I Have A New Found Fascination With Long Island

i am an impressive 320 pages into "power broker" and i still have about 700 to go. i am finding a it really good read. one of the more interesting aspects of the book is that back in 1926 one of al smith's major campaign platforms was park construction. read that again: the governor of the largest state in the union (i think new york was the largest state back then) won an election on parks. he ran on building parks. and won. by a landslide. that is crazy. and the linchpin location for all these parks was long island. yes. long island. it's almost incomprehensible to me how a) a statewide election can deliver a mandate for parks and b) long island was considered pristine nature.

it just shows what a different time it was. and, you know what? despite all of moses' bullshit, if it was not for him and his vision, parks in this country would not be the same. that is one of the most striking things about moses. again, forgetting all of his asshole qualities, which were in abundance, he had a vision of a grand statewide park system, connected by a series of parkways so the outdoors could be accessible to all new yorkers. it was really an incredible vision, and that was moses' strongest quality. he had the ability to think big. he was uncompromising in his vision, but, hey, we can't all be perfect, right?