Stuyvesant

Went for a walk through what was once Stuyvesant's Bowerie to Stuyvesant Park, covid 19 quiet today.

He's protected today from Covid 19 but not in April 1644 as Governor of Curacao when he lead an unsuccessful attack on St. Martin against the Spanish and lost his leg to a cannonbal.  He was then forever known as 'Peg Leg Pete'.  

In 1845 he became Director-General of New Amsterdam, currently New York City.  

His great contribution to us today is religious freedom.  He was against it.  He hated Jews, Catholics every race and religion that was not a part of the Dutch Reformed Church. &  When he ordered the public torture of 23 year old Quaker convert Robert Hodgson, the Quakers of Flushing, Queens rebelled.  That is known as the Flushing Remonstrance, an important trigger to our Bill of Rights' Freedom of Religion. 

 Is there a moral to the story?  Seems like there should be.  

Should he have a statue?  He helped grow the city but he used that growth to fight the New Haven Community.  And more: He sailed down the Delaware river to attack New Sweden as a part of the European Second Northern War.  In his absence Native Americans attacked Pavonia and that began the Peach Tree War.  No one knows how many lives were lost in these conflicts but we know not much was changed because of them.  New Sweden's 18 settlements still exist as American Cities e.g. Kingsessing is Southwest Philadelphia, and Sidoland is a part of Wilmington, Delaware.   

And then there's slavery.  He owned  40 slaves, the largest amount owned by any person at that time in New Amsterdam.  He oversaw in 1660 Manhattan's first auctioning of slaves. 

 Let's find someone else to represent New Amsterdam.  Think positive.  There must be one.

Open Wide

It's what a dentist would say at your visit.  I would obey, sit and worry what he would find.  It would be the familiar, the expected but still anxiety inducing.
Today it's some politicians, plutocrats, oligarchs, moneymen asking us to open up the country.  How wide?  They don't really know.
What will happen is unknowable at this time.
I think of the saying, is it from Dr. Martin Luther King, 'if one man is not free, I am not free'.  So then if one man is not safe no man is safe.  And again if one man is not not safe nothing is safe, not our commerce, not our stock market, not our future.  Someone sneezed on it all.
Is that future, the trajectory the world was on in January, feasible, sensible, safe?
I've got nothing more to say.
That's how my mind is working these days  It flits from one idea to another.  It doesn't linger long enough to resolve anything. 
I don't know if it's possible for every one to be safe but increasing that number would bring stability in health, commerce and perhaps even my thinking.

Central Park, a good place to sit, just sit, no expectations.

A day Before Tomorrow

The East Village, Tuesday, 4/14/2020, 11AM
Washington Square Park:

 The dog run

 Lafayette looking south

 5th Ave. looking north

North of Park looking East

 Broadway looking south

 8th Street

 Broadway looking south

 Astor Place

 Bowery looking south

 St. Mark's Place

 Bowery

 East 5th Street

 1st Ave. North

South

My Virtual Classroom

Turner Classic Movies
Philosophy
82 on Spectrum
'When your head says one thing and your whole life says another, your head always loses.'
'You don't like it do you Rocco, the storm? Show it your gun, why don't you? If it doesn't stop shoot it.' 
Key Largo

'I've always found it very ... sanitary to be broke.'
'There's a fair face to the land, surely, but you can't hide the hunger and guilt.  It's a bright, quilty world.'
'You've been traveling around the world too much to find out anything about it.'
'What's a tough guy? A guy with an edge ... a gun or a knife, a nightstick or a razor, somethin the other guy ain't got. Yeah, a little extra reach on a punch, a set of brass knuckles, a stripe on the sleeve, a badge that says cop on it, a rock in your hand, or a bankroll in your pocket. That's an edge brother.  Without an edge, there ain't no tough guy.
The Lady from Shanghai

'Love is eternal.  It has the strongest motivation for human actions throughout history.  Love is stronger than life.  It reaches beyond the dark shadow of death." From the murderer in
Laura

PAUSE

It was 20 days ago, March 20th, that Gov. Cuomo instituted PAUSE meaning Policies to Assure Uniform Safety for Everyone.  It was a lockdown, a voluntary, non-enforceable one but 'the ultimate step', a lockdown.  Only essential businesses would be allowed to have employees at work; all non-essential employees must work from home; all residents must remain indoors except for essential activities.
 
I personally did not heed the warning and I discovered the consequences when I went on the scale yesterday.  If I were this President I could say 'who knew'.
Yeah, but everybody knows about stress eating.
So I'm exercising and eating right.  Today I had Alexa play me some Louis Armstrong as I walked around my 600 sq. foot apartment.  I got to 1300 steps, perhaps because  Alexa played 'Hello Dolly' and 'Summertime' before I shut her off.  I'll try again later with the BEE GEES.

