On Bill Maher's Thoughts of 2005 at Huffington Post

Mr. Maher has reminded me of an American History episode, about how did all those Texians get in here? Robert Gardiner, the last heir to what was the manor of Gardiners Island "out east" on Long Island (where Pinewood West Studios is) told us that his great-aunt First Lady Julia Gardiner was very influential in getting Texas into the Union, so much so, Gloria Swanson said to him it would take a Vivian Leigh to play her. She was 19 or so below decks with the recently widowed President Tyler on the US Princeton, when the "Peacemaker" cannon, supplied "free" by the Haddersley Forge of NYC, exploded killing her father Senator Gardiner, two Cabinet members and others, while they were both raising a toast of champagne. She fell into his arms, in the finest Parisian fashion, where the Gardiners often schooled, and later added four children to President Tyler's ten. She was said to have been the "prettiest First Lady" ever and her persuasion helped get Texas into the Union according to Mr. Gardiner, now deceased. Ex-President Tyler was in charge of Richmond, VA during the Civil War, and died there, after Julia Gardiner rushed from Tidewater up in the middle of the night on horseback, a premonition driving her. Both the Union and the Confederacy ceased hostilities long enough to let the grieving First Lady through enemy lines back to New York City, where she was later the center of the press' attention over a contested will regarding expensive Manhattan real estate. Mr. Gardiner relayed that during Law School he hid from the "precedent" attributed to his name the case set. He also served in WWII in the Navy aboard the "U.S. Princeton" in Naval Intelligence. It remains to be seen what will happen to Gardiners Island, in the family since 1639. And that's how Texians became Texans and every farm hand in the U.S. got the name "Tex"? Happy New Year Bill Maher and everyone else. It's good to see someone can breakout of type casting.

Mail Call

I joined the "William Shatner DVD Club" which was the only piece of mail we got yesterday ("A new Sci-Fi, Horror, or Fantasy DVD Every Month!"). Oh the horror! I put on the "Wolves of Wall Street", (just got a DVD player/recorder from IchibanPC in Las Vegas, NV for $40, free shipping for Christmas, a NEC OEM) instead of "Ginger Snaps" (which, I read is from the same Montreal director that had Rutger Hauer in "Hemoglobin" renamed since, on Grand Manan Island, NB, Canada at the Swallowtail Lighthouse, now a "bed and breakfast" since automation and new technology, the best GPS was installed in the Bay of Fundy I followed though a dramatic light, nonetheless.) The hero in "Wolves of Wall Street" (with Julia Roberts brother, Eric Roberts as the Michael Douglas devil-like, but more reality based, "Wall Street") travels to NYC to be a broker and goes into my former employer's building to meet Louise Lasser, the landlady, which has two entrances, 40 Exchange Place or 25(?) William Street! (Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman!) Very strange. Spike Lee and Denzel Washington were last seen there too when I was working there at the beginning of Fall end of summer. Interesting film, the bad brokers are also "werewolves"! Lots of local "color" Trinity Church is no longer "black" after 9/11/01 cleaned to its original brown, where the Queen used to exchange a number of peppercorns for it every year. Trinity Church was one of the first in wide-scale unemployment (pre-Martin Scorcese's 2002, "Gangs of New York" current crime rate down for the 17th year) to establish a "mission" in the Bowery, once NYC's "Broadway", (where I've done research) Raoul Walsh's "Regeneration" the first gangster film, was made there, 1915. Peter Bogdonavich was just talking about him, directing "White Heat" with James Cagney on Turner Movie Classics "Essentials" I think used to call him Pablo? I think this season the Post Office really got tied up, so it seems, from the feedback (or lack thereof) from Registered Mail and EZ-Pass we've gotten here at 1918 Holland, in the Bronx (named after Swedes not wanted in New Amsterdam the Broncks, like Hendricks, and other -icks they sometimes turn into -x). I worked on the archaeology of a sharecropper site outside Tennessee Williams' Columbus, Mississippi that was the childhood home of "Honeybee Hendrix" of West Point, Mississippi, at the Waverly Plantation Ferry Access site in the way of the Tennessee-Tombigbee Barge Canal, chosen by the US Congress over a NYC "Energy Island". Tombigbee River runs from NE Mississippi into Alabama and into Mobile Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. It's northern end was connected with the Tennessee River, which can connect with the Ohio, and I dare say if you follow the "drinking gourd", one gourd became the "banjo", you might even end up in Canada.

CNN.com - Transcripts

CNN BREAKING NEWS Ronald Reagan Dies at 93 Aired June 5, 2004 - 16:50 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. Interesting assortment of commentators.

