Looking for Something?

Live Where We Are

Welcome, March! William Cullen Bryant saw through your bluster: For thou, to northern lands again, The glad and glorious sun dost bring, And thou hast joined the gentle train And wear'st the…
Bill Kauffman
March 1, 2011

Welcome, March! William Cullen Bryant saw through your bluster:

For thou, to northern lands again,

The glad and glorious sun dost bring,

And thou hast joined the gentle train

And wear’st the gentle name of Spring.

Ring in the month with Gerald J. Russello, patriot of Brooklyn and editor of The University Bookman, and John Bryan Kuhner, author of Staten Island, or, Life in the Boroughs:  http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/bookman/article/live-where-we-are. The 1900 declaration of the Staten Island Separation League in favor of “the Jeffersonian principle of decentralization” rings truer than ever today: “Staten Island can only become truly great when divorced from New York and incorporated as an independent city.”

Enjoying what you’re reading?

Support FPR’s print journal and selection of books.
Subscribe
A stack of three Local Culture journals and the book 'Localism in the Mass Age'

Bill Kauffman

Bill Kauffman is the author of eleven books, among them Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette (Henry Holt), Ain’t My America (Metropolitan), Look Homeward, America (ISI), and Poetry Night at the Ballpark (FPR Books). His next book, Upstaters, is due from SUNY Press in 2026. He is a columnist for The American Conservative and The Spectator World. Bill wrote the screenplay for the 2013 feature film Copperhead. He is a founding editor of Front Porch Republic and has served as a legislative assistant to Senator Pat Moynihan, editor for various magazines and publishers, and vice president of the Batavia Muckdogs, a professional baseball team that was euthanized by Major League Baseball. He lives with his wife Lucine in his native Genesee County, New York.

3 comments

  • Lassy
    14 years ago

    http://pajamasmedia.com/victordavishanson/the-fragility-of-complex-societies/

    Seems you’re on the same page?

  • D.W. Sabin
    14 years ago

    Looks like a great book with some fine illustrations.

    I’ll meet yer demolition of Washington’s Homes and raise ya with the damnable demolition of Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Don’t know why anyone is tender about the showy folks of Gotham. After all, the outer boroughs provide the capital “C” in the word “character” that defines the greater place.

    I’ve seen as many second or third generation localists in College Park Queens as I have in many a small town in the heartland. I’d hate to see Staten Island go though….its the last holdout of Republicans in Deep Blue New Yawk. If all things go well, Fresh Kills Park will be one of the most amazing public parks on the Eastern Seaboard in a few years, recovering from its career as one of the largest dumps in history. Frederick Law Olmsted cut his teeth as a failed “Scientific Farmer” on Staten Island before moving on to designing and building Central and Prospect Parks with Calvert Vaux after founding the Red Cross in the Civil War.
    Every Borough possesses its ample charms, not the least of which are the world class personalities.

    Methinks we’ve atomized enough though , we ought should try a little covalence before we put up the dukes. Then again, nothing so conveys an idea quite as well as a good old poke in the nose with a side of “ovuh heah you, you friggin mook”.

  • Rob G
    14 years ago

    Sounds like a great book. If the subject is of interest I’d also recommend “Days Afield on Staten Island” by William T. Davis. Originally published in 1892, it’s a nature memoir written by a prominent Staten Island naturalist and historian.

Comments are closed.