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Jacob A. Riis
The Battle with the Slum
> XI. Letting in the Light
Jacob A. Riis
. The Battle with the Slum.
XI. Letting in the Light
been out of town and my way had not fallen through the Mulberry Bend in weeks until that morning when I came suddenly upon the park that had been made there in my absence. Sod had been laid, and men were going over the lawn cutting the grass after the rain. The sun shone upon flowers and the tender leaves of young shrubs, and the smell of new-mown hay was in the air. Crowds of little Italian children shouted with delight over the garden, while their elders sat around upon the benches with a look of contentment such as I had not seen before in that place. I stood and looked at it all, and a lump came in my throat as I thought of what it had been, and of all the weary years of battling for this. It had been such a hard fight, and now at last it was won. To me the whole battle with the slum had summed itself up in the struggle with this dark spot. The whir of the lawn-mower was as sweet a song in my ear as that which the skylark sang when I was a boy, in Danish fields, and which gray hairs do not make the man forget.
Keep off the grass!
In my delight I walked upon the grass. It seemed as if I should never be satisfied till I had felt the sod under my feet,sod in the Mulberry Bend! I did not see the gray-coated policeman hastening my way, nor the wide-eyed youngsters awaiting with shuddering delight the catastrophe that was coming, until I felt his cane laid smartly across my back and heard his angry command:
Hey! Come off the grass! Dye think it is made to walk on?
So that was what I got for it. It is the way of the world. But it was all right. The park was there, that was the thing. And I had my revenge. I had just had a hand in marking five blocks of tenements for destruction to let in more light, and in driving the slum from two other strongholds. Where they were, parks are being made to-day in which the sign Keep off the grass! will never be seen. The children may walk in them from morning till night, and I too, if I want to, with no policeman to drive us off. I tried to tell the policeman something about it. But he was of the old dispensation. All the answer I got was a gruff:
Gwan now! I dont want none o yer guff!
It was all guff to the politicians, I suppose, from the day the trouble began about the Mulberry Bend, but toward the end they woke up nobly. When the park was finally dedicated to the peoples use, they took charge of the celebration with immense unction, and invited themselves to sit in the high seats and glory in the achievement which they had done little but hamper and delay from the first. They had not reckoned with Colonel Waring, however. When they had had their say, the colonel arose, and, curtly reminding them that they had really had no hand in the business, proposed three cheers for the citizen effort that had struck the slum this staggering blow. There was rather a feeble response on the platform, but rousing cheers from the crowd, with whom the colonel was a prime favorite, and no wonder. Two years later he laid down his life in the fight which he so valiantly and successfully waged. It is the simple truth that he was killed by politics. The services which he had rendered the city would have entitled him in any reputable business to be retained in the employment that was his life and his pride. Had he been so retained, he would not have gone to Cuba, and would in all human probability be now alive. But Tammany is not in politics for its health and had no use for him, though no more grievous charge could be laid at his door, even in the heat of the campaign, than that he was a foreigner, being from Rhode Island. Spoils politics never craved a heavier sacrifice of any community.
Colonel George E. Waring, Jr.
It was Colonel Warings broom that first let light into the slum. That which had come to be considered an impossible task he did by the simple formula of putting a man instead of a voter behind every broom. The words are his own. The man, from a political dummy who loathed his job and himself in it with cause, became a self-respecting citizen, and the streets that had deen dirty were swept. The ash barrels which had befouled the sidewalks disappeared, almost without any one knowing it till they were gone. The trucks that obstructed the childrens only playground, the street, went with the dirt, despite the opposition of the truckman who had traded off his vote to Tammany in the past for stall room at the curbstone. They did not go without a struggle. When appeal to the alderman proved useless, the truckman resorted to strategy. He took a wheel off, or kept a perishing nag, that could not walk, hitched to the truck over night to make it appear that it was there for business. But subterfuge availed as little as resistance. In the Mulberry Bend he made his last stand. The old houses had been torn down, leaving a three-acre lot full of dirt mounds and cellar holes. Into this the truckmen of the Sixth Ward hauled their carts, and defied the street cleaners. They were no longer in their way, and they were on the Park Departments domain, where no Colonel Waring was in control. But while their owners were triumphing, the children playing among the trucks set one of them rolling down into a cellar, and three or four of the little ones were crushed. That was the end. The trucks disappeared. Even Tammany has not ventured to put them back, so great was the relief of their going. They were not only a hindrance to the sweeper and the skulking places of all manner of mischief at night, but I have repeatedly seen the firemen baffled in their efforts to reach a burning house, where they stood four and six deep in the wide slips at the river.
Colonel Waring did more for the cause of labor than all the walking delegates of the town together, by investing a despised but highly important task with a dignity which won the hearty plaudits of a grateful city. When he uniformed his men and announced that he was going to parade with them so that we might all see what they were like, the town laughed and poked fun at the white wings; but no one went to see them who did not come away converted to an enthusiastic belief in the man and his work. Public sentiment, that had been half reluctantly suspending judgment, expecting every day to see the colonel knuckle down to politics like his predecessors, turned in an hour, and after that there was little trouble. The tenement house children organized street cleaning bands to help along the work, and Colonel Waring enlisted them as regular auxiliaries and made them useful.
They had no better friend. When the unhappy plight of the persecuted pushcart menall immigrant Jews, who were blackmailed, robbed, and driven from pillar to post as a nuisance after they had bought a license to trade in the streetappealed vainly for a remedy, Colonel Waring found a way out in a great morning market in Hester Street that should be turned over to the children for a playground in the afternoon. But though he proved that it would pay interest on the investment in market fees, and many times in the childrens happiness, it was never built. It would have been a most fitting monument to the mans memory. His broom saved more lives in the crowded tenements than a squad of doctors. It did more: it swept the cobwebs out of our civic brain and conscience, and set up a standard of a citizens duty which, however we may for the moment forget, will be ours until we have dragged other things than our pavements out of the mud.
A Tammany-swept East Side Street before Colonel Warings Day.
The Same Street when Colonel Waring wielded the Broom.
Even the colonels broom would have been powerless to do that for the Bend. That was hopeless and had to go. There was no question of children or playground involved. The worst of all the gangs, the Whyós, had its headquarters in the darkest of its dark alleys; but it was left to the police. We had not begun to understand that the gangs meant something to us beyond murder and vengeance, in those days. No one suspected that they had any such roots in the soil that they could be killed by merely destroying the slum. The cholera was rapping on our door, and, with the Bend there, we felt about it as a man with stolen goods in his house must feel when the policeman comes up the street. Back in the seventies we began discussing what ought to be done. By 1884 the first Tenement House Commission had summoned up courage to propose that a street be cut through the bad block. In the following year a bill was brought in to destroy it bodily, and then began the long fight that resulted in the defeat of the slum a dozen years later.
It was a bitter fight, in which every position of the enemy had to be carried by assault. The enemy was the deadly official inertia that was the outcome of political corruption born of the slum plus the indifference of the mass of our citizens, who probably had never seen the Bend. If I made it my own concern to the exclusion of all else, it was only because I knew it. I had been part of it. Homeless and alone, I had sought its shelter, not for long,that was not to be endured,but long enough to taste of its poison, and I hated it. I knew that the blow must be struck there, to kill. Looking back now over those years, I can see that it was all as it should be. We were learning the alphabet of our lesson then. We could have learned it in no other way so thoroughly. Before we had been at it more than two or three years, it was no longer a question of the Bend merely. The Small Parks law, that gave us a million dollars a year to force light and air into the slum, to its destruction, grew out of it. The whole sentiment which in its day, groping blindly and angrily, had wiped out the disgrace of the Five Points, just around the corner, crystallized and took shape in its fight. It waited merely for the issue of that, to attack the slum in its other strongholds; and no sooner was the Bend gone than the rest surrendered. Time was up.
But it was not so easy campaigning at the start. In 1888 plans were filed for the demolition of the block. It took four years to get a report of what it would cost to tear it down. About once in two months during all that time the authorities had to be prodded into a spasm of activity, or we would probably have been yet where we were then. Once, when I appealed to the corporation counsel to give a good reason for the delay, I got the truth out of him without evasion.
Well, I tell you, he said blandly, no one here is taking any interest in that business. That is good enough reason for you, isnt it?
It was. That Tammany reason became the slogan of an assault upon official incompetence and treachery that hurried things up considerably. The property was condemned at a total cost to the city of a million and a half, in round numbers, including the assessment of half a million for park benefit which the property owners were quick enough, with the aid of the politicians, to get saddled on the city at large. In 1894 the city took possession and became the landlord of the old barracks. For a whole year it complacently collected the rents and did nothing. When it was shamed out of that rut, too, and the tenements were at last torn down, the square lay as the wreckers had left it for another year, until it became such a plague spot that, as a last resort, with a citizens privilege, I arraigned the municipality before the Board of Health for maintaining a nuisance upon its premises. I can see the shocked look of the official now, as he studied the complaint.
But, my dear sir, he coughed diplomatically, isnt it rather unusual? I never heard of such a thing.
Neither did I, I replied, but then there never was such a thing before.
