The Thoreau You Don't Know by Robert Sullivan

Zip Locked

2012-01-25T15:18:00.000-05:00

There is really not much to say.

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What it would take to lose all the bike lanes in NYC

2011-11-07T16:57:00.006-05:00

Bike Snob is, among other things, a genius. He has proved it again by calculating the number of a particular subset of bikers—he defines a member of this subset as a "Nü-Fred Bike Hate Unit," or NFBHU—it would take to have the city pull up all the bike lanes: 80,000. First he sets the scene:

Anyway, I don't have a problem with people who choose not to use the
bike lane, or who ride Pistas, or who shop at Old Navy for that
matter. However, what this Nü-Fred was also doing was running all the
lights, and this being rush hour it meant that the crosswalks were
pretty crowded. I made no attempt to keep up with him, but I kept him
in my sights for awhile, during which I probably watched him ride
against the light through three or four crosswalks. Furthermore, at
each of these crosswalks, I'd estimate that at least five pedestrians
looked at him like they wished he'd get run over by a truck--and this
wasn't even in the most crowded part of town.

Then he points out their PR potency, which is high.

Basically then, a single hapless Nü-Fred (though I suppose calling a
Nü-Fred "hapless" is redundant, since the haplessness is implied) has
the power to turn five New Yorkers against cyclists every single
block. This means that, in the course of a 20 block journey during
peak hours, one (1) Nü-Fred will make one hundred (100) New Yorkers
hate cyclists. (If you'd like, we can refer to this 20-block
100-person figure as one (1) "Nü-Fred Bike Hate Unit," or NFBHU.)

Of course, it's impossible to say with any certainty how many Nü-Freds
there are in New York (at least without subpoenaing Bianchi,
Specialized, and Felt and forcing them to disclose their regional
"urban fixie" sales records). What we can determine though is how many
NFBHUs it would take to turn each one of New York City's eight million
people against cyclists, and the answer is this:

80,000 NFBUs.

Really, if you think about it, that''s not all that much. All it would
take to would be for some evil anti-bike mastermind to unleash 80,000
Nü-Freds on the streets of New York and in a single weekday morning
the entire populace would turn against us. By week's end, bicycles
would probably be illegal, they'd turn the bike lanes into free car
parking, and without cyclists to preoccupy them the police would then
be free to focus the entirety of their efforts on beating Occupy Wall
Street protesters, harassing food trucks, and insulting the poor while
they defend their right to break the law.

He describes his calculations are "crackpot" but that's not fair, and besides, crackpot has never stopped anybody from calculating before. Speaking of indignities:

2011-10-25T15:20:00.001-04:00

In Earlier News

2011-10-13T14:04:00.004-04:00

An I.W.W. protest in Union Square, broken up subsequently by the police, on April 5, 1914.
The headline in the Times:

Wages

2011-10-12T15:03:00.002-04:00

The Women's Law Project reports:

Recently released 2010 census data shows the gender gap unimproved from the year before—women still make only 77 cents to every dollar a man makes. For women of color this discrepancy is even larger. African American women earned only 67.7 cents and Latinas earned 58.7 cents to the male dollar. Despite the fact that women are becoming more educated than men on average, they still continue to have significantly lower salaries.

Union

2011-10-06T22:28:00.000-04:00

via Joe's Union Review

Cleanliness is Next to Crowdliness

2011-10-06T22:12:00.007-04:00

Reports (and neighbors) suggested to the staff of the TYDK that the people at the protests were good-for-nothing teens who didn't shower. We heard the no showering thing several times while on our morning constitutional (little or no legalistic relation). The staff of the TYDK noticed that there were many different kinds of people at the protest, among the thousands and thousands who were there. There were young people who, as far as conversation went, were good for a lot, it seemed. There were the group of writers and artists that the TYDK staff was invited into, men and women in their 20s and 30s and maybe the occasional 40s, carrying excellent silk screen posters (above right). There were people in musicians unions, student unions, teachers unions, as well as un-affiliated musicians, students and teachers; we saw women who were nuns and women who were priests. There were Socialists handing out literature, and movies stars handing out high fives, and people we had not seen for years, who live up state a bit—a small group that included Jer, who took great photos of all the protestors, each of whom, in certain afternoon lights, looked a lot like me and perhaps like you too, especially if you are a doctor (right).
But a point we at the TYDK would like to stress is that, in the case of the management of the TYDK, we showered, just before we left. We looked kind of great, in retrospect, or at least pretty tidy, as far as our occupation goes. And, when we got back, we looked even better, charged with the power of all that union.

What Took Them So Long?

2011-10-06T22:09:00.005-04:00

A point that Naomi Klein made on the Brian Leher show was not that people in countries outside of the U.S. were asking: What are they protesting for? Rather, she said, people outside the U.S. had seen the disparity in wealth increasing, and are asking instead: "What took them so long?"

A Gift

2011-10-06T21:57:00.004-04:00

This

is commented on here at length. How it relates to this below is, unfortunately, not clear.

Reading

2011-10-05T06:35:00.003-04:00

Some reading—a few pages from the introduction of There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America, by Philip Dray. But it now.

Contrast of Message Messages

2011-10-05T06:10:00.003-04:00

Some people think the Occupy Wall Street Protest is too vague in its stated (or unstated) demands and that that is a problem, a strike against the Wall Street strike. Other people don't. Here are two videos to compare. We at the TYDK think that Nicholas Kristof makes a good point about, say, taxing financial transactions (the Tobin tax) but at the same time we think that the idea makes a bad placard, as opposed to what we are seeing out on the street. (We also find the tone condescending, like much of the coverage of the protest in New York City.) A better direction for message refining comes from the Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen, who describes his union and the Occupy Wall Street protesters are "singing the same song and fighting the same battle" against economic inequity. This is more about battle songs than people who are not interested might imagine, and singing songs, as inarticulate as that might seem, certainly help with what Samuelsen rightly calls "the sense of desperation."

