Recent Revolution Research

This reminds me a bit of John Wentworth vs. Peter Livius, in pre-Revolution New Hampshire. Wentworth, the only former governor to survive the Revolution, ending up the Governor of Nova Scotia, and Livius who was appointed one of the first Supreme Court justices of Canada to stop his apparent attack as "Americus" in the London press on Wentworth, while awaiting the hearing on the accused nepotism of the Wentworth family in allotting privilege, property and rights in New Hampshire, which at the time included parts of today's Vermont. An excellent recent historical study was done of it and one wonders how much of it was part of the American cause of jurisprudence, perhaps now overlooked ("Governor John Wentworth & the American Revolution: The English Connection" by Paul W. Wilderson, c) 1994, The University Press of New England). My friend has a cabin on Tuftonboro Neck outside Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, the neck which Livius once owned and the family he represented by marriage, and nearby Governor Wentworth's place, the "oldest summer resort" in America because of it, the former Governor's site is on Lake Wentworth near the big Lake Winnepeasauki where Bob and Libby Dole bought a judge's place, a friend of theirs.

Wanted...Dead or Alive

Mark Knoller: Shelf Life For Heated Rhetoric Usually Short - Public Eye

"Anytime, baby" was on the shoulder patch of the Grumman trained pilots of the F-14 Tomcat's the Shah of Iran ordered (80 [of 100?] delivered according to an F-14 test pilot Tom Gwynne, vice president of the "Cradle of Aviation Museum" on Long Island, NY the other day in Newsday) for defense of Iran back in the late 1970's before "Top Gun" and the revolt, I believe over the impunity of Savak, the Shah's secret police, that operated here in the U.S. collecting info on students here in American schools. There was a striped orange tiger tabby cat in a boxing ring with gloves on standing at one of the corners on it.

Back in the early 70s there was also a wanted poster too, of Jesus Christ, "Wanted Dead or Alive" maybe part of the crusade we seem to be involved in. Apparently, Pontius Pilate may have been involved in the assassination death of Emperor Tiberius, however the story of the cobbler "wandering jew" who drags his body out of a lake every year, is a fictional account partly from Texan frontier pharmacist, an O. Henry story (after Ohio Penitentiary they they think in Austin).

Posted by georgejmyers at 3:10 PM : May 30, 2006

Note: the Iranian student problem was noted in the film "See No Evil, Hear No Evil" where a demonstration is included in the film I seem to rememeber which may date the script or lend an historical telling to the tale, of the two "witnesses" to a murder played by Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor.

Heavy water rumour...

windymedia >> Britain's dirty secret

I worked on the U.S. EPA National Priority Superfund cleanup in Cold Spring, NY on the Hudson River, in Foundry Cove, next to Constitution Island, where a great chain had been stretched across the river to the river-edge of what is now the West Point Academy to then stop the British Navy, with a series of them along the river, to prevent a "divide and conquer" of the Northern and Southern colonies, by commanding the river. We worked in the remains of the edge of the "West Point Foundry" which patented a rifled cannon, the Parrott "rifle" (New Hampshire brothers) used in the US Civil War to great advantage. As a part of an archaeology team, as required by law, some things were known and some not. After some remote sensing, the or a prototype of the "Swamp Angel" gun platform was partially recovered, used in 1863 bombardment of Charleston, South Carolina. In the history of the property, it was rumored that a Canadian company had been there producing "heavy water", where they had last made bridges and steel work until its "Bridge Shop" burned down in 1913. It was also recently the site of a chlorine storage fire that was fought by 700 firemen for 24 hours reported by the press, so not much of the foundry exists, piles of brick on the water tunnels, which had the first labor action in a U.S. Federal facility, it's also written. The "lead" said don't worry about heavy water production it doesn't present a hazard as much as the nickel and cadmium in the Foundry Cove and Constitution Marsh, spilled from the production of batteries for the NIKE missile defense systems, once used around the world. I wonder, did this site, whose "workers" were once smuggled under aliases from Great Britain to work on the cannon founding, make the heavy water for Great Britain sent to Israel as reported?

Croatia apologizes to Tesla for not recognizing his talent (Update)

I would hope the government can help the Tesla museum at Wardenclyffe, near Rocky Point on Long Island in New York after the (psycho-toxic) clean-up of Peerless Photo that once inhabited his complex. It is to become a Museum of Science on Long Island. An archaeologist friend once was asked about all the weird brick tunnels in the place by the photo people, I am not sure what she knew. Her husband was killed by radiation at the Brookhaven National Laboratory I heard, when it was run by the Dept. of Energy, now by a consortium of universities, nearby Stony Brook University the lead. Hope they can clean up that tritium in the aquifer.

