Delanceyplace

the first prime minister --6/2/2026

Tue, 02 Jun 2026 01:45:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from The Great Man by Edward Pearce. Robert Walpole became the first member of Parliament to be regarded as “Prime Minister” (or “First Minister”). He began to emerge as a young Parliamentarian during the reign of Queen Anne, when the “Duumvirs” (Latin for "two men"), in the form of Sydney Godolphin and John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, governed England:

“From the start, Walpole was assembling a circle which he would later dominate. Like the Tory leader Robert Harley, with whom he had otherwise only talent in common, Walpole had a gift for friendship. James Brydges, Paymaster General (1705-13) and later Duke of Chandos, described his as ‘the most friendly nature I have known’. Good humour joined with leadership qualities acquired a following, and Walpole could soon count on circles beyond the family group of Walpoles and the Townshend connection, a local nucleus which, before long, included his brother and lifelong lieutenant, Horatio Walpole, as well as William Feilding, Ash Windham of Felbrigg and Thomas De Grey, a Windham cousin, at Thetford and the two Whig candidates for Norwich, Waller Bacon and John Chambers. They would suffer the chicanery of the Tory Mayor, William Bythe, who voided their election being non-freemen for a freeman borough.

“These were all Norfolk men, but the group was not limited by the Fens. Walpole had no compunction about doing favours upwards. The Devonshires almost defined the term 'Grandee', but it was at Castle Rising that William Cavendish, Marquess of Hartington, heir to the Duchy and ardent Whig, was found a seat under Walpole's immediate patronage in 1701. In James Stanhope he found a man of equivalent talent to Spencer Compton, the lifetime occupant of his shadow. Then there were Sir John Holland, General Earle, Richard Temple of Stowe, Sir John Cropley down in Dorset and Jack Smith who would soon occupy the Speaker's chair. As early as 1708, Marlborough would be acknowledging 'the personal friends of Mr Walpole'. …

Portrait by Jean-Baptiste van Loo, c. 1740

“Government would lie in the early years of Anne with what were called the Duumvirs (co-rulers). Sydney Godolphin, a fussing, ubiquitous financial specialist, was a man around since Charles II, who had observed, 'Ah Mr Godolphin, never in the way, never out of the way.' He was partnered by the great Achilles, John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough. The General was about to enjoy enormous Continental military glory in a sequence of battles won over the French which 'every schoolboy' of legend could once recite: Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde and, more problematically, Malplaquet, actually a bloody draw. Neither man had strong inherent political colours, though Marlborough's ferocious wife, Sarah, would become a sort of Whig Boadicea. They were there because there was a war to be fought, an administrator working with a soldier who either corresponded or commuted. Otherwise the Ministry was mixed. But with military victory, the Whigs, as supporters of the war, advanced. By April 1704, the year of Blenheim, most of the High Tories, Rochester, Nottingham, Jersey and Sir Edward Seymour, were gone, replaced by the moderate Harley and the very young Henry St John, the beginning of a ten-year alliance working its way to misalliance.”

author: Edward Pearce title: The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's First Prime Minister publisher: Random House UK date: page(s): 31-35

]]>

lincoln, temperance, and education -- 6/1/2026

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 02:30:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Abe by David S. Reynolds. Young Abe Lincoln stood against the tenor of his times with his support of temperance and his pursuit of ‘book larnin':

“Abe kept a close watch on the ever-growing temperance movement, which went through several phases between the 1820s and 1850s. Early in this period, Lincoln wrote temperance articles for newspapers, and later he gave temperance addresses and joined the Sons of Temperance, a group opposed to alcohol abuse. But he never became a rabid temperance advocate; he avoided the extremes of total abstinence, Washingtonian Society confessionalism (the precursor of Alcoholics Anonymous), and prohibitionism. The moderation he showed foreshadowed his approach to slavery. His involvement with the temperance movement became an important factor in his political rise.

“He learned to be moderate during his youth. His refusal to drink at many social events must have raised some eyebrows, but it kept him on a steady course. Here again, his father led the way in avoiding extremes. Thomas ‘was temperate in his Habits, never was intoxicated in his life,’ said a friend.

“Also exemplary was his father's honesty. Lincoln's famous honesty as a lawyer and politician had a personal precedent in his father, who was widely described as truthful. Thomas's step-granddaughter recalled, ‘Uncle Abe got his honesty and clean notions of living and his kind heart from his father.’ A minister who interviewed Thomas's nieces and nephews similarly concluded that the president ‘received from his father certain qualities of mind, ... above all, his proverbial honesty '' and truthfulness.’ Others who knew Thomas concurred that he was ‘a Strictly honest and hard-working Man,’ ‘a sturdy, honest Godfearing man whom all the neighbors respected.’

Thomas Lincoln

“Like other rural Americans of the time, Thomas needed all members of the family to help out around the house and farm. Lincoln later recalled that an axe was put in his hands when he was eight, and that instrument remained there for much of his youth and early manhood. He felled trees, split rails, and built fences. He also did farmwork such as planting seeds, sowing crops, taking grain to mills for grinding, and tending animals. During the 1820s he worked successively as a supplier of wood for steamboats, a ferry operator on the Ohio River, a carpenter, and a riverboat steersman on two trips that he took by flatboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans.

“The fact that his father often hired him out to neighbors has been called oppressive or exploitative, but this practice was common. As Sara Quay notes, ‘If families were to be successful on the frontier, they depended on contributions of every member of the family unit, regardless of age, size, or interest in doing so.’ Children as young as five were given chores, and a father could claim a son's wages until the son was twenty-one. Therefore, Thomas Lincoln was doing nothing unusual when in the mid-1820s, under financial pressure after a friend defaulted on a loan Thomas had endorsed, he hired out Abe to neighbors doing various jobs (as ferry operator, farmhand, wood chopper, butcher, store clerk, and others) that paid between ten cents and thirty-one cents a day. Like other frontiersmen's sons, Abe worked at his father's behest.

“Did Thomas impede his son's education? The image of Thomas as an ignorant taskmaster who scolded the studious young Abe for reading instead of doing his farmwork is a staple of books and films, based mainly on Dennis Hanks's comment that Abe ‘was a Constant and I m[a]y Say Stubborn reader, his father having Sometimes to slash him for neglecting his work by reading.’ To the extent that this is true, it should be noted that hostility to education prevailed on the frontier. Most country folk of the time considered schooling a frivolous distraction or a threat to the rural lifestyle. The education historian Mark Friedberger explains, ‘Unlike middle-class urbanites, farmers did not regard education favorably. Parents wanted their children to remain on the farm, to look after them in their old age, and then to inherit the Homestead land.’ Parents knew that children who did receive education tended to leave their farms and move to cities, where better jobs were available.

“Also, Thomas Lincoln's Baptist faith inclined him against education. The Baptist religion was simple and pietistic, and frontier preachers, most of them uneducated, denounced ‘book larnin',’ which they regarded as useless in gaining God's grace.’ These frontier ministers stood opposed to public schools, regarding them as part of an elite urban conspiracy to spread false religion and destroy local control.’

“But Thomas Lincoln managed at times to rise above this widespread mistrust of education. Sarah Bush Lincoln, Lincoln's stepmother, declared, ‘As a usual thing Mr. Lincoln never made Abe quit reading to do anything if he could avoid it. He would do it himself first. Mr. Lincoln could read a little & could scarcely write his name: hence he wanted, as he himself felt the uses & necessities of Education his boy Abraham to learn & he Encouraged him to do it in all ways he could.’ Abe himself reportedly said, ‘My father had suffered greatly for the want of education, and he determined at an early day that I should be well educated. And what do you think he said his ideas of a good education were? We had an old dog-eared arithmetic in our house, and father determined that somehow, or somehow else, I should cipher clear through that book.’ It makes sense that Thomas would value ciphering, because measurement and proportion were important tools in his work as a carpenter and cabinetmaker.”

author: David S. Reynolds title: Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times publisher: Penguin Press date: page(s): 33-35

]]>

the british economy depended on the caribbean -- 5/27/2026

Wed, 27 May 2026 03:00:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from The War for America by Piers Mackesy. For the British, the American Revolution quickly became a naval war with France over possession of the islands of the Caribbean. With their vast sugar plantations, these were more lucrative to Britain than the American colonies and more likely to remain colonies over the long run. Furthermore, the French had lost key Caribbean possessions to Britain during the recent French and Indian War that had ended in 1763, and viewed the American Revolution as their opportunity to regain them:

"Why this obsession [of the British] with the West Indies? [Lord] Sandwich had predicted that the war aims of France would be to overturn the peace of 1763 and regain her empire and her markets; and that for the sake of the American alliance she would forget her claim to Canada, and look for her reward in the sub-tropics -- in India, West Africa and the Caribbean. And he was right. The French navy was to neglect America for the West Indies. There most of the naval fighting took place; and there in 1782 the greatest British victory of the war was won by [Admiral George] Rodney. With the fate of North America in the balance, the maritime Powers of Europe threw their strength and hopes into a chain of small, fever-ridden islands in the Caribbean. 'The war', wrote one of Prime Minister Shelburne's correspondents in the year of Rodney's victory, 'has and ever must be determined in the West Indies.'

Political map of the West Indies

"A powerful and noisy pressure group represented the West India interest in London. In 1775 the Society of West India Merchants and the Agents for the Planters had joined forces to represent the West India interest as a whole; and they were to exercise some influence over the government's strategy. But their clamor was not the main reason for the Ministry's interest in the islands.' The real issue was concerned with national policy. In the long run England might or might not recover America; but whatever the course of the war in the Caribbean, the Antilles could not sustain an independent existence and would remain colonies of one Power or another. The wealth they produced from sugar and its by-products was still vast. It is said that the West Indies accounted for a third of the overseas trade of France. Much of the British trade passed through Bristol; but into London alone the British islands sent nearly 300 ships in an average year, with a 100,000 hogsheads of sugar and 11,000 puncheons of rum. The West India imports in 1776 had been valued at £4 1/4 millions, compared with the East India Company's £1 1/2 millions. And for a mercantilist the sub-tropical products of the West Indies fitted much better into the British economy than the products of American farms and fisheries, which were not needed and were generally excluded from the home market. The planters' produce was needed, and favoured the balance of trade by saving England from the need to buy from foreign rivals. As a market for English manufactures the planters were also more satisfactory than the Americans: with their sugar profits they could at least pay their debts. The sensible Sir Charles Middleton believed passionately in the islands' importance. 'The sugar islands', he wrote, 'are the best and surest markets for our staple commodities, and the most productive of all our colonies. They are the easiest source of our revenues.'

Cutting the Sugar Cane, from "Ten Views in the Island of Antigua", 1823

"There was thus a general belief that the British economy and finances depended on the West Indies. And conversely it could be argued that nothing but their West India commerce had enabled the French to equip the fleet which successfully confronted [Admiral Augustus] Keppel in the course of 1778; and that the conquest of the French islands would ruin the enemy's finances. And by conquering them all it was argued that England would obtain an economic grip on the American colonies. ... For England, the islands held the lure of compensation for her losses in America, finance to pay for the war, a favourable balance of trade, an economic lever to coerce America. For the chance of conquering the French West Indies and 'avenging the faithless and insolent conduct of France', the King had said he was willing even to come to terms with America."

]]>

the double helix --5/26/2026

Tue, 26 May 2026 03:04:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Brilliant Blunders by Mario Livio. A blunder by the world’s greatest chemist, Linus Pauling, left an opening for young upstarts James Watson and Francis Crick to race to be the first to discover the double-helix structure of DNA:

“Contrary to the somewhat tentative spirit of the scientific paper, in his personal communications about the proposed model, Pauling expressed more confidence and was extremely upbeat. In a letter to the Scottish biochemist (and eventual Nobel laureate) Alexander Todd, dated December 19, 1952, Pauling wrote: ‘We have, we believe, discovered the structure of the nucleic acids. I think that it will be about a month before we send off a manuscript describing the structure, but I have practically no doubt about the correctness of the structure that we have discovered ... The structure is really a beautiful one.’ In a letter sent on the same day to Henry Allen Moe, president of the Guggenheim Foundation, Pauling repeated the same sentiment: ‘I have now discovered, I believe, the structure of the nucleic acids themselves.’

“Another person with whom Pauling was corresponding regularly was his son Peter, who, as luck would have it, had arrived at Cambridge just a few months earlier to work as a research student with John Kendrew. Peter's desk was in an office with four other colleagues. In Peter's words: ‘To my left, near the window, was a rather noisy fellow named Francis Crick. On my right was a desk occasionally occupied by Jim Watson. Also in the room was a visiting scientist, Jerry Donohue, whom I knew well from his long association with Caltech, and Michael Bluhm, John Kendrew's research assistant.’ In a pre-email era, Peter, through his frequent exchange of letters with his father, became the main line of communication between Caltech and Cambridge. Consequently, as soon as Linus informed Peter of his paper on the structure of DNA, the latter asked for a copy. This was on January 13, 1953. Peter added in his letter a brief comment that spoke volumes about the pressure the British scientists were feeling: ‘I was told a story today. You know how children are threatened “You had better be good or the bad ogre will come get you.” Well, for more than a year, Francis [Crick] and others have been saying to the nucleic acid people at King's “You had better work hard or Pauling will get interested in nucleic acids.’’’

The structure of the DNA double helix (type B-DNA).

“Under these conditions, it was only natural that the news from Peter that Pauling had discovered the structure of DNA hit Watson and Crick like a thunderbolt. With the memory of Pauling's previous victory with the alpha-helix still fresh in the minds of everybody at Cambridge, the two young men were wondering if this was a catastrophic case of deja vu. On January 23 Peter sent Linus another letter, this time complaining only that ‘I wish Jim Watson were here [Watson was on a quick visit to Milan, Italy]. It is rather dull now. Nothing to do. No interesting girls, just young affected little things only interested in sex, in an indirect manner.’

“The weeks between Peter's request for a copy of Pauling's paper, and the manuscript's arrival on January 28, felt like an eternity to Watson and Crick. When Peter finally brought the paper, Watson quickly pulled it out of Peter's outside coat pocket, and instantly devoured the summary and the introduction. Then, after staring at the illustrations for a few minutes, he couldn't believe his eyes. Pauling's structure, with the phosphates in the center and the bases on the outside, was strikingly similar to his and Crick's abortive model. The model was preposterously wrong!

“Watson did not conclude that Pauling's DNA model was wrong just because it had three strands. Pauling's nucleic acid molecule was simply not an acid at all. That is, it could not release positively charged hydrogen atoms when dissolved in water, the very definition of an acid. Instead, the hydrogen atoms were bound firmly to the phosphate groups, rendering those electrically neutral, while every elementary chemistry book (including Pauling's own book!) stated that the phosphates had to be charged negatively (the acid is highly ionized in aqueous solution). There was no way to extract those hydrogen atoms, either, since they were actually the key links holding together the three strands through hydrogen bonds.

“This blunder was just too much for Watson and Crick to swallow. The world's greatest chemist constructed a completely defective model, and the model was wrong not because of some subtle biological feature but because of a major blooper in the most basic chemistry. Still incredulous, Watson rushed to Cambridge chemist Roy Markham and to the organic chemistry laboratory to check with them whether there was any doubt that DNA, as it occurs in nature, was indeed the salt of an acid. To Watson's satisfaction, they all confirmed the unthinkable: Pauling had utterly botched the chemistry.

“There were only two things left to do that day. First, Crick hurried to Perutz and Kendrew to convince them that urgency was of the utmost importance. Unless he and Watson got busy with modeling immediately, he argued, it wouldn't be long before Pauling discovered his mistake and revised his model. Crick estimated that they had no more than about six weeks to come up with a correct model. Watson and Crick's second action was equally obvious to the two young men: They went to celebrate at the Eagle Pub on Bene't Street. Watson later recalled, ‘As the stimulation of the last several hours had made further work that day impossible, Francis and I went over to the Eagle. The moment its doors opened for the evening we were there to drink a toast to the Pauling failure.’

“How could this blunder have happened? Why was Pauling's model-building approach so spectacularly successful with the alpha-helix and so disastrously ineffective with the triple helix?”

author: Mario Livio title: Brilliant Blunders publisher: Simon & Schuster date: page(s): 134-137

]]>

jerry seinfeld's agent -- 5/22/2026

Fri, 22 May 2026 03:20:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. Jerry Seinfeld's career moved from standup to sitcom due to a wise choice in agents and the persistence of that agent:

"[Jerry] Seinfeld had already made several smart choices in his fledgling career, and among them was to sign with manager George Shapiro.

"Shapiro was inspired to go into show business like his uncle, Dick Van Dyke Show creator Carl Reiner. Shapiro's charm -- kind eyes, a warm smile, and a hint of a New York accent -- made him particularly suited to being a talent manager, endearing himself to both performers and executives. He had spent the early years of his career at the William Morris talent agency in New York. There, he'd helped put together TV comedies such as The Steve Allen Show, That Girl, and Gomer Pyle. Now, as a talent manager for young comedian Jerry Seinfeld, he may have been simply doing his job when he told NBC executives that his client belonged on their network. But he was also speaking from decades of experience during TV's formative years.

Jerry Seinfeld and George Shapiro

The Tonight Show or Late Night. In 1988, he made his strongest epistolary plea as Seinfeld prepared for his first concert broadcast at Town Hall in New York City. 'Call me a crazy guy,' Shapiro wrote to Tartikoff, 'but I feel that Jerry Seinfeld will soon be doing a series on NBC.' He closed by inviting Tartikoff to attend the Town Hall event. No one from the network came, but Tartikoff invited Seinfeld and Shapiro in for a meeting.

"Seinfeld didn't know his manager had badgered NBC about him. He was still unaware when he and Shapiro headed to NBC's Los Angeles offices on November 2, 1988, to discuss the possibility of a network project with Tartikoff, Littlefield, and the head of late-night programming and specials, Rick Ludwin. Seinfeld hadn't the first idea what he'd do on television -- his main career plan was to be a standup comedian for as long as he could. ...

"A few months later, Seinfeld had joined forces with Larry David on the script. ... Once they had come up with what they believed was a solid sitcom proposal, Seinfeld had to return to pitch it to the network executives. ... Several Castle Rock executives sat in as David and Seinfeld outlined the new sitcom concept to NBC in entertainment president Brandon Tartikoff's office.

"The comedian charmed the room, got some laughs. Tartikoff signed on with a bit of a shrug. It would require a small development deal. He and his executives liked Seinfeld's humor. They, too, thought: Why not? 'George,' Tartikoff said to Shapiro, 'now you don't have to send me any more letters.' ...

"Soon came another test of the budding relationship between Seinfeld and NBC, when a scathing review of Seinfeld's stand-up show in Irvine, California, ran in the Los Angeles Times. In January 1989, Lawrence Christon wrote: 'He's expressive. He's clear. And he's completely empty. ... There isn't a single portion of his act that isn't funny -- amusing might be a better word -- but ten minutes or so into it, you begin wondering what this is all about, when is he going to say something or at least come up with something piquant.'

