There’s a fascinating (but very poorly edited) piece in the Science section of today’s New York Times, about the treacherous habit of self-examination after the fact: “The New Year’s Cocktail: Regret with a Dash of Bitters”:

Over the past decade and a half, psychologists have studied how regrets - large and small, recent and distant - affect people’s mental well-being. They have shown, convincingly though not surprisingly, that ruminating on paths not taken is an emotionally corrosive exercise. The common wisdom about regret - that what hurts the most is not what you did but what you didn’t do - also appears to be true, at least in the long run.

Yet it is partly from studies of lost possible selves that psychologists have come to a more complete understanding of how regret molds personality. These studies, in people recently divorced and those caring for a sick child, among others, suggest that it is possible to entertain idealized versions of oneself without being mocked or shamed. And they suggest that doing so may serve an important psychological purpose.

What the author, Benedict Carey, is trying to say here (but what he makes unnecessarily confusing by inserting shame into the equation) is that not blaming yourself (exclusively) for whatever went wrong helps you move on. He does describe—very gingerly—various coping strategies that people adopt for dealing with the past:

Researchers find that people think about past foul-ups or missed opportunities in several ways. Some tend to fixate and are at an elevated risk for mood problems. Others have learned to ignore regrets and seem to live more lighthearted, if less-examined, lives. In between are those who walk carefully through the minefield of past choices, gamely digging up traps and doing what they can to defuse the live ones.

Finally, he gently suggests that time heals all such wounds, if you allow time to do its thing:

With age, people apparently detoxified their regrets by reframing them as shared misunderstandings, a retrospective touching-up that in many cases might have been more accurate.

As for me, one of the best decisions I ever made was to bail on grad school. Every time I read stuff like this, I’m reminded of the fact that I have absolutely no regrets about my decision.

The Modern Language Association frequently helps out its critics with provocative session titles and left-leaning political stands offered by its members. …[I]n moves that infuriated the MLA’s Radical Caucus, the association’s Delegate Assembly refused to pass those resolutions and instead adopted much narrower measures. The [MLA] acknowledged tensions over the Middle East on campus, but in a resolution that did not single out pro-Israel groups for criticism. And the association criticized the University of Colorado for the way it started its investigation of Ward Churchill, but took no stand on whether the outcome (his firing) was appropriate.

Imagine that: in the name of academic freedom, academics who consider themselves “progressive” demand the right to promote one one point of view and to single out only one group for criticism.

The resolution as [Grover Furr] wrote it said that some who criticize Zionism and Israel have been “denied tenure, disinvited to speak … [or] fraudulently called ‘anti-Semitic.’” The resolution called this a “serious danger to academic study and discussion in the USA today” and then resolved that “the MLA defend the academic freedom and the freedom of speech of faculty and invited speakers to criticize Zionism and Israel.” The resolution made no mention of the right of others on campus to embrace Zionism or Israel or to hold middle-of-the-road views or any views other than being critical of Israel and Zionism.

The substitute resolution, adopted by a vote of 63-30 said:

“Middle East is a subject of intense debate,” ….[and that] it was “essential that colleges and universities protect faculty rights to speak forthrightly on all sides of the issue,” and urged colleges to “resist” pressure from outside groups about tenure reviews and speakers and to instead uphold academic freedom. Nelson’s resolution did not identify one side or the other as victim or villain in the campus debates over the Middle East and said that academic freedom must apply to people “to address the issue of the Middle East in the manner they choose.”

This was considered too even-handed by critics. But supporters from the health majority of MLA members who voted have got the right idea:

[T]hey argued that the MLA shouldn’t be picking sides, and that the principles behind defending Israel’s critics should apply to its supporters as well. One professor said: “Academic freedom is meaningless unless it applies to all points of view.” Another said that even if 95 percent of disputes over academic freedom and the Middle East relate to one side of the argument, the principle of academic freedom should be paramount, not helping those 95 percent over the 5 percent. [e.a.]

Really? Ya think? 

That the painfully obvious bottom line about freedom of speech (that it’s for me and for thee) needs to be spelled out to 33% of the members in good standing of the MLA is a sad commentary on the American academy.

The good news is that the hard-core ideologues on college campuses are finally being challenged. 

