Friday, May 11

   Welcome to the Wanaskan Almanac for Friday.

     It's the birthday in 1811 of Chang and Eng, the conjoined twins who gave us the term "Siamese Twins." At their birth, the midwives were horrified, but their mother loved them and encouraged them to exercise so that they became as coordinated as their peers and were able to help their fisherman father. At age 17, a British merchant contracted with their mother to exhibit the boys in the west for 30 months. On the ship, the boys quickly picked up English and climbed the rigging with the sailors.

    They appeared first in Boston in 1829 and were an instant hit. They entertained crowds with acrobatics and by playing chess against each other. They were able to carry around a 280 pound man. After touring the U.S. they traveled to England. Doctors who examined them could not agree if they could be safely separated. One doctor said, "They'll make a lot more money together than they would separated." 

    Once their contract expired, they got their own manager and made lots of money. After seven years on the road, they decided to settle down. A doctor friend from rural North Carolina convinced them to return home with him. They bought slaves and a plantation and started looking for wives. The idea of the twins having sex horrified the public. Marrying sisters made it seem less bad. They settled into a four-person bed and started producing children; Eng had, 11, Chang, 10.   There's no record of how things went at night. Some biographers suppose that couple B would zone out when couple A were making whoopee. Wife B probably repaired to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal till she got the all clear. After a few years the sisters began to dislike each other, so the twins set up separate households and took turns spending a week at each.

    The South was ruined financially by the Civil War and Chang and Eng had to go back on the road, but tastes had changed and they had less success. As they aged, they began to disagree more. Eng liked to stay up late playing poker, while Chang started drinking. At the age of 62 Chang died of a stroke. Eng died of a heart attack a few hours later. During the autopsy, doctors discovered the twins shared a liver and would not have survived an attempt to separate them. They have over 1500 descendants, many of whom still live in the area of their North Carolina home.

Not so surreal Dali

   It's also the birthday in 1904 in Figueres, Spain of Salvador Dali. the great surrealist painter. We are all surrealists when we dream, but Dali, with his wild imagination and artistic skill, was able to make a living at it. When he was a child, Dali's lawyer father forced him to look at images of advanced-stage sexually transmitted diseases which led Dali to develop an obsession with and  fear of sex.  Dali's mother, who he adored, died when he was 16. It's no wonder Dali's hero was Freud, who he met once.
    Dali's father did encourage his son's artistic talent, sending him to art school near their home in the Catalonian region of Spain, then on to Paris. This was in the 1920's and Dali was immediately taken up by Picasso, and learned about surrealism. Dali's personal style as well as his art attracted wealthy patrons and he never had to go through a "starving" phase.
   When Dali was 25 he met Gala, a Russian immigrant who was married to a surrealist poet at the time. She became his lifelong muse and they were married five years later. Dali was not only a painter, but also a sculptor, a filmmaker and fashion designer. He was repeatedly drummed out of the Surrealist group for his commercialism and his political views. He refused to take a stand against Hitler, and when the war came, he nipped over to the U.S. George Orwell said of him "He is a good draftsman and a disgusting human being." Dali would retort, "The difference between me and the other surrealists is that I am a surrealist."
    Though usually an affable fellow, Dali could be touchy. Once, while watching a surrealist movie, he stood up and knocked over the projector saying, "They have stolen my dream!" While putting together a window display in New York, he discovered that someone had altered his work, so he pushed a piano through a plate glass window.
    Once back in Europe, Dali's fame continued to spread. He found he could avoid paying for restaurant meals by making little signed drawings on the back of the check he wrote to pay for the meal. He guessed the restaurant would not want to cash these "works of art," and he was mostly right.
    Gala demanded that he build a castle in Spain for her to which she would disappear for weeks at a time. He had a fear of abandonment and when she died in 1982 Dali lost the will to live. He made a couple of alleged attempts at suicide. His nerves had been damaged by medicinal cocktails Gala used to make for him, and he did no painting in his last years. He died of heart failure in his hometown in 1989 at age 84.

    Today's poem is by myself, Chairman Joe:

We admire the hawk rising from the ditch as we speed by.

Then notice a mouse rising with him,

The mouse getting a bird's eye vision of the nine square yards

Where his short life was led.

Our pity rises with the mouse,

Though we'd not want him scurrying across our kitchen floor,

Nor the hawk, thrashing about the living room,

Upsetting lamps and such,

Knocking portraits off the walls.

         Come back Sunday for more squibs from @jmcdonnell123