Limericks and an Alligator

http://www.erasing.org/four_post-election_limericks/ The page following these limericks has a link to an exclusive filmic performance by Brad Pitt one of America's most successful actors and to the film "Dog Factory" (1904) made by the Thomas A. Edison film studio in New York City. It shows some of the old style humor that was once shown in NYC's earlier theater district, I think, on the Bowery. Today there, is what is called America's oldest continuing arts organization, over 50 years, the Amato Opera, across the street, the Bouwerie Theatre (in an old German bank), CBGB's, the rock venue (an annex to it), and nearby, the Bowery Ballroom, where Stephen King made his first public appearance after his recovery from a terrible pedestrian / van accident, hit while walking along a Maine road. The driver died later in his sleep. Over on Houston Street just off the Bowery, ("howston" in NYC, a Scottish businessman's name) there was once the Yiddish Theater District, where Walter Mathau started (his real name is as long and as unpronounceable a name can get I thought) until the Chrystie Street subway extension and time tore it up. While doing research there and nearby for archaeological significance, we also determined it to be once the site of a Quaker Cemetery, moved to what became Prospect Park, Brooklyn, (on the Coney Island Road) and some to Old Westbury. The Methodist one, on another lot, was moved to the State legislature size-mandate avoiding Brooklyn/Queens cemetery (straddling two counties), in a late winter in the middle of the 19th century. Just south of there (Houston and Bowery) one map showed a "Negroe Cemetery", today a small parking lot, perhaps never moved (?). Interestingly, the "Anthology Film Archives" on Second St off Second Ave., a major repository and exhibition space supported by many in the visual arts and information businesses, was once a courthouse built on-top of a Methodist cemetery. Later NY State ordered the move when "missed" ones were found in the courthouse construction. A former English professor at Buffalo, NY, artist/filmmaker, Paul Sharits, has a sculpture there and other works with other artists. It is across the street from one of the two remaining cemeteries in the general neighborhood, both marble vaults, one that once contained former President Monroe. That is until, before the American Civil War, the Virginia Legislature voted to remove him to the Hollywood Cemetery in Virginia! The whole city, it's written, stopped to pay its respects as the former resident was paraded to the dockside. John Ericcson, the inventor of the modern ship propeller and designer of the "U.S.S. Monitor" was also later removed, to Sweden. He had lived in the Village, and designed the Union submarine involved in the first battle of the ironclads, with the "C.S.S. Virginia". If you know anyone that has any information about the "U.S.S. Alligator", America's first submarine, which also sank off Cape Hatteras, NC, where the "U.S.S. Monitor" lies in part, some of it now at a new museum in Newport News, VA, please forward the info to the forum "sub-arch" where underwater historical archaeology is discussed. Originally posted Nov. 13, '04 to "histarch" list historical archaeology (but not "sub-arch" underwater archaeology list).