blanton (above) leapt to his feet, and stormed toward Marion, who met him with balled fists. They were separated by fellow members and Congressman Zioncheck's remarks, now including the ones about Blanton, were removed by vote of 272 to 0. Even Zioncheck did not vote to retain them.

"I actually did vote for the $87 billion, before I voted against it."

Sen. John Kerry explaining his voting record

Just after midnight on January 1^st, 1936, Marion stumbled into the lobby of a D.C. apartment building and hot wired the intercom so he could call every tenant at once. He identified himself and then wished them all a happy New Year. His sleepy victims did not appreciate the gesture, but the press did. It seemed some one had begun keeping newspapers notified of Marion's adventures...

,,,as when,  early in the morning a few weeks later the congressman was stopped by capital police doing 60 miles an hour up Connecticut Avenue (above).  Marion paid a $25 fine. Then in April, it happened again. This time the speed was 70 miles per hour. Marion paid a $45 fine, and the the judge slapped on a $20 fine for contempt. The papers began calling him the 'Salon Congressman” - as in "saloon", and “the House's Bad Boy”. 

It was even reported he had driven his roadster on the White House lawn. He hadn't. But when the White House did not strongly defend him, Marion mailed President Roosevelt a package of empty beer bottles and some mothballs, with no explanation.

"About this time, the Congressman's  car was stopped by the Park Service and Mrs. Battistella was able to open the door... The next thing I knew she was in the water."

Congressman Wilbur Mills explaining how his date, aka stripper Fanny Foxe, ended up in the Potomac River.

In April Marion (above, left) met a 21 year old Works Progress Administration typist from Texarkana, Texas, named Rubye Louise Nex (above, right).  Marion explained to Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior, "I met her about a week ago, then she called me up one night. She asked me down and so I went down and looked her over. She was OK.” Marion asked the Secretary to officiate at their wedding, but Ickes demurred. So Marion and Rubye crossed into Maryland, which had no waiting period for marriages. Rubye told the papers “excitement and hubbub” just seemed to follow her new husband,  and she was “glad to go along with him”.

"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."

Senate Candidate Christine O'Donnell explaining why she does not trust science

They decided to honeymoon in Florida, but were stopped almost immediately in Alexandria, Virginia, and charged with speeding. Marion posted a $200 bond, and continued on his honeymoon. Four days later their trip was interrupted again, 2 ½ miles south of Shallotte, North Carolina, when a county sheriff pulled Marion over, supposedly because that morning the Congressman had missed his court date back in Virginia. 

The head line read “Zioncheck Again Arrested”, and although no one in Washington thought to ask how, in 1934,  a county sheriff  had heard within four hours about a missed court appearance 300 miles away, I suspect some one whom Marion had insulted, was engineering all of these police encounters. Like, say, Mister Hoover?  When Alexandria refused to pay for Zioncheck's  extradition over a misdemeanor, the couple was released - but for the rest of the trip to Miami, Rubye did the driving.  And she received a couple of speeding tickets.

"The governor is hiking the Appalachian Trail."

Spokesman for then South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford

At this moment the Puerto Rician legislature passed a bill applying for statehood status. American congressional leadership asked Marion, since he was in Miami, to check out the situation. Marion and his new bride (above) flew there on Monday, 7 May, and what they found was not what Roosevelt's appointed governor, Blanton Winslip, had been telling the White House. 

He saw violence in the streets (above). Their car was chased by rock throwing youths, shouting nationalistic chants. But the White House was not prepared to listen, telling Marion the governor “is the sole and competent authority to carry out this government's policy”. So Marion went public, warning the Associated Press, “The United States ought to either get in or get out of here. This thing is like a snowball. It grows.” But because of the damage already done to his reputation, Marion's report was dismissed as the ravings of a drunken lunatic. A couple of auto accidents on the island did not help his credibility. 

"I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out under...President Jimmy Carter. I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence."

Representative Michele Bachmann, attempting to explain the 2011 flue outbreak.

On his return to New York, two weeks later, Marion and Rubye (above) entertained several reporters in his hotel room, even inventing a new drink -  cough syrup, honey and rye, which he dubbed a “zipper”, as in 'zip your lip'.  But if Marion thought this meeting was off the record he was sadly mistaken.

The alcoholic invention and treatment was made and was duly reported, and afterwards the couple were dared by photographers to wade into a fountain. Which they both did. The headlines shouted, “Zionchecks Go For A Paddle”.

"How's my favorite young stud doing?"

Congressman Mark Foley, e-mailing a 16 year old male page

Back in Washington at the end of May, Marion found his apartment occupied by Mrs. Benjamin Young, whom he was subletting from. His landlady thought Marion was unfit to be either a Congressman or to rent her property.  Despite the Zioncheck's lease having another five months to run, she refused to leave. So all three occupied the one bedroom together. Marion returned to work the next day, riding a bicycle to the capital as a publicity stunt and to avoid any further traffic tickets. But as a pedestrian he was arrested by Alexandria police Sargent George Helmuth, for that missed court appearance. He was only in jail long enough for a few more press photos to be taken , which made the front pages from D.C. to Seattle.

"PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air."

