BITS & PIECES

Openers:  "First," said Florio the gangster,"I'm going to cut off your nose and make you eat it.  Then I'm going to cut off your ears and make you eat them.  Then I'm going to gouge out your eyes and make you eat them.  Then I'm going to cut off your balls, fry them in a bit of your own fat, and make you et them.  Unless --"

"Yes?"

Florio is about forty, fair-haired, stocky, just under medium height.  If he says somethig, he means it; that's his gimmick, in a world where everybody's got to have one to stand out from the crowd.  Florio keeps his promises, like God.  Personally , though, I think the reason for Florio's outsatnding success in his profession is his imagination, which is vivid, lurid, and just quirky enough to make you piss yourself, as I'd just done.

"Unless," Floriio said, with a smile, "you do a job for me."

"Consider it done," I said quickly.  "Really.  I mean it,"

--Pulling the Wings Off Angels by "K. J. Parker" (Tom Holt) (2022)

First off, the title almost nails it.  There is only one angel, but wings are pulled off.  More than once.

Our narrator is an unbelieving clerical student in a world which worships the Invincible Sun as God.  He (the narrator, not God)  is deeply in debt to crime boss Florio.  As we have seen above, that is not a good thing.

There is an old myth -- and surely, it has to be a myth -- that the narrator's grandfather once captured an angel, which is still being held hostage in an undisclosed location.  All our narrator has to do is procure the angel for Florio and all will be forgiven.  Easy peasy.

A great romp of a fantasy that touches on magic,susperstition,  the lack of science, and the paradoxes of an infallible supreme being.

"K. J. Parker" is the pseudonym Tom Holt (born 1961) uses for many of his fantasy novels.  Under his own name, Holt writes humorous fantasy, often based on various mythologies.  He has also published historical novels, poetry, continuations of E. F. Benson's "Lucia" series of novels, and a satirical biography of Margaret Thatcher.  As Parker, most of his fantasy takes place in secondary universes.  He has won the Crawford Award and two World Fantasy Awards.  He can be very funny.

 

Incoming:

