Is It All Loot? Tackling The Antiquities Problem

Discussion which includes a former professor of mine at Stony Brook University, Elizabeth C. Stone, Ph.D. With her guidance I had studied the "Middle East" "Levant" and "Southwest Asia" archaeology. One site in particular, Nuzi, excavated in Iraq by Starr of Harvard in the 1930's was very interesting, near Kirkuk and Mosul, Iraq (in "Southwest Asia") where it's reported Catholic Christians have lived since about 300 CE (AD) (Britannica). There is a fragment of tablet that describes a wedding (failed?) between Egypt and Iraq allegedly found elsewhere, linking the kingdom of Mitanni with Egypt around 1300 BCE, its capital still yet to be found. Many tablets were found in Nuzi and were translated giving an insight into the ancient "fertile crescent" between the Tigris and the Euphrates said to be the origin of Western Civilization. The Nuzi city site was armed to the teeth when abandoned, projectile points ("arrowheads") found in many of its rooms, perhaps over-run for being cosmopolitan, at a crossroads of Hittite, Hurrian, Mesopotamian, Indus and other peoples, I thought and wrote.

C.S.S. Alabama Virtual Exhibit

New C.S.S. Alabama Exhibit on the MUA:
"The online Museum of Underwater Archaeology is proud to announce the opening of our latest exhibit on the investigation of the CSS Alabama (http://www.uri.edu/mua). Based on the field work conducted from 2000 to 2002, it features three galleries covering the vessel's historical background, the methodology employed in the field, and the team's findings. In addition the exhibit hosts PDF copies of two reports, and an annotated bibliography."
I worked in the West Point Foundry Cove in Cold Spring, NY with Gordon Watts who has been on and off of this project for a long time, back then he was working on his doctorate at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, and we did a number of remote-sensing tests and operations with Grossman & Associates, along with others from Texas A&M. The "C.S.S. Alabama" was sunk by a Parrott rifled cannon (patented) made in the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY on the "U.S.S. Kearsarge". The EPA Region 2 archaeologist, John Vetter, was in the background, as we did the required archaeology for the then in design stages, National Priority Superfund Cleanup of the Marathon Battery Site, where batteries for NIKE missile defense rockets were made. It was a primarily cadmium and nickel contamination in the Foundry Cove, a part of Constitution Island which is on the east shore across the Hudson River from the West Point Military Academy, where one of the large iron chains were once stretched across the Hudson River, to stop a "divide and conquer" the British forces had planned for the Hudson River in the American Revolution.
The foundry came after, methinks, the fortifications designed during the Revolution by Bernard Romans a Dutch-American patriot on Constitution Island, currently held by the Academy. Michigan Technological University is starting its fifth field season in the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring (named by George Washington, two of the early foundations appear to be "Virginian" as seen in Henry Glassie's work) of industrial archaeology, in the Foundry proper which was off limits to us. However, we did recover R.P. Parrott's gun platform, I think the prototype of the one used (over 600 spent friction primers, 2 EOD empty shells), field-named "Swamp Angel" used in an incendiary bombardment of Charleston, South Carolina in 1863, which was written about in a poem by Herman Melville "Swamp Angel". The wooden platform and pintle, on wooden grillage, was found under the large industrial remains of the company's "Bridge Shop" which burned c. 1913, ceasing operations of that large company's (one of more than a couple) use of the access to railroad and ocean about 50 miles north of New York City, where the circa Civil War operations had their offices.
There was quite a fine levied against Great Britain in Switzerland for the C.S.S. Alabama construction, adjudged in violation of treaty.

International Society for the Protection of Garden Gnomes

Spiegel Online Garden Angels The Secret History of the Garden Gnome German Fast Food Forget the "Mett", Try a "Frikadelle"

Sean Penn has a Torture Doll

Sean Penn Admits To Having An Ann Coulter Voodoo Doll... There is a company that sells all kinds of "voodoo" dolls all sorts of images of well known people. There are dolls called "kubrick" in Japan, the Onion listings had. I remember scanning tha company that made the "voodoo" dolls.
The F-101 Voodoo fighter/bomber jet was built by McDonnell-Douglas in St. Louis, Missouri. It had nuclear capability, small a-bombs. Two were stationed at Calverton, NY out on Long Island where Grumman later built the F-14 Tomcat (used in "Top Gun" Tom Cruise movie, also the Lunar Excursion Module used by Tom Hanks in "Apollo 13").
Yesterday I read about the fiscal problems of the "Cradle of Aviation Museum" out there (whose Vice-President Tom Gwynne, and former F-14 test pilot, I met years ago during the Iranian hostage crisis, when we sold 80 F-14's to the deposed Shah of Iran it was reported in the paper "Newsday" yesterday (I thought 100, perhaps the original contract). When I met him, on his birthday, I was attending Graduate School in Anthropology where his wife also attended. There were once about 4000 Grumman employees over there in a compound training Iranians in "Top Gun". When I was over to their house the media announced the US would blow all the F-14's up if the USSR came near their border, because of the air-to-air missile technology.
Anyway, the shoulder patch for the pilots was a orange tiger striped cat with boxing gloves in a small boxing square "ring" and it once said "Anytime, baby" and then I read or heard it became "Make my day".
Whose the "voodoo doll"? It seems the public sometimes when people in high places become the stickers to the stickees. The museum of voodoo is in a small white house in New Orleans. We've been stuck! Is Ann Coulter in trouble? Elections officials to query GOP pundit

Red Knot and Horseshoe Crabs

Denise Sheehan Commissioner New York Department of Environmental Conservation I am writing asking you to support a two-year moratorium on the taking of female horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay, as New York State is a member of of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, your state has the ability to help save the vanishing shorebird, the Red Knot, by supporting the horseshoe crab moratorium. Defenders and other conservation groups have been urging state fisheries officials to halt the harvesting of horseshoe crabs.
It seems a shame, horseshoe crabs, which I grew-up watching on the sand flats of the West Meadow Beach on Long Island, NY, descended from trilobites, one of our oldest "living fossils" are harvested for their clear blood. Their blood is unique in that in the presence of any bacterial contamination it "clouds up". Used in the medical field to test and detect the efficiency of sterilization procedures in equipment cleaned for operations, it seems a shame, that the bloods use, which in this modern world of organic chemistry, should and can be replaced, will have this consequence and perhaps other consequences in the natural world (i.e., young birds eat mosquito larvae in Alaska, holding insect populations down). The horseshoe crab is relied upon by the Red Knot bird, which increases its weight twofold in the consumption of the fatty eggs of the horseshoe crab while making its way up the flight-way along the East Coast to the Arctic. It will become extinct due to the over-? of the horseshoe crab, by as early as 2010 say experts.
Please join the call for a moratorium of two years on the taking of female horseshoe crabs in the Delaware Bay.
Sincerely, George J. Myers, Jr. BA Anthropology
The Red Knot's Fate is at Stake
This unique shorebird is in grave danger, but your state officials can help save it. You can help by attending an important public hearing.
When: Wednesday, March 29, 2006; 7:00 PM Where: New York Department of Environmental Control , Bureau of Marine Resources Headquarters, 205 North Belle Mead Road, East Setauket, New York
Inquiries: Kim McKown; (631) 444-0454

The Poll

Re: POLL -- Are You One of the 26% of American Adults Favoring Impeachment? Impeach Yourself! My concern is also with the past, (April Fools 1973 Grateful Dead concert in the War Memorial Auditorium, Buffalo, NY) and there were people on his first day as President saying that there may actually be grounds for impeachment as evidence of bribes had been seen. This is like a blast from the past, Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman and current Senator Hillary Clinton the only two women on the "Watergate" investigation of President Nixon's committee. Mrs. Clinton is currently my State Senator in New York, and has been doing a fine job in my opinion. I work in public archaeology and once worked for NYPIRG selling "Public Citizen" subscriptions door-to-door on Long Island. They have filed a number of lawsuits recently, Public Citizen, founded but not run by Ralph Nader, one against the budget bill not voted on by the House, approved by the Senate and signed by His Excellency GWB, and another joined with the Teamsters Union, headed by duly elected James P. Hoffa, a lawyer, which wants to return the safe hours and trucking regulations the Bush Administration has deregulated. I'm with Representative Conyers, investigate, investigate, investigate.

