Washington Square Quotes

Don’t underestimate the value of irony—it is extremely valuable.

do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?” “Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

if you are going to be pushed you had better jump

You think too much.' 'I suppose I do; but I can’t help it, my mind is so terribly active. When I give myself, I give myself. I pay the penalty in my headaches, my famous headaches--a perfect circlet of pain! But I carry it as a queen carries her crown.

You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

She is like a revolving lighthouse; pitch darkness alternating with a dazzling brilliancy!

As I stand in the elevator, dazed, I realise that a massive winning lottery ticket chunk of my future has somehow found me here in the present, and I start to laugh. I cross the lobby, and as I run down the stairs to the street I see Clare running across Washington Square, jumping and whooping, and I am near tears and I don't know why.

... since she might not be splendid, she would at least be immaculate.

Besides, he was a philosopher; he smoked a good many cigars over his disappointment, and in the fulness of time he got used to it.

Oh," said Catherine, with some eagerness, "it doesn't take long to like a person—when once you begin.

... he escaped all criticism but his own, which was much the most competent and most formidable.

Poor Catherine's dignity was not aggressive; it never sat in state; but if you pushed far enough you could find it. Her father had pushed very far.

Whoever is born in New York is ill-equipped to deal with any other city: all other cities seem, at best, a mistake, and, at worst, a fraud. No other city is so spitefully incoherent. Whereas other cities flaunt there history - their presumed glory - in vividly placed monuments, squares, parks, plaques, and boulevards, such history as New York has been unable entirely to obliterate is to be found, mainly, in the backwaters of Wall Street, in the goat tracks of Old and West Broadway, in and around Washington Square, and, for the relentless searcher, in grimly inaccessible regions of The Bronx.

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places.

Catherine, who was extremely modest, had no desire to shine, and on most social occasions, as they are called, you would have found her lurking in the background.

I hardly knew what to do. I wanted, of course, to rush down to Washington Square and grip the poor blighter silently by the hand; and then, thinking it over, I hadn't the nerve. Absent treatment seemed the touch. I gave it him in waves.

Mrs. Penniman always, even in conversation, italicised her personal pronouns.

... was after all a rather mature blossom, such as could be plucked from the stem only by a vigorous jerk.

Catherine had not understood all that she said; her attention was given to enjoying Marian’s ease of manner and flow of ideas.

In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself. Entering the perimeters of the white arch, one was greeted by the sounds of bongos and acoustic guitars, protest singers, political arguments, activists leafleting, older chess players challenged by the young. This open atmosphere was something I had not experienced, simple freedom that did not seem to be oppressive to anyone.

Nevertheless, he had offered her a home under his own roof, which Lavinia accepted with the alacrity of a woman who had spent the ten years of her married life in the town of Poughkeepsie.

He wanted most of all the people of his own mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he could harangue and scold by the hour, servants, you see, to his fancy. Among these people he was always self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even have opinions of their own, but always he talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king he was, in a six-dollar room facing Washington Square in the city of New York.

The thing to do when you’re impatient,” he proceeded, “is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you.

Tell the world what scares you the most” says Brandy. She gives us each an Aubergine Dreams eyebrow pencil and says “Save the world with some advice from the future” Seth writes on the back of a card and hands the card to Brandy for her to read. On game shows, Brandy reads, some people will take the trip to France, but most people will take the washer dryer pair.” Brandy puts a big Plumbago kiss in the little square for the stamp and lets the wind lift and card and sail it off toward the towers of downtown Seattle. Seth hands her another, and Brandy reads: Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random useless facts that are all we have left from our education” A kiss and the card’s on it’s way toward Lake Washington. From Seth: When did the future switch from being a promise to being a threat?” A kiss and it’s off on the wind toward Ballard. Only when we eat up this planet will God give us another. We’ll be remembered more for what we destroy than what we create.” Interstate 5 snakes by in the distance. From high atop the Space Needle, the southbound lanes are red chase lights, and the northbound lanes are white chase lights. I take a card and write: I love Seth Thomas so much I have to destroy him. I overcompensate by worshipping the queen supreme. Seth will never love me. No one will ever love me ever again. Beandy is waiting to rake the card and read it out loud. Brandy’s waiting to read my worst fears to the world, but I don’t give her the card. I kiss it myself with the lips I don’t have and let the wind take it out of my hand. The card flies up, up, up to the stars and then falls down to land in the suicide net. While I watch my future trapped in the suicide net Brandy reads another card from Seth. We are all self-composting” I write another card from the future and Brandy reads it: When we don’t know who to hate, we hate ourselves” An updraft lifts up my worst fears from the suicide net and lifts them away. Seth writes and Brandy reads. You have to keep recycling yourself”. I write and Brandy reads. Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known.” I write and Brandy reads. The one you love and the one who loves you are never ever the same person.

I imagined us sitting around a table together, sharing a good meal and laughing about all the crazy things we’d done in our lives. Including that time I wrestled the god of old age in Washington Square Park.

And much addicted to speaking the truth. In her younger years she was a good deal of a romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about one's heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton.

The city was a real city, shifty and sexual. I was lightly jostled by small herds of flushed young sailors looking for action on Forty-Second Street, with it rows of x-rated movie houses, brassy women, glittering souvenir shops, and hot-dog vendors. I wandered through Kino parlors and peered through the windows of the magnificent sprawling Grant’s Raw Bar filled with men in black coats scooping up piles of fresh oysters. The skyscrapers were beautiful. They did not seem like mere corporate shells. They were monuments to the arrogant yet philanthropic spirit of America. The character of each quadrant was invigorating and one felt the flux of its history. The old world and the emerging one served up in the brick and mortar of the artisan and the architects. I walked for hours from park to park. In Washington Square, one could still feel the characters of Henry James and the presence of the author himself … This open atmosphere was something I had not experienced, simple freedom that did not seem oppressive to anyone.

