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Snippets

Cake bakers bake cakes. Bread bakers bake bread. Cookie bakers bake cookies. Bagel bakers bake bagels (after boiling them first, I hope.) Pretzel bakers bake pretzels, with a twist, of course. A recent email from a right wing “religious” organization, referred to “Christian bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein.” Oh, dear! Do Christian bakers bake….?­­

Born-again Christians. Isn’t it better to get it right the first time?

Ascribed to Billy Sunday in Jess Walter, The Cold Millions: “Goin’ to church don’t make you a Christian any more than goin’ to a garage makes you an automobile.”

Do the Christians who are non-celiac but gluten-free pray sincerely, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

Increasingly actors listing credits in Playbills include preferred pronouns. For example, the actor playing Max in the production I just saw included (he/him/his) and the one playing Sandra had (she/her). And pronouns often appear on the signature lines of emails these days. I wrote about how a new pronoun for the NBP has not come easily to me. Search Results for “pronoun” – AJ’s Dad (ajsdad.blog). But my preferred personal pronouns have remained constant: I, me, and especially mine.

I have not done much traveling since Covid infiltrated, but it is funny what I retain from earlier trips. For example, I went to Morocco shortly before the pandemic. I could not name all the different foods I tried. I cannot remember all the restaurants and hotels. I could not even tell you all the cities I visited. But I do remember that Morocco had many wonderful, varied streetlights.

Like others, I have admired the broad boulevards of Paris that help make the city beautiful. However, A Burglar’s Guide to the City by Geoff Manaugh says that these streets were not designed for their esthetics but to aid the police so that the thoroughfares could not be blockaded as they had been earlier in the Nineteenth Century.

Call me prejudiced. I was surprised at how fit–and attractive–the mixed-doubles Olympic curlers were.

“It seldom pays to be rude. It never pays to be only half rude.” Norman Douglas.

Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

Are you a Zen master if, when you order a hot dog, you say, “Make me one with everything”?

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The Ukrainian Jokester (concluded)

The man with the accent who, to my regret, had just told an offensive joke on the subway to me, loudly announced at the joke’s conclusion that he had to take care of some personal business. He fished out of a fanny pack-sized satchel a dented plastic cup. He moved to the end of the car. I feared that he was going to urinate there, but, instead, he opened the subway door and stepped into the space between the cars as we lurched to our next stop. A considerate man, apparently, to do this out of sight and to use a cup.

My hope that he would take another seat and find a new conversant was dashed as he sat in the place he had vacated. I could not take my eyes off that plastic cup, which looked surprisingly dry, as he placed it back into the satchel while I wondered what that cup was nestling against.

Based on zero evidence that his comedic efforts were a success (no passenger had laughed or, strictly maintaining the no-eye-contact rule, had even looked in his direction), he launched into several more stories. Each time the punchline was, “It was the Jew!” After one of these inevitable endings, he said, “I must be Jewish. My grandfather was Jewish, but he converted to Catholicism.” Perhaps there was a story worth hearing there, but I was not about to try finding out.

We came into a stop that allowed a transfer from our local train to an express, and I got up to exit as did other passengers. “You’re leaving,” he said, and I nodded pointing at the subway sign. He looked a bit hurt, and for a brief, irrational moment I felt sorry that I was sneaking out on him. Even so, I hurried out the train door and scurried to get on the subway car directly in front of the one I had left.

 Now that I was separated from him, I did exit at my planned 110th Street station, but I was immediately pleased that as I stepped from the car I was behind a pillar on the platform, for I could easily hear “Glory, Glory, Hallelujah” coming from my “friend” who, too, was on the platform. (He did not advance the song beyond this refrain, but his voice was pretty good.) I had a view of the exit turnstiles, but I did not see him go through them immediately. He had to be lingering on the platform, and if I headed for the street, he would see me. I waited. I still did not see him. I can’t tell you how foolish I felt hiding behind a narrow subway pillar that required me to suck in my gut to remain unseen. Finally, thanking all the Christian, Arab, and Jewish gods, I saw him go through the turnstile. I could not see the stairway to the street, so I waited some more. I inched forward, but with his back to me, he was still at the bottom of the steps that I had planned to take. I tried to calculate the likelihood of being spotted going up a different set of stairs that would have made a slightly longer trip to my destination. I eschewed the risk and waited further behind my protective pillar. I finally took baby steps forward again, and blessed day, I did not see him. I left the platform and ascended to the street, fearing he would be at the top, but although I did a 360, I did not spot him.

I hurried—a rather loose term for the way I now walk—up to Columbia University stopping for a few quick errands along the way. I was going to meet for the first time a student whom I was going to advise for his senior thesis. I had read his proposal. It was for the definitive biography of Supreme Court Justice John Marshall. My goal was to aid the student in narrowing his topic so he could complete it in the next year and not need five more years to graduate as his proposal would require. I knew that I was about to dash some dreams, but sometimes you have to break some eggs to make the omelet for the greater good. (Ok, I agree that this is a mixed metaphor and not a good one, but I can’t come up with anything better right now. I am listening if you have a suggestion.)

