[PHOTO] Temperance Fountain, Tompkins Square Park, New York City

The Temperance Fountain in Tompkins Square Park, in the Alphabet City neighbourhood of Manhattan, is an interesting artifact of its late 19th century era, concerns for public health and for the proper socialization of non-teetotaling immigrants both contributing (among other factors) to the fountain's erection.



From the NYC Parks Website:

Dating to 1888, this neo-classical fountain was the gift of the wealthy San Francisco dentist, businessman, and temperance crusader Henry D. Cogswell (1820–1900).

Cogswell was born in Tolland, Connecticut in 1820, the son of an architect and builder. His mother died when he was young, and the family relocated to Orwell, New York. At age nine Cogswell returned alone to Connecticut, and endured “eight years of labor in southern Connecticut and Rhode Island cotton mills, itinerant wanderings, and incarceration in a poorhouse." Managing to transcend these ordeals, and largely self-taught, Cogswell served as principal of Orwell High School, studied medicine, and became a dentist.

News of the California Gold Rush of 1849 lured Cogswell to San Francisco. There his prosperous dental practice and real estate investments permitted him to retire in 1856 with a fortune estimated at $2,000,000. He engaged himself in public philanthropy, founding the Cogswell Polytechnic Institute, and helping to advance the anti-alcohol or “temperance” movement. Often, his charitable acts were tinged with self-promotion, and in an effort to embellish his humble origins, he adopted the coat of arms of Humphrey Cogswell, a 15th-century English lord, from whom Henry falsely claimed his lineage.

Cogswell’s most lasting legacy was the 50 monuments he sponsored nationwide between 1878 and the 1890s. Most were versions of the temperance fountain. Several of the fountains, such as those in Washington, D. C., Boston Common, and in Tompkins Square Park, were covered by a stone canopy or baldachin supported by four Doric columns. As can be seen here, the four stone entablatures were emblazoned with the words Faith, Hope, Charity, and Temperance.

The erection of the Temperance Fountain in Tompkins Square Park resulted from Cogswell’s affiliation with the Moderation Society, which was formed in 1877 to address health conditions on the Lower East Side, and to distribute free ice-water fountains to encourage citizens to drink water instead of alcoholic beverages. Cogswell served as the group’s honorary president in 1890, and the collaboration produced another temperance fountain at the New York City main post office at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue. The figure of Hebe, the mythical water carrier, atop the pyramidal stone pediment was originally fabricated in zinc by the J. L. Mott Iron Works in Mott Haven in the Bronx. The classically-styled figure is based on a marble statue made circa 1816 by the renowned Danish sculptor Albert Bertel Thorvaldsen (c.1770–1844). Thorvaldsen’s 1839 marble self-portrait stands in Central Park at East 97th Street. Though the four ornamental luminaires with red, white and blue tinted glass, which once flanked the fountain, long ago vanished, this monument has withstood the vagaries of time better than most. In 1992, the fountain underwent extensive restoration, and the Hebe statue was replaced with a more durable bronze replica.

[URBAN NOTE] "U.S. Congresswoman calls for high-speed rail linking Manhattan to Canadian cities"

I like the idea of high-speed rail. I'd love a high-speed rail route in Canada, connecting Toronto to Montréal, with a side-spur to Ottawa, preferably one linking the entire central Canadian urban corridor from Windsor to Québec City. I love the idea of cross-border rail links, too, the idea of a high-speed link between Canada and New York City that New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney talked about with the Globe and Mail's Konrad Yakabuski particularly appealing to me. There's just the non-trivial question of whether or not any of these high-speed rail links would be financially viable. I suspect not, at least judging by the projections for a similar mooted high-speed rail link between Toronto and Buffalo.

Is my gut feeling wrong?

[New York Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney] wants governments in her country and Canada to get moving on building a high-speed rail line that would link Manhattan, where her district lies, to cities north of the border.

“It would really help the economies of our countries dramatically,” Ms. Maloney insisted in an interview with The Globe and Mail, as she prepared to take the stage on Tuesday night at the Democratic National Convention here. “Both of our countries should get behind it, push it and make it happen.”

The dream of bringing European fast trains to North America has been around for decades without making much headway. But it got a powerful boost from President Barack Obama, whose stimulus bill allocated $8-billion for the development of high-speed rail projects. Most of that money is still waiting to be spent.

