The Brooklyn Bungalow

Our daughter Lisa shared a recent story titled: Is This the End of the Brooklyn Bungalow?

I was bowled-over by the photos and text about this key piece of history! It is MY history because I spent my school years, elementary through college, in or near the Brighton Beach Bungalow Colony described in the linked story! NOTE: Brooklyn is the southmost of the five boroughs of New York City. Brighton Beach is in the southmost part of Brooklyn.

OUR BRIGHTON BEACH BUNGALOW

Here is the latest Google Street View of our bungalow (red arrow - second house in from the street - Brighton 6th Street). Although the linked story says most bungalows did not have basements, ours did have a full basement. As the inset photo shows, the front door was several steps above street level.

Most recent Google Street View of the bungalow at 21 Brighton 5th Lane, Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY. I lived here with my parents, my brother, and my grandparents during my High School and College years. Our bungalow is the second one in from the street (red arrow). The inset is a 1965 view of my in-laws (Gilbert and Clara Stark) and my parents (Ruth and Morris Glickstein) standing on the steps leading up to the front door of the bungalow. 

Above is a Google Earth view of the bungalow (red arrow) and surrounding area. Our bungalow is only about 30 x 30 feet (900 square feet). It sits on a 40 x 50 foot lot. My brother Lee and I shared a tiny bedroom, and a bunk bed, in the upper left part of the house. The single bathroom is in the upper middle and the kitchen in the upper right. Our parents bedroom is in the middle right and our grandparents bedroom and sitting room is in the lower left. The living room is in the very middle.

My parents did not buy the bungalow until I was in High School. I remember how it looked when we bought it. The floors were uneven and they creaked. However, with the help of a wonderful Italian neighbor who had floor jacks, my Dad and I jacked the floor back to level and ran two new support beams across the house. The basement floor was covered in Kentile and we had a nice recreation room and laundry in the right half and a shop in the left half. Thus, our 30 x 30 foot home had almost 1800 square feet of living space. 

OUR BRIGHTON  BEACH APARTMENT HOUSE

During my elementary school years, our family lived in an apartment house in Brighton Beach. Here is a Google Street View of the apartment house. The inset shows my brother Lee and me on Brighton 5th Street, with our apartment house on Neptune Avenue behind us.. Our apartment was a one-bedroom second-floor walk-up in the rear of the building. My brother and I shared the single bedroom. Our parents slept on a fold-out couch in the living room. 

OVERVIEW OF NEW YORK CITY AND THE BRIGHTON BEACH AREA OF BROOKLYN

Here is a Google Earth image of the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn, located between Coney Island and Sheepshead Bay.

The inset is an overview of New York City that shows the five boroughs. The Bronx is the northernmost borough with Manhattan to the south and east, Queens to the east, and Brooklyn to the west. The eastern tip of Staten Island is shown to the south-west.

The inset indicates the locations of my high school and college. I took the BMT subway to Brooklyn Technical High School, one of the four special high schools in New York City at the time. Brooklyn Tech is located in the part of Brooklyn closest to Manhattan. For my college years, I took the BMT subway to Times Square, in the middle of Manhattan, and then the IRT subway to 137th Street to City College of New York (CCNY) in Harlem. (If my first class was in the southern area of the campus, I'd take the BMT to 34th Street and switch to the IND subway to 125th Street, the "Main Street" of Harlem.) 

The main part of the map above shows BRIGHTON BEACH located between CONEY ISLAND  and SHEEPSHEAD BAY. It shows the location of our apartment house on NEPTUNE AVENUE and our bungalow on BRIGHTON 5th LANE. It also indicates the locations of my elementary schools, PS253 for grades K-6 and PS209 for grades 7-8. 

As a point of interest, one of my classmates in the 4th grade was Neil Sedaka, already a piano virtuoso. His family lived in Sheepshead Bay in an elegant apartment (from my point of view) overlooking the west end of the bay (under the letter "B" in the above image). He invited me to his apartment and played on his grand piano. He also visited our humble apartment and played on our upright piano, which was probably out of tune, but he did not complain.

As mentioned above, I worked with my father fixing up our bungalow. (In addition to his main job for the Post office as a Letter Carrier and later a Field Forman, my Dad was an expert wood-worker and also did plumbing and electrical jobs on our bungalow, our paternal grandmother's nearby bungalow, and neighbor's homes, often with my help.) 

