Waiter, I’ll Have the “Supo de la Tago”

Kion vi volas manĝi?

It would be nice to see the menus, if they still exist, or ever existed, but the claim made in 1913 was that seven hotels in the United States had restaurant menus in Esperanto, none of which were in Washington, D.C. The article, unfortunately, doesn’t indicate where they actually were.

The suggestion that there were seven restaurants with Esperanto menus is somewhat surprising. After all, the number of foreign Esperantists in the United States at any given time, has undoubtably been so small that they were probably outnumbered by other tourists from their country who didn’t speak Esperanto. Further, the whole idea of menus in a variety of languages seems to crop up in Europe, but not here.

An English-language menu isn’t always a help. I remember being perplexed the choice “Rhenish pickled beef” on a menu in Germany. I asked to compare it with the German menu, and there it was, “Rheinischer sauerbraten.” Sauerbraten isn’t actually pickled, it just gets marinated in vinegar, not nearly long enough to pickle it. Then there are the bad translations, where English just gets mangled on the menu.

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A Cranberry Tart, A Seasonal Treat

The finished tart, shiny and yummy

We were off for a post-Thanksgiving gathering and I told our host that we would be bringing something “seasonal.” I wouldn’t say what, because I like there to be some element of surprise. What I brought was a cranberry tart. It was seasonal (needs fresh cranberries), yummy, and it’s not difficult to make.

I will offer the caveat: I’ve got some kitchen skills, and (at least) I think I’m pretty good at making desserts. I made this more difficult by baking it in a tart shell, because I like the way that looks. It could be done in a pie shell, but even then I would use the richer tart crust. The tart really is akin to a pecan pie, but with cranberries (and that’s good because I don’t much care for pecan pie).

I finished it off with an apricot glaze, as a result of binging on episodes of The French Chef. Once again, this is not difficult, and the glaze isn’t simply pretty, the apricots give the tart another level of flavor. You can paint this stuff on practically anything.

Docking. Almost ready to bake

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The Lawyer, the Rug Merchant, and the Sodomy Charge

With whom did Benny attempt this?

Articles about sodomy charges in early-twentieth century newspapers tend to be a bit on the opaque side, often not disclosing the name of the other individual involved. Since at the time, opposite-sex couples could be, and were, charged with sodomy, sometimes it’s not clear whether or not the report of transgressive sex is a matter of early (and somewhat hidden) gay history. In this case, I have the suspicion that there’s a bit of gay history underneath it all.

In 1910, Benjamin A. Younkers was a lawyer in Des Moines, Iowa. He was thirty-five years old, married, and though native born, the son of immigrant parents. Martin J. Loftus was a rug salesman in Des Moines, Iowa. He was thirty-five years old, married, and though native born, the son of immigrant parents. How did these two men differ? Younkers had been married for three years, and had no children. Loftus had been married for fifteen years, and had two. Younkers was Jewish, with parents from Russia and Germany. Loftus had parents from Ireland.

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Germ Warfare and Other Intimidations

Mark that one "Return to Sender," would you?

A Colorado judge received a gruesome package in the mail in November, 1909, as reported in the Spokane Press. The box contained two small strips of human flesh. I’m ready to heat sterilize my mailbox just for reading that. But it gets worse, and when you’re starting with medical waste in your mailbox, worse must be pretty bad. The title of this post isn’t “Yucky Mail.” According to a note in the box, the skin was from a smallpox victim. So the anthrax attacks of several years ago, were just kinda copycat.

Wikipedia notes that smallpox was almost completely eliminated from the United States by 1897, so it’s not actually clear that there was any smallpox-infected skin for someone to easily obtain in 1909. To do this, you have to be certain that you’re immune, and it only works if your prospective victim is not immune (flip those around and it’s suicide and annoying, disgusting mail).

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A Professional Esperantist

He wasn't actually looking at
Esperanto, but was getting others to.

