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German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: "God is dead and Afflictor is stupid." (Image by Hanns Olde.)

How great that our little Brooklyn website has continued its international expansion by ringing up its first visitor from Germany. It looked for a while like there was a wall between us, Germany, but then it came tumbling down and now we’re together at last. But who among you has so much free time on their hands that they can waste precious moments browsing our idiot website? Was it you, Rammstein lead singer, Till Lindemann, with your crotch o’ fire? Was it you, Chancellor Angela Merkel, with your generous cleavage? Was it you, 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant, with your elongated forehead? Well, whoever it was, we extend warm greetings to the whole of Germany. Welcome to Afflictor Nation!

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"Astrology is the practical part of the science of Astronomy."

It’s 1863, you’re in the Boston area, you’re down to your last 50 cents and you need someone to cause a speedy marriage. What do you do? You get yourself over to the temporary Winter Street offices of Professor Baron, a presumably preeminent practitioner in the field of astrology.

This print ad from that year doesn’t state where Mr. Baron earned his Ph.D. in astrology, but it touts his amazing abilities. In the incredibly sexist spirit of that time, women were charged only 50 cents for a reading whereas men had to fork over a dollar.

The Professor’s quarters were located “above Mr. Emerson’s Trimming Store.” An excerpt from the copy:

“Has profound knowledge of the rules of the Science of the Stars, and as the hand of fate has marked out the path of each individual, so Professor Baron unfolds its meanderings of the past, present and future, covering the whole field of all that relates to your happiness or misery, through life. If you wish to know whether you will be successful and prosperous in any undertaking, or to hear from an absent relative or lover, call on Professor Baron. He will reveal unto all who consult him secrets that no living mortal ever knew before, and those who call will be sure to be more successful through life. The Professor can bring success out of the most perilous undertakings.”

See other Old Print Ads.

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Gray Woman: I have two eyeballs and I don't share them.

With the aid of Edith Hamilton‘s classic text, Mythology, and the Theoi Greek Mythology site, I bring you the top five lesser-known misogynistic mythological creatures.

  • Harpies: Frightful flying creatures with hooked beaks and claws who always left behind a loathsome stench.
  • Gray Women: Extremely withered and strange trio of women. Shared one tooth and one eye. Inserted and removed eyeball in their foreheads.
  • Gorgades: A tribe of female creatures whose bodies were covered entirely with hair.
  • Akhlys: The demon of misery. Pale green hag with bleeding cheeks and tear-stained eyes.
  • Empousai: Fierce underworld demons who used the guise of sexually attractive raven-haired women to lure young men to their death. Had mismatched legs of brass and donkey.

Read other Listeria lists.


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I am late hockey goalie George Hainsworth. In addition to playing for the Montreal Canadiens, I was also a net minder for the Saskatoon Sheiks.

I knew the second I put up a post that mentioned hockey that Afflictor.com would have its first visitor from the incredibly cold and underpopulated nation of Canada. But, you know, what took you guys so long? You’re sitting right up north there and many other far-flung countries have already joined Afflictor Nation. Too busy counting your 26 Olympic medals? That’s 11 fewer than the USA won, so it shouldn’t have taken you that long, Canada. Well, thanks for taking a break from curling and pretending you’re proud of Celine Dion long enough to throw us a bone. Better late than never, Canada. We welcome you to Afflictor Nation!

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"General Tom Thumb": I might have been just 31 inches tall, but I was P.T. Barnum's greatest attraction.

