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itsthenovelteafactor · 3 years ago

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Fall of the House of Hargreeves

So I mentioned a while back in my Superhero Gothic meta that there were a number of parallels between the season one finale of The Umbrella Academy and the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Fall of the House of Usher and that I could probably write a whole meta on that if anyone was interested. Shout out and love to the anon who requested that I do that!

It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these long form metas, but I am very excited to get back to writing about two of my favorite things: gothic literature and chaotic superheroes.

Part I: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher (which I’ll call House of Usher for convenience for the rest of this meta) is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe first published in 1939. It is considered a classic gothic short story, and deals with themes of family, madness, inheritance, and isolation.

Since it’s in the public domain, I’ll go ahead and link a pdf to the story here. If you aren’t interested in reading, though, or just want a refresher, the story follows an unnamed narrator going to visit his ill friend, a man named Roderick Usher in his isolated (and very spooky) family estate. Upon arrival, he discovers that Roderick’s sister, Madeline Usher, is also ill, and has a tendency to fall into dreamlike trances.

Over the course of the visit, Roderick confesses to the narrator that not only does he believe the house is alive, but that it is connected to the fate of the family which, at this point, only includes Roderick and Madeline. He later comes and tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and enlists his help in order to bury her in the family tomb beneath the house. They do so, but for the next couple of days Roderick is suspiciously...on edge.

Then, one dark and stormy night, Roderick shows up in the narrator’s room incredibly worked up, and throws open the window, and starts low-key (read: high-key) having a breakdown. The narrator is unsure as to why until he hears ripping and tearing sounds coming from somewhere in the house. These ripping and tearing sounds are revealed to be Madeline whom Roderick and the narrator buried alive whose appearance scares Roderick to death, right before she collapses, also dead from the strain of tearing through the foundations of the house.

The narrator decides this would probably be a good time to leave and is very much right about that because as soon as he leaves, the house (which was already in pretty bad shape) splits in two and collapses into the lake surrounding it. The end.

Part II: Umbrella Academy as Gothic

So, there are probably a couple similarities between House of Usher and The Umbrella Academy season one that stand out right off the bat, but I’d like to start by taking a step back to talk about thematic parallels between the two works. If you’d like to read a very long winded explanation of why I consider The Umbrella Academy to be a modern gothic tale, I have a really long meta about it.

If not, here’s a quick overview:

Gothic does not have a clearly defined set of requirements as a genre, but its purpose is to explore the contradictions and the failing edifices of convention in a way that is dramatic and often fantastic.

Gothic fiction plays with reality, but usually in a way that is representative of the characters and story.

It often situates itself during times of great change, as there is something haunting about the irreversible passage of time, particularly for those that struggle to acknowledge it and hide behind conventions that have grown increasingly irrelevant.

Poe is considered one of the classic authors of gothic fiction (though the genre significantly predates him), and is decidedly one of the best well-known examples of it.

The Umbrella Academy is a family drama about former child superheroes dealing with their trauma while trying to prevent an apocalypse that their every move seems to set further in motion. It explores the messy and complicated relationships between siblings who have been abused and pit against each other for years. And yeah, it’s fun with great music and talking gorillas and dance sequences, but the premise is kind of hard for me to read as anything other than gothic.

Part III: Parallels

Like House of Usher, the first season of Umbrella Academy takes place in a massive, largely empty mansion where siblings gather with disastrous consequences. Both works explore a family that is past their prime and disconnected from the present. They also both explore the psychological toll of isolation, the consequences of tyrannical family rules, and why it is a really bad idea to lock your unstable sister in a basement and just leave her there.

Let’s start with some thematics parallels. Everyone in House of Usher is extremely isolated, and the absence of anything resembling the modern world amongst the house full of relics is part of the horror. All of the siblings in Umbrella Academy are defined by their isolation as well, physically (Luther, Five, and Ben), socially (Vanya, Diego, Klaus, and Allison), and emotionally (legit all of them). It is this isolation that drives the conflict of the story, feeding into every characters’ choices.

In both House of Usher and Umbrella Academy, the main characters are trapped in this isolated state as a direct result of their familial legacy. In House of Usher, the titular house is a character itself, a manifestations of the obligations Madeline and Roderick hold as members of an aristocratic family that is so far divorced from wealth and status that it keeps them from ever fully moving on and rejoining the real world. In Umbrella Academy, the characters are similarly trapped by their familial legacy, this time in the form of the specter of their abusive father, and the roles he created for them. Like the Usher siblings, the Hargreeves have no way of maintaining the roles their family left out for them – they were never given the tools to function in the real world and it cripples them – but are trapped in them regardless.

Part IV: The Woman* in White

*As of the time I am writing this, nothing has been said regarding Vanya’s gender identity being written to match Elliot Page’s. I am using she/her pronouns for Vanya, as that is what has been used for the character thus far.

Aside from thematic parallels, however, the most direct connection between the short story and series, and in fact the reason I was inspired to write this meta in the first place is the way both of the stories end: with a sister trapped beneath the house clawing her way out to face her brother(s and sister) and creating a disruption of the family legacy so great that the entire estate crumbles.

Madeline Usher is described at this point as wearing a white dress, strained with the injuries she sustained from physically breaking herself out of the basement tomb her brother buried her alive in. Vanya, of course, becomes at this moment the White Violin, and though she has not yet had the epic violin-music-so-powerful-it-changes-the-color-of-her-clothes scene, the principal still stands.

As characters, there are also a couple of noteworthy parallels between Vanya and Madeline. The narrator at one point describes “the illness of the lady Madeline had lone been beyond the help of her doctors. She seemed to care about nothing” (Poe, 27). The reader never knows what illness precisely is the cause of Madeline’s apparent madness, but we see the effects. It dulls her emotional responses to situations and leaves her withdrawn and powerless. Similarly, we learn over the course of the first season of The Umbrella Academy that the medication Reginald Hargreeves prescribed Vanya for her anxiety is actually a power suppressor for her abilities that has much the same effect – because they are strengthened by extreme emotion, the drugs numb Vanya’s emotional responses and deprive her of the ability to access her powers.

Additionally, the final scene of the story story shows Madeline escaping her tomb during a great storm and going to face her brother who put her there, the storm itself being a metaphor for her anguish that tears the house apart. Vanya’s connection to the destruction of the house is a bit more literal, but it is similarly a manifestation of her anguish and trauma. She sees flashbacks of her siblings being distant and rude to her in their childhoods and the anger she feels rips the foundation apart.

It is not entirely clear in the short story why Roderick buries Madeline alive – there are a lot of theories: he genuinely believed she was dead, he wanted her out of the picture, he himself was succumbing to the madness of the house, etc – but the guilt he feels for doing so manifests as him hearing her scraping her way out for several days preceding her escape. The justification for Vanya’s imprisonment is more clear in text, but the series of flashbacks make it clear that it is not just the imprisonment that has driven her over the edge. It it guilt for her sister, anger at her abusive upbringing that is much more easily directed at her siblings than her father, the newfound emotions experienced by being off her medication for the first time since childhood, Leonard’s manipulations, etc.

In both cases, amidst a spiral of emotions and experiences folding in on themselves, Vanya and Madeline experience a single, cold moment of clarity that drives them to escape, and it is that moment of clarity that breaks the shadow of the family legacy. They observe the situation as it stands and realize that it is completely unacceptable, and it is the realization that leads everything to crumble. Because gothic literature is focused on the complexities of maintaining that which is out of date, the realization that things must change can break the spell.

Part V: Conclusions

As per usual, I have no great theories on why this is or what it means. One of the reasons I love gothic literature is that it is rife with meaning that can be more easily felt than deciphered. I welcome any and all interpretations, theories, (politely worded) disagreements, and comments.