That night, while they were debating the unusual thing, happened the accident to the children of which I spoke, emphasizing the charge that the nuisance was dangerous to life, and there was an end. In the morning the Bend was taken in hand, and the following spring the Mulberry Bend Park was opened.
The Mulberry Bend.
I told the story of that in The Making of an American, and how the red tape of the comptrollers office pointed the way out, after all, with its check for three cents that had gone astray in the purchase of a school site. Of that sort of thing we had enough. But the Gilder Tenement House Commission had been sitting, the Committee of Seventy had been at work, and a law was on the statute books authorizing the expenditure of three million dollars for two open spaces in the parkless district on the East Side, where Jacob Beresheim was born. It had been shown that while the proportion of park area inside the limits of the old city was equal to one-thirteenth of all, below Fourteenth Street, where one-third of the people lived, it was barely one-fortieth. It took a citizens committee appointed by the mayor just three weeks to seize the two park sites for the childrens use, and it took the Good Government Clubs with their allies at Albany less than two months to get warrant of law for the tearing down of the houses ahead of final condemnation, lest any mischance befall through delay or otherwise,a precaution which subsequent events proved to be eminently wise. I believe the legal proceedings are going on yet.
The playground part of it was a provision of the Gilder law that showed what apt scholars we had been. I was a member of that committee, and I fed fat my grudge against the slum tenement, knowing that I might not again have such a chance. Bone Alley went. I shall not soon get the picture of it, as I saw it last, out of my mind. I had wandered to the top floor of one of the ramshackle tenements in the heart of the block, to a door that stood ajar, and pushed it open. On the floor lay three women rag-pickers with their burdens, asleep, overcome by the heat and beer, the stale stench of which filled the place. Swarms of flies covered them. The roomno! let it go. Thank God, we shall not again hear of Bone Alley. Where it cursed the earth with its gloom and its poverty, the sun shines to-day on children at play. If we are slow to understand the meaning of it all, they will not be. We shall have light from that quarter when they grow up, on what is truly educational in the bringing up of young citizens. The children will teach us something for a change that will do us lasting good.
Bone Alley.
Half a dozen blocks away, in Rivington Street, the citys first public bath-house has at last been built, after many delays, and godliness will have a chance to move in with cleanliness. The two are neighbors everywhere, but in the slum the last must come first. Glasgow has half a dozen public baths. Rome, two thousand years ago, washed its people most sedulously, and in heathen Japan to-day, I am told, there are baths, as we have saloons, on every corner. Christian New York never had an all-year bath-house until now. In a tenement population of 255,033 the Gilder Commission found only 306 who had access to bathrooms in the houses where they lived, and they would have found the same thing wherever they went. The Church Federation canvass of the Fifteenth Assembly District over on the West Side, where they did not go, counted three bath-tubs to 1321 families. Nor was that because they so elected. The Peoples Baths took in 121,386 half dimes last year (1901) for as many baths, and more than forty per cent of their customers were Italians. In the first five months of the present year the Rivington Street baths accommodate 224,876 bathers, of whom 66,256 were women and girls. And this in winter. The free river baths have registered five and six millions of bathers in one brief season. The great unwashed were not so from choice, it would appear.
The river baths were only for summer, and their time is past. As the sewers that empty into the river multiply, it is getting less and less a place fit to bathe in, though the boys find no fault. Sixteen public bath-houses on shore are to take the place of the swimming baths. They are all to be in the crowded tenement districts. The sites for the first three are being chosen now. And a wise woman
offers to build and equip one all complete at her own expense, as her gift to the city.
Pull up now a minute, if you think, with some good folks, that the world is not advancing, but just marking time, and look back half a century. I said that New York never had a public bath till now. I meant a free bath. As long ago as 1852, just fifty years ago, the Association for improving the Condition of the Poor built one in Mott Street near Grand Street, and spent 42,000 in doing it. It ran eight years, and was then closed for want of patronage. Forty years passed, and it was again the Association for improving the Condition of the Poor that built the Peoples Baths in the same neighborhood. That time they succeeded at once. And now here we are, planning a great system of municipal baths as the peoples right, not as a favor to any one, and the old lie that the poor prefer to steep in their squalor is no longer believed by any person with sense. This month contracts will be given out for the fitting of nine public schools with shower-baths where we had one before, and notice is given that that one will be open to the people on Sunday mornings. No, we are not marking time; we are forging ahead. Every park, every playground, every bath-house, is a nail in the coffin of the slum, and every big, beautiful schoolhouse, built for the peoples use, not merely to lock the children up in during certain hours for which the teachers collect pay, is a pole rammed right through the heart of it so that even its ghost shall never walk again. For ever so much of it we thank that association of men of splendid courage and public spirit. They fight to win because they believe in the people. They fight
the people and so they are bound to win.
Every once in a while these days a false note in it all jars upon mea note of dread lest those we are trying to help get tired of the word reform and balk. Reform such as we have occasionally had is to blame for some of that. Certainly you do not want to reform men by main strength, drag them into righteousness by the hair of the head, as it were. And let it be freely admitted that the man on Fifth Avenue needs to be reformed quite as much as his neighbor in Mulberry Street whom he forgot,more, since it is his will to mend things that has to be righted, while it is the others power to do it that is lacking. But right there stop. Let us have no pretending that there is nothing to mend. There is a good deal, and it is not going to be mended by stuffing the one you would help with conceit and ingratitude. Ingratitude does not naturally inhabit the slums, but it is a crop that is easily grown there, and where it does grow there is an end of efforts to mend things in that generation. You do not want to come
to your work for your fellows, when you go from the brown-stone front to the tenement; but neither do you want to make him believe that you feel you are coming up to him, for you know you do not feel that way. And moreover, it is not true, if you are coming at all. You want to come right
to help him reform conditions of his life with which he cannot grapple alone, and it is as good for him, as it is for you to know that you are doing it. For that is the brotherhood. And now you can see how that is the only thing that really helps. Charity may corrupt, correction may harden and estrange,in the family they do neither. There you can give and take without offence. Children of one Father! Spin all the fine theories you like, build up systems of profound philosophy, of social ethics, of philanthropic endeavor; back to that you getif you get anywhere at all.
I did not mean to preach. I was just thinking that the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, in its fifty years of battling with all that makes the slum, has come nearer that ideal than any and all the rest of us. And the president of it these ten years, the same who with his brother tried to reform Gotham Court, is the head, too, of the citizens union which is the whole reform programme in a nutshell. All of which is as it ought to be.
To return to the East Side where the light was let in. Bone Alley brought thirty-seven dollars under the auctioneers hammer. Thieves Alley, in the other park down at Rutgers Square, where the police clubbed the Jewish cloakmakers a few years ago for the offence of gathering to assert their right to being men, live the life of men, as some one who knew summed up the labor movement, brought only seven dollars, and the old Helvetia House, where Boss Tweed and his gang met at night to plan their plundering raids on the citys treasury, was knocked down for five. Kerosene Row, in the same block, did not bring enough to have bought kindling wood with which to start one of the numerous fires that gave it its bad name. It was in Thieves Alley that the owner in the days long gone by hung out the sign, No Jews need apply. I stood and watched the opening of the first municipal playground upon the site of the old alley, and in the thousands that thronged street and tenements from curb to roof with thunder of applause, there were not twoscore who could have found lodging with the old Jew-baiter. He had to go with his alley, before the better day could bring light and hope to the Tenth Ward.
What became of the people who were dispossessed? The answer to that is the reply, too, to the wail that goes up from the speculative builder every time we put the screws on the tenement house law. It does not pay him to build any more, he says. But when the multitudes of Mulberry Bend, of Hester Street, and of the Bone Alley Park were put out, there was more than room enough for them in new houses ready for their use. In the Seventh, Tenth, Eleventh, Thirteenth, and Seventeenth wards, where they would naturally go if they wanted to be near home, there were 4268 vacant apartments with room for over 18,000 tenants at our New York average of four and a half to the family. Including the Bend, the whole number of the dispossessed was not 12,000. On Manhattan Island there were at that time more than 37,000 vacant flats, so that it seems those builders were either talking through their hats, or else they were philanthropists pure and simple. And I know they were not that. The whole question of rehousing the population that had been so carefully considered abroad made us no trouble, though it gave a few well-meaning people unnecessary concern. The unhoused were scattered some, which was one of the things we hoped for, but hardly dared believe would come to pass. Many of them, as it appeared, had remained in their old slum more from force of habit and association than because of necessity.
Everything takes ten years, said Abram S. Hewitt, when, exactly ten years after he had as mayor championed the Small Parks Act, he took his seat as chairman of the Advisory Committee on Small Parks. The ten years had wrought a great change. It was no longer the slum of to-day, but that of to-morrow, that challenged attention. The committee took the point of view of the children from the first. It had a large map prepared, showing where in the city there was room to play and where there was none. Then it called in the police and asked them to point out where there was trouble with the boys; and in every instance the policeman put his finger upon a treeless slum.