• David Bergantino, Wes Craven's New Nightmare.  Movie tie-in novel. "Ten years ago, legendary horror director Wes Craven created Freddy Kreuger, one of the screen's most unforgettable monsters.  Now actress Heather Langenkamp is about to return to her role of 'Nancy, Freddy's first and greatest foe, in the newest and most ambitious 'Nightmare' movie yet.  But the line between fiction and reality becomes terrifyingly blurred, as Heather begins to have horrible dreams while mysterious accidents threaten those around her.  As the ultimate 'Freddy' movie rushes into production, the cast and crew find themselves stalked as though Freddy himself has escaped from the movies into real life.  But Freddy Kreuger is just a fictional character...or is he?"  Meta, much?  Bergantino also wrote four of the six Freddy Kreuger's Tales of Terror  tie-in novels.
• Max Allan Collins, Fancy Anders for the Boys (Who Killed the Hollywood Hostess?) and Fancy Anders Goes to War (Who Killed Rosie the Riveter?).   Mystery novellas, with artwork by Fay Dalton.  In Boys:  "October 1942.  With her private detective daddy in the OSS chasing saboteurs, Fancy is stuck playing receptionist/cleaning-gal at the empty Anders Confidential Investigations office.  But then the 24-year-old Barnard grad -- expert in shooting, flying and jujitsu -- is recruited back into action.  Hollywood, with Betty Davis and John Garfield leading the charge, has put together a night club where servicemen are served by waiters and waitresses with famous faces, from Gable to Dietrich, from Abbott to Costello.  With starlets acting as hostesses, gorgeous Fancy fits right in.  But this pistol-packing mama knows her real job is solving the murder of Who Killed the Hostess -- a Victory Girl who became an L.A. battle casulaty.  In the meantime, saboteurs are targeting the Canteen for maximum damage, hoping to wipe out half the stars in Tinsel Town and blast a hole in America's morale."  In War:  "Fall 1942.  When her Hollywood private detective daddy is called back to uniform, Fancy Anders is issued orders of her own -- answer the phone, make referrals, and keep the place dusted.  But the 24-year-old Barnard grad -- whose hobbies include shooting, flying and jujitsu -- isn't having any.  At Amalgamated Aircraft, a young female worker chosen to pose for patriotic photos and posters has met with a suspicious "accidental death."  Fancy takes the victim's place on the swing shift, fitting in well with co-workers very much not from high society circles.  With the occasional help of LAPD homicide cop Rick Hinder, Fancy takes a hammer to the head of a saboteur, sniffs out the enemy within, and sets out to prevent an assassination attempt on President Roosevelt, scheduled to tour the plant and greet the women who work long, hard hours for the war effort."  Fancy is "a compelling new series protagonist both indelibly of her time, and far ahead of it."  As a big MAC fan, I am convinced he can do no wrong, and this series stands proof to that.  There's at least one more Fancy Anders novella in the pipeline, and someday (perhaps) they will gathered in an omnibus.
• Blake Crouch, The Last Town.  A Wayward Pines novel.  "Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrived in Wayward Pines, Idaho, three weeks ago.  In this town, people are told who to marry, where to live, where to work.  Their children are taught that David Pilcher, the town's creator, is god.  No one is allowed to leave; even asking questions can get you killed.  But Ethan has dicovered a secret of what lies beyond the electrified fence that surrounds Wayward Pines and protects it from the terrifying world beyond.  It is a secret that has the entire population completely under the control of a madman and his army of followers, a secret that is about to come storming throughh the fence to wipe out this last, fragile remnant of humanity,"  This is the third book in the trilogy which spawned the television show Wayward Pines, starring Matt Dillon and Toby Jones.  The program ran for two seasons on Fox (2015-16), until it lost steam at the end; I understand the original books are much better.
• John DeChancie, Castle Perilous.  Humorous fantasy.  "Yesterday he was an unemployed philosophy major.  Today he lives in a castle...that's worlds away from home.  His best buddy looks like seven feet of walking shag carpet, and the girl in his life's from California.  In Castle
  Perilous, everyone has some magical talent, and behind each of the 144,000 doors thre's a new world to explore.  There's only one hitch.  There's a reason it's called...CASTLE PERILOUS."  There are eight books in the series.
• Richard Lockridge, Streak of Light.  A Nathan Shapiro mystery and a recent FFB.  "Roger Clare, rancorous right-wing political columnist for the New York Sentinel, made his reputatiojn by sounding off about the breakdown of law and order all around him.  They broke down, unfortunately for Mr. Clare, early one morning in his own office, when someone put a bullet through his head  It's definitely a front-page murder case., and Lieutenant Nathan Shapiro and Detective Tony Cook of Homicide, Manhattan South, hardly have a chance to begin their investigation before someone again turns the Sentinel offices into a shooting gallery.  Who's behind it? A left-wing terrorisr group?  The curiously dry-eyed, philandering widow of the late Mr. Clare?   Or is the culprit a disgruntled employee of the newspaper? This is one of Shapiro and Cook's toughest cases, and one they solve brilliantly with a clue as simple as a streak of light."   Lockridge, with his wife Frances, is best known for the husband-and-wife detecting team of Mr. and Mrs. North.  (The Norths were originally created by Richard Lockridge for a series of humourous stories in The New Yorker in the 30s, and graduate to solving crimes in the 40s.)   The series featured a rotating cast of characters which contiued after Frances's death in 1962, including the North's good friend Captain Bill Weigand, New York State cop Merton Heimrich, and Wiegand's underling (and occasional detecting partner of Heimrich) Nathan Shapiro.  Shaprio was the lead character in ten books, written first by the Lockridges, then by Richard alone after Frances's death. 
• Brian Lumley, Blood Brothers.  Horror novel in the Necroscope series.  "The vampires have been vanquished!  Harry Keogh and the armies of the dead have destroyed the evil that once plagued the world.  Nathan and Nestor, secret twins of the Necroscope and a proud gypsie woman, were children when their father, his humanity poisoned by his fearsome struggles, sacrificed himself to save mankind.  Yet there are vampires still, vampires crueler and stranger than any the Necroscope had faced.  When these new, merciless killers swoop out of the sky, Nathan and Nestor are men -- but they have few of Harry's miracuolous powers.  Torn from each other by battle, the sons of the Necroscope journey across the vampire world, exploring its mysteries, each seeking the powerful, terrible vampires, his missing brother...and the woman they both love!"  There is also a spin-off from the original series, the E-Branch Trilogy.
