WHAT'S EATING YOU?

I wonder if Superman ever has a creepy crawly moment, just before he steps into the shower maybe, when out of the corner of his X-Ray Super vision he notices a bunch of little buggies crawling over his skin. Of course his skin is "super" and never wears out, meaning he does not support a menagerie of livestock, grazing on his desiccated flesh, like we do. And I've got to say, that makes Superman a little less Super. to me.  Because compared to your personal zoo of Dematophagoisdes pternyssinus, AKA the Mighty Dusts Mite (actually some 15 species) grazing on your body at this very moment like vast microscopic herds of minuscule buffalo, Super Villains are a minor annoyance.

Feel the sudden urge to scratch? Don’t bother; scratching just creates tiny Alps of dead skin for these buggies to feast upon. The truth is we don’t merely live on this planet; this planet also lives on us. Louis Pasture had it right; even fleas have fleas. And so do we, and so do our fleas and so do the fleas starving on the desert that must be the empty plains of Superman's flesh.

Despite their small size (three of them could fit in the period at the end of a sentence and about 42,000 of them live in every once of dust) these driven little arthropods have a massive impact, because the Dust Mite does not eat dust – ah, would that dusting had such a dedicated helpmate. Rather they feast on the 50 million flakes (about 1 ½ grams) of skin which we shed each and every day.  About 80 % of the “dust” you can see floating in a beam of sunlight is your own dead skin, and fodder for these microscopic herbivores. These are the bugs that give spiders the heeby-jeebies!

Our mighty mite companions also enjoy munching on hair, pollen grains, fungal spores and bacteria, as well as cigarette ash and tobacco, clothing fibers, fingernail clippings and filings, food crumbs, glue, insect parts, paint chips, salt and sugar crystals and even graphite; in short everything and anything we are, use or touch, they eat and regurgitate and re-eat and re-regurgitate, etc., etc. (Dust mites, you see, are so small they  have no digestive tracts).

When you sleep (we spend about 1/3 of our lives in bed) your body and bedding is transformed into an Acaroliocal Park (acarology being the study of dust mites) which makes Michael Crichton’s "Jurassic Park" look like it had been stepped on by an Apatasaurous.  As much as half the weight in your ten year old mattress could be the 10 million mites who live there and depend on you for their dinner each time you lay you down and go to sleep. Mites don’t like sunlight and they love high humidity, meaning when you climb into bed tonight they will be there to welcome you, waiting for you to exhale and pull the covers up.

They also love rugs and carpets, dusty bookshelves and dusty books and nooks and crannies on fabric covered furniture. And they are completely harmless – except that their poop and their desiccated corpses are a source of human allergies and likely one of the primary a causes of asthma. During a female mite’s lifetime of 3 to 4 weeks she can produce 200 times her own weight in mighty pop and leave 300 cream colored mighty mite eggs, all capable of taking your breath away. A dehumidifier helps with the allergies (dust mite populations drop at anything below 50% humidity) and regular vacuuming can help keep their populations under control. But there are studies showing that carpet or mattress shampooing or even using a Hepafilter on your vacuum cleaner merely increases the resident population because it moistens it and scatters it. 

These tiny bugs have evolved so closely with us that there are no conditions or chemicals that will kill them without doing the same thing to us. So basically, the best we can hope for in our war with dust mites is a draw, because the world of the dust mite is a familiar yet strange place where air behaves more like water and a each human hair supports an isolated ethos.

And as every Ying has its Yang, and every Superman has his Bizzaro Superman, the herbivore dust mite has engendered the family Cheyletidae, the micro-predatory dust mite, which can be 6 – 8% of the total mighty mite population. These minuscule lions and tigers and bears stalk their prey every night, even migrating with them onto and off your body, unseen and largely un-felt, pouncing with vicious crushing microscopic jaws. They are no less heartless for their lack of a heart. Some digest their food inside its own shell (something to think about the next time you eat crab) by injecting masticating juices, and some of these tiny predators even consume the shell, reducing their meals to a tiny pile of mush before consuming it.

