Quote of the Day (Elliot Ackerman, on ‘The Stories We Tell About War’)

“The stories we tell about war are really important to the decisions we make around war.”—American Marine veteran-turned-novelist Elliot Ackerman, quoted by Emily Bobrow, “Weekend Confidential: Elliot Ackerman,’” The Wall Street Journal, May 20-21, 2021

What stories did Donald Trump hear about war that led him to commit American forces to Iran? What made him think the outcome would be better than the “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan that he criticized in his Presidential campaigns?

The image accompanying this post, of Elliot Ackerman at the 2015 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken on Oct. 18, 2015, by Larry D. Moore.

Photo of the Day: Two Kinds of Toxic Environment

I took the image accompanying this post a week ago while I was still on vacation at the Chautauqua Institution, a lovely enclosed upstate New York community with numerous Victorian cottages that have helped make this picturesque place a National Historic Landmark.

As much as its cultural and intellectual atmosphere, habitual visitors glory in its physical environment. For the 30-odd years that I have come up here, I have made it a point, as long as the rain is holding off, to take daily brisk walks by Chautauqua Lake.

Until the last three days of this vacation, that is.

In the background, a particle-laden, milky uniformity had replaced sunlight streaks of the morning horizon. Never mind a wide view of what lay upon the waters: as you can observe in this image, nothing could be seen beyond the boats lined up at the marina.

Probably at no time, I suspect, since the height of COVID-19 up here, masks were being distributed and gratefully worn by many visitors on the grounds.

The first day of the wildfire, the designation was “Dangerous for Certain Groups”; the following day, the label became simply “Dangerous”: and by the third, the bad air quality had turned sufficiently dreadful to earn the term “Hazardous.”

This photo renders in literal terms a toxic physical environment. But it symbolizes what has increasingly become a toxic diplomatic one, as well.

At this moment, Donald Trump has chosen to do what he does best: make a bad situation worse. He’s taking literally the satirical South Park song “Blame Canada,” but without an iota of logic. Our nation up north is responsible for not maintaining its forests properly, he claims.

That’s pretty rich, coming from a President who has already laid off thousands of U.S. Forest Service workers and whose 2027 budget includes cuts of more than 70% to the agency. But his rationale would be hideous in any case because he refuses to accept the reality of human-caused climate change.

Super-hot temperatures in the areas around the wildfires, together with dry vegetation, resulted in “functioned like a chimney, a super long chimney shooting smoke into the upper atmosphere and then the jet stream” and then found its way to the US, according to Ava Berger’s NPR report last week.

This is a situation that calls for international cooperation to address causes, not finger-pointing—unless you’re Trump. Then he tells citizens of a country that he has not-so-jokingly called to be annexed into the U.S. that he’s going to levy “a big tariff” on their nation for the wildfires crossing the border.

Trump has turned the Ugly American stereotype of the Vietnam War era into an actuality. His default reflex—to blow smoke every time he finds himself in a difficult situation—has become literal this time, and it’s losing the U.S. a neighbor and friend it could always count on.

The smoky air has cleared from beautiful Chautauqua Lake, as well as other areas affected in the northern part of the U.S. last week. But before the end of this second Trump term, you can count on it coming back, perhaps at more hazardous levels.

And Americans had better accept that it’s going to take longer before the effects of Trump’s careless, toxic rhetoric dissipate.

From now on, traditional allies like Canada are entitled to wonder what got into Americans that they put in the White House a charlatan like Trump twice—and whether the Republican Party he has remolded in his image will nominate as his successor someone equally wedded to his agenda of environmental callousness and diplomatic exploitation.

TV Quote of the Day (Reiner and Brooks, With the 2,000-Year-Old Man on Ancient Matrimony)

Carl Reiner: “We know that many, many hundreds of years ago, most men had more than one wife.”

The 2,000-Year-Old Man [played by Mel Brooks]: “Yeah!”

Reiner: “Did you practice polygamy in those days?”

The 2,000-Year-Old Man: “I never practiced it. I was perfect at it!”—Reiner and Brooks with their “2,000-Year-Old Man” routine, The Hollywood Palace, Season 4, Episode 2, original air date Sept. 24, 1966

I had heard bits of the classic Carl Reiner-Mel Brooks routine (captured on five albums released between 1960 and 1997) but was reminded of this short section when I was recently visiting the National Comedy Center in Jamestown, NY.

Though I have gone through this wonderful museum a couple of times before, this was the first occasion I had to see their section on Reiner.  It was a great reminder of just how influential he was, on TV and film, over several decades.

Influenced by the example of his longtime friend Reiner, Brooks is also turning over many of his artifacts to the comedy museum. Once its curators have had a choice to sample these wares, the resulting display should be something to see.

