Posts Tagged ‘Long Island City’
putrescent juice
– photo by Mitch Waxman
My long, indeed “Grand Walk”- a semi conscious amble whose path is revealed only by images found on my camera card sometime later- had carried me from Manhattan to the Grand Street Bridge. A revelation and totem of the political border of Queens and infinite Brooklyn, it would not be inappropriate to describe it as a former gateway to hell itself.
Not quite 100 years ago, the sky would have been black with the product of smokestacks, and every surface exposed to their fumes would be painted with a greasy residue of the worst kind of filth imaginable.
from Harper’s weekly, Volume 38, 1894- courtesy Google books
AN INSALUBRIOUS VALLEY.
The city of Brooklyn, having purged itself of the malodorous political institutions that were so long a blot upon its southern border, might well turn its attention to some nuisances of a more literally malodorous kind that flourish along its northern border, a detailed description of which will be found in another column of the Weekly’. It appears that in an early day the valley of Newtown Creek, which is the boundary between Kings and Queens counties, was selected by various manufacturers as an eligible site for the location of factories. The location was then far on the outskirts of the city, and no doubt quite unobjectionable. A great variety of institutions were set iu operation here, including those useful and necessary but unpleasant factories whose purpose it is to transform the animal refuse of a city into merchantable produce. The gases generated by these factories had an odor almost unendurable, as any one can testify who was accustomed to travel on the Long Island Railroad from the Thirty-fourth Street ferry in years gone by. But so long as railroad passengers were the only sufferers, nothing could be done to abate the nuisance, and there were for a long time no residents near to make complaint, as the growing city very naturally held back at a respectful distance from so undesirable a neighborhood.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
If one did not frequent the district, the smell would be overwhelming but the sense most offended would likely be the visual faculties. There are things which ordinary people should not see or know too much about. The customs and mores of the graveyard come to mind, and so does the imagery produced on the battlefield or on the inside of a slaughterhouse.
Amidst the farms of oil tanks and forests of chimneys, without gazing too deeply, one would notice the mounds of dead horses and dogs first- then, the tons of human shit would come into focus.
from The Sanitary Era, Volume 1, 1887, courtesy google books
Newtown Creek — No city in the Union has so foul a pest hole at its boundaries as Brooklyn. The sludge acid discharged from the works of the Standard Oil Company seems to possess an ominous potency for stirring up the sewage in the creek, and its black and thickened current seethes with bubbles of sulphuretted hydrogen. The shores, banked with this acid and with nameless filth, empoison the atmosphere at low water, while every rising tide seems to free a new supply of sludge. When to the oil industry is added the manufacture of fertilizers and a plenitude of pigs along Queens County shore, the sources of supply for a great nuisance or a grievous plague are discernible to all but official eyes and nostrils. Newtown Creek should be filled up, though not with sludge acid, and the nuisance makers removed to a distance. Our, Health Commissioner is authority for the statement that “You might as well try to fight the devil as the Standard Oil Company.”
– photo by Mitch Waxman
At this spot on the Newtown Creek, where the bone boilers and fat renderers rubbed shoulders with glue factories and manure manufacturers and acid factories, infernal mountains of organic waste materials were gathered. Necessary for the industrial pursuits of these corporate entities- the rail brought Manhattan and Brooklyn’s putrescent garbage, human waste, dead animals and anything else which once lived to them.
There was one company whose particular specialty was recovering useful chemicals from rotting cow and pig blood, produced in fantastic amounts by the armies of butchers staffing the slaughterhouses of New York and the abattoirs of Brooklyn.
No. 4—Grand Street Bridge—
The contract for the construction of this bridge was awarded to Bernard Rolf, on August 7, 1900, at an estimated cost of $173.379.90. The bridge should have been completed on October 21, 1901, but it was fourteen months later, December 26, 1902, before it could be used, and then for only part of the day; and it was not until February 5, 1903, that it was accepted and declared open for traffic.
The contractor presented claims for extra allowances, and a committee, consisting of the late Mr. C. C. Martin, Consulting Engineer; the then Deputy Commissioner, and the Engineer in Charge, reported a finding, which was accepted by the contractor and the City. The total cost of the bridge was $172,748.06.