In addition to working with my Dad, I helped my paternal grandfather, who had a news-stand on a subway station. Once a week, I'd do the paperwork involved in returning unsold magazines. I also worked at a nearby shoe store one summer. 

When I turned 13 and was able to get working papers, I spent my summer vacations selling Good Humor Ice Cream and Orange Drink on Brighton Beach. I'd walk on the sand, with an insulated box on my right shoulder filled with ice cream pops and Humorettes (their version of Creamsicles), kept cold with dry ice, and another insulated box on my left shoulder with orange drink containers. As I walked I'd drum up business by loudly shouting "HEY ICE CREAM HERE, GOOD HUMOR ICE CREAM AND ORANGE DRINK!" I credit that job for my strong speaking voice.

I also worked the summer after my high school graduation as an office boy and clerk in Manhattan at LF Domerich, a financial factor company. (To get that job I had to lie and claim I was not going to leave for college at the end of the summer.) 

Later, during the summer between my Junior and Senior years at college, I worked as a Technical Writer for ITT Federal in Paramus New Jersey, where I learned a great deal about writing and publishing, which helped me greatly throughout my engineering career.

Ira Glickstein

A Conservative View of US Political History

[from Bill Lifka] I’m re-reading the book: A Patriot’s History of the United States by Schweikart and Allen. The authors are professors of history at the University of Dayton and the University of Washington. Unusually for their field, the professors are Conservative in their political view.

According to Schweikart, the reason for their book was that Liberals have written the overwhelming majority of text books on American history. Not only do these tales tell the American story with a strong leftward slant but major events and characters are absent from the pages. Schweikart’s and Allen’s version received praise for accuracy and fairness from objective experts.

The truth is that America’s history of its famous and infamous characters is a mix of altruism and selfishness, honesty and corruption, courage and cowardice, wisdom and stupidity, prudence and rashness, unity and divisiveness. Natural cynicism makes me think the specific gravity leans to selfishness, corruption, cowardice, stupidity, rashness and divisiveness.

WHY HAS AMERICA SURVIVED SO FAR? HOW MUCH LONGER?

It raises questions why America has survived so far and how much longer a nation so confounded can survive. Survival to this point and beyond has nothing to do with American people standing head and shoulders above their counterparts in other countries. Americans are not exceptional as a group of individuals.

In my opinion, the reasons for success are a design of government structure that has withstood efforts of generations of Americans to destroy it and that the nation was placed under protection of an Almighty God from the very beginning, first by early European settlers and again by the Founders as they laid out the design of a governmental plan. Who knows how much further we can stretch the wisdom of the Founders and the patience of God?

HISTORY OF THE MODERN DEMOCRATIC PARTY (AND MARTIN VAN BUREN)

1821 - A good place to begin my argument is in the year 1821 which was when the modern Democratic Party was formed. (It wasn’t the party of Jefferson, as widely proclaimed. Jefferson and Madison had very different principles and goals but they, especially Madison, did start the party system.)

I summarize the story from the history book as follows. Martin Van Buren was the son of a tavern owner in Kinderhook, New York. He resented the autocratic landowning families in this area and found enough like-minded politicians to control the New York State Constitutional Convention in 1821 enacting universal manhood suffrage.

He learned to employ newspapers as no other political figure had, linking journalists’ success to the Party’s fortunes. He perceived the necessity of discipline and organization to control the masses he sought to organize. He sought to create a political party dedicated to no other principle than holding power.

The problem with the political climate developing in the young nation was the disagreement over slavery which was dividing the states between the North and the South. Van Buren (and many others) viewed the logical result of this would be civil war, which he hoped to avoid. The best way to do that, he reasoned, was to remove slavery (and any other issues) as a party consideration.

He joined southern planters with northern non-elites to form a national organization dedicated to attaining and retaining political power. An important factor in attaining success was in taking advantage of the growing size of government which provided an ever-larger pool of government jobs with which to reward supporters: to the victors belong the spoils. Van Buren tied his star to a practice that, at its roots, viewed men as base and without principle. If they could be silenced on the issue of slavery with the promise of a job, what of their integrity? Yet, that was the strategy for the noble purpose of saving the nation from civil war.

1824 - Andrew Jackson was chosen as the standard bearer for Van Buren’s party in 1824. The Electoral College vote was: Jackson 99, (John Quincy) Adams 84 and Clay 41. There being no majority, the decision fell to the US House of Representatives. Clay was Speaker of the House and he detested Jackson so Adams received his votes. The one-term Adams’ administration was plagued with “pay back” acrimony for the “stolen election”.

