Tribute to Joel Siegel

I was reading at the Huffington Post Harry Shearer's tribute to his friend Joel Siegel and thought to write this bit about him. One of the most important facts I found about him, in that it directly affected me, was a New York City calendar he had printed, which I found in the Student Union book store at Stony Brook University where I was an undergraduate and graduate student in Anthropology in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the calendar, there was an important event in the history of New York City described for different days. I found later some of this information encyclopedic in I.M. Phelps Stoke's five volume "Iconography of Manhattan" (at Grossman and Associates, Inc.) who also wrote the official paperback guide to the history of New York City for the 1939 World's Fair, complete with pictures and reproductions of paintings. A copy is in the Huntington Free Library at Westchester Square in the Bronx, which once held the Heye Foundation's ethnology collection, since moved to Washington, D.C. in the move of the foundation over to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, part of which is in the Old Customs House at the "foot" of Broadway across from Battery Park where I once worked on the "swing shift" (3:30pm to 12:00am) in archaeological monitoring for the excavation of the new subway "tunnel" to the new station at the new Staten Island Ferry Terminal. That's another story herein. As I began way back then working in NYC archaeology his calendar meant a lot to me, as did Ms. Callender of the Heye Foundation, a fellow grad student.

I was recounting a memory of Joel Siegel when he finally got East with a woman archaeologist friend. His cousin I think she said worked as an archaeologist in Israel on Masada (metzuda, "fortress" the human remains there recently re-interpreted) and he came down to a NYC urban archaeology site we worked on with Nan Rothschild, Ph.D., where the Livingston and the "Captain" William Kidd's family had been, then across the street from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Park in lower Manhattan, where we'd spend lunch that summer by the falling water, reading the memorialized letters from Vietnam, since redone. Called then the "7 Hanover Square Site" which historically was the site of the King George statue, torn down and melted in Connecticut for Revolutionary War musketballs, its near today the recently opened garden commemorating the British victims of the attack on the "World Trade Center". She said he had a close-up of her hand and a few artifacts they had been finding on an earlier site in search of the "Stadt Huys".

One of the descendants of the Livingston family was visiting too. A politically powerful family whom had also tried to establish iron-making in the English colony but had failed from poor resource and regulation, restricted to anchors, for example by the mother country. Captain Kidd had given a large gemstone ring to his neighbor Mrs. Livingston to curry favor in his upcoming trial which resulted in him hanged in London for "piracy" when his London privateer backers didn't come forward, though he originally thought he was to be tried in the accidental killing of a young crewman by a thrown bucket in a tense almost mutiny. He's cited as perhaps "the most maligned character in history" in "A New American History" by the popular 1930s historian of American history, W.E. Woodward. Robert Gardiner, of Gardiner's Island, NY where the treasure was dug up in the 1880s and used for a large "Seamans Home" in London I've heard, replied when I once asked him on the phone, that he had done some research while there and a map to the treasure apparently was on his person when he was hung and as all property belonging to criminals becomes the property of the Crown, and since there was no "US of A" then, the British claimed that the treasure, an Indian raja's daughter's dowry, "rightfully" belonged to the Crown. Lady Diana I think was related to the Kidd's through her mum.

I will miss Joel Siegel's humor and most of all the intelligent acumen he brought to the tube. I would have liked to thank him for the calendar, on behalf of NYC.

Can you see it from space?

‎Rideau Canal named a global gem

Makes me happy as the "chocolate pot" I bought in their donation bric-a-brac shop and a cloth take-out bag when before "SUV" we rented from the Canada leaser to geological survey some of their 4-wheel drive vehicles for an archaeological survey along the St. Lawrence Seaway, nearby. Some of the "eminent domain" properties for the Seaway construction (a federal agency now headquartered in the Union Hotel in Sacketts Harbor part of a New York State Urban Cultural Park, in the news recently for a part of an 1812 fort found, probably in the big "retirement community reuse" of historical property. Much of it, "birthplace of the US Navy" (nearby Watertown, and Fort Drum, NY, and in it Dr. Guthrie's ether, Zebulon Pike's "grave" noted history) was once placed (federally, mostly fallen down wooden structures) on the lake ice in winter and lays offshore on the bottom of Lake Ontario. On a small crew with "Archaeology" magazine editor Angela Schuster, we discovered an unmarked coffin near the surface of the "Parade Ground" when another company had noted scattered human remains in some of their shovel tests for the reuse of the Madison Barracks, where among others, the future president of the U.S. Ulysses S. Grant served first, fresh out of West Point Military Academy.

