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;void(0)) . . . BROADWAY see "ACTORS" for related links see "PLACES" for related links ...The original "Broadway" theater was the Victoria, opened in 1899 by Oscar Hammerstein, "the first of Times Square's masters of shameless hyperbole." Hammerstein made brief flings at high-minded drama before bowing to the box office and making the Victoria a palace of riotous vaudeville. Within the decade, there were some 40 theaters operating in and around Times Square, specializing in generally respectable but decidedly middlebrow fare. The real action, however, may have been in the "lobster palaces" where fat men ate huge meals and waitresses were often expected to double as sexual partners. The link between Times Square and convention-flouting sex was there from the beginning. Broadway's true Golden Age, however, was kicked off with the dance craze of 1915. The great names are Flo Ziegfeld and Irving Berlin. Ziegfeld's "Midnight Frolic," a companion piece to his Follies, was a nightly post-theater dance party for 600 guests on the rooftop garden of the New Amsterdam. "The women wore narrow, clinging dresses and the men wore top hats and tails. They drank champagne and ate pistachio nuts while the masterful Ziegfeld ran his sparkling parade of beauties across the stage and into the crowd." Over the next decade, a host of Ziegfeld imitators -- Earl Carroll's Vanities, Garrick's Gaieties, George White's Scandals -- ratcheted up the glitz and bare female flesh to the point where Ziegfeld started to put clothes back on his girls. The music was terrific and the wit as effervescent as the wine -- it was the age of the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Porter, Berlin (as always), the Paul Whiteman band, George S. Kaufman, Robert Benchley and the Algonquin circle. But underlying it all was the criminal culture of the speakeasy -- "essentially a bordello with music and dancing" -- presided over by the murderous Arnie Rothstein and the gangland ethic packaged and sanitized by Damon Runyon. Depression, repeal and the rise of Hollywood tolled the end of an era. By the 1950s the middlebrow review pioneered by Ziegfeld was the province of Ed Sullivan. There was still kick left in Broadway, however, for as it decoupled from popular culture it finally became a home for serious theater. The 1930s saw the rise of the Group Theater -- the great names are Clifford Odets, Eugene O'Neill, Maxwell Anderson, Lillian Hellman, Elia Kazan. But as the area slid into decay, the legitimate theaters became precarious stepping stones through the sewer of the violent street and drug culture of the 1970s. ... --Charles R. Morris, reviewing James Traub's _The Devil's Playground_ in the "Wall Street Journal" - MORE ABOUT BROADWAY: http://broadway-plays.visit-new-york-city.com/ ON BROADWAY  ;void(0)) BROTHERLY LOVE . . see: "FRIENDSHIP" see "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links It is an old saying, that charity begins at home; but this is no reason it should not go abroad. A man should live with the world as a citizen of the world; he may have a preference for the particular quarter or square or even alley, in which he lives, but be should have a generous feeling for the welfare of the whole. --Richard Cumberland (16311718) English theologian, Anglican bishop, and philosopher of ethics. The universe is but one great city, full of beloved ones, divine and human, by nature endeared to each other. --Epictetus (55135) Greek philosopher. A low capacity for getting along with those near us often goes hand in hand with a high receptivity to the idea of the brotherhood of men. --Eric Hoffer (19021983) American longshoreman, philosopher, and author who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1982. My affections were first for my own country, and then, generally, for all mankind. --Thomas Jefferson (17431826) American statesman and president [18011809]. In a letter to Thomas Law [15 January 1811]. The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn. --R.D. Laing (19271989) Scottish psychiatrist. _The Politics of Experience_ [1967], ch. 4 Oh, the poor folks hate the rich folks, And the rich folks hate the poor folks, All of my folks hate all of your folks, It's American as apple pie. --Tom Lehrer (1928 ) American songwriter and satirist. "National Brotherhood Week" [1965 song] [Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness, speaking:] Mos Eisley Spaceport. You will never find a more retched hive of scum and