Cars and streetcars and horses, oh my.
Something Wonderful: 1911 – A Trip Through New York City
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WHEN in the course of human Events, it becomes necessary….
Welcome to the New American Digest: 2003-2020
He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff’s talus on the other side,
And then in the far distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush–and that was all.
Gerard Van der Leun
When all Earth’s seas shall Levitate,
Dark shawled within the skies,
Upon our eyes will Starfish dance
Their waltz of Blind surprise.
The sun will Rise within wine Dark
As Argonauts imbibed,
Whose drunken arms embrace that sleep
Where Phaeton’s horses Stride.
Upon all of Earth’s wind-sanded shores,
As dolphins Learn to soar,
All we once were on the land
Shall be sealed behind the door
Of Ivory and Chastened Gold,
That the Mystery solved complete
Shall never til the seas’ Long fall
Wake mariners from their sleep.
— Van der Leun
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.
— The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T. S. Eliot
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Probably the last good year in the lives of our grandparents, before it all went *SMASH* in August, 1914.
Hale Adams
Pikesville, People’s still-mostly-Democratic Republic of Maryland
Eerie. They don’t seem all that different from us.
What America looked like the year we adopted the M1911 .45 pistol. Think about that.
Wouldn’t you like to see those same areas filmed today in those locations? I’d do it in black and white with a sound track. The contrast would be stunning.
Wonderful, thanks for sharing!
Teri Pittman April 22, 2018, 9:49 AM
Wouldn’t you like to see those same areas filmed today in those locations? I’d do it in black and white with a sound track. The contrast would be stunning.
Not necessarily. The transport was different. In addition to horses and streetcars, traffic was lighter due to there being fewer cars. The elevated subways in Manhattan have, for the most part, been put underground.
But there was a lot of continuity in the buildings. The triangular flatiron building @ 23rd and Broadway is still there- though there has been a lot of adjacent construction since then. I have been visiting cousins on the Lower East Side for decades, where there has been little or no new construction for a century. The last time I visited the Lower East Side, I was very surprised to see some construction.
@Andy Texan: They’re not that different, but boy howdy, there weren’t nearly as many overweight people in that video as we would see now, were there?