Rowdy

2011-10-04T15:46:00.005-04:00

Has everyone been following William Hogeland's blog on the subject of the Wall Street protests? It's deeply applicable:

But I write about the deep, founding roots of rowdy, American populist protest and insurrection, often visionary and even utopian, yet informed and practical too, specifically over money, credit, and the purpose and nature of public and private finance. And despite my pop-narrative books on the subject , and despite my articles here, and in such place as Newdeal20.org (articles picked up by AlterNet, Huffington, Salon, Naked Capitalism, and others), key indicators of my relative impact (like royalty statements!) give me a sneaking suspicion that most people still don’t connect the American founding period with a rugged drive on the part of ordinary people for equal access to the tools of economic development and against the hegemony of the high-finance, inside-government elites who signed the Declaration and framed the Constitution and made us a nation.

The TYDK team does not necessarily agree with the too-vague accusations being thrown at the protestors, the number of which grows on weekends, when people are off from jobs that pay wages that have fallen (in real dollar terms) since the seventies. We tend to think of the protest cellularly, and we are not talking phones: the encampment is like a nucleus, the cell growing in times of greater protestation activity, such as tomorrow. We were there last week, on the portion of the Brooklyn Bridge where the cops didn't arrest people, and we saw plain clothes police, plainclothes nuns, people with dreads and people who dread drinking decaf in the afternoon, since they wake up in the night as it is. A mix, in other words. (And a guy standing beside us, who was ostensibly not part of the protest, said that though he was himself making six figures, and though he could, as he put it, make fun of about a group of "people who might smoke weed," he was pleased that it was happening. "I'm happy they are out here," the six figure-er said. "Things are screwed up.")

Hogeland, though, presents an (excellent) reading list, which I hereby re-present:

The Putney Debates. 1647. Rank and file in Cromwell’s Army believed they deserved the vote. Cromwell disagreed. The “Levellers” lost — but this is one of the first articulate demands for disconnecting rights from property.

Letter from a Birmingham Jail. 1963. Martin Luther King, Jr., argues for the validity of taking direct action in the street, not just waiting for courts to catch up.

The Port Huron Statement. 1962. In a time not of recession but of immense prosperity, students who had benefited from that very prosperity questioned its basis and demanded a renewal of American political values, at home and around the world. Prescient or self-fulfilling or both? Anyway, at once passionate and crystal clear.

The Populist Party Platform. 1892. “We meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the Legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling places to prevent universal intimidation and bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled, public opinion silenced, business prostrated, homes covered with mortgages, labor impoverished, and the land concentrating in the hands of capitalists.”

Common Sense. 1776. Paine’s call not only for American independence but also, and more importantly — and this is the part routinely and deliberately ignored or marginalized by liberal “consensus” historians — for social equality, in a new kind of American republic.

That’s a start. . . .

I would only add How Not To Get Rich, which is already currently in the Occupy Wall Street library.

A Greek in a Dark Pool, or Dublin

2011-09-28T18:21:00.005-04:00

I wish I could see Katie Holten's new public art work on the streets of Dublin, Ireland.

Let Them Eat Only Organic Snacks!

2011-09-17T06:46:00.002-04:00

Frank Bruni's column on famous chefs' food fights, gets at the things often unsaid about fancy foods, such as this:

A great deal of American obesity is attributable to the dearth of
healthy food that’s affordable and convenient in low- and even
middle-income neighborhoods, and changing that requires a magnitude of
public intervention and private munificence that are unlikely in such
pinched times.

and this:

But these preferences reflect privileges and don’t entitle me,
Bourdain or anyone else who trots the globe and visits ambitious
restaurants — the most casual of which can cost $50 a person and
entail hourlong waits — to look down on food lovers without the
resources, opportunity or inclination for that.

Matthew Sharpe Takes it Home

2011-09-16T23:40:00.003-04:00

The week that was Matthew Sharpe's week bloggin' at Powell's wrapped up today, Friday.

Matthew Sharpe's Powell's Expedition

2011-09-12T14:56:00.007-04:00

The Echo Maker is the title of Sharpe's first Powell's guest blog post, one of a week's worth of posts and posts. Take heed!

I find this humbling: the possibility that always and everywhere, our understanding of the world and of each other and of ourselves is at best a fairly attuned and nuanced fiction.

Dave in Meadowlands!

2011-09-10T11:34:00.006-04:00

Meadowlands aficionados will be excited to know that my friend Dave is in and out of the Meadowlands today—to wit:

Reykjavik Watch

2011-09-10T11:04:00.009-04:00

Just as the red maples lead the chorus of turning leaves as they set south from Nova Scotia and Maine, slowly setting fire to the woods in the Middle Atlantic states--set fire figuratively speaking, of course, as we have surely had our share of floods and fires and quakes of late--so the music scene in Reykjavik leads the way, in some instances, when it comes to music in New York. A place that the staff of the TYDK has long dreamed of visiting and yet never actually has is Reykjavik, which was recent host, apparently, to The Murphy Beds. The Beds, as they are sometimes known, are normally a four-member ensemble, making this Icelandic permutation a kind of twin Beds thing. Góða nótt og dreymi þig vel! Via reykjavik.com.

More Icelandic saga:

More Murphy Beds:

Broken

2011-09-09T15:13:00.005-04:00

A friend of the TYDK—N.D., the cousin of one of the unicyclists here—sent over this below, and we are all very grateful:

And Yet

2011-09-08T16:24:00.004-04:00

Right! Nothing you do matters!

