Reading Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote, reminds of that common girl that always appears in these New York based stories. That complicated mysterious girl that the narrator of the story is always curious about. She’s always preoccupied with her own secrets and either longs for a man by sleeping next to him on his bed for affection one day or wants to be alone and goes M.I.A  for weeks the next. I saw a similarity between the main character Holly Golightly and Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby. It seems like New York, always attracts people that don’t know what they want, are often emotionally detached and very selfish to their own needs, at least that’s what I got from this story. Alcohol also seemed to play a huge role in this story and quite frankly I can’t imagine a good New York story without it. Imagine, a sober New York? I liked Capote’s story and his version of that “psycho” mysterious New York girl who finds solace in a Tiffany’s jewelery store.

As I drew an end to Mason B. Williams City of Ambition, I was surprised to see La Guardia’s sudden shift in interest. He went from controlling every aspect of getting New York out of the Depression, to wanting to be part of the change in America’s foreign policy on a national level. I though being a part of a complex city would prepare him for the duties he wanted to pursue on a national level, but evidently that was untrue. La Guardia struggled to juggle his mayoral duties and his duties as the head of OCD during the war. His inner need to be a part of the war effort mixed with his emotions, got in the way and as a result led him to make poor judgements and decisions and showed a side of La Guardia people had never seen before. I have a small prediction as to why this may have happened. It’s because the attention and care needed for a city like New York and the attention and care needed for America as a whole was very different during this time. La Guardia, when attempting to handle both at once, couldn’t because he simply wasn’t prepared to assess both at the same time. I thought being a representative of a city with massive diversity would’ve helped him attack the issues that he faced on a national level but unfortunately it didn’t. In fact, it actually resulted to the downfall in his popularity in New York. This was reflected when he ran for mayor for a third term and when he couldn’t even run for a fourth term. However, this sudden change in popularity didn’t change his original goals because in the end he did make moves to assess public health insurance and housing post-war. All in all, it was interesting to see the obstacles that faced these native New Yorkers when it came to addressing both the Great Depression and WWII in the making of modern America and New York.

As we delve further into Williams’ book City of Ambition we begin to learn about the many different obstacles that faced FDR and La Guardia during the Great Depression, more specifically, when the New Deal came about during this time in American/New York history. When i learned about the New Deal in high school I got a brief overview about the many different institutions that were established during this time and how they worked to get America out of the Depression. I was surprised to learn, while reading, how much oppression there was to some of the programs enacted, more specifically the WPA. It seemed as though during this vulnerable time in history people should have kept their mouths shut and listened to the government since it was for their best interest, but there always has to be fight over power doesn’t there? I feel that since FDR and La Guardia were working so close together, and the fact that it was not a regular sight to see, (Republicans and Democrats working together) people felt threatened and then felt the need to enforce a strict line that divided the two parties even though they had similar agendas. This need for political parties to enforce these divisions is what, I believe, slowed down the progression of the US to getting out of the Depression.

The beginning of Mason B. Williams City of Ambition revolves around the rise of La Guardia and Roosevelt’s political prominence during the 1920-30’s. It was interesting to read how two men from totally different backgrounds found themselves fighting for a better government at the same time. Their childhood’s became the basis of what they focused there attention on when it came to reforming the government. Roosevelt’s passion for the environment at a young age led him to push for environmentally friendly hydroelectric power and the loss of his father to eating diseased meat led La Guardia to push for cleaner manufacturing in the food industry. These changes in history is what constitutes a standard in an advancing society and what helps us to grow. Being that New York is where anything and everything happens and from what I’ve read about the actions taken by La Guardia and Roosevelt, I wonder what our next wave of living standards will be. Of course we already have technology that continues to change our daily lives, but  who will be the next person to take their struggles and passion from childhood and change our  society in the unique way FDR and La Guardia have.

