But it was delicious.

While many people remember the tragic Great Molasses Flood that struck Boston in 1919, few now recall the Tremendous Canned Jellied Cranberry Roll that nearly flattened the city center in 1913. 

So hibernate already.

We got some new neighbors. They're up from the city. Actually, they aren't even here full-time yet. They're still having work done on the house next door. 

The family is friendly. Jewish, very Orthodox. No wild parties on Friday nights. The kids sort of like our big fluffy dog, Izzy, but don't want to get close to him. As I understand it, the Orthodox don't have anything particularly against dogs -- but they are very confused by them. Possibly the idea of a pet as a companion strikes them as odd. I've heard that expressed from other people too, as it happens. 

For his part, Izzy would love to play with them. But the kids are also terrified of him, because their experience with dogs is so limited. They don't seem to get that even a dog who is trained to sit will not do so because someone yells "Sit!" from twenty feet away. 

I discovered myself that there is a big learning curve with dogs, much of which I've detailed on this very blog over the years. 

The kids wanted to see the dog over the fence, which was fine. Even protected by the fence, they'd all scatter like pigeons when Izzy made the slightest move toward them. 

I've seen other kids who came up from the city who also are scared of dogs, but for different reasons. We had a black family who came from a neighborhood where only the bad guys had big dogs, so big fuzz Tralfaz scared the kids silly. I felt bad for those kids, and I still do. Creeps ruin everything -- even dogs.  

Anyway, the Orthodox family went home Sunday morning. Which was good, because if the kids had seen this guy in my backyard, they might never have returned. 

Welcome to the exurbs.

I was bringing Izzy around the side of the house yesterday when I spotted Yogi at the base of the yard. Izzy had not noticed him yet. So turn on a dime we did, and went to use the front yard instead. 

I then monitored the situation through the window. Eventually the big dude did a couple of big yawns and trundled out through the high grass. Later a fox showed up, maybe looking for leftovers, and rolled in whatever scent the bear left behind. I guess that will help the fox avoid being an hors d'oerve himself. 

The bear bottom line is, you move to the country, you get to see some wildlife. I have not heard of any bear attacks in the time I've lived here, even on people who go into the woods on purpose. But my neighbors who turn the cats out at night might want to have a second thought. Ohio is not the only place where cats can be consumed, you know. 

If I see the bear again, I will try to teach him a command. "Hey ber! Ir zol geyn kheyberneyt itst!" ("Hey, bear! You should go hibernate already!" according to Google Translate.) It could work. 

Urbi et orbi.

Suppose my church decided to enforce a twenty-percent tithe on all members. Ten percent is the usual request, based on the old temple requirements -- the word tithe means ten. But poor people would be exempt, and in fact would be given money from the church treasury. Indeed, it soon turned out that so much money was given to them that the church went into serious debt. 

Then the church decided that people could live in the building rent-free, even those who were not members, nor believers, nor even respectful. Food was provided. Some people who came in were in desperate need. Others, however, were not. It was obvious that most were addicts or insane or both. Despite the clear rules, they wouldn't go outside to smoke; they drank alcohol, did drugs, had sex; they ate and left garbage in the sanctuary. They stole the sacramental wine; they even peed in the baptismal font although there was a bathroom available. They got into fights. They ripped up carpet, broke chairs, shredded Bibles and missalettes, stole anything that was not bolted down. People were brought in to watch over them at the church's expense, but they continued these antics. Rules were never enforced; in fact, the watchers brought in were specially instructed not to interfere in any way. 

Meanwhile, the parish elementary school no longer bothered to teach the children math or science or even religion. The claim was made that learning leads to inequality, so there must be no learning. It became nothing more than a filthy, feral daycare center for children up to ten years old. But tuition doubled, then tripled.

Then the church demanded thirty, then forty percent of our income to cover all the new expenses. Still, there was never enough money for basic upkeep. The place looked terrible; parishioners feared it would burn down one night. When they went on Sunday it was a revolting experience. Maybe worst of all, the priest never even talked about God's Word anymore. All he said was what a great place the church was and what a privilege it was for us to be members. If we objected to the people ruining the building and interrupting the church's traditional duties, we were wicked and cruel. Meanwhile, there were rumors that the priest and his pals were raiding what they could from the treasury and having a wonderful time with it. 

