Photo of the Day: On the Rocks in Central Park

Late in the afternoon over a week ago, I snapped this “on-the-rocks” shot of the city, close to the Wollman Rink in Central Park. In the mid-to-late Seventies, if seats at the Schaefer Music Festival were sold out, my friends and I would sit on a high perch like this and still be able to take in the show. Twilight was something in those days...

Quote of the Day (Raymond Chandler, on Why TV’s Perfect)

“Television's perfect. You turn a few knobs, a few of those mechanical adjustments at which the higher apes are so proficient, and lean back and drain your mind of all thought. And there you are watching the bubbles in the primeval ooze. You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet...And if some nasty-minded person comes along and says you look more like a fly on a can of garbage, pay him no mind. He probably hasn't got the price of a television set."—Mystery writer Raymond Chandler (1888-1959), in Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler, edited by Frank MacShane (1981)

Quote of the Day (Russell Baker, With a Great Gardening Tip)

“Watering at certain times leads to fungus and .watering at other times encourages crabgrass. Decide whether you prefer fungus or crabgrass and water accordingly.”—Russell Baker, Poor Russell’s Almanac (1972)

Photo of the Day: Find the Humans

Over a week ago, while in Brooklyn to see primarily Prospect Park and Grand Army Plaza, I walked past the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I was strongly tempted to go in, but if I was going to enter, I wanted to stay longer than the hour I had left in order to get my money’s worth of the $10 admission fee.

The sight of this display, just outside the entrance, made me extremely reluctant to go, but all the more sure that I would return at some point in the future.

Bonus Quote of the Day (Comic Ari Teman, on What IKEA Is Good For)

“IKEA is a good place to pick up a girl who's not looking for something permanent.” —Comic Ari Teman, tweet of March 17, 2014

Quote of the Day (Wilfred Owen, on the Horrors of WWI)

“We'd found an old Boche dug-out, and he knew,

And gave us hell, for shell on frantic shell

Hammered on top, but never quite burst through.

Rain, guttering down in waterfalls of slime

Kept slush waist high, that rising hour by hour,

Choked up the steps too thick with clay to climb.

What murk of air remained stank old, and sour

With fumes of whizz-bangs, and the smell of men

Who'd lived there years, and left their curse in the den,

If not their corpses. . . .”—Wilfred Owen, “The Sentry”

This poem, and a number of others of the same era, were brought to my attention in the cover story of the July issue of Military History Magazine, “The Poets of Hell,” about the extraordinary literary outpouring produced by World War I. All of the poets discussed here—not just Owen, but also Rupert Brooke, Edmund Blunden, Isaac Rosenberg, Siegfried Sassoon—were British, but U.S. servicemen would experience their own horrors once they were shipped overseas. (U.S. soldiers would also contribute significantly to the annals of literature created by the war, notably E.E. Cummings' The Enormous Room and Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms.)

Every war breeds its own kind of hell. Those of us who benefit from the sacrifice of the service personnel in these conflicts stand across a great gulf from them, separated by this simple fact: we simply have no clue of the horrors they endured.