Making a difference
Posted: August 4, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, politics Leave a comment
Ashley Weinberg, a psychologist at the University of Salford who has interviewed dozens of former members of the British Parliament about why they liked their jobs, says that the phrase “being at the center of things” kept coming up. That yearning doesn’t require convictions. “You’re sensing things happening around you,” Weinberg says. “Which is quite different from whether you want specificthings to happen around you.”
That’s from this interesting article about George Pataki, and why a longshot guy would run for president.
MANY CANDIDATESWITH no chance of victory run for president because of conviction. Like, say, Ron Paul in 2012 or Bernie Sanders today, they have a set of issues they passionately want to advance.
This does not, as far as I can tell, apply to George Pataki. As Jonah Goldberg put it in a column last month, Pataki seems to be “pretending to have core convictions just so he can run.” Even the Pataki website motto—”People over politics”—suggests a desire to avoid serious thought. And such an impression is nothing new. As Pataki’s third term as governor of New York was winding down in 2005 and 2006, The New York Sun wrote that “one looks in vain to discern any principle or idea that Mr. Pataki stands for consistently.” Columnist Deroy Murdoch wrote in National Review that Pataki was “a politician of breathtaking mediocrity” whose “lack of competence, charisma, and character composes a sickening trifecta.” Kindest was The New York Times, which complained that under Pataki “reform was a talking point, not a doing point,” while nonetheless conceding that, overall, “New Yorkers are well aware that it is possible to do worse.”
Another common explanation for why people choose to run doomed presidential campaigns is that it raises the odds of getting a Cabinet post. Perhaps Pataki wishes to be secretary of Agriculture? But that’s unlikely. While steering a federal department is prestigious, the work is hard. Which, I’m afraid, brings us to another harsh point made by many observers of Albany: that Pataki is not only light on convictions but also disinclined to exertion. “The consensus was he was a lazy guy,” says George Marlin, a leader of New York’s Conservative Party, who was appointed by Pataki to head the Port Authority but later became a prominent critic of the governor. “Energy was not his strong suit.”
In 2006, New York Post state editor Fredric Dicker described Pataki’s administration as one “marked by a torpidity unprecedented in modern times” and estimated, based on testimony from sources in Albany, that Pataki averaged about 15 hours of work per week. Meanwhile, The New York Observer saw a “legacy of laziness, mediocrity and pervasive neglect of the public interest.” The 15-hour-a-week claim seems improbable, of course, and Pataki’s spokesperson David Catalfamo calls it “ludicrous,” saying no one lazy could get elected three times, enact numerous changes, or steer the state through the aftermath of September 11. But it’s fair to say that those who praise Pataki tend to mention intelligence or analytical power rather than midnight oil.
Amazing.
It reminded me of seeing Rahm Emanuel once on Charlie Rose. Asked why he’d wanted to run for Congress, he said “to make a difference.” Charlie nodded. Humans are obsessed with “making a difference” in general, but (duh) not all difference is good.
It seems, when you read about politics, that a lot of people go into it to sort of pretend to others and maybe to themselves to be doing something, without necessarily figuring out what they should be doing.
Governor William Weld and Senator John Kerry sang together in 1997 during the St. Patrick’s Day Breakfast. Michael Robinson-Chavez/Globe Staff/File 1997
A guy who seemed to be a great case study in this when I was growing up reading the newspaper was Bill Weld, Governor of Massachusetts, who, it seemed pretty clear, basically got bored of the job before he was out of office. How about this, from a 2004 James Fallows article previewing Bush-Kerry debates. Fallows is talking about when Weld and Kerry debated during the 1996 campaign for Senate
But they differed in a crucial way. Kerry tried harder. His tone was more appropriate to a TV debate (Kerry was understated and almost languid, Weld strangely blustering). He was quicker to turn each answer into an attack. And he more clearly figured out the theme that would be troublesome for his opponent, as he hammered home the idea that Weld was a comrade of Newt Gingrich and the national Republican Party—a kiss of death in Massachusetts. (Perhaps illustrating the truism that aristocrats don’t sweat off the squash court, on the day of the first debate Weld was worrying about a chess match against a journalist. “I would advise the President not to engage in any chess games by mail while engaged in debates with Senator Kerry,” Weld told me. “I was studying the chess game in my office and also preparing for the debate that night—and I made just a little bit of a mistake and lost a pawn. And I really hated losing that pawn.”)
Obviously he’s being a bit of a showoff, WASPy understatement etc., but man. Everything’s just an amusing game to this guy. From Weld’s wikipedia page:
In July 1997, Weld was nominated to become United States Ambassador to Mexico by President Bill Clinton. His nomination stalled after Senate Foreign Relations committee Chairman Jesse Helms refused to hold a hearing on the nomination, effectively blocking it. … This refusal to hold hearings was also rumored to be at the request of former United States Attorney General and friend of Helms, Edwin Meese. Meese had a long-standing grudge against Weld stemming from Weld’s investigation of Meese during the Iran-Contra affair. Weld publicly criticised Helms, which the White House discouraged him from doing, but Weld relished the opportunity, saying: “It feels like being in a campaign. I feel newly energized. I love to stir up the pot. I seem to click on more cylinders when the pot is stirred up.”
Very human, I guess. But perhaps either unsettling or amusingly absurd to think on how much of history might be driven by just people’s desire to stir the pot and click their cylinders. Boredom, in other words.
Whole Foods didn’t have the mezcal I like
Posted: July 31, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, food, world Leave a comment
You can call that the ultimate #firstworldproblem. But I bet not being able to find your favorite alcohol is a relatable problem in every nation on Earth, among every race* and at every level of wealth and poverty.
