PAINTING OVER

I guess it was inevitable that once these two met, their relationship would turn from unpleasant to downright ugly. Widow Jane Leland Stanford was a rigid, humorless, devoted temperance adherent who worshiped a vengeful God. She was described by an acquaintance as a lady with “ an assured position in the social and financial world."  In other words, she was born with a stick up her bum, and after the death of her husband, she exchanged the wood for steel. Her antagonist, Ashley David Montague Cooper, was what was once politely called a bohemian, but more accurately he was a hedonist, an inveterate gambler, a constant drunk, a profligate womanizer, and an atheist. He was also a very good painter. About the only thing these two agreed upon was that if there was a hell, then A.D. Cooper going there in a hand cart. And it was fitting that their relationship, such as it was, sank completely when it ran aground on her rocks.

Jane Stanford's jewelry collection was the guilt on the gilded age. During her lifetime she was known as the queen of diamonds, and her private hoard remains famous to this day because after her husband died in 1892 the United States government slapped a $15 million tax lien (half a billion in 2012 dollars) on his estate. Jane refused to pay even a portion of it, even though the drawn out legal battle threatened to destroy the memorial to her only child.

The story that Stanford University was founded when Harvard rejected Leland Stanford Jr. is a myth. The reality was that in 1884, when he was sixteen, the boy's doting parents rewarded Junior with a “grand tour” of Europe. It was while exploring the temples of Greece that the boy contracted typhus, and he died in Florence, Italy. The parents were heartbroken, and the little comfort Jane's husband could offer was to tell her, “Now, all of California will be our child”. He might have actually said that, as reason for founding the University that bares his name. Stanford University was supposed to be free for all qualified students, women admitted equally with men, and to “qualify students for personal success and direct usefulness in life.” And when the cold hearted tax collectors prevented Jane from transferring money to the university, Jane decided to sell her bling to keep the young university afloat. But first, she thought it would be a good idea to memorialize her donation. Consider it a sales pitch.

She carefully arraigned the 34 diamond studded tiaras, necklaces, cameos, bracelets, rings, ear rings, lockets, watches, diadems and other assorted brick-a-brack, on a red velvet piano cover, and had it photographed. And then, because the resultant black and white image (above) did not do justice to the $100,000.00 ($3 million today) collection, Jane decided to have the jewelery painted. In the spring of 1898 she hired the most talented (and expensive) painter she could find, Ashley David Montague Cooper. The idea of donating what she intending on paying Cooper, to the cash strapped university, never seems to have occurred to the lady.

By the time he was thirty, A.D. had already painted the President's official portrait – U.S. Grant. But his most famous painting was titled “Inquest on the Plains” and depicted a small circle of American buffalo in the snow, surrounding a dead Indian warrior. Subtle was not A.D.'s approach to art. Said a critic, “When he was good, he was brilliant; when he was bad, he was laughable.” Most of his darkly romantic western allegories were hanging in the finest homes from New York City to San Francisco. His studies of nude females, on the other hand, were hanging over most of the bars between San Francisco and his home and studio in Santa Cruz. He used them to pay off his own and his friend's bar bills. A.D. had many friends and he was generous to a fault. And that may have been why, when the messenger arrived from Jane Stanford, A.D. agreed to the climb up Nobb Hill to her 50 room San Francisco mansion.

The lady had a few rules. First, while he was working on the still-life of her jewelry, A.D. was to wear formal dress. Couldn't have her diamonds see A.D. in his shirt sleeves. Secondly, he was to arrive at work sober, and since no alcohol was allowed on the premises, he was to do no drinking on the job. To be certain that her rules were adhered to Jane's personal secretary, Bertha Berner, was to be in the room at all times. A.D. readily agreed, so Jane showed him the piano cover she had draped her jewelry upon, and the jewelry itself. To be honest, it did not seem like that complicated a job, a bit like asking Leonardo Da Vinci to paint a rumpus room. It wasn't as if the dowager was going to be looming over A.D. while he painted. The hedonist must have wondered, what could go wrong?.