Cinematical Mira Sorvino Lackawanna Marshal

"1. She was good with Mariah Carey I thought in 'Wise Girls' (or various combinations of the two words, this one harkens back to Director E. Mason Hopper's 1929 one, he later played an uncredited doctor in 'Sunset Blvd.' which was on this last weekend. WOW Gloria Swanson once told Robert Gardiner, (he told me) of Gardiners Island, NY, it would take a 'Vivian Leigh' to play his great-aunt 'the prettiest' First Lady, Julia Gardiner, married to President Tyler, about 40 years younger, after a tragic 'Peacemaker' cannon explosion that killed her Senator father and others on the U.S.S. Princeton on the Potomac River about Mount Vernon) though it was made in Canada! She gets 'drafted' into an undercover operation on the Mob. Someone should make a film about that 'free' Haddersley cannon, cast in NYC (no the cannon)."

The Huffington Post:CIA Probing Potentially "Erroneous Renditions"...

I was schooled as an anthropologist (not an apologist) and one of my professors was Marvin K. Opler, Ph.D., then involved in the trans-cultural psychiatry and the "Mid-Manhattan Project" (how do we statistically define "mental fitness" for military duty?) and an honorary Navaho. I learned he had a brother, Morris Opler, also an anthropologist. Morris Opler was recently written about in the "American Anthropologist." His doctoral thesis, was on the long distance kinship relations of the Apache, native "Americans". He, apparently, like his brother Marvin Opler, served in the Japanese-American internments in the West in WWII. Morris Opler wrote three legal briefs on behalf of the rights of Americans in internment camps, two of which were heard by the US Supreme Court. I have a vague feeling the third one was over the seizure of "Japanese" in seventeen (17) other countries, forced into internment camps in the U.S. and never recompensed as were U.S. citizens (~ $25k) under the Presidential War Powers Act. Those, then children, are still waiting for a settlement of the government's admittance of "racism". Someone out there want to rebring the briefs?

As the World Turns More Slowly?

Slate: "The U.S. Naval Observatory has announced that they'll add an extra second to the nation's atomic clocks this New Year's Eve—the first time a "leap second" has been deployed since 1998." Last time I heard about this it was the large impoundments of water we've built, i.e. dams, near the Equator that have slowed down Earth's rotation (there's one coming up in Syria that had/has Iraqi's Fundies in a knot, no water like "no ticket" in the movies). Some geographers see a coming civil war between the Northern Hemisphere ("haves") and the Southern Hemisphere ("have nots") over resources. I once had a piece of software that was developed by the gentleman measuring the Moon's distance from the Earth with a laser off the mirrors left behind there in the Apollo/LEM program (Lunar Excursion Module built by Grumman who built, sold and trained the 100 F-14 Tomcat's in Iran for the Shah) and the software could take two photo's and recreate a 3-D wire frame from some known distances in the photo. I was really surprised on how far the Moon/Earth distance varies within its orbit (apogee/perigee), which seemed a little underplayed in the article. The Moon is also slowly (very slowly) moving away.

"The Swamp Angel" by Herman Melville

I sometimes wish we had never found the prototype to the "Swamp Angel" at the marsh edge in Cold Spring, NY where they once had the over 500' long "Bridge Shop", on concrete stanchions until the fire in 1913 in Cold Spring, it a worldwide and local producer of bridges (one still in New Jersey, and still in business today). Under one of the pyramidal "pads" or footings that once held up the steel covered assembly-line shed, with a rail line in it and others alongside it, with gantry cranes outside and various steam driven lifters of ironwork for assembly and riveting inside had been, were the remains of the prototype "Parrott" platform on-top of the piled "grillage" of small diameter trees, perhaps floating at one time, with what appeared to be in old "stereo-pair" photographs, a two story observation tower, supplied by a different load-bearing rail, one that brought weapons of mass destruction that brought asunder, where later, created spans brought people together.(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."

State of South Carolina's listing for the "Swamp Angel".