The early Esperanto movement had its share of celebrities, people who tended to get mentioned whenever the subject of Esperanto was brought up, or whose connection to Esperanto was mentioned whenever attention was being turned to them specifically. Chief among these was Dr. Zamenhof himself, but in the United States, the same was true of the Stoner family, and every time Mrs. Stoner’s educational theories were discussed in print, readers would be reminded of her connection to the Esperanto movement.

But Zamenhof didn’t make money from the Esperanto movement (it actually was a drain on his resources) and Mrs. Stoner’s interest in Esperanto seemed to be largely based on self promotion.[1] One celebrity’s fame came from his promotion of Esperanto, and in traveling around promoting Esperanto, Edmond Privat was one of the early professional Esperantists, and preeminent among them.

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I Tried to Write Click Bait… And You Won’t Believe What Happened Next!

Just one click. It won't hurt.
I promise.

Actually, you’ve probably already sure what would happen if I tried to write click bait. The main purveyors of click bait won’t be wondering how to contact me to get me to write for them. After all, the click bait version of my blog is This Man Invented a Language — And You Won’t Believe What Happened Next or Two Men Met in Washington, D.C. — What Happened Will Make You Cry![1]

I admit it: if I saw something with a titles like this on a friend’s Facebook feed, I wouldn’t click it. (I’m happy to do the experiment.) So maybe, I’m dooming this post to No-Click Hell. I don’t know. The reason I’m writing this it to point out that I have very little idea what posts are and aren’t going to catch on, beyond some really broad parameters. Also, because the New York Times just looked at click bait, under the title “You Won’t Believe What These People Say About ‘Click Bait’,” though what they say is exactly what you expect.

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An Esperantist in Motion Pictures

Esperanto: They ought to
make a movie!

There was little find about Creston C. Coigne, who as a young man in New York wrote a letter to the Sun which appeared in their November 25, 1916 edition, in part because Mr. Coigne died young. When he died, he was probably about twenty-six years old. The 1915 New York State Census says that Mr. Coigne was eighteen years old and worked as a motion picture actor.

It was a family business. The same census lists his father as a motion picture director and his mother as a motion picture actress. Coigne’s brother Armand, was at sixteen and a stenographer. His grandmother, Ella Brous, kept house for the family. The family business was named after him, Creston Feature Pictures. Like many short-lived silent movie studios, it’s a struggle to even find out what they produced. The Catalog of Copyright Entries does list both Ireland a Nation and St. Joan of Arc among their pictures. The firm did advertise that another film, The Scapular, was nearing completion.[1]

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Some Thoughts On Genre

Some books. American 20th
century writers.

A friend once asked me if I shelf my science fiction books apart from “literature.” I don’t actually recognize a separate category called “literature,” and my books are shelved in Library of Congress order. This means that writers are grouped by historical period, not their names, or the intent of their fiction. It would get muddy otherwise. Should you lump Charles Dickens, a writer for the masses, in with the popular fiction, despite that his work is taught as literature today.[1] I shelve Dickens in with the other Victorians.

I read something today that I think got genre a bit wrong.[2] In his view, genre fiction puts character subordinate to plot. I could doubtless fill his home with genre works that gratify that opinion. He noted that (and I will quote here) that “people are good or bad (sometimes evil)” (I"m quoting, but not naming. I have my reasons.) And I could fill his home with genre works that refute that claim.

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Bloggers, Do the Analysis First

Where my readers are
Nov 19–23, 2014

I know now that I got the sequence backwards. Ironically, when I was looking into blogging with the hope of monetizing my writing that way,[1] nothing I read told me what I’m about to say, that you should start the analysis early. I got the sequence wrong, finally adding the analytics to the blog.

