Saturday, July 1, 2023

Everything Old Is New Again

Saturday, June 24, 2023 
As you well know, international Jewish bankers sank the R.M.S. Titanic with explosives, not an iceberg.

Therefore, it follows that the Titan submersible, funded by the Rothschilds, was destroyed to prevent the disclosure of evidence.

Sunday, June 25, 2023
Hats off to Billy Spiro.  Not only does he continue to sell me tickets to Ranger games at face value, but he offered to bring food from Wo Hop in Chinatown to my door.
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Where do you live?  If asked by someone from Denver, you might say New York.  If within 100 miles of the Holy Land, you'll probably name your neighborhood, because placing yourself merely among 8,000,000 other souls isn't very helpful.  Accordingly, it's interesting to know the desirability of local neighborhoods to prospective renters.  https://www.renthop.com/studies/nyc/hottest-nyc-neighborhoods-for-new-yorkers

Note that five of the top 10 were considered "bad neighborhoods" within recent memory, places where you would not park your car or go for an evening stroll.  In this case, plus les choses changent, plus les choses changent.  It seems like a neighborhood’s decline need not be permanent.  On the other hand, once ascended, a neighborhood may avoid decline.

Blockbusting was the way to turn a “good” neighborhood “bad.” Nowadays, NIMBY is invoked to keep good neighborhoods from getting better.
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Maybe it’s OK that I am walking unsteadily with a cane, otherwise I would be jumping up and down at the stupidity of a federal court judge’s defense of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.  (I will not name this sycophant.) Ignoring the actual winners and losers in his rulings, Your Dishonor claims that Thomas’ originalism “more often favors the ordinary people who come before the court – because the core idea behind originalism is honoring the will of the people.”  Although some were individually distinguished, the “people” of 1787 were white male property owners, that property often including other human beings.  
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Not only am I unable to jump up and down, but I probably could not have done more than a block or so down Fifth Avenue in today’s Pride parade.   However, I had vivid memories of the first parade in 1970, held to commemorate the riots at the Stonewall Inn on Sheridan Square the year before.

I was living in Greenwich Village in a tiny, dirty, dark, roach-ridden apartment on a fabulous street.  I had a nice car and a folding bicycle.  On Sunday, June 28, 1970, the Christopher Street Liberation Day March stretched about 15 blocks when I caught up with it on my bicycle.  Am I claiming to have joined that first March?  No, but I was a fellow traveler. 

And, there might be proof of a sort.  Jerry Davis, brother of my brother's friend Danny Davis, a freelance photographer, was covering the March for a Brazilian press agency.  No doubt, Jerry captured big me on top of a little bicycle.  Unfortunately, he died young decades ago without sending any copies to me, but I must have been digitized somewhere along the way. 

Monday, June 26, 2023
This list of the 50 most banned books in America is cluttered with advertisements, but it’s a good picture of what we are afraid of.
https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-50-most-banned-books-in-america/

Tuesday, June 27, 2023
Some things you have to take on faith, especially when they are presented with exactness on the Internet.  I can’t help it if you don’t believe that there are 61,134,526 Marias in the world, the most popular first name.  

Thursday, June 29, 2023
Best forgotten?
My Chinese American physical therapist was amused when I described Boaz as #1 Grandson.  It seems that he never heard of Charlie Chan.
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Once upon a time, affirmative action in admissions to educational institutions disprivileged the privileged, taking slots away from white students to make room for “others.”  Now, the success of one group of others, Asian Americans, has changed the playing field.  So, opposition to affirmative action, buried by the United States Supreme Court today, has a variety of sources, representing different interests with varying degrees of integrity. 

I believe that one significant element of the opposition, supplying a lot of the bucks in this decades-long battle (Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 [1978]), comes from those who tacitly cling to the Lost Cause.   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederacy    

Any victory, any advancement of African Americans refutes their belief in white supremacy, the natural order of society.  They will tolerate success by Asian Americans, even Jews, as long as a white foot stands on a Black neck.  

Friday, June 30, 2023
Many thanks to Stony Brook Steve for getting me out of the house and onto local sidewalks.
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Looking at the opinions in yesterday’s Supreme Court decision on affirmative action, you find remarkable agreement by the two Black members.  Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent opened with “Our country has never been colorblind.”  In his concurrence with the majority opinion, Clarence Thomas said “our society is not, and never has been, colorblind.”  The critical difference is that Thomas then says ”So what?”

2 comments:

  1. No Bronx neighborhoods make the rent survey??? I remember dating a young woman who lived in Riverdale. I mentioned that I had gone to high school in the Bronx, and she replied "Riverdale is not in the Bronx, not if I can help it."

    ReplyDelete