They have no other playground than the street, was the explanation given in each case. They smash lamps and break windows. The storekeepers kick and there is trouble. That is how it begins. Many complaints are received daily of boys annoying pedestrians, storekeepers, and tenants by their continually playing baseball in some parts of almost every street. The damage is not slight. Arrests are frequent, much more frequent than when they had open lots to play in. This last was the report of an up-town captain. He remembered the days when there were open lots there. But those lots are now built upon, he said, and for every new house there are more boys and less chance for them to play.
The committee put a red daub on the map to indicate trouble. Then it asked those police captains who had not spoken to show them where their precincts were, and why they had no trouble. Every one of them put his finger on a green spot that marked a park.
My people are quiet and orderly, said the captain of the Tompkins Square precinct.
The police took the square from a mob by storm twice in my recollection, and the commander of the precinct was hit on the head with a hammer by his people and laid out for dead.
The Hook Gang is gone, said he of Corlears Hook. The professional pursuit of that gang was to rob and murder inoffensive citizens by night and throw them into the river, and it achieved a bad eminence at its calling.
The whole neighborhood has taken a change, and decidedly for the better, said the captain of Mulberry Street; and the committee rose and said that it had heard enough.
Mulberry Bend Park.
The map was hung on the wall, and in it were stuck pins to mark the site of present and projected schools as showing where the census had found the children crowding. The moment that was done the committee sent the map and a copy of chapter 338 of the laws of 1895 to the mayor, and reported that its task was finished. This is the law and all there is of it:
The people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows:
Section 1. Hereafter no schoolhouse shall be constructed in the city of New York without an open-air playground attached to or used in connection with the same.
Section 2. This act shall take effect immediately.
Where the map was daubed with red the school pins crowded one another. On the lower East Side, where child crime was growing fast, and no less than three storm centres were marked down by the police, nine new schools were going up or planned, and in the up-town precinct whence came the wail about the ball players there were seven. It was common sense, then, to hitch the school playground and the children together. It seemed a happy combination, for the new law had been a stumbling-block to the school commissioners, who were in a quandary over the needful size of an open-air playground. The roof garden idea, which was at the start a measure of simple economy to save large expenditure for land, had suggested a way out. But there was the long vacation, when schools are closed and children most in need of a chance to play. To get the playground on the roof of the schoolhouse recognized as the
public playground
seemed a long step toward turning it into a general neighborhood evening resort, that should be always open, and so towards bringing school and people, and especially the school and the boy, together in a bond of mutual sympathy good for them both.
Roof Playground on a Public School.
That was the burden of the committees report. It made thirteen recommendations besides, as to the location of parks and detached playgrounds, only two of which have been adopted to date. But that is of less accountas also was the information imparted to me as secretary of the committee by our late Tammany mayorand may he be the lastthat we had as much authority as a committee of bootblacks in his officeit is all of less account than the fact that the field has at last been studied and its needs been made known. The rest will follow, with or without the politicians authority. One of the two suggestions carried out was for a riverside park in the region up-town, on the West Side, where the Federation of Churches and Christian Workers found saloon social ideals minting themselves upon the minds of the people at the rate of seven saloon thoughts to one educational thought. Hudson-bank (it is at the foot of West Fifty-third Street) has been a playground these three years, in the charge of the Outdoor Recreation League, and it is recorded with pride by the directors, that not a board was stolen from the long fence that encloses it in all that time, while fences all about were ripped to pieces. Boards have a market value in that neighborhood and private property was not always highly regarded. But this is the childrens; that is why, within a year now, the bluff upon which the playground is will have been laid out as a beautiful park, and a bar set to the slum in that quarter, where it already had got a firm grip. Hard by there is a recreation pier, and on summer evenings the young men of the neighborhood may be seen trooping riverward with their girls to hear the music. The gang that laid out two policemen, to my knowledge, has gone out of business.
The best-laid plans are sometimes upset by surprising snags. We had planned for two municipal playgrounds on the East Side, where the need is greatest, and our plans were eagerly accepted by the city authorities. But they were never put into practice. A negligent attorney killed one, a lazy clerk the other. And both served under the reform government. The first of the two playgrounds was to have been in Rivington Street, adjoining the new public bath, where the boys, for want of something better to do, were fighting daily battles with stones, to the great damage of windows and the worse aggravation of the householders. Four hundred children in that neighborhood petitioned the committee for a place of their own, where there were no windows to break; and we found one. It was only after the proceedings had been started that we discovered that they had been taken under the wrong law and the money spent in advertising had been wasted. It was then too late. The daily assaults upon the windows were resumed.
The other case was an attempt to establish a model school park in a block where more than four thousand children attended day and night school. The public school and the Pro-Cathedral, which divided the children between them, were to be allowed to stand, at opposite ends of the block. The surrounding tenements were to be torn down to make room for a park and playground which should embody the ideal of what such a place ought to be, in the opinion of the committee. For the roof garden was not in the original plan except as an alternative of the streetlevel playground, where land came too high. The plentiful supply of light and air, the safety from fire, to be obtained by putting the school in a park, beside the fact that it could thus be built beautiful, were considerations of weight. Plans were made, and there was great rejoicing in Essex Street, until it came out that this scheme had gone the way of the other. The clerk who should have filed the plans in the registers office left that duty to some one else, and it took just twenty one days to make the journey, a distance of five hundred feet or less. The Greater New York had come then with Tammany, and the thing was not heard of again. When I traced the failure down to the clerk in question, and told him that he had killed the park, he yawned and said:
Yes, and I think it is just as well it is dead. We havent any money for those things. It is very nice to have small parks, and very nice to have a horse and wagon, if you can afford it. But we cant. Why, there isnt enough to run the city government.
So the labor of weary weeks and months in the childrens behalf was all undone by a third-rate clerk in an executive office; but he saved the one thing he had in mind: the city government is run to date, and his pay is secure.
It is a pity to have to confess it, but it was not the only time reform in office gave its cause a black eye in the sight of the people. The Hamilton Fish Park that took the place of Bone Alley was laid out with such lack of sense that it will have to be worked all over again. The gymnasium and bath in it that cost, I am told, 90,000, was never of any use for either purpose and was never opened. A policeman sat in the door and turned people away, while around the corner clamoring crowds besieged the new public bath I spoke of. There were more people waiting, sitting on the steps and strung out halfway through the block, when I went over to see, one July day, than could have found room in three buildings like it. So, also, after seven years, the promised park down by the Schiff Fountain called Seward Park lies still, an unlovely waste, waiting to be made beautiful. Tammany let its heelers build shanties in it to sell fish and dry-goods and such in. Reform just let things be, no matter how bad they were, and broke its promises to the people.
No, that is not fair. There was enough to do besides, to straighten up things. Tammany had seen to that. This very day
the contractors men are beginning work in Seward Park, which shall give that most crowded spot on earth its pleasure-ground, and I have warrant for promising that within a year not only will the HamFish Park be restored, but Hudsonbank and the Thomas Jefferson Park in Little Italy, which are still dreary wastes, be opened to the people; while from the Civic Club in Richard Crokers old home ward comes the broad hint that unless condemnation proceedings in the case of the park and playground, to take the place of the old tenements at East Thirty-fifth Street and Second Avenue, are hurried by the Tammany Commission, the club will take a hand and move to have the commission cashiered. There is to be no repetition of the Mulberry Bend scandal.
Kindergarten on the Recreation Pier, at the Foot of E. 24th Street.
It is all right. Neither stupidity, spite, nor cold-blooded neglect will be able much longer to cheat the child out of his rights. The playground is here to wrestle with the gang for the boy, and it will win. It came so quietly that we hardly knew of it till we heard the shouts. It took us seven years to make up our minds to build a play pier,recreation pier is its municipal title,and it took just about seven weeks to build it when we got so far; but then we learned more in one day than we had dreamed of in the seven years. Half the East Side swarmed over it with shrieks of delight, and carried the mayor and the city government, who had come to see the show, fairly off their feet. And now that pier has more than seven comradesgreat, handsome structures, seven hundred feet long, some of them, with music every night for mother and the babies, and for papa, who can smoke his pipe there in peace. The moon shines upon the quiet river, and the steamers go by with their lights. The street is far away with its noise. The young people go sparking in all honor, as it is their right to do. The councilman who spoke of pernicious influences lying in wait for them there made the mistake of his life, unless he has made up his mind to go out of politics. That is just a question of effective superintendence, as is true of model tenements, and everything else in this world. You have got to keep the devil out of everything, yourself included. He will get in if he can, as he got into the Garden of Eden. The play piers have taken a hold of the people which no crabbed old bachelor can loosen with trumped-up charges. Their civilizing influence upon the children is already felt in a reported demand for more soap in the neighborhood where they are, and even the grocer smiles approval.