Gmail - Digital reconstruction of a 17th century clinker boat

I've worked in 3D with some ship parts, the tidal remains of a cargo sloop in the Hudson River, on it's west bank, in the Bear Mountain State Park, left behind, and in some commemorative photographs of Henry Hudson's "Half Moon" passing by in the foreground at the 1939(?) celebration. My question is the type of construction. Each of the ribs was "hinged" with an iron rod. For example a section of three piece wood come up from the keelson, where (almost "Mad" magazine like) two further rib sections would be joined in the pin, and further another section of two or three pinned further up the rib, with a second iron rod. It looks sort of like a specific form of replacing the carving out of larger ship timbers, also perhaps half as light. This was a centerboard cargo hauler, the box for the board there also "pinned" together with iron rod, vertically. Somewhat funny, it is in a remote area, by the steepness of the access, and we had approached it as perhaps able to do a handheld magnetometer survey, which we had recently completed in Saratoga Springs on a "city gas" manufacturers EPA site. It was also during a solar storm event so when we got there, it was kind of funny, as we were presented with a number of standing iron rods where standing there, the wood they once joined had since washed away, and the ribs were made from sections and short iron rods (no nuts or bolts, all close fitted). Sort of like this in plan: =======||_______||========= =======||_______|| =======||(*space) ||========= (*formatting auto edits) this: ) (tipped over) in profile. || actually the iron rod, though appeared in pieces is solid. == and ___ meant to be the wooden "composite" frame. Anybody have a description? I used a "total station" and diagrammed the structural elements in detail of the best example of the two and provided NY State's SHPO with an AutoCad file I think and paper copy of the remains, back in 1993 or so. Posted to Underwater Archaeology 12/21/05

NYC Police Officers Covertly Videotaping Protestors | The Huffington Post

NY Times December 22, 2005 Police Infiltrate Protests, Videotapes Show By JIM DWYER "I had to login twice too (once to the NSA?) I was on a Bronx County grand jury and I picked up a NY Post paper. In it was an exclusive that stated over three thousand undercover drug buys were secretly video-taped by supervisory police of the deals, supposedly to fight corruption. I asked an ADA if we could see the tapes as evidence, in $5 and $10 drug buys mostly, no answer. The US Constitution allows jury trials for $20 cases and up, maybe it should have an amendment?"

The Blog | Arianna Huffington: The Apostrophe Crisis: When Perfectly Good Punctuation Goes Bad | The Huffington Post

"W.M.D. 'Words of Mass Deception' or W.M.D.s 'Words of Mass Deceptions'? or just W.M.D. 'Words Make (my) Day' ('Make My Day' the replacement for the 'Tomcat' insignia 'Anytime, Baby' on the Shah of Iran's trained F-14 pilots. He had bought 100 of the Grumman built fighter bombers, and a compound of about 4,000 Americans once trained them.) How about Myers Rum, ho ho ho Myers's post."

Top 5 discoveries/finds in underwater archaeology

My sort of American list: 1) The "Defence". The ship, scuttled in Maine to avoid capture by the British Navy, helped redefine the TPQ (date after which) pearlware ceramics were manufactured (putting the date before the American Revolution or one of the causes of it) used in dating terrestrial deposits, from an 1800 date to 1774 (with two other tightly dated sites, one Pluckemin, NJ). It was dove on by underwater archaeologists who also worked on the "Ronson" ship excavated from 1730's fill in Manhattan, NY which my coworker and I with a backhoe operator uncovered in the last "deep test" allowed. 2) The Swedish "Vasa" for obvious reasons, that is public display and publications. 3) The British "R.M.S. Titanic" for somewhat obvious reasons (a puzzle with EDO relations still has me wondering about the public accounting of the finding). 4) The German "Wilhelm Gustloff" named after an assassinated Swiss Nazi, murdered at home. It was sunk in January 1945 by the Russian submarine "S-13" the largest loss of life from sinking in modern history. Recently written about by author Gunter Grass, it is online rumored to have had the "Amber Room" perhaps recovered and exhibited as the "recreated" Amber Room by Russian art conservationists. 5) The recent recovery of the "dumping" of the "U.S.S. Maine" off the Cuban coast. It was excavated in the Havana, Cuba harbor by the U.S. Admiralty, which in one of its opinions stated that it may have been the result of a coal bunker fire, by one of its admirals, reviewed in "Scientific American" and researched recently by an independent materials scientist, and reported on the "Discovery Channel"(?) Due to "yellow journalism" the "Remember the Maine" call to war was promulgated to prod the U.S. into war, especially after the crisis of President McKinley's assassination in Buffalo, NY and the rise of Theodore Roosevelt to President, himself once shot at a speech, and went on to finish his talk. The first White House Press Secretary also resulted over it, Cabinet member George B. Cortelyou, invited the press into the White House for the first time.

Hilton Hotels and Bjorn Lynne's music

"EagleRiders has a program with Hilton, you can rent a Harley-Davidson at some of them, if you have the 'do-re-mi'. Paris Hilton just got a crystal embedded pink chopper and colors. I wonder if she had anything to do with it? There's a new Hilton on Staten Island in NYC, where they want to put a NASCAR race track, near where the current lead singer for 'Journey' lives, Steve Augeri, ('Tall Stories') married to my cousin. Thanks for the photos of home here in Norway. There's this Norwegian Hall in St. James, NY near Smithtown, anyway..."

