The Valley Village View

SYBILL THE SOOTHSAYER/
THE VIRAL LIBRARY/
THE DISMAL SCIENCE DEPT.

*This potent symbol of superstition itself, was adopted as a socially-conscious lapel badge by some Henry George readers *of the Gilded Age*.* “Do you see the cat?” was the slogan, referring to the shocking evils of our unfair economic system. Poverty was the cat that was, to Progressives, a terrifying apparition on every street corner, a threat in every streetcar, yet, maddeningly, apparently “unseen”, unremarked — even ignored — by fellow citizens in the “Me/Mine/Now!” classes, focused on the dream-world of their iPhones …er, the dream-world of their Wall Street Journals.

“Woooo! WOOOO! The spirits say today is Friday the 13th! Day ill-omened…don’t move, don’t plan, don’t even open the curtains this morning! Beware, Patient Reader…be very, very, ware! Do you see the cat?! Woooo!” [klunk*]

Hmmm…Maybe Sybill shoulda stood in bed! In a whirling trance, her turban unraveled and flew off; so when she slipped off her tripod, her bare tattooed head took the blow on an unluckily overturned abalone shell. What are the odds! Well, Metaphysician, heal thyself; the View’s not insured.

But say, folks, what IS the origin of Friday the 13th being an unlucky day? I know, I’ll look in the Encyclopedia of Superstitions, another buck-book from the Thrift Witches…

Yesterday at Echo Park I was ignoring the homeless while enjoying a Face-time conversation on my iPhone with Ken A. He couldn’t recall a book that he had recently enjoyed, which he had been meaning to discuss with me. After a bit of head scratching he said “damn, it was an unusual book for me, a tome I would never pick up…I’ll recall in a minute.” I said “The Compleat Angler,” and he said, “Yes, how on earth did you guess?” Wooo, woooo! Well, I saw him on screen walking along the Calaveras River to campus; wearing a 19th century oysterman’s hat, neckerchief and poncho. Anyone who knows Ken knows the costume is not the strange part — our call might just as easily have found him riding his bike while wearing a shako; and I would still have guessed Walton. But it was funny…not funny ha-ha, if you know what I mean…just funny.

Then Ken asked what I was reading, and I told him about the Encyclopedia of Superstitions. It’s a Barnes and Noble reprint of a highly entertaining 1948 classic. I knew this work for a standard as soon as I read the entry on bees: I recognized the prose. Maybe you will too; for this entry was the source used by David Wilson at his world-famous Museum of Jurassic Technology, for his loopy exhibit of dioramas depicting Rural Folk Customs, such as “telling the bees.” ( His brilliant museum in Culver City is now closed, sadly, on accounta the Covid-19. )

Since bay, beans, and bees are personally (magically, sympathetically) connected with Ken himself (also bats and belfries?), let these entries suggest the fun in this book:

WAIT! BEES are very well; but what is the spooky origin of our fear of Friday the 13th? Oddly, the Encyclopedia makes no mention of any special superstition that I could find. I looked up Friday, and thirteen, and numbers, and…it just doesn’t seem to have been important in ancient Germanic or Celtic lore in the British Isles, at all.

I also couldn’t remember anything specific from any other historical source. So I researched online; sure enough, almost all the information about Friday the 13th is of the folklorically suspect “in ancient times people believed…” variety. There are generic references to Christ and the apostles, Good Friday, witches’ covens, etc.
But the evidence is very flimsy that before the 20th century, there was anything in it, beyond the facts Friday is ill-omened (or auspicious) in some cultures;, while 13 is ill-omened (or auspicious) in some cultures; combined, they must be double-evil, (or super-good) etc. But no one ever “celebrated” or did anything about those beliefs, as a social custom. So if America’s calendar superstition is not an inheritance from any of our immigrant ancestor groups, why is it an universal American meme, understood and observed in some way, by schoolchildren and seniors alike, who will universally acknowledge that the day is ill-omened, whether they believe it or not? I was about to toss the Encyclopedia away as useless and incomplete, and abandon this blog post, when it dawned on me — this “holiday” or superstition, must be an entirely American invention. It’s not pagan at all.

Wonder of wonders, the answer shrieks like a midnight Greymalkin atop Hamilton’s grave in Trinity Churchyard on a dark and stormy Black Friday night. It’s all about Wall Street — the irrational fear that suddenly, all the money in the world will just disappear one day — and what will you do THEN? No wonder it’s America’s own creepy little superstition.