Mrs. Spielberg's trees redux

I left out a pre-9/11 story under the title "Mrs. Speilberg's Trees" (1/28/2005). There was a small lot in Riverdale that Mr. Steven Spielberg's sister built on, near the Hudson River Park I once had to try to survey in, it in NYC coordinates, 0,0 at Columbus Circle, pre-GPS and basemap information unavailable unless one called Iowa or Nebraska, depending on each surveyor, who sort of "hoard" (or once sort of) their survey information building a client database that stretches over years. I had a friend who moved west to get away from it, principle contractors, same jobs. One has to find the right surveyor, ask for his data perhaps and where he left or found any datums. Much of this has changed at the time, I was using an electronic "total station" to sight in archaeological and botanical features with some new software I bought "AutoCad" from someone leaving the country. When the European satellite array gets up, we'll have much more accuracy, i.e., with Galileo, GPS and GLOSNOS the Russian array of satellites. What I was trying to say was that the contractors who worked on the property of Spielberg's sister I was told had cut many trees that they shouldn't have, and a gentleman from City Planning, who led a hiking tour of the Old Croton Aqueduct system on Saturdays for the Bronx Historical Society I attended, took some of the pictures of the trees. I read later that contributions were paid instead of fines that went into a discretionary "slush fund" run by the former Parks Commissioner. I was joking to no one in particular at the time they were going to put Mr. Spielberg's mother in jail, what was that going to look like? Not that she paid into the fund.

Graceland an Official Historic Landmark

Last time I was in Memphis, Tennessee, Graceland was closed out of respect to the wishes of the family, I think, Elvis Presley's father had died. I was living in Columbus, Mississippi, working near the Waverley Plantation Mansion ferry historic site for the Tombigbee River "Barge Canal". The local Mall there had Elvis' Cadillac station wagon and one of his guitars on exhibit. He had asked General Motors to please build one, and had one built to show what he meant. We then moved up to Belmont, Mississippi, working in Bay Springs in Tishomingo County, and one of the crew, a mandolin player, took me down to Tupelo one evening to see Elvis' birthplace, since fixed up and at the time a chapel contract planned for the back of it was awarded to a firm in West Point, Mississippi. The gates were closed that day.

Last Request (it's my birthday)

Mike Stanfill, Private Hand - Flash animation - The Last Request: Years ago, Harvard University published a book of prison work songs from Texas called "Wake Up Dead Man" from one of them. The authors explained, back in 1971, that conditions, yes, had been very bad in the Texas prison system, but in the then recent times had made remarkable progress and had become one of the "best" prison systems in the USA. However, with the return of the "death penalty" I feel the US prison system, especially with DNA in the news, and people in prison freed after, what was the last, 18 years?, has taken a turn for the worse. The "NY Times" has made a statistical case against in that the shootings and deaths of police officers is higher in New York State with the death penalty in one of their editorials. I was to the site of the last death penalty hanging in New York State, Mayville, NY, near Lake Chautauqua, (geoarchaeology "Millennium Pipeline") while a public execution almost went on over HIV, the defendant extradited to the Bronx County, NY by its District Attorney here, who had opposed another NY Governor ordered sentencing within his jurisdiction. This work is very powerful and this gentleman quite an artist. Don't miss the "Infinite Cat Project" it's hilarious!

Dalai Lama interviewed in Dharmsala - BBC

Interesting "seeing" the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala, India, compliments of the BBC. I thought this interesting news story I ClipCache saved awhile ago interesting in the archaeology of Tibet. My grief is not completing "Economic Anthropology" with the Chairman (classes are tough when you're the only one in them) of Anthropology some years ago, Pedro Carrasco, Ph.D., who escaped out of Tibet during a Chinese invasion where he had gone as a student from Mexico, to study markets there. I hear archaeology in Nepal has ceased. I once had Social Anthropology with Rex Jones, Ph.D., he and Shirley Jones studied with the Limbu of eastern Nepal. dhyana prana for wakefulness, as the Carl G. Jung text had of the "Great Liberation". The "dalai lama" said it's Mongolian for "ocean of wisdom", it would be nice if Tibet was like Mongolia today, autonomous. Large Tibetan religious site discovered in Sichuan (Xinhua) Updated: 2005-02-11 09:28 The discovery of a large Tibetan religious site in Shiqu County in southwest China's Sichuan Province was announced recently. Located at the source of the Yalong River in remote southern Sichuan, the site was well protected since the area is not easy to get to, said Shi Shuo, a professor on Tibet culture in Sichuan University who discovered the site. The site, which is 73 meters long, 47 meters wide and 14.5 meters high at the center, has been carefully studied and authenticated by the Sichuan Provincial Relics and Archeology Institute. It was surrounded by nine-meter walls, dotted with 383 stone Buddha shrines. Inside, there were huge piles of Buddha sculptures and stones engraved with Buddhist sutras. "Some narrow paths stretch inside the piles. The site is just like a labyrinth," Shi said. Locals believed the site was related to King Gesser, a Tibetan hero whose exploits have been handed down in songs and stories for eight centuries among the Tibetan people. "Some tales said the site was built to pay regard to Gesser's spirit and some believed it was used to commemorate the deceased soldiers who died when fighting alongside Gesser at a nearby battlefield," Shi said. Judging from the Tibetan and Sanskrit sutras on the stones, the site might date from around the 11th or 12th century, said Gao Dalun, director of Sichuan Provincial Relics and Archeology Institute, calling the site a "stone sculpture museum." Rocks with engraved sutras are endemic to Tibetan Buddhism and are also related with local worship of rocks. The sculptures and sutra stones are believed to bear the wishes of believers." My friend Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D. had some neighbors on 19th St. in NYC that were Tibetans. They also had a retreat house near Bowdoin Park, Dutchess County, NY where we worked. It had a raptor care center, and released birds of prey back into the wild, or cared for those no-longer able to. It was a summer estate of the financier J. P. Morgan I was told, though that house, in a photo, is gone. It was with great sorrow I heard one of the care-takers or "rangers" who lived there took his own life by plunging from a bridge into the Hudson River.

Eat Soup With A Knife

Interesting, I thought Intelligence "lost the war" (never declared by the Congress) in Vietnam, the History Channel had the Vietcong celebrating Christmas with Bob Hope, in the tunnels underneath him! I kid you not. I had a classmate in Da Nang in Air Force Intelligence, a sergeant, who looked me up when he got home. Our high school Newfield, in Selden, NY out on Long Island had the first JROTC Marines in the country, his father was on the school board, Mr. Mijon. Mr. Marino, who owned the local butchers, lost a son, in demolitions gone awry, or he became a Lt. Colonel in the Cuban Army! Just a theory. I was in the Boy Scouts with him for awhile, later a red beret Explorer, Post 222. Are the 20,000 JROTCs in mostly poor high schools, worth the over $1 billion a year? ("Defense Monitor" ca. 1994) Or should we have had a "draft" as Harlem Rep. Charles B. Rangel, a Korean War vet, proposed bringing back, quickly squashed by the Congress? Do they have women in them? I ask because the "All Volunteer" service started partly in my school district, who sued for non-property based school aid funds and lost to "it's constitutional" to pay less to the poorer school districts and give more to the "richer" properties. Oh yeah, a lottery makes everything hunky-dory. Insurgency, I think, can be beat with better ideas, timetables offered, since there are no overwhelming numbers since Nagasaki. David Martin Dispatch: Why Learning The Lessons Of Vietnam Can Be Hard 30 Years Later

Up up and away

I once worked for Joel W. Grossman, Ph.D., an archaeologist, who also wrote the Western Hemisphere archaeology Encyclopedia Britannica Yearbook summary, in "contract" archaeology who was an avid photography enthusiast. If we had archaeology, he'd have a large disk made to make photo-3D slides, or a bi-pod made to photograph the remains of a Dutch West Indies site down on Whitehall St. in Manhattan. I worked with him on Rolleimetric close-range photogrammetry as it started out, a way to document air-crashes fast before the blizzard came, a Canadian company, Prometric Technologies, assisted us, trained and worked also with Schneider Instruments, the camera filter makers, where I met the director of monuments of Mexico, they wanted a way to document the movement of huge blocks of stones in the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City. We once went out to see Ken Hansen in Connecticut, near Pepperidge Farm, where he would demonstrate an overhead system he had designed. Joel Grossman was alway looking for someway to mosaic overheads into a site plan that would show the excavations we had done, like at the West Point Foundry, in Cold Spring, NY. However, Rollei's system is more a parabola of photos that are best registered by software in space, not a refinement of photos taken from an airplane! The Hansen overhead system was composed of nested square tubes with pulleys and steel cables running within them, on a base that contained switches and video for mounting a commercial size TV camera (circa 1994) and allowed upwards of 30 feet, enabling it to see over walls (as it was at the American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq I think he said, a reason for its construction) or down the street to see crowds, events, etc. Rollei has a pneumatic monopole system for its medium-format metric camera. Mr. Hansen was very nice and even offered a commission if I knew anyone who would be interested in purchasing it or them. I think they would make a great addition to TV news organizations, it folds into a small package (shipped once to Iraq) and set-up simply and fast, providing a vista in circumstances where often there is none. khpny19@aol.com (might be at this address once brick and mortar in NYC)