Thanks for taking the time to read; I have a lot of fun doing these. Enjoy spooky season, y’all. 💛

#The Umbrella Academy meta #TUA meta #The Umbrella Academy #TUA #The Fall of the House of Usher #House of Usher #Edgar Allen Poe #back here with the long metas on gothic literature and superhero tv #Vanya Hargreeves #Madeline Usher #happy spooky season y'all

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blockwarden · 6 years ago

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Civil Defense in the Fallout Series

For better or worse, nuclear warfare has dominated both the American psyche and American media since the dawn of the Cold War. From duck and cover drills to War Games, to fallout shelters and The Day After, we have long looked at the what-ifs of nuclear warfare with an almost violent curiosity—like a train wreck or a plane crash, we simply cannot look away. Although the threat of nuclear war and mutually-assured destruction no longer looms like the spectre of death over our shoulders, we still find ourselves fascinated by it, and our media reflects this. An almost infinite number of books, television shows, movies, and video games have been dedicated, in some part, to the prospect or aftermath of nuclear warfare. Video games especially being a relatively new, mostly immersive medium, have taken the theme of nuclear warfare and ran with it, including Metro 2033, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., DEFCON, Civilization V, Call of Duty, Metal Gear Solid, and Ace Combat Zero, to name just a very small number of them. But no game series is more synonymous with nuclear warfare as the Fallout series.

Although I could personally talk about the Fallout universe, the history, the sociopolitical setting, and the Great War itself for hours on end, the gist of the series is that in a retro-futuristic, alternate timeline world, on October 23, 2077, “Red China,” the Soviet Union, and the United States finally pulled the trigger and engaged in a full-on nuclear war, with bombs falling on most U.S. cities, including Las Vegas, Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The war itself lasted only two hours, but more energy was released in the first moments of the Great War than all the previous human conflicts combined. Entire mountain ranges were created by the sheer tectonic stress caused by the bombs, and the oceans and rivers of the world were contaminated irreversibly by the “relatively low-yield” warheads. In short, the Fallout series is a (somewhat exaggerated) look at the realities of mutually-assured destruction, and a clear representation of all our nuclear fears.

But how realistic is this? How likely is it that if something like the Great War were to happen today would our land and water still be unusable 200 years in the future? In discussing this, we need to first look at the preventative measures taken in the Fallout universe. And this starts with civil defense.

Not much Fallout canon is dedicated to civil defense. Although there are posters from the “Civil Defense Administration” found in-game, most preventative measures in the Fallout series come from Vault-Tec and their vaults. But these vaults were sociological experiments disguised as fallout shelters, and ultimately, Vault-Tec was not actually concerned with the preservation and continuation of the United States post-war. Some vaults were rigged with poisonous gases, some had purposefully faulty blast doors, and some were simply absurd (such as Vault 77, which was populated by 999 puppets and one man.) Since we can’t consider Vault-Tec an agent of emergency preparedness or disaster response, we must turn back towards the aforementioned Civil Defense Administration.

We know from in-game dialogue, terminals, notes, holotapes, and even character backstories that most people in 2077 were expecting a war any day. We can find personal basement shelters in bombed-out neighborhoods, Pulowski personal preservation shelters dotting street corners, and in the beginning of Fallout 4, as the bombs approach Boston, we can hear air raid sirens. We can find government bunkers like the South Boston military checkpoint and the Greenbrier Resort, and although not morally aligned to the concepts of American civil defense, some vaults did manage to provide safety for generations of dwellers. So, we know that some effort was made, and we can assume that these efforts were spear-headed by the Civil Defense Administration. But this is where the similarities between historical American civil defense and Fallout civil defense stop.

Walking around in a Fallout game, you encounter decimated homes and buildings, upturned roads, and irradiated water and soil. Skeletons litter the landscape. The few remaining buildings for the most part lack running water or electricity. There is no trash collection, there are no vehicles, there aren’t even any authorities outside of rag-tag militias capable of curbing the rampant crime across the wasteland. Doctors are few and far-between and mostly self-taught, and pockets of radioactive waste remain in open-air pits. If the Fallout series truly had a Civil Defense Administration, this dangerous, dirty, destroyed world would simply not exist.

Historically, civil defense has focused on both emergency preparedness and disaster response. The civil defense agencies of the United States were comprised of rescue squads, decontamination squads, demolition and clearance crew, auxiliary police officers, auxiliary firefighters, nurses, doctors, road repair crews, utility repair crews, drivers, messengers, radio operators, food and housing corps, chaplains, refuse collection crews, and even gravediggers—all who focused on disaster response and, more importantly, rebuilding. Civil defense was almost singularly-focused on the idea of rebuilding, of piecing the country back together after an emergency, of reestablishing normalcy as quickly as possible.

In Fallout, however, this doesn’t seem to be the case, except for a few exceptions. After the bombs fell, those remaining U.S. Armed Forces members tried their best to maintain order and control, but they quickly succumbed to the radiation and mobs. Then there were the Responders, seen in Fallout 76, who were an organization of police, firefighters, medics, and general volunteers that emerged in 2082 to provide medical assistance, supplies, and survival training to survivors. They were followed by Project Purity in Fallout 3, which was dedicated to decontaminating the water of the Washington D.C. area and providing potable water for survivors, although the project began in 2277, 200 years after the bombs fell. The last exception would be the Mojave Express, a courier service seen in Fallout: New Vegas in 2281. There is also the NCR Sharecropper Farm in Fallout: New Vegas, as well as a pastor in Diamond City in Fallout 4. But this is…it. There is no large-scale, nation-wide effort to rebuild. There are corpses and skeletons left where they fell, there are burnt-out cars left in the middle of the road, there are collapsed bridges and spewing pipelines and ponds so irradiated they’ve birthed new monstrosities like Swan in Fallout 4. There is no governing body, no faction that truly takes the reins, not even a surviving member of congress (technically, there was with the Enclave, but their motivations were selfish and generally fascist.) And this is anathema to the spirit of civil defense.

From a civil defense perspective, the Fallout series is almost insulting. It shows a total lack of law and order, a lack of neighborliness, a lack of effort to hold the world together. It shows tribe mentality, it shows the collapse of society, it shows the end of the world as we know it. This is not what civil defense, fictional or historical, would have strived for. It could be that, as we see in the case of Appalachia in Fallout 76, those who tried to rebuild were wiped out. It could be that, much like historic civil defense, it faced opposition in the form of apathy. Or it could simply be that a partially-recovered world is not nearly as compelling as a game as one where every water purification plant is overrun with Mirelurks and feral ghouls leap at you from the public library.

This is a sentiment echoed by many players of the two latest titles, Fallout 4 and Fallout 76. I’ll spare y’all the student game developer rants as much as possible here, but there’s a lot to be said, so hold on. Most players absolutely hated the settlement system in Fallout 4. They despised the Minutemen, Preston Garvey, and protecting innocent farmers from Raiders. They hated having to sacrifice rare parts like gears and screws to build defenses. They hated the radiant quests. In short, they hated rebuilding and recovering. This could be because Bethesda did a pretty ham-fisted job at motivating the player to recruit and rebuild settlements, or it could be because Bethesda kind of forgot that the Fallout series, since its infancy with Interplay, was meant to be post-post-apocalyptic. It was meant to be a game about a half-restored world. One only needs to look at places like Vault City or Shady Sands or even the New Vegas strip to know this. These were settlements that had rebuilt and moved on from the Great War. Bethesda has effectively abandoned this since acquiring the series, choosing instead to feature wastelands over burgeoning towns. So, while Diamond City and Bunker Hill might have running water, they’re still using oil lamps and sleeping in drafty, scrap wood houses as if the bombs fell just a few weeks ago.

