Memories

For whatever peculiar reason, I was remembering the Hudson Tubes (the old name for the PATH trains onaccountabecause the tunnels beneath the Hudson were cylindrical sections of cast iron bolted together.  Still are, come to think of it) this morning.  Mostly I was envisioning the time after the demolition of Hudson Terminal and the surrounding neighborhood (which I learned later had been known as Radio Row) and the excavation of what became known as "the bathtub" (the slurry wall) at World Trade Center (designed to keep at bay all the little underground streams running through the area), when the tunnels in and out of the old Hudson Terminal were visible, looking something like a pair of snakes that had swallowed rods.  

(Passengers used the platforms at Hudson Terminal until the World Trade Center station was built, about two stories deeper and a block closer to the river, with the approach angle of the track softened so that the mighty whine of trains entering Hudson Terminal became the muted howls of trains entering World Trade Center.)

I only saw Hudson Terminal at street level from outside once, when my friend C. and her mother dropped me off there.  It was past twilight, so all I saw was a dark building.  Mostly I took subways to get there, and the subways had underground connections to the old station (Cortlandt Street BMT had several arches leading to the HT concourse, which had to be bricked up when it closed).

ETA:  More information with pictures (I have changed some of the text above to reflect this).

The Mythical Superwoman

Or:  Why I read Echidne of the Snakes.

Happy Thanksgiving Day

I have a lot to be thankful for, probably too much to list in detail, for which I thank God and people.  In that order.

We bought a turkey dinner from Pathmark.  We still cooked.  But at least we used disposable plates this year, so the cleanup was less onerous.

Dreaming

Driving around with Janis Joplin, who began to weep, and I was nattering on about drug rehabs and interventions, and she said, "Don't you know where we are?"  So then I held her.

I don't think it was really Janis Joplin.

Yoda, Off My Sentence Structure Lay, Please

Is Live Journal an outage having today?

Manufacture

Via Bitch Ph.D., via Brilliant at Breakfast; a Sweet Juniper! piece about the U.S. auto industry's crossroads, abandoned Detroit schools, and what constructing things means to people.

One thing I do like about GM, Ford, and Chrysler is that they are companies that still make something. What do the vast majority of the Fortune 500 companies even do? What does Goldman Sachs do? What do all those companies in Silicon Valley make? They shuffle paper, sure, transmit blips of binary code, attend important meetings, and make "deals." Maybe brown people somewhere across an ocean will make whatever it is they're selling or shuffling on paper or e-mailing each other about. But in Detroit, and in plenty of other industrial cities across this country there are still people making things without exploited labor, and believe it or not that still means something.

When researching my family's history when we were considering buying the old homestead, I found the story of when my ancestors moved from upstate New York to eastern Michigan. There were pages of details describing the difficulties of the journey and the work of building the farm once they arrived, long lists of the things they built with their hands. When I read that, I thought, God, I can't even install ceramic tile. I can't help but believe that if most of our ancestors could see us whining about "these tough economic times" they'd say, "Forsooth, what a bunch of pussies."

More on the Prop. H8 Fight, a Week Late

Many Catholics (in the S. F. Bay Area) opposed Proposition 8 [California].

ETA 11/27:  The New Yorker (Hendrik Hertzberg) weighs in.

Oh, That's Where I Parked It!

An ancient chariot unearthed in Bulgaria.

A Spot of Sanity

Some African American perspective on the passing of Prop 8 [California].

Note some of the comments.

I wonder "What would Bayard Rustin have supported here?" but that's not exactly a question.

We do know what Wanda Sykes said.

Good grief, I missed the 200th post.

Throwing It Back

Via Brilliant at Breakfast, a serious pro-life statement.

Classic

Four Lines

Hope-with-feathers cannot soar;

caught in nets of twisting doubt,

expectations soar no more

than algebras of puissant clout.