Give 550,000 Americans in D.C. a voting voice

I urge you to vote for H.R. 5388, DC Fair and Equal House Voting Rights Act, which will be considered by the Government Reform Committee on Thursday. The DC Voting Rights Act will give the citizens of the District of Columbia voting representation in the House. The bill was introduced by Representative Tom Davis (R-VA) and Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and has both Republican and Democratic cosponsors. We believe this bill is a fair and politically viable way of correcting an injustice that has existed for over 200 years. The committee has an opportunity to make history, to bring more than half million Americans fully into our democracy, where they belong. The citizens of the District of Columbia deserve the same right that all other Americans have to be represented in Congress. DC residents pay federal income taxes, serve on juries, and die in wars to defend American democracy. DC citizens are currently serving in the armed forces in Iraq, fighting for new democratic rights for Iraqis that they do not enjoy themselves. Please vote for H.R. 5388, the DC Voting Rights Act, and give the more than half million Americans in the District a vote in the House. I am just saying D.C. should have the right to vote, it after NYC and Philadelphia the capital of the U.S. The Capitol dome was made in Motthaven in the Bronx, NY and assembled for President Lincoln for just over 1 million dollars. That was after the fire in the Library of Congress and they replaced it with an all cast iron one in 1859, which has been replaced as the Library grew, covered up I read. Janes and Kirtland last had an office in the Seaport and made the ubiquitous steel kitchen cabinets still in many apartments in New York City. I know if I didn't have a vote, I'd have so much to complain about, I'd be bonkers.

"The Kurds"

There was an interesting author interview on the L.A. based book show that was broadcast on WNYC TV I think it was. It was with the author Kevin McKiernan who recently published, "The Kurds" about those people who live in the north of Iraq, Turkey, Iran and former Soviet Union. I was once assigned a reading topic on them in anthropology, not much had been done, the particular group studied lived a semi-nomadic herding life bringing goats and sheep to higher pastures in the summer and lower altitudes in the winter. I had just caught the end of the interview, where the author stated most of the Kurds in the U.S. are in Nashville, TN, Fargo, North Dakota and San Diego, California and had been responsible for some of the information supplied leading up to the occupation of Iraq, where they control mostly the area around Kirkuk, an "Iraqi-Kurdistan" which contains the rich oil fields of Mosul. The famous archaeology site "Nuzi" is there, excavated by Starr of Harvard University in the 1930's, which I had the opportunity to read the site report from.

The author thought the Kurds more secular Sunni's than the Iraqi Shi'ite, who are ruled from Friday services from the mosque, and the country may go the way of Czechoslovakia (now separate republics) and partition off into three separate areas of defense, though the Turkish government may not allow it to happen, as recent bloody fighting has been going on there with "their" Kurds. My anthropology education has been one study, then a war, after another starting with East Timor, which nations that could have stopped but allowed an invasion to go on, right after the Vietnam debacle, said to be over off-shore oil there too. It looks like a book the leadership should be reading.

Don't Pillory Hillary, hickory dickory dock.

U.S. Senator Clinton, the former "First Lady", once sponsored the "Purple Heart" stamp, the Post Office often honors politician's requests, the medal first given out in New York City, the Order of the Purple Heart was established Aug. 7, 1782, and then made them permanently print it I read. At the New Windsor Cantonment, near Newburgh, NY (where a conspiracy to make General George Washington king was thwarted) will be a veterans Purple Heart center, announced by Bernadette Castro, who once ran for U.S. Senator against NY's former senior U.S. Senator Patrick Moynihan, she since, the appointed head of NY State's Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. Some remember her as the young girl bouncing up and down on the TV ads for "Castro Convertible" sofas. I slept on one the night she lost. The New Windsor Cantonment is where we asked the troops to over-winter after the treaty with the British had been signed, just in case. I slept there too once in the winter.

Ruler, ruler on the wall, who are you to decide?

A Democratic Dictatorship Good commentary on our times

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation

Zenger zinger

CBSNews.com: Blog

I have no formal journalism training, though social anthropology is a good place to look for the story behind the news. Horace Greeley told us to go west and grow up with the country, which might still be good advice from his couch in NYC's City Hall Park where he watches the passersby, on-top of the First Almshouse cemetery I've had to dig in. Nathan Hale's statue, who regretted having one life to lose, was moved to the front of it, across the street from Benjamin Franklin who also had a small press in New York once and almost stopped the bloody revolution at the Conference House at the tip of Staten Island, but alas a compromise was not to be had, and the attendees went on arguing whether the windows should be open or closed. Not far from Horace Greeley, Ethan Allen was tortured by a British Major Cunningham in a "hole blacker than any black hole of Calcutta" according to the NY Times in 1903. A small monument to Joseph Pulitzer too, is in the park, within "earshot" of Mr. Greeley's effigy both alongside the infamously costly, "Tweed Courthouse" finished by Mayor Fernando Wood. Journalists and publications, like John Peter Zenger, a monument to his arrival, a "swivel gun" on the southern end of Governors Island, need protection by the public and by the government, as the exhibit at St. Paul's church, where the contested vote was cast, is kept to inform our "freedom of the press".