If I were the Devil . . . I mean, if I were the Prince of Darkness, I would of course, want to engulf the whole earth in darkness. I would have a third of its real estate and four-fifths of its population, but I would not be happy until I had seized the ripest apple on the tree, so I should set about however necessary to take over the United States. I would begin with a campaign of whispers. With the wisdom of a serpent, I would whisper to you as I whispered to Eve: “Do as you please.” “Do as you please.” To the young, I would whisper, “The Bible is a myth.” I would convince them that man created God instead of the other way around. I would confide that what is bad is good, and what is good is “square”. In the ears of the young marrieds, I would whisper that work is debasing, that cocktail parties are good for you. I would caution them not to be extreme in religion, in patriotism, in moral conduct. And the old, I would teach to pray. I would teach them to say after me: “Our Father, which art in Washington” . . . If I were the devil, I’d educate authors in how to make lurid literature exciting so that anything else would appear dull an uninteresting. I’d threaten T.V. with dirtier movies and vice versa. And then, if I were the devil, I’d get organized. I’d infiltrate unions and urge more loafing and less work, because idle hands usually work for me. I’d peddle narcotics to whom I could. I’d sell alcohol to ladies and gentlemen of distinction. And I’d tranquilize the rest with pills. If I were the devil, I would encourage schools to refine yound intellects but neglect to discipline emotions . . . let those run wild. I would designate an athiest to front for me before the highest courts in the land and I would get preachers to say “she’s right.” With flattery and promises of power, I could get the courts to rule what I construe as against God and in favor of pornography, and thus, I would evict God from the courthouse, and then from the school house, and then from the houses of Congress and then, in His own churches I would substitute psychology for religion, and I would deify science because that way men would become smart enough to create super weapons but not wise enough to control them. If I were Satan, I’d make the symbol of Easter an egg, and the symbol of Christmas, a bottle. If I were the devil, I would take from those who have and I would give to those who wanted, until I had killed the incentive of the ambitious. And then, my police state would force everybody back to work. Then, I could separate families, putting children in uniform, women in coal mines, and objectors in slave camps. In other words, if I were Satan, I’d just keep on doing what he’s doing. (Speech was broadcast by ABC Radio commentator Paul Harvey on April 3, 1965)

... there was something superior even in his injustice, and absolute in his mistakes.

When a man decides to do something he must go all the way,” he said, “but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.

To her mind there was nothing of the infinite about Mrs. Penniman; Catherine saw her all at once, as it were, and was not dazzled by the apparition; whereas her father's great faculties seemed, as they stretched away, to lose themselves in a sort of luminous vagueness, which indicated, not that they stopped, but that Catherine's own mind ceased to follow them.

This purpose had not been preponderantly to make money--it had been rather to learn something and to do something. To learn something interesting, and to do something useful--this was, roughly speaking, the programme he had sketched, and of which the accident of his wife having an income appeared to him in no degree to modify the validity.

You see, people forget you

What the hell, it always rains in sad love stories. And in happy ones too. Must be a reason, though perhaps not necessarily metaphysical.

A “place to sit” ends up being Washington Square Park, where we find a bench and Oliver lays out his sandwich and I pop open my seltzer.

MARRY JANE: What are you doing here? SPIDER-MAN: A 500 ft. geyser in Washington square and you're wondering what I'm doing here?

Such afternoons the buses are crowded into line like elephants in a circusparade. Morningside Heights to Washington Square, Penn Station to Grant's Tomb. Parlorsnakes and flappers joggle hugging downtown uptown, hug joggling gray square after gray square, until they see the new moon giggling over Weehawken and feel the gusty wind of a dead Sunday blowing dust in their faces, dust of a typsy twilight.

Because you see darling, darling, there are no false questions. All questions in life are true questions. Answers may be false, but questions cannot be false. Sure,they can be dumb, they can be stupid, but never false.

Stuyvesants and Vanderbilts and Roosevelts and staid, respectable Washington Square. Trinity Church. Mrs. Astor’s famous ballroom, the Four Hundred, snobby Ward McAllister, that traitor Edith Wharton, Delmonico’s. Zany Zelda and Scott in the Plaza fountain, the Algonquin Round Table, Dottie Parker and her razor tongue and pen, the Follies. Cholly Knickerbocker, 21, Lucky Strike dances at the Stork, El Morocco. The incomparable Hildegarde playing the Persian Room at the Plaza, Cary Grant kneeling at her feet in awe. Fifth Avenue: Henri Bendel, Bergdorf’s, Tiffany’s.

Mrs. Almond lived much farther up town, in an embryonic street with a high number—a region where the extension of the city began to assume a theoretic air, where poplars grew beside the pavement (when there was one), and mingled their shade with the steep roofs of desultory Dutch houses, and where pigs and chickens disported themselves in the gutter. These elements of rural picturesqueness have now wholly departed from New York street scenery; but they were to be found within the memory of middle-aged persons, in quarters which now would blush to be reminded of them.

Some three or four years before this Dr. Sloper had moved his household gods up town, as they say in New York. He had been living ever since his marriage in an edifice of red brick, with granite copings and an enormous fanlight over the door, standing in a street within five minutes' walk of the City Hall, which saw its best days (from the social point of view) about 1820. After this, the tide of fashion began to set steadily northward, as, indeed, in New York, thanks to the narrow channel in which it flows, it is obliged to do, and the great hum of traffic rolled farther to the right and left of Broadway.

American girls are the best girls,” he said cheerfully to his young companion.

(...) It simply appeared to him proper and reasonable that a well-bred young woman should not carry half her fortune on her back. (...)

Most love stories are nocturnal. That's what makes them so fascinating.

She sought to be eloquent in her garments, and to make up for her diffidence of speech by a fine frankness of costume

Her aunt seemed to her aggressive and foolish, and to see it so clearly—to judge Mrs. Penniman so positively—made her feel old and grave. She did not resent the imputation of weakness; it made no impression on her, for she had not the sense of weakness, and she was not hurt at not being appreciated. She had an immense respect for her father, and she felt that to displease him would be a misdemeanour analogous to an act of profanity in a great temple; but her purpose had slowly ripened, and she believed that her prayers had purified it of its violence.

The court exonerated Admiral Kimmel of all charges and laid the blame squarely on Washington. The Army Pearl Harbor Board also concluded that Washington had full foreknowledge of the attack.

Moinous reaches for Sucette's hand and squeezes it. Oh but I do love you, I do, I swear, in spite of them. However, for the first time in his life Moinous understands what quicksand love is.

I want to know why you don’t like me, Malloy. I like you, even if you do hit people.” He sighed. “I never said I didn’t like you, Mrs. Brandt.” Reasonable again. She wanted to smack him. “And why don’t you ever call me Sarah? You think I’m beautiful, but you never call me Sarah.” He muttered something she didn’t understand. “You do think I’m beautiful,” she insisted. “You said so!” “Yes, I do,” he said grudgingly. “And I do like you, Sarah. Now let’s talk about something else, because you’re going to be very embarrassed if you remember any of this conversation tomorrow.

