For Peace and Freedom

So they dug out this ash heap in Queens and built all these pavilions. They had cars already driving around in 1939. Cars were not yet drudgery and traffic jams and Jiffy Lube– they were leisure and freedom. They had an early television. Television was not yet aesthetic assault and battery everywhere you turn. You could see the Magna Carta. They had a dishwasher, which was about to make everyone’s life better (except for people who insist on living in minimally renovated pre-1935 housing like stupid, stupid me). They had a robot who smoked cigarettes. He was seven feet tall, spoke 700 words from the record player in his belly, and I would definitely go out on a date with him if his reconstruction goes as planned.

Houses and Graves

No one else on the FDR home tour was about to wet herself with excitement like I was. He sat in this room! That was his lamp! He pulled himself up this dumbwaiter! (He did– even long after electricity, both to keep himself in shape and to assure himself he could evacuate in case of fire.) Inside the house is neat– but you have to stay with your tour guide to make sure no one spits on the floor. Outside the house is even better.