Re: Summer Cemetery Excavations

>In front of Mayor Giuliani (pre 9/11)...wonder if they're conjoined adult twins?
Today President Bush declared the less than 1/2 acre, a National Monument, the African Burial Ground, (thought to contain 20,000 burials) which is also part of New York's City Hall Park and Commons Historic District.
In 1999 I came onto the summer cemetery excavations in NYC's City Hall Park, it being restored to a period of about 1880 by the various contractors, busy while the human remains were discovered and "dealt with" supervised by a forensic anthropologist who worked for the Smithsonian and on-call with the Rhode Island police, Marilyn London, I hope she doesn't mind. The fence installed was large cast iron set in stone which was being ground constantly while we were working, along with the various other operations, i.e., as slabs of stone, from the Binghamton, NY area, in grey and black to outline former buildings around and in the park compiled from historic map overlays by other researchers were brought in to create a plaza that summer. There were also protests against the NATO aerial bombings in Europe, a large cross carried out to the middle of the nearby Brooklyn Bridge, the labor negotiations (or lack thereof) protested with the City and a few other problems as the dry summer proceeded. Under the "watchful eye" of the statue of Horace Greeley ("go west young man and grow up with the country" he sits on a small sofa) and near the Joseph Pulitzer monument, "newspaper row" had been nearby, where the city's papers were published at one time, (unfortunately none of the presses have been saved as in some cases other cities) were the human remains near the surface under the walkway and "in the way" of the to be electronically controlled emergency entrance to the park.
In the middle of testing for the area containing the cemetery and new security fence and features being installed were the remains it was thought of New York's "First Almshouse" cemetery, which I had done some research from borings on with another company that had excavated a small area between the since restored courthouse and City Hall, later expanded by another archaeologist and students from Brooklyn College. I had also worked in a re-excavated trench for power and steam between the "Tweed Courthouse" and Surrogate Court through Chambers Street with another archaeologist. The courthouse was then to hold a museum of the city, instead now occupied as a Dept. of Education headquarters. Some of the episodes of "Law and Order" TV show were filmed in it.
I was asked to excavate where a water fountain was to go and as I came down into the sandy soils encountered two burials, as many of the artifact-free burials were, of two or more laid in the ground in the same pit, and I hope the water fountain "footprint" was moved to accommodate the burials. Then, (or recently) the Iroquois Council in New York State had adopted a position or policy of recommending not moving any burials. The then recent decision I think that it was applied to was in the new salt sources found near or in Letchworth State Park, to replace the salt mines that had flooded and collapsed on the east shore of Lake Cayuga, above Ithaca, NY. The new source had burials on it and they wanted the people involved to leave them there and work around it. In this case all remains that were previously disturbed enough (very shallow) were removed and said to be returned to a chamber near those that remained at a later date. Not all the remains were inside a "cemetery" and my general feeling is that a better scientific effort perhaps could have been done, but like I said, I got to it in the middle. I was told that some of the remains for example were used for baseline studies of PCB contamination in the Hudson River where I had previously worked in Dutchess County, NY.

Mardi Gras

Jean Lafitte Tickle my feet! I don't recall where this came from but told to a child it comes back to "haunt" you! The link connects to the interesting site Jean Lafitte in Louisiana. The Lafitte Vineyards have a bust of President Thomas Jefferson who visited there while in France (played by actor Nick Nolte in the film "Jefferson in Paris" I write to his "double" in film sometimes, from California, Grand Manan Island, Canada and Rochester, NY). According to a Sunday "Times-Picayune" I read one summer hurricane a-comin' there in 1979, Jefferson was related to the Lafitte's through his wife, so the story went, and General, then Emperor Napoleon was smuggled off the island of exile and is/was buried in the Lafitte cemetery under another name. Some legend! Hmmm... there was a Corsican migration to Puerto Rico... Nearby here, at Fordham University, a Jesuit institution of higher learning, there was recently published an historical study of abolitionist movement against the practice of slavery, and surprising to me, was that how early it started in Spanish North America, Mexico and elsewhere in the Caribbean, etc., which I studied at Stony Brook University. It had an anthropologist from the small island of Dominica. I stayed in the LaSalle Hotel with a friend going to visit the Yucatan, working on the archaeology of now completed Tombigbee Waterway in Mississippi, a canal fed by the Tennessee River connecting with Mobile, Alabama on the Gulf of Mexico, said to have the oldest Mardi Gras celebration in the United States.

US leader crashed by trying to 'pedal, wave and speak at same time'

Shhh...not well publicized story. Current sitting President George W. Bush put a Scottish police officer out for 14 weeks when he hit him while riding his bicycle there. He rides because of pain in his knees keeps him from running. They should give him a bike with the crank placed further forward as they are being created now, they used to be connected directly to the large wheel on the velocipede, like the Memphis, TN "Bicycle Club" with backgammon tables I heard about.

Talking about Bones tell ancient tale of Kennewick Man - Science - MSNBC.com

A study, not mentioned, states he may have come from across the Pacific Ocean.

Fort Golgotha, NY

One time following up a "con job" excavation I was told happened when some NYC "archaeologists" where allowed to dig a trench in the Huntington graveyard, atop a hill, where the British Army had "Fort Golgotha" in the cemetery in the American Revolution, some reported them baking bread on tombstones, and where Nathan Hale was taken before his hanging in NYC (there is a statue in City Hall Park, recently moved to the front of the City Hall where it had been at the back or north side of the park) I helped in a "gifted and talented" program of excavation on a Saturday for elementary school kids, excavating a few test squares between the stones. The remains of the fort had been plowed level after the Revolutionary War. One of the Town of Huntington's offices was in the small building there, and the Suffolk County Historian was also on the school board. Anyway, we were helped by a re-enactor who lived practically next door, a podiatrist who played the head of the "Queens Rangers" once headed by Benjamin Thompson who later was well-known as the physicist Count Rumford. We thought perhaps we relocated some of the outline of the entrance way near the current flagpole, with Edward Johanneman, MA and Gaynell Stone, PhD. (showing gravestone rubbings) and tried to recover the area that had been previously disturbed by the previous "archaeologists" that sort of started this, perhaps. Down slope near the disturbed topsoils were stones obviously not from the glacial deposits of Long Island and near them a metal cartouche (silver like a large "pin") of the "Queens Rangers" was found, which I caught hell for letting the re-enactor borrow for a day to have one of his associates make a drawing of for further re-enactments occurring in bicentennial activities around Long Island. One French observer reported (not much about it) that in a windstorm the snow rolled up like carpets up the hill to "Fort Golgotha" named after the "hill of skulls" related in the Christian bible as where crucifictions occurred, where the biblical Jesus Christ was crucified between two thiefs by the occupying Roman government. I did get the "Queens Rangers" cartouche back from the rather large podiatrist, who dressed in a large "beefeaters" hat (traditionally bearskin I read) was quite imposing on a horse.

The Black Ball Line

"It was a plucky thing to do Hurrah for the Black Ball Line! To cut the Pirate vessel through, Hurrah for the Black Ball Line!" Site is full of historic folk songs mostly in Midi from around the world.

Pirate name?

My pirate name is:

Mad Roger Rackham

Every pirate is a little bit crazy. You, though, are more than just a little bit. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from fidius.org.

