Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...
Thanks Trippler for the links.
ReplyDeleteYou bet!
ReplyDeleteI wish that somehow I could go back in time to exchange a few ideas with those brilliant folks in the T's. How would the nation and world have changed if they were aware of what was to come? I think it would be a very different world, indeed.
184-year-old Adams letter found
ReplyDeleteSixth president wrote about parents’ burial
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/04/21/184_year_old_adams_letter_found/?s_campaign=yahoo
"Adams penned the letter, dated Sept. 8, 1826, two months after his father died on the young nation’s Independence Day. He was seeking permission from the supervisors of the church, which he called a “temple,’’ to bury his father and mother there.
“I have considered it a duty devolving upon me to erect a plain and modest monument to his memory: and my wish is that divested of all ostentation it may yet be as durable as the walls of the Temple to the erection of which he has contributed, and as the Rocks of his native Town which are to supply the materials for it,’’ Adams wrote."
I will have to check but I wonder of JQA had any influence upon the T's or vice versa. He was religiously orthodox while most of them were not so this may have had some impact on their exchanges, if any.
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