Crematory Holds 19th Century Feminist’s Remains Hostage.

Is a crematory in Queens holding hostage a pioneer in woman’s rights?

Lisle Lester was a reporter in the 1800’s who had a rocky career in publishing. She was widely known for her strong opinions on many topics and her tussles with the male typographical unions. She worked for the Milwaukee Sentinel and in 1863, Lisle took charge of the Pacific Monthly, a woman’s literary magazine previously known as the Hesperian. During her career she burned many bridges and pissed off more people than one should during a lifetime.

Miss Lester took that final taxi in June of 1888 in New York. What was worst is that no one claimed her cremated remains. There was no next of kin and one wonders about friends or loved ones. Did she really make that many people mad in her lifetime by standing up for her beliefs in women’s suffrage?

Her remains have sat there for over 119 year on a shelf at the Fresh Pond Crematory in Queens.

The plight of Lester remains were found out by an author who wrote a book about her. Fay Campbell Kaynor was doing research for her 2001 book, “Lapdogs and Bloomer Girls: The Life and Times of Lisle Lester, 1837-1888” and found Miss Lester’s ashes at the crematory but they would not release them until a storage fee was paid. The bail was set at $5000. Kaynor contacted the Fond du Lac County Historical Society and explained what the crematory wanted to release this historic figure.

While she worked with the Fond du Lac County Historical Society on the release, Kaynor died leaving the task to Jack Copet a publications coordinator. He wrote letters back and forth to the business and the storage charges grew to $7,522. According to a price schedule sent to him, the fees went up significantly over time. For instance, between 1902 and 1957 storage cost $12 a year. That was up to $300 a year by 1991.

Copet contacted Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin where Lester studied in the 1850s. The school offered “oral and written support for your project at this time,” but no money. The Wisconsin Historical Society also said no. Copet wrote to the National Organization for Women about the post-mortem plight of this early feminist, but so far hasn’t heard back from them.

The Fond du Lac newspaper wrote and article and eulogized Lester and said her writing was “racy, pungent and of good literary style.”

It wrote that Lester was born Sophia Walker in New Hampshire and later moved to the Fond du Lac area of Wisconsin and adopted the pen name. She came to Milwaukee and worked at the Sentinel in 1863. Lester served there as a printer and trained other women for the job, much to the chagrin of men who dominated the field.

Twice divorced and career-driven, Lester led the Badger Journal in Wisconsin. She went on to San Francisco, Washington, D.C., New York and other cities, making her living as a columnist, dramatist, civil rights advocate, editor and theater critic. Her death came during a bout of pneumonia. She was 50.

It is a shame that there is no memorial to this noteworthy woman and that she is being held hostage because of greed. As she fought for the equality of women we should fight for her to be released and be given final peace.

..But Wait, There More: Ronco Declares Bankruptcy

Well- another Father’s day went by and I didn’t get what I had hoped for from my children. I guess I should be happy that I didn’t end up with a Popeil Pocket Fisherman.

For years now we have been bombarded with TV commercials trying to sell you everything from the Veg-O-Matic ( It slices, it dices, it makes 100s of French fries..) to Ginsu knives. We have bought a few items through the years. I had the record vacuum that you place your vinyl LP in and it spins it around and sucks off the dust. ( I ruined my brother’s Mike Oldsfield Tubular Bells record with it.)

I had bought my mother the Armorcote non-stick pan. It worked till the non-stick part came off in a dish she was making.

I even still have a few LPs that were made with the Ronco label. One from the UK has a great collection of New Wave hits.

Well it looks like that famous name of Ronco will be taking it Final Taxi as they have filed for bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Woodland Hills, California.

Ron Popeil, 72, started the Chatsworth, California-based company around 1958 and became a household name by hawking products in late-night television ads. He was known for infomercials selling his products and got his start pitching his father’s Veg-O-Matic manual food processor . During the 1970s, Ron Popeil began developing products on his own to sell through Ronco. Ronco became a household name with its commercials for kitchen products including the Ginsu knife, and Armorcote (and Armorecote II) non-stick saucepans and frying pans. They aired incessantly, especially during off-hour TV viewing times, these commercials became known for their catchphrases such as “…but wait, there’s more!” “50-year guarantee” (later expanded to a “lifetime guarantee”), and “…how much would you pay now?”

