tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87090525176997849432024-03-16T03:09:17.837-04:00Greater New YorkA blog about New York's politics, culture and history.Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.comBlogger476125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-82569047492339493012013-01-14T09:26:00.001-05:002013-01-14T09:34:29.741-05:00Slide Mountain in Winter<style>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiGb1C8hIi2Pu_SC3xCBNjZj3z_ooZsWlFmBVVgLZwwNe-m4sXsb7TOv-DI6wrNLirMSTfcjx44dynMIBbboGrmono4XDFyS3n314h9OoyQ7t8gjMFwOzcpW0zndC0mLCY7I3rNOUV4fw/s1600/winter+tent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiGb1C8hIi2Pu_SC3xCBNjZj3z_ooZsWlFmBVVgLZwwNe-m4sXsb7TOv-DI6wrNLirMSTfcjx44dynMIBbboGrmono4XDFyS3n314h9OoyQ7t8gjMFwOzcpW0zndC0mLCY7I3rNOUV4fw/s320/winter+tent.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">The
hike to the top of Slide Mountain in the Catskills from the trailhead near
Winisook often gets knocked as a boring slog through the woods with limited
views from the summit. That's debatable at best and untrue in winter. As I
learned on 3 January 2013, the summit of Slide, at 4,180’, is a great
destination for winter camping in a surreal landscape shrouded in snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">My
son Max and I loaded up our overnight gear, strapped on our snowshoes, and set
off in the late afternoon from the parking lot on Slide Mountain Road.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We followed the yellow-blazed
Phoenicia-East Branch Trail to the red-blazed Wittenberg-Cornell-Slide Trail to
the summit. While there were a few short and steep sections at the start, most
of the ascent was long, gradual climb of about two miles with great views of the late afternoon sun
on the forests.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">We
started later than I wanted, around 3:30, but by sunset--around 5 pm--we were
well into the balsam forest that covers the top part of the mountain. To
preserve the ecosystem, overnight camping on Slide is prohibited above 3,500’
from March 22 to December 29. We were happy to take advantage of the winter
interlude to sleep on the summit.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">The
well-packed trail was easy to follow, so we snowshoed until we found a good
campsite: off the trail and surrounded by trees to break the wind, but not so
wooded that we feared for snow-laden trees dropping their burdens on us in the
middle of the night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">We
dropped our packs, gulped some water, and munched granola bars to restore our
energy. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">(The need to eat regularly
to maintain body warmth and energy makes winter backpacking a moveable feast.)</span> Then we pitched our tent, a sturdy MSR design pictured here, at our mountaintop campsite. To keep us secure in any winds, we tied our guy lines to
snowshoes and ski poles buried in the snow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For all our precautions, it was a quiet night. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">We
cooked supper on a butane stove by the light of our headlamps, their beams
glistening off sparkling snowflakes and cutting through the steam that rose from
our cooking pot. The cold weather made our butane stove predictably slow to boil water, but
all worked out fine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Warmed by a meal of macaroni and cheese, mixed vegetables, and double
strength hot chocolate, we soon felt warm and refreshed. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">For
our evening's entertainment we walked few hundred yards down the trail to the
actual summit. The deep snows muffled our every sound.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The trees around us were so covered in
snow that their shapes were fantastic—by turns round, bulging and pointy. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">From
the top of Slide we took in wintry views of the Catskills, then returned to our
snug tent and warm sleeping bags for more chocolate.
With zero degree bags and double foam pads, we were comfortable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">We
slept late and ate a breakfast of oatmeal and hot chocolate. As we packed our
tent, a passing snowshoer arriving on the summit told us that overnight the temperature
had gone down to 0.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">We
descended without incident and drove down the mountain. Our only dispute was a
generational disagreement on the proper musical accompaniment for our
triumphant trip home. We eventually settled on the Grateful Dead and went home
happily.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">Slide
in the winter is a serious trip. We took the easy route up (compared to the
ascent over Wittenberg) and brought good winter gear, including insulated
boots, mittens, warm hats, and lots of layers of clothing. Don’t attempt a
winter campout on Slide unless you have appropriate gear and a solid knowledge
of winter camping. But if you have all of these, it’s a great trip.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-weight: normal;">Photo
by Max Snyder.</span></div>
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<br /><span id="fullpost"></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com40tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-22840112034878587852012-10-30T19:53:00.002-04:002012-10-30T21:25:28.416-04:00After the Storm<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b>Along the East River at 78 Street last night, at abut
8:30 pm, water had crested over the riverside walkways</b>. <br />
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<b> I returned about noon today to find a much quieter scene. </b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc1pyP1gxZwzn0MN7em1D-WIv1K8llv9GCI52chhzP_61GNNmamj51cvUr6KL_3UZp9uWP_IJ-w0WqordfjexqKPyJI8CFFvFHzmrhzLw3gra06kCTcJubT5im1kOwAXtNM7xeRgecq6Q/s1600/East+River+After+Hurricane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc1pyP1gxZwzn0MN7em1D-WIv1K8llv9GCI52chhzP_61GNNmamj51cvUr6KL_3UZp9uWP_IJ-w0WqordfjexqKPyJI8CFFvFHzmrhzLw3gra06kCTcJubT5im1kOwAXtNM7xeRgecq6Q/s200/East+River+After+Hurricane.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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On the upper east and west sides of Manhattan today, there was the
amiable, outgoing atmosphere that I associate with a day after a snowstorm
in New York City. People step out of their apartments, put on their
friendliest faces, and enthusiastically become part of a scene that is
much larger then themselves. Downtown and in New Jersey, things are much
worse. <br />
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Fifty blocks south of me, my friend has no power. Classes at Rutgers-Newark, where I teach, have been cancelled through Friday. Power is out in Newark; one of my students there cut short an e-mail because she wanted to preserve the juice that remained on her computer. <br />
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It will be days sorting out this disaster and much longer learning its lessons. But here are two of then.<br />
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One, government makes a difference. Comparisons between hurricanes Sandy and Katrina are bound to be inexact, but here in New York we were blessed with effective municipal and state government and a more than competent president. The same cannot be said for the poor people of New Orleans. This is one more proof, if any was needed, that we cannot leave health, safety and our collective welfare to the free market. Just and effective government is a necessity.<br />
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Two, we are in an era when global warming causes violent weather patterns that put us all at risk. In the recent past, natural disasters, activism and independent journalism pushed this issue to the top of the political agenda. Since then, it has all but vanished. Neither the Obama nor the Romney campaigns has had much to say about it. We need to get back to it.<br />
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Global warming is not something to be ignored because it is politically inconvenient. Look no further than downtown Manhattan if you want to see its consequences. <br />
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<span id="fullpost"></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-81813848800456627352012-10-02T22:46:00.001-04:002012-10-02T22:49:53.863-04:00Hard TImesThe 1863 Draft Riots, an explosion of protest, race riot and street warfare, are the ugliest upheaval in the history of New York City. Explanations of the episode have changed over time, shifting from economics (Irish workers rioted because they feared competition for jobs from African Americans) to a greater emphasis on white racism. It is the genius of <i>Hard Times</i>, a <a href="http://www.thecelltheatre.org/the-new-york-times-theatre-review-hard-times-an-american-musical-at-the-cell-theatre/" target="_blank">musical</a> about the riots written by Larry Kirwan, that it grasps both of these explanations in ways that illuminate the hardships suffered by African and Irish Americans in Civil War New York.<br />