What went wrong with A.D.'s plan was Bertha Berner. She was a slightly younger version of Jane Stanford; her hair locked down in a tight white bun, her bedroom and office adjacent to Jane's bedroom, upstairs. By A.D.'s second session with the hoard, once it was clear Bertha was not going away, A.D. snapped. According to Bertha, ““he rose … made a deep bow with a flourish, drew a flask from his pocket, and took a drink. Then he said, ‘Now you watch me put a little fire into that sapphire!’” Bertha probably reported this transgression to her mistress. But judging the work in progress, Jane decided to keep A.D. on the job and Bertha watching over the work..

Twice over the next few weeks A.D. became so inebriated Bertha had to be send him home. But climbing back aboard the wagon each time, he returned and forged ahead, memorializing this six foot by four foot record of wealth in every precise detail, until he had finished. A.D. was paid and discharged, and the painting hung in Mrs. Stanford's mansion's art gallery. For a few days it seemed the intrusion of the reprobate had been a mere bump in the broad serene calm which normally pervaded the Stanford mansion.

Then one morning a policeman knocked on the mansion's front door, delivering disturbing news. The officer reported to Bertha that a duplicate of the jewelery painting, this one on redwood, had appeared in the front window of a saloon in San Jose. And worse, the items depicted were prominently identified on the canvas to be the property of Jane Leland Stanford. It was like an advertisement for any thieves looking for a new target. A.D. had even showed the chutzpa to have boldly signed the copy.

  

What Jane Stanford supposedly said was recorded by her faithful servant Bertha. "What a sad thing,” she supposedly said. “All that talent, dulled by John Barleycorn.”  She thereupon dispatched a servant and the police officer via the San Francisco, San Jose, Monterrey Railroad to retrieve the copy of her painting. A little cash smoothed the transfer of the art from the saloon's window into the servant's hands, and it can be assumed that some silver also made its way into the police officer's pocket. Three hours later the copy was in Jane's hands, and promptly destroyed. And in any normal household that would have been the end of the entire affair.

It was not ended for Jane because, first, as a temperance supporter she had been made a laughing stock in front of her Nobb Hill sophisticates. And secondly, when Jane traveled to London to sell her jewels, she learned the unpleasant lesson all jewelry owners must eventually learn, about the difference between an insurance value of diamonds and the market value. Diamonds, it turns out, are for forever only until you try to sell them. Jane found buyers for only about ten of the jewels in the painting. Still that was enough to endow the University with $20, 000 a year to buy new books for the library. The fund is still being used for that purpose today, and is called “The Jewel Fund”. Also immediately upon her return to San Francisco Jane had A.D.'s original painting taken down from her gallery and placed in storage. The queen of diamonds found it too painful anymore to gaze upon her jewels. The next year, 1898, the Supreme Court ruled for the Stanford estate, and Jane no longer had to sell her diamonds.

A.D.'s original painting stayed in the basement of the Stanford Nobb Hill mansion until Jane's death in 1905. The old lady died while hiding out in Hawaii. She was convinced that someone was trying to poison her. The Hawaiian police suspected strychnine, but most people considered that nonsense. Jane had left Bertha $15,000 ( half a million today) and a house. Meanwhile the vast majority of Jane Stanford's estate, about $40 million (over a billion in today's dollars) went to the institution which bears her only son's name, Leland Stanford Junior University.

Ashley David Montague Cooper continued on his road to perdition, unimpeded by public disapproval or personal regret until 1919, when at the age of 62 “grey-haired, but stalwart and erect” the old reprobate married 36 year old Charlotte George. The couple shared five happy years together until A.D. died of tuberculosis, in September of 1924. Presumably he was exhausted. His painting of "Mrs. Stanford's Jewel Collection" was brought out of hiding after her death. Now considered "one of the most extraordinary still-lives of our time"  it hangs in Cantor Arts Center on the Stanford University campus. 

- 30 -

CLEVER HANS

"I can always tell which is the front end of a horse, but beyond that, my art is not above the ordinary."

