from my sketchbook: douglas corrigan

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You went the wrong way, old King Louie!
Ever since a visit to a California airfield, Douglas Corrigan became interested in flight. He began taking flying lessons at an airfield where aircraft manufacturers B.P. Mahoney and T.C. Ryan ran a small airline. He eventually took a job at their San Diego factory.

Just after Douglas was hired, a young aviator named Charles Lindbergh contacted Mahoney and Ryan with plans for a specialized craft. Douglas assembled The Spirit of St. Louis’ wing and installed its gas tanks and instrument panel. When Lindbergh took off from San Diego to prepare for his famous flight from New York, Douglas personally pulled the chocks out from the wheels of the aircraft. When news of Lindbergh’s success reached Douglas and his co-workers, they were excited, but Douglas vowed to someday make his own transatlantic flight.

In 1929, Douglas received his pilot’s license and he purchased a used monoplane. He began to modify the craft, readying it for his own flight of glory. Unfortunately, the government repeatedly rejected Douglas’ applications for transatlantic flight. He had flown from San Diego to New York on quite a few occasions and was certain that his modified plane could make the trip across the ocean. The US government believed otherwise.

On July 8, 1938, Douglas left San Diego for New York, a trip he had made many times. His official flight plan had him returning to California on July 17. Douglas took off from Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn in a thick fog. He flew east and claimed he had become disoriented. With the fog refusing to lift and visibility at its poorest, Douglas was only able to fly with aid from his compass. Twenty-six hours into the flight, he dropped below cloud level and noticed a large body of water beneath him. According to his account, Douglas realized that he had been following the wrong end of his compass’s magnetic needle. After twenty-eight hours and thirteen minutes in the air, Douglas touched his plane down at Baldonnel Airport in Dublin, Ireland.

When officials questioned him, Douglas stuck with his story of getting lost in the clouds and flying the wrong way. Upon his arrival back in the United States, the newly-nicknamed “Wrong Way” Corrigan was given a hero’s welcome. The New York Post  printed a front-page headline that read “Hail to Wrong Way Corrigan!” — and the headline ran backwards. Douglas also received a ticker-tape parade down Broadway with more people lining the sidewalks than had turned out to honor Charles Lindbergh after his transatlantic flight.

Long after his fame had faded, Douglas retired to an orange farm in Santa Ana, California. He passed away in December 1985 and he never changed his story.

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IF: intention

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This week’s Illustration Friday word suggestion is “intention”.
I'm just a soul whose intentions are good/Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

I’m pretty sure my dad’s intentions were good, but he had his own quirky method of making them known.

My father followed an old-time, though slightly skewed, set of ethics. He was a hard worker and blindly devoted to the company he worked for — no matter how little that company gave a shit about him. He tried to instill his work ethic into my brother and me and he somewhat succeeded, as we are both hard workers. However, the Pincus boys just never bought into the “blind loyalty” part, as we came to know after years of working for various employers, that most employers feel that their employees are expendable and easily replaced.

My father loved his family and his way of showing love was to keep constant tabs on their schedules and their whereabouts. As my brother and I came into our teens, that task proved increasingly difficult for my father. Where are you going? How long are you staying there? When will you be home? Who will you be with? these were all part of the regular barrage of questions my brother and I were riddled with when we made a motion toward the front door during our adolescent years. My older brother’s teenage antics made a wreck of my father’s sense of family order and when I reached “driver’s license” age I was no better.

In the summer of 1980, when I was 19, I ran a sidewalk produce stand for my cousin at 16th and Spring Garden Street in downtown Philadelphia. My cousin awakened in the wee hours of the morning and would spend several hours purchasing stock for the stand at the massive Food Distribution Center in South Philadelphia. He’d load his van with crates of fresh fruit and vegetables and I’d meet him at the stand around 8 a.m. to help unload the van and set up for the day. I did this every weekday for the entire summer and, even though I would sometimes stay out fairly late on weekday evenings, I was never on that corner later that 8 a.m. the next day. No matter what. Never.

