BROWDERBOOKS
Against my better judgment, poetry is coming out of my ears. Long ago I told my friend Vernon, also a poet, that I wanted to squelch my muse, so I could focus on other things. He said, "If you try, it'll come out your ears." And so it is. I've even gotten up in the middle of the night to jot down a few words, a few phrases, which is the height and depth of absurdity. And how do these golden inspirations look in the cold light of morning? Not impossible, not base lead, and sometimes rather good. That is the trouble. If they looked mediocre and forgettable, I could forget them and be done with it. But these, in their way, haunt me. They say, "C'mon, write me down. Link me up with other words, make me into a poem." But I don't want these nocturnal ·or even diurnal) invasions. I need my sleep. And what I'm writing -- perhaps blatherings for a chapbook -- have something to offend everyone. A kicky thought, admittedly, but I doubt if, given the chance, Everyone will read them.
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| Hogarth, "The Distress'd Poet," 1737. And look at what a mess his place is. |
Today, poetry is a poor, sad thing. Only a few hopeless addicts -- usually poets themselves -- read it. The rest of the world have jobs to do, video games to play, love affairs to get into or out of. So who has time for poetry today? A paltry few. Not like in the nineteenth century. Back then, when Byron or Longfellow announced a new volume, people flocked to the bookstore, even lined up outside, sizzling with expectation. Yes, really. But that was before movies, television, and the Internet.
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| Domenico Fetti, "A Poet from Antiquity," a painting of 1620-1621, painted for the ducal court of Mantua. Not meant as satire, but look at that outlandish headgear -- supposedly, a crown of laurels. He's supposed to be inspired, yet human, and unheroic. Agreed, heroic he ain't. |
My prose, fiction and nonfiction, is another matter. People -- some people -- actually read it. And it's all gluten-free and made in America, and it doesn't rob me of sleep. To see it, go to my post BROWDERBOOKS. And now, on to spooks and ghouls.
Of Spooks and Ghouls
This post is a repeat of post #31, dated October 28, 2012, which I am resurrecting in honor of Halloween 2019. If it sounds familiar, it also appeared as chapter 38 in No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World. Apologies to those already familiar with it.
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| Silar |
But I won't confine myself to the holiday. This post's subject and the next will be our ambiguous attitude toward death and the dead, a vast subject that, given the many associations and scraps of history dancing in my head, will probably spill out in all directions. But we'll start with Halloween.
For most of us, Halloween means ghosts and witches and skeletons, trick-or-treating, costumes, jack-o’-lanterns, and innocent or not-so-innocent pranks – a completely secular event. But the name “Halloween” is a contraction of All Hallows’ Eve, referring to the Christian feast of All Hallows on November 1, and Halloween, celebrated on October 31, has both pagan and Christian antecedents. It has been traced all the way back to the late-autumn Celtic festival of Samhain, when the physical and supernatural worlds were closest; the souls of the dead were thought to revisit their homes, and bonfires were built to ward their spirits off.
The Christian holy day of All Saints’ Day, November 1, was a time for honoring the saints and praying for the dead, who until this day were thought to still wander the earth prior to reaching heaven or the alternative. But this was also the last chance for the dead to wreak vengeance on their enemies before entering the next world, so to avoid being recognized by them (hmm… they must have felt guilty about something), people disguised themselves by wearing masks and costumes: the beginning of Halloween costumes. So are the dead to be welcomed and prayed for, or dreaded and avoided? Both, it seems. Which shows, I think, a profound ambivalence.
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| Laszloen |
As for jack-o’lanterns, they developed out of the custom in Scotland and Ireland of carving turnips into lanterns to ward off evil spirits. Coming to this country, immigrants from those countries used the native pumpkin instead, whose size and softness made it much easier to carve. The name itself probably comes from an Irish folktale about a man named Stingy Jack who outwitted the Devil but after his death, being barred from both heaven and hell, was doomed to wandering the earth with an ember to light his way.
Children’s trick-or-treating came later, being first recorded in North America in a Canadian newspaper of 1911. Wikipedia dates the first use of the term in the U.S. from 1934, but I can testify that by then all the kids in my middle-class Chicago suburb were ringing neighbors’ doorbells in hopes of goodies, though usually not in costume, without any thought of pioneering a new Halloween custom; as far as we were concerned, this is how it had always been, though we were much more into treats than tricks. (Still, my father, fearing vandalism, always wired the gates to our backyard shut, to keep out devilish intruders of whatever species or persuasion.) By then, too, the costumes that some people donned were not confined to the eerie stuff (ghosts, skeletons, witches, and such), but included just about anyone or anything you could think of. All of which shows how a holiday once concerned with praying for departed souls and warding off evil spirits has become, in the U.S. today, a children’s fun fest spiced with just a touch of the eerie.