… and when it does, blogging takes a backseat.

I haven’t stopped; I’m just otherwise engaged.

I’ll be back.

I’m unplugging for a long weekend. See you on the other side. Here are a few more New York pix to tide you over:

down by the Hudson River:

SoHo fire escape:

Regular readers know that I recently took a little detour away from my usual subject matter to post some pictures of Lower Manhattan. (I’ve got a lot more, by the way, but I have to clean up my startup disk to make room for them on iPhoto. Nightmare.)

Meanwhile, you can read all about the transformation of Lower Manhattan here, in the New York Sun:

Luxury Seems To Be Set For the Lower East Side

Ultra-luxury five-star hotels, the largest supermarket in the Northeast, apartments renting for $80 a square foot, condominiums selling for $1,500 a square foot, top-flight restaurants, a hip nightlife scene, and high-end boutiques: It’s not TriBeCa, the meatpacking district, or the High Line area I’m talking about — it’s the Bowery and the Lower East Side.

“Once a few new projects that were initially viewed as trailblazing succeed and take hold, it makes it easier for other projects to prosper and the gap between the lower end and the high end of the market and condo prices diminishes. That’s precisely what is happening to the Lower East Side,” Mr. Ivanhoe continued. “Once the area is viewed as acceptable for people to live in safely and some entertainment, shopping, and services fill in, the foundation is in place for a strong, stable area for years to come.”

“Its not just condo mania, it’s a confluence of everything coming together in the Lower East Side,” a principal of Columbia Street Developers, Marshall Sohne, said. “From working in the neighborhood, I got to see some of the forces at work. The Bowery was the commercial kitchen district. Now just look at Bond Street between Lafayette and the Bowery where people want a location that they are paying real numbers for lofts without any services. These are ‘hip’ artistic types with big dollars, willing to pay the type of prices that were paid by the tycoons living in the Time Warner Center, but these people prefer to be on Bond Street.”

Read the whole thing if you dare. Here’s a sampling of what a neighborhood in transition looks like.

the old Bond Street, up close

Bond Street, looking east from Broadway

Bond Street, looking west toward Broadway, where it ends in a T

Bond Street construction, seen from a Bleecker Street rooftop

the new 23-story hotel going up on the Bowery

The 23-story hotel is being built around the building where Hettie Jones, ex-wife of Amiri Baraka (ne LeRoi Jones), lives. You can read all about it here. (I snuck onto the building site and took a lot of up-close-and-personal shots like this before getting chased away by a guard. Exciting!)

In the backyard of the new Bowery Hotel

Across the street from the new Bowery Hotel. Just what you want to see after you’ve paid $600 a night for your room, right?

Spring Street, Lower Manhattan, May 2007

See that reddish building way off in the distance, and the greenish one next to it? They’re across the Hudson River, which you can’t see, in New Jersey. The beige building in the right of the picture is on the pier on the Manhattan side of the river.

Update: does it remind you of this classic Saul Steinberg illustration?

Sullivan Street, SoHo, May 2007

While everyone in Israel is angling for position now that Olmert has gotten a 0% popularity rating and Nasrallah is singing nyeh nyeh nyeh boo boo, I’m watching Gaza to see what’s going on among Israel’s putative partners for peace.

Here’s what’s going on: al Qaeda (or someone affliated with it, or involved in al Qaeda-type thinking) is pressuring Hamas, as evidenced by a Guardian story about abducted BBC journalist Alan Johnston. Apparently Haniyeh is in negotiations with Johnston’s kidnappers [e.a.]:

 The letters from Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh have sought to “clarify to these people [the kidnappers] that this issue doesn’t serve the interest of our people, and the Muslims,” said the aide, Ahmed Youssef. …

Youssef said the kidnappers had not demanded any ransom and suggested they were a militant Muslim group.

“Money is not the issue. The issue is an incorrect understanding of Islam, how to deal with foreigners in general, an incorrect understanding of Islam among some,” he said.

Youssef declined to discuss the kidnappers’ identities or ideology. “Any discussions about it will harm this issue,” he said.

 For what it’s worth, Abbas also released a quote:

“We know where the journalist is, and we want to preserve his life and we want to save him, and this needs time,” Abbas was quoted as saying by the official Wafa news agency.

