We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
This week's series began yesterday. You never know what you'll find here at Maggie's. America has plenty of Bridgeports these days. We'll have a daily Bridgeport post this week.
Bridgeport, CT (settled 1639 as "Newfield") was a boom town from around 1800 until the end of WW 2. Lots of farming in the back country, fishing, shipping and ship-building on the harbor, and, at its peak, over 500 factories. "Help wanted" signs everywhere.
Few people know that Bridgeport was the first city in America with an auto industry.
Farmers, factory workers, a good share of prosperous folk, tons of Polish, Irish, and Italian immigrants and then southern blacks attracted to jobs during the war, grand theaters, fancy stores, and of course, PT Barnum (who Walt Kelly yclept PT Bridgeport). Today, Bridgeport is about 40% recent Hispanic immigrants, 30% Black, and the rest are various kinds of white.
There has been no gentrification of downtown because there are few jobs and not much to do. Well, nothing to do. The weekend streets, empty of traffic and foot traffic except for the occasional hoodie, give a sense of desolation but not menace. There is no critical mass of activity, which has all moved to the suburbs to escape Blue City decay and taxes. (It's Obamaville for sure. In the previous election, just enough uncounted paper votes were mysteriously discovered in bags in a Bridgeport school basement to turn the election over to a Democrat CT governor days after good Repub Tom Foley appeared to have won the election.)
The city's heyday was probably between 1840 and the late 1940s - a century. In today's post-industrial northeast, the town's population is down to around 144,000, and many of the old factories are now vacant lots and the rest are rotting hulks. Even the old Bridgeport Post-Telegram is now the "Connecticut Post." With the decline of the town's manufacturing and farming base - its main bank used to be Mechanics and Farmer's Savings Bank - corrupt politicians, high taxation, criminals, drugs, welfare recipients, and mob influence have been feeding off the carcass of this failed old Blue State city.
This once-proud city, with abundant advantages, did not deserve this fate. Such bountiful towns are like the third world now.
The main businesses in town now seem to be government services, hospitals, and law, since it's the legal and court center of prosperous southern Connecticut and remains Connecticut's largest urban center. Oh, it also has the woebegone and marginal University of Bridgeport which until recently was owned by the Moonies and one which few would attend given any choice at all. Lots of foreign students desperate for an American degree of any sort.
Nobody visits downtown Bridgeport as tourists except me and a couple of my kids on an urban exploration jaunt last weekend. Well, also visitors taking the Port Jefferson ferry or going to Bridgeport Bluefish games. (They have a decent government-looking transportation hub, with the bus station, the Boston - Washington DC train station, I-95, and the ferry all within walking distance.)
During our tourism, we stopped for a pleasant lunch at The Creek in the Black Rock section of town. They had Palm on tap and the place was full of people. I'm told another good popular joint in the neighborhood is Harborview Market. I'll have to try that next time I'm in the area.
A few of my pics:
A cute old half-block (rest of the block demolished at some point, probably in "urban renewal" aka "Negro Removal" in the 1960s) in Bridgeport's South End, with garbage from Sandy's flooding.
Most of the in-town residential areas look like this. Typical northeast workingman's dwellings from the 1880s-1920s. Cheap housing now, but too-high property taxes for the people who might otherwise afford them. When the taxes are higher than a mortgage, it's not attractive. It leads to a downward, death spiral. The poorer it becomes, the more taxes are raised for government "services." Then voters vote with their feet.
Building on the corner of Main St, a block or two from the big new RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland, for those of you in Yorba Linda) bulding - doubtless located with generous multi-year tax breaks. The graffiti is really pretty well-done:
Delaying implementation until 2014 helped the president win re-election, but now the bill is coming due. The administration can’t forestall Obamacare’s massive regulatory impact any longer, and the result will keep Congress and the media occupied for months and years to come.
We are beguiled by what political scientist James Payne calls the "philanthropic illusion" -- the idea that the government has money to bestow on needy people and worthy causes. It doesn't. Washington is not a source of wealth, and its subsidies are not largesse
For a taste, here's Iranistan (pronouced Iranis'tan), PT Barnum's home in 1848 on the corner of Fairfield Avenue and Iranistan Ave. Barnum did a lot of things in his life, made and lost fortunes, was Mayor of Bridgeport for a while, got elected to the CT State Senate to lobby for the railroads (he liked to commute to NYC in the pre-commuter era), promoted and was a major contributor to the creation of Bridgeport's Olmstead-designed Seaside Park, was a great impresario of hoaxes and the strange, and later in life a circus impresario. Everything on a grand scale, always taking risks, a bit of a con man who didn't mind admitting it. An American icon.
His three magnificent Bridgeport homes all burned down but his circus lives on as he first envisioned it: traveling by train and performing in permanent venues instead of under tents. And always, elephants. He transformed the circus industry.
18:33 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, "Are you the King of the Jews?"
18:34 Jesus answered, "Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?"
18:35 Pilate replied, "I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?"
18:36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here."
18:37 Pilate asked him, "So you are a king?" Jesus answered, "You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice."
If you want to destroy an infantry unit, you cut it off from its neighboring units. If you want to destroy a generation, you cut it off from previous generations.
I have no wit, no words, no tears; My heart within me like a stone Is numbed too much for hopes or fears. Look right, look left, I dwell alone; I lift mine eyes, but dimmed with grief No everlasting hills I see; My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me.
My life is like a faded leaf, My harvest dwindled to a husk: Truly my life is void and brief And tedious in the barren dusk; My life is like a frozen thing, No bud nor greenness can I see: Yet rise it shall--the sap of spring; O Jesus, rise in me.