* how many races are there? is this a useful way to categorize people? was it ever? (was thinking the other day about “Asian/Pacific Islander.” Are a Tongan and a Han Chinese in Beijing any more related than a white guy from Dublin and a black man from Senegal? )
Live Great Debates Tonight
Posted: July 27, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, comedy 1 Comment
Guys! Really excited about tonight’s Great Debates Live at the UCB on Sunset. If you’re in LA hope you’re considering coming, last I checked there were 14 tickets left. The UCB’s doing us a huge solid by letting us perform there, would be great to sell it out. We’ve got some great fun planned, special guests. Little Esther is gonna warm up the crowd: 
You can buy a ticket for five bucks right here:
https://sunset.ucbtheatre.com/performance/40748#reservation
But before we can all have fun together, I do have to just dispense with an unpleasant sort of cloud that’s hanging over this event. The rumor that so-called “Debater X” is planning some kind of mischief for tonight’s live Great Debates event is just that — a rumor. This is a guy who won’t even reveal his face, let alone his name, so how he acquired any credibility at all is beyond me. The best theory I heard — by best I mean most amusing in its ridiculous — is that Debater X is a famous athlete. HIGHLY doubt it. Just doesn’t fit the psychology here.
Please. The lamest thing about Anonymous is that they saw this and were like “COOL LOOK!”
What “Debater X” is is something much simpler. He’s a troll. Trolls are all too common in the anonymous world of the Internet, where you can hide behind your avatar and fire darts from the safety of a desk covered in crinkled Chipotle wrappers. So, do not worry about Debater X, just grab a ticket, come on out, show’s at 8:30pm, enjoy yourself!
There are no coincidences.
Posted: July 22, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945 1 CommentLifting this wholesale from Tyler Cowen:
E. L. Doctorow
Posted: July 22, 2015 Filed under: America, America Since 1945, writing 1 CommentINTERVIEWER
You once told me that the most difficult thing for a writer to write was a simple household note to someone coming to collect the laundry, or instructions to a cook.
E. L. DOCTOROW
What I was thinking of was a note I had to write to the teacher when one of my children missed a day of school. It was my daughter, Caroline, who was then in the second or third grade. I was having my breakfast one morning when she appeared with her lunch box, her rain slicker, and everything, and she said, “I need an absence note for the teacher and the bus is coming in a few minutes.” She gave me a pad and a pencil; even as a child she was very thoughtful. So I wrote down the date and I started, Dear Mrs. So-and-so, my daughter Caroline . . . and then I thought, No, that’s not right, obviously it’s my daughter Caroline. I tore that sheet off, and started again. Yesterday, my child . . . No, that wasn’t right either. Too much like a deposition. This went on until I heard a horn blowing outside. The child was in a state of panic. There was a pile of crumpled pages on the floor, and my wife was saying, “I can’t believe this. I can’t believe this.” She took the pad and pencil and dashed something off. I had been trying to write the perfect absence note. It was a very illuminating experience. Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.
from here of course.
The only Doctorow I read is this one, which is great:
I also read the beginning of this one:
Billy Bathgate has a lot of sexy stuff in it that I really appreciated at the time (16?). Both books start with one guy violently taking the woman of another guy as the other guy is more or less forced to watch. It’s pretty primal and intense shit. Welcome To Hard Times was even a little too much for me.
DOCTOROW
Well, it can be anything. It can be a voice, an image; it can be a deep moment of personal desperation. For instance, with Ragtime I was so desperate to write something, I was facing the wall of my study in my house in New Rochelle and so I started to write about the wall. That’s the kind of day we sometimes have, as writers. Then I wrote about the house that was attached to the wall. It was built in 1906, you see, so I thought about the era and what Broadview Avenue looked like then: trolley cars ran along the avenue down at the bottom of the hill; people wore white clothes in the summer to stay cool. Teddy Roosevelt was President. One thing led to another and that’s the way that book began: through desperation to those few images. With Loon Lake, in contrast, it was just a very strong sense of place, a heightened emotion when I found myself in the Adirondacks after many, many years of being away . . . and all this came to a point when I saw a sign, a road sign: Loon Lake. So it can be anything.
How about:
INTERVIEWER
For describing J. P. Morgan, for an example, did you spend a great deal of time in libraries?
DOCTOROW
The main research for Morgan was looking at the great photograph of him by Edward Steichen.
Google Image Search “Morgan by Edward Steichen”:
Good one from cuz
Posted: July 22, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, family, Texas Leave a comment
more.
Yes to this attitude!
Posted: July 20, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, writing Leave a comment
4,835 words on Ta-Nahesi Coates and Gawker controversy and Donald Trump
Posted: July 17, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, animals, Kennedy-Nixon Leave a comment
; ) just kidding! Instead here:
“My mother told a funny story,” says Caroline Kennedy, who is now the US ambassador to Japan, but was once – a little over 50 years ago – a toddler growing up in the White House.
“She was sitting next to Khrushchev at a state dinner in Vienna. She ran out of things to talk about, so she asked about the dog, Strelka, that the Russians had shot into space. During the conversation, my mother asked about Strelka’s puppies.
“A few months later, a puppy arrived and my father had no idea where the dog came from and couldn’t believe my mother had done that.”
The puppy was Strelka’s daughter, Pushinka, listed on her official registration certificate as a “non-breed” or mongrel.
“Pushinka was cute and fluffy,” says Ambassador Kennedy – in fact the Russian name translates as Fluffy.