Thank you, Senator McCain

Interesting legal document I've looked at, since I have worked in this type of work environment for a number of years in the USA, (from, metaphorically, Fort McHenry, Maryland to Skagway, Alaska, where during Mt. St. Helens 1980, the Russian cruise ship "Odessa" docked and entertained the townspeople). "Law on Cultural Heritage in Vietnam"

Wacko Fundie Nutbars

Will this Canadian wordsmith's words catch on? This mananite thinks mannalite is a really good read, and so too, "Canadian Word of the Day" by Bill Casselman. After all we're dictating new start days for "Daylight Savings" to Canada? Maybe we should have asked them, they didn't go to Iraq with us, did to Afghanistan, where some of our Illinois Air Guard flyboys trigger happy bombed and killed six Canadians, which POTUS took three days to actually acknowledge and apologize for. I suppose Bush's new posture is "I'm responsible for Iraq," (where we hit very coldly Sodom Whosesane(?)'s sons) not Afghanistan, they all tried to kill his Daddy, former flyboy too. Wacko Fundie Nutbars? Lunatic Fundamentalist Christians... I guess other religions could have their Fundies in a knot.

Sylvia Plath's "Ariel"

Ariel was Shelley's biography also. I once had a British "Ariel" motorcycle which went out of business before Sylvia Plath wrote this, I had a 1956. I wonder, there is a form of romantic poetry, song, etc., that had to do with motorcycle riding to visit ones love interest and riding away, as the British were at one time very large producers of motorcycles, the Ariel, referred to as the "gentleman's motorcycle" even a lambskin seat on some like the "Square Four". It had a "jumping horse" on its gas tank pads, Britain's "nigger" instead of America's "Indian"? Just some thoughts of a rider, loved to freeze with "Sylvia" on the back.

Enronnie

My godmother/aunt just retired from a VA Hospital next to Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn, NY where I've also dug archaeology test holes in the "Parade Ground" after inspection. Seems, 10 million dollars, was by Enron there, in energy costs, was lost in the shuffle. Then, the head of the US Army was fired by the POTUS, and he had been a on the board at Enron. (George HW Bush fired the head of the Navy for "Tail Hook"). This was after the GAO sued and lost to see the records of the "energy meeting" in the first months of the previous 4 years (at twice the salary as ex-President Bill Clinton, who has at least addressed the New-York Historical Society) of the Bush Administration. Terribly, traffic lights were shut down in the energy crisis in California. My question is, is any of this possibly orchestrated or has just "market forces" caused the Enron crisis?

Governor denies clemency for ex-gang leader

"El Condor Passa" the melody to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail, etc." should be "sparrow than a snail".

R.E.M. Titanic

I hope this is not out of place, as a former member of the US National Maritime Historical Society, based in Peekskill, NY I have had the opportunity to attend some of its meetings and had some work published as in its "Sea History" quarterly magazine, which was documenting two Hudson River tidal sloop wrecks in Bear Mountain State Park, below Revolutionary War forts Clinton and Montgomery, though they later, as documented in photographs. At one of their meetings, which coincided with the large section being lifted off the bottom of the RMS Titanic site, which coincided only by the date I think, that section came very close to the surface and slipped back into the depths when the harness broke, or slipped, I felt compelled to ask the then Maritime Historical Society President, Peter Stanford, why the Titanic exhibit was kept from New York City, where there is also a monument to the ship in the South Street Historic District. He replied it was over the designation by the U.S. Congress, as to the significance of the site, and out of respect to its law, the Society had supported it. It means, however, that an exhibit that has seen many visitors in other cities, would never come to the ship's original destination, an arrival it never would have, after it hit the iceberg and tragically sinking, with some of New York City's residents aboard. You might imagine, it was quite a meeting, policy and practice and the dynamics of the expedition to recover the part, which had to be retrieved again in the middle of it. Perhaps the people in charge should re-examine their policies? Not to start an argument, the observations of an American anthropologically trained archaeology technician who once stood in the hold of a circa 1730's ship buried in New York City (just outside the historic district) in winter and still wonders could we have saved this? George Myers posted Dec. 7, 2005 @ Underwater Archaeology forum

What's the "Missing Man" Formation?