  • “Aldiborontiphoscophornio”: James Ballantyne (1772-1833) Scottish printer.
  • “Ape”: Carlo Pellegrini (1839-1889): Italian caricaturist.
  • “Bastard of Orleans”: Jean Dunois (1402-1468) French count/military commander
  • “Blind Traveler”: James Holman (1786-1857) British navy lieutenant who went blind, made long solo journeys.
  • “General Tom Thumb”: Charles Sherwood Stratton (1838-1882) Diminutive entertainer from Connecticut, worked for P.T. Barnum.
  • “The Great Profile”: John Barrymore (1882-1942) American actor.
  • “Insects’ Homer”: Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915) French entomologist.
  • “Mob’s Hero”: James Manners, Marquess of Granby (1721-1770) British military commander.
  • “Nestor of Golf”: Tom Morris (1821–1908) British golfer.
  • “Prince of Interviewers”: Nassau William Senior (1790-1864) English economist.
  • “Puck of Commentators”: George Steevens (1736-1800) Shakespearean commentator.
  • “Sillographer”: Timon (320 B.C.-230 B.C.) Greek poet and philosopher.
  • “Thunderbolt of Italy”: Gaston Foix (1489-1512) French nobelman.
  • “Touch Doctor”: Valentine Greatrakes (1629-1683) Irish physician.
  • “Vinegar Joe”: Joseph Stilwell (1883-1946) American military commander.

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On "M*A*S*H," Radar loved Grape Nehi.

This matchbook cover bears an advertisement for the once-popular Nehi sodas, because nothing goes better with lung cancer than orange soda. There’s no exact date linked to this advertisement, but it had to be 1955 or thereafter.

Nehi (pronounced “Knee High”), the brainchild of Georgia grocer and philanthropist Claud Adkins Hatcher, was first sold in 1924. Although the Nehi brand is no longer a supermarket staple (the 16-ounce orange was once incredibly popular), it was the foundation product of what eventually became the Royal Crown Cola corporation.

The Hatcher family website reveals how Nehi came to be. An excerpt:

“There is an interesting story about the origin of the Nehi trademark that took place in the 1920s. Supposedly, Claud Hatcher overheard a route salesman enter the plant one day and describe a competitor’s tall bottle as being ‘knee-high.’ This phrase falling on the receptive mind of Claud Hatcher became Nehi, which was destined to become America’s best known soft drink flavor line. The Nehi line of fruit flavours (orange, grape, root beer, etc.) was introduced in 1924.”

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Ford to New York: Drop dead, you filthy, egg-sucking dogs. I will dine on your rotting carcasses. (Photo by David Hume Kennerly.)

With the aid of the fun book, New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis by Jeffrey A. Kroessler, I previously presented you with the ten most amazing historical moments in NYC in 1906 and 1967. Before I return the book to my shelf, I go to it one last time to help me present the biggest and best in NYC for 1975.

Read other Listeria lists.


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I have emphysema just like Osiris and Thoth.

“The Utmost in Cigarettes” is the slogan that was used in this post-WWI ad for the imported cigarette brand Egyptian Deities. Priced at 30 cents a pack, the brand tried to sell itself as a continental, sophisticated accoutrement as much as a pack of smokes.

The ad copy promises that “people of culture and refinement invariably prefer Deities to any other cigarette.” But the early century rage of Egyptian and Turkish cigarettes did not last forever. An excerpt from Relli Shechter’s article, “Selling Luxury: The Rise of the Egyptian Cigarette and the Transformation of the Egyptian Tobacco Market, 1850-1914”:

“Tastes in Europe and the United States shifted away from Turkish tobacco and Egyptian cigarettes towards Virginia tobacco during and after the First World War. What remained of the Greek-run tobacco industry in Egypt was nationalized after the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Egyptian-made cigarettes were thereafter sold only domestically, and became known for their poor quality (and low price).”

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You can perform your service in Afflictor Army any time you like, Bar Refaeli.

You’ve been remiss, Chosen People: Afflictor.com has been around for nearly three months and many nations have joined our foolishness, but you’ve acted meshuganah and avoided the site. Until today, that is. The excitement in Afflictor’s Brooklyn offices was palpable when we looked at the traffic stats and realized we had our first visitor from Israel. Why else was Israel even founded, except to be a part of Afflictor Nation? Oh, to be a refuge for Jewish people in an often hostile and prejudiced world? Yes, that too, we suppose, but mostly it was to help us add another nation to the roster of countries that have visited our idiot site. Shalom to you, Israel, and welcome to Afflictor Nation!

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Siegel once asked Marlo Thomas if people thought she was "bitchy." She was understandably not very amused. (Image by Ronni Bennett.)