Other inventions by Popeil include a machine that scrambles eggs inside the shell, a food dehydrator, an automatic pasta maker and a spray to cover bald spots on people’s heads. Among the company’s best-selling gadgets is the Pocket Fisherman, a compact rod and reel. I think my kids bought my wife the Showtime Rotisserie, a small oven designed for cooking meat and poultry, using Popeil’s latest catch-phrase: “Set it, and forget it.”

I know people who still have the electric shock to tighten up your stomach muscles with a 9 volt battery- or the one that shocks your acne away.

Ronco’s television ads were so familiar to viewers that they were spoofed by several comedians including Dan Aykroyd’s famous 1976 sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” In the sketch, Aykroyd advertises the “Super Bass-O-Matic ’76” by “Rovco,” a blender that

turns a whole fish into a brown liquid, which is then drunk by Laraine Newman, who co-starred in the segment.

“Wow, that’s terrific bass!” she says.

Stand-up comedian Gallagher satirizes Ronco with perhaps his most famous routine involving a large wooden mallet called the “Sledge-o-Matic”, used to pulverize fruit, other food items and still other random objects. Gallagher delivers the routine in a manner similar to Popeil in his infomercials.

According to a court filing, its current assets include inventory of $7.7 million and $3 million in cash and uncollected bills. The company said it generated $45 million of revenue last year. The company has arranged bankruptcy financing, and the restructuring is supported by secured lenders, he said. A hearing to approve the new loan and other court requests has been set for June 19.

So is this the end of Ronco? Somehow I think we may still hear the phase “..but wait, there’s more..”

Cream of Wheat Chef gets gravestone 69 years later.

I never was a big oatmeal eater when I was a kid. During the cold months mom would cook me Cream of Wheat instead.

I remember staring at the box as this black chef smiled at me every morning. I often wondered if this was a real person or a character much like Tony the Tiger or Capn’ Crunch.

He was REAL!

In fact the man widely believed to be the model for the white-hatted chef whose face has greeted breakfasting Americans for more than a century on Cream of Wheat boxes finally has a grave marker bearing his name just this week.

Frank L. White died in 1938, and until this week, his grave in Woodlawn Cemetery in Leslie, Michigan bore only a tiny concrete marker with no name.

On Wednesday, a granite gravestone was placed at his burial site. It bears his name and an etching taken from the man depicted on the Cream of Wheat box.

Jesse Lasorda, a family researcher from Lansing, started the campaign to put the marker and etching on White’s grave.

“Everybody deserves a headstone,” Lasorda told the Lansing State Journal. He discovered that White was born about 1867 in Barbados, came to the U.S. in 1875 and became a citizen in 1890.

When White died Feb. 15, 1938, the local paper, the Leslie Local-Republican, described him as a “famous chef” who “posed for an advertisement of a well-known breakfast food.”

White lived in Leslie for about the last 20 years of his life, and the story of his posing for the Cream of Wheat picture was known in the city of 2,000 located between Jackson and Lansing and about 70 miles west of Detroit.

The chef was photographed about 1900 while working in a Chicago restaurant. His name was not recorded. White was a chef, traveled a lot, was about the right age and told neighbors that he was the Cream of Wheat model, the Jackson Citizen Patriot said.

I can’t help but wonder if Nancy Green, the lady who was used for the logo of Aunt Jemima, has a grave stone telling who she was.

Not quite dead yet; Man awakes from 19 year coma

Kill Bill, The Dead Zone, Good Bye Lenin are all movies about people who awoke from a coma and things in their life changed.

In the film Good Bye Lenin, which is set in the East Berlin of 1989 . Alexander Kerner’s mother, Christiane, an ardent supporter of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany, suffers a heart attack when she sees Alex being arrested in an anti-government demonstration and falls into a coma shortly before the fall of the Berlin Wall. After almost a year she awakes, but is severely weakened both physically and mentally, and doctors say that any shock may cause another, possibly fatal, attack. Alex realises that her discovery of recent events would be too much for her to bear, and so sets out to maintain the illusion that things are as normal in the German Democratic Republic. To this end, he and his family revert the flat to its previous drab decor, dress in their old clothes, and feed the bed-ridden Christiane new, Western produce from old labeled jars. For a time the deception works, but gradually becomes increasingly complicated and elaborate. Despite everything, Christiane occasionally witnesses strange occurrences, such as a gigantic Coca-Cola advertisement banner unfurling on a building outside the apartment. Alexander and a friend with film-making ambitions edit old tapes of news broadcasts and create their own fake special reports to explain them away. It really is a cute and well done film – rent it on Netflix.