Subject: What's the "Missing Man" Formation? From: GeorgeJMyersJr-2 Date: Dec 10 2005 8:01PM Well you could say it is one of the Columbia orbiter's crew, the celebrated Israeli pilot who flew in "close formation" into Iraq years ago to bomb the French built nuclear power plant. The formation was used to "pose" as a commercial airliner as it flew over nations who never would have granted permission for such a mission. Ironically, his notes, from Columbia when it disintegrated on re-entry, fell to earth and are being conserved, what remained of them. Because of his presence on Columbia, I had suspicions about "black-ops" being done, perhaps. Recent "discoveries" in HAZMAT communications, where I once trained in the late 1980's and early 1990's to do archaeology in EPA National Priority Superfund sites in the New York City area (for Region 2 which besides the tri-state includes the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico) allow the transmission of radio between, for example, a helicopter and the International Space Station, developed to overcome the problems of "space suits" in confined spaces and communicating in them with other HAZMAT team members. He's the "missing man" from that formation that started this war in my opinion.

Who Should Host the Oscars?

chris-rocks-not-hosting-the-oscars-and-no-one-cares: I once worked in Coco's Plankhouse. They had an Oscar, grilled mahi-mahi fish (for the story?) with toasted almonds (for the faith?) with asparagus spears ontop (for the theatrics?) and a Hollandaise sauce ontop of it all (for the audience?). Maybe the Muppet's Swedish Chef should host the Oscars, a smorgasbord of cinema. Maybe "Dick Tracy" (the only remotely connected part of Hollywood to me, the make-up Oscar a friend got) should host them, he seems to have a handle on the history of the place, and his sister gets work like a bee was on the end of her nose.

The new Bond

cinematical-seven-the-best-bond-movies: Interestingly, Encarta's entry for Ian Fleming (who had a cameo, in a cafe, in "The Prisoner" series) who had a golden typewriter in the Caribbean, where one can live in his room for a night, does NOT list "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" which he also wrote, now on Broadway (Birdie num num, what to do?).

On the 25th "Anniversary" of John Lennon's death.

There is another "Strawberry Fields" out on Long Island, an estate around the North Shore I once went past to investigate an archaeology site with Edward Johanneman, a then Baiting Hollow resident and archaeologist. The site we went to has an interesting story with it, part of it formerly some sort of water-powered factory once. On this other estate are three connected brick "boxes", almost like a small "project" that were built in NYC that I once also lived in in the South Bronx, public housing, provided at a set percentage of one's income then (?). Anyway after this dramatic scenery, they are almost funny, these three connected square brick buildings that are the estate there. They belong to three brothers who run a "social disease" alcohol treatment center in Manhattan, that a famous baseball player once attended according to the newspapers. Anyway, these brothers were once very into partying, drinking perhaps back maybe in Prohibition days, sometimes laws can have the opposite effect. Their father, according to Mr. Johanneman, decided to teach them a lesson and left all his money in some stock, a new business, starting out, that became IBM, International Business Machines. The stocks "split" a number of times, 1 became 5, each one of those, 1 became 4, etc. and the thought "useless stock" became worth quite a bit of money. To show they had "learned their lesson" they began the walk-in clinic in mid-town Manhattan for the treatment of alcoholism, a social disease. Speaking of Long Island, under the "Freedom of Information Act" it was revealed in 1993 or so that the FBI was spying on John Lennon, and one particular "tail" was to Stony Brook University (State University of New York at Stony Brook, SUNY at Stony Brook, where the current fictitious character cited in "Forbes" magazine, "Daddy Warbucks" aged 52, once attended, how I don't know, he's been around since 1924, must have found the "Fountain of Ink") back in the early 1970's and the agent described seeing "hippies and zippies" there. I was in St. James, NY I think when John Lennon was shot with a folk singer friend, who had been visiting with Mrs. Woodie Guthrie who was in a small ground-floor apartment in the Dakota. I think later said she had heard the shots, heard all over the world. They were trying to get some of his writings out.

Re: Holiday Tree (sic transit gloria mundi)

The last original tree on the White House grounds was taken down because the squirrels were annoying the Bush Administration ('methinks he protesteth...aw shucks, conjure 'em'). I wrote they perhaps should have tried cutting the offending tree square instead of down, as are all the trees at the Albany Capital complex in New York, put up by former Governor and then Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller. I think it was to cut down on squirrel 'limb' networks, once said to stretch from NYC to Chicago, when Europeans first arrived. So all the trees are now 'foreign'. Tannenbaum started in New York City among German immigrants in Brooklyn it's written spreading from there to the rest of the US as "Christmas Tree". Hope it don't come with a dictator. Maybe one Christmas, Yale alumnus Senator Hillary Clinton will join that circle of former students who have been given an "honorary degree" by "Sanity Clause". Ho ho ho! (Right after I posted this here and MSN I had a "blue screen" tcpip.sys crash, first crash since I got Verizon DSL. It's a new revised file w/ Windows XP SP2 to stop P2P "Friendly" file transfers, and to slow down specific "worms" from propagating.) Interesting site: FRANK'S FESTIVUS: THE FIRST NAME IN FESTIVUS "tm" presents News and Comment on the upcoming Festivus season, as well as the only festivus pole on the market that meets Frank's original exacting standards for the Festivus Season. The Festivus Pole

