New Research in Copper?

West shore of Rock Lake, Wisconsin. Copper outpost of the prehistoric E.U.? http://www.rocklakeresearch.com/index.htm NASA World Wind 1.3 88.94669W_43.07475N11.jpg

West shore of Rock Lake, Wisconsin. 

The Dragon in the Lake -- New Book Reveals Latest Research on the Ancient Underwater Pyramids in Wisconsin

BAGnewsNotes: Getting Between The Point And The View / Your Turn: The Shrine

I was in the "notorious junk bond" dealers, the "Pep Boys" franchise shop having my car repaired and reading the magazines, they had the original "Low Rider" issue. In it, beyond the statement of purpose, was some of the politics of the day. The Vietnam "war" (never declared by Congress, I was once about to be drafted into) article had that, as someone had obtained the info, not available to the public, that a disproportionate number of Mexican-Americans were dying there, there was protest along those lines by Americans who wanted to know "why". This image to me refers back to the same question. I attended Newfield H.S., in a "blue collar bedroom community" which, according to my "leaked" source, had the first JROTC Marines in the USA, the US Army one in CT, (in Paul McCartney's managers town, maybe we had the "Brooklyn Bridge") and the Navy and Air Force on the West Coast. "Defense Monitor" reported 20,000 of them now, in mostly poor schools, and at $1 billion a year, it asked "Are they worth it"? before going off the air. As a relation of a TV news producer who had his "common soldiers" view of Vietnam, stopped by "higher ups" (according to Edwin Newman, who read the letter written to his crew there, at his eulogy in the United Nations Chapel, he last "covered" the both US conventions of 1976 for CBS, and had died in Mexico) I too would like to know if certain types of people (like the Japanese-Americans lost disproportionately to the Texans they saved in the WWII "Battle of the Bulge") or troops are being asked to serve.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Study highlights global decline

"The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment was drawn up by 1,300 researchers from 95 nations over a period of four years."

Posted at "BAGnewsNotes: Getting Between The Point And The View

"George Myers on Raining Down From On High" That is interesting observation, one I wouldn't have made even though I had seen the "Pieta" from behind thick purplish glass at the New York World's Fair in 1964. There is a beautiful white copy of the "Pieta" in the St. Joseph's Seminary, in Yonkers, NY, and other statuary, one a native American. The Seminary once was to have been "condemned" for a site of public housing. Ironically, the Valentine House once there, (now an archaeology site) was instrumental, on a high point, for General Washington's intelligence and the eventual defeat of the British, who occupied Fort Golgotha in Huntington, NY. You got me, I missed the Capitol dome, which was made and assembled by Janes and Kirtland, for a tiny bit over $1 million during the Lincoln Administration. It was cast in the Bronx, NY, the company once near the African Burial Ground, on Duane Street in Manhattan, before being "removed" to the Bronx. The previous dome was more like a "hatbox" and Lincoln it's said thought the new one symbolic of bringing the Union back together. Lifted into place with horsepower, block and tackle, and labor, J. & K. had previously produced, after a fire, an all cast iron Library of Congress, got a foot in the door, and other structures resulted, some superseded as the Nation grew in size. Janes and Kirtland was in business until the 1960's. (Add-to: last reported in the "Bronx History" journal to have been producing the ubiquitous steel kitchen cabinets found once in many apartments). - Site Recommended by Brian Flemming, once candidate for Governor of California and author of the musical, "Batboy".

Road Hazards

3/23/2005 I had to replace two out of the four tires I had just bought in September in Monticello, NY. I was in no-man's land, between Exit 46 and Exit 48 (on the Long Island Expressway, apparently "no Exit" 47, Sartre would have laughed) when the front went out on one of my new Bridgestones. I managed to get into the "Emergency Stopping Only" shoulder and jacked up the car next to the speeding-by traffic and put the spare on. I got off the Long Island Expressway, and after choices offered at the gas station/convenience center of local places that might fix a tire, went past Old Bethpage Village Restoration, into a Gulf station on Manetto Hills and Old Country Road. I was surprised, the busy station was being run by a nice younger woman. She offered to replace the same tire for $89 plus and since I had replaced all four in Monticello, NY after a road hazard there punctured a sidewall and I barely made it into another auto center there, I said OK. Then we went outside, her and I, and I explained I would like to be the one opening and closing the rear hatch on my 1983 black Volvo wagon, and noticed a bubble in the sidewall of the rear tire. Her and the mechanics agreed that would be from potholes, and would I like another tire, which then they sent out again for. Both beads were ripped, exposing steel. As I pulled back later onto the Expressway, I didn't get very far when traffic halted near the Huntington exit at 49, I think. There were 2 or 3 police cars, a large NY State vehicle, with strange bumpers, and as we slowly went by in one lane, a small flatbed truck with two guys shoveling a small pile of "hot patch" into some of the holes in the road. Later, I read in Newsday, that the guy who did "The Big Dig" in Boston, MA was supposed to be responsible for finishing all the work on the Long Island Expressway too! Can't they spread these contracts around a bit! But that "lawnmower entrepreneur" I'm thinking of calling these Nixon-inspired "ragged dick" guys (Horatio Alger, etc. Former Mayor Giuliani threw out the people unloading fish, over pennies, in the Fulton Fish Market, put one in charge, handed him City owned and not yet registered hi-los, and, turns out the guy was wanted in Federal Court! Which was against the "new" law the Mayor had after parading this guy around who had started by mowing lawns in Garden City, Long Island I think) had died and the Expressway (LIE), way behind schedule. (The Fish Market is moving to Hunts Point, Herman Wouk's "home town" here in the Bronx soon.) Scandal is afoot in Boston too as the largest single construction project in the history of the United States is springing leaks, so many people are afraid to drive "in it".

