Lovely article. It would appear that your author is not familiar with Ian Bartky’s Selling the True Time: Nineteenth-Century Timekeeping in America (Stanford University Press 2000). In it, she would find that the concept of counting down to an event had its origin in the telegraphic dissemination of time, which began with the Navy in the 19th century. The concept became a public event when the Navy installed a time ball on Manhattan in the early 20th century for the ships in New York Harbor. It connected that ball to the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C. To mark that event, it publicized a public event for New Year’s Eve with the idea that New Yorkers would know exactly when the new year began. I haven’t looked at the book for several years but I believe the year was 1906.

David Alan Grier

Thank you for publishing your recent essay by Stephen G. Bloom, detailing Jane Elliott’s brown-eye/blue-eye exercise (which he incorrectly referred to as an “experiment”). So many of Mr. Bloom’s observations proved how effective Ms. Elliott’s exercise was and continues to be.

In sharing how many people left the exercise feeling disturbed, violated, and confused, it revealed just how insidious racism is to people who experience it firsthand. The people attending her exercise might have felt picked on for a few hours, and have every right to feel upset.

However, the kindness, compassion, and empathy that Bloom is looking for should have come from those very people, at the very moment they realized that people of color, women, LGBT people, and other marginalized minorities go through that experience every single day, often for decades or a lifetime. They constantly feel ridiculed, falsely accused, and manipulated. Racism, sexism, and homophobia are an unbelievable breach of trust and obscene.

If those participants are, 30 years later, still only remembering their own pain and grievances, then it’s not likely that Ms. Elliot or any other educator can impart to them what it takes to generate sufficient empathy and compassion. That is not the fault of Ms. Elliott or her powerful exercise.

Steven Reeder

Because if you live in Texas,

… you don’t have to spend countless time looking at all those beautiful mountains, hills, and valleys across the state

… you can drive to the country’s best ski resorts in just two or three days

… the winter ice storms are ‘cool’ for taking walks

… you enjoy fabulous cheap Texas blended table wines

… the hot and humid summers are a great way to sweat weight off

… you get lower state income taxes which enables you to pay your property tax that is at a 2.5 times higher rate than California

… you save money since you only need to wear blue jeans, t-shirts, cowboy hats, and boots

… it’s a far shorter travel time to visit Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana

… you may get to enjoy a hurricane

… you live in a state that has a fast-increasing crime rate… and a quickly declining number of Texas police

… BUT you can protect yourself from criminals because of the Texas ‘Open Carry’ laws

… driving time to hate rallies is shorter… in fact, you’ll probably have them in your own home town

… far more restaurants serve the famous French delicacy: chicken-fried steak in country gravy

… you save money and keep the weight off since you can’t find many Michelin Star restaurants

Richard Wollack