It even seems that our current  mighty mites are the survivors of a once more varied population of “guest workers”, as was attested to by the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, just before vespers on 29 December, 1170. Once you get over the the whole subject of the power of the Church versus the power of the State, the story of Becket's death becomes much smaller and larger - at the same time.  Because something amazing happened to the Archbishop’s fresh corpse, as described in Hans Zinsser’s 1935 epic book, “Rats, Lice and History”, beginning with Zinsser’s description of the dead Archbishop’s robes of office. 

When he was murdered Becket was wearing, “…a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, …robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body, a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen.”  These were all natural fibers, you see.

As Becket’s corpse grew cold the successive layers of robes also cooled, and all the little creatures that had been living within the folds and pleats started looking for a new home. Wave after wave of various fleas, ticks, spiders, pincher bugs, and other creatures flowed out from the corpse, “…like water in a simmering cauldron” producing in the hushed mourners gathered in the dim cathedral, “…alternate weeping and laughter…’”. Those Saxons; they sure knew humor when they saw it, skittering across the blood stained marble floor. And the unseen mites must have been far more numerous and just as desperate to find their meal ticket suddenly giving then the cold shoulder.

 Not only did the dead Becket popularize the hair shirt, but his corpse offered an abject lesson in the realty of life before the invention of the water heater. Without easy access to warm water people tended not to bathe. And that made them much more intimate with their pests and parasites than we of the hygienic era. But despite our best efforts we still live with the mighty Dust Mite. In fact, if you listen very carefully, you can probably hear them marching across your flesh right now, and everything you touch during an average day, looking for a snack.

Sleep tight, and just let the dust mites bite. And bon appetit for you both.

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WHO WAS THAT LUNATIC? People Kill People, With Guns

I believe I have stumbled upon a way to spot a deranged maniac before they get the gun and shoot somebody. The predictive indicator ain't their choice of video games or violent movies. Rather you just criticize their poetry, and the unbalanced murderous mind is instantly revealed. My case in point  -  in early 1910 Mr. William Mossman,  the manager of the Pittsburgh Orchestra, observed that his employee Mr Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough had once again “insisted on inflicting his home-made poetry and epigrams on all who would listen".  According to Mr. Mosman,  experienced members of the orchestra always listened politely to Fitzhugh, and kept their spit valves firmly closed until his latest maudlin verse was over. But one day a member of the brass section,  Otto Kegel,  could no longer resist trumpeting his opinion that Fitzhugh wrote the worst poetry ever written .

Fitzhugh's response was to grab his own $400 violin and smash it over Kegel's  head.  Fitzhugh then fled screaming from the building.  He sulked for 72 hours, and when he returned he was not a better poet.  That, I believe, was a certain indication Fitzhugh was a lunatic destined to shoot somebody.

Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough's story began inside 1331 K Street Northwest, Washington, D.C.. The  mansion stood just across the street from Franklin Square Park.  In this wealthy abode resided the imminent Dr. Edmund K. Goldsborough, his wife Julia and their children - two sons, Fitzhugh Coyle, the eldest, and Edmond the youngest child, - with two daughters in-between – Francis the older and Ann the younger girl. Julia doted on all her children, and denied them nothing,  But F.C. was her favorite.  He showed real talent with the violin and he loved poetry, which he produced in prodigious quantities.  He composed, by his own admission, a new ode to Venus about once a week. And his mother assured him every line was sheer genius.

In 1898 Dr. Goldsborough decided his son F.C. needed a profession. And that year the would-be poet was dispatched to Harvard College, to become an attorney.  After just one year however, F.C.  dropped out of law school, and returned home. Tensions in the house on K Street immediately began to rise.  F,C. (above) told his diary that he was being followed by private detectives, and increasingly  the volatile young man would intervene when his father tried to discipline Francis or Ann,  eventually even threatening violence if the doctor “so much as laid a hand” on either girl. There is no record, Dr. Goldsborough ever did.