Re: Eye Candy

On 1/15/2005 I posted a query listed in another database I once contributed to, but didn't get a "mentor" that is "everything2" (don't put a full roll of Mentos in a bottle of soda...whooosh!) "Book most owned by American libraries with the word "fuck" in the title" The Ice Opinion : Who Gives A Fuck? Ice-T and Heidi Siegmund, New York : St. Martin's Press, 1994 (ISBN: 0312104863) The following link (Mr. Conrad Link, across the street at home lived to be 101, worked in spring production in Paterson, NJ, his shop voted a raise rather than a pension) is to: List of films ordered by uses of the word "fuck" From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Gardiners Island, NY

In "Historic Houses of Early America" by Elise Lathrop, she states "Since 1639, Gardiner's Island has been known by the name of that family that acquired it. Lion Gardiner purchased it from native Indians, his title being confirmed by James Farret, who three (3) years earlier had been employed by William, Earl of Sterling, "Secretary of the Kingdom of Scotland," to sell lands for him on the whole of Long Island, although at the time the Dutch were in possession there." p. 337, (also a reference to the Oliver Walcott farm discussed in the next entry) Tudor Publishers, NY, 1927 c) Robert M. McBride & Co.

Re: Hanover Square

I wrote, "...the American Revolution the statue of King George, II maybe ("King of Great Britain and Elector of Hanover from 1727 to 1760 (1683-1760)") was pulled down and taken to Connecticut where it was melted down into musketballs..." Sorry, I've checked "Newsday" and my notes and that was the wrong King George. King George III's statue was taken down from Bowling Green by angry citizens. In the tome "Cradle Days of New York (1609-1825)" by Hugh Macatamney, NY: Drew and Lewes, 1909, on p. 61, it states: "When the statue of King George was destroyed by citizens, British soldiers, in revenge, pulled the Pitt statue down and broke off the head and an arm. It lay in the rubbish." It was put on exhibit at Riley's Fifth Ward Museum Hotel. William Pitt was a known legistlative supporter of colonist's rights in the English Parliament. The statue was put up sans head and arm. "There the relic of the past stood until Riley's death, when the New-York Historical Society secured it and now has it in its collection." It originally stood at Wall and William streets, close to Hanover Square. The King George III statue, once in Bowling Green, was taken to Oliver Wolcott's farm in Connecticut and made into bullets (over 43,000). Oliver Wolcott, Jr. was George Washington's Secretary of the Treasury. Oliver Wolcott, Sr. was Governor of Connecticut.

North America's Oldest Extant Warship

"A new DVD documentary about a French & Indian War (1755-1763) shipwreck in Lake George, New York, USA has been released. The 57 minute long documentary is entitled "The Lost Radeau: North America's Oldest Intact Warship." The documentary was produced by Pepe Productions, a multi-media corporation, in conjunction with Bateaux Below, Inc., a not-for-profit educational corporation that found the shipwreck in 1990 during a Klein side scan sonar survey. The documentary examines the history, discovery, and archaeological study of a little known, but extremely historic shipwreck. The 52 ft. long by 18 ft. wide LAND TORTOISE was a British and provincial floating fun battery, literally a floating fortress. The unusually seven-sided warship was pierced for seven cannons and was deliberately sunk by the British on October 22, 1758 to keep it from falling into the hands of the French. After the 1990 discovery of the radeau, the one-of-a-kind wooden shipwreck was studied by a team of volunteer divers and underwater archaeologists under the direction of archaeologist D. K. Abbass, Ph.D. In 1994, the sunken warship became part of a State of New York-administered shipwreck preserve for visiting scuba divers. In 1998, the LAND TORTOISE was designated a National Historic Landmark. For information on the DVD documentary consult the website: http://www.thelostradeau.com"