In the meantime I'm chilling and planning the end of my PAUSE.
I'm going to Venice, this place, where they make a decent Martini:

Today 4/5/20

Can't ignore what happened this week. 
Masks are now being recommended for everyone everywhere all the time when we are outdoors.  It's nothing to wear a mask or a scarf around our mouth and nose.  The CDC recommends it. 
While our President reminds everyone of that he tells us it is voluntary and he won't wear one.
Bravado, machismo, toughness can get you through the desert, to the top of Mt. Everest, through a war and even through a pandemic, but only if you follow the rules.  You want to take water to the desert, Oxygen to Mt. Everest and armaments and leadership to a war.
Even more disturbing than our president's grand-standing was Jared Kushner's announcement that not the States as the President said but they themselves are hoarding ventilators.  He said they're not for the states but for the government.  Government?  The Kushners, Trumps, McConnells?  Is that what he thinks is the government?

There are lot of people on Television talking about drinking, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, Ina Garten, Martha Stewart.  Lessons in how to escape? 
Our leadership is a disappointment but they're not the only ones.

I remember having a win in Las Vegas and being invited to dinner by the manager.  He had learned that I was an occupational Therapist and wanted to talk about his wife who had M.S.  He confided to me that after working many years it was difficult to pay the medical bills so at 72 he was back at work.  It hadn't always been like that.  The casinos had been good places to work with good salaries and support but Howard Hughes had put an end to that, he said.  At one time when you came to the casino many things could be comped.  If you were at a table you could get drinks, cigarettes and even a sandwich.  Shows were comped regularly, but Howard Hughes determined there was more money to be made if every department made a profit.  Shows, cigar shop, and kitchens had to make a profit.

Pay for play.

In the early 1960's Chairman William Paley told news reporters they shouldn't be concerned about costs or being profitable.  They were providing a public service.  Walter Cronkite could say what he thought about the VietNam War.  He said: 'I have Jack Benny to make money'.
Then in 1977 Roone Arledge became President of ABC news.  He turned ABC sports into a money maker so why not the news?

Pay for play.
 
How do you get them to sit in front of their TVs today?  Watch people drink?  Teach them how to make cocktails?
& reboot the premise of 'Queen for a Day' [1956-1964]. 
One of the most popular TV shows ever.  Where Jack Bailey would have people tell a live audience about their disadvantaged life and why they needed a refrigerator.
'Would you like to be Queen for a day?' was the promo.

Today TV anchors interview people about a horrible event in their life while we watch and feel their pain.
CBS news has a recurring ad where each anchors tells us that they care about us.
Aldous Huxley called it the feelies in 'Brave New World'.

Trump has proven there are enough maybe 25% to 40% of the population that will believe him irregardless. 
And the rest are mixing cocktails?

Or exhausted!

Diorama

Jim walking around isn't happening much these days because of the shutdown in NYC due to the Coronavirus.  So I have this idea taken from my friend, Jim Ferris, who used to build dioramas.  He had one, I vividly remember, of a general store that you might see in a 1940s hollywood western, maybe 14" by 18", very impressive.
So I'm thinking since I'm not walking around in real time I'd experiment and build my personal diorama, similar to something you'd see in the American Museum of Natural History but imagined,  something to 'walk around in'.

Dioramas originated in France in the 1920s and meant literally 'through that which is seen'.  So I'll try through a photograph to build a verbal diorama of what is seen.  Flesh it out.
Let's start with this one of me:

First Holy Communion, 7 years old, 1951, Eisenhower in the White House, Joe McCarthy in the Senate, War in Korea, Jim Crow in the South and myself, parents, Sister and Brother in the Bronx.  I was in the 3rd grade at Holy Spirit Grammar School.  A small grammar school, 16 classrooms two for each level.  The church more like a chapel was downstairs.
We had just moved to the Bronx to live and work as superintendents for a 10 apartment building complex. 
Some observations from the photo.  There were lots of parking spaces available in 1951.  No graffitti, maybe a little trash or else I've got something related to the day hanging on my arm. I think trash but it's odd and odd framing for a photo but who thought about such things then in our world.  The sun is in my eyes; probably a brownie camera and maybe that was the best way to get a bright picture or maybe he or she just thought it was the best way.  It was probably my Mom taking the picture.  She was much more interested in memories and sharing.
That boy, if he were not facing the sun would most definitely be smiling.  He's very religious and this is the biggest day in his religious life.  He's happy, shy, keeps to himself.  He can't say why yet but he feels different or more accurately he senses from others that he's different.  Soon they'll tell him why and how he's different and the diffidence will grow.  But this day he's happy.