Tim Craire's Blog, page 3
May 20, 2020
The Bludgeoning of the Suitor
Link to Amazon Kindle listing:
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Elizabeth and the young man in better days:
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Could Elizabeth’s father be implicated?
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May 19, 2020
The verdict
In one, Hasson claims that he was stabbed while breaking up a fight:
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In another, he is stabbed for no reason whatsoever; his companion does not even realized the stabbing has occurred until the suspects have passed:
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Although another witness mentions seeing one of the suspects rise up off the ground:
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In the end — even though Anton Herrold had at one point reportedly claimed not have carried a knife at all:
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–and even though he had previously been reported to be “wicked” —
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— in the trial, he was found not guilty due to self-defense. The jury took only thirteen minutes to arrive at the verdict. The article mentions that at the trial he was shown to be of good character; reading between the lines, I have to wonder if the implication is that Hasson, for his part, was not considered to be of good character.
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Despite the not guilty verdict, Herrold soon returned to Europe, where his family has remained since.
March 1, 2020
“The stabbing was done by a third party”
The Allentown Leader of April 30, 1896, suggests that things are looking up for the murder defense of Anton Herrold (see previous two posts):
-Herrold and also his co-defendant, Tony Horwath, have the support of their wives and also a family friend, Henry Weisenberger
-Herrold has savings of $597 with which to fund his defense; a quick internet search shows average annual wages at the time to be around $500 or less, so this was roughly over a year’s pay
-The families were able to hire two attorneys
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The article does still refer to them as “Huns.” They claim that neither of them had a knife, and someone else entirely stabbed Hasson.
Next: A quick jury verdict at the trial.
February 22, 2020
Huns! Hikes! Drunken Hungarians!
At the end of the previous post about the killing committed by Anton Herrold in 1896, a newspaper labels Herrold and his companion “Hikes.” This term appears on the Wikipedia entry “List of Ethnic Slurs” as a reference to Italians; here it obviously has a different meaning.
The Allentown Leader of April 24 refers to the men as Huns:
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Hungarians are not Huns; not much is really known about the Huns, who were made famous by Attila of course. Their language is lost, for one thing. The real ancestors of today’s Hungarians moved into what is now Hungary hundreds of years after the Huns had vanished from history.
The term Huns was famously used during World War One by the British and by Americans to refer to Germans:
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In researching these posts I’ve learned that Kaiser Wilhelm II, ironically, may have inspired the use of this slur against his own people when he encouraged them to be as oppressive as Huns during the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900.
Anyway, the coverage of Herrold (whose name was spelled several different ways in the various news articles) ended up being more polite, as we’ll see . . .
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February 16, 2020
So my friend’s great-grandfather stabbed a guy to death . . .
In Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in April 1896, a young man named Anton Herrold — an immigrant from Hungary (he had ethnic German roots, hence the not-very-Hungarian-sounding name) stabbed another young man, who died within a few days. The incident was covered heavily by local newspapers, although the details of the stories varied enormously. Herrold was the great-grandfather of a friend of mine, who sent me the clippings.
The Semi-Weekly New Era of Lancaster Pa. described the stabbing as an “unprovoked” attack in which a “drunken Hungarian” “pounced” on the victim, John Hasson, in a “dark alley way” with a butcher knife:
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The Allentown Leader, however, wrote that the stabbing happened not as pouncing in a dark alley but rather after Herrold and one companion crossed paths with Hasson and two of his companions, and the men “jostled” each other:
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These articles are so fascinating in how they reflect the standards of journalism of the time; had Hasson not been considered “respectable,” would the writer have mentioned this? This version also has the first ethnic epithet, “Hikes” — more of those to come!
January 2, 2020
Tracking the change I pick up off the ground!
In 2008 I started keeping track of how much I picked up. I had always picked up change, dropping it into my kids’ piggy banks after they were old enough to have them, but I hadn’t totaled it.
In 2008, I picked up a total of $9.49.
In 2009, I picked up $19.51 — almost double the year before. I think this goes to show that when you track something, you tend to pay more attention to it. Prior to 2008, when I walked home from the subway station, I would sometimes choose the route that took me past a row of parking meters; after I started tracking the change I picked up, I always went that way. I came across a lot of change by them. Is this sad, and pathetic? Well, I had to walk home one way or another, so I might as well take the route that had money scattered around.
In 2010, I picked up $22.42.