A game where survival is not nearly as hard, where you aren’t grilling rabid dog meat and sleeping on a flea-infested mattress, is just not fun to most players. So, if the Fallout Civil Defense Administration had done a realistic job and cleaned all the literal skeletons out of the closet, Bethesda would have ultimately lost the one thing driving players in Fallout 4: the desire to survive.

This isn’t a condemnation of Bethesda at all—in fact, modeling at Bethesda Austin is kind of my dream job—but it is perhaps a critical look at their failure to use civil defense properly in order to bolster a certain environment, atmosphere, and play style. We simply don’t know, however, how much research and effort Bethesda (or even Interplay or Obsidian) put into civil defense. For all we know, one of their artists was simply inspired by the infamous “Serving you in time of emergency!” poster and didn’t think anything of it. But for a game that essentially trailblazes our pop culture understanding and opinion of nuclear warfare, it’s kind of a shame that civil defense is so overlooked. The Fallout series is almost obligated to get things right, especially when there are people who legitimately think the Vault Boy/Thumbs Up technique is a true way to measure fallout.

(It isn’t. This will get you killed.)

#articles #fallout #fallout 4 #fallout 3 #fallout 76 #fallout new vegas #civil defense

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unclelight16-blog · 6 years ago

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"The New York Curb Market… Which has No Organization Whatever”: The Enclosure of New York’s Last Outdoor Stock Market, 1900-1921

By Ann Daly

Visitors to the New York Curb Market, located on the Broad Street sidewalk, also called “the gorge,” found themselves overwhelmed by the noise and frenzy. Hundreds of men on the street “writhed, leaped, swayed.” In New York’s last outdoor stock market, where orders were communicated by yelling or signaling out a window and anyone with lungs could trade, financial journalist Edwin C. Hill claimed in 1920, “some of those whirling dervishes down the street could borrow a million on their moral credit; for others the jail beckons.”

The market on Broad Street. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

To Hill, it looked like hell. “Fingers in sets of two, three, and five at a time… shot up vertically or spanned horizontally sideways in mad play,” while in the buildings overlooking the street, “windows were popping with grimacing faces — female, it seemed, as well as male — with grotesque and distorted features… with arms and hands that leaped from a mysterious interior to convey cryptic symbols to the upraised eyes of the leaping creatures in the gorge.” In this mysterious market where men wore garish coats and hats, “demon knew demon by the color of a head-dress.”

If the visitor looked closely, Hill claimed, they could see the Curb for what it really was: a functioning stock market. On the street, the machinations of finance were visible to all. The Curb, it was said, “is finance set to jazz music.” It was “money doing a shimmy.” The grimacing faces above the street were brokerage house clerks tasked with manning telegraphs and telephones indoors and communicating orders to their traders in the market below. Four young boys sat in each window with their legs dangling out, and brokers knew which boys belonged to each house, and therefore where to look for their orders. Men stopped trading to throw things at each other, harass passing newsboys, or whistle at a pretty woman. They often had to dodge traffic while conducting business. Neither snow nor rain prevented traders from trading stocks and bonds on the street, year in and year out. Yet less than a year after Hill introduced his readers to the market, this public Spectacle ceased to exist. On June 27th, 1921, the Curb abandoned its place on the street and moved into a new building on Trinity Place, where it would become, by midcentury, a financial powerhouse called the American Stock Exchange (AMEX). [1]

The concept of an outdoor exchange is old — The earliest European stock exchanges formed out of doors in the seventeenth century — but most exchanges moved indoors as quickly as possible. In New York, the New York Stock Exchange formed in 1792 with signing of the Buttonwood Agreement, named after the buttonwood tree the traders were supposed to have met under. By 1793, however, trading had moved into the Tontine Coffeehouse. As an outdoor stock market that persisted into the twentieth century, The Curb Market was an odd anachronism. Its existence begs two questions: Why did the Curb stay outside from the late 1860s until 1921, and why did it finally abandon the street for the comfort of four walls? Surely, it wasn’t a desire to get out of the rain, or they would have moved inside well before 1921. Instead, the Curb Market used public space to lend credence to its claim that it was not a formal securities market, and therefore could not be regulated. In the aftermath of the Panic of 1907 and a rising tide of public scrutiny of securities markets drew increasing attention to the speculative dealings on the Curb, some Curb brokers began to find their outdoor environs and openness to be a hindrance, and eventually the market traded its informal status for a codified set of rules and regulations, which necessitated a move indoors. The Curb, the Sidewalk, and the New York Stock Exchange

Outdoor exchanges lacked spatial controls which regulated access to trading and were therefore seen as less legitimate than those exchanges, such as the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) or the Chicago Board of Trade, that had decades earlier gone inside. By taking cover on New York City’s streets, the New York Curb Market evaded regulation and served as unofficial market where New York Stock Exchange brokerages could participate in more speculative transactions. Outside, the Curb consciously rejected the institutional trappings that signified an organized securities market. Because anyone could simply walk up to the market and trade with any other trader, the market could plausibly claim to not be an organized securities market, but simply a group of people who simply gathered to informally trade in anything, and therefore, not an organization that could be regulated. As the New York Times put it, “Any man with a good pair of lungs is free to trade there so long as he keeps good his contracts.”[2]

The Curb was not just seen as an unorganized, informal, and semi-illegitimate market: it kept itself that way in order to preserve its relationship with the NYSE. The NYSE used the Curb as an unofficial ‘seasoning market,’ or place to test out new issuances. Although the relationship was never formalized, the Curb was widely accepted by the NYSE as a preliminary market for newly issued or speculative securities, and was what is now known as a small-cap market. The best stocks, including Coca Cola, General Motors, Shell, Standard Oil, Goldwyn Pictures, and Phillip Morris, started on the Curb and quickly moved inside to the NYSE. Industrial and mining concerns were particularly prevalent, since new industrials and unexplored mines had significant start up costs, but were often unable to meet the NYSE’s requirements for listing that would give them access to the larger capital market. Other companies, like Standard Oil, had no interest in disclosing financial statements that might run afoul of anti-trust statutes and always traded on the Curb. By literally kicking risky securities to the Curb, the NYSE managed to preserve its reputation while still making a market for these more speculative stocks. [3] As one commentator in the 1870s put it, the Curb was the “flower which blooms in the garden of the regular board… feasting on remnants and odds and ends.” Even the Curb’s nickname, the “Little Board,” was a reference to the NYSE’s “Big Board.” Eighty percent of Curb orders originated from NYSE brokerages, and the big board countenanced the market as a place to trade in speculative securities and skirt NYSE regulations that banned some risky trading practices and demanded financial disclosures from listed companies.

Signaling from the window to brokers below. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Although the NYSE maintained the Curb as a place for speculation that would have otherwise been banned, it only allowed the Curb to exist so long as it did not compete for business. NYSE regulations banned brokers from trading on rival exchanges; brokers who traded on rival exchanges like the Consolidated Exchange would lose their seats. In order to survive, the Curb had to be able to plausibly claim that it was not a stock market.

In the aftermath of the Panic of 1907, the congressional investigation in to the causes of the panic, colloquially known as the Money Trust investigation, focused on the relationship between the NYSE, the Curb, and space. The Panic had started with the collapse of an attempted corner in the Curb Market, and the committee asserted that NYSE denied the Curb the institutional solutions it needed to prevent the kind of market manipulations that started the Panic so that NYSE brokerages had a place to engage in risky speculation away from scrutiny. The committee repeatedly demanded to know if the NYSE specifically prohibited the Curb from going inside in order to evade regulation, and implied that the NYSE forced them to trade in the rain or risk losing all of their business. Over and over again, committee members asked NYSE representatives one question: “Why the Curb does not get out of the rain into a building?” The answer of course, was that space was a heuristic for organization, and going inside would mark the Curb as an organized exchange that NYSE brokerages could not trade on without running afoul of the NYSE’s rules. [4] Who is in Charge of the Market?