The Perilous Pit

I thought I'd offer some of my experience in this often "perilous pit" topic:

My experience had been to string aluminum frames with string in 10cm squares and place two of them on the excavated remains and stand on a ladder and photograph them.That was Bowdoin Park, Dutchess County (how we Yanks spell it) once J.P. Morgan's summer place on the Hudson River, across from Marlboro, NY and where ye olde ferry village was.

Interesting "phase" problem, the first phase found some remains, the headstones had been moved on and off the site to plow the narrow rich river terrace, the "geezer" who knew where the stones were supposed to go back to, was fired before they were replaced, and ended up in the local highway department, as the tale went. One archaeological "phase" was done, a line drawn on the ground, and another phase started which I was involved in, winter (using shelter, toboggan and generator) and summer to excavate further a well, then thought finished.

A youth visitor to the subsequent mechanical excavations found a skull in the one of the dirt piles. Bulldozers had started to unearth what had been thought about 1/4 acre cemetery which was actually a 1/2 acre, which a local descendant asserted she had been telling the sewer authority involved in the "taking" of that part of the public park, for years about, once also a former Dutch Reformed churchyard and 20th century "youth farm" and "first" village disturbed by the railroad. An interesting lime kiln had been found too with remote sensing provided by Bruce Bevan who brought a whole "array" of instruments to test the place in a day. Some of the last Federal monies for community sewer projects was spent there, now "they're" on their own to float bonds, etc. to meet U.S. Federal pollution discharge guidelines.

An interesting rock shelter "fall" was excavated there by the once New York State Archaeologist Robert Funk who contributed much to the prehistory of the Hudson River Valley, where once we would be "divided" to be "conquered" (N.J. Parkways Commission) following up on avocational archaeologists work that was also done recently in the park.

Another cemetery I helped with the Moore-Jackson Cemetery in Queens, NYC, had stones that the WPA apparently put artistically there making public works in the Great Depression, but had been broken somewhere else (below the surface) hopefully on the property the Queens Historical Society owns. Some of the decedents house had been used as a headquarters in the "Battle of Long Island" which General Washington lost, at a crossroads of "information" their participation found null, so innocent after the American Revolution. For Celia Bergoffen, Ph.D, RPA.

I have worked for a number of archaeologists on the "First Almshouse" question in NYC City Hall Park, which was further excavated in the summer of 1999, I came on late to it, though explored on two other excavation projects by different archaeologists. I generally have some question about the "First" designation, and its proximity to the British Army Barracks and the Ol' Bailey or prison the NY Times reported as "blacker than any black hole of Calcutta" in which its was also reported by them (1904?) that patriot Ethan Allen was tortured by a British Major Cunningham. Also I wonder how many archaeologists can be switched onto a single research question without it getting entirely switched into the lowest common denominator.

I have also worked at Sacket's Harbor, NY on Lake Ontario said to be the "birthplace of the U.S. Navy" over the War of 1812 (Washington D.C. was burned its stated for burning what has become Toronto) and Zebulon Pike's remains location is still in doubt I read. We set aside one part of the parade ground (with Angela Schuster of "Archaeology" magazine lately, et al) from condominium development when a follow up of Berger, Inc., determination of scattered human remains turned up more substantial remains, the remains of a wooden coffin buried just below the modern surface.

Mr. Dershowitz's new book

Ruben Blades for President! Oops wrong country right lawyer, Mr. Dershowitz was there when he graduated law school. I was there when the law school opened in Buffalo, NY, NY State's only one. I have a few questions about the "Battleship Bush" revolution. My father's oncologist was featured on a PBS John McLaughlin as a cinematographer of the hardships the children suffered in Iraq after "Desert Storm". American Veterans For Peace was addressing that issue I read with water filtration projects before this last invasion. Why didn't we have a new draft? I feel for the 50,000 who were just put on their third tour to Iraq and in Afghanistan. An "Afghan" was once a rug on American couches throughout the land. Some of the troops are from Fort Drum, NY where I was part of the initial archaeology survey done by law that brought the 10th Mountain Division (started by a Dole, not Senator Dole, though he was in it) to New York's swamps and sand dunes from Camp Hale, Colorado back in the 1980's for EBASCO, a Texas power plant builder, in five top floors of the World Trade Center. So where's the lawyers? Bushes kill them all? His Dad once asked for a moment of prayer from the upper deck of the Motor Ship Mount Washington, in Wolfeboro, NH as he had to become President while President Reagan had his colon operated under anesthetic. Maybe this silent prayer thing has gone too far. We need more secular humanism.

Ports sales and the Seaman's Bank

A number of years ago, the Seaman's Bank for Savings was for sale. It was started by mariners and had its headquarters at 30 or 40 Wall Street, a building next to Federal Hall, where a statue of George Washington stands near the famous stock exchange. The price of the bank was what I thought, a paltry $17 million and I asked "how come" of a banker of the Sound Federal Savings Bank. He said the sale is only to other banks and conditions had to be met in order to purchase. Mr. Rockefeller of CitiBank bought it and donated the merchant marine memorabilia to the South Street Seaport in NYC for a write-off of over $2 million, and it became part of a huge bank. Donald Trump now owns the building. Anyway, was the sale of the ports management company a "selective" sale or were just other countries invited? There's a ferry NYC can't (built in Australia went Rochester/Toronto) have because of the Jones Act, travel to and from US ports must be on vessels made by America, so if something goes faster, better, and cheaper, built by another country, we can't have it. Maybe that's what's at the bottom of it and the "selective" sale...How many American companies were offered the deal I'd like to know?

New England Leather

Are you familiar with Thomas (?) Plant who built the "Castle in the Clouds" overlooking Lake Winnepeasauki in New Hampshire? He was a New England shoe magnate they say there on the tour. He owned a number of leather concerns. It's said he lost his money when the hurricane hit Cuba, wiping out the whole sugar cane crop he had invested in, apparently with advice from his friend Theodore Roosevelt. There is not a nail in the "castle" in the Ossipee Mountains (former volcano, perfect ring dike structure, 6X as high as Mt. Everest they think blew 10X Mt. St. Helens in the geological past, in a eco-inventory recently a mountain lion or puma was perhaps found) with its distinctive orange roof and five-sided stones made by imported Italian laborers. He had a suit of armor made for him (about 5 feet high) and a torch made by Tiffany (electric) lights the stairway near the armor. I think his ex-wife was painted by Klimt and the place had all the "modern" conveniences. It was for sale once bought by a North Carolina firm that markets the purest water ever tested, to hotels, and now is also a micro-brewery. It has successfully been put into a trust by investors in the environs so that it may stay, where it once was a carriage ride around and atop the Ossipee Park on the way to the more popular White Mountains (after the Plant financial collapse, I guess someone had that idea) it's now a refuge of sorts, the bottler staying in its smaller compound. Interesting place. Winnepeasauki is said to mean "Smile of the Great Spirit". There are live pumas in the Science Center in Holderness where "On Golden Pond" was filmed.