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The play takes shape in the story of a group of New Yorkers--Protestant and Catholic, Irish and native born, black and white--who seek refuge from the Draft Riots by hiding out in a bar owned by an African American woman, the widow of an Irishman, in the Five Points. The intersections of their lives, rivalries, loves, and animosities illuminate both the characters' individuality and the wrenching conflicts of their time.<br />
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Kirwan, whose music with <a href="http://www.black47.com/" target="_blank">Black 47</a> has used traditional Irish music, rock and rap to convey the Irish past and present, uses dramatic scenes and the music of Stephen Foster and minstrel shows to tell his story. The choice of Foster, who appears as a character in the play, and the related theme of blackface minstrelsy, are inspired. Foster's story illuminates the blend of vigor and sentimentality that defined American popular music in the mid-nineteenth centry, while minstrelsy helps Kirwan address both the racism and nativism of the time. Kirwan also depicts Foster as tormented by a love affair with a man who turns up in the bar, but this sub theme does more to suggest a reason for Foster's melancholy that it helps to explain his times.<br />
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Over the course of <i>Hard Times</i>, Kirwan explores the hardships that scarred both Irish and African Americans----neighbors, rivals and lovers, trapped in a hellish situation. At the same time, he shows how the Irish and African American meeting in song and dance--in the Five Points--produced great American art forms such as tap dance and ragtime. The result is an ending that is sobering yet rousing.<br />
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<i>Hard Times</i> was performed at The Cell on 23rd Street in Manhattan as part of the 1stIrish theater festival. Its run is over, but <i>Hard Times </i>surely deserves a revival at another theater soon.<br />
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<span id="fullpost"></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-30302395223342466802012-09-23T22:51:00.000-04:002012-09-23T23:06:09.032-04:00Woodie at 100<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyjCYERO40gqdStfs4X7S7erhH-NdLFnEhcMv3dmU9G2OXncGa13Hv8aRvrsc95JmBjwg20o-2RM7DtCYJT-FuLGQ-J90hCLDckr3gX8jsTKG_4EWtG0vkIwHPvjeyuzuUuOOoGABhgQ/s1600/Woodie+Concert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeyjCYERO40gqdStfs4X7S7erhH-NdLFnEhcMv3dmU9G2OXncGa13Hv8aRvrsc95JmBjwg20o-2RM7DtCYJT-FuLGQ-J90hCLDckr3gX8jsTKG_4EWtG0vkIwHPvjeyuzuUuOOoGABhgQ/s1600/Woodie+Concert.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Concert for Woodie Guthrie at Brooklyn College</td></tr>
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Gatherings to celebrate heroes of folk music and the old left sometimes feel like events for senior citizens. Last night's concert at Brooklyn College to celebrate the centennial of Woodie Guthrie's birth was an exception. Despite the abundance of gray hair, there were enough young people and enough inspired renderings of Woodie's lyrics that the future of folk music and fights for social justice felt secure for another 100 years.<br />
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The key to this is the <a href="http://www.woodyguthrie.org/archives/archivesindex.htm" target="_blank">Woodie Guthrie Archive</a>, run by Woodie's daughter Nora. In the archive, along with artwork and more, are almost 3,000 lyrics that Woodie wrote. Over the years, Nora has encouraged musicians to put them to new uses.<br />
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Two of the best products of this splendid idea could be heard last night.<br />
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Billy Bragg, a great interpreter of Woodie's songs, performed "God Down to the Water," which draws on Woodie's years as a merchant seaman in World War II. The lyrics, which Bragg set to the haunting tune for he Irish song "She Moved Through the Fair," are a beautiful mediation on love, distance, and the danger of loss.<br />
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Equally beautiful, and very different, was the Klezmatics' <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZfhHG5hovk" target="_blank">version</a> of "Mermaid Avenue," Woodie's splendid tribute to that thoroughfare in Brooklyn. The opening verse alone makes it one of the greatest New York City songs:<br />
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Mermaid Avenue that’s the street<br />
Where the lox and bagels meet,<br />
Where the sour meets the sweet;<br />
Where the beer flows to the ocean <br />
Where the wine runs to the sea;<br />
Why they call it Mermaid Avenue<br />
That’s more than I can see.<br />
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To get the sound of "Mermaid Avenue," check out this Klezmatics version on YouTube, recorded at the Tarrytown Music Hall.<br />
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Woodie's centennial will culminate soon in a concert in Washington, DC. But as far as I'm concerned, his spirit lives in raised voices, honest struggles, and the sounds of Mermaid Avenue. <br />
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</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-20931902559751880602012-09-23T22:21:00.001-04:002012-09-23T22:21:48.545-04:00Overwrite this text with your summary
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</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-58374707214177207882012-07-22T07:44:00.003-04:002012-07-22T07:48:27.179-04:00Along the Bronx River<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsp9_Ajd6HVxTiRPF9Ibv5OCoymJ6ystrCPIaHOQLNOHy00_U9AH1psMn0ChcTTjJtrGY5ED5uLVXleiYdr0kik_quZknby8duMicOd7HGNd_lNsICZVu9JzaIepAQybyEgoYfm0oYhg/s1600/SAM_0525.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpsp9_Ajd6HVxTiRPF9Ibv5OCoymJ6ystrCPIaHOQLNOHy00_U9AH1psMn0ChcTTjJtrGY5ED5uLVXleiYdr0kik_quZknby8duMicOd7HGNd_lNsICZVu9JzaIepAQybyEgoYfm0oYhg/s200/SAM_0525.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
The restoration of the Bronx River is one the great victories of New York environmentalism. Earlier this summer, I got a close look at all the good work the Bronx River Alliance has done to help this waterway<span id="fullpost"> when I paddled a 2-person kayak with my friend Jason Barr from Shoelace Park, at 219th Street, to the handsome Hunts Point Riverside Park. If you care at all about environmental justice and beautiful park design, or even if you just hanker to visit places that most people ignore, you owe it to yourself to make this trip. </span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">River levels were low but passable when we pushed off and we only ran aground a few times. (If you make this trip, bring a boat that can take some scratches.) There were a few falls and rapids that were too dangerous to run, but the portages for these are clearly marked (in English and Spanish) and we never lost our way.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kEuvkBvoYGMlbwuVUbs-OInKkbyoAxBKeuCUSGYuYy0jap7SGq8H0eKW_uBsjPqT6YrNhiJf0ttPXPoik8DQ7P1Cy1k09h8psBl4b5AoGN1M5WPPvi_xbWzL7rDzWz2EmfKCXuxh64U/s1600/SAM_0540.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_kEuvkBvoYGMlbwuVUbs-OInKkbyoAxBKeuCUSGYuYy0jap7SGq8H0eKW_uBsjPqT6YrNhiJf0ttPXPoik8DQ7P1Cy1k09h8psBl4b5AoGN1M5WPPvi_xbWzL7rDzWz2EmfKCXuxh64U/s200/SAM_0540.JPG" width="150" /></a></div>
<span id="fullpost">The range of landscapes that you pass through varies from forests in the upper reaches of the river to industrial zones near its mouth. We saw plenty of birds, including egrets and herons. The river runs right through the Wild Asia exhibit at the Bronx Zoo, and I thought I notices some kind of Asian antelope behind the discrete fencing of the zoo.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7JGcUdT8TgO7mPmfTvTDjd7Z_C04QCMudhLK6Jie_xxyO2WD6ZwrLaVU1UVhr9CxO7L_Gdvg7dEla19Nub0ZLrGh_tzVLEN8L2E-qQz9Fna7XNEPZxAWeIn6y-JXOQUqsERJjoqoWHyk/s1600/SAM_0535.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7JGcUdT8TgO7mPmfTvTDjd7Z_C04QCMudhLK6Jie_xxyO2WD6ZwrLaVU1UVhr9CxO7L_Gdvg7dEla19Nub0ZLrGh_tzVLEN8L2E-qQz9Fna7XNEPZxAWeIn6y-JXOQUqsERJjoqoWHyk/s200/SAM_0535.JPG" width="200" /></a><span id="fullpost">We stopped for lunch by this falls, which is in the vicinity of the Bronx Zoo. Gazing at the tumbling water, I thought I might have been in the Adirondacks. For folks who live in the Bronx, it's a great gift to have a landscape like this right in their backyard.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">To learn more about the restoration of Bronx River, check out a recent piece in the New York Times by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/arts/design/bronx-river-now-flows-by-parks.html?_r=1&ref=michaelkimmelman" target="_blank">Michael Kimmelman</a>, who as architecture critic does a great job of linking design, the urban ecosystem, and social justice.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">To learn more about the good work of the Bronx River Alliance, and pick up some tips on paddling this splendid river, visit the homepage of the <a href="http://www.bronxriver.org/" target="_blank">Alliance</a>.