What If They Had Facebook?
Posted by admin on February 23rd, 2010 filed in PostsComment now »
To pass the time on a boring road trip, I decided to up the number of my FB buddies to an even number – 50. I put a deadline on it and began to search for friends. Those who had over 100 connections made me feel unpopular while those in the 300+ range brought back memories of junior high dances and the cement block walls of the gymnasium.
It is intriguing to see who is friends with whom. It is also a minefield. If you end up with the ex of an old friend first and then invite the other spouse while you are trying to reach a goal of say 50, what’s the unfriending etiquette?
While I waited for confirmations and my total to rise, I wondered what if there had been Facebook when certain historical figures lived.
Would Napoleon have only military friends or would Josephine be on post-divorce? Would John Adams have Thomas Jefferson along with Abigail and the kids? Who would Mark Twain accept invites from beside the frog?
Whose Facebook list would you most like to see?
The $5 FLIGHT
Posted by admin on October 18th, 2009 filed in PostsComment now »
Today began simply enough. I was scheduled to fly to Chicago at 11:30 AM. My primary reason is to visit with my cousin and provide a week’s worth of driving and distraction to her. As a bonus I will be able to visit my underemployed daughter.
Since my patient and accommodating husband was suddenly called out to help raise his uncle’s sailboat which sank earlier this week on the Connecticut shore, I must drive myself to the airport and remember where I park it. Not sure that I have any space for this information in my mind, I immediately text message his cell and park it there. Now it becomes his task to remember when I call in a panic on my return.
My flight cost only $5 (okay I used frequent flier miles) and it was worth every penny to be squeezed in sardine class. Remarkably there is no extra charge for attendants threatening to remove everyone still standing in the aisles from the plane so they can take off on time. Of course the reason we are standing in the aisles is that the airline of George Gershwin is now charging $15 to $20 for each checked bag. So everyone is trying to find room in the overhead bins for the contents of their closets. Of course if the airlines would stop letting people take their wardrobes with them in the cabin then we might be able to think of flying as something more glamorous than a really fast bus.
It occurs to me that the airlines are missing a golden opportunity. Don’t penalize those who check their bags (other than with the chance of losing their luggage completely) but rather make those who are in such a hurry and end up holding everyone up pay a premium for that overhead bin space. If it does not fit under the seat then you have to pay. Might make a little room for pillows and blankets too.
Prologue
Posted by admin on October 16th, 2009 filed in The Defalcation of John Chester EnoComment now »
From my master’s thesis…
June 1868
As he stood behind a curtain on the stage of the New Haven House in June 1868, hidden from the dinner guests and within moments of being lauded by his Yale Junior Class as the most popular of the most popular, John Chester Eno had his life before him. He was the embodiment of “Young America” – that generation of post-Civil War men who would avail themselves of the limitless possibilities afforded to them by birth, ability and wealth. Sixteen years later, also in June, John Chester Eno, having squandered those opportunities, faced the judge of the Queen’s Bench in Quebec as his lawyers attempted to prevent his extradition to the United States to face an indictment on sixteen counts of violating federal banking laws and embezzling four million dollars as President of the Second National Bank of New York City.
When the music played and the curtain rose on that warm June evening in 1868, John Chester Eno stepped out from an elaborate stage prop formed in the shape of the number eight attended by the runners-up, four of the most popular members of the junior class, on either side. To the thunderous applause of his peers he became the Wooden Spoon man of 1869 – an honor bestowed by the Society of Cochleaurati or “Cochs” which traced its origin to Yale’s shadowy Skull & Bones fraternity of which he was also a member. Not listed by name to keep his election secret until the unveiling, he was identified in the program as simply as “The Innate Man.” Thus was defined the shape of his entrance piece. The use of theatrics had a long tradition as other Spoon men had exited from an oversized loaf of bread as “The Inbred Man” or a giant peapod as “The Peacock.”[1] To us the wit may seem a bit sophomoric but to the Yale men who created these parodies of serious academic exercises this was the height of hilarity.
The Wooden Spoon man honor, adapted from a tradition established at Cambridge in England, was only conferred on those with the financial resources to provide the lavish entertainments expected by their fellow students. The Wooden Spoon man was also distinguished by receiving the most elaborate of the spoons presented to him and his attendants. John Chester Eno’s classmate Lyman Bagg described the award:
The Spoon was a much more elaborate and costly affair than the others, being handsomely carved and ornamented, with a silver plate in front on which were engraved the name and class of the recipient, the date of presentation, and so forth while on the back was cut the Latin motto, Dum vivimus, vivamus.[2] A velvet-lined case was provided for it, and its size and material were usually the same as the others, – though rosewood has sometimes taken the place of black walnut, and other costly woods have perhaps been employed.”[3]
The spoon itself was about three and one-half feet long and the one Eno received was covered in elaborate carvings with Victorian motifs and silver flourishes.
The spectacle of the spoon award was one of Victorian college antics replete with practical jokes and inside humor. But there was a deeper significance. John Chester Eno had been chosen to “the highest elective honor of the college” by the other honorees and marked as a man of wealth and social status.[4] He achieved a distinction that his own father Amos R. Eno could never have obtained. The Eno family of New York City had arrived, and John Chester was being honored as the popular son of a rich and powerful man. Considering the course his life took after graduation one wonders if his classmate Bagg had a darker meaning when he wrote of the Spoon man, “It should be remembered, however, that college “popularity” and college friendship are not synonymous terms.”[5]
John Chester Eno was sixty-six years old when he died in New York City on February 28, 1914. His passing provided an opportunity for journalists to revisit the events of May 1884 when privilege and popularity allowed him access to a sum of money few could imagine and helped him avoid the justice he so richly deserved. By the end of his life John Chester had long been in ill health, his wife was dead and his estate non-existent. He had spent the last thirty years as a footnote to the greed and excess of the Gilded Age, much of it traveling through Europe in flight from the censures of his own social circle. But through it all he held on to his wooden spoon in its velvet-lined case – a reminder that no matter what subsequent actions he had taken – he would always be the Wooden Spoon man of Yale Class of 1869.
[1] Lyman Bagg, Four Years at Yale, (New Haven: Charles A. Chatfield & Co., 1871), 415-416. Even his motto E Novem Unus was a play on John Chester’s surname and his choice from nine fellows elected.
[2] The fairly well-known Latin phrase translates to “While we live, let us live.”
[3] Bagg, 410-411.
[4] Bagg, 408.
[5] Bagg, 409.The Spoon Man