My friends among the nonbelievers and non-adherents said I was insane to keep going to this church. And they were 100% right. And yet, when I looked around, I saw that every other parish had become exactly the same: mismanaged, broke, useless, filthy, and dangerous. 

Does this fictional example differ from the way American cities are treating their citizens?

The two things really have a lot in common. 

Let's assume cities and churches both have a duty to help the poor. Both have or ought to have a sense of purpose. But like the church in my illustration, the cities have completely given up on the idea of their proper duty toward the citizens -- safety and streets and sanitation. The citizens are just suckers, paying more and ever more to live in places that are dirtier and more dangerous by the day. 

I have written before that our beloved former pastor wanted to use the old chapel as a warming station in the winter, allowing the minuscule homeless population of the town to stay there in the winter. What happened was similar to the disaster described, as many of us expected, right up to the peeing in the baptismal font. Our pastor, probably somewhat chastened by the experience, had to close the doors to them. Groups that used the chapel for legitimate purposes were asked to check the sanctuary to make sure no bums slipped in while we were there, because for a couple of years after the failed experiment they kept thinking of it as their home -- and bathroom. Our pastor had learned a lesson. But at no time had he ever lost sight of the primary mission of the church -- to bring God's Word to the people. 

Cities aren't like that. Many adherents to the church of Leftism aren't like that, either. They get their stuff stolen, cars taken at gunpoint. Their streets are covered in garbage and feces. The schools are rattraps and kids come out dumber than they went in. Poor neighborhoods are shot up; old properties become a different type of shooting gallery. Expensive civic projects come and go, and the only thing that gets larger is the debt. And yet the Leftists continue to vote for the same kinds of imbeciles, grifters, and creeps who are making their lives miserable. Worse, if they move to some other town out of terror, they start voting for the same kinds of imbeciles, grifters, and creeps that ruined the place from which they came. They seem to cling to their faith more strongly than Catholics do to theirs, and much more than your average Methodist or Presbyterian. A Catholic who gets mugged may forgive his mugger, knowing that if the crook believed as he did, the poor soul would reform. The Leftist who gets mugged knows that the mugger believes the same things about life that he does, so there's nothing to do but accept it, or lash out at inappropriate targets. If it weren't for those rich people, no one would mug anyone! 

When a church fails in its duties, it is held up as an example. When a government does, it is considered par for the course. I do not understand why so very many people can cling so hard to something that fails them over and over again. 

Memey like Sunday morning.

Busy day yesterday so... break out the memes! 

Good morning... What hurts today?

Noted this on Lileks's blog the other day

Duck and cover.

Yes, it looks like it's the return of Duck & Cover!

🦆+📔 

No, not the act that killed vaudeville, nor the world's worst law firm, nor even my excellent duck-centric novel available in serial form on Amazon.

I am of course referring to the classic rules for survival in the event of a nuclear blast, to duck down and take cover. I had a science teacher in high school who, during what we called "shelter drills," said sarcastically that this would protect us from the nuclear holocaust. He was right, in a way, especially since being in New York City, I figured we'd go up like a Roman candle in the first breath of a nuclear exchange. Duck and cover wasn't a bad idea, if we still were dealing with A-bombs; in the bombing of Hiroshima, 30 percent of the immediate deaths were caused by falling debris. But by the time I was a kid we had ICBMs with H-bombs, so we were all going to be crispy critters, as they used to say. 

Which brings us to this, for which I wish I could take credit, or at least thank the person responsible:

Well, it's spring now, but that's all right. Missiles don't care.

I don't think we're going to get into a Fun With Nukes situation, despite provocative news (possibly disinformation) that Russian leadership is chilling in the bunker like aging steaks. Besides, the American ruling class hates its own people so much, they might be perfectly happy to let a couple of cities go and sue for peace. As long as they're in Texas or Florida, anyway. 

I guess I'm in a crappy mood to start this Thursday. Got any good news?

Boroughs of holly.