"As Seinfeld fretted over the review, Shapiro asked a staffer to photocopy a bunch of Seinfeld's positive reviews and deliver them to Littlefield and Ludwin at NBC. In the end, though, it seemed that Seinfeld and Shapiro were far more concerned about Christon than NBC was. They didn't bat an eye. Seinfeld and Shapiro desperately wanted this show to happen -- and NBC didn't care much either way."

author: Jennifer Keishin Armstrong title: Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything publisher: Simon & Schuster date: Copyright 2016 by Jennifer Armstrong page(s): 17-20

]]>

acrylic paint and oil paint -- 5/21/2026

Thu, 21 May 2026 03:00:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Thinking About Art by Penny Huntsman. Though they had been around for centuries, oil paints gained prominence and popularity with the masterful works of Jan van Eyck in the 15th century. Acrylic paints emerged as a potential alternative to oil paints for artists in the 1950s:

“Acrylic paint was first used in the 1940s and made commercially available in the 1950s and while it is assumed to have greater durability than oil and a reduced tendency to discolour, its permanency is yet to be tested. Acrylic also dries much faster than oil, and so is less suited to images that require modelling or chiaroscuro. Acrylic paint, which uses an acrylic polymer emulsion as a binder, dries to a flexible paint film because it is comprised of interlocking molecules which shift without causing damage during expansion and contraction. While oil paint is referred to as 'oil-based' on account of its mix with linseed oil, acrylic is referred to as water-based on account of its dilution with water, if desired, although it is most commonly applied thickly to give an opaque finish.

“Acrylic is also quite flat in terms of its light absorption which can render its subject fairly stark in contrast to the light-reflective qualities of oil. Consider Vermeer's View of Delft, 1660-1661, for example; if this work had been executed in acrylic, then the atmosphere, the reflected sparkle, and the richness would all be lost. The Prussian Blue that Van Gogh described as 'heavenly' in the View of Delft, is not even possible in acrylic on account of a chemical incompatibility (De Leeuw, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh, p. 401). Vermeer's renowned depiction of sunlight in some works, and the 'spiritual' glow in others, was achievable through his use of Indian Yellow, an oil paint made from the urine of cows fed upon mango leaves. Conversely, as liberating as the medium of oil was for artists like Vermeer, the acrylic paints exploited in Ofili's contemporary works (examined later in this chapter) are not available in oils. Every material brings its own range of possibilities and limitations.

“Oil paintings are prone to cracking over time, while acrylic paintings maintain a stable surface. This is because the binders (liquids mixed with the pigment) in oil and acrylic paint are different. Oil paint binders, such as linseed oil, dry to an inflexible, weak film that may crack as it expands and contracts with changes in external temperature.

“Young British Artist (YBA) Marcus Harvey (born 1963) uses the medium of acrylic in a similar way to that of Hockney insofar as he shows an awareness of the limitations of the medium and uses the graphic properties of acrylic to lend a further dimension of meaning to his painting of child murderer Myra Hindley. How do you think the qualities of acrylic help to convey a sense of Hindley's character?

Myra by Marcus Harvey (1995)

"Harvey's large-scale portrait Myra uses acrylic with a hand-printing technique to create a mosaic effect, which, when seen from a distance, is reminiscent of her black and white police mug-shot on which the painted image is based. That Harvey used the plaster cast of a child's hand to print the portrait catapults an already emotive image to new levels of explosive controversy. Primary school children, innocent and untutored, make perhaps their first personalised creations like this, only usually they adorn our kitchen walls and later become memories in parents' scrapbooks. However, Harvey implements an unorthodox technique, causing the handprints to appear pixelated and mechanically detached from us.

“Like so many artists before him, in a lineage that started with Caravaggio (originally Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, 1571-1610) in the seventeenth century, Harvey paints the 'ugly truth': pointing directly to an unspeakable crime. While it has been argued that this work is astonishingly insensitive, others consider that children are too often without a voice in an adult world, and that in noting their tiny handprints, we become poignantly aware of their vulnerability.”

author: Penny Huntsman title: Thinking About Art: A Thematic Guide to Art History publisher: Wiley-Blackwell date: page(s): 84-85

]]>

the downside of parking lots --5/20/2026

Wed, 20 May 2026 02:58:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar. There is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person:

“Most Americans, of course, do not have to fight for parking. On the contrary, the combination of urban renewal, public lots, and parking requirements for private development were astonishingly successful at creating ample space to park. By square footage, there is more housing for each car in the United States than there is housing for each person. All this asphalt constitutes a kind of ecology unto itself, changing the way air and water and animals interact with human civilization. It changes the way we behave, too. ‘The effect of the cars reaches far beyond the cars themselves,’ wrote Christopher Alexander in A Pattern Language, his landmark study of human landscapes. ‘They create a maze of driveways, garage doors, asphalt, and concrete surfaces, and building elements which people cannot use. When the density goes beyond the limit, we suspect that people feel the social potential of the environment has disappeared.’ Perhaps most importantly, making it easier to park did not get rid of the life-draining experience of traffic. On the contrary, it created traffic.

“[Victor] Gruen's [often considered the 'father of the shopping mall'] distress reflected the dawning regrets of city fathers at large, the start of a half-century planning hangover upon awaking to find yourself surrounded by parking lots. Dude, where's my town? By the end of the 1960s, the emerging consensus was that we would never be able to build enough parking to restore the vigor of the prewar metropolis. In retrospect, the focus on parking as the key to ensuring downtown's survival seems perverse. Downtown business interests and the politicians they supported were delusional. The conventional wisdom in Chicago, for example, had been that the 1954 opening of the record-breaking Grant Park Garage would help ensure that the population of the Windy City was not eclipsed by that of Los Angeles. (It did not.)

“In 1957, at a conference in Hartford, the urban historian Lewis Mumford postulated that cities would never be able to build their way out of car traffic. It would progress, he said, ‘until that terminal point when all the business and industry that originally gave rise to the congestion move out of the city, to escape strangulation, leaving a waste of expressways and garages behind them.’ One planner said the cars coming downtown were like coffee–you had to provide the cups (parking garages). Mumford's metaphor was not so neat. Traffic, he said, was like ‘dumping a whole orphanage on an overcrowded and bankrupt home.’

“Even car-friendly engineers never believed that Americans would abandon mass transit the way they did. Frank Turner, the father of the interstate, took the bus to work most days and, as head of the Federal Highway Administration in the late 1960s, would open his meetings at bureau headquarters by asking: ‘How many of you came by bus today?’ In 1953, fewer than half of the fifty-seven thousand people arriving in downtown Atlanta every day came by car, and in their parking assessment that year, city leaders believed that transit ridership would stabilize. But the more parking lots cities built, the more people drove. Transit executives, whose long-held (and widely despised) monopoly was coming to an end, were some of the first to sound the alarm. The general manager of the Cleveland transit system, D. C. Hyde, argued in 1952 that parking was doing the opposite of what its builders believed: ‘Destroying buildings and using valuable land for more and more parking lots and garages hastens decentralization.... It is just as sensible to stop doing things that bring more automobiles into already congested areas as it is to stop buying drinks for a person who is already drunk.’ Like transit officials in Detroit and elsewhere, Hyde reminded his audience that streetcars and buses were by far the most efficient use of precious street space–and were being rendered useless by automobile traffic. The chairman of the board of transportation in New York went one step further, arguing that better transit, not better parking, was the key to halting the suburban ascendance.

“In 1965, the chairman of the Boston finance commission slammed the municipal garage program. Boston had built garages for ‘the bolstering effect they would produce on the city's economy’ by pulling in suburban shoppers, George Berkley wrote, even when ‘no interest was evinced from the private sector.’ Even assuming a generous boost to retail activity, the city was still spending millions subsidizing its garage operating expenses. By invoking eminent domain to seize properties for parking, Boston had forfeited tax revenue; by subsidizing parking spaces, it had forgone transit revenue. Garages, Berkley added, also caused congestion, detracted from the street's ‘scenic appeal,’ and reduced the taxable value of transit-adjacent properties.

“Over the course of the 1960s, this view would enter the mainstream. Transit ridership cratered. Residents, stores, factories, and offices abandoned cities. Urban renewal did damage; highways did more. Intellectuals led by Jacobs and Mumford assailed car-centric planning, and local activists in cities like Baltimore and San Francisco organized ‘freeway revolts’ to stop inner-city expressways. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower seemed to regret what he had wrought with the Interstate Highway Act; ramming the big roads through American neighborhoods had never been his intention. But more than the highways or the slum-clearance projects, it was the need for car storage that ate through American downtowns.

“By 1972, the Detroit City Planning Commission made a downbeat assessment of how the Motor City's downtown had wound up dedicating 74 percent of its land to vehicle movement and storage: ‘The automobile has an insatiable appetite for space. It needs about 300 square feet when stored in its home quarters; 300 square feet when stored at its place of destination; and 600 square feet on its way. It further needs about 200 square feet for those places where it is sold, repaired, and serviced. Thus an automobile needs 1400 square feet of living space. That is equal to the living space of a family unit.’ A surface parking lot was the lowest-cost use of downtown land, but Detroit had so much parking relative to commercial activity by the millennium that even parking lots were being abandoned.

“Parking was just as much of a mess whether you considered it at the scale of your street, your city, or the entire country. Washington paid for the highways, but it did not address the parking. Washington kept track of how many cars were on the road and of how many miles of road we built. But no one kept track of the parking supply, where a car spent almost all its life. Most studies put America's parking supply at a little under a billion spaces. Under the assumption that each space (including egress) takes up 330 square feet, if we were to lay it all flat, the asphalt would cover the entire state of Connecticut–twice. The desert agglomeration of Phoenix has 12.2 million parking spaces, about 3 per person, 4.3 per vehicle, and 6.6 per job, divided more or less evenly between the street, commercial facilities, and home garages. Parking accounts for 10 percent of the manmade landscape in the Valley of the Sun. In Silicon Valley, America's wealthiest and most productive region, parking is 13 percent of the land–not including the curb. According to one estimate, this wasted space cost the region a billion dollars in forgone wages. There are 15 million parking spots in the Bay Area, 2.4 for each car and enough to wrap a parking lane around the planet twice and still have some left over.

“The most valuable land in the United States is in New York City, so you might think it would pay for New Yorkers to count the parking spaces. No one has. Estimates range from 1.3 million to 3 million, a staggering degree of uncertainty–and that's just the number of spaces on the street. In any case, New York is exceptional among U.S. cities for its low number of parking spaces. San Francisco, America's second-densest large city, has 441,541 curb spaces, more than one for every household. When estimates include garage space, the numbers go way up. Philadelphia has 2.2 million parking spots, according to a conservative estimate, or 3.7 for every household. Seattle has 1.6 million spaces, or more than 5 per household. And those three cities are among America's most compact; each has robust public transit and schools and shops within walking distance of most homes. Des Moines has the same number of parking spaces as Seattle, though it is less than one third the size. The Iowa capital has almost 20 parking spaces per household. Many American downtowns, such as Little Rock, Newport News, Buffalo, and Topeka, have more land devoted to parking than to buildings.

“In the mid-aughts, when the team of programmers at Maxis were working on the first new SimCity in a decade, they studied American municipal architecture, politics, and urban design to try to produce a compelling simulacrum. Lead designer Stone Librande used Google Earth to measure his surroundings. The biggest surprise he found was the size of the parking lots. ‘When I started measuring out our local grocery store, which I don't think of as being that big, I was blown away by how much more space was parking lot rather than actual store,’ he said. ‘That was kind of a problem, because we were originally just going to model real cities, but we quickly realized there were way too many parking lots in the real world and that our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.’ In the game, he said, they tried to imagine that the parking was underground: ‘We had to do the best we could do and still make the game look attractive.’

A San Jose, California parking lot in 2006

“All this pavement has direct environmental consequences. One is simply the cost of producing it all: the production of cement is responsible for almost 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and lots and garages are part of that total, as is all the infrastructure required to serve the sprawl.

“A second is the loss of natural land to suburban development. America lost 460,000 acres of wetlands, for example, every year in the 1950s and '60s, and 290,000 acres a year in the '70s and '80s. This transition is associated with steep declines in animal density, especially of birds and bugs. This is happening even in the oldest and slowest-growing parts of the country: Massachusetts, for example, developed more land in the last five decades of the twentieth century than in the three hundred years prior to 1950.

“A third is the urban heat island effect. Pavements and roofs absorb energy from the heat-generating elements of urban life, such as buildings and vehicles, which means that cities both warm up faster and cool down slower than natural areas.

“A fourth is flooding. A city is, among other things, a complex new hydrological zone, where water collects and flows in unpredictable ways. In sprawling Houston, fifty years of growing faster than any city in America have sealed a Belgium-sized section of Texas grassland beneath asphalt, concrete, and lawn. Flat as a tile and nearly as resistant to water, Houston is the epicenter of the urban flooding epidemic in the United States. When the stronger and more frequent rainstorms caused by climate change pass over this heavily populated region just inland from the Gulf of Mexico, the water has nowhere to go. Various studies have estimated that ‘impervious’ cover such as parking lots may increase runoff and flooding by up to a factor of ten. In the two decades preceding Hurricane Harvey, greater Houston grew by 2,7 million people–the equivalent of adding an entire city of Chicago to the metro area in just twenty years, mostly on former prairie, farmland, and forest. Approximately 770 square miles were developed in this time, with about half of the land becoming impervious. From 1996 to 2011, impervious surface in Harris County increased by a quarter, and from 1992 to 2010, the area lost almost a third of its wetlands--about sixteen thousand acres. In Brays Bayou, one of the city's major creeks, rainfall has increased by 26 percent over the past forty years--but runoff is up 204 percent. Runoff has tripled because the region has paved its way into an unmapped, manmade floodplain. Subdivisions built upstream are causing hundred-year-old houses downstream to flood for the first time.

“It's a problem that goes far beyond Houston. Cities like Chicago and Saint Louis have dug huge underground tunnels to hold all the rain. In Philadelphia and Seattle, homeowners have adopted rain barrels and cultivated native plants. Everywhere, architects have installed green roofs and city planners have replaced the desiccated pits of street trees with reedy green swales. Even the engineers of parking lots are doing their best, adapting to stormy weather with porous materials like gravel or crushed clay. If you drive to commune with the spirit of American environmentalism at Walden Pond, Henry Thoreau's retreat near Boston, you will leave your car on one of America’s pioneering permeable parking lots.

“A fifth consequence of all this pavement is water pollution. Outside of cities, runoff from roads and parking lots often goes straight into lakes and streams. In the northern part of the country, in the winter and spring, this runoff is contaminated with road salt. In the summer, heated by the smoldering blacktop, it can drain ten to twenty degrees hotter than it fell. In all seasons, it can be contaminated by pollutants such as motor oil, rubber dust from tires, animal droppings, pesticides, air pollution residue, and heavy metals. Jurisdictions are frantically trying to slow this phenomenon; by 2020 they had created more than 1,800 stormwater utilities in the United States that try to treat or divert runoff away from sensitive habitats.

“A sixth is groundwater absorption, the flip side of the flooding. The largest stormwater utility of all is funded by a “driveway tax” in sunny Los Angeles, of all places, which in 2021 put a 2.5-cent annual levy on every square foot of pavement. It is not enough money to encourage greener building practices at scale–but will raise enough across the country to build infrastructure to keep the city’s precious rainstorms from being flushed down its concrete river directly into the Pacific Ocean. That will keep the beaches clean. But it will also, crucially, preserve millions of gallons of stormwater that could be used for nonpotable uses like watering lawns and keeping saltwater out of underground aquifers. During difficult times, it could be filtered and put back into pipes.”

author: Henry Grabar title: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World publisher: Penguin Books date: page(s): 71-78

]]>

palantir and ukraine--5/19/2026

Tue, 19 May 2026 02:36:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from The Philosopher in the Valley by Michael Steinberger. Palantir’s data targeting is joined to warfare:

“[Ukraine] was the first time in a while that Palantir's work in the realm of national security and defense was not bound up in controversy or ambiguity. The failed war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with human rights violations and concerns. about privacy and civil liberties, had tainted the fight against terrorism. The Trump years had been fruitful but challenging for Palantir. With Ukraine, however, there were no complicating factors (so far)--it was good versus evil, and Palantir was unequivocally on the side of good.

“Karp was also eager to talk about Palantir and Ukraine because it was a way of deflecting attention from the company's sagging stock price and Wall Street's deepening skepticism. After trading as high as $45 per share in early 2021, Palantir's stock had steadily declined, and by the time Russia invaded Ukraine, it was barely above $10. True, it had been swept up in a general sell-off of tech stocks, but it was also the case that the market just didn't see Palantir as a winning investment. A headline in the Financial Times took Karp's words and used them against the company: ‘Palantir: Built for Bad Times (But Maybe Not These Bad Times).' The disconnect between the importance of the work that Palantir was doing and the value that the market placed on that work was large–and, for Palantirians, not a little maddening.

“For Karp, the war in Ukraine was an opportunity, as well, to rally his own troops. The company was still full of industrious, ambitious people, but two years of Covid lockdowns, as well as the controversies that had dogged Palantir, had sapped morale–that was how Karp felt, anyway. The challenge on this front was evident in a town hall meeting he held that afternoon in Washington. With the pandemic still causing widespread illness, the meeting took place under a tent in the courtyard of Palantir's office. As his colleagues ate lunch, Karp, using a handheld microphone, riffed on a variety of topics, including himself. ‘Everyone thinks I'm insane,' he said. This perception, he went on to explain, had contributed to Palantir's success. ‘The thing about being viewed as bonkers is that people don't want to compete with you.’ He continued in this vein for around forty minutes. His quips drew polite laughter, but he seemed to struggle to connect with his audience. True, it was early March and a little chilly for an al fresco lunch (there were heaters in the tent, but they weren't offering much warmth), which might have muted the response. Still, it felt as if there was distance now between Karp and the rank and file, a point he acknowledged in his talk. ‘We've been separated for two years,' he said. ‘It's very hard to build a culture, to keep a culture, when you don't interact with people in person.’ He added, ‘We just have to try to get back together in the office.’ Much had changed during Covid: the company had gone public, work habits had been altered, and Karp had officially become a billionaire. He was also now a lot older than most of his employees. Could he still relate to them? Could they still relate to him?

“Three years before Russia invaded Ukraine, Palantir started working on Project Maven, the Pentagon's artificial intelligence program, taking over for Google. According to Doug Philippone, Defense Department officials approached other tech companies first and reached out to Palantir only as a last resort because they were put off by the turmoil surrounding the firm at that time. For his part, Philippone was wary of getting involved with Maven. While the future of warfare undoubtedly revolved around AI, Maven had become a costly flop–the AI technology just wasn't good. Philippone says that the algorithms that were supposed to be able to identify, say, objects being surveilled by a drone were not up to the task: a sheep standing in a field would be mistakenly flagged as a man–that sort of thing. ‘The dirty secret of Maven was that this shit didn't even work,' says Philippone.