</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-76256409795820090472012-04-28T11:53:00.002-04:002012-04-28T11:56:19.457-04:00"Inventing Our Life"In my youthful travels in the 1970s and 1980s, I encountered three institutions that deeply impressed me as visions of a good and just way of life: the kibbutz, the British National Health Service, and the BBC. All of these have fallen on difficult times in recent decades, but it is the kibbutz that is the subject of an interesting documentary by Toby Perl Frelich, "Inventing our Lives," now playing at the Quad in Greenwich Village. <span id="fullpost">"Inventing Our Lives" explores the history and current crisis of the kibbutz movement, which has fallen victim to a turn away from socialist ideals in Israel, the movement's own internal fights, the rightward turn in Israeli politics, and the passing of the generation that led kibbutzim from their founding into the 1960s.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">The <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1687875/" target="_blank">film</a> is a friendly look at the kibbutz, but it doesn't ignore the kibbutz movement's contradictions. Communal child-rearing practices sometimes stifled "normal" family life but left women with the jobs of running childcare for everyone. One kibbutz that she looks at was built, to the distress of its American-born kibbutzniks, on abandoned Palestinian homes. And for all the movement's professed egalitarianism, it could be quite elitist in its own way. In the old Israel, kibbutzniks considered themselves part of the vanguard of Israeli society. One consequence of this was that they never embraced the Middle Eastern Jews who immigrated after 1948, thereby cutting themselves off from what would become a large and growing sector in of Israel's population. This failure, "Inventing Our Lives" notes, was one of many factors that undermined the kibbutzim in the long run.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">For all the problems that have befallen the movement, and for all the agonizing that accompanies efforts to either revive or privatize the kibbutzim, Frelich's interviews with founders, their children and their grandchildren convey what was best and most compelling about kibbutz life: the freedom that children enjoyed on the kibbutz grounds, the strong sense of solidarity that could turn a campfire singalong into a a swelling chorus that strengthened the voice of the weakest singer, and the beauty of a life that was lived close to nature and close to the artistic and intellectual heritage that kibbutzniks drew from European humanism.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">I encountered all of these at Kibbutz Gvat in the Jezreel Valley in the 1980s, where I was a guest and worked briefly in a small workshop making parts for irrigation systems. I remember how a print of a classical painting hung outside one workroom. The painting, along with the shaded walkways between houses, the cultivated fields around, and the lives my friends there enjoyed as singers and musicians, seemed to me like the perfect blend of the outdoors life, hard work, culture and learning.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">Since the 1980s, Gvat--like the kibbutzim portrayed in "Inventing Our Lives"--has gone through changes that I'm not in a good position to explain or understand. Whether the kibbutzim disappear or reinvent themselves is an open question left hanging at the end of "Inventing Our Lives." Something similar could be said for the BBC and the National Health Service in Britain. The social democratic ideals that animated all of these, and brought out some of the best in the 20th century, are beleaguered but still relevant. Here's hoping that the kibbutz movement reinvents itself in a way that creates a more just and democratic Israel.</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-1511854747420917862012-04-11T23:30:00.004-04:002012-04-13T11:43:31.364-04:00Hiking in Harriman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTH9gL-AZdwkgHxQJsIsh9WstRa_X8ML3prMjyXzKIdYKoBq_s4fJE9Wpv0ieDDKfbubHmGgPRgoAtusA-dkxfFa_vC0qF6TYVqyOdYd177JSw-cSZ0Z_8dG17K8B5VLPDRlWWJPcrb8c/s1600/SAM_0360.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTH9gL-AZdwkgHxQJsIsh9WstRa_X8ML3prMjyXzKIdYKoBq_s4fJE9Wpv0ieDDKfbubHmGgPRgoAtusA-dkxfFa_vC0qF6TYVqyOdYd177JSw-cSZ0Z_8dG17K8B5VLPDRlWWJPcrb8c/s200/SAM_0360.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
The hiking paths of Harriman State Park crisscross rocky ridges,
military routes of the Revolutionary War, and forty years of my own
memories as a backpacker. I shared all of these on a recent three-day
trip with my daughter Allison.<span id="fullpost"><br /></span><br />
<span id="fullpost">She's in the background of this photo, making camp at the William Brien Memorial Shelter. We camped here on a route that scribed a great if lopsided circle, from the Bear Mountain Inn to West Mountain Shelter to the Brien shelter and back to the Inn.</span><span id="fullpost"> Over three days I visited some places I haven't seen in decades and checked out some new ones as well. </span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">The view from West Mountain Shelter looking down the Hudson Valley to New York City remains one of my favorites. It's a great destination for a first-time backpacker: the route to the shelter on the Suffern-Bear Mountain Trail climbs enough to make things challenging without making things so hard that a novice will get discouraged.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">Even more impressive, though, was the view from the summit of Black Mountain ascended from the east on the Appalachian Trail. I had never walked this stretch before, and it involved a sprint where the Appalachian Trail crosses the Palisades Interstate Parkway. Once you cross the Parkway, the path climbs gradually and then steeply to a beautifully contoured stretch of trail that runs along the summit of Black Mountain. The view towards Bear Mountain to the east, and the great ridges of Harriman State Park to the west, is spectacular. If you stay on the Appalachian Trail from this point, you can then walk to the Brien shelter and camp for the night. </span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">From the Brien shelter, we returned to the Bear Mountain Inn via Popolopen Gorge, a route that I can't recommend at this time because all sorts of earth moving efforts turn your walk into something like a hike through a construction site. Nevertheless, we eventually came back to Hessian Lake and the Bear Mountain Inn, which marked handsome end to our journey.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">It was great to share old memories with Allison, a skilled backpacker in her own right, who at the age of 16 already has stories of outdoor adventures to pass on. Doubtless she will accumulate more.</span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">In our crowded metropolitan region, Harriman remains an invaluable resource that makes the pleasures of the outdoors available to everyone. To learn more about the park, and hiking in our region, check out the <a href="http://www.nynjtc.org/" target="_blank">NY/NJ Trail Conference</a>. Their good work makes possible the great hiking opportunities of Greater New York.</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-25745145720700066402012-03-24T17:39:00.002-04:002012-03-24T20:47:59.517-04:00Bonticou Crag<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixi-slHGhLKQUYcGk0cYMTtTLh_vYGQ2B5xLfi0-OyLbt3fowdSpMmGXPfKMCqmkobIa_hJOkqneqZ8jYqeU8lyHmOhxEP_Ii40tqRHHG7RnBoFLeF1bD5hEqTvFpIbYeLT9VGn9qmr8s/s1600/SAM_0333.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixi-slHGhLKQUYcGk0cYMTtTLh_vYGQ2B5xLfi0-OyLbt3fowdSpMmGXPfKMCqmkobIa_hJOkqneqZ8jYqeU8lyHmOhxEP_Ii40tqRHHG7RnBoFLeF1bD5hEqTvFpIbYeLT9VGn9qmr8s/s200/SAM_0333.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
My lifelong love of mountaintop vistas has one complication: I have an ambivalent relationship to heights. For years, I put off an ascent of Bonticou Crag (left) in the Shawangunks because it has a reputation of requiring a head for altitude. So it was with special joy that I climbed it and stood on its summit yesterday with my son Max.<br />
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We got up early, drove to Mohonk Preserve, and hiked an easy route of carriage roads and paths to the start of the ascent. Like other scrambles in the Shawangunks, <a href="http://www.nynjtc.org/hike/bonticou-crag">Bonticou Crag</a> is basically a succession of moves: scramble over big boulders, walk along a ledge, squirm up a rock slab, and repeat. </span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">The difference with Bonticou Crag is that the handholds are trickier, the footholds aren't obvious, and everything is steeper. Twice I recited to myself the joking motto of an American expedition to the base of Mount Everest in the 1950s, which adopted a phrase posted in a school in a Himalayan village: "Gather courage, don't be a chicken-hearted fellow." (For more on this, read the fascinating, insightful and well-written <i>Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes</i> by Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver.) <br /><br />Finally, with a few grunts, gasps and narrow squeezes, we stood atop Bonticou Crag. The view was spectacular, and the classic Shawangunk combination of barren rock and gnarled trees made us feel that we were in an alpine environment. We took a long and pleasantly winding route back to our car, then drove back to New Paltz with Bob Dylan blasting on our CD player.<br /><br />I have been hiking and cross-country skiing in the Shawangunks for forty years. Going there yesterday with my teenage son Max (and his Bob Dylan CDs) was a great way to combine past and present, along with future prospects for more good hikes.<br /><br />Of course, for real mountaineers Bonticou would be an easy scramble. For me, it was a strong challenge but an enjoyable one. That's the great thing about hiking: we can all find our Everests according to our abilities. (There is also an easy route up Bonticou that requires no scrambling.) </span><br />
