https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/09/the-1904-st-louis-worlds-fair-photos/597658/
Wouldn't it be magnificent to see a worlds fair nowadays?
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/09/the-1904-st-louis-worlds-fair-photos/597658/
Wouldn't it be magnificent to see a worlds fair nowadays?
Not a bad idea.Might lift our spirits.
ReplyDeleteI too think they should bring World's Fairs back.
ReplyDeletewhats new ?
ReplyDeletenothing.
except software and electronic stuff is smaller every year.
I guess you aren't aware of the guy who has a flying suit. Hologram tvs, drones that have cameras, and can be used to make incredible movies - without Hollywood, or financing. There's a lot of stuff, that is WOW, and would make a great Worlds Fair, like foods, art, 3d printers, vehicular stuff, aerospace stuff (basically Elon Musk's company offereings in getting to orbit) and a lot more. I hope you get surprised this weekend with a lot of happy stuff, you sound tired.
DeleteI hope you have pizza and beer!
I opened the link Jesse attached to view the pictures of the fair and sat in my chair stunned and amazed at the beauty and magnificence of the buildings. They were marvelous. There was a dark moment though. The influence of Charles Darwin and his book, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” was arguably peaking. A southern aristocrat turned African explorer by the name of Samuel Verner, influenced by Darwin, brought an African pygmy, Ota Benga, to the fair to be displayed as---in the words of one writer---an ‘emblematic savage’ along with other ‘strange people’ in the anthropology wing. Verner subsequently arranged with the Bronx Zoo director William Hornady to have Benga displayed in a primate cage at the zoo. A New York Times piece (September 9, 1906) opined: “The exhibition was that of a human being in a monkey cage. The human being happened to be a Bushman, one of a race that scientists do not rate high in the human scale, but to the average non-scientific person in the crowd of sightseers there was something about the display that was unpleasant … It is probably a good thing that Benga doesn’t think very deeply. If he did it isn’t likely that he was very proud of himself when he woke in the morning and found himself under the same roof with the orangoutangs [sic] and monkeys, for that is where he really is.” Benga, weary of life in America, eventually ended it by his own hand. A number of books have been written detailing this tragedy, one of which I read in the mid 90s. And there’s plenty on the web.
ReplyDeleteI think I posted about the people in zoos and worlds fairs years ago... what a strange world we've inherited, the natives of other countries, those born with birth defects, really, any number of strange or unusual people who weren't protected from this cruel world's horrible perverse drive to look upon the strange and unusual, the macabre.
DeleteThe Siamese twins, the aboriginals, the obese, the emaciated, the extremely tall.
There isn't much kindness out there and damn few who will befriend, protect, etc