1828 - In 1828, Jackson and his VP, John Calhoun, coasted into office. When he left office, Jackson had more totally consolidated power in the executive branch than any previous president, ensuring what Van Buren had dreaded: a powerful presidency subject to sectional pressures. His adept use of the spoils system created a large-scale government bureaucracy that further diminished states’ rights. This planted the seeds for the “New Deal” and the “Great Society” and (I would add) Obama’s eight year reign.

1836 - Van Buren followed Jackson into the presidency in 1836 to reap the blame for all that turned out badly from Jackson’s initiatives. After one term he was defeated by Whig candidates, William Henry Harrison (Tippecanoe) and John Tyler.

Harrison died after one month in office and Tyler succeeded him. The interesting thing about the succession is that the US Constitution’s language on presidential succession is not precisely clear that the Vice President automatically becomes the fully empowered president when his predecessor dies in office. Some doubts were raised. Tyler just assumed direct succession was the intention and took control. In this little-noted act he cemented the foundation of the Republic in future times of chaos and instability. This small snippet of history typifies the generally untidy political proceedings that have been part of our nation’s Presidential campaigns and the use of presidential power, once elected.

The formation of the modern Democratic Party isn’t a particularly heart-warming story especially the part about founding principles. However, there have been moments in later history where that party has provided great leadership for the country.

PARTY POLITICS NOW (AND DONALD TRUMP)

At this moment, the Democratic Party is at a low point in its history, despite having one of its members in the White House. At least, that’s my opinion. In many ways, it espouses the principles and methodologies Van Buren invented but has added cultural dogma and governing philosophy that moves the nation far from the direction the Founders intended and defined.

The Democratic Party is not alone in American political history in experiencing recurring shifts in goals, initiatives and methodologies. All have been the same in that regard. But now is a very bad time for one of the two major political parties to be focused on matters of lesser importance.

Of course, Donald Trump is doing his best to coax Republicans into the same mindset. The Democratic Debates have been particularly useless in addressing key national issues. The Republican debates have been notably better except for time spent in personal attacks. The debate this Thursday should provide good reminders of issues which should be the basis of your vote in November. Trump’s likely absence should raise the quality of debate immensely.

Bill Lifka

David Hume - History of England

I presented "David Hume - History of England" at the Philosophy Club of the Villages on 4 November 2011. THANKS to all who attended and made well-thought out comments.

You may download a copy of my Powerpoint show here: HERE

David Hume was born in Scotland (1711) and lived there and in England for most of his life. He published the first volume of his History of England in 1754. He published additional volumes in the years following. Hume died in 1776.

OUTLINE OF MY TALK

1. David Hume and Adam Smith

• His sanguine life and stoic death

2. Early History of England

• Britons (prior to ~43 BC)
• Roman Rule (~43 BC)
• Saxon Invasion (~450 AD)
• Danish Invasion (~980 AD)
• Norman Conquest (~1050 AD)

3. Jewish References (~1100-1290AD)

Ira Glickstein

Sarah Palin Right On Paul Revere's Ride?

Could Sarah Palin have been right on when she described her idea of the famous midnight ride of Paul Revere?

Say what? Yep, I read it on, of all places, the MSNBC website. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43285196/ns/politics/ [Scroll to the bottom and click on "Show more text"]

WHAT DID YOU (AND I) LEARN ABOUT PAUL REVERE'S RIDE?

Pretty much the story as told by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, http://poetry.eserver.org/paul-revere.html

Listen my children and you shall hear

Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, ...

"..Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch

Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm."

... And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height

A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns.

... It was twelve by the village clock

When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.

... It was one by the village clock,

When he galloped into Lexington.

... It was two by the village clock,

When he came to the bridge in Concord town.

... So through the night rode Paul Revere;

And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,---...

Do you remember anything else?

SARAH PALIN'S VERSION

The MSNBC site linked above quotes her as saying:

"He who warned the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms by ringing those bells, and makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed."

Say what? Did you ever hear that Paul Revere WARNED the BRITISH ??? And RINGING THOSE BELLS ??? And, we were going to be FREE and ARMED ???

Where did she get that from?

OK, if you go to that linked MSNBC site, scroll to the bottom and then click on "Show more text", you will read:

... Revere did give up some details of the plan to the British that night, but after he had notified other colonists, and under questioning by British soldiers ... Revere revealed "there would be five hundred Americans there in a short time, for I had alarmed the Country all the way up," ...

