PEACE | Sept. 3–Treaty with Brits; GW Goes Home

George Washington thought he was done.
When Yorktown got the Brits on the run.
But wise folk flew out to his residence,
And begged him to be first of our Presidents.
(Clerihew by JT Marlin.)

This day in 1783 was signed the second Treaty of Paris, between Britain and the newly independent American colonies, supposedly ending the Revolutionary War. The text is here.

It was 20 years after the first Treaty of Paris, signed between the British and the French, which wound up the French and Indian Wars and made the independence of the colonies possible.

Following the signing of the Treaty of Paris by representatives of the American colonies, General Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army and like Cincinnati's, retired to his home–Mount Vernon, Va.

Washington's return to civilian life was significant. It said to history -- "This was not just a war, it was a revolution." 

The Continental Congress had given him dictatorial powers. Some wanted Washington to become king. 

But he did not want this. He wanted a Republic - and land in the western territories for his veteran officers (as well as honoring of existing titles of property-owners in the region). 

Washington's farewells to the nation and to his officers were short-lived. Five years later he was elected as the first President of the United States... and the Brits came back until they were expelled a second time.

Dancing Cheek to Cheek

The link below goes straight into Fred Astaire's song from Top Hat (1935).

Then we have the dancing. Will two people ever do this any better? Hard to believe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrCsyN-fZ94

(Thanks to Tim Sullivan for sending me this link.)

BIRTH | Aug. 17–Mae West

Mae West (1893-1980)

This day in 1893 was born in Brooklyn, N.Y.  Mary Jane "Mae" West.

She was an icon of the Roaring Twenties and then with her wit stretched her career into a lifetime of notoriety.

She was the eldest surviving child of boxer and private investigator Irish-Catholic John Patrick West and Matilda "Tillie" Doelger, who in 1886 emigrated with her family from Bavaria  and was for a time a corset model.

Mae West started performing at 14. At 18, the New York Times praised her "snappy way of singing and dancing." She soon became a sex symbol with an unmistakable walk and kept going for 70 more years with her unique talent for thinking up and delivering wry double entendres. Her mother was her biggest fan; but other relatives disapproved.

Having started her career in vaudeville in New York City, she followed the movie business to Hollywood. (Thomas Edison's use of strong-arm teams to collect royalties helped drive movie-makers out of New York.) Diamond Lil (1928), her play about a lady of leisure in the 1890s, became a Broadway hit and then a movie. In Night after Night (1932) she has this exchange:

Hat Check Girl: “Goodness, what beautiful diamonds.” Mae West (playing the part of Maudie Triplett): “Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.”

She then starred with Cary Grant in I'm No Angel (1933). She played opposite W. C. Fields in My Little Chickadee (1940). The American Film Institute ranks Mae West as #15 among female stars of all time.

When her long cinematic career ended, she continued to perform in Las Vegas, in the United Kingdom, and on radio and television, and to record rock and roll albums.

Some of Her Famous Quotes

A man in the house is worth two in the street.
A man's kiss is his signature.
An ounce of performance is worth pounds of promises.
All discarded lovers should be given a second chance, but with somebody else.
I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
I generally avoid temptation unless I can't resist it.
I didn't discover curves; I only uncovered them.
I never worry about diets. The only carrots that interest me are the number you get in a diamond.
I believe in censorship. I made a fortune out of it.
I'll try anything once, twice if I like it, three times to make sure.
It's not the men in my life that count, it's the life in my men.
Love conquers all things except poverty and toothache.
Personality is the glitter that sends your little gleam across the footlights and the orchestra pit into that big black space where the audience is.
Save a boyfriend for a rainy day–and another, in case it doesn't rain.
Say what you want about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins.
The best way to hold a man is in your arms.
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.
There are no good girls gone wrong–just bad girls found out.
When I'm good I'm very, very good, but when I'm bad, I'm better.
You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

NYC Comptroller's Ofc 1994-2001 - Regina Calcaterra

NOW - Regina Calcaterra, Author of Etched in Sand. 
Photo taken August 9, 2015 by JT Marlin.

