Con Men

Think Madoff was a cool cookie!

Did you ever see the late movie based on the story of a young miner who showed up a at a tavern that was a community gathering place for coal miners in a small mining town in Pennsylvania in the late 1800's.

He was looking for work in the mine and a place to stay. A genial man bought him a drink and offered him room and board at his house.

The next day the host invited the young man to join along with his sons the trek to the the mine shaft. A word to the Foreman and the new man was hired.

Over weeks and months at the tavern and at home the discussion often revolved about the the lousy unsafe working conditions, the low pay, and the firing of workers on a whim.

Finally the stranger was invited to a meeting. A union was being formed. A strike was to be held and maintained until management met basic requirements.

The young man had earned his stripes as a miner and was invited to be on a steering committee planning the strike along with his host family.

He was also "keeping company" with the daughter of the house.

On the day of the strike a swarm of Pinkerton strike breakers appeared and swiftly arrested the ringleaders.

At their trial the interloper was not among them. In fact, now dressed as a Pinkerton agent he was testifying for the prosecution pointing out his supposed benefactors as the key parties in the strike plan.

They were meted out prison sentences.

He married the young lady, now there was a con-man, and moved to Colorado where he again went undercover at a mine.

Prior to the coup bringing Saddam Husein to power Iraq much as it is now was a political quagmire with governments rising and falling with predictable regularity.

An attempt at stability boiled down to four men the most likely was a wealthy merchant.

Several years before he had migrated, the scion of an influential family that had lived in Brazil for a few generations, he had opted to return to the land of his fore bearers.

As his investments increased and began to bear fruit, he also began to be accepted into the higher levels of Iraqi society and into the confidence of the movers and shakers of the country.

He could well have been the Iraqi head of state.

Unfortunately, Soviet military monitors were getting the evidence of a clandestine radio transmission.

To their astonishment the source was traced to the home of our guy. He was found in his attic making a routine report to Tel Aviv.

He was an Israeli Mossad officer on assignment.

Palm Springs International Film Festival

Last night we saw a very moving film entitled "Broken Promise". The story of Martin Friedman who through a number of serendipitous events survived a concentration camp and escaped to join Slovak partisans.

His best buddy and chess partner along with the other members were fiercely anti Semitic and in one sequence executed one of their own mainly because he was Jewish.

Most of his large family perished in the camps.

The promise made was that the family gathered for a joyous Bar Mitzvah in 1938 Czechoslovakia would gather again at the parents' home again in 1939.

By that time the family was dispersed and some had perished.

The highlight of the evening was the appearance of Martin Friedman, the author and survivor on the stage.

His message was that no matter how tranquil your life seems always be vigilant of your freedoms.

It brought to mind the ongoing greeting between my father and uncle.

Uncle: What's new?

Dad:(in Yiddish) Somewhere Jews are being persecuted.

Uncle:(ironically) So, What's new?

The Recession is Over

Recalling the wisdom of grandfather B. In the 1930's with recession rampant the U. S. government under Pres. Herbert Hoover decided to rein in spending thereby greasing the skid into The Great Depression.

In many communities with plants shut down and farmers unable to sell their produce people simply ran out of money.

On every block there was a mom and pop grocery and they kept was called a "tab". The customer could buy essentials and pay as a day job or a check from a more prosperous relative was available.

A customer came in to Chestnut Street Corner Grocery one day and payed his account in full.

A few weeks later the owner encountered him on the street. I haven't see you for a while he noted.

I have a good job now. I buy my groceries at the supermarket for cash.

But why did you desert me?

Oh! Do you sell for cash too?

There have been many cartoons and gags about the age of magazines in doctor's waiting rooms.

Recently Jean drove a friend to the new and beautiful waiting room at the emergency room at Eisenhower Hospital.

It is a far cry from the old one where you might sit for an indefinite time next to someone squirming with a bruised limb or coughing from an unknown malady.

For those familiar, I was shocked last year that upon entering I was ushered immediately into a triage room.

Jean had called me to explain she might be there for some time so I decided to sit with her.

On the low table was a copy of the magazine, Palm Springs Life.

Flipping through I glanced at the obligatory page of the movers and shakers at a charity costume gathering.

There dressed in western garb with toy six-guns at her sides was cousin Jan.

Knowing that Jan had moved from the valley a few years ago, I checked the date.

I don't remember the exact date. I thought of tearing out the page but opted not to deface the magazine.