 

The meeting site provided a complication. Although I have taught a course at Columbia, and I am currently advising another senior on his thesis, I am not a regular member of the Columbia faculty and do not have a Columbia ID. In this land of Covid, Columbia now limits access to its buildings, and I can’t get in them. The student and I had worked out a solution. We would meet on the steps of Hamilton Hall (yes, that Hamilton of musical fame—a graduate of a precursor of Columbia) and then move into a wedding-sized tent set up on a lawn in front of the building, one of the many “temporary” erections now marring the Columbia campus. Enough heat is provided by portable heaters to make it reasonably comfortable inside.

 he student calls out my name as I approach Hamilton. We shake hands and head into the tent, which contains a dozen or more eight-person tables and find a place to talk. Doing my job, I ask some incredibly insightful questions that will advance the student’s thought processes exponentially. He is answering, and I am listening when I spot him. My pisser, Polish-Ukrainian, Jew-joking subway rider is walking on the far side of the tent. My eyes are glued to him hoping he does not spot me. He sits down at a table where there is one other man. Does he know this guy? Does he have some connection to Columbia? I am not about to ask him, but I realize that I have not been listening to the student’s painstakingly thoughtful comments. I stop the student’s discourse and say, somewhat embarrassed, that I was not listening. I briefly explain to him why, and then immediately wonder if I should have told him about the anti-Semitic jokes since the student has a Jewish sounding name. However, he seems to think that my awkward situation is funny. My subway companion is sitting with his back to me and is unlikely to see me, so I get back to my business of advising a Columbia senior thesis. After a forty-minute discussion, I leave the tent with hopes that I have left my subway regaler behind.

I have garnered no great wisdom from this encounter, and it will not change my subway behavior. Someday again I will be asked about a book I am reading, and I will still give a brief reply, and the odds are overwhelming I will quickly return to my reading. All I can take away from my subway trip is the reminder that not every experience in New York is pleasant, but even those that are not may add interest to life.

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The Ukrainian Jokester

          New Yorkers have rules for subway riding. Some are for efficiency—let passengers exit before boarding. Other rules are for privacy and safety. Thus, don’t make more than fleeting eye contact with other passengers and then only  as an “excuse me” after bumping into someone. Similarly, no engagement with ranters on the train, whether they are preaching what they think is a gospel truth or telling us about the presence of alien beings or the dangers of fluoridated water. When performers seek to collect money, don’t ask them about their lives, where they got their dance or musical training, or how much money they make—they are in a hurry to get to the next car. Riders, of course, can give money to the beggars, but should seek no other engagement with them. (I am beginning to worry about inflation. In the past panhandlers would seek any loose change passengers might have, but yesterday one asked for dollar bills, suggesting quarters were not enough.)

          Only certain conversations between passengers are proper. It is all right to ask travel directions. Is this the 4 train, for example, or does this train stop at Spring Street? Someone will almost always give the correct information. However, all personal questions and comments are to be eschewed between passengers not known to each other. You don’t ask where another passenger is going or what they do or where they live. You don’t comment on someone else’s clothes even if their dress looks as if it is meant to elicit remarks.

          All those rules, of course, do get broken occasionally even by nice (i.e., non-crazy New Yorkers), such as the time I was asked whether I could calculate the circumference of a heptagon by a seatmate who was on her way to buy antique wood for a frame. I have broken the rules myself a few times. Once I asked a young man holding a basketball about his ability and learned he played professionally in Israel. Another time I played rock, paper, scissors with a high school student as we hung onto a subway pole.

          Perhaps the most frequent question I have asked or been asked on the subway has been, “Is that a good book?” referring, of course, to the material someone is reading. I have not been or seen anyone offended by this query, which is often asked as an effort at self-aggrandizement. It is akin in some circles to a wag of the middle figure in front of a closed left eye—a signal of membership in a group. This not a secret society, but the book question announces that I, too, am in that select group that reads books. The answers are usually mundane: Yeah, it’s good. I am not far enough into it to know yet. It was highly recommended to me, but so far it’s only so-so.

After the answer the inquirer usually responds with something such as: I read [name of different book] by that author and have wondered about the one you are reading. People have recommended that book, but so far I haven’t gotten to it. I am looking for a new author. This brief interchange is almost always the entire conversation, and we readers quickly go back to our books.

          It was not surprising, then, as I headed uptown at noon the other day, that the man seated across the car from me asked, “Is that a good book?” He was about sixty with a shock of thick hair on a big head. He was dressed simply—not in business or fashionable attire, but he did not look like a homeless person. His left hand held a sheaf of papers bound together but it did not have a cover as if it had been a pamphlet. From my vantage point six or eight feet away, I could not tell what the material was, but it did not appear to be in English. He had an accent, but he was perfectly understandable. There was no indication from his speech that he was under the influence of drink or drugs.

