Karen Kwiatkowski on Pope George

Perhaps understanding George W. Bush as pontifex maximus, and civil religion as adoration of a strong central governing authority makes sense. It explains the "God picked me to be President" thing, and why Mr. Bush doesn’t need to read anything written on paper, preferring instead to get guidance – on blowing the budget, conducting military invasions, public prevarication, and spending billions of our hard earned money to encourage people to stop taking steroids and get married instead – directly from some higher power. Dick Cheney, perhaps.

The Hudson from the wilderness to the sea

It is proposed to present, in a series of sketches with pen and pencil, pictures of the Hudson River, from its birth among the mountains to its marriage with the ocean. It is by far the most interesting river in America, considering the beauty and magnificence of its scenery, its natural, political, and social history, the agricultural and mineral treasures of its vicinage, the commercial wealth hourly floating upon its bosom, and the relations of its geography and topography to some of the most important events in the history of the Western hemisphere. --Benson J. Lossing (1866)

Every couple of days I like to see what's new in the world of online books. This was today's find.

The Young and the Gay of Both Sexes

"Manhattanville is the northern termination of the celebrated Bloomingdale Road, which crosses the island diagonally from Union Square at Sixteenth Street, to the high bank of the Hudson at One Hundred and Fifteenth Street. It is a continuation of Broadway (the chief retail business street of the city), from Union Square to Harsonville, at Sixty-Eighth Street. In that section it is called Broadway, and is compactly built upon. Beyond Seventieth Street it is still called Bloomingdale Road--a hard, smooth, macadamised highway, broad, devious, and undulating, shaded the greater portion of its length, made attractive by many elegant residences and ornamental grounds, and thronged every fine day with fast horses and light vehicles, bearing the young and the gay of both sexes. The stranger in New York will have the pleasure of his visit greatly enhanced by a drive over this road toward the close of a pleasant day." -- The Hudson from the wilderness to the sea. (1866), Chapter XXI.

In a couple of hours I shall make my way up Broadway (under Broadway) to Harsonville...