Kiwiwriter47

How you create cities and run them is a fascinating subject to me as a city PR officer and a SimCity builder, and a historian, so I like to read books on those subjects. I found a few that are helpful: The Power Broker, by Robert Caro. This is the Pulitzer-winning biography of the man who wrecked New York's mass transit systems and replaced them with superhighways, building up a power empire, covering up his racism. The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. She shot Moses and his plans to build a superhighway through Manhattan's Houston Street like the Red Baron nailing Snoopy. WPA Guide to New York City/WPA Panorama of New York City. 1939. Federal travel guides to New York and rich with history. How the Other Half Lives, by Jacob Riis. I hit the roof when I read this as a teenager. I hit the roof again when I read this as an adult, realizing that nothing had changed. In fact, the "new-law tenements" stink as much as the "old-law tenements." And sweatshops still make people sweat. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. If it isn't in there, you don't need to know about it for the city's history. They did a new volume: "Greater Gotham," for 1898 to 1910. Just as big as the first one, but only 12 years. Holy moley! The Great Bridge, by David McCullough. How they built my favorite bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge. Engineering, people, politics, crime, and color. The World Beneath the City, by Robert Daley. How New York got water, gas, electricity, sewer pipes, and some of the great characters involved with them, like Smelly Kelly. Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, by George Washington Plunkitt. "A series of practical talks on practical politics by New York State Senator George Washington Plunkitt, delivered from his rostrum, New York County Court House's Bootblack Stand." Except for the portion on gas and excise, it's as true now as it was in 1893. Architect's Institute of America Guide to New York. Walking tours and analysis of architecture. Caustic. NYPD, A city and its Police, by James Lardner and Thomas Reppetto. The history of the police -- a tale of politics, peril, payola, padding, and enormous courage and valor, from the 1840s to 9/11 and beyond So Others Might Live, a history of the New York Fire Department. (I don't have it in front of me, so I can't give the author). Does the same for NYFD, with less issues of corruption and more issues of culture, particularly politics, race, and societal changes, leading up to female firefighters and the horrors of 9/11. Report From Engine Company 82, by Dennis Smith. A first-person, up-close of the life of firefighters in the South Bronx during the dreadful "war years" of the early 1970s, where "The Bronx Was Burning," and Dennis and his colleagues had to put it out. It says a LOT about the interaction and intersection of firefighters and their neighborhood: class, race, poverty. More than fire is combustible. Report From Ground Zero, by Dennis Smith. His story -- and those of other firefighters -- of the city's response to the 9/11 attacks and the weeks thereafter. Gripping stuff about government and people in action in a municipal and national crisis and inaction in that same crisis. Behind the Green Lights, by Detective Cornelius Van Willemse. He was an NYPD detective in the early 1900s. Very different force back then, but not so different a New York. Blue Blood, by Edward Conlon. The memoir of a Harvard graduate who became a New York cop and worked in housing projects in The Bronx. His family comes from law enforcement, so he brings an interesting perspective to the situation. Blue on Blue, by retired NYPD Deputy Chief Charles Campisi. He was head of the Internal Affairs Bureau, and he really shook things up. He presided over the Amadou Diallo and Abner Louima fiascoes. He tells a lot about how IAB really works and what it does, and you learn a lot about the culture of the police, New York, and the politics therein. One point he makes repeatedly: they do integrity stress tests on street cops -- leaving out money and fake drugs at "crime scenes," offering them "bribes," or turning in "purses full of money," and 98 percent of the time, the officer being tested passes it, not even knowing he has been tested. I'd like to get a first-rate history of London, my mother's family's home town, one of my other favorite cities in the world (along with San Francisco and Christchurch, New Zealand), but I haven't been able to find a good one yet. If anybody knows of good books on "how to run a city" or "histories of cities," I'd like to hear them. If anybody wants to see a good pun, I can accommodate them, too!

Gerbils with wheels...