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<span id="fullpost">And wherever you walk, if you find yourself in a tough ascent, remember the motto: "Gather courage, don't be a chicken-hearted fellow." You'll reach your summit in good time.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> </span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-85550199905678969232011-12-31T12:36:00.005-05:002011-12-31T13:32:49.703-05:00A Class ActAs a surpassingly ideological woman, Margaret Thatcher would probably recoil at how the new film <span style="font-style:italic;">The Iron Lady</span> depicts her in distinctly personal terms as an aging, widowed, out-of-power politician struggling with dementia. But in at least one way the film reflects a political sea change that Thatcher helped set in motion: the decline of the idea that class is a relationship that structures both inequality <span style="font-style:italic;">and</span> solidarity.<span id="fullpost"><br /><br />In <span style="font-style:italic;">The Iron Lady</span>, class is a form of social distinction, a kind of snobbery that Thatcher overcomes in her own Conservative Party (along with sexism) to become prime minister. In this view, her rise is a triumph for pluck and meritocracy. The Labor Party politicians that she battles and the demonstrators arrayed against her are cardboard figures, either simpletons or hooligans. <br /><br />Thatcher triumphed as a politician, the film suggests, because she remained true to herself in the face of all opposition. The content of her policies, and their impact, receive comparatively little attention. Yet this is the woman who did as much as anyone to popularize the neoliberal world we live in today, where society is a fiction, greed and gain are the engines of progress, and the most modest forms of social democracy are decried as nothing more than socialist dictatorship.<br /><br />Some of this is unavoidable in a feature film organized around one central character. But I can't shake the feeling that some viewers will come away from <span style="font-style:italic;">The Iron Lady</span> seeing Thatcher's career as a triumph for diversity (grocer's daughter overcomes the snobs) while never thinking that her vision of politics and government, which denied inequalities of class and exalted individualism at the expense of solidarity, brought us to the atomized, insecure, and massively unequal world that we inhabit today.<br /><br /><br /> </span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-74758118826805690202011-12-20T20:55:00.003-05:002011-12-31T12:36:25.394-05:00HitchEverybody’s writing about Christopher Hitchens, so I thought I would add my two cents. I never met him, never exchanged apercus over aperitifs, and was never the recipient of his kindnesses or intellectual benefactions. Like other readers of the Nation over the past three decades, I just read him regularly, agreed with him sometimes, disagreed with him other times. Of course, he wrote brilliantly and facilely on any topic of his choosing, and generally asked the big questions, those worth asking. But he was basically a provocateur, a distiller of outrage, generally (except in his marvelous literary essays),a disdainer and avoider of nuance. <br /><span id="fullpost"> <br />His politics were basically limited to foreign policy.(In this he is unlike his great model, George Orwell, most of whose best work was on the class structure in England.) His basic instincts were always right, insisting on the importance of asking about God’s existence, of the need to maximize human freedom, for eliminating the barriers against liberty. But figuring out to achieve this in an unfree world, with plenty of bad guys, and no unalloyed good guys, is always the rub. <br /><br />I basically agreed with him on Serbia and Bosnia, which I think was his great turning point in his world-view, with his acquiescence in the use of western power to liberate peoples from tyrannical dictatorship. And I understand, and sympathized with his anger at Clinton in not doing enough in the Balkans, and doing what he did tardily and clumsily to advance this goal. <br /><br />But I simply don’t understand how he went from blasting Clinton for his bombing of a purported munitions factory in 1998,to, three years later, starring in the Amen corner of cheerleaders for Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. It seems so unnecessary— there were plenty of leftists and liberals who managed to combine a detestation for Saddam Hussein with opposition to the war, but he was defeated by his basic inability to see nuance in any situation, and this was a war, with horrible people on both sides, that needed nuance slavered into every crevice. And when the war became a fiasco, he had ample opportunity to admit that he had been wrong, but I guess his vaunted courage deserted him.<br /><br />Anyway his legacy is obscure. His politics for the last decade of his life, a hodge-podge of ultraleftist remnants and his newfound conservative human rights realpolitik, simply did not make much sense. He left no useful political legacy except as a cautionary reminder if how difficult it is to make one’s way through the mine field of our post-post Cold War world. <br /><br />If he resembles anyone, its a funnier hipper less sententious version of Whittaker Chambers for our time (with Sidney Blumenthal a stand-in for Alger Hiss.) . He will be remembered, and pardoned by many, for writing extraordinarily well. I don’t think he would have thought that was enough. <br /></span>Peter Eisenstadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16267135072555177441noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-34846315433534954062011-11-16T22:47:00.003-05:002011-11-16T23:20:43.676-05:00Journalists Under ArrestAccording to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly and spokesmen for the Bloomberg administration, the reporters arrested at the breakup of Occupied Wall Street and ensuing protests in lower Manhattan were arrested for their own safety. Or because they were trespassing on private property. Or because they had no right to be at the scene of an ongoing police operation. Hogwash. Reporters have been visiting crime scenes and accompanying police officers on dangerous and not so dangerous operations since the nineteenth century. The only conclusion I can come to is that the NYPD preferred to do its work in the dark, without independent observers. And that speaks badly for the NYPD.<span id="fullpost"><br /><br />The press passes that reporters carry--which are issued by the police department--clearly state that they permit the bearer to cross police lines in pursuit of a story. The idea behind the practice dates to 1836, when the newspaper editor James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald was admitted to a downtown brothel that was the scene of the murder of one Helen Jewett. As Bennett was admitted to the premises while others were kept outside, the story goes, a guard explained, "He is an editor--he is on public duty."<br /><br />The notion of journalists as the eyes and ears of the public is thus an old one in New York City. It's an ideal worth taking seriously because police officers, like elected officials, act in the name of the public. If we don't have a chance to observe them in action through the eyes of reporters, then we are blinded to what is being done in the name of our city. And a blind democracy is not a healthy democracy.<br /><br />Zuccotti Park may be spic and span, but something smells when the NYPD insists on arresting journalists who want to watch cops make arrests.<br /><br /><br /><br /></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-80604179318786729812011-11-15T22:29:00.012-05:002011-11-16T23:23:38.966-05:00Order Reigns on Wall StreetI arrived at Zuccotti Park today around 1 pm, too late to have seen the eviction in the early morning hours. I did, however, see plenty of examples of how NYPD policing strategies raise tension and curb dissent. I also got a chance to think about how the Occupy movement can grow from this latest turn of events.<br /><span id="fullpost"><br /><br />Along Broadway at the eastern edge of the park, around 1 pm today, the police had demonstrators and pedestrians squeezed between metal police barriers on the park side and a double line of police officers on the Broadway side. On the sidewalk, that made passing by the park crowded and at times tense. <br /><br />For me, it was one more example of a problem that dates back to the Giuliani years: the practice of treating public assembly as a problem to be controlled. In the end, that makes for demonstrations hemmed into holding pens patrolled by lines of grim looking cops. On both the police and demonstrators' sides, this was not a situation conceived to cool down hotheads.