Pete Lit

Poe in New York

Just saw this come up on Project Gutenberg: Literary New York: Its Landmarks and Associations, by Charles Hemstreet (1903). Though I may or may not browse through the rest eventually, I was immediately drawn to the chapter "Those Who Gathered About Poe" which charmingly describes the various literary associates and residences of Poe's New York years. Here the author describes the vicinity of Poe's last New York home, in the village of Fordham (now the Bronx):

After passing through these rooms and with the memory of Poe strong upon you, walk away along the street remembering that in Poe's time it was a delightful country road. Stroll towards the Harlem River as he wandered many a moonlight night, his brain busy with the deep problems of The Universe. After a time you will pass on to the High Bridge, that carried the pipes of the Croton Aqueduct over the river,—this at least unchanged since his day. Walk over the path there, high above the water, and visit the lonely spot where the suggestion came to Poe for that requiem of despair, the mystic Ulalume.

The house still stands.

Not only are my parents awesome...

...but now they've also been immortalized for their roles in what was purportedly the first panty raid in history, at Augustana College in 1949. Just good clean fun, though the starched college elders and many students' parents were scandalized by the event.

Happy Birthday, Chicago!

A very happy 173rd to Chicago, which was incorporated as a city on this day in 1837. Chicago History Journal has some interesting insights on the city's earliest days, including this surprising response to its request for its very first loan:

State Bank Of Illinois, Springfield, May 31, 1837. Peter Bolles, Esq.,

Dear Sir: Your letter of the 18th, addressed to the president of this bank and proposing on behalf of the city of Chicago a loan from this bank of the sum of $25,000, has been laid before the directors of the bank, and, I regret to have to state, declined. I am very respectfully, your ob't serv't,

A. H. Ridgely, Cashier.

Re-JEC-ted! Fortunately, or unfortunately, the city has had absolutely no problem going into debt ever since.

(Image: Saloon Building at Clark and Lake Streets, which housed the first City Hall.)

Wabash Avenue, 1900

I love almost all of the old photos at Shorpy, but what I love most of all are the full-sized original versions of each displayed photo. Case in point: this 1900 image of the west side of Wabash Avenue in Chicago, looking north from Adams Street (presumably from the Adams El station). The main image is interesting enough, but if you click on "View full size" you'll see an immensely larger version, in which fine details can be easily discerned. That image I've posted above is cropped from just a fraction of the larger photo, from which you can clearly see the faces of pedestrians and read shop signs. The literatus in me couldn't help being drawn to the "Pilgrim Press Booksellers" and "Summer Reading", though the former was presumably a purveyor of inspirational works which would probably not have been of much interest to me. If you look several floors up on the facade of this building, the name "Potter Palmer" can be seen, which leads me to believe that this is actually the backside of the Palmer House hotel which would have fronted onto State Street, just one block to the west.

The Flatiron, Under Construction

Though I've seen images of the iconic Flatiron Building countless times (including a framed poster of Edward Steichen's famous photograph, which once adorned my college dorm-room wall - yes, I've always been a geek), this is the first I've ever seen of the building under construction. Two oddities catch my eye - one, the unfinished fifth and sixth floors, as if the builders just skipped over those floors and vowed to get back to them eventually; and two, the scaffolds on the top floors being supported from within the building itself instead of from the ground.

Bury My Heart... turns 40

One of the finest books I have ever read (and an early impetus towards my finally challenging conventional wisdom and recognizing the plight of the powerless), Dee Brown's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, celebrated its fortieth anniversary this year. At The Huffington Post, Tim Giago writes a nice appreciation on the book, including this vivid and moving quote:

Perhaps prematurely, Black Elk said, "I did not know then how much was ended. When I look back now from this high hill of my age, I can still see the butchered women and children lying heaped and scattered all along the crooked gulch as plain as when I saw them with eyes still young. And I can see that something else died there in the bloody mud, and was buried in the blizzard. A people's dream died there. It was a beautiful dream...the nation's hoop is broken and scattered. There is no center any longer and the sacred tree is dead."

(Via MobyLives.)

William Leuchtenburg, Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940

William Leuchtenburg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 is a very fine and highly informative overview of the New Deal - the domestic economic and social programs developed by Roosevelt and his army of reformers in response to the crisis of the Great Depression. Refreshingly, the author resists considerable temptation in not making this a mere hagiography of FDR, but discusses both his successes and his failures, both his personal strengths and shortcomings. The author acknowledges that, for all of its success, the New Deal never solved the problem of widespread unemployment, which was only quelled with the rapid military armament in support of the war in Europe. Still, the New Deal did stabilize our country and bring it back from the bring of collapse, while also establishing much of the social safety net (Social Security, insured bank deposits, unemployment insurance) that we often take for granted today, as well as regulatory bodies like the Securities and Exchange Commission and the National Labor Relations Board which have been critical in curbing the worst abuses of big business.