Mark Twain

I retain a few doubts about Hans. I agree that he was clever, but how clever was he, really? Hans willingly cooperated with the man who proved he was as dumb as a horse. That was not very smart. And if Hans could actually preform basic math, why don't we see more horses working in banks? Sure, Hans might have been an equine genius, even capable of reading human minds, but what are the odds the only genius human- mind-reading horse would be bought by a retired gym teacher who just happened to be anxious to prove that horses could memorize the multiplication tables? Perhaps I should rein myself in here, and start at the beginning.

"Horses do think. Not very deeply, perhaps, but enough to get you into a lot of trouble."

Patricia Jacobson and Marcia Hayes - "A Horse Around the House"

Right out of the gate, Hans just looked smart (above). He was handsome, sleek, athletic and big, almost a thousand pounds and five and a half feet high at the shoulders. His breed had been founded by Count Orlov who crossed Russian mares with Arabian stallions, to produce spirited trotters. And then Count Rostophin threw in three oriental stallions to breed gentle, empathetic riding horses. So popular was the breed that by 1866 nearly half of all horses on Russian stud farms were Orlovs. And by the end of the 19^th century, they were even being sold in Europe.

"Small children are convinced that ponies deserve to see the inside of the house."

Maya Patel

The popularity of the Orlov is explained by the web site, InfoHorse.com (http://www.infohorse.com/ShowAd.asp?id=3693) ; “Possessed of amazing intelligence, they learn quickly and remember easily with few repetitions. There is often an uncanny understanding of what is wanted and needed of them....They can become extremely sensitive to the moods and emotions of their riders/owners, even reflecting them in self-carriage. Under saddle this makes for a partner of such willingness and awareness that traditional (dressage) exercises become poetry.”

"Horses are uncomfortable in the middle and dangerous at both ends."

Ian Fleming - Sunday Times of London, October 9, 1966

Which brings us to Wilhelm von Osten (above), a retired, grouchy, grumpy Berlin prep school mathematics teacher who believed that animal intelligence was sorely underrated. Beginning in the 1880's he attempted to teach simple math to a cat. The feline did not care scratch for his efforts, so von Osten switched his subject to a bear. The Ursula proved a bear market for von Osten's educational techniques. So in 1888 he bought a pony, whom he named Hans. Von Osten was giddy when, after a few weeks effort, when he wrote the number three on a blackboard, Hans tapped his right hoof three times. It seemed clear, to him at least, that he had harnessed the genius in the young stallion.

"It's always been and always will be the same in the world: The horse does the work and the coachman is tipped"

Old proverb

Von Osten now had the bit between his teeth. He asked Hans for the sum of three plus two, and the black beauty tapped his hoof five times. Eventually Hans was even figuring square roots and working with fractions. Hans even read a calendar, answering “, "If the eighth day of the month comes on a Tuesday, what is the date of the following Friday?” - something I would have trouble with. But there was more. Asked to identify a member of the crowd , Hans was able to tap out a name, using a complicated code chart, even though no one had told the horse the name. But after years of giving such public demonstrations before enthusiastic crowds, von Osten grew frustrated by official indifference. So, in the summer of 1902, he advertised for sale his “beautiful, gentle 7 year old stallion”, in a military newspaper. In fact Hans was not seven, and he was not really for sale, but the ad did mention, “He distinguishes ten colors, reads, knows the four arithmetic operations, etc.” That elicited the sought after response from cavalry officers, who stampeded to von Osten's house. They came prepared to mock but left impressed. Because of this growing support by such a respected segment of German society, within two years even the Minister for Education was singing Han's (and of course, von Osten's) praises.

“You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him participate in synchronized diving.”