Back before American media was engulfed in its faux-reality mania, in which emotionally damaged recruits are encouraged to act out every last pathology to pump up the ratings, TV host Stanley Siegel and his questionable taste and utter neuroses were considered controversial. During the 1970s, his raucous live morning show on the local ABC affiliate made his name as famous in New York as any politician, athlete or Broadway star.

Siegel invited his therapist to psychoanalyze him each week on the air, he allowed a wasted Truman Capote to sit down as a guest when he was clearly in no condition to do so and he angered a good number of politicos and entertainers with his brash questions. He was the anti-Brokaw, and it worked wonderfully well for a while.

In the 1977 New York magazine article,Give Us a Kiss, Stanley,” which was written by the journalist and playwright Jonathan Reynolds, Siegel was analyzed a little bit more. These days the talking head appears to be attempting to get some sort of travel show off the ground, but Reynolds’ piece captures Siegel at the height of his entertaining narcissism. An excerpt:

“Every day, Siegel wallows guiltlessly in his own persona, exulting in the dust, high jinx and cobwebs he reveals. He is funny, frightened, confused, weepy, sexual, evangelistic, and overbearing right in front of everybody’s eyes. In terms of emotional exhibitionism, Stanley Siegel makes Jack Paar look like Thomas Pynchon.

In the nearly two years he has been on WABC-TV at 9am, he has sextupled the ratings of his dreary predecessors, increased WABC’s rate card from $35 to $100 for every 30-second spot sold, knocked the venerable Not for Women Only and mega-venerable Concentration out of their time slots, and gained a host of admirers from Robert Evans to Eleanor Holmes Norton.

People tune in to the Stanley Siegel Show to see how Stanley feels–for if there is one predictable element in the program, it is that it will always be clear just how Stanley feels.”

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They've finally come up with an easy way for me to visualize Bridget Bishop's hanging whenever I stir my tea.

According to silvercollecting.com, Daniel Low and Co., a jewelry store established in Massachusetts in 1867, started a spoon-collecting craze in the U.S. with the introduction of their “Salem Witch Spoon,” playing up the town’s history of lady-hanging to sell a piece of cutlery. The store, housed in the First Church Building, offered a variety of spoons ranging in price from $1.25 to $2.50. An excerpt from the 1891 ad:

“An interesting mania, yet having its useful side as well, is the collecting of odd silver spoons. The idea is too get them from as  many different localities as possible, but particularly from places having some special Historical value. One of the presents received by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes on his eighty-first birthday was a gold-lined silver spoon, the handle of which bears a witch on a broomstick.”

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Jerry Rubin was a charter member of the Yippies and could ably pull off the headband look.

With the aid of the very fun book, New York Year by Year: A Chronology of the Great Metropolis by Jeffrey A. Kroessler, I present to you the ten most amazing historical moments in NYC in 1967:

Read other Listeria lists.

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Not Rosie O'Donnell.

The Presidential race of 1888 was raging, as Benjamin Harrison and Grover Cleveland battled furiously for the White House amid the uproar over tariffs. (Harrison prevailed.) But in Brooklyn, people were able to chill out thanks to the twin relaxations of base ball (spelled as two words in those days) and horse racing. In the August 16, 1988 issue of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, an article simply title “Base Ball” addresses a resurgence in the popularity of what was considered even then to be a waning national pastime. An excerpt:

“Base Ball and horse racing divide with the Presidential campaign a large share of public attention. Indeed, judging from the amount of sporting news printed in the newspapers and the crowds which gather about the bulletin boards awaiting the latest returns from the field and track, it would seem most people are willing to let the tariff take care of itself until, at least, the warm days are over. The season has been generous in amusements of every kind, and among other things it has witnessed a revival of popular interest in the national game which cannot fail to be gratifying to those who had begun to think that its best days had vanished. The ball field may not possess the exciting and exhilarating influence of the track, but it enjoys an equal share of popularity, and in the East, at all events, it does not sufficiently appeal to the gambling instinct to render it vicious or offensive. Brooklyn’s renewed interest in base ball is due to the fact that for the first time in years the city is represented by a club of undoubted merit.”