          I answered his book question simply, “I am enjoying it.” Then came my first warning for he asked, “What is it about?” Normally we book questioners have spotted the cover and know something about the book or the author and that has prompted our original question. But perhaps he was captured by the catchy title of the book. I replied, “It is about a baseball catcher who was a spy during World War II.” I glanced down at my book hoping to end this conversation. He probed, “For who?” I said, “America” and turned a page even though I had not read it as my signal to be left alone.

          Silence for the briefest of moments, and then, “Books are wonderful. They can take you to other worlds.” Now I definitely wanted out of this conversation. No subway book lover would say this to another book lover. I remained silent. He: “I read a lot when I was in prison.” This confirmed that I should find a way to get out of this conversation, not because the guy had been in jail, but because this was not a subway-book-lover discussion. On the other hand, my long-ago career as a public defender makes me a sucker about talking to those who are usually shunned, those who have been imprisoned. He continued that he read history book after history book while locked up. I couldn’t resist; I acted foolishly for a sensible subway rider and asked how long he had been in jail. “Twenty-two days,” the bigheaded man said with a smile. I had trouble not laughing, but I was convinced that this was not the time for jocularity or asking whether he was a speed reader.

Instead, to avoid saying something more about jail, I asked where he was from originally. He told me Ukraine but also mentioned Poland. He said his last name, which I did not get, but it sounded as if it was Polish. I gathered he was Ukrainian of Polish descent. He launched into a short geopolitical discussion and said that Ukraine was really part of Russia and Ukraine needed Russia for protection. He said that the countries were close culturally, with similar ethnicities, music, literature. “The countries share an alphabet.” I have listened to many crazies on the subways and streets of New York as well as at work, but, I thought, this guy, if crazy, is not typical; pointing out a common heritage from a shared alphabet had an intelligence not encountered with most ranters.

Silence for a few moments, and I hoped that the conversation was over, but then he said, “I am getting off at 110th Street.” I tried to hold my face and body steady to not betray that that was my planned exit, although I immediately started thinking about getting off at another stop instead. I was not sure why he announced his destination, but then he said that he had time to tell a joke. I had concluded that he was not totally crazy, but I was not so confident of my psychological skills that I wanted to risk making him angry by telling him to shut up. But I quickly regretted not taking that chance when the joke started loud enough for most people on the car to hear, “A Christian, an Arab, and a Jew were in the desert.” The punchline was, “It was the Jew!” indicating the inherent rapaciousness of Jewish people. This was not a joke that I would have wanted to hear anywhere, much less in New York, much less in a subway car. And to make things worse, it was not funny.

Concluded on Feb.9

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First Sentences

“In a first-class stateroom on a cruise ship bound for New York from Alexandria, Egypt, a frail, middle-aged writer and educator named Sayyid Qutb experienced a crisis of faith.” Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

“Miss Minerva Winterslip was a Bostonian in good standing, and long past the romantic stage.” Earl Derr Biggers, The House Without a Key.

“Moscow. Autumn. Cold.” Teffi, Memories from Moscow to the Black Sea.

“Gwenda was eight years old, but she was not afraid of the dark.” Ken Follett, World Without End.

“At the start of the twentieth century, language in America—it had not yet become the ‘American language’—still showed the influence of its largely prescriptive Victorian past.” William and Mary Morris, Harper Dictionary of Contemporary Usage.

“The decision to bomb the office of the radical Jew lawyer was reached with relative ease.” John Grisham, The Chamber.

“In the late spring of 1875, the ancient seaport town of St. Augustine, Florida, witnessed the beginnings of an educational campaign that would have an impact on every Indian nation in the United States.” Jacqueline Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club: Schools, Race, and the Struggle of Indian Acculturation.

“I returned from the City about three o’clock on that May afternoon pretty well disgusted with life.” John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps

“The game, like the country in which it was invented, was a rough, bastardized thing that jumped out of the mud.”Sally Jenkins, The Real All Americans: The Team that Changed a Game, a People, a Nation.

“In a dream at daybreak, on 18 April 1948, Calogero Schiro saw Stalin.” Leonardo Sciascia, The Death of Stalin.

“Faced with working-class life in towns such as Winchester, I see only one solution: beer.” Joe Baegeant, Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War.

“—Something a little strange, that’s what you notice, that she’s not a woman like all the others.” Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman.

“Vic Smith, a hunter, lifted his head above a rise on the plains floor, peering down at seven hundred buffalo in the valley of the Redwater River.” Michael Punke, Last Stand: George Bird Grinnell, the Battle to Save the Buffalo, and the Birth of the New West.

“I’m a priest, for Christ’s sake—how can this be happening to me?” John Banville, Snow.

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Snippets

“The unvaccinated are losers.” Ascribed to Aaron Rodgers.