Blogger provides some analytics, but (as I’ve later learned), their hit counts includes every time your page gets accessed, even when there’s no human on the other end. I want my stuff to be read, and let’s face it, a web spider indexing my site isn’t actually reading anything.[2]

There, on the AdSense page was the link suggesting that I integrate my site with Google Analytics. Note to new bloggers: Sign up for Google Analytics on day 1. Because I demurred for so long, I have tracking data only from November 19, 2014 (despite that this blog launched on May 1, 2014). Just from those few days, I see that some fairly old posts are still getting traffic, which is good to know. One worry I had was that once posts were written, they would be quickly forgotten and no one would visit them again. But in these last five days, I see that people have visited pages written in every month of this blog’s existence.[3]

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And Now in Stereo

The right side of a stereo pair.
You can just assume I wanted an
excuse to put a shirtless guy in my blog

Has the 3D craze died?[1] For the last few years, there were many big budget releases and re-releases in 3D, ranging from the wonderful ParaNorman, Hugo, and even A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas[2] to some less distinguished items. During the previews before one movie, they ran a trailer for the 3D conversion[3] of Titanic. I leaned and whispered, “that’s the worst 3D conversion I’ve ever seen.” Then they showed the trailer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. “I stand corrected.”

Unfortunately, the film industry again proved the adage, “make it good, or make it 3D,” despite that there were some films that were both. And with a lack of good new content coming, the existing material just couldn’t support things. Yes, House of Wax is a wonderful film (I’m referring to the 1953 Vincent Price movie, not the unrelated 2005 film of the same name), but how often can you watch it.[4]

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Think of Poor Oklahoma

34 States today. One more coming tomorrow

With today’s decision starting marriage equality in Montana (and bringing the total to 34 states), there’s now a nice solid block of the western states, a good chunk running from New England down to the upper South, and a group of Midwestern states. But this leaves Oklahoma there in the midst of states that don’t marriage equality, joined to a state that does, only by the Panhandle. Had the Republic of Texas not ceded the area, poor Oklahoma wouldn’t be adjoining any marriage equality state, saved only by a narrow connection to New Mexico.

There are parts of the country that continue to surprise me. The Sixth Circuit decision certainly caught me by surprise, though it might be the case that sends marriage equality to the Supreme Court. I would have thought the Fifth Circuit would be more likely, though we are still waiting for the appeals on that one.

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An Unearthly Child — Blogging Doctor Who

A friend recently wondered about getting access to the classic episodes of Doctor Who, although when I noted that I have nearly all that have been released,[1] she actually declined my offer that she borrow them, stating that she didn’t want to come between a man and his collection of Doctor Who DVDs. She then suggested that I might make a list of those that are worth watching.[2] Which got me thinking, if the DVDs are going to be of any use whatsoever, then someone should watch them, and that someone is going to be me.

This is, by the way, the second time that I’ve blogged about Doctor Who. I really should blog more about science fiction and fandom, and there’s a perfectly good reason why I haven’t done so.[3] The prior time was offering my view to all the people who wondered how the events of the 50th anniversary episode could happen, what with the time lock and all.

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Inside AdSense

Look at those numbers!
You may need a magnifying glass.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about blogging, which when described that way seems even more navel gazing than this one. Actually, they’re blog posts on monetizing your blog content, and they probably get more traffic than I do. (I admit it, when I realized that my major themes were going to be constructed languages, gay rights, and cooking, I wasn’t assuming that I’d get massive amounts of traffic.[1]) I have seen my traffic slowly grow over the last six months, although recently it took a big tumble that had me wondering just what was going wrong.

Let me digress for a moment (my blog, I get to, though I’d never know if you skipped to the next paragraph) and discuss the State of the Blog at about six months. This is my 353rd post and this is the 201st day after I started the blog,[2] working out to about one-and-three-quarter posts per day. I have been getting approximately two thousand hits to my blog each month, and as I noted in the previous paragraph, that has been slowly growing.

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A Home for Esperantists in New York City

If Esperanto can make it in NYC…

I saw on Facebook recently that the cafe where the Esperanto group in New York City meets is closing, leaving them without a meeting space. Of course, many small groups have similar problems; finding a place to meet can be tough. Either places are too noisy or too difficult to get to or too expensive (and that’s just talking about my own experiences).

