Mondo Lizzie Borden

October is still more than a month away and already Halloween is being promoted and discussed. I guess some people really enjoy this celebration. I know I used to. I stopped getting into Halloween when I went all out making a haunted house, had spooky music playing through the open windows, dressed up in a costume, and loaded up on the really good candy—-I had three kids visit that night. The perils of living on a short dead end street. I got to the point where I decided that all the effort was not worth the payoff so I bagged the effort.

Anyway, some people still love and enjoy Halloween and of course Lizzie is often mentioned as a character that kids and adults like to impersonate.

An interesting story was recently posted Online about this very thing, but with a surprising (to me and to her) ending.

. . . October is when the holiday hype really begins, with Halloween. Well, I actually heard that Walmart will start putting out the Halloween merchandise at the first of September, so that’s when the Halloween hype really begins.

Except Halloween isn’t the same as it used to be. I used to love trick-or-treating when I was a kid. Now I’m too old for it, and I don’t even get to see today’s kids trick-or-treating. Again, the job gets in the way. One exception was a few years ago, when Walmart had an indoor trick-or-treat parade inside the store, and we associates got to give out the candy. I was all dressed up in my Lizzie Borden costume, complete with a cleaver. It surprised me that most people had no idea who Lizzie Borden was. I thought everyone knew the poem: “Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks….” Anyway, I got some interesting reactions, especially when one kid saw me from a distance and yelled, “Ahh! It’s a ghost!” And of course there were many kids in cute costumes, too. I took many pictures and put them up on my Photobucket album. I swear there were at least three Spider-Men.

Here she is as Lizzie. I think it one of those “kit” costumes, but I like it!

So who are you going as this year?

In a myspace blog about upcoming Nightwatchers events—ghost-hunting around the country—there is an advertisement/poster about a May 2008 overnight at the Lizzie Borden B&B. Nice poster. Only thing is, that isn’t a photo of Lizzie. This is the now famous “man-hands” Lizzie image that has been rejected by Borden scholars, the Fall River Historical Society, and aficionados of the case as a likeness of Lizzie Borden.

I don’t think this poster bodes well for the authenticity of the event. Do you?

A very good study of Sharon Pollock’s Blood Relations, the best play about Lizzie Borden written to date, appeared recently on comp this!: a comprehensive comprehensive blog, humorously subtitled “a blog for writing about my experience studying for and writing the comprehensive exams for my ph.d. in english literature. one woman. one year. 225 novels. an ass tonne (metric) of secondary criticism. the depletion of sanity will be epic.”

I think you will enjoy the approach and critical skills of this author.

The print version of the August 2007 issue of The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies is now available for sale through LuLu.com.

This issue is 120 pages in length, almost double our usual issue size. In addition, it presents new information regarding Emma Borden’s years at Wheaton Female Seminary (her lost years), including photos of the Seminary when she was there and her account book and grades!

We also are pleased to present fantastic pieces by Fall River historians Neilson Caplain, Bill Goncalo, and Michael Brimbau. There is a wonderful photographic essay on Luther’s Four Corners Museum and Lizzie’s chairs, a highly informative piece about crime in Fall River in 1892, and a thought provoking essay by Melissa Allen. Regular contributors Douglas Walters, Denise Noe, Eugene Hosey, and Sherry Chapman also grace our pages with remarkable contributions.

All in all a jam-packed issue sure to delight and satisfy!

Online subscription price is only $20 per year (4 issues a year). PLUS: Subscribers get a special discount on the print issue not offered to the general public.

If you are a subscriber, you can purchase the print copy through our print-on-demand partner, LuLu.com by logging into The Hatchet and purchasing through the subscriber area. That is the only link to the discounted print copies.

Non-subscribers can purchase color or B&W copies directly through the LuLu.com site.

Cheers,
Stefani Koorey
Editor and Publisher
The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies

So many people only remember Lizzie from the doggerel that claims her guilt that she often makes the “I didn’t know that” lists.

One such list is quite extensive and surely needs some checking to make sure it is all correct. However, if it is 100% right, it is an amazing collection. And, of course, Lizzie is there.

Here is a snippit from a much larger posting. Go there and have fun tomorrow at work torturing your fellow workers with “Did you know that . . .”

Barbie’s measurements if she were life size: 39-23-33.

The dollar symbol ($) is a U combined with an S (U.S.)

Our eyes are always the same size from birth, but our nose and ears never stop growing.

The Statue of Liberty’s tablet is two feet thick.

