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.
By Alton Hall Blackington, New England’s Disastrous Weather, Yankee Books, 1990
As long as people work, live, and play in the vicinity of North End Park in Boston, no winter will pass without someone recalling the catastrophe that took place there on January 15, 1919. The scene of this tragic accident was that low-lying section of Commercial Street between Copps Hill and the playground of North End Park. Looking down from Copps Hill on that mild winter afternoon, you saw first the tracks of the Boston elevated railroad and the old houses nearby. Across the street were the freight sheds of the Boston and Worcester and Eastern Massachusetts railways, the paving division of the Public Works Department, the headquarters of Fireboat 31, and the wharves with patrol boats and minesweepers moored alongside. In the background to the left was the Charlestown Navy Yard. And towering above the freight sheds was the big tank of the Purity Distilling Company-bulging with more than two million gallons of crude molasses waiting to be made into rum. In the Public Works Department, a dozen or more horses munched their oats and hay, as flocks of pigeons fluttered around to catch the stray kernels of grain that fell from the feed bags. Stretched out on the running board of a heavily laden express truck, Peter, a pet tiger cat, slept in the unseasonably warm sunshine. This was the fourth day that the mercury of the thermometer on the sunny side of the freight shed had been climbing. On January 12 it was only 2 degrees above zero. But on the thirteenth the temperature rose rapidly from 16 degrees to 40; now, at 12:30 P.M. on Wednesday the fifteenth, it was 43 degrees above zero, and so warm in the sun that office workers stood around in their shirtsleeves talking about the weather. Even the freight handlers had doffed their overcoats, and sailors from the training ship Nantucket carried their heavy pea jackets on their arms. Mrs. Bridget Clougherty put her blankets out to air and smiled at little Maria Di Stasio gathering firewood under the freight cars. She waved to her neighbor, Mrs. O'Brien, who was dusting her geraniums on a dingy windowsill. At the pumping station attached to the big molasses tank, Bill White turned the key in the lock and started uptown to meet his wife for lunch. He bumped into Eric Blair, driver for Wheeler's Express, and said, "Hello, Scotty. What are you doing around here at noontime? Thought you and the old nag always went to Charlestown for grub." The young Scotsman grinned. "It's a funny thing, Bill," he said. "This is the first time in three years I've brought my lunch over here," and he climbed up on the bulkhead and leaned back against the warm side of the big molasses tank-for the first and last time. Inside the Boston and Worcester freight terminal, Percy Smerage, the foreman, was checking a pile of express to be shipped to Framingham and Worcester. Four freight cars were already loaded. The fifth stood half-empty on the spur track that ran past the molasses tank. Smerage had just told his assistant to finish loading the last car when a low, deep rumble shook the freight yard. The earth heaved under their feet, and they heard a sound of ripping and tearing-steel bolts snapping like machine-gun fire-followed by a booming roar as the bottom of the giant molasses tank split wide open and a geyser of yellowish brown fluid spurted into the sky, followed by a tidal wave of molasses. With a horrible, hissing, sucking sound, it splashed in a curving arc straight across the street, crushing everything and everybody in its path. In less time than it takes to tell it, molasses had filled the five-foot loading pit and was creeping over the threshold of the warehouse door. The four loaded freight cars were washed like chips down the track. The half-loaded car was caught on the foaming crest of the eight-foot wave and, with unbelievable force, hurled through the corrugated iron walls of the terminal. The freight house shook and shivered as the molasses outside, now five feet deep, pushed against the building. Then the doors and windows caved in, and a rushing, roaring river of molasses rolled like molten lava into the freight shed, knocking over the booths where freight clerks were checking their lists. Like madmen they fought the onrushing tide, trying to swim in the sticky stuff that sucked them down. Tons of freight-shoes, potatoes, barrels, and boxes tumbled and splashed on the frothy, foaming mass, now so heavy that the floors gave way, letting tons of the stuff into the cellar. Down there the workers died like rats in a trap. Some tried to dash up the stairs, but they slipped-and disappeared. As the 58-foot-high tank split wide open, more molasses poured out under a pressure of two tons per square foot. Men, women, children, and animals were caught, hurled into the air, or dashed against freight cars, only to fall back and sink from sight in the slowly moving mass. High above the scene of disaster, an elevated train crowded with passengers whizzed by the crumbling tank just as the molasses broke loose, tearing off the whole front of the Clougherty house and snapping off the steel supports of the "EI" structure. The trestle snapped, and the tracks sagged almost to street level, but the motorman of an approaching train, seeing the danger, managed to throw his train in reverse and prevent further catastrophe. The roaring wall of death moved on. ..
Not much has changed in Progressive populist appeals since then:
Now, my friends, if you were off on an island where there were 100 lunches, you could not let one man eat up the hundred lunches, or take the hundred lunches and not let anybody else eat any of them. If you did, there would not be anything else for the balance of the people to consume.
(Note to our non-American readers: today we celebrate Columbus Day in the USA. Had he sailed in the service of his homeland, the Republic of Genoa, the language of much of the New World would be Italian instead of Spanish. An interesting detail is that he never acknowledged that he had found a new continent.)
If Columbus had not carried some shoots of sugar cane from the Canary Islands to the West Indies on his second voyage, somebody else would have, eventually.
(Sugar cane, a grass, is native to some Pacific Islands, but it spread to India and then around the warm parts of the world. Sugar is good.)
The West Indies proved to be a good place to grow sugarcane. Once the natives were wiped out in hard labor on the Spanish and French cane plantations, importing slaves from Africa was economically sensible if morally indefensible. Thus began the slave trade to the New World and, eventually, the cane/molasses/rum/slave circuit.
