The Newtown Pentacle

Wednesday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One cannot describe how much I wish to puncture my sick room boredom and get out with the camera again. The foot is recovering, although it’s my ankle that got broken. The ghastly consequence of the ankle injury caused a significant amount of damage to the foot’s skinvelope, which felt like a burn for much of the last fifteen hundred and thirteen hours. The constancy of pain has fallen off as the injury and post surgical situation has healed, and my old mutant healing powers have resurfaced. When I was young, I healed like Wolverine. Not so much anymore.

I may get my balls busted mercilessly for it in the comments section occasionally, but it’s been a practice of mine to try and be radically honest about the various health issues I’ve experienced over the years while writing this periodical. 2012’s ‘lurk unseen’ was published while I was experiencing a short term back problem, for instance.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

One of the prime reasons why I got so involved with the Governmental and regulatory nitty gritty around Newtown Creek was to create access for the camera. I managed to get into places that nobody else – including the TV networks – could get close to. Over the years, I had to endure literal days of OSHA classes and training into get to some of these places, but you gotta do what you gotta do if you want the shot. Saying that, once you’re ‘CERT’d’ by one industrial entity, that’s good enough to satisfy insurance requirements for others. These shots were taken by a humble narrator wearing a vest, hard hat, and very uncomfortable steel toe boots. Nobody gets hurt, that’s the rule. Except for the boots, they hurt.

2015’s ‘brought up’ details a visit to the still under construction Kosciuszko Bridge project and shows various stages of the work. I’d mention that both ‘then’ Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, and former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, were also on this walk but not ‘officially’ so ‘no photos of them’ was requested as it would have become a ‘thing’ with the Governor’s office otherwise.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

It’s actually kind of amazing, all the stuff I’ve gotten to do, and especially so between about 2009 and 2020. Covid closed a bunch of doors, ones which never reopened. Separately from this sudden need to exploit the Pentacle archives, your humble narrator has been sorting through literally hundreds thousands of photos in pursuance of finally building a portfolio site based around these ‘prime’ years of mine. One thing that’s popped up during this process is that I’ve got a lot of dead friends, many of whom I used to do all this crazy stuff with.

Used to be, when Captain John Doswell called you up and asked if you’d be interested in riding on a boat to Albany, in January, with Bernie Ente onboard and Bill Chambers acting as skipper…

These archive posts are reaching into Newtown Pentacle’s backups, and are pulling posts that went public on this date, in their respective years, going back to 2009. This practice will continue until I’m back on both feet full time, and new photos and stories can be gathered. For anyone who hasn’t heard the news, I broke my left ankle at the end of September.

I capture a huge number of photos – under normal circumstances – while accomplishing my daily round, many of which are ‘odd balls’ that don’t necessarily fit the narrative of a post. Every now and again, I’ll pull a few of these shots together and run them together as an ‘odds and ends’ post – as in 2020’s ‘stagger back.’

Back tomorrow.

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Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.