Project Maven analyst view

“Palantir didn't solve the AI problem–that task fell to other companies that were contributing to Maven. Instead, Palantir filled other gaps. Initially, it provided the project with a sophisticated mapping tool called Gaia. Not long thereafter, it occurred to Philippone and some of the engineers he worked with that Foundry could possibly deliver the data integration and analytic capabilities that Maven still lacked. That proved to be the case, and Foundry soon became Maven's operating system. Philippone says that Palantir ‘built the infrastructure that would allow the AI to be useful’ and gave the officers who were running Maven ‘breathing room' until the AI technology was workable.

“By the time Russia invaded Ukraine, Maven had become a formidable asset, dramatically improving the military's situational awareness in combat zones and accelerating the so-called kill chain, the time between the identification of a target and its destruction or liquidation. The Biden administration sought to aid Ukraine without putting the United States in direct conflict with Russia, and Maven was integral to this strategy. Operating out of a secret site in Germany known as ‘The Pit,' the Army's 18th Airborne Corps, under the direction of Lieutenant General Christopher Donahue (who would later oversee the evacuation of Kabul Airport), used Maven to track Russian troop movements. The system ingested and analyzed vast quantities of satellite and drone imagery to show where Russian forces were attacking or massing in preparation for an assault; where Russian munition depots were located; and other vital intelligence. The U.S. shared this information with the Ukrainians, which helped them mount unexpectedly effective resistance during the first months of the war.

“But via Foundry, Maven was able to deliver much more than just an exquisitely detailed view of the battlefield. Palantir's technology also enabled Donahue's team to pull in cellular data. As it happened, many Russian soldiers–including, it turned out, commanding officers–were using their personal cell phones to communicate because their military-issued phones didn't work. This allowed the Americans to identify their precise locations, information then shared with the Ukrainians. ‘It was the war on terror all over again,’ Philippone says. ‘I mean, the one thing we know how to do, we know how to pinpoint you anywhere in the world and kill you. The terrorists who learned to live without their phones survived. Those who couldn't, didn't.’ A number of Russian generals were dispatched to the front to try to salvage the sputtering war effort, and Ukrainian forces killed several of them in the first months of the conflict. They were located with the help of Maven, too, but the American military was cagier about how it passed along that information. The Ukrainians were given coordinates and told, in so many words, that they would be pleased with the result.

“Karp was not quite as circumspect. ‘Palantir is responsible for most of the targeting in Ukraine,’ he said at a conference that the company hosted in Palo Alto. Karp had grown tired of having to always be so discreet about what he considered Palantir's most important work. In the past, he had talked only in vague terms about the terrorist attacks that Palantir had supposedly helped foil. His inability to offer specifics meant that the company never got the credit that he believed it deserved. It was, he said, a ‘twenty-year frustration.’ But after deleting that passage in his letter referencing Palantir's involvement in Ukraine, he had now decided that it was time for Palantir to get the recognition that it deserved: the world would know that it was helping Ukraine. (The Pentagon was not thrilled about his outspokenness and eventually asked him to dial it back, which he did.)"

author: Michael Steinberger title: The Philosopher in the Valley: Alex Karp, Palantir, and the Rise of the Surveillance State publisher: Simon & Schuster date: page(s): 215-222

]]>

zouaves!--5/18/2026

Mon, 18 May 2026 03:01:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from A Nation Unraveled by Sarah Jones Weicksel. Outlandish uniforms of the Civil War:

“Military uniforms were made for and worn by the young sons of both Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis–uniforms that conformed to the standards of brass manhood. The Confederate artillery uniform of Jefferson Davis Jr. (1859-1864) included a gray shell jacket with red piping, cuffs, and collar, as well as gilt brass buttons and gold braid on the sleeves. Tad Lincoln (1853-1871), on the other hand, was photographed in a dark blue Union uniform complete with shoulder straps, a gold sash, gilt brass buttons, and a Union kepi with US insignia. It was given to him as part of a courtesy commission granted by Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Entirely symbolic and a novelty for the boys themselves, as neither child actually served in an army, these uniforms nevertheless referenced what was at stake in the war–the future of a nation and the youth who would inherit it.

“One need not have been the child of a political leader to find themself clothed in their family's patriotic sentiments. A young South Carolina girl wore a dress made from a First National Confederate, or Stars and Bars, flag. Cut into pieces, the short-waisted dress has a white bodice with red vertical stripes, red stripes at the shoulders, and a full skirt made of three tiers of alternating red and white fabric, with a vertical dark blue stripe that includes the stars. While this dress referenced a Confederate nation, the dress worn by the girl's brother was South Carolina through and through. Made of a deep cobalt blue, the dress is readily identifiable as the South Carolina state flag, with a gold palmetto tree on the skirt and a Zouave-style jacket trimmed in gold with a gold quarter moon on the breast. This use of bright colors and printed fabrics was a marked departure from typical clothing intended for small children, which was often white cotton or linen that could be easily bleached clean. Clothing children in patriotism was, in fact, quite inconvenient.

“Women and children overtly adopted military-inspired styles into their wardrobes. While Zouave-style jackets were inspired by French Zouave uniforms in the Crimean War, the style took on new meaning with the raising of US and Confederate units who adopted these Zouave-style uniforms, with their baggy pants and open, cropped jackets. Variations on this style were quickly adopted in women's and children's fashions. 'For children of both sexes,' wrote Godey's Lady's Book, 'these Zouaves are all the rage; they are made of all kinds of materials, thick and thin, but the white pique suit with broad, gay ribbon sash and the little turban hat with plume, makes a very pretty and stylish costume.' With bold embroidery, colorful trim, and an open jacket, civilians' Zouave fashions created direct connections to the uniforms worn by highly celebrated military units, like the New York Fire Zouaves.

The Brierwood Pipe, an 1864 oil painting by Winslow Homer of two 5th New York Zouaves

“Such uniform-inspired fashion and brass buttons were particularly important to how Northern and Southern women of the middling and upper classes constructed their own gendered identities during wartime, even going so far as to use military buttons on their own clothing. As one woman wrote, 'We wore our homespun dresses, made en train, trimmed in [South Carolina] palmetto buttons on the shoulders and on the sleeves, a la militaire.' Wearing brass buttons was a material way in which women expressed patriotism and physically marked their connection to soldiers, thereby tying their sense of womanhood to that of brass manhood. As one Union woman wrote, 'A lot of us girls went down...as the soldiers were passing through and they cut buttons from their coats and gave them to us as souvenirs....We wear...earrings made of the buttons the soldiers gave us.' The earrings this woman wore likely resembled a pair made from Confederate Navy buttons in which an ear wire was attached to the button back. With no additional embellishment, the earrings preserved the appearance of the buttons as buttons, rather than incorporating them into a larger piece of jewelry. Simple designs such as these made quite clear the connection between a woman's jewelry and a soldier's uniform.”

author: Sarah Jones Weicksel title: A Nation Unraveled: Clothing, Culture, and Violence in the American Civil War Era (Civil War America) publisher: The University of North Carolina Press date: page(s): 99-101

]]>

mark twain at west point--5/15/2026

Fri, 15 May 2026 03:00:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Mark Twain and West Point by Philip Leon. Mark Twain loved visiting the US Military Academy at West Point, and would always take time to meet with the cadets:

“Mark Twain revelled in the company of cadets, and made it a standing practice to join the young men in the barracks away from their officers. For hours into the night, he would hold forth with jokes and stories, the cadets roaring with laughter. On these occasions the tactical officers obligingly overlooked violations of ‘lights out’ and infractions of noise regulations. At least half or more of a senior class could crowd into an upperclassman's room to hear him because the corps was still quite small. The class of 1881, with whom he became particularly close, had only fifty-three members. Some other senior classes that he visited, 1886 and 1888, graduated seventy-seven and forty-four cadets respectively.

“Carter's description of these intimate barracks sessions provides an appropriate beginning to establish the warm tone of Mark Twain's time with the cadets:

Samuel Clemens, age 15, holding metal type in a composing stick that spells out his first name.

“He had a sharp eye that seemed to look right through you. We were so young that not many of us were aware that he was a great author and speaker. He cocked his feet on one chair and slumped down in the one he sat in, smoking and just rambling along, in a conversational tone. Often his eyes were closed, or half-closed and there would be long pauses in which he seemed to be thinking. The first time we gathered, we thought we were going to hear a rip-roaring orator and were sort of disappointed when he just sat down among us and began to ask us questions about ourselves. Then something that was said would start him off on a story – and from then on we just listened. The stories were good, but no other person I've ever known could tell them as Mr. Clemens did. Only a few of us could sit down, the rest just stood, solid-packed, in that small room. Nobody dared cough or make a sound. Everybody was afraid he might miss a word of those stories that drawled along until, suddenly, like a whip cracking, he would come to the point of his story and we would laugh–real laughter that shakes you in the middle.

“Yes, he did use some profanity, but it seemed to come in natural. His stories were all clean fun that concerned people he had met somewhere in this country or abroad. I think he enjoyed talking to us boys as much as we enjoyed having him. He impressed me as being a man's man and we were flattered by having him treat us as men. He certainly did not talk down to us as did many of our officers. No man can talk down to anybody, sitting with his coat off on the edge of a tilted-back chair and drawling what he says as if he were totally unaware of his audience.

“These earliest visits of Mark Twain to West Point formed the basis for a pattern that would continue for thirteen years. He would arrive at the post to great fanfare, usually welcomed personally by the superintendent. Then he would be included in some formal social event such as a parade, a ‘hop’ or dance, or a less formal activity such as billiards with the officers in their dayroom. If he delivered an address, typically in the evening in the cadet mess hall, or dining room, he might share the dais with several speakers such as general officers or politicians. Later that night, after the duty day and all the oratory ended, Mark Twain would find his way to the barracks to hold court in the large room of a senior cadet where, enthroned in a ‘tilted-back chair,’ he would regale his loyal subjects with jokes and stories.”

author: Philip Leon title: Mark Twain and West Point publisher: ECW Press date: page(s): 38-41

]]>

teaching a labrador to swim -- 5/14/2026

Thu, 14 May 2026 03:20:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Good Dog by David DiBenedetto and the editors of Garden and Gun. Dominique Browning writes in "Swim Team" about how she taught Ozzie, a neurotic Labrador, how to swim:

"That dogs are emotional creatures -- that they keen with sadness, leap with joy, wiggle in friendship and waggle in play, that they endure heartbreak and separation -- is a thing well known to all who count these fascinating creatures among their best friends. But that dogs suffer neuroses? That they can be crippled by anxieties buried in their tribal past? That fears as deeply buried as last year's bones can ooze up out of the primordial pink of their brains, and keep a dog from being all the dog that she can be? Or that their genetic pools might get twisted and polluted as ours do? I had no idea, until I met Ozzie.

"There was something off about Ozzie from the moment she entered the lives of her owners -- dear friends of mine, so I was able to observe her case at a close distance over many years. She was adorable; what puppy is not? A chocolate Lab, full of bounce and energy, Ozzie never met a shoe she did not chew. But what was cute in a baby was less so in an adolescent, and intolerable in a young adult. Dogs, as you know, have a way of bounding through these stages at warp speed.

"Ozzie seemed untrainable. ... Those sweet, indulgent friends of mine ... finally sent her off to boot camp so that she might have a chance to pull herself together. And it worked, sort of. Still, Ozzie could not stop chewing. Chewing herself, that is. And she was chronically depressed, putting on weight, listless, turning her back on all the doggyness the world had to offer. Finally, she was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Before too long Ozzie was chowing down Prozac, or Wellbutrin, or some such chemical cocktail, so that she might have a chance at a full and happy life. ...

"We were living on the coast of Rhode Island, and we went to the beach every day to walk and play. When Ozzie was a puppy, I looked forward to doing that thing everyone does with Labs -- throwing balls and hanks of driftwood into the ocean, watching as their Labs hurtle across the sand, dash out into the foaming surf, and retrieve the things, battling the break of waves, riding the swells, return joyfully triumphant to drop the thing at their owners' feet, gaze soulfully up, brimming with quiet dignity, tail wagging proudly to do it, please, just one more time.

"But Ozzie was afraid of the water. Very, very afraid of the water. She wouldn't go near it. ... This is when I began to suspect that something was really wrong. ... One day, I had an idea. I decided that somewhere deep down inside, Ozzie knew that she was a swimmer. She knew she was supposed to frolic in the surf; she knew she was meant to pull through cold water. Ozzie knew all this, in her doggy Labby soul. She was suck ... She could not see a way out. ... But I could. I would teach Ozzie to swim.

"We went to the beach ... I sat down next to Ozzie in the warm sand. I began to talk quietly to her about water. ... As I talked, I moved slowly, gently, closer to the tideline. Ozzie huddled next to me. ... I held her paw in my hand, as we sat, and as the waves came up, she flinched a bit -- I could feel a shudder pass through her -- but then she settled down. ... Before too long, we were sitting in a few inches of water, just holding paws. I coaxed Ozzie into a lying down position, and I got onto my own tummy. ... Soon the water was high enough to give me some buoyancy. I pinned my elbows into the sand, and faced the waves, tadpole style. Ozzie scrambled to her feet, but she stayed with me. I moved a bit deeper into the water, and Ozzie began wading. I laced my arm around her leg and up under her neck. She knew I was right there with her. She was knee deep, then gut deep, determined to stay on her feet. I let a wave push me up against her, and gave her a little bump, just the tiniest shove, and Ozzie was off her feet -- just for a few seconds, until the wave retreated. ...

"I took her paw again, and on the next wave, the next moment of buoyancy, I crooked her leg, and showed her how to paddle, She backed off, so I told her I would do it, a little dog paddle just the way people learned to swim, and just the way other dogs did it. ... Ozzie was getting excited I could tell. A spark lit in her eyes. ... Before too long, we were swimming. ... Ozzie was swimming."

]]>

westinghouse goes for broke --5/12/2026

Tue, 12 May 2026 03:11:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from Empires of Light by Jill Jonnes. George Westinghouse, chief competitor to Thomas Edison, made a bold gamble for the 1893 World Fair:

“On Monday, May 16, George Westinghouse and Charles Terry arrived at the World's Fair's offices in the Rookery, a Burnham building on LaSalle Street, where almost two dozen men had assembled. Some were already nervously smoking cigars. Chief Burnham and the other members of the Committee on Grounds and Buildings were installed at a long table, where sat the sealed iron bid box. Sitting in other chairs were Captain Eugene Griffin, a second vice president for General Electric, and the firm's two local managers. Once Westinghouse and Terry were also seated, all waited expectantly as the bid box was unlocked and unsealed. Cigar smoke drifted about amid the low whispering. The final electrical joust was about to begin. Once again there were only two bids. General Electric's was read aloud first. Their new DC-only bid was $577,485, their new AC-only bid $480,694. As every man sitting in that Rookery office was well aware, these new General Electric bids were a shameless one-third the company's original $1,720,000 bid. There were various murmurings and men glancing at one another. Then, as the new Westinghouse bids were taken up to be read, silence descended, only the street noises filtering through. Westinghouse's bid for a combination of DC and AC was $499,559. The GE men squirmed and looked unhappy. Westinghouse was undercutting the trust. Westinghouse's AC offer for all ninety-two thousand lights was $399,000, $80,000 below the trust's best bid. Daniel H. Burnham, fair construction director and a forceful man of definite opinions, said promptly that the contract should go to Westinghouse. But the other committee members balked. One later memoir claimed that some were 'stockholders in the General Electric Company' still determined to see Coffin prevail. The committee retreated to a locked office. Hour after hour passed. The lights in the nearby buildings had gone dark. At 7:00 P.M., when the janitors began cleaning the halls and offices, the exhausted committee men agreed to reconvene the next morning. As they all left, Westinghouse said to a Daily Interocean reporter, 'There is not much money in the work at the figures I have made, but the advertisement will be a valuable one and I want it.'

“And so, Tuesday morning, as the lovely spring weather held, the joust resumed at the Rookery. Captain Griffin of GE sulkily insisted that George Westinghouse could not possibly carry out the contract, because, reported the Chicago Tribune, 'his patents...were involved in litigation. [GE] had injunction proceedings instituted against the use of the lamp which Mr. Westinghouse proposed to furnish.' Westinghouse laughed affably, responding, 'There wasn't the slightest question about his ability to furnish the lamps desired.' Another fair director complained in exasperation to the Daily Interocean, 'For many years the Edison Company contented itself with flooding the country with circulars trying to ridicule the Westinghouse system. One morning it suddenly awoke to find it had a competitor. Now it says that if the contract is given to Westinghouse an injunction will head him off.... One moment's thought will show how great a bluff is made.'

“However breezy Westinghouse might be, the issue of the Edison light bulb patent was deadly serious. The bitter legal war was in its final appeals, and every well-informed electrician, including Westinghouse, fully expected GE to win. What no one could know yet was whether GE would be judicially obliged to sell Edison bulbs to anyone but their own customers. Burnham agreed they should put off awarding the contract for a few days while they consulted the fair lawyers.

“In this Chicago battle of the War of the Electric Currents, Westinghouse was motivated not just by his longtime electrical dreams, but by his great dislike of GE's chief, Charles Coffin, an animosity that was completely mutual. One could easily imagine that Westinghouse would take great pleasure in denying Charles Coffin and GE the World's Fair contract, even at the lowball bids they were both now making. After all, if Coffin had been less grasping and gouging, the whole huge contract would have been his back in early April.

“On May 22, the committee once again summoned Westinghouse. by telegram, and once again he climbed aboard the Glen Eyre for the twelve-hour journey across Ohio and Indiana. Many friends urged him not to, undertake this vast· and perilous job, one where failure was a high and public probability. But sanguine as ever and wreathed in his electrical dreams, Westinghouse arrived at the Rookery the next afternoon. The lawyers had ruled in his favor, but now the committee was proposing to split the contract in two. George Westinghouse 'said he was the lowest bidder,' reported the Chicago Tribune, 'has first-class apparatus and should get the entire job.' He was not a man of half measures. When the truculent Captain Griffin again raised the light bulb patent issue, the committee asked if Westinghouse would ease their minds by providing a $1 million bond guaranteeing the contract. Certainly, Westinghouse said genially.

“Once more, the committee withdrew to wrangle. Hour after hour ticked by. Outside, the sky grew dark, and the noise of LaSalle Street down below subsided. Many cigars were smoked, and the room grew stale and stuffy. The electric lights came on in the Rookery. Finally, the committee agreed at 7:30 P.M. to vote. Quickly and unanimously, they bestowed their shimmering prize on George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company. A sore loser, Captain Griffin responded angrily, immediately threatening that when the light bulb patent ruling went their way, Westinghouse would "be entirely in our power. He will not be able to make his own lamps and he can only buy from us. We will not injure the fair, but we will not let him continue his contract.

Westinghouse in 1884

“As for Westinghouse, he did not gloat but picked up his black umbrella and prepared to leave, telling the newsmen only, 'I shall put in ten or twelve dynamos of 12,000 lamp capacity and furnish a clean-cut, first-class system. I have about 100,000 lamps, either completed or partly so, at the works, and there will be no difficulty in furnishing material. I am required to have between 5,000 and 10,000 lamps installed by the 1st of October. This is an easy task. There will be no difficulty in furnishing the entire plant by the time of the opening of the Bxposltion.' An easy task, Westinghouse said with his signature insouciance. Electrical Engineer wondered if Westinghouse would really go through with this latest reckless endeavor. After all, he first needed to ante up another $500,000 for his $1 million bond. 'Mr. Westinghouse may not care to put up so large a bond, and the amount does seem rather heavy, but he is not the kind of man to stop short after having gone so far. Amen.'