I got "friended" by someone who promptly asked me if I had got my prize from Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. He said he saw my name on the list, and I should claim it from a Facebook page earing the name of the woman who gives it out. I then got a message from her saying that I was indeed about to get my money, but I first had to fill out a form on Facebook that included such minor details as my birthdate, Social Security Number, and checking account routing number. I treated them to some choice obscenities, reported both accounts to management, and blocked them.

giant Yellow Submarine...

I'm listening to "Streets of Philadelphia" by Bruce Springsteen. Here's the link to the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z2DtNW79sQ

More dog shots: The dog with the stripe on his face at left is Bodhi Bodacious. Three years old, 75 lbs. He is half Preso Canarias, half Pitbull. He has sad eyes...HE HAS SAD EYES!!!! But he is a "mass of hot air and love." At right is Gemma Gen, a pure-bred two-year-old 130-lb. South African Boerboel (Mastiff). She is "a mass of chaos and sweetness." As you see, they are best friends forever, and this is one of their favorite things to do...they always lie in the same V formation on their dog bed unless they line up on it. When not playing with each other, they play with their family. When not playing with their family, they play with dog toys (often with each other). When not doing that, they snooze in various places. The second photo shows Bodhi taking in the sun on our back deck. It was THAT kind of day. The last shot is an older one of Bodhi and Gemma snoozing in the kitchen. It's about a year-and-a-half old, when Gemma was only 50 pounds. She grew some. Right now we have a brindle puppy over as well, Squishy Chewbacca Muraca, a very young brindle puppy selected from an animal shelter and named by our niece Lexi. She's the family dog of my wife's brother. Squishy is very sweet, not disciplined yet, but plays well with people and our dogs. Her ancestry is very mixed. Everybody likes her.

Moby Dick arrived...

Just wrapped up "Deathly Deception" about "The Man Who Never Was," which fills in the gaps created by Ewen Montagu's original book, which had to obscure Ultra and Bletchley Park's role in that bizarre and highly successful affair. Now I'm reading about Bletchley Park.

Outstanding book. A touch outdated by Ballard's findings, but Lord admits it in his follow- "The Night Lives On." I have a bunch of his books, all autographed. I never knew that he was very friendly and liked to meet fans of his writing and the Titanic. I never met him before he died, and I would have liked to have told him to his face that he remains one of the four greatest influences on my writing.

graffiti on a....

Peshtigo is on the northeast side of Wisconsin, right? That's where the fire was, the same day as the Chicago fire. The only thing I know about Wisconsin is that it is the home of the rare and flowing "Snickerdoodle."

I was referring to the industrial 20th century and post-industrial 21st century. However, I doubt that the owners of factories and mills in the South cared much about heat and cold levels in both facilities during any weather conditions, as workers there would attest. That led to a lot of court battles over child labor and union battles over the right to organize. The most interesting one was the UAW vs. Henry Ford, who refused to give in until 1941, when the US government said, "If you want contracts, you have to allow elections." Ford may have been a Nazi sympathizer and an anti-Semite, but he wanted that money. So the bitter old man grudgingly allowed his workers to vote whether or not they wanted to join the UAW. He thought they were so loyal to him because of his safety programs and Harry Bennett's private police, they would vote against the UAW or stick with the "company union." They didn't. They voted to unionize in the UAW. Ford, aging and bitter, was stunned. When Walter Reuther came to negotiate the contract, Reuther expected a fierce battle from the Old Man. Instead, a flattened Ford gave the UAW everything it wanted. He gave up control of the company in 1943 to Henry Ford II, whose first act was to fire Harry Bennett and eliminate the goons. His second act was to tell Ford dealers to stop selling the "Dearborn Independent" which mostly reprinted anti-Semitic writings. Meanwhile, Ford haunted his mansion, extremely depressed by the greatest war in history. He had backed Hitler, who was now a losing horse, and when the GIs liberated Dachau and Buchenwald, his grandson brought in the newsreel footage of Hitler's concentration camps. Ford, a pacifist and a Quaker, was so shocked by the grisly material, he suffered the first of the series of strokes that ultimately killed him in 1948. But I digress... The South was dependent on agriculture then and now, and, of course, today on oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The agricultural economy of 1609 to the 1940s would have done better if it wasn't so labor-intensive and they had crop rotation back then. Last time I saw "Roots," with my family, I told them that if I was running some plantation back before the Civil War, I'd do two things. 1. Rotate the crops to end over-dependence on King Cotton. That would likely add to profits and efficiency. 2. Summon all the slaves to a meeting in front of the big house and tell them "You are now all employees of the Apple Wapple Company. You will be paid wages based on hours worked with overtime. There will be no use of whips or torture on Apple Wapple property. All Apple Wapple employee children -- and that includes mine and the staff -- will attend a school together. You will all be issued Apple Wapple Employee cars, which will function as 'Slave Passes' for when you have to deal with idiots. In 30 days time, I expect you to unionize and prepare for me a list of issues to be addressed by management in our contract. And the only sex between management and union will be consensual." That might show a profit, make some lives better, and drag the Apple Wapple Company out of the "Old South."