Scotsman.com News - Politics - 'Cover-up' claims over lord's letter

"On March 18, 2003, Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the Foreign Office deputy legal adviser, wrote a letter of resignation. In it she said: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution. I cannot in conscience go along with the advice which asserts the legitimacy of military action without such a resolution." But the Foreign Office censored out two crucial sentences in the version it published."

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Balochistan talks 'breakthrough'

Where Alexander the Great wouldn't go.

KingsBayPeriscope.com: Steady climb 03/24/05

"Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Defense Department leaders and U.S. legislators 'have worked together to increase servicemembers' basic pay by more than 21 percent,' a senior DoD official told House Armed Services Committee members March 16."

MobyLives.com

"The AFP reports that the 900–page Le Chevalier de Sainte–Hermine, which will be published in June by Phebus press, is 'a classic Dumas adventure story about the start of the Napoleonic empire and includes a swashbuckling account of the battle of Trafalgar,' and includes a fictive solution to the real–world mystery of who killed Admiral Horatio Nelson."

Was "The Mysterious Island" (Jules Verne) Okinawa?

Earthjustice Newsroom has an article on a ruling to help save the endangered dugong (a relative of the manatee, native of Florida) in the Pacific, threatened to extinction, perhaps, by the US Department of Defense, if allowed to proceed (airport on coral currently blocked). In Jules Verne's "Mysterious Island" there is a lagoon, in which a dugong swims, which leaves quite an impression. Perhaps the island was somewhere else, heh, its fiction! But the movie had nothing to do with book, or barely. The film creator just passed on, a tribute as it was to stop action animation and cinematography, however.

Community LANDSAT7 (Pseudo Color) Flores and Corvo - from World Wind 1.3 (NASA) online. 

Community LANDSAT7 (Pseudo Color) Corvo - one of the two most westerly islands of the Azores, Flores the other. 
"This is what Jaime Cortesao believes, and he concludes that in 1452 Diogo de Teive reached the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, a distance of 1,450 miles. If this is true, it would make him one of the earliest European discoverers of America. Whichever direction Teive took, the voyage was not a total failure, for on the return passage he discovered Flores and Corvo, the two most westerly islands of the Azores group. Between 1462 and 1487 there were at least eight Portuguese voyages whose primary objective was the discovery of new Atlantic islands." p. 95 "Phantom Islands of the Atlantic: The Legends of Seven Lands That Never Were" Donald S. Johnson. Walker and Company New York. c) 1994. First published by Goose Lane Editions in Canada in 1994. Revised edition published in the United States of America in 1996 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc.

One-eyed dragon in Tran Dynasty dig

Inside the Co Loa Citadel

VietNamNet Bridge

Hidden US War footage asks, “Why?� "A stunning US documentary on the American-Vietnam War debuted on Vietnam Television’s channel 1 (VTV1) at 10pm on March 10. ... According to French film critic Daniel Costelle, the film was shot by US troops and sat silent for years in US archives opened only in the past ten years." Are there more?