When I was there the Rideau Canal stepped locks were dry and being restored. I heard you can ice skate around Ottawa partly because of it. I had to sign and purchase a bond, that the Canadian vehicles were not being used to take jobs away from Americans. Joke from Sacketts Harbor: "What did one bone say to the other bone?" "Let's get up and get some dinner across the river." Once the largest encampment in the US (30-45,000?) The New York units refused to invade Canada.

First Lady Laura Bush Visits Africa

DDT was used by the US Army in Italy during WWII to douse children and others to kill body lice. Has there ever been a followup study of those citizens (i.e., it might explain why the "yellowcake" "document" came from there)? Some of the first studies of its harmful effects, the thinning of bird eggshells, causing whole "clutches" to shatter before they could hatch, was on the former "armed to the teeth" Great Gull Island just off the federal animal disease control center, Plum Island (in the midst of 40 million people its sometimes argued, Rome, NY would be a better location) where it's said we fought one of the first battles with the British military in the revolution. Great Gull is now owned by the Museum of Natural History I thought I read. Little Gull Island has the lighthouse. Ospreys out there have made a slow recovery with the removal of DDT from agricultural practices I thought I read or heard from the former heir to Gardiners Island, his great-aunt and first lady, Julia Gardiner Tyler, Robert Gardiner once candidate and anti-DDT at the levels it was once used. Former President Tyler was in charge of Richmond, VA during the civil war. She's sometimes described as instrumental in getting Texas into the Union and the "prettiest" of First Ladies. Reply#1 - Thu Jun 28, 2007 2:50 PM EDT

Newsvine - 1st Lady Targets Malaria in Africa Tour

Secret Societies

Comment on NY Times "The Lede: "Notes on the News"

"Secret Societies: Yale and Disneyland" by Mike Nizza

1. Both have "brands"? Bush on his tush (said from a heated coat hanger) and Disney from the time he was AWOL and kept in Fort Williams on Governors Island for missing the "Steamboat Willie" (Mickey Mouse captain)?

2. Both feature Sinfonians? (music fraternity members, a former 3 Cabinet post holder, 4 today, George B. (M.) Cortelyou, once a shorthand teacher in NYC who also was once Chairman of the Republican Party and early CEO of ConEd)

3. Both connected by the bones of "Mayflower" Puritan Isaac Allerton, of New Haven and powerful NYC merchant with a East River warehouse just outside the "Water Gate" in the "Wall" that became Wall Street ("foot of" once a slave market). Allerton's bones have been moved to the cemetery Yale University maintains. The Mayflower Madam made Disney come to New York, maybe Bush's father build Shea Stadium!

4. Either or neither nor are they run by women! Even Ralph Nader had an award from Yale Law but not my State Senator, Hillary Clinton.

5. Both cite "extended kinship" as truth also shown among the Apache by Morris Opler in his doctoral research at the U. of Chicago. He later went on to have three of his four briefs heard before the US Supreme Court for the rights of those Americans interned in the camps of World War II. None of those mentioned however have to my knowledge had a case heard a null connection.

Help save Nuzi, near Kirkuk, Iraq?

Another Deck of Cards for U.S. Troops in Iraq The Army heli commander character in "Apocalypse Now" played by Robert Selden Duvall used cards as markers on bodies in Vietnam. Looking at them in a pdf file (was in "Navy Times") each suit is also a larger picture when you arrange them. One or two have pictures from Fort Drum, NY where I once was part of the archaeology survey in 1983 when it was announced the Army's 10th Mountain Division was leaving Camp Hale for a new cantonment at Fort Drum, formerly used for winter training and National Guard service (Ed. - then (?) stationary tank fire into double fenced "impact zones" and A-10 Thunderbolt range practice, EOD disposal, etc., WWI to present). The company I worked for that was a part of Ebasco, with then five (?) floors in an upper tower of the WTC (Ed. - South Tower "Ebasco would occupy floors 79 through 96" - Dear Twin Towers), a Texas based power plant construction company.

