We love this building, and it’s a delight to hear that it’s been purchased by the neighboring Green-Wood Cemetery and a complete renovation is in the works!
The little greenhouse in Brooklyn that really, really should not still be standing
We love this building, and it’s a delight to hear that it’s been purchased by the neighboring Green-Wood Cemetery and a complete renovation is in the works!
The little greenhouse in Brooklyn that really, really should not still be standing
Happy Birthday, Walt Whitman! Ah we’ve had such great times with you, singing the body electric, working on our phrenology…
Hey, remember when we played that game of baseball and no one really knew what they were doing because it was 1846?
Remember when you said that nothing, not even God, was greater than the self?
Or that time you wrote some steamy erotica?
What about that terrible time you had during the Civil War?
Or when we got into that argument about slang?
In the end, we loved just sitting on the stoop with you, kicking back few beers, watching the people, endless, streaming, with strong voices, passions, pageants.
Don’t ever change, Walt.
A fake 1912 Titanic newsreel, from the excellent Public Doman Review:
A short film which appears to show the interior and deck of the Titanic only minutes prior to its ill-fated voyage in April 1912. Included in the footage is Captain E.J. Smith apparently inspecting the ship just 10 minutes prior to departure, various deck promenades, and the actual leaving of the ship.
We are reliably informed however that it is a sneaky bit of sleight of hand by the newsreel company, splicing together footage from other ships (mostly the Titanic’s ‘sister’ ship The Olympic). Notice the scratched out name plates on the frames which appear as floating white marks in the film.
In the spring of 1860, Bolivar Roberts, superintendent of the western division of the Pony Express, went to Carson City, Nevada, to engage riders and station agents for the Pony Express route across the Great Plains. In a few days, fifty or sixty riders were engaged—men noted for their lithe, wiry physiques, bravery and coolness in moments of great personal danger, and endurance under the most trying circumstances of fatigue. Particularly were these requirements necessary in those who were to ride over the lonely route.
It was no easy duty; horse and human flesh were strained to the limit of physical tension. Day or night, in sunshine or in storm, under the darkest skies, in the pale moonlight, and with only the stars at times to guide him, the brave rider must speed on. Rain, hail, snow, or sleet, there was no delay; his precious burden of letters demanded his best efforts under the stern necessities of the hazardous service; it brooked no detention; on he must ride.
Sometimes his pathway led across level prairies, straight as the flight of an arrow. It was oftener a zigzag trail hugging the brink of awful precipices and dark, narrow canyons infested with watchful savages, eager for the scalp of the daring man who had the temerity to enter their mountain fastnesses.
—William Lightfoot Visscher, from A Thrilling and Truthful History of the Pony Express in our latest issue, Means of Communication
Good boy! This WWI war dog just swam across a canal to deliver a message to his commanding officer. (National Library of Scotland)
We’ve got more animal messengers, including pigeons and ponies, in our chart “The Medium and the Messenger” from our brand-new issue Means of Communication.
The Lenox Globe, c 1510, the only early map which actually uses the phrase “here be dragons” (hic sunt dracones). It’s located on the east coast of Asia, underneath the label for India.
President Abraham Lincoln on November 21, 1864, sent a letter to Mrs. Bixby, who, the War Department informed him, had lost five sons fighting for the Union.
“I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”
In fact, two of Mrs. Bixby’s sons were killed in action, a third either deserted or died while a prisoner of war, a fourth was honorably discharged, and the fifth deserted.
So you want your boy to become a man, who do you call? Justin Bieber? No, you call Theodore F**king Roosevelt, that’s who. He’ll teach your boy not to bully, but to instead beat up bullies.
The boy can best become a good man by being a good boy—not a goody-goody boy, but just a plain good boy. I do not mean that he must love only the negative virtues; I mean he must love the positive virtues also. “Good,” in the largest sense, should include whatever is fine, straightforward, clean, brave, and manly. The best boys I know—the best men I know—are good at their studies or their business, fearless and stalwart, hated and feared by all that is wicked and depraved, incapable of submitting to wrongdoing, and equally incapable of being aught but tender to the weak and helpless. A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals. One prime reason for abhorring cowards is because every good boy should have it in him to thrash the objectionable boy as the need arises.
From “The American Boy,” part of our Ways of Learning issue
Have fun tonight, everyone! Much love from LQ.
“Give me the whip.”
I looked about the room.
“No,” she exclaimed, “stay as you are, kneeling,” She went over to the fireplace, took the whip from the mantelpiece and, watching me with a smile, let it hiss through the air; then she slowly rolled up the sleeve of her fur jacket.
“Marvelous woman!” I exclaimed.
“Silence, slave!” She suddenly scowled, looked savage, and struck me with the whip. A moment later she threw her arm tenderly about me and pityingly bent down to me. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, half-shyly, half-timidly.
“No,” I replied, “and even if you had, pain from you is a joy. Strike again, if it gives you pleasure.”
Hi there, Jonathan Franzen. We hope you are having a lovely Tuesday. So you say Edith Wharton was a prude, confined largely to a sexless marriage, hemmed in by plainness and haunted to write about the very beauty and passion that was lacking in her own life?
But have you read her porn?
Here’s a passage from an unfinished work, Beatrice Palmato:
“And now, darling,” Mr. Palmato said, drawing her to the deep divan, “let me show you what only you and I have the right to show each other.” He caught her wrists as he spoke, and looking straight into her eyes, repeated in a penetrating whisper, “Only you and I.” But his touch had never been tenderer. Already she felt every fiber vibrating under it, as of old, only now with the more passionate eagerness bred of privation and of the dull misery of her marriage. She let herself sink backward among the pillows, and already Mr. Palmato was on his knees at her side, his face close to hers. Again her burning lips were parted by his tongue, and she felt it insinuate itself between her teeth and plunge into the depths of her mouth in a long, searching caress, while at the same moment his hands softly parted the thin folds of her wrapper.
One by one they gained her bosom, and she felt her two breasts pointing up to them, the nipples hard as coral, but sensitive as lips to his approaching touch. And now his warm palms were holding each breast as if in a cup, clasping it, modeling it, softly kneading it, as he whispered to her, “Like the bread of the angels.”
PS. Sorry we didn’t mention this before, but there’s a good chance this is a scene between Beatrice and her dad. Happy V-day everyone!