Only one cross-border link – between New York and Montreal – is mentioned in the U.S. Transportation Department’s 2010 list of “priority corridors.” But little progress has been made on advancing the project advocated by the Quebec government. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed no enthusiasm for the idea.

California is currently the site of the biggest and most controversial high-speed rail project in North America, a $68-billion plan to link San Francisco and Los Angeles in less than three hours. Construction on the first leg of the project, through California’s Central Valley, is slated to begin next year.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is also championing fast trains in his state. He is plowing state and federal funding into speeding up train service to upstate cities including Albany, Syracuse and Buffalo. He snagged an extra $500-million in federal high-speed rail money that was refused by Republican governors in Wisconsin and Ohio, who feared the faster train projects would end up as financial sink holes.

Ms. Maloney, whose district covers most of Manhattan’s east side and parts of Queens, thinks expanding the scope of New York’s projects to include more populated Canadian cities makes economic sense and could be the key to their viability.

[LINK] "Tu and Twitter: Is it the end for 'vous' in French?"

BBC News Magazine's Rebecca Lawn writes about one potential form of technology-triggered language change: the shift to more informal second person pronouns in French (and, as discussed in the article, in other languages like Spanish which make the same distinction).

Anthony Besson calls most people "vous". As a young man, it is a sign of respect to those older than him, and he's often meeting new people through his work in PR in Paris.

Yet this all changes on social media. "I always use 'tu' on Twitter," Besson says. "And not just because it takes up fewer of the 140 characters!"

Lots of other French people do exactly the same.

"Tu" is normally for family and friends, but when you're communicating through @ symbols, joining networks and tweeting under a pseudonym, a formal "vous" can seem out of place, even to someone you've never met.

Antonio Casilli, professor of Digital Humanities at Telecom ParisTech engineering school, says the web has been used as a tool for breaking down social barriers from its very beginning, resulting in a distinctively "egalitarian political discourse".

The pervasive pattern of speech on the web in the 1990s, he says, was "cyber-utopian California-style libertarian discourse, inherited from 1960s counter-culture".

And the egalitarian spirit remained when the "participatory web" came of age in the mid-2000s, he suggests.

Social networking sites such as Twitter take this one step further, adopting codes "characterised by a heightened sense of emotional proximity", such as friending on Facebook, he says.

Twitter, meanwhile, follows on from a long line of internet forums where users could be anonymous.

"In the philosophy of the internet, we are among peers, equal, without social distinction, whatever your age, gender, income or status in real life," Besson says.

Addressing someone as "vous" - or expecting to be addressed as "vous" - on the other hand, implies hierarchy.

It is, as Casilli puts it, "a major break in the code of communication… an attempt to reaffirm asymmetric social roles… a manifestation of distance that compromises social cohesion".

[LINK] "Canadian Cousins With Fleur-de-Lis and Mixed Genes"

Ian Austen's New York Times article describing the collecting culture surrounding Canadian-brand cars made in the United States for the Canadian market in the two decades after the Second World War made for amusing reading.

To Americans, they look familiar, yet strange. Their brand names don’t ring a bell: Mayfair, Frontenac, Acadian, Meteor, Monarch, Fargo, Laurentian, Beaumont.

These are among the cars once created specifically for Canada, and usually built in Canada, by the Detroit-based automakers. In their heyday, from the end of World War II until the late 1960s — a period of true mechanical distinctions between, say, Chevrolets and Pontiacs — the Canadianized cars shamelessly borrowed parts and styling from their sister divisions.

Once common on Canadian roads, such cars have become, even here, largely forgotten historical footnotes.

When Denise Côté, a retired government secretary in Ottawa, went to register her 1957 Monarch Lucerne, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation would have no part of it. Until Ms. Côté commissioned an auto historian to provide the government a history of Ford Canada’s Monarch brand, the license bureau would register her car only as a Mercury Monarch, a model that wasn’t produced until the late 1970s and was sold on both sides of the border.

“It is a Monarch Lucerne; it is not a Mercury,” said Ms. Côté, a longtime car fancier. Referring to the bureaucrats, she said, “They wouldn’t change it for the world, and they eventually had to call Toronto to do it.”

A variety of factors inspired the Canadian subsidiaries of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler to create Canada-only models. But the sometimes oddball results came into being, and then faded away, largely because of import tariffs.

Until the United States and Canada signed an agreement in 1965 creating cross-border free trade in cars and auto parts, vehicles imported to Canada from the United States were subject to duties of as much as 35 percent. To avoid the duties, automakers struggled to find economical ways to squeeze a wide range of models onto single assembly lines in their Canadian factories.

