PASSION AND OTHER SINS; PART TWO

“He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.”

Cicero

I would say producing the “new” will was a serious overreaching on Althea’s part. Senator William Sharon’s adopted son from his second marriage, Frederick Newlander, continued to fight his father's and Althea's divorce settlement in the California courts, delaying and obfuscating,  But Frederick also launched a new front in Federal court - which he had access to because the estate Althea was now laying claim to was spread out over two states. Frederick's lawyers argued in Federal Court that the new will which Althea had produced was a forgery, as were the “fraudulent” marriage contracts. And in Federal Court, it was Althea’s lawyer, David Terry, who delayed and obfuscated. But Terry lost round one when a federal judge decided he could not make any decision without first taking testimony and evidence through a special master. That meant Frederick's lawyers could force Althea to testify under oath. And this led to Althea’s downfall - not for what was said in court, but for how she reacted to what was said.

The girl was under a lot of pressure. And Althea had never respond well to pressure. She had always been carrying a grudge, and the more the lawyers told her "no", the heavier that grudge became. Eventually she also began to carry a pistol in her hand bag. And she began to loudly denounce witnesses who offended her - in open court.  Where it all went down on the record. She shouted at one man, “I will shoot him yet; that very man sitting there!” When the court appointed examiner asked her to be still, she drew her gun. “They shall not slander me!" she shouted. "I can hit a four-bit piece nine times out of ten.” While pointing her pistol at one of the opposition lawyers, she assured him, “I will not shoot you just now, unless you would like to be shot and think you deserve it.” A federal marshal disarmed the lady. But the incident made it into the 1,723 page report the examiner provided to the two Federal judges  who would decide the case. And they decided that the will and the marriage contracts were both forgeries, enjoined Althea from claiming otherwise, and ordered her to hand over the documents to Frederick Newlander, now  again, the one third legal heir to his father's estate.

“If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.”

Ben Franklin

But the judges went even further, lecturing Althea in open court, contending that “…property and position are in themselves some certain guaranty of truth in their possessor…”, and that “A woman who voluntarily submits to live with a millionaire for hire ought not…be allowed to punish her paramour for the immorality of which she was a part…” It is hard to find a more able defense of the Victorian ideal of the nobility of wealth and the original sin of women, than that argued by these two Federal judges. Misogynistic pompous jerks that they were. I'm not saying that Althea was justified in the way she expressed her anger with the courts, but I am saying that she might have been nuts,  but maybe she wasn't entirely unjustified in what she did next.

But the problem was,  as we all know,  some men are drawn to crazy women.  On 7 January, 1886, two weeks after this hypocritical lecture in open court,  Althea and her lawyer, David Terry (above), were married. He became the smitten Cupid to her Psyche. She played psycho to his old fool. On the face of it Althea came out ahead. She now had a defender who saw the courtroom as an extension of his happy home. His reaction to the unbraiding she had received in court was as blunt as a knife fight; “They shall not brand my wife a strumpet.”  He said this despite her having made her living as a strumpet.  Judge Terry's legal strategy matched his temperament. Terry decided to simply ignore the federal court ruling. After all, Senator Sharon was dead, which, David Terry argued, had rendered any court decisions concerning the California divorce case an “ineffective, inoperative, unenforceable pronunciamento.”

And by simply ignoring the existence of the Federal Court order vacating the will, he avoided dealing with the decision that the will had been forged. Plus, if Althea continued to hold onto the marriage contracts, in defiance of the Federal court order, she could still use them as evidence in her California divorce case, which Sharon’s son Fredrick continued to fight in state court. And it was about here, as the fall of 1886 approached, that Frederick Newlander opened yet a third front against Althea and David Terry; a political front.  Or perhaps, a political affront.

“But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.”
Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In the elections of November of 1886, Fredrick Newlander threw huge sums behind the “Blind Boss”, Christopher Buckley (above). Buckley's bi-partisan political machine had run San Francisco city hall for years, but had been recently thrown out of power by Republican reformers. 

But with Newlander money, the Democrats under Buckley (above) were swept back into office. This allowed Buckley to appoint judges friendly to the Sharon divorce case. Which he did. Althea's  alimony had already been reduced, from $2,500 a month, to $500. Now, the estate of Senator Sharon was granted an entirely new trial - which forced a living woman to argue she should be granted a divorce from a husband who had been dead for two years.  But before that travesty of logic could occur, the California Supreme Court, now stacked with judges whose election had been financed by Frederick Newlander, overturned the original decision in the divorce case. The common law marriage of Senator Sharon and Althea was retroactively null and void. And with that, officially, Althea was now a perjurer and forger, in both the Federal and the State courts.