Long House Reserve, East Hampton, NY

Edward Albee Streaming Video: American playwright spontaneously creates characters to promote the arts in all forms, on the east end of Long Island. One interesting sculpture there "Play It By Trust" by Yoko Ono (1999) is there. I've seen some of her other work online in Spain and in Japan where she was once a student during World War II. Long House Reserve

The Lesser-Known Islands of New York Contest: The City Room Pop Quiz

The Lesser-Known Islands of New York June 22, 2007 NY Times My grandma, Ms. Gregory was a nanny for the caretaker on one of them, “Bedloe’s Nanny” I heard her called. I was on Governors Island to do geoarchaeology around the National Parks Service part. It was almost empty, the Coast Guard groundskeeper said that it’s said some of the South’s ordnance is buried in the other part, and once Walt Disney was AWOL when he missed the ferry there in WWI. A former “Swivel” captain, the ferry there once so-named told me the plans for D-Day were kept in a safe there in the mansion, meeting him and his wolfhound by Miller Field, Staten Island, on another “archeology” survey (federal spelling). We dug into the moat of Fort Jay, built by Columbia University students in appreciation of the “Jay Treaty” and first SCOTUS Chief Justice, his place could use some work too. One island missing from the photo contest was blown up for the Brooklyn side of the Verrazano Bridge and I read it once held prisoner the son of General Robert E. Lee in the Civil War, or was that Fort Williams where Disney was on Governors? One of the islands, Brother, is where the Civil War National Guard unit based in the Bowery near Germania Hall, (where Kate Mullaney, sitting next to Susan B. Anthony, was the first woman elected to union management) was mustered out after the Draft Riots, its officer in "courts martial", and after they were called out in defense of Washington, D.C., having marched there. National Guard once meant that not “state militia”.

Is that why the NY Times called Governors Island “Sleeping Beauty”?

"Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World Is Reported" - NY Times

Posted to histarch today:

Perhaps shot from horseback? I say that as I have had classes with Edward Lanning ("Peru before the Incas" and co-author of "Pre-Hispanic America") and worked for Joel W. Grossman whose Ph.D. was in prehistoric Peru and worked for UNESCO there until an assistant was blown up at a podium, perhaps by "Shining Path" he's related. Incidentally the forensic college cited, Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science, has been involved in major public cases, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Phil Specter trial, etc.

I once worked with close-range photogrammetric developers from Canada, Prometric Technologies, which tried to demonstrate to the US FBI (and similar agency in Canada) the benefits of the technique back in the early 1990s, where we used it for plans and profiles on a couple of sites, particularly of historically unknown contamination and I photographed a number of profiles and plans of archaeological excavations in the West Point Foundry, Cold Spring, NY that way and rectified and produced 3D data some of it plotted from that then developing system. It can have many uses in archaeology and preservation then currently in use in England for automobile accident investigations.

In the interest in developing standards for this type of recording shown in the NY Times, I have found that at least in the Bowdoin Park Dutch Reformed burials back in the 1980s (in former JP Morgan summer-place, as the federal supplied sewer money ran out) and the so-called "First Almshouse" burials in 1999 in New York City's City Hall Park, the oldest city hall still in use as one in America, on the former green, to be lacking. One with grids made from window screens taken from a step ladder and other basically just hand sketched in, to me, troubling procedures after working in more dimensions, the 2D digitizing from photo interest "points" becoming 3D data for further use. For example the Metropolitan Cathedral in Mexico City may be measured after a time of photos to see if any of the stone blocks have moved, or because of the extreme accuracy that can result, the pipes in a nuclear power plant.

George Myers (not the known opinion of any of the others mentioned)

NY Times: "Earliest Gunshot Victim in New World is Reported"

Thanks for the clue. The Washington Post is much clearer and has a photo essay which shows the contrast in the mortuary practices between the two and the archaeological evidence only mis-reported it seems in the NY Times I was off about.