You reduce, reuse and recycle. You turn down plastic and paper. You avoid out-of-season grapes. You do all the right things.
Good.
Just know that it won’t save the tuna, protect the rain forest or stop global warming. The changes necessary are so large and profound that they are beyond the reach of individual action.

This is the kind of thing people love to read, a relief. And yet, it is, we here at the TYDK would argue, short-sighted, a view of the trees that purports to be a view of the forest. It has put us in mind of this, which is where this post takes its title, "And Yet."

Free Agency, Part 2

2011-08-25T10:45:00.002-04:00

The response by the NYPD to the Associated Press report on the New York City police department's counter terrorism program was notable for being as petty-seeming as it claimed the A.P.'s report is.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne defended the city’s counter-terrorism efforts following allegations that police have been spying on Muslim communities with the CIA’s help, blaming criticism partially on petty "jealousies that success sometimes breeds.”

Maybe there is absolutely nothing to the A.P. report, which seems unlikely. I hope other news agencies follow up on it. I don't think paying attention to your police department is petty, especially since success, when it comes to civil liberties, is measured on a daily basis, rather than looking back at the term of, say, a mayor or police commissioner.

The Swamps of Jersey

2011-08-24T09:05:00.002-04:00

I wrote a piece about the new development plans in the Meadowlands, here, which is rendered (my word) like so:

And if I am not mistaken, Rosalita is the tune that includes the following lyric" "...somewhere in the swamps of Jersey..."

Free Agency

2011-08-24T08:52:00.006-04:00

This morning WNYC featured Matt Apuzzo, the Associated Press reporter who co-wrote this story:

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the NYPD has become one of the country's most aggressive domestic intelligence agencies. A months-long investigation by The Associated Press has revealed that the NYPD operates far outside its borders and targets ethnic communities in ways that would run afoul of civil liberties rules if practiced by the federal government. And it does so with unprecedented help from the CIA in a partnership that has blurred the bright line between foreign and domestic spying. Neither the city council, which finances the department, nor the federal government, which contributes hundreds of millions of dollars each year, is told exactly what's going on.

Just out of curiosity--where were our other news organizations on this?

Downgrade

2011-08-22T10:19:00.005-04:00

Why does the job market get such short shrift? Why do we outsource ourselves in the foot? Where is the Walden Pond we can visit that will allow us to see we cannot have a long-term solution to a debt crisis with out a short term solution wherein people have jobs, with rising debt-solving incomes? Can we worry a little less about the stock market and a little more about the job market? It's depressing, for sure, which is why humor is a kind of stimulus.

Boat Biking

2011-08-10T22:25:00.004-04:00

Speaking of the harbor, here is a biker leading his Zodiak to the bay, shot sideways on Columbia Street in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

On the Water

2011-08-09T19:15:00.004-04:00

On this, the anniversary of the publication of Walden, we direct your attention to the harbor of New York, which is a place that is in the city, of course, but also away, a place for reflection that necessitates association, to make a pub on the movement of Thoreau's day, led by the Associationists. Thoreau was an association of one, thinking for himself, strengthening the community by strengthening himself. Here is another great piece by Corey Kilgannon, Day one of a week that we hope goes long:

Cuckoo

2011-07-30T14:07:00.002-04:00

In case, you don't know "The Cuckoo," which is the theme song for William Hogeland's Declaration, just out in paperback, here is this, from the Quincy Patriot-Ledger:

A talk on the book is here.

Things Noticed

2011-07-09T10:28:00.001-04:00

Here's a post that explains this photo:

The Village is Dying

2011-07-06T16:03:00.002-04:00

Thoreau's Concord was losing its populace, facing the onslaught of urban investment, farms dying, "country homes" sprouting like invasive weeds. Here's a version of the same story:

Bike Lanes

2011-06-22T15:18:00.001-04:00

Concert

2011-06-16T09:04:00.000-04:00

The Other Rats

2011-05-17T10:46:00.005-04:00

Photos in the news of the new muskrat in the Gowanus Canal, formerly Gowanus Creek. This New York Post piece mentions the muskrats living at Brooklyn Bridge Park. Muskrat cam?

A muskrat has made a home along the toxic Brooklyn waterway’s banks by First and Bond streets, a few feet away from one of four houseboats now docked along the Gowanus that the Post reported on in Monday's edition.

Putting the O in Storm (Drains)

2011-05-05T09:00:00.001-04:00

Toil

2011-04-30T12:30:00.001-04:00

Field Trips

2011-04-30T10:31:00.003-04:00

I wonder if people know that Thoreau and his brother are sometimes said to have pioneered the idea of a school field trip, at least in and around Concord, Massachusetts? Pioneered, that is, taking young people out of the school room, out to see a boat maker make a boat, out to see a surveyor survey? The Thoreau brothers were both teachers, and of course, the Transcendentalists in general thought that schooling needed reform—take Alcott, who saw the poetry of kids, the poetry that, I would argue, is often schooled out of them, even today, instead of encouraged. Even at Harvard, which Thoreau attended, things were bad, students rioting, standards low. Thoreau used to say that Harvard taught all of the branches of knowledge and none of the roots. Being a teacher, he supported teaching, and education was less a chore and more of a joy.