Several important changes were found necessary in the operating machinery; New end wedges have been put in place and steel bearings have replaced certain cast-iron ones. One hand-turning gear has been installed. Stationary signal lamps, showing white and red, have been placed at the ends of the draw span. Hanging platforms have been erected at the ends of the draw span, and a platform built around the centre pier. These platforms have more than paid for themselves in the cost of repairs and erection. The railing has been painted, and the draw is working satisfactorily.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Maspeth, troubled motherland of Queens, lays claim to this corner of the Creeklands in modernity and when exiting the Grand Street Bridge onto Grand Avenue (it changes to Avenue as it enters Queens, transmogrifies into Broadway at the heart of historic Newtown at Queens Blvd., and loops into Astoria finally terminating nearby Hallets Cove at the East River) one can say one has been there, although the lovely hills and quaint homes by which one might normally distinguish Maspeth are not present here.
Heaps of fecal matter and rotting pestilence, along with storm clouds of buzzing insects, are mentioned in first hand accounts gathered over a multiple decade period regarding this area.
from Illustrated history of the borough of Queens, New York City, 1908 courtesy google books
The untold thousands who travel every year to and from the places of amusement on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean, or to and from the large race-tracks, ride along the anything but beautiful banks of Newtown Creek, and gain from them their impression of what the borough is. This is the first impression, and therefore the strongest, and it is difficult to dispel it, for the majority of people stick to a conviction once formed, and are loath to change it, even in the face of powerful arguments. Nobody likes to admit that he was wrong or mistaken in his judgment; it is rather human to defend a position once taken.even after one has begun to doubt its correctness. And it is no exaggeration to state that perhaps ninety per cent of all the people passing through Queens Borough know nothing of it except that it contains dismal swamps, railroad yards and factories distributing evil smells and ugly to the last degree.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Odd, the shot above and others not published indicate that my so called “Grand Walk” took an unexpected turn at this point, leaving Grand and turning North at Page Place. This is the first deviation from common street car and trolley routes which my dreaming gait carried me through.
I must have seen one of the odd cats which frequent or inhabit the area, a polydactyl line which has been mentioned in prior postings of this, your Newtown Pentacle.
from The City record, Volume 6, Part 4, 1878, courtesy google books
Newtown creek ior many years has been a source of nuisance. It receives the contents of several of the large sewers ot Brooklyn. From above Penny Bridge to the East river are factories of various descriptions, oil refiners, fat inciters, gut cleaners, distilleries, car stables, super-phosphate factories, ammonia works, varnish works, and last, but not least, immense piles of stable manure, stored for future shipment, the refuse from all of which runs into the creek, and polluting the waters to such an extent as to have killed all the fish. At low tide acres of land, covered to the depth of several inches with fat, the refuse of the oil-stills, are exposed. At high tide the oily portion of this refuse floats on the surface of the water, still giving forth its characteristic tarry odor. To add to this, many oil works, when the storage tanks are full, run their waste alkali and even their sludge-acid into the creek ; in the latter case giving rise to the well known sludge smell. During the visit of Drs. Chandler and Janeway, on the 14th inst., the material flowing from the drains at the Franklin Oil Works and at Pratt s Refinery was tested and found to be decided acid, affording proof that the sludgeacid was being discharged as above stated.
Frequently during the agitation of the oil with the oil of vitriol the covers of the agitating tanks are left open and the tfl-smefling fumes are allowed to escape into the air.
Near by are also melters boiling fat in open kettles, a method long since abandoned in New York. The stench from all these various operations is very offensive. There is a preference on the part of the manufacturers of fertilizers to manipulate the sludge-acid in the vicinity of the oil works, especially during hot weather, since it is asserted that if sludge-acid is diluted soon after its flow from the agitator, about twenty-five per cent, of it readily separates as tar, but if allowed to stand for forty eight hours in warm weather it becomes thick and ropy, the tar rises slowly and is removed with difficulty and only in small quantities. Moreover, transportation of the extra bulk of tar increases its cost to the consumer. On the other hand, as the acid is sold by yearly contract, as soon as the storage tanks are full, the refinery has no object In its further preservation and naturally allows the surplus to run into the creek.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Imagine the scene, a century past, in this place where the industrial revolution happened. Further, let us speculate whether the bone boilers and fat renderers would sell their services as “recycling” in our modern context with it’s sophisticate euphemism. See the smoking stacks atop the mills, smell the rich perfume offered by the offal docks, hear the machines and pumps grinding away, touch the cadaverous piles of rot, taste the world which was.