In the absence of institutional mechanisms for purging the market of fictitious sales and creating trust in the Curb market itself, one particular broker, Emmanuel S. Mendels, Jr., stood above all others. Referred to as ‘the father of the Curb,’ ‘Pop’ Mendels and his associates served in an ad-hoc fashion, making public judgments on membership, listings, and trading rules. [5] Although he lacked the power to ban particular stocks or brokers from the Curb, the Mendels’ stamp of approval helped bolster a new listing’s reputation, and his approbation would make other brokers wary of a suspicious newcomer. Mendels’ authority depended on his “sheer integrity and force of character” — personal characteristics that endowed the market he oversaw with a modicum of legitimacy. [6] Mendels codified his informal power by founding the Curb’s first governing body in 1908, The New York Curb Agency, but even that organization advertised the market’s informal status and went so far as to name its governing document The New York Curb Market Manual; Containing General Information regarding contracts, deliveries, listings, transfers, ETC. of the New York Curb Market which has NO ORGANIZATION WHATEVER. [7]

Without a governing body and spatial arrangement that allowed the Curb to police traders and exchange, the job of regulating boundaries of the market fell to the same organization charged with controlling the rest of New York City’s public spaces: the police. By 1905, the market had grown so large that it began to present a public nuisance. In the outside market, trading an embodied activity that was open to anyone with good eyesight and a loud voice. Traders were known for their physical talents. Curb brokers traded in all weather and were famously hardy, with one claiming that he was “rugged as a bear” and that it would take a “very large axe” to kill a Curb broker. [8] Even trading itself was a physical activity. Most traders eschewed the telephones and telegraphs of the indoor exchanges in favor of a secret set of hand signals. [9] Each brokerage or individual trader had his own sign language that they used to communicate with the clerks above the street, and these signs facilitated rapid communication, and kept incoming orders private. Orders originated with the street clerk, who manned telephone and telegraph banks in the office buildings that surrounded the market, and were the main conduit of information between the street below and the world outside. After receiving an order, the street clerk leaned out the window and signaled to his trader below, whom he identified by the design of his colorful cap and coat. The trader, who was often selected for his sharp eyesight as much as his quick thinking, executed the order and then signaled its completion to the appropriate window. Traders and clerks constantly “wig-wagged” back and forth, but stealing another trader’s hand signals was a violation of the implicit contract of the Curb. To observers, including Hill, the market assaulted the senses with its sound, movement, and color.

By 1905, some of the adjacent brokerage houses that transmitted orders through nearby windows were using megaphones to communicate with the street below. The Standard Trust Company, located on Broad Street next to the market, complained to the police. New York newspapers attributed the noise to the way the Curb conducted business, as it was the place where “the man with the leather lungs has the best of trading.” Upon consultation with a committee of four brokers, including Mendels, the city reached a compromise. Police Commissioner McAdoo, acknowledging that “the customs and traditions of the curb market have existed for a long time, and many of the men on the curb are connected with leading houses on the Street,” incorporated the Curb into a larger plan to ease traffic and congestion on Wall Street. McAdoo stationed two members of the traffic squad in the street to “herd the brokers within reasonable bounds” and remove loiters. He also roped off a section of the street, an “arrangement made for the restriction of trading to a specified area… with openings at intervals through which the brokers and messengers were allowed to pass.” [10] In essence, the police were tasked with deciding who would be allowed in to trade and who would be excluded.

Brokers signaling to the windows. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Traders rebelled. Although there was never a referendum on the ropes, traders voted with their bodies and voices. This new spatial arrangement was not well received by the brokers, because it both marked them as no more prestigious than street vendors and disrupted the way the Curb did business. The Curb men expressed their distaste for their new confines: newspaper reports from the first day of enclosure claim that the Curb men crowded into the north end of their enclosure, as far away from the hotdog and lemonade vendors as possible. One trader complained to the New-York Tribune that the new spatial arrangements also had a negative effect on trading: the space was too small and overcrowded, so he was unable to push through the crowd to get between the north part of the sidewalk, where copper stocks were traded, and the south, where the gold stocks were, and consequently was going to have to give up his business in one of the metals. [11]

With McAdoo’s declaration that only traders were to be allowed within the ropes, it was up to the police and traders to negotiate the distinction between traders and the general public. One Monday in April, 1906, Callahan, the newly appointed Curb market policeman, had a dilemma: a young boy wanted to become a Curb trader, but Callahan did not know if he should be allowed into the market or not. According to the New York Times, shortly after the police roped off the market, a young man approached the ropes and declared his intention to trade in the market. Callahan rebuffed him, telling him to “take a walk” because there was “nothing doing for you in here.” The man persisted, however, and some of the brokers took him under their wing, telling him “if he’d yell loud enough the firms away up high would throw him orders out the windows.” Callahan again led him out of the ropes, but the boy protested, exclaiming, “I want to be a broker, and you can’t stop me.” [12] Callahan, unsure if learners were allowed in the market, compromised by allowing him to hang just outside of the ropes, and eventually the boy was employed by one of the brokerage houses as a clerk.

The move inside

After the Panic of 1907 and the ensuing congressional investigations, the Curb found itself under increasing public scrutiny and the Curb Agency introduced a series of reforms. Despite the best efforts of the Curb Association, however, it became increasingly apparent that the Curb could either be truly open or regulated, but not both. Plans to build a building began in 1916, and on July 27, 1921, the New York Curb Market officially began business in their new three million-dollar building on Trinity Place, just a few blocks from their old sidewalk.

The Curb’s move indoors was part of a broader regulatory program that signaled a larger shift in the relationship between markets and society. In its earlier outdoor form, the Curb was unregulated and dangerously risky institution, but it was also understood to be an open and democratic. As Hill explained, any white man could simply walk up to the market and begin trading, regardless of social status, wealth, or ethnic affiliation. In the first decades of the twentieth century and as stock markets became an increasingly important part of the American financial system, they because increasingly distinct from the rest of society. In partnership with state and federal governments, stock exchanges like the NYSE and the Curb implemented reforms regulations that were intended to bring stability to the market and prevent illegitimate speculators from gambling in the market. It was no longer acceptable for NYSE brokers to speculate wildly, even if they did so outside. In response to this shift, the Curb began to restrict membership, implement listing requirements, and closed itself off from the public by moving indoors. As more Americans began to invest in the stock market, physical and institutional boundaries mediated access to the market itself.

Ann Daly is a Ph.D. candidate at Brown University, where she studies the history of money in the nineteenth century United States.

[1] Edwin C. Hill, "The Strangest Stock Market in the World," Munsey’s Magazine, February 1920, 45-6. [2]; "The Deals and Ways of the New York "Curb"," New York Times, October 11 1908.

[3] William R. Sheerin, "The Newspapers Versus Wall Street," Michigan Manufacturer and Financial Record 1918, 6-7; Sobel, The Curbstone Brokers, 115-6; "The Remarkable Activity in Outside Securities," New York Times, January 1 1900, 28; Arsene Pujo, "Report of the Committee Appointed Pursuant to House Resolutions 429 and 504 to Investigate the Concentration of Control of Money and Credit," ed. House of Representatives (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), 38; Albert W. Atwood, "On the Curb," The Saturday Evening Post, September 9 1916; New York Curb Exchange, America's Second Largest Stock Market: New York Curb Market, New York, June 1921 (New York: The New York Curb Market, 1921).

[4] Testimony of Mr. Mabon and Sturgis in Money Trust Investigation: Investigation of Financial and Monetary Conditions in the United States under House Resolutions Nos.429 and 504, before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Banking and Currency, Vol, 6 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1913), 65, 470-75, 815.

