User talk:Buster7/Gleanings

The Works Progress Administration

built traditional infrastructure of the New Deal such as;

• roads, bridges, schools, courthouses, hospitals, sidewalks, waterworks, and post-offices, but also constructed museums, swimming pools, parks, community centers, playgrounds, coliseums, markets, fairgrounds, tennis courts, zoos, botanical gardens, auditoriums, waterfronts, city halls, gyms, university unions and national parks (in the West).

Most of these are still in use today.

• The amount of infrastructure projects of the WPA included 40,000 new and 85,000 improved buildings. These new buildings included 5,900 new schools; 9,300 new auditoriums, gyms, and recreational buildings; 1,000 new libraries; 7,000 new dormitories; and 900 new armories.
• In addition, infrastructure projects included 2,302 stadiums, grandstands, and bleachers; 52 fairgrounds and rodeo grounds; 1,686 parks covering 75,152 acres; 3,085 playgrounds; 3,026 athletic fields; 805 swimming pools; 1,817 handball courts; 10,070 tennis courts; 2,261 horseshoe pits; 1,101 ice-skating areas; 138 outdoor theatres; 254 golf courses; and 65 ski jumps. WPA was liquidated on June 30, 1943, as a result of low unemployment due to the worker shortage of World War II. The WPA had provided millions of Americans with jobs for 8 years. from 1935 to 1943.
• More than $1 billion was spent on publicly owned or operated utilities; and another $1 billion on welfare projects, including sewing projects for women, the distribution of surplus commodities, and school lunch projects. In its eight-year run, the WPA built 325 firehouses and renovated 2,384 of them across the United States. The 20,000 miles of water mains, installed by their hand as well, contributed to increased fire protection across the country.

Brief History of the WPA

Source:A Google Book

• In 1933 President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the Civil Works Administration.
• From December 1933 to June 1934 funding went to the Public Works of Art Project.
• Its successor, in existence from 1935 to 1943, was termed The Federal Art Project of the Works Progress (later called Projects) Administration (WPA).
• From 1934 to 1938 the Treasury-based project was called The Section of Painting and Sculpture and, from 1938 to 1939, The Section of Fine Arts.
• From 1939 to 1943, the program was called The Section of Fine Arts of the Public Buildings Administration of the Federal Works Agency.

Focus of WPA changed over the years

The direct focus of the WPA projects changed with need. In 1935 priority projects were to improve infrastructure; roads, extension of electricity to rural areas, water conservation, sanitation and flood control. In 1936, as outlined in that year’s Emergency Relief Appropriations Act, public facilities became a focus; parks and associated facilities, public buildings, utilities, airports, and transportation projects were funded. The following year, saw the introduction of agricultural improvements, such as the production of marl fertilizer and the eradication of fungus pests. As the Second World War approached, and then eventually began, WPA projects became increasingly defense related. (ref)

The Murdering Muralist

Links

• Serial killer
• Gratification
• Paul Durousseau
• Kenneth Bianchi
• Saeed Hanaei IRANI
• Ted Bundy
• Richard Speck
• Fritz Haarmann GERMAN...executed on April 15th, 1925

Strange reasons

• the power of life and death
• "angels of death" or angels of mercy
• for money, for a sense of sadistic pleasure, for a belief that they are "easing" the patient's pain, or simply "because they can"
• sexually aroused by death ...Nurse Jane Toppan

State level WPA Library/Post office/City Hall projects

One project of the WPA was funding state-level library service demonstration projects, which was intended to create new areas of library service to underserved populations and to extend rural service. Another project was the Household Service Demonstration Project, which trained 30,000 women for domestic employment. South Carolina had one of the larger state-wide library service demonstration projects. At the end of the project in 1943, South Carolina had twelve publicly funded county libraries, one regional library, and a funded state library agency.