<br /><br />I also want to note that the <span style="font-style:italic;">Times</span> reported that reporters were barred from the park when the evictions took place. As was noted in <a href="http://http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-clear-zuccotti-park-with-show-of-force-bright-lights-and-loudspeakers.html?hp">"Police Clear Zuccotti Park..."</a><br /><br /><blockquote>Reporters in the park were forced to leave. Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, said it was for their safety. But many journalists said that they had been prevented from seeing the police take action in the park, and that they had been roughly handled by officers. Mr. Browne said television camera trucks on Church Street, along the park’s western border, were able to capture images. <br /></blockquote><br />That's more proof, if you need any, that the fate of honest and independent journalism is inextricably linked to other freedoms like the right to protest. The First Amendment, as my late friend Jim Carey liked to point out, is more than a guarantee of freedom for journalists: it is an exhortation to gather and speak freely in a democratic way of life.<br /><br />In the long run, I've always thought that the Occupy movement should value a continued presence in the park over holding turf for 24 hours around the clock. Equally important, it has to make some demands or make itself the street protest division of a movement that raises coherent demands of its own to get us out of this economic crisis.<br /><br />In the long run, OWS lost to the cops last night and the right to demonstrate took another beating. In the long run, however, this can become a chance to regroup and come back fighting for a more just future.</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-51650331318318067072011-11-09T22:00:00.006-05:002011-11-09T22:36:14.314-05:00Paddling the Bronx River<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP_lC8NAw7jLkEnVRCjwubXnzTH0XLbU6Kv_-nZd1ZW4GHExw_RZCLCCNFp3Nr1w7Lgx_Yftgybru5Rzn6Zm8oTjq9VpZL8lihgv3mj8qEIcR1HKeuDnyjtqS_fBmY1ZBByUKV64lkXZw/s1600/DSC_0023.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 133px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP_lC8NAw7jLkEnVRCjwubXnzTH0XLbU6Kv_-nZd1ZW4GHExw_RZCLCCNFp3Nr1w7Lgx_Yftgybru5Rzn6Zm8oTjq9VpZL8lihgv3mj8qEIcR1HKeuDnyjtqS_fBmY1ZBByUKV64lkXZw/s200/DSC_0023.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5673202091745580098" /></a><br />The wealth of outdoor adventures to be found within the borders of New York City always astounds me, from bouldering in Central Park to mountain biking in Highbridge Park to beach combing at Jamaica Bay. But nothing matches the autumn canoe trip that I took last week under sunny skies and luminous fall foliage on the Bronx River.<spanid="fullpost"><br /><br />To dedicate the Thain Family Forest, a rare old-growth forest that has been given new pathways and environmentally educational signage, the <a href="http://www.nybg.org/exhibitions/thain-family-forest/index.php">New York Botanical Garden</a> in the Bronx held a festival with walks, poetry, music and more.<br /><br />For me and my wife, the best part of the festival was a short canoe trip on the Bronx River run by the <a href="http://bronxriver.org/?pg=home">Bronx River Alliance</a>. The Alliance has done great work to clean up the river and make it a setting for hikes, canoe trips, and communing with nature. Last Sunday, they brought canoes to the river and we had a great time paddling New York City's only true freshwater river. (The Hudson is a salt water estuary and the East River is a tidal strait.)<br /><br />Afloat on the Bronx River, all we could see were forests, the shoreline and sun-dappled waters. The distant hum of traffic and stray soda cans occasionally reminded us of the city around us, but most of the trip was a great escape from concrete and traffic.<br /><br />Thanks to the good work of the Bronx River Alliance, there are all sorts of ways to enjoy the river. We'll be back.<br /><br />The festival continues for the weekend of November 12-13. If you want to paddle, get there early. On the day of our visit, there were lots of eager canoeists waiting to get out on the water.<br /><br />Photo by Clara Hemphill.<br /></spanRob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-85064440143358471732011-10-11T23:02:00.004-04:002011-10-11T23:25:32.581-04:00Occupied Wall Street JournalLast night I visited Occupied Wall Street on my way home from work. I strolled around the encampment, took in the sights, and came home with the best example I have yet found of the depth, complexity and reach of this movement: a copy of the encampment's newspaper, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Occupied Wall Street Journal</span>.<span id="fullpost"><br /><br />The front-page stories by Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges were nothing that you couldn't read in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Nation</span> (not that there's anything wrong with that fine publication.) But the inside pages, with pieces on the "The Progress of Revolutions" and an international timeline on this year in dissent, and back pages featuring union endorsements of the occupation, and articles on the principles and practices of the occupation, give a sense of the movement's range and principles. <br /><br />My Spanish-language edition of <span style="font-style:italic;">Occupied</span> contained the most interesting thing I've seen on the encampment: a map of the site. As it shows, walking from the northeast corner of Zuccotti Park to the southwest you'll go from the library to the general assembly to the info desk to the kitchen to the sleeping area to the medical service.<br /><br />There are plenty of flaky types participating in the occupation, but the people I met running the kitchen, library and information desk were all smart, hard-working, welcoming and organized. Their organizational capacities, which seem to hold the whole operation together, are the embodiment of new forms of politics and participation. <br /><br />As Alexander Hamilton might have told you when he founded the <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Post</span> to support the Federalist Party, newspapers are a great way to build and maintain a movement. Even in the age of Web, the local and global dimensions of <span style="font-style:italic;">The Occupied Wall Street Journal</span> give the occupation a kind of gravity that should be taken seriously. </span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-21482975969464344722011-10-06T08:51:00.006-04:002011-10-06T09:41:40.421-04:00Lost in the HeadlinesIn the <span style="font-style:italic;">Daily News</span> and the <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Post</span>, the peaceful nature of last night's protest at Zuccotti Park, which brought 10-20,000 people to downtown Manhattan, was lost in headlines that emphasized a confrontation between police and maybe 200 of the protesters that took place late in the evening. <span id="fullpost"><br /><br />The front page of the <span style="font-style:italic;">News</span> trumpeted "Brawl St.," complete with a cop blasting pepper spray at a protester. Inside, a news story provided a much more accurate depiction of the evening's events and stressed how clashes broke out only after nightfall. And a column by Jimmy Breslin grasped the importance of the rally and its union presence.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style:italic;">Post</span> gave over its front page to the death of Steve Jobs and ran "It's Brawl Street" on page 7. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Post</span> acknowledged that the protest was peaceful before it turned violent late in the evening but emphasized the confrontation, thus allowing the last act in the drama to define the story about the rest of it.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style:italic;">New York Times</span> ran "Seeking Energy, Unions Join Wall Street Protest" on the front page above the fold beneath a four-column photograph of the demonstrators. This piece, clearly the product of lots of reporting on the unions and the occupy Wall Street movement, relegated the post-demonstration violence to one paragraph. But what the piece ignored in breaking news was compensated for with strong analysis and a great map of Zuccotti Park that helps explain the organizational depth of the protesters who set up camp in the park.<br /><br />As we saw in the Sixties, a peaceful protest was defined by disproportionate coverage of a trouble-seeking minority of protesters. As is so often the case, it was the photos and headlines that were most misleading. Photographs are great for capturing action and anger, but they just can't carry the nuances best conveyed by words.<br /><br />Journalists can and should do better. At the same time, the protesters who ended the night by looking for a confrontation on Wall Street, which was beyond the site of the rally, made their own mistake. Their actions made it easier for headline writers and photographers to misrepresent their movement. At the next protest, we need to see wiser heads prevail.