They seem to be afraid to say anything more for fear that Johnston will be killed by his kidnappers.

You’ll note that just a couple of days ago, al Qaeda was publicly provoking and goading Hamas. From a story published in the L.A. Times:

An Al Qaeda leader called on the Palestinian group Hamas to fight Israel with “bombs and fire.”

“Where is revenge, where are the bombs, where is the fire?” Abu Yahya al-Libi asked members of the military wing of Hamas in a video posted on a website used by Islamist militant groups.

Al Qaeda views Hamas as a moderate group that has compromised the rights of Palestinians for political gains.

A war of words between Hamas and al Qaeda has been going on for a while. Here’s one story from mid-March:

Hamas to al-Qaeda: Stop baseless accusations

 

Fury in Hamas after al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri ‘eulogizes’ the movement, saying it has surrendered and betrayed its principles. Hamas: ‘We will not forsake a single grain of the sand of Palestine’

Here’s another story from mid-April:

‘Al-Qaeda operating in Gaza’

 

PA security officials say global jihad group targeting Palestinian leaders, secular Muslims

Al-Qaeda is operating in the Gaza Strip and previously attempted to assassinate Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other top leaders from Abbas’ Fatah party, according to Palestinian security officials.

Can it be any more obvious that al Qaeda is operating with total impunity in Gaza, where there are currently no Western reporters?

Can it be any more obvious that al Qaeda took Johnston hostage as leverage against Hamas, which has been deemed to be not sufficiently Islamic to suit al Qaeda? that al Qaeda is now trying to hijack the Palestinian cause, for its own ends?

I last wrote about “al Qaeda-type thinking” in Gaza a few weeks ago. That phrase ran in both the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune on April 16.

No one has picked up on it since. Because they’re afraid that Johnston will be killed by his kidnappers. That’s how terrorism works: it’s extortion.

I’m sorry to be back to blogging. It was so much nicer to lose myself in the sights of downtown Manhattan for my impromptu photo project.

But no one else is writing about this—there’s a virtual news blackout—so it falls to me to document what I’ve been able to put together.

Distance usually helps clarify that which was murky.

I’ve made some minor edits*** to “What am I documenting?” … if you’re interested.

————

*** Why is this important? Because unclear writing is evidence of unclear thinking. And since I spend a lot of time on this blog pointing out the logical flaws in the arguments of others, it is only right that I try to keep my own house clean.

For those of you who like to pore over such things, although I can’t imagine why you would want to, here’s a reprint of my original post:

1800	2007-04-29 8:40:20 pm	what am I documenting?

My son borrowed my camera the other day.

“What are you documenting?” he asked when he saw the pictures I’d taken.

Good question. I’m not quite sure, except to say that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction—in this case, the bold and fast-paced transformation of a formerly sleepy neighborhood via striking (and sometimes strikingly incongruous) architectural statements (some of which are artful and most of which are gut-wrenchingly bad) have propelled me out into the streets of Lower Manhattan with my camera. When the inevitability of change gets in your face every time you walk out your door, it seems like a natural reaction to want to document those changes.

There is nothing conservative about me. I come from a long line of rebels. I am not afraid of change—as long as the rush to change isn’t so great that we are tempted to throw out all of the old to make way for all of the new.

So: I have taken to documenting the changes in my backyard. It’s an accompaniment to the hints of changes that I’ve picking up in the culture but cannot possibly document because of the dizzying pace of change.

and here it is in context

Canal and Renwick Streets

update: this post has been updated.

My son borrowed my camera the other day.

“What are you documenting?” he asked when he saw the pictures I’d taken.

Good question. I’m not quite sure, except to say that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction—in this case, the bold and fast-paced transformation of a (formerly sleepy seedy, then sleepy) neighborhood via striking (and sometimes strikingly incongruous) architectural statements (some of which are artful and most of which are gut-wrenchingly bad) have propelled me out into the streets of Lower Manhattan with my camera.

When the inevitability of change gets in your face every time you walk out your door, it seems like a natural reaction to want to document those changes freeze the present, at least temporarily. I didn’t set out to hold off the future but rather to preserve my memories of the present (because we always think we will remember how things were, but we never do).