To the tune of "Christmas in Killarney," it's "Christmas in the Boroughs," for those of us who grew up in the city but not in the City:

The freakin' songs, the freakin' tree
The hum of the wheels on the BQE
It's Christmas in the Boroughs
With all of the folks at home

In Dyker Heights, there ain't no fights
Some guys put up a billion lights
So you 'n me, we'll take the D
And hope we don't get mugged

The door is always open
The goombahs come for lunch
Canarsie John, before he's gone
Will throw a Sunday punch

The night is dark|
We'll light a spark
And drink some Natty in the park
It's Christmas in the Boroughs
With all of the folks at home

Christmas in the Boroughs
Is sometimes kinda squalid
But Santa's my compadre 
And he'll do me a solid

Our songs are sung
We're havin' fun
And no one's callin' 9-1-1
It's Christmas in the Boroughs
With all of the folks at home

The freakin' songs, the freakin' tree
The hum of the wheels on the BQE....

I'm handin' you no bull---
No matter where you roam
It's Christmas in the Boroughs
With all of the folks at home.

The next step.

Sad mayoral history.

I thought the graphic below from National Review was very interesting, especially to those who keep wondering why their cities suck so hard. The point is not that Republicans do such an awesome job, but that one-party systems have no incentive to provide any service. 

You will notice that the last row is an important addition from yours truly. Fixed it for ya, NR! 

For those who would like more information about the administrations of Bradley Stokes and Dave the Orangutan, I refer you to the following texts: 

Detective Comics 179 (January 1952): 

(NB: I know Bruce Wayne is "Mayor of Gotham City" in this issue, but it's just a stunt by Stokes where prominent citizens get to be Mayor for a Week when he goes on vacation -- Bruce didn't have the time or authority to do much. Clever fund-raising gimmick, Stokes.)

2000 AD 366-443 (1984-1985): 

(NB: Dave would die tragically as part of an insurance fraud murder, but he is still remembered as one of the most popular mayors Mega-City One ever had.)

In old New York.

Hat tip to Jon, fellow Bleatnik on the Great Lileks's site, for this amazing time suck for all of us who grew up in New York City, or the nearby area, or just like New York:

Street View of 1940s New York

Between 1939 and 1941, the Works Progress Administration collaborated with the New York City Tax Department to collect photographs of every building in the five boroughs of New York City. In 2018, the NYC Municipal Archives completed the digitization and tagging of these photos. This website places them on a map.

As Jon pointed out, what this essentially does is turn a map of New York City c. 1940 into a Google Street View. I found it to be a delightful time suck on a busy week. (There's also a 1980s version available, but I didn't find it to be as complete.)

Here are some photos of New York locations found through this "Street View," to give you a taste. The watermarks are unavoidable; the signs in front were some location or tax code used by the photographers and not a clear indicator to the streets.

Columbus Circle. The Majestic Theatre had become the Park in 1911.

Near the Lincoln Tunnel (less than five years old at the time)

West side downtown, near what would be the World Trade Center . Streets downtown were paved
with ballast stones from ships, some of which are still visible at the South Street Seaport.  

South Ferry area, where a man in a hat is immortalized unawares 80 years later, along with a few palookas

The Porto Rico line sailed between Manhattan and Puerto Rico for 75 years; more at this link if you're curious

These are not pictures of all the great, well known structures, the Penn Stations and Ebbets Fields. These are the places where people lived and worked, from a time when New York had just started replacing so many old walk-ups with the glass towers that line its streets today.

And yet so many things look familiar to me, even though they were gone long before I came on the scene. It may have been shorter, but it was still the New York I once loved.

Fred's Book Club: Courage in Reporting.

Welcome, friends, to another edition of our Wednesday book group, the Humpback Writers, not named for humps but for Wednesdays. It's a dumb joke but we're sticking with it.

This week's book is by one of the few really sharp and honest reporters of whom I know, someone who does not toot the courage horn by sitting in a studio defended by the resources of a network, but demonstrates it by going out in the world to find things called facts and write stories based on them. I mean City Journal's own Heather Mac Donald, and her book, The Burden of Bad Ideas: How Modern Intellectuals Misshape Our Society.

I feel you can make a distinction between two types of reporters who look at societal problems: the first, your average J-school grad, says Look at this problem! Do something! The other, much more rare, says Why is this a problem, one that has proved so hard to solve? Mac Donald is squarely in the second camp, and this book is a great collection of her pieces on these problems.

