William Elliott azelgrove's Blog, page 26

The Cheap Seats of Wrigley

You went there in the off years and there were many. During the summer when the world was asleep and a hot dog and a beer and a breeze off the lake made you think you died and gone to heaven. And a lot of times you came in on SRO's and made your way down to the expensive seats. Nobody seemed to care because the Cubs hadn't won for a very long time and there were open seats. And still it didn't matter because you were in Wrigley and the ivy and the neighborhood and the peanuts and the guy selling beer were something out of a different time.

And then they started to win and the Billy Goat curse seemed to lift. Who knows if it was the reason they had lost all those years but it was a convenient scape goat. No pun intended. And the SROs went up in price and it became harder to get to the good seats. Celebrities started showing up. And ticket prices hit the thousands. Still the Mets stalled them and people cursed the goat and wondered again if 1908 was really it.

But then they came back and even at the end the curse seemed to come back. How could a team be two down in the World Series and come back and win in the other teams town? But they did. And even after they won you knew it was already in the history books. And maybe those old days of cheap seats and the easy walk down to the good seats are gone forever.  Eventually though the ticket prices will fall and the celebrities will go back to Hollywood and it will just be the beer guy and the peanuts and the breeze off the lake. 2016 will be the year people will look back to and say... that was when the Cubs Won The World Series!

Until next year. Go Cubs.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

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"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Sure Honey I'm Voting The Same Way

But she  isn't. The revolt goes back to a 1921 scenario. Women are getting the vote and the American home is in flames. The next thing you know women will demand the same pay for equal jobs. And now we have women who are going against the patriarch. This is especially true in republican households where spouses have voted in sync for years but now there is this. Women are looking at the first woman president and Donald Trump and according to an article in the Chicago Tribune they are secretly going their own way.

Some are not so secret. Pollsters coming to the door are being turned away with the wife running out the door and saying she agrees with them. Trump has thrown down the gauntlet for even the most conservative households. The de riguer vote for the standard bearer is under assault as couples fight over the television. Men are wearing headphones and watching Fox News while wives go into bedrooms and secretly dial up MSNBC. This all screams out the early conflagrations of the Vote in 1921 and men like Teddy Roosevelt proclaiming it will undermine the household.

Like it or not we are facing the prospect of the First Woman President and under the Trump assault this peeps out of the covers as a call from the past and a glance toward the future. And so some couples whose marriage is in danger of being pulled asunder by politics decide it is better to just lie. Sure honey, I'm voting the same way you are. Uh huh.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson


"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Edith and Woodrow Wilson's Strange Road Trips

The President  had manged to get into a Coney Island wheelchair and sit out on the south portico of the White House to get air. He was wrapped in blankets and stared into the bloodless sun and wondered what had happened to his presidency. Meanwhile Edith was desperate to find something that would make the president happy or at least release him from his terrible depression over his devastating stroke.  She had begun showing him movies in the Red Room but he often fell asleep or began crying if the scenes were too intense.

Before they were married she and Woodrow would take long drives in the country to relieve stress and get away from the prying eyes of the White House. Edith wondered if it might work again and had a ramp built in the back of the White House so the President could get into the Pierce Arrow limousine. Even with the ramp it took four secret service men to lift him into the car. The agents positioned Wilson on the right side of the car with his right side facing out so no one would know his left side was paralyzed. They put his hat on and they were off.

The presidential limousine that weighed four tons and looked like something out of the Adams family went around Washington a few times and then they headed for the country. When cars passed them Wilson demanded the driver give chase and he be allowed to hold court on the side of the road for speeding. Many people were not sure the man in the back of the car was the president. Many had not heard or seen him for over a year. When he returned he was greeted by the families of the secret service men instructed to cheer.  Wilson turned to Edith with a tear in his eye..."you see Edith, they still  love me".

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson




"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Madam President Will Have To Address Obamacare....Fast!

It is something everyone wanted and it is hard to say where it went off the rails. Maybe it was the lack of  a single payer option. Maybe the risk was too high for insurance companies and they found new ways to ensure they were covered. But the bottom line is that if you get your insurance through the exchanges then you are probably getting pummeled. The deductibles are outrageous and so are the premiums. I of all people really wanted health care reform but somewhere it veered and while more people are covered and you cant get kicked off for a pre existing condition, the cost will now kill a middle class family.

Hillary does have the election in the bag or so it seems but this is the snake in the grass that could leap out and change everything. Americans vote with their pocketbook nine times out of ten. With the news that premiums could jump 25 percent Obamacare is in danger of soaring out of the reach of middle class Americans and I am talking about people not covered under an employers plan. It is a bit like being out on the bow of a ship in a gale and it is getting rougher.