There is nothing conservative about me. I come from a long line of rebels. I am not afraid of change—as long as the rush to change isn’t so great that we are tempted to throw out all of the old to make way for all of the new. The old and the new can not only coexist peacefully; they can live together in harmony.

So: I have taken to documenting the changes in my photographing my backyard. I thought I was documenting the change, but that makes it sound too much like I’m trying to hold off the future. Which I’m not. I have always been intensely curious about the future.

This intermittent photo diary is an accompaniment to the hints of change that I’ve been picking up in the culture but cannot possibly document because of the dizzying pace and odd trajectory of that change. Are we taking two steps backwards at the same time that we claim we’re making progress?

the Gwathmey building at Astor Place, viewed from Cooper Square

NoHo, corner of Bond and Lafayette, looking north

April 2007

I’ve been keeping a brutal pace and I’m beat. Like Roger L. Simon, I’m also feeling that after paying way too much attention to politics (not my natural milieu), I need to take a long, hot shower. And I would be lying by omission if I didn’t also note that the Egyptian Sandmonkey’s announced retirement from the blogosphere has me in a deep funk.

In “Done,” the Sandmonkey explains that he has been too cavalier about his personal safety:

One of the chief reasons is the fact that there has been too treet and asking questions about me since that day. I ignore that, the same way I ignored all the clicking noises that my phones started to exhibit all of a sudden, or the law suit filed by Judge Mourad on my friends, and instead grew bolder and more reckless at a time where everybody else started being more cautious. It took me a while to take note of the fear that has been gripping our little blogsphere and comprehend what it really means. The prospects for improvment, to put it slightly, look pretty grim. I was the model of caution, and believing in my invincipility by managing not to get arrested for the past 2 and a half years, I’ve grown reckless. Stupid Monkey. Stupid!

No—not stupid. He was reckless in his pursuit of liberty. Born freedom fighters are like that sometimes. In the police state of Egypt, where the Sandmonkey lives, that is indeed dangerous. I worry for him.

I hope to come back refreshed after a breather. Meanwhile, I leave you with a message from New York City.

and here it is in context

corner of Thompson and Bleecker, April 2007

update: welcome, ETP readers! Enjoy Cathy Seipp’s piece below. And then do go here to read Matt Welch’s most excellent farewell to her.

Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I used to read her Hollywoodland columns in Salon.

This is Cathy Seipp (”Standing Room Only at the Mad-at-Me Section“, from 1997!):

Anyway, I wish American media types would follow the example of British media types and not take being trashed in print so personally. I was touched and extremely satisfied a few years ago when Tina Brown, who was then departing Vanity Fair for the New Yorker, graciously introduced her replacement, Graydon Carter, to the Vanity Fair staff — in spite of the fact that Carter had regularly insulted Brown in the pages of the old Spy.

Perhaps I inherited a Commonwealth version of this attitude from my deeply sarcastic Canadian family. At least, that’s what occurred to me recently when a woman at a party approached to say, “You wouldn’t write the way you do if you weren’t Canadian.” Since she was Canadian, I’ll assume she meant this as a compliment. But it did bring back a rather vivid childhood memory.

There I was, age 6, with my entire expatriate Canadian clan (aunts, uncles, parents, sister, cousins, grandparents — all of whom were now living in the same Southern California subdivision). We were cozily sitting in Grandma’s TV room watching a documentary about brain damage. Suddenly, my aunt, age 11, shifted on the sofa. “Oh, look, Cathy,” she announced coolly. “That boy can tie his shoes with only half a brain. Interesting, because you still can’t tie your shoes with a whole brain.”

Even as I heard my mouth shriek the outraged, tearful, “MUMMY! Did you hear what she SAID??? Make her say SORRY!!!” I also felt another thought silently filling my mind: “Wow, that was a good one.” My aunt and I have a siblinglike closeness built on years of insults, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

So if I insult you in print, please remember, it’s only because I care.

You never insulted me in print, Cathy, but you gave me great insight, gutsy honesty, and deep pleasure as a reader. Thank you.

—————-*** Back when Salon was a great. Today I can’t even link to it without forcing you to watch an ad, so I won’t link. The excellent critic Charles Taylor was my other Salon fave. One of the most depressing stories I have ever read was in this interview with Taylor, where he describes how Salon changed.