If she is to have a fall,” said Mrs. Almond, with a gentle laugh, “we must spread as many carpets as we can.” And she carried out this idea by showing a great deal of motherly kindness to the girl.

FEDERAL LANDOWNERSHIP (TOP 12 STATES) STATE TOTAL SQUARE MILES % OWNED BY FEDERAL GOV. 1. Nevada 61,548 87.6 2. Utah 35,723 68 3. Alaska 244,627 67 4. Idaho 34,520 65.2 5. Oregon 34,084 55.5 6. California 49,842 49.9 7. Wyoming 30,902 49.7 8. Arizona 32,228 44.3 9. Colorado 25,851 38.9 10. New Mexico 28,143 36.2 11. Washington 13,984 32.8 12. Montana 29,718 31.9 Source: National Wilderness Institute

The ideal of quiet and of genteel retirement, in 1835, was found in Washington Square, where the Doctor built himself a handsome, modern, wide-fronted house, with a big balcony before the drawing-room windows, and a flight of marble steps ascending to a portal which was also faced with white marble. This structure, and many of its neighbours, which it exactly resembled, were supposed, forty years ago, to embody the last results of architectural science, and they remain to this day very solid and honourable dwellings. In front of them was the Square, containing a considerable quantity of inexpensive vegetation, enclosed by a wooden paling, which increased its rural and accessible appearance; and round the corner was the more august precinct of the Fifth Avenue, taking its origin at this point with a spacious and confident air which already marked it for high destinies. I know not whether it is owing to the tenderness of early associations, but this portion of New York appears to many persons the most delectable. It has a kind of established repose which is not of frequent occurrence in other quarters of the long, shrill city; it has a riper, richer, more honourable look than any of the upper ramifications of the great longitudinal thoroughfare—the look of having had something of a social history.

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while; in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.” —Don Juan

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places." These "places" make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

Well I'll be damned Here comes your ghost again But that's not unusual It's just that the moon is full And you happened to call And here I sit Hand on the telephone Hearing a voice I'd known A couple of light years ago Heading straight for a fall As I remember your eyes Were bluer than robin's eggs My poetry was lousy you said Where are you calling from? A booth in the midwest Ten years ago I bought you some cufflinks You brought me something We both know what memories can bring They bring diamonds and rust Well you burst on the scene Already a legend The unwashed phenomenon The original vagabond You strayed into my arms And there you stayed Temporarily lost at sea The Madonna was yours for free Yes the girl on the half-shell Could keep you unharmed Now I see you standing With brown leaves falling all around And snow in your hair Now you're smiling out the window Of that crummy hotel Over Washington Square Our breath comes out white clouds Mingles and hangs in the air Speaking strictly for me We both could have died then and there Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague 'Cause I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid

These things belonged here, in this house: it was as if the house itself had grown them, as if they were something living that would shrivel and die were they moved elsewhere. And then he thought: was the same not true for him? Was he not also something the house had, if not spawned, then nourished and fed? If he left Washington Square, how would he ever know where he truly was in the world? How could he leave these walls that had stared blankly, plainly back at him through all of his states?

It’s funny the way you sometimes remind me of myself,” he went on. “I too did not want to take the path of a warrior. I believed that all that work was for nothing, and since we are all going to die what difference would it make to be a warrior? I was wrong. But I had to find that out for myself. Whenever you do realize that you are wrong, and that it certainly makes a world of difference, you can say that you are convinced. And then you can proceed by yourself. And by yourself you may even become a man of knowledge.

In all the media coverage of militias and militants, Hamas, Fateh, and the Israeli army, one forgets that they operate in the midst of these large numbers of innocent people, crammed into 360 square kilometers, an area “slightly more than twice the size of Washington, DC.

Long ago, when New York City was affordable, people who felt they didn’t fit into the mainstream could take a chance and head there from wherever they were. Bob Dylan came east from Minnesota in the winter of 1961 and made his way downtown to Greenwich Village. Like countless others before him, he came to shed the constricted definition of his birthplace and the confinement of his past. I first saw Bob at Gerde’s Folk City, the Italian bar and restaurant cum music venue on the corner of Mercer and West Fourth Streets, one block west of Broadway and a few blocks east of Washington Square Park. Bob was playing back-up harmonica for various musicians and as a duo with another folksinger, Mark Spoelstra, before he played sets by himself. Mark played the twelve string guitar and had a melodious singing voice. Bob’s raspy voice and harmonica added a little dimension to the act. Their repertoire consisted of traditional folk songs and the songs of Woody Guthrie. They weren’t half bad. Bob was developing his image into his own version of a rambling troubadour, in the Guthrie mode.

the BASK-8 had finally arrived! The Cyborg Queen and Commander Newters observed the park from the window of the Command Bridge. “I believe this is the park we’ve been looking for, Your Majesty,” Commander Newters said. “Oh yes, this is definitely Washington Square Park, I can see it’s filled with the boxy soldiers we agreed to defeat.” “This city has more square parks than all my planets combined,” the Cyborg Queen said. “Anyhoo, I can see we’re a little tardy. Send the Cyborgs to assist the metallic lumberjack and his vertically challenged friend.

And I still want to know why you hit that man in front of me. You wanted me to see it, didn’t you?” “Why would I want you to see it?” Sarah was getting very annoyed with him. He usually wasn’t this dense. “Because you wanted me to think badly of you, and I demand to know why!” “You do, do you?” he said in a very odd tone. “Yes, I do, and I’m not getting out of this cab until you tell me!” “I don’t want to tell you.” “Then what do you want?” She knew he was looking at her, although she doubted he could see very much in the darkness. “I want to show you,” he said.

She stood there looking, consciously and rather seriously, at Mr. Ransom; a smile of exceeding faintness played about her lips—it was just perceptible enough to light up the native gravity of her face. It might have been likened to a thin ray of moonlight resting upon the wall of a prison.

But then he knew. It was not just the fact of his grandfather's tears; it was because he knew that, with them, his grandfather was acknowledging that he understood that David would, finally, disobey him. And with that, David knew as well that his grandfather would not yield, and that when he left Washington Square, he would be leaving it behind forever. He sat, immobile, understanding that this would be the last time he would sit in this drawing room, before this fire, the last time this would be his home. He understood that now his life was not here. Now his life was with Edward.

