SMARTY PANTS

A small article in the NY Times last week got me thinking about the limits of human intelligence.

For years we have assumed that global warming would result in the rising of tides and the loss of coastline as the ice caps melted. Al Gore, in his movie, showed graphically how the Florida peninsula would be reduced to a little pencil-thin strip of land as the water rose. And Manhattan has been depicted as disappeared with a few tops of the tallest buildings poking above the waves.

Well, science has begun to measure the affect of the shrinking glaciers and, guess what? In all our speculation about the rising tides, we forgot to figure that glaciers have weight. And when that weight is removed from the land, the land actually rises and the waters recede! Studies of both the north polar icecap and Greenland have measured an increase of coastline, up to thirty feet more beach in Greenland where the melting has been very severe.

How about that? More waterfront property to uglify!

OINK, INC

I think all of us who are reading this blog should create a bank. I mean, how difficult can it be? Look at all the schmucks who already have a bank. Why shouldn't we have one too?

I considered calling it Goldman, Saks, instead of Goldman Sachs, for my wife's benefit, but then I thought-I don't want to be confused with those crustaceans, do I? On the other hand, I wouldn't want her to walk around with a platinum Goldman Saks credit card which nobody, not even Saks, would accept.

So I think we should create Oink, Inc.

Our logo will be a pig at the trough, with a background ofAlan Greenspan testifying to Congress. In the background, will be piles of pig shit, like Congress itself.

And the logo will be surrounded by sheaves of greenbacks, which makes the whole thing run.

So, sign up now for the OINK BANK, Inc. Maybe we'll get some TARP funds.

What would we want for our motto?

The Rain in Spain...

..may fall mainly on the plain,
But here in Philly it falls willy-nilly.

There seems to be no let up from the cold and dreary, rainy Spring we are experiencing. It has been raining here since last Friday and the forecast is for it to continue through next Saturday. Nothing to be done about it but cuddle up with a good book, which I am doing. In fact I have three books under way at the moment: Toni Morrison's "A Mercy" has just ended (mercifully-I hated it) and I am reading two short story collections, "Bad Dirt" by Annie Proulx and Jhumpa Lahiri's "Unaccustomed Earth." I am also reading "The Limits of Power," by Andrew J. Bacevich, a history professor at Boston University. He seeks to identify and chart the decline of American political influence, which he tracks to the 1965-1973 period. For those of us who lived through this era, it is a fascinating hypothesis. I was turned onto this book by my Mother-in-Law and not many of us are fortunate enough to have a Mother-in-Law smart enough and curious enough to be reading stuff like this.

Fortunately, the Phillies are playing in St. Louis, which is blessed with sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s and Ryan Howard, whose home town is St. Louis, celebrated with a grand slam last night. "Watch this, Albert." (You'd have to be a baseball fan)

May the weather move East.

COLONIAL CONSUMPTION

A friend whose name we won't reveal, but who is commonly called "Steven," commented privately: "BTW, I didn’t want to blog it, but I find it difficult to believe that the FDA would allow City Tavern to be serving the very same food they were 223 years ago. Of course they had salt with which to preserve meats back then, but that still seems an awfully long time. The same holds true for the menus. Most assuredly they’d be greasy, tattered, shreds of paper by now. What do you take us, your readership, for?"
Perhaps Walter Staib, who now runs City Tavern and who is an old friend from Aer Lingus and ARAMARK will comment, although - come to think of it - he once prepared airline food! Gak!
As to Steven's (oops) other comment about the readership, I really didn't know that there was one. I thought I was writing this for therapy. If not, I might have to be more careful.
Not to worry - I know there is almost no one out there, so I can continue to hold my penis while I write or write this. Therapy is therapy.
As for City Tavern: Try the hard (overcooked) lamb, still called "mutton" on the menu. This is the last gray lamb in the colonies. Or perhaps you'd like the pheasant, shot this morning while cavorting on the Mall, and then known as pigeon. Maybe the rabbit stew, hard from the local pet shoppe?Too bad, we're all out of the Deer Testicles. (Sorry Walter)
BTW: If there is a "readership" please speak up and I'll clean it up.

JUST YESTERDAY

Benjamin Franklin landed right here on the shores of the Delaware River, having taken a packet boat from northern New Jersey, the last leg of his trip from Boston, where he had fled an apprenticeship at his brother's printshop. It seems he landed somewhere around Market Street and he remarks in his biography on the view of the Christ's Church steeple, still a landmark three blocks in from the riverfront, although in Franklin's day much closer to it. As Philadelphia grew inland from the Delaware River, the construction debris was dumped into the river, extending the city by about two handred yards into the river. Front Street was once the riverfront and the landfill debris now supports a six lane highway (InterState 95) plus a four lane road (Delaware Avenue) plus various waterfront developments, condos and piers. Franklin would be hard-pressed to point out exactly where he stepped ashore.
Some two hundred years before Franklin, William Penn's landing in Philadelphia is commemorated today by the Penn Treaty Park, where he is said to have signed a peace agreement with a tribe of the local natives. The park is located about a half mile north of where Franklin landed. But the park, like the modern waterfront developments, rests on landfill accumulated over the ensuing centuries and, while Penn may have signed his treaty waterside, he was assuredly not in this park.
Although neither Penn nor Franklin would recognize the riverfront of Philadelphia today, much of the city's charm lies in just how much a colonial resident would find familiar. Franklin could easily trace his path up Chestnut Street to Independence Hall and back down Second Street to City Tavern where the framers of the Constitution dined after their debates in that hot summer of 1776. Today, you can order the same food from the same menu in the same room where they ate. He would recognize the bronze plaques on the fronts of houses showing four interlocking wrists because his fire company insured those houses and put those plaques there. And he would note those houses that have lightening rods on their roof, an invention that stemmed from his kite-flying experiments.
To Franklin, it might seem like only yesterday.