Aviation and Archaeology SHA 2007

March 13-16 I think it's a great idea having grown up in the "Cradle of Aviation" Long Island, NY. I thought this subject has been in historical archaeology in Great Britain for quite a number of years also, so it would be like "catching up". Many of my high school classmates parents were involved in the Grumman "Lunar Excursion Module" (LEM) project, which incidentally was built all over Long Island in small shops so no one had the "big picture" I was told. Nearby Gyrodyne also flew coaxial helicopters, manned and unmanned, sometimes over the potato fields around former Flowerfield, NY, next to what, with some of the property donated, became Stony Brook University, now about to take the rest of Gyrodyne property for research. Today is Einstein's birthday. As part of a "hunter-gather" task I was hired short-term to collect all the CRM (cultural resource management) info available in the NY SHPO (State Historic Preservation Office) at Peebles Island in Waterford, NY (near Albany, glad they're re-routing around that old Norse site in Waterford, Ireland, I signed a petition) for the Upper Hudson River for the design of the PCB cleanup there by the EPA for the company formerly known as T.A.M.S. Some of the proposed PCB clean-up sites I worked on back in the 1980's and that has still not begun. My task to gather, so architectural historian(s) and an archaeologist(s) could look at the corridor for historic and prehistoric significance was only called for recently, I am given to understand, because of objections by GE to their being left out! As a part of that task I informed T.A.M.S. about the evaluation of aeronautical sites as for example one of the first flights in NY was from Governors Island by Wilbur Wright up and back on the Hudson River which may or may not have had a canoe attached to the bottom. The US's first flight school was from catapulted planes on Governors Island in NYC harbor, now thanks to the Clinton Administration back without undo cost to the City. (Congress wanted about $0.5 billion for it). I inquired into the the aeronautical history and a couple of museums of that ilk in the vicinity of the Hudson River, and they said sadly, that much of the history would have to be gleaned from local newspapers, reading through as very little is known although a few major collections of aircraft (and ongoing industry) exist not too far from the Hudson River, which was probably by VFR (visual flight rules) used quite a bit in navigation, and perhaps for earlier routes. I forwarded the info to them now Earthtech, (part of TYCO), down near "Ground Zero" an unfortunate term from the nuclear age, which ran without source throughout the media. To continue in the archaeology of aviation theme, I might present an example from historic preservation. I was reading the New Brunswick, Canada "Blacks Harbour Historical Society" on-line, a former "factory" town (canning fish) from where ferries leave for North Head on Grand Manan Island, N.B. Canada (the island a little over two hours away). My cousin there, Wilma Green (nee Parker), as a nurse assistant, used to accompany seaplane flights for medical emergencies transport. Anyway, not too far from Blacks Harbour, is the town of Pennfield, which served as a WWII airfield. In the course of its occupation, abandoned it appears mostly today, judging from the satellite views in World Wind 1.3 from NASA, some servicemen from around the Commonwealth passed on while there and were buried there. Those types of cemeteries should be looked after as relations, it was reported, come from around the world to visit the gravesides. I doubt many public airports (or private) would appear to have this "feature" but perhaps some have in former times. I have visited a few small grass field runways in New Hampshire that have a recent grave-plot next to them of former aviator or supporter. That has me perplexed also. Working in 1999, in New York City's City Hall Park, once a Commons and now associated with the "African Burial Ground" a block away as part of a larger Historic District, I was perplexed by the possibilities presented by the human remains in City Hall Park under the statue of Horace Greeley and next to the Joseph Pulitzer monument. Here then NYC was restoring the park to a ca. 1870 type (though the granite bollards would disappear and emerge by electricity not steam) and lining the surface with grey and black stone from Binghamton, NY. The dark stone, after a map study (Stone (?) pers. comm. 1997 while we worked in Chambers St.) was outlining the various buildings once nearby the "Tweed" Courthouse (Mayor Fernando Wood would be a more appropriate name dedicated and finished by him, instead of the "Boss" imprisoned across Chambers St. the once to be home of the Museum of New York City, the restored Courthouse is headquarters of the Dept. of Education today) and the McComb designed City Hall, (a famous lighthouse architect first) to allow the pedestrian to see where the "British Barracks" were, "The Prison" ("blacker than any black hole of Calcutta" when run by British Army Major Cunningham, where Ethan Allen was tortured, NY Times 1903) etc., that though skeletons were found two or more deep, without any worldly goods whatsoever with them, these were insistently called the remains from "The First Almshouse" an attribution deducted from read history, the "first" a decision by historians (or would be) to attribute significance perhaps, precluding other explanation in my opinion (redeposited remains from the nearby Kings College, now Columbia University, anatomy scandal, where students exhumed bodies to practice for their finals, or the remains of nearby prisoners, also come to mind.) I excavated one unit for the water fountain and found two persons, almost appearing conjoined, which, on one wrist was perhaps a small wooden amulet empty except appearing as if "imprinted" with a small stereotype of the two joined tablets of Moses' story of lawgiving. Would anyone know of such a "reliquary"? I still feel bad about kneeling into their skulls. At the time, 1999, the Iroquois Council had issued an edict that as a new general policy they felt no burials should be moved, one in particular in the new found salt source for New York roads, out near Letchworth State Park, the salt mines next to Lake Cayuga in Myers, NY collapsed after flooding. I suppose respect can take different forms, sort of a follow-up of "Construction and excavation of the world's first 'mock' mass grave.url"

Posted at Histarch today

"Ground Zero" - I am still in a mild state of shock from the aircrash events of September and November 2001 here in NYC, working for a company once in the archaeology of Fort Drum, NY in the World Trade Center and at the time for Panamerican Consultants in historic Bridgewater, NJ and Picatinney Arsenal. I hope offense was not taken in this reference, speculation as to the November 2001 crash of mostly Dominican-Americans, widely, to perhaps have been the fault of following to closely behind the JAL (Japanese airline) taking off in front of it. We were working next to a model airplane field in a local drought next to the Raritan River. This definition online for "ground zero" appears unbiased and pretty accurate: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-gro3.htm "World Wide Words is copyright © Michael Quinion, 1996–2005. All rights reserved. Contact the author for reproduction requests. Comments and feedback are always welcome Page created 24 November 2001." I didn't mention it there, but the day anthrax was discovered in our mails, I was working for Panamerican at West Point Academy, in West Point, NY. In fact I got pulled over for speeding in Highland Falls, NY after I go between a speeder and the policecar behind him on the way to the "Pointers Echo" where we were staying until I got canned for a previous reservation for a weekend football game at "Buffalo Soldiers Field" there. If I hadn't worked there before, just below Fort Montgomery (literally the fort) and the Bear Mountain Bridge, also literally, on a couple of Hudson River sloop wrecks found tidally today in the background of the "Halve Moone" replica photo of 1936, and that Fort Montgomery just opened as a NY State Historic Park, excavated over the years it is said by a Bear Mountain employee, I might have lost my cool.

Still in beta, one on Grand Manan Island, NB, Canada, (prevents downdrafts in chimneys). American company is offering them for free while testing. 