The play pier is the kindergarten in the educational campaign against the gang. It gives the little ones a chance. Often enough it is a chance for life. The street as a playground is a heavy contributor to the undertakers bank account in more than one way. Distinguished doctors said at the tuberculosis congress this spring that it is to blame with its dust for sowing the seeds of that fatal disease in the half-developed bodies. I kept the police slips of a single day in May two years ago, when four little ones were killed and three crushed under the wheels of trucks in tenement streets. That was unusual, but no day has passed in my recollection that has not had its record of accidents, which bring grief as deep and lasting to the humblest home as if it were the pet of some mansion on Fifth Avenue that was slain. In the Hudson Guild on the West Side they have the reports of ten children that were killed in the street immediately around there. The kindergarten teaching has borne fruit. Private initiative set the pace, but the playground idea has at last been engrafted upon the municipal plan. The Outdoor Recreation League was organized by public-spirited citizens, including many amateur athletes and enthusiastic women, with the object of obtaining recognition of the necessity for recreation and physical welfare of the people. Together with the School Reform Club and the Federation of Churches and Christian Workers, it maintained a playground on the uptown West Side where the ball came into play for the first time as a recognized factor in civic progress. The day might well be kept for all time among those that mark human emancipation, for it was social reform and Christian work in one, of the kind that tells.
The East River Park.
Only the year before, the athletic clubs had vainly craved the privilege of establishing a gymnasium in the East River Park, where the children wistfully eyed the sacred grass, and cowered under the withering gaze of the policeman. A friend whose house stands opposite the park found them one day swarming over her stoop in such shoals that she could not enter, and asked them why they did not play tag under the trees instead. The instant shout came back, Cause the cop wont let us. And now even Poverty Gap is to have its playgroundPoverty Gap, that was partly transformed by its one brief seasons experience with its Holy Terror Park,
a dreary sand lot upon the site of the old tenements in which the Alley Gang murdered the one good boy in the block, for the offence of supporting his aged parents by his work as a bakers apprentice. And who knows but the Mulberry Bend and Paradise Park at the Five Points may yet know the climbing pole and the vaulting buck. So the world moves. For years the citys only playground that had any claim upon the nameand that was only a little asphalted strip behind a public school in First Streetwas an old graveyard. We struggled vainly to get possession of another, long abandoned. But the dead were of more account than the living.
The Seward Park.
But now at last it is their turn. I watched the crowds at their play where Seward Park is to be. The Outdoor Recreation League had put up gymnastic apparatus, and the dusty square was jammed with a mighty multitude. It was not an ideal spot, for it had not rained in weeks, and powdered sand and cinders had taken wing and floated like a pall over the perspiring crowd. But it was heaven to them. A hundred men and boys stood in line, waiting their turn upon the bridge ladder and the travelling rings, that hung full of struggling and squirming humanity, groping madly for the next grip. No failure, no rebuff, discouraged them. Seven boys and girls rode with looks of deep concernit is their wayupon each end of the seesaw, and two squeezed into each of the forty swings that had room for one, while a hundred counted time and saw that none had too much. It is an article of faith with these children that nothing that is going for their benefit is to be missed. Sometimes the result provokes a smile, as when a band of young Jews, starting up a club, called themselves the Christian Heroes. It was meant partly as a compliment, I suppose, to the ladies that gave them club room; but at the same time, if there was anything in a name, they were bound to have it. It is rather to cry over than to laugh at, if one but understands it. The sight of these little ones swarming over a sand heap until scarcely an inch of it was in sight, and gazing in rapt admiration at the poor show of a dozen geraniums and English ivy plants on the windowsill of the overseers cottage, was pathetic in the extreme. They stood for ten minutes at a time, resting their eyes upon them. In the crowd were aged women and bearded men with the inevitable Sabbath silk hat, who it seemed could never get enough of it. They moved slowly, when crowded out, looking back many times at the enchanted spot, as long as it was in sight.
Perhaps there was in it, on the part of the children at least, just a little bit of the comforting sense of proprietorship. They had contributed of their scant pennies more than a hundred dollars toward the opening of the playground, and they felt that it was their very own. All the better. Two policemen watched the passing show, grinning; their clubs hung idly from their belts. The words of a little woman whom I met once in Chicago kept echoing in my ear. She was the happiest woman alive, for she had striven long for a playground for her poor children, and had got it.
The Seward Park on Opening Day.
The police like it, she said. They say that it will do more good than all the Sunday-schools in Chicago. The mothers say, This is good business. The carpenters that put up the swings and things worked with a will; everybody was glad. The police lieutenant has had a tree called after him. The boys that did that used to be terrors. Now they take care of the trees. They plead for a low limb that is in the way, that no one may cut it off.
In the Roof Garden of the Hebrew Educational Alliance.
The twilight deepens and the gates of the playground are closed. The crowds disperse slowly. In the roof garden on the Hebrew Institute across East Broadway lights are twinkling and the band is tuning up. Little groups are settling down to a quiet game of checkers or lovemaking. Paterfamilias leans back against the parapet where palms wave luxuriously in the summer breeze. The newspaper drops from his hand; he closes his eyes and is in dreamland, where strikes come not. Mother knits contentedly in her seat, with a smile on her face that was not born of the Ludlow Street tenement. Over yonder a knot of black-browed men talk with serious mien. They might be met any night in the anarchist café, half a dozen doors away, holding forth against empires. Here wealth does not excite their wrath, nor power their plotting. In the roof garden anarchy is harmless, even though a policeman typifies its government. They laugh pleasantly to one another as he passes, and he gives them a match to light their cigars. It is Thursday, and smoking is permitted. On Friday it is discouraged because it offends the orthodox, to whom the lighting of a fire, even the holding of a candle, is anathema on the Sabbath eve.
The band plays on. One after another, tired heads droop upon babes slumbering peacefully at the breast. Ludlow Streetthe tenementare forgotten; eleven oclock is not yet. Down along the silver gleam of the river a mighty city slumbers. The great bridge has hung out its string of shining pearls from shore to shore. Sweet land of liberty! Overhead the dark sky, the stars that twinkled their message to the shepherds on Judæan hills, that lighted their sons through ages of slavery, and the flag of freedom borne upon the breeze,down there the tenement, theAh, well! let us forget as do these.
Bottle Alley, Whyó Gangs Headquarters. This picture was evidence at a murder trial. The X marks the place where the murderer stood when he shot his victim on the stairs.
Now if you ask me: And what of it all? What does it avail? let me take you once more back to the Mulberry Bend, and to the policemans verdict add the police reporters story of what has taken place there. In fifteen years I never knew a week to pass without a murder there, rarely a Sunday. It was the wickedest, as it was the foulest, spot in all the city. In the slum the two are interchangeable terms for reasons that are clear enough for me. But I shall not speculate about it, only state the facts. The old houses fairly reeked with outrage and violence. When they were torn down, I counted seventeen deeds of blood in that place which I myself remembered, and those I had forgotten probably numbered seven times seventeen. The district attorney connected more than a score of murders of his own recollection with Bottle Alley, the Whyó Gangs headquarters. Five years have passed since it was made into a park, and scarce a knife had been drawn or a shot fired in all that neighborhood. Only twice have I been called as a police reporter to the spot. It is not that the murder has moved to another neighborhood, for there has been no increase of violence in Little Italy or wherever else the crowd went that moved out. It is that the light has come in and made crime hideous. It is being let in wherever the slum has bred murder and robbery, bred the gang, in the past. Wait, now, another ten years, and let us see what a story there will be to tell.
Avail? Why, it was only the other day that Tammany was actually caught applauding
Comptroller Colers words in Plymouth Church, Whenever the city builds a schoolhouse upon the site of a dive and creates a park, a distinct and permanent mental, moral, and physical improvement has been made, and public opinion will sustain such a policy, even if a dive-keeper is driven out of business and somebodys ground rent is reduced. And Tammanys press agent, in his enthusiasm, sent forth this pæan: In the light of such events how absurd it is for the enemies of the organization to contend that Tammany is not the greatest moral force in the community. Tammany a moral force! The park and the playground have availed, then, to bring back the day of miracles.
Note 1.
Mrs. A. A. Anderson.
Note 2.
June 26, 1901.
Note 3.
The name bestowed upon it by the older toughs before the fact, not after.
Note 4.
To be sure, it did nothing else. When the people asked for 5000 to fit up one playground, Mayor Van Wyck replied with a sneer that Vaudeville destroyed Rome.
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Ted Ligety favored at Olympic ski season kickoff
SOELDEN, Austria (AP) — Ted Ligety will be the overwhelming favorite when the Olympic ski season opens on Sunday with a World Cup giant slalom on Rettenbach glacier.
The American has won this race for the past two years and finished on the podium for the past five.
A year ago, Ligety didn't just win here, he dominated with a massive victory margin of 2.75 seconds. Taking advantage of extensive preparation on newly shaped skis introduced last season, he went on to win six of eight giant slaloms on the circuit.
"I hope to come close to that," Ligety said on Thursday. "But people have figured out the skis by now and I can't really expect to win GS by those kind of margins."
Ligety also won three gold medals at last season's world championships — a feat no man had accomplished since French great Jean-Claude Killy won four 45 years earlier.
So how does he find motivation having already achieved so much?
"Ted is internally motivated, has always been internally motivated and that's never been a question," U.S. men's head coach Sasha Rearick said.
"The challenge now, after a year like that, is everyone wants a piece of him — media, industry, commercials, the foundation, marketing. So he's been busy. But he's done a good job to make sure that hasn't interfered with his training and keeping focused on what is important. He's working on getting better every day."