My one qualm is that, despite the title, this is not exclusively a study of the New Deal, but more of an overview of FDR's first two terms. Leuchtenburg narrates at length about the rise of fascism in the mid 1930s and the start of World War II at the end of the decade, which of course are essential to any discussion of FDR's presidency (especially since the author details FDR's response to each, most notably charting Roosevelt's evolution from isolationist to internationalist) but don't specifically pertain to the New Deal. The book could well have stayed to its New Deal theme, not by ignoring fascism and WWII, but by explaning how each impacted New Deal policies and programs. Still, that qualm is a minor one, and Leuchtenburg's book is a thorough and well-written study of a fascinating era and one of our greatest political leaders, which I highly recommend.

Quotes

Three more great quotes from Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940 by William Leuchtenburg, which I finished reading yesterday. First, Justice Louis Brandeis, on Scandinavia's "middle way" (emulated by the New Deal) which accomodated both public and private institutions, and also a backhanded refutation of Communism:

"Why should anyone want to go to Russia when one can go to Denmark?"

Next, Harry Hopkins (FDR's WPA director and later Commerce Secretary) on the New Deal's spirit of innovation and non-ideological pragmatism:

"I am for experimenting...in various parts of the country, trying out schemes which are supported by reasonable people and see if they work. If they do not work, the world will not come to an end."

Lastly, Republican Senator Jim Watson of Indiana, expressing, to Wendell Willkie (the GOP presidential nominee) at the 1940 nominating convention, the conservatives' concern over the political ideology of Willkie, who had only recently left the Democratic Party:

"I don't mind the church converting a whore, but I don't want her to lead the choir the first night!"

"In Flanders Fields"

Despite being a pacifist, I still find myself moved by this verse...

In Flanders Fields
by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD, Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Today is Veterans Day, so please give some remembrance to all of the soldiers who have fought for our country. But also recall that this day was originally called Armistice Day ("a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace"), which marked the peaceful end of World War I, and remember that striving for peace means more soldiers come home safely or never go to war in the first place.

Quote

"Why shouldn't the American people take half my money from me? I took it all from them."
- Edward Filene, as quoted in Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940, by William Leuchtenberg

I didn't know anything about Filene (other than his department store chain) before reading this quote, but he seems to have been an interesting individual. He was a highly successful merchant, of course, but also was instrumental in the creation of both credit unions and workers compensation insurance.

Great Depression reading

My literary tour of the Great Depression continues. Over the weekend (thanks in part to Internet-connection problems that kept me off my laptop, blissfully as I now realize) I finished Edmund Wilson's The American Jitters: A Year of the Slump, a collection of magazine essays from 1930-31, when the "Great Depression" moniker hadn't been coined yet and the turnaround engineered by FDR (who took office in 1933) was still a few years off. Wilson surveys the national landscape, with particularly memorable pieces on labor strife in the West Virginia coal mines and the construction site of the Hoover Dam, making no effort to hide his Communist sympathies (which were admittedly more socially acceptable in those capitalist-backlash days) and his loyalties to the common laborer. As the book concludes, I was struck by how convinced the otherwise astute Wilson was then that the Communist revolution in America was imminent. Which makes me wonder why, despite conditions being so ripe, that revolution never happened - was it the success of FDR's New Deal? the preoccupation with the rise of Hitler and immersion in WWII? the emerging horrors of the totalitarian Soviet state that revealed that maybe Communism wasn't paradise after all? Interesting question, I think.

Next up is William Leuchtenburg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal: 1932-1940, which I'm seventy pages in to. Fresh from his resounding 1932 defeat of Hoover (electoral college margin: 472-59!) FDR has just completed his whirlwind first 100 days in office, during which time he managed to enact a truly mind-boggling mass of legislation designed to stauch the Depression bleeding and prod the country toward recovery. Good reading so far, though a bit heavy on detail.

L’Anse aux Meadows

As an American of Scandinavian descent, I've long been fascinated by L’Anse aux Meadows, the only confirmed Viking settlement in North America, on the far northern tip of Newfoundland. Atlas Obscura has a nice summary on the site here (including the video clip above, only about the first third of which is of L’Anse aux Meadows). I hadn't realized until now that the actual site was intentionally buried in sand and sod for protection, with a replica built on top of it. It's truly a testament to both the hardiness of the Vikings and the discomforts of months at sea aboard ship for a site this desolate to have been considered a desirable settlement location. This is one of those places that I'd absolutely love to visit, but likely won't due to its extreme remoteness.

Joe Hill

Time to honor a great American (or great American immigrant), the organized labor hero Joe Hill, who was born 130 years ago today. Or more accurately, as Mobylives points out, Joel Emmanuel Hägglund, Hill's given name. I had no idea he was Swedish. And check out the Wikipedia section on the remarkable fate of his remains - Billy Bragg, you're a braver man than I.