Tannery Hall, 2 cents of shoe leather

As one of the earliest patented businesses (1600's for grinding bark for tanning hides in the vicinity of Wall Street) in New Amsterdam/New York you would perhaps think there are many examples of leather from it. I'm not sure if there has been many. One place, Bestevaers Cripplebush, a swamp never deeded by the Dutch government to anyone, on the edge of which was hung one Jacob Leisler, exonerated under William and Mary (there was no water in the fort, nor people when the British Navy showed up and well William was of Orange and Mary of England anyway), became the tannery vats of the Roosevelt's (the former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt side, the former President Theodore Roosevelt side's father was a mere glass importer) and about it is said in business history, more money made in the preparation and tanning of leather than any other business until the modern era. As health concerns arose, primarily from flies and hide preparation, the industry was moved in stages to the periphery of settlement, especially after mid-nineteenth century studies by citizens, not city agencies, brought wide-scale suggestions from study and improvements to public health on Manhattan island. Some of the few shoe examples I've seen from archaeological contexts were made with many rosewood pegs instead of brads or nails, made to fit as it were to specific customer, and an itinerant traveling class of cobblers (some say leprechauns, often depicted as cobblers) traveled into the countryside often to visit a farm or farmstead once a year to shod the families and workers there. One of the last hide processing places I'd discovered recently, began in the 1850's in North Creek, NY where great stands of hemlock trees were cut, their bark used to tan the hides, many more later brought in by train, as many as 10,000 a year, until the 1880's. Later in the 19th century garnet mines (the state gemstone, the scallop the state shell) were exploited nearby next to where in the 1930's skiing begun, inspired by Lake Placid's Winter Olympics, and people were brought from NYC and elsewhere by train, which became today nearby Gore Mountain for skiing, with better than an old V8 car as a ski rope lift. There's an interesting history of shoe leather! Further north, titanium was mined in the 1940's and 1950's near the older abandoned McIntyre Iron Mine site, near the village of Adirondac, recently granted money for historic preservation and interpretation to bring the now uninhabited titaniferous iron oxide mining location, first shown to prospectors as a solid iron dam "au natural" by a "St. Joseph Indian" there in the foothills of Mt. Marcy, New York States tallest mountain. The tannery vat complex in early 18th century New York was not far from the current City Hall, between it and the former shoreline at Pearl Street and serviced by the James Roosevelt wharf. Just in case: >Bestevaers Cripplebush, was Bestevaers Kreupelbosch (a type of tree?) An incident occurred here of note on September 15, 1655 as reported by Secretary Van Tienhoven (Innes 1902) "When the Indians landed, in large numbers, upon Manhattan Island...in the absence of Director-General Stuyvesant and of his soldiers, who had started a few days before upon their expedition against the Swedes on the Delaware River, one of the first points they commenced their work of violence was at this warehouse." (Tablet at 8-10 Peck Slip erected by the General Society of Mayflower Descendants in 1904 to commemorate the warehouse of Isaac Allerton, a Mayflower Pilgrim who was Governor Bradford's assistant at Plymouth. [Museum Exhibition Commission 1909:64] "Here, then, for a number of years the old Puritan merchant carried on his commercial transactions, making frequent journeys backwards and forwards from his house in New Haven." (Innes:336) In "In Small Things Forgotten" James Deetz speaks about the architect finding one of Allerton's mysteriously unfinished structures near Plymouth) "They ran in large armed parties through the streets," says Van Tienhoven, in his report to the Council, "violently attacked the house of Mr. Allerton, knocking the lock from his door, beating his servants, and ransacking his premises, on pretense of searching for two Indians." (Innes:336-7). They were reported to be five or six hundred in number, and fled across the Thomas Hall farm into the swamp, known as Bestevaers Kreupelbosch, when a ship across the East River, commanded by Captain Scharborgh, began training his guns on the site." (Innes 1902). Other uses for the "Allerton warehouse" cited were a temporary reception for the boys and girls sent over from the almshouse in Amsterdam (Almoners Orphanage) in 1654 to receive after five years 53 acres of land. Govert Loockerman, one of the executors of Allerton's estate becomes "orphan master" in place of Johannis van Brugh. Govert Loockerman and Isaac Allerton along with Cornelius Steenwick and Cornelis Vanderveen are considered the four greatest merchants of New Amsterdam. New York - Maryland connection: Govert Loockerman was the original patentee of the property in the neighbohood of Hanover Square and had three children. (Hanover Square was recently visited by the Prince Charles and company to dedicate a garden to those British citizens lost in the World Trade Center collapse on Sept. 11, 2001). One daughter was married to Cornelius Dircksen, the ferryman, who ran the original ferry to Brooklyn. Another daughter was married to Peter Cornelisen Vanderveen and then she was later married to Jacob Leisler. Govert Loockerman died in 1671 and his widow lived to 1678. His son Jacob Loockerman, was a physician, and sold the family's property to his brother-in-law, Jacob Leisler before leaving for St. Mary's City, Maryland where Govert Loockerman his father had acquired large possessions (Valentine 1856:75). More on the "swamp" In 1734, this tract was sold for 200 pounds to Jacobus Roosevelt who divided it into 50 lots and established on them several tanneries (large leather center into at least the end of the nineteenth century) More immense fortunes have been made about that region than any other of the city. The swamp had been leased to Rip Van Dam for "21 years and 20 shillings a year" from Gerardius Beekman (Stone 1872:91) Stone, William Leete 1872 History of New York City, New York I think this was one of the rare old business books in the Huntington Free Library in Westchester Square, Bronx, NY formerly housed an ethnography collection of the Heye Foundation the collection was moved as part of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian but the library remains. Later "Old Man's Swamp" was known as: Beekmans Swamp, became a leather goods center (Moscow 1978:27) Moscow, Henry 1978 The Street Book: An Encyclopedia of Manhattan's Street Names and Their Origins, Hagstrom Co., NY Reprinted in 1979.

Don't take away our safeguards

BLM Categorical Exclusions Content Analysis Team Post Office Box 22777 Salt Lake City, UT 84122-0777 Subject: Don't adopt proposed categorical exclusions on public lands I am writing to express my strong opposition to the proposed policy change that would exempt many destructive activities on BLM lands from environmental analysis and public review. In addition, I request that you extend the comment period, as 30 days for such a significant proposal is insufficient. Consider the funds that were supposed to be given to our national parks for national recreation from off-shore drilling right fees. They have been raided over and over by the Congress and now represent a "deficit" that will never be recovered. This the public now knows, and should never be excluded from future government decisions over public lands. Because The Earth Needs A Good Lawyer - Earthjustice

