Lizzie Borden Killed Her Parents Here. Eat Hearty, But Don’t Feed the Ghosts

The house where Lizzie Borden may have killed her family is now a Bed and Breakfast lodge.   This sturdy wood frame house in sturdy Fall River, Massachusetts hardly looks like a celebrated murder scene, but then so few really do.   That is, until you look at them with the knowing eye.   Otherwise would you know the difference?   Would the people lodged in creepy, haunted houses really see and feel the ghosts if they didn’t know they were inside a creepy, haunted house?

Maybe.  I remember visiting one small town and finding one house particularly, in fact, unmistakeably creepy.  Nobody seemed to know anything about what may have happened there, neither my family nor the neighbors.  Okay.  False hunches.  I was just getting ready to leave.

As luck would have it the current owner of the house pulled up in the driveway.   Without much prodding  her confirmed my suspicions that foul play did indeed occur in that house.  A minister of some religious persuasion, deeply in debt, killed his wife for the insurance money.  He had pushed her down the stairs.  The house over the years was occupied by other people with new and different tragedies, from riches to rags to sagas of drugs and degradation.

But Lizzie Borden was another story.  She was the O.J. Simpson of her time, among the dozens of other celebrity killers.   Ironically, perhaps, Lizzie was not tried for the murder of her parents in California. Nevertheless, she was still acquitted.   She then became part of mythical American macabre.   There is a rhyme about her.  “Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.  And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father 41.”

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As to who actually committed, the murders, as with most of these high profile murder cases, theories abound.  It was everyone from the housekeeper to the towns people who didn’t at all like Andrew Borden.  Some think Lizzie killed him because financial disputes and property divisions.   That would be a motive.  It has certainly been one before.   Others believe Lizzie, the spinster, may have been a little too constrained and embroiled in family dissension.  She may have lashed out to save her sanity and her inheritance.

Today we would find a drug ridden and repressed Lizzie seeking to right the wrongs of an inhospitable environment, an oppressive father and abusive step-mother.  Who knows?  But today what remains of the story, aside fromthe legend itself, is the bed and breakfast and the ghosts who inhabit it along with the 10,000 people who pass through its doors each year.   Ghosts are reported to do what ghosts are best know for.   They poke and prod, open and close the draws, turn the lights on and off, move things around.  In short, they scare the hell out of most of us.   For a population that thinks of Pearl Harbor as ancient history, it is amazing how sex and murder can long endure.

Lizzie Borden died and left $30,000 to the animal shelter.   She left another $500 so that the cemetery could tend to her father’s grave in perpetuity.  Guilt or true love?   It’s hard to say.   Maybe a little of both.   The thing is, given the times, most people were perplexed and a legend was born.  Today, we know the story all too well.   The difference a hundred odd years can make.

When Your Mayor is Dressed in Drag

Stu Rasmussen used to be a guy.  Now Stu Rasmussen is best known as Carla Fong.   Stu as Carla wears plunging neckline dresses and mini-skirts.   Stu or Carla is sixty years old, so even on a good day and with movie star looks being sixty and wearing mini-skirts is a questionable strategy.   Especially when you look like Stu, who also happens to be mayor-elect of Silverton, Oregon.  Talk about “change.”

According to an article in the Los Angeles Times, Stu had been elected Silverton’s Mayor in 1988 and again in 1990.  He just won again.  Looking at his photos, augmented breasts and notable cleavage or not, Stu has radio looks.   Stu/Carlas photo reminds me of the quote now deceased  and noted author Truman Capote issued when appraising the now equally deceased and noted author, Jacqueline Susann.   Capote declared,  “she looks like a truck driver in drag.”

While Capote’s quote elicits certain emotions about Stu/Carla, I really don’t regard his image as the truck driver in drag.   He is more reminiscent of one of the more senior English actresses in one of the uptight, upright, Merchant-Ivory Victorian costume dramas.    Or he could be the gracious Earth Mother emanating from the Hippie Period of Stu’s generation.    But then again I don’t live in Silverton and see Stu on the street on a regular basis.  If I did, I may have other opinions.

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I will assume until better notified that Stu must find it tough to shop for the wardrobe he prefers in the tiny town of Silverton.   Shopping for high fashion in Portland is tough enough, yet alone Silverton.   In the past, for transgenders and drag queens alike, this would be a problem resolved only by scheduled trips to the larger cities.   Today, with the Internet, shopping for the heels, plunging necklines and minis is just a click or two away.   Thanks to ecommerce, even buying for the odd-sized is made easy.