“The morning after George Westinghouse's return from Chicago, the 'Old Man,' as his workers called him, went straight to the company's machine shop and summoned E. S. McClelland, a top draftsman, to the front office. His employee of a dozen years appeared armed with a pad and pencil. McClelland, who had been amazed when his boss sailed off in the Glen Eyre for Chicago to seek this great electrical prize, now learned for the first time that his boss had–to everyone's astonishment–won the great contract. He also was learning what would be wanted for this gigantic Chicago World's Fair contract:

"Mr. Westinghouse: 'I want an engine.'

"Reply: 'Yes, sir.'

" '1,200 brake horse power.'

" 'Yes, sir,' with considerable trepidation.

" '200 revolutions per minute.' (Engines of that size usually run about 75 R. P. M.)

" 'Yes, sir,' with considerable consternation.

" '150 pounds per square inch boiler pressure, non condensing.'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'Splash lubrication.'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'Must go in such and such space.'

" 'Yes, sir.'

" 'I will be in again at 2:00 o'clock to see what you have.'

"'Exit Mr. Westinghouse,' said Mr. McClelland, 'leaving me in a daze. It is hard to describe the feeling of consternation that request caused. We were building 250 horse power engines [then].... A 1200 brake horse power engine to operate at 200 revolutions per minute seemed to me to be entirely out of all reason. Yet this was the task set before us. Mr. Westinghouse needed such an engine.' In fact, he needed many. The response of McClelland's boss in the drafting department was that Westinghouse was 'asking for the impossible and he just won't get it.' Yet all the draftsmen knew somehow they must produce some kind of an engine design by the afternoon, so they set to work. At 2:00 P.M., Westinghouse called to say he would not be by till the next morning. McClelland and another man stayed on in the drafting room till 2:00 A.M., striving to devise something they could show Westinghouse. The next day at dawn, very early, they all reassembled to look at this drawing, turning the drawing board .on its side for a better view. 'This setting of the board on end, strange as it may seem, gave us the solution to the problem.... As a vertical engine there was space to spare. When this solution flashed upon our minds the leading engine draftsman seemed to be electrified and became wildly enthusiastic.' Soon George Westinghouse strode in 'with his usual good-natured alertness and expectancy,' viewed the work with approval, and said, 'How soon may I have four of them?' So the work began on 'new and untried electrical machines and steam engines of a totally new design.'"

author: Jill Jonnes title: Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks date: page(s): 253-257

]]>

income taxes, tariffs, and henry george--5/11/2026

Mon, 11 May 2026 03:10:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from The Price of Democracy by Vanessa S. Williamson. American debates on the proper method of taxation:

“In a society so marred by extreme inequality, the appeal of instituting an income tax was self-evident. Public anger was stoked by journalists' and scholars' exposes of the new poverty and the new wealth–and especially by the revelation that the owners of immense fortunes paid next to nothing in taxes.

“In fact, the federal tax system exacerbated the rapid concentration of money and power. In the late nineteenth century, more than half of federal revenue came from the tariff, the schedule of duties applied to foreign goods imported to the United States. Tariffs raised prices, which hurt poor consumers, especially farmers who paid for protected goods yet received little benefit for the products they grew. The tariff also insulated domestic industries against foreign competitors, enriching the owners of the big corporations that were clustered in a handful of Northeastern states. Modern analyses suggest that the tariff redistributed to its beneficiaries as much as 8 percent of the nation's gross domestic product. But even at the time, the impact of the tariff was widely recognized. Political economist and lawyer Thomas Shearman made headlines in 1889 when he calculated that wealth in the United States was more unequal than in aristocratic England–and cast the blame on the tax system. 'In no other country,' Shearman wrote, 'has the burden of taxation been cast so exclusively upon the working class, or the machinery of public taxation been used so unscrupulously for private profit.' As muckraking journalist Charles Edward Russell put it, 'The root of the evil was the accursed tariff. Under its operation the wealth that should be for all was seized by the favored few.' For its role in corporate consolidation, the tariff became known as 'the mother of trusts.'

“Republicans from the industrial Northeast recognized the tariff's political weaknesses and worked to shore up support for it. They argued that the benefits of the tariff trickled down to industrial workers–but in an era of vicious strikebreaking, the idea that big business was looking out for its workers was not terribly convincing. Republicans also added duties to some farm goods, like wool, to protect agriculture as well as industry. On many products, however, American farmers could compete without trade protections, so this did little to muster support for the tariff. Most significantly, Republicans spent the embarrassingly large sums raised by the tariff on military pensions for Union war veterans, providing a safety net to hundreds of thousands of Americans decades before the welfare programs of the New Deal. 13 But even this policy was not enough to make the tariff widely popular. Union pensions did nothing to increase tariff support in the former Confederate South, or among recent immigrants in Northern cities. And if Union veterans were committed to protecting federal revenue, many were happy for that money to come from a more progressive tax than the tariff.

Georgist single tax poster published in The Public, a Chicago newspaper (c. 1910–1914)

“In the campaign to reduce or eliminate the tariff, the income tax was not the only tax proposal that found popular favor as an alternative source of revenue. By the early twentieth century, more than thirty states and the federal government had experimented with a tax on inheritance. Another proposal involved taxing lands held by speculators–an idea that had been popular with agrarians since the country's founding.

”No tax proposal, however, encouraged fanaticism quite like Henry George's 'single tax,' a proposal to replace all other taxes with a tax on the unimproved value of land. George's 1879 book on the topic, Progress and Poverty, sold millions of copies, inspired the formation of hundreds of 'Single Tax' clubs, and in 1886 pushed George to a solid second-place finish in the race for mayor of New York City (in which he outpolled the Republican, Theodore Roosevelt). Several utopian colonies were founded on the basis of the Georgist tax. The single tax was, in the words of historian Ajay Mehrotra, 'a kind of flypaper for social movements.'

“The single tax was a digression in the history of American taxation, but it was so popular that we should digress as well, and consider why a tax plan could provoke such fervor. There is nothing so terribly wrong with the variation on a property tax that was the sole demand of the Georgist movement; some localities impose a similar tax today. However, to balance one's entire fiscal edifice atop one narrow tax, particularly one applied to something as unstable as land values–that is where the Single Taxers tipped into crackpottery. But committed Georgists believed that the single tax was a panacea: a way to replace every other source of government revenue and singlehandedly eliminate poverty.

“What Georgism offered, other than the appeal of a silver bullet, was a tax that seemed to apply only to the portion of one's wealth that one did not 'earn.' All efforts to improve the land–with buildings or irrigation systems–went untaxed under George's plan. Taxes fell only on the value of the land, and no one could claim to have personally created that value. In rural America, the soil was a gift of nature (or a gift from God, to many religiously inclined 'Citizens). More prosaically, the value of a plot of farmland had everything to do with its access to the railroads and the markets. In the cities, the value of land was even more obviously tied to the society and economy that surrounded it–the roads and sewers, the parks and schools, the stores and neighbors. The emotional appeal of Georgism lay in a fundamental truth of the industrial world: that wealth was increasingly a social product. This reality, as we will see, was central to the fight for the income tax.

“The income tax never provoked monomaniacal zeal on the order of Georgism, but it had substantial advantages, including that it was far more closely tied to the taxpayer's ability to pay and it could raise vastly more money. From the 1870s onward, prominent economists were among the strongest proponents of an income tax. The income tax had also already been proven successful. Other countries had taxed income for decades; some states had also experimented with income taxes. A federal income tax was proposed as early as the War of 1812 and, of course, had served as an effective source of revenue during the Civil War.”

author: Vanessa S. Williamson title: The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History publisher: Basic Books date: page(s): 161-163

]]>

wes moore -- 5/8/2026

Fri, 08 May 2026 03:13:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore. "Governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, tells the true story of two kids with the same name: One went on to be a Rhodes Scholar, decorated combat veteran, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison."

"After kissing me good night for the second time, she sent me up to my room and sat on the couch. With a glance back, I saw her rub her eyes again and rest her head in her hands. People around us didn't think she was coping well with her husband's death. They thought she needed help, not just in raising the kids but in raising her spirits. Although we were surrounded by her longtime friends from college and my uncles and aunts from both sides of the family, it wasn't enough. She was losing her grip. She needed help only her parents could provide.

“A few mornings later, Mom woke up, made breakfast for us, and got Nikki and me off to school. Then she called her mother up in New York. Her mother had let her know that there would always be an open door for her in the Bronx if she needed it. But my mother had been determined to stick it out in the home she'd bought with her husband. Until now.

"Mom, if it's still all right, I think we need to move up there. I can't do this alone anymore.’

“My grandmother was thrilled. Before she even answered my mother, she called out to my grandfather, 'Joy and the kids are moving up to New York!’

“Three weeks later, Nikki, Shani, and I all stood outside our car, staring with something like disbelief at our now empty home. This was it. We were actually leaving Maryland.

“'All right, guys, load up,’ my mother cheerily yelled as she threw in one final bag and slammed shut the trunk of our lime green Ford Maverick. Nikki helped me get my seat belt done while my mother secured Shani in the car seat. Even as a kid, I could tell my mother's aggressive good cheer was for our benefit. Before we took off, she paused to take one final look at our house, the house she'd lived in for six years. It already felt like a past life.

“My grandparents weren't strangers to me; they'd spent quite a bit of time with us in Maryland. They were both recently retired–my grandfather from the ministry and my grandmother from twenty-six years as an elementary school teacher in the Bronx. I was excited by the idea of living with them; they spoiled us like crazy. But I was apprehensive about moving away from my friends, from the only world I'd known.

“My mother prepared us for the move by telling us about her wonderful childhood and the glories of the Bronx. She told us about the neighbors who always had a hot meal for you and looked out for you if your parents weren't around. She told us about the amazements to be found at the Bronx Zoo, which was only ten minutes away from our new home. She told us it was safe, that in all the time she'd lived there as a kid, she had not once experienced crime or violence. But when we broke off the interstate and started navigating the burned-out landscape of the Bronx, we could feel her energy shifting. Things had clearly changed.

“The Bronx is an amazing place, home to over a million people. The diversity of the borough is extraordinary: areas like the Italian immigrant-settled Country Club neighborhood were among the most affluent of the city but were only minutes away from the poorest congressional district in the nation. When my grandparents moved to the United States, in the 1950s, the South Bronx had already begun its transformation from a majority Jewish borough to one dominated by blacks and Latinos. When my mother grew up in the Bronx, despite rising poverty levels, the sense of family and community were strong. With every decade that had passed since she left the area, things had gotten worse. In 1977, when President Jimmy Carter visited the Bronx, he said it looked like ‘a war zone.’ Seven years later, we were moving back.

“We'd stopped at a red light at the corner of Paulding and Allerton avenues when we saw a woman walk up to a young boy standing on the corner. The woman was dressed in a blue shirt and faded blue shorts that showed off her scaly, ashy legs. She stumbled to the boy, with her right hand tightly gripping a wad of money. The boy, no older than sixteen, darted his head back and forth, apparently looking for cops, customers, or both. As she approached him and they started talking, the light turned green and my mother quickly hit the gas. Even craning my neck backward, I didn't see how that scene ended. We were now only two blocks away from our new home. When I turned back around, I could see the nervousness on my mother's face reflected in the rearview mirror. Moments later we arrived.

“When my grandparents moved to the United States, their first priority was to save enough money to buy this house on Paulding Avenue. To them a house meant much more than shelter; it was a stake in their new country. America allowed them to create a life they couldn't have dreamed of in their home countries of Jamaica and Cuba: Their plan had been to return overseas once they retired, but they couldn't bring themselves to leave. They sensed that they were needed here. Today was exactly the kind of day they'd been anticipating.

“The three-bedroom home always managed to somehow stretch itself when people were in need of a place to stay. The number of people who lived in the home at any given time fluctuated between five and nine, which made for tight living conditions. When we showed up that late summer day in 1984, we brought the number to seven.

“I walked up the stone stairs to see the front door open and my grandparents waiting there. My invitingly plump grandmother stood in the doorway, her hair in a light Jheri curl and a smile settled so firmly across her face it seemed permanently engraved. ‘Welcome home!’ she bellowed out to us in her Jamaican accent. She engulfed my entire body in her hug, folding me into her chest in a tight embrace. My grandfather stood directly behind her, waiting his turn to get at the grandchildren. My grandfather was a short man, no more than five foot six, but his presence dominated every room he entered. He was dark-skinned with a muscular frame that made him seem much younger than he was. People often compared him with his fellow man of the cloth Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but of course that didn't mean anything to me. His mustache tickled as he hugged me and kissed me on the cheek.

“After unloading the car, my mother began to tell my grandparents about what she had seen earlier, the woman buying the drugs from the young boy. She also told them about a telephone pole she'd noticed outside their house that had been converted into a makeshift memorial. There was a picture of a young girl taped to the pole, and sympathy cards and tiny stuffed animals were scattered around it. Signs saying WE LOVE YOU and SEE YOU IN HEAVEN were taped around the little girl's picture. Her name was April. The shrine had unsettled my mother.

“My grandparents told my mother about the changes that had been taking place in the neighborhood. As I sat next to her, trying to spin a basketball on my index finger, I heard my grandparents talk about how drugs and violence had slowly crept in. Fear and apathy had become the new norm in what had once been a close-knit community. They also talked about something I'd never heard of before. Crack.

“My grandmother left the table and went into the kitchen. She returned a few minutes later with a large pot of codfish and ackee, the official dish of Jamaica, and a large helping of grits. They had spent days preparing the dish in anticipation of our arrival, my grandfather serving as sous-chef, deboning the light, salty fish and chopping up the onions and peppers while my grandmother seasoned and cooked it to perfection. Retirement had been wonderfully relaxing for them. That was all over now.

“My grandparents, Rev. Dr. James Thomas and Winell Thomas, met when he was an eighteen-year-old ministerial student in a small Jamaican parish and she and her parents were newly arrived parishioners from Cuba. My grandmother's parents left Havana in the 1930s in search of work; at the time Jamaica was an island of relative prosperity amid the worldwide Great Depression. My great-grandparents loaded up on a boat in Havana Harbor with six-year-old Winell and prepared to create a new life in Jamaica.

“The two largest islands in the Caribbean were only ninety miles apart, and my great-grandparents planned to return quickly after a temporary stay in Jamaica to make some money. In fact, my grandmother's older sister, Lurlene, was left behind. But the family never went back to Cuba, and my grandmother never saw her sister again.

“When my maternal great-grandparents arrived in Jamaica, they searched for a church home. One Sunday, they entered Mount Horeb Church in St. James Parish and were immediately impressed by the young, dynamic pastor, Josiah Thomas. My grandmother, however, was even more struck by the pastor's son. Their friendship was quick and easy. As they got older, their love for each other developed; they were married in 1948.

“My grandfather had a dream to follow his father's footsteps and join the ministry. Since he could remember, he'd wanted to lead his own congregation. But to do it, he needed to complete school. His father used to tell him, ‘Being a leader in the faith is about more than simply proclaiming the Word, you must be a student of the Word.’ The first step along that road was to leave his new bride and his homeland to attend Lincoln University, a historically black college in Pennsylvania.

“When he arrived in the middle of November, he had his Jamaican wardrobe: shorts, short-sleeve shirts, and a few pairs of slacks for fancy occasions. On his first day on the picturesque campus, he walked briskly through the bracing Pennsylvania wind and fallen autumn leaves in open-toed sandals and shorts.

"'Hey, you, come here quickly!’

“The voice came from a man standing about thirty feet away. My grandfather hesitated–not only did he not know the man but also because it was too cold for small talk. The man jogged over to my grandfather, who speed-walked to meet him halfway.

"'Where are you from?’ the man asked. He wore an elegant black suit and black tie, and his demeanor was irresistibly cheerful, which put my grandfather at ease. His accent wasn't American, but my grandfather couldn't quite place it.

"'Jamaica,’ my grandfather proudly responded.

"'I knew you were not from here. We need to get you some appropriate clothes. Don't worry. When I first came here, I did the same thing.’

“The man took my grandfather to the store to buy him some warm clothes to wear until he could properly equip himself for the winter. The shopping excursion was the first of many encounters between my grandfather and this man, who would become a mentor, teacher, and friend to him. They spent many hours talking together about the changing world and the dawning of independence and liberation movements across the African Diaspora. He tried to convince my grandfather to go into politics, as he hoped to, and change the world through that means. But my grandfather insisted that God was calling him to serve through the ministry.

“The two men's paths diverged over time. The man who mentored–and clothed–my grandfather followed his dreams and made history. That man, Kwame Nkrumah, became the president of Ghana, the first black African president of an independent African nation.

“After completing his education, my grandfather moved to the South Bronx and brought his wife and kids with him. In 1952, my grandfather, son of a Presbyterian minister and now a Presbyterian minister himself, became the first black minister in the history of the Dutch Reformed Church. The Dutch Reformed Church, born in the Netherlands during the Reformation, had spread throughout Europe and around the world, and even eventually became the official religion of apartheid South Africa. My grandfather's pioneering ascent to the ministry was met with many cheers but some threats as well. He battled through them and made history.

“Thirty-two years later, he hadn't changed. He sat across from my mother and told her that the changes in the neighborhood had not diminished his belief in the community. He was determined to stick it out and do his part to heal what was broken in the Bronx.

“I continued to spin the ball on my finger.

“The first few days after the move, I became antsy. I missed my old friends and my old neighborhood. I had thought my mother's rules were strict but soon realized that my grandparents' were many times worse. They made it very clear that Paulding Avenue was their home and their rules would apply. When the streetlights went on, we had to be back home. All chores had to be done before we even thought about going outside to play. If we heard any gunfire or, as my grandmother called it, 'foolishness,' outside, we were to immediately return home, no matter when it was. These were not Bronx rules, these were West Indian rules. And my grandparents figured if these rules had helped their children successfully navigate the world, they would work on their grandkids too.”

author: Wes Moore title: The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates publisher: One World date: page(s): 37-42

]]>

the beatles' new haircuts -- 5/7/2026

Thu, 07 May 2026 03:20:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from The Last Days of John Lennon by James Patterson. A new group called the Beatles perform live for the BBC. They are sporting new haircuts:

"‘At least the BBC thinks we're good,’ George [Harrison] says. Brian's booked them to record in front of a live audience for a BBC radio program called Here We Go that will air them in a half-hour slot called ‘Teenagers Turn.’ It pays well and, even better, will reach millions of listeners.

"The boys arrive dressed in their new mohair suits, bright white shirts, and thin ties. Their trousers are trim, and they're wearing Chelsea boots fitted with Cuban heels. Their hair is no longer slicked back with grease but clean and combed forward in a strange ‘mop-top’ style. Astrid Kirchherr, Stuart’s fiancée, gave Stu the haircut first, and George liked it so much he asks her to cut his hair, too. Paul and John are more skeptical. 'John was always a little bit sarcastic,’ Astrid recalls, ‘so at first, even with the hairstyle, he couldn't stop laughing, but in the end he just joined in. That was John. That was typical.’ Which leaves only Pete still Brylcreemed, though Astrid points out, ‘Pete couldn't have the hairstyle anyway because he had curly hair.’