(from)
From the Traphes L. Bryant oral history over there at the JFK Library:
And:
Charlie and Pushinka:
The Relationship That Dares Not Speak Its Name
Posted: July 8, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, love 4 Comments
The relationship that is so important and yet perhaps the hardest to express and discuss is FRIENDSHIP.
You love your friends. You love them so much. How to tell them? Can you? Should you? Is it acceptable? Are there rituals for it? Can other people ever understand it?
Is the expression of this part of what we love in sports?
Maybe the difficulty of expressing this relationship is why it makes for such powerful art.
What is the power of this gif from Broad City?
It is that Ilana is having almost orgasmic feelings, not from sex but from friendship-love for Abby*.
I haven’t seen all of Broad City, but I bet there’s a lot more of this emotion than there is of sex-having joy, or man-woman emotion.
I remember in high school my English teacher calling our attention to an essay called “Come Back To The Raft Ag’in Huck Honey” by Leslie Fielder. It’s not easily avail online but by the first sentence it’s talking about homosexual tension between Huck and Jim, who remember spend the whole book on a raft together, close as can be:
Fiedler’s first critical work appeared in 1948 and came about from his habit of reading American novels to his sons. The essay appeared in Partisan Review (enabled by Fiedler’s recent acquaintance with Delmore Schwartz) and was the subject of a great amount of critical debate and controversy. “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!” argued a recurrent theme in American literature was an unspoken or implied homoerotic relationship between men, famously using Huckleberry Finn and Jim as examples. Pairs of men flee for wilderness rather than remain in the civilizing and domesticated world of women. Fiedler also deals with this male bonding in Love and Death in the American Novel (1960), Waiting for the End (1964) and The Return of the Vanishing American (1968).
As Winchell wrote in his book on Fiedler, “Reading ‘Come Back to the Raft’ over half a century later, one tends to forget that, prior to Fiedler, few critics had discussed classic American literature in terms of race, gender, and sexuality” (Winchell 53). Fiedler emphasized the fact the males paired in these wilderness adventures tend to be of different races as well, which created an additional critical dimension. “Come Back to the Raft” not only caused a stream of letters of protest to be sent to Partisan Review, but it also was attacked by the critical community. For instance, Queer theoristChristopher Looby argues that Fiedler’s claims were noticeably given from a 20th Century urban perspective and did not adequately address the time period in which Huckleberry Finn was written (i.e. the debate on the sexuality of Abraham Lincoln).
Well, call me a square, but I don’t think Huck Finn is really about queer theory. I think it’s about men bonded together in friendship. No sex, just men intensely and closely together.
Hemingway as us. puts it succinctly:
I think intense, almost inexpressible friendship is a theme that runs through American literature, and probably world lit.
Many, many times in the history of America, men were bonded to each other in intense ways. And women were bonded to each other in intense ways. That’s how they got through life.
Forget history: think of your own life.
There is little language or ritual for this relationship. The big ritual is marriage: man and woman (and now man/man, woman/woman etc. but it’s not the same thing).
In a way, at a wedding you’re saying goodbye to your friend relationships.
The two most popular TV shows of my youth, Friends and Seinfeld, were about friends who are bonded to each other.
The romantic relationships they form are disposable by comparison.
What’s going on in Moby-Dick, really? What’s the most important relationship in this book with almost no women?
You could say it’s the friendship between Ishmael and Queequeg?
How about Gatsby? The whole summer over which Gatsby occurs, Nick is dating some chick named Jordan who he in the end discards as unworthy. What relationship from that summer was important to Nick? His friendship with another dude. How about this moment when Gatsby lives up to Nick’s dream of him?:
I wanted to get up and slap him on the back. I had one of those renewals of complete faith in him that I’d experienced before.
Gatsby is like a love letter from Nick to his great, doomed friend.
Why was True Detective good last year and not good** this year? Tons of reasons (if you agree with the premise).
But last year it was about partners. Male partners.
Not sex partners — geez, it’s not all sex. Men can love each other without fucking. True Detective 1 is about guys who had to be loyal to each other. In the beginning, and also the “end,” in fact, they hate each other. But in the true end? They are there for each other. They love each other so much it breaks your heart. Isn’t the last shot or whatever Harrelson carrying McConaughey?
(Yeah I’m no dunce, I know that’s also meant to be Jesus or whatever too — for that matter, what are the Gospels about if not friendship and love among bros?)
What is Entourage about?
I started watching Ballers this year. Ballers = Entourage but about sports, right? I’m sure that’s how they pitched it.
But Ballers sucks** so bad it makes you revisit and consider what made Entourage tick.
What was Entourage about? Friends. Male friendship. It’s so awkward to talk about that the only way the Entourage dudes could express it was in talking about fuckin’ chicks, or making fun of how gay Lloyd is. There are (at least in the movie) zero emotional moments between men and women in Entourage. The emotion is men, trying so hard to express something that their culture/life whatever gives them no language for: the non-sexual love between men.
Ballers sucks because The Rock has no real friends in it. Who is his friend, Corddry?
C’mon.
In Ballers, there’s no loyalty to a friend that he puts above everything else in his life.
Consider The Bridges At Toko-Ri, by James Michener. (I’m stealing this point from some military guy in an interview. I can’t remember who. When I find it I’ll post, this bit about Bridges at Toko-Ri is more or less a summary of what some guy said in something I read years ago:)
In this movie/book, William Holden has a great life, post-war. But he’s called back to war to help out his shipmate. His wife, Grace Kelly, can’t understand this relationship. Who cares? Stay with your great life and wife and kids! She doesn’t understand “shipmates.” But William Holden knows it’s the most important relationship in his life.