villainy. --George Lucas (1944 ) American screenwriter and producer. _Star Wars_ [1977] (screenplay) There is a destiny that makes us brothers: None goes his way alone: All that we send into the lives of others Comes back unto our own. --Edwin Markham (18521940) American poet and lecturer. "A Creed" [1900], _Poems_, ed. Charles L. Wallis [1950]. It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons. --Henry Miller (18911980) American novelist and essayist. We are all brothers under the skin and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it. --Ayn Rand (19051982) Russian-born American writer. _The Fountainhead_ [1943] Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. --Franklin D. Roosevelt (18821945) American Democratic statesman and President [19331945]. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. --William Shakespeare (15641616) English dramatist. _King Henry V_ [15981599], act 4, sc. 3 What men call social virtues, good fellowship, is commonly but the virtue of pigs in a litter, which lie close together to keep each other warm. --Henry David Thoreau (18171862) American essayist, poet, and practical philosopher. _Journal_ [1906] "23 October 1852" The brotherhood of Man presupposes the fatherhood of God. --Arnold Toynbee (18891975) English historian. _A Study of History, 1934-1939_ TOPICAL "English Town, Feeling Neglected, Asks Its French Twin for a Divorce: Wallingford and Luxeuil-les-Bains Share 30 Years of Misunderstanding" --Aaron O. Patrick and Max Colchester _The Wall Street Journal_ [8 June 2009] Thirty years ago, the quaint English town of Wallingford agreed to "twin" with Luxeuil-les-Bains in France, forging the kind of ceremonial links meant to promote cultural understanding between countries. Sometimes that doesn't work out. In recent months, Wallingford and Luxeuil have teetered on the brink of divorce. Citing neglect, the English town earlier this year moved to formally sever its relationship with its French partner. For three years, Wallingford Council officials say, Luxeuil ignored entreaties from its twin, including requests for student exchanges, friendly soccer matches and an annual Christmas card. The snubs stung Alec Hayton, who stepped down as Wallingford's mayor last month but is still responsible for sibling relationships with other towns. "I think they are extremely rude," Mr. Hayton said in a May interview. "We send our monthly magazine. We never get a reply." Suspicion of the French in Wallingford, a town of 7,000 near Oxford and a stronghold of William the Conqueror in 1066, runs deep and has been heightened by the perceived snub. "I don't think the French have really liked us ever, even if you go back to the First World War," says 88-year-old Daphne Sharp, a Wallingford resident. The residents of Luxeuil, a picturesque town in the east of France with 8,000 people and a 1,400-year-old abbey, are blasι. "Frankly, I had other more important subjects to worry about after my election," says Mayor Michel Raison, who was voted into office in March 2008. Allegations of rudeness are Anglo hyperbole, Mr. Raison says. The Wallingford magazine never turned up, he says. He did receive a DVD -- "A Day in the Life of Wallingford" -- but didn't reply because Luxeuil had yet to make a DVD of its own, he says. His deputy sent a Christmas card when he got one from Wallingford, he says. The civic spat is a setback for Europe's twin-town movement, which emerged after the destruction of World War II as a means of fostering European goodwill. In 1951, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions proposed that towns and cities across the continent form relationships and exchange visits, according to a spokesman. The simple idea took off. The council estimates there are now 17,000 twin-town relationships among Europe's 100,000 towns and cities. In Europe, the process is usually called twinning. In the U.S., the operative term is "sister cities." To promote European integration, the European Union provides up to 14 million ($19.6 million) a year for group visits from one twin town to another. Cities twin for different reasons. Paris and Rome agreed to twin in 1956 as a sign of a postwar conciliation. London and Beijing signed a five-year twinning relationship in 2006 to foster cooperation between the host of the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese capital, and the host of the 2012 Olympics, London. Coventry, one British city bombed heavily in World War II, twinned out of solidarity with Stalingrad, which was also mauled by the