Sunday, July 29, 2007
reading lists
Last summer, President Bush announced that he was reading "The Stranger" by Camus--what a perfect choice, I thought--either he's an idiot, and the irony is sickening, or he's not, and his cynicism blows me away. What a tidy metaphor for the larger debate surrounding this man. Similarly, Clinton, when asked what his favorite book is, couldn't settle on one, and came up with a list. Imagine my glee when Mitt Romney, a MORMON contender for the republican nomination for president in 2008, was asked what his favorite book is. Mormon, to me, already indicates a serious lapse in sanity. Intolerant, you say? Go look up what these people decide to believe. Do it. They're willfully irrational. Anyway, his answer was that the bible is his favorite book (trite, trite), BUT that L. Ron Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth" is his favorite novel. (L. Ron Hubbard being the founder of Scientology, a cult that asks its adherents to believe that traumatic memories stem from tiny bits of alien that exploded way back when and became attached to humans. really.) How perfect is that?
Monday, July 16, 2007
I want to stay in New York forever.
I was talking with a friend the other day, and he observed that he'd always been drawn to history as a result of having grown up around the Hudson River area. As I walked home, uphill from where we were, I took note of my surroundings in a new light. I live about a quarter mile east of the Hudson River, and roughly an eight of a mile west of a cliff that overlooks spanish Harlem. Additionally, starting in my neighborhood heading north, the height above sea level rises pretty steadily, until you get to the part of town called Washington Heights, which got its name from being the highest (natural) point on Manhattan, and as such was the spot that General Washington chose to be his lookout area, so he could see enemy ships approaching from the south, on either part of the island, from the Forth they built ("Fort Wahington;" they lost the battle anyway). I went up to my roof and looked down Broadway, that famous wide avenue that was designed to be "broad" enough to heard cattle down once upon a time. It was a cattle trail. Before that, it was an Indian trail, obviously unpaved, but still carved out of the natural vegetation that once covered Manhattan island.
New York, and, I suspect, many other cities that were designed before cars became big, lends its inhabitants the opportunity to, in the course of the day, look at the landscape and imagine, vividly, what it must have looked like 100+ years ago. Without going out of my way at all, I can look at the Hudson River, with its rocky edges and its surrounding forests, and imagine, without too much trouble, really, what it might have looked like before New Amsterdam was settled. The many cliffs and contours of northern Manhattan can sometimes, if you squint, give an idea of how the city looked before pavement.
You don't get this kind of connection to years past in the landscape where I grew up. We had freeways, and the Alamo, and not much in the way to suggest a special connection to the land that drew people to Houston, or San Antonio, for decades. Houston was built on a swamp, but all we have around us to really evoke that kind of past are the mosquitoes--a far less romantic reminder, by the way, than rivers and forests, and old, wide streets, and cobblestone downtown, etc. In Texas, if you want history, you drive through downtown San Antonio to the facade of the Alamo, try to find an unmetered parking space, give up and park across the street for, like 50 cents an hour, which you will complain about the duration of your tour. The Alamo doesn't look old, or lived-in. It looks more like the kind of place that Ozzy might pee on, and less like the kind of place that we are to imagine (and there are SO many problems with the story, but let's go with it for now) that "heroes" (I can't resist the quotations. sorry.) "bravely" defended their "principles" and martyred themselves. You walk in, and there's stuff in glass cases. To the left, I think, is the gift shop. That's it. If not the Alamo, we have the San Jacinto monument somewhere outside of Houston, where the highlight of my trip was that machine they had, that pressed pennies into flat San Jac icons. Nothing about driving through the streets of Houston evokes anything beyond perhaps personal nostalgia. Nothing.
New York, and, I suspect, many other cities that were designed before cars became big, lends its inhabitants the opportunity to, in the course of the day, look at the landscape and imagine, vividly, what it must have looked like 100+ years ago. Without going out of my way at all, I can look at the Hudson River, with its rocky edges and its surrounding forests, and imagine, without too much trouble, really, what it might have looked like before New Amsterdam was settled. The many cliffs and contours of northern Manhattan can sometimes, if you squint, give an idea of how the city looked before pavement.
You don't get this kind of connection to years past in the landscape where I grew up. We had freeways, and the Alamo, and not much in the way to suggest a special connection to the land that drew people to Houston, or San Antonio, for decades. Houston was built on a swamp, but all we have around us to really evoke that kind of past are the mosquitoes--a far less romantic reminder, by the way, than rivers and forests, and old, wide streets, and cobblestone downtown, etc. In Texas, if you want history, you drive through downtown San Antonio to the facade of the Alamo, try to find an unmetered parking space, give up and park across the street for, like 50 cents an hour, which you will complain about the duration of your tour. The Alamo doesn't look old, or lived-in. It looks more like the kind of place that Ozzy might pee on, and less like the kind of place that we are to imagine (and there are SO many problems with the story, but let's go with it for now) that "heroes" (I can't resist the quotations. sorry.) "bravely" defended their "principles" and martyred themselves. You walk in, and there's stuff in glass cases. To the left, I think, is the gift shop. That's it. If not the Alamo, we have the San Jacinto monument somewhere outside of Houston, where the highlight of my trip was that machine they had, that pressed pennies into flat San Jac icons. Nothing about driving through the streets of Houston evokes anything beyond perhaps personal nostalgia. Nothing.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
a misadventure
This blog was started on a truly selfless impulse: to help a friend choose a template for her blog. I had to pretend to create one to make an educated suggestion. And the temptation of an empty slate got the best of me, so here I am. The name I chose just came to me, and I thought it was hilarious, though if I'd known I'd be making a decision that would be in effect for more than a few minutes, and more public than just for me, I might have chosen more wisely. I also would have given more careful consideration to whether there ought to have been two l's in "sacrilicious" (sacrillicious?).
This entry might be all I ever get around to writing here. Perhaps not. I'd like to have a go at this blogging thing, though, apart from my feeble attempts on myspace, which location, I think, immediately saps the gravitas of my varied opinions. Stay tuned.
This entry might be all I ever get around to writing here. Perhaps not. I'd like to have a go at this blogging thing, though, apart from my feeble attempts on myspace, which location, I think, immediately saps the gravitas of my varied opinions. Stay tuned.
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