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Give me my gold medal or I will shear my gorgeous shoulder-length tresses in protest. (Image courtesy of David W. Carmichael.)

We welcomed Russia to Afflictor Nation last month, when one of their citizens visited our stupid site for unknown reasons, and now another Russian has graced our URL. Vladimir Putin and his young ward, Dmitry Medvedev, have obviously lost their iron grip on their people, as comrades everywhere are whiling away their time reading our inane comedy and profane commentary. Perhaps Putin was distracted by Russian figure skater Evgeni Plushenko’s controversial second-place finish at the Olympics. Funny thing is, Putin doesn’t seem particularly distracted by his country’s disappearing journalists. Regardless: Welcome again to Afflictor.com, Mother Russia!

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On an 1949 assignment for "Look" magazine, young Stanley Kubrick photographs showgirl Rosemary Williams. Seems like a good gig.

Look magazine was never quite able to steal the spotlight from its equally photo-rich big-city competitor, Life, but the Iowa-based publication waged a good fight with a keen eye for talent and tons of amazing pictures.

After all, they gave a young photographer named Stanley Kubrick more than 300 assignments. And the inaugural issue in 1937 was no shrinking violet: It contained a feature on a Japanese brothel and a pictorial of hermaphrodites. The magazine was founded by Iowa newspaper publishers and brothers John and Gardner Cowles, Jr. The duo were not exactly prepared for the response to the magazine. An excerpt from a 1937 article in Time:

“When brothers John and  Gardner Cowles Jr., publishers of the Des Moines Register and Des Moines Tribune, started Look ten months ago they had no idea whether they would sell 60,000 or 600,000 copies. First issue of the 10¢ monthly gravure picture magazine was a 705,000 sellout, and the present 1,700,000 circulation came in generous leaps and bounds as the monthly became a fortnightly.”

The sad truth is that when Look went out of business in 1971 and Life the following year (for the first time), they both were still very popular periodicals, with millions of subscribers. But advertising had migrated to TV, so the ambitious photojournalism was no longer economically feasible. It’s all cyclical, huh?

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It feels just like being at home, apart from the constant vomiting from sea sickness.

I didn’t realize that passengers ships were air-conditioned as early as 1948, but that’s one of the promises in this advertisement for a quartet of passenger ships that traveled from New York to Mediterranean destinations. I would guess it was the beginning of the post-war dividend kicking in as American entered one of its most prosperous eras.

The ships were owned and operated by American Export Lines, which was originally known as Export Steamship Corporation when it began operating in 1919. A line of cargo and passenger ships, American was the category leader during its heyday. It ultimately declared bankruptcy in 1977. An excerpt from the ad copy:

“Designed to provide a new concept of comfort, convenience and pleasure in the spirit of modern American living. Embodying the experience of extensive research and wide experience in Mediterranean travel…possessing an air of charm and quiet good taste in the beautifully decorated, roomy interiors…fully air-conditioned.

All staterooms are outside, each with a private bath. Every cabin resembles a completely appointed living room when arranged for daytime occupancy…equipped with generously oversized downy berths for night-time comfort. Permanent outdoor pools.”

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The original "Brooklyn Daily Eagle" published from 1841 to 1955.

The Brooklyn Public Library has put online the 1841-1902 archives of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Amid the earth-shattering stories of wars, treaties and calamities that effected millions are the bizarre stories that simply rocked a trolley-load of people. An excerpt from the December 17, 1899 article “Morey Loses A Foot In Trolley Mishap” which was subtitled “Passengers in a Coney Island Car Startled by an Exceptionally Queer Accident; Shock for the Motorman; Morey, who is a Well Known Gravesend Man, Exhibits Remarkable Nerve”:

“A ‘horrible accident’ occurred on a Brooklyn trolley car on Coney Island avenue yesterday afternoon. Lewis Morey, who for a long time has kept a bicycle repair shop and storage place on Surf avenue and who holds the championship medal for a twelve hour bicycle race, won at the Sea Beach Palace, was the victim. Morey had been to Manhattan and was returning to his home when the accident befell him.