Bad law, bada bing

1. Having to be strip searched at a US/Canada border crossing for a marijuana seed in the crack of the bench seat of a really old car. Being charged "in concert" for it, though you've just met your room-mate who borrowed the car from his father's Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn Sunoco station, a "station car" a clunker usually used to get parts, and the pills in the other guy's underpants in the car, he takes those to study. Having to spend the night in jail, and buy the car back at "book". 2. Having to produce bonds for having rented a pre-SUV 4 wheel drive from the Canadians in Ottawa who provide for their geological services and signing an affidavit that this is not to take jobs away from Americans. Also being told the lack of pollution devices in Canada are the cause of it, when actually the opposite is true. 3. Being "citizen arrested" for malfunctioning new fire alarm system in a newly "hastily" opened dormitory without the bugs being worked out, or the furniture supplied. Being charged for "criminal tampering" for it usually charged against those that steal power from an electrical utility. 4. Being pulled over for speeding when you got in front of the police car who was pursuing the real speeder, but you think maybe the anthrax has everyone on edge that morning outside West Point Military Academy. 5. There's a few more, like leaving a small upstate New York town at 3 AM in the morning, now with $5 between us, "otherwise it would cost $200 and I'd have to wake the judge up" for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle in the worst fog in 20 years in a 2 seat Volvo. 6. Being served with "Her Majesty's Search Warrant" by two officers who just driven 200 miles, got on a ferry in the highest tides in the world, probably at least had to spend one night on the island, to explain to me they can search anyone and anything with just suspicion, (so said the warrant) have them in and toss the place to find a small chunk of hashish, in a room-mate's pillow, probably from circulation on the island, which they deport him for instead of me! 7. Being the last motorcycle to pull into a parking lot, not really with those other bikers and being given a ticket for "80 mph in a 30 mph zone" when you just passed the sign that said "End 40 mph Speed Limit" and there's no way you could have gotten up to that and back down. Watching the officer stick his nightstick into your tail pipe and saying he should give you a ticket, though having just bought the bike, you know it's used as a police bike in Japan, otherwise you might not have bought it. Arriving twice at the court to see the others plead guilty, and the cop doesn't show up twice after I pleaded innocent. Third time, I can't make it to the court, I innocently think I could call and inform them, and I am arrested at home on George Washington's Birthday for a special "scofflaw session" which I hadn't realized I would have a bench warrant issued for my arrest. I explain my position (cop never shows, end 40 mph, called, etc.) and the judge lets me go after giving me a hard time about all the taxpayer money it costs. 8. Enough about me. Today in 1965, Malcolm X was "assassinated" (said to be where the word "hashish" comes from) or murdered at the Audubon Ballroom, fought over with FOX network once who were going to raze it for TV, recently fixed up, the section of it remains I think I saw in a Sunday NY Times magazine. Having a pretty NYC police officer pose as a "crack whore" and when Mr. Shabazz, takes the $5 bill from her, insisting that she should have a beer or something instead, outside the Patterson project where I once lived, a Grand Jury foreperson for this one in Bronx County, jumping all over him and beating him up and charging him with theft before he had a chance to explain anything. Under the US Constitution you are entitled to a jury trial for amounts of $20 or more. The police woman sued the NYPD for being forced into her "role".

My first personal "blog" pages at CompuServe 1995

Enter My Techworld Dinosaur Bird in Boots

"Old Guns" (the movie?) of New York

The Westchester Historian: Vol. 34 (p. 52)
April, May, June, 1958 Number 2
Letters Received
10 Chester Ave. White Plains, NY
September 11th, 1957

My dear Mr. Albee:

An item for THE HISTORIAN if you approve. Many years ago there lives in Croton Falls a young girl who was called the "Swamp Angel." She became the wife of General Sickles. In no biography of the General is she married and I have read three. The most readable of these is called "Dan Sickles" by a man whose name begins with P.----. The White Plains Library has it. It would be needed for atmosphere. It is short, and I wager you, if you begin it you will never put it down. General Sickles shot on sight, in front of the White House and killed the Attorney General of the United States, a son of Francis Scott Key. Sickles had just learned he, Key, was his wife's lover, S. was tried for murder but acquitted. Sickles afterwards said it was his fault as he had neglected his wife shamefully while running for President. He took his wife back and was sent to Coventry for so doing. The general lived in White Plains once. I used to see him on the New York trains.

Hastily,
Julia Crosby

NOTE: Gen. Daniel Edgar Sickles, a member of Congress, shot Philip Barton Key, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on Feb. 27, 1859. The name "Swamp Angel" was given by Federal soldiers to an 8-inch Parrott gun used during the siege of Charleston, S.C., in 1863. The book Miss Crosby refers to is titled DAN SICKLES, HERO OF GETTYSBURG AND YANKEE KING OF SPAIN, by Edgcumb Pinchon, 1945. -ED.

Old stereo photos, available in the West Point Foundry School Museum, Cold Spring, NY of the gun testing platform there, excavated under the remains of the 500 foot long "Bridge Shop" by Grossman, et al. for the EPA prior to remediation, show many other guns including Rodmans.

Interestingly: (Ibid.) Vol 34 July, August, September, 1958 No. 3. (now No. for number) "With emphasis on past events in the southern area of our County..."

(Note: Westchester was one of the original settlements in today's Bronx County, where the current US Capital Dome was cast in iron in the South Bronx, transported and assembled in Washington, DC for $1 million towards the end of the Civil War by Janes and Kirtland, Inc. - in an article by the former Bronx County Historian, who also published a book on it's "frontier days".)

"...as the theme of our Annual Fall Pilgrimage, a few facts about Fort Slocum, Westchester's only remaining active fort are of interest. First acquired from the Siwanoy Indians by the Dutch West India Company in 1640, the 60 acre island is reached by way of a 10 minute ferry ride from Neptune Park in New Rochelle (home of Thomas Paine - me). Its long and varied history which included plans for a large hotel abandoned before the Civil War began and ownership by John Bouteiller, "merchant of Martinique," made a visit worth while. First known as the DeCamp general hospital for Civil War wounded in 1861, permanent Government ownership began in 1867. The name Fort Slocum came into use in 1896 when the island was so named in honor of the Civil War Major General Henry W. Slocum. An interesting memento preserved as a tribute to the 19th century military establishment is the 34,000 lb. Rodman gun which hurled a 450 lb. missile 4 miles using a 100 lb. black powder charge. Today a Nike control base, Battery D of the 1st Missile Battalion of the 55th Artillery Group occupies the island." p 65.

Currently called "David's Island" Donald Trump once had plans for it though a bridge to it was considered out of the realm of development possibilities. I think Berger, Inc. did the EIS, a matter of public record. Interesting, also, is that the production of batteries for Nike missiles in Cold Spring, NY (across the Hudson River from West Point Military Academy, to the northeast) led to the excavation of the R.P. Parrott prototype gun platform that became the "Swamp Angel" (still not found). There was cadmium from battery production for NIKE missiles, the major pollutant in the Constitution Marsh (Foundry Cove) currently held by Scenic Hudson, Inc., NY State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, (formerly by the Audubon Society) and Constitution Island, by the West Point Military Academy. The polluted marsh was hauled out from behind a built earthen dam, mixed with concrete, hauled out on railroad, and currently, the marsh in Foundry Cove, is in "restoration".

Just the facts, ma'am...

In 2005, the NYPD issued about 13,500 tickets to truckers while serving 45,558 tickets to bicyclists. Since oversized, off-route and other illegal trucks are more of a threat than a bicyclist riding without a bell, the City would do better to reverse these numbers. Read T.A.'s testimony at Tuesday's City Council hearing on truck traffic. T.A. E-Bulletin: Effects of Traffic on New Yorkers' Quality of Life TriBeCa restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. Interesting site too. TriBeCa Cafe/Restaurant, 102 Dumbarton Road, Partick Cross, G11

"Follow down" to Aerial resources

I don't have anything firm to contribute. I was once associated with the Gwynne's through the Stony Brook Anthropology department, that is I met Mr. "Tom" Gwynne who was the F-14 test pilot for the Grumman Corporation (they built the LEM Lunar Excursion Module used to land and leave the Moon, some of my high school classmates parents were from that industry) who sold 100 F-14 ("Top Gun" jets in the movie of the same name) to the Shah of Iran. The company had a compound of 4000 employees and their families there before the Islamic Revolution and the "hostage crisis" resulting from the students occupying the US Embassy. They claim to be spied on here while attending school, by the Savak, secret police operating with impunity in the US. Mrs. Gwynne has a Ph.D. in Anthropology now (she helped teach the field school in Long Island Archaeology taught by R.M. Gramly, Ph.D., also assisted by Sherene Baugher, Ph.D. once the first NYC Landmarks Commission Archaeologist and recently President of the Council for Northeastern Historical Archaeology. Interestingly Stony Brook University is "seizing" the property next door for expansion which contained Gyrodyne, makers of coaxial helicopters, manned and unmanned used in Vietnam and as submarine hunters in the Cold War, can be seen online. I saw one one person helicopter flying over the potato fields that became tract developments near the university. I years ago tried to research the adjoining property ran into a wall so to speak, for future impacts there and it's amazing, the university may also owe their original siting in part to them too.