This problem is nothing new, and in 1907 the Esperantists in New York had solved the problem, at least for a while. It certainly didn’t become the permanent home of Esperanto in New York, or the current group wouldn’t be looking for somewhere to meet. What is interesting is that this is all happening in the shadow of the Ido schism, only a few days after this article, the New York Times would carry an article on a split in the Esperanto movement in New York.

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The Bookseller, the Library, and Volapük

The late news from Paris

Among the many volumes in the Bancroft Library, the special collections library of the University of California, Berkeley, are two books on Volapük, the Hand-Book of Volapük, by Charles E. Sprague, and the Abridged Grammar of Volapük; Adapted to the Use of English Speaking People, by Auguste Kerckhoffs, and the only question I have is: “did they end up in the library because of Bancroft’s younger brother?” The Bancroft Library is named Hubert Howe Bancroft, a California bookseller and amateur historian who amassed a substantial library which he later sold to the State of California.[1]

Why not the older Bancroft? Well, they might have been his, but he doesn’t seem to have thought much of Volapük. In an essay on “Early California Literature,” he noted that while “a universal tongue must in time prevail,” he felt that English “need fear no competition from such artificial substitutes as Volapuk, of uncouth aspect.” No Volapükian he. But his brother is another matter altogether.

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Lame Phishing Scam of the Day

Did my grandmother write this e-mail?

Most phishing scams just make me roll my eyes; this one made me laugh.

I'll admit it right here: I have a PayPal account. I assume they're quite common, so the people trying to steal account information know if they broadcast these things, they're likely to find someone who has an account, which is so much better than the phishing scams where the scammers try to get me to log into accounts when I have never had a relationship with that particular financial institution. 

I do have a PayPal account, and sometimes real e-mail ends up in spam, so I opened it up and took a look at it. I sort of skimmed it. There at the bottom was the actual text that PayPal puts at the bottom of its e-mails to warn users about fake e-mails.

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An Esperanto Cocktail for Charles Fairbanks

Charles W. Fairbanks
Probably didn't speak Esperanto

It’s clear that the Salt Lake City newspapers had it in for Charles Fairbanks in 1907. I don’t expect the name to ring a bell 107 years later; he’s on that long list of Vice Presidents Who Never Became President. Fairbanks was Vice President to Theodore Roosevelt, someone who probably could have overshadowed anyone.[1] Fairbanks didn’t have a chance.

But given the openly partisan newspapers of the day, you would think the one published by members of his own party might have cut him some slack. No dice. Both the Salt Lake Herald and the Salt Lake Tribune were published by Republicans, but in 1907, Fairbanks clearly wasn’t the Republican they liked. (The Tribune describes the Herald as a “Democratic newspaper.”)

At the time, Fairbanks was hoping for the Republican nomination for President for the 1908 election, but he never got the full backing of his party.[2] But I think it was the cocktails that really counted against him in Utah. Oddly enough, both papers in slamming Mr. Fairbanks brought up Esperanto.

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Contractor’s Claims Insufficient to Support Sodomy Charge

Was his neighbor a peeping tom?

On November 13, 1896, the Rock Island Argus reported that there was insufficient proof to sustain the allegations of sodomy that had been made against one John Matthey. The references to Mr. Matthey in the Argus form a brief span of three days, from the initial report of the charge on November 11, 1896 to the charges being dropped two days later.

Nor have the usual records been all that forthcoming. I’ve been able to establish that Rock Island didn’t publish a street directory in 1896, and Mr. Matthey doesn’t seem to show up in the others. His accuser does though. The claim that Mr. Matthey had engaged in sodomy came from one Stephen O’Connor, and I found lots about him.

I should pause here and note that our story has one character too few. We have an accused (Mr. Matthey), a witness (Mr. O’Connor), but while sodomy can be accomplished with a partner of the same or opposite sex, it is not a solitary activity. The records here is mute as to what exactly Mr. O’Connor claimed to have seen.

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Girls’ Trip to Evil Haunts Blamed on Novels

Remember children, the policeman is your friend
Especially when your trip to New York lands you in a brothel

Those damn novels, leading young women astray for generations. Now, of course, when people are looking for something to blame, they never think of novels. But in 1889, novels were still on the suspect list, though it had become limited to “trashy novels.” Got that? There are good novels, then there are trashy novels. And if you read the trashy kind, there’s no telling what could happen to you.