Washington Post article and photo essay

There's also a report of troops getting archaeological playing cards in Iraq to help them recognize archaeological sites, imploring them to drive around them rather than over them. I still have a picture in my mind of the small palisade site that is "Pine Camp #1" archaeological site at Fort Drum with the wooden snow fence around it except where the tank tracks had pulled up and stopped just over the fence. It's been part of the research on the "St. Lawrence Iroquois" thought one of the earlier groups of their legacy in the "A2A" area (Algonquin to Adirondack) known for its interesting agricultural settlement patterns and wildlife and according to some legend, site of the early "state formation" of the League of the Iroquois. Even early stone canal structures according to Parks Canada.

Iraqi Archaeology Playing cards:

George Myers

Apologies for reposting, what I meant to post was stopped as Google engineers repaired the email account at gmail they said.

Thanks for the clue. The Washington Post is much clearer and has a photo essay which shows the contrast in the mortuary practices between the two in situ. The archaeological evidence appears to be mis-reported in the NY Times.

link

There's also a report of troops getting archaeological playing cards in Iraq to help them recognize archaeological sites, imploring them to drive around them rather than over them.

I still have a picture in my mind, from survey, of the small palisaded village site that is "Pine Camp #1" archaeological site at Fort Drum with the wooden snow fence around it except where the tank tracks had pulled up and stopped just over the fence. It's been part of the research on the "St. Lawrence Iroquois" thought one of the earlier groups of their legacy in the "A2A" area (Algonquin to Adirondack) known for its interesting maize based agricultural settlement (wild rice?) patterns and wildlife, and according to some recorded legend, site of the early "state formation" of the League of the Iroquois noted by Benjamin Franklin, as to perhaps be emulated in "America". There's even some early stone canal structures according to Parks Canada that have been difficult to date in the St. Lawrence Seaway opened by President Eisenhower and Queen Elizabeth near Fort Drum, NY. And a secret "Skull and Bones" compound in the Thousand Islands nearby in the news again over the alleged theft of Geronimo's bones by the Yale University "fraternity" while President Bush's grandfather was there.

link

George Myers

During George H.W. Bush's presidency (1989-1993)

Posted to Archeoseek

Hello. I once worked with some archaeologists from Texas in the West Point Foundry cove part of Constitution Island, across the Hudson River from the West Point Military Academy. We were limited to the marginal area of the site where the EPA since has built an earthen dam and removed cadmium contamination from battery production, for Nike missiles, hauled out on the former railbed for the foundry which produced among other, the Parrott rifled cannons used in the US Civil War. Under the early 20th century "Bridge Shop" remains, we found what still has me in a quandary, either the prototype of the "Swamp Angel" or the original towed back on grillage from it's still unfound location from the swamp nearby Charleston, South Carolina where the Union bombarded its downtown in 1863 with incendiary explosives. Nearly 700 friction primers were found so I think it was the prototype R. P. Parrott designed gun platform we actually found there after magnetometer survey and computer digitized map overlay from photo of a map in a glass case at the Foundry School Museum. We didn't get to caisson and take it apart however.

Iraq

I heard the Democrats are exploring the Emergency War Powers Act that gives a great amount of foreign policy power to the President. It's being researched for perhaps criminal tampering. I think the Republicans complain over it while Democrats are in office, then get in, and really "push the envelope". An associate crash-landed onto Hainan Island, China after leaving local NYC area archaeology (last seen in Jack Nicholson's old town Neptune, NJ) and joining Naval Intelligence at the beginning of the group W Bush first term.

Under this act can they read the diplomats letter pouches, obtain industrial intelligence of other companies based overseas and here in the US? It seems very convenient to have it as currently understood, many of us could be in a camp like Lt. Sulu (Star Trek actor George Takei) was as a youth, though now National Park Service historic sites, which by the way Americans were "reimbursed" for but not the people of 17 other countries brought to them of Japanese ancestry. Maybe it could have been a 1930s "Expeditionary" force like General Schwartzkopf's father led in Iran, putting a "Shah" in power but I doubt the rest of the world would have gone along. There's 80 F-14s Iran bought back in the later 1970s over there.