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The Highway Tax

2011-04-25T22:29:00.003-04:00

Thoreau is often portrayed as a man against taxes. This is wrong. People who believe Thoreau to be anti-tax cite his essay, “Civil Disobedience.” Far from being a split from society, “Civil Disobedience” is a bold statement of citizenship, of the necessity of putting in your share, and it’s part of the formulation of the utopian vision of Walden. It is almost not about avoiding taxes. Even in skipping some taxes, Thoreau emphasized that there are other taxes he needed to pay, that he was too civil to resist. One of the best lines (or one of my favorites, anyway) has to do with the road. You wouldn’t know it in the way it has been given over to the automobile today, but the road is a public space, perhaps the first public space, and when Thoreau talks about the road in “Civil Disobedience,” the road is the connection to everything and everyone outside of himself—the road concerns the importance of staying connected. To wit: “I have never declined paying the highway tax, because I am as desirous of being a good neighbor as I am of being a bad subject; and as for supporting schools, I am doing my part to educate my fellow countrymen now.” Speaking of community, here is a passage from President Obama's recent speech, at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.:

But there’s always been another thread running through our history -– a belief that we’re all connected, and that there are some things we can only do together, as a nation. We believe, in the words of our first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, that through government, we should do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves. And so we’ve built a strong military to keep us secure, and public schools and universities to educate our citizens. We’ve laid down railroads and highways to facilitate travel and commerce. We’ve supported the work of scientists and researchers whose discoveries have saved lives, unleashed repeated technological revolutions, and led to countless new jobs and entire new industries. Each of us has benefited from these investments, and we’re a more prosperous country as a result. Part of this American belief that we’re all connected also expresses itself in a conviction that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security and dignity. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard times or bad luck, a crippling illness or a layoff may strike any one of us. “There but for the grace of God go I,” we say to ourselves. And so we contribute to programs like Medicare and Social Security, which guarantee us health care and a measure of basic income after a lifetime of hard work; unemployment insurance, which protects us against unexpected job loss; and Medicaid, which provides care for millions of seniors in nursing homes, poor children, those with disabilities. We’re a better country because of these commitments. I’ll go further. We would not be a great country without those commitments.

Community: can't live without it, can't live without it.

The Harbor with Accompaniment

2011-04-25T21:57:00.004-04:00

See the harbor as it was. Sure, it was polluted as hell; swimming houses, sometimes floating docks in the harbor, mostly closed up show by the 1930s. But there was lots of economic activity. Stuff being moved that would today be moved on the highways that help us keep our locally driven mileage high, as well as our asthma and obesity rates. Imagine if the harbor was this full with ferries now? Imagine if we worked with it, rather than against it. Imagine if we included in our definition of the environment something that was along the lines of health, or, more precisely, a larger consider of the public health. And then—and this is just to much imaging, but it is spring, after all—imagine if these jobs were jobs again, and jobs with OSHA regulations, with health care? (video via Rogert Ebert's Journal)

And speaking of Tom Waits, as The Suite 16 was...

Great News

2011-04-05T13:22:00.003-04:00

From the Times: The Great Lakes. The Mississippi River. The Chesapeake Bay. The Everglades. And now, ladies and gentlemen, the New York / New Jersey Harbor. The area’s aquatic network has been designated one of the nation’s Great Waters by a consortium of conservation groups called the America’s Great Waters Coalition .

A Year

2011-03-11T12:11:00.003-05:00

One year in 2 minutes from Eirik Solheim on Vimeo.

You might want to turn the music down and replace it with, say, Blue in Green . Via Dave.

Thoreau in Wisconsin

2011-03-01T08:55:00.004-05:00

A lot of people don't realize that Thoreau went to Minnesota and Wisconsin on his one and only trip west, in June 1861, described, by the Western newspapers, as the celebrated abolitionist, due in large part to his treatise on non-violent resistance. He would died within the year. I was recently reading his journals, and noticed that when a friend was being sought by federal marshalls, given a revolver and sent into hiding by local abolitionists, Thoreau stayed at his friend's sister's house, to protect her. "Lodged at Sanborn's last night, after his rescue..." (Tweet via the Awl.)

More Animals in Urban Forests

2011-02-20T23:18:00.006-05:00

Scientists investigating an increase in fishers in upstate New York forests wondered whether or not there were enough mammals for a fisher population to survive. Camera traps set up in the forests in the Albany area showed that there were more animals in urban forests than in non-urban forests.

We found higher diversity and overall higher activity of animals in our camera traps set in urban forests than in those out in the wild areas. The objective of this study was to compare the potential prey communities that fishers might encounter in these two environments. Could fishers be lured into these areas by abundant prey? Now we know that, yes, this could be part of the explanation (i.e. hypothesis not rejected).

Urban forests strike again, as agents of diversity, as reservoirs for species that we had not imagined were reservoirs for species. (In this case, the survey found 14 species in suburban forests, including dogs and snowmobilers, but only six in the so-called wild forests.) But another great this about this investigation is that it involved a high school study participating in "project-based study." A high school student, in other words, monitored the cameras and collected the data. High schools are a little like urban forests these days, especially given the emphasis on intellect-stomping standardized tests and now budget cuts everywhere: they are places where we have resources we probably don't know about, resources we are mostly not taking advantage of, resources we are likely hindering.
via the NY Times.

Fireball

2011-02-14T23:20:00.003-05:00

The American Meteor Society confirmed a meteor spotted today over New Jersey and Pennsylvania. A photographer in the Lehigh Valley saw it, according to the Express-Times:

Express-Times contributing photographer Tim Wynkoop reported seeing the meteor shortly before 1 o'clock as he was driving on South Main Street in Phillipsburg, traveling west to east across the southern sky, though it was gone before he could snap a picture. "In the sky straight ahead, I saw this huge ball of fire coming down out of the sky, probably at a very sharp angle," Wynkoop said. "It left a very long trail of fire. I didn't see any smoke. As soon as you saw it, it was gone."

Said Robert Lunsford, the AMS's operations manager: "This was indeed a meteor."

They're Back

2011-02-07T12:26:00.005-05:00

As noted today in the Daily News, the whales are back.

Human Settlements

2011-02-04T07:38:00.003-05:00

Something that Thoreau does well is help you think about cities as human settlements, places that are as natural as any place else, sometimes more natural than other places. Here, via a cool place somewhere in Oregon, are these photos by Michael Wolf.

via The Best Time of Day

Maps are Cool

2011-02-02T10:38:00.011-05:00

Hey Ralph!

