| abstract | - Greeley was born on February 3, 1811 in Amherst, New Hampshire. He could not breathe for the first 20 minutes of his life, and some say this is the cause for everything that followed. To this day, newspaper men say we could control carbon emissions and solve global warming if all the God-damned environmentalists would also just refrain from breathing for about 20 minutes. Greeley's parents, Zaccheus and Mary (Woodburn) Greeley, moved house repeatedly during Greeley's youth, without even the lame excuse of Army service. Neighbors thought Greeley was smart and offered to pay his way through Phillips Exeter Academy, but the Greeleys were proud, and replied, "No, thank you, we will just stay poor and ignorant." However, in 1820, the Greeleys moved to Vermont, as it was a few miles ahead of the creditors in pursuit. This was Greeley's breakthrough, as he became the 15-year-old apprentice of the printer of a newspaper called the Northern Spectator. After only four years, it became painfully clear that no one wanted to spectate at the north of East Poultney, Vermont; nor north from Poultney, toward the ignorance of Blissville. The newspaper went into oblivion, and Greeley went into Pennsylvania, eventually finding work at the Erie Gazette. In 1831, Greeley went to New York City to seek his fortune. Unfortunately, he found that it was safely in the hands of other people. He found work at newspapers no one has ever heard of, including the New York Morning Post and The New-Yorker. Greeley met his wife, Mary Young Cheney, at a boarding house that rejected meat, alcohol, coffee, tea, spices, and intoxicants, leaving only hanky-panky as a diversion. Their marriage was sandwiched into Greeley's newspapers in the middle of the winning numbers in the lottery, though their honeymoon was sandwiched into the work week, and consummated at the sandwich break.
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