The Veterans For Peace had the right idea, pre-US led invasion, trying to get the water supplies back up inside Iraq. My father's oncologist filmed the plight of the children there after the "Desert Storm" strategy of air war. If the US had worked with those veterans on a large scale "reconstruction" perhaps the civil war there may have been averted in my opinion.

Comment: Arianna Huffington: Iraq: The Battle of September Has Already Begun

What wasn't published as my OS flailed around: I like the new look here, very good, and shows more of the wonderful amount of links to information along with the return of some very interesting columnists (fourth) like Marvin Kitman who blew my mind with that article on the Oswald gun that had to have been aimed at Jackie in order to hit President Kennedy according unofficially to the Marine at the target range he talked to. Obsession. It seemed he didn't write in Newsday much after that. One Marine I heard of thought this was the new world war order established at the Teheran Conference at the end of the Second World War (no longer an effort to end all wars as was the "First" renamed later) after the American Expeditionary Force put the Shah of Iran system in office in the 1930s, in charge by General Schwartzkopf's father who went on to be the federal lead investigator in the Lindbergh kidnapping which I heard recently has had questionable info as to where a meeting took place with Hauptmann, over the $, in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx or in NJ. Incidentally, those "Top Gun" F-14s in the movie? We sold 80 of them to the Shah before the exchange students got tired of being spied on over here by their secret police Savak. Not too sure if one thing led to another at the American Embassy. Maybe the 4000 Grumman employees in a nearby compound had to go? I heard the Democrats are exploring the Emergency War Powers Act that gives a great amount of foreign policy power to the President. It's being researched for perhaps criminal tampering. I think the Republicans complain over it while Democrats are in office, then get in, and really "push the envelope". A friend crash-landed onto Hainan Island, China after leaving local archaeology (last seen in Jack Nicholson's old town Neptune, NJ) and joining Naval Intelligence at the beginning of the Bushies first term.

Tell Bush/Cheney Administration: Stop Offshore Oil Drilling! Petition

The offshore drilling leases were supposed to provide a source of revenue for the people of the US to use in recreation, i.e., parks and other outdoor activity, the return on the sale the "people" expected, for the profitable use of our offshore property. Guess what? Not a penny! Congress has taken the lease revenues for other uses and its now thought beyond realistic payback without dire consequence. It should be "reined in" and until it is, no new leases!

Tell Bush/Cheney Administration: Stop Offshore Oil Drilling! Petition

"Lincoln Guidance Wanted" response

Here in the "Yankee" borough of the Bronx in NYC, where the American author from Virginia, Edgar Allan Poe once walked and talked on the Jesuit's Fordham University, (inspired perhaps by the bells of the chapel finally released from the "clutch" of the WFUV radio tower, a newer one next to the football field was 11' too close to the Botanical Gardens and so it is now FCC approved atop Montefiore Hospital, probably by its former Secretary of State's son Michael Powell, now next to the once also fought EPA mandated filtration plant taken over from "crooks" to be determined in court by Skanska going from $1 to $2 billion) President Lincoln contracted with Janes and Kirtland for a little over $1 million to cast and assemble the Capitol Dome, replacing the "hat box". I am given to understand he thought it an important symbol our unity, whom had previously built the cast iron fireproof Library of Congress since superseded by our literary output. I worked on the site of the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring, NY where he witnessed the firing of R. P. Parrott's patented (1861) rifled cannon later (1863) used in the incendiary civilian bombardment of Charleston, South Carolina, named the "Swamp Angel" which blew apart later investigated by the Congress. It had been produced in the first federal facility to have a labor dispute over government run production. Another Hudson River foundry owner, was contracted by the Confederacy to build a powder mill said based on the London Crystal Palace brochures handed out and outside of Atlanta, Georgia its thought if it had been found might have shortened the civil war considerably, it was made very efficiently.

Later, the statue at the Lincoln Memorial was created and then reproduced from sections of the smaller statue by a Bronx, New York firm.