Cuthbert Soup - “Another Whole 'Nother Story”

The mockery poured upon the Minister for those statements finally achieved Von Osten's goal. A panel of 13 “experts” was herded together; a veterinarian, a circus manager, a Cavalry officer, the Director of the Berlin Zoo, some school teachers and the psychologist Carl Stumpf, The panel ran Hans through his paces, and when faced with Han's 89.9% accuracy, came to the unanimous conclusion there were no tricks involved. That declaration even made the New York Times chuckle (“Berlin’s Wonderful Horse. He Can Do Almost Everything but Talk.”) The German government was now facing a night-mare of public humiliation. So before declaring himself mentally un-stable, Stumpf decided to go one step further. He asked his assistant, Oskar Pfungst, to put Hans through his paces.

I'd rather have a goddamn horse. A horse is at least human, for God's sake.

J.D. Salinger - “The Catcher in the Rye”

Pfungst designed experiments for Dr. Stumpf, and he now laid down four restrictions to begin a series of tests for Hans, to be conducted in the courtyard of the Psychological Institute of the University of Berlin. First Pfungst cut von Osten right out the herd. Then he put blinders on Hans, so he could only see the human asking the question. And then he varied whether the questioner knew the answer or not. The key turned out to this last bit. When the human was ignorant of the correct answer, Han's winning percentage dropped to just 6%. So Hans was only as smart as the human asking the question. That lead to testing the questioner. By closely watching the humans and not the horse, Pfungst found they were subtly and unconsciously tensing their muscles as Han's approached the correct answer, and showed a similar relaxation immediately afterward. Pfungst's theory was that Hans was watching for the same muscle clues he expected when a human was riding on his back. In his December 1904 report – "Clever Hans (the horse of Mr. von Osten) A Contribution To Experimental Animal And Human Psychology" - Plungst revealed, he could now “call forth at will all the various reactions of the horse by making the proper kind of voluntary movements, without asking the relevant question.” .

"Horse sense is the thing a horse has, which keeps it from betting on people."

W.C. Fields

But for me, von Osten's mane arguments were finally reduced to horse d'oeuvres when Pfungst used von Osten's techniques to train his own dog, Nora, to duplicate all of Hans' feats. Of course, having hitched his reputation to his halter-ego Hans, Von Osten bridled at the suggestion he was not a genius horse – Hans, that is. So he bolted for the exit - von Osten did, that is. He told a newspaper “one can hardly see in these experiments more than a kind of scholarly jest....” He retreated to his families' estate in Prussia. And there the bitter old man died, on July 3, 1909. He was buried at the Church of Zion (Zionskirchhof) back in Berlin

"If the world was truly a rational place, men would ride sidesaddle."

Rita Mae Brown

Hans, still as clever as ever, was adopted by Karl Krall, a wealthy jeweler in the west German town of Elberfeld. Krall was determined to prove Hans a genius, and the stallion continued to spend hours each day, now with two stall mates,  standing through interminable instruction and testing sessions. The horse genius was last heard of in 1916 when he was drafted, and probably died pulling wagons in World War One. Meanwhile, the "Clever Hans (in German “Kluge Hans”) Effect", still plagues researchers by producing false positive results by search, drug and bomb sniffing dogs, dolphins and primates used in language research and even human sufferers of autism. And I suspect it also occurs in contestants on American Idol.

"There are only two emotions that belong in the saddle; one is a sense of humor and the other is patience."

John Lyons

- 30 -

GETTING A HEAD

I would call it the definitive way of dealing with a swelled head. Oh sure, Oliver Cromwell had some doubts while he was dying. And it was about time he did. All his life Oliver had been such an imperious narcissistic autocrat that in retrospect, the despotic and conceited Charles I now seemed reasonable - once Oliver had beheaded Charles. But then Oliver went on the ultimate ego trip, launching a bloody war trying to eradicate Catholicism from Ireland. He would have had better luck trying to reintroduce the snakes. Oliver was so supercilious that in 1650 he wrote to a Scottish opponent, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ think it possible you may be mistaken,” and just three years later he suffered no such introspection while making himself dictator, because, “…the spirit of god (was) so strong upon me, I would not consult flesh and blood.” Flesh and blood has bowels, Oliver, it seems, did not. It turns out the one nation Oliver never even attempted to conquer was gaul 

And then at the age of 59, on his death bed, on the afternoon of September 3, 1658, Oliver was beset by humility at long last (as well as a urinary tract infection – which is what kills you when you don’t have antibiotics). Oliver whispered, “My design is to make what haste I can to be gone.” But it was too late to be hasty. Even dead, Oliver could no longer escape the judgment of those who had suffered under his turgid arrogance.