In the end, he dies in a ditch with his friend Mickey Rooney. This was his fate, to die with his friend. Tragic, maybe, but noble.
How about this?
What you read about in books about war is men bonded to each other so deeply, so intensely, beyond anything they’ve ever felt before.
famous one from the Korean War by Al Chang, whose career seems worth investigating at some later date.
… and then it’s gone. It can never come back.
If you survive you get on with the regular relationships of life, always missing the closeness you once had.
What is Broad City about?
Friendship. A time in your life that will not last forever when your most important relationship, a relationship transcending all other bullshit, a relationship felt so deeply you almost can’t take it, is friendship.
My point is just: friendship is such a big deal in life. But we hardly even have language to talk about it. So exploring it can make powerful art/comedy/drama.
* I think, not 100% sure on the context here, as always write me if I’m wrong as I so often am.
** so far — I’m a believer and rooter-for.
Cleanin’ out my DVR
Posted: July 6, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, Indians, TV Leave a comment
One of the local public broadcasting stations here in SoCal aired an episode of the Berenstain Bears in Lakota.
The Lakota language represents one of the largest Native American language speech communities in the United States, with approximately 6,000 speakers living mostly in northern plains states of North Dakota and South Dakota.
The USWNT
Posted: July 2, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, sports Leave a comment
I gotta say, I’m enjoying the women’s World Cup, and I am for the US women. I like Tobin Heath
And Kelley OHara
And Sydney Leroux
I like this:
And I like that Alex Morgan wrote a bestselling book for middle schoolers:
This is the only one star review:
Do agree with Ken that this is troubling:
Summer
Posted: June 29, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, California, the California Condition 1 Comment
Wait! You can’t be shut down for summer! I need my Helytimes!
writes reader Melanie in Nashville. Aw, thanks! Don’t worry, there’s tons to read… in the archive!
There have been over 560 posts on Helytimes. Here are the ten most popular:
1) Sundown by Gordon Lightfoot
Off the charts most popular post, because of people googling supposed inspiration/John Belushi partyfriend Cathy Smith
Those’ll keep coming over the summer!
3) Cinderella and Interrogation Technique
Disney + Nazis will bring ’em in.
A personal passion
5) What was up with European witch trials?
Feel like this is my wheelhouse, summarizing dense history of the general reader, but it’s a lot of work to write posts like this.
6) Ships’ Cats
I mean, for Convoy alone.
The “it man” of Norwegian literature!
Just a real great story.
9) Losing The War by Lee Sandlin
This blew my mind, some of the best writing I’ve ever read on WWII.
10) Coaches, parts 1 and 2.
About Pete Carroll, Nick Saban, and Bill Belichick
Now, here are just some personal favorites:
– Record Group 80: Series: General Photographic File Of the Department of the Navy, 1943-1958
Here’s stuff related to a current project:
– The Conquest Of New Spain by Bernal Diaz
Here is some backstory on Donald Trump, lately in the news:
You can also browse yourself by category. Probably the deepest holes are
– Music
See you later!
Shuttin’ Up For Summer
Posted: June 28, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, heroes, writing 1 Comment
Time for summer vacation here at Helytimes!
Before I go there were a couple things to get out of my system:
New David Brooks book
I like David Brooks, I’ve read all his books. Lately he’s been getting hammered by the millennials. That’s gonna happen when you tell people stuff they don’t wanna hear, true or not, and you don’t seem to actually have it all figured out yourself. Whatever, he has an exhausting job. Shouldn’t Times columnists take a year off every so often?
The message that’s at the center of this book might be, you must work hard every day at being a better person.
Who would disagree with this? Yet it’s not really a message we hear that often.
Brooks thinks people used to hear this message all the time, it was part of the public life or public religion or culture of this country. As his sparker example, he cites a radio broadcast he heard from the end of WW2:
Well, ok. But maybe they were somber because three hundred thousand American guys had gotten killed, half of Europe was leveled, China was fucked, they’d just dropped two world-changing weapons on Japan, there was footage somewhere of bodies being shoved into ditches by bulldozers at Nazi camps, and we might have to fight the Soviets tomorrow.
Maybe they were just tired and exhausted and depressed.
As for the football thing, you know durn well that’s not a fair comparison, Brooks. You’re being glib. An adrenalined athlete and a broadcast at the end of a war are going to have different tones.
Anyway. The book is mini-biographies of:
George Marshall
Francis Perkins
A. Philip Randolph
Bayard Rustin
Dorothy Day (a fox, Brooks, you should’ve mentioned that, kind of part of the story here)
George Eliot
Dwight Eisenhower
Samuel Johnson plus there’s Johnny Unitas, etc.
Those are all good. Who doesn’t love little biographies?
The basic message is that all these people worked hard to be their best, to find what that was, sort out their values and then live up to them. They overcome crazy challenges, achieved impossibilities, etc.
The world these people grew up in was very different. For one thing it was way poorer. It was way slower. It was traditional. It was segregated. Some of these people worked to change those things, others were like the embodiment of preserving those values.
So not all the lessons are easily transferable. Eisenhower and Marshall were military guys. Day worked in the Catholic tradition. Perkins and Eliot were from rigid semi-aristocracies. Maybe a moral of this book might be “use the values you’ve been taught. Lock into some tradition and try to advance it.” That’s an interesting idea.
One thing that I think is a fake claim in the Brooks book is this:
Well whatever, Joel Osteen gives me the willies, but all these characters Brooks describes believed they were “made to excel… to leave a mark on this generation… chosen, set apart”
On the whole though, the book was a fine read, and it’s worth thinking about this stuff. It reminded me of the lectures my high school headmaster used to give. There was a lot of sense in them, I look over this book of them a lot.
