The War on Drugs started with Billie Holiday. – Johann Hari, POLITICO Jazz was the opposite of everything Harry Anslinger believed in. It is improvised, relaxed, free-form. It follows its own rhythm. Worst of all, it is a mongrel music made up of European, Caribbean and African echoes, all mating on American shores. To […]
Continue reading →I wish I could remember who pointed this out on Twitter: Small Town Noir. A wonderland of strange stories and mug shots, from back in the day. On the back of Harold Kelty’s mug shot, a police officer wrote, “With Bill Harlan and John Hawk, stuck up Hutchinson Gas Station near New Wilmington, Pa.” The […]
Continue reading →Do all buildings hold secrets like this? Likely so. I just happen to know these two. Above you can see the planned implosion, carried out yesterday, of the decades-old Macy’s department store (formerly Foley’s’ department store) in downtown Houston. When Samuel Arbesman alerted me to a notice of this at The Atlantic Cities site, I […]
Continue reading →Research offers so many diversions from the main thread one is following. Yesterday it was Blériot flying the Channel. This morning produced this distracting oddity, from the Wikipedia entry for Northampton, MA (link below): In 1805 a crowd of 15,000 gathered in Northampton to watch the executions of two Irishmen convicted of murder: Dominic Daley, […]
Continue reading →One of the pleasures of living in the UK, where I’m two-thirds of the way through a year here, is the stellar quality of some of the television programming, and particularly of the many science and cultural series produced by the BBC. A wonderful post by scientist and blogger Stephen Curry last week, Artful History, […]
Continue reading →One of the best history books I’ve ever read is Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb. I read it more than two decades ago, and that’s how good it is: It sticks with me now as a stunning narrative and a deeply informative history. If you ever even pause while wandering by a […]
Continue reading →