RIOT! The Cost of the Purple

I would say the odds were that young “Rocky” Sabbatius was destined to die unknown, within 50 miles of his birth place, in the village of Tauresium on the banks of the Varda River, in what is today Macedonia. He was a very smart lad, and handsome, in a shy sort of way, a bit small by all accounts, but, his biggest failing was that Rocky was not overly ambitious. See, when Rocky was born the world still answered to bloodlines, brawn and ambition. But he was to be blessed by two strokes of luck in his life, which saved him from anonymity, failure and an early death. The first lucky break was that he had an uncle who was very, very ambitious.

Flavis Iustinus arrived in Constantinople sometime around 470 A.D. barefoot and hungry, an ignorant adolescent. His only possession was his ambition. He joined the army because soldiers were fed, and he rose in the ranks because war favors competency over blood lines. Iustinus was eventually made commander of the palace guards. That made him wealthy, by normal standards, which enabled him to bring his sister’s boy to the capital of the Byzantine Empire, and adopt him under the name of Flavius Petrus Sabbatius Iustinianus.  We'll just call him "Rocky".  It turned out this may have been the smartest thing Iustinus ever did, because when the emperor, Anastasius I, died in 519 A.D, the precocious lad advised Iustinus to take on the purple himself. And he did, becoming the Emperor Justin I.

Now, palace politics being what they are, being the adopted son of the emperor made Rocky as likely to be poisoned as he was to be the next emperor. But this was when Rocky had his second stroke of luck.

One night at the theatre he met a lovely comedian, talented, gorgeous, and just about his size. Her name was Theo, and Rocky was smart enough to recognize that she was as smart as he was, and twice as ambitious.

Her father had been an animal keeper for the Greens. These were one of what were the strongest most influential social groups in the Eastern Roman Empire, sports fans. Although Christianity was the official religion of the Empire, and since politics was off limits for everybody except the upper classes, the real religion and the real politics in Constantinople had become the choice of supporting either the Venti – the Blue - or the Pasini – the Green.

Each of these “clubs”, supported chariot races held in Constantinople’s Hippodrome, and were a sort of NASCAR, roller derby, ice hockey and Russian roulette all rolled into one, and with soccer hooligans thrown in for spice.

The drivers dressed in their club colors, green or blue: leather helmets, knee and shin pads, and a leather corset . They were all young, and one of the most famous lived to the ripe old age of 27, before he died in a crackup. The horses had even shorter life spans.

Each of the 24 races held each day of the season (which lasted only 66 days) pitted up to six Greens and six Blues against each other for five crash filled laps. The Christian emperors found this crash ‘em, smash ‘em preferable to old gladiatorial games because they were slightly more gory.

Everybody in town wore their team colors, usually a stripe along the legging or the hem of a dress or tunic. This started out as friendly rivalry, but the partisanship turned increasingly bitter until the fights in the stands between Venti and Pasini required that each group be given their own cheering sections. These fights were then morphed into gangs of Greens and Blues roaming the streets after dark, mugging and killing each other and the occasional a random passerby. The politicians got involved for the votes, and used the thugs to intimidate their political opponents. Screaming at the opposing side, even at the Emperor in the Hippodrome,  became the only chance the common folk had to make their voices heard.

The Greens were the largest and strongest club, and when Theo’s father died, her mother begged the Greens for a job or at lest a pension to support herself and her three daughters. The Greens turned her down. And that was why Theo had gone to work as an actress.

Rocky was smart enough to want to marry Theo, but he was prohibited by the law from marrying any woman below his social station. As an actress, Theo was a half step above being a prostitute, a recognized profession but you wouldn’t want your son to marry one. So, Rocky pushed his uncle to change the law. In 525 A.D. the happy couple became a happy couple, legally. This infuriated the nobility politicians, who spread false rumors about Theo’s shameless behavior, and noted that the Greens had tossed her out. Over night Rocky and Theo became rabid fans of the Blues. This may have been a mistake, because on 1 August, 527 A.D., Rocky’s uncle died, and the shy kid from a backwater of the Empire, and an actress from nowhere, became joint rulers of a big chunk of the known world, the Emperor Justinian and the Empress Theodora.