"Shocking new look aside, the Beatles are on their best behavior. They play four songs – ‘Hello Little Girl,’ Chuck Berry’s ‘Memphis,’ Roy Orbison’s ‘Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream),’ and the Marvelettes' ‘Please Mr. Postman’ – and win over the live audience of 250 young people, everyone cheering and clapping. As the band walks off, John feels happy, particularly with his singing on ‘Memphis’ and their take on ‘Please Mr. Postman’ which introduced the ‘Motown sound’ to much of the British listening public. Last summer, Bob Wooler had declared in Mersey Beat, ‘The Beatles were the stuff that screams were made of.’ Tonight, when they finished their last song, nearly all the girls had indeed screamed."

]]>

marcus aurelius -- 5/6/2026

Wed, 06 May 2026 02:25:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Advice from the Emperor Marcus Aurelius in his masterwork, Meditations:

“Take care that thou art not made into a Caesar, that thou art not dyed with this dye; for such things happen. Keep thyself then simple, good, pure, serious, free from affectation, a friend of justice, a worshipper of the gods, kind, affectionate, strenuous in all proper acts. Strive to continue to be such as philosophy wished to make thee. Reverence the gods, and help men. Short is life. There is only one fruit of this terrene life, a pious disposition and social acts. Do everything as a disciple of Antoninus. Remember his constancy in every act which was conformable to reason, and his evenness in all things, and his piety, and the serenity of his countenance, and his sweetness, and his disregard of empty fame, and his efforts to understand things; and how he would never let anything pass without having first most carefully examined it and clearly understood it; and how he bore with those who blamed him unjustly without blaming them in return; how he did nothing in a hurry; and how he listened not to calumnies, and how exact an examiner of manners and actions he was; and not given to reproach people, nor timid, nor suspicious, nor a sophist; and with how little he was satisfied, such as lodging, bed, dress, food, servants; and how laborious and patient; and how he was able on account of his sparing diet to hold out to the evening, not even requiring to relieve himself by any evacuations except at the usual hour; and his firmness and uniformity in his friendships; and how he tolerated freedom of speech in those who opposed his opinions; and the pleasure that he had when any man showed him anything better; and how pious he was without superstition. Imitate all this that thou mayest have as good a conscience, when thy last hour comes, as he had.

Aureus of Marcus Aurelius

“Return to thy sober senses and call thyself back; and when thou hast roused thyself from sleep and hast perceived that they were only dreams which troubled thee, now in thy waking hours look at these [the things about thee] as thou didst look at those [the dreams]."

author: Marcus Aurelius title: Meditations: A New Translation (Modern Library) publisher: Modern Library date: page(s): 107-109

]]>

the land mania--5/4/2026

Mon, 04 May 2026 03:17:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from Speculation Nation by Michael A. Blaakman. A "rage,” a "Vortex,” a “deranged" "madness,” a "ravaging flame”:

“If you were to visit the Monroe County clerk's office and begin to trace the title of my parents' house from their deed up the chain of previous owners, proceeding to a few other repositories as you continued back long before the property was a suburban lot, you'd eventually find that the first two white people to claim that land as property contracted to buy it from a revolutionary government in 1788 as part of a six-million-acre purchase. One, Oliver Phelps, a bumptious former tavernkeeper, provisioned the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War; the other, a fusty merchant named Nathaniel Gorham, cashed in on wartime privateering, succeeded John Hancock as president of the Continental Congress, and signed the U.S. Constitution.

"Those two men joined thousands of others in a surge of land speculation that began to swell during the War for Independence and crested in the 1790s, a dramatic historical process that swept up millions upon millions of acres from Maine to the Mississippi and from the Great Lakes to Georgia. Widely known but less widely understood, this development is rarely investigated by historians as a single, national event. To be sure, land speculation has been a theme throughout American history, from Puritan proprietors and Jamestown adventurers through the railroad barons of the Reconstruction era to a real-estate mogul in the twenty-first-century Oval Office. But land speculation in the 1780s and 1790s was a chapter apart, defined by its entanglement with revolutionary ideas, politics, and state formation. Throughout these two decades, thousands of speculators and dozens of land companies bought and sold huge tracts of land–recently expropriated from or even as yet unceded by its Indigenous owners–expecting to resell it for astronomical profits. This was a period when it seemed like anybody with capital or access was getting involved in the land business and when fortunes were being won and lost apparently overnight. It was an era when ambitious investors, the already wealthy as well as those on the make, mobilized public and private initiative to dispossess Native people and to convert their territories into private property at breathtaking speed and scale. The land market's promise seemed so certain that it led people to leverage large purchases upon the profits they expected to make from other speculations, still in progress. It led some failing financiers to try to speculate their way out of insolvency from within the walls of debtors' prison.

“By 1795, the passion for land speculation had reached the floor of Congress. Late that year, Robert Randall and Charles Whitney traveled to Philadelphia in hopes of finding a fortune. They hailed from Maryland and Vermont, respectively, and though their background and the origins of their partnership are unclear, their intentions were plain. In cahoots with a group of British merchants at Detroit, they sought to purchase from the federal government a right to the entire lower peninsula of present-day Michigan–some twenty million acres, all told, of Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi homelands. After several weeks of surreptitious lobbying, offering lawmakers money and shares of the land, they claimed to have clinched the support of a third of the House and most of the Senate. Corruption so bald could not survive the sunlight. The 'wild land-jobbing scheme' was laid bare on December 28, when several congressmen interrupted the chamber's proceedings to disclose the ongoing attempt at bribery. Whitney was quickly apprehended at a nearby tavern. Randall, loitering that day in the lobby of Congress Hall, at first attempted to flee. When the doorkeeper pointed him out to the city marshal for arrest, he seemed taken aback. After all, the United States was teeming with speculators; searching for powerful partners in the nation's capital, Randall and Whitney thought they had come to the right spot. The scandal consumed Congress for more than a week. The press, for its part, chalked the affair up to the spirit of the age, the 'phrenzy of speculation' that stretched across the republic. Randall and Whitney belonged to a 'speculating tribe' that numbered in the thousands, all of them chasing 'roman tick projects' by wheeling and dealing in tracts of land so large, so distant, and so unknown to the U.S. governments and citizens who claimed them that they could only be imagined in abstract terms.

1914 billboard criticizing speculation on land, which cites Henry George

“You might even call it a mania. And in the eighteenth century and ever since, many observers have done just that. In the 1780s and 1790s, the land business was a 'rage,' some said–a 'Vortex,' a 'deranged' 'madness,' a 'ravaging flame.' George Washington, himself a substantial speculator, marveled at how the burgeoning land business seemed to numb its participants' minds to numerical scale. 'Men in these times,' he noted in 1784, 'talk with as much facility of fifty, a hundred, and even 500,000 Acres as a Gentleman formerly would do of 1000 acres.' In a Philadelphia magazine in 1798, one writer framed this historical moment quite succinctly. 'The Land Mania is a frequent disease in every part of America,' he wrote, a bit tongue-in-cheek. 'It broke out with peculiar violence in most of the states immediately after the peace [in 1783], and has continued to be more or less the epidemic of our country ever since.'

“Such talk is telling evidence. It captures the ambition and frenzy of the era's land business, the promised profits of dispossession, the metastasizing complexity of land transactions, the soaring rhetoric and spin. When people reached for the language of 'mania,' they revealed not only that they saw the enthusiasm for land speculation as a single, national trend but also that they perceived its increased pull and prevalence as something new to their place in time–something they could not quite explain. In some ways, the puzzle inherent in this language persists to our own day. For although speculators have loomed large in histories of the revolutionary era, we lack an account that explains the unprecedented intensity, structural origins, and national scale of the land business itself. Historians often reproduce the era's language of mania to describe land speculation in the early republic. Now as then, this vocabulary marks the phenomenon as irrational, inexplicable, and ultimately unknowable.”

author: Michael A. Blaakman title: Speculation Nation: Land Mania in the Revolutionary American Republic publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press date: page(s): 2-5

]]>

beijing -- 5/1/2026

Fri, 01 May 2026 03:00:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Design of Cities by Edmund N. Bacon. The design of Beijing, or as it was once called by Westerners, Peking.

“Possibly the greatest single work of man on the face of the earth is Peking. This Chinese city, designed as the domicile of the Emperor, was intended to mark the center of the universe. The city is deeply enmeshed in ritualistic formulae and religious concepts which do not concern us now. Nevertheless, it is so brilliant in design that it provides a rich storehouse of ideas for the city of today.

“The old Chinese drawing, and the photograph of the Altar of Heaven, at left, and the curved canal in the Forbidden City, on the opposite page, give some indication of the experience of progressing along a Chinese movement axis. In full play are all the elements of space design that we have been discussing, from the analysis of the Guardi drawing on pages 24 to 27, to this point. If we study this progression in terms of the impact on the sensibilities of the participator as he moves through these spaces, the true nature of the design can be felt. Here are the joy of ascent and descent, the recession planes and the penetration in depth. In the roofs and the columns arc concavity and convexity. This is architecture that connects with the ground by multiple platforms and that cuts the sky in a never-ending series of undulating lines and curving shapes as the points in space move across one another in the view of the participator progressing up the central way.

“More clearly than elsewhere, the design is the sequence of progression. The buildings are all of a uniform modular system, the proportion and dimensions of structures increasing with the number of bays, according to definite rules of progression. With such rules the designer is forced to depend on means other than aggrandizement of architectural mass for effect.

“The picture of the Altar of Heaven, opposite, shows in pure form the use of architecture to modulate the experience of progression through space. The central axial movement is contained and directed not by architectural mass but by the design of the paving in a simple earth plane. The act of progressing into a more intensely sacred space is achieved, not by a wall which encloses a space, but by a free-standing gateway astride the paved articulated line of movement, its only function being to demarcate a point in movement or a moment in time in a chain of movement-experience.

“The Altar of Heaven itself, the most sacred place in China, where twice annually the Emperor made sacrifice, is the purest possible space experience. The three cylinders, each defined by one of the three tiers of ascending balustrades, set into motion vertical shafts of space articulation. The climax of the experience is the point of meeting of the stairway and the sky.

Temple of Heaven on an 1898 postcard

“The full-bodied 'baroque' form of the curving canal in the outer court of the Forbidden City, the 'River of Golden Water,' right, punctuated by the bulbous tops of the marble balustrades which line it, shows that within the rigid discipline of a traditional system of architecture, such as the Chinese imposed upon themselves, there was adequate room for rich expression, here, appropriately, in the realm of land design.

“The central design structure of Peking, emphasized in the total plan of the city, is shown opposite. The approach from the south across the plain leads to the central gateway in the great wall, which opens upon the paved way between the Temple of Agriculture to the left and the Temple of Heaven to the right. The design of these spaces, in turn, is excellently related to the central movement system, providing a series of perpendicular and parallel modulations in reference to it.

“The fundamental character of Peking is expressed by the central movement through four areas, each of which has its own particular color. The southern rectangle, with its enclosing walls, the Outer City, has buildings with black roofs. These prepare the eye for the fresh experience, after penetrating the wall surrounding the hollow square, the Inner City, of the brilliant blue-purple tile roofs and red doors with gold ornaments. Next comes the gate to the Imperial City, outlined in green. The rhythm of space contraction and expansion intensifies until the space is reached before the Wu Měn or Meridian Gate (shown on pages 244 and 245), heralding the Forbidden City, the home of the Emperor of China.

“From this point the experience of entering into the outer court with its curved canal, and finally the central court with the Throne Halls, is one of unbelievable color intensity. The yellow and gold roofs surrounding the blue sky create a sensation of architectural power which has no parallel. The progression moves across the northern leg of the moat enclosing the Forbidden City and up Coal Hill and down again, and on to the Drum Tower and the Bell Tower, where it expires before the northern city wall is reached.

“In actual fact, the size and mass of the Hall of Supreme Harmony, shown in the color photo on page 244, is no greater than that of many of the buildings encountered on the three-mile progression up the main axis from the outer gate. The principle of dominant mass, central to most Western monumental civic designs, is totally absent. Indeed, the Hall of Supreme Harmony is invisible except when seen from the central courtyard.

“The power of the experience lies in the utilization of anticipation and fulfillment, in the setting up of a rhythm of experiences in time, a sequence of sensation that keeps mounting in intensity. Space and color are the major modulators, and the climax is indeed an adequate one for the center of the kingdom.

The plan of Peking is probably the only plan of any city that can be enlarged from scale to scale, and yet at each scale, whatever its extent, can hold together as a total design. At each level the city asserts its own design coherence but contains within itself the seeds of a different design order that will emerge as dominant if the scale is enlarged or reduced.

“The drawing at left is an enlargement of the central axial element shown in the plan on the previous page. This extends from the gate at the entrance to the Imperial City to Coal Hill, which lies north of the Imperial Palace. As one moves through archways into walled courts and back into archways again, there is a clear rhythmic modulation of the northern axial movement based on openings and closings of space, with a systematic intensification of the rhythm as the throne is approached.

“There are cross axes and side units which counterfoil the central design. Although there is heavy axial balance, there is not a rigid axial symmetry; the balancing buildings may be quite different in design, and, beyond their formality in the central spaces, the water courses are allowed to meander freely within the formal areas.

“The rectangular moat enclosing the Forbidden City decisively cuts it off from the remainder of the urban complex, and provides a rich color element in its reflection of the red walls and yellowroofed pavilions along it.

“The enlargement, shown here at right, of the central palace space from the plan opposite provides a rich and superbly modulated design which has its own coherent qualities. The visitor to this area would have passed through the Meridian Gate, across the 'River of Golden Water' on one of the five bridges, and arrived at the Gate of Supreme Harmony shown at the bottom of this plan.

“The central system of design consists of three principal pavilions, the Hall of Supreme Harmony to the south, the Hall of Protecting Harmony to the north, and the square hall between, set on an H-shaped mound which is built in three tiers, each with its rich balustrade of white marble, punctuated by great gold-plated urns. The space in which the mound is located is divided into three zones by walls which cut across the mound. The earth forms, which are basic to the whole design, and the space modulation determined by the planes of the walls, each have their own independent but interrelated existence.

“Peking emphasizes the dominance of land-form design in great and extensive work. The levels of the land, the cutting of the land by channels of water, and the creation of land mounds at the climax, determine the architecture of the city. While the planes of the walls define space areas, the buildings, minor in mass, create points of repose and accomplishment.”

author: Edmund N. Bacon title: Design of Cities: Revised Edition publisher: Penguin Books date: page(s): 244-251

]]>

joyce, ulysses, and false ethnic purity -- 4/30/2026

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 03:20:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Around the World in 80 Books by David Damrosch. In his work, James Joyce's Dubliners cling to an artificial image of their island's ethnic purity, even with rampant, everyday evidence to the contrary:

"Having fled Ireland together with Nora Barnacle in 1904, [James] Joyce washed up in Trieste, teaching English as a second language. In 1907 he gave a public lecture on 'Irlanda, Isola dei Santi e dei Savi' (Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages). There he asserted that the Irish language derived from Phoenician; brought northward by 'the originators of trade and navigation.' Emphasizing the antiquity of Irish culture, Joyce declared that 'the Irish nation's insistence on developing its own culture by itself is not so much the demand of a young nation that wants to make good in the European concert as the demand of a very old nation to renew under new forms the glories of a past civilization'. Yet what distinguishes Irish civilization for Joyce is its ethnic hybridity: 'Do we not see that in Ireland the Danes, the Firbolgs, the Milesians from Spain, the Norman invaders, and the Anglo-Saxon settlers have united to form a new entity, one might say under the influence of a local deity?' Looking forward to Ireland's eventual independence from England (and, he hopes, from Roman Catholicism), Joyce returns in closing to the Greek world, asking, 'Is this country destined to resume its ancient position as the Hellas of the north some day?'.

Trieste circa 1907

"In the opening pages of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus's obnoxious roommate Buck Mulligan remarks on his 'absurd name, an ancient Greek!'. Looking out over Dublin Bay, he parodically translates the Victorian lyricism of Algernon Swinburne into Homeric epithets: 'God! he said quietly. Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks! I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalattal Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother.' Mulligan doesn't realize, though, that 'the original' isn't a single language at all, but a congeries of dialects: the 'wine-dark sea' would be thalassa in Homer's Ionic dialect, not thalatta as in Xenophon's Attic Greek. Joyce's Greece, like his Ireland or Walcott's Antilles, is a hybrid culture.

"Insular communities are often deeply suspicious of outsiders, as we've seen in Rosario Castellanos's Chiapas. Both Leopold and Molly Bloom are in some sense 'from away,' as people say on Mount Desert Island in Maine, where I was born -- a term that can apply there equally to people from Bangor or from Berlin. Though he's a born Dubliner, Bloom is the son of a Jewish immigrant from Hungary, while Molly grew up on Gibraltar, daughter of an Irish father and a mother of Spanish (and perhaps Jewish or Moorish) descent. Ignoring or resisting such hybridity, most of Joyce's Dubliners cling to an artificial image of their island's ethnic purity. In the second chapter, the schoolmaster Mr. Deasy declares that Ireland 'has the honour of being the only country which never persecuted the jews' -- for the simple reason that 'she never let them in'. Leopold Bloom is the embodiment of the ethnic variety that Mr. Deasy can't see, but even Bloom is a hybrid individual. Though everyone thinks of him as a Jew, as he himself does, we first see him frying pork kidneys for breakfast, and we later learn that only his father was Jewish, not his mother, and so he wouldn't be Jewish under Jewish law. On top of that, he's actually been baptized. His Judaism isn't even skin-deep, as he's never been circumcised.

"In his Trieste lecture, Joyce emphasized Ireland's ancient Celtic civilization, but he noted that it had been overwhelmed by centuries of invasions, from the Norse to the English. The Irish language is almost as dead in Joyce's Dublin as Arawak is on Walcott's Saint Lucia. A visiting English ethnographer, staying with Stephen and Mulligan in their Martello tower, confidently addresses an old milkwoman in Irish, only to find that she thinks he's speaking French. 'I'm ashamed I don't speak the language myself,' she confesses when he sets her straight; 'I'm told it's a grand language by them that knows'. With Gaelic lost outside Ireland's rural west, Joyce's Dubliners are caught between the stiff foreignness of British English and the liveliness of their demotic brogue. It is a mark of their outsider status that neither Bloom nor Stephen speaks in Irish English, though Stephen (and Joyce in turn) will precisely record the dialogue of their Irish characters, much as Walcott uses a creolized English to represent his characters' Antillean Creole, even as he writes his own brand of highly literary English."

]]>

transcenders -- 4/29/2026

Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:30:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from The Mattering Instinct by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. For a powerful type of personality labeled by the author as a "transcender," the need to matter to others is all-consuming:

“Short of lunacy, there is no greater sense of mattering than that experienced by transcenders.