As for the important stuff, Stu ran on the promise he would help stem the rapid growth in Silverton.  Perhaps his serving as the leader of the welcome wagon would serve to cause many potential transplants relocation to Silverton.   Not everyone is tolerant as we last saw in California’s recent proposition to ban gay marriage. But then, perhaps Stu will draw a crowd to the city.  You never know.

While I’m sure some are upset about the new mayor’s fashion statement, let us not forget that Stu was elected to office with an overwhelming 55% of the vote.   Politicians would kill for that margin.   Some have.   So it is understood that people in this former lumber town not only tolerate Stu, but they like him.   They not only like him, but they trust him.   Which is more than most citizens can say for their local elected officials.   And that says a lot.   About Stu.  And Silverton, the town where he serves as mayor.

Federal Drug Sniffing Beagle Hangs Up Its Nose

Shiloh, the Beagle, has called it quits from public service.   That’s right, after eight years on the job one of our finest federal officer has decided his day is done.  According to an article in the Los Angeles Times he will no more wander about the Los Angeles International Airport’s Bradley Terminal in search of illicit Khat and other drugs the a bevy of smugglers have tried to smuggle through Customs.

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So it is eight years in and now Badge Number 58 is being rotated out of service.   He is neither the kind to play golf or travel the roads in his trusty RV.   Instead, Shiloh will live with his longtime handler.   Should be a nice life.   We thank him for his service and hope he doesn’t grow bored with the civilian life.

Costco at Thanksgiving and the Battle for Pumpkin Pie

Everybody wants a slice of the pie.  Pumpkin pie, that is.   It is tasty and seasonal.  Pumpkin pie is well worth fighting for.   Just ask some of the customers at Costco.

Mumbai had its terrorists.  Wal-Mart has its trampled workers.  Costco has its pumpkin pie.   While the world recoils at the horrible slaughter in the Indian City, or the poor guy who was run over at 5 A.M. by a brutally zealous Long Island crowd,  Costco shoppers kicked off the holiday season by shoving each other out of the way in quest of the great seasonal dessert.   I mean, if you can’t find your pumpkin pie at Costco, where else can you find it?

This, of course, to the saner among us is a rhetorical question.  Pumpkin pie is everywhere this time of year. Albeit it, is is neither as large a pie as those served up at Costco, nor is it as cost-effective.   Costco pumpkin pies are big and relatively inexpensive.    When you are watching your bucks, it’s a good place to pick up three or four for the Thanksgiving dinner at a very good price.   It’s not worth the risk of getting hurt for it.   Not offended, but physically hurt.

There was a battle for the pumpkin pies.  For dozens, it was a principle worth fighting for.   They needed dessert and they were going to get it no matter who got in their way.    Old women, small children, the nerdy, the needy, doesn’t matter.   Keep you hands off my pumpkin pie.

You see,the Costco bakery ovens can handle a mere sixty pies an hour.   That is going full tilt.  This of course is usually more than sufficient.   But come the holiday season when the craving comes for pumpkin pie, things are very, very different.  When you have hundreds of customers standing around waiting until the next round of pies come out of the oven.  And when there aren’t enough to go around, the flimsy veneer slides off the patina of civilization, and the battle is on.

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In this case, I expect some attorney will claim Costco was negligent by using bakery ovens that could only turn out sixty pies an hour.  And when the Costco workers, attempting to be fair, tried to limit one pie to every party, this poor excuse sharing the wealth elevated mere negligence to cruelty and deprivation.  Human rights were violated.

Human rights?  Don’t laugh.  Family values were violated.  Every family member needs at least a couple, few slices.  Piece of the pie!  Isn’t that what America is all about?   Otherwise, what will do with all that extra whipped cream?  Because any fool knows you can’t eat the whipped cream without the pumpkin pie.   You can’t have your turkey without the expectation of pumpkin pie.   Lack of pumpkin pie could result in serious disillusionment and a grievous sense of loss.

Sharing was not an option.  Customers elbowed and shoved each other out of the way.  A melee broke out in the bakery section.    People weren’t getting their pumpkin pie.  And those that did, were only allowed to buy one instead of the four they were planning to have for that special Thanksgiving dinner.

I am not one to mince words about the assault on the quality of life and the decline of manners and etiquette.  And certainly there are things to be said for our national obesity and smaller portions of everything would best promote the general well being.  A trip through Costco should tell you that.  Double wides in every aisle.  Double wide shuffling through in somnambulistic stupor.  Until you take away their pumpkin pie.   Then they come to life.

