Man, if it wasn't for President McKinley I wouldn't have to read the the book Murdering McKinley for history class. Although turn of the century culture is interesting (partly cause I love the whole imagery of kids playing stickball in the street, pies cooling on windowsills and and Vaudeville rapscallions) I'm just plain not interested in the presidents. I thought maybe listening to the musical Ragtime would get me into it but I just payed more attenton to the music.
I'm thinking the next book I read should be on Vaudeville, I could learn those old routines, perform them and get even stranger looks than I already do. On the Simpsons comentary tracks they're always saying how John Schwartzwelder loves old time imagery, I'm starting to see why. Of course if I lived back then I'd be tossed into a sanitarium for hysteria. Then again, one treatment for hysteria involved doctors administering proto-vibratrors to induce "paroxyms". Anywho I woulda been yet another Jewish immigrant trying to make it in the Lower East Side, very active in the suffragette movement. I love imaginign What If.
I'm thinking the next book I read should be on Vaudeville, I could learn those old routines, perform them and get even stranger looks than I already do. On the Simpsons comentary tracks they're always saying how John Schwartzwelder loves old time imagery, I'm starting to see why. Of course if I lived back then I'd be tossed into a sanitarium for hysteria. Then again, one treatment for hysteria involved doctors administering proto-vibratrors to induce "paroxyms". Anywho I woulda been yet another Jewish immigrant trying to make it in the Lower East Side, very active in the suffragette movement. I love imaginign What If.
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Grover Cleveland was THE BOMB!
I always feel a bit sorry for McKinley, he really did love his wife despite all of the troubles that occured to her. You have to give the man some credit for his devotion to her.
That having been said, if he hadn't been shot ,we never would have had Roosevelt as president which, I feel, would have been a disaster.
If I had grown up in that period, I'd have been a politically active student from a predominantly agricultural part of Wisconsin and a devoted follower of Robert LaFollette; the Govorner and founder of the Progressive movement. Actually, now that I think of it, thats pretty much how I am today as well