In 1800, my ancestor Aaron Barlow traveled with his daughter Esther to Norfolk, Virginia where both got caught by a yellow-fever epidemic and died. They are buried in a mass grave there, along… Continue reading
Willowbrook. Any New Yorker of a certain age shudders at that name–and no, not because it was Geraldo Rivera who brought it to our attention. Willowbrook was a place of horrors all on… Continue reading
My conception of who makes a good political candidate is changing, and fast. Until recently, there were certain people and certain positions I could never support. Candidates could not be evangelical Christians… Continue reading
Over the past year, we’ve twice “won” New York City affordable housing lotteries. We learned quite a bit through the process, but pulled out in both cases. As I am a college professor,… Continue reading
Until the mid-1830s, American journalism existed for politics. That is, most newspapers were supported by the largess of the politicians they supported. There were no government printing offices and the newspapers were products… Continue reading
In a Facebook post linking to this article about the young anti-AR-15 activist David Hogg, NYU Culture and Communications professor Mark Crispin Miller wrote, “This kid may not be a crisis actor, but… Continue reading
Originally posted on 1968: Nothing Is Revealed:
By George Wallace presidential campaign, 1968 – http://ronwade.freeservers.com/bumperstickersa11a.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=61648521 George Wallace, segregationist par excellence, declares himself as an independent candidate for president on this day in…
On Bastille Day in 1965, I was a 13-year-old in Paris. On our way home from a year living in Thailand, my family was staying in the apartment of a college friend of… Continue reading
This morning, the first day of the semester, I was babbling and told a story, a true one, that normally I elide. A colleague and I were talking about artifacts from earlier technologies… Continue reading
Maybe we should be having an Alexander Pope moment: A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, And drinking largely… Continue reading