Aerial resources

Subject: Re: 2007 SHA symposium As sort of an off-topic tip to this, there was a report of a proposal during the beginning year of World War II to build an underground bunker system for the support of upwards of 5,000 planes to defend the East Coast of the USA to be built on Long Island the "cradle of aviation". The said proposal was found in a dumpster and reported in the press a few years ago. The location wasn't mentioned I'd expect somewhere "out East" as they say about the Hamptons and other areas out to Camp Hero, there 16" gun emplacements and early radar at Montauk a ferry step off to Block Island, now a NY State Park (stay out of the ordnance demarcated areas and the others still off limits if you go there, part of a coastal defense network that stretched into "private" looking houses (notice the narrow horizontal slit windows, there you have one) to I think Miller Field on Staten Island in NYC, the first "automated firing system in the US" now part of Gateway National Park which includes the explorer/aviator named Floyd Bennett Field, NYC's first commercial airport, where Senator and former astronaut John Glenn once set a transcontinental speed record in a jet. I just read recently that the Montauk Airport was/or had bunkers since buried perhaps part of the airfield. I've looked at in NASA World Wind 1.3 and it appears they might have been. A grandson of Pan-Am Clippers crash boat operator at Flushing Airport (probably the best breeding ground for West Nile virus and a shame, don't emergency land there there's a crane in the runway -FAA). cont'd I was told by him that the first flights to Brazil from NYC were from Flushing Bay by some veterans who had bought two surplus PBY Catalina's (or Cansos?) and flew them to Miami, Florida then to Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. As a tourist statistic, I've read more tourists to NYC come from Brazil than any other country. Bom dia!

Happy Valentine's Day, Kiss, Kiss

Warning Spoiler Ahead! "The Intruder (1962) Directed by: Roger Corman Genre: Drama Tagline: He Fed Their Fears And Turned Neighbor Against Neighbor! Plot Outline: Racist Shatner drifts from one small Southern town to another inciting townspeople to riot against court ordered school integration. Also Known As: I Hate Your Guts! (USA) (reissue title) Shame (USA) (reissue title) The Stranger (UK) MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, language, some violence and sensuality. Comment: Author: JHC3 from Seattle, Washington After years of debate, the courts have finally ordered the desegregation of the nation's schools. A small (and fictitious) Missouri town must deal with the issue as black students go to the previously all white school for the first time. Enter Adam Cramer (Shatner), a representative from Washington of the Patrick Henry Society. He claims to be a social worker, but it turns out that this society is a racist organization opposed to desegregation. Cramer hopes to interfere with the court-ordered policy and begins to stir up the community with fiery rhetoric and bold tactics. Cramer soon discovers that the mob he has helped create is beyond his ability to control. "The Intruder" is a little known film written by Charles Beaumont (a core writer for "The Twilight Zone" and a screenwriter for many of American International's classic 1960s horror films) and directed by Roger Corman. It shouldn't be little known. This is arguably the best and most important film ever made by Corman and perhaps by Beaumont as well. Shatner puts in a sterling performance as the racist Cramer and the supporting cast, which included both veteran actors and local citizens from the town of Charleston, Missouri (where it was filmed), is also excellent. Corman and Beaumont took on some seriously volatile subject matter and used both tact and intelligence to tell a story and send a message. For those who are more sensitive to racist language or who are caught up with political correctness, "The Intruder" might be somewhat abrasive or uncomfortable to watch. Personally, I think that this would be ideal for viewing in high schools and colleges that are studying the subject of racism and integration in the United States. Regardless, for those seeking a well made, well acted film." - International Movie Data Base

EPA Docket Center Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2002-0051

The cement industry collectively emits at least 12,000 pounds of mercury each year, yet currently is free to operate without any regulatory requirements to reduce mercury pollution. In its December 2005 rule proposal, EPA once again refused to establish requirements for cement plants to reduce their mercury emissions. Cement plants also emit dioxin, hydrochloric acid, hydrocarbons, and other toxic pollutants. While cement plants continue to reap enormous profits as they pollute our environment with unhealthy amounts of mercury and other air toxics, the agency charged with protecting the environment and the health of Americans is doing nothing. I implore you to rewrite this rule to include limits on mercury and other toxic pollution from cement plants, to the full extent that the Clean Air Act requires. For far too long, cement manufacturers have poisoned our air and water with mercury and other pollution. It is time for EPA to do its job and protect our health and our environment. I feel the EPA may also be "guilty by association" whether intended or not, as a cement plant was proposed on the Hudson River, and this timely suspension of mercury contamination rules just too convenient. I worked in the archaeology of the Marathon Battery National Priority Superfund Site in Cold Spring, NY and other Region 2 sites and on the proposed PCB cleanups of the upper Hudson River since 1983, most recently for TAMS, now part of TYCO. In part I base this complaint given issues of Frederick Church's NY State maintained "Olana" where the Hudson River School of art started, his "Niagara" and others the first artwork purchased by the Congress, where it still hangs, and a nearby proposed cement plant. Please, more research on scrubbers, and more regulation on mercury, the scourge of the "top of the food chain". First half written by the Earth Justice organization, the second half by me. See: "State Sues E.P.A. for Files on Household Pollutants" -NY Times 2/15/06

Covey of quail

Last time I saw a covey of quail (or "bobwhites" as they are also known) I had won a summer part time job in the Republican held Brookhaven Town Parks Department in the bicentennial year (summer of draught in Britain). I was raking rocks out of and helping spread calcium chloride (keeps fugitive dust at bay) and lime-lining a night-lit baseball field in North Bellport, NY, out on Long Island where the "bar leagues" played their slowpitch games, in a predominately black part of town. They had the "summer job lottery" to counter the charge that they were "nepotists" for summer jobs, going to party members kin only. Out past the 1st base foul line, was a covey of quail. Bellport, settled first by ship salvers, was once a produce exporter to NYC before a passage through Fire Island closed up by shipwreck.

Cheney shoots the elephant

The news media was reporting it happens all the time, and had a woman say, I've got some birdshot in me (CBS). I don't know if quail hunting is really the macho image America should project, they're cute, they have tassels like college graduating alumni, and make a sound like "bob white! bob white! bob white!" Is that the answer to the "killer rabbit" media "joke" that went around during President Carter's term? It never ceases to amaze me that the so-called "brilliant" minds in this country, willing to lead, become so stupid and senseless with "swifties" "Willie Horton's" and tank helmets, etc., and then expect for people to take them seriously. Ralph Nader and the State of New Hampshire have the right idea, pay them an honorarium for the honor. Rescind Bush's salary back to Clinton's level (1/2) we deserve better for the $.