The Evening World did manage to quietly give their readers the addresses of two New York brothels, though the implication of the article was that the police had closed these “establishments.” When I was last in New York, I took the Tenement Museum tour (tours only because it’s a preserved tenement house, that was boarded up for decades and used as a storehouse, so its interiors were largely preserved), the tour guide said nothing about tenements being used as houses of prostitution,[1] but that is the implication of this article. Yes, that “trashy novels” will land you in a brothel.

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Cranberry Sauce — Simple, as in Syrup

Ready to cool and gel in the fridge

When I was growing up, I was given the task of chopping up the cranberries and the orange for the cranberry relish. I also got to open the can for the cranberry sauce. Eventually my family went to using the whole berry sauce, which I guess was a step in the right direction. Maybe.

Many years later, long after I had left my parents’ home, I learned that it’s easy to make whole berry cranberry sauce yourself. This is another one of those things where the recipe is on the back of the package, nobody every looks at it. Also, I suspect that people assume that this is going to be a whole lot of work, but it’s really simple.

A “simple syrup” is just 1 cup of sugar dissolved in 1 cup of water. Oh, simple. We have to go a little more complex than that, because cooking this stuff in sugar water is kinda boring. You need to amp it up just a little. You have a choice of liquids: cranberry juice (not cocktail) or red wine.

Just in the pot and starting to pop.

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Sexual Perversion in Washington

There'll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

When I look into the backgrounds for these old stories, I feel like a combination of a private detective and the town busybody. It does take some sleuthing; checking other newspaper accounts to see if I can find out more about the people involved in the story, looking at public records that might shed some light on the matter (for the record, the dead have no privacy rights). Sure, when I look into an early-twentieth century sodomy accusation there’s prurient interest involved. Look: people from a century ago having sex. Forbidden sex.

That’s an important part too. I only have to read the comment on articles about same-sex marriage. I would like to think that referring to gay men as “sodomites” was some queer linguistic habit of a century ago, but the comment still gets made in 2014.[1] It would probably be both difficult and expensive to get the court transcripts of whatever transpired on Friday, November 8, 1901, but the Sunday Morning Globe of Washington, D.C. makes it seem worthwhile, since the testimony “revealed the most indescribable details of sexual perversion,” which the Globe assured its readers were “too filthy and demoralizing to even write about.“

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The Famous Professor Christen

Prof. Arnold Christen
Esperantist.
Grower of lip hair

I find it amusing when I look at a newspaper or magazine from decades past and someone is described as “famous” and I have no idea who that person it. It’s an object lesson that fame (and even infamy) can be fleeting. One year your name is on everyone’s lips, and some time after that, everyone’s forgotten who you were. This is particularly true of entertainers.

The Washington Herald described Professor Christen as “famous” in its November 9, 1913 edition. Who? Given the number of times I’ve found that “professors” in early twentieth-century newspapers weren’t any sort of academic (such as the then 18-year-old Edmond Privat or the 14-year-old Val Stone), when a newspaper tells me that someone is a professor, I want to see an academic affiliation.

I went on the merry hunt for Professor Christen. I am happy to announce that this is one of those situations in which we are dealing with an actual academic. Not some teenager either, Arnold Christen was about 56 years old in 1913.

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The Place where Ido Began

This gives a hint

It’s pretty commonly known that the committee that proposed Ido as “the” international language met in Paris in October 1907.[1] The committee, as Esperantists note, was pretty much self-selected, and no one had made any sort of promise to abide by their decisions. If the major academic journals of the world and the diplomatic corps had said that within a year of the decision, they would switch over to whatever language the committee chose, we’d all know that language right now.[2]

None of the histories of the incident that I’ve seen (both from the Idoist and Esperantist sides) seem to mention just where the conference happened, other than Paris, and Paris is a big place.[3] But an article that appeared in the Daily Arizona Silver Belt on November 8, 1907 may give a hint. At the same time, the article makes a claim that probably wasn’t true. And other portions of it are somewhat mistaken.