While Ligety is hoping to peak for the Sochi Games in February, he also wants to win the overall World Cup.
Ligety broke the 1,000-point barrier for the first time last season but he still finished third overall behind Marcel Hirscher of Austria and Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway.
"The overall challenge is going to be able to execute week in and week out," Rearick said. "He was able to do that in GS consistently, now it's about taking that same kind of consistency into the slalom and super-G. Last year we saw a real, big gain in his super-G and now we need to make that same jump in slalom."
Ligety showed his super-G potential by winning that event at the worlds, and his main emphasis in preseason training has been on slalom.
"Hopefully that's the formula to win the overall," he said. "The overall is every World Cup skier's big goal and every year I round out my skiing. It's not easy though."
To help Ligety achieve his overall goal, the U.S. squad has a special multi-event team of coaches to work exclusively with Ligety and fellow allrounder Bode Miller, who is back after taking a season off to let his surgically repaired left knee fully heal.
"My knee is good. It's a little puffy but it's been that way for a long time," Miller said. "Overall it feels better than it has since '01."
Having sat out last season, the reshaped GS skis are completely new to Miller.
"It's been difficult because I haven't had a chance to ski at a very high level," he said. "So when I got on the race hill here it was a bit of a shock. ... It's less fun, more work, but it seems OK."
Miller also has a solid record in Soelden. He won in 2003 and 2004 and has eight consecutive top-10 finishes.
Still, having not raced for so long, Miller wasn't about to make any predictions for Sunday.
"It's an intimidating race hill," he said. "I hope to be in touch and gain some points."
Hirscher and Svindal are again the favorites for the overall title. Hirscher took the coveted crown the past two seasons and Svindal won it in 2007 and 2009.
"I'm ready," Svindal said. "Last year I made the overall exciting and I want to be a part of that excitement again. If it's Ted or whoever I want to make it hard for them, too. I for sure want to win it."
Another overall contender could be Alexis Pinturault, the Frenchman who was sixth overall last season with three victories in three different disciplines: Slalom, super-combined and giant slalom.
The only racers to win in GS last season besides Ligety were Hirscher in Val d'Isere, France, and Pinturault in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.
After Soelden, the World Cup goes to Levi, Finland, for slaloms on Nov. 16-17, followed by stops in the United States and Canada before the traditional races in Europe.
The Sochi Games run from Feb. 7-23.
Follow Andrew Dampf at http://twitter.com/asdampf

subset: commoncrawl


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Hearing Care
Left untreated, hearing loss can seriously limit your ability to work, learn and enjoy life. The Henry Ford Allegiance Hearing Center offers safe, effective treatment and services for those living with the challenges of hearing loss. Our skilled and compassionate staff use the latest technology to provide treatment options for children and adults. We also offer the only industrial hearing conservation program in the Jackson area.
On-staff Audiologists
All of our practitioners are Doctors of Audiology (AuD). These audiologists are skilled in providing diagnostic, rehabilitative and other services associated with hearing and balance. They are also pleased to accommodate patients who communicate using sign language. In addition, our audiologists collaborate with otolaryngologists, physicians trained in disorders of the ear, nose or throat.
Hearing Care for All Ages
We are experienced and equipped to care for patients of all ages – from newborns to adolescents to seniors.
Use of Latest Technology
We use the latest technology, including the use of videonystagmography — a series of tests that measure involuntary eye movements to diagnose specific balance or dizziness disorders.


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High Desert Collection (PCGS Set Registry)
Ron Guth: With Full Steps, the 1939-S Reverse of 1938 Nickel is approximately ten times as rare as the non-Full Step version. This does not necessarily make it an expensive coin, just that it makes it a little more difficult for a collector to find an example. The typical grade is MS65FS. None have been certified finer than MS66 by PCGS, and the finest example is a single PCGS MS66+FS.
© 1999-2018 Collectors Universe NASDAQ: CLCT


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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Comcast Corp. dates back to 1963, when businessman Ralph Roberts got into the cable TV business in its early days. He spent $500,000 for American Cable Systems, a company in Tupelo, Miss., that strung up cable to carry TV broadcasts to homes that couldn't get clear reception with antennas.
Later, the former New Yorker incorporated Comcast — named for "communications" and "broadcast" — closer to home in Pennsylvania, and expanded it by acquiring other cable TV providers. In 1990, Roberts' son, Brian, became president. He accelerated the company's expansion.
Comcast paid $47.5 billion for AT&T's cable division in 2002. Comcast now has 22 million subscribers in 39 states and Washington, D.C. Its services are available to just under half of the nation's households.
Under Brian Roberts, Comcast has not been content to be a mere distributor of programming. It has gained ownership of regional sports channels, the E! Entertainment network, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Philadelphia Flyers.
In 2004 Roberts made a dramatic stab at grabbing ownership of even more programming: He launched a $54 billion hostile bid for Walt Disney Co. Disney blocked it. Comcast's own shareholders didn't show much enthusiasm for the deal, either.
But Comcast succeeded in becoming an entertainment powerhouse when it bought a 51 percent stake in NBCUniversal from General Electric Co. in February 2011. A few months ago, Comcast appended NBC's peacock logo on top of its corporate name in a new logo of its own.
With Tuesday's deal, Comcast is gaining ownership of the rest, fulfilling Roberts' dream of owning both the cables that carry TV shows and movies and the studios that produce them.


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For this Thanksgiving pie, we decided to see what would happen if we transformed that classic treat of autumn the caramel apple into a pie. The result was a crazy good no-bake apple pie.
Its also totally versatile. We opted to top our pie with a blend of crumbled shortbread cookies, chopped toasted peanuts and mini chocolate chips. But feel free to cater to your crowd and top the pie with whatever you prefer to coat your caramel apples with. Just aim for about a total of about 1 cup of toppings.
This pie should be assembled just before serving. The apples can be cooked ahead of time. Then when you are ready for dessert, it will take just 15 minutes to finish the recipe and get it to the table.


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Manchester man charged with burglary, criminal threateningStaff report
October 31. 2013 10:07PM
MANCHESTER — At his arraignment on a burglary charge Thursday in Circuit Court-Manchester District Division, William Case denied breaking into his neighbor's apartment.
Case, 53, of 54 Blodget St., was also arraigned on a felony charge of criminal threatening and a misdemeanor of resisting arrest.
Case is accused of breaking into a woman's apartment Wednesday afternoon, moving around the apartment and shouting at her, frightening her. The woman, who told police she works at the New Hampshire State Hospital, said she's been trained how to handle people with mental illness and was able to persuade Case to leave her apartment. She then called police.
In court, Case was insistent. "I'm not breaking into anyone's house," he told Judge William Lyons. "I'm not taking anything out of anyone's house."
Intead, Case suggested, he is the victim. Case said he is being monitored constantly. He said everything he does is being recorded and monitored 24 hours a day, although no one has been able to find the recording equipment in his apartment. Case told the judge his downstairs neighbors should be investigated.
"I was accused of breaking in before this case," he told Lyons, referring to his arrest in August for breaking into an apartment at 52 Blodget St.
In that incident, a relative of the tenants caught Case leaving the apartment and restrained him until police arrived, police said. The residents told police that nothing was removed from their unit. The August burglary charge has been bound over to Hillsborough County Superior Court.According to court documents, the owner of 54 Blodget St. told police Case has lived there for a couple of years and has recently been yelling at other tenants and causing damage.
The documents also say that when police arrived, they found the door knob to the victim's apartment broken, the door broken and the latch broken out of the solid wood door.
When an officer knocked on Case's door and sought to speak with him, the documents say Case refused to open the door, saying: "I am property of the federal government. Go away."
Told he needed to make a statement, Case used an obscenity and said that was his statement. He told the officer to leave and said he had knives and police would have to shoot him to get him out.
After police backup arrived, Case was spotted at the door to a fire escape, holding a 12-inch knife and a meat cleaver. According to the documents, he still refused to come out of the apartment and threatened to "murder" the officers. Police said Case struck the door with the cleaver, causing the tip to become stuck.
The documents show Case finally opened the door slightly. When an officer determined Case had nothing in his hands, police entered and took Case into custody.
Police prosecutors withdrew their motion for preventive detention and requested $25,000 cash/surety bail.
Lyons set bail at $20,000 cash/surety, with a probable cause hearing on the felonies set for Nov. 12 and trial on the misdemeanor set for Dec. 3.


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Can You Guess the Celebrity Cleavage?
If you don't get this right off the bat, then you have our sympathies, because the owner of this set of dress-bustin' puppies is one of the hottest girls around.
At only 21 years of age, this model is one of the most sought-after hotties in the world. One of the most important things to happen to her was appearing in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2011 and becoming Rookie of the Year. The rest, as they are oft to say, is history.
Since then, she's gone on to appear in other mags and even became sort of a viral hit once a video of her dancing to Cat Daddy spread across the Internet.
Most recently, she was named Model of the Year at the 10th annual Style Awards in Sept. 2013.
Can you guess who this incredibly hot babe is?