Germans. (The Russian city is now called Volgograd.) Today, Coventry has 26 twins -- including towns called Coventry in Connecticut, New York and Rhode Island -- making it Britain's most-twinned location. The twinning of Wallingford and Luxeuil blossomed from a chance meeting. In 1979, members of a French scout troop got off at the wrong bus stop and found themselves in Wallingford, where a resident directed them to the town's campsite to spend the night. One of the scouts was the son of Luxeuil's mayor, who initiated the twin-town relationship when he heard about his son's warm reception, Wallingford officials say. Initially, things went well. There were student exchanges. The Wallingford brass band was a big hit when it visited Luxeuil in 1990. "They were so good we invited them back for a wedding," recalls Marie France Frere, 65, who helps manage the town's twin relationships. But the relationship fell into neglect and hit a low in 2005, when Wallingford Council invited Luxeuil officials to the 850th anniversary celebration of the town's charter, offering free accommodations. The council says it didn't even get a reply. Last Summer, Mr. Hayton, who speaks German but not French, and Mr. Raison, who doesn't speak English, met for the first time at a dinner in Bad Wurzach, a German town twinned with both cities. Communicating through an interpreter, the men say they agreed to try to get the relationship on track. Mr. Raison says he sent Mr. Hayton an email last September inviting the residents of Wallingford to Luxeuil to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their three-way twinning with Bad Wurzach. "We never heard back," says Mr. Raison. Mr. Hayton says he has checked the council's email accounts and there is no record of the invitation. In March, Wallingford declined an invitation to play in Luxeuil's student soccer tournament, the Lux Cup. Wallingford council's town clerk, Andrew Rogers, says the French gave just two months' notice, too little time to arrange for parental consent and other details. "You should plan 12 months ahead," Mr. Rogers says. Fed up, Mr. Hayton last year phoned Britain's Local Government Association, asking how to get a divorce from Luxeuil. He says the association didn't know. A spokesman for the association says Mr. Hayton should have contacted the National Association of Local Councils, which represents smaller towns such as Wallingford. Mr. Hayton then announced at a meeting of Wallingford councillors that a divorce was in the cards. Like combatants in any good tabloid divorce, they began communicating in the press. A reporter wrote about the pending split in a local newspaper, and the story was picked up in the French press, although the reports said Mr. Hayton had approached the European Union, Europe's central government. "If they wanted a divorce, they should have just called me," says Mr. Raison. "They didn't need to go running to the European Union." Getting a divorce is simple, according to the Council of European Municipalities and Regions. "All they have to do is say, 'Shall we call it a day?' " says Patrizio Fiorilli, a council spokesman. A separation wouldn't take a big emotional toll on the French town, according to Mr. Raison. Most Luxeuil residents "don't give a damn" if the towns are twinned or not, he says. Mr. Hayton recently said he already had four twinning offers from other French towns, including several in the scenic Loire Valley. But in the past few days, Wallingford has begged for a last-minute reconciliation. Hoping for a kiss-and-make-up moment, Mr. Hayton wrote Mr. Raison to apologize for calling attention to the cities' troubles, and suggesting they could put their past behind them and renew their commitment. "We wish to have a happy relationship full of promise," Mr. Hayton wrote. He quickly received an invitation to a Luxeuil event in September. Said a spokesman for the French town: "We are at peace for the moment." - . . see "MONEY" for related links see "CAPITALISM" for related links "Land in 1920s Florida Was So Hot, People Sold Underwater Lots" By Cynthia Crossen in _The Wall Street Journal_ August 3, 2005 Gertrude Shelby asked her readers a question in a 1926 issue of Harper's magazine: "Did you ever keep chickens?" Ms. Shelby, a journalist, was using a metaphor to explain the rapid inflation of property prices in Florida. "Put down a pan full of big scraps, and the hens come running. The first ones grab big pieces and depart rapidly. ... The others see the pieces in the beaks, and instead of realizing