At the beginning of that summer, I went on my first vacation without my parents. I went to Florida with three of my friends. When I returned home, my cousin recruited me to hawk plums and lettuce and I was just getting into the daily routine that the job required. I had also just met a girl at a local record store and we made plans for a date. Late one afternoon, I came home tired from a full morning of weighing out cherries, bagging bananas and persuading passers-by to pick up some tasty spuds for their family’s dinner. After a shower and a change of clothes, I was ready to take this new girl out to a restaurant and who-knows-what-else. I met my father on the front lawn as I was leaving the house and he was arriving home from work. Right on schedule, the questions began.

He opened with his old favorite — “Where are you going?”

“I have a date.”

“When will you be home?”

“I don’t know. Later, I guess.”

“You know, you have work tomorrow.,” he informed me, as though I would not have otherwise been aware of my employment.

“I know.,” I answered as I opened the driver’s door of my mom’s car and slid behind the wheel. My father stood on the lawn, arms folded across his chest, and watched me drive off. It was apparent that he was not pleased with my limited answers to his inquiries.

I arrived at Jill’s house and offered her the passenger’s seat in my mom’s tank-like Ford Galaxie. We chatted as we drove and at one point I glanced in her direction as she nonchalantly popped a Quaalude into her mouth. We pulled into the parking lot of the Inn Flight Steakhouse on Street Road and I helped Jill through the entrance doors as her self-medication affected her navigational ability on the short walk from my car. At dinner we talked and joked and exchanged other typical “first date” pleasantries. Before we knew it, we had spent several extended hours at that table, although I’m sure I was more aware of the time than she was. (Under the circumstances, I sure I was more aware of a lot  of things than she was.) She invited me back to her house, explaining that her parents were away for a few days (hint, hint). We drove to her house and, once inside,  she motioned to the basement, telling me she join me in a few minutes.

Meanwhile, my father was manning his usual post at the front door. He stood and stared out through the screen with an omnipresent cigarette in one hand, checking his watch approximately every eight seconds.

“Where the hell is he?,” he questioned my mother.

“He’s on a date. He told you. You saw him when you came home from work.,” she replied, as she had countless times before.

“He has to go to work early tomorrow morning. Doesn’t he have a watch? Doesn’t he know what time it is?” My father was convinced that if he personally didn’t inform you of the current time, you couldn’t possibly know. He fancied himself humanity’s “Official Timekeeper”. He would have made a great town crier.

My mother — that poor exasperated, sleep-deprived woman — tried to reason with my father. “He’ll be home. He knows he has to work. He’s responsible. You know  he’s responsible.”

Suddenly, he grabbed his coat and scanned the living room for his car keys. “What are you doing?,” my mother asked, suspiciously.

“I’m gonna go look for him. Maybe he has a flat tire.,” he said, trying to sound concerned, but my mom was not convinced.

“You don’t even know where he is. You don’t know where the girl lives. You don’t even know her name! Where are you going to look?” My mother knew he was up to something. No one could get anything  past my mother. Especially my father.

“Then, I’ll drive around and look for him.” Ignoring her words, my dad got into his car, backed down the driveway and sped off to a planned destination. He had no intention off driving around. He knew exactly where he was going. Somewhere around the time that Jill was descending her parent’s basement steps wearing little more than a blanket and a smile, my dad was bursting through the doors of a police station several blocks from our home.

“My son is missing.,” my frantic father shouted at the policeman on duty, “I don’t know where he is!”

The unfazed officer grabbed a pen and, with it poised above a notepad, asked my father, “When did you see him last?”

“About seven hours ago,” my dad replied, “when he left for a date.”

The policeman dropped the pen, cocked one eyebrow and stared blankly at my father. “He’s probably still on the date, sir.” He instructed my dad to go home, assuring him that I’d probably be home any minute. Annoyed and dejected, my father shuffled back to his car and drove home. A few minutes after he pulled into the driveway, I steered my mom’s car along the curb in front of my house. As I walked up the front lawn, searching for my house key, the front door opened and the shape of my father was silhouetted by the living room lamp. My mother was lurking several feet behind him.