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As a long-standing member of PASS who lives in the greater Seattle area and has attended about nine of these Summits, let me start out by saying how GREAT it was to go to Charlotte, North Carolina this year. Many of the new folks that I met at the Summit this year, upon hearing that I was from Seattle, commented that I must have been disappointed to have to travel to the Summit this year after 5 years in a row in Seattle. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I cheered loudly when I first heard that the 2013 Summit would be outside Seattle. I have many fond memories of trips to Orlando, Florida and Grapevine, Texas for past Summits (missed out on Denver, unfortunately). And there is a funny dynamic that takes place when the conference is local. If you do as I have done the last several years and saved my company money by not getting a hotel, but rather just commuting from home, then both family and coworkers tend to act like you're just on a normal schedule. For example, I have a young family, and my wife and kids really wanted to still see me come home "after work", but there are a whole lot of after-hours activities, social events, and great food to be enjoyed at the Summit each year. Even more so if you really capitalize on the opportunities to meet face-to-face with people you either met at previous summits or have spoken to or heard of, from Twitter, blogs, and forums. Then there is also the lovely commuting in Seattle traffic from neighboring cities rather than the convenience of just walking across the street from your hotel. So I'm just saying, there are really nice aspects of having the conference 2500 miles away.
Beyond that, the training was fantastic as usual. The SQL Server community has many outstanding presenters and experts with deep knowledge of the tools who are extremely willing to share all of that with anyone who wants to listen. The opening video with PASS President Bill Graziano in a NASCAR race turned dream sequence was very well done, and the keynotes, as usual, were great. This year I was particularly impressed with how well attended were the Professional Development sessions. Not too many years ago, those were very sparsely attended, but this year, the two that I attended were standing-room only, and these were not tiny rooms. I would say this is a testament to both the maturity of the attendees realizing how important these topics are to career success, as well as to the ever-increasing skills of the presenters and the program committee for selecting speakers and topics that resonated with people. If, as is usually the case, you were not able to get to every session that you wanted to because there were just too darn many good ones, I encourage you to get the recordings.
Overall, it was a great time as these events always are. It was wonderful to see old friends and make new ones, and the people of Charlotte did an awesome job hosting the event and letting their hospitality shine (extra kudos to SQLSentry for all they did with the shuttle, maps, and other event sponsorships). We're back in Seattle next year (it is a release year, after all) but I would say that with the success of this year's event, I strongly encourage the Board and PASS HQ to firmly reestablish the location rotation schedule. I'll even go so far as to suggest standardizing on an alternating Seattle – Charlotte schedule, or something like that.
If you missed the Summit this year, start saving now, and register early, so you can join us!
Watching Shark Tank tonight and the first presentation was by Mango Mango Preserves and it highlighted an interesting contrast in business trends today and how to capitalize on opportunities. <Spoiler Alert> Even though every one of the sharks was raving about the product samples they tried, with two of them going for second and third servings, none of them made a deal to invest in the company.</Spoiler> In fact, one of the sharks, Kevin O'Leary, kept ripping into the owners with statements to the effect that he thinks they are headed over a financial cliff because he felt their costs were way out of line and would be their downfall if they didn't take action to radically cut costs. He said that he had previously owned a jams and jellies business and knew the cost ratios that you had to have to make it work. I don't doubt he knows exactly what he's talking about and is 100% accurate…for doing business his way, which I'll call "Go Big". But there's a whole other way to do business today that would be ideal for these ladies to pursue.
As I understand it, based on his level of success in various businesses and the fact that he is even in a position to be investing in other companies, Kevin's approach is to go mass market (Go Big) and make hundreds of millions of dollars in sales (or something along that scale) while squeezing out every ounce of cost that you can to produce an acceptable margin. But there is a very different way of making a very successful business these days, which is all about building a passionate and loyal community of customers that are rooting for your success and even actively trying to help you succeed by promoting your product or company (Go Special). This capitalizes on the power of social media, niche marketing, and The Long Tail. One of the most prolific writers about capitalizing on this trend is Seth Godin, and I hope that the founders of Mango Mango pick up a couple of his books (probably Purple Cow and Tribes would be good starts) or at least read his blog. I think the adoration expressed by all of the sharks for the product is the biggest hint that they have a remarkable product and that they are perfect for this type of business approach.
Both are completely valid business models, and it may certainly be that the scale at which Kevin O'Leary wants to conduct business where he invests his money is well beyond the long tail, but that doesn't mean that there is not still a lot of money to be made there. I wish them the best of luck with their endeavors!
Today, Monday, was the first day of the PASS Summit Preconference training events, but instead I spent the day at the free SQL in the City event put on by Red Gate. For me this was not a financial decision (pre-con sessions cost extra above the general Summit registration) but rather a matter of interest. I had already included money for pre-cons in this year's training budget, but none of them really stood out to me, so even if the Red-Gate event were not going on at the same time, I probably would not have gone to any pre-cons this year. However, the topics being presented at the SQL in the City event were of great interest to me. There promised to be good information on Continuous Integration and automated deployment of database changes, which lately has been a real hot topic at my work. And indeed, Red-Gate announced the release of a new tool (still in Early Access Program…a.k.a. Beta) which is called the Deployment Manager. Since we are in the middle of a TFS implementation project, it will be interesting to see how this plays out and compares to what we put together with the automated builds in TFS. But, as I understand it, the primary focus of Deployment Manager is not to be the Build process (Red Gate uses JetBrains' Team City for that in their shop) but rather to aid in the deployment of those build packages, as well as providing easy rollback and a good visualization of which versions of software are in which environments. It looks promising and I've already downloaded the installer package to play with it later.
Overall, I was quite impressed with the SQL in the City event. Having heard many current and past members of the PASS Board of Directors describe the challenges of putting on a large conference, and the growing pains that the PASS Summit has gone through, I am even more impressed that the Red Gate event ran as smoothly as it did. And it is quite impressive the amount of money that Red Gate must have spent given that this was a no-charge event to attend, they had a very nice hot lunch, and the after-event drinks celebration. Well done, folks!
Of course it was great to hear from a variety of speakers. Today I listened to some folks from Red Gate like Grant Fritchey (blog | @GFritchey) and David Atkinson (Product Manager for SQL Source Control and now the Deployment Manager tool set); and also Brent Ozar (blog | @BrentO) and Buck Woody (blog | @BuckWoody). By the way, if you have never seen either Brent or Buck speak, you really should. Different styles, but both are very entertaining and educational at the same time. I love Buck's sense of humor (here's a tip…don't be late to Buck's session or you'll become part of the presentation) and I praise Brent's slides. Brent's style very much reminds me of that espoused by Garr Reynolds on his Presentation Zen blog (and book) and I am impressed that he can make a technical presentation so engaging.
It was a great day, a great way to kick off the week, and I am excited to get into the full Summit!
If you're a regular reader of this blog, you know that I have written several posts about how important I think it is to protect your source code, to version it, and in particular, all the aspects I like about Red Gate's SQL Source Control product. But for a moment, let's take a break from my writing and I want to hear your stories. What nightmare situation are you in, or can you imagine, where source control for your database would save the world. Or maybe your life is not so dramatic, but you do see a challenge that, if you just had a good tool like SQL Source Control, it would go much smoother. What's your pain? You have read my writings, now tell me your story, and be in the running for a free copy of SQL Source Control from Red Gate.
Yes, that's right. Although I am just a fan of Red Gate, they have authorized me to give out a handful of licenses to blog readers who are willing to share their story by posting a comment to this blog entry. Simply add your comment below (be sure to include a valid email address in the box that asks for that) to be entered. The contest starts immediately and over the next few days, the best stories will win.
Brian Moran (blog | Twitter) did a great presentation today for the PASS Professional Development Virtual Chapter on The Art of Questions. One of the points that Brian made was that there are good questions and bad (or at least not-as-good) questions. Good questions tend to open-up the conversation and engender positive reactions (perhaps even trust and respect) between the participants; and bad questions tend to close-down a conversation either through the narrow list of possible responses (e.g. strictly Yes/No) or through the negative reactions they can produce. And this explains why I so frequently had problems troubleshooting real-time problems with users in the past. I'll explain that in more detail below, but before we go on, let me recommend that you watch the recording of Brian's presentation to learn why the question Why is often problematic in the U.S. and yet we so often resort to it.
For a short portion (3 years) of my career, I taught basic computer skills and Office applications in an adult vocational school, and this gave me ample opportunity to do live troubleshooting of user challenges with computers. And like many people who ended up in computer related jobs, I also have had numerous times where I was called upon by less computer-savvy individuals to help them with some challenge they were having, whether it was part of my job or not. One of the things that I noticed, especially during my time as a teacher, was that when I was helping somebody, typically the first question I would ask them was, "What did you do?" This seemed to me like a good way to start my detective work trying to figure out what happened, what went wrong, how to fix it, and how to help the person avoid it again in the future. I always asked it in a polite tone of voice as I was just trying to gather the facts before diving in deeper. However; 99.999% of the time, I always got the same answer, "Nothing!" For a long time this frustrated me because (remember I'm in detective mode at that point) I knew it could not possibly be true. They HAD to have done SOMETHING…just tell me what were the last actions you took before this problem presented itself. But no, they always stuck with "Nothing". At which point, with frustration growing, and not a little bit of disdain for their lack of helpfulness, I would usually ask them to move aside while I took over their machine and got them out of whatever they had gotten themselves into. After a while I just grew used to the fact that this was the answer I would usually receive, but I always kept asking because for the .001% of the people who would actually tell me, I could then help them understand what went wrong and how to avoid it in the future.