The BMW Montauk motorcycle. Ain't it cool?  
I worked with people who worked on the archaeology of Montauk a number of years ago. It was determined in a Federal court that they had no title to the lands. I also read Carl G. Fisher bought what he thought was a title from them. He developed sealed beam headlights, making millions, developed Miami Beach (Montauk was to become a Miami Beach of the North, apparently construction from his era still there, before the "Stock Market Crash" which some argue is almost irrelevant as the major cause of the Depression, few compared to today were actually vested in it) and lived in a small cottage on the Florida beachfront. Back when I first met the archaeologists working at the early "Second House" the "modern" empty tall hotel (12 stories?) from that era was still for sale. I wonder if it still is? I read one building there, a lodge of sorts is being nominated to the National Register of Historic Places and being restored by local interest. Geologists report George Washington asked the locals where the best place for the lighthouse he authorized should be. A sad story relates how many of the local natives were lost trying to rescue a wrecked passenger sailing ship, which they often were known to do. One ship sailed away to return five years later, in the interim the steady light lighthouse and the Montauk flashing light were switched (or vice versa) and the ship thinking it was rounding Montauk Point crashed into the south shore. The Suffolk County Archaeological Association has published one or two large paperback books on the Montaukett natives, in fact it was an unpublished thesis from NYU on their history by a Ms. Fisher, that began their research and publications, last I looked there were seven, about Long Island natives, some of whom were known to Thomas Jefferson, who collected their words and James Madison who visited William Floyd's place, he the first New Yorker to sign the "Declaration of Independence" (fourth signer overall) at which the Association mapped the basement prior to its gift to the Fire Island National Seashore, Federal Wilderness, Dept. of the Interior. I attended the public hearing for its creation at the William Floyd High School, archaeologists also turned in a report, which if I recall, shows "wilderness" a relative term. I later assisted the Denver Service Center's archaeological tests as they prepared the place for public entry. Interesting, a William Lloyd (well-to-do Tory on the North Shore) bottle seal was found, and perhaps not a surprise as it's related the British Army used the fine house of the American patriot William Floyd, as a stable for horses and cut down all the manor's trees. Recently Camp Hero has opened out at "The End" as a State Park, after some (or one) of the areas were set aside for having UXO (British developed "science") or (unexploded ordnance) in it and appropriate warnings placed on signs. Other areas there are still off limits, once two 16" guns and other parts of a shore battery were there, probably went up in the 1920's. A State Policeman and his family lives there. There was a large radar dome and a "concrete fishing village" and its reported that some of the first modern electronic computations went on there, perhaps tracking aircraft and ships at sea. It's where it's said one of the "Green Mountain Boys" Captain Hulbert and a number of the locals marched around one hill, reversed their coats, and marched around another part of a hill, convincing the British Navy, who would have put ashore for the sheep and cattle out in the "Hither Hills" to provision itself, not to put ashore to augment their lousy rations. A "fake" Hulbert Flag, he is recorded as having submitted one of the considered designs for the new nation, (the Smithsonian reports that the fabric of the artifact was "power" woven dating it to the 19th century) exists in the Suffolk County History Museum, in Riverhead, the 13 stars in the shape of another star, like the "Seal of Solomon" or the "Star of David". Interestingly the "Green Mountain Flag" has them in an almost random way, unless some secret design or other pattern. Captain Hulbert's father was a cobbler and had a shop in Bridgehampton on the northeast corner of the Sag Harbor Turnpike and the Montauk Highway. I went to camp overnite at Montauk years ago on my Japanese police bike, a 1968 Kawasaki 650cc, with a friend John Kirschenheiter, whose brother was a policeman, on the back, another one, a Kawasaki 650 TT, I took to Grad School. I once borrowed a Honda 160cc and went to Orient Point, maybe Honda will issue an "Orient". Maybe its like the old bike songs from England that went into rock-and-roll ballads, going to see a girlfriend riding back down the coast or something I heard from there. Maybe that's why they call this BMW "Montauk" except I seem to never see people again I've gone out there with. Then again REI had an expensive pair of loafers called "Montauk" too. More likely it's a good thing. Some of the older car maps have "Summer Ferry" that used to leave from Montauk, NY to Rhode Island's Block Island. "Of all the islands lying off the East Coast of the United States, the one 12 miles off the shore of Rhode Island, first noted by French navigator Verrazzano in 1524 and later named by Dutch trader Adrian Block in 1614, has the most successfully clung to its past." That too, perhaps, a ferry to Block Island from Montauk would be a "good thing." One problem back around 1980 or so was development, some of the building lots going for $1 million an acre there near or on Lake Montauk I believe, though I was not directly connected with the research. Apparently a cemetery of the Montaukett natives, and judging from the artifacts recovered from grave-robbing by a collector tracked down and "caught" in return for cooperating in re-locating the burial ground, was from about the time of the "Contact Period" when Europeans and native Americans first began interacting, i.e., "onion" shaped bottle, etc. just seen in a few polaroids. The story I was told was that the archaeologist went back to the robbed grave to screen the excavated soil to see if small artifacts had been missed by the diggers, i.e., small beads, etc. The guy helping says that no sooner had they started doing that a group of native Americans from the Shinnecock and elswhere perhaps, approached and they ceased what they were doing. The County I think bought the property with a buffer and the building went on around it.

Looking over Bar Harbor, Maine and a virtual Atlantic Ocean. That's Cadillac Mountain above the town, the highest point on the East coast of the USA at 3X vertical exaggeration from a Landsat satellite picture in World Wind 1.3 from NASA. I was there once in the fog with Lou Young, the drive to the top that is of Cadillac Mountain, (Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, NY is said to be close to as tall) it was so foggy that summer, the place had practically shut down and it wouldn't have been prudent to get out hiking around with nobody out and about all over Mt. Desert Island. Now there is a high-speed car-carrying catamaran called "The Cat" that leaves Bar Harbor for Nova Scotia, does like 80 miles an hour! It ran over a Nova Scotia fishing boat the first time out. The city of Rochester, NY just bought a similar one (5 Mercedes diesel engines, the U.S. Marines were interested in it at auction) to go back and forth to Toronto, Canada. Under its previous owners it had a "dock malfunction" while visiting the Port of New York, where a somewhat similar vessel has been prevented by a technicality from conducting passenger service for the casinos in Connecticut. Sounds like a fun way to visit Chinatown over there and ride the trolley cars to the film festival. Or hang out at the western bar on Gladstone and Queen, I did. Where were you? I spent the night. Or take their subway. 

Same view of Acadia National Park on Mt. Desert Island with Bar Harbor, Maine in the foreground with 3X vertical exaggeration of Cadillac Mountain from USGS 1 meter orthophotos. 