“What are you still doing up?,” I asked.

“Where the hell were you?,” my father yelled, “I just came from the police station looking for you.”

With this information coming to light for the first time, my mother and I simultaneously emitted a loud, angry and incredulous ‘WHAT?’

“You went WHERE?,”  I screamed, “You knew I was on a date! Are you INSANE?”  I glanced down at my watch (contrary to my father’s beliefs, I did own one and I referred to it often). “I don’t have time to talk about this. I have to wake up in a couple of hours to go to work.” I echoed my father’s ingrained work ethic and looked him square in the face. “And so do you.,” I finished.

With that, I stomped upstairs, flopped down on my bed and drifted off to sleep to the muffled tones of my mother’s reprimanding voice coming from my parent’s bedroom below.

I know my father’s main concern was my safety and well-being and his intentions were honorable, but he desperately needed to take a course in Parental Behavior. Lucky for him, I think my mom taught those classes.

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from my sketchbook: allison hayes

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And with the way you look I understand that you are not impressed
Even after winning the 1949 Miss Washington DC Pageant, Mary Jane Hayes wasn’t interested in a career in movies. She did some modeling, though, and it was during a photo-shoot that she was approached by a talent scout from Warner Brothers Studios. Mary Jane turned down his offers of “stardom”, but on a subsequent visit to New York City, she gave the scout a call. He invited her to make a screen test at the New York office.

Another scout, this one from rival studio Universal-International, saw Mary Jane’s photo in a Washington DC newspaper and tracked her down. She told him she had done a screen test for Warners. Through industry connections, the Universal scout saw the screen test and Universal-International offered Mary Jane a seven-year contract.

Once in Hollywood, she began shooting her first picture, Sign of the Pagan  with Jack Palance as Attila the Hun. She also changed her name to the more exotic “Allison”. During filming, Allison began a relationship with her co-star Palance. He treated her poorly, both on the set and off. Soon, she moved on to other pictures with a long line of leading men including Tony Curtis, Van Heflin and Raymond Burr. Cecil B. Demille almost cast her as Moses’ wife in his epic The Ten Commandments,  but it was revealed that she was under contract to Universal and she lost the part to Yvonne DeCarlo.

In 1956, Allison worked with legendary B-movie director Roger Corman on the Western Gunslinger  with star John Ireland. The location shoot was plagued with four days of rain and, in the resulting mud,  Allison was thrown from a horse and broke her arm. She quipped to director Corman, “Who do I have to fuck to get off this picture?”

Allison consulted with a doctor for treatment of her arm and was prescribed a calcium supplement to aid in the bone healing. Ready to get back to business, she was cast in a string of horror movies culminating with her best-remembered role in the cult classic Attack of the Fifty-Foot Woman,  in which she played the titular character. In the film, Allison wreaked havoc on those who did her wrong, including co-star Yvette Vickers.

Allison’s career kept her busy, even if the budgets of her pictures were greatly reduced. She also continued to ingest the calcium supplements although she felt they were draining her energy and making her weak. With her films drawing fewer crowds and her health slowly declining, Allison began to take smaller roles in episodic television. She voluntarily stopped taking her calcium medication and decided to give the remaining pills to a toxicologist. Reports came back to Allison with startling news. The pills that she had been taking regularly for years contained a high amount of lead and Allison was suffering the effects of advanced lead poisoning. Even while tending to her personal health needs, Allison mounted a campaign to have the FDA ban the import and sale of the particular food supplement.

On February 26, 1977, the now-invalid, 46-year-old Allison was moved to a San Diego medical center. She was experiencing chills, flu-like symptoms and intense pain. She died the next day. Shortly after her death, a letter arrived from the FDA explaining that, as a result of her actions, amendments were being made to the laws governing the importation of nutritional supplements.