Culture History

I later did some archaeology at the Captain Brewster Hawkins House in East Setauket out on Long Island for Dr. John Lee a psychopharmacologist psychiatrist back in 1980 or so that I used for a paper for a grad class in "Culture History" for Peruvianist archaeologist Edward Lanning. The shipyard there built the "Wanderer" a slaver which put into Jekyll Island, Georgia in 1858, (Wikipedia) even after being boarded by a British slave-trade blockader, which thought that this large luxury yacht couldn't be used for slaving. It was fitted with water tanks in Port Jefferson, NY after being sold to a Louisiana cotton merchant's broker, I think 400 of the 600 Africans survived the crossing fed from a big iron cauldron that's a marker today. It was used and captured as a chess piece it's said during the Civil War and might have just help start it, slave trade illegal.

My cousin, Dr. Nick, D.O., died suddenly

CIRILLO—Dr. Nicholas W. on May 6th, 2006. Formerly of Brooklyn, NY. Beloved husband of Joyce (nee Ronda), and extraordinary father of Lauren, Victoria, and Nicholas. Cherished son of Vivian & the late Nicholas. Amazing brother of Chris & Beth, Lisa & Carmine Vartolo, Lydia & Steve Augeri, Vivian & Bradley Boolbol, Stephanie, & the late Joseph Cuevas. Adored uncle of Ralph, Nicole, Adam, Victoria, Meghan, Emily, Jenna, Bradley, Christian, Ricky, Cynthia, John, Luis & Sarah. Loving son-in-law of Maria C. Ronda. Fond brother-in- law of Milton & Cindy Ronda, Rodrigo & Lola Moreno, Nanette & the late John Moreno. Nick was an inspiration to all who knew him. A brilliant & compassionate doctor, and a great human being. He will be greatly missed. Reposing at the TORREGROSSA FUNERAL HOME, 1305 79th St., Bklyn. Visiting Wed. 2-5 & 7-10 PM. Burial in Wilkesboro, N.C.

Secret Subway

>Geoff Carver >someone on a german-language list had a question about whether there had been any archaeological investigations of any remains of alfred ely beach's pneumatic subway in NYC anyone heard/seen anything about it? The story I heard that the pneumatic tube subway was constructed in "secret" and as far as I know, I have not heard of it turning up in any archaeology though I think there was some offhand report about it possibly turning up in a construction or utility excavation not too long ago. At the end of last year I was monitoring the new subway tunnel through Battery Park, once, where before Ellis Island, Castle Clinton (Castle Williams across the harbor on Governors Island, another multi-gunport circular structure) on the "Swing Shift" (3:300pm to 12:00am) and many pneumatic tubes kept turning up, where before they ran from the former immigration center (Castle Clinton) to the nearby U.S. Customs House, now also part of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. Other pipes were not very well mapped, i.e., water to the various facilities, and had to be repaired and reconnected as the work went on down to bedrock between the I-beams and wooden platforms for heavy equipment used in the "cut and cover" tunnel construction used elsewhere too. The current subway connects to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal on a track of a short radii curvature from earlier railcar specs., so current passengers have to depart from the first four modern cars, where the platform for them exists, the rest of the train in the tunnel approach to the station. The new construction will alleviate that problem with a new station, at the former Whitehall wharf. A lot of modern excavation and techniques are/were being used creating combinations of concrete pilings and walls in bedrock. An eternal flame and the "Sphere" sculpture from the World Trade Center plaza is in the Battery Park, "adjoining" the new tunnel construction. The National Parks Service runs the ferries to the world's first electrically lit lighthouse, the Statue of Liberty on Bedloe's Island from the park, where my Scottish grandma once worked as a nanny for the caretaker. The new National Lighthouse Museum is supposed to open at St. George on Staten Island. The pneumatic tubes in the park were used for paperwork between the facility I think and the pre-Ellis Island immigrant processing. We lost one dirt profile in the loose consolidated fill to a water pipe fracture. The current Battery Park was built by prison labor according to the fiscal report in the 1850's of the NYC Parks Dept. to the city I read in Special Collections at Stony Brook University many years ago. Once Castle Clinton was an island, like Ellis Island, with a causeway out to it (and Rikers Island, the prison, though household coal trash filled-out by 1903 (NY Times), the causeway came with the automobile, boats from the Bronx serviced it before, connected to Queens today, cases from it are still heard by juries in the Bronx). There were also cable car systems like San Francisco around the area and perhaps, and steam locomotive elevated trains (and surface), whose constructions may have impacted the experimental pneumatic subway. Sure would be fun to find.

