Archive for the ‘Pickman’ Category
inquisitive and malignant
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whenever the weather has been tolerable by one so accursed as myself, efforts have been made to get out and wave the camera about. In the shot above, ongoing construction of new bulkheads at Whale Creek captured my interests. There will be quite a bit of activity along this section in the near future, as the NYC DEP requires that a new channel be dredged which will allow their sludge boats to transverse the section of Newtown Creek between the East River and the Whale Creek tributary.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
As part of the construction master plan for the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, the sludge tank at the East River will be decommissioned and the docking which currently feeds the after product of the plant to the sludge boats for further processing will be moved closer to their source on the Whale Creek tributary, which is just under a mile back from the East River. A new class of sludge boats is currently under construction, and will require a deeper draft than the Newtown Creek currently offers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One such as myself is excited by the prospect of dredging on the Newtown Creek, and the spectacular images such industry will present. Of course, I don’t live on the north side of Greenpoint, which will undoubtedly experience a less than admirable stench as the foul ichors which line the bed of the waterway are torn away from the bottom and exposed to both the air and to the burning thermonuclear eye of god itself.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
concrete reverberations
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
“The Tree fed by a Morbid Nutrition” at Calvary Cemetery, which has been observed as the site of varied occult activities in the past.
The postings “Triskadekaphobic Paranoia” and “Update on the Calvary Knots” discussed the tree and its locale in some detail. Most recently mentioned at this- your Newtown Pentacle in the fall of 2012- an odd altar was found and described in the post “embowered banks.”
It’s a lonely spot at a high elevation, a lost corner in the emerald devastations of Calvary.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The whole hurricane thing ate up most of November, and then the Festivus season was upon me, so I haven’t had a chance to come back and check on this squamous tree since just before Halloween.
Since I was already in Calvary on unrelated business, it was decided to swing by and see what might be amok.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This toppled stone could very easily be explained away as due to the high winds of Sandy, or the accidental nudge of a grounds keepers machinery. Large riding mowers are employed at the cemetery, although I’d be hard pressed to understand why they’d be mowing the lawn during those months when the ground cover is brown and dying away.
Notice that cord at the base of the crucifix, that this is one of the stones tied with “The Calvary Knots.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The tree fed by a morbid nutrition continues to be an interesting nexus of curious attentions. You never know what you’re going to find in Calvary Cemetery here in Queens, I always say.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
shared obeisances
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On this Maritime Sunday, witness the struggles of the Thomas D. Witte tug as it manages a barge into place on the lamentable Newtown Creek. That’s the City’s “Newtown Creek Dock”, tenanted by the mill of the titanic SimsMetal operation.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In a distant era, this locale was the home of the LIRR’s infamous Manure Dock, where a 30 foot high pile of the stuff would have awaited disposition to agricultural clients further east. Recycling, it seems, has a centuried history along the Newtown Creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The narrowness of the great canal creates a series of issues for tug and barge combinations along the Newtown Creek and always has. There used to be a specialist company, Newtown Creek Towing, which was located nearby the Vernon Avenue Bridge.
A hearty Maritime Sunday shout out to DonJon towing and the crew of the Thomas D. Witte is offered.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
Project Firebox 56
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Abused, perhaps it will find celebrity when Kaufman Astoria Studios takes possession of this street in Astoria which the movie studio has coveted.
Due to dwell on a demapped street, isolated from the surrounding grid, this noble firebox will soon sit within the security of the cinema industry, becoming part of some ubiquitous New York street scene in hundreds of police procedural dramas and hit Hollywood productions.
It waits, as it always has, for that day when it will be needed to summon aid for the needy, the helpless, the injured.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
licensed guide
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Visiting with the Alsops, your humble narrator finds fancy in the notion that he is sitting in a place which is theoretically unique upon this earth.
A Protestant graveyard which dates back to the days of the Dutch colonial decadence, The Alsop plot is entirely enveloped by the coils of First Calvary Cemetery, which is a Catholic institution. Modern minds forgot the fires of the Reformation, wherein our modern world of the west was forged, but such mingling of creeds still draws ire and derision from the faithful.
While in Calvary, and when the light is right, one makes an effort to photograph these centuried stone markers.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Lost in my pursuits, sudden realization that I wasn’t alone washed over. One of the famed Groundling Burrowers appeared. The Lagomorphs are famed as messengers between the underworld and our own, and often have I consulted with this oracular population that exists within Laurel Hill. No question burned in my mind, as before, and I wondered what it had come to tell me.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Stoic, the beast gave no indication.
It fixed me with an unblinking glassy stare. A blossom of terror unfolded in me, becoming a yawning maelstrom of chaos- of the sort described by Poe himself- which threatened to consume my very mind and plunge me into that dark blessing which is the ignorance engendered by madness.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Monstrous silence crushed down upon me, and this thing which had grown haughty and mature in some subterranean pocket of the cemetery continued to glare. The hidden paths known only to its kind, leading to unguessable sorts of ghoulish destinations and nitre choked cathedrals of sorrow below ground, carry these Groundling Burrowers into contact with that which cannot possibly exist down there and broad is their experience.
The beast twitched its ear to the east, and then I drossly noticed what it wanted me to see.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A stone monument, buried except for a small patch of its face. Had the Burrowers purposefully excavated a section, hoping it would be noticed by Grounds Staff or idle passerby?
The creature bounded off, disappearing into a thicket of grass following the fence which cordons off the Alsop ground from the larger cemetery surrounding it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The visible section of the exposed monument says Richard Alsop, aged 1 month.
The Alsops engaged in an annoying multigenerational habit- the naming all of their male children Richard or Thomas- which confuses me. According to the Alsop genealogy folks a Richard Alsop aged 1 month died and was buried here in an interval between seven year old Hannah and a four year old also named Richard- that would correspond to a period sometime between 1772 and 1777.
Thanks Mr. Rabbit, you Groundling Burrower you.
Also:
Remember that event in the fall which got cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy?
The “Up the Creek” Magic Lantern Show presented by the Obscura Society NYC is back on at Observatory.
Click here or the image below for more information and tickets.
The Newtown Pentacle 