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from my sketchbook: max manning

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put me in coach, I'm ready to play
For 28 years, Max Manning taught sixth grade in Pleasantville, New Jersey before retiring in 1983. In those years, how many students knew anything about their teacher’s past?

Max was born in Georgia and grew up in South Jersey, just outside of Atlantic City. He was a stellar athlete on his high school’s baseball team. Word of his on-field abilities made its way to a scout from the Detroit Tigers and a contract offer was tendered. But the offer was rescinded when the team discovered that Manning was black.

Soon he signed a contract with the Newark Eagles of the Negro League. Nicknamed “Dr. Cyclops” because of his thick glasses, Max developed his sidearm pitching style and posted good numbers in strikeouts and wins. However, his baseball career was put on hold briefly when Max entered the Air Force in World War II. During his military service, he faced racial prejudice, with one incident landing him in the stockade for fifteen days. Later, he suffered a back injury in a truck accident and was discharged. Despite the injury, Max was determined to resume pitching for the Eagles.

Max returned to baseball and in 1946 he finished the regular season with a record of 11-1 with the second-highest league strikeout total. Pitching through constant back pain, Max helped the Eagles overcome the mighty Kansas City Monarchs to win the 1946 Negro League World Series. After the World Series, he barnstormed with greats like Satchel Paige, Bob Feller and Buck Leonard, but his physical ailments forced his career to an end.

On his wife’s insistence, he returned to school on the GI Bill and earned a teaching degree from Glassboro State College. He taught, and was beloved by students, at the Pleasantville Elementary School for 28 years. After retiring, Max kept busy with gardening and with his family until he passed away in 2003 at age 84. Just before he died, Max gave a lengthy and enthusiastic interview to the History Channel detailing his baseball career. I wonder how many of his former students watched it?

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IF: capable

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This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “capable”.
sometimes a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” — Mohandas Gandhi

Mohandas Gandhi began a law practice in South Africa in the late 1800s, after several failed attempts at establishing a practice in his native India. He initiated his form non-violent protest while fighting for civil right in the expatriate Indian community in South Africa. He returned to India in 1915 and further strove for civil rights for the oppressed lower class. He mounted campaigns for women’s rights, religious equality and freedom, fair treatment of laborers and freedom from foreign domination — all employing his non-violent methods. He successfully rallied Indians against the British-imposed Salt Tax in 1930 and later spearheaded the Quit India movement to expel British rule from India. The effort resulted in the suppression of free speech and the imprisonment of thousands, but the British eventually left India, deciding that its people were “ungovernable”.

Gandhi devoted his life to peace and equality, while stressing its achievement through non-violent means. On January 30, 1948, as he approached the podium to address a prayer meeting, Gandhi was shot and killed by Nathuram Godse, a Hindu extremist.

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from my sketchbook: casino royale

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cha-CHING!
I’ve made it pretty clear that my wife and I visit casinos a lot. Okay… maybe a little more  that “a lot”. The Waterfront Buffet at Harrah’s Resort in Atlantic City is a great place to eat. That fact that it is connected to a casino and, due to my wife’s — shall we say — “affinity” for gambling, we haven’t paid for a meal there in years, makes it all the better. We have experienced the over-the-top glitz of Las Vegas and the faded, slow-paced, middle-of-nowhere desolation of Laughlin (Nevada’s red-headed stepchild) and everything in between. We live within a convenient driving distance to several casinos. There’s Atlantic City, the gaming mecca that has ruled the east coast since 1978. More recently, we have patronized Sugar House (the first and, so far, only casino within the Philadelphia city limits), suburban Parx (the former Philadelphia Race Track) and the Harrah’s location in the blighted hamlet of Chester, Pennsylvania.