"Secret Subway" and "The Beach Pneumatic Transit Co." study by Joseph Brennon. Alfred Ely Beach was one of the founders of "Scientific American" magazine and his father owned the newspaper "The Sun" my father worked at as a young boy, his father a real estate reporter for the "New York Record" I think it was. New York's "The Sun" has recently been "reborn", beginning first on the Internet! Only $0.25 (once a penny). "The Sun" building was recently added to New York City's Landmarks.

CBS News: Blog Public Eye

NSA Story Old News? Yes…And No. It sounds very dumb too. Let's collect all the numbers, times, and dates and if a terrorist reveals a phone number, we got them. Meanwhile, you can make free calls on the Internet which as far as I know cannot be monitored, traced or recorded, to anywhere in the world with an Internet connection. So what was the point of this exercise one might wonder? I have a colleague who got a job with the US Census Bureau and they are gathering hospital records, perhaps, over the "terrorists" and the Emergency War Powers Act, that from my view, Republicans complain about Democrats using in office, swear to reform those laws, get into office and become the biggest egregious users of them. Once upon a time a Seattle native had an American flag with the "Peace" sign on it (semaphore for ND "nuclear disarmament" I read the symbol) placed there in black tape. He was fined after a demonstration stopped below his window, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court over $75. In the Washington Appellate Court vs. the defendant, the court found that the defendant had been within his rights, having not desecrated the flag materially and had a right to an opinion of the First Amendment. Perhaps, it should be taught in school.

What Happened to My Country?

How U.S. Citizens Were Cooked Comments: They are also hiring "anthropologists" over at the US Census Bureau (I have an ax to grind I got a 97 on their test and was never called in the last 2000 census) to collect data at hospitals' databases, which I'm told, on one hand, patient's records are not accessible to insurance companies, etc. I can't understand how we could allow this without any government oversight or judicial purview, another surprise from the "duopoly" that's kissed Geronimo's skull in the Yale University "Temple". Some set theory Yale.

Danke for letting me be myself again...

Did I tell you about Ralph the bouncer for the Rollling Stones and the Sly Stone wedding? We used to work for Abraham and Strauss furniture...

Misunderstandings: "Gross" Is a German Word, Too - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Found letter says Yale club has Geronimo skull

HARTFORD, Conn. - A Yale University historian has uncovered a 1918 letter that seems to lend validity to the lore that Yale University's ultra-secret Skull and Bones society swiped the skull of American Indian leader Geronimo. AP Updated: 1:54 p.m. ET May 9, 2006 There's also a petition online to get to the bottom of this, which I recently signed.

The Apache were misunderstood to be local groups but had extended kinship groups across large landscapes according to Morris Opler, 1930's, U of Chicago, Ph.D, who also wrote three briefs on the rights of Americans in internment camps in the 1940's, two which were heard by the Supreme Court. People of Japanese (our word) ancestry were also taken forcibly out of 17 other countries in Central and South America and brought to camps in the U.S. They never were recompensed for it as U.S. citizens were to some extent in the Reagan administration.

Morris Opler's brother, Marvin K. Opler, Ph.D. an "honorary Navaho", his wife had a Masters of Biology, was also a fairly well-known psychological anthropologist. When I studied with him, (1974) he had been asked to evaluate some of the "Mid-Manhattan Project" results, a $10 million NIMH study that used a battery of available psychological tests to evaluate a square block in NYC for the statistical incidence of mental problems in the US. It was compared to the previous results used to evaluate "fitness for service" based on a cross-section of the state of Minnesota's mostly rural population begun in the late 1930's: the M.M.P.I. Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Either rural America is more adaptable to "neuroses" or the general incidence of "neuroses" has gone up, then an initial conclusion. His son is a psychiatrist in the Bronx, NY.

Motown's Eddie Kendrix, "There's a skeleton in your closet."

George W. Bush has a crowd of skeletons in his closet - Pravda.Ru Source: realchange.org Prepared by Alexander Timoshik Pravda.Ru

EDITORIAL: Military veterans and lawyers

EDITORIAL: Military veterans and lawyers Move to repeal 'museum piece' deserves support "...Congress imposed a limit -- first of $5, then $10 -- on what lawyers could receive for assisting a veteran. That lasted until 1988..." May 09, 2006 Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

Whaling in New York (cont'd)

>Ron May, Inc. >Well George, now you have an interesting conundrum. There always remains the possibility that the Basque whalers came south into "American" waters in search of whales, but no one has dug into the Basque archives to know for sure. As well, the early 18th century whalers in New England did not invent their trade. British and Dutch whaling companies probably hunted off New England long before the Massachusetts industry, but again the old archives have not been exhausted. Suffice to say that American whaling hands from European ships settled in New England and generations of their offspring created a culture of whaling that has become famous today. But to test for a Basque or Dutch connection to those early Americans would be quite a research job. Strangely, the methods and strategies did not differ that much until the development of the bomb lance around 1850. Oh, and by the way, bomb lances went out of fashion by the end of the 19th century, but a whale dissected off the Pacific Coast by fisheries people yielded fragments of a bomb lance in the 1950s and the San Diego Natural History Museum folks pondered if this was due to great age or if people were still using that technology in the mid 20th century?