A Wonkette Reader Contest:

So What's Really Bothering Justice Stevens? "I know John Paul Jones was an alias, he was wanted for murder in Setauket, NY (now Port Jefferson, NY), and rape in Portsmouth, NH. No, my names is not really John Paul." Two British Navy officers on the "Nehantic" and a barely legal age woman, 16. "How come Justice Hugo Black had an assistant like Charles Reich, who wrote "Greening of America" and "Sorcerer of Bolinas Reef" and I have all these right wingnuts?" "If the town takes Justice Souter's house in New Hampshire over eminent domain, I'll take the Fifth." Just compensation is required by the Fifth Amendment for eminent domain takings.

Al Franken on Wellstone and King Memorials

As I recall, as it split conversation in my house, the Wellstone Memorial was criticized because former Speaker "Newt" Gingrich (and cunning Republican linguist, maybe they should have added "Navaho 2 cents" to their lexicon) was not invited or something to that effect. The "Mississippi Half Step" (vs. "Two steps forward one step back" the first, or "former" the "Grateful Dead" band's opening number on April Fool's Eve when they played the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo, NY on 3/31/1973, the second, or "latter", a summary of the USSR's national history circulated in the 1960's, and a song's refrain I've been hearing from "The Boss" Bruce Springstein) hopefully will not be the outcome of all this political "putsch" by missing billions in cash maybe distributed to our "successors" by "Custers Battles". Live from Washington, D.C. it's a Saturday night massacre! That would be two steps backwards! "Mind your business or your business will mind you." - Benny Franklin (?)

Peace symbol

Carl G. Jung, M.D., the "heir apparent" to Sigmund Freud, (Freud was fond of cinema and is seen leaving an airplane with a "home movie" camera arriving here in Westchester, NY in the late 1920's, a picture shown in the press recently found by the relation of a M.D. friend of his here he visited) published a paperback book, posthumously I think called "Man and His Symbols" about the various signs and symbols we use in our world to communicate, i.e., the Mercedes, the various products in business, etc. One in particular I acquired in the town of Woodstock, NY in 1968 has been on many peoples minds, the "Peace" symbol which came after Dr. Jung's book, which I enjoyed so much at the end of high school I was spirited away from other studies in an attempt to read his collected works published in a number of volumes, at the Suffolk County Community College, said later by the County Historian to be where, on-top of the hill of the former sanitarium now college, two Irish slaves of one of the Norse explorers, climbed and saw the Great South Bay, Fire Island and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. I also attending high school was in the audience of two presentations of Shakespeare's "Henry V" one at the theater in Stratford, on the Thames in Connecticut, a school trip with my English class, and the other, when the production moved to Broadway, with my humanities class, with Mr. Gold. At the first production, there were also many handicraft vendors and I purchased a small leather ring with a "peace symbol" attached to it, prior to seeing the play I think. More recently I read the symbol is actually based on semaphore which though defined as "An apparatus for visual signaling with lights or mechanically moving arms" was originally an alphabet based on flag positions of two human arms, signally or spelling out the letters of the message with arm positions of the flags. The "peace" symbol is the position of two letters "N" and "D" (similar to the Mercedes symbol though it has no "legs") which were described as standing for "_N_uclear _D_isarmament" started in England over the idea of stationing nuclear missiles by the US/NATO to launch at the USSR. I once lived with a nuclear laser scientist sons, here from Italy as he worked at the nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory, now run by a consortium of universities, headed by Stony Brook University, where we were in attendance along with a Cherokee-Italian American. One of the sons started the Amnesty International chapter at Stony Brook University and went on to work in the non-proliferation of arms. The other was studying in the new field of Boolean logic encoded into "chips" and I think I gave him my two board demonstrator I had acquired from Edmund Scientific. It ran off a lantern battery and you patched onto posts, wire-ends to create different logic circuits, lighting up the three or six LED's (light emitting diodes, infrared ones are used in the "total station" I went on to work with in archaeology, a way of recording 3-D locations used by land surveyors) in different patterns, representing NOR, NAND, ADD, etc., logic "gates" from George Boole, a logician. "Keep patching" was the motto of the kit. I once mistakenly had hooked up the battery opposite and blew the diode under my finger, (not light emitting, it prevents current from flowing the wrong way, protecting other circuits, then a "HED", heat emitting diode, ouch!) and soldered in a replacement with one from Radio Shack. It's similar to an electronic kit of radio my grandfather had given me years ago. All this stuff must be working well. However when the shift changed, someone forgot to tell the next shift that there was going to be a research missile launch from Norway, and the Russians almost launched a counter-offensive in 1995 I read. Some of our NIKE missiles are used in Swedish rocket weather research. The chronicler of it there discovered an article from East Germany that suggested Korean Flight 007 was shot down over a sub-orbital "satellite", launched over "enemy territory" to gather intelligence, chased in pursuit. My archaeology co-worker joined US Naval Intelligence after working together in Neptune, NJ (actor Jack Nicholson's home town) and collided with a Chinese fighter-interceptor and emergency landed on Hainan Island in China. Hello Ken!

Coretta Scott King

I remember back in 1974, reading about Mrs. King, then when I heard about many political issues, some still very important, the ministers against the B-1 and B-2 bombers (which prophetically since have been "seen" by Australian radar, $11 billion plane seen by $1.5 million radar see "Happy Australia Day" here), friends in Buffalo, NY who knew people at the shootings at Kent State University, the only "white" at the birthday commemoration of saxophonist John Coltrane, whose house in Huntington, NY has recently been saved, the continuing work of the "Southern Poverty Law Center," by Morris Dees, to teach tolerance, the Carter Center, (former President Jimmy Carter was on CNN's "Larry King Show" Sunday night, I got a kick out of the holiday card the Carter's send), and the various run-in's the King family has had with my former employer (though always in the background of many other jobs) the U.S. National Parks Service, over the Martin Luther King, Jr., memorial site, the law transcripts I've read investigating the other scenario of her husband's assassination, in all this Moratorium observing, Vietnam hospital bombing protest on Madison Ave., etc., I came across an interesting fact about Mrs. King. After her husband was murdered, she was hidden away in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire for her protection where Dr. King had friends. More recently Robert "Bob" and Libby Dole bought a judge's place out near the small airport there on Lake Winnepeasauki. The former Vice President Dan Quayle, was seen in a local lunch bistro during an election campaign a few years back. There is a museum there, the "Wright Museum" about WWII, created in part by the museologist of the "Holocaust Museum" in Washington, D.C., who might be the same person selected by the Mayor of NYC to create the "Ground Zero" museum, which as a name I would, and will object to, though, WordWeb has, "The site of the World Trade Center before it was destroyed".

Colonial Wiretaps

During America's bicentennial (1976, of the "Declaration of Independence" signed by William Floyd of Mastic/Shirley, NY now part of the Fire Island National Seashore, near the once British Fort St. George, in the Manor of St. George) the local press informed us of Washington's "Spy Nest" in Setauket, NY then a British stronghold, with the second oldest Anglican church in North America still there, with musketballs embedded in it, it and the Presbyterian church there a long time, back into the 17th century. Nathaniel Roe, at "Roe's Tavern" and others were involved in gathering information, one a coded message "spelled" out in the drying laundry of a "hotel" was taken by horseback to NYC. Loyalist houses were known by a black line drawn around their chimney. A "Committee of Safety" was in charge of collecting everyone's guns, many muskets were hidden, as in Huntington, where a cache was hidden under a porch. On Washington's triumphal tour, a "return" to Long Island (he had lost the first "Battle of Long Island" and had been there after the earlier "French and Indian War" on his way to Boston, MA) he stopped overnight at the "Roe Tavern" whose proprietor had saved the American cause in Providence, Rhode Island, with the spy info, and the following morning was to be joined in his tour by Mr. Roe, who unfortunately fell from his horse that morning and broke his leg. Mr. Roe later resided along Mud Creek in East Patchogue where he made cherrywood furniture. His house in Selden, NY had been pierced many times by British musketballs, though its exact location has yet to be found. So the spy business has been important in America's past, but the laws followed to protect us from hearsay prosecution, lies and mis-statements I thought by at least having a judge involved (and a warrant).