I am fascinated by the other people I see at casinos. I usually stand behind my wife as she sits before a glowing slot machine, feeding triple-digit currency into the bill acceptance slot like scrap paper into a shredder. Trying to combat the hypnosis from watching the blurred reels spin, I watch the crowds of people shuffle by. I maintain that the overwhelming majority of guests at a casino look as though the last place they should be is in a casino. Most wander about the rows of slot machines, glassy-eyed and confused, pausing briefly to study the possible money-making options the machines offer. (My wife and I play slot machines exclusively. The house minimums at table games have kept me away since the early 80s.) The age of the average slot player is that of one who has been on a fixed, government-supported income in the many years since their mandatory retirement.

On a recent late Friday evening, Mrs. Pincus and I found ourselves seated at a slot machine based on the Sin City romp The Hangover.  The machine was part of a free-standing island on the casino floor that was coupled with three additional machines of a duplicate theme. My wife and I do our very best to draw little attention to ourselves. If we are winning, it’s no one’s business. Same goes for losing. Other people, it seems, are of a decidedly different line of thought. It seems that television commercials have set a precedent for how to behave at a casino — and that is loud and cartoonishly animated. Add an abundance of free alcohol that crosses the legal limit and you have a very volatile and obnoxious combination. On this particular night, one such example was at the machine on the other side of ours. A woman in her early thirties was screeching and whooping and barely able to stand on her feet. She was not playing and merely observing the progress of the active player. While this woman was staggering and screaming, she was being physically supported by a large man bearing an uncanny resemblance to Santa Claus. He was dressed in jeans and a yellow chamois shirt, but most striking was the vest that he wore. The top half was adorned with a multitude of glistening multicolored stones (not jewels, stones) and the bottom had — what appeared to be — the loose change found beneath a sofa cushion and sewn into individual coin-sized pockets. A large, ten-gallon hat decorated with silver, turquoise and feathers completed the outfit. When Mrs. Pincus and I decided that we had sufficiently won (or lost) enough, we left, but not before I was doused with ice from a cup that the drunk woman lobbed into a trash receptacle. “Oh my God! Oh my God!,” she slurred, “I’m s-s-so sorry!” and she Oh my God -ed me all the way out the door.

The next night, we headed down the Atlantic City Expressway to Harrah’s to enjoy the bountiful buffet and a crack a untold riches. We stopped by the Total Rewards desk, the customer service area for members of Harrah’s “frequent gamblers” club, to pick up vouchers for a future promotion. The free Total Rewards membership is offered in four levels: Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Seven Stars. Upon entry to Total Rewards, members are placed at the Gold level. As frequency of gambling is increased, tracked and proven, membership level is raised. My wife is currently at the Diamond level. As we stood in the queue line awaiting our turn with a representative, we quietly chatted about some non-casino related subject. Suddenly the woman in front of us spun around to face us and began loudly criticizing the qualifying criteria of admittance to the Seven Stars level. She angrily voiced her opinion to us for several minutes as we stood in silence. Then, just as abruptly and unprovoked, she snapped around on her heels and approached the next available agent. My wife and I stared blankly at each other, trying to remember if we asked for her views and then blacked out.

Once in the queue at the Waterfront Buffet, Mrs. Pincus rifled through her purse to locate a coupon that offered free dining (and that was possibly expired). The line slowly made its way to the cashier counter when a young man immediately in front of us rudely interupted our conversation.

“You got any coupons?,” he asked.

“What?'”, my wife replied and I whispered: “Do you know him?” She shrugged in the negative.

He fidgeted in his ill-fitting overcoat, ran his hand through his uncombed hair and repeated, “You got any coupons?”

“No.,” Mrs. Pincus answered. By this time, our meddler had been called on to step up to the cashier. He produced a creased paper from his pocket and asked the clerk, “Do you take coupons from Caesar’s ? (another casino, but part of the Harrah’s family)”.

“No, we don’t,” she said.

“Then, I hav’ta pay ?, ” he asked.

“If you’d like to eat here, yes.,” she answered without a crack in her expression.

