Remembrances.

They're dancing by the pale moonlight. And they're dancing with the devil.

That painting is by Eric Edward Esper. I first saw it just a few days ago, it was only painted in 2013, and I recognized it immediately. It was painful.

It was painful to see that painting because at 3:15 pm on December 30, 1903, as that cast of Mr. Bluebird came out for Act II and began singing "Let Us Swear It by the Pale Moonlight"...Can you believe it?:

(Men.) Say it is in-form-al, but im-proper? not at all!
(Girls.) Mer-cy! how you fright-ened us! that is-n't right at all!
(Girls.) How can we get down there?
(Men.) Jump, we'll catch you
(Girls.) no, we'd fall.
(Men.) Dearest, how you trem-ble!
(Men.) Let us swear it by the pale moon-light,-- We love you blind-ly.
(Girls.) Let us wear it in the pale moon-light,---We thank you kind-ly

That spotlight creating the dreamy moonlight, right in that spot about 15 feet above stage as depicted by Mr. Esper, began sputtering and sparking and some of the sparks landed on the stage drapery and the stage drapery caught fire. It was all over in, from memory about 15 minutes, but no longer than 30, and when it was all over about 605...605!...mostly women and children, a holiday matinee audience...

Oh boy. I have not written about this previously...Writing slows me down, makes me think, makes me feel, and this is the first time....

...Okay... The Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago is the second deadliest in history, in world history, second only to the Ringtheatrebrand in Vienna in 1881 (850 killed). Anyway, what prompted this post was my Friday line and then I remembered Mr. Esper's painting, The Conflagration of the Absolutely Fireproof Iroquois Theater. 

At least three times over the last few years I had written fairly lengthy drafts on memorialization, on why human beings, especially Americans, memorialize some things and not others.

I own a few things from the Iroquois Theatre. I own a hardbound commemorative opening-night, November 23, 1903, program; I own four--Four? I don't know why four.--copies of the "Let us swear it by the pale moonlight" sheet music. And I own one example of the Kilfyre cannisters, there were only three or four of them in the theater that afternoon, they contained bicarbonate-of soda and powder, and they were the only fire-fighting equipment in the house. I don't claim that those constitute proper memorialization but, very sad to say, they are about the only memorialization that exists.

I couldn't believe the Kilfyre when I got it and I have explained it to people who have been over to my house when they've seen it and asked "What's that?" The Kilfyre is a metal tube about three feet long and two inches in diameter. I've explained to friends how "proper use" of the Kilfyre was to throw the contents at the flames; I've explained how the one in-house fireman attempted to do that that afternoon but that the arc light that started the fire was on a platform 15 feet up; The absurdity of trying to throw powder up at a fire, the absurdity of the powder falling back down onto the fireman; The absurdity of having a stomach antacid--Anybody got any Tums?--as the sole means to extinguish a fire in a crowded theater. The whole thing was just sounded so preposterous. So with the Kilfyre I could see it for myself, I could hold the thing in my hand and pretend to throw it. The standard distance between floors in a standard American apartment or condominium building is 12-15 feet. So I could take the Kilfyre outside onto the ground floor of my building...And I did that. I didn't even fake throw it; I looked up at the second floor, looked at the Kilfyre in my hand and after a few seconds just walked back into the lobby of my building. So, I could see how preposterous the whole thing was, see?*

Anyway, memorialization. They didn't memorialize the Iroquois. Never did. But I didn't know that at
first.

The first time I ever thought about this memorialization thing was some years ago in New York City. I had gone there with a woman I was dancing with, we were going to something at NYU but I went to two things at NYU and I'm not sure which one this was. Anyway. We were in a hurry, I remember we were walking and we rounded a corner and I noticed a plaque on the wall of the building we were next to. It was the site of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire. I turned around and looked at it as we kept walking and said something to my dance partner about it but that was it, we got to wherever we were going, the weekend concluded and I came back home. I had made a mental note to look it up and when I got back home I did.

I was shocked, outraged really, to discover that the very floors on which the Triangle Shirtwaist sweatshop was located, where the fire started, where all of those 146--"Only" 146, right?--burned to death, or jumped to their deaths on the street below,---plump, plump, plump--those same floors were being used by NYU! I kicked something so hard I stubbed my toe.**

A couple of years after that visit to New York City I read an article in The New Yorker. The article was about a doctor. A doctor who had recently died, committed suicide as I remember, perhaps incorrectly, but about a doctor who had come up with what is now the gold standard in treatment of severe burn victims. Previous practice had been to put like vaseline or something on the burns but this doctor and the hospital he was at ran out of vaseline or whatever it was and he became a medical bricoleur and wrapped his patients that one night in gauze, maybe with vaseline on the burns, I don't know, but the innovation was the gauze because it let the burn wounds breathe and that lessened infection. The reason the doctor and hospital had to improvise was because "that one night" was the night of the Cocoanut Grove Nightclub fire in Boston. 1942. 492 people burned to death.