George, There are several good sources on the global history of whaling. For a recent review: Reeves, R.R. and Smith T.D. 2003 "A Taxonomy of World Whaling: Operations, Eras and Data Sources" Northeast Fisheries Science Center Reference Document 03-12 A somewhat older collection of papers: International Whaling Commission 1967 Report of the International Whaling Commission (Special Issue) 10 And for a southern hemisphere perspective: Lawrence, S. and Staniforth, M. (eds) 1998 The Archaeology of Whaling in Southern Australia and New Zealand. Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology Special Publication No 10. We are currently working on further 19th century shore whaling sites in New Zealand Ian Associate Professor Ian W.G. Smith Department of Anthropology, University of Otago PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand ph 64-3-479-8752 fx 64-3-479-9095

ian.smith@stonebow.otago.ac.nz www.otago.ac.nz/anthropology Thanks, I feel odd having left out the Sag Harbor, which has a museum on Long Island and once an important whaling port too, where by the way, John Steinbeck eventually settled down. I'm not sure how this ties into "native rights" with the Shinnecock reservation, and the other historically present and past dwellers that were involved in the whaling industry too. One record has a great loss of the Shinnecock trying to save those drowning from a ship wrecking off the coast, which, before the US Life Saving Stations, were known for rescuing many from the pounding surf and riptide. The US Commerce Dept. used to advertise their "Pow-wow" around the US Labor Day and many native peoples from all over came and sold their handicrafts. There's also a lawsuit over a proposed casino in Hampton Bays, NY which alleges their lands were taken illegally in 1859. >Ron May, Inc. Looking through my notes on the Basque whaling industry, I see they began hunting whales in the 11th to 12th century in their own Bay of Biscayne. Right whales were their targets. When they depleted whale populations, they expanded their searches for better grounds. One source showed town seals from A.D. 1351 with whale boats and harpooners. They apparently reached Canada around 1540 in search of cod fish and set up organized whaling stations by 1550. Basque archives reveal a navigator named Martin de Hoyarsabal, who mapped Canadian waters. Of particular interest for George is the fact they also shipped on with Dutch and British whalers in the 17th and 18th centuries, which might explain the whaling towns of New England. The thing is, I do not think the Canadian scholars bothered themselves with the question of whether Basque fishermen and whalers explored or hunted as far south as New England. The answer might lie in the Basque archives.

Whaling in New York

Posted to historical archaeology (histarch) and underwater archaeology (sub-arch) forums: In "Famous First Facts A Record of First Happening, Discovery and Invention in the United States," by Joseph Nathan Kane (c)1973 3rd Edition, The H.W. Wilson Company, NY 1964) it's stated that the first "Whaling (systematic)" began in Southampton, Long Island, New York on March 7, 1644. Has anyone heard of earlier dates? Of course it might be hard to get dates from the Shinnecock archaeology finds, currently said, many to be under America's first golf course (said to be 12 holes in the Scotsman newspaper online). It might be difficult to ascertain as the same reference has the first "Historical Society" the American Historical Association founded Sept. 10, 1884, in Saratoga Springs, NY. Would welcome counter dates. >George: >Basque whalers had fully established shore stations linked by ships in New Foundland as early as the 16th century. Also, Dutch whalers hunted the North Atlantic at least that early. The same kind of operations continued through the 19th century in both the Atlantic and Pacific waters. Out here in San Diego, we have the only known surviving tryworks oven feature preserved on Ballast Point, Naval Base San Diego. I have a research paper in process on the Ballast Point Whaling station. >Ron May >Legacy 106, Inc. Thanks. One of the first tax revolts in the New York Colony was over the 1/6 or so of beached whale rendered to oil to be paid to the New York government in the "city". Many thought it an undue tax and without representation (that east end of Long Island is at least 80 or 90 miles away in Suffolk County) in the outcome of local government I think began to refuse to pay it. It was also I think in reference to "beached whales" and tough to enforce. It may also had been a misunderstanding about methods of harvest. Later in the 19th century some other towns on Long Island became whaling ports, Greenport out on the north fluke of the native thought fish-shaped island and in Cold Spring Harbor, which today is home to the world famous biology research laboratories. I was thinking there might be some other earlier dates, but I imagine they might be early on at Nantucket Island (the Macy's company was started by one of their whalers, after four or five business failures its written) and elsewhere. Some of the native materials found "out there" have "harpoon" looking artifacts, though thought maybe for smaller coastal fish. Thanks >José Manuel MATÃ?S LUQUE >I don´t know whether this is related to your query but don´t forget the whaling stations in Newfoundland by the Basques since 1500´s (Red Bay shipwrecks mainly, 1545) as it is said also to have been the early moments of whaling as a commercial entreprise yearly when vessels were fitted in the Baque Country for that purpose. Also there are terrestial stations to produce whale oil and you´ll find references in English. If you want the Spanish ones, I can provide you with them. >William Moss >http://www.heritage.nf.ca/exploration/basque.html Me: I was thinking Continental United States to "narrow" it down a bit since the date is very early, I thought maybe Spanish? whaling in southern U.S. States? earlier? Thank you. I once met the woman from Guelph University on Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick in the Bay of Fundy, (not far from St. Croix Island, a very early international archaeology site between the US and Canada), who was taking DNA samples from the "right whales" with a small crossbow. They have a nursery there, not far from Campobello Island also. They had some minke whale sitings too she said of the two parked down at Indian Beach and the Eddystone light called "The Whistle" I had seen that had chased the ferry over to the island. The DNA was combined with visual records to try to study the "right whale" pods and their attempts at survival swimming from Florida to New Brunswick, Canada. Once working for the US National Park Service, I had left to go to grad school and returned to visit the crew at its next stop, the Martin Van Buren "summer White House" (due to epidemic) which then was all white and has been returned to what it once looked like. Nearby in Hudson, NY was where it's said many whales were processed for whale oil for the northern tier of cities lighting (Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo) and also the home of the American Museum of Firefighting. (?) >Ron May, Inc. >One of the interesting archives concerning whaling is the Basque legal archives (although I no longer recall where it is located). The Basque whalers took out insurance on their expeditions and often filed claims or were sued for failure to make payments upon their return. Fascinating details emerge from those claims and counter-suits. The one Dutch scholar I have met also said the legal records for 16th century Dutch whaling expeditions, as well as health records, are extensive. Of course, researching this source requires considerable funding and language skills to ferret out the story.