“The unvaccinated just don’t play.” Ascribed to Novak Djokovic.

“The unvaccinated eat wherever.” Ascribed to Sarah Palin.

Ever since I learned the meaning of nescience about a decade ago, I have wished to use it but have not. If, however, I met Aaron, Novak, or Sarah, I would hope to have the opportunity to say, “I marvel at the extent of your nescience.”

Mitch McConnell recently said, “If you look at the statistics, African-American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.” The search, so far unsuccessful, began immediately to find a Trump supporter who found this offensive. And curiosity is now rampant as to how McConnell will describe Hispanic voting rates.

I just got on my computer an ad on how to block ads. You can make up a punchline.

The Lunar New Year began yesterday—the Year of the Tiger. I was happy to learn that I should not clean my place during the first few days of the New Year—“lest you want to sweep luck away.” I am pleased to report that I have much luck stored up. The dust bunnies look so fierce that this year I have anointed them dust tigers.

New York City had its first major winter storm of the season. During it, I did what I usually do during such an event. I turned to Wallace Stevens and read:

          It was evening all afternoon.

          It was snowing

          And it was going to snow.

          The blackbird sat

          In the cedar-limbs.

Now I have added “The Snow Man” to my ritual reading of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”:

          One must have a mind of winter

          To regard the frost and the boughs

          Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;  . . .

          For the listener, who listens in the snow,

          And, nothing himself, beholds

          Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

I wish I understood that.

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His Honor’s House (concluded)

A summary of Samuel Booth’s Brooklyn mayoralty asserted that it left no “especial mark,” but that conclusion was not completely accurate. Booth set in motion projects that are an integral part of Brooklyn today. As the Landmarks Commission noted, Booth “initiated a plan for a comprehensive park system.” The park commissioners appointed Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux, designers of Central Park and Prospect Park, to the task of laying out the new parks, and the result of many of the Olmsted and Vaux plans can be seen today, including in the vicinity of our house. At the urgings of Walt Whitman, who was then editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a fort used in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, was turned into a park in the 1840s. By the end of the Civil War, it had deteriorated. After approval from the Brooklyn parks commission under Booth, one of the first projects of Olmsted and Vaux was to redesign what is now Fort Greene Park. The result today is an attractive, highly utilized thirty-three acres.

Even when not holding an official position, Booth remained active in civic affairs. His opinions were solicited about an elevated railroad, and the city obtained his testimony about the value of a church building that the municipality wanted. Perhaps most significantly he testified, giving our house as his address, before a commission investigating the Brooklyn Theatre calamity of December 5, 1876. In a hall with about 1,000 of the 1,500 seats occupied, a fire broke out on the side of the stage at about 11 P.M. between the fourth and fifth acts of The Two Orphans starring Kate Claxton. Booth described the narrow stairways, less than seven feet wide, with two right angle turns from the upper reaches. When an emergency exit was opened, patrons from the lower tiers fled into the stairs obstructing them even further. Although the fire department responded quickly, almost three hundred people died in the blaze. The testimony of Booth and others led to safer theaters in a movement headed by the New York Daily Mirror. (Until I read Booth’s testimony, I had never heard of the Brooklyn Theatre tragedy. On the other hand, I have read much about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25, 1911, which was New York City’s deadliest NYC industrial disaster. That fire had 146 victims. The largest disaster in New York City before 9/11 was the sinking resulting from a fire of the “General Slocum,” a boat ferrying people to a church picnic on June 15, 1904. Of the 1342 people on board, 1021 died.)

While engaged in these various forms of public service and maintaining his own business, he was an active member of the Hanson Place Methodist Epicopal Church, which still exists. He was especially interested in young people and spearheaded that church’s and another church’s Sunday schools.

 Booth retired from active business in 1881. An article about him said that wealth was not his ambition, but he “acquired a comfortable competence.” Retirement gave him additional time to devote to young people. He went to the Elmira Reformatory in upstate New York to talk with the warden there, and as a result, he oversaw parolees from that institution who were from Brooklyn. On his death, one newspaper cited this activity as another example of Booth’s “strong sense of Christian duty.”

He died on October 19, 1894, in his then home a few blocks away from ours, where he lived with an unmarried sister, a niece, and her husband. He  did not die in obscurity. The next day a special meeting of the board of alderman presided over by the mayor resolved to attend his funeral and close city offices for a half day. Mayor Charles A. Schieren was quoted as saying, “If ever a man earned a seat in heaven, it was Samuel Booth, for he devoted his entire life to the uplifting of men.” Several aldermen and ex-aldermen also gave kind comments and words of praise.