After two years of this, in 1901, and by mutual consent, F.C.  left home again,  this time for Europe, to study the violin.  Here he met with considerable success, and he did not return for four long years, coming home briefly during the winter of 1905-06. That spring he left again, first to Montreal, Quebec where he worked as an instructor, and then in 1907 he followed a Berlin acquaintance, Karl Pohlig, who had been hired as the new conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

The city of brotherly love offered F.C. his best chance for normality, and he became first chair violinist.  However, at the same time he altered his signature to a multi-pointed star, with his printed name forming all the spokes. But then in 1909  half the Pittsburgh orchestra quit in a dispute with their new cold intellectual conductor, the Frenchman Emil Paur.  F.C. was offered more money and stayed,  but the labor tensions had an impact upon F.C., as shown by his attack upon the head of the unfortunately outspoken Mr. Kegel.

As the orchestra teetered on the verge of bankruptcy early in the 1910 season, the 31 year old Fitzhugh learned his little sister Ann had become engaged to William Stead, and the pair intended on moving to England. Shortly there after F.C. Goldsborough disappeared from Pittsburgh, leaving behind only a note of explanation. “The Pittsburgh smoke has driven me crazy”, he wrote. “You will never see me again.” He confided to his diary that he had decided to murder a man he had never met, the journalist, social novelist, and affected eccentric, David Graham Phillips.

The tall, handsome and beryl eyed Phillips once said he would rather be a journalist than President. His 1906 series “Treason in the Senate”, serialized in the magazine “Colliers”, was such a scathing indictment of political corruption that it led by 1912 to the 17^th amendment to the Constitution, requiring the open election of senators. Phillips was a workhorse,  writing late into the night while standing at his desk (above), grinding out 6,000 words a day.  He said, “If I were to die tomorrow, I would be six years ahead of the game”  And beginning in 1901 he also produced six popular pot boiler novels like his 1909 best seller “The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig”.

His characters were little more than caricatures, but because Phillips (above) told interviewers he based them on living people, readers were intrigued. Phillips described his female protagonist in “Craig” , the wealthy “noodle-head” Margaret Severence, in venomous terms. “To her luxurious, sensuous nature every kind of pleasurable physical sensation made keen appeal, and she strove in every way to make it keener.” In reality Phillips wrote from his fertile imagination, and what he knew his readers wanted. The hint of slander was a marketing ploy, like the white suits with a mum in the lapel Phillips always wore in public, or his crumpled alpine hat. The problem was, F. C.  Goldsborough had fallen  for every ploy.

When the mad young Mr F.C. Goldsborough read the “Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig” he was convinced the unflattering character of Miss Severence (above)  was based upon his own younger sister, Ann.   Fitzhugh wrote to Phillips, claiming libel and asking for an apology. However, since he did not sign his name and failed to provide a return address, Phillips could not apologize, even if he had wished to. Fitzhugh took the lack of response as arrogance, and wrote a series of increasingly angry and threatening letters, eventually signing them in Phillips' own name,  convincing the novelist his mysterious correspondent was a lunatic - which he was. Clearly this miss-communication could not continue.

With his sister Ann's wedding day scheduled for 25 February, 1911,  F.C. rented a top-floor rear room for $3 a week at the Rand School on East 19^th Street in New York City.  His check in date was 2 November, 1910.  He informed no one of his new address.  His family thought he was still in Pittsburgh. In fact he was now just a block away and just around the corner from the brownstone National Arts Club at 16 Gramercy Park South – where David Graham Phillips lived. And almost directly across that small private Gramercy Park was the Yale Club, where Phillips received his mail.  F.C. spent the next two months stalking his victim.

As was his usual habit, the 42 year old David Phillips rose late on Monday, 23 January, 1911. He had been working the night before, grinding out his six thousand words, and after breakfast and dressing, it was well after one before he took the elevator to the first floor and hurried down the front steps of the Arts Club (above) . He carried with him the corrected proofs of his new short story, “Susan Lenox:  Her Fall and Rise”,  ready to be mailed to the Saturday Evening Post magazine.