Charles Taylor was dismissed from his duties as a Salon critic in February, 2005. At the time, Salon editor Joan Walsh chalked up the decision to simple economics: their publication had just 22 editorial employees and could not justify employing three film critics. This was disappointing news for regular Salon subscribers and a harbinger of declining standards. Although Taylor’s colleagues Stephanie Zacharek and Andrew O’Hehir continue to offer insightful cultural analysis and film criticism, a casual perusal of Salon post-Taylor reveals feature articles that are elaborately disguised press releases pandering to the studios. Gossip, box office reports and hype don’t address whether a film has merit as art or entertainment. The latter was Taylor’s specialty; he called it like he saw it, often employing the sorts of provocative turns of phrase that spark arguments in parking lots.

I won’t be watching the HBO series Addiction,*** which producer Sheila Nevins calls “didactic television.” Yuck. Not my cuppa. Besides, I’m happy to report that I conquered my worst addiction about 8 years ago (the second—and final—time I quit).

Once upon a time, I also used to smoke these.

The boy who introduced me to them in college is dead now. Of cancer.

I’m still addicted to this:

————–

*** Here’s what the NYT’s Virginia Heffernan (not my favorite critic—barf) has to say:

The program is part of a solemn project, something that Sheila Nevins, the enterprising president of HBO Documentary Films, has called “didactic television.” It is also devised to be more accessible than past HBO projects, with some cable systems, including RCN in the New York City area, showing it free during its first four-day run.

Intended to do more than entertain or alarm, then, “Addiction” is meant to sober people up. To that end, its message is this: Drug and alcohol addiction are diseases of the brain, and they can be treated, at least partly, with medicine.

This straightforward message is remarkable for at least two reasons. First, it’s intrinsically controversial, since A.A. for a long time expected its participants to refrain entirely from drug use, even prescription pills. The model of addiction presented here — addiction as a brain disease — is somewhat at odds with the cognitive model used in classic 12-step programs.

Second, it’s remarkable that so many top-notch filmmakers have consented to push someone else’s point so hard. It’s almost ominous. The sameness of the films in “Addiction” might aid its effectiveness as propaganda, but as art it’s monotone; it’s hard to believe it’s the collaborative work of so many otherwise individualistic artists.

It’s an Eminem kind of day:

[S]ince birth I’ve been cursed with this curse to just curse
And just blurt this berserk and bizarre shit that works
And it sells and it helps in itself to relieve
All this tension dispensin these sentences
Gettin this stress that’s been eatin me recently off of this chest
And I rest again peacefully (peacefully)..

“The Way I Am”

Welcome, Steel Deal readers!

The photo of John Edwards’s home has not been removed, as I thought it had been when I wrote this post. I’m not sure why I wasn’t able to find it this morning, and I’m too tired to look into it. The photo is available here.

Roger L. Simon, who linked to the photo, isn’t a fan of the ostentatious lifestyle, but he’s got a tip for Edwards:

He should do what the Hollywood stars do when people start to criticize their private jets and multi-million dollar residences in Malibu, Vail, etc. He should buy a Prius!

It’s been two years since I was here.

Jacob Weisberg has the best take on Bush’s demeanor last night, and what it means:

Before last night, this imperious attitude resounded through all Bush’s speeches to Congress. His previous State of the Union addresses each represented attempts—more successful than not in the first term, more unsuccessful than not in the second—to impose his will on Washington and the world. The administration’s attitude toward congressional challenge was perhaps best summed up by Dick Cheney’s famous suggestion to Pat Leahy of Vermont on the Senate floor: “Fuck yourself.”

It would be foolhardy to think that Bush’s true feelings have changed. Until the day he leaves office, he will continue to regard members of Congress as meddlesome Lilliputians trying to tie him down. But the reality is that they have tied him down. Faced with an assertive and so far remarkably effective Democratic Congress—and with no supportive public to turn to—Bush has to suppress his arrogant and bullying style as best he can.

Yes. And can I just say that even Hillary Clinton is starting to look good to me at this point?

