Quote of the Day (Pete Hamill, on When ‘The Way Out of Poverty Was Through the Library’)

“I come from the white working class, but I was fortunate. I had parents that thought things would be better tomorrow or the day after tomorrow and the way out of poverty was through the library. My mother got me a library card when I was five. I couldn't read yet, and there were mothers like that all over New York.”—Irish-American columnist-novelist-memoirist Pete Hamill, quoted in Richard Turner, “Weekend Confidential: Pete Hamill—A Lifetime of Big Stories, Revisited,” The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 19-20, 2019

(Photo of Pete Hamill taken in Brooklyn in September 2007 by David Shankbone.)

Quote of the Day (Hubert Butler, on Crises)

“Timid or stupid people often enjoy times of crisis. They can suspend, for the country or the cause, those careful discriminations, which tire the brain and do no good to the career. ‘Now,’ they cry, ‘is not time for academic straw-splitting and parlour theorizing. Close the ranks! He that is not with me is against me!’ And so there is always a drift towards crisis, a gentle, persistent pressure towards some simple alignment of Good and Evil, Friend and Enemy. Even the churches are drifting slothfully towards a crude Manichaeism of Darkness and Light and away from Christ, who said so inscrutably that we should love our enemies.”—Anglo-Irish historian, translator, and essayist Hubert Butler (1900-1991), “Crossing the Border,” in Independent Spirit: Essays (1996)

When Butler wrote these lines in 1955, he was talking about the border between the Republic of Ireland and Ulster. (Little did he know that the issue would become considerably more fraught and violent within a generation—or that, by 2020, unrest might raise its head again in this area.)

But he could just as easily have been talking about the post-9/11 atmosphere, or even now in the United States. People who should know better are falling in the social media for fake memes that appeal to their prejudices. It is precisely because an item strikes a chord with you that it should be investigated.

In bewailing “timid” people, Butler was not criticizing people who took reasonably precautions about their physical safety, but those who fell victim to a herd mentality, who followed a party line without thinking.

You would think that a public health crisis would be the one time that partisanship would be put aside. Instead, it has only exacerbated everything that has made these last two decades such rancid ones.

Avoid labels and embrace “careful distinctions.” Those actions have never been more necessary to the survival of this republic, or even the world.

Quote of the Day (Steve Martin, on Why All Writers Should Live in California)

“I would like to recommend that all writers live in California, because here, in between those moments when one is looking into the heart of a rose, one can look up at the calming blue sky. I feel sorry for writers—and there are some pretty famous ones—who live in places like South America and Czechoslovakia, where I imagine it gets pretty dank. These writers are easy to spot. Their books are often filled with disease and negativity. If you're going to write about disease, I would say California is the place to do it. Dwarfism is never funny, but look at what happened when it was dealt with in California. Seven happy dwarfs. Can you imagine seven dwarfs in Czechoslovakia? You would get seven melancholic dwarfs at best—seven melancholic dwarfs and no handicap-parking spaces.”—American actor-writer Steve Martin, “Writing is Easy!” in Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from “The New Yorker,” edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder (2001)

(Photo of Steve Martin taken by David Shankbone at the premiere of Baby Mama in New York City at the 2008 Tribeca Film Festival, Apr. 23, 2008.)

Photo of the Day: Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Memorial, Pittsburgh PA

I took this picture in late June of last year, while on a weekend stop in Pittsburgh. The Southwestern Pennsylvania World War II Memorial, erected in Point State Park – the downtown confluence of the Steel City’s three rivers—was dedicated in 2013, in recognition of the region’s significant contribution to the war effort. 

Its 16 granite panels recount experiences ranging from Medal-of-Honor heroism to defense production on the homefront. Further enhancing the memorial’s educational component—which otherwise, with the passage of time, would increasingly be lost to popular memory—are eight other text panels that explain events that shaped the region, led to the war and determined its conclusion.

The memorial now attracts an estimated 50,000 annual visitors. But, for those who can’t go there—and even for those who have made it—I would also recommend visiting the memorial’s Website, which features interviews with five veterans of the conflict—among the area’s dwindling survivors of “The Greatest Generation.”