Before Ground Zero

Child-like view of the World Trade Center, drawing done some years before 2001. The view is from the West Village, looking south on Seventh Avenue from Sheridan Square.

© gringoworks, 2006

Note: The gringo caravan is back from sabbatical. Posting should be more frequent, depending on the psychic weather and its global warming. Being  in the East, at any rate,  doesn't tie you down in a cyclo pedicab or tuk-tuk or moto-dop anymore. That old Vietnam/Indochina thing is over (speaking to those who know it once existed.)  We internuts realize how inter-connected everything's gotten, right? You can do almost anything from almost anywhere.  You want to study cyclical human weather patterns that include, but are not limited to, the Asian land mass? How about  socialist life and Josip Stalin  as only his daughter Svetlana could tell it?  How about Sigmund Freud's  'Civilization and its Discontents'?   And Leo Tolstoy's imaginative yet devastatingly accurate portrait of a successful judge, his circle and his family life in  'The Death of Ivan Ilyitch'?  And social critic Camille Paglia's take-down and punch-out of acadummies and white feminists like the politically correct princesses, among others? And the blazing satire of Petronius Arbiter's fools, slaves, poets and lovers in the time of Nero?  And Balzac's  aristocratic but passionate  zoo of post-Enlightenment Paris, featuring an old man's obsessional love for his two daughters and a young man's plan to conquer one of them on his road to fortune,  ('Pere Goriot.') And we cannot forget the masterly  Edward Gibbon's account of how, after Rome declined, degenerated and became too 'smart' for  its old gods and goddesses, the Arabs and slave converts mounted  superb horses,  raised the sword of a new monotheism, something culled from Judaism and called 'Islam,' and they conquered from Spain to Egypt to Syria to India---as there were  no longer men, or  any Caesar or Marius or Augustus or Pompey or Hadrian or Trajan--- or even Constantine---on the scene  to stop them. Once mighty Rome, the West incarnate,  could now be safely mocked.

Sabbaticals can work for multi-tasking. Therapeutic possibilities too.

Blogworld: More than 300 firefighters gave their lives that day. Blackfive captures the spirit by focusing on 'Matthew Lancelot Ryan--Someone You Should Know.'.....Alexandra at Allthingsbeautiful puts faces on 9.11 in 'We Remember, We Mourn and We Do Not Forgive.'

 

 

 

Technorati Tags: 9.11, 9.11 art

Comments

[scott edwards]

While I laud you on your ambitious summer reading, includung an aquaintence of mine Ms Paglia- who did it her way at Yale, I am left wondering at your conclusion regarding Eddie Gibbons "Decline & Fall" and the islamic swarm into Spain created by a power vaccum in Rome's decline.
(I am not the first to point out that Gibbons masterpiece is hardly the last word being published some 125 yrs ago.. and the various Book Of The Month Clubs will offer the nine volumes gratis if you'll kindly sign up to receive their next eight monthy choises and etc...) I'll wager that none of your august readership has waded through Gibbons and maybe a few have heard of it via the bookclub offers. However, Gibbons has emphatically stated that the decline can be mainly attributed to the reduction of the Roman senate to a mere appendage of Ceaser and the debauchery of the citizenry increased expoentially with the consolidation of power in the emporer and the maldistribution of the wealth created from the spoils of war. When Gringoman instructs his unwashed on "Rome becoming too smart for its gods" he means that the Ceasers in their quest of a unitary executive no longer felt bound by the legal and ethical constraints imposed by the religion or the senate. The unravelling of Rome started at the top; though sometimes in these multi-volume tomes it is hard to see the public hot baths from the vomitorium.

[Scott edwards]

Apropos your rendition of the Tower above, I am reminded of Parson Weems who it seems had a penchant for conflating into an imbroglio christian religion with the american flag at the founding of the new republic. Weems had a senior moment when it came to the seperation clause of the american constitution and spun tales regarding Washington in particular, some of which survive to this day. (See Weems, Washington and the Cherry Tree) Whilst Parson Weems had placed an imaginary hatchet in Washingtons hand, I thought it fitting that Gringoman do likewise with Washingtons penultimate sucessor; and in the context of the tower above. The parson after all had displayed some rather fascist tendencies, and one of them being that religon serve the state. I would allow Bush to mouth the same words

[gringoman]

I am left wondering at your conclusion regarding Eddie Gibbons "Decline & Fall" and the islamic swarm into Spain created by a power vaccum in Rome's decline.
(I am not the first to point out that Gibbons masterpiece is hardly the last word being published some 125 yrs ago.. and the various Book Of The Month Clubs will offer the nine volumes gratis if you'll kindly sign up to receive their next eight monthy choises and etc...) I'll wager that none of your august readership has waded through Gibbons and maybe a few have heard of it via the bookclub offers. However, Gibbons has emphatically stated that the decline can be mainly attributed to the reduction of the Roman senate to a mere appendage of Ceaser and the debauchery of the citizenry increased expoentially with the consolidation of power in the emporer and the maldistribution of the wealth created from the spoils of war. When Gringoman instructs his unwashed on "Rome becoming too smart for its gods" he means that the Ceasers in their quest of a unitary executive no longer felt bound by the legal and ethical constraints imposed by the religion or the senate. The unravelling of Rome started at the top; though sometimes in these multi-volume tomes it is hard to see the public hot baths from the vomitorium.
==============================

Wonder no more. Instead of the usual "progressive" interpretation of Gibbon, implying that Rome declined by becoming less "plebeian" or "democratic" or even "multy-culty" enough,(good old capital vs. labor strife?) try facing Gibbon head on, with or without Book Club bonuses. Of course some academmies can "correct" Gibbon here and there. Any monument can take a little polishing after 125 years, so let them wax away where they think they can. The stereotype argument that Rome deteriorated because the Senate surrendered to dictatorship seems to say everything while saying essentially nothing. Which makes it a favorite of....
Lighting a fire under a pot of water will heat the water, will it? Well, uh, yes, hey, you've got a point there. So forget about all the myriad of circumstances, who's lighting up, where, why, how etc etc. Just give us the simple-minded stuff about the "military" vs. the Senate and ignore what was happening to the composition of the Senate, the ruling families, the degradation of the Army and its once educated leadership etc. Still, if there's no time to look into the social realities, but you want to examine why the muslim fanatics now had a field day in storming out of their sand dunes and water holes and trampling over a once mighty civilization, there's still another option. You could quote Gibbon:

"The birth of Mohammed was fortunately placed in the most degenerate and disorderly period of the Persians, the Romans and the barbarians of Europe: the empires of Trajan, or even of Constantine or Charlemagne, would have repelled the assault of the naked Saracens, and the torrent of fanaticism might have been obscurely lost in the sands of Arabia."

[hank aaron jersey discount]

Great review and an interesting topic. Nice job! I will bookmark your site. I think you are right. .

[UGG Boots Sale]

I really feel like you may most likely teach a class on the best way to make a terrific weblog.http://www.replicaoakleycheap.com This really is great! I've to say, what truly got me was your style.http://www.topfakeoakleysunglasses.com You definitely know the best way to make your weblog far more than just a rant about an problem.http://www.sellmacmakeup.com Youve produced it achievable for individuals to connect.http://www.monclerjacketswholesaler.com/ Great for you, simply because not that a lot of people know what theyre undertaking.http://www.uggbootssalemall.com