"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
My favorite among the spam names to recently come over the e-transom.
I imagine her singing Irving Berlin:
The gals with umbrellers Are always out with fellers In the rain or the blazing sun But a man never trifles with gals who carry rifles Oh, you can't get a man with a gun
With a gun! With a gun! No you can't get a man with a gun A Tom, Dick, or Harry Will build a house for Carrie when the preacher has made 'em one But he can't build you houses with buckshot in his trousers Oh, a man may be hot, but he's not When he's shot! Oh you can't get a man with a gun!
Via Corbis, the caption to this pic of Annie Oakley reads:
She once shot a cigarette from the mouth of former Kaiser Wilhelm, (when he was Crown Prince), and received a medal from King Edward of England who called her the greatest rifle shot in the world, but Annie Oakley as a girl in Greenville, Ohio, where she was born in 1860, had to be good with the rifle in order to shoot game for her mother and herself. At sixteen, she married Frank Butler and with him as her manager, she joined "Buffalo Bill" Cody's Wild West Show. Although she never had a written contract with that great showman and Scout, Annie Oakley traveled with Buffalo Bill's entourage for more than seventeen years and to him she was just "Missie." She could drill a pack of cards with a bullet from any distance. Free passes to any show punched with holes the size of 34 caliber bullets have since that time been called "Oakleys."
Here's an animated illustration of Annie shooting the ashes from the kaiser's cigarette.
An American Experience feature on Annie Oakley includes a gallery of her Wild West Show posters.
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From a HistoryNet article comes an Annie Oakley vignette Mrs. P will appreciate:
In 1887…Buffalo Bill's Wild West sailed to London as part of the U.S. delegation to Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. That May 5, Prince Albert Edward delighted in a special performance by the company and afterward wanted to meet the cast members. Annie Oakley had heard that women would flirt with the prince in front of his wife. When the prince was introduced to Annie and extended his hand, Annie passed it by and shook the princess' hand first. She told the prince, "You'll have to forgive me, I'm an American, and in America, women come first."
On May 11, it was Queen Victoria's turn to have a command performance. It was held at the exhibition grounds after her courtiers convinced her that they couldn't fit Cody's outfit into Windsor Castle. When the American flag entered the arena, Queen Victoria stood up and bowed deeply, and Cody's company roared its approval. For the first time in history, an English monarch had saluted the Star-Spangled Banner. After…Annie Oakley had curtsied and walked up to her, the queen told Annie, "You are a very clever little girl."
On a subsequent European tour, Annie was offered a commission in the French army by the president of France, and received a proposition from an African king:
The king of Senegal said he would buy her for 100,000 francs. Oakley declined, at which point the monarch fell to his knees, kissed her hand, and left. #
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