Birdstones, banners, and Uncle Sam

A number of years ago I was involved in the Suffolk County Archaeology Association and attending graduate school at Stony Brook University in Anthropology where I had also earned my BA in anthro. I was researching local history and prehistory and came upon a limited edition (500 copies) of a book published on the "boat stones" of Long Island, New York where this all relates. In it was a map showing where most of these carved stone "bird effigies" were found, on the northern fluke of the "fish-shaped" island, ("Paumonak" it's thought) and attributed to a mounting on water-borne craft, i.e., dugouts, etc., one once at Garvies Point Museum in Oyster Bay, NY was created and rowed across Long Island Sound in an "experimental archaeology" endeavor. These carved stone artifacts are shaped somewhere between a oarlock and bird, many with bulging eyes on the simple form, and often with two holes where they were attached, perhaps to the front of the watercraft. The point of this, is that the volume was published in Colorado, the objects are in collections elsewhere, other than Long Island, to my knowledge, collected singularly, from their origin and appropriately, however, attributed to a location, on a map. I imagine often, antiquities lose their locations, which in the nuclear archaeological chemistry experiments I've been witness to, at Brookhaven National Lab, now run by a consortium of universities, formerly the US Dept. of Energy, make their provenience and provenance hard to establish with certainty, which can cause all sorts of problems over fakes, forgeries and leave national legacies in dangerous doubt. I would rather know the WWII archaeologically researched "beaker culture" than the Adolf Hitler conception of Teutonic history for example, considering all sorts of illegal arts were stolen then. I imagine the more we can now share information on the world wide web the better it might be for appreciation of each others history, although, I think Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that the proliferation of telecommunications satellites might lead to a world-wide "Babel" as assertions of ethnicity and other singularities emphasize separation rather than cooperation.

Superbowl censors

Still on Unemployment having been fired for having a blog from Dewberry (or the MTA, the Parks Dept., Landmarks, the construction contractor?). We found the remains of the earlier "batteries" in Battery Park at the foot of Broadway, where the tourists get on the boat to see the Statue of Liberty also where my grandmother Margaret Gregory married to Joseph Myers was once a "Scottish nanny" to the caretaker out there on Bedloe's Island (which is a renaming there never was a well never mind) Dad used to say they used to call her "Bedloe's Nanny" when I think she was 16 she worked out there watching after the caretakers kids. It's the first electrically lit lighthouse in the United States also the Statue of Liberty 1886 (?) or so. Just before 9/11/01 a French parasailer, trying to get a unique photo session with "Bedloe's Liberty" which was given by the French the base finally built after much newspaper brow-beating (Joseph Myers worked in real estate reporting) and got tangled up in the torch! It was restored to its gold leaf (scaffolding all over it for a number of years) beauty for free by the French. The NY police I think climbed up and untangled the photographer / adventurer / flyer from the torch. The first flight school in the US, was on nearby Governors Island run by Wilbur Wright for the Army, launched by catapult. He took off there once and flew up and down the Hudson River some say with a canoe tied to the bottom of a Wright Flyer. It was the cover of the Daily News the day or two before the 9/11/01 attack. Guy jumped off the Empire State Building, 21, 66th floor or so, yesterday or so, tomorrow, the annual run-up its stairs to the top race. I was up there once with Don, later the Twin Towers, after a Bernadette Peters "spot" on the radio one lunch hour. My friend worked for a company on the 90-95th floor, Envirosphere (in one office) part of the Texas power plant builders EBASCO on the five floors until they moved out to New Jersey. I worked for them in archaeological clearance of Fort Drum, NY where many of our Army troops are now permanently and shipped from there as the 10th Mountain Division (formerly of Camp Hale, CO) overseas. I was all over the 110,000 acres one fall digging tests with two three women, a Ford Bronco, and Joe, a professor now of archaeology at New Paltz, NY. His Mom saw Jimi Jam Hendrix and a Janis Joplin look-alike in house she was showing way back in 1968 near Woodstock, NY they thought no one would show up at. I thought I saw him in a cafe in Woodstock that summer working in Timber Lake Camp, near Phoenicia, NY. Guess it was! Bob Dylan and the "Big Pink" the Band were there that summer too.

Free news tips

The "Washington Post" has out-scooped the NY media at least twice. The first was the book on "Wedtech" those military bridges to be built in the South Bronx Republican-inspired "economic empowerment zone" (they ought to do their homework, the Capitol dome was cast here in the Bronx and erected for President Lincoln during the Civil War for $1 million, replacing the "hat box") corrupt government program and the recent book I read of theirs on anthrax, in which Selective Service, "conscientious objectors" used in anthrax experiments were recently given medals. Kathy Nguyen (also the name in "Park and Nguyen" lawyers in the Morris Park section of the Bronx, frequented by Regis Philbin who grew up a block from here) a Vietnamese-American nurse died of anthrax in the "attack". She was from the borough of the Bronx, NY, yet as I recall, there was no anthrax found anywhere where they found her deceased. I once worked for a "c.o." who sued for his status on non-religious grounds, his dad a WWII bombsight technician. Perhaps XXX should do a follow-up, since as prod to invaded Iraq, it was a highly emotional issue, an attribution, leveled at the United Nations by another Bronx "native" General Colin Powell at the United Nations, contributing to the atmosphere of fear and justification for going along with the current Republican led administration in it's prosecution under the War Powers Act, whether the U.N. agreed or not. When they're out of office, Republicans like nothing better than to complain of its effects, of the War Powers Act, swear to reform it, then use it to invade and bomb other countries (Cambodia under Nixon, Afghanistan and Iraq under the current President Bush, numerous places under his father, etc.) without at least calling for hearings to reconsider its, "...however I choose" perception. My cousin George Murray, from the Bronx, directed "Huntley and Brinkley," produced "NBC Nightly News," produced both parties convention coverage for CBS in 1976 and had his eulogy read by Edwin Newman in the U.N. Chapel. In it was read a letter canceling a "common soldiers view" (he had been an Army Captain in the Korean War) investigation that was going on in Vietnam, cancelled by "higher ups". So let's revue the anthrax story maybe, after all the former Republican mayor made a lot of money cleaning it up I read.