I had, by then, done my share of reading on Philadelphia, so I knew that, in another time, when the Task was here in Philadelphia, the city had fallen victim to a fever. And among the men who combatted this fever was Benjamin Rush, a famous doctor, which is hard to countenance given the theory he put forth in defense of the city. Colored people were immune to the fever, he told Philadelphia, and more than immune, their very presence could alter the air itself, sucking up the scourge and holding it captive in our fetid black bodies. And so tasking men were brought in by the hundreds on the alleged black magic of our bodies. They all died. And when the city began to fill with their corpses, its masters searched for a space far from the whites who were felled by the disease. And they chose a patch of land where no one lived, and tossed us into pits. Years later, after the fever had been forgotten, after the war had birthed this new country, they built rows and rows of well-appointed houses right on top of those people, and and named a square for their liberating general. It struck me that even here, in the free North, the luxuries of this world were built right on top of us.

In our co-lecturing days, Flo Kennedy and I were sitting in the back of a taxi on the way to the Boston airport, discussing Flo’s book Abortion Rap. The driver, an old Irish woman, the only such cabbie I’ve ever seen, turned to us at a traffic light and said the immortal words, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament!” Would she have wanted to own her words in public? I don’t know, but I so wish we had asked her name. When Flo and I told this taxi story at speeches, the driver’s sentence spread on T-shirts, political buttons, clinic walls, and protest banners from Washington to Vatican Square, from Ireland to Nigeria. By 2012, almost forty years after that taxi ride, the driver’s words were on a banner outside the Republican National Convention in Tampa, when the party nominated Mitt Romney for president of the United States on a platform that included criminalizing abortion. Neither Flo nor the taxi driver could have lived to see him lose—and yet they were there.

At different spots in the room stood the six resident geniuses to whose presence in the home Mr. Pett had such strong objections, and in addition to these she had collected so many more of a like breed from the environs of Washington Square that the air was clamorous with the hoarse cries of futurist painters, esoteric Buddhists, vers libre poets, interior decorators, and stage reformers, sifted in among the more conventional members of society who had come to listen to them. Men with new religions drank tea with women with new hats. Apostles of Free Love expounded their doctrines to persons who had been practising them for years without realising it. All over the room throats were being strained and minds broadened.

The decades that she devoted to conserving her husband’s legacy made Eliza only more militantly loyal to his memory, and there was one injury she could never forget: the exposure of the Maria Reynolds affair, for which she squarely blamed James Monroe. In the 1820s, after Monroe had completed two terms as president, he called upon Eliza in Washington, D.C., hoping to thaw the frost between them. Eliza was then about seventy and staying at her daughter’s home. She was sitting in the backyard with her fifteen-year-old nephew when a maid emerged and presented the ex-president’s card. Far from being flattered by this distinguished visitor, Eliza was taken aback. “She read the name and stood holding the card, much perturbed,” said her nephew. “Her voice sank and she spoke very low, as she always did when she was angry. ‘What has that man come to see me for?’” The nephew said that Monroe must have stopped by to pay his respects. She wavered. “I will see him,” she finally agreed. So the small woman with the upright carriage and the sturdy, determined step marched stiffly into the house. When she entered the parlor, Monroe rose to greet her. Eliza then did something out of character and socially unthinkable: she stood facing the ex-president but did not invite him to sit down. With a bow, Monroe began what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech, stating “that it was many years since they had met, that the lapse of time brought its softening influences, that they both were nearing the grave, when past differences could be forgiven and forgotten.” Eliza saw that Monroe was trying to draw a moral equation between them and apportion blame equally for the long rupture in their relationship. Even at this late date, thirty years after the fact, she was not in a forgiving mood. “Mr. Monroe,” she told him, “if you have come to tell me that you repent, that you are sorry, very sorry, for the misrepresentations and the slanders and the stories you circulated against my dear husband, if you have come to say this, I understand it. But otherwise, no lapse of time, no nearness to the grave, makes any difference.” Monroe took in this rebuke without comment. Stunned by the fiery words delivered by the elderly little woman in widow’s weeds, the ex-president picked up his hat, bid Eliza good day, and left the house, never to return.

This, too, was like seeing double. This was where my heartaches began. In combat zones there is no structure, the form of things changes all the time. Safety, danger, control, panic, these and other labels constantly attach and detach themselves from places and people. When you emerge from such a space it stays with you, its otherness randomly imposes itself on the apparent stability of your peaceful home-town streets. What-if becomes the truth, you imagine buildings exploding in Gramercy Park, you see craters appear in the middle of Washington Square, and women carrying shopping bags drop dead on Delancey Street, bee-stung by sniper fire. You take pictures of your small patch of Manhattan and ghost images begin to appear in them, negative phantoms of the distant dead. Double exposure: like Kirlian photography, it becomes a new kind of truth.

George Washington is the quintessential American public ancestor. Americans worship him before an obelisk in Washington, a statue in Baltimore, a square in New York, an engraving on the dollar, and Stuart prints hanging from coast to coast. (Washington couldn't have known that the obelisk to be dedicated in memory of him, on February 21, 1885, would be the world's largest replica of a 3,500-year-old monument to the Egyptian sun god.)

To commit the act of felo-de-se is a form of delusion. You see, my love, to leave one's life unfinished implies the possibility of success. What is left unlived may contain the potential truth one always seeks. Those who kill themselves do so with the conviction that they would have reached that truth eventually had they lived to the proper end. They die in the illusion of hope which in a way keeps the rest of us alive. Reason, therefore, for not committing suicide.

Suggested Reading Nuha al-Radi, Baghdad Diaries Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin Jane Austen, Emma, Mansfield Park, and Pride and Prejudice Saul Bellow, The Dean’s December and More Die of Heartbreak Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Joseph Conrad, Under Western Eyes Henry Fielding, Shamela and Tom Jones Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank Henry James, The Ambassadors, Daisy Miller, and Washington Square Franz Kafka, In the Penal Colony and The Trial Katherine Kressman Taylor, Address Unknown Herman Melville, The Confidence Man Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita, Invitation to a Beheading, and Pnin Sarah Orne Jewett, The Country of the Pointed Firs Iraj Pezeshkzad, My Uncle Napoleon Diane Ravitch, The Language Police Julie Salamon, The Net of Dreams Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis Scheherazade, A Thousand and One Nights F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants Carol Shields, The Stone Diaries Joseph Skvorecky, The Engineer of Human Souls Muriel Spark, Loitering with Intent and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Italo Svevo, Confessions of Zeno Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Anne Tyler, Back When We Were Grownups and St. Maybe Mario Vargas Llosa, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter Reading

home of Elon Simpson. We were right off of Washington Square, a part of the city marked by well-appointed brownstones with shuttered windows and a park hailing back to this country’s birth. Here was the seat of this city’s Quality—and the seat of our dead. I had, by then, done my share of reading on Philadelphia, so I knew that, in another time, when the Task was here in Pennsylvania, the city had fallen victim to a wave of fever. And among the men who combatted this fever was Benjamin Rush, a famous doctor, which is hard to countenance given the theory he put forth in defense of the city. Colored people were immune to the fever, he told Philadelphia, and more than immune, their very presence could alter the air itself, sucking up the scourge and holding it captive in our fetid black bodies. And so tasking men were brought in by the hundreds on the alleged black magic of our bodies. They all died. And when the city began to fill with their corpses, its masters searched for a space far from the whites who were felled by the disease. And they chose a patch of land where no one lived, and tossed us into pits. Years later, after the fever had been forgotten, after the war had birthed this new country, they built rows and rows of well-appointed houses right on top of those people, and named a square for their liberating general. It struck me that even here, in the free North, the luxuries of this world were built right on top of us.