THEN: Regina Calcaterra was one of the lawyers in the front office of the NYC Comptroller's Office during the eight years that Alan Hevesi was Comptroller, 1994-2001. (I served as Chief Economist during that administration and the ones before and after.)

NOW: After running for the State Senate from eastern Long Island, she was appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo as Executive Director of a Moreland Commission to look at corruption in Albany.

Most recently, she has written her life story, Etched in Sand. Here is a video trailer about the book.

I met her on Saturday evening, August 9, at the Authors Night in East Hampton.

The subject of her book reminds me of the new book by my sister Brigid Marlin, The Box House, also about a girl who takes charge of her siblings.

Another "Then and Now" post on what happened to people who worked at the NYC Comptroller's Office in the 1990s is here.

JOHN LENNON | Susan Wood's Lennon-Ono Photos

Susan Wood poses with friends at her exhibit of photos of John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and other contemporaries such as
Ralph Lauren, Ted Kennedy, Susan Sontag, Diane von Furstenberg, and Christie Brinkley. It was at the Mulford Farm
in East Hampton, N.Y. and is open until October 18, 2015. Photo by JT Marlin.

S

WOODIN | Charlie Miner Interview, July 31, 2015 (Updated Nov. 21, 2015)

EAST HAMPTON, N.Y., July 14, 1939. Wedding of Anne Woodin Miner and William Hamilton Phipps [original photo with handwriting]. An edited photo has been added to Appendix B of the Woodin biography.

I am writing about the life of Will Woodin, FDR's first Treasury Secretary. I have spoken so far with three of the four living Woodin grandchildren - Charlie Miner, Jr., Anne Gerli, and Woody Rowe. I am hoping soon to talk with the fourth, William H. Woodin III, who is 90 years old. 

Yesterday (July 30) I again interviewed his grandson Charlie Miner, Jr. With us were Charlie's daughter Charmaine, his niece Suzanne, his granddaughter Ashley, and my wife Alice. I am grateful to them for their patience. Some questions were prompted by Marlene O'Brien, a former co-worker at the NYC Comptroller's Office, who has kindly read the draft bio. I am impressed with how much Charlie's grandma was involved with her grandchildren relative to her husband, which I take to be a reflection of the life of someone like Will Woodin who was one of most important business and government leaders of his day.

As the comments are transferred to the respective chapters, this post will shrink.

Chapters 5-7. [Comments moved to the chapters]

Chapter 8. New York City

[Charlie and his sister Anne and his mother Mary Woodin Miner lived with Will Woodin in New York City during the school year and near him in East Hampton during the summer.]

My mother Perky lived with grandpa and grandma at 2 East 67th Street. I had a bedroom up in the penthouse on the 13th floor where grandpa's office was. My parents divorced so she lived with grandpa and grandma along with her two children. There was lots of room. I remember the lavish dinners they would have, when grandpa entertained. I remember some of the famous people who visited - J. P. Morgan, William Vanderbilt, Al Smith - that's how grandpa got to know FDR - the Astors. They would come to dinner. There was a big living room at 2 East 67th Street, with deep blue drapes.  My mother and grandma would always say that grandpa was sleeping and was not to be disturbed. I saw a lot of grandma, but grandpa was always very busy. Once, I remember, I sneaked into the beautiful big bedroom one evening, when he was relaxing after work. I was about seven years old. He was in his bathrobe and he was asleep.

Q. There is a report of two adjoining townhouses on East 64th Street between Lexington and Park that your grandfather bought in New York in 1902 and then sold a few months later. What was that about?
A. That was probably grandma Woodin... she would have been the one who bought them. She liked to buy houses. She probably wanted to have a place for grandpa's parents in New York, after grandpa's father lost a lot of money speculating in gold mining stocks. There was a crash in 1893, and then in 1896 a gold rush in Arizona. Clement invested in Diamondfield Daisy and Humbug gold mines. We got "Gold Bug" pins to wear. Then the stock price fell. [One of the stocks was issued at $1 par and fell to 4 cents. There was gold in the mines they bought, but not much.]

