1. Today, I watched another couple of episodes of the over seventeen hour documentary, American Experience: New York. I have now watched the documentary's coverage of New York City's history before the 20th century. The episodes I watched today focused on the unimaginable growth of wealth in New York City in the 19th century contrasted with the equally unimaginable increase in poverty, especially among immigrants who populated the squalid conditions of the tenements in the Lower East Side. What I watched today contrasted Walt Whitman's enthusiastic idealism regarding the energy and possibility immigrants brought to the USA with the horror of how employers and landlords exploited these people, crammed them into unthinkably vile slums, and paid the adults and children next to nothing for long hours of labor in factories and sweatshops.
These episodes also explored the wealth and the wealthy as New York City's energy and industry dazzled the word with the building of Central Park, the fourteen year construction of the Brooklyn Bridge (at its completion in 1883, nothing in New York City reached higher than the bridge's towers and its span), the dedication of the Statue of Liberty (1886), and the completion such marvelous public buildings as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the NYC Public Library, St. Patrick's Cathedral, among others.
2. I haven't been paying much attention to the Colorado Rockies this season and today their game with their division rival, the Arizona Diamondbacks was my free game on MLB.TV.
Today I witnessed what makes the Rockies a formidable squad as they shellacked Arizona 13-2 with a barrage of timely hits, a bunt single (!), towering home runs by Trevor Story and David Dahl, and a superb pitching effort by German Marquez who struck out eleven Diamondbacks in seven innings -- and was the player who bunted for a hit.
3. The Deke left with Carol this afternoon for a trip to Moscow to hear the writer Tara Westover speak. I had planned on braising a whole chicken, but it didn't thaw in time, so I scrounged around the kitchen and made up a meal. I combined coconut milk, green curry paste, fish sauce, soy sauce, and brown sugar in a pan and warmed it up. Meanwhile, I chopped a couple of sweet peppers and about 2/3s of an eggplant and fried up those pieces. At the same time, I boiled a couple lumps of ramen noodles into softness. I combined all of these ingredients into a bowl and enjoyed my bowl of green curry sauce over eggplant, sweet pepper, and ramen noodles.
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