Erect and somber, Washington rode into the middle of a hollow square formed by New York and Connecticut regiments while a chirpy throng of civilians ringed the greensward. A uniformed aide spurred his horse forward; the crowd hushed as he unfolded his script and began to read: “In Congress, July 4, 1776.” Even the most unlettered private recognized that something majestic was in the air. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Here is a cutting from the Ladies’ Home Journal of Philadelphia: Uncle Sam set apart a royal pleasure ground in North Western Wyoming and called it Yellowstone National Park. To give an idea of what its size—3,312 square miles—really means, let us clear the floor of the park and tenderly place some of the great cities of the world there, close together as children do their blocks. First put in London, then Greater New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Paris, Boston, Berlin, St. Louis, Hong Kong, San Francisco and Washington. The floor of the park should be about half covered, then lift up Rhode Island. Carefully, so as not to spill any of its people, set it down and press in the West Indies. And even then there are 200 square miles left.

For my first home-cooked meal in Tokyo, I took an assortment of beautiful Japanese ingredients and did what came naturally: I made Chinese food. I stir-fried some beautifully marbled kurobuta (Berkshire breed) pork with bok choy, ginger, and leeks, sauced it with soy sauce, mirin, and vinegar, and served it over rice, sprinkled with shichimi tōgarashi seven-spice mixture. This seemed like a reasonable act of Japanese-Chinese fusion. I made some quick-pickled cucumbers on the side. This was before we discovered that anything you do to a Japanese cucumber diminishes it. I should have known this; once I interviewed a Japanese-American farmer who grows more than a hundred Asian vegetables in Washington state. Naturally, I asked him about his personal favorite. Cucumber, he said. "How do you prepare it?" I asked. "Slice and eat." The whole meal was about the same as something I'd make at home, but I cooked it in Japan. It was like the SpongeBob SquarePants episode where SpongeBob has to work the night shift at the Krusty Krab, and he keeps saying things like, "I'm chopping lettuce... at night!" I was slicing cucumbers... in Tokyo!

Richard Durham was a black writer whose credits in radio would run a gamut from Irna Phillips serials to prestige plays for such as The CBS Radio Workshop. But in Destination Freedom Durham wrote from the heart. Anger simmers at the foundation of these shows, rising occasionally to a wail of agony and torment. On no other show was the term “Jim Crow” used as an adjective, if at all: nowhere else could be heard the actual voices of black actors giving life to a real black environment. There were no buffoons or toadies in Durham’s plays: there were heroes and villains, girlfriends and lovers, mothers, fathers, brutes; there were kids named Joe Louis and Jackie Robinson, who bucked the tide and became kings in places named Madison Square Garden and Ebbets Field. The early historical dramas soon gave way to a more contemporary theme: the black man’s struggle in a modern racist society. Shows on Denmark Vesey, Frederick Douglass, and George Washington Carver gave way to Richard Wright’s Black Boy and the lives of Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller, and Nat King Cole. The Tiger Hunt was a war story, of a black tank battalion; Last Letter Home told of black pilots in World War II. The stories pulled no punches in their execution of the common theme, making Destination Freedom not only the most powerful but the only show of its kind.

Monty küçük tuvaletin kapısını kilitleyip, klozetin kapalı kapağının üstüne oturdu. Biri tuvalet kağıdı rulosunun takılı olduğu plastiğin üzerine, cehenneme kadar yolunuz var, yazmıştı. Kesinlikle diye düşündü o da. Ama senin de cehenneme kadar yolun var. Herkesin. Kapıdaki Fransız kadının, şarap içerek yemek yiyenlerin, siparişleri alan garsonların, hepinizin canı cehenneme. Bu kentin ve içindeki herkesin canı cehenneme. Sokak köşelerinde sırıtarak dilenen serserilerin, türbanlı Sihlerin, sarı taksileriyle birbiriyle yarışan yıkanmak bilmez Pakistanlıların da. Göğüs kıllarını alıp, memelerini büyüten Chelsea'li ibnelerin de. Hepsinin canı cehenneme. Aşırı pahalı meyvelerinden piramitler yapan Koreli manavların, onların plastik ambalajlara sarılı lale ve güllerinin de. Beşinci Cadde'de sahte Gucci satan beyaz cübbeli Nijeryalıların da. Brighton Sahili'nde küp şekerleri dişlerinin arasında tutarak çaylarını cam bardaklardan içen Rusların da. Hepsinin canları cehenneme. 47. Cadde'de elmas satan şapkalı, kirli gabardin takımlı, Mesih'in gelmesini beklerken sürekli para sayıp duran Yahudilerin de. Sokaklarda sürtenlerin, yaşlıların ve de spastiklerin de. Kendini beğenmiş, metrolarda sürekli gazete okuyan, kolonya sürünmüş Wall Street borsacılarının da. Hepsinin canı cehenneme. Washington Square Park'ta, bellerinden cüzdan zincirleri sarkan patenli punkçıların, her yere bayrak asan, otomobillerinin açık camlardan dinledikleri müziği bangır bangır herkese dinleten Porto Rikoluların da. Naylon eşofmanları ve St. Anthony madalyonlarıyla gezip, saçlarına durmadan briyantin süren Bensonhurst İtalyanlarının da. Enginarı Balducci'den, eşarbı Hermes'ten alan, büzük dudaklı, asık suratlı ev kadınlarının da. Asla pas vermeyi bilmeyen, savunma yapmayan, her turnikeye girişte bir adım fazladan atan varoş çocuklarının da. Babaları Tokyo'ya iş gezisine giderken mutfakta oturup esrar çeken okullu uyuşturucu müptelalarının da. Mavi giysileri içinde kabadayılık taslayarak dolaşan, kalın enseli, Krispy Kreme'e giderken bile kırmızı ışığı takmayan polislerin de. Knicks'in, Indiana'ya karşı oyunu nedeniyle Patrick Ewing'in, Charles Smith ve onun Chicago maçındaki başarısız uzaktan atışlarının, John Starks'ın Houston maçındaki korkunç şutlarının da canı cehenneme. Jordan'ı hiç yenemedikleri için cehennemin dibine kadar yolları var. Sürekli söylenip duran bücür Jakob Elinsky'nin de canı cehenneme. Hep sevgililerimin kıçlarına bakıp duran Frank Slattery'nin de canı cehenneme. Ben gidince özgürlüğünü ilan edecek Naturelle Rosariao'nun da canı cehenneme. Güvendiğim ama beni gammazlayan Kostya Novotyny'in de. Karanlık odasında film banyo edip duran babamın da. Karlar altında çürüyen annemin de. Bu kadar çabuk kurtulan İsa'nın da canı cehenneme. Çarmıhta yalnızca birkaç saat, cehennemde bir hafta sonu sonra melek ordusuyla eğlence. Bu şehrin ve içindeki her şeyin canı cehenneme. Astoria'daki tek katlı evlerden Park Avenue'daki dublekslere, Brownsville'deki projelerden, Soho'daki mağazalara, Bellevue Hastanesi'nden Alphabet City'deki meskenlere, Park Slope'un kahverengi taşlarına kadar her şeyin canı cehenneme. Bırakın Araplar her tarafı bombalasınlar, bırakın sular yükselsin ve bu fare delikleri yok olsun, depremler yıksın tüm bu yüksek binaları, alevler sarsın her yanı. Yaksın, yıksın, bitirsin. Ve senin de canın cehenneme Montygomery Brogan. Her şeyi mahveden asıl sensin.