Great Gull Island, east of Plum Island off the North Fork of Long Island, NY. Check out the large gun emplacements, a 16" was at the structure in the east end. Not far from here to the east is a wonderful lighthouse Little Gull Island, then Fishers Island a part of Suffolk County just off Connecticut, which also had a fort on it at the west end of the island. A mallard duck family its related has taken up residence in the water at the bottom of the former 16" gun's emplacement. 

Zoomed in Great Gull Island, to show the former Coastal Defense installation, ca 1920's and the 16" gun emplacement and other structures. 

The New York Times: Television (Forum/Message Board)

georgejmyersjr - 11:21 PM ET March 9, 2005 (#2006 of 2006) Dan Rather Good luck on your new job. My cousin George Murray once directed "Huntley and Brinkley". He died in Mexico, and they had a eulogy at the UN Chapel. Edwin Newman read a letter George Murray had to write as the months of research in Vietnam was canceled by higher-ups. I used to think, was that because General Westmoreland sued all of NBC for it's news network reporting? Well, no that was actually later, for a report broadcast after we had left Vietnam, in public "reality". His crew were trying to create a report of the "common soldiers view" of the Vietnam Conflict, though and so, I imagine that would be like saying, today, "80 per cent of the troops in Southwest Asia voted, where they could, secret ballots not guaranteed there, Democrat". George Murray had been an Army Captain in Korea during that war. He last produced the Democratic and Republican Conventions in 1976 for CBS. Maybe you met him, Mr. Rather? One of my high school classmates, Lou Young, is over at CBS News in NYC. If baseball, above the rules of monopoly, according to the Supreme Court, as reported by the Writers Guild of America, is the national past-time, I imagine this all got started, respectfully Mr. Rather, when CBS's head's brother wanted to buy the Texas baseball team President Bush (then Governor) wanted and did everything in his power to make sure he got what he wanted according to what I heard on WNYC radio awhile ago. You're out! It still doesn't explain how the Los Angeles Dodgers can sue a sports bar in Brooklyn for using "Dodgers" in its name.

SciFiDaily: He's Gonna Save the World at Casino Royale

George Myers said... By your command: I was looking at "The Prisoner" fan sites (looking again for "Six of One..." (half a dozen of the other, the effect of sci-fi convention art years ago) and came across this interesting reference at "Take All Prisoners" to Ian Fleming appearing on the Patrick McGoohan produced "the Prisoner" series. In "The General" episode Ian Fleming appears as: The General Writer: Joshua Adam Director: Peter Graham Scott Guest Cast: Colin Gordon (Number Two), John Castle (Number 12), Betty McDowall (Professor's Wife), Peter Swanwick (Supervisor), Conrad Phillips (Doctor), Michael Miller (Man in Buggy), Keith Pyott (Waiter), Ian Fleming (Man at Cafe), Normal Mitchell (Mechanic), Peter Bourne (Projection Operator), George Leech (Guard), Jackie Cooper (Guard) http://www.io.com/~jkweston/prisoner.html#general 1:19 PM

Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. The partial large island cut-off in the top left is Campobello Island, in Canada, made famous by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, just north of the peninsula, Quoddy Head State Park, Maine, USA. Grand Manan, the archipelago in the center, about the same length as Manhattan Island, is where my grandfather Lawrence G. Urquhart was from, the village of Castalia. Cheney Island is just to the west of the larger island furthest east, White Head Island (a separate free ferry goes there), between White Head and Ross Island (Ross Island is accessible over a "causeway" at low tide, among the greatest range of tides in the world, I once got stuck out there in flood in a van). Some people on Grand Manan are related to the current American Vice President, Richard "Dick" Cheney. James Audubon visited Maine, and after a few weeks grew impatient, looking for birds. He visited Grand Manan and was happier, some of drawings in the museum there in Grand Harbour. Kent Island, one of the three islands in the southeast is (or was) a bird observation center run by Bowdoin College of Maine. Arctic and sub-arctic species sometimes make it part of their "flyway" and sometimes Atlantic puffins abound. The whole "Grand Manan Parish" is under federal bird wildlife protection status. Whales have a nursery in the northern waters of island, swimming up the coast from around Florida and back. Traces of old native settlements have also been found by "Provincial" (or Federal?) archaeologists there. (NASA's World Wind 1.3)  

Sable Island, Nova Scotia (French: Sand Island) once visited by the US National Geographic in a schooner, was once "the" scary place in the North Atlantic, fogbound 300 or more days a year. There are numerous shipwrecks there from running aground on it in the trans-Atlantic crossing. Wild "Sable Island Ponies" still probably run through the wrecks and ruins perhaps eating strawberries and such as the old Geographic reported, who when they showed up, the lighthouse keeper's wife thought were real spooks at first. Satellite GPS and other navigation sure has made that danger a part of the past. The new danger here is a pipeline that will send oil and gas (mostly) to Quebec a full page ad in the NY Times said. Interestingly, the only Royal Governor in office (New Hampshire) to become a Governor after the American Revolution, was Governor Wentworth of Nova Scotia, originally had "America's oldest summer resort" on Lake Wentworth, near Wolfeboro, NH. A friend has a place near where, similarly, one of the first Supreme Court Justice's of Canada lived, Mr. Livius (and a water-power source from Mirror Lake) on Tuftonboro Neck, in "next-door" Tuftonboro, NH. The Mirror Lake was once called "Dishwater Lake" as the locals asked Mr. Livius if dumping their dishwater into the lake might help his water-powered operation work. Sable Island is one island I'm sure someone would be glad is automated, it is where the shifting sands are always changing form, where the Gulf stream current and the Labrador current meet, out in the North Atlantic, which is getting windier on average, with higher wave heights. (Picture from NASA's World Wind 1.3)  

Benjamin Thompson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Benjamin Thompson was head of the "Queens Rangers" on Long Island, said to have torn down Presbyterian churches to create "Fort Golgotha" in the old cemetery on top of the hill in Huntington, New York (called "Ashford" under "Lord Protector" Oliver Cromwell). Nathan Hale, after capture, was brought there before being taken to New York City, where he was hung and there stated its said, "I regret having only one life to lose for my country." A monument in Huntington, NY there attests to him being there. Where he was buried it is not known. Nathan Hale's statue in New York City, has been recently moved to the front of City Hall, in City Hall Park, after renovations there in 1999. For many years it was on the northwest corner of the park, near Chambers St. and Broadway. It now faces the statue of Benjamin Franklin across the street, who also once had a small press there. The other statue in the park is of Horace Greeley. I have worked in the archaeolgy of both Fort Golgotha and City Hall Park.

