Postblogging Technology, Jun 1953, II: The Rosenbergs, Everest, the 707, and Transistors. Wow.

R_.C_,
The Oriental Club,

London,
England

Dear Father:

At your very strong suggestion, we have decided to go away from the major port city for the summer and the duration of all the emergencies,but we  haven't ended up in Campbell River, as for various reasons the house in Nakusp was in need of a tenant. So here we are, gorging on cherries and trout, waiting on corn and enjoying the difference between fresh turnips and onions and the ones from the grocery. The house has not had a tenant in two years, and one gets the sense that Nils is too old to do proper caretaking, so we have a contractor up from Nelson to put a new roof on and central heating and air conditioning while he is on it. Which makes for a much-interrupted summer idyll far from the madding crowds and atom bombs, but what do I know, I have two babies in tow! 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

So you see, Ethel Rosenberg had to die to protect VENONA and not because she was Jewish and public opinion was screaming for blood

A Technological But Also Inevitably Political and Medical Appendix to Postblogging Technology, June 1953, I: Diagnosing Presidents

 

Leaving aside the unintentional, dark irony of an ad exalting modern diagnostic practice and focussing on peptic ulcers,  this post was only secondarily inspired by this ad. It actually mainly has to do with my nephew, C.'s, enrollment in a doctoral programme in medical physics. No, that's a lie. It has mainly to do with my company put roasting chickens on two for one last week. I spent entirely too much time on Tuesday and Friday cooking them, so Postblogging June, II is stuck two-thirds of the way through 15 June. 

And that is why my attention is very much focussed on the already reported 10 June 1953 press conference in which Senator Robert Alphonso Taft announced that he was ill and would be temporarily resigning as Leader of the Senate, with William F. Knowland as his interim replacement. "The Senator from Formosa" would end up remaining as Majority and Minority Leader, until 1959. 

Taft had first sought treatment at Walter Reed in May after a round of gold with the President was interrupted by the increasing severity of hip pains which the Senator had been suffering for some time. At the time the pains were dismissed as arthritis. It was not until a late May visit to Holmes Hospital in Cincinnati that nodules were removed from his neck and abdomen and biopsied, coming back malignant. It was for some reason found necessary to hospitalise Taft again in New York on 7 June to finally confirm the cancer diagnosis, and a final diagnosis of metastatised cancer of unknown origin was made on the basis of exploratory surgery on 4 July. As The Periscope will report next week (around here), by 15 June, there were rumours that Taft's condition was life-threatening, but he was only officially put on palliative care in July, and died of a brain hemorrhage on 31 July some hours after a final visit from his wife, a detail that I assume Wikipedia offers in a spirit of "Do I have to paint you a picture"? 

The man who almost won the Republican nominations in 1948 and 1942 was dead, within months of beginning his first or second term, depending on which alternative history you prefer. This is something that has struck me as somehow significant ever since I read the grief-stricken Time obituary of 1940 Republican candidate Wendell Willkie in October of 1944. At the time and since it has been my lively suspicion that one of the problems with Willkie is that Henry Luce had such a massive crush on the man, but I think we can all agree that it is a bigger problem that in some alternate history he would have dropped dead at the climax of WWII, just a month away from contesting the 1944 Presidential election. In other words, pick your alternate timeline carefully, and you'll get three Republican Presidents dying in office in thirty years.   

Postblogging Technology, June 1953, I: Boom, Baby, Boom!

Speaking of The Organisation Man, I'd do "Little Boxes," but I've already done it, and I kind of agree with Tom Lehrer that it's the most sanctimonious song ever.

R_C_.,
The Oriental Club,
London,

England




Dear Father:

I hope you're enjoying the Coronation. Not only am I jealous as can be, but just thinking about it has my mind turning to the madness of moving with two babies, even if it's almost two months away. In the mean time, you're missing a beautiful month in Vancouver.

I kid. Rain. Okay, it's not so bad. Somehow I've volunteered to stroll Maggie to sleep so that I can enjoy the gardens in the rain, which I am about to do as soon as I finish this. Not many young mothers do that sort of thing in this neighbourhood! Which reminds me that I am dying to ask Grace what she thinks of the birth rate numbers out of the US Census. It turns out that the wartime "baby boom" never ended. I wonder if that explains all the Park Forest-style conformity and social group think that Fortune is so upset about. Too many babies! 

Just wait until they all get to college, I say. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie

Postblogging Technology, May 1953, II: Astin, Hell's Gate, and John Foster Dulles, Or, How To Be the 34th Ranked President

R_.C_.,
The Mayflower,
Washington, DC

Dear Father:

In the week you have been gone, I have gone from mopy to tired to ready to spend such time as Jim-Jim and little Margaret have left me to get back on the horse. Okay, yes, I am a bit bored. I am also short my usual copyediting assistance, although I  hope to do something about that by my next letter. Here is wishing you the best of underhanded luck in getting the most out of the Snake River. I might not approve of the decision (we might need that power, and people certainly need the fish), but at least we'll make some money. 

Your Loving Daughter,

Ronnie