I’ve always thought that the streetcar should be brought back into wide use, mainly because it’s far less expensive to set up street car lines than to dig the tunnels needed for a subway.
This article seems to agree.
The piece talks a good bit about the St. Charles streetcar in New Orleans. I have some wonderful memories of riding that line with my friend Dzifa, taking it from her Garden District apartment to the bars and restaurants of the French Quarter.
Today (September 29) is National Coffee Day! Huzzah!
Check and see if local coffee houses are honoring the day with a free cup or something. Or just brew some coffee and enjoy.
As an explanation for my bare handful of readers, I have been feeling a little fatigued and overwhelmed lately and have not been able to focus on my reading assignments.
We will be back next week, I promise.
The annual Flower Mart was taking place at the National Cathedral the other weekend. A wonderful used book sale was also taking place on the Cathedral grounds underneath a long tent.
I found some lovely books and LPs, though I missed out on an anthology of stories by John Campbell, better known as the editor of Astounding Stories, where he ushered in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, publishing early stories by Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, A.E. Van Vogt, Robert Heinlein, and Andre Norton. I would even go so far as to say that Campbell was the Maxwell Perkins of sci fi – driving his writers in the direction of more and better characterization and hard science. Of course, after the Golden Age era of the late thirties and the forties, both he and the magazine he edited became better known for crackpot conservatism, new age-y hocus pocus, and a racism that was both weirdly expressed and unforgivable.
What I did pick up included Virgil, Jorie Graham, Otto Rank, and Goethe; along with vinyl records including a Glenn Gould performance of Bach’s The Well Tempered Clavier and Leonard Bernstein conducted performances of Mahler and Beethoven (which, much like reading Heidegger on Nietzsche, one listens to more for Bernstein’s vision than the composer’s).
Will I live to see the day come when printed books, like vinyl, are only available used? Or else in limited release, deliberately anachronistic editions that merely supplement the work in some other form (like REM’s orange tinted vinyl pressed single of Orange Crush, released to help generate buzz for the album on which it appeared, Green)?
After all, I am still old enough to faintly remember the days before cassette tapes fully replaced vinyl LPs.
In such an event, it becomes to easy to envision one’s self as a cantankerous old recluse, surrounded by the detritus of a dead age: manual typewriters with each ribbon wrung dry of the last particle of ink before being replaced, fountain pens, mouldering books with brittle pages, and vinyl records etched by time with deep scratches, skips, and crackles.
The last remaining manufacturing facility to continue to produce typewriters shuttered its doors with only a few hundred typewriters (mostly Arabic language machines – which makes me think of that wonderfully disturbing seduction from the movie Naked Lunch involving such a typewriter). The company was Godrej and Boyce.
The factory was located in Mumbia, India. It seems that typewriters were commonly used by government offices and businesses in India long after other countries had completely switched over to computers. But finally, even India succumbed.
The only typewriters that will remain are used models, like mine. Though I had expressly sought out an older, anachronistic machine, there is something very sad in the shuttering of the last factory to make new typewriters, even though I hadn’t known it existed before.
It’s only a matter of time before I won’t be able to find ribbon for my typewriter, or parts when it breaks down. But it still has something to offer.
The little girl who lives downstairs used it and ran down to tell her mother about this old-fashioned computer that printed every letter as you were punching the key. I was trying to use it to help with her spelling, encouraging to use the machine’s limitations as a means to focus on each and every letter, rather than rushing through like one would on a computer.
I titled an earlier post A Recovering Atheist’s Take on the Rob Bell “Controversy”. Now, I would like to apologize to atheists and agnostics for using the term “recovering.” I should have simply said “former.”
Recovering atheists implies that atheism is some adolescent stage that a healthy person should advance from.
That is simply not the case. I am not an atheist anymore, but I respect both atheism and agnosticism as valid, mature, and rational choices.
I noted a little while ago that I had started trying to do work in a little coffee shop down the street. The two dollars, plus some loose change for a tip, seems a not unreasonably fee for two hours of reasonably uninterrupted work, even for one who is struggling monetarily. And I have a self-image to maintain, and haunting coffeehouses is a critical part of that, as is wearing corduroy sport coats, carrying erudite sounding books with me to unlikely places, and letting my beard grow wild at least twice a year.
The whole working in coffee shops is hardly a new phenomenon, but I came across this article from The Atlantic on working on coffee shops. The short version is: Coffee shops, not just for European writers anymore.
He does a good job of capturing the particular elements that make it a handy place to work. Some minimal distractions (people chatting, passing by, the view out the window), but not the all encompassing, soul crushing distraction of the television. Also, the social pressure to be utilitarian inside a coffee shop. You can’t just watch videos of cats doing something cute with yarn or whatever. You must appear useful – to be actually working on something.
For an extreme example of this, there is Summit, a coffeehouse in San Francisco’s Mission District, whose primary purpose is to provide local start ups a place to work.
When I said I was going to (try to) stop so much about myself, I was referring to some of the most shamelessly self-indulgent (and usually boring and poorly written) stuff I have occasionally thrown up onto this blog.
I still see the world through me eyes. I am still affected by my experiences and personal ideologies. My posts will still be about books I have read, thoughts I have experienced, and events I have attended.
In general, things that have, in some way, happened to me.
And I will still try and note how these things might or might not affect my view of a subject.
For example, when I write about Haley Barbour, I usually make note of the fact that in 2003, my candidate lost an election to him.
But unless I can directly connect it to a larger world – to people, places, and things beyond myself.
At least, that’s what I’m going to try to do.
Actually, this post is about the need to stop writing about me. I’m getting in the way of my own writing. Several times, I have written about my recent illness and subsequent recovery. Or about my faith. And generally speaking, when I have written about these things, it has been sentimental crap. Or least not up to the level of writing quality I expect from myself (though who knows, maybe you the reader think everything I’ve put down here is crap).
It extends to my other writings as well. More and more, the poems I write that use the word “I” are failed attempts.
Time to get away from solipsism and into the world.
But enough about me.
As part of my continued effort to restrain the urge to dive back into my old coffee addiction, I am drinking more tea. Non-caffeinated or low caffeine teas seem somehow less heinous, less abominable in the eyes of nature and all that is holy than decaf coffee (which I will still not drink). Luckily, down at Eastern Market there is a nice lady who sells teas and honeys.
With my brand new coffee pot and new, small cups – all recently bought from Cost Plus World Market (Restoration Hardware/Pier One Imports for people with less money) – I set about trying to make, not a perfect cup of tea, but at least better than I usually.
I know I don’t make a perfect cup of tea, because I never quite manage to follow all of the tea-related edicts laid down by the great one himself, George Orwell.
the coffee philosopher 