Who can guess, all there is, that might be buried down there?
from Annual report of the State Board of Health of New York, 1883, courtesy google books
Simon Steinfel’s rendering establishment, which is on Furman’s island in Newtown creek (and within the limits of Newtown), gives off very offensive emanations for a long distance in the course of the railway route. Great quantities of decomposing animal matters were found upon the premises in barrels and otherwise packed in readiness for rendering.
- Kirkman & Sons’ rendering establishment, near Steinfel’s, boil and render fat and scrap in open kettles.
- At John C. Muller & Co.’s bone-black factory, at the same place as above mentioned, imported and domestic bones are burned, after being boiled in open kettles to remove all fat. The bone-tar, one of the results of bone varnish, is mixed with soft coal and burned as fuel. It is very offensive.
- C. Meyer’s bone-black factory, at the same place and of essentially the same business, is very offensive. The odor is described by the inspectors, who are expert chemists, as being extremely pungent and sickening. They say: It is doubtful if this industry can be carried on without being offensive constantly. The drainage of all these works on Furman’s island, on Newtown creek, as here described, passes out through an open ditch into the creek.
- Henry Berau’s rendering establishment on Newtown creek has the contract for removing dead animals from Brooklyn. This place is tributary to that of Preston’s, already described. His business is exceedingly offensive, and too near the populous cities and their suburbs.
- These several places are sources of constant offensiveness to railway travelers, and few have any idea of the sources whence the stenches come.
- Brooklyn Excavating Co.’s dumping of night soil is carried on near the border of Brooklyn city-lines, between Grand street and North Second street, only 300 feet from the railroad track. The stench from the nuisance is exceedingly offensive.
- Benjamin Eosenzweig’s fat rendering near Newtown creek, near the railroads, is excessively offensive, the work being carried on from seven in the evening till five in the morning.
- G. W. Baker’s fertilizer factory, close by the railroad track, between Grand street and Metropolitan avenue, is excessively offensive. It manufactures rotten bone manure, tank sediment manure and neatsfoot oil.
A Free Newtown Creek Boat Tour
Forgive the break in narrative for a moment, Lords and Ladies, but I have something very cool to offer you today.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A free Newtown Creek Boat tour will be offered as part of the “City of Water Day” event on July 16th, and I’m hoping that those of you who were unable to afford or attend the May 21st “Hidden Harbor” tour can join us on a trip up the Newtown Creek.
I’m going to do half of the narration and lead the tour, and one of Newtown Creek Alliance’s environmental experts will be onboard to discuss the ongoing Superfund saga and the finer points of recent developments involving the Greenpoint Oil Spill settlements and other environmental issues.
This tour will not be going all the way to the heart of darkness at English Kills (as the May 21 Hidden Harbor tour did), as we are limited by time and schedule, but will definitely include DUPBO, DUGABO, DUKBO, and approach the 3.1 mile mark at the Grand Street Bridge (DUGSBO).
The comfortable NY Water Taxi vessel I’ve been assigned will be leaving at 12:15 (sharp) from, and returns at 1:45 PM to, Governor’s Island. Governors Island will be served by free ferry service that day, please check the City of Water Day site for details and scheduling.
this free tour fills up quickly, so don’t wait.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Additionally, I’ll be presenting a 30 minute version of my “Magic Lantern” show on the Creek afterwards as part of the “Water-Rama: A Symposium on Our Harbor” event. It’s scheduled for 3:30 PM on July 16th.
Explore the length and breadth of Newtown Creek, the troubled waterway which forms the border of Brooklyn and Queens, with photographer and Newtown Creek Alliance member Mitch Waxman. The modern conditions and history of the Newtown Creek and its tributaries will be revealed, and the startling possibilities offered by it’s renewal and revitalization during the Superfund era will be discussed.
Project Firebox 24
– photo by Mitch Waxman
On the corner of Vernon Avenue at 38th, in venerable Ravenswood, stands this soldier of the city.
Clearly overburdened by duty, task, and “what could happen”- it nevertheless stands a lonely vigil as the throbbing harmonics of Big Allis wash over and through it.