South of the border things are just a bit different. Related to Halloween in Mexico is the Day of the Dead (el Dia de los Muertos), celebrated on November 1, a national holiday when people gather to remember and pray for deceased friends and family. Altars are built in homes and cemeteries, and offerings are made of sugar and chocolate skulls, and bread often in the shape of a skull and decorated with white frosting to resemble twisted bones. Photos and memorabilia are also placed there, in hopes of encouraging visits by the dead, so they can hear the prayers and comments of the living.
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| Tomascastelago |
All right, Mexico and la Catrina are pretty far removed from New York, the alleged subject of my blog, but I warned you that I might stray far and wide. So to get back to the Apple, how about the doctors’ riot of 1788? No, the doctors didn’t riot; in fact, they came close to being lynched.
bodies from graveyards. During the Revolution, battlefields provided a good supply of unclaimed bodies, but with the coming of peace the need for more bodies intensified. In New York the students at the city’s only medical school, Columbia College, raided the Negroes Burial Ground, where both slaves and freedmen were buried, but also the graves of paupers in Potters’ Field, while usually – but not always – respecting the graves of those “most entitled to respect.” So great was the demand for bodies that a new occupation appeared, the professional body snatcher, or resurrectionist, whom the medical schools could hire. Aware of the risks, grieving families often hired guards to watch over the grave of a loved one at night for two weeks following burial, since after that the bodies would be too decomposed for purposes of dissection. The authorities were certainly aware of the activities of body snatchers, whether professional or amateur, but probably chose to look the other way, as long as it was all done discreetly and confined to the graves of the lowly, but by the late 1780s trouble was brewing.
The mob's anger did not subside overnight, and many doctors found it convenient to take a sudden vacation out of town. The governor called out the militia, but the mob disarmed some of them and attacked Columbia College, destroying more medical specimens and instruments. Alexander Hamilton tried in vain to calm them, and John Jay (a future Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) was hit by a rock and knocked unconscious. That evening the mob threatened the jail, where the doctor and students were still lodged. When the rioters hurled bricks and rocks at the militia, the soldiers finally opened fire, killing eight and wounding many more. Those doctors still in town treated the wounded, and the rioters dispersed the next morning, thus ending the new nation’s first recorded riot.
Some weeks later the New York legislature passed a law permitting the dissection of hanged criminals. Unfortunately, there were never enough of them, so resurrectionists and their opponents would persist well into the next century, often provoking (your choice) picturesque or grisly incidents, as my next post will show.
Of course body snatching is now a thing of the past, is it not? Wrong! In 2005 an ex-dentist in Fort Lee, New Jersey, was arrested for obtaining bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania with forged consent documents, and then selling bones, organs, skin, and other body parts to legitimate medical companies and tissue banks for resale to hospitals, which needed them for transplants. They did six or seven extractions a day, a male nurse involved in the operation later confessed; it took 45 minutes for the bones, and another 15 for skin, arms, thighs, and belly. But why get involved in such a gruesome business? Because, the nurse explained, he went from earning $50,000 a year as a nurse to $185,000 as a "cutter." Yes, this illegal business is flourishing throughout our fair land, as a quick search for "body snatching" on the Internet will quickly demonstrate. I myself plan to be cremated, but this doesn't guarantee a thing; so did the people whose bodies were stolen by the dentist and his fellow ghouls.
Of course body snatching is now a thing of the past, is it not? Wrong! In 2005 an ex-dentist in Fort Lee, New Jersey, was arrested for obtaining bodies from funeral homes in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania with forged consent documents, and then selling bones, organs, skin, and other body parts to legitimate medical companies and tissue banks for resale to hospitals, which needed them for transplants. They did six or seven extractions a day, a male nurse involved in the operation later confessed; it took 45 minutes for the bones, and another 15 for skin, arms, thighs, and belly. But why get involved in such a gruesome business? Because, the nurse explained, he went from earning $50,000 a year as a nurse to $185,000 as a "cutter." Yes, this illegal business is flourishing throughout our fair land, as a quick search for "body snatching" on the Internet will quickly demonstrate. I myself plan to be cremated, but this doesn't guarantee a thing; so did the people whose bodies were stolen by the dentist and his fellow ghouls.
Happy Halloween!
Coming soon: My Crazy Wednesday: A Hundred Dollars' Worth of Turnips, My Lambda Lawyers, Trapped
© 2019 Clifford Browder
Coming soon: My Crazy Wednesday: A Hundred Dollars' Worth of Turnips, My Lambda Lawyers, Trapped
© 2019 Clifford Browder
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