This is a fair slam on Brooks’ book.
When Your Enemy Wants To Surrender, Let Him.
Disappointed Brooks wrote a column about Lee without noting my and Bob Dylan’s work on the topic. As it happens I’ve been thinking about Lee a lot lately.
Grant, who’d seen thousands of people, many of them children, die horrible deaths because of Lee’s brilliance, because of his perseverance, because of his ability to inspire an army, Grant who’d lost friends and had to send his own guys to get killed by the thousands because of Lee, treated him with utmost magnanimity.
Here is what Grant says about Lee when they met at Appomattox:
The best one hour about Lee for my money is this PBS American Experience doc, avail free on my PBS Roku channel:
(How hard does American Experience dominate?)
Union General Montgomery Meigs thought of a punishment for Lee. He turned Lee’s wife’s ancestral home, to which Lee hoped to retire one day, into a fucking cemetery:
As for naming schools after him? Sure — maybe it’s a good lesson about how you can have some amazing qualities but be wrong about the most important things of your age. Kids can be reminded every day to ask “what might I be wrong about? what are we ALL wrong about?”
But also who cares? We can and should change our heroes as time goes on. Name it after the next guy. Name all those schools after Harriet Tubman or Sally Ride. Or Francis Perkins or Bayard Rustin.
Anyway: summer!
(I enjoy fails but I do prefer when I know for sure the guy isn’t paralyzed.)
If you need me btw you can find me here!:
– one of the prettiest songs ever written, says Dick Clark.
Fred Trump
Posted: June 17, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, New York 4 Comments
Once, back when I lived in New York, I went down to Coney Island to have a look around. On Surf Avenue, there was a man with glasses, maybe sixty but energetic, and good-humored, standing behind a table, handing out fliers about some neighborhood development thing or another. He was opposed to it. I got to talking to this guy, and he brought up Fred Trump, Donald Trump’s father, and the various destruction he’d done to Coney Island. To this man, Fred Trump was both laughable and a villain.
from Politico’s “Quiz: How Well Do You Know Donald Trump?” http://www.politico.com/gallery/2013/10/quiz-how-well-do-you-know-donald-trump/001376-019598.html
Some time after that I looked up Fred Trump’s obituary in The New York Times. He died in 1999. It’s a great obituary, written by Tracie Rozhon:
Frederick Christ (pronounced Krist) Trump was born in New York City in 1905. From World War II until the 1980’s, Mr. Trump would tell friends and acquaintances that he was of Swedish origin, although both his parents were born in Germany. John Walter, his nephew and the family historian, explained, ”He had a lot of Jewish tenants and it wasn’t a good thing to be German in those days.”
His father was a barber who arrived from Kallstadt, Germany, in 1885 and joined the Alaska gold rush. By the turn of the century, he owned the White Horse Restaurant and Inn in White Horse, Alaska, while also supplying food and lumber to the miners.
Fred Trump started a construction business at fifteen. With the money he made he paid for his kid brother to go to college and get a Ph.D.
”He made a great contribution; he filled a very big hole in the market,” Mr. LeFrak recalled. ”We took Queens; he did more in Brooklyn. He was a great builder who rallied to the cause like we did; he built housing for the returning veterans. I guess you could say we’re the last of the old dinosaurs.”
Fred Trump married a Scottish immigrant. When he died they’d been married 63 years.
His estate has been estimated by the family at $250 million to $300 million, but Mr. Trump did not believe in displays of wealth — with one exception. For decades, he insisted on a Cadillac, always navy blue, always gleaming, and always replaced every three years, its ”FCT” license plate announcing its owner wherever he went.
Fred Trump was frugal:
Mr. Trump was a demon for controlling costs. Besides collecting unused nails, Mr. Gordon said, Mr. Trump often performed the exterminating chores in his buildings by himself. ”He became an expert,” Mr. Gordon said.
When it was time to order the thousands of gallons of disinfectant necessary for his thousands of apartments, Mr. Trump gathered samples of all the available floor cleaners on his desk. ”Then he sent them out to a lab and found out what was in them and had it mixed himself,” Donald Trump recalled. ”What had cost $2 a bottle, he got mixed for 50 cents.”
What the guy on Coney Island didn’t like was the destruction of Steeplechase Park, told here by Wikipedia:
After acquiring the site in 1965, Fred Trump intended to build a low-cost housing development. Trump was unable to get a change to the zoning of the area, which required “amusements” only (largely due to the efforts of the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce), and decided to demolish the park in 1966 before it could obtain landmark status. Trump held a “demolition party,” at which invited guests threw bricks through the Park’s facade. Trump bulldozed the majority of the park, save for a few rides and concessions stands, among them the Parachute Jump, that were along the boardwalk.
The housing development never happened though, and Coney Island is a bit of a wasteland.
The story of the demolition party is also told in this book:
This book is incredibly poignant. Charles Denson is a good writer, and his book is very personal. Some it is about how his memories of the park were tied up with his longing for his disappearing father.
One thing Donald Trump always does is call people “losers.” I’m with John Le Carre: the mark of a decent society is how it takes care of losers. So I don’t think I will vote for Donald Trump.
Interaction Ritual Chains
Posted: June 5, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, Christianity, heroes, history, marine biology, religion, sexuality Leave a comment
Got interested in the sociologist Randall Collins via his blog, which I think Tyler Cowen linked to.
Collins also wrote a book about violence.
