As we approach the new year and I shuffle closer to infirmity and senility, I have been thinking about 1905.  Our domicile, 60 Rosedale Street, Rochester, NY, turned 100 this year.  As I worked on the old girl this year, I paid a little more attention and got to see a bit of how things were done back then.  A little amateur archaeology, I suppose.
 

Here are some of the U.S. statistics for the year 1905.  They came off the Amazon Seller’s Soapbox, so they may not be accurate, but interesting fodder for a bit of cyber-investigation perhaps.
 

The average life expectancy in the U.S. was 47 years.  Only 14 percent of the homes in the U.S. had a bathtub.  Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone.  A three-minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.  There were only 8,000 cars and only 144 miles of paved roads in the U.S.  The maximum speed limit in most cities was 10 mph.  Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California.  With a mere 1.4 million people, California was only the 21st most populous state in the Union.  The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.  The average wage in the U.S. was 22 cents per hour.  The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.  A competent accountant could expect to earn $2,000 per year, a dentist $2,500 per year, a veterinarian between $1,500 and $4,000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5,000 per year.  More than 95 percent of all births in the U.S. took place at home.  Ninety percent of all U.S. doctors had no college education.  Instead, they attended so-called medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as “substandard.”  Sugar cost four cents a pound.  Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen.  Coffee was fifteen cents a pound.  Most women washed their hair only once a month, and they used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.  Canada passed a law that prohibited poor people from  entering into their country for any reason.  Five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
 

1. Pneumonia and influenza
2. Tuberculosis
3. Diarrhea
4. Heart disease
5. Stroke
 

The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii, and Alaska hadn’t been admitted to the Union yet.  The population of Las Vegas, Nevada, was only 30! Crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn’t been invented yet.  There was no Mother’s Day or Father’s Day.  Two out of every ten U.S. adults couldn’t read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.  Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at the local corner drugstores. Back then a pharmacist said, “Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.”  Eighteen percent of households in the U.S. had at least one  full-time servant or domestic help.  There were about 230 reported murders in the entire U.S.

 

           

I saw Syriana a few weeks ago and have since read Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture.  Since I don’t really know what to say about either, and I’m tired of thinking about it, I thought I’d cut and paste a few quotes from other places in the attempt to give you a sense of the connections I feel exist between the two.
 

“I think “Syriana” is a great film. I am unable to make my reasons clear without resorting to meaningless generalizations. Individual scenes have fierce focus and power, but the film’s overall drift stands apart from them. It seems to imply that these sorts of scenes occur, and always have and always will. The movie explains the politics of oil by telling us to stop seeking an explanation. Just look at the behavior. In the short run, you can see who wants oil and how they’re trying to get it. In the long run, we’re out of oil.”

Roger Ebert
 

“In 1958 I wrote the following:
 

‘There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.’
 

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?
 

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.”

 Harold Pinter
 

“If the public knew the truth, the war would end tomorrow. But they don’t know and they can’t know.”

Former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George
 

“…it’s the duty of every real American to be on the lookout for goldbricks, pinko’s and fellow travelers. ‘Course without the likes of Americans like you the jobs of Americans like me would be a lot more difficult. But don’t get me wrong, Americans like me like difficult jobs. So don’t get the idea you’re doing the CIA any favors. We don’t really need Americans like you, we don’t need anybody.”

Colonel Sam Flagg
 

“Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don’t exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. ‘We don’t do body counts,’ said the American general Tommy Franks.”

Q: You have said that you personally went to Scooter Libby (Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff), Karl Rove and Elliott Abrams (National Security Council official) to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that? And can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?
 

A: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that’s exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They are good individuals. They are important members of our White House team. And that’s why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it’s accurate before I report back to you, and that’s exactly what I did.

Scott McClellan Oct. 7, 2003