Q.  Did you interact much with the staff in New York?
A. Oh, yes. Delia and Mary, and the cook, I forget her name. Lawrence, who drove the company Rolls Royce, and James and his son George, who drove the family Cadillac, mostly for grandma. Lawrence used to take Anne and me to school in the morning. When we got near the school, I asked Anne to keep her head down so the other boys wouldn't see I was riding with a Girl.

Chapter 9. Woodin as Musician and Collector

Q. Did you ever see your grandpa's world-famous coin collection?

Will and Nan Woodin, 1933.

A. I saw the box he kept it in. It was in his office in the New York City penthouse, where my bedroom was. He would look over his collection on the weekends.

Chapter 12. Washington

Q. Did you visit your grandpa in Washington when he became Treasury Secretary?
A. We went to the Inauguration in 1933, the one for which grandpa composed a march. I remember that it was cold and it was raining. It was in March.

50th Anniversary of the Voting Rights Act

LBJ signs Voting Rights Act of 1965 as MLK looks on.
MLK was assassinated in 1968.

On this day in 1965, LBJ signed the Voting Rights Act, guarantees the rights of all American citizens to vote.

The law makes it illegal to impose restrictions on federal, state and local elections designed to deny the vote to some citizens, notably blacks.

Johnson was elected Vice President under JFK. He President in November 1963 upon the JFK's assassination. In the presidential race of 1964, Johnson was elected in a lopsided victory and used the mandate to push for legislation he believed in, including stronger voting-rights laws.

LBJ would have taken cautious steps toward greater voter participation, but in March 1965, television viewers watched as state troopers in Selma, Alabama, attacked a group of peaceful protestors who were marching to the capitol. A week later, President Johnson gave a televised speech before Congress, in which he said:

I speak tonight for the dignity of man and the destiny of democracy. The command of the Constitution is plain. There is no moral issue. It is wrong to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote ... [A]ll of us ... must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.

Robert Caro, in an eloquent introduction to his bestselling book, The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Means of Ascent, volume 2 of his biography of LBJ, explains to future generations of students of history the significance of the last sentence of this quote.

Martin Luther King Jr. was watching the address at the home of a family in Selma, Ala., on television that night with some aides. None of these aides "during all the years of struggle ... had ever seen Dr. King cry." When LBJ got to "we shall overcome", "they were looking when Martin Luther King began to cry" (Caro, 1991, p. xx.)

When the president signed the legislation a few months later, MLK and other civil rights leaders were present. The law was designed to enforce the 15th Amendment of the Constitution ratified in 1870, entitling all male citizens to vote. The 1870 law was extended by the 19th Amendment 50 years later - in August 1920, when the last required state (Tennessee) ratified it - to include all women as well as men.

In his speech to Congress on March 15, 1965, Johnson outlined the ways in which election officials denied African-American citizens the vote:

• On the day of election, officials told blacks they gotten the date, time or polling place wrong, that the officials were late or absent, or that the prospective voters hadn't filled out an application.
• Election officials required literacy skills.  Voting officials, primarily in southern states, had been known to force black voters to “recite the entire constitution or explain the most complex provisions of state laws”.
• Even blacks with college degrees were turned away from the polls. 

Caro in Master of the Senate, volume 3 of his LBJ biography, gives many vivid examples of how blacks were disenfranchised. An African-American woman who had studied hard to pass the literacy test failed her test because someone else the same day could not answer a question.

Even after the Voting Rights Act passed, state and local enforcement of the law was weak and even  ignored, but African-American voters now had a basis for challenging voting restrictions in Federal courts. Problems with voter suppression did not end, but they diminished. The new law was followed by a huge increase in voter turnout - in Mississippi, voter turnout among blacks rose to 59 percent in 1969, from 6 percent just five years earlier.

In 1970, President Richard Nixon extended the provisions of the Voting Rights Act and lowered the eligible voting age for all voters to 18.

Jerry Goldfeder of Stroock Stroock & Lavan offers a free update on voting rights in the USA in August 2015.

Some are deeply concerned that new moves for voter suppression threaten the achievements to date.