My life is like a broken bowl, A broken bowl that cannot hold One drop of water for my soul Or cordial in the searching cold; Cast in the fire the perished thing; Melt and remould it, till it be A royal cup for Him, my King: O Jesus, drink of me.
A bit about the poem here, and about the poet here. Drawing of Rossetti by her brother, the Pre-Raphaelite artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
My family of origin voted to ban Christmas presents amongst eachother years ago. It's my two parents, five kids with five spouses, countless grandkids. However, bringing food, booze, and home-made Christmas cookies to the family gathering is welcome and wanted.
In my own family, as the kids have gotten older, we keep it generally in the area of books, scarves, and Christmas socks.
My in-laws, on the other hand, love the whole Christmas ritual of buying, wrapping, and giving presents, and find joy in it.
Someone once told Mary that the way to hold a moment in your mind forever is to list at least three things you can see, three you can hear, smell, feel.
Living among outspoken, educated liberals who worship at the altar of diversity, yet react with shock and horror when confronted by opposing viewpoints, is a constant challenge. It’s especially difficult for someone who enjoys a good verbal joust even more than sports junkies love watching steroid-enhanced musclemen bash each other while chasing a pigskin ball.
My Thanksgiving prayers (and many of my prayers), begin with "Lord, help us be fully grateful and thankful to You for being a companion and guide in our lives in good times and in hard times."
These half-crazy Puritans had little to be thankful for materially, yet thankful they were on the chilly shore of Cape Cod Bay. Brownscombe's The First Thanksgiving:
And now Cape Cod, this summer. What would those Pilgrim forefathers have thought of this sight?
Just Put the F*cking Turkey in the Oven and go take a walk. She's right. Turkey does taste like cardboard unless you charcoal-and-wood grill one, in which case it tastes like semi-smoked cardboard. I'll only eat the dark meat of the thighs and legs, where there is flavor and juiciness.
Two of my kids are going down to see Dylan in Brooklyn tonight with pals. I'd go myself, but I am working. My kids find Bob kind of fascinating. I love it when my kids are around and they decide to go off and do things together. Feels good to know that they will be there for eachother in the future when I fade from the picture.
It also makes me feel good to know that Bob is back in New York tonight, his old stomping grounds. He'll never quit. Like a true Yankee or an old bluesman, he'll work until he drops. It pleases me to let the youth use my tickets.
Dunkin Donuts is a Yankeeland item which has begun to colonize the world. Mediocre coffee, mushy donuts which are not really fat-fried and have no crunch, but half-decent daily bagels. Also, "Breakfast sandwiches" made of God-knows-what warmed-up plastic-wrapped thawed-out food-like substances.
People like Dunkin anyway. It's familiar, predictable, comfortably mediocre. A welcome sign to see on a cold, sleety night of driving in the middle of nowhere. Clean bathrooms. A Dunkin franchise is a cash cow for the franchisee. I know a Greek immigrant who now owns five of them. He's rich. He is fortunate in having a loyal, smart, and pleasant mostly-Hispanic staff. A few Pakistanis too.
I haven't had one of their too-sweet and mushy donuts in years, but once in a while I'll have a toasted bagel. I only like fried donuts.
Bob Rosenberg opened the first one in Quincy, MA in 1949, and the first of thousands of franchises the following year in Worcester.
In 2006 the parent company was acquired by a consortium of private equity firms: Bain Capital, The Carlyle Group, and Thomas H. Lee Partners. Heavy hitters, for a humble donut shop. Dunkin' Donuts is the world's leading baked goods and coffee chain, serving more than 3 million customers per day. Dunkin also bought Baskin Robbins a while ago, which is why you sometimes see the two carbohydrate outlets under the same roof.
“[F]inally, beginning in 1949. . . you and your employer will each pay 3 cents on each dollar you earn, up to $3,000 a year. That is the most you will ever pay.”
What unites all of these stories is the growing failure of America’s local associations — civic, familial, religious — to foster stability, encourage solidarity and make mobility possible.
This is a crisis that the Republican Party often badly misunderstands, casting Democratic-leaning voters as lazy moochers or spoiled children seeking “gifts” (as a certain former Republican presidential nominee would have it) rather than recognizing the reality of their economic struggles.
But if conservatives don’t acknowledge the crisis’s economic component, liberalism often seems indifferent to its deeper social roots. The progressive bias toward the capital-F Future, the old left-wing suspicion of faith and domesticity, the fact that Democrats have benefited politically from these trends — all of this makes it easy for liberals to just celebrate the emerging America, to minimize the costs of disrupted families and hollowed-out communities, and to treat the places where Americans have traditionally found solidarity outside the state (like the churches threatened by the Obama White House’s contraceptive mandate) as irritants or threats.
Before that article in Salon, this mother was allowed to believe that her staying off the dole had some honor in itself-- some validation of her identity-- and it allowed her to survive her hardships. Now she is forced to swallow that these people are not merely as good as her, but more valuable-- they get an article, they get defenders like you, they are praised for their intrinsic human value, and all she gets is mocked, belittled, "she's too stupid to know what's good for her!"-- all she can do is comment on their life-- and her small act of rebellion is to at least use the space to tell the world she exists. Rage is her defense that keeps her intact while the world seemingly ignores her.
Capretta and Levin: Why ObamaCare Is Still No Sure Thing - The majority of state governors are Republicans, and they have the power to disarm the health-care law.
Gold Fever Hits Television
A Better Resurrection
1850 travel ad. Drive carefully, readers, this holiday weekend. We cannot afford to lose a single one of you.