While these momentous events were unfolding, the time limit for Althea to appeal the Federal Court Order, requiring her to hand over the marriage agreements and the will, ran out. Immediately Frederick’s lawyers requested an order of contempt be issued against her, which the Federal Court, meeting in the Assessor's Building in San Francisco (above), immediately agreed to do. Terry’s strategy of defiance was thus proven bankrupt. Twice he appealed the contempt court orders all the way to the U.S Supreme Court, and twice the order was affirmed. This is what happens when lawyers stop thinking with their big heads.

“It is with our passions as it is with fire and water; they are good servants, but bad masters.”
Roger L’Estrange

So, on 3 September, 1888, Althea and David Terry found themselves back in the Assesors' Building (above), while the final decision in their contempt case was read out by the ancient, pompous, humorless, and equally prone to violence,  Federal Judge Stephen Johnson Field.

Field (above) was a sitting gun toting Justice of the United States Supreme Court, helping out during the summer while the Supremes were in recess. This was a man who was passionate about the law, had no doubt about his own correctness, carried a pistol, and had a deep hated for David Terry,  and was not forgiving of those who disagreed with him. In other words, he was the perfect counterweight to Althea’s passion.

As he droned on, reading the intricate legal justifications for his decision, the irrepressible Althea jumped  to her feet. “Judge,” she demanded, “are you going to take the responsibility of ordering me to deliver up that marriage contract?” Barely pausing in his recitation, Judge Field ordered, “Remove that woman from the courtroom. The court will deal with her hereafter.” As a U.S. Marshal  reached for Althea, David Terry’s drew his six foot muscular frame up from his chair, warned the Marshal, “No man shall touch my wife”, and then punched the marshal right in the mouth, knocking out his tooth.

“Passion is a sort of fever in the mind, which ever leaves us weaker than it found us.”
William Penn

The fight was on. Several Federal Marshals and assorted guards and lawyers who had been waiting for just this sort of outburst from these two, descended upon the feisty pair. A bowie knife was stripped from David Terry’s fist, and a loaded pistol was confiscated from Althea’s purse. The lady scratched faces, the old man threw punches, but once order was restored the court completed reading the decision of contempt on the earlier court order, which, needless to say went against Althea and David. The Court then immediately moved on to the trial of both David and Althea for their most recent show of contempt for the court. Judge Field ordered David Terry to spend six months in the Alameda county jail. Althea was sentenced to one month. The two new convicts now had a new enemy.

Now, if these two litigants had regained full control of their faculties, and issued a proforma apology, as any sane person in this situation would have done, that would have been the end of this tale. But neither David nor Althea were able to regain their perspective. And that is my favorite definition of insanity - the inability to recover your senses, once you lose them. 

“Death is the only pure, beautiful conclusion of a great passion.”

David Lawrence

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PASSION AND OTHER SINS. PART ONE

“Love without passion is dreary; passion without love is horrific.”

Lord Byron

I should begin by reminding you of one of the lesser known legends of Psyche, which describes her so beautiful she was persecuted by that other goddess, Venus.  I say lesser known legend because, there were so many myths and legends about Psyche, and really, few people who survive high school would feel any empathy for a cut-throat cold-blooded narcissistic "pretty girl" like Psyche.  Which brings me to the perfect living example of the lady, a walking earthquake of passion and self-centered delusion named Sarah Althea Hill.

Ms. Hill  didn't much like her first name and was known to friends and enemies as Althea. To describe her as normal, even for San Francisco, would be an insult to the abnormal. In the summer of 1880 she was a “rosy-cheeked, blue-eyed beauty of the Golden West,” in her late twenties, and as loony as a bat in radar factory. And yet she was about to come within a hair's breath of controlling one of the biggest fortunes in America, and was about to entertain, frighten and divert an entire nation for a decade. There had been men in Althea's life before our story beings, in particular a lawyer – Althea had a soft spot for lawyers - but he had recently abandoned her, and many lawsuits followed. It is also alleged that she had recently attempted suicide, but whether out of desperation or calculation I cannot say. To the point, she was thus unencumbered when she met by happenstance or connivance the sixty year old United States Senator William Sharon.