In the following weeks, eulogies for Samuel Booth were given from pulpits around Brooklyn. Ten days after his death, The Rev. Louis Albert Banks, a famous man in his own right and a prolific author of “uplift” literature, who was then leading the Hanson Place Methodist Episcopal Church, said that Booth was “a man of genuine public spirit. He believed it was his duty, and the duty of all Christian men, to be as faithful to civic obligations as they were to the claims of the church.” Banks emphasized that Booth was Superintendent of the Sunday School and then said, in an unfortunate phrasing that might today bring snickers about the never-married man, “Samuel Booth believed in boys, indeed it might be said he had a passion for boys, and that is why I have called him the boys’ patron saint.”

It was a good life that Samuel Booth led. He was a decent person. Of course, often house owners leave problems for the subsequent owners—asbestos or mold, for example. On the other hand, what I hope is that anyone who enters our house—His Honor’s House—feels the sense of decency that Booth once brought into what is now our home.

And he built a damn fine house!

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His Honor’s House (continued)

Samuel Booth, the builder of our Brooklyn house erected in the 1870s, was born in England in 1818, supposedly (as a newspaper article said in December 1931 almost forty years after his death) “with foresight”—on the Fourth of July. (I am leery of those who claim the Fourth of July as their birthday ever since I learned that George M. Cohan, that Yankee Doodle Dandy Boy, said he was born on Independence Day, but his birth certificate said July 3. If anyone cares to look for Booth’s English birth records, let me know.) Booth did not stay in England long. With him in tow, his family imigrated to New York City three weeks after Samuel’s birth. They stayed there for the first ten years of his life and then moved to Brooklyn.

Booth stayed in school until he was fourteen when he began work as a clerk in a wholesale grocery business in Manhattan. At sixteen he was apprenticed to a joiner, and at twenty-five in 1843, he went into business for himself as a builder. His first successful building project was with John French, a frequent partner through the years, for a row of houses in Brooklyn on the north side of Remsen Street between Court and Clinton Streets, not far from the East River and Manhattan. This was a fast-developing area of Brooklyn. At that time the site of our current house was largely farmland. (While this country may have been one of general western expansion, Brooklyn was different. It was first settled on the western shore of the East River and then moved eastward.)

He was elected alderman in 1851 as a Whig, but shortly after the party was formed, he became a “staunch Republican.” He declined to run for another aldermanic term in 1855 but was elected supervisor in 1857 and reelected until 1865. In 1866, he was elected the sixteenth mayor of Brooklyn, but he only served one two-year term. The city was increasingly staunchly Democratic while he was not. (Brooklyn became a city in 1834, but much of what later became Brooklyn were independent townships. As population increased, the towns became incorporated into Brooklyn. This process continued for more than fifty years. In 1886, the Town of New Lots became part of Brooklyn followed by the incorporations of the Towns of Flatbush, New Utrecht, and Gravesend in 1894. The Town of Flatlands was the last incorporation making Brooklyn the land mass that now exists, which is contiguous with Kings County.)

His public service continued when President Grant appointed him Postmaster of Brooklyn in 1869, a position he held until 1873. And in 1878, he began a two-year term on the Board of Education.

While Booth held different positions as a public servant, a theme went throughout all of them: a devotion to public service with integrity. For example, as a Brooklyn Supervisor he headed up commissions that built a jail and courthouse “with no corruption”–an unusual circumstance then (and now) as a newspaper reported upon his death in October 1894.

During the Civil War he administered enlistment bounties in Brooklyn. Men were not drafted if a county filled its quota of enlistees. Brooklyn, as did many other places, raised money to entice men to join the army so that the draft could be avoided. Significant sums of money were often at stake and corruption frequently followed, but not in Brooklyn under Booth. As a newspaper article in December 1931 titled “Stories of Old Brooklyn” noted, Samuel Booth administered $3,800,000 of Civil War bounties, and “not a penny of it went astray,” something otherwise unheard of during the Civil War. Furthermore, as Postmaster, he did not seek to expand his domain; instead, he consolidated offices to save money.

Booth’s mayoralty was not flashy. An obituary said, “His administration as mayor did not leave any especial mark upon the history of the city,” noting that the Common Council was Democratic and pointing out, somewhat strangely, that the Council did not pass a single measure over Booth’s veto. The article also said that while Booth’s term produced no memorable results, “it was honest.”

(concluded January 31)

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His Honor’s House

                                           

(this is a continuation of posts from January 2, 2022, through January 9.)

          I had learned that our house had been built by Samuel Booth in the 1870s. The New York City Landmarks Commission report about our Brooklyn neighborhood said that our house is a “residence erected by real estate speculator and former Brooklyn mayor Samuel Booth sometime between 1872 when he acquired the land and 1883 when he sold it to Charles and Kate Glatz.” I thought, however, that maybe there was more to learn about the building of the house and its builder. Occasionally when I had some curiosity, some energy, and some time, I headed to the Brooklyn Historical Society to dip into nineteenth century materials.