Rocky had big plans to rebuild the empire, but to do that he had to increase taxes, and that again offended the nobility, who were the only ones who paid taxes. Things came to a head on Saturday, 10 January, 532 A.D., when seven gang members, both Blues and Greens, were hanged for the murder of a minor city official. What brought things to a head was that only five of them died. Somehow two survived, one Green and one Blue. They took sanctuary in a monastery, which was quickly surrounded by soldiers, waiting to arrest them when they came out. Of course there was always the chance the entire thing was a set up, a little public play staged by the nobility to manipulate the masses. What we know for a fact is that the masses of people wanted both those two men, one Green and one Blue, pardoned and freed.

All day long, on Tuesday, 13 January , the crowd at the Hippodrome glowered at Rocky, sitting up in the royal box. As the 22nd race of the day was run, the Blues and Greens began to chant in ominous unison, “Win! Win! Win!” ("Niki, Niki, Niki", in Latin). Rocky thought it was a good idea to remove himself as an irritant and sneaked back into the palace, which was adjacent to the stadium.

As soon as that happened the crowds exploded out of the stands and filled the nearby streets, in a full riot, burning, looting and killing. Almost half the city went up in flames. With nightfall, the gangs occupied the Hippodrome, which allowed them to keep an eye on the palace.

As if it had been planned in advance, bright and early Wednesday morning, Senators appeared at the palace to offer their advice. It seemed to them, said the noble politicians, that what would calm the crowds would be to pardon the two surviving thugs. Rocky agreed. Well, suggested the politicians, how about also dismissing the tax collector?  Rocky agreed, again. And that was clearly a mistake. The Senators now decided they were in control, and on Thursday the mob from the Hippodrome marched through the streets to the home of the nobleman Hypatius, who was a nephew of old Anastasius. The crowds now proclaimed him their new Emperor.

In the palace, Rocky, urged on by some of his advisors, was contemplating a safe retreat by boat. And then Theo stood up. She may not have been much over five feet tall, but it was instantly clear she was the tallest person in that room.

Legend gives several versions of what Theo said, but in essence they all boil down to this, “Purple makes a fine burial shroud.” I guess you had to be there. But however she said it, Rocky and his advisers were embolden. Being powerful without a democracy is a risky existence. And sometimes staying in power requires that you run a little more risk. Rocky and Theo decided to stay and fight it out with the nobility, and to fight smart.

On Friday morning, a royal advisor (a eunuch named Narses), slipped into the Hippodrome. Quietly he met with the street leaders of the Blues, not their noble masters, the the gang leaders on the spot. He displayed his badge of office, a ring with the royal seal, given to him by the Emperor Rocky. Then he reminded the Blue leaders that the Emperor had long supported them over the Greens. He reminded them that their “new” emperor, Hypatius, was a Green and a nobleman. And then he handed out bags of gold, and retreated. Within a few hours, after talking the situation over among themselves, the Blues, in mass, filed out of the Hippodrome. There was no confrontation, and no argument. The now solitary Greens were stunned.

And while they remained stunned, two masses of soldiers stormed into the Hippodrome from both ends and slaughtered every body. All of them. The soldiers then tracked down Hypatius and hacked him to death as well. Those helpful noble Senators who had urged  Emperor Justinian to run for it,  \ were arrested, their wealth was seized and they were exiled. Or murdered. And as soon as all of that was done, the Blue leaders were slaughtered as well. In all some 30,000 people were butchered. No one dared to ever oppose Rocky again.

Rocky -  the Emperor Justinian -  became known as “the Emperor who never sleeps.” He was constantly in motion, and seemed to  be everywhere, paying attention to everything. And he trusted  the Empress Theodora so much he officially made her his co-Emperor. He got his higher taxes. He rebuilt the city of Constantinople, building perhaps the most magnificent church in all of Christendom, the Haggai Sophia (Holy Wisdom), which still stands to this day, now as a Mosque . He rebuilt much of the Roman Empire as well. Most of the ruins which still stand in Rome and Constantinople, are in fact, the product of Rocky and Theo's work.

His lady love, Theo, died on 28 June, 548 A.D., not yet 50 years old.  She was made a saint in Eastern Orthodox Christianity.  Rocky lived for another 17 lonely years, dieing on 14 November, 565 A.D. So successful was his reign, that he was also made a saint. And in a very odd way, his greatness was established by the riot that almost dethroned him. And by the woman who loved him. A little ambition at the right moment, can be a very good thing.

