Categories
Month: October 2017
Categories
The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness. – Eric Hoffer
Born in Vermont. Raised in New York. Mediocre student. Strong antislavery beliefs. Became a lawyer. Very much a people person, which led to much of his success. Friend of Roscoe Conkling. Assigned Commissioner of ports in NY. Important position at the time. And very lucrative.
Panic of 1873 lead to the end of moiety system. Hayes made civil service reform the leading cause of his presidency. Hayes replaced Arthur as part of his reform campaign.
Arthur picked as president primarily because of his likability and his alliance with Conkling and the Stalwarts. Arthur remains loyal to Conkling during Garfield’s/Blaine’s successful scheme to appoint non-Stalwarts to cabinet positions. Led to a break between Garfield and Arthur.
Arthur was really into modernizing the White House. Liked fine clothes, carriages etc… He was the Jackline Kennedy of his time.
Vetoed the Anti-Chinese Immigration Bill. Signed the second one, knowing his veto would be overturned.
Popular book at the time. Henry George’s Progress and Poverty.
Republicans were crushed in the elections of 1882. During the duck session when they still had a majority, Arthur decided to push Pendleton’s civil service bill. Wanted to be seen as party of reform. Passed and Arthur signed.
Died from problems related to Bell’s Palsey; kidney disease. Was a big eater/drinker, which probably caused the issues.
Remember as an “ok” president – not terrible, certainly not great. Did better than expected considering.
I read his book All I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten a long time ago. I remembered it as rather cornball, but I did remember it, which is something. I read something about this volume recently and decided to give it a try.
This one is pretty cornball as well, and formulaic, but I can’t say didn’t enjoy parts of it. The title come from a newspaper article, an interview with a guy, who when asked how his matteress got on fire, answers that it was already on fire when he lay down on it.
A couple stories stood out to me. The one about the driver instructor who was loved by his students because he just listened to them and tried to get to know them. Another good one was about his time at a Zen monastery. The head of the place reads to him this:
There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.
However. It helps to understand that fire burns, and when it rains , the earth gets wet.
There was also the story about the Hunt Saboteur Association, whose purpose was to break up fox hunting events – often humorously – thereby saving foxes from death. The interesting point was that doing good can also be fun, it doesn’t have to be grim and hard work.
Categories
Advice to a Mad Prophet
by Richard Wilbur
Categories
A Chronic Condition
by Richard Wilbur
Categories
After the Last Bulletins
by Richard Wilbur
After the last bulletins the windows darken And the whole city founders readily and deep, Sliding on all its pillows To the thronged Atlantis of personal sleep, And the wind rises. The wind rises and bowls The day's litter of news in the alleys. Trash Tears itself on the railings, Soars and falls with a soft crash, Tumbles and soars again. Unruly flights Scamper the park, and taking a statue for dead Strike at the positive eyes, Batter and flap the stolid head And scratch the noble name. In empty lots Our journals spiral in a fierce noyade Of all we thought to think, Or caught in corners cramp and wad And twist our words. And some from gutters flail Their tatters at the tired patrolman's feet, Like all that fisted snow That cried beside his long retreat Damn you! damn you! to the emperor's horse's heels. Oh none too soon through the air white and dry Will the clear announcer's voice Beat like a dove, and you and I From the heart's anarch and responsible town Return by subway-mouth to life again, Bearing the morning papers, And cross the park where saintlike men, White and absorbed, with stick and bag remove The litter of the night, and footsteps rouse With confident morning sound The songbirds in the public boughs.
Categories
The Beautiful Changes
by Richard Wilbur
One wading a Fall meadow finds on all sides The Queen Anne’s Lace lying like lilies On water; it glides So from the walker, it turns Dry grass to a lake, as the slightest shade of you Valleys my mind in fabulous blue Lucernes. The beautiful changes as a forest is changed By a chameleon’s tuning his skin to it; As a mantis, arranged On a green leaf, grows Into it, makes the leaf leafier, and proves Any greenness is deeper than anyone knows. Your hands hold roses always in a way that says They are not only yours; the beautiful changes In such kind ways, Wishing ever to sunder Things and things’ selves for a second finding, to lose For a moment all that it touches back to wonder.
Categories
This Be The Verse
by Phillip Larkin
Categories
Fire and Ice
by Robert Frost
Categories
James A. Garfield – Ira Rutkow
Last president born in log cabin. Born in the Western Reserve. Close to what is now Cleveland. Great student at Williams College. Good at debate. Considered one of the best-educated presidents.
Long-time congressman from Ohio. Was a radical Republican, voted for the impeachment of Johnson. Not a Lincoln fan, felt he wasn’t aggressive enough.
Elected to Senate. Backed Blaine for presidential nomination. Disputed convention, Blaine supporters eventually threw support to Garfield. Eventually he won out over Grant.
Made Blaine Sec. of State. He preceded to attempt to control Garfield. Assignment outraged Conkling, boss of NY politics.
He and his vice-president did not like each other. Author was aligned with Conkling, a Stalwart.
Garfield refinanced the national debt, reducing the interest debt by 40%. Was agressive in bring Hawaii under US influence.
The “Star Route” scandal involved post office officials pocketing funds from rural routes that generated additional money do to their rural nature (they didn’t’ really deliver the mail, just kept the money). To his credit, Garfield did not attempt to shield his campaign manager or primary fund-raiser when their involvement was discovered.
Charles Guiteau shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Washington train depot. Garfield was headed to New England for a two-week vacation with his wife (she was already in the North East, recovering from an illness). Guiteau was a nut-job who had been pestering the Garfield administration for a position. He claimed he acted to save the republic from Garfield.
The doctors gave him champagne to counter liver hemorrhage. oh boy. The doctor’s fought vigorously about Garfield’s care. Dr. Bliss won out, over the objection of several more qualified doctors.
Book provided a lot of information on the history of medicine (written by a doctor). Basically, there were two schools of though: Allopaths, who believed in strong remedies to produce the opposite affect of a disease, and homopaths, who basically believed the opposite. Neither really led to particularly effective treatments. The Allopaths probably did more harm.
In the 1860’s doctor Joseph Lister made the connection between sterilization techniques and positive surgical outcomes. His thoughts were well-known by the time Garfield was shot, but not well-accepted by U.S. doctors, especially older ones, such as those that treated Garfield.
Author notes that Garfield’s wound was similar to Reagan’s. He would have recovered quickly with modern medical treatment.
Biography about Joey Gallo, mobster from NYC. Subject of the Dylan/Levy song, “Joey”. Levy actually new Gallo personally, back in the sixties when “mobster chic” was popular among the rich white privileged types. Morons.
Didn’t like the book at all really. Written in a hipster beat kind of way, I found the style annoying, and at times it was hard to follow.