• Fred Rosen, Body Dump.  True Crime.  "In October 1996, women began vanishing off the streets of Poughkeepsie, New York.  All were young, pretty, and petite.  Most were hustlers and crackheads.  By August 1998, as the toll reached eight, a victim's mother said bitterly, 'When they find one, they'll find them all.'  She didn't know how horrifyingly right she was.  At the height of the manhunt, prostitute Christine Sala, hysterical, told police that she had barely escaped being strangled by Kendall Francois, 27, a 6' 4", 300-lb middle school hall monitor whose slovenly personal hygiene earned him the nickname 'Stinky.'  When caught, Francois said he'd killed the women because they hadn't given him the sex he claimed he'd paid for.  Investigators in white bio-hazard suits entered the house where Francois lived and found eight female corpses, almost all decomposed.  Some were placed in plastic bags together in the attic.  Others lay in shallow graves in the crawl space under the house.  It was such a tangle of rotting flesh and bones, even the investigators couldn't tell how many bodies there were.  Now, sentenced to life in prison without parole, the man whom others dismissed a smally oaf had finally been unmasked as one of the most bizarre serial sex-killers of modern times."  Gruesome and yucky, but it makes one wonder how many other sickos there are out there.
• Andrzej Sapkowski, The Last Wish.  The first book in The Witcher series, basis of the video game and the television series.  "Geralt of Rivia is a witcher.  A cunning sorcerer.  A merciless assassin.  And a cold-blooded killer.  His sole purpose:  to destroy the monsters that plague the world.  But not everything monstrous-looking is evil, and not everything fair is good...and in every fairy tale there is a grain of truth."  Translated from the Polish by Danusia Stok.
• Mickey Spillane, The Shrinking Island:  Three Novels.  Young adult mystery/adventure omnibus.  Back in the day, an editor bet Mickey Spillane -- who was well-known of the level of violence and sex in his novels -- that he could not write a "kid's book."  Spillane took up that challenge and, relying on his story-teller's sense of adventure and his love for the sea -- produced 1979's The Dsay the Sea Rolled Back, which introduced the young heroes Larry and Josh.  The pair returned in 1982's The Ship That Never Was.  A third title, The Shrinking Island, was announced but never appeared.  Until now.  Spillane's complete manuscript was discovered among his paper by Max Allan Collins who, following Spillane's wish and with the permision of Spillane's widow, has been preserving Spilane's legacy.  "In The Day the Sea Rolled Back, an inexplicable freak of nature rolls the sea back from the shores of the Caribbean island of Peolle and allows Larry and Josh to search the wreck of the Nantucket Belle and its supposed hoard of Spanish treasure.  but -- unbeknownst to them -- the boys are closely tracked by a pair of local fishermen who mean to take the treasure for themselve.  During The Ship That Never Was, Larry and Josh task themselves with rescuing an ancient sailor adrift in a mysterious longboat and find themselves embroiled in finding a lost island and restoring a missing heir to the throne of a kingdom.  In The Shrinking Island. Larry and Josh embark on their most exciring adventure yet when they find themselves up against dangerous storms, a missing Spanish galleon, a gang of greedy salvage hunters, and a disappearing island in a race against time to save the sacred land of their friend's ancestors..."  In his introduction to the omnibus, Collins quotes Spillane's reason for writing books for kids, "They grow up to be adults, you now,"  But this was more than prepping a future audience for his adult novels for Spillane -- I think he truly enjoyed the challenge of writing adventure novels for kids, especially books that gave him a chance to write about the sea.
• Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins, The Menace.  Mystery/horror novella based on an unproduced filmscript by Spillane.  "In touristy Peachtree Heights, Georgia, a sring of presumably accidental deaths of area physicians rouses the suspicion of police chief Blake Cutter.  But the former big-city cop's attempts to warn Dr. Roy Ryan are viewed by his estranged wife as an attempt to muddy the waters of a custody battle over the couple's young son Richie.  Too late to do anything more, a small, incredibly powerful creature emerges from the night to brave the walls of the doctor's compound, terrorizing the family and any and all police guarding them.  The menace is suddenly real, and those physicians' deaths are anything but accidental.  And when young Richie's archeologist uncle gives the boy a grisly birthday present -- an actual Aztec mummy -- the child begins to think to long-dead corpse is his friend, one who is still breathing..."  This edition also includes the original, long-lost version of "The Duke Alexander," a short story which had been altered as a Mike Hammer short story for actor Mickey Rooney, as well as a rare true crime article by Spillane from 1952.
• Dave Thomas and Max Allan Collins, The Many Lives of Jimmy Leighton.  Science fiction novel.  "Smalltime Boston thief Jimmy Leighton stumbles into a perilous quantum experiment -- and a bullet -- propelling him down the multiple paths his life might have taken in this exciting, innovative thriller." Dave Thomas was a founding member and head writer of the TV comedy series SCTV, and was co-creator (with Rick Moranis) of the popular beer-drinking Canadian comedy duo, Bob and Doug McKenzie.  A film director, screen writer, and two-time Emmy winner, Thomas has also been a writer/producer for Bones and The Blacklist.  Colins is an MWA Grandmaster, creator of The Road to Perdition, the Nate Heller historical mysteries, the hitman Quarry novels, many novels continuing the legacy of Mickey Spillane, the popular Antiques  mystery series (with his wife Barabara Collins), and too many other things for me to mention. 
• Douglas E. Winter, Stephen King:  The Art of Darkness.  Very much dated look at King and his writings, pubished in 1986.  I had a copy way back when but it went walkabout, so I picked this one up when I came across it in a thrift store.  Call me sentimental.