While the car was moving at a fast rate of speed down Coney Island avenue toward the West End a woman passenger signaled the conductor to stop. The car was crowded and Morey was standing outside on the rear platform. As the car began to slow up the men on the platform tried to make way for the woman, stepped down on the stirrup of the car and sprang off.

The ground where Morey jumped off was very rough, and his foot striking a small stone, caused him to fall to the ground almost under the car. As Morey slipped and fell the woman standing ready to get off screamed and the conductor and the other men on the platform had little shrieks of horror torn from their throats at the awful sight.

As Morey’s right foot struck the stone it was given a twist and the right foot snapped off at the ankle, like a piece of brittle glass. The foot, encased in its shoe and with the upper end of the sock hanging out of the shoe mouth and hiding the snapped off joint, rolled a few feet away from the prostrate man.

As the car came to a standstill those inside rushed off, and, seeing the foot broken off and Morey lying like a dead man, they, too, began screaming. The conductor went wild with fright. He called to the motorman to come help with Morey, but that was not needed, for there were many willing hands. In an instant a dozen men were trying to get around Morey to carry him someplace where he could be given medical treatment. But nobody had the nerve to pick up the foot. All viewed it with agonized horror.

‘Oh, get away from me,’ Morey snapped out as the sympathetic passengers crowded around trying to lend him aid. This was rather startling coming from a man who had just lost his foot but the passengers were more than shocked when they saw the footless man rise up to a standing position and hobble around on his one sound foot and the jagged stump.

‘Where’d my foot go?’ Morey asked as he looked around for the missing member. ‘Darn that foot anyway.’

‘Oh, there it is,’ he exclaimed in a relieved tone as he caught sight of the foot and the shoe. Pushing several of the half dazed passengers aside, he picked up the foot and began to look at it in a rueful, sorrowful way.”

The kicker to the story was that Morey had a prosthetic limb, and what had fallen off was his artificial foot.  Clearly sounds like a fictional urban legend, but it was presented as fact.

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This novel was as lusty as its cover, but the Hays Code made for a toned-down film version.

“A lusty novel of the Southwest” boasts the copy in this 1947 advertisement for a 25-cent thrift edition of Niven Busch’s melodramatic novel, Duel in the Sun. The story concerns a half-white, half-Native American woman who gets caught up in intrigue–romantic and otherwise–while living with her white rancher relatives.

Before becoming a novelist and Hollywood screenwriter, Busch was a magazine writer for the New Yorker and Time. Duel in the Sun was made into a film by David O. Selznick and King Vidor in 1946 and remains a popular classic, one which Martin Scorsese identifies as one of the most influential films of his childhood. But the out-of-print novel is all but forgotten. An excerpt from the ad copy:

“When hot-headed handsome Lewt McCanles gallops recklessly along a trail that can lead only to flaming gunplay, a million-acre cattle empire trembles in the balance. Brother wars on brother in an action-packed, swift-shooting story of the great American Southwest in its sprawling, brawling infancy.”

See other Old Print Ads.

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I laugh because I just thought of a new and ingenious means of psychological torture.

For years, I lazily accepted the notion that director Alfred Hitchcock was underrated by the media as merely a purveyor of spine-tingling melodrama, someone thought of as an entertainer of the masses but not an artist. I assumed that the campaigning of his greatest admirer, Francois Truffaut, helped revise the opinion of Hitch as someone worthy of high praise.

There may be some truth to that, but people definitely knew how great Hitchcock was long before the ’60s. Case in point is a 1939 article in Life magazine, “Alfred Hichcock: England’s Biggest and Best Director Goes to Hollywood.” The piece looks at the esteemed English director’s move to California to begin a brilliant second act to his career.