“I saw there something missing from her great blue eyes; I looked; gasped.”
**Click below for Thomas W. Lawson’s 1907 novel, ‘Friday the 13th’** **as a free e-book:**

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/12345/12345-h/12345-h.htm

It is a story of financial chicanery written by the dazzlingly immoral Thomas W. Lawson, Gilded Age tycoon-turned Amalgamated Mining stock-swindler, turned chastened reformer:

Lawson, who was intensely superstitious, wrote the novel Friday the Thirteenth in which an evil broker picks that day on which to bring down Wall Street.
— Quoth Wikipedia

Thomas William Lawson (February 26, 1857 – February 8, 1925) was an American businessman and author. A highly controversial Boston stock promoter, he is known for both his efforts to promote reforms in the stock markets and the fortune he amassed for himself through highly dubious stock manipulations.
At 12 years old, Lawson ran away from home to become a clerk in a Boston bank and soon began speculating in stocks. Lawson specialized in shares of copper-mining companies, which were then a staple of the Boston stock market, and became a multimillionaire during the copper boom of the late 1890s. He was a principal mover in the promotion of companies trying to establish the small town of Grand Rivers, Kentucky as a major steel-producing city. He built the lavish estate called Dreamwold in Scituate, Massachusetts at a cost of $6,000,000.
— Quoth Wikipedia.

Lawson was everywhere at the turn of the century. He shamelessly shilled false Amalgamated Mining stocks in a horrible manipulation; then he wrote about his crimes; then his victims wrote about being victimized by his crimes. Then, after his crimes enriched him, he apparently saw the cat — and got even more publicity by turning muckraker, “warning” the public about letting sociopathic greedy pricks like him run everything. Lawson’s novel was meant to show Americans how dumb they were to trust in Wall Street for their jobs, savings, or general economy. 1907 was, in fact, a year of financial panic — the Knickerbocker Crisis — so dire it ultimately led to the Federal Reserve in 1913. And THAT, it turns out, is the true, totally repressed, origin of our socially-durable American superstition of Friday the 13th!

Lawson’s self-promoted conversion experience provoked satire. The sub-title of the Richard Webb book ‘Me and Lawson’ below, is ‘Humpty Hotfoot’s Little Run-in with Frenzied Copper, Amalgamated Gas and Scrambled Oil.’ The charming illustrations are by W.W. Denslow, the Oz artist.

The Thomas W. Lawson, in which he had invested heavily, was the only seven-masted schooner ever built. It was wrecked off the Isles of Scilly at 2:30 am GMT on Saturday December 14, 1907, but to Lawson, at home in Boston, it was at that time still Friday the 13th. Lawson is believed to have been the inspiration for the protagonist of David Graham Phillips‘ 1905 novel The Deluge. He is generally credited in the U.S. with the Lawson sofa, made for him at the turn of the 20th century. It was a square, overstuffed sofa on a generous scale with loose seat cushions and pillows. The Lawson Tower, originally part of his private Dreamworld estate, still stands. The structure is a water tower with a shingled outer shell and observatory which offers views of the area from an observation deck.
– Quoth Wikipedia

EPILOGUE: After I recommended the Encyclopedia to Ken, he asked “But I’m looking for a really good read…what’s the last really good novel you’ve read?” And I replied, “Angle of Repose,” by Wallace Stegner. “Oh yes — I’ve heard about that, how they stack tomatoes on trucks…” “Well, this is a term that comes from mining, angle of repose, and the novel is set in the exciting but harsh world of wild-cat copper mining in the Gilded Age, around the Anaconda and Amalgamated swindles.” And he said, sounds interesting and is reading it now. I had no idea that Friday 13th had anything whatsoever to do with capitalism or mining or literature, but it do! Woooo…wooooo!

–

We found a cheery amateur plein air landscape at the Studio City Council Thrift (framed in Santa Monica.) I thought I recognized the topography; the bluff, and the tree, and the green creek/woodlands, then the hazy hills beyond. It recalled a scene at Hansen Dam I had seen with Clio many years ago. I really needed fresh air yesterday, and I was curious to see whether the painting really matched my memory, so I went check the View.

This might have been the spot, 50 years ago. But this bluff has eroded and been regraded even since I was last here; you can see the marks; and there’s a total lack of chaparral on the slope so it has been done again recently. Plus, the freeway now dominates the Tujunga Valley. The one big eucalyptus, is now several; but that’s not unusual for this invasive grower. VERDICT: I believe in my fancy, but it’s inconclusive. The Viewpoint for the painting is a bit to the right from this photo; adjust the parallax, and the foothills do match up against the San Gabriels, as in the painting.

In the event, my search proved more profitable than my goal. This is so often true in California that it should be an official footnote to our state motto: “Eureka!* *but my search was more profitable than my goal.” Here are some of the amazing Western Views and creatures I found while scrambling around the buff. Two different habitat types communicate here; it’s where foothill alluvial fan chaparral — the SFV’s signature habitat, one of the rarest in the world — meets Southern California riparian woodlands. The contrasts make for a bracing hike, or ride.

Oblong thickets are one of the most fun places to explore in the chaparral. There are usually several species of shrub grown together, back to back, like a Roman century’s square, often headlong to the prevailing flow of a long-vanished flood. Below, laurel sumac has got juniper’s back; …they protect the understory; here, cactus. As wind blows and water washes through the thicket, seeds get stuck in the tangle on the ground, and sprout there too, and the thicket evolves. I’ve learned they are a good place to spot unusual species. Here I was not disappointed; the north half of the thicket is a single huge California juniper covered with berries. Though supposedly not rare in our state, I had never seen one in all my born days. WOW. The bright blue berries were so cute I set them as my background image.