We approached another cashier, one we knew from many previous visits. My wife made small talk and the cashier tossed our coupon to one side without looking at it. She wrote out a table card and, with a smile, directed us to the hostess. The young man, struggling to situate his wallet back into his baggy pants pocket, pushed his way in front of us. The hostess led our “party of two” and his “party of one” through the massive dining room. On our journey, he stopped and pointed to several empty tables, inquiring, “Can I sit here?  Can I sit there? ” until he was eventually seated in a remote corner away from other diners. The hostess figured him out immediately. We caught glimpses of him during our meal, as he bothered an exasperated waitress for dinnertime conversation in which she had no interest.

Mrs. Pincus and I finished our dessert and walked to the casino to encounter characters that will make it into a future blog post.

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DCS: jill banner

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Sting! Sting! Sting! Sting! Sting!
Jill Banner was born Mary Molumby near Puget Sound in Washington. Her widowed mother moved around the country when Jill was a child until the family finally settled in Glendale, California. Jill attended Hollywood Professional School with classmates Peggy Lipton (of TV’s Mod Squad and future mother of actress Rashida Jones), Carl Wilson (of the Beach Boys) and Mouseketeer Cubby O’Brien. The school offered classes in the mornings and allowed students to pursue acting jobs in the afternoons.

At seventeen, Jill landed her first movie role in the low-budget Spider Baby. The future cult film starred Lon Chaney Jr. (in one of his last roles), Carol Ohmart (one in a long line of actresses touted as “The Next Marilyn“), Quinn Redeker (Academy Award nominated screenwriter for The Deer Hunter), horror movie staple Sid Haig and one of the last screen appearances by Mantan Moreland. Spider Baby, filmed in 1964 but released in 1968 due to legal battles, told the story of the demented Merrye Family, three murderous, cannibalistic siblings under the watchful care of chauffeur Bruno (played by Chaney). Jill played Virginia, the childlike, spider-obsessed title character. The creepy, but rather bloodless, film was played as an over-the-top homage to The Munsters and The Addams Family, two popular TV shows of the time.

Jill next appeared with James Coburn as a hippie chick in The President Analyst.  This role enabled her to move into a comfortable position playing naïve teenagers and strung-out hippies in weekly police dramas like Dragnet and Adam-12. In the late 60s, she was part of an ensemble cast in C’mon Let’s Live a Little, one of the last pictures in the “beach party” genre.

While in Rome, filming director Christian Marquand’s psychedelic 1968 movie, Candy, she met Marlon Brando, one of dozens of actors agreeing to a brief on-screen cameo (including Ringo Starr in his Beatle-less film debut). Jill and Brando, nearly thirty years her senior, became a couple. When they returned to the United States, Jill settled into a behind-the-scenes role, developing scripts for the Oscar-winning actor.

In 1982, Jill was travelling on Southern California’s Ventura Freeway when her Toyota was struck by a truck driven by a drunk driver. Jill was thrown from her vehicle and head-first into a cement divider. She fell into a coma and died in the hospital, never regaining consciousness. Jill was 35.

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IF: fluid

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This week’s Illustration Friday challenge word is “fluid”.
He decomposed/He died and left his body/To the bottom of the ocean/Now evverybody knows/That when a body decomposes/The basic elements/Are given back to the ocean/And the sea does what it oughta/And soon there's salty water/(That's not too good for drinking)/'Cause it tastes just like a teardrop/(So they run it through a filter)/And it comes out from a faucet/(And is poured into a teapot)
No matter what anyone says, Andres Serrano is an artist in every sense of the word (or at least by Andy Warhol‘s definition). Like Ansel Adams, his medium of choice is photography and he photographs ordinary subjects in an artful fashion. Unlike Adams, Serrano finds beauty in decidedly different objects. Serrano’s prints share a commonality in their inclusion of human bodily fluids — blood, urine, semen, feces, mother’s milk — and a slant towards the controversial.