• Initially, let the reader believe that the Muralist just wants companionship/friendship/maybe sex from the first victim...but one thing leads to another and at the moment of murder he (and the reader) realize that he was going to kill her all along...Split personality((as a result of Halley Comet Gas))(????)((He has convinced himself that it affected him at 5 years' old)))....or....the reader discovers that she is not the first victim... or ... he doesn't know how to end the affair. He hides the first bodies in WPA projects nearby and going forward always makes sure their is a working project nearby. ...he gets friendly with the workers on site and knows their schedules.
• "I have friends in Kansas" (((referring to the lake below))) is one of the blunders that he commits, kind of creating very discreet/subtle clues for the WPA agent that eventually is pursuing him. His subconscious desire to get caught before he kills again. The agent begins to investigate missing persons around the time MM was in the area (((of the lake below for instance)))

Wyandotte County Lake, in Kansas City, Kansas

was a part of the New Deal Act proposed by President Roosevelt. The construction of the lake was a way to employ residents while providing a method of water conservation for Wyandotte County. Construction on the lake started in 1936 and it was not fully complete until 1943. The WPA was hesitant to approve the project; in March, Frank Holcomb, Chairman of the County Commissioners, was opposed to any major additional expenses. However, as negotiations cleared the way, some work was restarted in the summer of 1938 on shop buildings, etc. (ref)

• A six-year project....the perfect place to hide "the evidence" "I have friends in Kansas"....His secret would remain buried under 10 trillion gallons of water. How did he transfer the bodies to kansas???? Mybe just one of the first victims.
• Almost every community in the United States had a new park, bridge or school constructed by the agency. The WPA's initial appropriation in 1935 was for $4.9 billion (about 6.7 percent of the 1935 GDP), and in total it spent $13.4 billion.(ref) At its peak in 1938, it provided paid jobs for three million unemployed men and women, as well as youth in a separate division, the National Youth Administration. Headed by Harry Hopkins, the WPA provided jobs and income to the unemployed during the Great Depression in the United States. Between 1935 and 1943, the WPA provided almost eight million jobs.(ref)Full employment, which was reached in 1942 and emerged as a long-term national goal around 1944, was not the WPA goal. It tried to provide one paid job for all families in which the breadwinner suffered long-term unemployment.

Notes from Friday 1/2/15 for a possible murder mystery about a travelling Muralist

• Written in the style of Arthur Hailey's best selling novels Hotel (1965), Airport (1968), Wheels (1971).

• The novel HOTEL features multiple unfolding plot lines which take place over a period of five weekdays, Monday through Friday. The Murdering Muralist Novel would fluctuate between Historic events and the travels of our main character. In HOTEL some chapters feature self-contained episodes exploring particular elements of the routine of a large hotel, in detail. For instance; Meg Yetmein, the cleaning lady, "gets revenge on her employer" by smuggling out steaks under her clothing when her shift ends. Tom Earlshore, a bartender, does much the same by "skimming" liquor and selling it to his mothers "speakeasy". Other brief episodes explain techniques used by local prostitutes to enter and exit the hotel undetected, and the various methods used by a hotel thief to get into hotel rooms.
• Margaret Atwood about "Alias Grace," her novel about a maid convicted of killing her boss/master in 19th-century Canada. She remarked... "murderers themselves often don't seem to understand their own crimes. They describe the acts as something that "just happened" or as if they were committed by someone else even as they acknowledge they did it" ((Halley Gas?)
• There is already a novel by the name of The Muralist by B.A. Shapiro. So our working title becomes A Murdering Muralist or (((MM going forward))). Her character is called Alizée Benoit, an American painter working for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), who vanishes in New York City in 1940 amid personal and political turmoil. She has a close-knit group of friends, including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Lee Krasner. MM could also have a group of artists..not close-knit...just aware of and falsely claiming as mentors..."I studied under____________ back in college", "Diego Rivera taught me all about Murals"

• MM likes to play Truth or dare with his partners, encouraging them to do dangerous stuff.....MM travels the railroad in or out, from where/to where.... hopping a train is his way around...prefers hobo camps...so towns/small cities where MM sets up shop must have RR access and an active WPA project nearby...
• Starts in MPLS, MINN...at the Main Building of University of Minnesota Engineering & Architecture Library) where there is a mural by Hollis Arnold completed while he was a graduate student ...should we name him Arnold H. Hollis. ???? (WPA Project?) (Year?) 2 female muralists were working at the same time, Elsa Laubach Jemne and Lucia Wiley, both local artists in MPLS....they were painting a mural at the same time at The Armory in MPLS. The Minneapolis Armory was the costliest single building in Minnesota supported by a Public Works Administration PWAgrant. The building is an example of the PWA Moderne style, a design characterized by strong geometry, bold contouring and integrated sculpture ornamentation. The building was designed by St. Paul architect P.C. Bettenburg.St. Paul artist Elsa Jemne painted murals in the building.(((McGlauflin, ed., Who's Who in American Art 1938–1939" vol.2, The American Federation of Arts, Washington, D.C., 1937 p. 274)))
• From Bosch story....serial killers they reach a Crescendo or LOUDNESS where they have to act
• NYTimes article

Possible Names

B. "Dutch" Gable...Lewis Friend...Robert Lepper...Vance Killdare...Tom Savage (real-Europa, Miss 1945)
...Jon Dandy...C. Willard Mayhem...Peppino Madre...