>From my research, this early date is more or less right. According to what I have read, the early English colonists learned to hunt whales from the beach from the Native Americans.

>Ralph K. Pedersen, Ph.D. rkpedersen@yahoo.com Visit http://www.wedigboats.org >Join the TAMU Nautical Archaeology group for NAP students and Alumni at > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TAMU_NAP_alumni Me: Although it's reported the first oil spring was recorded in 1627 in Cuba, New York (north of where petroleum oil drilling started later in Western Pennsylvania), the first oil (kerosene) wasn't patented (Newton Creek, NYC, by Abraham Gesner) until 3/27/1855 so there might've been quite a bit of whale oil used for lighting.

POGO: Project On Government Oversight

"Lockheed's Revenue To Go Orbital" The other day I saw Sir Arthur C. Clarke's picture on the Internet wearing a T-shirt that said "I invented the satellite and all I got was this crummy T-shirt" or something like that.This type of ability would maybe certainly set international relations back if not described properly. I recall the US-Russian polar bear tracking in the late 1960's using telecommunications satellites, a cooperative effort that in the Russian's hands became an international search and rescue system I read. I would hope the USA is thinking along similar lines and only in very defined circumstances used for other purposes. Comment at POGO blog: blogging on corruption blogging on solutions.

Comment of a good review of "Eyes Wide Shut"

 The DVD "Blockbuster" "R" version was not as interesting. I read the script written by Stanley Kubrick (from the Bronx, NY where I am, recently a retrospect of his work, especially "2001: a Space Odyssey" is exhibited through the artifacts of the film, i.e., the space suit, the B&W Polaroids system he used to figure the color of scenes as they would appear later, etc. in Germany). Was the marijuana scene added or ad-libbed? It wasn't in the script I read, nor Alice on the bidet(?) with Dr. Tom in the room? As I recall. I may have to watch the "European" version first. He should have been able to make "A.I." first (which uses the same device, the boy robot comes into the bathroom while the woman is on the "throne"). Being a New Yorker, I thought the sets of a "Ulysses in Night town" a little flat, somewhat, unreal though the gate to the estate more than real for New York and today's America.

foot talk

FiveFingers™: The foot glove and shape of things to come?

"This Property Is Condemned" 1966

contactmusic.com review comment

"Tennessee" Williams was from Columbus, Mississippi, where I lived for awhile in 1979, then wettest year on record, and a hurricane fizzled out in New Orleans, in early August. They built the Tombigbee Barge Canal (now Waterway) connecting the waters of the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mexico, in Mobile, Alabama using that Tombigbee River, chosen over an "Energy Island" for New York City by the U.S. Congress. Sometimes I wonder, having finally seen this film, how much it may have been about an old sow of a proposal for the canal and how much of it was just a story. Republicans manned the phones then and registered as many as they could (and maybe jammed the Democrats on election day, after all it's where the Choctaw Reservation is, and the money to do so for New Hampshire came from in 2002, defeating the incumbent woman governor) to vote, making them the new Big House. I might've given it three stars, because of the direction and story erudition, they earned it.