</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-28011753343051754552011-10-05T22:01:00.007-04:002011-10-05T22:29:38.320-04:00Marching on Wall StreetA few days ago, I walked through Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan to check out the occupation of Wall Street and found a ragtag mix of earnest protesters, young people, and homeless-looking folk. Tonight, I returned with thousands of marchers who trekked down Broadway to protest the our country's unjust and inadequate responses to the economic crisis. I marched with union members, teachers, musicians, white collar workers, peace activists, and environmentalists. This is a real movement for economic justice and the Democrats ignore it at their peril<span id="fullpost"><br /><br />The breadth, spirit and order of tonight's march were impressive. These were the left end of the people who elected President Obama--from radicals to liberal Democrats--and they are the foundation for any consequential movement for progressive change in the United States. They are also people who understandably feel ignored by the current administration.<br /><br />Old faces from other protests, union members from Local 100 of the Transport Workers' Union and the Communications Workers, and smiling onlookers brought a great sense of energy, steadiness and purpose to the procession. The best piece of sloganeering I saw was a sticker that many people wore on their lapel, simply reading "99%." It was a great reminder that the marchers were part of the majority in the country and that the economy ought to serve us and not the other way around.<br /><br />Up to now, reporting on the Wall Street occupation has depicted the protesters as everything form Sixties holdovers to nut cases. Gina Bellafante's piece in the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/nyregion/protesters-are-gunning-for-wall-street-with-faulty-aim.html">Times</a> was an example of this kind of journalism, managing to be snide and shallow at the same time. She focused on the weirdest people in the park, dismissed the rest of them as unrealistic, and then left. Tonight's demonstration is an answer to her. So was the occupants' committees organized to deal with cleanup, security, and arts and cultures. Some of those folks may be anarchists, but that doesn't mean that they don't know how to govern themselves.<br /><br />After months and years of being kicked around by the Great Recession, tonight thousands of New Yorkers kicked back. It felt great. <br /><br />If we find a just way out of this crisis, it will be because people in power--starting with the White House--hear the voices in Zuccotti Park.<br /><br /><br /></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-49899325538156350802011-05-02T21:42:00.002-04:002011-05-02T22:14:54.801-04:00Searching for VJ DayOn my way to work this morning, I passed the World Trade Center site. There were lots of camera crews, lots of commuters and lots of cops. Everybody seemed to be taking pictures, but there was no obvious focal point to the scene--no waving flag, no inspiring orator, no sailor giving a nurse a passionate kiss as in Times Square at the end of World War II. I was glad that Osama bin Laden met his just end, but I couldn't shake the feeling that this was not a clear-cut ending, the way VJ Day was for World War II. I rode to work anticipating revenge attacks and an interminable war in Afghanistan. Then Peter, in one of our many conversations conducted by cell phone as I stride through Newark, gave me a new way of looking at the situation. <span id="fullpost"><br /><br />With bin Laden dead, the US can begin redefining its fight against Al Qaeda and its allies. That means enduring vigilance, but hopefully a giant step away from the wars like Iraq and Afghanistan that have done so much to tarnish our democracy and stain our reputation in the Muslim world.<br /><br />John Kerry got it right in 2004: the United States' war against Al Qaeda and its allies should be conducted with the long-term goal of reducing it to something like our national fight against organized crime: something we do with complete seriousness, but not something that eternally defines us and our nation.<br /><br />Kerry knows something about war, unlike George Bush and Dick Cheney, but that didn't stop the GOP from ridiculing him as an ineffectual, defeatist Democrat. Hardly. <br /><br />For some time, we've needed a win in the fight against Al Qaeda that would restore our sense of strength, reduce our fears, and give us the confidence to wage this struggle in ways that are consistent with our best selves. <br /><br />When US forces killed Osama bin Laden, they gave us a just and useful victory. Let the president make the most of it, even if it isn't the equivalent of VJ Day.<br /></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-4609399474740010672011-05-02T08:57:00.002-04:002011-05-02T09:03:37.699-04:00Mission Accomplished; New Mission StartingThe death of Osama bin Laden is a moment for genuine national pride, a rough but necessary form of justice meted out to an evil, evil man, who was responsible for the death of thousands of innocent people. President Obama and all those involved in the operation deserve the gratitude of the nation. But the real question is, where do we go from here? Since 9/11 the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been seen by most Americans in an intensely personal way. Now that we have accomplished this, there is no better time to examine the two wars we have waging, with the ostensive purpose of destroying al-Queda, in Iraq and Afghanistan, though both wars long ago sprawled away from any such simple objective. It is time to, accurately this time, declare mission accomplished, and end American involvement in the wars. And while we’re at it, we can reexamine the security and surveillance state that has burgeoned since 9/11. There’s no restoring the World Trade Center, or the thousands of lives that were lost in its destruction, or going back to a pre-9/11 world, but perhaps now we can move forward, beyond the world 9/11 created. For the first time since September 11, 2001, a president of the United States has the moral and political standing to really explore how this country has changed, since 9/11, often in ways not for the better. I was reading the other day how by 1944, literally hundreds and books and studies had been produced on the questions raised by the "post-war world." It is time Americans started thinking a little about what the world would be like when the war on terror, or whatever the Obama administration calls it, is over. It is time to start contemplating a new post war world. I hope that President Obama makes the most of this unique opportunity to reorient America, and make it, and the world it so crucially shapes, better places to live, with brighter futures.Peter Eisenstadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16267135072555177441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-31929950904569137842011-04-24T09:51:00.008-04:002011-10-06T10:31:04.952-04:00Black Watch in BrooklynThe war in Iraq, and military life in general, are so far from the experiences of most Americans that it takes a determined effort to understand them from the inside out. But if you seek to understand them, you should definitely see <a href="http://www.stannswarehouse.org/current_season.php?show_id=9">Black Watch</a>, a brilliant play at Saint Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn about soldiers in the famed Scottish regiment deployed to Iraq.<span id="fullpost"><br /><br />Grounded in interviews with Black Watch veterans, the play takes the form of encounters between a writer and soldiers in a Scottish poolroom that flash back and forth between the deep past, the present, and the war in Iraq. The play has already won many awards in Britain, and has returned to Brooklyn after an enthusiastic reception at Saint Anne's in 2007. Better than anything I have seen, it captures the complex mix of pride, courage, cynicism, anger, obscenity and solidarity that sustain soldiers in combat. <br /><br />If you're looking for a critique of the history of the Black Watch in the British Empire, or an examination of British soldiers' relations with Iraqis, you'll have to keep looking. Neither gets much time in the play. <br /><br />Where Black Watch excels, however, is in its exploration of the ideas, actions and emotions of soldiers. With monologues and dialogues, exquisitely choreographed scenes of combat and barracks brawls, pipe band music and Scottish folk songs, Black Watch takes viewers to a world that few of them will know first-hand. The final scene of the play, which blends an assault and close order drill, conveys the suffering and solidarity of the soldier's life in ways that are extremely moving.<br /><br />Gregory Burke, author of the play, suggests in a program note that the sense of unity in the Black Watch can be traced to "the male psyche's yearning for a strong identity." He adds that "The army does not recruit well in London or any other big city; fighting units tend to be more at home with homogeneity than with metropolitanism or multiculturalism." <br /><br />He's on to something, but his play does better than his writer's note at explaining the complex mix of motives and feelings that sustain soldiers. What carries the men in the Black Watch, despite all the pain and contradictions that surround them, is the knowledge that every one of them would risk his life for the other. As a university professor who can find it hard to get people to attend a meeting at 10 am, I know how that sense of solidarity is a rarity in the modern working world. And working class lads aren't the only people looking for a strong identity: the Princeton alumni who gather annually to sing the praises of Old Nassau are perhaps more besotted with their alma mater than these soldiers are with their regiment.