If you find yourself in a bar fight, his main advice on avoiding “damage” seems to be:
1) maintain calm, steady eye contact.
2) speak in a calm clear assertive voice
3) assert emotional dominance, or at least hold your own, emotional dominance-wise.
Most of the damage gets done, says Collins (who watched hundreds of hours of tapes of bar fights) when you’ve already lost the emotional encounter. Even worse if there’s a crowd.
At the heart of Collins’ micro-sociological theory is the concept of “confrontational tension.” As people enter into an antagonistic interactional situation, their fear/tension is heightened. These emotions become a roadblock to violence, and so flight and stalemate often result. Actual violence only occurs when pathways around this roadblock can be found that lead people into a “tunnel of violence.” Collins identifies several pathways into this tunnel, the most dangerous of which is “forward panic.” In these situations, the confrontational tension builds up and is suddenly released so that it spills forward into atrocities ranging from the Rodney King beating to the My Lai massacre, the rape of Nanking, and the Rwandan genocide. Other ways around the stalemate of confrontational tension are to attack a weak victim (e.g., domestic violence) or to be encouraged by an audience (e.g., lynch mobs). Clearly, these pathways can also be combined, as when a schoolyard bully is encouraged by a crowd of classmates or when forward panic is stimulated by a group of bystanders.
Best posts from his blog, I’d say:
this one, on Napoleon and emotional energy.
this one, on Tank Man, is very interesting (although it goes against some other ideas I’ve heard, like Filip Hammar’s claim that it was well-known in his neighborhood of Beijing that Tank Man had been binge-drinking for days leading up to this event.)
this one, about fame, network bridging, and Lawrence of Arabia, is just fantastic.
So’s this one, about what we can learn from the gospel accounts of Jesus about charisma.
This one about Moby-Dick and bullfighting had some really interesting, new to me ideas.
I bought Professor Collins’ ebook, about emotional energy in Napoleon, Steve Jobs, and Alexander the Great. Lots of good stuff in there. And I got his magnum Interaction Ritual Chains. That’s a bit drier, but I’m learning a lot:
Record Group 80: Series: General Photographic File Of the Department of the Navy, 1943-1958
Posted: May 22, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, photography, the ocean, WW2 1 Comment
Fair to say I’m more interested than most people in old photos.
There are amazing collections of old photos in various US government archives, but they’re not always easy to find or sort through online.
Somehow I stumbled on this US Navy photographic archive.
“Pilot Tells of Dive-Bombing Wake Island in ready room of USS Yorktown (CV-10), 10/1943” is the title of that one.
“Pin-up girls at NAS Seattle, Spring Formal Dance. Left to right: Jeanne McIver, Harriet Berry, Muriel Alberti, Nancy Grant, Maleina Bagley, and Matti Ethridge.”, 04/10/1944″
“Sign on Tarawa illustrates Marine humor and possible lack of optimism as to duration of war., 06/1944”
“Much tattooed sailor aboard the USS New Jersey, 12/1944”
“Crewmen aboard USS Yorktown (CV-10) dash to stations as general quarters sound., 05/1943”
“Filipinos with their ‘bancas’ loaded with wares, paddle out to anchored destroyer to trade with crew., 06/1945”
“Personnel of USS LEXINGTON celebrate Christmas with make-shift decorations and a firefighting, helmeted Santa Claus., 12/1944”
“Graves of U.S. Marines who died taking Tarawa, before headstones were prepared. In background are the first tents put up after occupation of the island., ca. 11/1943”
“Marines installing telephone lines under fire on Peleliu. In the background is seen part of famous Bloody Nose Ridge, scene of the fiercest fighting on Peleliu., 09/1944”
“Sailor asleep between 40mm guns on board the USS New Jersey (BB-62)., 12/1944”
“F6F taxies into position after landing on board the USS Lexington (CV-16)., ca. 11/26/1943”
“Sailor eating sandwich beneath propellers of torpedo being loaded aboard U.S. submarine at New London, Connecticut., 08/1943”
“Children in Naples, Italy. Little boy helps one-legged companion across street., 08/1944”
“Torpedomen relaxing beneath rows of deadly torpedoes in torpedo shop., ca. 05/1945”
Lord knows what you’d find if you dig through the archives in person. This is just what’s digitized and online.
Happy Memorial Day, errboddy.
“Lesser” McConaughey, or, On The Subject Of Great Acting
Posted: May 21, 2015 Filed under: actors, America Since 1945, movies, Texas, the California Condition Leave a comment
1995. I got my first big paycheck as an actor. I think it was 150 grand. The film was Boys on the Side and we’re shooting in Tucson, AZ and I have this sweet little adobe guest house on the edge of the Saguaro National Park. The house came with a maid. My first maid. It was awesome. So, I’ve got a friend over one Friday night and we’re having a good time and I’m telling her about how happy I am with my set up . The house. The maid. Especially, the maid. I’m telling her, “she cleans the place after I go to work, washes my clothes, the dishes, puts fresh water by my bed, leaves me cooked meals sometimes, and SHE EVEN PRESSES MY JEANS!” My friend, she smiles at me, happy for my genuine excitement over this “luxury service” I’m getting, and she says, “Well…that’s great…if you like your jeans pressed.”
I kind of looked at her, kind of stuttered without saying anything, you know, that dumb ass look you can get, and it hit me…
I hate that line going down my jeans! And it was then, for the first time, that I noticed…I’ve never thought about NOT liking that starched line down the front of my jeans!! Because I’d never had a maid to iron my jeans before!! And since she did, now, for the first time in my life, I just liked it because Icould get it, I never thought about if I really wanted it there. Well, I did NOT want it there. That line… and that night I learned something.