Heather Locklear and Denny Crane

Don't know about that but it's printed she's (part?) a Lumbee, native American of North Carolina. They in the early 1700's got into a war with the settlers, and the New York Iroquois League asked them if they would like to join. They marched up a (first "trail of tears"?) the Appalachia's in part where the Trail goes, its marked the Tuscarora Trail, which is what they are named in New York State around Lewiston, NY near the New York city of Niagara. I saw an article, a millionaire was alarmed in the 1930's that their handicrafts, often sold to "honeymooners" leather and bead work, were to be displaced by the large hydroelectric storage lake flooding their lands and he raised money to help at least secure in part where they are today. The Lumbee claim to be the original and the Tuscarora claim they were and some "heated" matriarchal words fly. I was in Bridgewater, NJ working on a "return to swamp to stop this flooding" (Hurricane Floyd) archaeology clearance had the photo of a Lumbee native who was talking to the local kids at school in one of the local papers (after 9/11 and the anthrax problem, "Washington Post" reports in their book about anthrax, that "conscientious objectors" used in anthrax experiments were finally given medals. The one "unsolved" victim of anthrax was a nurse here in the Bronx, NY Kathy Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American). I went on to work for the same company Panamerican Consultants of Buffalo, NY at Picatinney Arsenal, a c. WWII "unisex" rocket assembly site full of lightning rods, there, that day Prince Charles was slapped in the face with a rose by a Latvian schoolgirl, who said Iraq was all his fault, and also at the West Point Military Academy and Fort Hamilton facility where new entry search procedures were set up as a result "Gonzo". What does that have to do w/ Heather Locklear and Denny Crane? I thought she was great on "Spin City"! I don't know I was in love with a Tuscarora woman once who had separated with her son "Pogo" ("We have met the enemy and he is us." - Pogo comic strip) from a rock and roll drummer and I just had to say it. If you see her say hello?

Back on line, wire contact outside out...

"The World's Fastest Indian" (2006) looks like a good film, another about motorcycles, besides the terrible "Sleazy Rider" some friends were going to make in Russian. Now that's a coincidence I was just thinking about Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" and hell I might catch for what I said about it. I had a 1956 Ariel that I grafted a 1963 Norton Atlas transmission into. It seems that when people were complaining about how much like the Kawasaki 650cc was like the British bike (a license from BSA actually they had bought, with heads made in Germany) they should have looked closer! I think all the British bikes were very similar to each other too. That Atlas was pretty close to Ariel, maybe Norton bought from Ariel. I just had to have a smidge taken off at my old employer's Gasser and Son, by a German tool maker from Canada. I also had some leftover steel from the former Denham Brothers iron yard nearby, a friends dad at Cadillac in Huntington had cut to fit around the new shape to be grafted into the frame. Norton went on to make target drones and spyplanes for Israel though an American has bought the motorcycle rights I read somewhere. Denham Brothers, once near the Centereach/Lake Grove, NY, border, once made the Shinnecock lock "doors" that allow one to go between the Atlantic Ocean and the Peconic Bay (between the two "tails" or "forks" of Long Island) that lets a boat, without going clear out to Montauk Point and back along the Atlantic side, access to the south shore, where Dune Road is, a strip of famous, expensive homes. It was called "canoe place" from the native "canoe carrying place" where its thought the Shinnecock (and others) carried their boats over land, a narrow "portage" to go from bay to ocean. Today, its where there is also a lot of heavy traffic in the summer. So maybe this is why BMW named their new motorcycle "Montauk"? Some places on Fire Island, the great barrier islands strung along the south shore, where if left to nature, the sand flows constantly along the shore from east to west, were referred to by anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss as like human canals like Venice has with water, Fire Island, with people. Great quantities of people flow out along the boardwalks and back during the summer from New York City.

War on T-shirts

I wrote that blog entry following in response to an article at the Huffington Post about Sheehan being removed from the Capitol "State of the Union" meeting for wearing a T-shirt which said "2,245 Dead -- How Many More?" In the "war on T-shirts" a Congressman's wife (R-Fla) wearing "Support the Troops - Defending Our Freedom" was removed too for a T-shirt in support of the President. I read the law, and they were both apologized to. However, leading people away in handcuffs (that is nylon plastic strips probably) to me seems fishy, like it was ordered then a quick thinking Capitol officer did the same to balance the perceived unlawful conduct, but both charges are being dropped. When I look at it I see actually both could be reversed, i.e., whose freedom, the President to use war powers however he wants? Republicans always complain when they're not in the Oval Office about the misuse of the War Powers Act, claim they will change it when they get in office then seem to be the biggest users of it in the Nation's history, never effecting a change of it whatsoever, perhaps earning the charge of "liars".

Curriculum and Protest

I've seen this happen before at President Nixon's re-election tour at MacArthur Airport on Long Island (where I also saw Hubert H. Humphrey in an open car motorcade) Air Force One pulled close to the fence behind where all people were, some with protest signs. The small group were moved back behind the bleacher seats by Secret Service I think, where they could not be seen or heard by the President who came out onto the stairs of the plane. More recently, I was asked to pick up maps in the afternoon that President George W. Bush was visiting Saint Patrick's Cathedral in NYC (where Pierre Toussaint remains are under the altar, a colleague worked on the archaeology of his burial) my stop on the express bus, to pursue the documentation of the history of the Upper Hudson River for the PCB cleanup designed by my then company, to be done the following day at Peebles Island in Waterford, NY. I was struck by the division of protest vs. supporters of the current President. All that disagreed were placed far away from the sight of the President it appeared as I pulled up to my bus stop outside the Cathedral near the former office of TAMS now part of TYCO.

State of the Onion

Interesting synchronicity or "deep chrono" thinking about the U.S. President's speech last night. I had just signed a petition to the government from Robert Redford that I think Bush used to get us over on his side. Robert Redford: In the petition is sort of the fact that 3% of the oil reserves we have and we use 25% of the world's oil. There's no way we can drill our way out, so lets start alternative energy research and use for real. I have recently looked (try to get the history and prehistory of) at a property for a proposed "Ski Bowl Village" in North Creek, NY next door in the former garnet mines they want to put a wind farm at Greenpeace came out for in December of '05 for Greenhouse Consultants. However, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is against the one Greenpeace is for off Massachusetts for various environmental reasons. I wonder if the Adirondack Park Agency (a unit larger than the State of Massachusetts) wants a precedent set in the development of the windfarm. The "Gore Ski Bowl Village" developer wants to re-establish skiing, which started there before it moved around the corner to Gore Mountain, actually reconnect with Gore Mountain through the old trails, many of the trails there long before skiing. North Creek, NY is where the Saks Fifth Ave. ski train used to stop in the 1930's, ski-inspired use by the locals from the nearby Lake Placid winter Olympics of 1932, and NYers will go skiing there instead of Vermont today it's argued. (Gore pumps Hudson River water for snow). Years before, Theodore Roosevelt left there for Buffalo, NY after the telegram came that announced that President McKinley was dead. He boarded a special train to Buffalo after being driven down all night from Tahawas Club near Mt. Marcy on a series of horse-drawn carriages, from where he had been hiking. Today a tourist train goes up and down the Hudson River from North Creek to Riparius, NY and back today, and there's a museum of skis and 20th century America, the railroad in town started by one of the gentlemen who built the U.S. transcontinental railroad. The town was a tannery for upwards of 20,000 hides a year, brought in by railroad from around the world due to its stands of hemlock trees cut and sluiced into town until they ran out. Titanium was mined near Mt. Marcy in the 1940's and 1950's and said to be for white paint for tanks and by truck and then rail brought through the town like garnet in the nearer mines. They're fixing up where the old McIntyre Iron mines were and the village of Adirondac near Mt. Marcy further north. So it's been printed.
"The Onion" has moved from Wisconsin to NYC.