April 3:  A busy day in history.  Here are eleven significant things that happened:

1.  Pony Express.  In 1860, the first successful Pony Express run began from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco, California.  America was growing and California was becoming increasingly important to the nation.  The discovery of gold in 1848 brought many to the territory, not only prospectors but also investors and businessmen.  By 1850, California entered the union as a state.  Within a decade, its population swelled to over 350,000.  There was an increasing need for faster communication between California and much of the rest of the country.   The need became even greater as the tensions leading to the American Civil War grew more pronounced.

William Russell, Alexander Majors, and William B Waddell, were three prominent businessmen who, as Russell, Majors & Waddell. held government contracts to deliver army supplies to to forts in the west.  "At the peak of their operations, they employed 6,000 men, owned 75,000 oxen, thousands of wagons and warehouses."  Russell felt the company could also benefit from government contracts for fast mail delivery.  Up until this time, mail and other communications relied on stagecoach delivery -- a slow and sometime unsure process.  Using a short route and mounted riders, Russell and his partners proposed a service that would deliver mail from Missouri to California in ten days -- a time limit that many claimed to be impossible. 

It took several months for the Pony Express to be organized.  By the end of February, 1860, they had hird 80 riders, and established 184 stations using 400 horses and hundreds of personnel.  Majors, a religious man, gave each rider a special edition Bible.  All riders were required to sign the following oath:

"I,..., do hereby swear, before the Great and Living God, that during my engagement, and while I am an employee of Russell, Majors, and Waddell, I will, under no circumstances, use no profane language, that I drink no intoxicating liquors, that I will not quarrel or fight with any other employee of the firm, and that in every respect I will conduct myself honestly, be faithful to my duties, and so direct all my acts as to win the confidence of my employers.  So help me God."

The Pony Express stations were roughly ten miles apart.  The entire route was approximately 1900 miles long. At each station, the rider would change mounts, taking only the mail pouch (mochila) with him.  Each mochila had a padlocked pocket to hold bundles of mail.  The muchilas could hold up to 20 pounds of mail.  Riders could not  weigh over 125 pounds, bringing the total weight for the horse, including one revolver and a water sack, to about 165 pounds.  Riders would themselves switch off after a stretch of some 75 to 100 miles; sometimes, riders would ride two stretches, going day and night, giving them over 20 continuous hours on a horse.  They were paid $125 a month, a very good wage for the time.

Only once durng the existence of the Pony Express did the mail not go through.  Mail services were suspended because of the outbreak of the Piutte Indian War in Nevada.  A Pony Express mailing, which left San Francisco on July 21, 1860, did not reach its destination in time; rather, it arrived two years late.

Despite its instant fame and sucess in delivering mail in a timely fashion, Russell, Majors & Waddell did not get the government contrat they had hoped for.  The contract went instead to the Butterfield Overland Stage Line, leaving the Pony Express to run mail only between Salt Lake City and Sacramento.  The Butterfield operation also took over many of the Pony Express's stations.  The Civil War came shortly after Butterfield had won its contract, causing the stage line to cease operations.  The Pony Express itself had been losing money all along, and ceased its operations on October 26, 1861.  In its 19 months of existence, the Pony Express had delivered aome 35,000 letters.  Two days before the announced closing, the transcontinental telegraph had reached Salt Lake City, providing a link between Omaha and Sacramento. The establishment of the telegraph would have provided the death knell of the Pony Express anyway.

Following the Civil War, the assets of the Pony Express and of the Butterfield Stage were sold to Wells Fargo, reportedly for $1.5 million.

Here's Lorne Greene celebrating the Pony Express in song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUvyjjNbNOk

2.  Jesse and Robert.  Noted western outlaw, bankiand train robber, and guerilla Jesse James has undergone a revisionist legacy as a sort of "Robin Hood," a beloved and supposedly misunderstood outlaw.  Nothing in the historical record shows that to be true.  