Congress eyes own window on Iraq war

Congress eyes own window on Iraq war. CS Monitor report

Journalist Transparency

CBSNews.com: Blog:

Transparency? Is it relevant when retired General Westmoreland sues the whole NBC network for a post-Vietnam analysis by NBC News over the issue of "body counts" for millions of $? When the "Washington Post" publishes a book on anthrax, where in it it's reported that Selective Service Conscientious Objectors were exposed to anthrax for research and recently given medals for it, is transparency even relevant? When they also investigate the "Wedtech Military Bridge Scandal" in the South Bronx, NY in the "NY Times" neighborhood, is transparency necessary? I think it can add a layer of explanation, but usually it's what a reader checks for in the "who" in the what, when, why, where, and how, but the "which" part of transparency would be hard to explain, "appearences" being what they are.

A Star Is Reborn

Helen Thomas ("of Troy"? Susan B. Anthony's friend Kate Mullaney was, of Troy, NY, organized the collar workers, first female in union management, elected on the Bowery in NYC's "Germania Hall") seemed surprised, as I was, because the editorial "we" hasn't been asking many questions of this administration and perhaps the Press deserves the moniker, "lap dog" said recently about it. So, I say "Bravo" to her questioning, and may many more follow. My high school friend is an investigative television journalist with CBS, and my cousin was a producer for CBS during the 1976 Bicentennial convention coverages. Without questions, Mr. Nader wins, and we're just a "duopoly".

Yeah, I signed it...

I signed a petition for a "shield" for journalists. Judith Miller, in jail for 85 days guarding a source, and my grandfather a real estate reporter in NYC, compelled me to. He worked in the Hall of Records, and lost his wheelchair polio confined assistant/son to an elevator accident during WWII, postponed my father's stationing, the fifth brother so, in Europe for grief leave. Daniel Basil O'Connor, a famous lawyer, handled the case and $5000 was exchanged, a lot for the time. My Aunt Nellie's husband law clerked for FDR. Kneejerk criticism of the press is dangerous TV.

Vidalia Park

I left out the destination of the S S City of Atlanta, it used to be docked on the westside of Manhattan around Pier 23 (?) and used to travel between Savannah, Georgia and New York City. My Mom said her Uncle Leman used to bring up the Vidalia onions from Georgia, when they came in the spring, the sweetest onion, you could almost eat them like apples. They grow only in a few counties in the state of Georgia. I was working on 180th Street here in the Bronx, near the Bronx Zoo and the Bronx River, archaeological monitoring with a friend, the new fence replacement that went in at the "Old Soldiers Cemetery" (veterans of four wars, 1812, Civil War, Spanish-American, WWI in it and a Civil War statue) and they were making a new park nearby. It is called Vidalia Park! Very strange... Al Pacino grew up about six blocks from there. The bridge across the river had been out for rehab. for months. I called in when I heard on the TV that any sightings of dead birds (alas, two in the locked-up Old Soldiers Cemetery, the raven nevermore...) as the Health Dept. was asking for input about sightings in regard to the West Nile virus back then. Two artillery pieces I found out from their absence at Fort Schuyler were once there too (a small faded sign said they had been from there, the Old Soldiers Cemetery). I wonder where they went?

All Press Conferences Are Stages And The Press Are Merely Players

The first "White House Press Secretary" as history rewrote his role, George B. Cortelyou, first invited the press into the White House, to report on President McKinley's condition, who had been shot at the Panamerican Exposition in Buffalo, NY. A Republican Chairman from NYC, a shorthand teacher, and Cabinet member (would be 4 posts today, 3 under McKinley and Roosevelt, historians could look into this guy, early CEO of ConEd), he was the first in wartime too, the Spanish-American War and helped Roosevelt start the conservation movement (National Archives). The President appears persnickety again using Helen Thomas this way. I would have asked him why Canada did not go into Iraq with us and why it took so long to acknowledge the mistakes the US made in bombings in Afghanistan: 1) same hospital, twice 2) bombing Canadian troops, 3) using "daisy cutters" and "propane bombs" (like the "oxygen bomb" in Godzilla) and why he thinks the public is so enamoured with this technology when the "connection" to 9/11/01 (in effect re-establishing the heroin "French Connections" and $110 million cash reported missing out of the WTC) to either Afghanistan or Iraq was not solidly made. What the U.S. provided in evidence, has not been beyond the taunt of "politics". Posted by georgejmyers at 2:03 PM : March 21, 2006

NY Times: Inside the Brooklyn Bridge, a Whiff of the Cold War

I enjoyed the Civil Defense finds article in the Brooklyn Bridge. It reminded me of Newfield High School on Marshall Drive in Selden, NY (named after the judge who defended Susan B. Anthony Upstate for dressing as a man to vote, a judicial taboo broken testifying to her character) which had the first JROTC Marine Corps about 1969-1975 (there are 20,000 JROTC the "Defense Monitor" reported, in mostly poor schools that cost back in the 1990s $1 billion a year, "Are They Worth It?" they asked). In its basement there were similar supplies. Your article "left out" some things I recall, the plastic bags to be used as liners for the water cans turned commodes and the abundance of sanitary napkins, perhaps left out of the article, or further looking would find. There were also water purification tablets I think, after the water was empty the plastic liner went in. I don't recall if there was water in them, maybe those a later issue (c. 1968?), inside the cans, the crackers without boxes, the bags, the water purification, and sanitary napkins, etc., first aid.(?) They might still be there, our then undefeated fencing team used to practice in part of the basement, raising concrete dust. Another high school was added, Centereach, H.S. with a planetarium voted for instead of a swimming pool.

S S City of Atlanta

I have some info. Leman Chapman Urquhart was from Castalia, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. He didn't survive the sinking and was last seen on the bridge. He had been in the employ of thecompany as was my grandfather Lawrence George Urquhart, though he may have been on the S S Beauregard on a Murmansk, Russia convoy and sometimes I think he said he might have been on it. Last I heard Leman Urquhart (I will check) was that his family whom I've never met, lived in Jacksonville, Florida. My grandfather said he was in an argument once with someone who insisted we could goto the Moon back then. There is a book "Operation Drumbeat" about the WWII "Battle of the Atlantic" (which has gone on for so long and for so many times wave heights have increased along with average wind speed) by Floridian scholar Michael Gannon "The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-Boat Attacks Along The American Coast In World War II" Harper & Row c) 1990 which mis-spells Leman "Lehman" and Urquhart "Urquart" which was promised to be corrected in the Second Edition (if there ever was one). There have been some problems with numbers as reported too, two survivors, three survivors also reflected in the number dead, 42, perhaps from the ordeal. Leman Urquhart, along with a few others, are named on the base of the flagpole at the old church (between two brass cannons) overlooking North Head, Grand Manan Island's main harbor, as having died to preserve Canadian freedom. We left a chalice at the church with Lawrence Urquhart's name engraved on it, given after his brother, Lawrence Urquhart, my grandfather, passed on. At the time I lived with him while excavating a circa 1730's ship in lower Manhattan and working in "contract archaeology" in the New York City vicinity, where the "S S City of Atlanta" had left from. The harbor pilot's association, at Sandy Hook, said that he may have been hired to be the captain, as a Master Mariner, ships could come and go faster without pilotage into and out of the harbor, in so doing, decrease the time at sea. The ship was a sidewheeler built in 1903 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I read somewhere, twice as much coal was used in propulsion, compared to the screw propellor. There was a social history written about the West Chester area by Anthony F.C. Wallace. Please send an email to georgejmyersjr@gmail.com for further info or questions or leave them here. We once used to sometimes summer vacation on Grand Manan Island and had an old house for awhile down in Seal Cove there, originally settled by an American Dr. Faxon, who built the island's first square-rigger, but left over the loyalties questions of the War of 1812. Nearby Maine later, in 1820, became a state, the borders there contentious and "litigious" as Mick Jagger once said on the Bronx County, NY courthouse steps, near where I live. (wish I could spell check these comments, Mr. Gates) Posted at MSN Spaces

