Posts Tagged ‘newtown creek’
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.
massing around
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An arrangement was made to meet up with some of my North Brooklyn chums to hash around a few ideas and discuss the news of the day at the thankfully reopened Ashbox restaurant in Greenpoint. A bit early for the assignation, your humble narrator drifted down to the street end, and former bulkhead of the Vernon Avenue Bridge, whereupon the Iron Wolf motored by.
from seawolfmarine.net
TUG: IRON WOLF (SINGLE SCREW) 450 HP, COASTWISE, MODEL BOW, HAWSWER TUG
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Long have I wished that my parents had been avid motorcyclists and named me Iron Wolf, but alas. In fact, anything even remotely canid would satisfy this urge, but this could have resulted in my name being “Laddie”, “Butch”, or “Spot.” Iron Wolf sounds like a metal band from the early 1980’s, the sort that would have headlined at L’Amour’s over in Bay Ridge.
from tugboatenthusiastsociety.org
Name: IRON WOLF,
- O/N: 0653661
- Tug, Length: 50
- Width: 16.7
- HP: 400
- Built Year: 1983
- Built At: New Bedford, Ma.
- Builder: Bear Marine Service
- Home Port: New York, NY
– photo by Mitch Waxman
All I could find online about Iron Wolf was terse, straight to the point, and in “all caps.” I suppose that’s appropriate. IF YOU NAME SOMETHING IRON WOLF, YOU SHOULD USE ALL CAPS TO DESCRIBE IT. TERSE GREETINGS AND A MARITIME SUNDAY SHOUT OUT TO THE IRON WOLF. WELCOME TO NEWTOWN CREEK.
from wikipedia
A tugboat (tug) is a boat that maneuvers vessels by pushing or towing them. Tugs move vessels that either should not move themselves, such as ships in a crowded harbor or a narrow canal, or those that cannot move by themselves, such as barges, disabled ships, log rafts, or oil platforms. Tugboats are powerful for their size and strongly built, and some are ocean-going.
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.
colossal portrait
“follow” me on Twitter at @newtownpentacle
– photo by Mitch Waxman
A constant desire for your narrator is the betterment of his palette wherein the esthetic appreciation of high culture is concerned. Accordingly, a recent perambulation brought me to the galleria of the native art form of the Borough of Queens, which is illegal dumping.
This salon is found on 29th street, adjoining that loquacious tributary of the Newtown Creek which men have referred to as Dutch Kills for better than three centuries.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The rotating displays offered here are many, and varied. Currently installed is an anonymous work comprised of empty vessels which formerly held liquor. Wry, such commentary on the human condition does not escape one as highly cultured and trained in the arts as myself.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Neither is the sly repetition and utilization of manufactured items, nor their seemingly random pattern, unnoticed. Random takes a lot of effort to get right. So does the solemnity of a suggested narrative.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The entire piece speaks to one on a visceral level, intoning mental images of some lonely bacchanal besottingly acted out- over and over during the course of weeks- happening in the same spot. Kudos are awarded the designer, for the subject matter and overall composition.
Well done, sir or madam, lord or lady.
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.
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.
The Newtown Pentacle 