Born and raised in Missouri, James (1847-1882) and his brother Frank were strongly sympathetic to the Southern cause.  During the Civil War, they joined William Quantell and "Bloody Bill" Anderson in their terrorist raids in Missouri and Kansas.  Reportedly the James brothers had taken part in the infamous Centralia Massacre of 1864, in which 24 unarmed Union soldiers were captured and executed.  Following the Civil War, the James boys rode with a number of outlaw gangs, -- robbing banks, stagecoaches, and trains.  Jesse James's reputation grew, and -- surprisingly -- so did popular sympathy for the outlaw.  From 1866 to 1876, Jesse and Frank James ran a gang with Cole, Bob, and Jim Younger.  This ended on September 7, 1876, when the James-Younger gang attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota.  Local residents had been warned about the raid and put up an armed resisitance.  One bank cashier was killed, along with a Swedish immigrant.  Severasl members of the gang were also killed.  The Younger brothers were captured, while Jesse and Frank James managed to escape.  Three years later, Jesse organized a new gang, which included Ed Miller (who was reportedly later killed by Jesse for talking too much) and brothers Charles and Robert Ford.

On this day in 1882, Robert Ford killed Jesse James, supposedly for reward money and for a promise of amnesty for his previous crimes.  James, who was going by the name of Thomas Howard, was shot in the head while standing on a chair in his living room to clean a picture hanging there.  Ford and his brother were quickly arreested, brought to trial, found guilty and sentenced to hang.  Almost as quickly, Missouri Governor Thomas T. Crittenton pardoned the two, raising speculation that a deal bad been struck with the brothers.  (Crittendon had been elected, in part, on a promise to bring the James boys to justice.)  Charlie and Robert Ford fled Missouri after receiving a miniscule reward.  Charlie, suffering from incurable tuberculosis and with a morphine addiction, colmmitted suicide in 1884.  Bob Ford was killed in 1892 in Colorado after being shot in the throat with a double-barrelled shotgun.

(On a personal note:  My late mother-in-law -- whoi never met a conspiracy theory she didn't like -- claimed to be related to Jessee James through an aunt of Jesse's.  Make of that what you will.

(On another personal note:  My mother's maiden name was Ford.  Hmm.)

Jesse James's public image and reputation grew substantially after his death.  Again, there is absolutely nothing to indicate he deserved that image:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcBkQiuK97Q

3.  Jack the Ripper.   The first of eleven murders of prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London was committed on this date in 1888.  Collectively known as "The Whitechapel Murders," there is no way of knowing whether they were all committed by the same person.  At least five of the eleven murders are widely believed to be the work of Jack the Ripper, the anonymous killer who supposedly taunted police with the famous "Dear Boss" and "From Hell" letters.  The "canonical five" victms -- Mary Ann  Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddoes, and Mary Jane Kelly -- were murdered betwen August 31 and November 9, 1888.  

The first of the "Whitechapel Murder" victims, Emma Elizabeth Smith, 45, was found on April 3, 1888.  she had been bludgeoned and sexually assaulted -- a blunt object had been inserted into her vagina, ripping her peritoneum.  She died the following day in a hospital of peritonitis.  She reportedly said that she had been attacked by three men, one of whom was a teenager.  Police were not informed of the attack or of her death until April 6.  Later, her attack was linked to the others by the press, but the prevailing opinion was that she was the victim of gang violence.  Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew of the Metroplitan Police Department was the only official to feel that Smith was an actual victim of Jack the Ripper.

The second victim of the Whitechapel Murders was Martha Tabrum, 39, whose body was found in the early hours of April 7.  She had been stabbed 39 times in the body and the neck (nine time in the throat, five in the left lung, two in the right lung, one in the heart, five in the liver, two in the splaeen, and six in the stomach, and numerous times in the lower abdomen and genitals).  Although not one of the canonical five, many believe the Tabrum was the first true victim of Jack the Ripper.

Theories as to the identity of Jack the Ripper have abounded over the last 135 years...Some felt he had to have been a local person, familiar with area.  Others believed he might be someone from a wealthier class who travelled to London's East End to do the murders.  Suspicion fell on medicalk men, as well as butchers.  Xenophobes focused on Jews and foreigners.  Anyone remotely connected to the case has been a suspect in someone's mind.  People not connected to the case, such as Prince Albert Victor, artist Walter Sickert (whom writer Patricia Cornwell famously accused of the crimes, using the flimsiest of evidence), and writer Lewis Carroll have also been suspected.  And what happened to Jack the Ripper?  His crimes (such as they were) stopped.  Or did they?  Did he die, or was he imprisoned in jail or a madhouse?  Did he move on to other, greener pastures?  Did he decide to give up wholesale slaughter in exchange for a hobby of collecting postage stamps?  No one knows.  But it's fun, albeit gruesome fun, to speculate.

