February 14, 2006
In Other News Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 11:00 AM EST 1. I can’t come up with another example of an incumbent Vice President shooting someone, though if Hannibal Hamlin had done so he would have been justified. Hamlin was Vice President during Abraham Lincoln’s first term, and he spent part of the summer of 1864 serving with a Coast Guard regiment in Maine. During most of his hitch he was a cook, but for his first few days on active duty he was a guard. So if any Rebels had decided to invade Maine (and the prospect is not completely far-fetched, since there was a Confederate raid on Vermont that same year), Hamlin could have shot them and been called a hero. 2. During the 12 hours or so Sunday when the snow was a moderate inconvenience, most sidewalks were reduced to a narrow path on which pedestrians trod, with high walls of snow on either side. I was reminded of the situation that prevailed into the nineteenth century in most cities, and probably still exists in some places, where most streets amounted to unpaved alleys. Muck and mud and refuse accumulated in the middle, so people stuck close to the wall as they walked, but when two people approached from opposite directions, one had to descend into the yucky part while the other slid by along the wall. Yesterday it was just the opposite, because the center of the path was the more desirable part, and when you took the “wall” (which in this case was really a pile of snow a couple of feet high), you risked getting wet shoes or a bootful of snow. The situation reminded me of a quotation from Samuel Johnson (via Boswell), which I’ll confess I had to look up: “In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it; the peaceable and the quarrelsome. When I returned to Lichfield, after having been in London, my mother asked me, whether I was one of those who gave the wall, or those who took it. Now it is fixed that every man keeps to the right; or, if one is taking the wall, another yields it; and it is never a dispute.” While looking that up, I came across this anecdote about Lord Chesterfield, which my source attributes to the British journalist A. G. Gardiner: “In his time, the London streets were without the pavements of today, and the man who ‘took the wall’ had driest footing. ‘I never give the wall to a scoundrel,’ said a man who met Chesterfield, one day in the street. ‘I always do,’ said Chesterfield, stepping with a bow into the road.” For what it’s worth, my experience yesterday was that both people tended to step aside. 3. Who would have thought a month ago that the greatest controversy on the world stage would be started by a bunch of cartoonists? Danish ones, yet. The only situation I can recall (after 30 seconds thought, admittedly) where cartoons caused so much commotion was when Thomas Nast was making fun of Boss Tweed in New York City in the 1860s and 1870s. Tweed supposedly complained that newspaper attacks were no problem, since his constituents couldn’t read, but Nast’s cartoons were killing him. His response was to offer Nast large sums of money to take up a different profession, or perhaps spend several years in Europe studying art at Tweed’s expense. Nast turned him down, and Tweed was eventually brought to justice. There’s no question that Tweed was a crook, but you have to admit that he was a mild-mannered one; a lesser man would have threatened or killed the cartoonist. If only all disputes could be settled according to our robust American traditions—open discourse, unfettered debate, and the judicious use of bribery—the world would be a much more peaceful place.
February 14, 2006
Snowstorm II Posted by John Steele Gordon at 09:00 AM EST I am not sure when or exactly where my colleague on this blog, Frederic Schwarz, did his inspection tour of Sunday’s snowstorm in which he saw no more than a foot of the stuff, but I doubt that the National Weather Service was hyping the recorded snowfall. So what could account for the discrepancy between the official statistic and his observations? I’ve been fifty miles north of New York City since the storm hit, but we certainly got two feet up here. I know. I had to shovel a good deal of it (and a heartfelt hat-tip to my friend, neighbor, and fuel-dealer Bobby Daros, whose truck and plow and strong back saved me from having to shovel a good deal more—I now have a mountain of snow outside my office window that might be there until April). I was immediately struck Sunday morning—after I first comprehended just how much of it there was—with how extraordinarily light it was. It was pure powder and very easy to shovel as a consequence. My front walk was a gorge, with two-foot sides, down to the street in no time. But powder snow compacts quickly, and by the time the storm ended, late in the afternoon, the walls of the gorge, despite additional snow fall, were noticeably lower. Today, they are no more than a foot high. Also, the city is an enormous heat sink. Unless the buildings and sidewalks were already below freezing, a good deal of the snow would have melted as it fell. Also I suspect that, because the snow fell so fast, it quickly built up a layer on the sidewalks that insulated the sidewalks from the cold air above, allowing the sidewalks to continue to melt snow from beneath. Finally, the official New York City weather statistics are gathered at Belvedere Castle in the middle of Central Park, not in the streets and avenues. The ground there would have quickly cooled to below freezing if it started out above it. And the wide-open spaces of Central Park—at least wide-open by New York City standards—would have minimized the drifting that would have piled up much snow in the lees of buildings and in cul-de-sacs and enclosed backyards, anywhere that was protected from the wind, keeping it off the streets. I think this is a good example of why Benjamin Disraeli said that mendacity came in three forms: lies, damned lies, and statistics. The last can be both accurate and highly misleading at the same time.
