"[T]hey were on the 7 train…that goes out to Flushing, and a transit officer saw them filming the tracks on the line, and they professed not to be able to speak English and we were able to bring to the scene one of our Farsi-speaking officers, and they were questioned…ultimately, they were ejected from the country…persona non grata.” –NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, “Bonus Footage” The Third Jihad, produced by the Clarion Fund and screened to roughly 1500 members of the NYPD in 2010. 

"'A foreigner, dressed like an Arab, with a great bundle on his head, took two single thirds for Hull by the midnight express' [...] ‘Why were they not detained?’ ‘We had no authority to detain them, nor any reason.’” –from Richard Marsh’s 1897 novel, The Beetle.

"An accumulation of coarse sawdust around the base of infested trees…is also a sign of the presence of the Asian Longhorn Beetle…If you suspect you have an infestation of ALB, please collect an adult beetle in a jar, place the jar in the freezer, and immediately contact the Bureau of Forestry at 717-948-3941." –Lebanon County Preservation District “Tree Vitalize” Program.

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."