Unbelievably, the magazine was over twenty years old.

I don't know if there is a Guinness category. Should I have occasion to be there again in a few years and the magazine is still there I might submit it.

My suspicion is that they have a supply in the basement and by then we will be into the 90's editions.

She has been called the First Jewish Superstar.

She was a poet, a writer,a painter, an activist in Jewish causes.

Her name was Adah Isaacs Menken.

She was born in 1836 and died in Paris at the age of 33 suffering from tuberculosis and peritonitis a rabbi at her side

Married to Menken in Texas the couple moved to Cincinnati to be closer to the center of the fledgling Reform Movement of Judaism. She wrote extensively of the plight of Jews in The Ottoman Empire of Turkey.

After the death of her infant she tired of domestic life and she and Menken were divorced.

She became an entertainer and eventually gravitated to San Francisco where she was discovered by a theatre owner and cast in the lead of the popular play Mazeppa.

A key scene involved the lead character being captured by brigands and stripped naked then breaking away on a fiery steed and galloping across the stage onto a ramp built in the center of the auditorium. Usually a dummy was used but Menken conceived the idea of riding the horse herself dressed in a skin colored body suit.

When the stunt became known, the righteous people of San Francisco were outraged but on opening night all the "cool people" were there. The women in their carriages dressed to the nines and the men in their top hats and flowing capes. The play was a sell out for months. Adah was the darling of the artsy set and is reputed to have had affairs with several including the author Brett Harte.

She took the play to New York and toured the country her many affairs no secret. News of her naughty behavior preceded her fanned by her advance man who was instructed to place as many pictures of her in Main Street storefronts as he could.

After the furor in the U. S. she moved on to London and the U.K. using the same Madonalike tactics and then on to Paris where she befriended George Sands and her group and was rumored to have had an affair with Alexander Dumas.

I mentioned her sad early death but her birth remained shrouded in a variety of tales she spread.

The fact established much later in 1938 by a researcher was that she was born in New Orleans. Her mother was a Creole (of mixed race) and her father was a free African American known to be an intellectual.

It was said that she converted from a Catholic birth but she maintained she was born the first Jewish Superstar.

Re Previous post

Saw the Mohs specialist today who informed me that Hoxsey's paste is no longer used. Patients complained that it caused to much irritation.

I will be going in for a day surgery on October 23rd to remove a basal cell cancer on the upper arch of my left outer ear.

This is a localized cancer that does not spread through the body but if not treated will continue to grow in the area it occupies.

There will be a small pit remaining where the affected tissue is removed.

If it proves too distracting to onlookers, I can have it repaired with plastic surgery.

Thanks to the doctors at Group Health who caught this early and to Medicare who will pay most of the bill.

In the 1940's as a 15 year old I worked summers at B. B. & S. under the tutelage of my mentor, Mr. Henderson.

Several lessons were dedicated to the stupidity of medical doctors who refused to acknowledge the genius of Harry Hoxsey, the lay doctor, former coal miner and insurance salesman, who advertised "Dr. Hoxsey's Cure for Cancer."

Hoxsey started his clinic in 1920 with a "sure cure" for any kind of cancer based on a handed down story about a horse that developed an ulcer. The animal was pastured in a field containing certain herbs. In time, the horse cured itself.

Hoxsey recreated a mixture of those herbs and teaming up with a radio announcer advertised to the world he could cure any sort of cancer.

Although he did no actual testing and tests by medical labs showed that internal use could make a patient extremely ill and in some cases cause death, by 1950 he was treating 8,000 patients a year with a revenue of $1,800,000.

A Canadian study showed that many of his "cures" did not show cancer symptoms in the first place and that a high percentage of his patients died of cancer after treatment.

He sued the AMA for slander and won. The judge awarded him $2. ruling that because most of Hoxsey's advertising was based on the idea that the AMA was persecuting him because they knew he was right and they were wrong he had suffered no monetary loss.

The Hoxsey case became a cause celebre with the top right-wing agitators of the day. Apparently Mr. Henderson subscribed to a right wing news letter and felt Mr. Hoxsey's pain and possibly sent a dollar to help the multimillionaire, Hoxsey, in his fight.

Tonight I was doing some research on treatment of basal cell cancer on the ear by the Mohs method. I was surprised to find that part of the treatment was the removal of cancerous cells using a caustic substance derived from some of the herbs used in Hoxsey's magic cure.

Well, Mr. Henderson, a lot of big lies are based on small truths.