In real life railway worker Jan Grzebski, 65, fell into a coma after he was hit by a train in 1988. The Polish man has woken up from a coma after 19 years to find the Communist party no longer in power and food no longer rationed.

When Grzebski had his accident Poland was still ruled by its last communist leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski.

“When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol queues were everywhere,” Mr Grzebski said. “Now I see people on the streets with mobile phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin,” he told Polish television.

He credits his survival to his wife, Gertruda. Doctors gave him only two or three years to live after the accident. Mrs Grzebski is reported to have moved her husband every hour to prevent bed sores.

“It was Gertruda that saved me, and I’ll never forget it,” he said

“I cried a lot, and I prayed a lot,” Mrs Grzebski said on Polsat television. “Those who came to see us kept asking: ‘When is he going to die?’ But he’s not dead.”

He missed his Final Taxi.

Memorial Day 2007

Memorial Day is a day to think of those that have died.

It is a day that is a United States federal holiday and is observed on the last Monday of May.  It was formerly known as Decoration Day. This holiday commemorates U.S. men and women who have died in military service to their country. It began first to honor soldiers who died during the American Civil War. After World War I, it expanded to include those who died in any war or military action. Some Americans use Memorial Day to also honor any family members who have died, not just servicemen.

Let’s think about the numbers of those who fought in US Wars.

In the American Revolution, 4,435 Americans lost their lives. 2,260 died in the War of 1812 with Great Britain.
In the Mexican War of 1846, 13,283 died.
In the Civil War, 558,052 died. (In that war, every casualty was an American one.)
The Spanish American War of 1898 cost 2,446 lives.
World War I took 116,708 American lives and World War II, 407,316.
Korea, 33,651; Vietnam, 58,168; the First Gulf War, 293; 75 died in Kosovo; 18 in Somalia; 390 in Afghanistan; 3,441 in Iraq (as of Thursday), and climbing.

This Memorial Day, please stop and reflect on those that gave their lives for your freedoms.

Typecast as a Reverend? Dabbs Greer dies.

I think I only saw the first episode of The Brady Bunch when it was syndicated. It’s hard to believe that the Brady Bunch started in 1969 and has had such an affect on our culture.

Sherwood Schwartz, creator of the series, conceived the idea for the series after reading an article that a growing share of the marriages in the United States involved children from a previous marriage. The TV show was about Mike Brady, a widowed architect with sons Greg, Peter, and Bobby, married Carol Martin, whose daughters were Marcia, Jan, and Cindy. The daughters took the Brady surname. Schwartz wanted Carol to have been a divorcée. The network objected to this, but a compromise was reached whereby no mention was made of the circumstances in which Carol’s first marriage ended, but many assume she was widowed.

The family was put together by Schwartz but joined together by a minister on that 1969 pilot episode. The minister was played by Dabbs Greer, Greer has taken his Final Taxi at the age of 90.

He was not just a minister in the Brady Bunch but also best know for playing the Rev. Robert Alden on “Little House on the Prairie”.

His career spanned more than a half-century and included roles in almost 100 films and about 600 television episodes.

In addition to running the Walnut Grove church on “Little House,” which aired from 1974 to 1983, Greer had recurring TV roles as storekeeper Mr. Jonus on “Gunsmoke” from 1955 to 1960; a coach on “Hank” in the mid-1960s; a regular in shows like “Bonanza” “The Fugitive”, “ Perry Mason”, “ Andy Griffith”, “ The Untouchable, in 1969’s TV series “The Ghost & Mrs. Muir” , a minister on “Picket Fences” in the 1990s; and a grumpy grandfather on “Maybe It’s Me” from 2001-2002.

On “The Adventures of Superman,” Greer dangled from a dirigible and appeared to be rescued midair by the Man of Steel in the 1952 pilot episode.

He debuted on the big-screen in 1949 in an uncredited part in “Reign of Terror.”

In his final film, “The Green Mile” (1999) Greer played the role of an older Paul Edgecomb, the prison guard in the film, whose younger self was played by Tom Hanks. He also played a prison guard opposite Susan Hayward in her Oscar-winning role in 1958′s “I Want to Live!”

Another famous TV couple that Dabbs Greer ( as a TV minister) performed the marriages of was of Rob and Laura Petrie on The Dick Van Dyke Show. I guess Greer just has the face of a reverend.

A Sesame Street and Electric Company Writer

When I was younger we only had 3 channels. The CBS channel was fuzzy so we had ABC, NBC and PBS.