[5] "Father of the Curb Dead," New York Times, October 18 1911, 90-93; Sobel, The Curbstone Brokers: The Origins of the American Stock Exchange.

[6] Hill, "The Strangest Stock Market in the World," 51.

[7] Emanuel S. Mendels, The New York Curb Market Manual; Containing General Information Regarding Contracts, Deliveries, Listings, Transfers, Etc. Of the New York Curb Market Which Has NO ORGANIZATION WHATEVER (New York: New York Curb Market Agency, 1909).

[8] Chapman, "The Curb Is Dead! Long Live the Curb!."

[9] "Curb Market Escapes Command to Move On," New York Times, June 17 1905; "Telephones for Curb Brokers.," New York Times, April 30, 1902 1902.

[10] "The Curb, Roped in, and Feels It Keenly," New York Times, June 27 1905.

[11] "Curb Brokers Roped In," New - York Tribune, 1905 Jun 27 1905.

[12] "He'd Be a Broker, Too," New York Times, April 9, 1906; "Curb Market Escapes Command to Move On."

Source: https://www.gothamcenter.org/blog/the-new-york-curb-market-which-has-no-organization-whatever-the-enclosure-of-new-yorks-last-outdoor-stock-market-1900-1921

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bitcoinhippi-blog · 7 years ago

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“Real Users": Bitcoin Donations Helped These Earthquake Survivors Recover

This is the second in a series by Aaron van Wirdum focusing on real people who use cryptocurrencies. Read about his earlier experiences in Italy here: "Real Users": In This Mountain Town, Everyone Knows About Bitcoin.

The straight stone road from the partially crumbled city wall to the scaffolded church in the center of the central Italian town of Norcia is empty. It glimmers a bit from the rain; the weather is unusually wet for this region today. Tourists and day-trippers that would usually be strolling around the historic town center on Saturday afternoons like these are nowhere to be seen.

Bad luck for Ilaria and Lorenzo. The couple — both in their thirties, both wearing thick coats, scarves and beanies to keep themselves warm — set up a small mobile bar near the end of the street, under a white marquee; the inside is decorated with pictures of flowers. It’s all part of a local street market festival.

There, they sell saffron and beer produced with saffron, produced from the thin reddish stalks plucked from the crocus. It’s a delicacy, Lorenzo explains, as he hands out taster-sized plastic cups with beer. “Pound-for-pound among the most expensive products in the world,” he says.

It’s been almost 18 months since the Norcia area was struck with a seismic shock of 6.2 on the Richter scale: an earthquake that many of the old brick homes typical of the Mediterranean countryside could not withstand. Whole street blocks had collapsed, claiming hundreds of casualties.

Ilario and Lorenzo in their market stand bar

Ilaria and Lorenzo got out safely, but their home was destroyed and their town, San Pellegrino di Norcia, is abandoned. They now live in a small, prefabricated house on the edge of Norcia.

Yet, Ilaria and Lorenzo have been able to keep their saffron business running, even after disaster struck their lives. They rebuilt parts of their organic plantation with financial help from Legambiente, a charity-based NGO dedicated to the earthquake recovery efforts.

This financial help did not come in euros. Legambiente had no euros left, Ilaria and Lorenzo were told when they applied for a reimbursement about a year ago; only bitcoin. The two had heard of the digital currency a couple of years ago when they were researching local money systems. But they had never owned any themselves.

“We would have preferred euros if it was available,” Ilaria admits, sitting down on one of the wooden benches they installed in the marquee. There are no potential customers stopping by, so she has time to talk about her experience. “But bitcoin was, of course, better than nothing, so we gladly accepted.”

Helperbit

Guido Baroncini Turricchia, founder of Helperbit

The reason Ilaria and Lorenzo received bitcoin is Guido Baroncini Turricchia. The 39-year old Italian environmental engineer is the founder ofHelperbit, a Rome-based startup that leverages bitcoin for fundraising campaigns.

Bitcoin is particularly well-suited to these types of causes, Baroncini Turricchia thinks, because of the transparency it provides. Through Bitcoin’s public blockchain, donors cantrace the funds they donate and be sure that they really end up at the Bitcoin addresses of the intended recipients of the money — and nowhere else.

“Helperbit was only four months old when disaster struck Norcia,” Baroncini Turricchia recalls, as we are driving in his car from Rome to the disaster-struck town.

“For any natural disaster it takes a couple of days before media attention catches onto the scope of the event and for donation infrastructure to be set up. As the fundraising campaign starts, the amount of incoming donations reaches a peak within one or two weeks. It then fizzles out over the next couple of months or years,” he explains, as he uses his finger to draw a long-tailed, skewed bell-curve through the fogged interior of the windshield in front of him.

The number of incoming donations for Norcia was already past its peak when Baroncini Turricchia was still looking for an NGO that would take bitcoin donations through Helperbit. Most of them were skeptical, even though he offered to set up integration for free. After several rejections, Legambiente was the first and only NGO that took Baroncini Turricchia up on the offer.

“They were initially skeptical too,” Baroncini Turricchia said. “News coverage about Bitcoin had been negative overall. But they ultimately agreed to give it a try.”

Even though Helperbit was late — it was November before it was all set up — the project was still able to collect more than 10 bitcoins over about a year’s time. The coins became part of Legambiente's budget, set up to reimburse local entrepreneurs on some of the costs they had to make to keep their businesses running.

“There are still bitcoins in the fund,” Baroncini Turricchia said. With bitcoin’s price increase over the past year, the euro value of this fund is up quite a bit as well. “But I’m not sure many people in Norcia know about it. For now, Legambiente still controls what’s left.”

An Unexpected Windfall

Ilaria and Lorenzo are two of five earthquake victims who have taken bitcoin reimbursements, so far. A third, Ilaria and Lorenzo’s friend Alessia, is also at the festival.

Wearing a green baseball cap representing the local farmer cooperative, Alessia has set up her booth to the left of the saffron bar. She sells cheese produced at her local sheep farm, as well as different types of nuts, all displayed on top of bales of hay.

Alessia at her cheese and nut stall with Ilaria and Lorenzo’s bar in the background

Alessia took a big hit when the earthquake struck: She lost both her home and the stable for her farm. She says that she too would have accepted euros from Legambiente, if that had been an option: “I didn’t think bitcoin was real.”

Yet, having been introduced to the cryptocurrency by Baroncini Turricchia, who also personally helped her set up a Helperbit wallet, she decided to keep it.

“Guido told me it could go up in price,” she explains. “Maybe to 6,000 euros, if all went well.” She had received about 5,000 euros worth in June of 2018.

She didn’t think about her bitcoin much over the following months — not until her mother saw an item on the news this January: the price had crashed almost 40 percent within days. Concerned by the message from her mom, Alessia contacted Baroncini Turricchia to ask how much of her 5,000 euros worth of bitcoin was left.

It’s only then that Alessia learned to which level the price had actually “crashed”: “My 5,000 euros worth of bitcoin had not decreased in value at all. It had increased to around 20,000 euros.”

Guido grins while he helps Alessia translate her story from Italian into English. He’d known back in June that the price could go up far more than 20 percent. He just hadn’t wanted to raise her expectations too high.

Alessia continues her story. Delighted with the news, she decided she wanted to sell most of her coins. She needed a new cheese machine. She signed up for The Rock Trading, a Malta-based exchange operated by Italians. Here, she encountered her first problem.

“They required a copy of a utility bill to prove my home address,” she explains, with a sarcastic smile. “I don’t have an address anymore.” She still lives in emergency housing, best described as a sea container with a door and windows, next to a gas station just outside of Norcia.