Washington Covenant Belt - bead belt made from shells, likely Mercenaria mercenaria, (Species Name: Mercenaria mercenaria (Linnaeus, 1758) Common Name: Hard Clam, Quahog, Cherrystone. Synonymy: Venus mercenaria) perhaps from Long Island, (I recall after the American Revolution, George Washington was the guest of the Spanish Ambassador in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania for a number of months, according to a sign on a house ca. 1978) once the source of shell beads for wampum to string for wearing which became a medium of exchange. Many different currencies from many nations were used in the early settlements until a standard was created. 

Re:Two American Indian tribes receive state recognition

"On the one hand, the Iroquoians admired the Algonkians for their endurance, hunting skills, and handicrafts; on the other hand, they despised them for their nomadic life. Joseph Campbell, quoting from an earlier source, writes: "Their [i.e. the Algonkians] very name means 'tree-eaters'...and was given to them by the Iroquois in contempt for their famine diet of buds and bark, to which, having no stores of corn, they were in winter sometimes reduced." Wampum Keeper

NIKE batteries (not included) and rifled "musket" cannons

 

Constitution Island, NY: The West Point Foundry was in Cold Spring, NY (on the east shore of the Hudson River and a National Register Historic District), the West Point Academy, seen in this cropped high altitude aerial photo, across the river. This shows the recent Marathon Battery Superfund Priority Site (made NiCad's for missiles) a remediation for the EPA, designed by Malcolm Pirnie, Inc., with an earthen dam in Foundry Cove separated from the marsh by a stone dike (breached). Where a "Great Chain" once stretched across the river to stop the British Navy, a very large dark spot of water appears (shown on a newer USGS map as a purple addition) next to the Metro-North railroad on Constitution Island. I wonder what it is? It is off-limits, part of the Military Academy's property. Fortifications were designed and built there by a "forgotten" Dutch-American patriot, Bernard Romans, Cartographer for the U.S. Continental Army, ("Mercator's World," 1996).

The marsh, Constitution Marsh, part of NY State Parks holdings (partly Audubon refuge before) is said once to have been an experiment in rice production. "In 1896/97 J. B. & J. M. Cornell took over the iron foundry at Cold Spring, N. Y. on the Hudson River. The foundry was known as the West Point Foundry Works. These facilities are discussed in the magazine, The Successful American, Vol. III, No. 4, April 1901, p. 202, which also illustrates the extensive works at this location" in the Foundry Cove in Cold Spring until a large fire burned the "Bridge Shop" around 1913. Under the remains of the 500' structure (and surrounding rail-yard) was the wooden "Parrott Gun Platform," on wooden "grillage" a prototype of the "Swamp Angel" created in the marsh of Morris Island, (or James Island) and used to bombard Charleston, South Carolina. Test shots were often fired across the river, once damaging the Cold Spring, NY Catholic Church, the first in the Hudson Valley, which had to be repaired with Federal monies. The first labor action in a Federal facility also occurred in the West Point Foundry, during the Civil War. It is reported to have been manned by secreted technicians with false identities from England and elsewhere, some under "industrial indenture," records of which still exist in the local population.

Additional "extra curricula" experiments went on there. One the "dynamite gun" was constructed of sections of pipe, joined together as a section of pipeline, like allegedly used by Iraqis in the war there with Iran, where over 1 million perished, and fired from a floating barge, a wooden projectile up-river for a number of miles, to prove its feasibility. A similar weapon was developed in the State of Vermont, its "inventor" assassinated on a street in the Netherlands while we investigated this site (Time magazine). There are other "stereo-pair" photo records of weapons in the Cold Spring, NY West Point Foundry School Museum, which may or may not have untold armament stories associated with them. Someone in the history department at West Point Academy should have a look if they haven't already.

The West Point Foundry had offices in New York City, and its ships with supplies ran quickly up and down the Hudson River. Nearby Peekskill, NY had "green" molding sand, said in 1857, to be the only place it was available in New York State, also site of emery deposits, once a sole supplier of that "grit". The Foundry went up for sale in 1873. Most of its "assets" were sold for scrap and melted down, as later, material there was scavenged for WWI and/or WWII(?) I grew up next to the Third Ave. EL (elevated trains) which for years people said we sold as scrap to the Japanese and they fired it back at us, but it didn't come down in the Bronx until the 1950's. A small steam locomotive, from one of the earlier EL's in NYC, ran on rail track around the West Point Foundry in its "cast stanchion pipe" period (many architectural products were produced also in the Foundry Cove), after falling off a NYC EL. The small museum and the Administration Building, ca 1865 on the eastside of Foundry Brook (also called Margaret Brook) across a small bridge and the water races running under a "sea of brick" and perhaps the water power delivery system that stretched miles away, and of course the empty "local tunnel mines" and mine pits in NY and NJ, are all that remain on site of it today. However, at least one bridge in New Jersey, a sugar mill in Puerto Rico, and various other structural elements of buildings from it are still around, along with the distinctive Parrott "rifle" (cannons) with their wrapped band or collar at their breach end. One large Parrott rifled cannon on the U.S.S. Kearsarge, with superior range, sank the notorious C.S.S. Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France, those sailors buried there, (naval guns with a swell on the muzzle early on?) - NYPL 3/8/05). I was told the two small-bore "Napoleon" like cannons at the Veterans Center at Weirs Beach, Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire, were "Parrotts", Robert Parker Parrott, one of six brothers from New Hampshire.