Rather than cutting through the gated park, Phillips turned left and walked the few steps to the corner of Gramercy Park West, and then turned right.  It took him less than a minute to cross 21^st Street, or Gramercy Park North, where he turned right again, walking the half block toward Lexington Avenue, which “T”ed into Gramercy Park. At the corner was the mansion that housed the Princeton Club (above).

As Phillips approached 115 East 21^st Street a man stepped away from the cast iron fence he had been leaning against, and blocked Phillip's way. From his coat pocket the assassin pulled a ten shot .38 caliber pistol, and was heard to announce, “Here you go.”  Then, with a sweep of his arm he fired six shots, each one hitting Phillips, once in the right lung, once in the intestines, the left forearm, the right hip and both thighs. Phillips staggered backward against the fence, almost falling into the arms of John Jacoby, a passing florist. Then, according to two other wittiness who had just come out of the Princeton Club, and without bothering to look at his victim,  Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough stepped into the gutter and, announced, “And here I go”. F.C. then shot himself in his fevered brain.

The Princeton Club's paper recorded the incident as follows. “David Graham Phillips, (class of ) '87, editor, publicist and novelist,  was shot six times today as he approached the Princeton Club, by Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough, a Harvard man...”

The three witnesses carried Phillips into the club's foyer and laid him on a settee. There the victim said he had no idea who his assassin was, and begged them not to tell his mother of his shooting because “the shock might kill her.” Out in the gutter F.C.'s body lay under a sheet for hours while police tried to understand. In Fitzhugh's pockets they found two short story manuscripts, and a membership card for the American Federation of Musicians. Now they knew the who and what, and after they read Fitzhugh's diary found in his room at the Rand School, they understood the why. He was a lunatic.

Three days after the shooting, David Graham Phillips died in a fever of septicemia. He was survived by his sister Caroline, who had been sharing his apartment at the Arts Club after leaving her abusive husband. She finished up her brother's final short story, and it was published posthumously. And in 1931 it was made into a motion picture, staring Clark Gable and Greta Garbo (above) . The Goldsborough family sent their sincere regrets to the Phillips family. The Goldsboroughs held the mad man's funeral service in the family home at 1331 K Street Northwest, and a month later held Anne's wedding in the same rooms. After the wedding, Mr and Mrs. William Stead moved to Nottingham, England, where he served as the United States Counsel.

The only positive outcome from the shooting was the passage of gun regulation, named after its co-author, State Senator Tim (Big Feller) Sullivan, which went into effect in August, just seven months after the shooting. To this day, the Sullivan Act requires a license to carry a hand gun in New York State, and allows each county to set their own limits on handgun licenses. Possession of an unlicensed gun in New York City results in an automatic one year in jail. Similar murders have occurred since, of course, but then crime prevention does not have to be 100% effective. Every life saved is of value, even if it is the life of an arrogant obnoxious lunatic and bad poet like Fitzhugh Coyle Goldsborough

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"EQUO NE CREDITE " ( Never Give Credit To A Horse)

I want to retell a story you've heard since childhood, a romance of brave heroes and young love crushed by cruel fate. It is the legend of the shining city of Troy, Helen and Achilles and the wooden horse. But this time I mean to wring as much of the myth out of the tale as I can. My version begins with the capricious, hot, dry Etesian winds, which for five months every summer for the last five thousand years have periodically roared without warning down the winding narrow straight of the Hellespont – the land gates to the Sea of Helen - for days at a time. Faced with such a fickle and relentless foe, crews of the square rigged ships, sailing from the Aegean Sea to the Bosporus and the Pontos Axinos (the Dark or Black Sea) beyond, risked their lives and their cargoes if caught in the straits by an Etesian wind.