We visited Columbus' nice house on Grand Canaria in Las Palmas last fall. By sailing ship, of all things. It is still a nice big handsome house.
Cane is still grown to some extent on the Canaries, and they are proud of their rum, Arehucas.
Eric Arthur Blair (1903-1950), better known by his pen name, George Orwell, remains an iconic figure in literature to this day. He's most famous for writing Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, both books which warn against oppressive totalitarian authority and the nature in which power corrupts.
We were just there...so I was surprised to see this in my NY Historical Society feed today. Grant's Tomb dedicated on April 27, 1897. Our Urban Hike had some relatively good timing.
The current dust-up between Trump and Cruz regarding their wives is nothing new, though the press tries hard to make it seem that way. Political wives have always been an issue, in some form. Betty Ford is known for her eponymous rehab centers, while Jimmy Carter was famous for the lust in his heart (which surely hurt Rosalyn's feelings). Nancy Reagan held seances in the White House, and was known to consult astrologers. I don't really have to repeat any stories about Hillary - there are more than enough out there to keep me busy typing all day.
But political wives and their treatment have a much lengthier history, too. Edith Wilson is often recognized as the 'first woman president' for the role she played while Wilson convalesced after his stroke. Eleanor Roosevelt was a fiery personality in her own right. Dolley Madison, of course, is remembered for saving Washington's portrait in the War of 1812, but she was also the first to decorate the White House. Few know she lived in poverty after the death of her husband.
Even further back, we have Mary Todd Lincoln, whose story is often overlooked. It's a strong likelihood she was manic depressive. But even in the 1800's she was aware of the spotlight put upon the wife of a president. She lived an unfortunate and desperate life not long after Lincoln's assassination.
Myron Magnet summarizes the history of the decay of the US Constitution. Even the founders thought that might be inevitable, given their wisdom about human nature, but they did their best to provide roadblocks. Securing the blessings of liberty (from government, of course) and securing defense from exterior powers...
There is always the excuse of a reason: Security, or To Do Good.
... we had better understand just what happened. There’s no single villain. As these books show, all branches of government conspired over more than a century to turn the Constitution that the Framers wrote in 1787, plus the Bill of Rights that James Madison shepherded through the first Congress in 1789 and the Fourteenth Amendment ratified in 1868, into something their authors would neither recognize nor endorse.
He was fortunate to be a guest at the Alhambra (when it was not in very good shape) for a month or so, exploring Grenada. Lots of treacherous travel, and many historical reminders - especially the remarkable contributions of the Moslems to Western civilization via Spain. As in Sicily, the Moslems had been good, intellectual rulers who were interested in justice, careful governance, science, architecture, music, and technology.
There was no sharia law or any of that barbarian nonsense. I suppose the Spanish natives were dhimmis, in a sense.
The Christian armies which chased them out were barbarians by comparison, but that was long ago. A quote from the book:
There are two classes of people to whom life seems like one long holiday - the very rich and the very poor; one, because they need to do nothing, the other, because they have nothing to do. But there are none who understand the art of doing nothing and living upon nothing , better than the poor classes of Spain. Climate does one half, temperament the rest...
Talk of poverty! with him it has no disgrace. It sits upon him with a grandiose style, like his ragged cloak. He is a hidalgo, even when in rags.
Most of the short book consists of tales and legends from the time of Moslem rule: genies and sorcerers and talking owls, hidden treasures, princes and princesses - even a Moslem prince who marries a Christian princess.
Northern Italy has long been a major manufacturer of silk fabric. Marco Polo, the Silk Road, the crusades, etc. Later, Italians migrated to operate the great silk mills in towns like Paterson, NJ.
In Florence, the Antico Setificio Fiorentino since 1786. Their warp technology invented by Leonardo. Two cool videos.
All humans are thought to be descendants of one woman, Mitochondrial Eve, who lived around 140,000 years ago - 4600 generations ago - in West Africa. Our cellular mitochondria follow the female genetic line.
In the linked piece, our Berkshire friend also notes, interestingly, in a quote:
Do the math as you count generations into the past. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great grandparents, sixteen great-great-grandparents, and so on through the centuries. Soon you reach a point where the number of ancestors in a given generation is larger than the population of the Earth at the time. (This is possible because as you move back, a single individual may occupy a large number of slots on your family tree, which is known as pedigree collapse.)
Pic is by Masolino, c 1426, in the Brancacci Chapel, Florence
The Battle of Trafalgar established Britannia as the ruler of the waves for over a century and shaped the face of Europe today. The Wiki write-up on it is an excellent summary.
While the Federalists advocated for a strong central government, Jeffersonians argued for strong state and local governments and a weak federal government.
Self-sufficiency, self-government, and individual responsibility, were, in the Jeffersonian worldview, among the most important ideals that formed the basis of the American Revolution. In Jefferson's opinion, nothing that could feasibly be accomplished by individuals at the local level ought to be accomplished by the federal government. The federal government would concentrate its efforts solely on national and international projects. Jefferson's advocacy of limited government led to sharp disagreements with Federalist figures such as Alexander Hamilton. Jefferson felt that Hamilton favored plutocracy and the creation of a powerful aristocracy in the United States which would accumulate increasingly greater power until the political and social order of the United States became indistinguishable from those of the Old World.
Now on 83 acres with some imperfectly-maintained gardens, the place has little use. It would make a fine campus. We had dinner with friends last night who love to explore the more obscure corners of NYC. They found the place to be fascinating, but Staten Island itself not so much.
In 1829 the great American author 
A repost -
Pepper, especially.