          When I did this research, it was the Brooklyn Historical Society, but it has gone through several name changes since I have been in Brooklyn. First it was the Long Island Historical Society. It is easy to forget that Brooklyn is part of Long Island, but, of course, it is, but the LIHS had few materials about Long Island apart from Brooklyn, and apparently the name was changed to the BHS to reflect its mission more accurately. Recently, however, it has become the Center for Brooklyn History, and it is no longer the freestanding institution it was, but is now a division of the Brooklyn Public Library.

          Even though the name has changed, it has remained fundamentally the same institution in the same building with a gift shop/bookstore emphasizing Brooklyn products and history, galleries of art reflecting Brooklyn history, temporary galleries that have exhibits about Brooklyn, a lecture hall with speakers about many topics, and a library. The library is beautiful, with a heavy emphasis on wood. An upper gallery surrounding the main reading floor has made me feel as if I am stepping back in time—just the place to blow the dust off nineteenth century records.

          I started with Brooklyn atlases and city directories that listed residents’ business and home addresses. An atlas of 1870 said that Samuel Booth was the Postmaster and lived on our block, although another atlas had him living about a mile away. But atlases of 1871 through 1874, while listing him as Postmaster, had him living at an address across the street from our house. Things changed in 1875. His occupation was now listed as carpenter, and he lived in what is now our house. (Although the Landmarks Commission report labeled Booth a real estate speculator, I have found no other source that describes him that way.) I found a record that he bought the lot that now holds our house on January 23, 1872, from the City of Brooklyn. Being the sleuth that I am, I concluded that our house was built in 1874 or 1875. He also ceased being Postmaster at that time, although I have no reason to believe that these events were related. Having learned this, a good part of my curiosity was satisfied. I realized that to do the tedious research of learning who all the subsequent purchasers were until we bought the house did not interest me much. (We have owned the house for over forty years, and I would not be surprised if we are the longest owners of it.)

I found, however, that I still had some interest in learning more about Samuel Booth. I thought I might do some research into his life and background perhaps to write an article for some local history publication, but mostly to keep myself occupied. Then I got excited about this possibility when I found out that the Brooklyn Historical Society had an entire folder in its archives of materials relating to Samuel Booth. I put in my request for it and had to wait a week until it was available for me at the library. I wondered what was there. Perhaps extensive records from the time he was mayor that might lead to a book about Brooklyn after the Civil War. Or perhaps a diary or personal letters that would give insights into the man that were worth sharing.

My heart sank a bit when the librarian finally delivered the folder.  It did not look thick enough to be a source for a fun research project. The folder contained only four documents comprising seven pages, and two of the documents did not seem to relate to Booth at all but instead had been misfiled. That pair were incorporation papers of a church when Booth would have been about twelve. The third document did belong there. It was a letter to him when he was mayor commending him on some action he took, but the letter, handwritten of course, did not make clear what that action was, and the signature was not one I could decipher. Finally, there were papers indenturing Booth to a carpenter and joiner when Booth was sixteen. This seldom-accessed file was a bust that doused any enthusiasm for this new research and writing project.

Still, every so often, I continued to want to know more about Samuel Booth, and when more nineteenth century newspapers went online, I could do that. I learned from these forays into digitized New York Times, the Brooklyn Eagle, and other publications that while Booth was of only minor historical significance, he was a decent, worthy man who did good works throughout his life.

(continued January 28)

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Virginia Governor Thinks . . . But Not Critically (concluded)

The first executive order signed by Glenn Youngkin, the new Virginia governor, seeks to keep “inherently divisive concepts” and Critical Race Theory out of his state’s public schools. Surprisingly, however, while CRT is banned, it is not defined. Perhaps the governor thought that it did not need a definition because everybody knows what it is, like air, the moon, Santa Claus, or the ills of communism. Much more likely is that Critical Race Theory went without explication because the drafters and signer of the executive order did not know how to define it. Or perhaps faced with defining it, they realized that they did not know what it is other than it was something bad. Or perhaps they thought that they’d know it when they see it, but don’t know how to put that feeling into words, which is really just another way of saying they don’t know what it means.

If those behind the executive order are as attuned to history as they want us to believe, then they know that banning or punishing something without a definition of the infraction has been a tool of autocrats. Without a clear definition, the uncertainty of what is and is not allowed chills behavior. People can only know after acting if their behavior will bring censure. The safest way to avoid the censure, then, is to stay far away from any line that might demarcate the impermissible. Imagine you are a social studies teacher who knows that twentieth century federal housing policies aided white but not Blacks in buying houses, and that for most Americans, homes are their most important financial asset. Blacks as a group have accumulated less wealth today than whites partly because of these housing policies. This is the good and bad of American history. The federal government aided people to buy homes, but it expressly discriminated against Blacks in the process with consequences for wealth inequality today. Would you teach this to your eleventh-grade class? Would you be teaching something out of Critical Race Theory and get into trouble? Where would you look for an answer as to whether this information is permissible? You would not find it in the executive order. Without clear, definitive guidance as to what constitutes Critical Race Theory, the response of many teachers, understandably, would be to avoid the topic entirely. And the result is that Virginia students get a poorer education.

