Photo of the Day: Horace Greeley Monument, City Hall Park, NYC

I’m not sure what I expected as I walked briskly through City Hall Park one afternoon last week, but it wasn’t this monument to an influential businessman and media magnate who never served in the Big Apple’s government.

With that said, though not be as well remembered today as he might have wished, Horace Greeley was a person of consequence in 19^th century America, and it wouldn’t hurt anyone passing through this area of Lower Manhattan to learn at least a bit more about him. This outdoor sculpture is as good a place as any to start.

In the New York area, the only press lords besides Greeley with designs on the Presidency were William Randolph Hearst (who never made it higher than Congress) and Michael Bloomberg (whose 2020 Democratic primary campaign failed dismally, despite $60 million of his own fortune).

Greeley, at least, filled an expiring Congressional term before being nominated in 1872 by both the Democratic and Liberal Republican parties. He lost that fall to Ulysses Grant—then, only a few weeks later, died, worn out in body and mind by the race, the recent death of his wife, and a bruising, losing struggle to keep his paper, the New York Tribune, out of the hands of a business rival.

Well before that, Greeley had made his mark as a tireless editorial voice for westward expansionism, free homesteading, the rights of labor, agricultural improvement, high tariffs, the beneficial impact of immigration, and most important, abolitionism.

His influence was so considerable that in 1862, after his open public letter to Abraham Lincoln advocating the confiscation of slaves held by Confederates, the President felt compelled to make one of his most famous explanations about the connection between freeing the slaves and preserving the Union.

For all his high-mindedness, Greeley earned a parallel reputation as an eccentric. His public advocacy for causes such as vegetarianism, spiritualism, and utopian socialism were considered especially fringe for his time.

Moreover, what people encountered when meeting him in person—his oversized, floppy hat covering unkempt white hair, a threadbare white coat, and a high-pitched voice that could erupt irritably—led cartoonist Thomas Nast to caricature him, repeatedly and unforgettably. (See this May 2008 blog post from the National Portrait Gallery on how Greeley was depicted.)

You’ll see little of that in the far more respectful monument in City Hall Park, created by John Quincy Adams Ward, one of the foremost sculptors of the day. The artist, Greeley’s daughter Gabrielle recalled, “spent hours studying my father as he worked in his office [and] after his death took a mask of his face." 

The statue shows Greeley sitting in a Victorian easy chair, with a copy of the Tribune spread out loosely over his knee—not just scrutinizing it for appearance or content, but perhaps contemplating how he could keep it from descending into the sensationalist abyss occupied by competitor James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald.

When the monument was unveiled in 1890, it stood in front of The Tribune’s building. By 1915, with the paper leasing corner, ground floor space in its building to a drugstore, the monument was moved to where it was originally intended: across the street, in City Hall Park.

Movie Quote of the Day (‘Tootsie,’ on Being a ‘Cult Failure’)

[Frustrated actor Michael Dorsey has complained that agent George Fields hasn’t found him any job recently. George pushes back, arguing that refusing to compromise about roles makes Michael unemployable.]

George Fields [played by Sydney Pollack]: “OK, I know this is going to disgust you, Michael, but a lot of people are in this business to make money.”

Michael Dorsey [played by Dustin Hoffman]: “You make it out like I'm some flake, George. I am in this business to make money, too.”

George: “Really?”

Michael: “Yes!”

George: “The Harlem Theatre for the Blind? Strindberg in the Park? The People's Workshop in Syracuse?”

Michael: “OK, now wait a minute. I did nine plays in eight months up in Syracuse. I happened to get great reviews from the New York critics, not that that's why I did it.”

George: “Oh, of course not. God forbid you should lose your standing as a cult failure!”— —Tootsie (1982), story by Don McGuire and Larry Gelbart, screenplay by Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal, with uncredited contributions by Robert Garland, Barry Levinson and Elaine May, directed by Sydney Pollack

This morning, there are at least a few actors in Hollywood, following last night’s Oscar ceremony, who don’t have to feel like they’re a “cult failure” anymore.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (St. Augustine of Hippo, on Injustice and Empire)

“Remove justice, and what are kingdoms but gangs of criminals on a large scale?  What are criminal gangs but petty kingdoms? A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention.

“If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renouncing of aggression but by the attainment of impunity.

“For it was a witty and truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great.  The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’  And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘The same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate; because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.’”—Catholic theologian and philosopher St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD), City of God, translated by Henry Bettenson (1972)

Quote of the Day (Michael Connelly, on the Importance of Writing 15 Minutes a Day)

“Something I was taught by a professor in a creative writing class, is that if you’re going to be a writer then you’ve got to write every day. Even if it’s only for 15 minutes. He added that—‘even if it’s only for 15 minutes.’ And that is actually the cool thing. The heart of that cliché is that even if you only write for 15 minutes a day, the story never leaves your head. It’s still churning in there. And that’s what’s important, because if you have that story turning in your head all the time, you reach a point where you just want to—you need to write it down. You want to get to that laptop or whatever you write on.”—American crime novelist Michael Connelly quoted by Andrew F. Gulli, “Interview With Michael Connelly,” The Strand Magazine, Issue LXXVII (2025)

What Connelly writes is true, and I would add other elements that operate in my case. First, 15 minutes don’t sound like much, but if you put enough of these segments together over time, you’ll eventually have something (even if it’s only a short blog post like this one).