His corpse was entombed in Westminster Abbey, along with all those kings and queens he thought himself superior to. His followers attached a plate to his coffin reading “Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland”, so that on Judgment Day there would be no chance Oliver would be overlooked. They might as well have planted a big arrow above his crypt that read “Dig Here!”

Judgment day arrived less than three years later. As soon as Charles II was crowned king, he had 12 of those who had participated in his father’s trial tried for high treason. The inevitable executions which followed produced a macabre precursor of Super Bowl Week. From Monday October 8th through Saturday the 13th , 1660 (on the old Julian calendar), the twelve were each subjected to what contemporary witness William Harrison described as “The greatest and most grievous punishment used in England….drawing from the prison to the place of execution upon an hurdle or sled, where they are hanged till they be half dead, and then taken down…”. It wasn’t until after the hanging that the festivities really got started.

The guest-of-dishonor was stretched naked on a butcher block table. First, his genitalia were removed and displayed to him. They were then thrown into a fire. Then, according to English Wikipedia, “A splash of water was usually employed to wake the man if unconscious…A large cut was made in the gut…and the intestines would be spooled out on a device that resembled a dough roller. Each piece of organ would be burned before the sufferer's eyes, and when he was completely disemboweled, his head would be cut off.” And not quickly removed, with a single swipe of a massive sword or an axe, but via repeated whacks with a meat clever. The idea was not to kill the unfortunate honoree, but to torture and humiliate him, and thus to entertain the crowd.

This was a spectator sport, drawn out for hype and hyperbole. Samuel Pepys was there for the anticlimax. He noted in his diary, “Saturday 13 October…went out to Charing Cross, to see Major-general Harrison hanged, drawn, and quartered…He looking as cheerful as any man could do in that condition. He was presently cut down, and his head and heart shown to the people, at which there was great shouts of joy…After that I went…home, where I was angry with my wife for her things lying about, and in my passion kicked the little fine basket, which I bought her in Holland, and broke it, which troubled me after I had done it.” Ah, death, where is thy operate conditioning?

Oliver Cromwell, being legally and retroactively the villain-in-chief would not be spared these humiliations just because he was deceased. He was spared the pain, but then there had been the urinary tract infection. On the morning of January 30, 1661 Oliver’s corpse and those of two of his fellow deceased co-conspirators, were hung by their necks at Tyburn, the traditional place of execution for “commoners”. Ouch, that little insult must have hurt. The un-dearly departed hung in public, like hams in a smoke house, until four in the afternoon. Then their heads were removed; I presume they cut off Oliver’s last, as we are told it took eight chops. The poor executioner must have been shagged out from removing the first two heads.

After this academic execution, Oliver’s corpse was discarded into a pit and his head was raised upon a 20 foot wooden pole above the south side of Westminster Palace. Finally, Oliver was as aloof as he had always imagined himself to be, head and shoulders above all other contenders...except he no longer had any shoulders. And there he bobbled about in heavy winds until at least 1672, by which time it seems, people had begun to forget just whose head was which head.

Legends claim that Oliver’s pole was blown down in a storm and Oliver’s dome rolled into the hands of Mr. John Moore, a guard, who snuck the coconut home and stuffed the noggin in his chimney. When it was realized that the arch villain Oliver Cromwell had somehow escaped, rewards were offered and notices posted demanding and threatening punishments unless he were returned. To remain discreet, Mr. Moore gave the head to an apothecary in King Street, who then sold Oliver’s skull to a Mr. Humphrey Dove, Esq. Lawyer.  Dove kept Oliver confined to a chest until his death in 1687 – Mr. Dove’s death that is. After this it appears that Oliver made a clean getaway, no mean feat for a man with no feet...or legs. Or torso.