Quote of the Day (John Gray, on History, ‘The First Victim in Dictatorships’)

“[H]istory is the first victim in dictatorships. Because perceptions of the past constantly and inevitably impinge on contemporary debate, we depend on historians to provide us with a richness and variety of grounding. Historians should not be too complacent about their ability to do it….Then again most historians have led sheltered lives, few have gained the insights offered by actual experience of popular engagement, and inevitably most of the historical record they work with was created by the elite. Yet history without any realised sense of the experience of the underclass, or, say, of women, is only half a history….I wouldn’t suggest supernatural predictive powers for historians. In my part of the world [Northern Ireland], we know enough of the tyranny of biblical prediction to too readily adopt other formulaic certainties. What we can usefully do is to point to other possibilities in the face of any prevailing consensus. We will serve best if we engage in an endless process of exploration, of critical assessment of what has gone before, of self-criticism to the point where it is just still possible to write—to move our understanding of the human condition forward. In doing so we engage in the one inevitable feature of the process; that revisionism will always be followed by post-revisionism.”—Belfast social historian, civil-rights activist and former librarian John Gray interviewed by Peter Collins, “Gray’s Elegy,” History Ireland, Spring 1999

Quote of the Day (Pianist Ilya Itin, on Music ‘Created in the Being of Listeners’)

“When we gather and listen together, we experience something bigger than us. It doesn’t mean we all experience the same thing — we have different backgrounds, thinkings, emotional makeup. But there’s something when we’re in that world, music is created in the being of listeners. It’s not the performer, it is the listener.”—Russian classical pianist Ilya Itin quoted by Cody Englander, “Ilya Itin to Perform Moving Pieces by Scriabin, Rachmaninoff,” The Chautauquan Daily, July 14, 2026

The image of Ilya Itin accompanying this post was taken in 2010 by Roy Quesada.

Photo of the Day: Troy Hill Incline Steps, Pittsburgh PA

About a decade ago, vacationing to see a close relative in Pittsburgh, I visited the Duquesne Incline, one of the last remnants of a once-common form of transportation in the Smoky City. Over a week ago, I saw another one reminder of these 24 massive structures that once moved goods and people up and down this city’s many steep hills: the steps around the Troy Hill Incline.

Unlike the Duquesne Incline, which remains operational nearly 150 years after it was built, the Troy Hill Incline lasted only from 1887 to 1898. 

When I took the attached photo on my recent visit to Pittsburgh, it was easy for me to imagine the necessity for this mode of transportation and the skill required to build it.

Trust me: the Troy Hill neighborhood (part of independent Allegheny City before being absorbed by Pittsburgh) is an acrophobe’s nightmare. 

Rialto Street (nicknamed “Pig Hill”), for instance, the fifth-steepest street in the city, ascends 118 feet, with a grade or steepness level of 24%. It’s a narrow, two-lane thoroughfare Thank God I wasn’t the one driving around there.

Its incline was built by Samuel Diescher, a Hungarian-American engineer responsible for 10 inclines in Pittsburgh alone. The tracks—partly laid on the ground, partly on wooden trestles—handled both freight and passengers with a 15-ton capacity. The building cost: $94,000. 

For a while, it seemed like a godsend for workers in this blue-collar enclave who didn’t have to trudge up what must have felt like a Himalayan height at the end of a long, weary day in area mills, tanneries, breweries, and railroad yards.

In contrast to other inclines, the one serving Troy Hill didn’t shut down because of safety concerns. Instead, low ridership, maintenance costs, and competition from expanding streetcar lines combined to undercut profitability. 

The tracks were eventually removed, but the physical geography of the neighborhood makes it unlikely that the legend of the Troy Hill Incline will disappear from the minds of Pittsburgh residents.

Quote of the Day (Marie Arana, on the Accomplishments and Presence of Latinos in the U.S.)

"These [scientific advances such as the electronic microscope, birth control and developments leading to brain surgery] are accomplishments that aren't written.  They’re not in textbooks. My mission has always been to educate Americans, make ourselves known. We have been for so long, many years, so many decades, and so many centuries people have said, ‘Who are you anyway?’ and we’ve always been perceived as newcomers. We’ve been here all along."— Author, editor, journalist, and critic Marie Arana, in a talk at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York, quoted by Nora Smith, “Arana Presents ‘Latinoland’: ‘We’ve Been Here All Along,” The Chautauquan Daily, July 18-19, 2026

The image accompanying this post, of Marie Arana at the 2019 Texas Book Festival in Austin, Texas, was taken Oct. 26, 2019, by Larry D. Moore.