I gave myself an extended Labor Day holiday — I took Tuesday and Wednesday off from work this week.

I largely wasted Tuesday. I sat around all day until the late afternoon, when, in a panic, I decided I needed to do something fun. (Yes, I am aware of the contradiction.) So I went for a long walk along Riverside Drive, and then I came home and watched Anatomy of a Murder, which I’d TiVo’d. Intriguing movie about a murder trial. Cynical plot, smart acting, great jazz score. And it deals with very raw themes for 1959. Jimmy Stewart actually utters the phrase “sexual climax.” JIMMY STEWART. Sexual climax! In 1959! There’s also discussion of panties, intercourse, and semen. This movie was released before the MPAA ratings system, when the motion picture code was still in effect, and I don’t understand how it got past the code.

One really cool thing about the movie is that the actor who plays the judge was, in real life, the attorney who represented the Army during the Army-McCarthy hearings before Congress, and uttered the famous words, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Yesterday was better. I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I hadn’t been there in a couple of years and I had a wonderful time. It was my first time there since they renovated the Greek and Roman galleries last year. They’re fantastic. I spent almost 90 minutes in those galleries alone, and it was especially interesting because I’ve been learning Latin lately and reading about ancient Rome. I also saw an exhibit of works by 19th century British painter J.M.W. Turner, as well as the Jeff Koons exhibit on the roof garden, where I looked out at the treetops of Central Park. It was a glorious afternoon.

I love looking at ancient objects. History smacks you in the face with its realness. These are actual objects that actual human beings touched — more than 2,000 years ago! I will stare at a Greek urn, scrutinize a piece of ancient Roman jewelry behind glass, and think to myself: ancient Greeks and Romans left the sweat of their fingerprints on this very object. The actual atoms that make up this object have been stuck together — buried underground, perhaps, but still intact — for the entire history of Western civilization; empires have risen and fallen, wars have been bought, scientific revolutions have occurred, and this object has persisted. History is real! You can read about it and it can seem as distant and fictional as J.R.R. Tolkien, but no — it all really happened. There really were people 2,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago. It makes me feel small and insignificant — but at the same time I feel like I’m communing with them, these ancients across the centuries, these human beings who may as well be aliens.

It gives me shivers.

I just stumbled upon an article in the New York Times archives, from ten years ago, about the disappearance of the New York City accent.

Back in the 1960’s, Professor Labov, then at Columbia University, did one of the first studies to show that classic New Yorkese was linked to lower socioeconomic status. He figured that the correct use of the ”r” sound would be a good indicator of social position. In other words, the higher people’s social class, the more likely they would be to use the ”r” conventionally.

The professor went to three department stores — Saks, Macy’s and the now-defunct S. Klein — each catering to a different socioeconomic group, and asked employees for the location of a department he knew to be on the fourth floor. Sure enough, he soon discovered that that the clerks serving the more affluent shoppers in upscale Saks said ”fawth flaw” far less frequently than their peers at bargain-basement Klein’s, with Macy’s somewhere in the middle. A 1986 study using the same methodology (substituting the now-gone J. W. May’s for Klein’s) confirmed that the trend still existed, and it almost certainly continues today, Professor Labov said.