2 Blowhards: Comment on Lincoln Guidance Wanted (Sunday June 17, 2007 "In 1880 Bernhardt allegedly saved the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, widow of President Abraham Lincoln. A ship, l’Amérique, was traveling from Nice to New York when it was hit by an enormous wave that knocked down Mrs. Lincoln and sent her rolling across the deck toward a companionway. As she was about to plunge headfirst down the stairs, Bernhardt managed to grab one of her legs and save her." Wikipedia entry on French actress Sarah Bernhardt)

Pirates

June 12th, 2007 - 7:58 pm

Very nice I enjoyed it. It reminded me of a exhibition in Tokyo “The Brotherhood” I was just reading about from Woody Vasulka (in English and Japanese at www.vasulka.org) whom I met years ago briefly in the Buffalo University Media Center in New York studying experimental film with Paul Sharits. It’s where they went after “The Kitchen” in NYC. Domo Arigato Mr. roboto! Which is very close to the Portuguese Obrigato for thank you used in Brazil too.

Breitbart.tv » Weirdest Johnny Depp Interview Ever

We are stardust...

Perhaps a few stories from the Flight 800 accident about reporting is illustrative. The press seemed generally to refuse to mention the copilot, Mr. Kevorkian because of other notoriety associated with the name, specifically in regards to a procedure that may have transferred fuel differently than usually known. International flights also, by the way, dump fuel after achieving altitude, which I was told by Lufthansa, evaporates before it gets to the ocean surface. NBC News in New York on a Saturday reported that it had gone out and purchased one of the suspect pumps in the fuel tank, produced a pump removed in the aircraft graveyard and vouched for the fraying of the wiring, with a receipt for the pump placing it on their news desk in front of cameras. What has been the follow up? The memorial will have to be moved to where it was originally planned, moved by officials, insisting on their plan and not the one of the concerned relations of the victims, to escape beach erosion, other than that, I heard not one plane has had the recommended changes that resulted from the investigation. Nor has the sighting of burning "meteor" debris sighted in the vicinity, on another flight, been investigated. I find it interesting myself having learned that a great number of meteors fall within a large ellipse in western Saudi Arabia, and no one's figured why the orbital mechanics work that way.

Journalistic Spine Surgery - Public Eye

Anthropology symposium

Gypsy moths...

That's a shame. Drew University, Madison, NJ began as the "College in the Forest". I (we 1990s) did tree survey and mapping as part of the archaeology of Mead Hall there resulting in metal tag labeling many of the large trees around the recently fire-repaired historic hall. The chairman of the 9/11 commission, former Governor Tom Keane was the president of the university. Woody Allen's wife also attended there. There are some truly wonderful trees there, two large copper beeches in front. I think I read it's where the first roses from China were cultivated.

The Creepy Crawly Tree-Killer, Gypsy Moth Caterpillars Are Wreaking Havoc On Mid-Atlantic States' Forests - CBS News

Rome Reborn 1.0 "...world's biggest computer simulation of an ancient city."

I think it should help discover some of the questions. Fustel de Coulanges researched the "Ancient City" (1864) I've read in social anthropology. "in which he showed forcibly the part played by religion in the political and social evolution of Greece and Rome. Although his making religion the sole factor of this evolution was a perversion of the historical facts, the book was so consistent throughout, so full of ingenious ideas, and written in so striking a style, that it ranks as one of the masterpieces of the French language in the 19th century." Perhaps it is a warning, after which Rome fell...not to but perhaps why.

There's No Place Like Rome - Couric & Co.

There's a piece of the Wright Flyer on the Moon...

A Piece of the Past Hitches a Ride on Next Space Shuttle Mission

HAMPTON, Va. -- A small piece of early American history will become the latest space traveler with the liftoff of NASA's space shuttle Atlantis. Atlantis is scheduled to launch Friday, June 8 at 7:38 p.m. EDT for the STS-117 mission to the International Space Station.

A nearly 400-year-old metal cargo tag bearing the words "Yames Towne" and some commemorative mementoes are packed in Atlantis' middeck floor cargo space for the roundtrip flight to the International Space Station. Their hitchhike through the galaxy honors this year's 400th anniversary of Jamestown, Va., the first permanent English settlement in North America.

