September 10

Hamida Djandoubi was, to put it mildly, not a very nice person. In 1974, he tortured and killed an ex-girlfriend. For quite a while, he seemed to be getting away with it, having threatened two witnesses with a fate identical to that of his ex-girlfriend if they ratted on him. However, in February of 1977, justice finally caught up with Djandoubi. At the end of his trial Djandoubi was sentenced to death. As is not only fitting, but also expected, the sentence was appealed. All reviewing courts upheld the sentence of death and it was finally ordered that the sentence be carried out. Djandoubi paid his debt to society at 4:40 in the morning on the 10th in 1977 when at Baumettes Prison in Marseille, when executioner Marcel Chevalier flipped a switch and the blade of a guillotine sent Djandoubi to whatever reward awaited him. This would be the last execution by guillotine in France.

September 9

Have you ever felt that your family at times puts just a little too much pressure on you to live up to their expectations? Whatever you faced in this regard should really be considered in light of Mary Stuart’s parents’ expectations. On the 9th of September in 1543 Mary, aged nine months, was crowned ‘Queen of Scots’ in the village of Stirling in Scotland. My guess is that she still had to eat all of her strained peas.

September 8

1974 was not a good year for Richard Nixon. Well, the beginning wasn’t all that bad but the bit in the middle was a bit dodgy and I’m reasonably certain he would have much preferred to be anywhere other than in the hot seat in Washington. It seems that he spent most of his time getting kicked around by those upstarts in Congress and the ingrates across the nation who seemed to have nothing better to do than annoy Nixon by pestering him about little things like his rewriting the constitution and operating above the law. How could anyone expect the man to do his job if he was going to be called on the carpet every time he forgot that there really is a Bill of Rights? That silly boy really should not have let things like the indictments and trials and all that sort of rubbish because on the 8th of September in 1974 newly minted President Gerald Ford granted Nixon a pardon for all crimes that he may have committed during his reign as President. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that the 9th of September was probably Miller time for Tricky Dick.

September 7

Monty Python's Flying Circus began its run on the BBC with the airing of its first episode on the 7th in 1969. Everyone seems to have his or her favorite sketch, whether it is The Spanish Inquisition, The Dead Parrot or The Cheese Shop. The show illustrated the wisdom of the time-honored adage: It’s all very funny until someone puts an eye out and then it’s hilarious. Their contribution to modern letters however ranges far beyond the sophomoric sketch comedy for which they are so widely known. The lasting contribution to the world that The Pythons have made is giving all mere mortals the key to successful writing. All you have to do is follow their instructions and your success is assured. The first step is to get a decent dictionary so that you have all the words. That done, your success is lurking just around that corner over by the door to the basement because all that you have to do after getting the book is put the words in the right order. That isn’t too hard, right? So get busy, I want to hear those typewriter keys chattering away right after you finish reading this.

September 6

When I think of Walden Pond, I imagine Thoreau living in splendid isolation in the middle of the woods in Massachusetts. I picture him enraptured by the beauty of the wilderness. Thoreau’s life on Walden Pond was not exactly the life of someone retreating from the hustle and bustle of life. How could it have been when the shack he lived in was barely a mile from town and he could walk out to get whatever he needed. One day when he went to town, he was arrested for failure to pay a $5.00 tax bill. Against Thoreau’s insistence that the bill not be paid, his aunt paid the bill and after doing hard time of a night in jail he ambled back to his pond. There is a story that periodically makes the rounds which states that upon Henry David Thoreau’s departure from Walden Pond on September 6, 1847, he moved in with Ralph Waldo Emerson and his family in Concord, Massachusetts. This strikes me as unlikely because when Thoreau did finally leave Walden Pond for good he had amassed such serious debt that would take him years to pay it off. The debt was incurred largely because Thoreau took Emerson’s suggestion that he self publish an early book bearing the title A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers. Emerson’s publisher apparently was more than happy to publish it, particularly so because Thoreau had agreed to pay all costs involved. The publisher did little or nothing to publicize the book and, it bombed. There seemed to be a great wall of friction between the two men from that point on. It’s a nice thought that two such important figures could live together, basking in the glow of each other’s brilliance, and spend their days producing masterpieces. It seems a bit similar to the period where Jackson Pollock and Willem DeKooning were housemates in Bridgehampton, New York. While Thoreau did leave Walden Pond on the 6th it seems that the whole Thoreau-Emerson thing never happened. It does make a nice story though.

September 5

The United States Army has a highly successful advertising campaign touting the Army’s desire to find individuals who wish to be ‘An Army of One.’ According to their website “The 2006 Game Plan describes the strategic challenges we face to accelerate the momentum we have established to transform our Army.” I somehow doubt that Howard Unruh is the type of recruit the Army is seeking. On the 5th in 1949 Howard Unruh, an Army sharpshooter who served in World War II, left his home in Camden, New Jersey with a German Luger and wandered around the neighborhood shooting and killing 13 of his neighbors This was the first U.S. single-episode mass murder. Mr. Unruh, now in his 80s and a resident of the Trenton Psychiatric Hospital, maintains that he ‘would have killed a thousand if he had bullets enough.’

September 4

On this day in 1888, George Eastman registered the trademark Kodak, and received a patent for his camera, which used roll film that made photography a realistic hobby for ordinary people. When Eastman was asked about the name "Kodak", he supposedly replied by stating that "Philologically, the word Kodak is as meaningless as a child's first 'goo'—terse, abrupt to the point of rudeness, literally bitten off by firm and unyielding consonants at both ends, it snaps like a camera shutter in your face. What more would one ask!" That is just a shade nicer than saying ‘it’s no more and no less than a linguistic slap in the face that is pretty much guaranteed to get people’s attention. What could be more fun than slapping people around and then having them buy my stuff?’