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All PROPHETS ARE FALSE- The Corvallis Love Cult

I am an admirer of the English philosopher Charles Chaplin, who observed that "Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot”. As an example I now present the life of Franz Edmund Creffeld,  who began life in 1871 with an extreme long shot in the far off kingdom of Germany.

Franz trained for the priesthood but was then forced to leave Germany and the Catholic Church in order to avoid military service. 

He immigrated to the United States, and in 1899 he arrived in the little town of Corvallis, Oregon, wearing the uniform (above) of a lieutenant in the Salvation Army.

Corvallis was (and is) a farming community on the West bank of the Willamette River, about half way between Portland and Eugene. At the turn of the 20th century it was home to nine churches, an Odd Fellows Hall, a Freemasons Lodge and a small core of about 25 adherents to the relatively new Salvation Army. 

The organization was revolutionary. William Booth (above, center) , the Army's founder, often became so possessed by "The Spirit" that he writhed on the floor and babbled in tongues. Also the Army was one of the few social or religious organizations at the turn of the century in which woman could hold respected leadership positions.

Despite these socially advanced elements, by 1903 the 29 year old Lt. Creffeld, was finding the strict doctrine and command structure of the Salvation Army to be too restrictive.  Franz chose instead to build upon his congregation, which contained a majority of women. And alone in the wilderness he  led them off the Salvation Army reservation. 

In the summer of 1903, under Franz's direction and in an act of extraordinary sexual independence for the time, the two dozen female  members built,  with their own hands,  a meeting house on Kiger Island, a 2200 acre wooded sanctuary in the Willamette River, just south of Corvallis.

That summer the sect was bursting with curious women and girls drawn to the power of the handsome charismatic Franz Creffeld's preaching  and the forbidden hints of feminism. His Salvation Army commanders described Lt. Creeffeld’s adherents as “Come-Outers” but they described themselves as “Holy Rollers”.

Come winter the revolution shifted back to town, into the home and family of prominent local businessman and convert, Mr. O.P. Hunt,, Mrs. Hunt, along with their sons and daughters - particularly their youngest daughter Maude Hunt (above, left) . Mr. Hunt hung a sign over his front door: “Positively No Admittance Except on God's Business”. The return to town brought increased scrutiny from the unconverted males of Corvallis, and they did not like what they observed. Even less did they like what they suspected.

Rumors told of nighttime naked rambles in the wilds of Kiger Island. And when the wooden sidewalks around the Hunt home were torn up and burned, along with stacks of furniture and piles of kitchen utensils, all to cleanse the Hunt family's soul of the temptation represented by physical property, one of the local newspapers suggested they were suffering from “…a condition bordering on insanity”.

Franz's flock were encouraged to wear old clothes instead of new. Members were discouraged from having contact with family members who were not Creffeld's followers. Indeed, the now bearded Franz began referring to himself as a prophet. He announced that henceforth he was to be called “Joshua II”  It was too much for a good Christian manhood of Corvallis to tolerate.

On the night of 4 January, 1904 a dozen or so self described “white cappers” (adorning themselves in the Klu Klux Klan’s white robes) set upon Franz Creffeld and on Mister Hunt. The pair were dragged to the edge of town. There both men were threatened with tar and feathers. (I doubt they actually applied the treatment since the usual effect of hot tar on human flesh is serious burns, often  resulting in the victim’s death. And no such injury was recorded by Creffeld.)

More likely Franz was merely roughed up, frightened and then chased into the woods, where later Mrs. Hunt and Maude were able to find and secretly escort the prophet and Mister Hunt back to their home. Shortly thereafter the town was appeased by news that “Joshua” and young Maude Hunt (above) had been married. The sexual escapades of “Joshua”, real or imagined, would seemed to have been ended.

Still it was clear that the locals had reached some sort of limit. Although there had never been more than 20 adherents to "Joshua/Franz's sect, a half dozen of his young female followers were committed by their parents to the “Boys and Girls Aid Society” - including O.P. Hunt’s son and Franz's new bride. Others were shipped off to relatives out of state. One or two women were even committed to the state lunatic asylum (above), in Salem.

A sullen quiet catching of breath settled over the town. But that ended in April of 1904 when the Portland police issued an arrest warrant for Franz on a charge of adultery with a young adherent from that town, Esther Mitchel. The aggrieved party was George Mitchel, Esther's elder brother. George  even posted a $150 reward for the arrest of "Joshua".