2011-01-25T21:40:00.002-05:00

It's the bus, stupid!
As mentioned here:
INFRASTRUCTURIST!
It's the fastest growing transportation mode in the U.S., and it is a relatively cheap way of (a) getting people places where they can be productive or happy or both; and (b) give them some jobs doing (a).

Snow

2011-01-25T21:32:00.002-05:00

Snow, somewhere in New York, and yet as if by magic, here. Courtesy of A Jeremiad.

A Tree House Story

2011-01-25T21:24:00.005-05:00

by Andre Dubus II

I WAS 9, my brother, Jeb, was 8, and maybe if we’d been born in a city we would not have started building treehouses and forts, igloos and tepees, even digging a hole in the ground that we covered with thick branches of pine, oak and maple. Or maybe if our mother and father did not fight most every night, their yelling rising up the stairwell like some poisonous vapor to us and our two sisters, Jeb and I would not have gone looking for the scrap lumber we found under the closed summer camps near our rented house in southern New Hampshire — two-by-fours and two-by-sixes, warped plywood and long planks of rough spruce....

in the Times here

The White Oaks

2011-01-25T20:51:00.004-05:00

Brooklyn's Prospect Park, as seen in a photo by Joseph O. Holmes.
via http://pictureyear.blogspot.com/

The Concrete Jungle

2010-09-13T13:46:00.001-04:00

The Concrete Jungle

Yes, Thoreau Laughed

2009-10-27T13:00:00.002-04:00

Brooklyn Bridge Biking

2009-10-16T12:04:00.003-04:00

Just for the record, Brooklyn Bridge biking can be done--calmly, genteel-ly, sensibly even, as this Thoreau You Don't Know-related biker shows...

But Seriously...

2009-10-16T10:26:00.002-04:00

From the Opionator:

The Dow crossed 10,000 Wednesday (and held that level Thursday, closing at 10,062). Thursday morning, Goldman Sachs announced a quarterly profit of $3.19 billion. Neither number would have seemed believable a year ago, but now that these results are in, what do they say about the state of the economy? Also, who should get the credit, and what on-going academic feuds can Dow 10,000 be a datapoint for?...

Robert Reich doesn’t think there’s much wisdom, collective or otherwise, behind the Dow: “This is all temporary fluff, folks. Anyone who hasn’t learned by now that there’s almost no relationship between the Dow and the real economy deserves to lose his or her shirt in the Wall Street casino.”

PS: H.N.T.G.R.

Why Is This So Fun?

2009-10-16T10:20:00.002-04:00

If Thoreau were Carl Sagan.... Ah, forget it!

last seen on the Daily Dish

A Sustainable Cities F.Y.I.

2009-10-14T11:42:00.000-04:00

Talking Bikers

2009-10-13T13:33:00.002-04:00

The Times has a nice David Byrne on biking video.

Is New York City Really Just a Giant Terrarium?

2009-10-12T22:18:00.001-04:00

via Urban Plant Videos

Snobbery!

2009-09-29T12:21:00.001-04:00

Q: Is there anything better than Bike Snob?
A: No.

As you may be aware, there is a genteel, non-competitive cycling conspiracy (GNCCC) afoot (or awheel) in New York City, and to a certain extent Robert Sullivan is its literary voice, giving it ready access to media outlets such as the Times. Furthermore, David Byrne is the conspiracy's celebrity spokesperson because his rock star status appeals to the youth (in the context of the GNCCC, the "youth" means people 55 and under), and the Dutch city bike is its de facto symbol and totem. While ostensibly the GNCCC is pro-cycling and works in our favor, there runs beneath it a sinister undercurrent of elitism, strange helmets, and pro-Dutch propaganda.

The Battles on the Brooklyn Bridge

2009-09-29T12:17:00.002-04:00

We at the Thoreau You Don't Know propose the following truce...

ONE of the great battlefields in the war between bicyclists and pedestrians in New York City is the Brooklyn Bridge. Pedestrians think all bicyclists are out-of-control maniacs; bicyclists — the majority, anyway — are just trying to avoid cars and not break a sweat. The stripe painted down the center of the elevated Brooklyn Bridge walkway, to separate bicyclists from pedestrians, has become a line in the sand. We need to erase that line once and for all.
via the New York Times

Permalancers

2009-09-24T13:34:00.002-04:00

There's permafrost, permaculture, and, of course, permanence, which is the opposite of temporary, which brings us to the increasingly average American worker, which brings us to permalancers:

Memories of Going Down the Ol' Bike Lanes

2009-09-22T11:45:00.001-04:00

Fire!

2009-09-12T09:29:00.007-04:00

Over at the Thoreau You Don't Know, we are counting the days until Look Down/ Shoot Down, photographer Jeremiah Dine’s exhibition at MAD Gallery, 520 W. 27th Street. From the release, just released:

The imagery is the visual language of the streets - traffic cones, signs, garbage, walls, curbs - the detritus of the urban environment, the whole making up a pattern of textures, colors and shapes.

More from the release, quoted above, shortly after it was released:

Look Down/Shoot Down refers to the process of photographing on the street, the literal act of looking and shooting. LD/SD is also the term for a modern fighter jet’s radar capabilities to acquire, lock on and destroy a target. The act of photographing can be thought of as “hunting” for images, and these images in particular are often shot looking down at the pavement or curb. The photographer’s eye is constantly acquiring and targeting new information.

