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First Sentences

“At the turn of the twentieth century, before Zionist colonization had much appreciable effect on Palestine, new ideas were spreading, modern education and literacy had begun to expand, and the integration of the country’s economy into the global capitalist order was proceeding apace.” Rashid Khalidi, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017.

“Had Ernst Simmel known he was to be the Axman’s second victim, he would no doubt have downed a few more drinks at The Blue Ship.” Hǻkan Nesser, Borkmann’s Point: An Inspector Van Veeteren Mystery.

“In the early morning hours of Wednesday, November 28, 1917, someone knocked on Khalil al-Sakakini’s front door and brought him great misfortune, indeed almost got him hanged.” Tom Segev, One Palestine Complete: Jews and Arabs Under the British Mandate (translated by Haim Watzman).

“We are the earth, the land.” Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois.

“It was July 29, 2019—the worst day of my life., though I didn’t know that quite yet.” Tim Alberta, The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism.

“Whenever I woke up, night or day, I’d shuffle through the bright marble foyer of my building and go up the block and around the corner where there was a bodega that never closed.” Ottessa Moshfegh, My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

“In 1848 Will and Ellen Craft, an enslaved couple in Georgia, embarked upon a five-thousand-mile journey of self-emancipation across the world.” Ilyon Woo, Master Slave Husband Wife.

“My journal is a private affair, but as I cannot know the time of my coming death, and since I am not disposed, however unfortunately, to the serious consideration of self-termination, I am afraid that others will see these pages.” Percival Everett, Erasure.

“Mark Twain counted pockets among the most useful of inventions.” Hannah Carlson, Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close.

“They were still traveling, into the dark.” Denise Mina, Field of Blood.

“It was a November afternoon in Queens and Jie Zou was looking for a parking spot.” Henry Grabar, Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World.

“From then on whenever he heard the song he thought of the death of Munson.” Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto.

“A little more than two hundred years ago, Europeans contemplated the Islamic countries of the Middle East from afar and imagined rare silks and spices, harems, and gold—yellow gold, not the underground sea of black gold that modern Westerners associate with the region.” Nina Burleigh, Mirage: Napoleon’s Scientists and the Unveiling of Egypt.

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Snippets

Just to set the record straight: Many Trump trial commentators have said that Trump needs only one hold-out juror to avoid conviction. This is true, but it lacks context. The jury of twelve must be unanimous to convict or acquit. If all the jurors cannot agree, we have a hung jury. The state would then have to decide whether to retry Mr. Trump. It should be noted, however, that although the exact rate is unknown, hung juries are not frequent. Getting such data is difficult because no uniform definition of “a hung jury” exists. For example, if five defendants are tried in one trial and the jury convicts four but can’t agree on the fifth, some jurisdictions would record this as a hung jury, while others would label it a conviction, while others would record four convictions and one hung jury. Similarly, when one defendant is charged with a number of crimes, many jurisdictions will consider only what happens to the most serious count. Others will call it a hung jury if the jury could not reach a result on any one count. Without going into methodological details, a study a few decades ago found that the hung jury rate throughout New York state was 2.8%. In other words, rare. Moreover, the little data we have indicate that few of those rare hung juries are hung because only one person won’t agree with the other eleven. One person can hang a jury. It rarely happens. (Drawn from my book, The American Jury System [Yale University Press.])

“What else was an ongoing criminal enterprise complicated by periodic violence for, but to make your wife happy?” Colson Whitehead, Crook Manifesto.

A lesson for our time? Jacques Chirac was President of France from 1995 to 2007. Allegations of corruption swirled about him. However, a controversial judicial decision concluded that he had immunity from prosecution while he was president. The court gave reasoning similar to what has been said in this country for granting immunity to a sitting president: i.e., he will not be able to perform his duties as president if at the same time he faces prosecution. In France, however, the authorities realized that such protection should end when Chirac left office, and he was indeed prosecuted for and convicted of various crimes when he became an ex-president. He was given a suspended two-year sentence for his convictions. (Chirac had suffered a stroke near the end of his presidency, and his mental health deteriorated after leaving office.) This precedent has not led to the regular prosecutions of ex-presidents in France, as it has said will occur unless Trump as an ex-president is given immunity from all criminal prosecutions.

The performance of the “Vespers” of 1610 by Claudio Monteverdi was marvelous. I expected as much with the twenty-five voices of the Choir of Trinity Wall Street. The accompanying Trinity Baroque Orchestra had violins, violas, a cello, bass, harp, harpsichord, and organ, but there was a bonus. The orchestra had not just one but two cornett performers; not just one but two theorbo players; and not just one but—wait for it—three performers on the sackbut. (Sackbut is one of those words, like Lake Titicaca, that I can’t say without smiling.)

As I neared my stop, a woman across the subway car, spotting the book in my hand, asked if I was reading the new Tana French novel. After I said that I was, she wanted to know if it was good. I said that I was enjoying it, but it was too long and was not as good as her last one. The woman got off the train as I did. She asked if I was familiar with the Scottish mysteries of Denise Mina, which she felt were similar to French’s. I was not, and she urged me to try them. Later that week I got one out of the subscription library. She was right. Field of Blood, which introduced the character, Paddy Maheen, is quite good.  And I have also learned that I can get useful book recommendations in all sorts of places including a subway ride. I doubt I will ever see that Tana French fan again, but thank you for the Denise Mina mention.

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Making More Decisions

          We are reminded regularly that the country is divided, but we have always had divisions. Who can forget the Civil War? Now there was a divided country. We have had, however, other divisions, often violent ones, including our many, many Indians wars as well as strife between labor and the plutocrats that took the lives of lots of mostly working people.