Joe Miller the Plagiarist

Joke book compiled from various ancient translated fragments.   (The publisher's link provides 30 free pages before you have to log in.)  Such news calls for jokes about comics who shamelessly use old material, but most comics do observational humor nowadays, so the gag will have to be something on the order of "Mr. Berle?  It's the Big Guy.  Says your fake book's been found, and He didn't know your jokes were that old."

Also, Croatia's cancelled Christmas.  Where's all that dextrous outrage?  (Parties and gifts, as opposed to the holiday, but I can hear the department stores all shuddering right now.)

Political Action

I went to the local rally against Prop. H8 (there were rallies nationwide) and got interviewed by one of the local stations, but since I insisted on being discursive (complete with mild pun), I doubt it'll get broadcast, which is a good thing.  This was a "good" rally, in that the speakers kept speeches short and pertinent, with audience participation, but I had another 2 miles to walk.  The counterdemonstration was three people, entirely surrounded by police.

I should have brought my camera.

Late

November 10, 1975: The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Pat Kight (a fellow former denizen of alt.callahans) wrote up her recollections as a young reporter.

Quiche Clique

November 8, I Like Pie, Spot!.  Note the label.

November 12, Fafblog!  Note the walrus.

November 14.  Note the subtle interplay and tuskiness.

Send a Postcard to Obama

Reminding him of what we stand for and what we'd like to see.  (See the top two articles at this Sideshow link.)

Regular sized postcard postage is $0.27; a five-pack of plain regular postcards costs $1.35.  A postcard's size constraint requires getting and sticking to your point, which in political contexts is Not Bad.  And postcards hide nothing.

I'm going to do it myself, and I am the world's worst correspondent.  Let alone initiating contact.

Yes, It's a "Meme." Deal.

D.'s Dewey Decimal Section:

478 Classical Latin usage

D. = 4650058 = 465+005+8 = 478


Class:
400 Language


Contains:
Linguistics and language books.



What it says about you:
You value communication, even with people who are different from you. You like trying new things and don't mind being exposed to unfamiliar territory. You get bored with routines that never change.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Remember the realization about "nobis" being the dative case?  That's the extent of my Latin scholarship. (Yes, I corrected that sentence.)(Further added:  I saw 3 of these before clicking on Spacefem, but I'm only certain about Better than salt money.)

Now Pitching for Heaven...Number iπ...

Herb Score (Indians) and Preacher Roe (Dodgers) died within two days of each other.

Adventures in Coincidence

(The Swan, photographed [finally!] November 10, around 4:00 pm.)

So after church Sunday morning I went to photograph the swan (on my way to the lunch date for which I was only late 5 minutes) and lo! the batteries, freshly charged, were quite, quite dead.  Not that the swan was there, but there was a pelican on the water, quite majestic, and two egrets.

Later that same afternoon, I decided enough was enough, and hied myself to a Radio Shack for batteries, explaining that the super-duper rechargeables I got three years ago did not work and that although the batteries in question look like AAs, they aren't really.  Radio Shack only has various strengths of AA and the super-duper rechargeables.  Which do not work.  The frustrated clerk sent me to the camera store around the corner.

Behind the counter in the camera store around the corner--

--I have to explain here that I am very much a New Yorker in that I do not pester total strangers even though I see them several times a week for several years.  That is, I do not presume acquaintance based on seeing someone more than twice.  I am pretty sure that I now know most of my neighbors on sight.  This was not always the case.--

--was someone I had seen almost every morning (when I wasn't running late) for several years.  Huh.  It turns out that I need Nickel Metal Hydride (yes, the secret of NiMH) batteries, and his name is Bill (cue The Crystals singing "Da Doo Ron Ron").  (Beautiful music is not in the cards.)

He hadn't seen swans on the lake in ages, either.

Veterans Day II

Two more links for Armistice Day.  (Linked from Better than salt money.)

[ETA:  May be triggering.  Violence.]  The death of Taslim Solangi and why it matters.  (Linked from Off Our Pedestals.)

Veterans Day

Veterans/Armistice/Remembrance Day.

Honor to our soldiers and veterans.  (Links thanks to Making Light.)