Rest for the Weary That's Not for the Leery

2009-09-12T09:22:00.004-04:00

While we at the Thoreau You Don't Know were on hiatus, the people over at LIFE have gone and put up a lot of Woodstock photos. We know that the Woodstock anniversary is officially over, but does that mean that we have to refrain from posting photos from Woodstock that we had really never seen before, such as this one? (It is for the Leary, of course.)

A Float

2009-07-30T08:36:00.002-04:00

We at TTYDK can only guess where the Jeremiad is Jeremiading from, or at, now.

A Reverse Canoe Commute; or, Pointed Portage

2009-07-30T08:01:00.005-04:00

This piece in the Times describes the conceptual reverse commute of two artists, on their way (back) to the Museum of Natural History.

Four days ago Mr. Starling and a fellow artist, Tyler Rowland — accompanied in a second (regular, nonart) canoe by another artist, Kasper Akhoj , and Dante Birch , a production manager at Mass MoCA — began enacting a kind of reverse expedition, taking not rare animal trophies but a load of complex cultural baggage and post-colonial inquiry back to the history museum. In May Mr. Starling put his canoe into the Hoosic River, whose south and north branches run through the Mass MoCa complex, and paddled and drifted to the Hoosic’s junction with the Hudson. Then, last Thursday, he picked up the journey in Albany, relying on tides, elbow grease and the kindness of strangers as he and the three other men made their way to Manhattan. (“Last night we had sushi, in Beacon,” Mr. Starling said when asked how they had been sustaining themselves along the way. “It’s been quite civilized, actually.”)

We would like to canoe the Hoosic someday. (Via D. Diehl.)

Island Camping

2009-07-29T22:03:00.003-04:00

Just in case there was any question or any doubt or any anything, really, let it be known that we are completely down with, for instance, this:

via popupcity.net and swiss-miss.com

Above San Francisco

2009-07-29T21:49:00.003-04:00

If you are one of those people who find themselves wondering what San Francisco looked like from a balloon in, say, 1901, or 1902, shortly after the Great Fire, then this is the Library of Congress site for you, or 4 U. The balloon was owned and (perhaps) operated by Professor T. S. Baldwin, who, on a previous balloon trip, freaked out his eight passengers, when the balloon broke from its moorings and traveled 50 miles south to Pescadero, though nearly floated west, out to sea. Another of the "aeronauuts" is listed as Edward Dudley. The long shadows suggest, according to the Library of Congress, that the trip was one of the last of the day. Up to twenty people could get in the balloon at a time, each person flying for a dollar.

Raging

2009-07-21T15:10:00.004-04:00

Here's a debate that may or may not still be raging over at The Year in Pictures, a most excellent photo blog: Ali v. Jacko. (The photo of Ali is by Danny Lyons, who is the Muhammed Ali of photos of the about-to-be-destroyed South Street Seaport, seen here.)

m.p.f.i.a.b.o.a.p.

2009-07-20T10:24:00.001-04:00

"Man playing flute in a bubble on a pond," a new photograph by Sam Amidon.

Choices?

2009-07-20T09:44:00.004-04:00

There is in fact a Thoreau twitter, no relation and quite for months, but there is also a Roland Headley twitter, begging the question: what are you to do?
via Doonesbury.com

Feelies

2009-07-18T12:13:00.002-04:00

It always amazes us that so few people know that Thoreau was a huge fan of the Feelies, in the '80s, when Hoboken was the Concord, Mass. of New Jersey.
via andrewromano.tumblr.com

Mercurial Skies

2009-07-18T09:33:00.002-04:00

Summer in the city means the weather is always changing, as we here at TTYDK can attest. Why, just the other day we entered the subway in Brooklyn, and the weather was sunny and nice, with just a few clouds, but by the time we got to Manhattan, we could see that it had begun raining bagels. Lox of luck trying to find the right umbrella!

Long Nights

2009-07-18T08:25:00.002-04:00

Via You Look Marvelous

When You Are Too Tired to Blog You Just Show Off a Postcard Which Contains a Photo Containing the Wild Where It's Not Necessarily Expected!

2009-07-06T21:39:00.006-04:00

This just in over the Thoreau You Don't Know's e-transom:

hello friends!
greetings from copenhagen. today, at 7 AM, i saw two people asleep in a tent, which they had set up literally on the platform of the central train station! wow. this is a great idea. i am going to go camping in the train stations of the world. it looked like this: http://bit.ly/myKfQ
if you know people in copenhagen, or malmo sweden, i'm playing in copenhagen tomorrow Tuesday at 9 PM at Huset, and wednesday in Malmo somewhere i forget at 7 PM.

NEWS

1. I made two videos of a new song. you can see them here. Video A is necessary for comprehending the full implications of
Video B, but Video B is way more amazing.

Video A: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qm7Qc57EQjY

Video B: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCHk8BYllOQ

2. There is an amazing honkytonk band called the Sweetback Sisters. This band includes one Stefan Amidon on drums and some singing. They have a KILLER new record out. You must buy it. Order a hard copy:
http://www.thesweetbacksisters.com/
Or download it from iTunes:
http://bit.ly/d9gdl

okay bye!
sam
vimeo.com/samamidon

We wish we got more postcards featuring people camping in train stations. As it is, we will make do with this one.

Semi-Rhetorical Question

2009-07-05T23:15:00.004-04:00

Where is the government?

What If Al Stieglitz Had a Cell Phone

2009-07-04T14:27:00.005-04:00

For All

2009-07-04T09:32:00.002-04:00

On the Fourth of July, you have to spend a little time speculating, when it comes to deciding exactly how cool Jefferson and Adams and all those guys were, but you don't have to wonder about how cool these two women are. They are completely cool, obviously.

Speaking of Metaphors

2009-06-28T09:56:00.003-04:00

Here's a very HDT review by Ginia Bellafante, TV critic extraordinaire, with a mention of the little know International Bureau of Metaphor, as well as a sci-fi situation related to this.