As a kid, the closest I got to see cartoons on a weekday was watching the educational show that were on the PBS channel. So I watched Sesame Street because it was funny. Much of it was well below me but still it was animated. The Big Bird and Mr. Hooper bickering back and forth was fun. This was also before we thought anything about Burt and Ernie’s relationship. I bought Erine’s Rubber Duckie single when it came out on 45.

But the one show that really floored me was one called The Electric Company.

I will still sing songs from that show. “Yeah we would all be in a mess, if we didn’t have “S” to put at the end of a word..” or “I like fish food; you do, too, Don’t look now, your hair is blue” or even “ Your rich Uncle died and left you all his M—–“ Comedy was the way to educate on the show as you had Jennifer of the Jungle, the Six dollar and thirty-nine cent man, or the adventure of Letterman. They even had Spider-man and the Blue Beetle on the show ( Not the DC comic hero) .

The original cast included Morgan Freeman, Rita Moreno (it was Moreno who screamed “Hey, you guyyyyys!!” to open the show) Bill Cosby, Judy Graubart, Lee Chamberlin, and Skip Hinnant. Most of the cast had done stage, repertory, and improv work, with Cosby and Moreno already well-known from film and television at that time.
Can you believe Morgan Freeman as a character called Easy Reader?

The reason I am remembering that show is because the writer for “The Electric Company and “Sesame Street “ has taken his Final Taxi .

Jim Thurman was an Emmy-award winning children’s television writer. He was one of a team of writers for Children’s Television Workshop during the early years.

Besides “Sesame Street,” & “The Electric Company,” Thurman wrote for “321 Contact.” He also wrote sketches for Jim Henson’s “The Muppet Show,” and performed voices such as “Sesame Street’s” Teeny Little Super Guy.

Thurman helped kids have fun with math as co-creator of “Square One TV.” As senior producer and head writer, he helped create the Mathnet segments, a parody of “Dragnet” featuring calculator-toting detectives.

Joan Ganz Cooney, founder and former president of Children’s Television Workshop (now Sesame Workshop) said, “Jim was a stalwart spirit within the Workshop. He was important not only for what he produced but for the positive spirit he had as he did it. He was an utter joy to work with, and was truly funny.”

Jim Thurman began his career in advertising in Los Angeles where he and writing partner, the late Gene Moss, formed a boutique ad agency, Creative Advertising Stuff. His comedy writing ability soon led him to television comedy, where he wrote for Bob Hope, Dean Martin, Carol Burnett, Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart.

With Moss he also wrote and provided voices for “Shrimpenstein,” a satirical children’s television program that aired in Los Angeles during the late 1960s. The two also wrote all 156 episodes and provided voices for the syndicated cartoon, “Roger Ramjet.”

If you have never seen a episode of Roger Ramjet go to YouTube and find one. If you are a fan of the comedy of the carton show Rocky and Bullwinkle and the like this is a must watch!

I found a VHS of it years back and loved it. I bought the DVD when it came out. It’s fantastic. I think Cartoon Network aired it at on point.

If you don’t think Jim Thurman touch people lives, your wrong. One thing he wrote that is still being used today in comedy bits is the “Soft Shoe Silhouettes.”

Two cast members of the Electric Company would appeared in silhouette, one giving the prefix of the word, the other the suffix, to form a new word (e.g., “th-” and “-ing” to form “thing”). Done twice through, sometimes with the viewer trying to read the word the second time through. The song usually ended with the two saying a soft “yeah!”

On MadTV they depicted Big Bird catching and spreading avian flu (Bird Flu) on the street. The silhouetted characters sounded out the words “flu,” “fever,” and “fatal.”

And in a recent Family Guy, Peter was one of the silhouetted characters reading the words. He quickly became frustrated at his inability to keep up with the other character, and attacked him.

Losing Kitty and Ho

Listen to this weeks Podcast of the Final Taxi on Kitty Carlisle and Don Ho.

Direct Download: Final Taxi

Or listen at
http://www.wildvoice.com/ronnasty

Or on MySpace: www.myspace.com/finaltaxi

Kitty Carlisle Hart, the supremely elegant actress, singer, arts advocate and TV personality is remembered for her role as the romantic musical heroine of the 1935 Marx Brothers film “A Night at the Opera” and she sang in the 1948 U.S. premiere of Benjamin Britten’s opera “The Rape of Lucretia.” Her long run as a panelist on the game show “To Tell the Truth” made her a regular presence in the country’s living rooms from the 1950s through the 1970s.