"The reality I have observed again and again in welfare offices and urban classrooms across New York and elsewhere is so dissimilar from that presented in the mainstream media that I sometimes wonder whether their reporters and I occupy the same universe," she writes in the introduction. "Maybe this is a matter of my background. I came to writing about urban problems and social policy as an innocent, without a preconceived theory about the neighborhoods that have dominated domestic policy debate for almost half a century now."

This book was published in 2000, but hardly anything has changed in the last twenty years, and where things had changed for the better, as in New York, they are rapidly changing back for the worse.

What Mac Donald learned in her work is shown in this book, with chapters like "The Billions of Dollars That Made Things Worse," "Why Johnny's Teachers Can't Teach," "Public Health Quackery," and "Revisionist Lust: The Smithsonian Today."

One of the most powerful chapters to me was "Homeless Advocates in Outer Space," which described a 1990s program by the Business Improvement District of Times Square to do exactly what advocates for the homeless seem to think has never been tried -- provide a no-strings-attached outreach to feed and clean and house the homeless, then offer every kind of help to get them on their feet provided they refrain from drug and alcohol use for a period of time. "One year and $700,000 later, only two people had accepted housing," Mac Donald reports. And this is only one of the programs described, a hint of the millions spent that helped hardly anyone. She concludes, "A sane homeless policy would acknowledge two basic realities. First, many people on the streets need treatment, not housing. For the sickest, legislators need to change rules against involuntary confinement, and states need to recommission mental hospitals emptied by deinstitutionalization. Second, for the rest of the homeless the best medicine is the expectation of responsible behavior -- the expectation of work and civil and lawful conduct in public spaces."

When The Burden of Bad Ideas was published, the New York Times Book Review said "this book has the freshness of a stiff, changing breeze." With the rush among governors and mayors to empty prisons and allow tremendous homeless encampments, and ding-dongs like Mike Bloomberg disowning all the policies that made his political leadership successful, I think it's safe to say that Mac Donald's essays, backed by interviews, observation, and deep research, have been completely ignored by those empowered to make better public policy. In fact, just last year she had a look at San Francisco's intractable homeless situation and found a situation even uglier than described in Burden. I doubt her work finds a welcome in the New York Times Book Review today.

I would advise anyone interested in the problems of urban decay to read The Burden of Bad Ideas. Urban problems have been given the breath of new life since the book was published. The causes have not changed, but now the idiocy that led to bad public policy has seeped into an urban population incapable of seeing how its participation in bad ideas leads to its own misery. This book ought to be required reading for every political science major in the country.

Instead, of course, Mac Donald gets silenced on campuses by the usual idiots who can't bear to hear anything resembling the truth.

Town and country.

Had a strange dog-related experience with someone in the neighborhood the other day.

There's a new lady in the area; she has a couple of young children and a tiny little dog. (No, she doesn't live in the Witness Security Program/FBI Safe House; I don't know where she lives but it's not there.)

I tried to keep away from her, I ought to let you know that. She was coming down the block with little dog but no little kids, and I was in the front yard with Senior Varsity Dog Tralfaz. Tralfaz is an enormous hairy beast, although the friendliest pup you know, and he sometimes scares children and other dogs with his enthusiastic greeting. That being: A few really loud barks, then he barrels at them like a locomotive. Who would be alarmed by that?

Typical action scene 

Anyone would be alarmed by that, I know, so I dragged and cajoled him against his will into the backyard until the lady went by. Well, he immediately pulled me to the farther end of the house to watch when she came out the other side, but he was quiet about it. Once she had gone, I took him back to the front to resume what we were aiming to do out there in the first place -- walking up the street, in the same direction from which she had come.

What I didn't realize was that as soon as she got to the end of the block, she and her dog turned around and started back up in our wake.

So now we had the world's slowest chase: me trying to keep my crazy bear from realizing the little dog was behind us, Tralfaz dawdling to sniff every molecule that the little dog had left behind, her and her dog strolling along, and me also trying to glance back to see if they were gaining on us (they were).