February 13, 2006
History in the Making, Part II: Grandpa Lied Posted by Frederick E. Allen at 04:00 PM EST I observed a week ago that the actor Al Lewis, aka Grandpa Munster, had died at the age of 95—or was it 82 or 83? Oddly enough, none of his obituary writers could ascertain his age to within even a decade, and amateur historians and others were scrambling to find the truth. Now it has been revealed: Grandpa Lied. He was born in 1923, though he claimed to be 13 years older. He never served on the Sacco and Vanzetti defense committee (he was four when they were executed). Nor was he a champion of the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930s. There’s no evidence he was a circus clown and trapeze artist, or that he once hired Charles Manson as a babysitter, or that he escorted W. E. B. Dubois to the burial of the Rosenbergs, or that he had a Ph.D. from Columbia. How did he build such an extensive, if fictional, résumé? One theory is that it began when he feared he wouldn’t get the Grandpa job if the producers of The Munsters knew he was younger than the actress playing his daughter, Yvonne De Carlo. At any rate, the historical record is now considerably clearer—if also duller. And even his widow doesn’t seem to mind. “He always told me he was born in 1910,” she told a reporter for The New York Times. “But I don’t think it matters at all.” In other news, it has been observed that Dick Cheney is the first Vice President in more than 200 years to shoot a man while in office. His one predecessor: Aaron Burr, who of course took out Alexander Hamilton in July 1804.
February 13, 2006
Don’t Believe the Hype Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 12:30 PM EST For the record, I live and work in Manhattan, and I have no idea where the supposed “record” figure of 26.9 inches in yesterday’s snowfall came from. There may possibly be 26.9 centimeters of snow out there, but inches? No way. Everywhere I’ve gone there is no more than a foot. The storm tied up some forms of transportation for a few hours, but by yesterday evening almost everything was back to normal. I would characterize this snowstorm as moderate, and I can remember three or four over the last 10 years that were much worse in both the amount of snow and the disruption they caused. I am completely mystified about why everyone is making such a fuss.
