Monthly Archives: July 2013

And to think that it happened on Mulberry Street

Posted on by The Old Wolf

(With apologies to Theodore Geisel.)

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This 1900 Photocrom was taken on Mulberry Street in New York City. My grandparents immigrated to New York from Italy separately and met here; they arrived in around 1900. (Click the photo for a full-size version).

Pasquale & Maria

This is the kind of scene that would have greeted them; the detail is incredible. Notice the young chap in the foreground enjoying a beer.

Posted at /r/HistoryPorn by user The OneInThe Hat. Based on the addresses visible in the photos, he or she was also able to get a street view of the same perspective:

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What a change in 113 years. I wonder what the area will look like in 2126?

The Old Wolf has spoken.

It’s not all black and white

Posted on by The Old Wolf

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This sad stone is the memorial of a woman whose real name was Kate Simpson.

A volunteer paid for a marker to be placed at her grave in September 1997, bearing the inscription:

Kate McCormick
Seduced and pregnant by her father’s friend,
unwed, she died from abortion, her only choice.
Abandoned in life and death by family.
With but a single rose from her mother.
Buried only through the kindness of unknown benefactors.
Died Feb.1875 age 21.

Victim of an unforgiving society
Have mercy on us.

I am not ready to get into a full-blown essay regarding my thoughts on abortion. The issues, for me, are too close and personal, and it would take more time than I have available to get everything sorted out in words that I’m happy with. But this little bit I can share for now:

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Regardless of what I believe personally, we must never return to a place where women are given no choice but to endanger their own lives, because of laws made by a body overwhelmingly populated by men who will never have to face the choices about which they are legislating. That place makes no sense at all.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Space Opera, then and now

Posted on by The Old Wolf

For my friends and readers who enjoy good SciFi

In a period of time eons ago, but after the coalescence of the Two Galaxies… was E.E. “Doc” Smith, the father of modern Space Opera. If you’ve ever read his Lensman series, or his *giggle* Skylark series, you’ll understand why he earned that title. Swashbuckling heroes with muscles that ripple in their gray leather suits, red-headed seven-sector callouts with tawny, gold-flecked eyes, strange looking aliens both good and bad, a deus ex machina good-guy gimmick, a drug that transcends any humanly possible high, intergalactic gangsters, ancient, wise and terrible guardians and blackguards, and weapons that become ever more powerful, biting, clawing, gouging, and coruscating through the spectrum into the black, beyond even the ability to describe their absolute, incomprehensible-cubed destructive ability… well, you get the drift. I happen to enjoy his fiction… it’s old, corny, hackneyed, totally disrespectful of all known laws of physics, and a great ride.

But today I’d like to introduce you to one of Smith’s heirs: Schlock Mercenary, a webcomic written and drawn by Howard Tyler.

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Sergeant Schlock, an amorph and eponymous hero of the strip.

“Schlock Mercenary” is space opera, just like its predecessor… but it’s space opera for the 21st century, with both heart and brains. Tayler, in addition to being a cartoonist, is a writer, in every sense of that word, and one who takes his craft as seriously as a heart attack.

The strip is complex and deep and tangled and convoluted, and not for those looking for “fluff” – Tayler has created a world every bit as intriguing as Niven’s “Known Space,” and I’m not going to even try to give you an overview. But I’ll suggest you get to know the strip through one character: Kathryn Flinders.

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Start at the beginning of Mallcop Command and watch this lady develop as a character (you first see her on 2/11/2010). In the process, you’ll be drawn in to an amazing world of military mercenary magic, and some intriguing character development along the way. If you like good science fiction and good writing, there’s a high probability that you’ll be hooked, and have to go back to the beginning of the strip.

You can thank me later.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

They speak the regular way

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Which is the meaning of the name “Illinois.”

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This map is intriguing. Prepared by the Atlas of True Names, it shows each state with the translated meaning of the state’s name. I wondered about the accuracy of the effort when I saw Utah described as “Land of the Sun,” when everyone here knows that Utah means “people of the mountains;’ however, a bit more digging revealed that linguistically, the word “Ute” means “the high land” or “the land of the sun,” which by metonymy could be extended to meaning the people who live in a high place, or the mountains.

Anyway, it’s presented here for your gratuitous enjoyment. Check out the other maps offered by the Atlas… I’d love to have some of these in hard copy on my walls.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Hypocrisy: Unchained

Posted on by The Old Wolf

Found at Reddit:

Nigger

There is a serious cognitive disconnect in our society. Paula Deen has been pretty much thrown in the dumpster for using the word “nigger”… once. Yet “Django Unchained” throws that word around one hundred and thirteen times, and earns an 88% (reviewers) / 94% (audience) rating at Rotten Tomatoes.

This isn’t Huckleberry Finn, a book written in 1884 and “a product of its times” (that book uses the word 203 times, by the way)… this is a 2012 production that has grossed over $423 million, and won two academy awards – one for best screenplay.

I abhor prejudice and discrimination in all its forms. Ms. Deen committed a serious error in judgment when she dropped that word in public [1] and I’m not condoning or justifying what she did… but rather, I’m asking the question, “Why was “Django” so popular if, by virtue of statistics, it should have been found 113 times as offensive as one person’s lapse of good manners?” Where’s the justification for that kind of popularity? If this racial slur is as offensive as everyone at politically-correct dinner parties and media newsrooms seems to think, how could a movie like this even get greenlighted, let alone make it to the Academy Awards?

There are a lot of people out there still talking about race relations, but I’d be really interested to hear what Morgan Freeman thought about this. He’s the one who pointed out that we’ll never get past the issue of race until we stop talking about it, and movies like “Django” seem – in my simple opinion – to be a force counter to progress toward greater humanity. That means that if a word is unquestionably offensive, everyone ought to stop using it. White folk shouldn’t use it. Black folk shouldn’t use it (claiming that they’ve pre-empted it, and made it “theirs”). Filmmakers and authors shouldn’t use it. If people keep using an offensive word and sometimes it’s OK and sometimes it’s not, then there are some serious questions to be asked.

I have no real answers, but the matter – in the words of Khan – “tasks me”… and I felt moved to put the questions out there.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

[1] I’m aware that her problems are a bit more complex than the one incident in question, but for the sake of simplicity I won’t elaborate on that here, as the other issues don’t really bear on the root problem.