Radiation from the Big Bang may give us a clue to dark matter and dark energy. First of all, the echo, or afterglow, of the Big Bang is easy to detect. Our satellites have been able to detect this radiation to enormous accuracy. Photographs of this microwave background radiation show that it is remarkably smooth, with tiny ripples appearing on its surface. These ripples, in turn, represent tiny quantum fluctuations that existed at the instant of the Big Bang that were then magnified by the explosion. What is controversial, however, is that there appear to be irregularities, or blotches, in the background radiation that we cannot explain. There is some speculation that these strange blotches are the remnants of collisions with other universes. In particular, the CMB (cosmic microwave background) cold spot is an unusually cool mark on the otherwise uniform background radiation that some physicists have speculated might be the remnants of some type of connection or collision between our universe and a parallel universe at the beginning of time. If these strange markings represent our universe interacting with parallel universes, then the multiverse theory might become more plausible to skeptics. Already, there are plans to put detectors in space that can refine all these calculations, using space-based gravity wave detectors. LISA Back in 1916, Einstein showed that gravity could travel in waves. Like throwing a stone in a pond and witnessing the concentric, expanding rings it creates, Einstein predicted that swells of gravity would travel at the speed of light. Unfortunately, these would be so faint that he did not think we would find them anytime soon. He was right. It took until 2016, one hundred years after his original prediction, before gravity waves were observed. Signals from two black holes that collided in space about a billion years ago were captured by huge detectors. These detectors, built in Louisiana and Washington State, each occupy several square miles of real estate. They resemble a large L, with laser beams traveling down each leg of the L. When the two beams meet at the center, they create an interference pattern that is so sensitive to vibrations that they could detect this collision. For their pioneering work, three physicists, Rainer Weiss, Kip S. Thorne, and Barry C. Barish, won the Nobel Prize in 2017. For even greater sensitivity, there are plans to send gravity wave detectors into outer space. The project, known as the laser interferometry space antenna (LISA), might be able to pick up vibrations from the instant of the Big Bang itself. One version of the LISA consists of three separate satellites in space, each connected to the others by a network of laser beams. The triangle is about a million miles on each side.

Anxious to defend his adopted city—especially his side of town, the less fashionable west end—Eli considered giving Veronica a condensed lecture on the history of Asheville, North Carolina. 1880: the Western North Carolina Railroad completed a line from Salisbury to Asheville, which later enabled George Washington Vanderbilt to construct the Biltmore Estate, the largest private residence in America. Over time, that 179,000 square foot house transitioned into a multi- million dollar company. Which lured in tourists. Who created thousands of jobs. Which caused the sprawl flashing by Eli’s window at fifty-five miles per hour. But Eli refrained from being the Local Know-It-All, remembering all the times he’d traveled to new cities and some cabbie wanted to play docent, wanted to tell him about the real Cleveland or the hidden Miami. Instead, he let the air conditioner chase away the remnants of his jet lag and thought about Almario “Go Go” Gato. He waited for Veronica to say something about the Blue Ridge Mountains, which stood alongside the highway, hovering over the valley below like stoic parents waiting for their kids to clean up their messy bedrooms. Eli gave her points for her silence. And for ditching the phone, even if she kept glancing anxiously toward the glove compartment every time it buzzed. The car rode smooth, hardly a bump. For a resident of Los Angeles, she drove cautiously, obeying all traffic laws. Eli had a perfect driving record. Well, almost perfect. There was that time he drove the Durham Bulls’ chartered Greyhound into the right field fence during the seventh inning stretch. But that was history. Almost ancient.

Between my first book tour, in 2003, and the next one, in 2009, many of the places I visited had undergone a significant transformation or vanished: Cody’s in Berkeley, seven branch libraries in Philadelphia, twelve of the fourteen bookstores in Harvard Square, Harry W. Schwartz in Milwaukee and, in my own hometown of Washington, D.C., Olsson’s and Chapters.

compared to his sixty-six-thousand-square-foot, $63 million primary residence on Lake Washington.