Here's one theory, courtesy of writer Robert Bloch and Boris Karloff's Thriller:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hL1q8IgcBk&t=3s

4.   Oscar Wilde.  On April 3, 1895, a libel case brought by writer Oscar Wilde began.  It would result in Wilde's imprisonment on charges of homosexuality.  

Wilde had met Lord Alfred Douglas, a young Oxford undergraduate, in 1891 and a tempestious affair developed.  If Wilde was indiscreet in the affair, Douglas was flamboyant, introducing Wilde to a series of rent boys.  Douglas's father, Lord John Shotto Douglas, the 9th Marquis of Queensbury (for whom the rules of modern boxing were named), confronted the pair about their relationship.  Queensbury reportedly told Wilde, "I do not say that you are it, but you look it and pose at it.  And if I catch you and my son again in any public restaurant, I will thrash you."  Wilde claimed later to have put on a brave face, but Queensbury said the author had "shown him the white feather," and acted like a coward.  Wilde feard the damage public exposure might do his career and reputation.  then, on February 13, 1895, the Marquis left his calling card at Wilde's club, addressed, "For Oscar Wilde, the posing sodomite."  Young Douglas was furious, and insisted that Wilde sue his fathe for defamation.  Most of Wilde's other friends advised against it, but Wilde listened to his lover.  The Marquis of Queensbury was arrested for criminal libel.  The defence against libel charges were to simply prove that the statements made were true.  Queensbury's lawyers hired private detectives to provide the evidence -- something they did in spades, uncovering "Wilde's association with blackmailers and male prositutes, cross-dressers and homosexual brothels."  Losing the lawsuit left Oscar Wilde bankrupt.

A warrant for Wilde's arrest on charges of sodomy and gross indecency was then issued.  A first trial ended without a verdict, but a later trial found Wilde guilty and he was sentenced to two years' hard labor.   Wilde went from Newgate Prison, first to Pentonville Prison, then to Wandsworth Prison, and finally to Reading Gaol.  While Wilde was imprinsoned at Reading, the Gaol held its first execution in 18 years -- the hanging of 30-year-old Thomas Wooldbridge for the murder of his wife.  Following his release, Wilde wrote the poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" about Wooldbridge's execution.  The poem, while drawing no moral judgments on the justice of England's laws, focused on the brutality of the punishment that all convicts share.  

The poem, 109 stanzas of 6 lines each, contains the following lines:  "Yet each man kills the thing he loves/By each let this be heard./Some do it with a bitter look,/Some with a flattering word./The coward does it with a kiss,/The brave man with a sword!"

Here's a recording of the full poem, read by Nick Gisburne:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPBI6a03n5g

5. Joseph Stalin.  On this day in 1922, Joseph Stalin became the first Secretary General of the 

Communist Part of the Soviet Union.  Stalin (1878-1953) joined the Russian Soviet Democratic Labor Party in 1901, where he raised funds for Lenin's Bolsheviks through robberies, kidnappings, and protection rackets.  He was exiled to Siberia several times after being arrested.  Following the 1917 Revolution, Stalin joined the Politburo.  He fought in the Russian Civil War and, in 1922, oversaw the establishment of the Soviet Union.  As Secretary Genral of the Communist Party, he shared leadership with others until Lenin's death in 1924 when he assumed leadership of the entire country.  Originally, the Soviet Union was run by a collective leadership, but Stalin managed to consolidate power by 1928 to become the country's dictator.  

Stalin maintained a strong cult of personality, but all was not well in the Soviet Union.  His policies brought about a major famine in which frive to seven million died in the winter of 1932-3.  Historians still debate whether Stalin had intended the famine to occur or not.  Strict penal measures were put in place:  stealing even a handful of grain could be a capitol offense.  State repression intensified in the 1930s as Stalin became increasingly concerned with the threat of assassination.  Purges were held within the Communist Party.  In 1937, the repression moved to so-called "anti-Soviet elements" in society.  Over 268,000 people were arrested, nearly 76.000 of them executed.  Ethnic cleansing of Poles, Germans, Latvians, Finns, Greeks, Koreans, and Chinese began.  Approximately 1.6 million people were arrested, 700,00 of them were shot, and an unknown number died from torture.  Stalin unsuccessfully tried to deflect resposibility of what has been known as the Great Terror from himself.  

Although allied with Germany at the outset of World War II, the Soviet Union  found itself  the subject of war with Germany when Hitler reversed course.  Follwing the war, Russain soldiers were accused of looting, pillaging, and rape in Germany and elsewhere -- activities that Stalin condoned with a "boys will be boys" attitude.

