Thank you, Garrison, for the fascinating history of the Erie Canal. Having lived in the City and also in Kingston, I enjoyed picturing the boats making that first trip. What an accomplishment to be celebrated.
I was particularly impressed by the fact that the opening of the canal meant that the cost of shipping a ton of cargo from Buffalo to NYC dropped from $90 to $4.
(It can be so easy to take the modern world for granted.)
Beryl Markham is a truly marvelous writer, and I highly recommend her book. I read it a couple of years ago, and, as just one example, the description of her dog's fight with a warthog remains so vivid in my mind that I can still see the dust clouds as though I had been there.
It is noteworthy that, unlike more recent authors, she is very discreet in the book about her love life. The adventurer Denys Finch Hatton, with whom she had a major affair, is only mentioned casually, and the book contains nothing about her scandalous affairs with British nobility and even royalty. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Markham !
Garrison is protective of her though. Where his Hemingway quote is "this girl...can write ringsaround all of us", what Hemingway really wrote is " But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us". He knew her personally.
Thank you, Garrison, for the fascinating history of the Erie Canal. Having lived in the City and also in Kingston, I enjoyed picturing the boats making that first trip. What an accomplishment to be celebrated.
I was particularly impressed by the fact that the opening of the canal meant that the cost of shipping a ton of cargo from Buffalo to NYC dropped from $90 to $4.
(It can be so easy to take the modern world for granted.)
Beryl Markham is a truly marvelous writer, and I highly recommend her book. I read it a couple of years ago, and, as just one example, the description of her dog's fight with a warthog remains so vivid in my mind that I can still see the dust clouds as though I had been there.
It is noteworthy that, unlike more recent authors, she is very discreet in the book about her love life. The adventurer Denys Finch Hatton, with whom she had a major affair, is only mentioned casually, and the book contains nothing about her scandalous affairs with British nobility and even royalty. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Markham !
Garrison is protective of her though. Where his Hemingway quote is "this girl...can write ringsaround all of us", what Hemingway really wrote is " But this girl, who is to my knowledge very unpleasant and we might even say a high-grade bitch, can write rings around all of us". He knew her personally.