Please tell me the cable cars are still running. They have National Historic Landmark status, you know. They appear in Star Trek, with their tracks slightly shifted to accommodate the realities of the 23rd century. Personally, in the 21st century, I think the California Street line should be extended past Van Ness Avenue, and the city leaders should take a look at their maps and hills and figure out where they can restore the lines they demolished. It takes two hours of standing in the "line ride" at Powell and Market to get on a cable car. It's ridickle-orst. Simply because the San Francisco Cable Cars only accommodate tourists and not commuters, they do NOT make my list of top five commuter railroads. Those are, in no alphabetical order: Chicago City Subway and El (The longest subway station in the world, an elevated line still in the downtown, and a beautifully restored historic station at Quincy Street) Glasgow Underground (small orange earthworms in an inner and outer loop) London Underground (A gigantic system that spreads everywhere. Soon enough it will have a line that connects directly with New York's Long Island Railroad at Montauk or Jamaica. Change at Jamaica for the train to Penn Station or King's Cross. It's just a long trip ) New York Subway (Another gigantic system that spreads everywhere, bringing vast development in its wake. Its advantage over the larger London system is that it has 24-hour-a-day expresses and a flat fare. You can lose your mind trying to figure out the London fare system. It's also converted a subway station into its Transit Museum. I've been a member for 20 years) Other favorites, but not in that class: Montreal Metro (Only one I ever saw that had a public library branch in a station) Washington DC Metro (Clearly designed by the same guy who created the Death Star. Every time I ride it, I expect to see Lord Vader himself checking tickets) Philadelphia City Subway (complete with underground trolleys, but I haven't ridden it enough) Boston City Subway (America's oldest and also has trolleys, and goes direct to Fenway Park) Bay Area Rapid Transit (zooms around, real fast, connects Oakland with San Fran, but does not connect A's Stadium with Oracle Park) MUNI (great trolley and trolleybus routes, and Trolley Festival on Market Streets, which includes 12 former Newark PCC cars, 11 of them painted up for various cities around the country. The 12th retains its Newark livery) Hong Kong (clearly a modern knock-off of the London Underground, but an enjoyable one) Toronto, Los Angeles, and Kyoto were visually dull. I didn't get enough of a ride on San Diego to make a judgment. Port Authority Trans-Hudson lost some of its luster for me when they removed the distinctive red-and-white signs and replaced them with blue-and-white. Exchange Place now has the charm of Fort Bragg with all the tiles. Pavonia, Hoboken, Christopher Street, 9th Street, and 33rd have retained some of their charm. A careful PATH train rider can see the abandoned 19th Street station and the raised platform for the sealed-off 28th Street station, and see that the 33rd Street station was moved back to 32nd Street. I ride the Newark Light Rail every day to work and while the underground stations are great (machine-age mosaics and terra-cotta art), the local riffraff use the staircases as men's rooms and they stink.