There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.

The slogan on New Hampshire license plates is ‘Live Free or Die’. These license plates are manufactured by prisoners in the state prison in Concord.

The straw was probably invented by Egyptian brewers to taste in-process beer without removing the fermenting ingredients which floated on the top of the container.

David Prowse, was the guy in the Darth Vader suit in Star Wars. He spoke all of Vader’s lines, and didn’t know that he was going to be dubbed over by James Earl Jones until he saw the screening of the movie.

The United States government keeps its supply of silver at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, NY

There are only thirteen blimps in the world.

Nine of the thirteen blimps are in the United States.

The existing biggest blimp is the Fuji Film blimp.

Naugahyde, plastic “leather” was created in Naugatuck, Connecticut.

The Swiss flag is square.

The word ‘pound’ is abbreviated ‘lb.’ after the constellation ‘libra’ because it means ‘pound’ in Latin, and also ’scales’. The abbreviation for the British Pound Sterling comes from the same source: it is an ‘L’ for Libra/Lb. with a stroke through it to indicate abbreviation.

Sames goes for the Italian lira which uses the same abbreviation (’lira’ coming from ‘libra’). So British currency (before it went metric) was always quoted as “pounds/shillings/pence”, abbreviated “L/s/d” (libra/solidus/denarius).

The three largest land-owners in England are the Queen, the Church of England and Trinity College, Cambridge.

The monastic hours are matins, lauds, prime, tierce, sext, nones, vespers and compline.
If you come from Manchester, you are a Mancunian.

No animal, once frozen solid (i.e., water solidifies and turns to ice) survives when thawed, because the ice crystals formed inside cells would break open the cell membranes. However there are certain frogs that can survive the experience of being frozen. These frogs make special proteins which prevent the formation of ice (or at least keep the crystals from becoming very large), so that they actually never freeze even though their body temperature is below zero Celsius. The water in them remains liquid: a phenomenon known as ’supercooling.’ If you disturb one of these frogs (just touching them even), the water in them quickly freezes solid and they die.

The white part of your fingernail is called the lunula.

Madrid is the only European capital city not situated on a river.

The name for fungal remains found in coal is sclerotinite.

The Boston University Bridge (on Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts) is the only place in the world where a boat can sail under a train driving under a car driving under an airplane.

Emus cannot walk backwards.

It is believed that Shakespeare was 46 around the time that the King James Version of the Bible was written. In Psalms 46, the 46th word from the first word is shake and the 46th word from the last word is spear.

The shopping mall in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada has the largest water clock in North America.

Both writer Edgar Allen Poe and LSD advocate Timothy Leary were kicked out of West Point.

She’s everywhere! She’s everywhere! I say that all the time. And it is true. Just turn on the TV on Friday nights, and if you have cable, there is Lizzie on some Travel Channel or A&E or History Channel show. Open a newspaper, magazine, or book, and often you will see her name mentioned. It is amazing just how much Lizzie has blended into the culture.

So I was not surprised to see her name mentioned all over the web recently when Edna Parker turned 114. You see Edna was born the year that Lizzie was tried and acquitted of murdering her father and stepmother, and of course the journalists have to mention that little historical moment. As if all of us would be amazed. And we are amazed, not only at Edna’s long life, but that there she is again!

Here.

Here.

Here.

And here.

Oddly though, the Fall River Herald News chose to run the article on the Obituary/Word page. When you see it you might think poor Edna had died instead of celebrated such a momentous birthday. But you know what they say in Fall River about stuff like that—”well, that’s Fall River for you.”

The Fall River Herald News ran a lovely piece today advertising my talk on Wednesday, August 15. Here is a copy. How kewl!

There was this in today’s SouthCoastToday.com:

‘Lizzie Borden in Cyberspace’: The Friends of the Fall River Public Library present Prof. Stefani Korrey of Valencia Community College, Orlando, Fla., 6:30 p.m. Aug. 15 in the meeting room of the Main Library. Free. Refreshments served. Paula C. Cullen, (508) 324-2700. 104 N. Main St., Fall River.

And in the Providence Journal as well!

At the library: The Friends of the Fall River Public Library will hold “Lizzie Borden in Cyberspace,” a program by Prof. Stefani Koorey, of Valencia Community College, Orlando, Fla., in Fall River Public Library’s main library meeting room, 104 North Main St., tomorrow at 6:30 p.m.

With all this great publicity, I am sure the meeting room will fill up. Come early and stay late!

See you all at the Library!