So, Paul Revere, in essence WARNED the British soldiers who questioned him after his ride, that there would soon be FIVE HUNDRED AMERICANS, ARMED and ready to protect our freedom.

And, during his ride through all those towns and villages, how did Paul Revere alert all those sleeping Americans? Did he go from house to house and wake them all up?

Of course not, he went to each Church, roused the keeper, and, by the sound of the Church bells, awoke and alerted everybody, informing them of the message he had received via the two signal lanterns hung in the Bell Tower of the Old North Church.

And, what was the main purpose of the British advance up through Medford and Lexington towards Concord? Well, it was to attempt to confiscate the stash of arms hidden there.

That explains this stanza in Longfellow's poem:

You know the rest. In the books you have read

How the British Regulars fired and fled---
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.

Ira Glickstein

PS: Sarah Palin is mocked for the slightest error or apparent error. At the same time, our President, arguably the most academically intelligent leader we have ever had, can write "24 May 2008" (a couple weeks ago in Westminster Abbey) as the date and year when it was actually 2011. The President forgets the YEAR, which is certainly more important for anyone to know than the story of Paul Revere, and Sarah Palin gets busted for her short-hand answer about the REAL story of Paul Revere warning the British and sounding the bells. Media bias? You Betcha! Amazing! http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=302953

...

Skepticism versus Faith

[From Joel] We had an excellent presentation at our philosophy club (The Villages, FL) this afternoon. However, the account of history from the time of the ancient Minoans to modern times sounded a little too much like feminist propaganda to me. I was suspicious. I questioned whether there was sufficient evidence for the belief in a garden-of-Eden-like world presided over by female goddesses and a female dominated society, but the speaker was unequivocal in his belief that the archeological evidence supported such a conclusion.

My search of the internet revealed that some skepticism would be appropriate. There is much disagreement over the meaning of the ancient remains found in Crete. As just one example, here's a review of a book which disputes the feminist theory of gender dominated history.

From Library Journal

According to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, there was a time in social development before written records when women were the central controlling forces in community life. Goddesses were the primary objects of worship, and peace reigned between the sexes. In a systematic analysis of the underpinnings of this popular theory, independent scholar Eller (Living in the Lap of the Goddess), who is affiliated with Princeton University, applies both logic and common sense to what has become a highly emotional argument for some feminists and New Age partisans. Pointing out that much of the physical evidence upon which the hypothesis rests is open to various interpretations, she warns that adherents of the myth may be seeing what they want to see: that by relying on biological distinctions they are creating stereotypes as insidious as the patriarchal ones they abhor. While immersion in this myth may raise gender self-esteem, only hard work will change the reality-based biases of modern life. This well-structured, lucid argument is recommended for academic libraries and public libraries where interest in the subject is high.

Joel

IBM Centenial: 100 Years x 100 Innovations

Here is a YouTube video well worth watching if you are an IBMer (as my wife and I were) or if you have used IBM equipment, or been affected by the computer revolution.

Men and women who were born 100, 99, 98, and so on years ago describe the progress of the IBM corporation and the computer industry, as marked by IBM innovations that occurred in the year of their birth.

Ira Glickstein

Wittgenstein's Poker

[from Joel - Wittgenstein's Poker and Wittgenstein links and image added by Ira] This is not a book about an Austrian variation on Texas Hold'em. It's about the philosophers Popper and Wittgenstein. Has anyone read the book? It's ingeniously based upon a ten minute argument between Popper and Wittgenstein that took place at Cambridge in 1946 and during which Wittgenstein is purported to have threatened Popper with a hot poker. The authors use the controversy as a means of sketching both philosophers and the various witnesses. Expanding about this nucleus, they comment upon the entire state and history of European philosophy during the first half of the twentieth century. I haven't finished the book yet, but so far it's a good read.

"Team of Rivals" by Doris Kearns Goodwin

I just completed reading Team of Rivals - The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln - a prodigious book of 757 pages plus two dozen pages of photos. According to the LA Times "Barack Obama loves it. ... it seems to be offering a template for the new administration. 'Lincoln basically pulled in all the people who had been running against him into his Cabinet,' is the way Obama has summarized Goodwin's thesis, adding, 'Whatever personal feelings there were, the issue was how can we get this country through this time of crisis.'"