(In these two years I picked up 190 pennies and 200 pennies [on the nose!] That’s a lot of pennies to reach down for . . . well, as I said — it’s a hobby of mine.)
Then I stopped keeping track. And soon after, I noticed I was seeing less dropped change. I think people just carry much less cash, now. Plus, many parking meters were removed, replaced by pay stations that accept credit cards.
Another change was that we moved, and while our old house was near a drive-through window of a drug store which often had fallen coins beneath it, the new house was not. So that source was gone, also.
But overall I just think far fewer people carry coins at all. The golden age of fallen change has ended.
Last year I kept track of the total again, for the first time since 2010. Drum roll:
$3.22. That’s it. And I found a quarter on the street on the Dec. 30th; without that I wouldn’t have even cleared three bucks.
Nothing so far in the two days of 2020.
December 24, 2017
Movie review — The 13th Warrior — thumbs up
The 13th Warrior is a 1999 film starring Antonio Banderas which did not receive terrific reviews at the time (or since) and apparently did not do well financially either. But I recommend it.
The story is set in A.D. 922. Banderas plays a Muslim Arab diplomat who joins a group of Vikings who head north to aid a besieged king. (The story is intentionally similar to that of Beowulf, in that regard.)
The movie has just a 6.6 rating on IMDB. It gets criticized because it’s too violent; the story line is pretty straightforward action/adventure bedlam once the Vikings and the Arab arrive up north; and there are some loose ends left hanging.
So first, about the violence. Yes, heads get chopped off; people are impaled, shot through the head with arrows, etc., and there’s a lot of blood. But it’s no worse than many movies from the 90s and afterward. No worse than Gladiator or Pulp Fiction, for example. I’m not sure why critics take such offense at Vikings getting decapitated here (ahem, spoiler alert) when other films just as violent were considered works of genius. Honestly — Tarantino was canonized for Pulp Fiction, but the violence in The 13th Warrior is no worse and is basically historically accurate, in the sense that the Vikings were certainly violent people.
Second, the action/adventure plot. Yes, it’s an action/adventure movie. There are chases, skirmishes, and battles. Secret passages and torch-bearing mobs. An army of bad guys are besieging a village, and the main characters . . . fight the bad guys. It’s not My Dinner With Andre.
Third, loose ends. Yes, a half-baked subplot with the maybe-treacherous son of an aging king is never really resolved. Also, Banderas ditches a love interest who would have been an interesting person to take back to the Middle East. A different director (Michael Crichton) took over the movie when it was nearly complete, and some balls were dropped. It’s a good flick anyway.
Another great thing about this movie is that it has a very rare, positive depiction of a Muslim. Banderas’s character is educated, urbane, literate (unlike his companions), and brave. He rescues a young Viking girl. He sticks to his beliefs in an alien environment. Why do I care? It’s just nice to see positive press for a Muslim when so often in Hollywood films they’re simply villains. Banderas’s character reminds me of the hardworking Muslim detective in A Perfect Murder and . . . not too many other roles that I can think of.
The movie does well depicting the polyglot tenth-century world of Viking travelers — they really did travel far to the south of their homes, down into Russia and Middle East. Banderas’s character has to have a friend (Omar Sharif!) translate for him from Arabic into Greek, so that a Greek-speaking Viking can pass along information from his band — it’s well done. A good movie to check out.
February 5, 2017
Dunters, a.k.a. red caps
Dunters, sometimes known as red caps, are somewhat like orcs but have . . . worse teeth, if that’s possible.
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Dunter holding musket – by Luka Cakic
They are technologically more savvy than orcs, although they copy rather than invent. They also have powerful females who will at least rule a fortified manor with an iron hand even if they don’t typically join war parties.
Probably the best-known depiction of a dunter commonly found online is from the 1978 book Faeries by Alan Lee and Brian Froud. I feel bad for these guys because their illustration is so seldom attributed:
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From the fine 1978 book Faeries by Alan Lee and Brian Froud!
There is also a dunter to be seen on a beer label, but he’s gone bourgeois on us:
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February 4, 2017
Rotoscoped orcs
Here begins a series of posts about orcs and dunters.
Some striking orcs appeared in the 1978 animated version of Lord of the Rings — at least my 11-year-old self thought they were striking.
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Rotoscoped orcs from Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 LOTR movie
I thought these looked unique, and menacing.
Now, many commenters online have panned them . . . for a contrary opinion of the rotoscoped orcs, see this comprehensive treatment of the film by Erik David Even:
