Eleventh Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon -- May 27, 2024

Washington Evening Star, 25-November-1923

Lea at Silent-ology is hosting the Eleventh Annual Buster Keaton Blogathon. A blogathon that has lived for eleven years is a rare and wonderful creature.

• For the first annual blogathon, I wrote about Buster Keaton's time in vaudeville: The 3-4-5 Keatons.
• For the second annual blogathon, I wrote about Buster Keaton and the Passing Show of 1917, the show he signed for after leaving vaudeville.
• For the third annual blogathon, I wrote about Buster's transition from vaudeville to the movies, Buster Keaton: From Stage to Screen.
• For the fourth annual blogathon, I wrote about Buster Keaton's time in the US Army: Buster Keaton Goes to War.
• For the fifth annual blogathon, I wrote about Buster Keaton's time making short comedies with Roscoe Arbuckle, Comique: Roscoe, Buster, Al and Luke.
• For the sixth annual blogathon I wrote about Buster Keaton's First Feature: The Saphead
• For the seventh annual blogathon I wrote about Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts -- Reel One, a series of films produced during 1920-1921. Buster and his team had a very high batting average.
• For the eighth annual blogathon, I started to write about the Buster Keaton shorts produced for the second season, 1921-1923. Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts -- Reel Two
• For the ninth annual blogathon, I wrote about the rest of the Buster Keaton shorts produced for the second season, 1921-1923. Buster Keaton's Silent Shorts -- Reel Two and a Half
• For the tenth annual blogathon, I wrote about the first feature that Buster Keaton had control over, Buster Keaton -- Three Ages -- What the Well-Dressed Man of the Ages Should Wear 

For the eleventh annual blogathon, I have written about a feature that was a big step forward for Keaton in the art of storytelling, Our Hospitality:

https://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/2025/05/buster-keaton-our-hospitality-family.html

Habemus Papam -- May 10, 2025

msnbc.com

On its second day, the Conclave selected a Cardinal born in the US, who was of partly African-American descent. MAGA heads exploded. People have said all my life that an American would never become pope. Robert Francis Cardinal Prevost was born in Chicago. He was Archbishop of x in Peru and had been working in the Vatican for two years. He was a joint citizen of Peru and the US. I was happy to learn that he had chosen the name Leo. I like Leo XIII. My first question on learning he was from Chicago was to ask: Cubs or White Sox. It turns out to be White Sox.

Comic Book -- Billy the Kid Western Outlaw -- May 8, 2025

coverbrowser.com

Charlton Comics published Billy the Kid Western Outlaw from 1957 to 1983. I read at least a few issues. Billy the Kid was a fictional character who shared few traits with the original Billy the Kid.

Pulp -- Wide Awake Library -- May 7, 2025

coverbrowser.com

Before the pulps, there were the dime novels, which sometimes cost a nickel. This issue of the Wide Awake Library featured the first full account of the life of bandit William Bonney, who was called Billy the Kid. The Kid died, shot by Sheriff Pat Garrett, on 14-July-1881. The True Life of Billy the Kid, written by John Woodruff Lewis, was published six weeks later.

Boston Post, 19-July-1881

Alcatraz -- May 6, 2025

T***p has decreed that the Bureau of Prisons should reactivate Alcatraz as a prison. Did he watch a History Channel program about Alcatraz? If he did, he fell asleep before the part where they said the prison was too expensive to maintain and the concrete was crumbling, and the iron was rusting away. 

Does he expect that guards and their families will live on the island again? I don't think I would like to have my family living on the other side of a fence next to a maximum-security prison. Some of my mother's classmates commuted from the island and everyone was worried when the Battle of Alcatraz broke out. 

And then he decreed a 100% tariff on films produced outside of the US, despite the fact that we export three times movies than we import.

Happy Cinco de Mayo, 2025 -- May 5, 2025

Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone. General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín led the Mexican army which defeated the French invaders at the Battle of Puebla in 1862.

"The national arms have been covered with glory" General Zaragoza wrote in a letter to President Benito Juárez. Some people credit this defeat with preventing French interference in the US Civil War.

Mark Twain Memorial Concert -- May 4, 2025

Washington Times, 08-May-1925

In May, 1915, Washington DC hosted a Mark Twain Memorial Concert to help raise funds for a Mark Twain Memorial Park in Florida, Missouri, Twain's birthplace. His daughter Clara sang and was well received, Irvin S Cobb was a popular humorist and Colonel George Harvey, the host, was a friend of Twain.