What Did You Do on the Solstice?

2009-06-28T09:01:00.007-04:00

Here at TTYDK, we took in Scandinavian fiddling, and a maypole dance, down at Battery Park, where the view is very nineteenth century, if you forget about the stevedores. Below is a snippet of ASI Spelmanslag, the fiddling group of the American Swedish Institute in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who flew in to play the so-called midsommar festival--waltzes, polskas, marches and schottisches. As noted fiddler recently told us, "Scandinavian fiddle music is one of the few fiddle musics where there more fiddles you have the better it sounds." This seems very true, and we wish it were a metaphor for more things, though not everything, of course.

Frank Sees

2009-06-25T12:28:00.002-04:00

Here's this on the cross country explorations of Robert Frank from the excellent photo blog The Year in Pictures. We would say something about landscape and memory at this point but the photos are so wonderful that, for the moment, we can't remember where we are.

That's The Sound of the Soundwalks Ending

2009-06-25T08:20:00.002-04:00

Did you hear that? A visual vestige (left) on The Rest is Noise.

Keeping Up With the (Homeless) Joneses

2009-06-04T14:37:00.004-04:00

OK, now I have seen it all: people who have homes are upset that people without homes are allowed to live in the expensive homes that did not sell because they were too expensive. Follow that? Yes, the homeless have been allowed to live in condos and the neighbors aren't happy. The homeless don't deserve this, says a neighbor:

To walk over there and see that folks in a shelter are living better than we are, it's not fair.

It used to be that people were against shelters on their street because the shelters were unattractive, the homeless homeless. Now, the argument is that the shelter was snuck in. But the shelter is a luxury condo--was a luxury condo snuck in? Does this mean people will be more wary of luxury condos? Does this mean that people will hope non-luxury shelters will be sought out in gentrifying neighborhoods? It's complicated.

Can't we just be pleased that someone got some people who needed help a place to stay?

T-Town

2009-06-02T13:08:00.004-04:00

Thoreau was big on the question that asks you to look at whether you are using technology or the technology is using you. Our car industry has long driven us in the wrong direction. We are now, whether we like it or not, at the wheel. Let's turn Detroit into a transportation capital, rather than a place that makes machines that pollute our air and our water as well as our downtown and our generally activity-less lives. Let's mobilize ourselves, a la the New Deal, perhaps (see photo), to turn Mo-town into T-town, which doesn't sound as cool but is. Imagine turning the interstate highways into interstate high speed busways, just for instance. Michael Moore is onto this, and here are a few points of his multi-pointed plan:

1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce - and most of those who have been laid off - employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.

3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.

Organic Farmers are Suffering

2009-05-30T14:10:00.004-04:00

Organic farmers are suffering, and they are questioning whether they can go local—i.e., sell their milk in their communities, rather than have it trucked off out of state. Which raises the question: is local the most organic? Here is a photo from the New York Times' report, with the following caption: "Last month’s meeting of the Maine Organic Milk Producers drew worried farmers seeking solutions to a post-boom bust."

To Stay or Slay?

2009-05-23T12:27:00.004-04:00

With newspapers and television news reports using the word "staycation" over and over again, it's maybe a good time to recycle the newspaper and explore your neighborhood, where, if you are us, you will find things like this. Or you can go on what Bike Snob calls a "slaycation." What? You don't know Bike Snob? You've got to get inside more. Or schluff.)

View nothing in a larger map

'The Thoreau You Don't Know' by Robert Sullivan - Los Angeles Times

2009-05-22T23:08:00.002-04:00

'The Thoreau You Don't Know' by Robert Sullivan - Los Angeles Times

Posted using ShareThis

TTYDK Takes to the E-Airwaves

2009-05-22T20:11:00.002-04:00

See here, for a podcast by a prominent member of the Thoreau You Don't Know staff.

Broken Up

2009-05-22T16:32:00.004-04:00

If you need images of cracked concrete, then this is where you can get them, thanks to designm.ag.

Many Mannahattas

2009-05-22T12:11:00.003-04:00

If you have not heard about the Mannahatta Project yet, then we envy you—the thrill of first Mannahatta contact is nothing to be sneezed at, even on an Air Action Alert day, precipitated in part by pollen, in part by everyone driving around in cars. Here the Bowery Boys, America's number one New York City history blogsite, takes on Mannahatta, seen, with the outline of the current Manhattan surrounding it, below.

Bike Rules

2009-05-20T10:58:00.006-04:00

Readers of this site know that (a) they would likely be better of reading other sites, or reading; and (b) that the staff here at TTYDK is very interested in the idea of bike etiquette, which can sometimes seem like an oxymoron though not always. On that note, here is this from Transportation Alternatives. It;s a new series of bike rules--the most important being the first, which reads as follows: "Pedestrians always have the right of way. PERIOD." Icons are below, explainations at the T.A. site, bikingrules.org

Write On

2009-05-01T15:14:00.003-04:00

The New York Times Book Review's blog, Paper Cuts, makes some good points about Thoreau's pencil, pun intended.
Photo here.

A Few Words for a River

2009-04-29T15:28:00.004-04:00

Let's say a few words for a river, our river over here, near the Thoreau Your Don't Know's basecamp, the Hudson. But let's not use the name "Hudson," and let's not just say any words. Let's repeat the words of Seamus Heaney, who the T.Y.D.K. staff happened to see last night, at the first annual (most likely) Princeton Poetry Festival. Let's repeat the words Heaney used when he read a poem called "Saint Kevin and the Blackbird," which we have in a collection called "Open Ground." One thing that the poem is about is Saint Kevin, who, while in his cell in the Wicklow Mountains, had extended his arm out the window, when a blackbird landed in his hand. Saint Kevin, not wanting to injure the bird, or the nest, or both or anything, held his arm in place. Said the poet: "Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the tucked/ Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked/ Into the network of eternal life,/ is moved to pity: now he must hold his hand/ Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks/Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown."
We love this poem, always have, love it more now, as we likely will when we next spend time with it. One of the many things we like about it is that it puts a positive spin on not doing, on standing ground, on holding still: it takes a lot of work to hold still, to hold back in life: "A prayer his body makes entirely/ For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird/ And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name." But what have we done? Just in saying that much we said too much.

