Monthly Archives: August 2013

August brings tomatoes; Bon Appetit gives this tomato salad recipe.

“Philadelphia, 1981” by Ray K. Metzker (via MPD)

“The Ruins of Detroit” by Yves Marchand & Romain Meffre (via Air and Angels)

From the New York Times, here’s Stephen Farrell on the quiet-as-kept City Hall library:

But while book titles can be searched online, the books themselves cannot be downloaded or taken out. They must be read on site, in one of two large rooms: one is somewhat dark and filled with bookshelves and old newspaper clippings; the other has a few computers and the librarians.

The volumes stocked by the library are not the kinds of books most people would consider summer reading — “Financial Problems of the City of New York” is one title — and they also tend to be large and bulky.

“Sometimes they will say, ‘It’s a lot of reading.’ I always say, ‘Well, you know what, I wish I had time to sit and read it. I would love to do it,’” Ms. Bruzzese said. “I think a lot of people, too, are used to electronic things now, they expect to find something on a computer. They see a book this size, and they think, ‘Oh, it’s a lot to read.’”

Below the library are the cavernous storerooms and vaults that contain some of the maps, books, photographs and other items that are part of the Municipal Archives. They document the city’s government and leadership dating back to the unification of the boroughs into New York City in 1898, and back to the first mayor of the city, Thomas Willett, in 1665.

[Photo Via: the Atlantic]

Yeah, Hard Luck Hiroki didn’t pitch poorly. It was that damn 3rd run he gave up before getting the final out in the 7th. Otherwise, man, he pitched another competent game. But the Yankees had Chris Sale on their hands, a formidable, hard-throwing lefty. They scored a run and would have had another if the home plate umpire didn’t blow a call at the plate. When your team doesn’t score those moments are critical because the Yanks scored another run in the 9th but Alfonso Soriano whiffed with the tying run on base and that was that: another loss. And the downward spiral continues.

Final Score: White Sox 3, Yanks 2.

[Photo Credit: David Banks/AP]

It’s Hiroki–Our Guy!

Brett Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano LF
Alex Rodriguez DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Vernon Wells RF
Jayson Nix 3B
Eduardo Nunez SS
David Adams 1B
Austin Romine C

Never mind the boo boids:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo via This Isn’t Happiness]

Painting by Maxi Quy via Supersonic Electronic. 

John Henry buys the Boston Globe and the Graham’s sell the Washington Post.

Here’s David Remnick:

After talking with the board of directors, Donald Graham quietly began looking for a potential buyer around Christmas of 2012. “We were in our seventh consecutive year of declining revenues, and there was the question of, What could we do?” Graham told me. The company had bought Slate and Foreign Policy (and is holding on to them) and sold Newsweek (which changed hands again this weekend). “Our strategy had been to innovate like hell in digital and other businesses and offset the declines in print revenues. But Katharine said the declines were going to go on, for the eighth and ninth straight years. And so …”

The trends were violent and undeniable. Graham and Weymouth saw circulation drop from 832,332 average subscribers, in 1993, to 474,767. The newsroom staff was once more than a thousand; it is now around six hundred and forty. The paper is still capable of extraordinary journalism—in June, it broke the Edward Snowden-National Security Agency surveillance story, along with the Guardian, and, only last Sunday, scored the first interview with the leader of the Egyptian military coup, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, in which the general said, nervily, “you have turned your back on the Egyptians and they won’t forget it.” But the Post is clearly a diminished version of its old self. It is still serious and grounded, but not quite essential in the way its rival, the Times, remains.

And our pal Peter Richmond.

[Photo Credit: Lisa Provence]

Papa Don’t Take No Mess.

[Photo Via: Neal Square]

Bronx native Art Donovan has passed away. Salute.

Alex Rodriguez wasn’t half-bad at the plate last night. He had a bloop single in his first at bat, drove a high fastball to deep center the next time up (hit it pretty well but it was just high enough for him not to center it), was late on an inside fastball in his third at bat and flied out to deep left, and then struck out looking to end his night. Unfortunately, Andy Pettitte wasn’t half-good. The White Sox scored 3 runs in the first inning and while nobody hit the ball hard and luck was on the home team’s side, things got worse after that and Pettitte was gone before the end of the 3rd inning.

Rough night for the Bombers. Final score: White Sox 8, Yankees 1. 

Derek Jeter goes back on the DL, David Adams called up, Brent Lillibridge cut, Andy Pettitte faces—ah, screw it: Alex Rodriguez is in the lineup tonight.

Brent Gardner CF
Alfonso Soriano DH
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Vernon Wells 1B
Curtis Granderson LF
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Eduardo Nunez SS
Chris Stewart C

Never mind the boo birds:

Let’s Go Yank-ees!

Early days of the IRT. 

The suspensions. 

And here is more on Alex.

[Image by Zac Freeman]

Alexandra: Oh, hell yes.

Man versions, this might be the most famous.

This one might be my favorite:

Torafu from Super Punch. 

I visited my mom recently and she showed me photographs from her trip to Africa in 1966. It was on this trip that she met my dad. She didn’t only have pictures, she still had the sunglasses she rocked that summer. They were in a plastic case stored in a box along with letters and photos.

Pretty cool, right?