Andrew Sullivan links to a devastating column by Nick Cohen. It’s devastating for those like me and Cohen, who are infuriated by the deranged detachment of our fellows on the liberal left, and devastatingly on-target about my liberal-left cohort, which has abdicated moral responsibility and taken on the ill-fitting cloak of moral purity in the wake of 9/11 rather than face the realities that challenge its 30+-year-old worldview:

Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal left is against come from the liberal left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don? After the American and British wars in Bosnia and Kosovo against Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansers, why were men and women of the left denying the existence of Serb concentration camps? As important, why did a European Union that daily announces its commitment to the liberal principles of human rights and international law do nothing as crimes against humanity took place just over its borders? …

Why is the world upside down?

Of course Cohen has some answers:

My parents joined the Communist Party, but left it in their twenties. My father encouraged me to read Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s exposés of the Soviet Union and argue about them at the dinner table. He knew how bad the left could get, but this knowledge did not stop him from remaining very left-wing. He would never have entertained the notion that communism was as bad as fascism. In this, he was typical. Anti-communism was never accepted as the moral equivalent of anti-fascism, not only by my parents but also by the overwhelming majority of liberal-minded people. The left was still morally superior. Even when millions were murdered and tens of millions were enslaved and humiliated, the ‘root cause’ of crimes beyond the human imagination was the perversion of noble socialist ideals.

Every now and again, someone asks why the double standard persists to this day. The philosophical answer is that communism did not feel as bad as fascism because in theory, if not in practice, communism was an ideology that offered universal emancipation, while only a German could benefit from Hitler’s Nazism and only an Italian could prosper under Mussolini’s fascism. I’m more impressed by the matter-of-fact consideration that fascist forces took over or menaced Western countries in the Thirties and Forties, and although there was a communist menace in the Cold War, the Cold War never turned hot and Western Europe and North America never experienced the totalitarianism of the left.

Indeed. Never having experienced totalitarianism of the left, my cohort is unable—or unwilling—to take the leap of imagination necessary to confront the fact that totalitarianism, whether from the right, the left, or the fanatically “religious,” is a scourge on humanity.

The good fight today is against the forces of darkness that seek to deprive individuals across the globe of their excruciatingly hard-won political and personal freedoms—supposedly in the name of Allah but actually for bloody revenge and in quest of raw power.

I am a child of the dark forces of the 20th century. Rocked in the kindly bosom of America, I was able to rise above and to soar through my American dreams along with my cohort. But I can never forget where I came from.

You might call me your guilty conscience.

On the other hand, you might call me the unexploded ordnance of the 20th century.

We’re here. We won’t shut up. Get used to it.

Blogging will be erratic—as the mood strikes. I’m sure I’ll be itching to get back to my keyboard soon enough.

Enjoy your festivities and your families and friends. And spare a thought (or, preferably, something more substantial) for those less fortunate than we.

Rachel Sklar, the brains behind Eat the Press, sent me a lovely bouquet, and I threw her a kiss.

You can read our exchange in the comments to this post.
I’ve got more to say, but it’s December 22nd and I’m waaaay behind with everything I’ve got to do.

Later.

But I’m not shy, so I’ll share five things you don’t know about me:

1)  I don’t have perfect pitch, but if there’s something very close to it, that’s what I”ve got. (I don’t mean to make it sound like a condition—I love music!)

2) English is not my native language.

3) I was born a lefty and forced rightward…handedness-wise, that is. (And maybe politics-wise, too, but that’s a subject for another day.)

My parents deny it, but I don’t believe them. In Europe, people believe that left-handedness is sinister, literally: sinistra in Latin means “left.” In France, if you’re a lefty you write with your “gauche” hand. Really! What is wrong with these people!? They are completely irrational on the subject.

Anyway, I do all sorts of things with my left hand—I reach for things with my left hand, turn dorknobs with my left hand, pour with my left hand, etc. I also drive my family crazy by twisting those twist-tie thingies with my left hand, and the righties can never figure out now to un-twist them; instead, they twist them even tighter. Ha!).

4) I would like to live on the Gulf of the Poets, in Lerici, Italy, half the year. Every year.

5) I hate blogging pseudonymously. I do it because it alone guarantees my freedom of speech.