<br /><br />In the end, the veterans of the Black Watch are buoyed by stories: the stories of their predecessors on far-off battlefields and their own stories of Iraq. They guard them closely, but we are fortunate to have them shared with us in this play. If you have any curiosity about these lives and their world, don't miss Black Watch.</span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-15719788023041525912011-04-12T15:55:00.004-04:002011-04-24T09:51:17.876-04:00Angry MenWith the passing of Sidney Lumet, we have lost one of the most gifted directors of the past half century, and one of the most gifted directors of films about New York City ever, to whom we owe Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, Network, Prince of the City, and many others. But for me, and I guess, for many others as well, his most memorable NYC film was his first, one that only shows the city in glimpses, 12 Angry Men, the ultimate jury room film.<span id="fullpost"> <br /><br />Made in 1957, the film is often seen as a high water mark of post-war liberalism, in which prejudice, seen as a distorting filter that blinds people to their own less than rational motivations, is eventually exorcized through exposure to the honest discourse of unbiased seekers of truth. Of course, if they were making the film today, it would end with Lee J. Cobb making his day, Clint Eastwood-like, with a sniveling Henry Fonda, tearfully admitting on his knees that his Harvard elitism blinded him to the reality that a punk is a punk is a punk, and that he almost let a dangerous murderer back on the street. <br /><br />The dominant metaphor of the film is the jury as democracy, in which people from different classes and backgrounds struggle to transcend their differences in their difficult search for a common ground. This doesn’t have too much to do with the reality of the jury system, with its origins lost in the Anglo-Saxon mists of the witenagenot and whatever, and the consensus the jury reached in 12 Angry Men with the notable lack of women and blacks, was not in the end truly representative of the country as a whole. Still it’s a powerful metaphor, one perhaps behind much of Obama’s efforts to convince Americans that what they share in common is more important than their differences. But if that's what he doing, he going about in the wrong way. <br /><br />What the jurors in the film shared were not their attitudes or beliefs, but a common task, a common purpose. They were partners, equal partners, and everyone was of equal importance. Once they understood this, they were able to reach a common decision. This is what America so badly lacks today, and I'm not sure how Obama should go about trying to realize this, but you don’t start by stating how much you agree with those opposed to you. <br /><br />Perhaps you start by finding a common enemy. Another Lumet film that perhaps speaks more to the spirit of our times, is one of his least characteristic films, Murder on the Orient Express, sort of the reverse of 12 Angry Men, in which—-spoiler alert—-twelve or so people of very different backgrounds and stations in life come together for the express purpose of killing someone they mutually loathe. If we really hated the recession as much as the travelers on the Orient Express hated the kidnapper-murderer they offed, as much as FDR hated the depression, we might begin to discover again what he had in common. <br /></span>Peter Eisenstadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16267135072555177441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-62116759274554379442011-04-10T20:15:00.001-04:002011-04-24T09:45:27.737-04:00Donald Trump and Adolf HitlerDonald Trump is embarrassing himself (as if that was really possible) in his new campaign to demonstrate that Barack Obama was not born in the United States. But the more interesting question is what has been behind the birther movement, which has shown a remarkable strength despite the absence of the tiniest scintilla of evidence for its cause. <br /><span id="fullpost"><br />One answer can be found in an infamous little book written in 1850, one of the greatest composers of all time (he would definitely be in my top five), and one of the worst persons of all time (its hard to compare someone who was actually not responsible for the deaths of anyone with the Hitlers and Stalins of the world, but he would definitely make the top 25, I think.) <br /><br />Anyway in this little screed he argues that composers of Jewish origin (he focuses on Felix Mendelssohn and the French opera composer, born in Germany, Giacomo Meyerbeer) can never really be German or European. Both of these gentlemen had converted to Christianity, but it wasn’t enough for Wagner, indeed it made things far worse. Because of their racial background, the most they could do was outwardly ape the forms of European civilizations, and appear to be German, while they really weren’t. <br /><br />Wagner was at the beginning of a new, and as we know, horribly virulent phase in the history of anti-semitism. For centuries, Jews had been the “other” the non-Christian minority. They dressed different, they talked different, they lived among themselves, and prayed to a strange God. <br /><br />But by Wagner's time Jews were no longer the other. Jews were us, apparently indistinguishable from good Germans. But of course Jews were still the other. But they had gone from despised outsiders to despised insiders, which meant they went from being despised for their powerlessness to being despised for their supposed powerfulnesss. Without putting all the sins of Hitler on Wagner’s head, a direct line leads from Judaism in Music to the death camps. <br /><br />Barack Obama’s is Donald Trump’s Felix Mendelssohn, the outsider who has become the super-insider who is still an outsider, though they can find no rational basis for his outsiderhood, except his racial affinity to many genuine outsiders, immigrants and poor blacks. <br /><br />Where does this leave us? Donald Trump is no Hitler, and the Tea Partyers not black shirts. But the most dangerous fury is not the hatred of the other, but the hatred of the almost like us. <br /><br />Obama tries, but for people like Trump he can’t really be an American, because deep down, in his essence, he isn’t one. And this is where we are in America today, and this passion is bitterly and hatefully destructive, and will lead to no good. <br /> </span>Peter Eisenstadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16267135072555177441noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-4284765769707461292011-03-28T22:33:00.008-04:002011-03-29T10:06:16.644-04:00Triangle Fire Legacies<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg4Sf8QGKdcbsBxNsxTDTtgMK1MvvYellZa9SIo1YWIoZur2YcAm4Qsz6DSsAfUy9yQEQw2hPJDsrrGTq9Toc5WIXUIuz_L06klLaSsJV-B0GPQ9Xu8oSUl-uvGjBq5qoLmv_r0h8eToM/s1600/SAM_0027.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg4Sf8QGKdcbsBxNsxTDTtgMK1MvvYellZa9SIo1YWIoZur2YcAm4Qsz6DSsAfUy9yQEQw2hPJDsrrGTq9Toc5WIXUIuz_L06klLaSsJV-B0GPQ9Xu8oSUl-uvGjBq5qoLmv_r0h8eToM/s200/SAM_0027.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589329109921562034" /></a><br />One hundred years ago Rosie Grasso, 16, lived at 174 Thompson Street, my old street in Greenwich Village. Although we lived decades apart, our workdays began the same way: a walk to the top of Thompson, then a right turn at Washington Square. I walked east to take the Lexington Avenue subway to <span style="font-style:italic;">Newsday</span>. Rosie walked to the east side of the Square, where she worked at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. There she became one of 146 people to die in the infamous Triangle fire. When the centennial of the fire came on March 25, activists chalked her name on the sidewalk in front of her old building. I set down my thoughts on the fire, and its significance, in an op-ed published in <span style="font-style:italic;">The Record</span>. <span id="fullpost"><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">The one hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire</span> will be a day of tragedy and irony. The tragedy lies in the deaths of 146 workers, most of them young Italian and Jewish immigrant women, who died because the laws of their time allowed them to work in a firetrap. The irony is that the labor movement, and the demand for strong government action on workers’ behalf galvanized by Triangle, are today under attack as never before. <br /><br />After the fire, tens of thousands of workers marched through the rainy streets of Manhattan in a procession that mixed mourning and protest. Rabbi Stephen Wise blamed the fire on greed and inadequate industrial standards. Labor activist Rose Schneiderman, a veteran of bitter garment workers’ strikes in 1909, concluded : “Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”<br /><br />Wise and Schneiderman lived in a time when ideas of reform and radicalism were part of everyday politics, and questions of corporate power, political corruption, and the tension between political democracy and economic inequality were widely debated. Socialism was not yet a scare word. Socialists could be found in city halls, state legislatures, and unions. <br /><br />The young women who died in the Triangle fire were part of a generation that tested the boundaries of life and work in ways that shocked parents and employers. They went to amusement parks without chaperones, found jobs of their own, bravely walked union picket lines in the face of thugs and strikebreakers, and fought for the right to vote. If they were Yiddish-speaking Jews they read newspapers like the socialist Forverts, or Forward, published on the Lower East Side. If they were Italian anarcho-syndicalists they might have read L’Era Nuova, or The New Age, published in Patterson, NJ and Manhattan.