“Transcenders, like socializers, seek their mattering in mattering to. Only the 'who' to whom they seek to matter isn't any other human or group of humans. Rather it's a transcendent presence believed to ground the being of all that is true in both the physical and moral spheres. A transcender's sense of mattering is grounded in a vision of a metaphysically fortified cosmos, conceived of as numinous, shot through with emanations of unlimited power, knowledge, justice, and–at least in some versions–mercy.

“The transcendent presence might be conceived along conventionally religious lines. In the words of the psalmist: 'The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge' (Psalm 19). Or the transcendent presence might be conceived in less religiously conventional terms: 'The universe is programmed to support your happiness, but not at some up-and-down, here-and-gone level. It's programmed to support your deep, abiding, fully actualized joy,' in the words of Marianne Williamson, an influential voice among those who identify as SBNR (spiritual but not religious), who received national attention when, in 2019, she garnered enough support for her candidacy for president of the United States to participate in the first two Democratic primary debates.

“So far as the mattering instinct is concerned, the difference between the psalmist and Marianne Williamson is less significant than the similarity. The all-important fact for any transcender is that the source of human mattering is embedded in the metaphysical grounding of all reality. Our own mattering is assured by our relationship to the transcendent presence whose own mattering is undeniable: For how could that which is responsible for all of existence not matter? The crux of human mattering, for the transcender, lies in the attitude of extrahuman reality. It cares about us.

William James in a séance with a spiritualist medium

“To experience as a transcender is to experience the cosmos with a heady fusion of awe and intimacy. The cosmos, while being an awe-inspiring more, is also domesticated: You feel at home in it. It was meant for you. The fusion can give rise to emotions that characterize the best of human relationships–overwhelming love and gratitude. In the language of the philosopher Martin Buber, the cosmos becomes a Thou rather than an It. And although the Thou exceeds your full knowledge, you yourself are fully seen and known by It: 'You have searched me and know me. There is not a word on my tongue but that Thou, oh Lord, know it well' (Psalm 139). Such transparency before transcendence can inspire fear, as the psalmist continues: 'Surely darkness will conceal me, night will provide me with cover. But darkness is not dark for Thou. Night is as light as day; darkness and light are the same.'

“But even though there is no hiding, you can never doubt how much you matter–cosmically matter, seen and known and, in many traditions, judged. The cosmos, in being a metaphysically fortified more, also renders the transcender a something more. Your life, which can't help meaning all the world to you, means something in the largest sense possible. You yourself, so fragile and tenuous, are implicated in the answer to the most profound of all metaphysical questions: Why is there something rather than nothing? That which answers the question purposefully created you.

“Since the subjective feeling of mattering is closely linked with the subjective feeling of meaningfulness, which is, in turn, linked with the subjective feeling of life satisfaction, the onslaught of psychological research demonstrating that the religious and the spiritual self-report higher levels of life satisfaction is hardly surprising. (Actually, the SBNR have an edge here, since they're not as prone to the negativity of guilt.) Sometimes this research is hawked as a reason to become a transcender, as if metaphysics could be sold to us, like membership in a health club.

“The transempirical nature of claims about a transcendent presence leaves ample room for faith to fill in the details. And faith, in turn, leaves ample room for a wide divergence of opinions about the nature of the transcendent presence that grounds reality and what it may want from us in the way of recognition and reverence.

“Here is yet another reason to be wary of those selling wholesale transcendence as a boost to life satisfaction. Faith, being exquisitely sensitive to the longings of the faithful, comes in many persuasions. I recall a tweet I saw back in 2014, in the triumphant days of Isis and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's declared caliphate. It was written by a young man who had left his native England to fight for Islam's ultimate triumph in the caliphate, and it testified to the exultant boost in his life satisfaction: 'I used to spend my days stacking shirts in Primark. Now POTUS trembles at my existence.'

“The very transcendence that renders the belief of transcenders so powerful a confirmation of their own mattering comes at a steep epistemic price. The epistemic uncertainty contained in the mattering instinct itself–we can't know that we objectively matter even as we can't help longing that we do–is mirrored in the transcender's response to the mattering instinct. The transcender can't know that their version of the cosmos is true even though they can't help longing that it is.

“In this sense, all transcenders, whether the psalmist, the jihad fighter, or Marianne Williamson, are alike in being cosmic petitioners. Their mattering is premised on reality's conforming to their vision of it. Doubters can be cosmic petitioners, believing that their mattering can be validated only by reality's containing their version of a transcendent presence, but are unsure of whether it does. Transcenders are cosmic petitioners who have sufficiently vanquished their doubts.

“The continent of the transcenders, with its powerful fusion of awe and intimacy, isn't a foreign land to me. This is where I was born and raised. I know what it's like to turn to God many times every day–in the blessing for waking up each morning–'I give thanks to you, living and eternal King, for you have returned my soul within me with compassion'–for every variety of food you eat, for putting on new clothes, for experiencing the beauties of nature-a rainbow, a lightning storm, my mother's rose garden in full bloom: 'Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has such things in His world.' I recited the blessing for receiving good news–'Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who is good and does good'–and also the blessing for receiving bad news–'Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, the true Judge.'

“To be a transcender is to believe that your personal existence has a role to play in the narrative of eternity. You would not be at all unless you had a role to play in the drama of all of existence. There is no greater mattering that you can conceive for yourself, short of imagining that you are yourself a transcendent being existing on an exalted plane beyond other mortals–in other words, short of lunacy. Compared to transcendent mattering, any other sense of mattering limps far behind, which again explains why psychologists keep producing data showing that the religious and spiritual report comparatively higher levels of life satisfaction.

“Is it any wonder then that, given the mattering instinct, the continent of the transcenders powerfully attracts us? If the cosmos were designed so as to best minister to the longing that defines us, then surely it would be the cosmos that transcenders, in all their differences, believe it to be: such as to confer cosmic mattering on us. Forget the philosophers' arguments for God's existence–the cosmological argument (arguing for God as the necessary first cause); the teleological argument (arguing that the design and order of the universe entails an intelligent designer); the ontological argument (arguing that God's existence is entailed by his definition); the moral argument (arguing for God as the necessary grounding of morality). Arguments for God are like arguments for why you love your children. They are arguments that are concocted after the fact–the fact being how well belief in a transcendent presence ministers to the longing to matter. This ministering doesn't show that transcenders have it wrong–but nor does it show that they have it right."

author: Rebecca Newberger Goldstein title: The Mattering Instinct: How Our Deepest Longing Drives Us and Divides Us publisher: Liveright date: page(s): 193-198

]]>

madero and zapata--4/28/2026

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 02:51:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from Mexico by Paul Gillingham. Relations between the victorious revolutionaries Francisco Madero and Emiliano Zapata after the signing of the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez, the document that ended that revolution:

“Madero won in a landslide in October and then ruled for just over a year amid the rubble of central power. His progress southward after signing the Treaty of Ciudad Juárez was a triumphant procession; by one account nearly half the population of Mexico City turned out to greet him on June 7. So, unpropitiously, did one of the valley's frequent earthquakes. Madero was doomed from the start by the botched peace treaty and the politics that made it, one of fundamental division between those who fought the revolution and those who ruled afterward. Madero didn't take over as president until November, so he spent the first months in Mexico City with great responsibility and little power. In that time the pattern for the rest of his regime was set: in the cities, subversion by Porfirian survivors, armed with a newly free press; in an embittered countryside, wars with ex-allies.

“The two were linked. Riots broke out across Mexico in the weeks after the treaty signing as local revolutionaries realized that neither Porfirian officials nor Porfirian property boundaries would move. The Terrazas would come home and their peons would still get paid fifty centavos a day in scrip for the company store. Contracts that caciques had taken from small businessmen like Orozco remained valid. Soldiers in places like Puebla were still ready to shoot protesters, as they did with machine guns in July, surpassing the death tolls of the great Porfirian massacres at Cananea and Río Blanco. Peasants in Morelos who took their lands back from planters were criminalized. Even in Coahuila, where Madero had the local knowledge to know better, federal soldiers were favored over local militiamen, hacendados over peasants, family and friends over the upwardly mobile. Three weeks after Madero took office Emiliano Zapata summed up the widespread sense of betrayal.

"The so-called Chief of the Liberating Revolution of Mexico, Don Francisco I. Madero, did not bring to a happy end the revolution which he gloriously initiated with the help of God and the pueblo, since he left standing most of the governing powers and corrupt elements of oppression of the dictatorial government of Porfirio Diaz ... [while] the immense majority of Mexican pueblos and citizens are owners of no more than the land they walk on, suffering the horrors of poverty.

Francisco Madero arriving in Pachuca in 1912

“Zapata was in many ways the ideal rural Maderista. He was thirty; of impeccable liberal stock, his ancestors fighters against the Spanish, the conservatives, and the French. The family were rich smallholders and traders in the village of Anenecuilco. They were important in mediating between a peasant world stocked by countryfolk they understood and a broader world that they made comprehensible. His elder brother Eufemia was, like so many other revolutionaries, a muleteer, with the regional networks of merchants and remote villages that that implied. Emiliano had also dabbled as a muleteer and bred horses; he had been as far as Mexico City; where he briefly looked after the stables of a big planter, Díaz's son-in-law Ignacio de la Torrey Mier. He had taken a minor part in a failed gubernatorial campaign. When he went back to Anenecuilco in 1909, he was elected president of the village council.

“Emiliano Zapata was more than a local worthy; he had the experience and legitimacy of a fugitive, arrested at seventeen for protesting against a neighboring hacienda's land grab. He was charismatic, an . excellent horseman who despite showy, silver-trimmed riding clothes remained a straightforward man who enjoyed women, cockfights, and corridas. The combination made him a useful leader as Morelos's villages disappeared beneath the seas of sugarcane, and in the spring of 1910, with maize planting urgent, he organized the occupation of ancestral fields taken over by the neighboring hacienda. By late autumn he was adjudicating land disputes at the municipal level in Villa de Ayala, a village defense fund supporting a growing militia, the authorities intimidated into acquiescence. In late November the Zapatistas began conspiring to join Madero's revolution; in March 1911 they finally did. In May they took the major town of Cuautla and then, the war supposedly won, began the business of agrarian reform. Peasants with guns took over hacienda fields, and Zapata, chief of the revolutionary army in Morelos, backed them up.

“A Maderista regime with a chance of working would have confirmed Zapata in power, allowed the people of Morelos to elect him governor, and granted him the autonomy to administer institutional land reform. But in the summer of 1911 Madero couldn't support Zapata, as this would have undermined reconciliation with the enduring Porfirians in government; he could only try and fail at mediation. President León de la Barra appointed first a planter and then a federal policeman to the governorship, sent in the counterinsurgency veteran General Victoriano Huerta, canceled the state elections, and declared martial law. Madero tried to negotiate by going to Morelos. He was not as well-meaningly myopic as all that, and knew that he was witnessing a microcosm of events across Mexico. On August 25 he wrote to León de la Barra with a list of complaints. Soldiers had jailed revolutionaries in Guadalajara, and Porfirian state legislatures had toppled revolutionary governors in Aguascalientes and Tlaxcala. Across Mexico interim governors were treating revolutionaries with contempt and violence as they took away their guns; of their triumphant forces only forty-eight hundred had been allowed to remain in arms; meanwhile Leon de la Barra's inactivity was allowing reyistas (supporters of Bernardo Reyes) to prepare counterrevolution. Madero ended with a threat and a demand: León de la Barra should remember the revolution's power and sack the hardline interior minister Alberto García Granados. Otherwise a civil war, for which he himself would prepare, was 'almost certain.'

“Yet in the end he backed the interim government. He had already supported the dismissal of Emilio Vázquez Gómez, the cabinet's main defender of the popular revolutionaries. In mid-August Huerta launched an offensive, burning ranches and executing more than sixty people. Yet as late as August 27, Zapata was still proclaiming loyalty. Only when the attorney general issued an arrest warrant did Zapata finally take to the mountains with his followers, growing in number and identifying themselves as rebel Zapatistas; the government called them 'ridiculously pretentious bandits.'

“Bandido and abigeo, cattle rustler, were terms long used to delegitimize rebels, branding them thieves–abigeos being the sort of thieves countryfolk particularly loathed–instead of political opponents. The Zapatista rebellion was the first of three such risings against the new regime, all branded banditry, all overtly political. In November the Zapatistas made the distinction clear with a manifesto, the Plan de Ayala, which called for peasants to get their lands back and for científicos and caciques to lose their own should they get in the way. Madero was to step down in favor of Pascual Orozco. In December they were followed in Oaxaca by the mayor of juchitan–a troublesome city, fiercely autonomous–Che Gomez, who led five thousand men into renewed rebellion. Once again Madero tried to mediate and failed, the governor murdering Gomez–the classic ley fuga, 'shot while running away' – as he prepared for talks with the president. In February disillusioned Maderistas briefly took Ciudad Juárez. And among multiple smaller outbursts–some manned by proper bandits, scofflaw opportunists–the most serious came in March 1912, when Orozco rebelled in Chihuahua."

author: Paul Gillingham title: Mexico: A 500-Year History publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press date: page(s): 374-377

]]>

debt and the constitution--4/27/2026

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 02:12:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from The Price of Democracy by Vanessa S. Williamson. The road to the U.S. Constitution began with debt.

The colonists went to war—war against a global superpower—with almost no central government to speak of, and no national taxing capacity at all. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not have the power to tax. Instead, Congress had to go hat in hand to the states, making 'requisitions' with which the states only partially complied. Inefficient tax collection was the norm across the colonies, and by the end of 1777, only half of the states had passed any tax legislation. Almost all wars are fought on credit, but America's revolutionaries really racked up the IOUs.

“Tax revenues were low in part because many states were only capable of applying simple, regressive taxes. Taxes proportionate to wealth would have been both less burdensome and more productive, and many poorer Americans demanded such a system. When wealthy Pennsylvanians opted out of the militia by paying a fine, militiamen petitioned for each draft dodger's payment to be calculated 'in proportion to his Estate.' But wealth-proportionate taxation was beyond early America's capacities—both because the wealthy did not want to pay and, relatedly, because many state governments, especially in the South, were simply not up to the job of assessing property. Congress had originally intended to allocate its requisitions based on the states' land values but was obliged to fall back on a population-based system.

“Popular demands for more egalitarian taxation would come to define not only the politics of the postwar period but the framework of American government for the centuries to come. In the meantime, however, taxes could not even begin to meet the needs of the war. 'The laying of Imposts unless from the last Necessity,' said Robert Morris, the crafty Pennsylvania merchant who served as the war's superintendent of finance, 'would have been Madness.' So the Revolutionary War was paid for by issuing currency and taking on debt.

Scene at the Signing of the Constitution of the United States on September 17, 1787, a 1940 portrait by Howard Chandler Christy

“About two-thirds of the cost of the war was funded through federal and state-issued 'fiat money.' This paper currency, not backed by gold or silver, had been used successfully in the colonies before, including to finance the American engagement in the Seven Years' War. The risk of this approach was inflation. Some amount of currency depreciation was not necessarily a problem; it could even work as a progressive, real-time 'tax on money,' as Benjamin Franklin argued. But the American governments usually printed far too much and taxed far too little. With such a glut on the market, the value of money plummeted. The value of the Continental dollar dropped by two-thirds in 1777 and then to nearly nothing. A barber in Philadelphia reputedly used the dollars as wallpaper.

“The rest of the cost of the war was financed by public debt. Millions were owed to foreign creditors, and tens of millions were owed domestically. This debt was held in numerous forms: government bonds and certificates, each with its own intricate repayment schemes; securities given to soldiers in lieu of pay; and IOUs to farmers, artisans, and merchants who had seen their goods requisitioned. Poorer people could rarely afford to hold on to their debt papers. Some soldiers sold their securities as soon as they were issued, just so they could afford to get home from the war. But speculators were willing to invest, for pennies on the dollar, with the hope of spectacular gains should the government eventually honor the debts at face value.

“And that was the key question: Could the postwar government impose enough taxes to pay off its debts? The market in government debt spiked and crashed with investors' confidence in the tax system. But if you had the capital to invest, the risks of buying were not as high as they might seem. Elites sometimes had inside information about which forms of debt were likely to get their interest paid. Even if a government scaled down its repayment, as sometimes occurred, there were profits to be made if the government paid more than the buyer had staked.

“As domestic debt consolidated in the hands of those with the money to speculate, the very richest people in America became the primary beneficiaries of debt repayment. Less than a decade after the Revolutionary War, nine in ten government securities were no longer in the hands of their original owners, and just 2 percent of Americans owned bonds. In Pennsylvania, 96 percent of all state war debt belonged to 434 people, with more than 40 percent held by just 28 men. In Rhode Island, more than a third of the $800,000-plus in federal bonds was owned by 9 people.

“Paying down this debt required taxation. The easiest source of revenue would have been tariffs, and Congress twice sought to enact a national 5 percent impost on foreign goods. But the Articles of Confederation required unanimous consent of the states for such a policy, and at least one state was always in opposition to each variation of the plan. So state governments had to 'open the Purses of the People,' as war financier Robert Morris was blunt enough to say. And the people's purses were very near empty.”

author: Vanessa S. Williamson title: The Price of Democracy: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History publisher: Basic Books date: page(s): 39-41

]]>

the football coach--4/24/2026

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 02:51:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from Football by Chuck Klosterman. The cliché of the football coach:

“With the possible exception of used-car salesmen, there's no vocational stereotype quite as fixed as that of a football coach. There are endless examples of real-life coaches who contradict this stereotype, but almost none in fiction, where a coach's personality is always the same. Negative depictions of football coaches (Dazed and Confused, Varsity Blues, The Slaughter Rule) present characters with the same core sensibilities as those depicted positively (Eric Taylor in Friday Night Lights, Ted Lasso in Ted Lasso). Even when a portrayal strives for ambivalence (as with Al Pacino in Any Given Sunday), the caricature stays locked. Craig T. Nelson played a problematic antagonist in the movie All the Right Moves and an affable protagonist in the TV sitcom Coach without changing his baseline persona at all. There are certain traits all football coaches are expected to possess: They're demanding, unapproachable, and obsessed with detail. They are patriarchal realists with juvenile interests. They're emotional, but only demonstrative when the emotion is anger or pride. They refuse to engage with hypothetical questions. They work long hours and are immune to inclement weather. In the morning, they drink whole milk with their kids. In the evening, they drink beer from aluminum cans, alone on the couch. They constantly get fired and are never surprised when it happens. Most critically, they are unsentimentally mired in the past-mistrustful of modernity and indifferent toward the future. Like Tony Soprano, they are history buffs who hate nostalgia; instead of seeing the past as something to remember, they see it as the way things should continue to be done.