Franz immediately disappeared, and was not seen again in Corvallis until August, when he was discovered by a young boy. The Prophet Joshua was filthy, nude and starving, hiding beneath the Hunt household. 

Arrested and tried in Portland, Franz was found guilty of adultery and sentenced to two years in the state prison.

And it was upon his arrival there, shaved and bathed,  that we get our first (and only) clear look at the real Franz Creffeld.  He stood five feet six inches tall, and weighed 135 pounds. There is something mystical about his eyes. They were “hypnotic”, glaring defiantly, almost mockingly, into the camera. For the first time you can begin to get a feeling for the power and attraction of this man's lunacy. This was the man all those women were swooning for?

Jail could not restrain or reform Franz Creffeld. He was released, with time off for good behavior, in February of 1906. What he could not know at the time was that he had barely three months left to live.

 Out of jail, Franz immediately reconstituted his flock, especially the Hunt family, who sold their property in Corvallis and used the funds to purchase property near the small town of Waldport, where Alsea Bay meets the Pacific Ocean. 

The Hunt family had deep roots in Waldport, but even here the bizarre practises of Franz's  church caused friction, in particular when a young girl spied several female followers cavorting naked on the beach. And, after one male family member tired to take a shot at him, Franz decided it would be safer to move to the more cosmopolitan Seattle, Washington.

And it was in Seattle, on 7 May, 1906, that Franz (Joshua II) Creffeld and Maude, out for a walk, paused in front of Quick’s Drugstore on First Street. There George Mitchell, convinced his sister Esther had been and was still being violated by the prophet, shot Franz in the back of the head. The prophet died instantly.

George Mitchell was tried in Seattle. His lawyers skillfully put The Prophet's behavior on trial. On 10 July, 1906  the jury came back after deliberating for just an hour and a half. To no one's surprise the verdict was “not guilty”. 

After celebrating for three days, George Mitchell was preparing for a reconciliation meeting with his sister Esther at the Seattle train station, when he was gunned down - by his own sister, Esther Mitchell.

She told the first police to arrive, “Of course I killed George. He killed Joshua the Prophet, didn’t he? What else was there for us to do?” The Seattle Police Chief, Charles Wappenstein, complained, “I wish these Oregon people would kill each other on their own side of the river.”

Esther’s use of the word “us” was correct. Maude had bought the gun and Esther had used it. 

While awaiting trial for this offense. Maude drank strychnine. Her father, O.V. Hunt, arraigned to have Franz’s body exhumed and reburied next to Maude’s, back in Oregon.

At her trial for the murder of her brother,  Esther Mitchell was judged to be insane. For three years she survived in the Washington State Asylum at Steilacoom. She was released on 5 April, 1909, and was according to the hospital staff, “thoroughly disgusted with herself”. That diagnosis would appear to have been incorrect. Mr. O.V. Hunt collected Esther and took her with him back to Waldport. There Esther managed to find some peace, and in 1914 at the age of 26, she married.

But three months later Esther ("X") drank strychnine, just like Maude. It was time for the final fade to black. Except there was to be a sequel.

On 26 March, 1997, outside of San Diego, California, some 40 members of the religious group “Heaven’s Gate”, committed suicide. It was, they believed, the price for a ticket aboard the space ship approaching earth from behind the comet Hale Bop.  About twenty of those deluded unfortunates were decedents of the Franz Creffeld’s movement, who had been recruited from Waldport in September of 1975. Final fade to black.

Fade in a title card, which reads; Tom Stoppard, another Englishman, wrote, “The bad end unhappily, the good unluckily. That is what tragedy means”.

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DOES YOUR COW POINT NORTH

I am certain that some will think this story is much a moo about nothing. But I think it behooves us to consider the implications of what at first blush seems like a simply grazy observation. Back in 2008 zoologists Sabine Begall and Hynek Burda of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany made the startling discovery that at any given instant on any given day, two out of every three cows  - and roe and red deer - standing in fields all over the earth have steered themselves along North-South magnetic lines, as if they were over sized leather covered compass needles. We don’t yet know for certain if they are headed for the North Star or aiming their dairy-airs south, but we now know that those of us with frontal mental lobes, single chambered stomachs and just two teats apiece have been missing the meat of this story for the last 10,000 years.