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A Simple Soup

Yummy soup

In fall, as the weather cools,[1] thoughts turn to a nice warming soup. I know that soup is one of those things that people just don’t think about cooking. Personally, I know that I need to trot out bowls of soup on more occasions, especially because it’s so easy. It’s also something you can do ahead. Make it the day before you want it, if you can plan things out.

A few days ago, the supermarket had some beautiful mushrooms. They were plain old crimini—brown mushrooms. You could use just about any sort of mushroom for this, though white mushrooms won’t have as much flavor, and morels would get somewhat expensive.[2] It was clear we needed to make a soup. In some ways, being reminded that the ingredients for soup are at hand is the biggest hurdle.

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A Shakedown in San Francisco

Highbinders? They come in crowds?

I learned a bit of old slang today. The word is “highbinder,” and according to Wiktionary, originally referred to a specific gang in New York City of the early nineteenth century, but later came to refer to Chinese criminal gangs.[1] It’s in this second meaning that I encountered it. However, another work, The Crooked Ladder, suggests that “highbinders” were the paid assassins of Tong gangs in New York and San Francisco.[2] A little further research showed that the word was once a familiar term that has fallen into disuse.

It’s not clear to me exactly when this story actually happened, as I have found reports with dates from November 5th through the 7th, 1888. Maybe as early as the 4th. Certainly those papers who are giving it a later date are wrong. The story deals with a shakedown within the Chinese community of San Francisco, but other than that it happened in Chinatown, no specific address is given, though a map of Chinatown from the 1880s locates the bordellos with Chinese prostitutes at the northern end, while those with white prostitutes were at the southern end. One article specifies that the inhabitants were “a number of Chinese women,” so it is more likely that the building was in the northern part of Chinatown.

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Du Esperantistinoj en Meksiko

Kapo de Zamnao, el
artikolo de von Schenck

Mi ne diras ke nur ĉar du virinoj pasigas kvindek jarojn de iliaj vivoj kune ili certe estis lesboj. Mi diras ke por lesboj en la fino de la jarcento ĉi tio estis tipa. La Grafino von Schenck kaj Fraŭlino Nohl eble simple estis du maljunaj fraŭlinoj, ambaŭ naskita en Germanio, kiu iris por pli simpla vivo en Meksiko kaj dediĉis sin al la instruado de Esperanto al la blinduloj.

Certe, ili pasis la plej grandan parton de siaj vivoj kune. En 1915, kiam ili venis al la atento de la Omaha Daily Bee,[1] ili ambaŭ estis en siaj 70aj jaroj. Mi ne sukcesis trovi naskiĝtagon por unu el ili, sed Natalia von Schenck estis naskita ĉirkaŭ 1840 kaj ŝia kunulo, Alicia L. Nohl, en ĉirkaŭ 1845. La ĝenerala manko de registroj por la du estas probable pro lia trankvila vivo inter blinduloj en Meksiko dum kvardek jaroj. Do, ili estis en siaj dudekaj jaroj, kiam ili renkontiĝis.

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Two Esperantist Ladies in Mexico

Head of Zamna, from an
article by von Schenck

I’m not saying that just because two women spend fifty years of their lives together they must be lesbians. I am saying that for lesbians at the turn of the century this was a common pattern. The Countess von Schenck and Miss Nohl may have simply been two spinsters, both born in Germany, who went for a simpler life in Mexico and devoted themselves to teaching Esperanto to the blind.

Certainly, they spent the bulk of their lives together. In 1915, when they came to the attention of the Omaha Daily Bee, they were both in their 70s. I haven’t managed to find birthdates for one of them, but Natalia von Schenck was born about 1840 and her companion, Alicia L. Nohl, in about 1845. The general lack of records on the two is probably due to their quiet lives among the blind in Mexico for forty years. So, they were in their twenties when they met.

