Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
whispered warnings
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All is fleeting, foot prints in the dust of eternity. Water will always win, and the accomplishments of an age of miracles will someday melt away into rust and sand. Like some ancient mariner, with his hands frozen to the wheel of a sinking ship and lost in tempest, so too does your humble narrator resist this and other truths of the world.
Welcome and nepenthe are found only amongst the tomb legions, so off to the polyandrion scuttle I.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A fairly early monument, by Calvary standards, is the 1858 obelisk and accompanying freestanding sculpture of the Connell monument.
It dominates in a prominent section of the great cemetery, occupying a position of prestige and the monument is evidentiary of a family possessed of certain material wealth and standing in the pre civil war era of 19th century New York City.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
This was the age when Tammany was born, and the teeming masses of Europe were arriving in daily tides to lower Manhattan. The City was bursting at its seams, and the inequality of wealthy and poor was never as wide as it was then. This is a New York that let pigs loose in the street to eat up the garbage, in which plumbing seldom extended beyond the ground floor, and in which children slept five to a bed just to stay warm. It was the time of the B’hoy and the mob.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Connell family has been difficult to track down, despite their obvious wealth and influence. Evidence of a Thomas M Connell, a “Commissioner of Deeds” during the early stages of the Tammany era who was forced from office might be one of the fellows who is buried here, but the obscured lens of the historical record makes this speculation at best.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Glaring and obvious to most, but always startling to me, is the manner in which important or at least famous members of the City’s upper crust just drift away. At the time of the Connell family’s residency in NY society, they were likely familiar and oft spoken of members of the community, either famous or infamous.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
In the world suffered by most in the 19th century, anybody who could afford to erect a thirty foot marble obelisk and surround it with free standing sculptures in Calvary Cemetery was clearly well off. Consider also, the societal standing and respect needed for Church officials to allow such a grandiose monument to be erected here.
Calvary is considered to be part of the altar of St. Patrick’s Cathedral by the Archdiocese, a holy of holies, and not a place to allow some “new money” bourgeois merchant to show off.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All else I can tell you of the woman who inspired this extravagant monument is of a singular nature.
Her name was Mary Frances Connell, who died on a Saturday- July 17- in 1858, and she was nineteen years old.
Over at NYTimes.com, a short obituary for Ms. Connell. Click here.
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 57
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Getting on the train is contingent upon it entering the station, and on this day, the MTA neglected to oblige their part in this social contract. After an interminable 35-40 minutes of waiting at the 23rd Ely or Court Square station, your humble narrator elected to walk instead. Upon arriving once more in the surface world, this sentinel greeted me at the corner of 21st street and 44th Drive. Its message is one of finding patience.
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.
inspiring and stupefying
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Longtime readers will no doubt recount stories of my endless complaining about the harsh climes of winter, its effulgent and preternatural darkness, and the limiting of photographic opportunities created during the 15-20 minutes of daylight we get during December and January here in a City which doth not sleep, but may forever lie dreaming. Saying that, when the light is good at this time of year, it is very good.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent trek across Western Queens, following the littoral edge of the borough, was cut short at the realization that sunset was approaching.
Your humble narrator is fully aware, more so than most, of what comes out only at night in Western Queens and made haste for Astoria so as to affix fresh wreaths of garlic, polished mirrors, and crucifixes to my doors and windows. Along the way, such sights presented themselves, that I grew distracted and began to lose track of the time.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I am legend, at least in my own mind, and there was little chance that one such as myself could endure long in the presence of that which sleeps by day and prefers instead the sodium lamp lit landscape. Better to batten down the hatches at base, lock down all port holes, and run silent during these long January nights of pregnant malignancy.
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.
ghastly stillness
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Whilst scuttling across Jackson Avenue in the venerable section of Long Island City recently, the ebb tide of traffic emerging from infinite Brooklyn carried a small vehicle which caught my eye. It was an Italian motor scooter, the perennially in fashion Vespa, but this one had a sidecar.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Your humble narrator has a soft spot in both heart and head concerning the subject of attaching sidecars to any sort of two wheeled transportation devices, as well as an acquired appreciation for the finer points of Italian vehicle design. I’ve never owned one, but were I to purchase such a conveyance, a sidecar for my little dog Zuzu would be part of the deal. I suppose Our Lady of the Pentacle could ride around in it too, but this desire is really built around seeing the dog in a leather aviators cap and goggles.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Practical transportation like this is commonplace in Europe and Asia, where streets are Medieval in size and scope, and the price of Petrol makes even the outrageous modern rate of $3-4 a gallon seem cheap. One of the things which future generations of Americans will never experience, and this may or may not be a bad thing, is cheap gasoline.
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.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 