Bush's Secret Shame

David Mamet's cartoon "Bush's Secret Shame" First I thought "Henry V" is it the king dons a disguise and talks to the troops. One of the troops was holding a bunch of leeks in the production (Welsh I think) I saw in Connecticut at the Stratford Theater there (school trip, went out of business maybe back now) went on to Broadway, which I saw in a Humanities class trip. The King wore these linkages with springs that made him about a foot taller and the 1970 (?) production was almost madcap. Then I thought "Blackie" the Clark Gable character who comes out to see the vast humanity in tents and on lines after the San Francisco earthquake in a film I think of the same name, after reading the comments. The real "Blackie" of "India" was involved in the Far East trade and lived there on Nob Hill. Of course, then there was "Star Trek", a the killing of Joan Collins by "fate" so she doesn't lead a student peace movement that leads to a totalitarian fascist dictatorship, Kirk and Spock go back to the soup kitchens of the Great Depression (Leonard "Bones" McCoy freaks out thinking of the stitching and cutting by scalpel) not caused actually by stocks crashing, small percentage involved in it, though today over 50% invested, the Dust Bowl and other weather factors we so soon forget more the major cause) Yep this sure looks scary for a Sunday comic. Makes me want to knock on the union hall door and get on a "Lake Boat". Thanks.* * Reference to DVD/film "Lakeboat" (2000, written by David Mamet) and the Seaman's Union Hall in Buffalo, NY. Boats stopped stopping there. The "Edmund FitzGerald" like "Lake Boats" haul taconite ore to Detroit and elsewhere (rich iron ore, from Mesabi Range, named (?) after the Taconic Range (orogeny) in New York and Vermont, a "Taconic Parkway" in New York State. New York was once a large iron center, operations in the Adirondacks, and in the Hudson Highlands, where for example, the "West Point Foundry" in Cold Spring, NY was, currently having its fifth season of industrial archaeology by Michigan Technological University. The "Lake Boats" also haul Midwest grains, Buffalo, NY, "Queen of the Lakes City" or something, was once known as the "grindstone of North America" or something. General Mills, Inc., was running three shifts when I was there last looking for work. I've seen some in the Eisenhower Locks, near Messina, NY in the St. Lawrence Seaway. The government is going to look at the ballast they sweep out and there is now a huge fine if one is caught diving on the wreck of the "Edmund FitzGerald" in Ontario, Canada ($750,000?).

The Medium Isn't the Message -- The Message Is the Message

I wouldn't be surprized if much of the controversy has arisen, not so much as what George Clooney said and repeated here, maybe out-of-context, more about Where it was from. The Guardian has won a number of awards for truth in journalism and has many interesting contributors to the printed word. It seemed that topics ignored elsewhere, and people too, had a outlet for a change to speak their mind in a place they felt comfortable with, at least how I felt about "discovering" it. You could say, gee Sean Penn said this after visiting Iran, gee we sold 100 F-14's (just retired) to the Shah back in the 1970's my friends from the Grumman Corporation (who used to sponsor history spots on the radio "About Long Island" on WALK, etc.) were over there, haven't seen them since their kids were playing with the royalty of Morocco, etc.

Actually I meant "The Independent" Huffington Post

Tax Cuts and the Republican Legacy

Some comments at Alec Baldwin's blog (a native Long Islander currently appearing in NYC live theater): Tax cuts should be in the spirit of retro-cuts: return the President's salary to President Clinton's level, 1/2 of President's Bush's, because it's an honor to serve. New Hampshire pays just an honorarium. Retro-cut the Defense Budget until it buys American, replace the Presidential Sea King helicopter with the same brand, a Sikorsky, (awarded to Britain and Italy, the company's workers are now on strike over health benefits according to James P. Hoffa here). Retro-cut taxes for the bottom first, like lunches for individuals under $10 or so. They should be looking to expand NEA funding. Residential Education could prove to be popular, where classes are held by artists in lounges, or other places near students. I watched it work for awhile once in Buffalo, NY. A "Seminar in the Arts" had a different visitor every week, i.e., Eric Bentley, an architect, a historian writing about a "History of Sex in the White House", the philharmonic tympani player. They had the Cleveland Quartet in residence one year, things like that could go far in improving education and the aims of the NEA. There was also a neighborhood "Media Center" which had film-makers (Hollis Frampton and Paul Sharits and others) in the community which worked with the community and university. More NEA funds not less.

Susan Sarandon Redux

Senator Clinton sponsored the "Purple Heart" stamp and since they expire, the permanent printing of the stamp by the Post Office. What follows was recently announced (3/17/06), by NY Parks Commissioner Bernadette Castro. She, as a millionaire Republican, ran for NY Senator against Patrick Moynihan, to whom she lost, and was appointed to run the Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation office. When Hillary Clinton ran for Senator, she did not. "New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Bernadette Castro Thursday began a nationwide search for Purple Heart medal recipients to share stories to be included in exhibits at the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor museum located at the New Windsor Cantonment State Historic Site in Vails Gate, New York. The facility will honor Purple Heart medal recipients, veterans who were wounded or killed while serving their country." As an Explorer I once winter camped there in, before it became an interpretative park and center. General Washington asked thousands of troops to stay on after the treaty had been signed with the British, just in case it proved to be a trick, though many would have liked to return to their families, they stayed over the terrible winter. Some molecular and other archaeology has been done there to understand it.

Susan Sarandon disappointed

What a piece of work! Susan Sarandon doesn't say other than she's disappointed! Aren't we all, one woman stood up to the declaration of war in WWII (which they found around 1990, the recording of her response, what a piece of audio-sleuthing/archaeology) which she warned against a "gut reaction" to the attack, and as such voted against it. A tough legacy in a masculine "field" war seen as. This post looks like "War of the World's" a little (spoiler), "...look the other way, Tom Cruise's character is going to kill Tim Robbins' NYC ambulance driving character. Now we're just going to do the same to Tim's significant other, Susan". Imagine me, I studied anthropology with the people who filed three briefs against the War Powers "incarceration" of Japanese-Americans, two which were heard by the Supreme Court, written by Morris Opler, Ph.D., who studied another "Skull and Bones" club offended people, the Apache. Senator Clinton has been doing a pretty good job in my state, New York, one of the few bright spots in my day often.

How many Generals fit on the head of a pin?

Let's see, there was General Colin Powell, from "Banana Kelly" a street here in the Bronx, NY, unlike others has a "crook" in it like a banana, so it got named. Then there was the head of the U.S. Army, fired shortly after the Enron scandal, which cost Fort Hamilton, in Brooklyn, NY $10 million in energy costs. He was on the board of Enron. Recently, General Richard Myers, formally of NORAD and "Space Command" (I imagine jokingly like General Jack D. Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove" who starts WWIII in the film by that former Bronxite, Stanley Kubrick) has been replaced. I read his testimony of the forced landing of the Korean Airlines in Canada, in the Yukon Territory, in White Horse, which when I was in Skagway, Alaska, they unofficially opened the road to. About five hours away, one local (Skagwaian?) woman I met, told me they drove up to see the western, "The Long Riders" (1980) in White Horse with the Carradine, Keach, Quaid and Guest brothers. Singer and entertainer Dolly Parton has a locomotive from Skagway, Alaska at her theme park. It was really touch-and-go for the "White Pass and Yukon Railroad" back when I was there, it had the seriously, disappearing railroad blues, someone there recording all the songs he could find. I guess her purchase might have helped. Anyway, I saw the footage of the 747's landing at White Horse, Yukon which has no radar! One of their transmitters was malfunctioning, sending SOS, he testified sort of to the U.S. Congress. Who's next?