In 1710 a Claudius Du Puy opened a museum of curiosities in London containing as its most curious curiosity of all, the head of Oliver Cromwell. That the exhibit was a financial failure was no fault of Oliver’s. He did his part. He was still dead. He still had no body to support him . But was this head really Oliver’s head? Or was it an imposter’s skull masquerading as the demon Protestant?

It would not be until the 1930’s that two scientist issued a 109 page report authenticating to a “moral certainty” that the head in question was unquestionably the head of Oliver Cromwell. And on March 25, 1960 Oliver’s morally certain head was finally buried somewhere near the chapel of Sidney Sussex College, in Cambridge, England. And nobody will admit to knowing exactly where.

And that anonymity must be driving Oliver out of his skull!

- 30 -

AMERICAN NARCISSIST

I can see him clearly, as if he was standing next to me at this moment. And yet his image remains hazy. According to his drivers' license, he was five feet, nine inches tall, weighed 150 pounds and had gray hair. He was also described as “ ...a slight hollow-chested man”, of 46, with thin lips. And yet he remains an enigma. A neighbor, when shown several photographs of him, said, “ "I knew him well and he never looked like that.” And he was not just a physical enigma. Howard Kittle, the Clinton County agent and Farm Bureau manager, received a letter from him, and admitted that if anyone else had written it “I would have thought sure he was insane.'” But that was before - when he was an elected community leader, a trusted guardian of the communities' wealth and its future. Afterward - the Clinton County Republican-News was forced to wonder, “Is the building of a modern institution which equips children to meet the problems of the world a burden - or is it a privilege?” You see, the man at issue was a anti-tax warrior and an American narcissist.

Bath in 1927 was a little farm town of about 300 people 10 miles northeast of Lansing, Michigan. “(It) had a ( grain) elevator, a little drugstore, and you knew everybody within 20 miles” said a life long resident. In 1922 rural Clinton County closed its scattered one room school houses. They used $8,000 of their own hard earned money to buy five acres of ground just south of Bath. They borrowed $35,000 to build a two story Consolidated School building. Here, classes would be divided by ages, to protect the younger children from older bullies. With fewer teachers, higher standards could be required of the instructors, even a college teaching degree. And amenities such as a library, lunch programs, athletics, music and art were added. And buses picked children up at their front doors and returned them safely home each night. It was the foundation for the secure world we grew up in. And it was not cheap.

The future always costs. You either invest in it now, or, if you refuse, it proves much more expensive trying to catch up.  In 1922 property taxes in Clinton county were $12.26 per thousand dollars of valuation ($160 today, or over $16%). In 1923 those taxes had gone up by half to $18.80 ($235 today). This was not the decision of a few liberals. This was debated for years within the community. And over time the decision was made to invest in the future of Clinton County,  in the counties' children, and spend the money. Three years later, eager to eliminate the debt quickly, the elected leaders of Clinton County paid off $7,200 of their obligation, and taxes topped out at one dollar higher (to $240 per thousand in today's dollars). It was expected taxes would now start to drop, but that did not take into account the rising inflation of the late 1920's, and the selfishness of one egomaniac who chose not to have a future.

I shall not use his name because of something Neil Kaye, forensic psychiatrist at Jefferson Medical College told Time Magazine in April of 2007.  He said, “We glorify and revere these seemingly powerful people who take life. Meanwhile, I bet you couldn't tell me the name of even one of (serial killer) Ted Bundy's victims.” So let me just share headline from the New York Times, dated Wednesday, 18 May, 1927, to explain who this man was, by what this man did.  “Maniac blows up school, kills 42, mostly children; Had protested high taxes...Children Pinned in Debris. Others hurled against walls or out windows – Searchers still hunt for missing. Agonizing scenes in yard. Distraught parents find little ones dead beneath blankets...”. The early numbers were wrong, of course. The maniac killed eight adults and 34 children at the school, that day. The last little victim, nine year old Richard Fitz, would die of an infection caused by his injuries, a week short of a year after the Bath School Disaster. And that was the name of one of this selfish bastard's victims.