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Young Esperantist Corresponds Across Lines of Battle

An Esperantist
in Missouri

It’s not clear when George A. Irion learned Esperanto, though in 1911, he placed a listing for correspondence in the Amerika Esperantisto. At that time, he was 18 years old, and just finishing high school. He was the son of George and Agathe Irion, both of whom were immigrants from Germany. The older George Irion became a farmer in Missouri, although judging from the local newspaper accounts, the family managed some degree of social prominence, with the senior Irion on the board of the local country club.

As a ten-year-old, Irion had a brush with death. George went swimming with his brother fifteen-year old brother Billy, and their friends, Earl Skinner (18), Tom Shire (probably William T. Shire, 14), and Park Sellard (also 10). George nearly drowned, but, according to the Mexico Missouri Message of June 18, 1903, he was rescued by Tom Shire. While swimming, Earl Skinner could no longer stay afloat, and when his friends realized he was gone, all they saw was his hand waving. Mr. Skinner’s body was later retrieved from the pond.

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Too Much a Potty Mouth for Advertising — Corrected!

Cash would be nice.

Correction: I usually append updates to the bottom of my blog posts, but this is a correction, where I'm going to gainsay some of the things below. You get this up front. Two days after I wrote this, the AdSense button became active. Clearly one of two things is true:

1. Due to my question, my blog was reviewed and found to be eligible for Adsense.
2. These things take time, and I was whiny and impatient.

I'm going with the second one.

“I’ve heard that you can make money by blogging,” said an acquaintance to me at a party after I said that I had been blogging. Well, some people can make money by blogging, I’m not just one of them. But I will admit that was one consideration (though not the only one) that came to mind when I started this blog.

Six months in and I haven’t made a penny. One of the reasons I chose Blogger is that Google (which owns Blogger) has its own advertising program, AdSense, which could make it easy. So I started writing and I would check from time to time to see if I had crossed that magic line that made my blog eligible for AdSense. After a while, I concluded that maybe Google had expanded its rule of “blog must be six months old in some countries” to all countries, and so I waited until six months was up.

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The Volapükian Daughter of the Father of Prohibition

I wanted a picture of her. I got this.

It’s a tiny item in a collection of short pieces on women in the November 3, 1891 Wichita Daily Eagle, under the heading “Feminine Fancies.” The second fancy is about Volapükian, one Louise Dow Benton. A quick search on the Internet assured me that my Volapükian readers[1] would likely know who she was. Out of the first ten Google results for “Louise Dow Benton,” three deal with Volapük as well.

Not only did Ms. Benton’s name not ring a bell for me, neither did that of her father, General Neal Dow. Here, at least, Wikipedia came to the rescue. General Dow had enlisted in the Union Army, starting with the rank of colonel, but rose to brigadier general. Given as he was both an abolitionist and prohibitionist, we can assume that he didn’t get one of those barrels of “what Grant was drinking” that Lincoln joked about sending to his other generals.[2] The entry notes that some called Dow “the father of prohibition,” since due to his efforts, Maine became a dry state. But while Wikipedia talks about all that and more (not about the barrels though), there’s scant reference to his family life. Wikipedia does not that Neal Dow was married to Maria Cornelia Durant Maynard Dow, but gives no other details. You wouldn’t know from the Wikipedia page if they had any children. Clearly, at least one.

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An Open Letter to Cox Communications

I receive frequent annoying scam calls. I was even more bothered to find out that in order to block these people from their repeated call, Cox wishes to charge me additional money. This should be free. Cox is complicit in this by trying to make money off of people who just want the nuisance callers to leave to them alone. One number, 570-983-3206, called me 18 times in the course of August and September. We have been called four times in the last four months from 949-896-5565, who claim to be contractors looking for work. We have told them not to call back, but they persist.

I was told that it would cost me an additional five dollars a month to be able to block these callers. Cox should not be charging money to protect me from these annoying, persistent, and illegal calls. If the phone carriers made it easy and free to block these calls, phone scammers would be in trouble. Think of boiler rooms of people listening to busy signals all day.