Man, this is beautiful–George Saunders’ commencement speech at Syracuse University (click here for the video):

So: What do I regret? Being poor from time to time? Not really. Working terrible jobs, like “knuckle-puller in a slaughterhouse?” (And don’t even ASK what that entails.) No. I don’t regret that. Skinny-dipping in a river in Sumatra, a little buzzed, and looking up and seeing like 300 monkeys sitting on a pipeline, pooping down into the river, the river in which I was swimming, with my mouth open, naked? And getting deathly ill afterwards, and staying sick for the next seven months? Not so much. Do I regret the occasional humiliation? Like once, playing hockey in front of a big crowd, including this girl I really liked, I somehow managed, while falling and emitting this weird whooping noise, to score on my own goalie, while also sending my stick flying into the crowd, nearly hitting that girl? No. I don’t even regret that.

But here’s something I do regret:

In seventh grade, this new kid joined our class. In the interest of confidentiality, her Convocation Speech name will be “ELLEN.” ELLEN was small, shy. She wore these blue cat’s-eye glasses that, at the time, only old ladies wore. When nervous, which was pretty much always, she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it.

So she came to our school and our neighborhood, and was mostly ignored, occasionally teased (“Your hair taste good?” – that sort of thing). I could see this hurt her. I still remember the way she’d look after such an insult: eyes cast down, a little gut-kicked, as if, having just been reminded of her place in things, she was trying, as much as possible, to disappear. After awhile she’d drift away, hair-strand still in her mouth. At home, I imagined, after school, her mother would say, you know: “How was your day, sweetie?” and she’d say, “Oh, fine.” And her mother would say, “Making any friends?” and she’d go, “Sure, lots.”

Sometimes I’d see her hanging around alone in her front yard, as if afraid to leave it.

And then – they moved. That was it. No tragedy, no big final hazing.

One day she was there, next day she wasn’t.

End of story.

Now, why do I regret that? Why, forty-two years later, am I still thinking about it? Relative to most of the other kids, I was actually pretty nice to her. I never said an unkind word to her. In fact, I sometimes even (mildly) defended her.

But still. It bothers me.

So here’s something I know to be true, although it’s a little corny, and I don’t quite know what to do with it:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Or, to look at it from the other end of the telescope: Who, in your life, do you remember most fondly, with the most undeniable feelings of warmth?

Those who were kindest to you, I bet.

It’s a little facile, maybe, and certainly hard to implement, but I’d say, as a goal in life, you could do worse than: Try to be kinder.

And more:

When young, we’re anxious – understandably – to find out if we’ve got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you – in particular you, of this generation – may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can….

And this is actually O.K. If we’re going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously – as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.

Still, accomplishment is unreliable. “Succeeding,” whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there’s the very real danger that “succeeding” will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended.

So, quick, end-of-speech advice: Since, according to me, your life is going to be a gradual process of becoming kinder and more loving: Hurry up. Speed it along. Start right now. There’s a confusion in each of us, a sickness, really: selfishness. But there’s also a cure. So be a good and proactive and even somewhat desperate patient on your own behalf – seek out the most efficacious anti-selfishness medicines, energetically, for the rest of your life.

Do all the other things, the ambitious things – travel, get rich, get famous, innovate, lead, fall in love, make and lose fortunes, swim naked in wild jungle rivers (after first having it tested for monkey poop) – but as you do, to the extent that you can, err in the direction of kindness. Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial. That luminous part of you that exists beyond personality – your soul, if you will – is as bright and shining as any that has ever been. Bright as Shakespeare’s, bright as Gandhi’s, bright as Mother Theresa’s. Clear away everything that keeps you separate from this secret luminous place. Believe it exists, come to know it better, nurture it, share its fruits tirelessly.

[Photograph Credit: Ivan Sigal]

Is Bud writes Glenn Stout:

Measured only by the dollar, Selig’s tenure has been a success. However, by almost any other method, it has been a failure, for during his tenure whatever special place baseball still held in American society and culture has irreparably eroded. More than that however, baseball used to matter. Now, despite its financial health, the game is in many ways like an invalid living on an old fortune, wealthy but sequestered, important only to those who still need to keep the old boy alive to live off the crumbs that drop from his lap.

…At the same time, under Selig, the credibility of the game has been shredded. Under his limited sense of leadership, the game chose not just to ignore PEDs, but to revel in their impact, to juice the game artificially after a period of labor strife. Did they plan this? No. Did they see it happen and get all goose-bumpy, and start drooling at the financial rewards? Absolutely. As long as the checks cleared it mattered not that a host of records essentially became meaningless, that history was devalued, or that fully two decades of seasonal results are suspect (including Boston’s long awaited world championships in 2004 and 2007). All in the name of short-term gain, baseball under Selig chose to insult the intelligence of several generations of fans in favor of those who came to the game, not as fans, but as corporate guests.

Baseball has always been a business, but for years its success depended, at least in part, on the ease with which it was easy to forget that. All pretense of that is gone now. Baseball is only business, and business is the only measure that matters. Witness the changes to the All-Star game, the playoffs, the escalating cost of watching the game, in person, on TV, or the Internet. If there is a National Pastime anymore, it is the ATM.

And let’s not forget drug testing.

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