Without going into excessive detail, Stalin was one of the worst people ever.

Here's a political cartton about a short-lived true love:

https://www.apstudent.com/ushistory/docs1901/hitlstal.htm

6. Bruno Hauptmann.  On April 3, 1936, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter who had entered the United States illegally when he was 24, was executed for the kidnapping and murder of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh, Jr. -- a case that had caused a national sensation.  Evidence presented at Hauptmann's trail appeared overwhelming, but later investigations called much of it into question.  Wirnesses may have been nintimidated, evidence may have been doctored or manufactured, and the crime scene was contaminated.  For all intents and purposes the trial was actually held in the press, which had demonized Hauptmann and slanted its coverage of the case.  Hauptmann,  by the way, never went by the name Bruno; the press of the day kept using his legal first name as a way of inciting anti-German prejudice.  Whether Hauptmann was guilty or not will never be known.  What is known is that justice, in the way it had been presented to the jury and the public, was not seved.

Here's a newsreel of the 1935 trial:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bruno+hauptmann

7.  Marshall Plan.   On this day in 1948, President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan -- the  European Recovery Program -- which authorized $5 billion in aid to 16 countries.  Over the four years the plan was in effect, the United States donated some $17 billion in economic and technical assistance to countries that joined the Organization for European Economic co-operation.  (A early draft of the plan had included the Soviet Union and its allies, but the Soviets rejected that offer.)  $17 billion in aid from the end of World War II until the Marshall Plan was created is not counted officially as part of the Marhall Plan.  

The Marshall Plan was one of the most successful foreign policy initiatives America had ever attempted.  In reslity, the amount of money was small in comparison to the GDP of the countries involved -- it's estimated that it increased GDP by about one-half of one percent.  The rewards for the United States, however, were immense.  The purpose of the plan was to help rebuld war-torm areas, remove trade barriers, modernize industry, improve European prosperity, and prevent the spead of European Communism.  In many ways, this is what it did.  It also provided a large economic boost to America, whose industries provided much of the materials needed.  The Marshall Plan paved the way for the post-World War II American prosperity, while also securing America's reputation as one of the good guys.

In 1951, the Marshall Plan was mostly replaced by the Mutual Security Act.

Here's The Blue Oyster Cult with "The Marshall Plan," which has nothing to do with the historical Marshall Plan:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srQhJI_pihs

8.  I've Been to the Mountaintop.  Martin Luther King delivered this speech on April 3, 1968, at the Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ headquarters) in Memphi, Tennessee.  It ends with an omninous note.  The following day he was assassinated.  Damn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixfwGLxRJU8

9.  Osborne 1.  The first portable computer was unveiled on this date in 1981.  (Whippersnappers out there may find it difficult to believe, but it had no battery and was powered through a wall socket.)  Roughly the size and weight of a sewing machine, it was advertised as being able to fit under an airplane seat.  The Osborne 1 came in a  plastic case with a handle and cost $1795; the software needed to operate the computer cost almost as much.  It had a tiny 5-inch display screen and used a single-sided floppy dick that could store 90 kB.

Soon the computing floodgates were open.

My, how things have changed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

10.  Unibomber.  Ted Kazinski, the "Unibomber," was captured in his remote cabin near Lincoln, Montana, on April 3, 1996.  A mathematics prodigy with a 167 I.Q., Kazinski graduated high school at age 15 and entered Harvard at 16.  A classmate later said that Kazinski was emotionally unprepared for college.  During his sophomore year at Harvard he took part in a "particularly brutalizing psychological study" that lasted for three years, in which he was subjected to weekly verbal abuse and humiliating attacks; he spend over 200 hours in the study, which may account for his hostile reaction to mind controlling techniques.  He graduated from Harvard with a Bachelor's in math in 1962.

Kaczynski received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967.  In 1966, he considered undergoing gender transition but did not make it past a psychologist's waiting room before changing his mind.   Guilt and disgust led him to fantasize about killing the psychiatrist and others.  He described coming out of this period as bursting 'from the ashes of despair to a glorous new hope."

In 1967, at age 25, he began teaching mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley.  Despite poor reviews from his students, he appeared to be on a tenure track.  Then, without explanation, he quit in 1969.  Kaczinski spent two years living with his parents in Illinois before moving to a cabin he had built in Montana.  There be lived simply, without electricity or running water.  He did odd jobs and received financial support from his family.  His goal was to become self-sufficient.  