Konrad Fiedler

The first stop for many immigrants who arrived at Ellis Island was a room and/or a job on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and hundreds of prominent business and civic leaders grew up in this community. Now, it is undergoing an unexpected renaissance.

“Until fairly recently the Bowery always possessed the greatest number of groggeries, flophouses, clip joints, brothels, fire sales, rigged auctions, pawnbrokers, dime museums, shooting galleries, dime-a-dance establishments, fortune-telling and lottery agencies, thieves markets and tattoo parlors, as well as second and third rate theaters,” the director of Eastern Consolidated Properties, Alan Miller, said.

The flophouses of the Bowery and Lower East Side are being replaced

(New York Sun) 

I can attest to that. I’ll take my camera outside one day and will show you the evidence.

Have you ever read something that was not written by you but that could have been? I just did. Here’s Jane Galt:

I read fast. Really fast. … I have never taken a speed reading course, and never tried to learn how to read fast; I’ve been doing it . . . well, I don’t know how long, but at least since I was in junior high school. The only tricks I know for learning how to read fast are:

1) Be born to parents who read fast, and a lot 2) Read a lot yourself when you are a child

As I get older, though, I’ve figured out how I do it: I skip things. This may seem obvious, but I actually had to catch myself doing it; it is not a conscious process, and if I think about it, I can’t do it. Somehow, my brain selects chunks of text that it thinks won’t convey new information, and avoids them. Perhaps this is not optimal, but it works well enough for me to have made A’s in most of my college lit classes. [I didn't take many college lit classes ---ed.] I can still read faster than most people while reading completely, and I do for some things, like textbooks, but it takes effort and I don’t enjoy it as much.

What brought this on was Tyler Cowen’s post on How to read fast

Galt thinks that most bloggers read fast (and describes someone witnessing Glenn Reynolds’s awesome speed-reading***). She’s probably right about that.

It’s only logical. I blog daily, and I consume (”read”) a whole lot in order to be able to produce, on average, four content- and link-rich posts a day. I won’t begin to guess the ratio (do I consume ten times as much as I produce? five times?). The point is that I need to be able to “read” fast in order to produce that much.

I’d argue, though, that when I’m reading at my fastest, I’m not reading “completely,” as Galt says she does when she reads five or six pages a minute. Not even close. The faster I read, the more often I have to backtrack in order to comprehend what I’m reading. The “searching for keywords” process that allows fast readers to hurtle through a text doesn’t really allow for complete processing. Not in my experience, at least.

Galt continues:

The interesting thing is that while I read a lot, I also re-read a lot, mostly fiction. For good books, I find each reading a deeper experience; it now occurs to me that this is because I’m reading a slightly different group of paragraphs than I did the previous time. My friends who read slowly, never reread.

I re-read a lot, too. I re-read constantly, in fact—as I’m reading. I’m forced to, because oftentimes there’s a lot riding on my getting what I read. Close reading (for nuance, for deep meaning, for shades of difference) requires you to slow down.

My “slow” is probably faster than what some people would consider “fast,” but there’s no virtue in this for me. I have family members who read slowly. They remember and treasure every word they read in the books they loved. Like Jane Galt, I re-read a lot of fiction, too. I have to, because there’s a lot I just don’t remember from the first time around…because I skipped over it.

That’s why, like Galt,

I have a pretty remarkable gift for forgetting whodunnit; I can read them every five years, and never see it coming.

I dunno. I can’t quite come around to thinking that this is a good thing.
———-

*** The prodigious Reynolds is, obviously, Mr. Incredible.

Do your shopping, stock the liquor cabinet, RSVP those invites, and wean yourselves from the expectation of posting marathons from yours truly. There’s more than ever to write about, but I’m swamped with non-blogging activities. Check back soon.

Listening to my iPod this morning, I got an adrenaline rush from some of the lyrics to ”No Retreat, No Surrender.”

‘Cause we made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
There’s a war outside still raging
You say it ain’t ours anymore to win
I want to sleep beneath
Peaceful skies in my lover’s bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And these romantic dreams in my head

Once we made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in a stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender

Googling the lyrics, I came upon a little speech Bruce made as he campaigned for John Kerry in October 2004:

 I think the human principles of economic justice — just healing the sick, health care, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, a living wage so folks don’t have to break their backs and still not make ends meet, the protection of our environment, a sane and responsible foreign policy, civil rights and the protection and safeguarding of our precious democracy here at home — I believe that Senator Kerry honors these ideals.