When the inevitable happened and we met, our greeting was quite friendly. Tralfaz immediately went nose-to-nose with the little dog, and at first all was fine; then the little dog did an aggressive growl and the lady had to pull him back. Which was no problem, as she is quite tall and presumably strong and her dog weighs maybe ten or fifteen pounds, maybe a tenth of Tralfaz's fighting weight.

We chatted a bit, complimenting each other's canine chums; she asking about dog groomers. I found out that she and the family just moved up to the Hudson Valley from the city and are just finding their way around. And then she said something that surprised me: that she'd cleaned up after her dog and didn't know what to do with it so she left it on the fire hydrant.

That sentence didn't compute for me, so I just let it fly by as we went on to the next topic. Soon we parted, and I took Mr. Friendly back down the hill.

Sure enough, hanging from the fire hydrant closest to my house was a plastic pet waste bag.

I realized suddenly that she really is from the city originally, and probably a neighborhood where there are municipal trash cans on every corner. Clean up after your pup there, drop it in with the Styrofoam coffee cups and chip bags and soda bottles in the corner can, and be on your way. This is something she didn't know about suburban life, that while we may have sidewalks in our neighborhoods, we don't have public trash cans.

We have to take care of our own trash. I use an outdoor bin in the backyard. Another family I know leaves the waste bags hidden behind the bushes until trash day. Another family keeps the garbage can outside all the time for that purpose.

Not to belabor a distasteful topic, but I had to think about how to deal with it. Of course if I speak with her again I'll suggest she follow my lead on this. Meanwhile, there was a dog waste bag hanging on a fire hydrant in front of the house of my despised neighbor, the dog hater, the one who I have mentioned will probably be led out of his house by the feds one day.

I told my wife about this situation. She thought that it was hilarious, but I knew we'd get blamed for this. And really, I don't want any confrontations with the unpleasant occupant next door. I don't want any contact with him at all.

So, while walking Nipper later, under cover of darkness, I took the bag off the fire hydrant and put it in my holding pen. The lady will probably think the garbage men picked it up, that it's part of whatt they do -- so if I'm not astute, the fire hydrant could turn into a veritable Christmas tree of dog poop.

The moral of the story is, I guess, comes from the old Town Mouse and Country Mouse tale by Aesop, or maybe the Town Mouse, Country Mouse, and Suburb Mouse by Roz Chast. Or something. The point is, moving from one kind of place to another is a culture shock. First thing to do is find out how to get rid of your garbage. It's not the same everywhere.

It's Thursday!

A friend of mine, who has worked in Manhattan since he was a mere barefoot boy with cheek of tan, running about from client to client, told us about a day he was happening along a busy thoroughfare when he saw a cardboard box on the sidewalk. As he drew near, a homeless gentleman popped out of the box and proclaimed, "It's Thursday!"

Now, you may have some questions, as we did:

1) Was it indeed Thursday? (It was.)

2) Was this some kind of calendar service he provided in hopes of getting spare change? (It did not appear so.)

3) Were there seven boxes along the sidewalk, each with its own friendly indigent, ready to proclaim the day of the week on his appointed day? (There were not.)

4) Did our jack-in-the-box seem happy, like he was glad the weekend was coming and he could take a break from his busy schedule? (That would be pure supposition.) 

5) Was it my friend's appearance on that street that prompted the declaration of the day, as if the man were lying in wait for such a thing? 

(No, there were many pedestrians going to and fro.)

6) Did my friend know that it was Thursday, or was this angel-in-a-box sent to remind him of a crucial appointment by telling him the day? (He did know, and it was no help.)

7) After the proclamation, did the man stay out and wait for applause, slink back in his box, or what? (My friend sped up his pace and does not know.)

So many questions, and yet the answers fail to satisfy.

That was decades ago, and probably every Thursday morning since I have greeted the day in my own mind by thinking, or saying aloud, or telling the dogs, "It's Thursday!" 

I sometimes think too of the strange man whose message of the day impressed even those of us who never had the chance to see him. I hope he got free from whatever problems put him in that box, and retired somewhere for quiet contemplation, thinking of the Fourth Day in Genesis, where God separated the Light from the Darkness. Or just looking forward to the weekend.

Let's fly, let's fly away.