What sights has it known, here in the fortress neighborhood of western Queens, and what stories might it tell?
such a sight
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Apologies for the dire tone of today’s post, this is the sort of narrative which Our Lady of the Pentacle usually asks me to pass her the hemlock following recitation, but I’m in a mood.
Knowledge of what might occur or exist behind these stout walls in Ravenswood, and the dire truth of what it might be that they guard against is strictly forbidden. The very pavement which provides a pedestrian path alongside these sky flung ribbons of masonry is delineated with the property line of the facility. Private security guards patrol in merciless boredom, watching for the itinerant photographer who might stray too close to this line.
In an age of terror, curiosity is an esoteric and questionable trait.
from wikipedia
Esotericism or Esoterism signifies the holding of esoteric opinions or beliefs, that is, ideas preserved or understood by a small group or those specially initiated, or of rare or unusual interest. The term derives from the Greek ἐσωτερικός (esôterikos), a compound of ἔσω (esô): “within”, thus “pertaining to the more inward”, mystic. Its antonym is “exoteric”.
The term can also refer to the academic study of esoteric religious movements and philosophies, or more generally of alternative or marginalized religious movements or philosophies whose proponents distinguish their beliefs, practices, and experiences from mainstream institutionalized traditions.
Examples of esoteric religious movements and philosophies include Alchemy, Astrology, Anthroposophy, Christian mysticism, Magic, Mesmerism, Rosicrucianism, Swedenborgianism, Spiritualism, the Christian Theosophy of Jacob Böhme and his followers, and the theosophical currents associated with Helena Blavatsky and her followers. There are competing views regarding the common traits uniting these currents, not all of which involve “inwardness”, mystery, occultism or secrecy as a crucial trait.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Angry and pessimistic, your humble narrator fears not, simply because the cosmos manifests and organizes itself in wild chaotics which are beyond all ability to predict or control. Comfort is found in a simple credo of “there is no “then”, there is no “future”, there is only “now”.” Tomorrow might bring a megatsunami or asteroid hit, or a simple infection whose result resolves lethally.
If one was to consider all the possible distopian end states of our civilization with clear eyed rationalism, it would engender longing for a new dark age of blissful ignorance.
from wikipedia
This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or space flight technology. Possible means of annihilation include nuclear war, biological warfare or accidental contamination, nanotechnological catastrophe, ill-advised physics experiments, a badly programmed super-intelligence, or a Malthusian catastrophe after the deterioration of a planet’s ecosphere. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in mainstream scientific theorizing. Indeed, there are probabilistic arguments which suggest that human extinction may occur sooner rather than later. In 1966 Sagan and Shklovskii suggested that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales. Self-annihilation may also be viewed in terms of thermodynamics: insofar as life is an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, the “external transmission” or interstellar communicative phase may be the point at which the system becomes unstable and self-destructs.
From a Darwinian perspective, self-destruction would be a paradoxical outcome of evolutionary success. The evolutionary psychology that developed during the competition for scarce resources over the course of human evolution has left the species subject to aggressive, instinctual drives. These compel humanity to consume resources, extend longevity, and to reproduce—in part, the very motives that led to the development of technological society. It seems likely that intelligent extraterrestrial life would evolve in a similar fashion and thus face the same possibility of self-destruction. And yet, to provide a good answer to Fermi’s Question, self-destruction by technological species would have to be a near universal occurrence.
This argument does not require the civilization to entirely self-destruct, only to become once again non-technological. In other ways it could persist and even thrive according to evolutionary standards, which postulate producing offspring as the sole goal of life—not “progress”, be it in terms of technology or even intelligence.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Childishly, one attempts to explain away the inherited guilt of a thousand generations with the declaration of personal innocence as if some sort of absolution actually mattered. Fate is not malleable, and one born to be king will rule in luxury while those others born to labor will toil and sweat in Malthusian dross.