A safe harbor close to the southern entrance of the dangerous straits, where a ship could safely wait for favorable winds, would surely prosper. For some 1,500 years there was just such a wealthy port on a broad bay at the mouth of the Scamander River, within ten miles of the Dardinelles, the   Hellespont. And to modern ears the cities' name sounds almost ethereal, as if whispered by the Etesian winds themselves – Wilusa.

Wilusa began as a fishing village, atop a 100 foot high limestone outcrop that jutted into the bay like a ship's prow. Over a thousand years the village became a royal palace and keep, five city blocks wide, with 25 foot high sloping walls. Eventually, as the town prospered, two ditches were dug, eleven feet wide and six feet deep, running out from the land side of the citadel. The earth from the ditches produced a 12 foot high wall,  encircling a city, eventually, of 6,000 people. A tunnel dug through the bed rock fed Wilusa with fresh water. And outside the walls, dotted with farms, was “The Troad”, the sea of grasses that made Wilusa famous for horse breeding.

The great crises for the city that would come to be called Troy began about the year 1275 B.C.E., when the guarantor of Wilusan royalty, The Hittite King Mursili III, was challenged by the resurgent Egyptians along his southern border in Syria.  Seeking to secure his opposite flank, Mursili III picked a dull but stable, younger son,  Piya Walmu, for the kingship of Wilusa. His name meant "gift from Wilusa". And for the Hittites he was a gift, supplying horses and chariots for the Hittite Army under Mursili's uncle, Prince Hattusili. It was the logical decision, but it short changed the older son, Piya Aaradu.  His name meant "gift of the faithful”. And his gift was a dangerous ego maniacal ambition.

The Battle of Kadesh in 1274 B.C.E. began when Hattusli's chariots caught a third of the Egyptian army by surprise, and came very close to sweeping it off the field and killing the Pharaoh. But Ramses kept his nerve and held his force together until reinforcements arrived. Nearly 4,000 chariots on both sides, the battle tanks of the day, swept back and forth across the Syrian plain, until the Hittites were forced to take refuge behind the walls of Kadesh.  Hattusli was saved only because Ramses' army was too weakened to put the city under siege.  Both sides' propaganda claimed a bloody victory, and both Ramses and Hattusli were labeled as heroes. But afterward both Hittite and Egyptian empires retreated to lick their wounds.

At the first word of Hittite troubles, Piya Aaradu murdered his bother and declared himself the new King of Wilusa. But Mursili knew he would not remain King for long if he was thought to be weak. And he felt his uncle Hattusli, the “hero” of Kadesh, looming behind his throne. So Mursili commanded Manapa-Tarhunda, the governor of the Seha River region , just south of Wilusa, to punish the usurper.  In about 1273 B.C.E., the Seha army marched on Wilusa.  But on the plains of The Troad,  Piya Aaradu ambushed the punitive force, and Manapa-Tarhunda was defeated. Now, suddenly, the Hittite western border was looking vulnerable, as well.

Mursili had no choice. In 1272 B.C.E. he dispatched a larger, fully Hittite force under a general known to history only as Gassus. Using a horsehide covered battering ram suspended from a rolling frame (above), the Hittites quickly breached the city walls of Wilusa.  Gassus allowed his warriors to sack the city, but prevented them from burning the entire place to the ground.  Afterward, Wilusa was no longer trusted enough to have its own king, but a local was named the new governor - Alaksandu. The only mistake Gassus  made, and perhaps the reason we do not know his full name, was that he allowed Piya Aaradu to escape.

The pouting prince sailed 300 miles down the coast of Asia Minor to the port of Millawanda, or Miletus in language of its Archean founders, the kings of Mycenea,  100 miles west across the Aegean Sea, in what is today Greece.   Here, Piya Aaradu was sympathetically greeted by Governor Atpa, who was also his son-in-law, and the brother of Akagamunas, the king of Mycenae. 