Paula Zahn: "How Much Of An Ax Do You Have To Grind With Secretary Rumsfeld?"...

My Grandpa said the Baptist ax(e) has two heads. I think we've had maybe an anthrax imposed silence. I was at West Point Academy during it and they had 10 people looking in vehicles, tanks and trucks across driveways and at Picatinney Arsenal, NJ they were getting ready to something with the rocket assembly factory, on top of a hill with a forest of lightning rods. The "Washington Post" wrote a book about anthrax which I've read. Conscientious Objectors, from the Draft Age, were awarded medals recently for being used in anthrax experiments. Those missing vials over in New Jersey? They weren't missing at all, just mislabeled, if you haven't heard. The one unsolved victim was a Vietnamese hospital stockroom worker Kathy Nguyen, that is it was reported nothing could be found of it anywhere near where she was. Finally someone is speaking up to these people who are supposed to be our civil servants not Southwest Asia's.

Anyone seen my coffe cup, it has my name on it?

George W. Bush - English Gregor W. Bush - German Joji W. Bush - Japanese Jorge W. Bush - Spanish Gershon W. Bush - Hebrew Giorgio W. Bush - Italian Yorgos W. Bush - Greek Georgiy W. Bush - Russian Jorge W. Bush - Hindi Georges W. Bush - French Qiáo Zhi W. Bush - Chinese

Interesting Music History in the South Bronx

I used to live here as a kid until 1960: "Professor Naison's first interview was with Victoria Archibald-Good, a social worker, whose family moved from Harlem to the Bronx around 1950. Ms. Good, whose brother is Nate Archibald, the former N.B.A. star, grew up in Patterson Houses, a public housing project in Mott Haven. She told Professor Naison about dancing in the mid-1960's to some of the greats of Latin music — Mr. Puente, Celia Cruz — at the nearby Embassy Ballroom on East 163rd Street at Third Avenue." Morrisania Melody - N.Y. Times Published: April 30, 2006.

The L word

laurence n. - bending of lightwaves by heat as seen on pavement on hot summer day lemma n. - (pl. -mas, -mata ) Logic, major premise; (argument or theme used as) the title of a composition; Lexicography, word considered as a headword, accompanied by all its inflected forms. Botany, flowering glume of grass. lestobiosis n. - (pl. -ses ) mode of life characterized by furtive stealing, especially as found where two species of ant live side by side. - From Luciferous Logolepsy "Dragging obscure words into the light of day" also home of The MegaPenny Project sort of a "Universe In 40 Jumps" (Kees Boeke: 1957) for a U.S. penny. Boeke's book made quite an impression on many people I think, back there during the "duck and cover nuclear attack drills" better in the hall than under a desk.

...concerned by the practice of "extraordinary renditions"

Representative Joseph Crowley Senator Charles Schumer Senator Hillary Clinton From: George Myers I am concerned by the practice of "extraordinary renditions" in which the United States is transferring individuals for detention and interrogation to countries with a substantial record of using torture. US legal obligations under federal law and international treaties prohibit the transfer of any person to any country where they are likely to face torture. Nonetheless, the US Government is reported to have sent or been complicit in sending individuals to countries like Egypt, Jordan and Afghanistan, countries that the State Department has criticized for practicing torture. As an archaeology technician I have worked in NYC City Hall Park, which was the former location of the "First Almshouse" and its cemetery. I worked there in 1999 delineating burials. Next door was what the NY Times reported (1903) to be "blacker than any black hole of Calcutta" prison where its alleged Major Cunningham of the British Army in the American Revolution tortured patriot citizens, among them Ethan Allen of Vermont. These practices were why we fought to rule ourselves and those that work for the people, by the people. Congressman Edward Markey (MA) has sponsored the Torture Outsourcing Prevention Act (H.R. 952) in the House of Representatives and Senator Patrick Leahy (VT) has sponsored the "Convention Against Torture Implementation Act" (S. 654) in the Senate. Both would require annual reporting of countries that engage in torture and prohibit the transfer or return of a detainee to a country that has a history of torture. I urge you to cosponsor and pass H.R. 952/S. 654, which is an important step in affirming US commitments under both international and federal law to prevent torture, and helps restore US credibility. - Amnesty International letter

"Janeane Garofalo touting a Scientology-linked project?"