The models were not adapted to Canadian roads, which aside from the snow and ice, were generally poorer, at the time, than American roads.

“Was there any design or engineering done?” said Sharon Babaian, curator of transport at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. “No, not really. It was very, very cosmetic. I think they probably put more money into the marketing than they did into the actual changing of the style of the vehicle.”

[LINK] "Israel and Russia join forces over gas"

I linked back in April to an article describing how Russian natural gas producers are establishing themselves in the Eastern Mediterranean, taking advantage of potential riches in the area despite border disputes involving countries like Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, and Israel. In Canada's Financial Post, Lawrence Solomon argues that Russia is starting to lean strongly towards Israel in gas and other domains, changing its pattern of alliances in the area.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russia’s economy descended into a decade of privation and chaos that Russians still recall with national shame. Now Russia is back, thanks to its emergence as an energy superpower. Russia boasts Europe’s fastest-growing economy and its most potent military, both due to its stranglehold over Europe’s energy needs. Loathe to lose either influence or sales in Europe, Russia keeps competitors at bay, as it did last year when it stymied a Turkish bid to build a competing natural gas pipeline to Europe.

Today Russia faces two new threats to its hegemony over the European market: Exports of gas to Europe from Israel’s vast offshore finds in the Mediterranean Sea and continental Europe’s own finds, in the form of enormous shale gas reserves.

For now, environmental concerns have taken most of the shale gas potential off the table, keeping Europe dependent on imports. But Israel’s Mediterranean gas, combined with gas from Israel’s Mediterranean partner, Cyprus, have the potential to cost Russia its top-dog role as Europe’s chief source of natural gas.

Enter Gazprom Israel, a proposed subsidiary of Russian government-owned Gazprom, the world’s largest natural gas company. According to reports in the Israeli and Eurasian media, the Israeli government has agreed to give the Russians a stake in the Mediterranean find, and also to increase the amount of gas allowed to be exported. With this deal, Russia would be cutting itself into any sales of Mediterranean gas to Europe or, possibly better from Russia’s point of view, it could persuade Israel to instead sell Mediterranean gas to Asian markets — a live option even without the advent of Gazprom Israel. Either way, Russia would retain the dominant role in Europe that underpins its national pride.

As for Israel, the benefit of aligning itself with Russia’s economic interests would be immense. Over the last half-century, Russia and Russian arms have been a mainstay of Arab nations and Muslim terrorists that sought Israel’s destruction.

[. . .]

With Israel becoming a major energy exporter, able to upset Russia’s dominant role as a gas supplier in Europe, Russia is tilting further in Israel’s direction — and further from Israel’s enemies. And with Russia and Israel jointly developing resources off Israel’s shores, Israel’s gas fields will benefit in part from a Russian shield — belligerents who have been menacing Israel’s drilling rigs and other energy infrastructure — they include the government of Turkey as well as Islamist terrorists in Israel’s neighbouring countries — will now think twice before an attack that could draw Russia’s ire.

[LINK] "Summer Madness on the Great Eurasian Steppe"

Czech journalist Martin Ehl, writing for Transitions Online, writes about how Hungarian Turanism--briefly, an incorrect nationalist theory that links Hungary not only with the Finnic peoples of northern Europe but with Turkic groups and various central Asians--is being used by Hungary's ruling Fidesz party to provide ideological justification for its rule. See here for an example of this theory as presented with a light nationalist spin.

It's worth noting, in the context of the extradition of Armenian-killing Azerbaijani military officer Ramil Safarov back to his homeland, that Azerbaijan as a Turkic nation-state is seen by Turanists as a kindred nation of Hungary. Perhaps there was a secondary motivation to the extradition behind the promise of bond purchases?

By giving its blessing to an obscure festival that propagates the ties between the Hungarian nation and the tribes of Central Asia through a theory with historical and living links to the Hungarian extreme right, Orban’s Fidesz party has tossed another explosive device into relations between Budapest and the rest of Europe.

Up to a quarter of a million visitors descended on the plain near the small town of Bugac in central Hungary this past weekend for the fourth annual Kurultaj, a gathering of tribal chiefs and national folklore groups that pay lip service to the tradition of Turanism.

The Turanians, so the theory runs, were a tribe of Iranian origin led by the mighty Tur. They were later identified with the Turks and later still embraced as forebears by several Central Asian nations in search of their ultimate origins. Most modern scholars regard this as an ungrounded theory, a modern legend.

