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Yes-No
Jun 05, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
A popular seventeenth century nursery rhyme is, “Three blind mice. Three blind mice. See how they run. See how they run. She cut off their tales with a carving knife…” The dark story behind the light-hearted ditty: the three blind mice were Protestant loyalists, burned at the stake by Queen Mary. A nineteenth century American counterpart is similarly macabre, “Lizzie Borden took an axe/ And gave her mother forty whacks/ When she saw what she had done/ She gave her father forty-one.” If the latter rhyme holds true, Lizzie embodied Shakespeare’s description of King Lear’s daughters, “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.”
The Merry Prankster
Jun 04, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
The Summer of Love. Those four words conjure a 1960s moment frozen in an American snow-globe; mythical months in San Francisco when visions of peace, love and harmony hung in the air-interspersed with quantities of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. It also represented a hippie love story, one between the guitarist-troubadour Jerry Garcia and his Mountain Girl.
The Truth (1876)
Jun 04, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University is one of America’s most esteemed research-based institutions, located in an iconic redbrick campus. But what’s with the unique name Johns? The university and medical hospital come from philanthropist Johns Hopkins.
For Remembrance
Jun 02, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Dr. Timothy Leary pronounced the paradoxical catchphrase, “If you can remember the sixties you weren’t really there.” Leary was not only there, he was its vanguard, and beside him- his psychedelic pioneer and muse. She was his soulmate who left her Midwest hoping for adventure, which she received in spades-a result of her love affair with an amalgam of the king of Hearts and the Joker.
After the Fall
Jun 01, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Famous playwright Arthur Miller went through life asked what it was like being married to Marilyn Monroe. It was an all too obvious euphemism for the real question: what was it like to have sex with the goddess who went to bed wearing only Chanel No 5? Miller took the answer to his grave but was never loathe to wax eloquent on his last wife after Marilyn, “This marriage makes the past seem worthwhile.”
It is Warm (1880)
Jun 01, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
If anyone were ever entitled to indulge in a pity party, it would have been the woman who fate had locked in a world of silence and darkness. Yet, instead of dwelling on her misery, she dedicated her life to the spreading of light. She remains a testament to what a possessor of courage can overcome
Mrs. Blue-Eyes
May 31, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
When one conjures the image of Francis Albert Sinatra, it is of a Jersey crooner with the velvet voice, the bruised romantic with shady Mob ties. The biography of the first modern pop superstar is the stuff of legend, as his second wife Ava Gardner and third, Mia Farrow. However, his fourth wife, like Sinatra’s trademark lyric, lived and loved her way.
The Stolen Hours
May 30, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
In Waiting for Godot two hapless tramps struggle to find meaning in a landscape of existential emptiness. They embody “the dangling conversation,” to pretend to be connected to another, to drown out loneliness waiting in the wings. Their only hope is the enigmatic Godot-who remains a steadfast no-show. But the author, Samuel Beckett, did not suffer such soul-sucking alienation though succor from across the sea.
The Seven of Us Can't Do (2013)
May 24, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Certain books have left their imprint on the face of the world; their authors were god-like in determining the destiny of humanity. Karl Marx’s The Communist Manifesto changed the socio-political landscape, Sigmund Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams shed light on the subconscious, and Charles Darwin’s The Origin of the Species rattled religion’s cage. These 19th century men were the power players whose pages became the dice of destiny. A 21st century woman likewise launched a movement through the venue of words.
The Lady and the Tramp
May 23, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Charlie Chaplin’s character of the Little Tramp became an immortal icon for his deft portrayal of man’s tragicomic conflict with fate. The lonely fellow buffeted by life resiliently picked himself up again and again in the hope that the next encounter would turn out better. And what made the man behind the clown stop leaning on his famous cane and throw it heavenward was the love of his lady, whose story has slipped through the crack of time until now.
Where Rosemary Goes...(1968)
May 23, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
The ancient Greek games originated in honor of the Gods of Mt. Olympus. After a hiatus of 1,500 years, the 19th century Frenchman Pierre de Coubertin resurrected the Olympics for countries to come together in sports rather than in war. In the 20th century, an American carried on the tradition of sprinkling the physical with the divine.
Any Other Man
May 22, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
One of the most challenging jobs in the world is that of the evangelist: hand-wrestling the devil over souls. Fortunately, when it came to saving his own, the Reverend Billy Graham had his fellow crusader in Christ, his “soulmate and best friend.”
Beloved Infidel
May 21, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
F. Scott Fitzgerald pessimistically pronounced, “There are no second acts in American lives.” He based this on his own free-fall: from golden boy of the twenties to forgotten has-been of the forties. What eased the pain of latter years was the purveyor of a poisoned pen.
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN PEN
May 20, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Bond. James Bond. This was the classic greeting of the most dashing member of Her Majesty’s Secret Service. However, if people knew the biography of his creator, Ian Fleming, they might have thought of him as Bondage. James Bondage. And he was met, lash for lash, by his ladylove.
Madame Butterfly
May 19, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
As Jell-O conforms to its mold, children often adhere to the values of their parents. However, in a 1950s love story which involved Julius Rosenberg, it was a Jell-O Box and a Remington typewriter which made a woman’s path stray far afield from what her family, or anyone else, ever envisioned.
The Last Word (1501)
May 19, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Kings are subject to grand gestures, sometimes of a romantic nature. Legend holds that when Queen Amytis grew homesick for the lush landscape of her native Media, her husband, King Nebuchadnezzar II, commissioned the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in his desert kingdom. When Mumtaz Mahal died giving birth to their fourteenth child, Shah Jahan immortalized his wife with the world’s most magnificent mausoleum. King Edward VIII, urged to give up his mistress, Wallis Simpson, instead relinquished the British throne. Another crowned head changed his country’s religion to legalize his obsession.
Fade Away
May 18, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
John Milton wrote in Paradise Lost, “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Ever since Penelope steadfastly wove on her loom waiting for Odysseus to return, the warrior’s wife has served in the typical role of the women who worry at home in shadow, waiting for their men to come back. But that has not always been the case. In contrast, a 20th century warrior wife accompanied her General, Douglas MacArthur, humanizing the man behind the five stars.
Herr Wolff
May 17, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Lord Byron wrote, “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart/Tis a woman’s whole existence.” This sentiment epitomized Adolf Hitler’s relationship with his consort who had the rather unenviable distinction of being the partner of the man history has dubbed evil incarnate.
The Fearess Girl (1967)
May 17, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Wall Street is named after an actual wooden stockade built by the Dutch when New York was Nieuw Amsterdam, erected to protect their trading post from the British. Wall Street became synonymous with finance in 1792 after twenty-four prominent merchants, in powdered wigs and waistcoats, founded the New York Stock Exchange to bet on foreign battles, elections, and cockfights. One hundred seventy-five years later, Muriel Siebert scaled the rampart when she became the first woman securities trader.
A Bumpy Ride (1941)
May 16, 2023 by Marlene Wagman-Geller
Upon hearing the word “president,” the image that is conjured is of a man wearing a dark suit and tie standing in the Oval Office. In sharp juxtaposition, during World War II, Bette Davis assumed the same mantle as the Chief Executive when she held the position of the first female President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.
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