He (above) was a dirty old man, one of the richest dirty old men in California, and the taxes  he actually paid made up 2% of the entire budget of the city of San Francisco. William Sharon was also a widower with three grown children. He was also a Senator representing Nevada. Yet Sharon lived in San Francisco's Palace Hotel (which he owned), and only traveled to Nevada occasionally. It is  also important to note that what drew the Senator and Althea together was clearly not love. It was passion. He had a passion for young women. She had a passion for money. At his suggestion they signed a pair of contracts. Or so she said.

“Passion…is violence to which you get hooked by pleasure.”
Isabelle Adjani

“In the city and county of San Francisco…on the twenty-fifth day of August, A.D.1880, I, Sarah Althea Hill….do here, in the presence of Almighty God, take Senator William Sharon, of the state of Nevada, to be my lawful and wedded husband…I agree not to make known the contents of this paper or its existence for two years…” And “…I, Senator William Sharon, of the state of Nevada…take Sarah Althea Hill…. to be my lawful and wedded wife…”  Of course, no ceremony took place, and no license was ever issued. However money did change hands. And in capitalistic nations that fits the definition of a contract. It was, in effect, a pre-nup without the nup.

The Senator wrote a note to Mr. Thorn, the manager of the neighboring Grand Hotel; “Miss Hill (is) a particular friend of mine, and a lady of unblemished character and of good family. Give her the best, and as cheap as you can.” It seems the Senator had agreed to provide Althea with a suite at the Grand Hotel, rooms which were connected via a convenient second story 72 foot long bridge across the street with Sharon’s more opulent Palace Hotel (above, right..)

He also agreed to provide to her a monthly payment of $500,  from which she furnished the rooms. In other words, if it was a real marriage, it was a marriage of convenience. And it was convenient for the Senator for just about a year.

“Purity engenders Wisdom, Passion, avarice…”
Cyril Connolly

As late as 3 October 1881, Senator Sharon was still referring in his notes to Althea as “My Dear Wife”. However, shortly thereafter Senator Sharon offered her $7,500 in cash if she would sign a paper using the name “Miss Hill”.  In early December she did so and the next day Mr. Thorn was informed by the Senator that the lady would be checking out.

What followed were desperate letters from Althea. “"My Dear Mr. Sharon… I cannot see how you can have any one treat me so—I, who have always been so good and kind to you—the carpet is all taken up in my hall —the door (the front door to her rooms) is taken off and away…Ah, Senator, dear Senator, do not treat me so —whilst every one else is so happy for Christmas, don't try to make mine miserable… Now, Mr. Sharon, you are wronging me; so help me God, you are wronging me…”

“Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion.”
George Hegel

By the end of December, Althea was gone from the Grand and the Senator had moved on to other young women, although he occasionally still spent “time” with her.  But Althea was not finished with Senator Sharon either. She engaged the services of a big (6') blustery, bowie knife-wielding lawyer, a hot headed ex-justice of the California Supreme Court named David Terry (below). Like Sharon, this would be cupid was sixty when he met Althea, but unlike Sharon, Terry was just as prone to passionate outbursts as the lady. And in September of 1883, under his guidance, Althea had a public outburst, in the local press, and then had the Senator arrested for adultery. Sharon sued, charging Althea with attempted blackmail, and alleging that the marriage contract was a fraud. Althea counter sued the Senator in state court for divorce, and asked for alimony.

The divorce trial entertained the citizens of San Francisco over the summer of 1884, with salacious details of how “the other half” lived, including tales of Althea watching Sharon in bed another woman. In September Judge Jeremiah Sullivan ruled that what Althea and Senator Sharon shared was a common law marriage, and awarded Althea half of the Senator's vast estate, as well as alimony of $2,500 a month. Althea simply purred at the decision. “I feel just like a young kitten that has been brought into the house and set before the fire.” The Senator immediately appealed And then on Friday, 13 November, 1885, Senator Sharon appealed to a higher court; he died.  And not very long after his death, Althea miraculously found a new will, in which the late Senator left every thing he owned to her.  It also left nothing to his three children.

“We all need to look into the dark side of our nature – that’s where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we’re busy denying.”
Sue Grafton

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TWO CHRISTMASES, Because We Have Two Easters

I'll bet darn few of you know that this year Christmas comes on Tuesday, 7 January. I am speaking of that “second” Christmas, the one 200 million Greek and Russian Orthodox Christians celebrate, 13 days after Catholics and Protestants make merry. Now, as to why there are two Christmases, well, that has to do with the way theology seems to have been invented specifically to start arguments. But let me start this argument at its beginning.