Just because you CAN?… Nah… It’s not a good enough reason to do something. Even when it means having more, be discerning, choose it, because you WANT it, DO IT because you WANT to.
I’ve never had my jeans pressed since.
I have been a McConaughey enthusiast for awhile. Proof: I saw Sahara and The Lincoln Lawyer* in the theater.
Here is a thing I admired then and continue to admire about McConaughey:
He treated ridiculous movies with utmost seriousness.
I don’t believe he treated Sahara with any less respect than True Detective, even though Sahara is crazy.
He brought pride and his fullest effort to those movies, the same as he would to any other movie. Failure To Launch, for example.
This is the mark of a true professional who practices his craft with great honor and seriousness
(but: could it also be the mark of someone who doesn’t know when something is ridiculous?)
The director, Richard Linklater, kept inviting me back to set each night, putting me in more scenes which led to more lines all of which I happily said YES to. I was having a blast. People said I was good at it, they were writing me a check for $325 a day. I mean hell yeah, give me more scenes, I love this!! And by the end of the shoot those 3 lines had turned into over 3 weeks work and “it was Wooderson’s ’70 Chevelle we went to get Aerosmith tickets in.” Bad ass.
Well, a few years ago I was watching the film again and I noticed two scenes that I really shouldn’t have been in. In one of the scenes, I exited screen left to head somewhere, then re-entered the screen to “double check” if any of the other characters wanted to go with me. Now, in rewatching the film, (and you’ll agree if you know Wooderson), he was not a guy who would ever say, “later,” and then COME BACK to “see if you were sure you didn’t wanna come with him..” No, when Wooderson leaves, Wooderson’s gone, he doesn’t stutter step, flinch, rewind, ask twice, or solicit, right? He just “likes those high school girls cus he gets older and they stay the same age.”
My point is, I should NOT have been in THAT scene, I should have exited screen left and never come back.
Matthew McConaughey is a truly great actor.
From a description of an interview with Cary Fukunaga:
Fukunaga took one of these opportunities to share a story about directing Matthew McConaughey, a health-nut and non-smoker, in an early scene where he takes long, audible drags of a cigarette. Fukunaga describes saying, “‘don’t make it look like a middle school girl smoking for the first time.’ And McConaughey went in the opposite direction, just Cheech and Chong-ing it.”
Bo Jackson ran over the goal line, through the end zone and up the tunnel — the greatest snipers and marksmen in the world don’t aim at the target, they aim on the other side of it.
We do our best when our destinations are beyond the “measurement,” when our reach continually exceeds our grasp, when we have immortal finish lines.
When we do this, the race is never over. The journey has no port. The adventure never ends because we are always on our way. Do this, and let them tap us on the shoulder and say, “hey, you scored.” Let them tell you “You won.” Let them come tell you, “you can go home now.” Let them say “I love you too.” Let them say “thank you.”
These quotes are from his amazing commencement speech at University of Houston:
The late and great University of Texas football coach Daryl Royal was a friend of mine and a good friend to many. A lot of people looked up to him. One was a musician named “Larry.” Now at this time in his life Larry was in the prime of his country music career, had #1 hits and his life was rollin’. He had picked up a habit snortin’ “the white stuff” somewhere along the line and at one particular party after a “bathroom break,” Larry went confidently up to his mentor Daryl and he started telling Coach a story. Coach listened as he always had and when Larry finished his story and was about to walk away, Coach Royal put a gentle hand on his shoulder and very discreetly said, “Larry, you got something on your nose there bud.” Larry immediately hurried to the bathroom mirror where he saw some white powder he hadn’t cleaned off his nose. He was ashamed. He was embarrassed. As much because he felt so disrespectful to Coach Royal, and as much because he’d obviously gotten too comfortable with the drug to even hide as well as he should.
Well, the next day Larry went to coach’s house, rang the doorbell, Coach answered and he said, “Coach, I need to talk to you.” Daryl said, “sure, c’mon in.”
Larry confessed. He purged his sins to Coach. He told him how embarrassed he was, and how he’s “lost his way” in the midst of all the fame and fortune and towards the end of an hour, Larry, in tears, asked Coach, “What do you think I should do?” Now, Coach, being a man of few words, just looked at him and calmly confessed himself. He said, “Larry, I have never had any trouble turning the page in the book of my life.” Larry got sober that day and he has been for the last 40 years.
Now: I loved reading this speech. Many important reminders about life:
Mom and dad teach us things as children. Teachers, mentors, the government and laws all give us guidelines to navigate life, rules to abide by in the name of accountability.
I’m not talking about those obligations. I’m talking about the ones we make with ourselves, with our God, with our own consciousness. I’m talking about the YOU versus YOU obligations. We have to have them. Again, these are not societal laws and expectations that we acknowledge and endow for anyone other than ourselves. These are FAITH based OBLIGATIONS that we make on our own.
Not the lowered insurance rate for a good driving record, you will not be fined or put in jail if you do not gratify the obligations I speak of — no one else governs these but you.
They’re secrets with yourself, private council, personal protocols, and while nobody throws you a party when you abide by them, no one will arrest you when you break them either. Except yourself. Or, some cops who got a “disturbing the peace” call at 2:30 in the morning because you were playing bongos in your birthday suit.
Entertainment Tonight called this speech “bonkers.”
That’s not fair.
Maybe a fourteenth lesson that McConaughey only hints at in his speech is: to achieve greatness you must dance along the edge of bonkers. To do anything worthwhile you must risk appearing ridiculous. On your journey, at many points, you will appear ridiculous. The fear of appearing ridiculous stops all too many from achieving their potential.