GenesisIV

Hello Teacher, I forgot to mention this product from Scotland much of it free for non-commercial use and I have used it as a "yardstick" to compare it to other products in the marketplace. It started as "Landscape Explorer" from WooleySoft at the Humblesknowe Cottage, Ramoyle, Dunblane, Perthshire, Scotland, on a floppy disk and worked with most machines. It's been used in the Sunday press there and elsewhere. I hope your grant is going well with the History Channel, a wonderful resource for it too, not just a show I've found. As I was studying this field it became known as a science called "geomatics" about 1993, because it would work in French and in English. The province in Canada my grandfather came from, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, is about 1/2 French speaking and they quickly started a department there for its study. Best regards, George Myers

fcc metes out record indecency fines

My cousin, George Murray, produced the 1976 Democratic and Republican conventions coverages for CBS. Edwin Newman read at his eulogy at the UN Chapel, a letter canceling, by "higher ups" his team of reporters for "NBC Nightly News" in Vietnam trying to get the "common soldiers view" of the conflict there, he had been an Army Captain in the Korean War, technically still on, and at first a film editor at NBC, from the U.S. Signal Corps. I think the current FCC fines are a tragedy, on the order of General Westmoreland's suing the whole NBC network over a post-Vietnam retrospective report by NBC News about "body counts". The fines, after General Colin Powell's son's leadership as the head of the FCC, are a calumny, a "blackening" of his service and the FCC, in my opinion, and should be withdrawn, as one event occurred accidentally, with Ms. Jackson and Justin Timberlake, and the other as part of a morality tele-play shown every week. Zacharias Moussaoui claims he was under surveillance as soon as he arrived in the US. Shouldn't he have had French counsel? As I recall it is a problem in international jurisprudence. Last job fired because I had a blog! Dewberry/Goodwin, Inc. Discovering the former batteries under Battery Park on the Swing Shift (3:30pm-12:00am) downtown, overrun with rats, in the new subway tunnel being "cut and covered" through the park. The "eternal flame" is there at the "Sphere" outdoor sculpture, once at the WTC, damaged in the 9/11/01 attacks, moved there near the old flagpole now with MIA flag (post 2003 City Council) on it. George Myers (P.S. The Bronx is still up and The Battery is down) Sent to an investigative reporter

US conservatives different from European conservatives

BitchNews : US conservatives different from European conservatives: Same in Canada compared to U.S. I was told, a Conservative closer to a U.S. Liberal. The Liberal Party, in NYC, that helped give Rudolf Giuliani the mayoralty, is no longer on the ballot. It started out coming out of the American Labor Party, thought was invaded by Communists in the 1940s, voted with Democrats in every election. Recently, it turned in less than 50,000 votes, so off the machines it goes. Sued by the US Federal government, all the machines in New York have to be replaced, most from early 1960s, some in NYC admitted to have been tampered with in some cabal between Democrats and Republicans.

11/02/05 Swing Shift, notes from the field

Found a milk bottle from the clearing by the construction crew just below Battery Park landscape surface, which I read years ago, in Special Collections at Stony Brook University library, in a fiscal report of the NYC Parks Dept. filed in the 1850's, reported that Battery Park was made using prison labor. In the report, it also listed the exotic animals various sea captains had that year brought to Manhattan for the Central Park Zoo, (not Kong). It showed in a few small lithographs and drawings what the construction of Battery Park required, i.e. the filling, the walks, the short fences, etc., I think. Back to the milk bottle. One of the laborers with the contracted excavators told me his father worked for the "Sheffield" milk company that was embossed on the milk bottle they had exposed. He said it was once the Doug Schultz brewery at 156th and Barry streets in the South Bronx, (not far from where I once lived as a child, at 143rd St. and Third Ave.) In the Bronx, the milk plant was once a "gangsters" brewery, and it was turned into a milk plant using the same pipes, he said. His father worked for 46 years for them delivering milk.

Pet Shop Boys, May 1, Battleship Potemkin

Pet Shop Boys to give huge free gig:

Spike Lee: I Don't Think African Americans Can Vote For Condoleeza Rice...

Ms. C. Rice appears very well schooled in politics. I wonder if she was part of the "telephone registration drive" the Republicans did in the great state of Mississippi, where I worked on the Tombigbee Barge Canal archaeology clearance. It was a project the US Congress picked over an "Energy Island" for NYC back at the end of the 1970s. The Republicans got all the phone books in Mississippi and the voter records I think. If someone was not on the "poll roll" and in the phone book, they would call them up and try to convince them to register and if they did "y'all remember a Republican called you, y'hear" I seem to recall. When we say "Russia" don't we really mean Ms. Rice was an expert in the USSR? Maybe everything went "south" with the collapse of the former Soviet Union. I personally would have trouble voting for her since on Tim Russett's show she said three times to his question, would she run, said no.

Genocide in Darfur

The Honorable George W. Bush The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW Washington, DC 20500 Dear President Bush, Genocide is taking place in Darfur, Sudan. On September 9, 2004 your Administration rightfully acknowledged this fact, but the U.S. has failed to take sufficient action to stop the violence. Up to 400,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been displaced, their livelihoods and villages destroyed by Sudanese government forces and their proxy militias. We call on you to assert U.S. leadership by redeploying troops from the quagmire in Iraq to the Darfur region of Sudan where they could make an immediate difference to the security and safety of millions of displaced and hungry people. One of our civilization's centers was in Sudan, in the ancient city of Meroe, on the Nile River, later part of Axum, its geoarchaeology published in "American Antiquity". It is thought, rightly or wrongly, that the "Ark of the Covenant" is held there. The United States has a unique capacity and clear obligation to take immediate action. Unless there is an urgent international intervention in Darfur, up to a million people may be dead by the end of this year. Sincerely, George J. Myers, Jr. BA Anthropology

I Am a Liberal. There, I Said It!

Here in NYC we have a Liberal Party problem I read. If a party does not receive at least 50,000 votes, it's taken off the ballot machine, which New York State is being sued for, not having good machines, hanky-panky switches in these old geezers. Elections, I might add, here in NYC have gotten strange since 9/11/01 also the after-event of an election primary. On TV just before it, candidates were asked, what they would do with the impending $ from the sale of the WTC, which was going to happen, and a city share in the Port Authority generated, on ABC-TV I think. Each candidates response was checked and either X ed or checkmarked for its "reality check" according to experts. Wish I had that tape, but 2" has to made into 1/2" into whatever. One response was to build the low-and-middle income housing promised in return for the street-taking at the WTC site, which never happened. Another ballot problem was that the medical marijuana party and others shown to us in our city-wide voters guide, were never on the ballot-machine, after 9/11/01. Those blasted machines from the early 1960's I hear are to be replaced by others for a year, and then another set. I blame the loss of the "Liberal Party" on the ballot here in NYC to the contraptions we've allowed too long.

Jazz Legend Miles Davis To Be Inducted Into Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame...

I saw Miles Davis with Buddy Rich the Big Band drummer back in the early 1970's on Long Island. Buddy was told to stop playing or die. He preferred to play he told the audience. Miles had an interesting set of South American inspired music. Both conditions are enjoyed by rock and roll today (drums, death, jungle, South America) so I guess you could argue his influence back then. They just saved John Coltrane's house on Long Island in Huntington, which is nice he a jazz saxophonist who influenced rock too. Ginger Baker says he's a jazz drummer. They should maybe get a rock and roll museum on Long Island (the venues, the Young Rascals, Foghat, Jonathan Edwards, Blue Oyster Cult, Brooklyn Bridge, etc.). My three cents.

FOIA and FOIL and Sunshine Week, oh my!

Yesterday's entry was about the FOIA the Freedom of Information Act. In New York State there is also a Freedom of Information Law, or FOIL. Maybe the Federal government should change theirs to "Law" and go after the agencies and people that won't comply in a timely manner. I once met a man who checked his file and found that he was being spied on while working for my employer in Puerto Rico, he a native to the island. I read the transcript and the "observer" sounded drunk, which begs a question about one person watching another, who happened to be just screening earth. Of course there's the famous "FOIA" files released in the 1990s of the surveillance of musician and artist John Lennon, who though he applied for citizenship here in the U.S., was a loyal British citizen, according to Yoko Ono who he was married to, another artist and musician, exhibited worldwide. The particular observation that sticks in my craw was when John Lennon visited my alma mater, Stony Brook University, (then I used to go to its concerts in the gym, a Fine Arts Center opened eventually, and I graduated from it and started a Ph.D.) and the watcher remarked that there were mostly "hippies and zippies". How long they had John Lennon under surveillance is a mystery to me. "Zacarias Moussaoui knew about the September 11, 2001 terrorist plot and could have prevented the attacks if he had talked, a prosecutor claimed as jurors began deliberating a possible death sentence. Moussaoui, 37, a French citizen of Moroccan descent, is the only suspect charged in the US for the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington in which nearly 3,000 people died." - Monsters and Critics Moussaoui has claimed that from the day he stepped foot in America, he was under surveillance, I heard him say on the car radio.

