I stand astride America’s Transcontinental Railway, looking east, then west. Initiated by Lincoln, overseen by Johnson, and completed under Grant, the undertaking called for the Union Pacific Railroad to work westward from Omaha and the Central Pacific, eastward from Sacramento. They met, as most schoolchildren learned in my day (do they study this anymore?), at [...]
Author Archives: Steve Cotler
The Market Falls–Then and Now
August 5, 2011 – 4:13 pm
I glance at the headline of an old newspaper that had been used to insulate one of the old log cabins that make up the museum in Frisco, CO. “Bankers Blame Tax Laws for Securities Drop” (The Denver Post…November 7, 1937). The Great Depression had been ongoing for over eight years. Yesterday the Dow fell [...]
Subway Cave
July 30, 2011 – 6:56 am
Some 20,000 years ago, a volcanic eruption sent gouts of lava into what is now Northern California’s Hat Creek Valley. This molten rock, like any liquid, flowed downhill, gravity pulling it into the lowest channels. These rivers moved slowly, the sides and top cooling as they touched ground and air. A hardened skin slowly formed [...]
Boiling Springs Lake
July 29, 2011 – 9:16 am
My son once opined that explorers should always travel with a ship’s poet, the better to name the newly discovered. Great Pond. Black Mountain. Rio Grande. No poet named those. * * * * * Planning a road trip into the Rockies had dragged my map mouse across several northern California highways unknown to me. [...]
Craft vs. Creativity
July 15, 2011 – 12:41 am
“With the coming of the Industrial Revolution, craftsmanship dissolved miserably into creativity.” In his shop beside the flour mill, the cooper spoke flatly and firmly, with no correction possible. It was Colonial Williamsburg, and my daughter Emily and I were breaking our cross-country drive with a hot summer’s day walk into 18th-century Virginia.
A Teenager Selling Shoes
July 14, 2011 – 9:06 am
Marty Stein and Benny Silverstein operated shoe stores in Oxnard, my California childhood’s small town. Marty’s store (Kirby’s Shoes) was on A Street’s east side, right next to my father’s men’s & boys’ clothing store. Benny’s store (GallenKamp’s Shoes) was directly across the street. Marty carried a marginally higher-priced line, but in a town that [...]
Shoe Polish and History…Repeating
July 14, 2011 – 12:43 am
A guest post by my oldest child, Emily. * * * * * I had this memory of my father. I was very young, and he was shining shoes. I well-remembered the smell, and the mess, and how careful he was with the polish in the little tubs. Everything was kept in a shoebox, and [...]
A Bully Story
June 26, 2011 – 4:22 pm
Every once in a while I come across a blog post that deserves wider reading. Hollye Dexter wrote one today. I reprint it unchanged below. The original is here. * * * * * When I started the seventh grade all the other kids seemed to tower over me in the halls. The girls had [...]
Clarence Darrow and Hawaii’s Massie Affair
June 22, 2011 – 10:46 am
A letter I wrote to The New Yorker about Hawaii’s infamous Massie Affair, a sordid episode in American race relations, was printed in the June 27, 2011, issue and is at the bottom of this page. I wrote the letter because: (a) I had recently read three thought-provoking books about racism in America during the [...]
No Sunglasses, No Service
May 23, 2011 – 12:30 am
I know a woman (she shall remain nameless) who loses her sunglasses repeatedly. A retired attorney, she is neither careless nor insouciant. It just happens. And each time her cheaters go AWOL, she reacts with dismay and a bit of self-directed anger. Then, after a mourning period shortened imperatively by the next glary day, her [...]