I live in the only borough of New York City that's not on an island, the Bronx and I'm upset about the way the whole WTC disaster was handled. We're still picking up bones from the Deutsches Bank (who flew firemen and police officer banners through parts of the Bronx, in Morris Park, sort of where Regis Philbin grew up hangs out, in tribute to them, you had to look very closely to see that it was from them) and as someone whose worked in archaeology, I wonder why. I've been told whenever there is an explosion in Israel they have a special team to recover human remains, told while I was delineating some burials in 1999 in City Hall Park, from NYC's "First Almshouse". To me the whole thing should have been done better and perhaps even martial law declared (especially since there was no real reason for it at Kent State University years ago) for that area and a better search made with federal MIA archaeologists who work in many parts of the world. Where's George? He's too busy reading Nigerian oil-mail from Italy and selling vacuum cleaners for yellow cake in Africa and pointing one finger at Iraq the other three pointing back at him. Janeane Garofalo touting a Scientology-linked project at Huffington Post

Thames Street, Manhattan

Guardian Unlimited Arts Antony and Cleopatra

Patrick Stewart is Antony...until October at The Swan.

There's a wonderful podcast tour of the Globe theatre begun and restored by Sam Wanamaker, who only lived to see the foundation cast (he was blacklisted, a Jewish intellectual in Hollywood and came over in 1948 thinking he could see The Globe on London's Bankside of the Thames, and started a push then to see it done, recreated). They are going to have Coliseum like fabric and rope roof over it for some performances.

Globepodcast

One has been proposed for Governors Island, NYC, I saw somewhere, like The Globe. Would be a good thing to have.

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Interesting NYC "first drama" facts: Drama: Aquatic play: "The Pirate's Signal" 4/4/1840 Drama: Benefit and performance: 1/7/1757 Drama: Burlesque show (of importance): "The Black Crook" 9/12/1866 Drama: native: A play successfully acted on a regular stage: 4/16/1787 Drama: Acted by professional players: "The Recruiting Officer" 12/6/1732 Drama: Performed 1000 times: "The Gladiator" opened 9/26/1831 Drama: first printed American play: "Androboros" printed in 1714 by Robert Hunter, colonial governor of New York and New Jersey Drama: William Shakespeare: "King Richard III" 3/5/1750 Opera: by an American: "The Archers, or The Mountaineers of Switzerland" 4/18/1796 (comedy based on William Tell) Opera: Italian: "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" 11/29/1829 Opera: of a serious nature "Tammany" 3/3/1794 Opera: performed by professional visiting troupe "The Beggar's Opera" 12/3/1750 Orchestra in a theatre: 1750 Minstral Show Troupe: organized by D.D. Emmett 1842-1843 Ballet presented: Bowerie Theatre 2/7/1827 Parachute jump from a balloon: Charles Guille 8/2/1819 Flea Circus: 1/1835 Puppet Show: 2/12/1738 Theater to be gas-lit: Chatham Garden 1825 Theater: Panorama Show: 1790 (in today's City Hall Park?) Wax Works Museum: opened June 1749 Moving picture: of an eclipse of the sun from a dirigible: 1/24/1925 Montauk Point, NY Moving picture: exhibited moving picture on film shown on a screen: 4/21/1895 Moving picture: film exhibition 5/9/1893 Moving picture: peep show exhibit 4/14/1894 Moving picture: talking in Esperanto 7/13/1929 (actor William Shatner was in one) Moving picture: 3D in color "House of Wax" 4/10/1953 - From "Famous First Facts A Record of First Happening, Discovery and Inventions in the U.S." c) 1973 Joseph Nathan Kane (January 23, 1899 - September 22, 2002 lived to be 103).

The Weather Men CBS News: Blog

I enjoy the weather forecasts that Mr. Price had done on the local news in NYC (at "Good Day New York" with funny repartee with Jim Ryan and others helped reinvent the morning news shows it seems to me as their alumni moved to other stations, CBS, UPN). Weather forecasting has been better than at-bats in baseball, that is hitting more often than not. I was in a university "Planetary Atmospheres" class when the Viking mission landed on Mars. Its good that we can maintain weather coverage (almost couldn't due to space shuttle delays) The US Weather Service forecast for hurricane Katrina was one of the most frightening things I've ever read, maybe next time elected officials will take it more seriously. Posted by georgejmyers at 8:12 AM : May 1, 2006

Iran News - Burnt City has largest ancient textile collection

Iran News - Burnt City has largest ancient textile collection LONDON, January 31 (IranMania) - The Burnt City is home to the largest collection of textiles from the third millennium BC, the Persian service of CHN reported.

CBSNews.com: Blog

Time For A Blogging “Reality Check?” Blogs are important to people fired for them as I was, though I had one before I was hired. Blogs also deflected the Dan Rather story IMHO. The fact that GWB got out of the ANG 6 months early to go to Harvard U. for an MBA and be on course for offices he sought, by his father's side, was deflected, along with his retraining and certification on the F-102. For what, when, why, where, and how, we may never know. Flying too low somewhere? Long time ago. Wish someone would find the guy 6 months within his age with the same name that was charged for "practicing medicine without a license" in Texas. Posted by georgejmyers at 9:36 AM : April 30, 2006