So let’s roll up our sleeves. That’s why I’m here today, to stand alongside Senator Kerry and to tell you that the country we carry in our hearts is waiting. And together we can move America towards her deepest ideals. And besides, we had a sax player in the [White] House — we need a guitar player in the White House.

Alright — this is for John. This is for you, John.

[Bruce launches into No Retreat, No Surrender]

Funny thing about those lyrics, though: Bruce sanitized them and made them safe for anti-war Democrats.

There’s a ”war outside still raging”? What war? There’s no war here.

We made a promise we swore we’d always remember
No retreat, believe me, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night with a vow to defend
No retreat, believe me, no surrender

Now on the street tonight the lights grow dim
The walls of my room are closing in
But it’s good to see your smiling face and to hear your voice again
We could sleep in the twilight by the river side
With a wide open country in our hearts
And these romantic dreams in our heads

We made a promise…  

Fuck you, Bruce.

They say there’s a war outside still ragin’ and they say it ain’t ours anymore to win.

No retreat, baby. And no fucking surrender.

I am grateful that my family and friends are all safe and sound and dry on this icy-wet Thanksgiving Day; that they all have loving companionship; that we have one another to lean on or to support, now and forever.

I am grateful for the Blessings of Liberty;

I am grateful to my parents, who secured those blessings for us at great personal sacrifice.

I am grateful to my children, who inspire me every day to struggle to secure the blessings of liberty for them.

I am grateful to my beloved country, which has room even for people like me: grateful but never satisfied—and vocal about it.

Because there are always more freedoms worth fighting for.

Hmmm. It seems there’s serious a hearts-and-minds battle going on between the peaceniks and the hawks in the culture beyond the blogosphere—you know: out there in America, where no one gives a shit what we blather on about and they just go ahead and live their lives.

On the side of the peaceniks you’ve got the Central Committe for Conscientious Objectors, which proselytizes against JROTC (the organization that was just banned from San Francisco by its school board) because it’s

too controversial, too likely to promote violence, too expensive, too controlled by Washington, too discriminatory, and too much at odds with the goal of creating critically-thinking students in gun-free schools.

And because

Instead of an alternative to violence, JROTC brings guns into the schools.

And because

Military training glorifies war. Ninety percent of all JROTC programs train students to fire rifles or pistols. All of them drill with guns and teach military history, customs, traditions, and beliefs. In JROTC, too many kids learn, from example, that violence is acceptable.

And in this corner, for the hawks, you’ve got the U.S. military, which is using video games, which it gives away free, as a recruiting tool. Kingdaddy explains:

I’ve just given you an encapsulation of the controversies around America’s Army, including its unsubtle recruitment pitch. Now, we have Future Force Company, a free game in the same vein, distributed by the defense contractor SAIC:

Future Combat Systems (FCS) will transform the U.S. Army’s Current Force to a more lethal, agile Future Force to achieve battlespace dominance. The F2C2 video game demonstrates the FCS wireless network-centric operating system that seamlessly links advanced communications and networking systems with soldiers, platforms, weapons, and sensors.

In other words, Future Force Company is a simulation of the hardware that the US military may purchase and deploy by 2015, the “future” that Future Force Company attempts to simulate. While I can live with a recruitment pitch for a public organization, the US Army, I can’t quite stomach a commercial for the equipment private contractors hope the Army will purchase.

I agree with him on both counts. As for whether it’s the peaceniks or the hawks who will win—really, it’s no contest.*** It won’t happen overnight, but the hawks will certainly win. After all, we are a nation at war.
—–

*** I say this with a heavy heart, because I have a son. Not only did he not play with guns and tanks and helmets and soldiers; we delayed even teaching him the words for those hateful things. (I told you I’m hippie-dippy.) He’s a young man now, with no interest in guns and tanks and helmets. And he is troubled and heartsick for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, young men like him who made a different choice for themselves. And he is disturbed by my hawishness—. As am I.

But if we do not defend ourselves and what we hold dear, who will do it?