The first successful calendar that we know of was adopted over 6,500 ago by the 18 amalgamated city-states we know as the Sumerians. Being farmers they started their year in the spring, with each of their months beginning with sunset on the night of the new moon. This lunar calendar proved so popular it was adopted with modifications by everybody, including a small group of highland Semitic sheep herders known to themselves as the Yehudi – modern English translation being “the Jews”.

The Jewish spring was marked by the birthing of their sheep, what they called the Pesach. Fourteen days into the first Hebrew month of Nisan, at the full moon, they drained the blood of one of their first born kids. The body was then burned, the rising smoke being offered up as a sacrifice to their god Elohim or Yahweh, to ensure he would keep them in milk, wool and lamb chops for the coming year. But, just about the same time as the invention of the calendar, the flocks of many of these Hebrews started dying.

Maybe it was disease and maybe war, but these Jewish bands were reduced to seeking work around the Egyptian settlements in the Nile river delta, where they were forced to exchange their Sumerian lunar calendar for an Egyptian solar one, and their mutton for bread. And the first Egyptian bread grain which ripened each spring, about the Nisan full moon, was barley. Now, barley doesn't rise well with yeast. This meant that every spring, when the stockpiles of wheat and rye grains ran short, the Jews were reduced to eating the hard, flat, unleavened bread. After leaving Egypt, or, as the religious fanatics described it, “escaping”, the spring Pesach was relabeled the Passover Festival.

Over the next  couple of millennial the Jews established a homeland called Israel, where they were  attacked by the Philistines, the Babylonians, the Egyptians, the Akkadians, the Hittites, and eventually the Romans. Every new conqueror forced the Hebrews to adopt some of their culture and calendar. 

And as is common with occupied people, the common folk dreamed of a messiah or Christ, who would save them from their oppressors, foreign and Jewish. Over time this produced a seemingly endless stream of messiah candidates. Most were loonies, many could be bought off. But a few were idealistic and dangerous enough that the upper crust Jewish Pharisees felt forced to eliminate them. And it was because of those few that before we got two Christmases, we got two Pesach-es – later renamed Easter.

See, the Romans, who were occupying Israel in the first century, had just switched over to a combination solar and lunar calendar championed by Julius Caesar and enacted on The Kalend, or the first morning of the new month of January, 47 B.C.E.  By Roman law all debts and taxes were paid on the Kalend, including the Temple Tax the Jews paid so they would be excused from sacrificing to the Roman gods.

This Temple Tax was paid to the Roman Governor in the capital of Jerusalem, a city of between 60 and 70,000 people. During Passover, the city had to accommodate another 5 to 10,000 pilgrims in town to sacrifice at their temple. This produced a lot of taxable income, but with a crowd that large, you were guaranteed at least one Christ-wanna-be a year. 

Which is why, the Christian holy book could be very specific about the date when the most successful Christ, Jesus ben Joseph of Nazareth, was nailed to a cross. He was killed, theologians now figure, in the 33^rd year of the common era, on Friday, 3 April, about 3:00 p.m., or about 3 hours before the start of Passover that year. Except killing this Christ only added to the Pharisse's problems.

These Christians kept insisting their dead guy was The Christ sent to reform Judaism which pissed off the Pharisee, who, since they were on top, did not want reform. Also reformers made the Romans nervous, which pissed off the Pharisee even more. A decade after Jesus' crucifixion, the Jewish King Agrippa beheaded the cult's new leader, the Apostle James. 

The next leader, James the Just, tried to avoid giving the Pharisee any reason to suppress the Christians by strictly obeying Mosaic law for 20 years. However, the Pharisee eventually decided to kill him anyway. So they threw him off the Temple roof. And that didn't kill him, they had him beaten to death.

But there were other, even more disruptive zealots around, and in the year 66 C.E., bad Roman government and all these revolutionaries set off the First Jewish war, which lead to the Kitos War and then the Bar Kokhba revolt, which ended in 136 C.E. 

This 80 years of violence so pissed off the Romans they destroyed the temple, then burned and sacked Jerusalem, and then outlawed Judaism entirely. The only way for Christianity to survive was to form their own religion, adopting the Julian calendar and inventing a new theology as they went along.

As figured by Professor Rodney Stark, of Baylor College, devotees of Christianity surpassed the “symbolically weighty figure” of 100,000 worshipers attending a hundred or so churches about the year 200 C.E., or 70 years after the last Jewish revolt. And yet, already, their new theology was starting to make problems. 

