Afternoon Baseball

"Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less. The vast majority of the people of this country live by the land, and carry its quality in their manners and opinions. We in the Atlantic states, by position, have been commercial, and have, as I said, imbibed easily a European culture." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Young American," Feb. 7, 1844.

An interesting picture, perhaps, of a Red-Blue state disjunction 161 years later. Or of the change in mining to a very impersonal endeavour, especially in oil. Or of the odd longing for Europe that's oh-so-metropolitan and New Yorker-ish. And I actually like reading that magazine; I'm just saying.
Most importantly, gorgeous prose. So jealous.