Helped by the town mayor who provided her with a signed letter for the verification process, Alessia managed to get verified in the end. “But I still didn’t sell all of my bitcoin, I’m holding onto what I’ve got left,” she says. “At least until bitcoin reaches 100,000 euro.”

The Case for Bitcoin

Baroncini Turricchia is himself a Bitcoin enthusiast; he spent much of the drive to Norcia philosophizing on the consequences of hyperbitcoinization and speculating on Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. But like Ilaria, Lorenzo and Alessia, his decision to use bitcoin is also practical.

The transparency provided by Bitcoin is unique compared to existing payment systems. Even funds donated in fiat currency — which is also possible via Helperbit — are converted into the cryptocurrency, which allows donors to track their own funds.

But that’s not all. If they want to, donors can also show to the world that they contributed; HelperBit even includes a provably fair ranking for donors.

Further, Baroncini Turricchia plans to extend that traceability to merchants who serve NGOs in disaster-struck areas, selling tents, sheets, food and more. Donors would know not only which victims received the funds but also where and how the funds were spent. Deals with such merchants could ultimately offer a profit opportunity for Helperbit, which is itself a for-profit company.

Transparency is not the only Bitcoin feature leveraged by Helperbit. Perhaps most obviously, the cryptocurrency is well suited for fast and cheap international payments, allowing donors to support causes anywhere in the world. To prevent anyone meddling with data, Helperbit also timestamps invoices on Bitcoin’s blockchain, like the invoices provided by Ilaria, Lorenzo and Alessia to claim their reimbursement. In the longer term, Baroncini Turricchia wants to establish a reputation system to let donors send bitcoin to victims directly, peer-to-peer.

At the same time, Bitcoin has presented its challenges. “The biggest problem is key management,” Baroncini Turricchia said. “It doesn’t matter how strongly we emphasize that private keys are crucial: It’s hard for people to understand that, without them, the money is literally gone, in a way that not even Helperbit can recover it.”

In part to mitigate this risk, Helperbit sets up a multi-signature solution. Legambiente, in this case, holds three keys assigned to three different people. Helperbit keeps one. Of this total of four keys, three keys are required to unlock the funds on Bitcoin’s blockchain.

“If Legambiente loses one key,” says Baroncini Turricchia, “they should contact us immediately to help send the funds to a new address. This has already happened once.”

Ilaria and Lorenzo, of course, did not choose Bitcoin for such practical reasons at first: It was simply the only option available. But now, as they learn more about the cryptocurrency, the couple is starting to see some benefits as well.

“It is the most transparent currency in the world,” Lorenzo says, when asked what he knows about Bitcoin by now. “And politicians don’t like it,” he jokes. “That’s a good sign.”

The two are now considering opening a webshop to sell saffron for bitcoin, most likely through OpenBazaar. Baroncini Turricchia recommended it because the peer-to-peer marketplace includes a built-in, dispute resolution solution. OpenBazaar will allow them to sell their saffron internationally, opening them up to a new market of bitcoin users, they hope.

Online, at least, the rain shouldn’t affect their sales.

Some of the quotes from this article were loosely translated from Italian.

This article originally appeared on Bitcoin Magazine.

Source

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/real-users-bitcoin-donations-helped-these-earthquake-survivors-recover/

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cryptobully-blog · 7 years ago

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Bitcoin Donations Helped These Earthquake Survivors Recover

http://cryptobully.com/bitcoin-donations-helped-these-earthquake-survivors-recover/

Bitcoin Donations Helped These Earthquake Survivors Recover

This is the second in a series by Aaron van Wirdum focusing on real people who use cryptocurrencies. Read about his earlier experiences in Italy here: “Real Users”: In This Mountain Town, Everyone Knows About Bitcoin.

Ilario and Lorenzo in their market stand bar

Ilaria and Lorenzo got out safely, but their home was destroyed and their town, San Pellegrino di Norcia, is abandoned. They now live in a small, prefabricated house on the edge of Norcia.

Helperbit

Guido Baroncini Turricchia, founder of Helperbit

The reason Ilaria and Lorenzo received bitcoin is Guido Baroncini Turricchia. The 39-year old Italian environmental engineer is the founder of Helperbit, a Rome-based startup that leverages bitcoin for fundraising campaigns.

Bitcoin is particularly well-suited to these types of causes, Baroncini Turricchia thinks, because of the transparency it provides. Through Bitcoin’s public blockchain, donors can trace the funds they donate and be sure that they really end up at the Bitcoin addresses of the intended recipients of the money — and nowhere else.

“Helperbit was only four months old when disaster struck Norcia,” Baroncini Turricchia recalls, as we are driving in his car from Rome to the disaster-struck town.

“They were initially skeptical too,” Baroncini Turricchia said. “News coverage about Bitcoin had been negative overall. But they ultimately agreed to give it a try.”

Even though Helperbit was late — it was November before it was all set up — the project was still able to collect more than 10 bitcoins over about a year’s time. The coins became part of Legambiente’s budget, set up to reimburse local entrepreneurs on some of the costs they had to make to keep their businesses running.

An Unexpected Windfall

Ilaria and Lorenzo are two of five earthquake victims who have taken bitcoin reimbursements, so far. A third, Ilaria and Lorenzo’s friend Alessia, is also at the festival.

Alessia at her cheese and nut stall with Ilaria and Lorenzo’s bar in the background

Yet, having been introduced to the cryptocurrency by Baroncini Turricchia, who also personally helped her set up a Helperbit wallet, she decided to keep it.

“Guido told me it could go up in price,” she explains. “Maybe to 6,000 euros, if all went well.” She had received about 5,000 euros worth in June of 2018.

The Case for Bitcoin

But that’s not all. If they want to, donors can also show to the world that they contributed; HelperBit even includes a provably fair ranking for donors.

“If Legambiente loses one key,” says Baroncini Turricchia, “they should contact us immediately to help send the funds to a new address. This has already happened once.”

“It is the most transparent currency in the world,” Lorenzo says, when asked what he knows about Bitcoin by now. “And politicians don’t like it,” he jokes. “That’s a good sign.”

Online, at least, the rain shouldn’t affect their sales.

Some of the quotes from this article were loosely translated from Italian.

Bitcoin

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megtalksaboutbooks · 7 years ago

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Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History-

Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History by Erik Larson (I’ve linked to the Kindle version because it has the cover that my paperback copy sports)

Isaac’s Storm: The Perfect Storm This essay is an analysis of a few key figures and the role of hubris in the devastation of Galveston in 1900. Constructive criticism would be much appreciated!

A “perfect storm” may figuratively refer to a number of factors that conjunctively exacerbate a situation. It may also refer to a literal storm, one that has formed in ideal conditions to become unusually powerful and menacing. In the case of the Great Hurricane of 1900, the perfect storm took on both of these definitions, its severity owing not only to the favorable climate and geography that amplified its destructive abilities, but also to the hubris of the age and the according conceit of several key figures in the National Weather Bureau. One such figure, the title character, Isaac Monroe Cline, played a special role in rendering his town of Galveston exceptionally vulnerable, and he paid the price with grave and permanent loss. In his nonfiction novel, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, author Erik Larson recounts the parabolic chain of events that led to the disaster on September eighth, 1900, from the butterfly flap of a mild sibling rivalry to the monstrous storm surge of bitter regrets and devastation of human life.