“What makes this caricature significant is the begrudging acceptance that all of these qualities are necessary, but only in combination and only if possessed by a man whose job is coaching football. It is hard to understand how and why that happened. When a youngish coach like Mike McDaniel or Brandon Staley doesn't fit the archetype, the genuine details of his personality receive less attention than the blanket categorization that he 'doesn't come across like a traditional football coach,' an optimistic description on the day he gets hired and a pejorative explanation on the day he gets fired. The image matters more than the resume, even when the resume is genuine. When Kamala Harris was running for president in 2024 and selected Minnesota governor Tim Walz as her running mate, it was partially because Walz was once employed as an assistant high school football coach for Mankato West High School. During preelection rallies, Harris referred to Walz as 'coach' more regularly than she called him 'governor,' and it became impossible to find any long profile about Walz that didn't note this specific aspect of his biography. In theory, the partnership was supposed to help Harris tap into male voting blocs. In practice, it destroyed her credibility among the specific demographic she wanted to persuade. Walz wasn't pretending; he really was a former football coach. He patterned himself after Nebraska's Tom Osborne, implemented a 4-4 defensive attack, and won a state title. But Walz only seemed like a football coach to voters with no preexisting relationship to football. His image embodied the liberal conception of nontoxic masculinity, a reverse Margaret Thatcher.

Nick Saban was the head coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide football team from 2007 to 2023.

“What has happened, it seems, is that the meaning of 'football coach' has adopted an unusually conflicted taxonomy. As a generic term for a faceless figure, the connotation is bad: The football coach is a retrograde bully, a nonintellectual devoid of empathy. In a more functional scenario, the connotation is good: A football coach gets things done and leads by example. But in a specific sense, when the coach is a real person and not an abstract idea, the negative traits of the generic image become the positive traits of the functional image. A football coach is old-fashioned on purpose, because he understands that objective truths don't change. A football coach is not intellectual, but only because he's smart enough to realize you can't learn to plow by reading a book. A football coach is a hard man who believes pain is weakness leaving the body, and what is now considered bullying is what he classifies as motivating. What's crazy is that football coaches (and particularly assistant coaches) who embody problematic traits tend to have longer careers than coaches who do not, even if they experience less success. A traditional coach is seen as an asset even when he loses. A nontraditional coach must win to survive.

“In the civilian world, a football coach is granted the status of Colonel Nathan R. Jessep, Jack Nicholson's character from A Few Good Men. Jessep throws around terse aphorisms like 'You want me on that wall' and 'You need me on that wall' and 'You can't handle the truth.' He's the bad guy in the movie, a chunk of human garbage, but everyone secretly fears he might have a point. Iessep's contention is that certain hard things can only be achieved through the old ways, even if those ways conflict with what society prefers. In A Few Good Men, such thinking results in a murder, a suicide, and a prison sentence. But the story's subtextual lesson is perhaps more troubling: The reason [essep's truth can't be handled is because it's an immoral truth, and the prospect of something both necessary and immoral requires too much cognitive dissonance to casually accept. Such problems can, however, be considered through the many [essep-like men who coach football, where the stakes are lower but the song remains the same.”

author: Chuck Klosterman title: Football publisher: Penguin Press date: page(s): 159-161

]]>

leaving on a jet plane -- 4/23/2026

Thu, 23 Apr 2026 03:20:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Take Me Home: An Autobiography by John Denver and Arthur Tobier. In 1966, John Denver wrote the song "Leaving on a Jet Plane." It was a time when he was not in a relationship, and so the song was more a projection for the love he hoped to have, rather than one he already had:

"The money continued to be a problem in those days and I spent a lot of nights in airports. In Chicago one night, I couldn't afford the twenty-dollar cab ride in from O'Hare and the hotel, so I occupied a chair in the terminal. I remember it being such a long, cold night. It seems to me I had similar moments at Newark and Kennedy airports: short on funds, sleeping in chairs instead of beds. If ever I felt needy, it was during this period.

"The worst time was when I had tonsillitis during a three- or four-day layover in Manhattan. There was no one around to rescue me, and I was down to my last thirty-five cents. I had been staying at the Great Northern Hotel, thinking that I simply had a terrible cold. Finally on Sunday, I had to go to the emergency room at Roosevelt Hospital to get something for the pain. The resident on duty wanted to admit me for a tonsillectomy, but I refused; it didn't feel right. I wanted to wait to talk with Milt in the morning. About two A.M. I spent the thirty-five cents on a milk shake; I couldn't take the pain any longer. That was the only thing that got me through the night.

"We had a couple of weeks to kill after that second engagement at the Cellar Door and, having no place in particular to go, I stayed around Washington. I had a lot of friends in the area and one of them, Jim Cunningham, invited me to stay with him and his roommate at their place in Virginia. I was beginning to forget what it felt like to have a settled life. In Chicago that summer, finding myself with some money in the bank, I'd bought a Triumph 500 motorcycle -- if Dad wasn't going to honor me for my success, I'd do it myself -- which I drove back to Washington. I felt it lent me an air of being a man in control of his own destiny. I was recording, I was performing, I was on my own, and I had wheels again.

"I kept busy those two weeks doing things with friends, letting certain feelings work their way to the surface. One night, when Jim and his roommate went to a party, I decided to stay put and started out the evening working on an oil painting. I'd gotten interested in painting while studying architecture in college. I was playing around with an idea. I had a six-pack of beer and a couple of sandwiches. And then I picked up my guitar and wrote a song with my soul wide open and my mind picturing the scene as if it stood before me, real enough to touch. I called it 'Oh, Babe, I Hate to Go.'

"I wrote the song not so much out of the experience of feeling that way for someone, as out of the longing to have someone to love. When I got through, I knew I'd written my best song yet. It was so exciting that, late as it was, I called Andy Poole, a friend who lived in the District, roused her from her sleep, and rode the Triumph over to her place to sing it for her. She was really knocked out by it, as were a few other people I sang it for."

]]>

covid!--4/22/2026

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:21:00 -0400

Today's selection-- from Air-Borne by Carl Zimmer. The airborne transmission of disease:

“Two weeks after the March 10 rehearsal, the World Health Organization swatted down that notion. On their Twitter account, the agency wrote:

"FACT: #COVID19 is NOT airborne.

"The #coronavirus is mainly transmitted through droplets generated when an infected person coughs, sneezes or speaks.

"To protect yourself:

"keep 1m distance from others
disinfect surfaces frequently
wash/rub your 👐
avoid touching your 👁️👃👄

"The day after that tweet, the Skagit Valley Chorale outbreak became international news. A story in the Los Angeles Times drew the world's attention to the singing group nestled in a valley that wasn't known for much besides an annual tulip festival. CNN interviewed Burdick about the experience. Strangers sent a blast of hate mail. They said the singers had blood on their hands.

"The first lesson people took from the Skagit Valley Chorale outbreak was just how easily one person could infect many others. But in the months that followed, Ruth Backlund and her fellow survivors agreed to collaborate on a scientific study that helped establish something just as important. Contrary to what WHO claimed, the study concluded Covid-19 was airborne.

“I am a journalist, and diseases are one of my beats. I became aware of the new virus in early January 2020, while it was still in China. By late January, a few scientists were predicting a pandemic. I started warning my friends to brace for a possible disaster. Like a paranoid doomsday prepper, I advised them to store extra toilet paper and canned food. When someone called me to plan a meeting in June, I told him meetings might not exist in June.

“I was right in some ways and very wrong in others. Like the Skagit Valley Chorale, I did not concern myself with the air. If I stayed a few feet away from strangers, I'd be safe from any viruses they coughed or sneezed. The droplets they expelled would fall to the floor like ball bearings. The most worrisome risk seemed to lurk on surfaces: the skin of my hands, which I washed many times a day; the grocery bags that I disinfected with Clorox wipes.

“Over the following months, I absorbed the growing consensus that Covid-19 was in fact airborne. As I recognized that floating droplets could transmit the virus from one person to another, I traded Clorox wipes for a carbon dioxide monitor. Masks became a staple. I also began to think about the air differently, as a gaseous ocean in which we all live, which infiltrates our bodies, which our own bodies transform and then return to the great transparent sea, that contains exhaled viruses that can then be inhaled. But I was also left with a question: how could such a fundamental mystery about the worst public health disaster in a century go unsolved for so long?

Common measures implemented to prevent the spread of the virus

“Once the pandemic passed its peak-after most people on Earth got infected, vaccinated, or both-I started looking for an answer. It became clear that for thousands of years the atmosphere had been an intimate, enveloping mystery. For hundreds of generations, scholars and physicians had claimed the air itself could turn dangerous. They gave bad air an assortment of names, such as miasma. Miasmas could be caused by the stars or swamps; they could spread down a street or float for hundreds of miles. When modern Western medicine took shape in the late 1800s, scientists and doctors alike tossed miasmas aside, treating them like an embarrassing relic of the Dark Ages, a concept with as much value to medicine as bleeding patients. They knew that germs spread diseases, and they knew that germs spread primarily through food, water, sex, and touch, as well as through coughs and sneezes. Germs were not airborne.

“But in the 1930s, a few scientists challenged this consensus. They argued that diseases could indeed spread on currents, that germs could float for hours like smoke. They recognized that airborne pathogens posed a fundamentally different threat than the one posed by short-range coughs and sneezes. They argued that some of the worst diseases known to humanity, such as tuberculosis and influenza, spread this way. Those scientists helped create a new field: the science of airborne life. They called it aerobiology.

“The aerobiologists were a motley crew. As some tracked pathogens floating inside schools and subways, others caught microbes soaring through the sky. They dazzled the world by finding spores as high as the stratosphere. The founders of aerobiology hoped their new science would unify all life of the air, whether indoors or outdoors, and make clear that the airborne diseases that afflict us are just a few species among a vast floating menagerie.

“Today, aerobiologists look at the atmosphere as one of the three great habitats of life. It didn't start out that way: when the Earth formed 4.7 billion years ago, a blanket of lifeless air formed from the gases hissing out of the molten planet. Life started off aquatic–some theories point to the young ocean as its nursery, others to freshwater ponds–but it did not stay restricted to water for long. Waves sprayed droplets containing bacteria and viruses into the air. About 2 billion years ago, the ancestors of algae and other single-celled forms of life also leaped from the water and traveled for hundreds or thousands of miles.

“When life spread to land, the air filled with new species. The winds scattered mats of terrestrial microbes, and then plants and fungi began releasing spores into the wind. Later, some plants evolved flowers that released pollen grains. Their airborne journeys became part of the recipe for their enormous evolutionary success. The greening land also lured animals ashore. To get their oxygen, they adapted to breathing air rather than pumping water through gills. And then some animals–insects first, then birds and bats–evolved to move through the air, with leaping legs and flapping wings.

“The animals became, in turn, hosts to another kind of airborne life: pathogens that floated from one host to another. Hantaviruses, for instance, infect rodents and then escape in their urine and saliva. On the ground they can survive in dried dust. Days later, a breeze can pick up hantaviruses and carry them into the nose of another rodent visiting the same spot, causing a fresh infection.

“Other pathogens turned the lungs of air-breathing animals into both a home and a launching pad. They get drawn into a host with an inhaled breath. Animals often react to a respiratory infection with an onslaught of immune cells and inflammation. This attack leaves an extra supply of mucus in the airway. To clear it out, the animals will use their lungs to deliver a powerful cough or sneeze. The contaminated mucus droplets can then strike other animals or contaminate the ground. But even regular breathing can be enough to spread some microbes. When an animal exhales air, the outgoing flow pulls droplets off the moist walls of the lungs, like a breeze passing over the ocean. Those droplets can evaporate down to droplet nuclei and float away.

“Airborne diseases also took advantage of the social lives of animals. As some species evolved to live in close groups–in nests, burrows, flocks, and herds–they made it easier for a cloud of exhaled pathogens to infect a new host. It's likely that airborne diseases have fared best among animals that live together. If a solitary creature breathes out microbe-laden droplets, they may fail to reach another member of its species before they fall to the ground or get damaged by sunlight. In a herd or a den, a sick animal can release clouds of pathogens that have better odds of getting inhaled by another nearby host.

“Measles, the most infectious pathogen ever found, belongs to a family of viruses that typically infect grazing mammals. Some infect seals. While seals spend much of their lives out at sea, they also haul out onto beaches where, huddling together in groups, they mate, raise their young, and breathe viruses on one another. Dolphins get their own form of measles too. While they never come ashore, they still have lungs and breathe through blowholes–a legacy of their terrestrial ancestors, which lived on land 50 million years ago. Swimming in pods, they surface together to exhale blasts of air and suck in new ones. The measles virus takes an airborne hop before the dolphins dive underwater again.

“When aerobiology emerged in the 1930s, it generated great excitement, but within a few years it faltered. In World War II, the United States and other countries recruited aerobiologists to make biological weapons. And when the war ended, the aerobiologists kept on growing pathogens to wipe out cities and starve nations. A shroud of secrecy fell across much of aerobiology. Even today, the science is not entirely free of it.

“In those postwar years, some aerobiologists tried to persuade public health officials to take the threat of airborne infection seriously. They largely failed. Infectious disease experts who led the fight against outbreaks and prepared for the emergence of new diseases mostly ignored the aerobiologists, even when it meant accepting some basic mistakes about the physics of air.

“The Covid-19 pandemic finally rattled that consensus. In so doing, it provided an opportunity to rethink our history with the air. The Covid-19 pandemic was not a fluke. It belongs to a deep history of airborne life, one that has adapted with astonishing efficiency to our species's rapid rise–from the dawn of agriculture ten thousand years ago to the rise of cities, to the Industrial Revolution, and now to the twenty-first century's megacities and decimated wilderness. SARS-CoV-2 is only one species in an airborne habitat that we largely ignore, but would do well to understand.”

author: Carl Zimmer title: Air-Borne: The Hidden History of the Life We Breathe publisher: Dutton date: page(s): xx-xxiv

]]>

the leading edge of rapid aging--4/21/2026

Tue, 21 Apr 2026 02:29:00 -0400

Today's selection--from Asia's Aging Security by Andrew Oros. Northeast Asia’s rapidly aging democracies:

“Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan face the most dramatic aging and shrinking populations in the Indo-Pacific in the 2020s, yet, to date, none have moved in the direction of reducing their military capabilities or readiness due to their rapid aging.

“The locus of rapid aging, population shrinkage, and security concerns in the world is Northeast Asia. In this region, three rapidly aging democracies and security partners of the United States face three rapidly aging autocracies that regularly signal nefarious intentions through their military activities and bellicose statements, including through rising gray-zone actions and provocative use of their potent military forces–and, in the case of Russia, outright invasion of one of its European neighbors, Ukraine.

"On the surface, there is a rough parallel of demographic direction among these security partners and rivals, but the later aging of China, North Korea...and Russia is one important difference–perhaps explaining differences in behavior in the past decade as aging has intensified but not yet reached super-aged status for the aging autocracies. Moreover, when examined in the greater depth presented in this and the following chapter, beyond differences in the timing of each demographic transition, levels of economic development, total population size, and ability to shape the actions of populations through government control result in significant variation across these six core cases in how rapid aging affects military readiness and broader security strategies of these aging powers. This variation underscores both a central argument of this book–that population demographics are indeed a variable in Asia's aging security landscape, not a constant–and helps to elucidate the many ways that demographic change is changing each state's approach to military security as well as where it is not.

Global rates of population growth and decline (2021–2022);

“The three traditional U.S. allies in Northeast Asia–Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan–face the most dramatic aging and shrinking populations in the Indo-Pacific in the 2020s. Yet, to date, none have moved in the direction of reducing their military capabilities or readiness due to their rapid aging. To the contrary, each has begun to implement strategies to adjust to actual and projected demographic change while strengthening military capabilities in response to rising perceptions of threats.

“Still, many challenges remain that are specific to the unique demographic and security challenges each faces–with two common threads being intensified aging and population shrinking and a growing concern about the military actions of Northeast Asia's aging autocracies, despite those states' own population shifts underway. Another common thread seen among these rapidly aging democracies is a growing engagement with security partners, especially a deepening of their security relationships with the United States.

“American allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region are all aging, but the Northeast Asian democracies face particularly challenging future demographics, as noted in earlier chapters–more intensified aging, especially low fertility rates, and little immigration, resulting in total population shrinkage. Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan form the leading edge of rapid aging in Asia. They all have median ages of over 40, and all are projected to be super-aged in the 2020s (which Japan reached in 2005) and to climb to median ages over 50 years old in the 2030s.

“Northeast Asia's rapidly aging autocracies–security rivals to the United States and the Northeast Asian democracies–face a similar demographic future but on a later timetable, as illustrated in table 3-1. While Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan all will have reached super-aged status by the 2020s, this milestone is projected to be reached by China and Russia in the mid-2020s, and North Korea only in 2040. China and North Korea also reached the earlier 'aged' status later than Northeast Asia's democracies.

“This later timing matters in the security arena for several reasons. First, the later agers can potentially learn from approaches taken and technologies developed to manage the aging transition by earlier-aging states. Second, to the extent that aging is a disadvantage in terms of military power–which is not a foregone conclusion in twenty-first-century conflict scenarios–the later-aging states would benefit from this delayed transition. Finally, related to the discussion of relevant scholarly literature in chapter 1, some argue that states may seek to lock in advantages of youth prior to predicted aging on the horizon, making the period of aging transition in the 2020s especially dangerous–the so-called power transition theory, which can lead to an aging security dilemma.

“In addition to the different year each state reaches its aging milestones, the speed at which it reaches each milestone varies among these Northeast Asian territories, also with important implications. South Korea, notably, has progressed from 'aging' to 'aged' status more quickly and is projected to similarly reach the super-aged and 30 percent milestones much more quickly as well. Looking further ahead, South Korea also is projected to overtake Japan as the region's most-aged state by 2050, when over 40 percent of its population is expected to be aged 65+. It is also worth underscoring that these next milestones for all the region's territories could happen even faster than projected and likely will, given further-declining birth rates and Russia's additional population losses as a result of its war with Ukraine (through both increased deaths and emigration).

“Beyond the rapid aging of societies in Northeast Asia, one could also view the Northeast Asian political regimes and their militaries as undergoing changes related to their advancing age. However, contrary to the societal movement toward super-aged status and the connotation of weakness and vulnerability that implies (rightly or wrongly), the military forces of all these states have entered a sort of 'middle age' that could be characterized as showing growing confidence and more mature capabilities. China, Taiwan, North Korea, and South Korea all effectively became new states and created new militaries in the late 194os/early 1950s, roughly seventy years ago. Moreover, each of these places apart from North Korea experienced significant internal changes in the late 1980s/1990s that led to considerable economic growth. As a result of both political and economic change, the militaries of these states embarked on significant modernization campaigns beginning in the 2000s that continue today. Japan's military also could be viewed as on a similar postwar trajectory, though initially for the different reason of its defeat in the Second World War. In Japan's case, its postwar military force, the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF), was created in 1954. Similar to China, Taiwan, and South Korea, the JSDF has embarked on a significant modernization campaign (though starting somewhat earlier, in the late 1980s) that has culminated more recently in new military roles and ambitions. The elevation of the Japan Defense Agency (JDA) to the Ministry of Defense (MOD) in 2008 and the crafting of its first formal national security strategy document in 2013 are two milestones in Japan's military middle age.