The road to hell is paved with the best intentions and while Obamacare is an improvement with millions of Americans insured, the red flag of economic distress could undo the good work of the health reform act. Madam President better shoot the snake before it bites her and changes the dynamic again of an election that is nothing if not unpredictable.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson


"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Hillary Clinton Will Not Be The First Woman President

Edith Wilson beat her to the punch. Hillary Clinton will be the first elected woman president. A small distinction you might say but Edith did reign from 1919 to 1921 and she had to step into the presidential shoes while her husband convalesced from a massive stroke. Edith Wilson had the end of World War I to deal with, returning  dough boys, a faltering economy, and a husband who was in danger of expiring. Dr. Dercums mandate that she keep all stress from the president cemented her role and put her in the White House until 1921

Edith famously replied to a demand from senators to see the president by saying that she was not concerned with the presidents health she was concerned with the health of her husband. Some say this pointed to a person without the best interest of the country at heart. But we have to give a break to the woman who only had two years schooling and no real experience in government except what she had leaned from Woodrow Wilson. She was doing the best she could as she fielded legislation, appointments, foreign crisis's, and tried to keep her husbands devastated condition a secret.

There was no coronation. No inaugural ball. But Edith did rule and one has only to look at the papers of Woodrow Wilson to see the correspondence pushed her way. Or simply research the presidents condition. Eventually Edith began pushing the president out to the south portico of the White House for air in a Coney Island wheelchair that supported his paralyzed left side. She then showed him movies in the Red Room and eventually took him for drives. But all this was in the care of a very sick man. In her memoir written in 1939 Edith said she was a steward of the presidency but she slipped up twice and called Woodrow Wilson an invalid in a letter to a friend.

 Not a smoking gun per say, but an invalid is not a president.

Order Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

q!"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning
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How Tough was the First Madam President Edith Wilson ?

 When Hillary Clinton is Elected as the First Woman President  she will have a woman from Wytheville Virginia to thank for paving the way. Edith Bolling Wilson married Woodrow Wilson, a man fifteen years older than her who had just lost his wife the year before. Four years later he had a massive stroke and left Edith Wilson to run the United States from 1919 to 1921.  It is really semantics whether Edith Wilson was the first woman president or not, the fact is that she used presidential authority for two years to close out World War I, fight for the League of Nations, and unwittingly help women get the vote in 1921. Her ghost will be at Hillary’s inauguration along with Alice Paul and Susan B. Anthony.
Imagine this. The suffragettes were chaining themselves to the White House gates while Edith was running the White House. She would stay up late deciphering top secret code from Europe hearing the suffragettes out by the gate. The irony that while women did not have the vote a woman was running the country is truly remarkable. Edith was from the South and disapproved of Alice Pauls tactics of laying down in front of carriages, hunger strikes, and flashing the president with signs under their skirts. She was still enough of a lady from the South to hold such aggressive women in disdain, but she was an aggressive woman herself.
From the moment Dr. Dercum told her that she must not stress the President and take over the White House or the president might die, Edith had to go her own way. When doctors told her an operation must be performed to relieve a blockage in his prostate she vetoed the operation and said nature would take its course. The president survived and Edith began to run the White House, delegating authority, getting bills passed, making appointments. All the while making sure her husband would survive his presidency.  
And when the  crucial vote came to the Senate for the right of women to vote, it was Edith who stepped in and encouraged her husband to violate the Sabbath and speak to the congress.  She was a pragmatist at heart who knew the vote would come eventually for women. And then in 1939 when she wrote about her time in the White House she covered her tracks once again and claimed to only be a “steward of the Presidency.” But others knew better and as time passed Edith Wilson was proclaimed more than once the first woman president. So now we are looking at the actual election of a Woman to the Presidency of the United States.  The suffragettes, Edith, Alice Paul, Susan B. Anthony, were all soldiers in the long fight for equality for women. Edith proved by experience a woman could handle the job at a time when women were second class citizens. Imagine what a woman can do now who doesn’t have to keep her husband alive and worry about men who saw her still as the “president’s new girlfriend.”  

Edith was a progressive woman who owned her own car and had means and traveled the world. She would approve of another progressive woman who has gone through hell to get to the White House.  Edith Wilson and the Suffragettes could relate. 
Order Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Did Trump hand Madam President the White House?

Edith Wilson may have been the first Madam President but Hillary Clinton will certainly be next. By not answering if he will respect the constitution of the United States by accepting the results of the election Donald Trump sealed his fate. He must have known this so what was his end game? Maybe he is already lining up his new network that is rumored to be in the works

 A great suspenseful moment...will the candidate for President of the United States accept the decision of the people or will he foment election. Tune in next week folks. I will keep you in suspense was the line that telegraphed the game was over. And like any businessman he has already begun cutting his losses as he morphs from Donald Trump the president to Donald Trump the showman. Truly he handed the election to Madam President with a bow.

And now a hundred years after Edith Wilson reigned another woman might hold the keys to the White House. Edith liked to walk the grounds of the White House at night to relieve the stress of keeping her husband alive and running the government. Who knows, maybe Hillary will take the same walks and she might just sense that other woman looking for peace in the darkness.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson




"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

On The Book Tour of Madam President in Washington DC

The first thing you are is tired. You have just given everything at a radio interview and there is nothing in the tank but you have more interviews and CSPAN in the afternoon and you are in front of people from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation who might not be crazy about calling Edith Wilson the First Woman President. And it is the first day your book is out.