February 13, 2006
Snowstorm-Schmoestorm Posted by John Steele Gordon at 10:45 AM EST For once the approaching storm was under hyped: 6 to 12 inches in the city, 5 to 9 in the northern suburbs, they told us. Only when it was almost upon New York City did the various weather forecasters begin to push the numbers up. And even then they were too low. By the time the storm headed farther up the coast, 26.9 inches had fallen in Central Park, an all-time record. The old record, 26.4 inches, had stood for 58 years, since December 26 to 27, 1947. Both these storms produced far more snow than the legendary Blizzard of 1888, which dumped a mere 21 inches on the city and ranks only third on the list of New York snowfalls. Why would a snowstorm that happened long before anyone living was born be so much a part of the folk memory of New York City today? In fact, that storm was far, far worse than the two that have surpassed it in total accumulation. One reason was meteorological, the rest were technological. First, the Blizzard of ’88 was a true blizzard, with howling winds for hour after hour that swept the streets clear in some areas and piled up drifts yards high in others. People who ventured outside for any length of time were in mortal peril, and many died as a result of exposure. Yesterday’s snowstorm, while accompanied by a good deal of blowing, had nothing approaching the sustained killer winds of 1888, and no one, at least as reported so far, has died from it. Second, the Blizzard of 1888 was totally unexpected. The weather forecast for March 12 called for “warmer, light to fresh southwesterly winds, except brisk along the coast, threatening weather, followed by rain.” Third, there were no snowplows in 1888. Horses can only pull, not push, so there were only two means of snow removal available: shovels and springtime. The streets and elevated railway lines (the mass transit of the late nineteenth century) were blocked for days, and neither people nor freight could move. “Chaos reigned,” the New York Tribune reported, “and the proud metropolis was reduced to the condition of a primitive settlement.” Most businesses couldn’t even open, of course, but P.T. Barnum’s circus did open that night in the original Madison Square Garden, with an audience of no more than fifty, including, at least according to family legend, my great grandfather, who lived nearby on Lexington Avenue. Fourth, most streets were still gas lit in 1888, and the winds extinguished the lamps in short order, producing a near total blackout. Fifth, communications completely failed. The telegraph and telephone lines in 1888 were strung on poles with as many as fifty crossbars, creating an intricate (not to mention hideous) cat’s cradle above the streets. The city had ordered them put underground, but the companies had been dragging their feet. When the blizzard struck, the wires all came down. So people were isolated in their dwellings, businesses dependent on them ground to a halt, and newspapers could not get news to print, as the wires to other cities were also down. The greatest city in the Western Hemisphere was as isolated as if it had been on the northern prairies. (The mayor of St. Paul, Minnesota, couldn’t resist a little Midwestern schadenfreude and smugly offered financial assistance in a telegram to the mayor of New York, noting that the weather in St. Paul had been “mild and beautiful.”) The Blizzard of 1888 changed New York and thus other American cities. The telephone and telegraph companies hastened to put the wires underground, and they were largely gone in a few years. The blizzard also gave a great impetus to building subways, which would be able to operate in the worst of weather. And the city moved to replace the old gas streetlights with electric ones. Thanks to the great blizzard, American cities became modern sooner than they otherwise might have. So today New Yorkers can watch an even greater snowfall with equanimity, get the latest news on television as the wind howls outside, talk to friends on cellphones as they make their way to the nearest subway station, and get to work. Life in the great metropolis goes on nearly as usual.
February 9, 2006
The View From 1911 Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 02:35 PM EST The 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, of which the ever-shrinking American Heritage library has tenaciously retained a set, is often, and justly, praised for the high quality of its scholarship. (A rather spartan but still useful online version, with no illustrations and frequent typos due to imperfect optical character recognition, can be found at www.1911encyclopedia.org.) The comprehensive entries are authoritative and well researched, and they often contain information that most other sources omit, making them invaluable for researchers. Equally praiseworthy is the writing style, which came near the end of an era when grandiloquence was considered a virtue. One of my favorite examples is a brief entry on backscratchers (the mere existence of such an item is part of the encyclopedia’s charm), which notes that they were often crafted in the shape of a human hand, and “the hand was indifferently dexter or sinister.” Still, the 1911 Britannica does reflect the prejudices of its age. In the entry on New York City, in the wake of statistics showing the city’s great increases in population, we are told: “This rapid growth, the large part which immigration plays in the growth, the marked falling-off in the character of the immigrants, and the fact that it is usually the weaker and less enterprising immigrant who stays in New York while the more capable go West—all these circumstances combine to make a serious social problem.” When those words were written, the turn-of-the-century flood of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe was at its peak. One can imagine a writer with nativist inclinations walking down Orchard or Mulberry Street, recoiling in shock at the unfamiliar languages and outfits, and thinking, “It can’t be like this everywhere.” In fact, enterprise had nothing to do with it; newcomers went where they had a relative or friend from the old country. And overwhelming as the influx may have seemed, it wouldn’t be long before the immigrants of New York City, like those everywhere else, would show the world what they could accomplish when given a chance and an education.
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