Now, after hearing Brian's talk, I understand what the problem was. Even though I meant to just be in an information gathering mode, the words I was using, "What did YOU do?" have such a strong negative connotation that people would instinctively go into defense-mode and stop sharing information that might make them look bad. Many of them probably were not even consciously aware that they had gone on the defensive, but the self-preservation instinct, especially self-preservation of the ego, is so strong that people would end up there without even realizing it.
So, if "What did you do" is a bad question, what would have been better? Well, one suggestion that Brian makes in his talk is something along the lines of, "Can you tell me what led up to this?" or "what was happening on the computer right before this came up?" It's subtle, but the point is to take the focus off of the person and their behavior; instead depersonalizing it and talk about events from more of a 3rd-party observer point of view. With this approach, people will be more likely to talk about what the computer did and what they did in response to it without feeling the interrogation spotlight is on them. They are also more likely to mention other events that occurred around the same time that may or may not be related, but which could certainly help you troubleshoot a larger problem if it is not just user actions. And that is the ultimate goal of your asking the questions. So yes, it does matter how you ask the question; and there are such things as good questions and bad questions. Excellent topic Brian! Thanks for getting the thinking gears churning!
(Cross-posted to the Professional Development Virtual Chapter blog.)
For six years I have been an avid and outspoken fan and paying customer of SourceGear products…from Vault to Dragnet to Fortress and on to Vault Professional, but that is all changing now. Not the fan part, but the paying customer part. I'm still a huge fan. I think that SourceGear does a great job with their product and support has been fantastic when needed (which is not very often). I think that Eric Sink has done a fine job building a quality company and products, and I appreciate his contributions to the tech community through this blogging and books. I still think their products are high quality and do a fantastic job of what they do. But there's the rub…what they do is no longer enough for me.
As I have rebuilt our development team over the last couple of years, and we have begun to investigate Scrum and Kanban, I realize that I need more visibility into the progress of the team. I need better project management tools, and this is where Vault Professional lags behind several other tools. Granted, in the latest release (Vault 6.0) they added a nice time tracking feature, but I want more. (Note, I did contact SourceGear about my quest for more, but apparently, the rest of their customer base has not been clamoring for this and so they have not built it. Granted, I wasn't clamoring for it either until just recently, but unfortunately for SourceGear, I want it now and don't want to wait for them to build it into their system.)
Ironically, it was SourceGear themselves who started to turn me on to the possibilities of other tools. They built a limited integration with Axosoft OnTime which I read about several times on their support site (I used to regularly read and occasionally comment on their Support Forum). I decided to check out OnTime and was very impressed with the tool for work item tracking and project management (not to mention their great Scrum Master in 10 Minutes video). I fell in love with the capabilities of OnTime. Unfortunately, the integration with Vault for source control management was, as I mentioned, limited. I could have forfeited the integration between work items and source code, but there is too much benefit to linking check-ins to work items for me to give that up. So then I did what was previously unthinkable for me, I considered switching not just the work tracking tool, but also the source code management tool. This was really stepping outside my comfort zone because source code is Gold, and not to be trifled with. When you find a good weapon to protect your gold, stick with it.
I looked at Git and Tortoise SVN, but the integration methods for those was pretty rough compared to what I was used to. The recommended tool from Axosoft's point of view appeared to be RocketSVN, but I really wasn't sure I wanted to go the "flavor of Subversion" route. Then I started thinking about that other tool I liked back when I first chose to go with Vault, but couldn't afford: Team Foundation Server. And what do you know…Microsoft has not only radically improved it over that version from back in 2006, but they also came to their senses about how it should be licensed, and it is much more affordable now. So I started looking into the latest capabilities in the 2012 version, and I fell in love all over again.
I really went deep on checking out the tools. I watched numerous webcasts from Microsoft partners, went to a beta preview on Microsoft's campus, and watched a lot of Channel 9 videos on the new ALM features (oooh…shiny). Frankly, I was very impressed with the capabilities of the newest version, and figured this was probably our direction. As an interesting twist of fate, one of my employees crossed paths with an ALM Consultant from Northwest Cadence, a local Microsoft Partner, and one of the companies that produced several of the webcasts that I had been watching. So I gave Bryon a call and started grilling him to see if he really knew anything or was just another guy who couldn't find a job so he called himself a consultant. It turns out Bryon actually knows a lot, especially in an area that was becoming a frustration point for us: Branching strategies and automated builds (that's probably a whole separate blog entry). As we talked, Bryon suggested we look into doing a DTDPS (Developer Tools Deployment Planning Services) session with his company. This is a service that can be paid for by Microsoft Enterprise Agreement planning services credits or SA training benefits, and, again, coincidentally, we had several that were just about to expire, so I put them to good use.
The DTDPS sessions were great; and Bryon, Rick, and the rest of the folks at Northwest Cadence have been a pleasure to work with. We have just purchased a new server for our TFS rollout and are planning the steps and options right now. This is still a big project ahead of us to not only install and configure TFS, but also to load all of our source code (many different systems, not just one program) and transition to the new way of life with TFS, but I am convinced that it is the right move for my team at this point in time. We need the new capabilities that are in alignment with Scrum and Kanban methodologies in order to more efficiently manage all the different projects that we have going on at one time.
I would still wholeheartedly endorse SourceGear's products and Axosoft's OnTime for those whose needs are met by those tools, but for me and my team, I think that TFS is the right fit, and I am looking forward to the change.
In the last couple of years I have conducted a lot of interviews for application and database developers for my company, and I can tell you that the little things can mean a lot. Here are a few quick tips to help you make a good first impression.
A year ago I gave you my #1 interview tip: Do some basic research! And a year later, I am still stunned by how few technical people do the most basic of research. I can only guess that it is because it is so engrained in our psyche that technical competence is everything (see How to Manage Technical Employees for more on this idea) that we forget or ignore the importance of soft skills and the art of the interview. Or maybe it is because we have heard the stories of the uber-geek who has zero personal skills but still makes a fortune working for Microsoft. Well, here's another quick tip: You're probably not as good as he is; and a large number of companies actually run small to medium sized teams and can't really afford to have the social outcast in the group. In a small team, everyone has to get along well, and that's an important part of what I'm evaluating during the interview process.
My #2 tip is to act alive! I typically conduct screening interviews by phone before I bring someone in for an in-person. I don't care how laid-back you are or if you have a "quiet personality", when we are talking, ACT like you are happy I called and you are interested in getting the job. If you sound like you are bored-to-death and that you would be perfectly happy to never work again, I am perfectly happy to help you attain that goal, and I'll move on to the next candidate.
And closely related to #2, perhaps we'll call it #2.1 is this tip: When I call you on the phone for the interview, don't answer your phone by just saying, "Hello". You know that the odds are about 999-to-1 that it is me calling for the interview because we have specifically arranged this time slot for the call. And you can see on the caller ID that it is not one of your buddies calling, so identify yourself. Don't make me question whether I dialed the right number. Answer your phone with a, "Hello, this is ___<your full name preferred, but at least your first name>___.". And when I say, "Hi, <your name>, this is Mark from <my company>" it would be really nice to hear you say, "Hi, Mark, I have been expecting your call." This sets the perfect tone for our conversation. I know I have the right person; you are professional enough and interested enough in the job or contract to remember your appointments; and now we can move on to a little intro segment and get on with the reason for our call.
As crazy as it sounds, I've actually had phone interviews that went like this:
<Ring…> You: "Hello?" Me: "Hi, this is Mark from _______" You: "Yeah?" Me: "Is this <your name>?" You: "Yeah." Me: "I had this time in my calendar for us to talk…were you expecting my call?" You: "Oh, yeah, sure…"
<Ring…> You: "Hello?" Me: "Hi, this is Mark from _______" You: "Yeah?" Me: "Is this <your name>?" You: "Yeah." Me: "I had this time in my calendar for us to talk…were you expecting my call?" You: "Oh, yeah, sure…"
I used to be nice and would try to go ahead with the interview even after this bad start, thinking I was giving the candidate the benefit of the doubt…a second chance…but more often than not it was a struggle and 10 minutes into what was supposed to be a 45-minute call, I'm looking for a way to hang up without being rude myself. It never worked out. I never brought that person in for an in-person interview, much less offered them the job or contract. Who knows, maybe they were some sort of wunderkind that we missed out on. What I know is that they would never fit in with the rest of the team, and around here that is absolutely critical.
So, in conclusion… Act alive! Identify yourself! And do at least the very basic of research.