The nineteenth century provided mankind with a better understanding of countless aspects of science, among them, of meteorology. The United States Weather Bureau, however, faced intense skepticism about its effectiveness and usefulness. Although weather predictions were becoming more accurate, incorrect predictions did occur, and any blunder quickly eroded the public’s trust. On top of this, the Bureau had, in its short history, already incurred an enormous scandal. A Bureau official had been caught embezzling funds, and, to add insult to injury, had escaped from prison a year after being sentenced. This shaky public image served to shape the attitude of the Bureau towards forecasting drastic events such as hurricanes. The Bureau even went so far as to restrict hurricane predictions in Cuba, prohibiting telegraphs about weather, save those sent by U.S. officials, from traveling over U.S.-owned wires. This hampered the Bureau’s ability to forecast cyclones, as hurricanes generally reached the U.S. by way of the West Indies. Furthermore, despite Bureau Chief Willis L. Moore’s insistence to the contrary, Cuban meteorologists were significantly better-versed in the conditions that indicated a hurricane’s approach. In a sad twist of fate, the Cuban predictions that the ban suppressed proved to be entirely correct. Cuban meteorologist Julio Jover “actually called it a hurricane” as early as September fifth, while the majority of Cubans “had called the storm a cyclone ever since the first sighting in the final days of August” (133). As the storm progressed, and the U.S. announced that it would pass Florida and fizzle out in the Atlantic, a Cuban weather station called “the Belen Observatory said.... that it would undoubtedly reach Texas” (253). Because of the telegraph ban, Galveston had little warning of what was to come. Another factor in unpreparedness for the hurricane was Galveston, Texas’s geographic vulnerability. Galveston had a shallow bay, as well as access to the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, the storm surge, an influx of flooding comparable to a tsunami, hit from both bodies of water, wreaking havoc upon entire wards of the city. Some of this flooding may have been deterred had Galveston had a seawall, but its plans to erect such a structure were neglected some years prior, partially as a result of Isaac Cline’s publishing of an article that “belittled hurricane fears” and stated with unwarranted certainty that Galveston was essentially immune to severe inundation (84). This article took fuel both from Isaac’s personal conceit and from economic pressure on Galveston to beat Houston in becoming the major port city in Texas. In its rush to gain prominence, Galveston became the perfect target for the perfect storm.

In its essence, Isaac’s Storm is a cautionary tale that warns against hubris. In this way it is similar to many folk tales, with disaster striking as a result of blinding conceit. Bureau Chief Willis L. Moore exemplified the fatal flaw when he placed the telegraph ban against Cuban forecasts. His pride led to paranoia that the Cubans were trying to upstage him, and he lost sight of what should have been his top priority: advancing the field of meteorology in order to prepare for disasters and thereby save lives. Galveston itself was also a victim of its own self-importance. The citizens of Galveston felt superior to nature, as did many sea captains of the time. They believed that modern technology had triumphed over any disaster that could occur, and placed economic gain ahead of the construction of a much-needed seawall. Led along in their ignorance by sentiments like those expressed in Isaac’s article, sentiments of invincibility, the people of Galveston found their houses collapsing around them as the “sustained winds... reached 150 miles an hour” and “Galveston became Atlantis” (198). Isaac himself resolved for his family to stay in their house, as he had had it built upon stilts, and believed it “impervious to the worst storms the Gulf could deliver” (7). The house was a Titanic before the Titanic ever set sail: its inhabitant’s faith in it inevitably led to most of their untimely deaths as it broke apart and sank beneath the water. Some fifty people took to the Cline house; eighteen made it out alive. They had faith in Isaac, Isaac had faith in his house, and the Titanic was unsinkable. The stories of those who fell victim to the Great Hurricane of 1900 are familiar to the point of being repetitive. In the words of Aesop: self conceit may lead to self destruction.

Although Erik Larson follows many individuals and their experiences throughout the book, there are characters that lend more to the account, including Isaac Monroe Cline, Joseph Leander Cline, and Willis Luther Moore, the three of which embody the key factors that led to the increased devastation caused by the storm. Isaac Monroe Cline, as can be inferred, is the title character. He was, at the time of the hurricane, the chief meteorologist in the Galveston Weather Bureau. Isaac had a “hardness and confidence that verged on conceit”, and held “a great pride in making his station one of the best and most important in the country” (4). His great faith in his own judgement was such that one might draw a moral from it, as with a fable. There is always more to know about the world, and he who does not keep an open mind turns a blind eye to whatever may befall him. Isaac “believed deeply that he understood it all”, and was thereby oblivious to the signs of impending danger (5). He closed his mind, and in that way relinquished his chance of preventing his own personal loss. Isaac lived with his family: his wife, Cora, and his daughters, Rosemary, Allie May, and Esther Bellew. His brother, Joseph, also lived with the family. Joseph, twenty-nine to Isaac’s thirty-eight, had a mild rivalry with his brother. They clashed frequently, each one trying to outdo the other, with Isaac generally coming out on top. Joseph had lived and worked with Isaac for eight years, and was always “eager to prove himself”, a habit that, the morning before the storm, surfaced again as Joseph “made the case too strongly that something peculiar was happening and that Washington must be informed” (10). As the storm came, and Galveston blew to pieces, Isaac and Joseph fought again and again. At 5:30 PM, Joseph had reported that the water was up to his waist. Isaac noted that the water was up to one’s neck. As conditions began to worsen, Joseph felt that “the storm was worse than anything Galveston had ever experienced”, and he begged Isaac to evacuate (172). When the house collapsed, Joseph rescued two of his nieces, then pulled them, as well as Isaac and his third daughter, onto a piece of debris that served as a makeshift raft. Despite all this, Chief Moore’s official account of the storm pronounced Isaac “one of the heroic spirits of that awful hour” and claimed that he had been a key factor in saving thousands of lives (250). After the hurricane, Joseph and Isaac separated, and each tried to erase the other from his life. Joseph’s experience reflects the idea of the misery induced by comparing oneself to others. He spent eight years in Isaac’s shadow, trying desperately to win an unspoken competition with his brother. In the end, he was “right about urging everyone to evacuate” (270). However, being right did not get him anywhere. Isaac still held the power, and for years afterward seemed to fare better. The Weather Bureau, having failed Galveston, as Isaac had, proceeded to bury its failure in false accounts and self-praise. Chief Willis L. Moore, despite having severely handicapped the Bureau’s ability to predict hurricanes, continued his upward climb. When “the War Department… revoked the ban on Cuban weather cables”, Moore remained insistent that the Cubans were irresponsible and wished to bring about the downfall of the Bureau (253-4). He did not seem to have learned from the Great Hurricane that image is based upon performance, and a false image will fall, sooner or later. Instead of bettering the Bureau to make it worthy of the faith it needed, Moore undermined the purpose of the Bureau by hindering it in its capabilities. He was mostly able to cover up his part in the destruction of Galveston, but continued to “let the expected obscure the real” (263). He endeavored to become Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of agriculture, using “bureau officials and bureau time to promote his ambitions”, and “became so convinced Wilson would choose him” that he picked a successor (269). Moore was not chosen, and was instead investigated in relation to his campaign. The Great Hurricane finally came back to bite him; Isaac was still hurt at Moore’s false accounts and readily relinquished all of his and Moore’s correspondence to the investigators.

Erik Larson’s story-like method of recounting a historical event is effective in that it not only reveals the facts and figures, but also in that it builds characters and emotion through first-hand accounts and inferences made based on similar happenstances. In his “Notes” chapter, Larson describes his research as “detective work and deduction to try to convey a vivid sense of what Isaac Cline saw, heard, smelled, and experienced in his journey toward and through the great hurricane of 1900” (275). However, Isaac Cline is not the only figure that Larson examines. He recounts the frustration of Louisa Rollfing as her husband refused to leave his work early, the horror and confusion that Ruby Credo felt as she watched her parents hacking through the floor of their coveted parlor, and Mollie Cohen’s trembling hands as she played the piano to calm her children. In contrast, Larson also examines the scientific aspects of the story. The storm underwent a change after it passed Cuba, a change such that it transformed from a tropical storm into a goliath hurricane. Although nobody at the time understood what had happened, there are more recent theories, and Larson details them to the reader in a way that is understandable to even those who know little about meteorology. He explains that there is a current in the Gulf called the Loop Current, which “brought a deep channel of warmth that the wind and seas could not have cooled”, giving the hurricane nigh-unlimited fuel (119). This combination of science and raw human emotion is the best and most thorough way to tell the story of Isaac’s storm because it takes into account the mixture of human and climatic factors that went into brewing the perfect storm.