The word “cow” derives from the Latin word ”caput”, meaning the head, which is the ancient way of counting cows, as in “Me and Tex are driving five hundred head to Abilene”. Clearly it was the head of the living cow that Gandi was thinking of when he wrote, “The cow is a poem of pity…She is the second mother to millions of mankind.” She is also, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the source of 18% of the world’s methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. And almost one third of the world’s oversupply of cow burps (the primary source of bovine methane) comes from India’s 280 million sacred cows. Holy or not, cows belch so much because they re-chew their cuds, regurgitating and re-digesting the cellulose over and over again. So the first secret of cows is that every cow is bull-limic.

The emotional life of the average Daisy or Bessie has been described as comparable to a potato on sedatives. But complexity was always hidden just beneath the hide. The American Humane Society has taken note that if one herd member is shocked by an electric fence, the entire herd avoids the wire. English linguistic bull artists have noted that cows moo in local dialects and inflections. And it has long been common knowledge that ungulates form their own bovine breakfast clubs. Three or four females establish lifelong bonds, a cow herd within the herd, or a “curd” if you will. Daisy actually enjoys a rich emotional life, nurturing animosities against her fellows, developing friendships and even mulling over the bovine equivalent of the Stephen Sondheim conundrum, “Is grass all there is?"

This shared arrogance of our two species matches the obsession of Bessie with a subject familiar to many obsessive humans; sex. Eric Idle has described cows as the “…librarians of the animal world; mild by day, wild by night." And John Webster, a professor of animal husbandry at Bristol University in England, describes cows as “gay nymphomaniacs”. The “curds” constantly cowlick one another. And a single Bessie in “heat” can set off a Daisy chain of cow girls “mounting” herd mates in a riot of bovine dominatrix behavior. Unseen by inattentive humans, a pasture of grazing Gurneys is in reality a seething mass of bored libidos on steroids. Literally  It gives a whole new meaning to the term “pasteurization”.

Few have ever denied that individually cows process a certain personal magnetism. Their sheer bulk demands respect, if not religious devotion. These are not cuddly creatures. The one point three billion cows alive at this moment are ponderous moovers and shakers, and udderly unimpressed with humanities’ crème-de-la-crème, logic. Every dairyman has herd that cattle tend to face uphill, into strong winds or turn their flank steak to the sunny side on a cold morning; and that all seems plausible. But the idea that these cow hides might be sharing some kind of mystical, new-age ferris sensitivity seemed until 2008 to be an oxymoron. But scientists seeking out the magnetic orientation of hills created by the European ground mole (Talpa europaea), stumbled over the realization that perhaps larger mammals might also be influenced by something other than human magnetism.  And this seemed confirmed by further study.

German researchers examined Google Earth photographs taken at the same local time of day, observing some 8,510 individual cows in 308 separate herds on five different continents, at essentially the same moment.  And the humans stumbled upon this udderly amazing fact; cows got magnetism. Generally, at any given moment, 70 % of the cows in any herd are standing about five degrees off of true North-South orientation. In Oregon State, closer to the North Pole, the deviation of cows is all of 17.5 degrees. In the southern hemisphere (Africa and South America) the alignment was slightly more north-eastern, south-western. Still, adjusted for latitude, 70% of all cows point toward the magnetic pole, and this is much too large a percentage to be a mere homogenized coincidence. The next question is, of course, why have cows got magnetism?

Cows are not migratory, but they once may have been. Cows share a common ancestor with whales, the “Pakictids”, which 53 million years ago had a whale’s ear and a cow’s teeth in a really ugly little dog’s body -  sort of a Mexican hairless meth addict with hair.  Could this ancient mongrel have been the source of the current magnetic deju moo?  It could, if it milked its genes for all they were worth.

So it seems, upon rumination, that we owe cows an apology, that to err might be human but to forgive could be bovine. But stop the stampede for animal rights. My guess is we could be apologizing to Daisy and Bessie “auf die Ewigkeit warten”, as they say in Germany, and it would make no difference because Daisy and Bessie are not particularly interested in our moo-tivations, because cows are just as conceited as we humans are. And in the final rendering the squeaky veal always gets the cud. Holy, cow!

P.S. Photographs are from “The Secret Life of Cows” by Glen Wexler.

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