Second, even if you’re struggling with the right words, transitions, or information to be conveyed, you don’t want to let the piece lie there. You want to finish the darn thing.

At the same time, don’t underestimate the importance of finding the best time of the day when your mind will be sharpest and you’ll have the fewest interruptions. For me, that’s when I’m in a coffee shop, with nobody calling, staring at a computer screen.

(BTW, my guess is that the professor that Connelly was talking about here was Harry Crews. In this YouTube video interview with David Perell, the novelist mentioned that this same advice was offered by Crews, “a Southern Gothic type of writer” who was teaching in Florida. Crews, who died in 2012, could be a hell-raiser, but at his best he could be evocative, as in this passage from his 1979 essay collection, Blood and Grits when he recounts slumping over a typewriter and popping pills in shame over his heritage, until he realized: “in that moment I literally saved my life, because the next thought…was that all I had going for me in the world or would ever have was that swamp, all those goddamn mules, all those screwworms that I'd dug out of pigs and all the other beautiful and dreadful and sorry circumstances that had made me the Grit I am and will always be….Since that time I have found myself perpetually fascinating.")

(The image of Michael Connelly that accompanies this post was taken on Oct. 15, 2010, by Mark Coggins from San Francisco.)

Photo of the Day: TV Series Filming in Sparkill, NY

I took the picture accompanying this post a couple of days ago, on the first day of location shooting for a Season One episode of the upcoming 8-episode Netflix series Unaccustomed Earth.

The actors and crew can be seen in the background of this photo. I didn’t want to move closer lest it aggravate production assistants who would, of course, loathe distractions on the set of this adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's acclaimed short story collection. 

Why did the producers choose Sparkill, an upstate New York hamlet so small (less than 1,400 people) that if you sneeze, you’ll miss it? Beats me, except that the state must have offered quite a financial package to attract this business.

A local businesswoman warned me before I drove up from Northern New Jersey that it might be difficult to find parking near her store because of the movie out-of-towners. So it proved, but I didn’t mind walking the few extra blocks.

Movie location shooting can be tricky. Whatever publicity and dollars that might accrue to the town often don’t mean much to local businesses that have to cope with what sometimes turn out to be annoying and protracted disruptions of their normal routines. What shows up on the screen may not be worth the turmoil.

My town, Englewood, NJ, was the site of two Woody Allen movies, for instance. In Annie Hall (1977), you can see the marquee of the then-still existing theater, the Plaza, for up to a minute. Two years later, his script for Manhattan called for what was evidently a satiric take on a Nazi rally. But you’d never tell from the final cut: there’s only a scene of Woody and Tony Roberts driving back into New York as evidence of something more.

It was a more dismal outcome than another movie shot there the same year, the Peter Falk-Alan Arkin farce The In-Laws. Any time I know it’s on TV, I can’t wait for one of its maniacal car chase scenes, shot at the southern end of my block, with my longtime church clearly visible in the background.

A much different experience unfolded in autumn 1999, when Robert Redford shot many scenes for The Legend of Baggar Vance in Savannah, Ga. While on vacation, I watched him on two consecutive days directing stars-in-the-making Matt Damon, Will Smith and Charlize Theron in a courthouse scene. Onlookers cheered wildly each time the actors waved at them in breaks.

Savannah was especially popular with filmmakers in the Nineties, with Forrest Gump also being shot there. But residents I talked to back then seemed to have especially fond memories of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. 

Despite what many might have thought from his Dirty Harry scowl, Clint Eastwood evidently personified geniality, posing for pictures with many star-struck locals.

We’ll see if the on-screen results and revenues in the town coffers fulfill initial expectations in Sparkill for Unaccustomed Earth. If they do, expect more of the same. If not, a lot of feathers will have to be smoothed down from now on.

TV Quote of the Day (‘Seinfeld,’ on Appropriate Terms of Admiration)

[Jerry and Elaine are talking about her new boyfriend, a conductor of a police band who insists on being called “Maestro.”]

Jerry Seinfeld [played by Jerry Seinfeld]: “So, what about the ‘Maestro’ stuff? Did he make you call him Maestro?

Elaine Benes [played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus]: “Yeah, I called him Maestro.”

Jerry: “You didn't mind?”

 
Elaine: “Well, I did at first, but actually I kind of got used to it.”
 
Jerry: “Okay, from now on I want you to call me ‘Jerry the Great.’”
 
Elaine: “I'm not calling you ‘Jerry the Great.’"
 
Jerry: “Why not? You call him ‘Maestro.’”
 
Elaine: “He is a Maestro.”
 
Jerry: “Well, I'm great.”— Seinfeld, Season 7, Episode 3, “The Maestro,” original air date Oct. 5, 1995, teleplay by Larry David, directed by Andy Ackerman

Quote of the Day (William James, on the Range of Emotions)

“There is no limit to the number of possible different emotions which may exist, and why the emotions of different individuals may vary indefinitely, both as to their constitution and as to objects which call them forth.”— American philosopher William James (1842-1910), The Principles of Psychology (1890)