Washington Times, 10-May-1925

Washington Evening Star, 11-May-1925

Toonerville Trolley -- To Kill a Woodpecker -- May 3, 2025

Perth Amboy Evening News, 27-May-1925

I love Fontaine Fox's The I love Fontaine Fox's The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

Krazy Kat -- Lost Mittin? -- May 2, 2025

Washington Times, 25-May-1925

I love George Herriman's Krazy Kat. Click on the image to see a larger version.

Washington Times, 30-June-1918

May 2025 Version of the Cable Car Home Page -- May 1, 2025

Saint Louis Globe-Democrat, 04-June-1896

I just put the May 2025 version of my Cable Car Home Page on the server:

http://www.cable-car-guy.com/

It includes some new items:

1. Picture of the Month: This real estate ad promotes an open house for an "Elegant Tyler Place Home." Prospective buyers could "Take Fourth street cable." (source: Saint Louis Post-Dispatch, 08-April-1888.)
2. On the Cable Car Lines in Saint Louis page: A ten-year update about the Peoples' Railway. including real estate ads
3. Added News items about cable car operating issues

Ten years ago this month (May 2015):

1. Picture of the Month: Fig. 27. -- Cable Train -- People's Railroad Co. (Source: "The Street Railway System of Saint Louis", The Street Railway Journal, June, 1895.)
2. On the new Cable Car Lines in Saint Louis page: The Peoples' Railway
3. Added News item about a terrible accident which seriously injured a cable car conductor

Twenty years ago this month (May 2005):

1. Picture of the Month: Muni Car 9, in the Market Street Railway's famous White Front paint scheme.
2. On the San Francisco page: Walter Rice's interview with Mrs. Barbara Kahn Gardner, daughter of Market Street Railway's principal owner, Samuel Kahn
3. Added the May installment of Val Lupiz's quarterly column, Tales From the Grip: "California, Here I Come"
4. On the New York/New Jersey page: 1887 newspaper articles about the first cable car line in Brooklyn, New York, and 1854 articles about the first horsecars in Brooklyn.
5. Added News and Bibliography items about a shutdown of the California Street cable car line. Added bibliography items and updated news items about the wildcat strike on 02-Mar-2005.

175 years ago - 1850
May 1 - Alcalde John White Geary, later a general in the Civil War, was sworn in as the first Mayor of San Francisco
May 4 - The Second Great Fire destroyed the entire block bounded by Kearny, Clay, Montgomery and Washington

125 years ago - 1900
May 02 - Grand Avenue Railway (Kansas City, Missouri) converted its Westport line to electricity

50 years ago - 1975
May 08 - Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run, taking the lifetime home run record from Babe Ruth

75 years ago - 1950
May 01 - Public Utilities Commission Manager James Turner announced that cable car operation on Powell Street is suspended from May 1 to May 14, 1950, inclusive for the installation of a new turntable at Powell and Market Streets. The new turntable replaced the original Ferries and & Cliff House Railway (Powell Street Railway) turntable that has been in use since March 28, 1888. Monday, May 15, 1950, service was resumed on both the Washington-Jackson and Powell-Mason cables. During the 15-day suspension, buses covered both Powell lines.

In January 2024 I started on a long overdue process of cleaning things up on my site. I started with the development pages. Actually, I guess I started the year before with making most thumbnails 200 pixels instead of 100.

Coming in June 2025: 
On the Cable Car Lines in Saint Louis page: A ten-year update about the Saint Louis Railroad

The Cable Car Home Page now has a Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/CableCarHomePage/

The Cable Car Home Page also has an Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/cable_car_guy/

Joe Thompson
The Cable Car Home Page (updated 01-May-2025)
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/
San Francisco Bay Ferryboats (updated 31-October-2024)
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/ferry/
Park Trains and Tourist Trains (updated 31-December-2024)
http://www.cable-car-guy.com/ptrain/
The Pneumatic Rolling-Sphere Carrier Delusion (updated spasmodically)
http://cablecarguy.blogspot.com
The Big V Riot Squad (updated obsessively)
http://bigvriotsquad.blogspot.com/

May Day, 2025 -- May 1, 2025

mobilize.us

As part of the program to permanently damage the government of the United States, President Musk and his flunky T***p signed an Executive Order eliminating bargaining rights for most Federal unions. A judge has temporarily stopped the union busting, but who knows how our corrupt Supreme Court will handle.

Today is International Workers' Day. Many unions are holding events for a National Day of Action.

indybay.org