Thomas A. Edison "lost his shirt" in a nearby magnetic ore extraction process.
Current "Parrott" research.

USGS aerial photo of West Point, NY, the Hudson River and Cold Spring, NY about 50 miles north of NYC.  

Fort McHenry, Baltimore, MD. 

Coming to Baltimore, MD

Soon to have the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal Museum next to Fort McHenry. Some of the big brass Congreve rockets, fired on the fort from "ladders" on smaller boats (they were just out of our guns range) were recovered by divers I heard in the Inner Harbor just off the fort's shore while I was working inside the fort for the NPS in 1978. Today in 1931 the US government authorized the National Anthem, the "Star Spangled Banner" based on the flag at Fort McHenry, Baltimore, MD.

Redux: finbacks, ferries and wrong terns (2005)

Not seeing any of the under 100 million makers, its also usually held, the awards, on my birthday March 26, I enjoyed what I saw. The picture about boxing however reminded me of the crooks running the NY Boxing Commission, who have a woman veterinarian on their staff as a fight side physician, who was not at one fight, that resulted in the death of one of the fighters that should have been stopped by the "Fight doctor" and later died of coronary collapse at a hospital. Poor guy. I like that Mohammad Ali's daughter has retained her title. I am ambivalent about it, though my grandfather Lawrence Urquhart used to religiously almost watch his "Boxeo" from Mexico City on the TV here in NYC, which he enjoyed, tough people those Mexican fighters. I spent three days myself with my nose stuffed with packing and a plaster cast on my nose (I finally sneezed, maybe why its a little crooked) when an adopted kid brother of a Golden Gloves, (Mr. Dickens, Mr. McCluskey's kid brother) picked a fight with me and followed me home. My nasion was in about 20 pieces, not trained in that, actually a fencer then. One archaeologist, "Scotty" MacNeish, an elder now, discovered the origins of maize, the prehistoric selection and cultivation, in the Valley of Mexico, resulting in the modern grain, was a Golden Gloves champ (1959?) from the Bronx I think I saw on his resume in a grant writing class, Edward Lanning taught who was advising our National Science Foundation (NSF) on directions of research. Ed Lanning, once of Berkeley University in California, wrote "Peru Before the Incas" and co-authored "Prehispanic America" with Shirley Gorenstein, my friend's R.P.I. graduate advisor in Public Archaeology. I have always been a fan of Clint Eastwood, my friends grew up on Eastwood Blvd., in Centereach, NY where the local library, once one of the top 50 in the country, is also. Thanks Mr. Eastwood for keeping it real. Doug Drexler is probably doing alright, last I heard. Someone donated $3 million to keep "Enterprise" on the air, private space ventures is said. Rickie Schroeder is involved in a Native film, Navaho? "Black Cloud" or something?

NASA World Wind 1.3 Released today! Mars too!

A commercial firm in Rochester, NY, Pictometry, I think states 6 inches to a pixel providing unique aerial photography for municipalities and such. Back in 1992 or so I was using the Rolleimetric MR2 photo program then in development. It uses a non-standard camera (registration marks on glass plate the film is held up to, reseau crosses, documented painstaking "calibration" to microns and a suite of software modules) and a magnifier "puck" on a digitizing tablet to produce (with "error ellipses" within tolerances for the computed "virtual reality" constructed from some known targets and standard distance in the series of photos recorded around an object, recorded angles of the camera too, and rough sketch of locations) it was being tried for different things, Crazy Horse Monument (3D digitize the model go cut up the mountain) get the air crash from a helicopter in Gander, Newfoundland before the blizzard gets the crash site, quick record auto accidents for 3D analyses later, etc.) I am really enjoying this program, a quantum leap in visual info.

