GEORGE STERLING'S ROLE IN NORA MAY FRENCH'S UNHAPPINESS ? : GEORGE WAS NEVER A GOOD CANDIDATE FOR HUSBANDING

While reading this book, I thought about George Sterling, a man who made his living and supported his wife through selling land for building, you could say a real estate agent or maybe a developer, of Carmel-By-The-Sea. Carmel is in the Monterey Bay area south of San Francisco and after the historic San Francisco earthquake many unhoused people made their way to Monterey. 

George Sterling was torn because he had entered into a conventional marriage with his wife, Carrie, but was not capable of being a faithful husband. Rather he was a womanizer and alcoholic. I see him as a man out of control of himself. He was so torn up, especially after Nora May French commit suicide by cyanide poison while an ongoing guest in his marital home, that - eventually - years later - he too commit suicide. At least that's a notion. Maybe he was a bit tortured because they'd had an affair and he was not free to be with Nora, but somehow I don't think this man, who seems to have been ruled by his emotions, would have divorced Carrie and married Nora. There was, in my opinion, much more wrong with him and his life that he couldn't bear.

But of fascination is that George had business connections that meant that he was one of the early members of the Bohemian Club, which is now the mysterious and controversial Bohemian Grove, a big boy's camp that has attracted world leaders and Presidents of the United States to its get-aways from the world. Rumors persist that Satanic rituals occur there but I personally have no idea if that's true. It seems to mainly be a men-only club for the very rich, some of whom probably were in secret society type fraternities when youth in college.

What George Sterling wanted was to be a literary person, a poet, to attract such persons to buying land and building homes in Carmel, to put that village on the map as an artists colony. Although his marketing and public relations had that effect, he actually wasn't successful selling property to people who had unsteady or inadequate income. How he hoped literary luminaries like writer Jack London would settle there.

Many of George's friends blamed Nora's death as his undoing. Or women in general. He and his friends attempted to pick up "Bohemian" women on the poetry scene in San Francisco and George was not the success at it. Further, Nora seems to have been given way too much credit for being a "femme fatale." While reading about these men and their ways, I couldn't help but think they were immature and how stuck the women at that time who married men like this were.

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WHY MISTRESSES OF EQUAL STATUS THREATENED THE SOCIAL ORDER

Why had her mother, and women of aristocratic status - members of Jamaican society and of the British peerage, accept that men were possibly not capable of fidelity.  For that matter, why did men also accept that the woman they married would not be the only one for them?  Is sex really meaningless?

From Chapter 7 again, page 59

It always futile to judge people by the rules of another time, and the values of that age certainly seem breathtakingly hypocritical  and unreasonable from a contemporary viewpoint, until one examines what motivated them and realizes that their objective was preservation of the family unit and conservation of the social fabric. Divorce was still something to be avoided at all costs, not only because of the disruption to family and social life, but also because it usually undermined the financial foundation of a divorced couple. As few marriages were conducted across class and colour lines, choice was also restricted, and there seemed little merit in 'swapping a black dog for a monkey' , as Jamaicans used to say. Therefore a mistress like Miss Khouri (her relatives's mistress of equal status to the family), being wife material, was a living, breathing, throbbing threat to the social order, while a girlfriend like Mrs. Powell (her fatther's supposed mistress) was not.

Commentary: Lady Colin Powell states in her book that her father, Michael, often openly declared that he had never looked at another woman other than his wife, their mother, though many knew of his sexual adventures. However, she realized that he was also signaling to his wife, Gloria, that he was not contemplating actually divorcing.

Page 60

,,, Gloria's ascendancy over Michael was reinforced by the fact that he was more emotionally involved with her than she was with him...

CASSANDRA PETERSON HEARS THE WORDS "YOU'LL NEVER WORK IN THIS TOWN AGAIN"

Excerpts from the book Yours Cruelly, Elvira by Cassandra Peterson

Chapter You'll Never Work In This Town Again

"It fills me with so much hope and pride that women are finally able to speak out about the treatment we've had to endure from men. Women have always had to worry about the damage to their livelihoods,  not to mention the loss of their dreams and aspirations, which could result from resisting men's unwanted advances, or God forbid, reporting it.  These days men are finally having to think very seriously about the potential damage to their own careers that engaging in this type of sexist behavior may cause.  One way or another, it will catch up with them, and karma's a bitch."

(Cassandra goes on to describe some of the experiences she had beginning as a girl when the neighborhood child molester tried to get at her, another at age 12, then in the 7th grade,)

"Miraculously - seriously - miraculously I made it through my teen years without getting raped, although I had some very close calls. I learned over time to never walk alone at night, to never park in dark areas, to always check to see whether anyone was hiding in the back seat of my car before getting in, and to keep an eye in the rear view mirror to make sure no one was following me.  It's great to grow up feeling like you're being hunted, right girls?"

(On an interview for a national commercial, a man asked her if she liked performing a certain sexual act and got up from his desk without any clothes on below his shirt.) "Shaken I jumped to my feet and headed for the door as fast as my feet would carry me.  As I literally ran down the dark hallway, my commercial aspirations in the dumper, I heard him yell these very words" You'll Never Work In This Town Again."

Please note that I normally cite the page number but the e-book I downloaded does not have page numbers showing.

As I read this, I was reminded of experiences I've had, such as being groped suddenly by a stranger when I sat waiting to get into a restaurant. That man was old and I wondered just how many women had been groped by him, how many got chased around the desk in his office. 

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DO ARAB MEN HATE WOMEN? SOBERING TRUTHS WHILE THE UNITED STATES LEAVES AFGHANISTAN,

 Al Jazeera is funded in whole or in part by the Qatari government.

Missy here! It's FRIDAY! Sorry to say I discovered the video I posted didn't post. Here is another try...

ANONYMOUS DEFINED MISTRESS : MISSY ASKS YOU!

"MISTRESS : SOMETHING BETWEEN A MISTER AND A MATTRESS"
- Anonymous

I ask YOU, is this funny?  Sexist?  I discovered it while doing some research on defining mistresses.  What definition of Mistress are you comfortable with?

Missy