Previously, I had sort of chalked up the Triangle Shirtwaist fire to more or less typical Gilded Age or near Gilded Age (1911) industrial madness. But 1942. I'm not that old but my parents were that old so I knew people who would have been adults in 1942, they were reasonable people, not like those Gildings of the Johnstown Flood or the near-Gildings of the Iroqois or Triangle. Who knows what those people thought? But 1942! My parents would have been devastated by the Cocoanut Grove fire. I would have thought, and I really did think, that the people of 1942 would have memorialized the Cocoanut Grove fire. But, they didn't. Oh, there's a plaque, like on the Brown aka Asch building at NYU, on the site, or near the site of the Cocoanut Grove in the sidewalk.

With Cocoanut Grove I became intrigued. What could explain this? In the American South practically every little town has some kind of monument to the Civil War dead. That was memorialized and never forgotten. In every county seat anywhere in North or South one can find memorializations to American war dead in all wars. IknowIknowIknow, wars are different. "Heroes," not  "victims."  I thought of other mass-loss events. The Johnstown Flood. That was memorialized. If the distinction between heroes and victims accounts for no memorialization for the Iroquois, Triangle and Cocoanut Grove, then what explains the Johnstown Flood Memorial?

I compiled a chronological list of non-war mass-loss events, even visited a few sites:


Ringtheaterbrand, 1861,Vienna, Austria: Memorial.
Johnstown Flood, 1889: Memorial.
Iroquois Theater, 1903: None.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, 1911. None.***
S.S. Eastland, 1915: None.****
Cocoanut Grove Nightclub, 1942: None.
Our Lady of the Angels school, 1958. None.
Beverly Hills Nightclub, 1977: None.
Murrah Building Bombing, 1995: Memorial.
9/11/2001: More memorials than you can shake a Muslim at. Memorials of every race, color, and creed. Titanosaurus-sized memorials.
The Station Nightclub, 2003: In the works.

That's my list. Go ahead, explain away, make my day.

Professor Kenneth E. Foote of the University of Colorado actually does explain it. In his book Shadowed Ground--What a superb title, huh?--Professor Foote offers..."shame" as an explanation for the unmemorialized. Shame! That is brilliant! I had never thought of that. People want to forget as soon as possible. Shame, wanting to forget, best explains, for me, the lack of memorialization at the Our Lady of the Angels fire site. By contrast we feel no shame with our war dead because they were "heroes" so Great-great-great Grandfather Beauregard Pickens, you get this pertty statue in the town square in Rabbit Shuffle, North Carolina. The 95 Angels, the 605 in the Iroquois,***** not so much. Not so much as one statue. Not so much as a plaque in the sidewalk.

That's some serious shame going on there, Pilgrim. Grandpa Beauregard fights in a war against the United States of America, for slavery, loses the war...and still gets a statue. Why then doesn't Timothy McVeigh get a statue in Oklahoma City? 605 moms and kids are burned to death in the Iroquois and they get nary a plaque; 844 mostly young women drown when the Eastland is at dock in a river, 20 feet deep, and those 844 get a single plaque. Shame doesn't adequately explain that to me. No shame maybe would add to the explanation.

The Eastland, like the Iroquois, like the Asch Building "reopened;" it was retrofitted, made more sea-worthy,--or river-worthy--renamed the USS Wilmette and was used during World War II!

That's insulting.

The treatment of those killed in the Iroquois, on the Eastland, in the Asch building, in the Cocoanut Grove, is insulting to the memory of the dead and a stain on the soul of America. Better to have the site off-limits forever, or at least ever since, as in the case of the Beverly Hills fire. Shame also does not explain the existence of the Johnstown Flood Memorial, nor the Suhnhaus (literally "sin house," House of Atonement) memorial that existed (until the Allies bombed it) in Vienna to the Ringtheaterbrand victims. 1861 Austria cared more for human life, thought more to memorialize its loss, than did 1903 or 1915 America?

That's insulting.

Of the eleven mass-loss events listed above in only four are there national memorials, where the whole society remembers. Two of those four were attacks, one of those was not in America and only one was memorialized contemporaneously. That is, none in America.

That is a shame.


*I wish props for having gotten this far without having dropped a single f-bomb.
**See *.
***See **** below.
****Don't even start on me with that plaque, I've been there, I've seen it. One plaque doesn't cut it: not on the Chicago River, not on the side of a New York building, not in a Boston sidewalk. You do 844 plaques to the Eastland dead, then we can talk.
*****First of all, see *** and **** above. Second of all, the plaque is on a wall in the corner of City Hall, I've been there, it is not on the site of the Iroquois. It was rescued and put there after it had been put in a vault and forgotten for decades. The Iroquois--Get this, get this, you're gonna love this--The Iroquois reopened the next year! "NEW AND IMPROVED! Under new management! Chicago's finest and absolutely--Really, we mean it this time,--fireproof. TheOriental Theater." I think there was one other incarnation and then the building was razed to make way for the Ford Theater. The street number doesn't exist. You cannot even see its footprint.