Critical Race Theory is not defined in the order or are the concepts and ideas related to CRT, which also are banned. On the other hand, the governor did define “inherently divisive concepts.” The executive order states:

“For the purposes of this Executive order ‘inherently divisive concepts’ means advancing any ideas in violation of Title IV and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, including, but not limited to of the following concepts (i) one race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith is inherently superior to another race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith; (ii) an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, is racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously, (iii) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, (iv) members of one race, ethnicity, sex or faith cannot and should not attempt to treat others as individuals without respect to race, sex or faith, (v) an individual’s moral character is inherently determined by his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith, (vi) an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race, ethnicity, sex or faith, (vii) meritocracy or traits, such as a hard work ethic, are racist or sexist or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.”

Perhaps the reason that Governor Youngkin’s order defines inherently divisive concepts is because his education was thorough enough that he learned the value of cribbing. His definitions stem from an executive order of September 2020 by President Trump that prohibited federal governmental agencies and federal contractors from conducting any employment training that promoted “divisive concepts.” Nine concepts are listed with a catchall provision, and those have been slightly reworked and placed in the Virginia executive order. The major difference is that the federal order only referred to race or sex, but Virginia has expanded that to “race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith.” The addition of faith raises important issues.

An inherently divisive concept, according to the Virginia governor, is one that maintains that “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her . . . faith.” However, faith, at least many believe, is not an immutable trait or characteristic that tells us nothing useful about a person’s character or merits, but a choice, and choices are worthy of judgment. Or at least that is what many religions profess. Whether one is baptized, goes to mass, keeps Kosher, prays five times a day to Allah…these things matter to those participating in such religious practices, and they affect both behavior and their feelings about non-practitioners.  In other words, Glenn Youngkin has issued an executive order that labels churches as teaching inherently divisive concepts. The order, however, does not affect Sunday, Saturday, or Friday worship services. The order only tells schools not to teach the inherently divisive concepts, and that seems right. Schools should not suggest someone is a better or worse person because they are a Catholic or a Sunni Moslem.

On the other hand, religion is a tricky area. The order states that “we must provide our students with the facts and context necessary to understand” important historical events, and religion is often part of those facts and context. With this executive order in force, how should a teacher approach the Protestant Reformation or the Crusades or the role of religion in the Salem witch trials or the Inquisition or Mayan human sacrifice? Throughout history religion has often been an “inherently divisive concept.” Shouldn’t kids know that?

The order says that schools should teach about “the horrors of American slavery and segregation.” Imagine a student saying, “I have been reading how ministers in the pre-Civil War period preached that slavery was required by the Bible and that Blacks are inferior. I have also read how ministers in the 1950s and 1960s said that God requires segregation of the races.” What if, as would be appropriate, the student then asked, “Did religious people really believe that and do they believe that now?” What if the student goes on to suggest that someone’s moral character was lacking for holding such religious beliefs. What should the teacher do in response?

Or what should the teacher do during a discussion of the Holocaust when a student says, “But some religious people believed that Jews were Christ-killers.” If you were the teacher, might your thought be, “I am not going to teach anything that might lead to such provocative questions and comments. I want to keep my job.” And, of course, it is not just in history or social science classes where the inherently divisive concept of faith may come up. What should the biology teacher say when students flatly reject evolution because it contradicts the Bible?

I hope that no one in any Virginia public school is teaching “one race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith is inherently superior to another race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith.” (Of course, religions do teach that one faith is superior to another, and such teaching occurs in non-public schools.) I don’t want students to be taught that “an individual, by virtue of his or her race, skin color, ethnicity, sex or faith, is racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously,” but if I were to present materials that demonstrate that whites throughout American history have gained financial and social advantage from discrimination against other races, might I have been teaching an inherently divisive concept? Would it be worth the risk?

And then there is this definition of an inherently divisive concept: “members of one race, ethnicity, sex or faith cannot and should not attempt to treat others as individuals without respect to race, sex or faith.” Ok, call me stupid, or ignorant, or ill-educated, but I am not sure what that phrase means, even though I have read it several times. Could you explain it? Or is it just an example of sloppy thinking? If it does say something useful, couldn’t it be written more clearly? That it hasn’t been seems to say something disturbing about those who claim to know what is best for Virginia schoolkids.

Finally, go back and look at the entire definition of inherently divisive concepts. The phrase “race, skin color, ethnicity, sex, or faith” appears six times except that half the time there is a comma after sex and half the time there is not. In a legal document, as the executive order is, a change in punctuation should mean a change in meaning, but if sex with or without a comma signals different meanings, I don’t get it. The meaning seems to be the same in all the phrases. Then, I thought, perhaps there is a raging debate I am not aware of in Virginia over the use of the Oxford comma, and Glenn Youngkin, ever the politician, doesn’t want to take a stand on this issue and with his split comma use hoped to mollify both Oxonians and non-Oxonians. If that is not the case, however, the haphazard appearance of the comma is just another example of the sloppy thinking and sloppy writing throughout the executive order. But even though they cannot think or write well, they are confident, Virginians, that they know what good education for the state’s public schools is.