• Clark Gable' It Happened One Night 1934, Mutiny on the Bounty 1935, Gone with the Wind 1939...Gable won again. the Muralist could bring out his ole disguise.
  William Powell The Thin Man 1934, My Man Godfrey 1936
  Paul Muni Black Fury 1935
  Gary Cooper Mr Deeds 1936
  Charles Boyer Conquest 1937
  Robert Montgomery Night Must Fall (1937 film)
  Henry Fonda Grapes of Wrath 1940
  Laurence Olivier Rebecca 1940
  Orson Welles Citizen Kane 1941
  Joel McCrea...Dead End (1937), Foreign Correspondent (1940), and The More the Merrier (1943)
  Ronald Coleman The Prisoner of Zenda (1937film), Kismet (1944 film)
  Humphrey Bogart Casablanca 1943
  Conrad Wilde 1945
  Gregory Peck 1945
• The muralist has one of those handsomely plain faces that he alters a bit with makeup and then use aliases that closely mimic the ACTOR so that people will create the likable connection on their own. O! Bob Montgomery? Like Robert Montgomery. You even look a little like him!!!

Appearance

Attitudinal, MM dresses and looks different from place to place to prevent detection, artsy, of course. MM needs acceptance by the citizens of the town as an artist...MM varies his appearance with long sideburns or a mustache or a goatee...van Dyke...hair combed to the right in one town, then the left in the next, glasses sometimes (Clark Kent into Superman) but MM doesn't really need them (((which leads to one of the times he is discovered and he has to kill))), ascot, beret, pin-striped suit, watch fob...bow-tie...creates subliminal attractions-"unknowingly'...he can't stop himself, he creates the attraction without wanting to or knowing it but then its there and he uses it to his advantage...
Subliminal attraction by the townsfolk because he looks like Clark Gable or Joel McRea...
"He wouldn't hurt a flea'...
All his worldly goods are contained in two valises---the old kind, with a leather belt on each side (((which he has used to choke on rare occasions))). A few of his brushes, the smaller fine brushes, the ones used for intricate detail on the mural, have traces of human blood on them. The blood is mixed in to the new layer of oil paint because "...like teh greats,it will be there for all time..."

Salon article about Murder Mysteries

• In Defense of True Crime Novels

Historic events of the MM Time

• John Wilkes Booth,the actor, is his hero. because he was born on the 40th Anniversary of Booth's assassination of Abe Lincoln...April 15, 1865, April 15, 1905
• Halley's Comet (1910) Muralist is 5 but his parents are influenced by the quackery and are convinced their young son has been effected by the toxic gas cyanogen which was discovered in the tail of the comet. The press of the time misquoted the astronomer Camille Flammarion by stating he claimed that, when Earth passed through the tail, the gas "would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet." Despite reassurances from scientists that the gas would not inflict harm on Earth, members of the public panicked, buying gas masks and quack "anti-comet pills" and "anti-comet umbrellas".
• 1912 The Muralist is 7 years old and is a bit strange "because of the gas!". The British passenger liner RMS Titanic sinks in the North Atlantic at 2:20 AM, two hours and forty minutes after hitting an iceberg. Only 710 of 2,224 passengers and crew on board survive. He hears his parents cheer the deaths of their insanely rich oppressors, """Those rich scoundrels deserved to Die""".
• Initially, let the reader believe that the Muralist just wants sex from the first victim...but one thing leads to another and at the moment of murder he (and the reader) realize that he was going to kill her all along....or....the reader discovers that she is not the first victim... or ... he doesn't know how to end the affair He hides the first bodies in WPE projects nearby and going forward always makes sure their is a working project nearby. ...he gets friendly with the workers on site and knows their schedules.
• The Wall Street Crash of 1929. MM is 24.
• The Great Depression from 1929 to 1939
• The WPA from 1935 to 1943. MM is 30.