You know these No Fear t-shirts? I don’t get em. Hell, I try to scare myself at least once a day. I get butterflies every morning before I go to work. I was nervous before I got here to speak tonight. I think fear is a good thing. Why? Because it increases our NEED to overcome that fear.
Say your obstacle is fear of rejection. You want to ask her out but you fear she may say “no.” You want to ask for that promotion but you’re scared your boss will think you’re overstepping your bounds.
Well, instead of denying these fears, declare them, say them out loud, admit them, give them the credit they deserve. Don’t get all macho and act like they’re no big deal, and don’t get paralyzed by denying they exist and therefore abandoning your need to overcome them. I mean, I’d subscribe to the belief that we’re all destined to have to do the thing we fear the most anyway.
So, you give your obstacles credit and you will one. Find the courage to overcome them or see clearly that they are not really worth prevailing over.
Here is what McConaughey looked like giving his speech.
Here is a great actor whose greatest role is himself.
* The Lincoln Lawyer spoke to a real fantasy I can’t be alone in having in Los Angeles: someone driving you everywhere in comfortable quiet. Since then Uber has come close to making that a reality.
The hero with a thousand faces
Posted: May 20, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, heroes, the California Condition 1 CommentThis
makes me think of this
David Letterman
Posted: May 19, 2015 Filed under: America Since 1945, comedy, TV 2 Comments
Gave me my first job ever. I only met him once, for thirty seconds.
I hated the actual work of working there. I had no idea how to write in this man’s voice, no clue what he was going to be into. I was terrible at it. On the show at that time he’d often throw out all the comedy and just telephone his assistant Stephanie on air instead. From my office I could see the Hudson River and I’d stare at tugboats going by. After six months I got fired.
Still it launched my career. People still ask me about it and probably will be for the rest of my life.
Steve Young had the office next to me, he’d been working there since 1989 or 1990. His office was full of records of industrial songs, and every once in awhile he’d play one for me. I remember one that was a rap that helped KFC employees remember how to make biscuits.
What a great man.
Another memory: every single day I ate the same thing: a BLT from Rupert’s deli downstairs.
Another one: they played the show, or at least the top ten list, on the radio. Sometimes, on my taxi ride home, the driver would be listening to it.
If you haven’t seen the last Norm MacDonald appearance there’s no helping you, but watch this old one. In these late episodes it’s easy to forget how sharp and fast and energized Letterman was at full strength.
The guy I’ll really miss though is Paul Schaffer.
“The secret I finally learned, after all these years, is just stay loose with this stuff,” says Paul Shaffer. “Swing with whatever happens onstage, because everybody else is.”
Stray Items
Posted: May 12, 2015 Filed under: Africa, America Since 1945, assorted, fscottfitzgerald, writing Leave a comment
Sorry I haven’t been posting more. Trying to finish my book and get Great Debates Live organized (get your tickets by emailing greatdebates69@gmail.com. We are legit almost sold out). Honestly it’s a LITTLE unfair to be mad at me for not producing enough free content.
A few items too good to ignore came across our desk:
1) Reader Robert P. in Los Angeles sends us this item:
Dear Helytimes,
Thought you might enjoy this wiki. There’s a great part about a riddle and another great part about conducting a trial. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Numbers_Gang
Gotta say, this is one of the most intriguing Wikipedia pages I can remember. I love when Wikipedia takes myth at face value.
2) Re: our recent post about Tanya Tucker, reader Bobby M. writes:
Saw that Tanya Tucker’s Delta Dawn popped up. Love that one. We like to joke that the lyrics are a conversation wherein some jerk is taunting an insanse person. “Oh, and, Delta? Did I hear you say he was meeting you here today? And (aside to chittering friend: ‘get a load of this’) did I also hear you say he’d be taking you to his mansion. In the sky? Yeah, that’s what I thought you said, Delta. Nice flower you have on.” Midler’s version blows.
Bobby M. is one of the contributors to Lost Almanac, a truly funny print and online comedy mag.
3) We ran into reader Leila S. in New York City. She was reading the letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and sends in some highlights:
to John Peale Bishop, March, 1925, he wrote “I am quite drunk” at the top of the paper above the date, then later in the letter: “I have lost my pen so I will have to continue in pencil. It turned up– I was writing with it all the time and hadn’t noticed.”to H.L. Mencken, May 4, 1925, re: Great Gatsby:“You say, ‘the story is fundamentally trivial.'”
to Gertrude Stein, June 1925, after a long letter kissing her ass:
“Like Gatsby, I have only hope.” Dude quoted his own book he just wrote!
to Mrs. Bayard Turnbull, May 31, 1934, after a long apology about his embarrassing behavior at a tea party:“P.S. I’m sorry this is typed but I seem to have contracted Scottie’s poison ivy and my hands are swathed in bandages.”
to Joseph Hergesheimer, Fall 1935, re: Tender Is The Night“I could tell in the Stafford Bar that afternoon when you said that it was ‘almost impossible to write a book about an actress’ that you hadn’t read it thru because the actress fades out of it in the first third and is only a catalytic agent.”to Arnold Gingrich, March 20, 1936:“In my ‘Ant’ satire, the phrase ‘Lebanon School for the Blind’ should be changed to ‘New Jersey School for Drug Addicts.'” [The letter continues about other things, then at the very end, emphasis his] “Please don’t forget this change in ‘Ants.'”to Ernest Hemingway, August, 1936
“Please lay off me in print.”
As always you can reach helytimes at helphely at gmail.com
Helytimes 