In 1975 he began booby-trapping developments near his cabin and setting fires.  He became obsessed with books on political philosophy, especailly Jacques Ellul's The Technological Society.  Between 1978 ans 1985, Kaczynki mailed or hand-delivered a series of at least sixteen bombs that ended up killing three people and injuring 23 others.  In 1995, he wrote a 35,000 word anonymous manifesto dubbed "Industrial Society and Its Future," and demanded that it be printed in full by a major newspaper.  Kaczynski's younger brother, David, recognized Kaczynski's style of writing in the manifesto, eventually leading the FBI to concentrate on the recluse.

Kaczynski began serving eight life sentences at a supermax prison in Colorado.  Early in his incarceration, he befriended Ramzi Yousef (the perpetrator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing)  and Timothy McVeigh (the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing, who was executed in 2001).    In 2011, he was listed as a person of interest in the Chicago Tylanol murders, but nothing has publicly come of that.  In December 2021, Kaczynski was transferred to a federal medical facilty in North Carolina for "health reasons."  Now 80, his current medical condition is unknown.

For what it's worth, here's "The Manifesto" from the soundtrack of the Discovery Original series Manhunt Unibomber:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

11.  Sad Times, Bad Times:  There have been shootings on April 3 in recent years just as there have on any other date you could mention.  In 2009, Jiverly Antares Wong opened fire on the American Civic Association immigration center in Binghamton, New York, killing thirteen and injuring four.  In 2018, Nasim Najafi Aghadm killed three poeple at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California.  And the beat goes on, dammit, because our cowardly politicians are too ignorant/selfish/afraid to do anything about it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF7EpEnglgk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF-MjfT07Xw

A Shout-Out to Just a Few of Today's Birthday Kids:

• Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), Unitarian minister, author, historian, chaplain of the United States Senate, and grand-nephew of Nathan Hale.   He is best remembered for writing The Man Without  Country, but should also be remembered for writing the first science fiction story about an articficial satellite, "The Brick Moon" (The Atlantic Monthly, in three parts, October - December 1869; a fourth part was published in The Atlantic Monthly, February 1870; all four parts reprinted in The Brick Moon and Other Stories, 1899)
• Bud Fisher (1885-1954), the creator of the Mutt and Jeff comic strip, the first American comic strip to be presented horizontally.
• Dooley Wilson (1886-1953), the actor, singer, and muscian who performed "as Time Goes By" in Casablanca.  A favorite song of my wife's; it was played at our wedding reception.
• Leslie Howard (1893-1943), British actor.  They sought him here, they sought him there, those Frenchies sought him everywhere.
• Sally Rand (1904-1979).  Dancer.  Hubba-hubba.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wyLtKukpIg
• Dorothy Eden (1912-1982), New Zealand author of romantic suspense novels often characterized as "Gothics."  She published at least 41 novels and two collections of short stories.  In 1980, she was described as one of the ten best-selling novelists in the world.
• Gus Grissom (1926-1967), Project Mercury, Project Gemini, and Apollo program astronaut, the second American to fly in space.  He died, along with astronauts Ed White and Roger Chaffee, when their Apollo 1 Command Module caught fire on Janaury 27, 1967.
• Jane Goodall (born 1934), English primatologist and anthropologist.  She has worked tirelessly on conservation and animal welfare issues.  We need more like her.
• Jeff Barry (born 1938), songwriter who has co-written such hits as "Do Wah Diddy Diddy," "Da Doo Ron Ron," "Then He Kissed Me," "Be My Baby," "Chapel of Love," "River Deep -- Mountain High," "Leader of the Pack," and "Sugar, Sugar,"  Admit it, you found yourself humming one of these right now.
• Sandra Boynton (born 1953), author, cartoonist, and songwriter, forever enshrined in my heart for creating the birthday card with four animals and the words "Hippo Birdie Two Ewes" -- the card has sold over 10 million copies.
• Paris Jackson (born 1998), singer, actress, model, and the daughter of the Gloved One.

Today's Poem:

Easter Wings

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,

Though foolishly he lost the same,

Decaying more and more,

Till he became

Most poore:

O let me rise

As larks, harmoniously,

And sing this day thy victories:

Then shall the fall further the fight in me.

My tender age in sorrow did beginne

And still with sickness and shame,

Thou did so punish sinne,

That I became

Most thinne.

With thee

Let me combine

And feel thy victoie:

For, if I imp my wing on thine,

Affliction shall advance the fight in me.

-- George Herbert (1593-1633)

Herbert was a priest in the Church of England and a metaphysical poet.  He has been recognized as one of the foremost British devotional lyricists.  "Easter Wings" was printed sideways on opposing pages, giving the poem the appearance of wings.

For those who celebrate, may this coming Sunday be meaningful and give you peace.