Archaeological researcher to discuss underwater finds

Archaeological researcher to discuss underwater finds http://www.kinston.com/SiteProcessor.cfm?Template=/GlobalTemplates/Details.cfm&StoryID=25968&Section=Society I had the pleasure of working with these guys back in 1990 - 1992 on the underwater and marsh remote-sensing surveys of the West Point Foundry Cove and Cold Spring, NY waterfront, just upriver from the West Point Academy's Constitution Island (said to predate the document in name) for Grossman and Associates, along with Texas A&M people. Interesting. And: "Narrow River eyed as possible Norse site" http://www.scindependent.com/articles/2005/03/01/local/cstory.txt A number of years ago, a Suffolk County Historian, (Long Island, there's one of them in Virginia and Boston, Massachusetts is in Suffolk County "too") published in its journal (ca. 1980 or so) a complimentary story (the Suffolk County Historian then was Christopher Vagts, also on the Huntington School District Board, perhaps a teacher of many years, we met researching a 17th century "Stone Fort" off Chichester Road in Huntington, NY and in "Fort Golgotha" there in the old cemetery the British Army, under a very young Benjamin Thompson (later a physicist of renown, known as "Count Rumford") had turned the "high point" of the military occupation of Long Island, the low point, when Nathan Hale was brought through there to be later hung in NYC, with only one regret, having only one life to lose for his country. A "gifted and talented" program was held for local students at those two sites, as "local history" became mandated in the public curriculum across New York State. He also had two more sites, a tavern and tanning vats, he was interested in testing. (one set of vats in New Jersey were the site of the "massacre" of Baylor's Dragoons which after excavation, was thought should be downgraded to an "atrocity" by a doctor in charge. (see "The Massacre of Baylor's Dragoons September 28 1778 Excavation of the Burial Site" Freeholder D. Bennett Mazur, Wayne M. Daniels, Museum Director, Bergen County Historical Society, Bergen County, NJ, which was given to me by Dr. Gary Corrado, a local podiatrist, who also assisting us in the small excavation, "played" Benjamin Thompson in the Bicentennial re-enactments of the occupation of Suffolk County, Long Island, NY culminating in an American victory re-enacted at the Manor St. George, in Mastic Beach, a private holding of the former fort remains (rediscovered in a drought) and grounds abutting the Wertheim National Wildlife Refuge). This report discussed the possibility that in later Norse voyages, one of the "sagas" described two Irish slaves, sent to reconnoiter the hills from Port Jefferson Harbor in the distance where Suffolk Community College is, on top of another moraine or hill, from which one could see the ocean and the barrier beach Fire Island, fit in the later explorations of "Vinland" some as in this current news article, have proposed to be possibly true. "Ironically" some of the testing of the so-called "Vinland" map was done by archaeological chemist Emeritus, Garmon Harbottle of the Brookhaven National Laboratory a few miles to the east of the community college, the college once the site of a sanatorium, the National Laboratory, once WWI, Camp Upton.

"New York Times" and a machine gun

"Like the Presidency, the paper has had to pay the price of eminence. It bears the traditional scars of journalism -- Winston Churchill's American grandfather, an early stockholder, for example, defended the office with a primitive machine gun during the draft riots of 1863, and a recent letter to the editor bore the piquant address, "Left-Wing Department, Un-American Fluoridation Director." Being the Times, however, it has acquired enemies more august than plug-uglies and crackpots. As a world newspaper it has been threatened by potentates, dictators, and offended governments, including its own. James "Scotty" Reston attracted the professional interest of the FBI after he was slipped the Dumbarton Oaks documents, and twice Times men have been hauled before Senate committees -- in 1915, on the charge that they had been bought by British gold, and in 1956 when Senator Eastland hunted Reds on the staff. More recently, of course, it was on the receiving end of the Nixon administration's big guns. Under fire the Times is serene. Its attitude toward traducers is reflected in a note Arthur Hays Sulzburger, Och's son-in-law and the publisher between 1935 and 1961, wrote to himself before testifying at a hearing. "Keep calm," it read. "Smile; don't be smart." In "Controversy And Other Essays in Journalism 1950-1975" - William Manchester in the "Americana" section "The New York Times" pp. 273-4. Little, Brown and Company, Boston, Toronto, 1976.

Press Release - Sexy ring of confidence - The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Fort or Ft. Slocum Davids' Island

The Cadence Page

"Jodies have been bursting in soldiers' hearts for more than 50 years. As the story goes, a formation of exhausted troops was returning to its barracks at Fort Slocum, N.Y., in May 1944 when a rhythmic chant arose from the columns. Pvt. Willie Duck-worth, a black soldier on detached service with Fort Slocum's Provisional Training Center, sang out the first-ever rendition of "Sound-off," "Sound-off; 1-2; Sound-off; 3-4; Count cadence; 1-2-3-4; 1-2 -- 3-4." Other soldiers in the formation joined in and their dragging feet picked up momentum."

Zentrum Paul Klee

Academy Awards 2005

From: "George J. Myers, Jr." Date: Tue Mar 1, 2005 4:38 pm Subject: Re: Fwd: finbacks , ferries and wrong terns (2005) I would like to thank the members of the Academy for giving an award (years ago) in makeup for "Dick Tracy" to my friend and fellow "Zum Zum" worker (the Bavarian fast-food franchise owner, was a part-owner of the "Four Seasons" and friend of 4 of the 5 NYC District Attorney's, trolling for former crooked FBI agents in the NY State Liquor Commission over the "Hell and Dunkel" [light and dark beer, Hellgate in NY where the water always "foamed"] we never served at the Mall, I thought he said. Sold out to Dunkin Donuts now a clock store), Douglas Drexler, now a Senior Illustrator at the Star Trek franchise "Enterprise". It's was "like butter" getting that close to Madonna ("Breathless Mahoney") in that region of space called deedee deedee deedee deedee, the Twilight Zone...where brains (or weir brains, where?) and rain kept "Seattle Slew" in mares. Tell you the truth I was watching "Gangs of New York" during the awards on Encore. Sense of humor they have on cable huh?

Construction and excavation of the world's first 'mock' mass grave

Peter Benenson Founder of Amnesty International 28 February 2005

When I attended graduate school in Anthropology at Stony Brook University, NY, my housemate started an Amnesty International chapter at the University. We thought we might have trouble, but the trouble was underground, leaking nearby gasoline "tank farm" over 1 million gallons over ten years. He and his brother were Italian natives, their father worked in laser physics at the Brookhaven National Lab on a grant. He went on to work in arms limitation research according to one alumni list. We also roomed with a professor of American "native/slave" relations, Phil Ributo, Cherokee and Italian-American. He had found on Bermuda's St. David's Island (Happy St. David's Day Wales!) that the son of "King Phillip" (or Metacomet, beheaded after the native uprising against Pilgrims, and whose head was placed on a pike for 25 years) had been given in slavery to the Governor of Bermuda, from whom he escaped. His mother and sister had been sent to Curacao. So the local legends, on an island that had a causeway only since WWII, built by the USA, to it.