Governor and Presidential candidate Mitt Romney, explaining why he strapped his dog on the roof of a station wagon

A few days later, after yet another confrontation with Mrs. Young,  Marion dragged the screaming and kicking woman out into the hallway, where he dumped her. Luckily the press was on hand to snap more photos. These headlines read, “Zioncheck Puts Woman To Rout”, and “Zioncheck Checks Out Landlady”.  Mrs. Young claimed a broken hip, but refused to be examined. Reporters quoted her as saying, “We've got to see whether this country is going to be run by Bolshevism or Americanism” Mrs Young insisted the police report her as 92 years old.  Her driver's license said she was 42.

"Not only did I grope him, I tickled him until he couldn't breathe and four guys jumped on top of me."

Congressman Eric Massa explaining his boisterous lifestyle

Rubye could take no more of the circus, and walked out. And while she was gone, Marion threw a temper tantrum, tossing dishes and furniture about the apartment. Eventually the police were called again, and Anthony was arrested again. This time a friend bailed him out, but warned him the Democrats would offer no further public support. 

From this Marion became convinced that his 21 year old bride had been kidnapped by the 66 year old Vice President, fellow Democrat John "Cactus Jack" Nance Garner (above). The next time the police responded to his bizarre behavior, Marion was committed to a hospital for "mental observation".

"I said a little prayer before I actually did the fingerprint thing, and the picture."

Congressman Tom Delay, explaining why he was smiling in his mug shot

They locked him up in the Gallinger Municipal Hospital Psychopathic Ward, aka the Washington Asylum. Rubye came to the hospital, but only to speak with Marion's doctors.  During his three week evaluation, Marion announced he would not run for re-election. 

Just as a grand jury was convening to consider his sanity, Marion's friends got him shipped (above) to a clinic in Baltimore, Maryland, and outside of the Grand Juries' reach. He stayed there for a few days, before climbing a fence and disappearing. He surfaced a week later with Rubye in Chicago, fresh and seemingly recovered, and boarded a train for Seattle.

"I wish we lived in the day where you could challenge a person to a duel."

Senator Zell Miller explaining how much he disagreed with interviewer Chris Matthews

On his return home, Marion's mother urged him to run for re-election, saying it was the only way to prove he was not crazy. And on Monday, 3 August, 1936, Marion paid the $100 fee and filed papers to run again in November. That night he told a Seattle radio station, “I have been pictured as a vicious wide eyed radical ever since I was president of the student body at the University of Washington. Now I'm going to go back to congress...I'm going to clear up of things that were falsely said about me.” 

He opened a tiny campaign office on the 5^th floor of the Arctic Club Building (now a hotel) in downtown Seattle, at the corner of Third Avenue and Cherry Street. But Rubye insisted Marion see a psychiatrist, which he finally did on the afternoon of Friday, 7 August,  when he was evaluated by Dr. Edward Hoedemaker.

"First of all it happened during a period after she was in remission from cancer."

Senator John Edwards, explaining the timing of his infidelity while his wife' was dying from cancer.

Doctor Hoedemaker warned Rubye and Marion's brother-in-law, Bill Nadeau, who were to drive him to a political meeting that night, that they should keep a close eye on the congressman. 

After leaving the doctor's office they stopped off at Marion's headquarters in the Arctic building  so Marion could pick up some papers before addressing a postal workers banquet. When he did not come out after a few minutes, Bill went in after him. He found the office locked. A janitor opened the door, revealing Marion writing at his desk.

"If you are not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."

Congresswoman Katherine Harris, explaining her reasons for being a Republican

Bill looked at what Marion was writing, which he assumed were remarks for that night's meeting. The note read, “"My only hope in life was to improve the condition of an unfair economic system that held no promise to those that all the wealth of even a decent chance to survive, let alone live." 

The note made no sense to brother-in-law Bill Nadeau (above), so he told Marion, , “Come on, kid. We'll be late. Forget it”. As his charge stood up,  Bill held up Marion's suit jacket for him to put on. But instead Marion made a dive for the open window.  Desperately Bill reached for the Congressman's feet. By the time he reached the window, Marion was already dead on the sidewalk five floors below. 

"I haven't committed a crime. What I did was fail to comply with the law."

New York City Mayor David Dinkins, explaining why he did not pay his taxes

Marion Anthony Zioncheck tumbled 60 feet....

...sailing past the cream white terra cotta walruses (above) which lined the third floor exterior of the Arctic building, and landed on his head, spattering a passing loan broker, W.H. McFarlane, with his blood and brains. Rubye was the next to reach the body. She fainted on the sidewalk. Two thousand attended Marion's funeral, at which the Reverend Fred Shorter called him “a shell shocked comrade who died at the barricades, fighting to the very last for the poor and dispossessed.” 

It might be added, with hindsight, that Marion Zioncheck was probably a manic-depressive who was self medicating with alcohol, or perhaps a victim of schizophrenia, which often onsets during the late twenties and early thirties in adults. But whatever his illness, he was certainly not helped by the soulless cut-throat nature of Washington politics and press. But it makes me wonder why so many of those drawn into politics are so freaking nuts, to begin with. And why we keep electing them.

"If God had not intended for us to eat animals, how come he made them out of meat?"

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin

(All clippings from Marion Zioncheck Papers, University of Washington Libraries.

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