“The relatively recent development of the contemporary political, economic, and military structures of these territories can be seen in generational attitudes related to military security discussed later in this chapter. More than age-period (the numerical age of those in different generations), the age-cohort effect is quite robust around generational groups within several of the territories examined in this chapter, which further dilutes scholarly predictions on the effect of aging on security outcomes, since those predictions generally, though not exclusively, are based on numerical age. For example, the generation that fought in wars to establish the current political regimes have identifiable traits versus the latest adult generation that grew up under greater economic prosperity. What are not apparent from the cases in this chapter are consistent attitudes about military security based on numerical age cross-nationally. As one example illustrated later in this chapter, those of the same numerical age-groups in Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan illustrate different attitudes about security. Across these societies, there are numerous examples of older age-groups expressing a preference for greater military spending and engagement than younger age-groups, again contrary to what is predicted in existing scholarly literature.

“In everyday portrayals, aging is often perceived as leading to weakness, frailty, and vulnerability–as well as to wisdom, wealth, and experience. In the case of Northeast Asia's population-aging states, the developments in security policies after a decade of rapid aging lean toward the latter characteristics: All have increased their defense spending and military capabilities with no signs that this trend will lessen in the next decade of rapid aging and projected population shrinkage. (See table 3.2 for the specific spending increases.) They have achieved this change in part due to increased wealth and experience.

“At the same time as the aging democracies began to experience increased effects of rapid aging, their regional security environment significantly worsened–as introduced in chapter 2–leading to a much grayer set of security challenges in addition to an escalation of conventional military threats. For example, North Korea test-fired more than sixty missiles in 2022, the most ever in a single year, and forty in 2024. Many of the tests were of nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike the U.S. mainland and South Korea, with Japan also a viable target. As another concern, from 2010 to 2020 China increased its defense spending by 249.23 percent (89.34 percent in constant 2019 USD), far higher than any U.S. ally or partner in the region. Japan's December 2022 national security strategy warns that Japan faces 'the most severe and complex security environment since the end of WWII' and concludes with these ominous words: 'In no way can we be optimistic about what the future of the international community will bring.' South Korea's and Taiwan's national security documents express similar stark concerns, as discussed in later sections of this chapter.

“Given growing security challenges, it may not seem surprising that in the period 2010 to 2020, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea increased defense spending 14.37 percent, 23.16 percent, and a whopping 67 percent, respectively (calculated in local currency)–and that Japan soon after put into place a plan to increase its defense spending by around 65 percent over a five-year period from 2022 to 2027, with South Korea and Taiwan announcing plans to significantly increase their defense spending as well. Each also embarked on notable campaigns to increase military capabilities, including offensive capabilities. None of these reactions seems surprising through a realist balance-of-power lens, but they run contrary to predictions of numerous scholars and media analysts about the likely effect of rapid aging on military readiness. For example, as noted in chapter 1, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan–and China as well–all have reached demographic milestones that make them statistically far less likely to engage in war than other, 'younger" states.'

“Other factors beyond demographic change and the changing regional and global security environment additionally contribute to changes in security policies seen in Asia's aging states. The dramatic proliferation of grayzone conflicts is one factor. Change in military technologies is another, which has resulted in entirely new security domains for competition–such as cyber and outer space. New patterns in domestic politics, including the role of new political leaders, are yet another factor. But within the mix, the rapid aging of the region and intensifying population shrinkage are also affecting the specific trajectories of military preparedness. Shrinking populations and expanding tensions are an apparent paradox of Northeast Asia in the 2020s, leading to growing concerns that an aging security dilemma has emerged.”

author: Andrew Oros title: Asia's Aging Security: How Demographic Change Affects America's Allies and Adversaries publisher: Columbia University Press date: page(s): 83-33

]]>

gauguin’s vision of the sermon -- 4/17/2026

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 02:49:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Wild Thing by Sue Prideaux. ‘I’ve Never Painted So Clearly':

“In January 1888, Gauguin left Paris for Pont-Aven. He was still not well, and he felt that his best chance to recover his health was to stay at the Pension Gloanec, where he could live cheaply and calmly and be generously fed. Between January and April he spent the majority of the time in bed, feeling sorry for himself and fuming against fate. He was bored, the weather was atrocious; he painted a few snowscapes, he had searing stomach pains and he had no money. Not until July did he feel himself cured, though the gut ache persisted, as it would for the rest of his life. To restore his strength, he took lessons in the boxing salle and the fencing salle, swelling his reputation for cutting a dash. As Pont-Aven welcomed its customary summer migration, Laval joined him, back from Martinique and as devoted as ever. 'For my part, the more I go on, the more I admire your talent, and I feel respect and affection for you. You made me understand the superior strength that permits me to make efforts to grow. I embrace you tenderly as a courageous elder brother who set the example for me.' Laval never forgot that Gauguin had saved him from suicide.

“Up until now, though Gauguin was concerned with infusing his work with spirituality, he had not introduced religious references. In Brittany they were inescapable. While much of France was succumbing to the moral anaesthesia of industrialised capitalism, Brittany still clung stubbornly to muddy-clogs ruralism and a deeply held Catholic faith. During his money-go-round in the City of Gold, Gauguin had hung a pair of wooden clogs on his wall. We see them from time to time in his Paris interiors, sneaky little invaders from pre-industrial times. Now, like the local Brittany peasants, he carved his own.

“Spirituality was as strongly rooted in Brittany as in himself, though he had long turned away from organised religion and the established Church. Moche animism had laid the foundation. On to this, Bishop Dupanloup had grafted the idea that a universal religio-intellectual synthesis was necessary, and this fitted well with Gauguin's own synaesthetic nature. The Breton position was a synthesis of Catholicism, Celtic and Druidic legend, animism and superstition.

Vision After the Sermon

“At the heart of every hamlet and village in the area was a small, squat church built of local stone. Most dated from around 1460 and were erected on the sites of Druid temples beside sacred springs that, according to Roman historians, were the place of Druidic human sacrifice. Following Christianisation, these sites absorbed the Christian symbolism of Jesus Christ the sacrificial victim through whose redeeming blood flowed the water of eternal life.

“Once a year, on the feast day of its patron saint, each of these little village churches was the centre of a unique ceremony called a pardon. It was the most important day in the church's calendar. The pardon had its origins in the ancient Celtic Tailteann Games, dating from somewhere around 1600 BC. Funeral games for the dead, they had included wrestling contests and these had survived down the ages, becoming known in Breton as the gouren. Christianity had transformed the wrestling contest from a slugfest ending in the defeated having his throat cut by a Druid into the representation of a moral conflict at the end of which the victorious wrestler, having proven through his strength that he was the most spiritually pure, was rewarded with a farm animal to swell his herd and his prosperity.

“Human rivers streamed through woods and green meadows from miles around to witness the event, dressed in their best to receive God's pardon for their sins. Snowy coiffes floated above dark dresses like foam on inky water, their white ribbons dancing like spume on the wind. First, they received absolution from the priest. Then they danced a gavotte, a rather formal folk dance, on the levelled area of ground by the church where the wrestling match had always taken place. As they danced, their wooden clogs flattened the grass of the arena which they gathered round to watch the young men of the village renouncing the devil before engaging in the wrestling competition. The champion, in Christian times, was deemed to have proven himself the most spiritually pure young man in the village. His prize, the live heifer which we see in Gauguin's painting tied to a tree during the match, symbolised the conquered opponent of previous times, who had then been sacrificed at the sacred spring.

“This is what Gauguin painted in The Vision of the Sermon. Past and present, reality and imagination, a fusion of the familiar with the magical and strange. Like in his portrait of Clovis asleep, Gauguin is attempting to show an outward and an inward state simultaneously. But he brings a further complexity to the picture as the Vision also tells the Bible story of Jacob wrestling with the angel, a story Gauguin identified with.

“The Breton women gathered for the pardon, dressed in their regional costume, have just listened to the priest on the right (whose tonsured profile some believe to be a Gauguin self-portrait). He has delivered a sermon on Genesis 32:22-32, which tells how the prophet Jacob wrestled all night with a mysterious angel before receiving a blessing from God.

“Gauguin wrote a letter describing the picture to Vincent van Gogh. The landscape and the fight, he explained, were taking place in the imagination of the people. The tree-trunk slashed diagonally across the space divided real space from imagined, the profane from the sacred. (This, if it really is a self-portrait, fixes Gauguin firmly in the spiritual space.) In the real space on the left, the prayerful Breton women stand in the circle to watch the contest. The heifer that is the victor's prize also occupies real space, tied to the tree-trunk. To the right of the tree, the space occupied by the imagination, the vision appears. The boys are transformed into Jacob wrestling with the angel. The wrestlers also, Gauguin says, symbolise himself wrestling with the tough process of artistic creation, and wrestling for the redemption of his life through art.

“The Vision shows Gauguin finally freeing himself from the subordination to appearances and committing to the inwardness of colour, as he had begun to do on Fruit Porters at Turin Bight. The whole scene, not only the imagined, takes place on vermillion ground, unifying the space while striking a fantastical and mystical note. Like the rest of the Vision, there are two ways of reading the red ground: literally and symbolically. Literally, the colour was not totally impossible: the pardon took place on the third Sunday in September, when the buckwheat in the fields turns red. Symbolically, red is the colour of blood and of life, and of intense emotion. The Vision also saw the further development of another motif that had fascinated him ever since his Impressionist days, the tree motif used in the Japanese manner as vertical screen to divide space, as in Fruit Porters at Turin Bight.

"The letter describing the Vision to Vincent included a sketch of the picture, and Vincent used exactly the same compositional device – the diagonal tree bisecting the canvas – in his famous Sower with Setting Sun (1888) which he painted some six weeks later. The Sower is also a religious allegory but one based on Christ's parable of the sower broadcasting the seeds of religious faith, which Vincent saw as symbolising the artist sowing the seeds of the new artistic truth.

“Gauguin wanted the Vision to hang in one of the local churches whose deep history had inspired its creation. He said that he wished to see the synthetic effect the modern piece would have among the rustic Romanesque and Gothic forms within the chapels. He offered it first to the church at Pont-Aven, but the church was in the throes of modernising its interior, so he was not unduly downcast when the priest turned it down. Far more authentic was the Church of Saint-Arnet at Nizon, with its deep, dark interior rich with pre-Christian figures and symbols, overlaid with later medieval paintings, sculptures and carvings. The canvas is quite large, seventy-three by ninety-two centimetres, and a group of his young pupils including Laval and Emile Bernard helped Gauguin to carry it four kilometres uphill through the fields to the Nizon church. There they hoisted the picture up above the door where the vermillion ground darkened to the colour of rich soil, just as Gauguin had envisaged. Pleased at how it looked, he sent Bernard off to the presbytery to fetch the priest to receive the gift. “

author: Sue Prideaux title: Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin publisher: W. W. Norton & Company date: page(s): 116-120

]]>

the transcontinental railroad -- 4/16/2026

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 02:18:00 -0400

Today's encore selection -- from Continental Reckoning by Elliott West. The most ambitious big U.S. government project of the nineteenth century was the transcontinental railroad:

"No event in the West during these years commanded more public attention than the Pacific rail project. Journals and newspapers followed it in scores of articles, and few literary visitors resisted observing and writing about the spectacle. Its scale and visibility alone made it difficult to ignore, but it had more than that going for it. The simple fact of its being built, the particulars of how it was carried out, and imagined events and threats that in fact were not there were the ideal makings for myths around the emerging West and its meanings for a reconstructing America.

“The most obvious theme was of western settlement as the unifying sequel to the Civil War's saving the Union. As if in relay, the Union Pacific's first rails were being laid simultaneous with the end of the war. Its most prominent field commanders came from high in the ranks in eastern campaigns. Maj. Gen. Grenville Dodge had served in Missouri, Tennessee, and Mississippi, and Brig. Gen. Jack Casement in engagements throughout the war, eventually marching through Georgia under William T. Sherman. Sherman himself would oversee protection along the route. Descriptions of construction evoked troops in mass array. Construction teams stood ‘like the grand reserve of an army’ behind the graders, and once at work their spiking of rails sounded up close like a ‘hotly contested skirmish’ and from a distance like the ‘roar of the wonderful advance.’

“In 1873 the popular Croffut's Transcontinental Tourist Guide recalled that in 1860 the nation had faced being riven, not into two, but into three parts—North, South, and West. It had taken the Civil War, that ‘carnival of blood,’ to convince naysayers into building the Pacific railroad that now joined all three into one. The next year Croffut's would feature on its cover John Gast's American Progress, with its floating female figure leading the railroad westward while stringing a telegraph line. Politicians hailed the project as truly national. A ‘free and living Republic’ would spring up along rail lines as ‘surely as grass and flowers follow in the spring,’ one promised. His reference was not to Nevada or Oregon but to the former Confederacy. Railroads were called agents of both reconstruction and recommitment. They would fuse all sections into one by tapping their resources, easing the movement of their peoples, and overcoming a bloody past with a binding prosperity.

The U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative stamp in 1944, on the 75th anniversary of the first transcontinental railroad in America.

“In this, the shift in the railroad's message could not have been sharper. An especially illuminating irony of the Union Pacific is this: Credit Mobilier, the corrupt engine that drove construction of what was now celebrated as the nation's great unifier, had been born in dedication to national division. Before it was acquired and renamed by Thomas Durant and George Francis Train, it was the Pennsylvania Fiscal Agency, brainchild of Duff Green, an ardent slavery apologist from Georgia who hoped to fund lines from New Orleans through Texas and then both westward to Southern California and southwestward through Mexico to Mazatlan. His was one of many visions of a powerful bi-oceanic Southeast resting on the institution ‘intended by a wise Providence’ for any civilized order—Black slavery.

“Now, with the Union preserved, the rhetoric of sectional dissonance gave way to one of railroads as agents of coalescence. As with the telegraph, bodily metaphors seemed irresistible. When the Pacific line was completed, Chicago celebrated with a hundred thousand persons in a seven-mile-long procession that ended with a windy oration by Vice President Schuyler Colfax. His imagery was both tangled and revealing. The nation had been literally reborn. Before the war it had been divided north-to-south but also, overall, had been a sprawling, inchoate body, what France's Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand had called ‘a giant without bones,’ In the war that body had found its strength and now, reaching westward, it had found its form. The new America lay toward the Pacific, the railroad its spine and with ‘iron ribs in every direction’ and arms reaching for the commerce of Asia.

“This vision, of the railroad embodying a renewed nation, had distinctive western colorations. First among them was virility, a West of unbridled masculine energy. Its clearest description was in the towns, ‘Hell on Wheels,’ that served as supply and recreation points. North Platte in Nebraska, Julesburg in Colorado, Benton, Laramie, Cheyenne, and Green River in Wyoming, and Bear River in Utah—some had been snoozing stage stops before being shaken awake. Others were built from nothing. All were collections of tents and flimsy plank buildings along dust-blown streets. Like other western working sites, notably mining camps and cattle towns, they were dominated by young men with spending money and glands at full throttle, on the loose from monotonous grunt work done under tight discipline. There was open, rampant vice. Visitors like Henry Morton Stanley wrote of the many hard cases, sharpers, and especially prostitutes, ‘expensive articles [who] come in for a large share of the money wasted.’ A large, revolving population of over-liquored men translated into plenty of brawling and high-decibel disorder. There were a handful of homicides and in Bear River a riot that took at least a dozen lives. Cheyenne vigilantes hanged seven men in 1867 and 1868.

“That rough reality, however, was consistently overstressed. An eastern reporter claimed absurdly that Julesburg hosted 750 brothels and gambling houses. Samuel Bowles wrote that the towns, ‘congregation[s] of scum and wickedness,’ averaged a murder a day. Stanley agreed on the homicidal clip and noted that men walked the streets of Julesburg who had murdered for five dollars. The going rate in Cheyenne was ten, wrote a Chicago Tribune correspondent. There is nothing to back up such claims, however. The Frontier Index, a newspaper that moved with the railroad, eagerly recorded the violence it witnessed from Laramie to Green River to Bear River, yet between March and November of 1868 it noted only a single murder and three lynchings (and dozens of arrests for public drunkenness and disorderly conduct).

“Even correcting for lively exaggeration, there seems something like a compulsive inflation of mayhem and dissipation that would be repeated over and again by visitors to the new country. The towns pictured at the tip of the railroad were expressions of expansion as national machismo. It was an image that would appear and prosper in various settings, a West of hairy chests and split lips.”

author: Elliott West title: Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion publisher: University of Nebraska Press date: page(s): 196-198

]]>

science in 1927 -- 4/15/2026

Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:33:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Science by Year by DK. Scientific breakthroughs in the year 1927:

“The year started with a milestone in communication technology. On January 7, a collaboration between the American Telephone Company and Britain's General Post Office opened the first transatlantic telephone service. On its first day 31 calls were made between New York and London.”

“A further development came in the field of quantum physics. Erwin Schrodinger had laid the foundations for quantum mechanics with his description of the wavelike characteristics of particles. Now, German physicist Werner Heisenberg (1901-1976) reasoned that the wave function of a particle could not be localized to a specific point in space and have a definable wavelength. Heisenberg developed this as his uncertainty principle. Its consequences are extraordinary: The more accurately a particle’s position is measured, the less accurately it is possible to determine its movement, and vice versa. Later, the Copenhagen Interpretation stated that it is impossible to experimentally measure wavelike and particlelike properties at the same time.

Solvay Conference on Quantum Mechanics

“While Baird worked in London on his television, the American Bell Company was also developing the technology. In April, Bell had a breakthrough when the company sent the first long-distance TV transmission using the semimechanical television from Washington to New York. Five months later, American inventor Philo Farnsworth (1906-71) introduced a way of scanning and transmitting electronically. Russian-American inventor Vladimir Zworykin (1888-1982) was working on similar technology at the same time, but it was Farnsworth who made it a reality.

“In April, Belgian astronomer Georges Lemaitre [1894-1966) published a scientific paper containing a revolutionary theory: that the universe is expanding. Lemaitre elaborated upon his theory in a presentation to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 1931, suggesting that the universe had originated from a primeval atom. His 'exploding cosmic egg' model anticipated the work of American astronomer Edwin Hubble [see 1929) and was the forerunner of the Big Bang theory [see pp.344-45].”

author: DK title: Science Year by Year: The Ultimate Visual Guide to the Discoveries that Changed the World publisher: DK date: page(s): 259

]]>

marcus aurelius -- 4/14/2025

Tue, 14 Apr 2026 02:22:00 -0400

Today's selection -- from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Advice from the famed Stoic philosophical work Meditations, by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius:

“Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, seashores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquillity; and I affirm that tranquillity is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to the mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last. But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe. Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms [fortuitous concurrence of things]; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community [and be quiet at last]. But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee. Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure [and be quiet at last]. But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee. See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of [the present], and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgment in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed [and be quiet at last]. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.”

Marble bust, Musée Saint-Raymond (Toulouse, France)

“This then remains: Remember to retire into this little territory of thy own, and above all do not distract or strain thyself, but be free, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal. But among the things readiest to thy hand to which thou shalt turn, let there be these, which are two. One is that things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable; but our perturbations come only from the opinion which is within. The other is that all these things which thou seest change immediately and will no longer be; and constantly bear in mind how many of these changes thou hast already witnessed. The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”

author: Marcus Aurelius title: Meditations publisher: date: page(s): 50-52

]]>