AP Review Finds Federal Government Missing Deadlines and Time Limits in Information Requests

It's National Sunshine Week, sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, March 12-18 to support more open government.

I think that more open government is a good idea. I worked in the Foundry Cove of Constitution Island, in Cold Spring, NY and I think it furnishes a good example. The Marathon Battery company produced batteries for the NIKE rockets, used in the defense against ICBMs then thought might be launched at the U.S. There were two stages of battery production, a sealed battery and a serviceable battery, much like the batteries in automobiles have become, sealed from filling, etc. It was told to me, as was most of this I offer, as told, not written, or newspaper clippings, in the museum. The written "Health and Safety" plan was general to cover the requirements of but not specific for this part of the site, which I heard, may have been used in heavy-water production for nuclear science, its last use, a pool chlorine storage warehouse which burned for 24 hours and took over 300 firefighters to control, these in the 20th century.

In the 19th century the West Point Foundry produced ordnance and cannons for the early republic, for the U.S. Navy first, one of the few registered federal armament production centers, (in the American Civil War, it made over 30,000 caissons, over 1 million shells, from small 10 and 20 pounders to 200 and 300 pound shells, for the patented rifled Robert Parker Parrott cannons, some used in the incendiary bombardment by the "Swamp Angel" of Charleston, S.C. in 1863). In the archaeological investigation of the foundry cove marsh-edge where we were confined (in the National Register of Historic Places) we recovered under the remains of the early 20th century company's facility, the wooden and iron "gun platform" prototype of the "Swamp Angel" and perhaps other heavy gun emplacements. Two fairly large shells were found with (?) their "sabots" (a softer metal disk, brass, attached to the shell which spun against the channels of the rifling in the large cannon after the black powder charge ignited, imparting spin to the iron shell, filled with who knows what incendiary charge), after a magnetometer survey which failed to find any significantly large "anomalies". EOD was called twice for the sighted empty shells in the backfill.

The gun platform was found in a combination of computer-aided mapping and from a digitized extension from a photograph of a Civil War era map behind glass in the West Point Foundry School Museum nearby, a museum in the small school once there for the foundry workers children, clandestinely brought to the U.S. under aliases from Great Britain, which had laws against certain workers leaving the country after being employed in this trade, according to the prior research.

Well the point is, the law required the testing in the marsh and the recording of features in this nationally and internationally significant site, which at first sight appears to be a nice little valley in the woods and marsh, which belies the "sea of brick" under the fallen leaves and the water work tunnels running under it, where the United States produced the weapons it needed to stem the tide against its own insurgency in the south and evolved into other uses. No information was provided in detail, i.e., who owned these properties when and what was going on there, a general level of protection was thought all that was required for the nearby warehouse which has been removed and the nickel and cadmium pollution removed from the land site and from the marsh, combined with concrete put on rail on the former rail-bed that had once serviced the West Point Foundry. Out in the Hudson River ran a double rail-line wharf, since burned below the water line, visible one day when a waterspout lowered the river enough to see the barest tops of the former massive works.

I went to work with a reasonable expectation of information to be provided sort of in the public interest (I didn't find out that 1 million shells had been made there till much later, yet we conducted magnetometer surveys from ATV and boat with Tidewater Research. Inc. who I'm not sure knew about it either) and other factors which weren't involved in the obvious "NIKE" cleanup were not considered, (lots of lead paint on bridges) though we had to provide gallons of urine for baseline studies, and before and after blood-testing, chest x-ray, and when asked after leaving the firm I was not provided with the medical data, nor was the Occupational Medicine M.D., Dr. Ehrlich, any longer at Mt. Sinai Hospital, when I checked there my father an experimental subject in a chemotherapy.

More open government and protection for people in its service is a policy worthy to pursue. Look before you leap doesn't work if you can't see or are kept from seeing.

Yeah Mars!

I enjoyed the "tip" to watch NASA.tv for the orbital "insertion" and it was fun. That superconducting supercollider should have been built in Northern New York State, near Malone, where Mickey Rooney sometimes lives. They had the property for free (one of the grant conditions) and lotsa' cheap hydroelectric power nearby at the international hydro dam on the St. Lawrence River we share with Canada. Instead it was-half built and cancelled in Texas. I once worked on a smaller proposed accelerator for Brookhaven Lab on Long Island, there's WWI practice trenches there from when it was Camp Upton in Yaphank, NY (Irving Berlin wrote a song about it "Yip Yip Yaphank!") it was outdated by CERN's cooperation plans (CERN abbreviation: Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (French), European Organization for Nuclear Research, now known as the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.) I once watched turquoise samples from ancient mines in the American Southwest go into there to be neutron-activated for trace element analysis. The DOE no longer runs it, Stony Brook University and others do (of course now they have to clean up the tritium in the aquifer).

The Unknown Presidency

His second wife, Julia Gardiner, he met below decks when the "gratis" New York Haddersley Forge built "Peacemaker" cannon exploded upon salute to Washington's Mount Vernon on the Potomac River, aboard the U.S.S. Princeton. It killed her father, Senator Gardiner (the manor/island Gardiner's Island is on the east end of Long Island, NY, granted by the King of Scotland) and two Cabinet members were killed along with others. It was the first "lying in state" in the US Capitol (its "hatbox" replaced later by a dome, for $1 million, by a Bronx, NY firm during the Civil War). Its said she was and still might be the prettiest First Lady, and Gloria Swanson remarked to the last male manor holder, Robert Gardiner, (as seen on "60 Minutes") it would take a Vivian Leigh to play her. President Tyler died in Richmond, VA during its seige, and former First Lady was allowed to travel to New York with her entourage through the temporary cease-fire held between the Blue and the Gray. So he said. The Haddersley Forge was on the west-side of Manhattan under the former proposed "Television City" by Donald Trump. Mr. Gardiner said they used to ride around in coaches like they were royalty, a big fancy looking seal on the side of their carriage. Dug a hole there once, didn't find anything.

To Tom Hayden

I recall getting on a diesel submarine in NYC with a black armband with the white numbers 40,000. The "activist" who gave us them got into an argument with the deck officer because, at the time, "only" 38,000 were dead in the Vietnam Conflict (unlike Iraq never a declared war). When I think of those turbulent days around NYC (Quebec separatists, Weathermen, radical Israeli supporters, and the doctor and nurse from Vietnam protesting on Madison Ave against our hospital bombing, I later met a B-52 co-pilot who crawled out of the "DMZ") I think we should make a number, almost any number available to the Iraqis to represent our intention to withdraw, instead of, as intelligence we screwed up in Mogadishu and dropped leaflets which translated "We are here to enslave you" due to poor linguistic talents which we still have in that part of the world, and would make a peaceful idea. Afghanistan? We bombed a hospital there twice if you recall.

Keep Arctic Refuge drilling out of our budget bill

It is with profound disbelief and regret that I write to you yet again about legislation that threatens America's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. I am troubled by the actions of the Budget Committee, which once again has crafted legislation that would use the budget process to open the Arctic Refuge to oil and gas drilling. Looking toward clean energy solutions for the future, I have worked in the clearance archaeology for the Millennium Pipeline in NY State, which will use Canadian gas, yet the project has yet to be completed. I hope my NY Senators are looking at a pipeline that uses 99% of pre-existing right-of-ways from Canada to Cleveland to Mount Vernon, NY, perhaps held-up by "higher-ups". I'm still waiting for the Millennium. We need more cooperation with Canadian resource management, though less and less has become a rule of sorts. I have loved working a number of times on New York's northern borders in archaeology compliance (the St. Lawrence Seaway, at Fort Drum, in Ogdensberg and Massena, NY). As a NPS worker in Skagway, Alaska for historic preservation, it an "entrepot" of sorts for Arctic arts, also the location of the Arctic Brotherhood lodge, I urge you to oppose any legislation, including the budget bill, that puts the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge at risk.

In Case You Missed It...