The article was written by Geoffrey T. Hellman, who was best known as a legendary New Yorker writer but also simultaneously served as associate editor at Life for a couple of years in the ’30s. Hellman’s papers are housed at NYU. An excerpt from the colorful piece, which looks at how Hitchcock’s devious need to cause discomfort carried over from the big screen into his personal life:

“In private life, Hitchcock’s astringent outlook enables him to take an enormous, if deadpan, satisfaction in the distress of his friends and acquaintances, especially in situations induced by himself. Although his flair for practical jokes has suffered a setback in Hollywood, where the novelty of his surroundings and the constant sun seem to have cramped his style, he is beginning to feel more at home, and judging from his past record it is only a question of time until he gives Louie B. Mayer the hot foot. He once offered an English property man a pound for the privilege of handcuffing him overnight, and just before snapping on the manacles gave the victim a drink into which he had slipped a strong laxative. Hitchcock has a sense of values and gave the fellow a 100% bonus the following morning because of the unusual humor of the circumstances.”

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The periodicals section is on the third floor, and, yes, I am a vixen beneath my demure exterior.

Several years ago I picked up a excellent 1969 paperback entitled Good Reading for about a buck in used bookstore in Brooklyn (which has since gone out of business). The Good Reading series was first published in 1935, and this 35th anniversary edition was priced at 95 cents.

Scholars from fields including Middle Ages history, the 19th-century British novel and Mathematics suggested the must-read books in their area of expertise. It lucidly and briefly annotates more than a couple thousand important books. In the fields of reference books and magazines, J. Sherwood Weber, who was the series’ editor and the chairman of the English department at Pratt, picked the best of the best.

The following are his choices for the best periodicals of the era, all but one of which still exist and have made the leap to the Internet. A good number, however, have changed significantly, so you’ll have to judge for yourself how many would still belong among the top publications.

Read other Listeria lists.

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Cooper looks cool in his dark glasses. Let's make a movie glamorizing him. Is Johnny Depp available to provide one of his overpraised, one-note performances?

I’m always amazed when criminals become folk heros, like when John Dillinger or Bugsy Siegel are glamorized because somehow their lawlessness supposedly tapped into the anti-authoritarianism of our collective psyche. We must be very bored.

Think of all the honest people who struggle through difficult times without committing crimes. Some are part of movements that attempt to make society fairer. Or perhaps they just quietly try as best they can to raise their children well. Those people are the heroes, but usually the geniuses with the guns and getaway cars get more attention.

One such unlikely antihero was the shadowy lowlife D. B. Cooper, who became a cult hero after hijacking a 727 aircraft in November 1971 and securing $200,000 in ransom from Northwest Airlines before parachuting into oblivion. Because of his daring crime and subsequent disappearance, Cooper became a huge cult figure

His wanted poster is textually matter-of-fact apart from mentioning that Cooper was a “heavy smoker of Raleigh filter tip cigarettes.” The images look fairly Warhol-ish, which isn’t surprising consider the Pop Artist’s stature in the culture at the time. There is no reward money listed.

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Where my hose at?

This 1961 advertisement in a New York University newspaper was one of the earliest ads for what were the first commercially available pantyhose. “Panti-Legs” were manufactured by a North Carolina fabric company named Glen Raven, which was founded in 1860 and is still in existence. A seamless pair of Panti-Legs would have run you $3 a pair back then. Glen Raven also makes awnings, flags and window covers. An excerpt from the ad copy:

“What’s going on with girls in every college in the country? Panti-Legs by Glen Raven! The fabulous new fashion that is making girdles, garters and garter belts old fashion. Panti-Legs are ecstatically comfortable with campus togs, date frocks, all your ’round-the-clock clothes–especially the new culottes and under the slacks. No sag, wrinkle or bulge.”

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Theodore Roosevelt called Chautauqua "the most American thing in America."

Got my paws on a bunch of ephemera that was stashed in an early 1900s bible owned by a family in Ripley, New York. I brought you a transcript of one piece yesterday–an article clipped from the Ripley Express about women cultivating facial beauty. Today I bring you an information sheet called “Chautauqua Tickets.”