Just before he murdered 34 children, the maniac had bludgeoned his wife to death, restrained all his animals in a burning barn, killed every fruit tree on his farm, and burned all his expensive farm equipment. Interestingly, it was figured by the cleanup crews, that he could have paid off his mortgage and his property taxes by selling most of his well maintained farm equipment, which, according to his neighbors, he rarely used.  Neighbor M.J. “Monty” Ellsworth wrote later, “He was at the height of his glory when fixing machinery or tinkering...He spent so much time tinkering that he didn't prosper.”  The maniac also stood out, as a farmer, for his meticulous appearance. He changed his shirt quickly should a spot of dirt appear on it and was often seen sitting on his front porch, in a smoking jacket,  puffing on a cigar.  But his primary interest, his obsession, was in cutting taxes.

The maniac had been elected to the school board in 1924, two years after the new school had opened and the first election after the new higher tax rate had been announced. His platform was to cut the cost of the new school. In 1925, after the death of Maude Detluff, the board's treasure, he had been appointed to fill that position. His book keeping was, like his appearance, meticulous. After his suicide, his books showed  “a long and detailed explination” of a 22 cent discrepancy. But in the spring of 1926, when he ran for election to officially take on that job, the voters had rejected him. Once again, the majority approved investment in the future  That rejection appears to have sparked the fuse. The maniac stopped paying the mortgage or insurance on his farm. The previous owner, his wife's relatives, eventually began foreclosure proceedings  His crops began to rot in the fields.

There is a story that decades earlier, a promising career as an electrician in St. Louis had been cut short by a fall and a serious head injury.  So farming was the maniac's second choice. He married and moved to Clinton county right after the First World War. He might have over paid for his farm, because land prices were inflated at time. And his wife was afflicted with tuberculosis, a wasting disease before antibiotics. The Klu Klux Klan would even alleged his Catholicism encouraged him to destroy the school because it was not a Catholic school. But even if all of that were true, none of it would justify the cold blooded murder of 34 innocent children, and nine adults, and the farm animals. All the maniac could focus on was HIS taxes.

Before the school was built, he had opposed it. Once it was decided to build it, he insisted it should be a 10 grade institution, instead of 12. He opposed the inclusion of a library, or athletic programs or a music department . And he lost every argument. Once the building was constructed, the tax increase gave him  enough supporters to win election to the school board, where his obstinacy continued. He even opposed giving the superintendent a paid vacation each year, and then argued it should only be one week, not two. And as he lost each of these arguments, his obsession grew, day by day. Words used to describe him during this time were “surly”, “obstinate”, “impatient” and “arrogant”.  Eventually he began to invest his money not in his farm, or his wife,  but in World War surplus explosives, and to sneak them into the basement of the school house, rig them with a timer and set them to explode early on a Wednesday morning,  just after classes had begun.

The day after the bombing,  while still in shock and grief,  the Clinton Country Republican ran an editorial, which explains, far better than I ever could, the connection between the maniac's crime and his anti-tax fever. “That he was insane there is little doubt. But he was not always insane. To start with he was merely antagonistic. Then he became radical.. He was the victim of the progress of his own lack of balance...What a terrible price to pay for narrow-mindedness. What an awful calamity for one peaceful little community to bear for one man's lack of ordinary American ideals...Never before have we known of aversion of the cost of education taking such terrible form. There are, however, many people who unthinkingly hamper and discourage the progress of good schools and other institutions for the welfare and happiness of the public. What are we going to do about it?”

It is almost a century later, and the question begs to be asked of the nation which elected an admitted rapist President, and the power hungry unChristian unRight, - those who object to investing in the future because they do not believe they have one. What are the rest of us going to do about it?  And the answer appears this dawn of the Trump Presidency - NOT A DAMN THING.

- 30 -