Page Sixteen

Friday, April 27, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1974 — Ten thousand people march in Washington, D.C. for the impeachment of Richard Nixon.” While Richard Nixon hid at Camp David, poring over transcribed records of his misdeeds, the Youth International Party and the National Campaign to Impeach Nixon marched — or, more likely strolled — up Pennsylvania Avenue towards the Capitol. Leading the parade was an Edsel “with a vice presidential seal on its side and drawing a cage with a figure representing Nixon behind the bars.” Unable to …

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Thursday, April 26, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1865 — Boston Corbett, a hatter-turned-cavalryman who, seven years earlier, castrated himself with a pair of scissors to better withstand the temptation of prostitutes, shoots and kills John Wilkes Booth.” Ah, how far we have come from the olden days, when all sorts of bizarre individuals carried on peculiar lives deeply affected by fanatical religious impulses … What’s that you say? It’s wrong of us to suggest that the human impulse towards spirituality is in any way responsible for Boston Corbett‘s …

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Wednesday, April 25, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1984 — Asked if he’s ever been to a communist country, James A. Baker III replies, ‘Well, I’ve been to Massachusetts.’” In just three days, James A. Baker III will celebrate his 82nd birthday, proving yet again that only the good die young. In addition to insulting the cradle of American democracy, Mr. Baker has: • helped elect George Herbert [Hoover] Walker Bush to Congress; • helped re-elect Richard M. Nixon president; • helped Ronald Reagan cheat in campaign debates against …

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Tuesday, April 24, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1704 — The Boston News-Letter, the first successful newspaper in the colonies, begins publication under John Campbell who insists on publishing all the old news he had before going on to the more recent. By 1718 his news is a full year behind. The paper eventually adopts Tory politics and perishes during the Revolution.” The nation’s first newspaper was Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick, but it was published only once, on September 25, 1690, then shuttered immediately by the authorities. …

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Monday, April 23, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: “1971 — National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, speaking by phone with Allen Ginsberg, agrees in principle to a personal meeting, but draws the line at doing so naked on television.” Clearly an item like this carries an unusual burden of proof. Here is an excerpt from the official White House transcript of the conversation, first made public on December 23, 2008 by The National Security Archive: TELCON Alan [sic] Ginsberg/Mr. Kissinger 7:50 p.m., April 23, 1971 G: I am calling at …

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Sunday, April 22, 2012 — The following item ran in our “Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide (Not for Navigational Purposes)” for this date: ” 2002 — “The Taliban is out of business permanently,” says Dick ‘Dick’ Cheney at a GOP fundraiser in Florida.” Who could be a better judge of the threat posed by insurgent fighters than a serial collector of five — count them, five — draft deferments? Reminds us of what Friedrich Nietzsche said: “Madness is the result not of uncertainty but of certainty.” Here’s a graph showing the relationship of U.S. casualties before [20] and after [1,833] Cheney’s Florida remark.