Andres Serrano has exhibited series of photos depicting corpses, burn victims, firearms, Klansmen and, most notorious, iconic religous symbols submerged in the photographer’s own urine. Serrano’s displays have been a constant source of contention. His works have been criticized, protested and even vandalized all over the world. Several examples of his work were defaced at a gallery in Sweden. His photograph Piss Christ,  depicting a small plastic crucifix resting in a glass of Serrano’s urine, was attacked with a screwdriver at a gallery in Australia. Despite the negativity, Serrano is a multiple award winner, including — but not limited to — honors from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

I have been drawing since I was a little kid. I have been receiving criticism for approximately just as long. I have maintained this blog for nearly five years and I have received my share of negative comments about my illustrations. And I don’t mind. I actually enjoy  comments from strangers telling me “that I suck” and “have no talent” and “my work is disgusting.” It makes me smile. I feel if someone takes the time to read and study something that I have created and it pisses them off so much that they need to tell me, then I have succeeded in holding their attention for more than a fleeting moment. And that’s quite an accomplishment in this time of major distraction. (Here is an example of one such episode from a few years ago.)

I’m sure Mr. Serrano is well aware of the people who oppose and vilify his style of expression, but it does not seem to stop him. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that it brings him the strengh and inspiration to continue.

I know it does for me.

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from my sketchbook: bo díaz

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Have we got what it takes to advance? Did we peak too soon?
After bouncing between the minor leagues and the bigs, Bo Díaz was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in the ’81 off-season. With the departure of All-Star catcher Bob Boone, Bo became the Phillies starting backstop. His game-calling skills helped Phils ace Steve Carlton become the league’s only twenty game winner in 1982. Bo finished the season with offensive and defensive stats ranking him second among National League catchers, behind the Expos’ Gary Carter.

Early in the ’83 season, Bo accomplished a feat only performed by eleven other players in baseball history. With the Phillies down 9-6 in the bottom of the ninth with two outs, Bo hit a game-winning grand slam. He ended the season catching Steve Carlton’s 300th career win. In the final week of the 1983 regular season, Bo hit .360 (including a game in which he went 5 for 5), helping the Phillies to the post-season. Despite losing their World Series bid to the Baltimore Orioles, Bo was the Phillies’ leading hitter.

Knee problems and two surgeries later, Bo was traded to the Cincinnati Reds where, once again he became the starting catcher. In one game against San Francisco, Bo caught opposing second baseman Robby Thompson stealing four times, a first-time occurrence in Major League history.

Bo continued for as long as he could, but several more knee surgeries and a shoulder injury forced him to retire on July 9, 1989 at the age of 36.

For nearly twenty years, Bo played winter baseball in his native Venezuela for the Leones del Caracas.  In 1973, 20-year-old Bo caught a no-hitter thrown by pitcher Urbano Lugo. Thirteen years later, he was behind the plate for a no-hitter hurled by Lugo’s son, Urbano Jr.

In November 1990, Bo was at his home in Caracas, adjusting the position of a large satillite dish on the roof. The dish accidentally tipped over and Bo was crushed to death beneath its weight.

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from my sketchbook: frank olson

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one pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small and ones that Mother gives you don't do anything at all
Senior U.S. microbiologist Frank Olson was a scientist at a lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Here, Frank worked for the CIA researching and conducting experiments with assassination techniques, biological warfare, terminal interrogations, and LSD mind-control. He was aware of highly-confidential information and he was uncomfortable with that knowledge. On Monday, November 23, 1953, Frank told his boss, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, he wished to resign his position. On Saturday, November 28, 1953, Frank fell to his death from a tenth-floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York City. The official story was that Frank was unknowingly given LSD as part of a mind-control experiment. The drug caused uncontrollable paranoia and Frank either accidentally fell or purposely jumped from the window.

For 22 years, that was the “truth”, but Frank’s family wasn’t buying it.

Frank’s son, Eric, did extensive investigation on his own and, in 1994, Frank’s exhumed remains were reexamined. A number of cuts and abrasions were found along with a large hematoma on the side of Frank’s head and another large injury to Frank’s chest. The family threatened murder charges against the CIA and federal government. The government responded with an apology for their part in drugging Frank without his knowledge and an out-of-court settlement of $750,000.

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