Here's another good SimCity sign: "Whatchoo want!"

Air conditioning is what made the South's economic development possible. Paul Johnson wrote that in a book, "How We Got To Where We Are." He also discusses the importance of the sewer system.

I suffered through yet another Yankee loss and the Giants splitting a doubleheader in Washington DC. The Giants have a wonderful record, the Yankees stink, so one of my two favorite teams is doing well.

That's clever...it reminds me of some modern artist, but I can't think of who. Maybe the guy who did the clock that bends over the shelf. London Routemasters....a great way to travel! That just looks...weird! That is one impressively huge city. What's the population? What's that in the lower right hand corner? A transit system?

Welcome aboard and have a terrific time...remember, the cities you make are open-ended. You can do what you like with them!

Really good factory building. I've seen these all over New Jersey. All it needs is a few trucks and a bunch of workers outside buying hero sandwiches from a "roach coach" and you're all set! This is an excellent preserved Roman ruin. Be it ever so crumbly There's no place like Rome Nero he was the Emperor And the Palace was his home But he loved to play with matches And for a fire yearned So he set Rome a-sizzle And he fiddled while it burned! An incredible airport, down to the airline symbols. Ah, Delta. The official airline of Walt Disney World. When you think Mickey Mouse...think Delta!

Unbelievable display of historical knowledge, photographs, and SimCity design all at once. The only remaining 1st generation dreadnought battleship is Texas in San Jacinto, Texas. She just got a massive repair job to address all kinds of issues, including a hole in her bottom. All the 2nd generation battleships are scrapped. There are seven 3rd generation battleships left: North Carolina; Massachusetts; Alabama; Iowa; New Jersey; Missouri; and Wisconsin; That's the entire Iowa class, which was kept in mothballs into the 1980s, reactivated, and paid off again. All are museums now. Funnily enough, the only Iowa-class battleship in her namesake state is New Jersey, for obvious reasons. Iowa is in Los Angeles, Wisconsin in Norfolk, and Missouri stands guard (figuratively) over the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. Missouri's bow faces Arizona's bow, basically to say to the 1,000 men entombed there, "You will never get hurt again."

Working from home today due to a Tele-Health appointment. I would have gone for a walk in the park for 45 minutes, but it's 94F out there, and there's a heat advisory in effect. I have two fans going in my den, which lacks a/c.

danced the Mambo...

YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIPE. I never got a kick out of inflicting chaos on my cities, because I play SC4 as a stress-reliever, and needless destruction of cities is not a stress reliever to me. I guess it's because I grew up a mile and a half from the World Trade Center, and vividly remember it going up. My father would tell me when it was done, it would be the tallest buildings in the world. My wife's last boyfriend, Mike Sheridan, was the Operations Manager for the Twin Towers (7-7) in Port Authority parlance, and had a set of keys that could open every single door in the buildings. If he lost the set, he was out $75,000. He was also a big wheel in the union. He saved numerous lives in the 1993 bombing, which is forgotten now, and some of the lives he saved perished on 9/11, among 75 other PA workers. By then Mike was retired and watched it from his sofa in Florida. I got to deal with it from the Newark Emergency Command Center, writing press statements and releases on our response and to calm our frightened residents. Anybody who told him the buildings were not destroyed by the planes got a punch in the nose from him. He knew the buildings cold and the cause of their destruction by heat. After 9/11, I never watched "Independence Day" again and studiously ignored its sequel. My wife and I knew people who died in that horror, including the father of one of my daughter's friends. Destroying cities ceased to be funny. But I enjoy building them.

Not a bad apartment block. No central A/C, I notice. This reminds me of some parts of Brooklyn and Queens. All you need are effects of kids playing stickball in the street, and you're set. Downloaded it. Most impressive. Very impressive...now all you need is a Sim that looks like Norman Bates!