We have heard candidates and pundits talk about the quality of life and the need to make adjustments.   For the sake of our country, they say, we need to sacrifice.  We have to learn to do without, and we have to think more about our neighbors.   So come election night we hold hands and look to the future.  We are promised change.  Or not.  But what we didn’t get was pumpkin pie.

At Wal-Mart You Can Shop Till You Drop

By now most of the known world has read in the New York Daily News or elsewhere about the tragedy  at a Long Island Wal-Mart, where an employer died after being trampled by a couple of hundred people.   Apparently, he made the mistake of trying to hold them back and paid the price with his life.   Other people were also injured and there was a controversial report that a pregnant woman miscarried.

If this episode wasn’t so tragic we could find it funny.   There have been numerous comedy scenes in television episodes and feature films, comic strips, even, where overzealous shoppers trample each other in search of the ultimate bargain.   The old comic strip, “Dagwood,” comes to mind.   The artist had regular strips depicting women fighting each other, playing tug-of-war for bargain goods.

But the fact is it is pretty tragic.  It is also very telling.   It is telling on different levels.  On one hand we can view this as a reflection of the  bad economy where the need to save money has driven people to wait outside the doors of a department store for it’s special opening at 5:AM.   Some stores even had special midnight openings.   For a country that goes to bed after the Jay Leno or David Letterman monologue, it says something about the need to find a bargain.

It also says quite a lot about consumerism.   I have to wonder, what are people doing out there at five A.M.?  How much can you really care about buying something that you would stand there like cattle waiting for the doors to open so you could fight you way under fluorescent lighting to get something for your wife and kids, girlfriend, whatever?  What does this really say about us, and the fact we cannot cure that disease, that we are consumer addicts.

Seventy percent of this economy if built on consumerism.  We buy stuff.   We buy a lot of stuff we don’t even need.  We buy stuff to impress our friends.   We buy dumb stuff, and in good economic times we pay a lot of money for overpriced, status seeking stuff that has the requisite branding.   We don’t save; we spend.  We buy.  We don’t buy things that last, most of the time, anyway, we buy instead things that are fashionable.   Things that we buy are built to be obsolete.   We even buy quality cars that were built to last and trade them in because we are bored with them.

We are so obsessed with buy, apparently,we don’t mind elbowing and even trampling a few people to buy more stuff.  Okay, so it’s the holiday.  It is a holiday in the worst economy in perhaps 100 years, and here we are buying.   Hang out Santa Claus and a few pretty lights, and we kick into buying mode like so many Pavlovian Dogs.
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Of course others have a different take on the incident at Wal-Mart.   Some are blaming the greedy retailers for having the temerity to open their doors in the wee hours of the morning.   At least for me it is a wee hour of the morning.   Some are more racist in tone and issue forth deplorable comments that the writers don’t even bother couching in more acceptable, or polite, racist content.   Pretty amazing.

As for the consumerism itself, it would seem a bit obsessive to be buffeted around by crowds at pre-dawn hours, waiting for a store’s doors to open.  I would think you have to be nuts, but then there were so many standing there, they couldn’t all be crazy.  Just sick.   Sick with what, I’m not sure.   And if not sick, not real logical.

The fact when the stores are stuck with unsold merchandise, say three weeks from now, they will practically be giving it away.   You can waltz in, make a better deal, and walk out without fear of getting trampled.  Or if you are really smart you can wait until after the holiday when they may be paying you to take this stuff out of the store.   You could buy on line and save gas and sanity, life and limb.  Or you can be really, really smart and be more discriminating and not get so caught up in shopping it becomes a major distraction.

Whatever you do for the holidays, this is certainly not the way to do it.  If you are that bored with your life, and your life is that stale that mobbing the front of a store, in cold weather yet, seems like a good idea, perhaps you should seriously consider ceasing to populate the earth any further.   We really don’t need more people, and we certainly don’t need more shoppers.

You may see the light.  Or the only lights that may penetrate the huddled masses are the twinkly lights of Holiday Season.   I would say Christmas, but it really has little to do anymore with the birth of Christ, Winter Solstice or whatever else you celebrate.   It is about you and how much you can shop.   It is about shopping, and not really so much about the giving.   You shop till you drop.  Or kill someone.

No matter how you see this, there is one thing you definitely won’t see standing in the middle of a department store, either at 5 A.M. or any other time where getting frazzled and frustrated is considered part of the experience.   Definitely one thing you won’t see.   Me.