          Increasingly, however, we think of divisions that aren’t as stark or cause as much violence. A lot of that comes from politics where vote seekers dice the electorate into more and more groups. The New Yorker writer and Harvard history professor Jill Lepore in her book If Then: How the Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future suggests that 1960 was a turning point. Simulmatics, formed in the 1950s, was a little-known company with big dreams. It sought to collect data about voters and consumers, analyze the information by what was then new computer technology, and predict how people would vote. It tried to take credit for at least some of JFK’s success in winning in the 1960 election, but it is not clear that anyone in the Kennedy campaign saw the Simulmatics reports. I never fully comprehended what the corporation really accomplished other than its many public relations efforts to promote itself before it disappeared into bankruptcy in 1970. However, the book did make me think about the data I might like to collect if I were going to segment the American populace to better understand it for political purposes.

          Of course, we are aware of some categories that pundits and politicos already consider: race, age, education, and income and whether voters live in an urban, suburban, or rural setting. All useful information, but I would want to ask further questions.

          Religion, for example. That seems to be an important piece of information. What is your faith? Do you worship with an established denomination? Would you describe yourself as an evangelical? How often do you attend a House of Worship in a year? What percentage of your income do you give to charities? How much of that flows to non-religious charities?

          Where do you get your news?

          How many books do you read a year?

          What two sports do you most like to participate in? To watch? None is an acceptable answer.

          Do you play video games? Which ones? How often?

          How often do you go to a gym? How often do you otherwise exercise?

          How many sexual encounters have you had that you regret or want to apologize for? (Our questionnaire is, of course, confidential.)

          What social media accounts do you have? How much time do you spend each day with them?

Which is more important for preventing oppression by the government: free speech or possession of a gun? What rights are protected by the First Amendment? The Second Amendment?

How many guns do you own?

          How much money does a family of four need to live comfortably?

When in American history did Italians come to be considered “white”?

Have you ever had a mullet? If so, when was the last time?

Have you ever had teased hair? If so, when was the last time?

Do you find yourself feeling superior to someone with a mullet or teased hair?

Do you know what white guilt is? Have you personally experienced it?

What kind of vehicle do you drive? If you had more money, what kind of vehicle would you drive?

Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

Have you ever served a sentence in jail longer than 60 days?

If you don’t now, would you consider living in a manufactured home?

Do you live in a gated community?

Do you own your own home?

Do you know what stock options are? Have you ever owned a stock option? Do you own stocks or bonds?

          What kind of music do you most listen to?

Where did you buy your last pair of shoes?

Have you served in the military? If so, what rank did you achieve? If you have children or grandchildren of an appropriate age, would you encourage them to join the military?

Would you encourage your children or grandchildren to join law enforcement?

How was your last medical procedure paid for? How much did you have to pay out of pocket?

Define a bell curve, a t-test, statistical significance, a control group.

          Do you think that the following statement is correct?  “If you weren’t a little dirty at the end of the day, you weren’t much of a man.” (Colson Whitehead, The Underground Railroad.)

          What kind of shows have you binge watched?

When was the last time you went to a museum?

What podcasts do you listen to?

Do you agree with this statement? “The greatest pleasure I have known is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.” (Charles Lamb.) Has that ever happened to you?

Posted on by rjonakait

First Sentences

“One winter morning several years ago, I got an email with some ridiculously exciting news.” A.J. Jacobs, The Puzzler: One Man’s Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life.

“The police decided to enter the flat, but rather than break down the door they called a locksmith, figuring that a few minutes either way were unlikely to make a difference.” The Shadow District by Arnaldur Indridason (translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb).

“At a recent lecture on the Piltdown disclosures a member of the audience remarked, ‘When I read in the paper that Piltdown man was bogus, I felt as if something had gone out of my life; I had been brought up on Piltdown man!’”  J.S. Weiner, The Piltdown Forgery.

“In my dream I was reaching right through the glass of the window on a hockshop.” Fredric Brown, The Fabulous Clipjoint.

“Magic matters.” David Copperfield, Richard Wiseman, David Britland, David Copperfield’s History of Magic.

“It is never easy to move to a new country, but in truth I was happy to be away from New York.” Katie Kitamura, Intimacies.

“A little before eight on the morning of March 21, 1829, the Duke of Wellington, England’s prime minister, arrived on horseback at a crossroads south of the Thames, about a half mile beyond Battersea Bridge.” Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen.

“It’s hard to know, ever, where a story begins.” Jennifer Haigh, Mercy Street.

“We forget that love is revolutionary.” Tiya Miles, All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake.

“His cousin Freddie brought him on the heist one hot night in early June.” Colson Whitehead, Harlem Shuffle.

“The politics of inevitability is the idea that there are no ideas.” Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America.

“It wasn’t far off midnight, but it was still light.” Ragnar Jónasson, Snowblind. (translated by Quentin Bates).

“’We need every one of you,’ proclaimed an anonymous 1985 article in a major white power newspaper.” Kathleen Belew, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.

“The dust hovers in a cloud behind the Reykjavik coach, the road is a ridged washboard and we rattle on; bend after bend, soon it becomes impossible to see through the muddy windows and, before long, the Laxdoela Saga trail will vanish into the dirt.” Auour Ava Olafsdóttir, Miss Iceland.

“Somewhere in the vast northern ocean, between Iceland and Norway, Thorsteinn Olafsson got himself involved in the biggest mystery of the middle ages by making an honest mistake: he turned his ship a few too many degrees west.” Egill Bjarnason, How Iceland Changed the World: The Big History of a Small Island.