#erik larson #isaac's storm #perfect storm #nonfiction #review #book review #hubris #meg talks about books #character analysis

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karashroyer · 7 years ago

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On Location

Octobers in Southern California are fiery. “The blaze is on the other side of the freeway,” people say to reassure themselves, though even vehicle fires have been known to melt overpasses. One such October, when a cousin came to visit us from Canada, Paramount was filming Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman on location in the desert. We headed north on the 14 to watch—they’d opened the set to visitors—but the road was closed due to fire. We turned around, tires stirring up dust.

On two separate occasions, I lived near Vasquez Rocks, a state park in Agua Dulce. It was an obvious choice for elementary school field trips, then, later, for post-midterm hikes. One day, when we arrived at the gate, the guard shook his head. “They’re filming on the premises,” he explained. Until that point, it had been easy to believe that the daily function of Hollywood was as fictional as the fictions it propagated.

We had moved to Los Angeles from the Pacific Northwest after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, like we were hungry for gold a century too late. My father planned to attend seminary. We lived in Van Nuys, then Granada Hills, and finally Santa Clarita, in a variety of apartment complexes with sickly green pools and Koreans. My parents had heard the public schools were terrible in L.A., full of drugs and promiscuity, so my mother home-schooled us. This meant that we spent mornings at our kitchen table crying over math, and afternoons swimming or driving around the city. The Northridge shopping mall had collapsed onto itself like a layer cake; overpasses had buckled. Why had we moved to this crumbling state? I was as fascinated as I was frightened. I never saw a movie star. Instead, my mother drove us to a tiny Dutch grocery store in the valley to buy spices for Indonesian fried rice and also dark chocolate hagelslag. By then we’d already affixed a French flag to the bumper of our blue Honda Accord—ostensibly named “Henri”—a constant reminder of our inevitable transatlantic move. (My parents had always wanted to be missionaries; until California, they did not know where.) “Where’s Henri?” we’d cry, perusing parking lots. People assumed we’d lost a sibling. My mother drove us to a church library in La Crescenta. We filled two milk crates with Focus on the Family cassettes, romance novels loosely based on Bible stories. The elderly lady behind the desk stamped each book with care, asked after our fresh-water aquarium. As my mother zigzagged Henri home through traffic, I read in the front seat until I felt sick. When El Nino passed through in 1998, we went out nonetheless in the early afternoon, walking single-file shortest to tallest (I was in the back) across flooded sidewalks in bright yellow Mickey Mouse rain ponchos we’d bought at Disneyland. A man took our picture for the front page of The Signal. My mother clipped it from the paper and sent it to my great-aunt in British Columbia; I never saw it again. Eventually we moved into a ramshackle house in the round of a cul-de-sac, which we shared with six college students; my mother and father became dorm parents in exchange for free rent. Our new roommates were from Mexico, Russia, China, Australia, and New Zealand. The Chinese girl kept a cardboard box next to her pillow full of emergency supplies in case the house came falling down around her head in an earthquake. Gilbert showed us how to heat up tortillas directly on the gas range; they all made frozen pizzas late into the night. Because the college where my father worked required students to sign a statement of faith in which they promised not to drink, have premarital sex, or dance, the house was fairly quiet.

When the students went home for the summer, the air-conditioning frequently gave out. My father would open the breaker to find giant brown spiders stretched over the switches; my mother often found dead black widows in the washing machine with our clean clothes. Across the street, our neighbor’s cat stalked; a brick had fallen on its head, permanently crossing its eyes. Once, watering plants in the backyard, my mother stepped over a baby rattlesnake three times before she heard its warning. From the safety of the house we watched it coil in on itself, flick its tongue. Its siblings curled around the tires of my father’s yellow Dodge van, hid in the deep grass. We beheaded them with shovels. “Don’t go outside without shoes,” my mother warned, as if the rubber flipflops we lived in would deter venomous fangs. It was easy to believe that going outside would result in someone’s death. More often, we just came home sunburned, intensely dehydrated. Near the spot where we parked our bikes my brother drowned an ant colony with a garden hose. Three baby birds fell out of a nest in the big oak out front, but Dad wouldn’t let us look. When I was invited to go hiking on location in Vasquez, I wore my flipflops. I didn’t own socks or the shoes to go with them until I moved to Chicago. During those years, I didn’t watch much television. I don’t think I missed as much in popular culture as I did in opportunities to connect with my peers. But doesn’t that seem shallow? I read books; many friends associated words with school, and hated them. Why did I have to bend to their tastes? I resisted on principle, but only felt worse. It’s lonely at the top of the rock.

Vasquez has been used as a backdrop in so many films and television shows that to see it in anything, now, is almost a joke about the industry. It’s a place that means everything and nothing, a jumble of boulders and brush that has been everything from an alien planet in Star Trek to Las Vegas in Friends to itself in New Girl. Vasquez Rocks is to Hollywood what the inside of Monica’s apartment is to New York City: a location for key moments, for outdoor voices. A goldmine. Not literally, although I believe that one of my childhood excursions involved a metal detector. On the 118 freeway, two of our sofa cushions blew out from under the ropes holding them to the pickup. We returned later with Henri to retrieve them, the slow-moving traffic a gift for slow-moving eyes. Mom washed the cushions and put them back on the sofa. Henri took us back to the Pacific Northwest a couple of times. On the Grapevine, he came dangerously close to overheating. Mom explained that her father used to place bottles of cold water in the engine to prevent this, then turned off the air conditioning and rolled down all the windows. The roar of the big rigs shifting down on the grade was deafening. Burnt rubber, tired brakes. Mom sat hunched forward in her seat, shirt plastered to her back with sweat. We didn’t sit easy until we were in Oregon. Vasquez Rocks is visible from the 14 freeway, and it makes me think: aren't most things visible from this vantage point in Southern California? Henri barreled in one direction or another, and we observed, as if we were standing on a moving sidewalk in an airport, images and lights flashing above our heads. I picked up the habit of being quiet in the car, watching for familiar landmarks to predict the ending of the show.

I lived in California longer than anywhere else: as a child, first, then as a college student. I was not unhappy there; I was not happy there. Now, it reminds me of something I’ve lost. Like deja vu, only with emotions: an ancient ache that acts up only in certain places, like a war wound might act up in cold weather. These places are like scars. You don’t know how much they hurt until you return to them, like pressing on a bruise. Two weeks ago I visited my brother in the Mojave, one of the most eerily beautiful and desolate places on the planet. His backyard is sand and aloe vera. We shut out the sun with thick curtains, tall glasses of ice water. All along the 14 freeway the heat shimmered like an oil slick, leading back to the ocean. It was the first time I had ever driven myself around in California, and the agency I felt startled me: had my movements really been so scripted before? How do I remember this place—as a location for a story that felt like it did not belong to me, as a rehearsal, as a wound? Last Thursday, it had been ten years since I’d been under the needle; the first time, in Bellingham, WA, I got a fleur-de-lys on my back because it, too, is a deja-vu place. This time, Troy, the tattoo artist, carved California into the back of my right arm.

“I forgot how much it hurts,” I told him afterward, gesturing toward the blackout bandage.

“I’m happy I could remind you,” he said.

#tattoos #tinyletter transcript #california #writing

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