CRASH AT THE WHITE HOUSE: THE OVERVIEW; Unimpeded, Intruder Crashes Plane Into White House By MAUREEN DOWD Published: September 13, 1994 I was working in "Alphabet City" between Ave.'s B and C, 10th and 11th Streets on a future Housing Police Headquarters/middle income housing project, after where "Batteries Not Included" was filmed and I found a "Kerb Dog" demo CD, my very first music CD, "End of Green". Bette Midler started buying the community gardens the Mayor Giuliani was going to bulldoze, others joined in, and they're still there last time I looked. Adam Purple, rest his sole, helped start them. The pilot was obsessed with Chelsea Clinton it was reported and I thought he should stop seeing young girls. I still feel weird about the joke, crossing the picket lines, seeing the "Law and Order" trailer, seeing the Latin Kings, the squats...etc., the place has gotten better I hear. The building in the film was totally built, though it looked real, my cousin told me. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy appeared in the Speilberg film released in 1987, perhaps together for the last time.

The Bronx County Courthouse

Oscar Watch: Mick Jagger on Jon Stewart and the Internet Me too (a Giannini from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Ed.- South America's largest city). Mick actually played guitar in the Bronx County Courthouse here in NYC. He was sued for some song and had to testify how he came up with songs, and he put on a radio and played along with a guitar. The courthouse steps were in the "Bonfire of the Vanities" film of Tom Wolfe, who I saw with Reverand Ralph Abernathy discussing the causes of urban riots, as a student in Buffalo, NY before the Rolling Stones got there (when Californian Kemp represented them in Congress). The Huffington Post March 6, 2006

Goodbye, Mr. Parks

I think "Leadbelly" was the best film made during the American Bicentennial

Underwater research

The two sources I know of would be the Grand Manan Museum, Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada. Mr. Eric Allaby compiled a map once I recall of the wrecks around the tides, rocks and ledges of the archipelago. I don't recall the specifics. He has had two submarines built in the St. John, N.B. shipyard, in the 1970's the one-man "subconscious" and more recently I heard (shhhh..) the "subconscious II". My grandfather, his brother a Master Mariner, captain of the "S.S. City of Atlanta" torpedoed by U-123 in January 1942 off Cape Hatteras, N.C., making the run for the Savannah Lines from NYC to Savannah, Georgia, my grandfather a longtime Merchant Mariner, were from Grand Manan. Another is the museum on the Great South Bay, Long Island, New York which has compiled a list of wrecks around Long Island, and a map, which was on exhibit when I last visited there. There was also an early Marconi radio shack nearby too I recall. Long Island Maritime Museum in West Sayville, New York. The U.S. National Archives will respond to individual wrecks, at least it did when I inquired about the S.S. Savannah and the S.S. City of Atlanta. The S.S. Savannah was renamed, a "Q boat" and captured 243 POW's from a German raider, they said as I recall. The Atlanta had 43 casualties and two survivors. It lies east of the barrier island (off Avon, N.C.) though the magnetic anomalies (a warning on NOAA charts) there lead to different listings, which I read the NOAA is attempting to correct for the East Coast in planned sections. The National Archives however published an article on the "White House Press Secretary" history, which it stated George B. Cortelyou of New York City, a former chairman of the Republican Party and held a number of Cabinet posts under President's McKinley and Roosevelt (he's shown in a photo standing next to McKinley at the Panamerican Exposition in Buffalo, NY where the President was shot, dying eight days, and Theodore Roosevelt technically had to be sworn in New York's Adirondacks) was the first to invite the Press into the White House, to inform them of the condition of the President and later the Spanish American War, a person overlooked by historians it's said a master of shorthand perhaps holding up research. The article seemed to be in denial, and made no mention at all of White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers who served for three years in that job, the first woman, so I suspect some of the information there might be politically expedited. Maybe just written in a previous administration.

Sikorsky Strike

As the son of a Teamster Local 804 member, which the prior president of the Teamsters came from, Ron Carey, a UPS driver from NYC, I really enjoyed this article from Mr. Hoffa. What really has me "ticked" about helicopters (my dad and I sometimes used to load furniture at the Roosevelt Field UPS center, with a moving metal floor, next to "Long Island Helicopters") is the replacement of the Presidential Sea King helicopter by foreign manufacturers chosen over Sikorsky, the "father" of helicopters, though I also went to school at Stony Brook University next to Gyrodyne, a "competitor" in small coaxial helicopters on Long Island the "cradle of aviation". Would it have been too much to ask of the White House to "Buy American"? Teamster President James P. Hoffa on the Sikorsky Strike at Huffington Post

Let presidents drain federal red ink

"Casting more sunshine onto legislative actions is necessary for a Congress held in such low esteem. (National Sunshine Week, sponsored by the American Society of Newspaper Editors, will be highlighted March 12-18 to support more open government.)"

Supreme Court Sides With Military Recruiters On Access To College Campuses...

Does this mean the Supreme Court will not bring up the JROTC system? Back in 1969-1970, my high school, Newfield, on Marshall Drive in Selden, NY (town named after a judge who testified on behalf of Susan B. Anthony posing as a man to vote, a judicial taboo) became the first Marine Corps JROTC in the country, the Army in Connecticut (Beatle Paul's manager's town) and the Air Force and Navy on the West Coast, I found in my research, then draftable. Somewhat more recently, the "Defense Monitor" show on PBS asked "Are they worth it?" and said the JROTC program, in 20,000 mostly poor schools, cost about $1 billion a year, back in the early 1990's I think. To me the single service orientation, and perhaps the exclusion of women, at least way back then, seem to be one of the reasons the government has fought so hard on this issue to recruit in "law schools". "Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam; purging and unscaling her long-abused sight at the fountain itself of heavenly radiance; while the whole noise of timorous and flocking birds, with those also that love the twilight, flutter about, amazed at what she means..." On a old poster "Our Rights and Our Liberties" banner in an eagle's mouth. Quotation: John Milton 1644

Guardian "Cops and Bloggers"

I was recently fired in America for having a blog, a policy I knew nothing about. I had just been hired for the "Swing Shift" 3:30 to midnight in the new subway tunnel being cut and filled in Battery Park in New York City, next to the "Sphere" and the eternal flame to the World Trade Center collapse. We were looking for and found the old "batteries" at the shore where New York defended itself. I was told days after starting the work, no blogs were allowed and received a letter firing me for it, even though my "acceptance of employment" letter had arrived days after I had started work, with my name spelt wrong too. ("New York New York, it's a helluva town, the Bronx is up and the Battery is down" song where I was commuting too) I have continued to blog even though I was "dooced" as the expression goes. I was once, in HAZMAT suit asked to sign, at Chinese "take-away" lunch, an agreement not to speak without permission about an EPA cleanup at the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY across the Hudson River from West Point Military Academy and next to Constitution Island, where a chain was strung across the river to stop the British Navy from a "divide and conquer" and said nothing for ten years, though I think only 1/2 of the boyos signed it. Guardian "Cops and Bloggers"

How Did it Feel?

Martin Scorsese’s Dylan documentary, "No Direction Home" I'm a little late and so was Joan Baez at Woodstock I learned later. She came down to the Hog Farm stage to sing bless her, where "The Quarry" sort of opened the show that sprang up like a summer rainstorm. I enjoyed the documentary, I worked as a dishwasher in Phoenicia, NY in 1968 and thought I saw Mr. Hendrix in Woodstock, NY where I see Mr. Dylan was also living. The film helped me "look back" thanks "Woodstock Festival" cinematographer! Another friend said Hendrix was in a house too with a Janis Joplin look-a-like according to his Mom, showing houses. Posted today at the Guardian Unlimited Culture Vulture blog

Indy 4

How about "Indy in the Land of Meroe"? I was looking at it in Wikipedia, it's in the Sudan and was intrigued by the pyramids and other structures. You could do some of the outside shots at Pinewood West in New York's toni Hamptons, Mr. Spielberg, some parts of it "out east" thought alot like "arabia" in the summer, between Pinewood and Montauk. Even the local natives had names like Pharoh. As an anthropology student I know some are still around thought the Montaukett were chased off in 1910 by a Federal court decision, one I think was held in the "Tweed Courthouse" in NYC's City Hall Park, City Hall's architect the same that designed the Montauk lighthouse commissioned by George Washington, who asked the locals where it should go according to some recent geologists.