With this familiar support, Piya Aaradu led a mercenary raid against Hittite merchants on the island of Lesbos. The joint Achean and Wilusian raid captured 700 skilled artisans, who were then sold into slavery.  It seems likely Piya Aaradu split the profits with Atpa, and that Akagamunas also “got a taste”, to borrow a Mafia term from the 20^th century A.D.  The “had been” and “would be” King of Wilusa, Piya Aaradu was now a pirate, with money to finance future raids, and a safe base to operate from.

Unfortunately for Piya Aaradu, his military alliance with the Mycenae was the final straw for the Hittites. About 1269 B.C.E. Mursili III was sent into exile by, his uncle, Hatusili.   The new king gathered an army and about 1267 B.C.E, marched on Miletus. 

Piya Aaradu tried talking his way out of the mess. He offered to swear allegiance to Hatusili if he was returned to power in Wilusa.  Hattusli responded by marching his army right up to the border with Miletus. Teetering on the brink of all out war between Mycenea and the Hittites, Hattusili demanded Akagamunas hand over Piya Aaradu for punishment.

Akagamunas was not eager to start a war. Pulling Hittite beards was fun, and Piya Aaradu's raids had even shown a small profit. But big wars have a tendency to wipe out small profits very quickly. So, as a show of respect, the Governor of Melitus, Atpa, invited Hatusili to visit Melitus , assuring him he would hand Piya Aaradu over to him. But once Hatusili was inside the city walls, Atpa informed the Hittite King that, oops,  Piya Aaradu had skipped town, some how.

Hattusili was not happy.  But he did not want a war, either. So after stomping around Mellitus for a few days, he headed home. And given the time and distance to think during his journey, and perhaps listen to his advisers, Hattusila decided on a new approach. The following year he offered to give Piya Aaradu everything he wanted, including the crown of Wiliusa. Swear fidelity to Hattusili and all would be forgiven.

Now, no one in their right mind would have believed such an offer. But was Piya Aaradu in his right mind? Or - more importantly - was Akagamunas?  And there were logical reasons for the King of Mycenea to be suspicious of the pirate prince.  It was one thing to finance Piya Aaradu when the Achaens had plausible denial  It would another if Piya Aaradu began to trumpet Mycenaean duplicity from the topless towers of Ilium. No matter how unlikely the offer from Hattusili was, the king of Mycenea could not risk the pirate prince taking the offer. It was a death sentence for Piya Aaradu.

It made little difference if the ego maniac was strangled in his bed, or stabbed by a trusted friend while leading another raid. His dead body may have even been handed over to Hattusili as a sign of good will. But as long as there was the possibility of Piya Aaradu switching sides again, he had to die.

In fact Hattusili followed a similar strategy later when his nephew Mursili escaped his exile and arrived in Egypt. First the Hittite King demanded his return. And then offered to welcome him back into the family. Both Mursili and Piya Aaradu simply, suddenly. disappeared from history. And they were far from the only ones who disappeared.

"Within a period of 40 to 50 years",  beginning abound 1206 B.C.E., according to historian Robert Drews, “...almost every significant city in the eastern Mediterranean world was destroyed, many of them never to be occupied again”  One of the first to be burned for the last time around 1200 B.C.E., was Wilusa. Almost the last to go was the Hittite capital of Hattusa, which was burned to the ground one night in 1180 B.C.E.  By then, every major city, from Greece to the Egyptian frontier, was violently destroyed, and often left unoccupied for generations.

Maybe the villeins were  invaders, or diseases, or volcanoes or climate change or perhaps even the replacement with bronze by iron tools and weapons. But whoever or whatever the cause, to a child growing up in Greece 3,000 years ago,  the past was a time of greatness and plenty, unlike the hunger and poverty of their today.  And leaders like Piya Aaradu (aka Priam), Akagamunas (or Agamemnon), Alaksandu (Alexander, aka Paris) were so famous for so long, they became myths. And Helen herself, the most beautiful woman in history, the face that launched a thousand ships and toppled the topless towers of Ilium (Troy) was Greece herself, and the new Hellenistic culture she would export to the entire world.

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