Fw: Re: RE: We know...MIB

You are correct I was working outside the MIB headquarters on a new tunnel (very well disguised MIB looks like a metal staircase when the door is open nothing like the movie) there to put a new tunnel that allows the subway cars to be fully occupied (instead of only the first four due to the radius of the track turning into the South Ferry terminal, newly opened where those take flight on escalators to the second deck of the ferries to Staten Island, once fought over to its identity with New Jersey, who said its ours which we said its ours, an island and then proved it. We have a yearly sail-around to commerorate the 17th century boundary dispute.) Ah I was getting tired of the "Amish Market" franchise there for dinner (4 in NYC) and they stopped my Swing Shift due to finding something then canned me for a blog entry the term for that "dooced" (maybe from voo doo I wouldn't be surprised having been too close to one F-101 Voodoo when a young impressionable Foxtrot fan, at the airshow, wandering off to look in its cockpit in an empty hangar. Good thing the keys weren't in it! Only kidding.) Off to see Adelaide nee Urquhart, my mother, once frequenter of Grand Manan since a youth and last holder of 12 room house in Seal Cove before it was taken down when the Province ordered it painted and fixed, next to their well-painted school. Its foundation was cracked, a large cobble where it did on a almost scandalously thin foundation of concrete for such a large real 2"x4"s etc. structure with plaster and lath walls with room in the attic for three more on a 100'x100' next to Bakers and the school. I'm not sure what she'll want to do with it someday. I sometimes wonder if I had painted it pink for the "Bermuda of the Fundies". Well, anyway, it was pretty weather beaten twisting on its foundation like a big sail, it might have been a "Big Pink". Interesting site: A-1 Women's Discount Bookstore

BEGGARS BUSH

An old play I'm trying to read: "BEGGARS BUSH, A COMEDY." www.gutenburg.org

On 1,000th execution since moratorium ended...

When I was in the 6th grade my teacher showed me a box of photos his dad had from when he was a news reporter. One was of one of the last hangings in Nevada, taken far away up on a hill, because there were what 50,000 people there to see the large "tripod" (so I remember it as) presumably the man was hung from. He related people used to travel by train for days and days to get to them, perhaps some in protest, others as part of the social circumstances. It looked like Needles, NV along Route 66, perhaps. Another photo was alarming and disturbing. His father, the reporter, was a witness to the first (?) woman executed on the electric chair in the state of Illinois. No pictures were to be taken, but he had rigged a small camera to his calf, under his trousers, and at the appropriate time, lifted the pants leg to snap the photo, which also had to be retouched a bit, I could see the pencil marking on some of it. It appeared on the front page of the "Chicago Sun" newspaper the next day. I think he may not have been invited back, I imagine. I read in death penalty cases another scale of wages and salaries are used. The estimate I read a number of years ago now, was about $4 million dollars, where everyone gets paid more perhaps to assuage their contact with the trial. Let's see, at $4 million X 1000 = $4 billion dollars we've redistributed to ourselves over someone else's tragedies, and in some cases not even the right people were punished. It seems to me, a more just punishment, life in prison, and cheaper too!

Your Constitutional Subway Bag Search, Plus New Subway Rules

Well, it might be a good place to hide "stream of conscious" being from "Conscience Bay". However, I live near the Bronx Muslim Center and my neighborhood has people from different faiths. The day they announced the search on the subways I expected that, not "random" subway stations. A subway runs in Buffalo, NY where reportedly a "cell" of terrorists were, are they inspecting at random riders on the Buffalo subway? The NY State Constitution was also found OK to discriminate in the return of State education monies based on property values by a judge, i.e. the less the properties are worth the less money each student gets in education funds. My school district brought the suit, Middle Country. By "Constitution" did the judge include the "Bill of Rights" first signed by New Jersey, which without New York would have never signed the Constitution?

Slate magazine

Subject: Bush's Tookie Take Two From: GeorgeJMyersJr-2 Date: Dec 2 2005 9:18PM I know that sounds terrible, but "Where's the weapons of mass destruction?" joke where President Bush went looking around in "mock" for them worse. Maybe the coat hanger brand on his butt from Yale days talking through his "words of mass deception" that became coined after it, it seemed. Maybe we've had too many Governors in the Oval Office, and structurally, I would welcome a Senator or even a Congressman, someone who doesn't sound like the proverbial "Boy Named Sue", the Man in Black sung about. I did "enjoy" if that's the word, the raw reactions that are often hardest to describe, I imagine by reporters, especially ones from a party from that party's persuasion. It shows good journalism despite a persuasion of politics. I spent a few months digging around human remains in NYC's first Almshouse, in renovating City Hall Park, next to a statue of Horace Greeley and a monument to Joseph Pulitzer, within "earshot" of what was once "Newspaper Row". We have to watch journalists, my grandfather, a real estate reporter, might add, as they might have "sidelines" making money, beside the bylines they struggle to post and apparently its "ethics" (Society of Professional Journalists where are you?) are getting more public attention everyday.

