Erin O'Riordan's Almanac for November 7th: https://ko-fi.com/post/November-7-Cicero-C0C715Q98X
Bummer November 7th
November 7, 1837: Anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy is shot to death by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, which is near Illinois’ border with “slave state” Missouri.
November 7, 1908: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are killed in a shootout with police in Bolivia.
November 7, 1980: Actor Steve McQueen dies in his sleep following surgery in Juárez, Mexico. He’d been diagnosed with pleural mesothelioma, which metastasized and caused large tumors in his neck, chest, and abdomen.
Between February and October 1980, McQueen had attempted to treat his disease with alternative therapy directed by William Donald Kelley, who called his quack treatment regimen “non-specific metabolic therapy.” In McQueen’s case, the treatments didn’t distract him from seeking conventional medicine; his doctors had already told him his cancer was inoperable and terminal. The quack “alternative medicine” did, however, cost him thousands of dollars while having no effect whatsoever on his disease. Kelley also falsely claimed in the media that his treatment of McQueen was successful, and this false claim may have cost other cancer patients their lives if they chose not to seek conventional treatment. Kelley, who died in 2005, did not have a license to practice medicine.
Erin's Dream Diary
Last night we watched the penultimate episode of VisionQuest, the Marvel-Disney series that's the latest installment in the trilogy that includes WandaVision (which introduces the Maximoff twins, Billy and Tommy) and Agatha All Along (which follows up with Billy). We'd also just binged Amadeus (2025), a miniseries based on Peter Shaffer's play. VisionQuest and Amadeus both starred Paul Bettany, who played Vision and Antonio Salieri.
(Mozart was played by Will Sharpe, who was in White Lotus season 2 with F. Murray Abraham, who played Antonio Salieri in Milos Forman's 1984 movie adaptation of Shaffer's play. When I watched Amadeus as a child, I thought F. Murray Abraham seemed ancient. He was in his mid-40s then. In the MCU, F. Murray Abraham is Khonshu, the Egyptian god of the moon.)
And then we stayed up too late watching a documentary on YouTube about teenagers who did unbelievably bad things. But I didn't have nightmares about wicked teens.
Instead, I dreamed I lived in a small Pennsylvania town where Taylor Swift was the mayor. She declared our annual Halloween parade was going to be by train this year. Everybody except the small children thought this was a very sad parade, since the decorated trains had to be spaced 20 minutes apart for safety.
Our town only had two restaurants, a breakfast cafe and a Mexican restaurant, both terrible. We tried to give the two restaurant owners helpful hints.
I lived with my brother, a car mechanic, who had recently broken his arm in a motorcycle accident. He had the hospital set the broken arm with his hand free in the middle of his chest, he said, so he could still flip people off. I'm actually the older sibling, but in this dream he was 19 and I was an 18-year-old high school senior. Nominally our single mother also lived there, but she was constantly at work.
Left unsupervised and bored by my small town, I used the lackluster Halloween parade as an excuse to flirt with an older guy. He worked at the local paint factory. That was the guy in my dream who looked like Paul Bettany.
But in real life, I don't like Paul Bettany because he's friends with Johnny Depp, who was badly abusive to his wife Amber Heard. Not only was he abusive, but Depp ran a publicity campaign to trash Heard's name in the media. I even fell for it until I learned better. Amber Heard, I'm sorry. You were right and your ex is a monster. And Paul Bettany, I suspect, is not a very nice guy either.
Yet in my dream, I was trying to convince him - the paint factory guy - that I was a grown adult with some dating experience and a suitable companion for the evening.
I do have to say that all of the actors in Amadeus (2025) looked very beautiful in late 18th century period costuming with era-appropriate hairstyles.
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