That thing which might exist at the summit of the sapphire megalith, which does not think or breathe but eternally hungers as it gazes down upon men, finds our antics both humorous and quite profitable.
from wikipedia
Predestination is the Divine foreordaining or foreknowledge of all that will happen; with regard to the salvation of some and not others. It has been particularly associated with the teachings of John Calvin. Predestination may sometimes be used to refer to other, materialistic, spiritualist, non-theistic or polytheistic ideas of determinism, destiny, fate, doom, or adrsta. Such beliefs or philosophical systems may hold that any outcome is finally determined by the complex interaction of multiple, possibly immanent, possibly impersonal, possibly equal forces, rather than the issue of a Creator’s conscious choice.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Civilizations under threat typically react to existential terror by crafting novel mythologies about Doomsday, populating their nightmares with demonic entity and barbarian horde. Vast sums are spent on throwing up city walls, procuring the services of night watch and city guard, and armoring vital infrastructure against the attentions of barbarian sappers. Paranoid imaginings, colored by the capability and abilities of the threatened culture, place god like powers in the hands of bogeymen. In our own age, it is supposed that the esoteric weaponry achieved by the vast industrial power of superstates can be cobbled together with grocery store items and incomplete scientific formulae downloaded from dubious sources.
As always, the true threat comes from within, and it is the product of isolated fear, paranoid loneliness, and economic doldrums. (If you believe in suitcase atomics, you know very little about nuclear weapons, and I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn that’s for sale)
from wikipedia
In Norse mythology, Ragnarök (Old Norse “final destiny of the gods”) is a series of future events, including a great battle foretold to ultimately result in the death of a number of major figures (including the gods Odin, Thor, Týr, Freyr, Heimdall, and Loki), the occurrence of various natural disasters, and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. Afterward, the world will resurface anew and fertile, the surviving and reborn gods will meet, and the world will be repopulated by two human survivors. Ragnarök is an important event in the Norse canon, and has been the subject of scholarly discourse and theory.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Race, ethnicity, and class have always been the fifth column in the American superstate- but a new and far more dangerous force now rages across the nation. Like scavengers biting at the heels of a wounded elephant, the demands of the quarterly profit report and the galvanizing competition of foreign nations has caused the financial industries of our nation to anatomize the American industrial base and render us a nation of waitresses and waiters.
Race and ethnicity are unimportant again, the only color anyone sees any more is green- whether it be rightist profiteering or amorphous leftist societal engineering.
from wikipedia
The terms ethnicity and ethnic group are derived from the Greek word ἔθνος ethnos, normally translated as “nation”. The terms refer currently to people thought to have common ancestry who share a distinctive culture.
Herodotus is the first who stated the main characteristics of ethnicity in the 5th century BCE, with his famous account of what defines Greek identity, where he lists kinship (Greek: ὅμαιμον – homaimon, “of the same blood”), language (Greek: ὁμόγλωσσον – homoglōsson, “speaking the same language”, cults and customs (Greek: ὁμότροπον – homotropon, “of the same habits or life”).
The term “ethnic” and related forms from the 14th through the middle of the 19th century CE were used in English in the meaning of “pagan, heathen”, as ethnikos (Greek: ἐθνικός, literally “national”) was used as the LXX translation of Hebrew goyim “the nations, non-Hebrews, non-Jews”.
The modern meaning emerged in the mid 19th century and expresses the notion of “a people” or “a nation”. The term ethnicity is of 20th century coinage, attested from the 1950s. The term nationality depending on context may either be used synonymously with ethnicity, or synonymously with citizenship (in a sovereign state).
The modern usage of “ethnic group” further came to reflect the different kinds of encounters industrialised states have had with external groups, such as immigrants and indigenous peoples; “ethnic” thus came to stand in opposition to “national”, to refer to people with distinct cultural identities who, through migration or conquest, had become subject to a state or “nation” with a different cultural mainstream. — with the first usage of the term ethnic group in 1935, and entering the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The risks of living in the scientific era are many. The long comfortable childhood of religious fervor and spiritual ecstasy enjoyed by mankind has at long last begun to give way to prosaic logic and motivated self interest. The vast ennui commented on by Sartre and others in the years following the 2nd phase of the 20th centuries “Thirty Years War”, a vague sense that the Hiroshima bomb signaled the death of God itself and ignited the spiritual longings for times gone by and gnostic interests which have come to be known as “New Age” is the rallying cry for the religious ecstatics who populate and color modern discourse.
The Wahabbi is not so different from the fundamentalist Christian or the Hasidic Jew in terms of clinging to orthodox familiarity in the hope of returning to some mythical age of holy splendor. They’re willing to take the air conditioning and cell phones, fly on intercontinental jets, and use the Internet- but are unwilling to swallow the truth that these manifest technologies represent. You can’t cherry pick scientific fact, and cafeteria empiricism is as unctuous to me as similar approaches to Catholicism or Jewry are to adherents of those belief systems.