In the year 189 C.E., Rome, received a new bishop, or elder of the church. We know him only by the name of Victor, and that he came from North Africa -  perhaps he was a Berber. We can assume Victor was devout, but we know he also was combative and arrogant. First, he had started calling himself “the Pope”. And secondly, was the way he tried to handle the Quarterdecimani debate.

In plain English, it was “The 14” - as in the 14^th day of Nissan, i.e. the date of Passover. Less than fifty years after the death of Jesus, Polycarp, the Bishop of Smyrna, reminded his fellow Christians that the Paesch was a life giving festival well before it became Passover. 

This made 16 Nisson - the second day after Passover – the perfect day to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Which meant the common folk still had to know when Passover started. And Polycarp had been personally trained by the Apostle John, who had personally known both the living and the resurrected Jesus.

But Victor and most western Bishops wanted to disconnect Christianity from Passover. That meant converting Jesus ben Joseph into a gentile, like the majority of the new Christian recruits. This was why the Sabbath was moved from the Jewish Friday at sunset and all day Saturday – the end of the week – to Sunday – the beginning of the week. And by using the Julian calendar, with which most gentiles were familiar, they could reenact the mystical Good Friday to Resurrection Sunday, every year. And that was something the “floating” Jewish Passover, which could come on any day of the week, could not do.

So far, settling such theological issues had followed the example of the Pauline Epistles. The bishops exchanged letters arguing their case, until they were close to agreement. They then held conferences, called synods, which endorsed the new dogma. But bishops still within the Byzantine Empire, who spoke and read Greek, felt as qualified to determine dogma as the upstart Latin speaker from Rome. 

But Victor, now abruptly warned that any Christians who did not sever the direct connection between Passover and Easter would be excommunicated - thrown out of the church and denied Jesus' forgiveness.

Immediately a missive arrived from the proud Bishop of Ephesus. This was a large, wealthy city, so when Bishop Polycrates spoke, other Christians paid attention. He reminded Victor that many respected church leaders celebrated Easter on 16 Nisson, like, “...Philip, one of the twelve apostles....(and) John, who was both a witness and a teacher...and Polycarp in Smyrna...” and the seven bishops in his own family. Polycrates warned Victor. “ I...am not frighted by terrifying words.”

Another dissent arrived from the Bishop of Lyon, France. Irenaeus was a Greek who had a strong record opposing “Judaizing” the new faith, which gave him street cred in this argument. Irenaeus cautioned Victor against asserting dominance, because that might start a civil war. Finally, Victor backed down. 

So,  for the next 800 years, everybody agreed to disagree on the date for Easter and about the power of one Bishop, whatever he called himself, to dictate to other Bishops. The eastern church read their liturgy in Greek, the Romans in Latin. And this divided church survived the fall of the western Roman empire and the rise of Islam, until 1053 C.E., when another hot head was elevated to Pope.

In that year, “Pope” Leo IX went nuclear on a small group of Greek Orthodox churches in southern Italy. Leo ordered them to either “conform” to the Latin system or close their doors. 

In Constantinople, the Ecumenical Patriarch, head of the local churches, Micheal I Cerularius, retaliated by dropping the same bomb on the Latin churches in his city.

The following year, 1054, Cardinal Humbert, led a Papal delegation to Constantinople to insist that Micheal reopen the Latin churches and acknowledge Leo IV as the supreme leader of the “Catholic”, meaning unified, church.

Oddly enough, Micheal said no.  Whereupon, everybody in sight excommunicated everybody else in sight. This exchange of “Ex” bombs escalated until it widened into the Great Schism, which has divided Christianity ever since. The two sides stopped talking to each other. The Latin churches continue to celebrate Easter on the first Sunday after the Paesch full moon, while the Greek Churches mark Christ's rising three days after Passover, whatever the day of the week.

A final bit of confusion was added in 1582, when Pope Gregory XIII introduced a new and refined calendar, which cut that year by 10 days. Initially it was recognized only in Catholic states. Protestant Britain did not make the switch until 1752, by which time the difference between the Julian and Gregorian calendars had grown to 11 days. Russian did not accept the change until the revolution, in 1918, by which time the shift was 13 days. They were followed later by most secular governments

But the Greek Orthodox Church, still pissed off about the Great Schism, have remained on the Julian calendar. Which is why we have two Easters, and why the Eastern Orthodox Christmas comes on  25 December, Julian Calendar, but actually falls on 6 January, under the Gregorian calendar – 13 days later. Which gives us two Christmases.

The Jews, of course, have stubbornly stuck to their own clock, insisting the year 2019 is actually the year 5779. And that....is a story for another time.

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