Your Constitutional Subway Bag Search, Plus New Subway Rules

Well, will the inspectors wear vinyl or latex gloves? Latex causes allergies, and on one Denzel Washington narrated "fire stories", they self-combusted into a warehouse fire, from the inside of the box out. Health care supervising the hands touching and "spreading" as the inspectors go from one bag to the next? And what if they can't see what they're spreading, perhaps? (besides fear in general and bad feelings about hollow-point armed "bobbies" killing a harmless Brazilian in London? I once hired a band "Trigger Happy" for students on Parents Weekend at Buffalo University, I wonder, are the inspectors armed with Kerik tasers or "glocks"? Could be a BIG mistake, a real "Yellowing of America (alert)". I have ridden subways, all times of day to work, and its the facilities that need security, not the general ridership on an individual basis.

Gothamist: Your Constitutional Subway Bag Search, Plus New Subway Rules

Bedbugs Taking Over US Again Because Of Increased World Travel, Changing Pest Control Practices… | The Huffington Post

"If they are, I hope they are not the 'superbug' from Iraq, read ferocious, and you can't give blood for a year if afflicted. I was in a former Holiday Inn, near Stewart Air Guard, Newburgh, NY where large military cargo planes fly in and out (one with 1/4 million hits of 'ectasy') and something was biting me I thought it was the spiders on Mama Leone's farm on West Point Academy's perimeter where we were but, who knows?" Actually, Stewart Airport in Newburgh NY is but one of several quarantine centers this country has for incoming livestock, and other agricultural imports to name but a "few". The other closest is in the Keys in FL. Posted by: TheShadow on December 02, 2005 at 04:36pm Image from "Germs, warfare In war, not all wounds are caused by bombs and bullets"

Piratery fka Piracy: Primer to Investing in Cutlasses, Rum and Pillaging

New York treasure story: (inspired by these posts) I think there's more money in waiting for the pirate to be hung then invest in his real estate property. At least it seems so having dug in the archaeology of Manhattan on that site of the former respected citizen of old New York, Captain William Kidd ("Scottish sea captain who was hired to protect British shipping in the Indian Ocean and then was accused of piracy and hanged (1645-1701)" - Word Web and Princess Diana's mother's surname). He, the most maligned character in history, according to some historians (W.E. Woodward for one) who feel that the reaction of throwing a bucket at a group of mutinous seamen which led to the death of one of the crew, no cause for his hanging for "piracy" when his London backers refused to produce the papers that showed he was involved in sanctioned privateering and not a "freebooter". I once asked the then owner of Gardiners Island, NY why his "treasure" was dug up by the British in the 19th century (?). He stated that a map was in his clothing when hung, and all property of criminals becomes the Crown's, and since the United States did not exist, and the island a "manor" the Indian (as in Indian Ocean) dowry and treasures taken and buried on the property theirs. I heard on TV it was used to build a retired seamen hospital in London. I know there has been a new book about William Kidd, I thought someone might be interested in it in regard to Gardiners Island, said to have been over-run by pirates at least once, also occupied by the British Army in the American Revolution. One or the other burned the place down too, probably the pirates. Senator Gardiner was on the deck of the U.S. Princeton when the "Peacemaker" cannon blew up saluting George Washington while cruising by Mount Vernon on the Potomac River. Robert Gardiner served on the U.S.S. Princeton in WWII. Senator Gardiner's daughter, Julia Gardiner, became First Lady to President Tyler after the tragedy, both were on board when the cannon exploded, but below decks having champagne according to Robert Gardiner, the source for most of this, now deceased. The island may be no longer a manor, no male heir was "issued". A monument on Gardiners Island, NY marks where the "treasure" was excavated from.

War Places Hill in Political No-Man's-Land

Yer' right, no-man's land because, when it was time, she was in Iraq visiting the troops, then POTUS, Mr. Bush, with all the "W" vote (women of soccer, women of factories, women all the social science said to target, particularly in Ohio) visited them after she did on Thanksgiving I think it was, it's been pretty confusing with C. Rice saying three times to Tim Russet on NBC, "no no no I won't run". And then there's Dick Morris with the two of them, Senator Hill and SofS Rice (where's the Beans? In Crawford wondering if jury duty this time would be right, last time it was over a stripper he needed legal counsel about his reponses to ?) putting them up together on his web site, who'll win? he asks. Yikes, back in September some group in New Hampshire already started Hillary Clinton's campaign "whether she wanted it or not" what's up with that?