I really enjoyed Anzia Yezierska’s book Bread Givers. The storyline was so raw and real and I felt that the struggles presented in the story of immigrant women were true for every ethnicity during that time. Before beginning the actual story I read Alice Kessler Harris’ introduction, and one particular sentence that stood out to me was when Yezierska’s daughter was reminiscing about her mother and said: “It was not so much that she was a feminist…she was just herself.” I’m glad she said this because I don’t think we can simply label Yezierska as a feminist. The same goes for the main character in the book, Sara Smolinsky. In the book through her experiences and struggles, she took on everything and set mottos that she lived by. Don’t settle for less, be independent, etc. These beliefs were the products of her experiences and in the end she was who she was, and I realized how much I hate the word feminist. I feel like every woman who has fought for herself and paved the way for a better life were just being themselves, and doing what they had to do to become their own person. They were who they were and hate that they are labeled feminists. Anzia Yezierska is Anzia Yezierska. Yes, a woman going to college and getting a job was unheard of and women had to fight for that right so it constituted for a new movement, the feminist movement, but I don’t like it when the word is used in this day in age. It reminds me of a time when women weren’t treated as equals. It generalizes in a way that I feel doesn’t give enough credit to who these women actually were. They were ahead of their time, they weren’t fighting for women’s right because they knew they already had them.

Some of the things that the US prides itself on is its freedom and safety, and when I read the article “The Privatization of Risk” by Craig Calhoun I was given a totally different view on how our government’s public safety incentives have become. The fact that these public institutions are using society’s vulnerabilities to advance in their own political and economic agendas is not why we should have them in the first place. An interesting thing about this trend with public institutions turning private is the fact that it has become a global policy. That got me wondering to what type of conditions cause these governments to change from public to private institutions. In this case (the US) we see a modern well to do society that is largely made by, for and of the people with good intentions and all in all encourages advancement. On the surface we have our Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence which ensures our civil liberties but under the surface, we rely heavily on the government to keep us safe and with this dependence we fall in to a trap. The government sees a way to make use of these vulnerabilities by privatizing and making certain safeties exclusive to their own liking with hidden agendas. So after reading this article and today’s discussion in class I believe there is a trend to how a government starts to privatize risk. With an advancing society comes more freedom and with more freedom we need more safety, forcing us in to this endless cycle where we are given and then stripped away from our freedoms.

After reading “All the Nations Under Heaven”, I was surprised to learn about things in New York City that I had never known before. One being how difficult the Irish had it! I thought the Irish were considered white and didn’t really face any discrimination, but that was completely false in the 1800’s. They suffered from extreme poverty and racial discrimination because of how they lived and where they came from and had to fight to finally be able to live up to the American dream, something I feel every immigrant that comes to America goes through. I look up to the Germans because all though they did have a small advantage when migrating to New York they were able to succeed and keep their culture an important part of their lives. Whether it was through the several German newspapers they published or the contributions to New York culture they made through theater and other works of art. While reading I realized that when coming to America, more specifically New York, these different cultures were given freedom and opportunities that was unheard of from where they came from and as a result New York became a blank slate where new ideas were introduced and brought in to action and as a result led to it being the successful metropolis that it is.

While reading Christine Stansell’s take on the turn of a new century aka the bohemian culture in Greenwich Village, I’ve extrapolated a couple of things. First, the massive change in culture and appreciation of the arts in New York City as a whole when all of these different people were put together. It’s fascinating to see that when immigrants were compacted in to that one area in the Lower West Side of Manhattan, it made way for a greater appreciation of the arts, literature and, in a broader sense, the truths of having so many different cultures compacted in a small area. Second, this modernization eventually led to mini revolutions. Whether it was changing the role of women in to the “New Women”, where they ventured in to different routes to quench their thirst for new ideas and interests, or the changing role of men to better fit the needs of these “New Women”. After reading the evolution of Greenwich Village, and eventually New York City as a whole, I found myself wondering if there’s a specific formula for a city to become like New York. Sure we all know that there’s no place like New York City but, what if we were to concentrate the same amount of different cultures in, let’s say, a suburban area in Ohio. Would the result be somewhat similar? Of course, we can’t go back and implicate these changes to find out, but I believe that because New York was the area where an influx of immigrants landed in the 1890’s, it made way for tolerance and eventually acceptance of different ideas and opinions. These same ideas made there way out of the shabby cafes that they were discussed in and eventually were put in to action for change and led to modernization to better accommodate the growing bohemian culture that began to dominate the city. It is because of this diversity that New York has become one of the greatest cities in the world.