Hope Springs Internal

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Doctor’s office, circa a few years ago.

I was sober for over a year at the time, but my life was still far from a day spent with a unicorn spitting candy as it carried me on golden highways that I thought some people were trying to convince me that their (new, sober) life is like. I had asked to see a therapist, and bureaucracy provided me with a pretty good one.
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Today in History: Star Wars Day

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Today is Star Wars Day. May the 4th be with you.

* * * *
Peter Minuit arrived in New Netherland on behalf of the Dutch West India Company 390 years ago today. He became Director of New Netherland (governor, essentially), and is famous for purchasing the rights to what is now the island of Manhattan from the Lenape peoples for what is believed to be 60 guilders (which would have been the equivalent of $1000 at the time, or around $10,000 now).

In 1846, an historian named John Romeyn Brodhead calculated that 60 guilders was worth about $23, which was incorrect but so poetic that the idea stuck and became a myth of early America: that Peter Minuit bought Manhattan for $23 in cheap trinkets from the Native Americans. The comic flip-side to this myth is the ironic speculation that the Canarsees were willing to accept any merchandise for the island as they did not control it, the Wappinger people did, and the Canarsees were content with keeping this fact to themselves.
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Not Abandoned: #FreeShawkan

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

August 14, 2013, was 994 days ago. On that date, Mahmoud Abu Zeid was arrested in Egypt. He is a photojournalist who was arrested while being a photographer. Four times since December of last year, his first court hearing has been postponed; the next attempt at a hearing will come on May 10.

Under Egyptian law, there is a two-year cap on pre-trial detention; 994 days is longer than two years.

You may very well have seen some of his work in recent years, as his photographs have appeared in Time magazine, in periodicals throughout Europe, and they have been distributed by Corbis, a major syndicate. (One photo is reprinted below the fold.) Mahmoud, who publishes under the name “Shawkan,” photographed everyday life in Egypt as well as breaking news stories like the protests in Tahrir Square and the trial of former president Hosni Mubarak.

Today is World Press Freedom Day, an annual commemoration established by the United Nations in December 1993. It celebrates the vital importance of a free press around the world, of the importance of the freedom of expression. What I write here is not important, but the fact that I can hit the “Publish” button in a few moments and send this into the world, that fact is.
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