That alone is a conflict of emotions. Yes the book is a lot like a baby with all that anticipation. But there it is and there is not a lot you can do at a point. Forget that you don't know where you are and everyone knows it you have to focus. So you duck into a Starbucks for cerebral juice and hope you wont be so brain fogged in the next interview. Sleeping in a hotel room puts you behind the eight ball. Who sleeps well in a room that a thousand other people have slept?

But this is it. You either do it or you dont'. When people read your book back to you on the air you wonder who wrote it. They sound so focused, something you are not. No matter. Coffee. Uber. And then a flight back home the next day. Onward.

Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson


"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

How A Soaked Book Led To Madam President

I was in the bathtub reading Scott Bergs book WILSON when  I dropped it in the water. It wasn’t a spasm but a reaction to the line I read that basically said Edith Wilson was almost the president in 1919. After I hauled the book out of  the water with blue ink washing down from the cover I read on and then on and on until I reached The Papers of Woodrow Wilson in the Elmhurst Library. There buried in the tombs was a story of a woman who had only been married to the president of the United States for four years and had only two years of schooling and was required in the forty sixth year of her life to take control of the United States government and step in as president.It is through the correspondence of the day that this story is told. 
There was no email or fax of course so people mailed each other and sent telegrams or letters. In these letters the power flowed from Woodrow Wilson to Edith Wilson as she redirected the presidential river to allow her husband to heal from a massive stroke that made him into a semi invalid who could only be wheeled out to the South portico or shown movies in the Red Room or when he was well enough taken for drives. In these dusty books I discovered that Wilson disappeared for five months and the White House ceased to function and became more like a haunted Victorian hospice than a functioning White House.
And at the center was Edith Wilson signing legislation, making appointments, orchestrating the cover-up, working on official proclamations while trying to fight the battel of the League of Nations. By the time I closed the volumes of letters and official correspondence I had my book and I had my heroine. Her name was Edith Wilson and she was the first woman president. The title flowed out from that idea, Madam President The Secret Presidency of  Edith Wilson.  And as I dug deeper I was surprised to find a love story.
Edith Wilson was a progressive woman who had buried one husband, a child , had been homeschooled by her grandmother and  had been left a failing jewelry company. By the time she met a grieving Woodrow Wilson she was a woman of means with the first drivers license in the District of  Columbia,  an electric car,and a penchant for travel and the good life. The last thing she had on her mind was marriage but Woodrow Wilson woke from his grief and pursued her like a Victorian suitor half his age. Wilson for all his academic frigidity was in reality a sensual man and the love letters would make a woman in 1919 blush. The romantic won over Edith and then he did a very curious thing. He made his new wife his partner in the White House.
 By the time they married Edith had been deciphering top secret codes and had become the President’s closest advisor and effectively began isolating him from the men around him. Edith was fierce, loyal, protective, aggressive,  and smart. The couple navigated through World War I as Wilsons health deteriorated. The final blow coming outside of Pueblo Colorado on a whistle-stop tour to promote the League of Nations. When they returned to Washington the blood clot in his brain squeezed off circulation and Wilson collapsed, paralyzed on his left side. The Edith Wilson presidency began.

 And now almost a hundred years later we entertain the possibility of our first elected woman president. The Edith Wilson Presidency has nibbled at the pages of history for a long time and maybe now with Hillary in the final stretch it is time to shine the light on the dusty pages that reside in the books never checked out. But in those pages is the story of Edith Wilson and her secret presidency. Hillary should take note of the woman who ruled before women even had the vote. She too, had it all against her. 
Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson
Book Trailer Madam President

"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning

Women Went Through Hell for Madam President

They laid down in front of carriages. They froze out by the White House gates. They endured hunger strikes and force feedings and were committed to insane asylums. Some died in obscurity after being shunned by society. A few were recognized for their efforts. Some were beaten and jailed and fined. They were viewed as modern terrorists and had to back down a world of men bent on never giving them the vote. And even when the law passed and Edith Wilson was running the White House no one was sure if the states were going to ratify the amendment.

It is amazing to think that African Americans had the vote fifty years before women. We always assume that blacks were far more oppressed than women but women weren't even seen as citizens. They did not vote and they had no power. So when we think of Edith Wilson taking over the White House and running it for two years it is amazing she could get anything accomplished in a world run by men. But she did and she worked in the White House as the suffragettes protested outside the White House gates.

And now we are entertaining the first woman president. Hillary Clinton has gone to hell and back to end up where she is. There is little doubt her way was paved with women who gave everything... so that in the year 2106 a woman could be elected to the highest office in the land.

Order Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson

Book Trailer Madam President The Secret Presidency of Edith Wilson




"Rocket Man is the funniest novel since Russo's Straight Man."

Chicago Sun Times


"Rocket Man is a hilarious, well written novel about one man's search for the New American Dream." James Frey, author A Million Little Pieces and Bright Shiny Morning