Of course- they’ve got angels, I’ve got the Hydrogen bomb to believe in.
from wikipedia
Historian Jacques Barzun termed science “a faith as fanatical as any in history” and warned against the use of scientific thought to suppress considerations of meaning as integral to human existence. Many recent thinkers, such as Carolyn Merchant, Theodor Adorno and E. F. Schumacher considered that the 17th century scientific revolution shifted science from a focus on understanding nature, or wisdom, to a focus on manipulating nature, i.e. power, and that science’s emphasis on manipulating nature leads it inevitably to manipulate people, as well. Science’s focus on quantitative measures has led to critiques that it is unable to recognize important qualitative aspects of the world.
Philosopher of science Paul K Feyerabend advanced the idea of epistemological anarchism, which holds that there are no useful and exception-free methodological rules governing the progress of science or the growth of knowledge, and that the idea that science can or should operate according to universal and fixed rules is unrealistic, pernicious and detrimental to science itself. Feyerabend advocates treating science as an ideology alongside others such as religion, magic and mythology, and considers the dominance of science in society authoritarian and unjustified. He also contended (along with Imre Lakatos) that the demarcation problem of distinguishing science from pseudoscience on objective grounds is not possible and thus fatal to the notion of science running according to fixed, universal rules.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Such thoughts are the reason why the long walks with my camera are best performed alone, for these are the sort of things that occupy my thoughts while perambulating the concrete realities of western Queens and the larger Newtown Pentacle. Notions of self importance and aggrandizement fall by the wayside when one witnesses Lindethal’s bridge with it’s double cantilevers, or the ruins of the centuried terracotta house on Vernon. The shoulders of giants are what we stand upon, as we gaze suspiciously at each other.
Btw, I got scooped on the revelation of the exquisite and baroque details of the Terracotta House being revealed, check out sugarnthunder.com for their far more timely set of images and comments.
from wikipedia
The word religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system, but religion differs from private belief in that it has a public aspect. Most religions have organized behaviors, including clerical hierarchies, a definition of what constitutes adherence or membership, congregations of laity, regular meetings or services for the purposes of veneration of a deity or for prayer, holy places (either natural or architectural), and/or scriptures. The practice of a religion may also include sermons, commemoration of the activities of a god or gods, sacrifices, festivals, feasts, trance, initiations, funerary services, matrimonial services, meditation, music, art, dance, public service, or other aspects of human culture.
The development of religion has taken different forms in different cultures. Some religions place an emphasis on belief, while others emphasize practice. Some religions focus on the subjective experience of the religious individual, while others consider the activities of the religious community to be most important. Some religions claim to be universal, believing their laws and cosmology to be binding for everyone, while others are intended to be practiced only by a closely defined or localized group. In many places religion has been associated with public institutions such as education, hospitals, the family, government, and political hierarchies.
down interminably
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A recent walk through Ravenswood, which is an ancient neighborhood found on the industrial western coastline of Queens, left an impression that the place has been undergoing some sort of siege for an interminable period. High masonry walls with imposing fences and warnings of 24 hour video surveillance admonish the passerby. At the crown of every barrier or at the angled corners of buildings one observes the “devil’s rope” with its wired barbs and razor edges. Everywhere dogs slaver at the end of long chains, hungering for delight.
What happens around here at night, which has made such armoring necessary, one is forced to wonder.
from barbwiremuseum.com
THE INVENTION OF BARBED WIRE
Joseph F. Glidden of Dekalb, Illinois attended a county fair where he observed a demonstration of a wooden rail with sharp nails protruding along its sides, hanging inside a smooth wire fence. This inspired him to invent and patent a successful barbed wire in the form we recognize today. Glidden fashioned barbs on an improvised coffee bean grinder, placed them at intervals along a smooth wire, and twisted another wire around the first to hold the barbs in a fixed position.
THE BARBED WIRE BOOM
The advent of Glidden’s successful invention set off a creative frenzy that eventually produced over 570 barbed wire patents. It also set the stage for a three-year legal battle over the rights to these patents.