Suddenly—so suddenly it scared him—there was light ahead, around a corner. Not the light of a rainy evening in the city, but paler, less certain. They rounded the corner. He noticed the flashlight bulb starting to flicker; lost the alligator momentarily. Then turned the corner and found a wide space like the nave of a church, an arched roof overhead, a phosphorescent light coming off walls whose exact arrangement was indistinct. “Wha,” he said out loud. Backwash from the river? Sea water shines in the dark sometimes; in the wake of a ship you see the same uncomfortable radiance. But not here. The alligator had turned to face him. It was a clear, easy shot. He waited. He was waiting for something to happen. Something otherworldly, of course. He was sentimental and superstitious. Surely the alligator would receive the gift of tongues, the body of Father Fairing be resurrected, the sexy V. tempt him away from murder. He felt about to levitate and at a loss to say where, really, he was. In a bonecellar, a sepulchre. “Ah, schlemihl,” he whispered into the phosphorescence. Accident prone, schlimazzel. The gun would blow up in his hands. The alligator’s heart would tick on, his own would burst, mainspring and escapement rust in this shindeep sewage, in this unholy light. “Can I let you just go?” Bung the foreman knew he was after a sure thing. It was down on the clipboard. And then he saw the alligator couldn’t go any further. Had settled down on its haunches to wait, knowing damn well it was going to be blasted. In Independence Hall in Philly, when the floor was rebuilt, they left part of the original, a foot square, to show the tourists. “Maybe,” the guide would tell you, “Benjamin Franklin stood right there, or even George Washington.” Profane on an eighth-grade class trip had been suitably impressed. He got that feeling now. Here in this room an old man had killed and boiled a catechumen, had committed sodomy with a rat, had discussed a rodent nunhood with V., a future saint—depending which story you listened to. “I’m sorry,” he told the alligator. He was always saying he was sorry. It was a schlemihl’s stock line. He raised the repeater to his shoulder, flicked off the safety. “Sorry,” he said again. Father Fairing talked to rats. Profane talked to alligators. He fired. The alligator jerked, did a backflip, thrashed briefly, was still. Blood began to seep out amoebalike to form shifting patterns with the weak glow of the water. Abruptly, the flashlight went out.

The Apotheosis of Washington—a 4,664-square-foot fresco that covers the canopy of the Capitol Rotunda—was completed in 1865 by Constantino Brumidi. Known as “The Michelangelo of the Capitol,” Brumidi had laid claim to the Capitol Rotunda in the same way Michelangelo had laid claim to the Sistine Chapel, by painting a fresco on the room’s most lofty canvas—the ceiling. Like Michelangelo, Brumidi had done some of his finest work inside the Vatican. Brumidi, however, immigrated to America in 1852, abandoning God’s largest shrine in favor of a new shrine, the U.S. Capitol, which now glistened with examples of his mastery—from the trompe l’oeil of the Brumidi Corridors to the frieze ceiling of the Vice President’s Room. And yet it was the enormous image hovering above the Capitol Rotunda that most historians considered to be Brumidi’s masterwork. Robert

May 19: At 2:00 p.m., Marilyn arrives at Madison Square Garden for a brief rehearsal. She departs to have her hair styled by Kenneth Battelle at a cost of $150. Then she returns to her New York apartment for a $125 makeup session with Marie Irvine. Finally, her maid, Hazel Washington, helps hook Marilyn into her Jean Louis gown, and she arrives at Madison Square Garden approximately three hours before she is to perform. Introduced to an audience of fifteen thousand as the “late Marilyn Monroe” after she delays her entrance (all part of the carefully rehearsed show), Marilyn performs flawlessly as the last of twenty-three entertainers and is clearly the highlight of the evening. Columnist Dorothy Kilgallen describes Marilyn as “making love to the president of the United States.” Marilyn also attends a party at the home of Arthur Krim, president of United Artists. She is photographed in a group of Kennedy supporters watching Diahann Carroll sing. To her right is Maria Callas and Arthur Miller’s father, Isidore. She is also photographed with both Robert and John Kennedy, as well as presidential advisor Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Schlesinger and Robert Kennedy playfully compete to dance with Marilyn. Contrary to sensationalistic reports, Marilyn spends the rest of the evening in her New York apartment with her friend Ralph Roberts and James Haspiel, one of her devoted fans.

Most of the trees are already dying. All across North America from Mexico to Alaska, forests are dying. Seventy thousand square miles of forest—that's as much land as all of the state of Washington—that much forest has died since I was born. What if I am growing up in a world that will not have trees anymore by the time I am my grandfather's age?

Forgive me, Mrs. Patterson, but I find I’m not quite desperate enough to hire Miss Longfellow. I have been given the responsibility of three children. With that responsibility comes the expectation that I will keep them alive until they reach adulthood. Putting Miss Longfellow in charge of them is truly not the best way for me to achieve the whole keeping-them-alive part of my plan.” “I never realized you were possessed of such a melodramatic nature, Mr. Mulberry,” Mrs. Patterson began. “But while I sympathize slightly with your plight, knowing you never expected to have three children dropped off on your doorstep, I’m afraid you’ve run out of options. Your wards’ reputations precede them, and no one wants to work for you, with the exception of Miss Longfellow.” Miss Longfellow suddenly rose to her feet and lifted her chin. “I find I no longer have any desire to work for Mr. Mulberry.” Mrs. Patterson waved Miss Longfellow’s protest aside. “Of course you do, dear. Why, he pays top dollar, and you’ll get to spend your summer in Newport. It’s the place to summer these days, and I’ve heard Mr. Mulberry has one of the most impressive cottages there.” She smiled. “It faces the ocean.” “Which is exactly why I won’t be taking Miss Longfellow with me to Newport,” Everett argued. “She’ll either drown the children by tossing them into the waves to assess their swimming abilities, or drown herself in the process, leaving me short a nanny once ag—” “I wouldn’t work for you even if you offered me two thousand dollars, begged me on bended knee, and brought me flowers.” Miss Longfellow turned her attention to Mrs. Patterson. “If you come across a family other than Mr. Mulberry’s who could use my services, I may be reached at Mrs. Hart’s residence in Washington Square.” With

On a June afternoon in 1791, George Washington, Andrew Ellicott, and Peter Charles L’Enfant rode east from Georgetown “to take,” so Washington recorded in his diary, “a more perfect view of the ground” of the new federal city. From David Burnes’s fields they surveyed the prospect of the Potomac River, and then, continuing east across the Tiber Creek, they climbed to the crest of Jenkins Hill. With the confluence of the Eastern Branch and the Potomac, the cities of Alexandria and Georgetown, and the hills of Maryland and Virginia spread majestically before them, the time had come, the president wrote, “to decide finally on the spots on which to place the public buildings.” From their vantage point on Jenkins Hill, L’Enfant presented his vision of a city worthy of the new republic. He began by siting the two principal buildings: the “Congress House,” as he called it, would command Jenkins Hill, “a pedestal waiting for a superstructure”; the “President’s Palace,” L’Enfant’s name for today’s White House, would rise about a mile away on the land partially belonging to David Burnes. A star of avenues each named for a state would radiate from the center of each house. Pennsylvania Avenue—the name would honor the state’s importance in the nation’s creation—would connect the two buildings. It would be “a direct and large avenue,” 180 feet wide and lined with a double row of trees. These radiating avenues would intersect at circles and squares, to be named for heroes, and they would overlay a grid of streets similar to that of Philadelphia.

