Flatiron is flat
sunset #NYC
didn’t have time to do the G but this came out well
bridges of the NYC boat tour
Reading (skimming, really) the giant New York, An Illustrated History, I noticed this amazing passage:
Forty thousand Germans alone had pushed in, creating an insulated neighborhood of their own called Kleindeutschland – Little Germany. An even greater number had come from Ireland, impoverished farmers and unskilled day laborers mainly, most of whom quickly found work, taking on the worst and toughest jobs in the city – digging sewers, paving streets, building houses, or working as servants, scullery maids, and seamstresses…
Year by year, the number continued to rise. By 1841, nearly 100,000 Irish Catholic immigrants had flooded into the city – fueling waves of virulent anti-Catholic bigotry among upperclass New Yorkers, and the bitter resentment of native-born workers, who feared for their jobs.
That year, Samuel Morse, the inventor of the telegraph, called for an end to Catholic immigration altogether, portraying the influx as a sinister papal conspiracy, aimed at bending American democracy to the will of Rome. “Up! Up! I beseech you,” he warned. “Awake! To your posts! Shut the open gates. Your enemies in the guise of friends, many thousands, are at this moment rushing into your ruin through the open portals of naturalization.” “If I had the power,” another man declared, “I would erect a gallows at every landing place in the city of New York, and suspend every cursed Irishman as soon as he steps on our shore.”
Note that this “flood” of Irish immigrants is from before the Irish Potato Famine drove a lot more of that country’s citizens to emigrate.
I can’t decide whether it’s reassuring or depressing that intolerant demagogues in 2016 are selling virtually identical poison as those from 175 years ago.
where our spoiled cat has been napping the last few days
summer blooming/wilting
#nofilter
so so SO great
#nozoom
about to not have a kid in K-12 anymore
Amazing and blunt article from Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker: The Dangerous Acceptance of Donald Trump. As always, the whole thing is worth a read (okay, skim the Alexander Pope poetry if you want), but there are some sobering statements there:
The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history—an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day. Instead, we seem to be either engaged in parochial feuding or caught by habits of tribal hatred so ingrained that they have become impossible to escape even at moments of maximum danger.
And:
If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans.
I hate talking about Trump, I hate reading about him, and most of all I hate seeing so much written and read and broadcast and viewed about him. I don’t really think he’ll get anywhere near the highest office of my country. But the very thought is moving further from the funny end of the spectrum, and more toward the horrifying end, with each passing month (though I’m not sure what this weird funny-to-horrifying spectrum is, exactly).
armadillos gonna armadill (taken from the back deck of our house, here in the middle of The Wild Kingdom)
I kind of hate these plants, they look like a a little kid drew them
when you invest in a well-designed wordmark, you really want to show it off
#roadpic of #clouds, as usual
got the missus a stripper for mothers day
1 outta 4 ain’t bad
cool little bus with good sci-fi & fantasy selection. (roof was a bit low for me… ?)