And I want particularly to honor those men and women who served their country when their country did not quite consider them human beings.  

(I would not expect, say, conservatives to understand that.)

Let the Record Show That:

• Eggnog season has already begun; and 
• There are flavored eggnogs.

Had lunch yesterday with Mary Kay (and thank you so much!), which was marvelous fun; we talked about everything! and then I bought beads for my mother.  The rest of the day is tomorrow's story.  Heh.

In memoriam

Miriam Makeba has died.

I had the pleasure of seeing her perform in 1994 at World Financial Center--and the displeasure of sitting behind people who needed to inform the entire segment of audience that they'd had difficulties on the subway in Brooklyn.

She was better.

Unanswerable Question

Why has Tom Cruise turned up in my dreams?

Yes, he was in an Obama ad (that I saw once), but there is no reason he should appear as a bus driver of a loop route while I'm floundering in some kind of advanced math class.

Realizations

Looks like I won't be doing NaNoWriMo this year either.  Although I'll be writing, of course.  Just nothing sustained.

Also, I had a spiritual journey thought a couple of days ago, but I've forgotten it, although it may have to do with love.

Why You Shouldn't Leave Home without a Camera

1. A swan (!) on the lake.
2. A Christmas tree being trimmed (yes, before Veterans Day.  Yes, the lighting ceremony is three weeks from today.  Yes, they decorate from the top down, using the large and probably fragile glass globes).
3. A beautiful, broad-brimmed brown hat on a beautiful brown woman.
4. Sunset.

OK, We're Calm Now

Next week is Armistice Day, what Americans call Veterans Day and Canadians call Remembrance Day, marking the end of World War I (which didn't get that designation until World War II; it was called the World War or the Great War); the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

Some of the battlefields, 90 years on.

One of the last living veterans has died.

I'm not going to do a comprehensive essay, but annually Making Light does a Remembering the Great War compilation of links and history which always fills me with awe, pity, and horror; this link is to last year's posting.

The weekend may be spent rereading The Guns of August and The Proud Tower.

Penny for the Guy

And today being the 5th of November, the British get to celebrate the event that poisoned their politics and lives for 200 years.

Skippy has the Right Music

Right here.

But my soul is still singing Lennon/McCartney.

Congratulations and Mazel Tov

President-Elect Obama!!!!!!

Unsurprisingly

Fafblog!'s Fafnir on Global Warming and Swing States.

My heart is beginning to sing, and the songs are Lennon/McCartney.

Got Vote?

VOTE!

(If you've already voted absentee, or already been to the polls, please disregard this message.)

Sad News

Senator Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, has died.

Miscellany

Because "miscellaneous" is a word my father taught me to spell, long years ago.

A possible consideration of the "traditional marriage" proponents.  (From Lady-Jem of LJ, via Better than salt money.)

Architecture, ownership, non-ownership, and micro-territoriality, or why urban design matters, even though it is unglamourous, heavily political, and heartbreaking.  (By way of Phila at Echidne of the Snakes.)

Shelleybear over on LJ reminded me about Z, the Costa-Gavras movie from 1969.  (The YouTube clip posted and the associated clips are in French.)  I wonder if it's on DVD...

Pam's House Blend calls Eve Harrington on Sarah Palin.  Fasten your seat belts...

Voter Alert

Avedon Carol at The Sideshow on election hijacking.  (Our thanks to her.)

Excerpt:

The perception that voter registration fraud is the problem is itself a problem, and people on our side who refuse to discuss the questions about voting machines and disenfranchisement (and actual stolen elections) while treating the voter fraud and registration fraud issue seriously only make the problem worse. We have real election fraud doing serious damage to us, and we should be screaming that Republicans are distracting us with their phony voter and registration fraud stories.

This is a pretty pivotal election.  Make your choice known.  If you could stand on line to see a movie or buy a Wii or an iPhone, you can stand on line to vote.  Seriously.  

(ETA:  What the guy in the video said.)

(EFTA:  The guy in the video is Sean Combs, and this is one of a series.)