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...
Looks like we need a new weekend meander....
ReplyDeleteI'm wrapping up the first draft of my forest service history and am using this quote from Gifford Pinchot:
ReplyDelete“The central thing for which Conservation stands is to make this country the best possible place to live in, both for us and our descendants. It stands against the waste of the natural resources which cannot be renewed, such as coal and iron; it stands for the perpetuation of the resources which can be renewed, such as the food-producing soils and the forests; and most of all it stands for an equal opportunity for every American citizen to get his fair share of benefit from these resources, both now and hereafter.”
Gifford Pinchot, The Fight for Conservation, 1910
And in a real meander, I have been listening to a great jazz station online from NYC while I work. This a.m. it has some great R&B for the weekend.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.wbgo.org/listennow/wbgo_8000.asx
Nice pic.
ReplyDeleteI just tuned into that jazz station from Jersey. Sounds good!
Glad you like the picture -- and the music. It's been "cool" jazz all week, but I'm really enjoying this old R&B. Nothing like a little James Brown and Otis Redding to get the weekend going.
ReplyDeleteLooks like you are ready for spring, av.
ReplyDeleteAs I remember from Collapse, Trujillo decreed conservationism in the Dominican Republic, setting aside great tracts of lack for conservation and woe be it to anyone to set foot in them.
Spring is just around the corner, I'm sure of it, she says hopefully.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, as I recall, in the DR, he wanted the forests as sort of tribute to himself and did not allow them to be cut.
Here's a synthesis of some of Diamond's other arguments, sort of a mixture of culture and history as well as environmental factors:
http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=4776
Gintaras, your Tolstoy et al. blog is so great, I don't know where to slip this in, so will mention it here.
ReplyDeleteSaw The Last Station which the NY Times panned, but I really enjoyed.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/450177/The-Last-Station/overview
I thought it was beautiful in places and that Christopher Plummer and Helen Mirran were entirely believable. And the young man who played Tolstoy's secretary was very good.
There was one young woman (the secretary's love interest) who seemed totally out of place in Russia, the 19th century, a movie.... but otherwise I was very moved by the film and now more than ever want to know about Tolstoy's life.
I'm a big fan of A.N. Wilson so picked up a used copy of his book on Tolstoy after reading War and Peace. Still haven't read it yet, though.
http://www.amazon.com/Tolstoy-Biography-N-Wilson/dp/0393321223/
Thanks av! Winding my way to the end of The Idiot. Should wrap it up this weekend.
ReplyDeleteI want to see this movie, but I have been disappointed time and again by British and American adaptations of Russian novels, so am not expecting much.
Tolstoy is such a fascinating person in his own right.
Yes, this one is definitely a costume drama, and over the top in places. But from my understanding, they had a stormy marriage and Mirren doesn't hold anything back.
ReplyDeleteOther than the badly miscast and mis-costumed young woman who almost looks like an extra who has wondered into the wrong set the first times you see her, I thought the movie was very interesting about the Tolstoyan movement and his ambivalence within it.
And the scene at the end (the last station) with the press camped outside the railroad station was reproduced during the credits with snippets of actual footage which I always find fascinating (fiction becoming fact or vice versa).
I'll put up a post, av, once I get through The Idiot, so we can talk more about it. Would love to get some feedback in the blog.
ReplyDeletehere's a fun weekend meander for those who may have missed it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.funnyordie.com/videos/f5a57185bd/funny-or-die-s-presidential-reunion
I was surveyed by the Pew Center for the People and the Press the other night. The poll is supposed to be up at the end of this week.
ReplyDeleteI often wonder who writes these questions. It doesn't give much wiggle room for the complexities of the issues. Lots of questions on health care, guns, and the census.
I hedged my answers on health care because I'm sick of hearing how the American people don't support reform. I just don't support that bloated Senate bill, but I guess that's the one Americans will have to live with -- literally.
True Grit on tomorrow on TCM.
ReplyDelete