You can all sleep easier knowing that.

Posted on by rjonakait

Virginia Governor Thinks . . . But Not Critically

Shortly after taking office, Glenn Youngkin, the new Virginia governor, issued an executive order “on Day One to end the use of inherently divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory” in K-12 public education. EO-1—ENDING-THE-USE-OF-INHERENTLY-DIVISIVE-CONCEPTS,-INCLUDING-CRITICAL-RACE-THEORY,-AND-RESTORING-EXCELLE[13856].pdf. (If on April 1, 2023, Youngkin signs another executive order, will it say that it was issued on Day Four-Hundred-Seventeen?) (Have you noticed how frequently politicians’ signatures are unreadable? Is that so that there can be plausible deniability later if they want to disown whatever they signed? Or maybe they really had wanted to be doctors? Or is it because their K-12 education did not reward good penmanship?)

As is frequent in such orders, the issuer first stated why the order is necessary and follows up with how the goals are to be accomplished. It seems almost impossible for politicians to escape platitudes in this portion of an executive order. In this one, for example: “Political indoctrination has no place in our classroom.” Our kids should not “be told what to think. Instead, the foundation of our education system should be built on teaching our students how to think for themselves. . . .We must equip our teachers to teach our students the entirety of our history—both good and bad.” Who could disagree?

A closer reading of this section headed “Importance of the Initiative,” however, raises questions about the order itself and the writing and thinking ability of its drafters and signer. The order says that “we must enable our students to take risks, to think differently, to imagine, and to see conversations regarding art, science, and history as a place where they have a voice.” How does the governor want students to think differently? Think differently from whom? From what? How does banning IDCs (inherently divisive concepts) accomplish this? In addition, the governor wants to enable students to imagine. Virginia kids now don’t have an imagination? That apparently makes them different from all children elsewhere, so perhaps Virginian small fry must be enabled to think differently.

The order seeks to improve the knowledge and thinking ability of Virginia students, but the order should make people wonder about how well its drafters and signer were educated. Should we take seriously pronouncements about education from someone who writes the phrase “to see conversations”? And doesn’t banning IDCs limit the ability of students to explore–think differently about–upsetting or inherently divisive concepts?

The order states what should be another platitude: “We must equip our teachers to teach our students the entirety of our history – both good and bad.” Okay. But it continues: “From the horrors of slavery, . . . [to] our country’s defeat of the Soviet Union and the ills of Communism, we must provide our students with facts and context necessary to understand these important events.” If Virginia schools teach such poor sentence construction, more than the mere banning of Critical Race Theory is needed for a good public education there. And I doubt the governor’s commitment to historical accuracy when he writes of our “defeat” of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, the clause states that schools should teach about “our country’s defeat of the Soviet Union and the ills of Communism.” Don’t the ills of Communism still exist even if the Soviet Union does not? Perhaps the goal is to teach about the ills of communism, but that is not what the order says, and, besides, it would conflict with the portion of the order that intones that political indoctrination has no place in Virginia’s classrooms and that students should not be told what to think. I doubt that Youngkin wants teachers to teach about the ills and shortcomings of capitalism; apparently, he would rather just indoctrinate them about the ills of communism.

The preamble concludes with sentences that are at best non sequiturs: the Virginia Constitution, it says, “provides a right to be free from any governmental discrimination upon the basis of religious conviction, race, color, sex, or national origin. Critical race theory and related concepts are teaching our children to engage in the very behavior the Constitution prohibits.” Did you follow that? The Virginia Constitution prohibits governmental discrimination. CRT teaches students to governmentally discriminate. Really? How does it do that? If that second assertion can, against all odds, make sense, surely there must be some intervening sentences to get there. As presented, the paragraph is gobbledygook. But it is presented by those who are going “to ensure excellence in K-12 public education” in Virginia.

Perhaps the sloppy thinking and writing in the “Importance of the Initiative” doesn’t matter much because it is the “Directive” portion of the executive order that contains the legally operative language. The thirteen numbered paragraphs make it clear that the Virginia governor is taking a strong stand against “inherently divisive concepts, including concepts or ideas related to Critical Race Theory.” They are to be rooted out of Department of Education policies and removed from DOE’s guidelines, websites, best practices, and training materials. Furthermore, the Superintendent of Public Instruction shall keep on the lookout for further executive or legislative actions that might be “needed to end use of all inherently divisive concepts in public education.”

Virginians can be proud that public school kids will no longer be polluted with these pernicious policies, or at least they will be kept safe once these offensive ideas can be identified. Good luck with that. The executive order does not even attempt a definition of Critical Race Theory, much less the “related concepts” associated with it.

(continued January 24)