[Publisher’s Letter] | By John R. MacArthur. When I began my tenure as publisher of Harper’s Magazine nearly thirty years ago, my biggest challenge — or so I thought at the time — was to get advertising agencies to pay more attention to the celebrated journal of American ideas and literature entrusted to my care. Harper’s had tens…
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I took these on an Olympus OM-1.
Since I wrote this (five months ago as of this writing) more arguments have been added to the four I here enumerate. The opposition is metastasizing, grabbing headlines like nobody could have predicted in December. I will include those new arguments — and my counter-arguments — in red. There are four main arguments against the…
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the starlings and the pigeons in city hall park the traffic coming off the brooklyn bridge then into the subway and under the river a transfer later and up into the brooklyn air walking for no purpose on 8th avenue staring at passing fences then it’s william gaynor’s house but somebody’s removed the stoop nothing…
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Talk about a bunch of doggerel: six hundred billion dollars for “defense.” They used to call it the War Department, before 1945; unless there was a war, they didn’t really have all that much to do. But defense? Ah. Everyone’s against war, but nobody can be against defense, or you’re anti-American. Well, the Senate just passed a…
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Pine beetles have been destroying the Pine Barrens of New Jersey. Of course, they didn’t just recently develop an appetite for pines: they are called pine beetles, after all. Unfortunately, our very love of trees is leading to their destruction. Fire is a natural friend of the forest — and it’s hard for us to imagine…
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September 14, 2013 Raymond F. Hessinger, Director, Freight & Passenger Rail Bureau, NYS Department of Transportation, 50 Wolf Road, POD 54, Albany, NY 12232. Dear Sir: I strongly support the maintenance of the rail system in the Lake Placid – Remsen travel corridor. The sudden and aggressive nature of the rails-to-trails folks has all the hallmarks of a…
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Government: I believe that government of and by the people is not necessarily government for the people. We don’t usually know much at all about the representatives we choose, and we don’t understand most of the issues they vote on. The language of bills is written by people trained in law; it is not a language most Americans…
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