<br /><br />Such militancy made New York’s response to the Triangle fire less than revolutionary but still transforming. Reformers, and Tammany Hall politicians acting out of humanity and political self-interest, created new laws to regulate working conditions. Prominent among the activists were Al Smith, a Tammany man from the Lower East Side, and Frances Perkins, an economist and social worker who had watched in horror as Triangle workers leaped to their deaths. <br /><br />When Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt of New York State was elected President of the United States in 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he brought to Washington ideas and people from New York. With help and pressure from radicals, union members and liberals, Roosevelt crafted the New Deal—a mix of programs to end the Depression that committed the federal government to protecting Americans against economic inequality. It also put the Federal government behind workers’ right to organize unions and bargain collectively with their employers. Years later Frances Perkins, Roosevelt’s secretary of labor and the first woman to sit in a presidential cabinet, said that the New Deal began with the Triangle fire.<br /><br />The New Deal order wasn’t perfect. Initially, it often discriminated against African Americans and women. Its political base included racist Southern Democrats and unions that did not always welcome Blacks and Latinos. But over time, New Deal reforms became more inclusive and improved the lives of the vast majority of Americans. When veterans of the Triangle era gathered to observe the 50th anniversary of the fire in 1961, in the middle of an extended era of prosperity, some 30 percent American workers were in unions. <br /><br />Now, the very notion of collective bargaining is under assault. In Wisconsin and in New Jersey, public sector unions are attacked. In private industry, unions have been ground down by hostile laws, conservative opposition, and industrialists’ ability to move factories to countries where unions are weak and wages are low. <br /><br />Today, only 11.9 percent of American wage and salary workers are union members. Labor unions, along with the kind of strong social benefits set in place by the New Deal, are increasingly viewed as illegitimate obstacles to economic health. <br /><br />Not all the signs are bad. Anti-sweatshop campaigns, polls that show support for the bargaining rights of Wisconsin pubic sector workers, and demonstrations on behalf of immigrant workers all suggest that labor still matters in America. It just doesn’t matter the way that it did in the days of the Triangle fire. To change that, more Americans will have to remember not just how the Triangle workers died, but how they lived.<br /><br />Reprinted from <span style="font-style:italic;">The Record</span>, 25 March 2011, www.northjersey.com<br /></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-47584591374473078002011-03-26T13:15:00.010-04:002011-03-26T14:22:54.328-04:00A Peak Experience in the Adirondacks<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1aoFv5dr9XK9A8vBgQbRXD0NU8HEmBEvg5JcdRpDMBE43ttozwcSiRiivn8WeOYaX_EwNHLfE0_Poq4lmkNGAkB34RHBroQv-E8GtAZZ0xw-g2-6N0w2EU6ou-0gjGQPRApQQiHy0rnc/s1600/SAM_0018.JPG"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1aoFv5dr9XK9A8vBgQbRXD0NU8HEmBEvg5JcdRpDMBE43ttozwcSiRiivn8WeOYaX_EwNHLfE0_Poq4lmkNGAkB34RHBroQv-E8GtAZZ0xw-g2-6N0w2EU6ou-0gjGQPRApQQiHy0rnc/s200/SAM_0018.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5588450366900963314" /></a><br />Growing up in the New Jersey suburbs and living in Manhattan, I've lived with an inconvenient ambition: to climb a mountain in classic alpine style--roped up, with ice axe and crampons, surrounded by ice and rock and snow. But even though I've done a lot of hiking, including a trek to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, I never realized my ambitions for mountaineering until a recent trip to the High Peaks of the Adirondacks. <span id="fullpost"><br /><br />Saint Patrick's Day of 2011 was the date. Goal: the summit of Mount Colden. <br /><br />The weather was bright, conditions were great, and my guide--Chad Kennedy of <a href="http://www.rockandriver.com/">Adirondack Rock and River</a>--was tops. Around 7:30 am we left the Adirondack Loj parking lot on skis, carrying climbing harnesses, crampons, snowshoes, and ice axes. (Chad carried our rope, carabiners and other climbing gear.) We skied to Avalanche Camp, stashed our skis, then trekked over the pass to Avalanche Lake and the foot of the Trap Dyke. The Dyke is essentially a steep gully that forms the first part of the ascent of Mount Colden.<br /><br />There was lots of snow in the Dyke, but it was fairly firm underfoot and there was no need for crampons and roping up until we reached the first of two ice faces. The first went by quickly; the second took a little more work to climb. (My ice axe was an absolute necessity by this point.) Soon we were up on the slab, an open rock face covered with ice and snow.<br /><br />We ascended the slab at a steady pace. I paid little attention to the scenery; most of the time I was looking for the best way to plant my crampons in Chad's footsteps. <br /><br />My alpine form is far from perfect, and at moments I wished I'd put in a few more weeks of running stairs before making the climb. But I kept on plodding as Chad set a good course and a good pace. We reached the summit by around 1 pm and I whooped with joy: ice, snow, and spectacular Adirondack scenery, all under a glorious blue and sunlit sky. <br /><br />We descended the mountain on snowshoes, put on our skis again at Avalanche Camp, and skied out to the Adirondack Loj. On this stage of the trip, gravity was our friend: we glided through the last few miles of the trek and finished around 6 pm. I was pleasantly tired, very happy, and glad to have taken my passion for mountains and hiking to a new level.<br /><br />Mount Colden in winter is a good introduction to winter mountaineering. You need basic skills with ice axe and crampons and you need to be in shape. With a good guide--and Chad, like other guides at Rock and River, is first rate--Mount Colden can be a great trip. It certainly was for me.<br /><br /></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8709052517699784943.post-35492331394665498872011-03-03T08:39:00.003-05:002011-03-26T13:15:46.971-04:00The Halting March of LaborI always learn from my students at Rutgers-Newark, especially when their experiences and understandings differ from my own. Yesterday, I asked a class of 30--the majority of them journalism majors--how many felt reasonably well-informed about the struggles over unions, public sector workers, and state government in Wisconsin. Only one student raised her hand. <span id="fullpost">This is striking in a school with many immigrant working-class students. Mind you, my students are fully plugged into social media. And at the start of the semester they were fascinated by events in Egypt. But labor struggles don't have any great interest for them.<br /><br />This more or less accords with my experiences last Saturday, when I attended a demonstration at city hall in New York City. The crowd was not large, and the median age was about 50. Our numbers swelled when we joined forces with a somewhat younger crowd demonstrating for women's reproductive rights at Foley Square. But never did we assemble a large crowd. And both demonstrations--corralled by the police and carefully monitored--conveyed the impression that public assembly in New York City has gone from being a fundamental part of democracy to a nuisance in the eyes of city hall that must be tolerated at best and always controlled.<br /><br />As the Egyptian revolution unfolded, some of my students interpreted the events in Cairo as proof of the power of social media. That's a partial truth. In Egypt, the uprising can be understood only as the product of social media, varied forms of labor organizing, civic dissent, the Muslim Brotherhood, and satellite television. All of these combined in fascinating ways.<br /><br />In the USA, we have an abundant and growing world of social media. We also have massive inequalities and a labor movement under fire from many directions. Yet social media alone did not bring out crowds to support the Wisconsin strikers, nor did it reach my students with the Wisconsin workers' plight.<br /><br />New media forms gain impact in part through their interaction with existing forms of consciousness. Among the young today in the USA, as networked as they are, workers' rights and the value of unions are just not a big part of their political vocabulary. I hope for a change in this, but I can't say that I'm optimistic in the short run.<br /><br /></span>Rob Snyderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14297706005998824168noreply@blogger.com3