Ooops, I did it again

To read: Petition to Repatriate Geronimo's Skull 4265. George J. Myers, Jr. B.A. Anthropology "Bothering some for decades, no jars stored in a basement at Yale U. will solve it. Please return. Marvin K. Opler, Ph.D. a student of the Apache, filed 3 briefs on behalf of Japanese-Americans rights in the WWII internment camps, 2 were heard by the US Supreme Court. R.M. Nixon: Help heal America." Actually it was Morris Opler, Ph.D. on Apache extended kinship structure, that filed the briefs against the unlawful imprisonment of the Japanese-Americans in WWII then. Marvin K. Opler, Ph.D., once cross-listed in the Anthropology Dept. and the Psychiatry Dept. of the medical school at SUNY at Buffalo, NY was an honorary Navaho. I think they both worked in the camps. A tribute to Morris Opler, Ph.D., whose nephew is a General Practioner, M.D. in the Bronx, NY (or was, my cousin Nicholas Cirillo is a D.O. in North Carolina) appeared (the last time I could afford the dues) in the American Anthropological Association's publications.

Good Luck and Good Night!

"In a tribute to one of the most insightful observers of America, the BBC presents the Alistair Cooke Memorial Lecture." July 4, 2005 An American Patriot Today The lecturer is Senator John McCain, one of the most popular politicians in the United States today. In front of an invited audience at the English Speaking Union in London, on the day that Americans celebrate their independence from Britain 229 years ago, Senator McCain will argue that "to be an American patriot is to support a moral mission at home and abroad". Interesting talk.

Phase Out Use of Perchloroethylene by Dry Cleaners

Dear EPA Docket Center (6102T) OAR 20050155: Right now, many dry cleaners are a toxic menace. They do not need to be. All over the country, environmentally responsible dry cleaners have stopped using perchloroethylene (perc) and switched to safer alternatives. These dry cleaners have made their neighborhoods safer. It is EPA's job to protect our communities from toxic pollution. You have the authority to ensure that all dry cleaners -- not just a few -- switch from perc to safe alternatives. You know that these alternatives exist and are commercially available right now. You know that these alternatives are cost-effective. You know that they will eliminate one of the worst sources of cancer risk this country faces. I'm sure George and Weezie Jefferson, (who owned a "chain" of dry cleaners in the TV series "Movin' On Up" - Ed.- I meant "The Jeffersons") would approve. Statistically "perc" may affect the minority owners the most, (as I was told by a "black" social anthropologist, they own most of them) and where they are often located, may be hurt the most by "perc". Please use your authority to require all dry cleaners in America to make a phased-in switch from perc to safe alternatives. Thank you for considering my comments.

Re:Re: Summer Cemetery Excavations

Follow-up: Topics in this digest: 1. African Burial Ground gets rare national honor - a correction From: "William Sandy" ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Message: 1 Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2006 13:04:27 -0500 From: "William Sandy" Subject: African Burial Ground gets rare national honor - a correction Your otherwise great article on the new National Monument (Daily News 3-1-06:19) has a major mistake in paragraph 2. The African Burial Ground was NOT found by "construction workers". It was found by archaeologists following out a detailed plan of investigation. It was because of the genius and hard work of archaeologist "Big Ed" Rutsch and his team from Historic Conservation & Interpretation, Inc. that this "Plymouth Rock for Ameican Blacks" was found! How about a retraction/correction?? I know 'cause I was there. Check out the "Big Ed" website for more. Bill Sandy, Registered Professional Archaeologist Westtown Gee, that's not right. I recall while working with Joel Grossman at his firm, Grossman & Associates, picking up a Saturday NY Times that had an article on the progress of Historic Conservation & Interpretation, Inc. at the site when they were down to the basement level below the street. To be fair, anyone looking at an old map could see the toponym "Negroes Burying Ground" next to the "Kolk" or "Collect Pond" (from "the deep, unfathomable" hardly, though still springs into basements nearby, see "Whole Earth Magazine" which NYer Marlon Brando contributed to). They might also see just off of Bowery (Encyclopedia Americana, "oldest street in America" article by Leo Herskowitz (?) who researched the so called "Broad Street Site" on Whitehall) below Houston Street (pronounced "hows ton" after a Scottish NYC merchant, the street once the Yiddish theater district, where Walter Matthau had his start as youngster) a "Negro Cemetery" in a former "cemetery district" half removed (marble works, Methodists, Quakers and National Guard removed, non-denominational cemeteries, the "firsts" still in the two marble vault cemeteries nearby). I also recall being asked by Joel Grossman, Ph.D. if I thought they might still be there and thought yes they could where the "rope walk" was also I recall, (a long shed for "winding" or weaving ropes for ships mostly, the "cable" grew out of it, John Roebling, Allegheny Portage Railroad, various bridges; Peter Cooper, transatlantic telegraph, etc.) George Myers

Wings Academy

Nearby at 180th Street, once said to be a good place in a nuclear attack so many elevated train lines cross there for the yards, someone said, they turned the former "rolling mills" into an aviation high school here in the Bronx. There was years ago another I think near LaGuardia Airport, some of the high schools are thematic for preparation in different fields. One persistent wing design is the three blade power generator used on so-called "wind farms" which also have their problems, bug build-up, birds, bats and visual and aural noise, etc. I once viewed an intriguing patent on an alternative design for utilizing the wind for power generation. The design basically is the proverbial wing stood on end, and able to rotate directly into the wind, having maximum airflow then over the symmetrical wing, flowing over both surfaces equally, and able to turn into the prevailing wind. Down the length of each side of the wing is a slit, which the airflow flowed over, and due to the Bernoulli effect would suck air through the slits and past the wing sucked out by the airflow over the slits from the wind. The slits would be connected to other airpipes to a vaned mechanism connected to a generator, pulling air through the vanes connected to the generator. It was an intriguing idea, silent, perhaps, wings standing sentinel. The principles are used in current airframe design for ventilation and power I think the author stated, though a caveat was something like "for deserts only". I may have related this idea to GE when they provided a sketch place on the web and perhaps are well aware of it.

Oh where oh where is Teamster Local 804?

In New York City! I should say I grew up in a Teamster household because my father worked the Night Shift unloading furniture trailer trucks and loading Macy's furniture delivery trucks for United Parcel Service. Macy's was started by Nantucket whalers in the South Street Seaport Historic District (hence the red star said to be from a tattoo) and failed a number of times at other businesses. UPS delivered furniture for them of Manhattan and then Abraham & Strauss of Brooklyn, both "merged" or acquired by Federated Department Stores, a Canadian firm I read that's been buying many of the large chains of stores. Federated is currently Macy's owner after the employees sat through its bankruptcy in ownership. UPS also carried toys from FAO Schwartz, unique items from Hammacher Schlemmer, (158 years old) etc. with furniture delivery to all boroughs, "upstate" and out to the east end of Long Island. Eventually they wanted out of the larger item deliveries (rugs, cabinets, chairs, beds, etc.) switching it out to concentrate on the huge volume of packages it carries and manages from its central office across from the Guggenheim Museum in NYC. The car-carrier Leaseway of Shaker Heights, Cleveland, Ohio delivered appliances and furniture for a number of years for Abraham & Strauss before the "merger". I sometimes worked temporarily for "both" (non-union). Ron Carey, the Teamsters union president before the current one, James P. Hoffa, (James R. Hoffa's son) was a United Parcel Service driver in NYC, in Local 804, which my father was a member of. From it Mr. Carey ran on a platform of cleaning up the Teamsters union image and business, which he did very well. Unfortunately, an impropriety within his re-election organization caused a Federal "flag" and an investigation was conducted during his re-election campaign. He was found innocent of all charges, perhaps conveniently after the election that he lost. Mr. Hoffa however, is a lawyer, his sister a judge and beyond reproach in my opinion. The recent split with the AFL-CIO was probably a good move for them, although George Meany, (United States labour leader who was the first president of the AFL-CIO (1894-1980) - WordWeb) was from NYC, a small asphalt park under the El in his honor in the borough of the Bronx. Here's someone else I also worked for in "delivery" Public Citizen, "Organization founded by Ralph Nader, public-interest watchdog organization frequently critical of corporations" and the recent courtcase they joined with the Teamsters on: Feb. 27 - Safety groups and Teamsters sue over trucker hours-of-service (they are only in California and Texas but when I worked for NYPIRG we sold subscriptions to their magazine).