Don Ho was an iconic Hawaiian entertainer whose signature song, Tiny Bubbles, made him a major tourist attraction on the island and his name has always been synonymous with hula dancing and luaus.

They both recently took their Final Taxi.

Cheerios.. Just add Milk

I recently had to see my doctor for a checkup. After the exam he told me that my cholesterol levels were a little high and that I need to get more oat products in my diet. My oatmeal and raisin cookies didn’t count.

He suggested that I eat oatmeal for breakfast or an oat cereal. No that is not true he told me to eat Cheerios. The brand name was mentioned. I know he meant the type of cereal but it was funny that was what he said.

How many products do we call the brand name when we are talking about a certain product?

I know that here in the South we will say we are going to buy a “Coke” when we mean any soda. But there are not many products that you call by the brand name.

That brand of cold cereal started out with a different name. It was first called “CheeriOats” by it’s prolific General Mills inventor Lester Borchardt in May of 1941.

Lester Borchardt took his Final Taxi recently at the age of 99.


The inventor spent 36 years at General Mills before retiring in 1969 as vice president and director of research. In his time at the company, he worked on projects ranging from food processing to high-altitude spy balloons to high-tech optics used by the Allies in World War II. Over a dozen patents carry his name.

Borchardt’s famous cereal’s first mascot, Cheeri O’Leary, was introduced in 1942, though the mascot was short-lived and she was rarely seen after 1945. Successful marketing and association with The Lone Ranger led General Mills to sell approximately 1.8 million cases of the cereal in its first year alone, and in 1945, the name of the cereal was changed to Cheerios .

New mascots named “The Cheerios Kid and Sue” were introduced in 1953 along with the package change, though again product association and in-box promotions generally kept the mascots of Cheerios from the limelight. If fact notable icons that have been prominently featured in association with Cheerios include Rocky and Bullwinkle, Scooby Doo, Star Wars characters, and NASCAR drivers.

You know I remember well in the 1978 film Superman: The Movie, Martha Kent places a Cheerios box prominently in front of the camera (as if intended to be a movie tie-in) at the beginning of the scene where Clark Kent is out in the middle of the field watching the sunrise.

And in another film, , Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989), the climatic scene involves one of the shrunken characters swimming in a bowl of Cheerios and almost being eaten by his regularly-sized father.


I watching television on a an afternoon off and saw the TV show Seinfeld like four times in a row. The show’s main character, Jerry, would curiously order a bowl of Cheerios at a diner instead of a regular meal in most of those.


Borchardt also played a key role in coming up with the process used to fortify milk with vitamin D. He turned the new fortification method from a “laboratory curiosity” to a commercially viable process.

His invention of Cheerios was even life-saving. When his grand daughter was about 14 months old, she drank part of a bottle of furniture polish. They took her to the emergency room to have her stomach pumped, and the doctor said if she hadn’t had a good breakfast that morning, she would’ve died. Yes – she had her Cheerios that morning.

So I guess I will now put away my bowl of Count Chocula and do what is healthy for me…

…… … I wonder if it counts if I mix the two together??

Memorable Ads From Howard Field

As I think back about all the TV I watched as a kid, you have to admit that if the TV show sucked you always had some good commercials to watch. At least they were memorable.

Okay, I will have to admit that we’ve occasionally been known to sneak off to the bathroom or kitchen or to Tijuana during commercial breaks. But there were certain ads that will always stick in our brains.

Who can forget Rosie the waitress, or Josephine the plumber? They were strong roles and they kept us entertained while selling their product.

Clad in silver armor and mounted on a white steed, the Ajax White Knight galloped valiantly down neighborhood streets zapping dirty laundry with his magic white lance  to the tune of “Stronger than Dirt.”

How about the Wesson oil commercial where the father comes in and ask the mother what the daughter is doing cooking bread in Wesson. I think you could fry anything in that stuff from fried chicken to the neighbor’s cat.

The reason for my remembering these is that the creator of these and many other commercials, Howard Field has taken his Final Taxi.

 After graduating USC he was signed as the youngest contract writer at MGM Studios. He was one of the first writers of plays for television. But the Big Apple beckoned and he went off to write for Young & Rublacam, Grey and Compton Advertising Agencies. He began the character commercials that were ground breaking.

Besides the ones I had talked about Field also gave us the Revlon commercials which featured Barbara Feldon, and he made us want to bake great Duncan Hines cakes.

 Howard Field won many Clio’s for his creativity.

One never knows what kind of impact you will have on people, even in just creating TV ads.

 

Ron