If the phone companies aren't willing to offer this, then perhaps Washington needs to better regulate the phone companies. I know that I will be contacting my representatives in Washington, the FTC, and the FCC on this matter. Cox should stop making life easy for phone scammers and side with their customers.

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Esperanto Wins!

None of the crew were named Zamenhof

Except we’re talking about a boat.

One of the big news items at the end of 1920 was the International Fisherman’s Championship. Although there had been yachting competitions for years, this was the first time that fishing schooners had been used in an international race. The race ran from Halifax, Novia Scotia, Canada to Gloucester, Massachusetts, United States. The winner was the Esperanto. The defeated vessel was the Delawana.

While there were many articles about the Esperanto and its crew, only one of them seemed to take any special notice of the ship’s name. She was, indeed, named for the international language.[1] When the ship was launched, in 1906, the name probably held greater promise than it did at the Esperanto’s moment of triumph, in 1920.

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Two Convicted for Sodomy, One Escapes

I'm rooting for the lad

Were they a couple? That’s one of the questions that is simply unanswerable about two young men who were charged and convicted of sodomy in Washington State in 1910. An October 26 article in the Yakima Herald refers to them as “lads,” and on November 2, the Herald supplies that one of the two, James Nichol, was twenty-one. Unfortunately, even with the biographical detail the Herald supplied, I haven’t been able to make any certain identification of the two.

The name of the other man is given as James S. Ryan, and Washington had an ample supply of men of that name, most of them of about 20 years of age. I was able to find 11 men over the age 17 and under the age of 30 in the 1910 Census. Some were married, most were single. The one James Ryan in Yakima County in 1910 has the improbable origin of “Greece,” as does everyone else in his railroad crew, a few of whom do have Greek surnames. I’ve also checked the 1920 Census to see if any of them vanish from the record, but it wasn’t all that helpful. No Greek Ryans in Yakima in 1920.

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The First Death of Father Schleyer

Father Schleyer, at the
time of his not death

In October 1888, the word went out that Father Johann Martin Schleyer, the inventor of Volapük had died. It made the newspapers across the country over a number of days, though some simply ran a brief item reading “The death is announced of Father Schleyer, the inventor of Volapuk,” or some close variant. The source of this information isn’t quite clear. The Los Angeles Daily Herald included it in a column of “Cable Sparks” on October 10, 1888. On the same day, Der Deutsche Correspondent ran an article with about the same information, datelined Paris.

This was repeated in several newspapers over the next few days. Some even condensed it down to “Schleyer, the inventor of Volapuk, is dead.”
But the Evening Bulletin of Maysville, Kentucky expanded it to “in Paris,” in their October 11 edition, probably mistaking the dateline for the place of the incident.

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Shakespeare Didn’t Invent “Gossip”

Professional word coiner.
The plays were a sideline.

A tweet popped up on my twitter feed today:

Shakespeare invented over 2,000 commonly used words, such as “amazement,” “luggage,” “gossip,” “bump,” and “eyeball.”

As always, points for use of the serial comma. Demerits for everything else. My first complaint is the use of the word “invented.” Shakespeare didn’t invent any words. Not a one. Not two thousand, but zero. Zilch. The only people who actually “invent” words are the creators of artificial languages, and even then, you might want to restrict it to those who create a priori languages. After all, Ludovic Zamenhof didn’t so much invent the Esperanto word for “bread,” pano, as adapt it from the French pain, while when Edward Powell Foster constructed Ro, his word polab indicates that it’s a food item, and so on.[1]

Let’s modify the claim, and suggest that Shakespeare coined these various words. Maybe. I argue not. Many words exist in spoken form before someone writes them down. A classic example of this is the word gay in the sense of “homosexual.” Other evidence makes it clear that the sense had become established before its first recorded use in the 1938 Bringing Up Baby. The Internet Movie Database states that Cary Grant’s line was an ad lib, but you wouldn’t make a claim that Cary Grant invented “gay.”[2]

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