Roger Simon and Angie Cannon, Amazing Journey: 100 Years in America

Summary/annotation

Amazing Journey: 100 Years in America was written by Roger Simon and Angie Cannon. It contrasts the way of life for a man living in New York in 1900 with the way of life for a family living in the same building one-hundred years later. “The picture that emerges is one of a nation that continues to be defined, in many ways, by its immigrants, even though today’s are of decidedly different origin from those a century ago.” (373)

Julius Streicher came to America from Germany in 1885 and was a “provisions dealer,” or grocer with his own store. (374) Julius and his family lived at 253 East 10th Street, which at the time was at the north end of the Lower East Side. Today, it is the “artsy, bohemian East Village.” (374) In the public school, whites are becoming more in the majority, compared to a decade before. (374) Dudley Sabo, a retired art teacher at the Brooklyn Museum, expresses his dissatisfaction with the gentrification of the neighborhood. “People with money moved in, and they weren’t as friendly as before. There’s rich people on one side and other people on the other.” (374)

Today, immigrants study for language tests on the benches in Tompkins Square Park, the same park where, in 1990, cops busted up a tent city housing two-hundred homeless people. (374) The census of 1900 records that Julius spoke English, but his wife did not. Their school-age daughter most likely spoke both German and English.

Now, some of the windows in Julius’ building have bars on them, something that “would have been unlikely 100 years ago.” (374) The streets that used to be lined with pushcarts are now dotted with popular boutiques. One of the most noticeable differences: the smell. In 1900, with only 8,000 cars in the entire country, a horse-towed carriage was still a popular means of transportation. It was calculated that the New York City horses dumped 2.5 million pounds of manure and 6,000 gallons of urine onto the streets each day. (375) In 1872, one quarter of all the horses in America died. “Only winter, which killed off the mosquitoes that carried the disease, saved… the horses.” (375)

Times were drastically different a hundred years ago than they are today. In some ways, we still face the same human struggles. Times are constantly changing, with 253 East 10th Street being just one example. “Everthing [in 1900] gave New York the same feel that it has today: a city on the move, on the make, a place of velocity.” (375)

ANNOTATION:

It is so interesting to see the changes in environment and way of life. 1900 seems so long ago, and in a lot of ways there is a huge difference in culture. But sometimes, you read a story and identify with the people in it, regardless of the time lapse. That is how I felt reading this article. Also, it was really cool to read that “the grandparents of people alive in 1900 had fought under General George Washington in the Battle of Yorktown,” because we are studying Yorktown in my history class, and it seems so long ago. (375) Though it jumped around a bit, I really enjoyed this article.

Ian Frazier, Dearly Disconnected

Summary/annotation

Dearly Disconnected, an essay written by Ian Frazier, was published in Mother Jones Wire magazine in 2001. In it, Frazier explains the sentimental value of a Sarasota, Florida payphone. (376) He also compares the near-extinct payphone to its replacement, the cell phone.

Before he and his wife married, he was living in a Montana cabin, and she lived in Florida. (376) One day, she called him from a payphone and he decided to write down the number so he could call her back. (376) “A day or two later, thinking about the call, I wanted to talk to her again. The only number I had for her was the pay phone number I’d written down.” (376)

One day, she had stepped out to run some errands. As she walked by the payphone, it rang. Not knowing what else to do, she picked it up. (376) Sure enough, it was Ian. “Love is pure luck; somehow I had known she would answer, and somehow she had known it would be me.” (376)

Several years later, Ian and his wife took their two children on a trip to Disney World, and they stopped by the payphone. His children were unimpressed, which got Frazier thinking about the “ordinariness and “boringness” of payphones and how they are becoming more and more obsolete as the cell phone becomes more and more popular. (376) Through his experience, Frazier discovered an interest in payphones. “There was always a touch of seediness and sadness to pay phones, and a sense of transience.” (377) Frazier notes that the cell phone is replacing payphones. “Recently I went back to New York after a long absence to try to find a working pay phone. I picked up one receiver after the next without success. Meanwhile, as I scanned down the long block, I counted half a dozen or more pedestrians talking on their cell phone.” (377)

Ian expresses his apparent distaste for the cell phone. “You sometimes hear people yelling into their cell phones, but almost never yelling at them. Cell phones are toylike, nearly magic, and we get a huge kick out of them, as often happens with technological advances until the new wears off. “ (377) Frazier thinks that pay phones, like historical landmarks, should have signs detailing what happened on that particular phone. However, he doesn’t think that pay phones will completely disappear. (378) “Eventually pay phones will become relics of an almost-vanished landscape, and of a time when there were fewer of us and out stories were on an earlier page.” (377)

ANNOTATION:

This essay was beyond ridiculous, in my opinion. I don’t buy that Frazier’s future wife just “happened” to answer a public pay phone that he was calling. His seeming obsession with payphones (so much so that he took his six- and two-year-old children to see it) and disdain for modern technology just makes me roll my eyes.

In my opinion, Frazier is just stubbornly holding onto a piece of obsolete machinery. Some parts of the essay did not make sense at all. For instance, “You sometimes hear people yelling into their cell

phones, but almost never yelling at them.” (377) What does that even mean? I did not like this essay at all.