I enjoyed reading it and now have a better understanding of Civil War history, the controversy over slavery, and the founding of the Republican Party. However, I had the feeling Goodwin was sugar-coating Lincoln's "political genius" and placing too much importance on his speaches and good humor and intentions, and missing the real story of how the Civil War was run (badly) and won (finally - with horrendous death and destruction on both sides). I recommend the book and would like to see comments by others who have read it and other books about this period in US history.

Like all of you, I learned about the Civil War in school and from other reading, but I was unaware of some details until I read this book:

The Civil War was Inevitable

The North and South had different economic interests. The South primarily exported cotton and imported manufactured goods. They needed low labor costs and low tariffs so they could buy the best quality and lowest cost manufactured goods from foreign sources and sell their cotton more readily. The North was a developing manufacturing center and needed tariff protection against foreign competition. They also needed federally-subsidized transportation infrastructure for waterways and railroads.

The issue of slavery added emotional fuel to the fire. Prior to the War, most northerners, including Lincoln, were content for slavery to continue in the South. After all, it was embedded in the Constitution (slaves counted as 3/5ths of a person for Congressional allocation). Even the Fugitive Slave Law, which required escaped slaves in free states to be forcibly returned to their masters, was supported as a necessary evil. Most of all, northerners wanted to settle the vast western territories with free labor. They expected slavery to die out naturally, over time.

Had the South agreed to limit slavery to where it existed, there would have been no War. But, to this they could not acquiesce. They needed to expand their labor-intensive agriculture industry into Missouri and beyond to Kansas and other western territories. They wanted the white settlers to democratically decide if newly-formed states would be slave or free. If all new states were free, they realized their political position would deteriorate, northern radicals would stir up slave revolts, the Fugitive Slave Law would not be enforced, and the entire structure of their economy and culture would collapse.

A series of compromises, from 1830 to 1850, allowed some increase in the number of slave states. This was too much for northerners and too little for southerners. The two major national parties, the Democrats and Whigs, struggled to maintain unity. Finally, the Whigs (Lincoln's original party), joined with remnants of the Know-Nothings and some War Democrats to form what became the Republican Party. Their platform was preservation of the Union, protective tariffs, and federal support for infrastructure.

War was inevitable when southern states began to seceed and claim possession of federal forts in their territory. Most northern Democrats, such as Steven Douglas (who ran against Lincoln for President in 1860) favored further concessions. After Lincoln won the election, the Democratic Party split into northern and southern wings and, with the firing on Ft. Sumter, the Civil War, percollating for decades, formally began.

The Emancipation Proclamation was Issued Late in the War

The Emancipation Proclamation was issued in January 1863. That was nearly two years after Lincoln was elected, southern states seceded, Ft. Sumter was fired upon, and the Civil War began. It applied only to territories held by Confederates where the President had no power to enforce it. Slavery continued in the border states under Union control where it had existed before the War.

Lincoln Was Incredibly Generous and Held No Grudges

If Goodwin is to be believed (and I accept her version with only a bit of hesitation) Lincoln was the most generous, kindly, and unselfish politician who ever lived. He retained members of his Cabinet who were openly disloyal and continued to support generals who were timid and incompetent and who defied his orders way beyond the time they should have been replaced. His Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon P. Chase was a major competitor for the Republican Presidential nomination and, while in Lincoln's Cabinet, he disloyally plotted to replace Lincoln at the next election. He remained in office way too long. After Chase's fourth combative resignation, lincoln finally took him up on it. He later nominated Chase to the US Supreme Court!

Lincoln finally found General U. S. Grant who is depicted by Goodwin as the most perfect general you can imagine, despite his excessive drinking. Grant won the war with aggressiveness and determination, and way too many deaths.

Loss of Life Was Horrendous

Goodwin recites the numbers of deaths of northern and southern soldiers in a matter-of-fact way. In my mind, I contrasted the loss of 3000 on 9/11 and the subsequent loss of several thousand American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan since then, with the much larger losses during the Civil War. For example, it was common to lose five, ten, or twenty-thousand in a single battle. Considering the smaller base population, the total losses during the Civil War would be equivalent to losing over a million soldiers now.

Parallels with Obama Administration

Lincoln's main rival for the Republican nomination was Willian Seward from New York State. He became Lincoln's Secretary of State, and, eventually, his most loyal supporter. President Obama, like Lincoln from Illinois, appointed Hillary Clinton, his main Democratic primary rival and also from New York, as his Secretary of State!

Ira Glickstein