In Hungary, the belief in the Magyars’ Turanian origins took hold in right-wing circles between the wars, a time when a part of the Hungarian elite sought cures for the trauma of the Trianon Treaty and the loss of two-thirds of the Hungarian empire’s territory and a third of its population. Far more dangerous than the Turan I – Hungary’s only domestic tank during World War II, built on license from Czechoslovakia’s Skoda works – Turanism became part of the ideological arsenal of the Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists.

The Arrow Cross line leads directly to the members and fellow travelers of today’s extreme-right Jobbik party, marked among other things by its undisguised anti-Semitism. With cynical irony you could remark that Jobbik’s public support for the anti-Israel statements of Iranian leaders stems not just from ideology but also from the belief in a shared ancestry.

For the first time this year, the Kurultaj festival became a semi-official event, although until now it’s been associated mainly with Jobbik. Marton Gyongyosi, the deputy chairman of Jobbik and of parliament’s foreign affairs committee, spoke last weekend of the need to seek the roots of the Hungarian nation in the east, the MTI news agency reported. He talked of the fictional Finno-Ugric theory “by which the Hungarians’ enemies try to undermine them,” and praised the official governmental “opening to the East” policy – which is nothing more than Budapest’s attempt to extricate itself from diplomatic isolation in Europe by looking for friends in Asia.

The musty theory of Turanism serves this purpose excellently. Tribal leaders were welcomed in parliament by deputy speaker and Fidesz member Sandor Leszak, and the government donated $310,000 to the Kurultaj organization. This weekend parliament saw not just oldsters in exotic folk costumes on its Secession-style benches, but also displays of battle scenes and falconry, among other things.

[. . .]

The Hungarian government’s cozying up to a mythology exploited by fascists is taking place against a backdrop of the “rehabilitation” of the interwar dictator Miklos Horthy – he’s had streets renamed after him and a statue of him erected – and international criticism of rising anti-Semitism in Hungary. It could be grounds to surmise that Orban and his party are nearer to the extremists of Jobbik than Europeans had previously thought.

[URBAN NOTE] "Mayor Ford needs to smarten up"

Wow.

Megan Harris' Toronto Sun article criticizing Rob Ford is unprecedented, considering that the Toronto Sun is a right-wing tabloid that's pretty much the house organ of the so-called "Ford Nation" of discontented suburbanites.

This is remarkable. I wonder what the response will be?

It’s time for Mayor Rob Ford to stop using his football team as a convenient photo-op and as an excuse for his lack of judgment.

[. . .]

During his time as a city councillor, Mayor Ford did what many ambitious elected officials do. They find issues to support that build their profile and credentials with voters.

Ford moved quickly to establish himself as a penny-pinching city councillor who respected taxpayers’ money. He did this by not using his allocated city hall budget to purchase office supplies, choosing instead to use his own money to cover these expenses. He thus earned a reputation for frugality and criticized other city councillors whom, he said, misused city resources to promote themselves.

In March, 2008, he established the Rob Ford Foundation. Its purpose is to raise money to help schools in underprivileged neighbourhoods run football programs.

This is both laudable and welcome but the kids involved should not be used as publicity tools.

I would absolutely agree with Ford when he says he does not benefit from the Foundation, if he didn’t brag about it at every opportunity.

No one disputes Ford’s passion for the game of football and helping kids, but does this give him a free pass to ignore and skirt rules and regulations he does not agree with?

Unlike Ford, the kids who participate in his football program cannot do the same thing in life without suffering serious consequences.

When Ford does it, he is being a poor role model for these young people, as much as he may sincerely want to help them.

If it was just a one-off situation, most people would look the other way. But as the litany of the mayor’s bad judgment calls is revealed, what lessons are these kids actually learning from him?

This latest controversy about using city resources and staff to help his football team once again puts the kids right at the centre of Ford’s poor judgment.

Leaving an executive committee meeting at city hall to go and coach his football team is wrong. Using his taxpayer-funded staff and resources to support the work of his private football foundation is wrong.

Surely, Ford knows this.

Instead of using city staff and resources for his football team, why doesn’t Ford simply hire and pay a coach, rather than duck out of his responsibilities at city hall, using the kids as an excuse?

Ford needs to occupy a higher moral ground if he wants to be taken seriously as a mentor and role model to these young men, to say nothing of being the mayor of the fifth largest city in North America.