The not-so-ancient lost city of Goverthing

Fascinating, bizarre, baffling: the archaeological excavation of a small town on Governors Island, New York, which disappeared...in 1954.

"Chicago, the Beautiful"

Here's a relic - a 1948 MGM travelogue on our fair city. Plenty of physical superlatives abound, such as "tallest" (Stevens Hotel) and "largest" (Merchandise Mart). I hope the Chamber of Commerce bankrolled this entire project, because they certainly got their civic-booster money's worth.

(Via Lake Claremont Press.)

Cahokia

Timothy R. Pauketa's book, Cahokia: Ancient America's Great City on the Mississippi, sounds utterly fascinating.

In retrospect, Pauketat sees an even more important conclusion emerging from Mound 72 and other Cahokia excavations: evidence of a metropolitan Native American society "characterized by inequality, power struggles and social complexity." These people were neither half-feral savages nor eco-Edenic villagers; they had lived and died in a violent and sophisticated society with its own well-defined view of the universe.

Though I'm a native and lifelong resident of Illinois, I've spent almost no time in the southern part of the state. But the Cahokia Mounds site is definitely one place I'd love to visit.

The Newgrange Tomb

This is quite amazing. The Newgrange Tomb (which I first heard about last night on NPR) is an ancient Celtic burial mound in the north of Ireland which was ingeniously built with a long passageway that is illuminated along its entire length by sunlight only at the Winter Solstice. Bear in mind that this technological feat was accomplished 500 years before the Egyptian pyramids and 1,000 years before Stonehenge. Awesome, particularly coming from supposedly "primitive" tribes.

Tourist demand to visit the tomb on the Solstice so far outstrips capacity (according to the story on NPR, 28,000 people applied this year for only 50 available slots) that this year a live webcast will be available from inside the tomb so that everyone can experience it online. The webcast starts today at 8:30 A.M. GMT.

Oops. Now that I've done the time zone conversion from GMT, it looks like the live webcast is over already. But it looks like the webcast is archived here, which I can't view at the office but am very much looking forward to viewing later at home.

Joliet History - Dairy Queen

The world's very first Dairy Queen opened in my adopted hometown of Joliet, Illinois, on June 22, 1940. The newspaper ad above appeared in the Joliet Herald-News two weeks after the store first opened. The building at 501 N. Chicago St. still stands, though the DQ has long since departed from downtown.

Mmmmm...large cuplet...

"The Rule Of His Will"

In 1866, in the Supreme Court case Ex Parte Milligan, Attorney General James Speed argued--in trying to justify President Lincoln's imprisonment of hundreds of dissenting citizens--that during wartime, the President should rightfully become "The supreme legislator, supreme judge, and supreme executive."

The Court wisely disagreed with this affront to civil liberties. Chief Justice David Davis wrote:

"The proposition is this: that in a time of war the commander of an armed force...has the power...to suspend all civil rights and their remedies, and subject citizens...to the rule of his will...If true, [our] republican government is a failure, and there is an end of liberty regulated by law."

Some things never change. John Ashcroft certainly agrees with James Speed. Hopefully the Supreme Court will agree with Chief Justice Davis and end the administration's ongoing assault on the Constitution.

(Via Nat Henthoff's fine article in the Village Voice.)

I Don't Care If I Ever Get Back

In belated honor of Opening Day, here's an old view of the West Side Grounds, the Cubs' home prior to Wrigley Field. (Courtesy of ePodunk.com.) The West Side Grounds (at Polk and Wolcott, where the hospital campus now stands) was the site of the Cubs' last World Series championship. Now, that's old.

Legend has it that the phrase "out in left field" originated here, as there was a mental hospital just beyond the left field wall. (Insert punchline about Cub fan loyalty here.)

Jefferson's Substance Over Style

The presidential election of 1796 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson was closely enough contested to come down to a handful of electoral votes. There was a problem with the votes from the Vermont delegation, which might have been considered technically invalid, although the intent of the delegation--in favor of Adams--was apparently quite clear. Rather than dispute the results on purely technical grounds, Jefferson conceded the election. In a letter to James Madison, Jefferson made this remarkable statement:

I observe doubts are still expressed as to the validity of the Vermont election. Surely in so great a case, substance and not form should prevail...I pray you to declare it on every occasion foreseen or not foreseen by me, in favor of the choice of the people substantially expressed, and to prevent the phaenomenon of a Pseudo-president at so early a day.

Jefferson's taking of the moral high ground, even though it cost him the election, is truly admirable. While he might very well have cooked the 1800 electoral ballot count in his favor, thus bolstering his election to the Presidency (but not stealing it outright), at least he was consistent in applying the same logic he used in stepping aside in 1796.

I can't help but wonder if George Bush, if faced with a similar substance-versus-style dilemma, would act as honorably.

Oh, who am I kidding? Of course I don't wonder. He wouldn't, period.