Chautauqua, massively popular in the late 19th century and the early 20th century, was a progressive education and culture movement that was begun in 1874 by Lewis Miller and John Heyl Vincent in Southwestern New York State. It grew into a traveling circuit that brought lecturers, preachers, musicians, Shakespearean productions, balled performances, etc., to rural communities across the country. The advent of automobiles, radio and TV eventually diminished the need for barnstorming entertainment.

The flyer (no way to tell the exact date) informs that tickets are available at local businesses, including Avery’s Garage and J.F. Vandrick’s Druggist Shop. The copy reads: “The War Tax is included in the price of ticket. This will save the trouble patrons were put to in former years. Adult Season Ticket…$2.75, Children’s Season Ticket…$1.35.”

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All of my wives are great, but you see that one right there, no the other one, she's my favorite.

National Geographic offers up a different sort of V-Day love story this month with a cover piece titled, Polygamy in America. The story looks at marriages with multiple wives in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a sect that split from the Mormon faith in the 1920s and became centered in Colorado City, Arizona.

The sect became infamous in recent years when their compound in West Texas was raided by federal officials amid domestic abuse and child-endangerment allegations. Perhaps trying to change their public image, church elders opened their doors for National Geographic. An excerpt in which women from the sect discuss their unorthodox marriages:

“Joyce is a rather remarkable example of this harmony. She not only accepted another wife, Marcia, into the family, but was thrilled by the addition. Marcia, who left an unhappy marriage in the 1980s, is also Joyce’s biological sister. ‘I knew my husband was a good man,’ Joyce explains with a smile as she sits with Marcia and their husband, Heber. ‘I wanted my sister to have a chance at the same kind of happiness I had.’

Not all FLDS women are quite so sanguine about plural marriage. Dorothy Emma Jessop is a spry, effervescent octogenarian who operates a naturopathic dispensary in Hildale. Sitting in her tiny shop surrounded by jars of herbal tinctures she ground and mixed herself, Dorothy admits she struggled when her husband began taking on other wives. ‘To be honest,’ she says, ‘I think a lot of women have a hard time with it, because it’s not an easy thing to share the man you love. But I came to realize this is another test that God places before you—the sin of jealousy, of pride—and that to be a godly woman, I needed to overcome it.'”

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The bible is subtitled: "As Laid Down By Our Saviour--The Christ."

Got my gnarled, greasy, grimy, grubby fingers on a copy of a Cornerstones of Christianity bible that was owned by a Presbyterian family in Ripley, New York, in the early 1900s. While the good book itself is a standard hardcover copy of Testaments both New and Old (published by the John A. Hertel Company), there was a stash of newspaper clippings, personal letters, general-store receipts and other ephemera still pressed in the pages. The latest item appears to be dated 1916. One of the letters involves a missionary expedition to India.

I’ll bring you a transcript of each item in the days ahead. Today I’ll start with a newspaper article that was clipped from a local Ripley journal. I’d like to say it’s a horribly stupid, sexist piece that could never be published now, but is it really any more reductive than much of the the junk in today’s women’s magazines? Here’s a word-for-word transcript of the unbylined “Cultivation of Facial Beauty”:

“The woman who spends all of her money upon clothes and neglects her face and hair is no more interesting than a wooden figure decked to a gorgeous gown in a show window. A great artist once said to me that no clever woman would wear a garment or jewel to outshine her face. Meaning that the face should be the ornament and the garments should form the frame surrounding it.

Nothing looks more grotesque than an expensively gowned woman who has allowed her hair to become faded and neglects to dress her face. When I say ‘dress her face,’ I mean not only to wash it but to treat it with a pure face cream, which cleanses the pores of the skin, and the use of a little delicate, pure powder. Every woman past the age of 25 requires a little powder upon her face. There are secretions of dust and grease in the pores of the skin which cause a shine upon the surface that has an appearance of neglect.

The face, neck and hair should first be considered; the dress should be a secondary consideration. The quality of the hair, its care and manner of arrangement is a question only of attention. The quality of the complexion, its bloom and smoothness, is simply a question of exercise, cleanliness, and quality of creams and powders used.

First beautify your head, then fit your garments to suit it, and you will have a harmonious symphony pleasing to the eye and mind of all who behold.”

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