THE FATHER OF BARBED WIRE
When the legal battles were over, Joseph Glidden was declared the winner and the Father of Barbed Wire. The aftermath forced many companies to merge facilities or sell their patent rights to the large wire and steel companies.
ACCEPTING THE DEVIL’S ROPE
When livestock encountered barbed wire for the first time, it was usually a painful experience. The injuries provided sufficient reason for the public to protest its use. Religious groups called it “the work of the devil,” or “The Devil’s Rope” and demanded removal.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Take this snazzy little number, occupying a 2,500 square foot lot, the dwelling offers a princely 1,250 square feet of living space, 2 parking spots, and it’s historic.
It has a long history in Ravenswood- this structure was built all the way back in 1927, before Big Allis or the Roosevelt Island Bridge. When it went up, along with the rest of 9th street, this was the border of sanity and wholesomeness. Next stop after Ravenswood were the asylums and orphanages of Blackwell’s Island (now Roosevelt Island).
Futilely have I sought tales of escaped lunatics swimming here during escape attempts, but I’m certain that in 1927, the communal sounds of lament and madness would have been omnipresent.
from wikipedia
- 1637 – Dutch Governor Wouter Van Twiller first purchases the island, then known as Hog Island, from the Canarsie Indians
- 1666 – After the English defeat the Dutch, Captain John Manning seizes the island, which becomes known as Manning’s Island.
- 1686 – Manning’s son-in-law, Robert Blackwell, becomes the island’s new owner and namesake
- 1796 – Blackwell’s great-grandson Jacob Blackwell constructs the Blackwell House, the island’s oldest landmark, New York City’s sixth oldest house and one of the city’s few remaining examples of 18th-century architecture
- 1828 – the City of New York purchases the island for $32,000
- 1832 – The city erects a penitentiary on the island.
- 1839 – The New York City Lunatic Asylum opens, including the Octagon Tower, still standing. The Asylum, which was designed by Alexander Jackson Davis, at one point holds 1,700 inmates, twice its designed capacity.
- 1852 – A workhouse is built on the island to hold petty violators in 220 cells.
- 1856 – The Smallpox Hospital, designed by James Renwick Jr. opens; later, when it falls into disrepair, it will be known as the “Renwick Ruin”
- 1858 – The Asylum burns down, and is rebuilt in the same location.
- 1872 -The Blackwell Island Light, a 50-foot (15 m) Gothic style lighthouse now on the National Register of Historic Places, is built by convict labor on the island’s northern tip under Renwick’s supervision.
- 1889 – The Chapel of the Good Shepherd, designed by Frederick Clarke Withers, opens.
- 1895 – Inmates from the Asylum are transferred to Ward’s Island, and patients from the hospital there are transferred to Blackwell’s Island. The Asylum is renamed Metropolitan Hospital.
- 1909 – The Queensboro Bridge, which passes over the island but does not provide direct vehicular access to it, opens.
- 1921 – Blackwell’s Island is renamed Welfare Island
- 1935 – The penitentiary on Riker’s Island opens, and the last convicts on Welfare Island are transferred there.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
One common remark, whether it be from Charles Dickens or Nellie Bly or the host of sensationalist writers who described the island of asylums and orphanages in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, commented on the chorus of sobbing and madness which arose from the populations of lunatics and (what we would describe in modernity as developmentally disabled) retarded children imprisoned there. The fate of such unfortunates in early modern times was not a happy one, and analogies to both the German writer Kafka and the English asylum known as Bedlam are appropriate.
Of course, just as it is today, having such an institutional neighbor enriches the local economy. A mental hospital needs workers, and employs a vast supply chain to bring the necessities of life. Everything from vegetables to gurneys must be brought in, maintenance of boilers and the machinery of such places must be performed, and a vast staff of quasi medical workers are required. In many towns and cities across modern America, the local prison has replaced the industrial mill as the principal employer, and the prison industry is one of the fastest growing sectors of the United States economy.
from pbs.org
Corporations are running many Americans prisons, but will they put profits before prisoners?
A grim new statistic: One in every hundred Americans is now locked behind bars. As the prison population grows faster than the government can build prisons, private companies see an opportunity for profit.
This week, NOW on PBS investigates the government’s trend to outsource prisons and prisoners to the private sector. Critics accuse private prisons of standing in the way of sentencing reform and sacrificing public safety to maximize profits.