there's plenty more in the pan, they chase the hens who got the first pieces. That's resale psychology." In less than a decade, that psychology transformed Florida from an overgrown bog to the epicenter of get-rich-quick schemes. Debarking from a train in Miami in 1925, an English tourist remarked on the city's "tropical bedlam," where sales agents pounced on visitors with noisy promises of "unsurpassed fortune." "One had been prepared for real-estate madness," the Englishman wrote. "And here it was, in excelsis." The Florida boom of the 1920s was far from America's first land rush, but it was certainly one of its most colorful, thanks to visionaries and hucksters like George Merrick, Carl Fisher and D.P. Davis. When Mr. Davis's first two island developments near Tampa went on the market in October 1924, people lined up for 40 hours before the sale began. One man chained himself to the door so he wouldn't lose his place. Not only did the entire 875 acres, much of it still underwater, sell out for $18 million, but an additional $8.2 million was returned to eager buyers whose money had arrived too late. With World War I over, and Calvin Coolidge, the preacher of prosperity, in the White House, ordinary working Americans in 1924 were feeling optimistic and flush. Cars were beginning to become more affordable, and highways were reaching regions largely inaccessible until then. And Florida, like Southern California, had something people from the North and Midwest were willing to pay for: balmy winter weather. A few foresighted developers already had started converting Florida's climate into cash. But first they had to clear the dense vegetation; drain, dredge, blast and fill; pour concrete; pump sand onto the waterfront; and import flamingos and date palms. They changed the name of Bull Island to Belle Island; Mosquito Inlet was renamed Ponce de Leon Inlet. George Merrick dreamed up a model city called Coral Gables, "wherein nothing would be unlovely." Carl Fisher took one look at a mangrove stand and imagined Miami Beach. With the extension of the rail line to Miami, some pockets of Florida began to serve as winter playgrounds for the very wealthy. World War I briefly interrupted the state's budding development, but soon after it ended, stories of the "American Riviera" and its skyrocketing property values began drifting north, assisted by a determined campaign of boosterism. "The only man that doesn't make money in Florida real estate is the man that doesn't own any," one slogan went. George Merrick hired William Jennings Bryan, former presidential candidate, to exhort the virtues of buying Coral Gables property twice a day to visitors. "Miami is the only city in the world," Mr. Bryan said, "where you can tell a lie at breakfast that will come true by evening." [ . . . ] The first generation of Florida buyers, like early converts to many speculative frenzies, did very well. A piece of land in Palm Beach that sold for $84,000 in 1915 was assessed 10 years later at almost $5 million. But as the prices inflated, so did the promises. A subdivision called Manhattan Estates was promoted as "not more than three-fourths of a mile from the prosperous and fast-growing city of Nettie." Nettie did not yet exist. People bought lots sight unseen -- a blueprint stamped "Sold" was more valuable than dollars. In the summer of 1925, people began putting "Not For Sale" signs in front of properties they intended to keep. Before long, however, Florida began to choke on its own growth. In 1925, more than 2,000 freight cars were waiting to be unloaded in Miami. In August, the single railroad operating to Florida announced it could accept no more freight except fuel, livestock and perishables. Stocks of building materials soon ran out. Then, "two hurricanes showed what a soothing tropic wind could do when it got a running start from the West Indies," as Frederick Lewis Allen put it in his history of the 1920s, "Only Yesterday." By 1927, those who still had money to gamble left Florida for a safer game: the stock market. end page | BABIES - BARTENDERS | BASEBALL | BASTARDS - BEATLES (THE) | BEAUTY | BED - BEGINNINGS | BEHAVIOR - BELIEF | BENNY (JACK) - BIBLE | BICYCLES - BIRDS | BIRTH - BITTERNESS | BLAME - BLOGGING | BLONDES - BOOK BURNING | BOOKS | BOOMERS (THE) - BOXING | BOYS - BREAKING UP | BREASTS - BRITAIN | BROADWAY - BUBBLES (ECONOMIC) | BUGS BUNNY - BUREAUCRACY | BURMA SHAVE - BUSYBODIES | | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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