Rethinking the Forest

2009-04-19T14:19:00.002-04:00

Here's another way to look at trees, brought to you by the staff of the Thoreau You Don't Know.

Exceptional Explanation of Exceptionalism!

2009-04-09T12:09:00.004-04:00

In Cape Cod, a book by Thoreau that is popularly thought of as a travel book, Thoreau goes a long way in changing the notion of American exceptionalism, emphasizing that the country is great not because God says it is, but because it is constantly recharged by people looking to reinvent America, to make their own exceptional voyage into the future of a new place. Here is a related take on what makes, or maybe ought to make, American exceptionalism, exceptional:

(via Professor G. Brewer, via the Daily Dish)

A Mere Muir?

2009-04-09T08:39:00.003-04:00

The Thoreau You Don't Know staff was recently buttonholed at a party, and presented with the following statement: "I heard that Thoreau was never went out in the real wilderness, that he was no John Muir." There is a lot for the staff to say about this, including, bt not limited to the following: Thoreau was writing about a "partially cultivated wilderness" (i.e., his local farming, lumbering, village shop- and artisan-filled community); Thoreau hiked with friends; Thoreau did in fact do a little Muir-like time in Maine; Muir liked Thoreau, or his work, anyway. But what should also be pointed out was that Muir was no Muir, or at least not what we might call the Pure Nature Guy. What we mean is he dealt with the corporate interests in the world at the time, which were substantial, to create parks, the first National Parks, in essence. Here's this from an excellent piece, by Robert Pogue Harrison, on Muir in the March 12, 2009 issue of the New York Review of Books, which seems to indicate that conservationists might work more closely with economic interests to fashion new kinds of 21st Century conservation:

Muir became a fixture of the steady tourist traffic to Yosemite in the early 1870s, an eccentric guide and congenial raconteur who impressed Emerson and P.T. Barnum, just as he would Theodore Roosevelt many years later. Part of the fascination of Worcester's account ["A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir," by Donald Worster, Oxford University Press] is to see how Muir's concerted conservation work emerged only in 1889 when he was already in his fifties, as part of the sudden wave of progressivism that swept America toward the end of the Gilded Age, and how this conservationism oddly sought corporate allies during its first flush of grassroots organization, accommodating itself to pragmatic, utilitarian, and commercial pressure, utilitarian, and commercial pressures of many kinds.

Muir's life and work is an example of how quickly things can change, how much affect a small group of passionate people can have on the government and society, how a good idea (national parks) has legs. Something Thoreau used to say, by the way, was, "[T]hank God they cannot cut down the clouds."

Dumpster Diving

2009-04-03T16:02:00.002-04:00

Here's this via Swissmiss, via we don't know...

The World's Best Music Videos Featuring Bicycles

2009-04-03T10:16:00.005-04:00

Speaking of bicycles, the good people at Streetsblog, America's #1 public space reporting team, have posted a list of The World's Best Music Videos Featuring Bicycles, including this one by the New Zealand biking team, Flight of the Conchords.

This one is too:

(Recorded) Live!

2009-04-02T09:57:00.003-04:00

If you have been having trouble getting out of bed, if you have turned to your friend or co-worker or significant other and said, "[Dude/Co-worker Bill/Honey], what is there to look forward to?"--well, the answer is here, in the form of a recording of the Book Court reading of the Thoreau You Don't Know, which prominently featured the Washington Square Harp & Shamrock Orchestra, as well as a special guest appearance by the How Not To Get Rich Orchestra.

Learning How to Not Work

2009-03-30T20:27:00.003-04:00

From a debate in the New York Times today, over the effectiveness of cutting salaried employees' hours during a recession featured this commentary by Corinne Maier, the author of "Bonjour Laziness":

France has the ultimate weapon for fighting the economic crisis: free time. Long live the 35-hour week, though it was once sentenced to the scaffold by President Nicolas Sarkozy . The law reducing work hours, known in French as R.T.T., today is like a shock absorber of the crisis. Businesses in trouble are using the R.T.T. regime to avoid layoffs. The proof? Last Christmas, none of my salaried friends in Paris were working. Several of them told me, “My company pushed us to take the R.T.T. between Christmas and New Year’s Day.” Translation: since there’s no work, mandatory days off. France’s law reducing work hours has been a shock absorber in this latest economic crisis. So what, then, of that favored slogan of President Sarkozy, “Work more to earn more”? Mr. Sarkozy himself still seems to believe in it, though perhaps he is the only person who does, and the 2007 changes to the R.T.T. law that reduced overtime costs for business remain in effect. But considering the current recession, it’s unlikely that many businesses will need to take advantage of them. Indeed, the Japanese employers’ organization is studying R.T.T. as a solution to the crisis in that country.

Here's my favorite part, where she wonders if the Americans are up to not working as hard on work and working on enjoying life:

I wonder, though, if the French model can work everywhere else: What would Americans do with close to two months of vacation a year? When you’re not used to it, it can seem like a LOT of free time. But perhaps that is indeed the future of capitalism. My American friends, make an effort to be lazy!

Word of the Day--Today Only!

2009-03-30T12:55:00.001-04:00

A new feature, which may only last for today, depending on the mood of the Thoreau You Don't Know staff: hurdy-gurdy!