...like The Fugitive

Someone is on his trail, a Treasury Department agent..The Section was a Treasury project...
The agents is newly married and his wife is not happy, at all, that he is always on the road so much...alternating chapters...
He eventually discovers/pieces together his clues to figure out the WPA/mural/murder pattern...small town project = unusual to have a missing girl in a small town (??)

Steve Allen

A whole chapter about a RR worker guy who saves his life by warning him about shifting cargo of metal pipes that will slide when the train moves forward and crush the Muralist and then, having a dual split personality mental conversation of good guy V bad guy...evil wins and The Muralist kills him by throwing him off a trestle, as the train goes aroud a turn so the enginer can't see the event, just in case the worker/guy remembers the incident or has to report it to his bosses.

• RR travel...new hyways were being constructed...thousands of .other WPA projects were going on...hitch hiking with "road Guys"...National Parks were a hotbed of WPA activity/camp sites/roadways/info centers/etc..
• anthology-like premise of wandering and finding adventure in each new place MM comes to. But the adventure always leads to someones, usually a young ladies, death...
  "Why doesn't the protagonist settle down somewhere?" Inner voices, fear of being discovered

Jim Parks, Evanston artist

• Have the Muralist talk like an artist
• [1] Interview
• [2] Web page 📄

Halley's Comet in April 1910, from Harvard's Southern Hemisphere Station, taken with an 8-inch Bache Doublet

Dates

• 1934----DC
• 1935----Iron Mountain Mich, Terrahaute IND, Gllespie ILL, San Mateo CA, Manalapan NJ.
• 1939----Richmond, Virginia, Paul Cadmus and Jared French work together. They are gay lovers.

1939

J. Paul Camus, named after (Jean-Pierre Camus),(November 3, 1584 – April 26, 1652) whose fictional works encompass both novels and short stories. His dark and violent stories, often based on contemporary anecdotes or criminal incidents (he wrote over 1000 such works) were in the tradition of the horrific tales ("histoires tragiques") of Matteo Bandello, popular in France in the late Renaissance and early seventeenth century. His longer works show the influence of ancient Greek novels (such as the works of Heliodorus of Emesa and Achilles Tatius), with their scenes of tempests and kidnappings. Much of his fiction has a moralistic intention, showing human folly, the unruliness of passions, the dangers of illicit love, and the saving grace of divine love.

Section Competition

• 48 States Competition
• Texas Mural Competition
• See:The Treasury Department Segment

1. . What was the competition like?
2. . What were the rules?
3. . How many judges and what was the criteria? He flirts with one of the elderly judges.
4. . Did the artist need to appear in front of a panel? Where? Do they pay attention to who is in front of them? "Do I know you? You seem familiar"
5. . Should he have a little stipend from an inheritance or a rich uncle or an elderly spinster that he befriended as a young man (who died of questionable circumstances)?
6. . A bit like Tom Ripley. He is a career criminal, con artist, and serial killer who always gets away with his crimes. Until he doesn't The Talented Mr. Ripley

Victims

• "Good-bye. And keep your little trinket"

P01135809

Trump visited a Trump Organization property on 428 of the 1,461 days of his presidency (nearly one in three) and is estimated to have played 261 rounds of golf, one every 5.6 days. Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 16:16, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Trump Bible

• Wallis' letter to Trump Buster Seven Talk (UTC) 16:15, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

National Debt under Trump AKA failed Campaign Promises

• Despite promising to eliminate the national debt in eight years, Trump approved large increases in government spending and approved the 2017 tax cut. As a result, the federal budget deficit increased by almost 50 percent, to nearly $1 trillion in 2019. Under Trump, the U.S. national debt increased by 39 percent, reaching $27.75 trillion by the end of his term, and the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio hit a post-World War II high. Trump also failed to deliver the $1 trillion infrastructure spending plan on which he had campaigned.

Next time

5/5 NBC...Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, continues to sow doubts about the last presidential election and is warning his followers — without citing any evidence — that Democrats will try to cheat in the upcoming one.

• A guiding principle for the group (((SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University and the center-right think tank R Street Instituteo))) is that Republican officials should “publicly affirm the security and integrity of elections across the U.S. and avoid actively fueling doubt about elections in other jurisdictions.”