“The notion that a corporation making a profit off this practice is more important to us than public safety or the human rights of prisoners is outrageous,” Judy Greene, a criminal policy analyst, tells NOW on PBS.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That nameless thing which has never drawn a breath, whose queer intelligence lurks within the spire of the sapphire megalith and gazes hungrily down upon the world of men, encourages and makes such a prison economy viable. It will ensure that new laws and restrictions are put in place by an army of loyal acolytes that suck at it’s poison teats, and its many servants in the media conglomerates continue to propagate a general aura of fear and loathing of “the other” suggesting the presence of a predatory element amongst the populace which makes the existence of such institutions seem not just necessary but prudent. More importantly, this prison industry is extremely profitable, and above all else that thing in the megalith encourages profit.
In the early 21st century, prison technologies now adorn private homes of substance and taste, and Orwell’s Big Brother need not surveil the streets for the private citizenry has already installed video security systems and razor wire which accomplish the goal for it. The gaol needs no walls, for terror has made us all inmates.
from wikipedia
In 1984, there is a perpetual war between Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, the super-states which emerged from the atomic global war. “The book”, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchic Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains that each state is so strong it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two super-states—despite changing alliances. To hide such contradictions, history is re-written to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces accustomed to doublethink accept it. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia). At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies combatting Eurasia in northern Africa.
That alliance ends and Oceania allied with Eurasia fights Eastasia, a change which occurred during the Hate Week dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party’s perpetual war. The public are blind to the change; in mid-sentence an orator changes the name of the enemy from “Eurasia” to “Eastasia” without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed they tear them down—thus the origin of the idiom “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; later the Party claims to have captured Africa.
“The book” explains that the purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities, hence the economy of a super-state cannot support economic equality (a high standard of life) for every citizen. Goldstein also details an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion, yet dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war’s purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s the super-states stopped such warfare lest it imbalance the powers. The military technology in 1984 differs little from that of the Second World War, yet strategic bomber aeroplanes were replaced with Rocket Bombs, helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (while they didn’t figure in WW2 in any form but prototypes) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses, island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform (in the novel one is said to have been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting a preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Modernity looks back on Blackwell’s Island, with its snake pit asylums and communal poor houses as some sort of anachronism. Left behind in the starry past, along with witch hunts and bad science, we have evolved past such childish attempts at mercy and embraced a more open and kind philosophy toward our challenged or confused or socially unacceptable brethren. This is a new age, enlightened and informed by scientific reason rather than instinct and custom. Right?
Ever wonder how they’ll describe us in 100 years, when some unborn academics perform their dissertations on the “age of terror”?
Remember, in a war of terror, whichever side scares the other more is the winner. A decade in, which side has become more terrifying to you, the nuclear armed super state with a well armed and paranoid population or the dusty mafiosos of a failed desert empire?
Incidentally, today is the anniversary of the General Slocum disaster, which was the greatest disaster in the history of New York City prior to the events of 2001, and which bears mention at this- your Newtown Pentacle.
from wikipedia
Some analysts, such as Noam Chomsky, posit that a state of perpetual war is an aid to (and is promoted by) the powerful members of dominant political and economic classes, helping maintain their positions of economic and political superiority.
Some have also suggested that entering a state of perpetual war becomes progressively easier in a modern democratic republic such as the United States due to the continuing development of interlocking relationships between those who benefit directly from war and the large and powerful companies that indirectly benefit and shape the presentation of the effects and consequences of war (i.e., the formation of a military-industrial complex).
There has been some criticism from anti-war activists and Bush critics, for example, that the Bush administration’s ties to Halliburton influenced the decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan. These claims have been denied by the George W. Bush White House.
However, the concept of a military-industrial complex was first suggested by President Eisenhower and the idea that military action can be seen as a form of market-creation goes at least as far back as speeches beginning in 1930 prior to the publication of War Is a Racket in 1935. The economic make-up of the 5th century BC Athens-led Delian League also bears resemblance to the economic ramifications of preparing for perpetual war.
With the advent of perpetual war, communities have begun to construct War Memorials with names of the dead while the wars are ongoing. See Northwood Community Park’s memorial which has space for 8000 names (approximately 4,500 used at time of construction) and plans to update it yearly.
The Newtown Pentacle 