Amid this social intercourse, however, he avoided sedulously a meeting with Mrs. Annice; he had decided not to see her for a while. Indeed, it was not till an evening late in February, after dinner, that he took a cab to her house near Washington Square. He found her at home, and had not waited a minute before she came into the room. She was a tall woman, and wonderfully handsome by gaslight; but she had that tiresome habit, which many women have, of talking intensely--in italics, as it were: a habit found generally in women ill brought up-women without control of their feelings, or command of the expression of them. ("The Bargain of Rupert Orange")

In the summer of 2014, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), and other members of the Democratic brain trust introduced a measure to amend the First Amendment as follows: Authorizes Congress and the states to regulate and set reasonable limits on the raising and spending of money by candidates and others to influence elections. Grants Congress and the states the power to implement and enforce this amendment by appropriate legislation, and to distinguish between natural persons and corporations or other artificial entities created by law, including by prohibiting such entities from spending money to influence elections. Declares that nothing in this amendment shall be construed to grant Congress or the states the power to abridge the freedom of the press.8 So, let me get this straight: The amendment would allow politicians in Washington, D.C., and state capitals to regulate speech that directly relates to the business of government and their jobs—the type of speech that should be most protected! This con job was nothing but a power grab to control how citizens—including corporations and conservative interest groups—can express their political views, a grab to help keep corrupt incumbents in office. After all, it’s tough to be voted out of office when you help control what your opponents and constituents can say about you. And it’s awfully hard to express one’s individual right to a fair vote when the outcome of an election is effectively rigged. Note the special carveout for the media. Reid and company were trying to make it so corporations and conservative interest groups would be muzzled, but unions and the Democrats’ tame press would be free to spew any kind of biased crap they like. If they can’t win elections fair and square, Democrats are more than willing to silence huge portions of the citizenry to stay in power. Had the amendment somehow passed, it would have been the first time one of the Constitution’s core individual rights would have been infringed through the amendment process itself.9 The attempt itself is disgraceful.

So when you’re trying to figure it out, all you’re really doing is trying to make the world familiar. You and I are right here, in the world that you call real, simply because we both know it.

They are not rocks.” he said. “They are strings. They will hold your spot suspended.

I wanted to examine the surroundings because I had no idea where I was.

Somehow, words seemed to be inaccurate and their meanings difficult to pinpoint.

Want to scale food production? Restorative ocean farms have the capacity to grow massive amounts of nutrient-rich food. Professor Ronald Osinga at Wageningen University in the Netherlands has calculated that a global network of sea-vegetable farms totaling 180,000 square kilometers—roughly the size of Washington State—could provide enough protein for the entire world population. A modest goal of five hundred twenty-acre farms would produce 120 million pounds of shellfish and in the range of eleven to forty million pounds of seaweeds, depending on the species grown—that’s a lot of food.

In April 1803, President Jefferson reached the zenith of his popularity with the Louisiana Purchase. For a mere pittance of fifteen million dollars, the United States acquired 828,000 square miles between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, doubling American territory. Hamilton was ruefully amused that Jefferson, the strict constructionist, committed a breathtaking act of executive power that far exceeded anything contemplated in the Constitution. The land purchase dwarfed Hamilton’s central bank and others measures once so hotly denounced by the man who was now president. After considering a constitutional amendment to sanctify the Louisiana Purchase, Jefferson settled for congressional approval. “The less we say about the constitutional difficulties respecting Louisiana, the better,” he conceded to Madison. To justify his audacity, the president invoked the doctrine of implied powers first articulated and refined by Alexander Hamilton. As John Quincy Adams remarked, the Louisiana Purchase was “an assumption of implied power greater in itself, and more comprehensive in its consequences, than all the assumptions of implied powers in the years of the Washington and Adams administrations.”31 When it suited his convenience, Jefferson set aside his small-government credo with compunction.

Yet the Woke messaging keeps flying. Speaking in New York’s Washington Square on September 18, 2019, Senator Warren let fire this zinger. “We’re not here today because of famous arches or famous men. In fact, we’re not here because of men at all.”20 But if Warren ever arrives in the White House, it will be because of men—not all of them, obviously, but sufficient numbers of them. And the lesson of the Trump presidency is that insulting voters loses their votes. Those who aspire to conjure up a counter-Trump movement of militant progressive forces imagine that American demographics have tilted to the point that a politics of (in their view) righteous grievance can outvote the (in their view) wrongful grievance that Trump has summoned up. They are kidding themselves about their math, but even if they were correct, what kind of answer would that be? Trump is president not only because many of your fellow citizens are racists, or sexists, or bigots of some other description, although surely some are. Trump is president also because many of your fellow citizens feel that accusations of bigotry are deployed casually and carelessly, even opportunistically. Anti-racism can easily devolve from a call to equal justice for all into a demand for power and privilege. We speak, you listen. We demand, you comply. We win, you lose.

The Obamas do not seem abashed to enjoy their newfound largesse. They now own a $2.5 million home in Chicago’s Hyde Park and a mansion in Washington, D.C., worth $8 million. The D.C. property, in the exclusive Kalorama neighborhood, has 8,200 square feet, including nine bedrooms, a two-tiered flagstone terrace with a courtyard and parking space for 8–10 cars.

Except for levees, there are no natural land surfaces in the city that are higher than fifteen feet above sea level. Canal Street meets the river at an elevation of fourteen feet above sea level; Jackson Square, only six blocks downriver, is only ten feet above sea level. The Tulane University area is a mere four feet above sea level, while the intersection of Broad and Washington Streets (originally part of the backswamp, now Mid-City) is two feet below sea level.

White envy of the black penis appears in various symbolic forms: the penchant for gun ownership, nuclear missiles, cigarettes (especially among white women feminists who smoke as a sign of liberation), and the Washington Monument. Even the chessboard becomes a symbolic racial battleground, with the black player allowed to move first on alternating black and white squares but the white player, naturally, always guaranteed to win.84

Harry had been down to Washington Square to hear an open-air concert of chamber music. How you could play chamber music outdoors Chester didn't understand—but it was New York and anything could happen.