January 2011

“Painting is dead!” cried a French artist when he saw his first photograph about 1840. But painting was not dead at all: it survived the arrival of photography with surprising vigor. And if there was one branch of art that held its own more steadily than others, it was genre painting, the kind of thing to which this portfolio is fondly devoted.

The camera, despite its reputation for veracity, often fudges considerably on the truth. Even the best lens distorts reality somewhat, and the film used throughout most of photographic history deprives the world of color. Moreover, the camera depicts the particular—the individual piece of reality confronted by the lens. When a photograph manages to show the typical rather than the particular, it is usually a lucky accident.

“If I may be allowed the language of the professional logic shop, a universal proposition can be made untrue by a particular instance. If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black you must not seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white. My own white crow is Mrs. Piper. In the trances of this medium I cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and Wits.”

—WILLIAM JAMKS, 1894, in a speech made on the occasion of his becoming president of the Society for Psychical Research

This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember, or overthrow it.

During less hectic days back in 1961, two editors at the New York Times got to wondering how that unawed newspaper might have handled some of the more momentous events since time began. They decided to try their hand at writing conventional one-column, two-line “heads” for a number of such incidents. Because of space limitations, a one-column headline is always a difficult chore; in Times practice, the task becomes all the more complicated because of a rigid rule against splitting infinitives or separating an adjective from its subject. Lampooning the headline-writer’s stock of banal verbs, nouns, and phrases, the editors came up with the following typically understated Times headlines, reprinted here with the permission of the newspaper’s employee magazine, Times Talk . We can hardly wait for the day when we’ll read: NOTHING HAPPENS; WORLD VERY HAPPY .

The reason Switzerland is not mentioned is that it is a great example of a nation where all able-bodied males must be adept in the use of firearms and have them in their homes ready for use. In addition, on election day, many wear side arms to show that they are prepared to defend their freedom. No gunfights!

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Naturally, my children are members of a drum and bugle corps and very proud of it. It distressed them to a far greater degree than I would have thought possible to view your article and to be put in the category you chose for them along with Bloody Mama and gangster molls.

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I never hunted in my life and am seventyone years old, and it has only been in very recent years that I even ever owned a gun … of any kind. … In 1918 I didn’t need a firearm … the Republic I was then living under well protected me. The criminal knew he didn’t have a chance against justice. Today I haven’t a chance against the criminal. The standards of this once-great nation have been reversed to that extent.

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Contrary to the author’s choice of words, the National Rifle Association is not against gun control laws; it is FOR the preservation of certain well-defined, time-honored rights—our heritage, you might say.

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I wonder if statistics are available that tell how many of the one million hand- gun imports are purchased by citizens who fear for their lives because they have lost faith in the law … that allows hoodlums of every description to run free.

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One of the most valuable rights of the American citizen is his right to bear arms, which presumes also the right to possess arms. … Why don’t you place the blame for the high crime rate where it belongs, namely on the failure of our judicial system to bring the accused to trial promptly and to effectively punish those who refuse to conform to our laws?

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