By chance I was online when you comment arrived. Thanks for it. It is especially appreciated because the post itself (unlike most posts to my two weblogs) was based on second-hand tales and was left unverified. Your linking of the story to world events, to changes in NYC demography and housing infrastructure, and to the mindset of the maintenance of abstract immigrant identities makes your comment all the more appreciated. I’m quite curious what brings you to know so much about Benjamin Franklin HS and the web of conflicts and frustrations of 1930s and 40s NY — neighborhood roots, historical research, or whatever else? Do let mek now if and when you have a moment.

While growing up, my only contact with Benjamin Franklin HS was its reputation, During my years at Seward Park (early-1960s) Benjamin Franklin was said to be an even “tougher” school, and Seward was tough enough on its own. I also remember that, some years after my high school days, my younger sister, a student at the very un-tough HS for Music and Art, was badly beaten during a racial confrontation following a dance at Benjamin Franklin If you have any knowledge of the history of integration at Seward Park, I would be all the more appreciative if you got in touch, it would help objectify my own memories tales of the unexpected violence and unexpected friendships during those years, and help place in broader context a conundrum that cast a shadow over those years, i.e. my (and others’) confused feelings at the time of closeness with African Americans marred by fears violence across racial lines. In some ways, my life has alternated between flights from such tensions and active commitment to their eradication.

To close, work and the exigencies of “the crisis” have cut down on my blog posting, but I hope sometime soon to post some memories about the cynically minimal token integration of Stuyvesant Town not long after its opening.

I like the more general characterization what we know and can express: applied epistemology as the quadrant of the knowledge-knowledge plane, where the first refers to knowledge about the real, and the second axis is representative of knowledge about the knowledge about the real. This, we can live comfortably in the first quadrant (because we know we know stuff there), can work to improve the second (where we know we don’t know it), should be wary of the third (where we don’t know we don’t know it) and can afford to be surprised by the fourth (where we don’t know we know it).

I was introduced to this idea by listening to Rumsfeld make excuses about “unknown unknowns” but would like to think the idea is older than that.

Any chance you could share some insights on how you evaluate doctors in a foreign land?

That would be very useful to those of us considering the possiblities.

Thanks again!

Anyway the story goes that he was in Germany and had heard that peoples rent had gone up. So he said: “Ich hab gehört das die huren hoch gegangen sind!”

There is something fascinating about blogging. I have never felt the drive to. I always thought it was a matter of reorganising your thoughts and to that purpose I rather ride my bicycle. It’s my way of figuring something out. Of course you are a text writer and for that this is YOUR medium

Thanks for the correction. My memory failed me. And thanks too for reminding me of the importance of Nietzsche and the importance of addressing stars with confidence.

S.