In my current position as Software Engineering Manager I have been through a lot of ups and downs with staffing, ranging from laying-off everyone who was on my team as we went through the great economic downturn in 2007-2008, to numerous rounds of interviewing and hiring contractors, full-time employees, and converting some contractors to employee status. I have not yet blogged much about my experiences, but I plan to do that more in the next few months. But before I do that, let me point you to a great article that somebody else wrote on The Unspoken Truth About Managing Geeks that really hits the target. If you are a non-technical person who manages technical employees, you definitely have to read that article. And if you are a technical person who has been promoted into management, this article can really help you do your job and communicate up the line of command about your team. When you move into management with all the new and different demands put on you, it is easy to forget how things work in the tech subculture, and to lose touch with your team. This article will help you remember what's going on behind the scenes and perhaps explain why people who used to get along great no longer are, or why things seem to have changed since your promotion.
I have to give credit to Andy Leonard (blog | twitter) for helping me find that article. I have been reading his series of ramble-rants on managing tech teams, and the above article is linked in the first rant in the series, entitled Goodwill, Negative and Positive. I have read a handful of his entries in this series and so far I pretty much agree with everything he has said, so of course I would encourage you to read through that series, too.
"SELECT *" isn't just hazardous to performance, it can actually return blatantly wrong information.
There are a number of blog posts and articles out there that actively discourage the use of the SELECT * FROM …syntax. The two most common explanations that I have seen are:
And if you use SELECT * in the definition of a view, you will run into a variation of the future-proof problem mentioned above. One of the guys on my team, Mike Byther, ran across this in a project we were doing, but fortunately he caught it while we were still in development. I asked him to put together a test to prove that this was related to the use of SELECT * and not some other anomaly. I'll walk you through the test script so you can see for yourself what happens.
We are going to create a table and two views that are based on that table, one of them uses SELECT * and the other explicitly lists the column names. The script to create these objects is listed below.
IF OBJECT_ID('testtab') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE testtabgoIF OBJECT_ID('testtab_vw') IS NOT NULL DROP VIEW testtab_vwgo IF OBJECT_ID('testtab_vw_named') IS NOT NULL DROP VIEW testtab_vw_namedgo CREATE TABLE testtab (col1 NVARCHAR(5) null, col2 NVARCHAR(5) null)INSERT INTO testtab(col1, col2)VALUES ('A','B'), ('A','B')GOCREATE VIEW testtab_vw AS SELECT * FROM testtabGOCREATE VIEW testtab_vw_named AS SELECT col1, col2 FROM testtabgo
Now, to prove that the two views currently return equivalent results, select from them.
SELECT 'star', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vwSELECT 'named', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vw_named
OK, so far, so good. Now, what happens if someone makes a change to the definition of the underlying table, and that change results in a new column being inserted between the two existing columns? (Side note, I normally prefer to append new columns to the end of the table definition, but some people like to keep their columns alphabetized, and for clarity for later people reviewing the schema, it may make sense to group certain columns together. Whatever the reason, it sometimes happens, and you need to protect yourself and your code from the repercussions.)
DROP TABLE testtabgoCREATE TABLE testtab (col1 NVARCHAR(5) null, col3 NVARCHAR(5) NULL, col2 NVARCHAR(5) null)INSERT INTO testtab(col1, col3, col2)VALUES ('A','C','B'), ('A','C','B')goSELECT 'star', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vwSELECT 'named', col1, col2 FROM testtab_vw_named
I would have expected that the view using SELECT * in its definition would essentially pass-through the column name and still retrieve the correct data, but that is not what happens. When you run our two select statements again, you see that the View that is based on SELECT * actually retrieves the data based on the ordinal position of the columns at the time that the view was created. Sure, one work-around is to recreate the View, but you can't really count on other developers to know the dependencies you have built-in, and they won't necessarily recreate the view when they refactor the table.
I am sure that there are reasons and justifications for why Views behave this way, but I find it particularly disturbing that you can have code asking for col2, but actually be receiving data from col3. By the way, for the record, this entire scenario and accompanying test script apply to SQL Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1.
So, let the developer beware…know what assumptions are in effect around your code, and keep on discouraging people from using SELECT * syntax in anything but the simplest of ad-hoc queries.
And of course, let's clean up after ourselves. To eliminate the database objects created during this test, run the following commands.
DROP TABLE testtabDROP VIEW testtab_vwDROP VIEW testtab_vw_named
So how do the new SQL Server Developer Tools (previously code-named Juneau) stack up against SQL Source Control? Read on to find out.
At the PASS Community Summit a couple of weeks ago, it was announced that the previously code-named Juneau software would be released under the name of SQL Server Developer Tools with the release of SQL Server 2012. This replacement for Database Projects in Visual Studio (also known in a former life as Data Dude) has some great new features. I won't attempt to describe them all here, but I will applaud Microsoft for making major improvements. One of my favorite changes is the way database elements are broken down. Previously every little thing was in its own file. For example, indexes were each in their own file. I always hated that. Now, SSDT uses a pattern similar to Red-Gate's and puts the indexes and keys into the same file as the overall table definition.
Of course there are really cool features to keep your database model in sync with the actual source scripts, and the rename refactoring feature is now touted as being more than just a search and replace, but rather a "semantic-aware" search and replace. Funny, it reminds me of SQL Prompt's Smart Rename feature. But I'm not writing this just to criticize Microsoft and argue that they are late to the party with this feature set. Instead, I do see it as a viable alternative for folks who want all of their source code to be version controlled, but there are a couple of key trade-offs that you need to know about when you choose which tool set to use.
Both tool sets integrate with a wide variety of source control systems including the most popular: Subversion, GIT, Vault, and Team Foundation Server. Both tools have integrated functionality to produce objects to upgrade your target database when you are ready (DACPACs in SSDT, integration with SQL Compare for SQL Source Control). If you regularly live in Visual Studio or the Business Intelligence Development Studio (BIDS) then SSDT will likely be comfortable for you. Like BIDS, SSDT is a Visual Studio Project Type that comes with SQL Server, and if you don't already have Visual Studio installed, it will install the shell for you. If you already have Visual Studio 2010 installed, then it will just add this as an available project type. On the other hand, if you regularly live in SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) then you will really enjoy the SQL Source Control integration from within SSMS. Both tool sets store their database model in script files. In SSDT, these are on your file system like other source files; in SQL Source Control, these are stored in the folder structure in your source control system, and you can always GET them to your file system if you want to browse them directly.
For me, the key differentiating factors are 1) a single, unified check-in, and 2) migration scripts. How you value those two features will likely make your decision for you.
If you do a continuous-integration (CI) style of development that triggers an automated build with unit testing on every check-in of source code, and you use Visual Studio for the rest of your development, then you will want to really consider SSDT. Because it is just another project in Visual Studio, it can be added to your existing Solution, and you can then do a complete, or unified single check-in of all changes whether they are application or database changes. This is simply not possible with SQL Source Control because it is in a different development tool (SSMS instead of Visual Studio) and there is no way to do one unified check-in between the two. You CAN do really fast back-to-back check-ins, but there is the possibility that the automated build that is triggered from the first check-in will cause your unit tests to fail and the CI tool to report that you broke the build. Of course, the automated build that is triggered from the second check-in which contains the "other half" of your changes should pass and so the amount of time that the build was broken may be very, very short, but if that is very, very important to you, then SQL Source Control just won't work; you'll have to use SSDT.
If you work on a mature system, or on a not-so-mature but also not-so-well-designed system, where you want to refactor the database schema as you go along, but you can't have data suddenly disappearing from your target system, then you'll probably want to go with SQL Source Control. As I wrote previously, there are a number of changes which you can make to your database that the comparison tools (both from Microsoft and Red Gate) simply cannot handle without the possibility (or probability) of data loss. Currently, SSDT only offers you the ability to inject PRE and POST custom deployment scripts. There is no way to insert your own script in the middle to override the default behavior of the tool. In version 3.0 of SQL Source Control (Early Access version now available) you have that ability to create your own custom migration script to take the place of the commands that the tool would have done, and ensure the preservation of your data. Or, even if the default tool behavior would have worked, but you simply know a better way then you can take control and do things your way instead of theirs.
In the environment I work in, our automated builds are not triggered off of check-ins, but off of the clock (currently once per night) and so there is no point at which the automated build and unit tests will be triggered without having both sides of the development effort already checked-in. Therefore having a unified check-in, while handy, is not critical for us. As for migration scripts, these are critically important to us. We do a lot of new development on systems that have already been in production for years, and it is not uncommon for us to need to do a refactoring of the database. Because of the maturity of the existing system, that often involves data migrations or other additional SQL tasks that the comparison tools just can't detect on their own. Therefore, the ability to create a custom migration script to override the tool's default behavior is very important to us. And so, you can see why we will continue to use Red Gate SQL Source Control for the foreseeable future.
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Nov 23, 2008 at 3:56 am
hey man that truck u got in the mud looks like fun
Jun 10, 2008 at 7:57 pm
nice gitter dirty at all ?
May 31, 2008 at 6:04 am
Very Nice choice of Trucks and you know how to use them!!! No pavement pounders here!!! Check my CJ when you get a chance.
Welcome to the site!!!
Welcome to the site!!!