Outward and Onward

Four days without blogging...not intentional, I assure you -- Thursday I had a meeting and a dinner with some friends, Friday I went to bed early, and yesterday was a family gathering...which gets me to here.  Three days of fun and excitement, more or less...actually, we went to the track yesterday, and I hit on a couple of trifectas, so I won some cash -- enough to finish Xmas shopping.  Rah!

Movies came tumbling off the list...up to 497, with "The Republic Strike Newsreel Footage," "One Froggy Evening," and "Rip Van Winkle" representing in the shorts...the last was interesting, a film adaptation of the Irving story/the big play that told the story.  I also watched "Tol'able David," a 1921 silent that was the film of the year that year...I thought it was good, but not quite all that, but, of course, I am not watching it in 1921, either.

The Cabinet picks are set...I still think Tillotson is a no go, for a bunch of reasons, but I could be off here.

I finished Kotkin's The Human City over the weekend; he is one of the few out there who is at least at peace with, if not for, suburbanization.  Anyways, while discussing the historical trend of people moving OUT of the city...he gave a bunch of stats about child mortality of the city in 1900, and it struck me that maybe, just maybe, people wanted to leave not just for land and space, but to save their children's lives...