Further: NASA Release 07-131  A Piece of the Past Hitches a Ride on Next Space Shuttle Mission

New Theory on Old Debate: Comet killed the Mammoth

Thomas Jefferson sponsored the first U.S. science expedition, to dig up the remains of a wooly mammoth found near Newburgh, New York and which he later asked Lewis and Clark to look out for on their expedition. A local school middle school was trying to get the former mammoth site on the National Register of Historic Places I read working in survey archaeology nearby. President Jefferson thought it was important because it was common belief that horses were or would be smaller growing in America than in Europe which he found a preposterous belief. Finding large mammoths would have quickly set that right perhaps he thought. The first "urban legend"?

Comment 6/12/2007 9:19:06 AM New Theory on Old Debate: Comet Killed the Mammoth Washington Post "There are intriguing new clues in the mystery of how the woolly mammoth met its demise in North America more than 10,000 years ago" - Christopher Lee

Newsday: "Mayor backs new LIRR stations" (and 2 in the Bronx)

I live near Parkchester and Coop City in the Bronx. The right of way and the rails are already there from earlier commuter services to the northern 'burbs used only by occasional freight trains today. It would be fairly inexpensive to do, "re-inventing" what had been there so to speak. Many people live in both places, Parkchester and Coop City, both with "built-in" shopping and services that would benefit by being in new transportation hubs. It would even help the former 3rd Avenue El hub in the South Bronx I once lived next to, the Manhattan part of the Third Ave. El, torn down and sold to the Japanese before WWII, not the Bronx part torn down in the 1950s.

Comment on "Mayor backs new LIRR stations" (Elmhurst and Corona, Queens, NY) Newsday, June 11, 2007

Future Minnesota Senator Al Franken?

I enjoyed this refreshing talk as I did in the Bronx (where Mr. Franken's daughter teaches in public school I think) when Al Franken was on Air America. However, having read one of his books, on being happy so to speak, it's good to see the guy who zinged the Washington Press corps, where he was the invited emcee, which I also enjoyed excerpted on CSpan I think, (Randi Rhodes was on too) its great to see him pursuing what he has wanted to do for many years, to run for office and make changes for us his fans. Did you know they provide day care for jurors in Minnesota? Wow, we should have that. You may want to know, that a sled-dog, the grand-daughter of Yukon King moved to Minnesota from Long Island many years ago, and probably lived happily ever after where there may be many more today. You may need them if it gets "tough sledding".

Al Franken: If You Ever Wonder Whether We Really Need Public Financing of Elections in this Country - Politics on The Huffington Post

"Banana" Kelly Street

I think of General Powell here in the Bronx, NYC, where he is from, the South Bronx where I lived as a child for a number of years in public housing, and I think of his role as having “to serve the President” and all the military tradition that would have been thrown out with the bathwater if he hadn’t. As a onetime possible “contender” for higher office I am reminded of the story of another New Yorker, from modest means, Theodore Roosevelt who its said, was given the Vice-Presidency so he wouldn’t have a lot to say, which he did, and helped bring the country into the 20th century. It’s unfortunate, that very questionable intelligence was given to him to present at the UN, but fortunate for us that he still will speak his mind on important American issues and still shows insight into current affairs. He could have just went on fixing his Volvos and said nothing. Think Progress » Powell: Close Guantanamo Now, Restore Habeas

Could this become the world's silliest budget?

"AT RISK: The Landmarks Preservation Commission and Historic Buildings and Neighborhoods Throughout NYC!

Unless YOU act right now, the already miniscule budget of the Landmarks Preservation Commission (LPC) -- the only city agency with the authority to protect New York's historic buildings and neighborhoods -- YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD -- could be cut significantly in the coming weeks.

The City Council, now entering final budget negotiations, must hear from you. Immediately. Email/call/fax your local council member and members of the budget negotiating team TODAY. See contact information below.

Frustrated with the LPC? Their slowness to respond? The ever-quickening pace of development, eating away at the character of our communities? It will only get worse, unless the LPC has the resources it needs to carry out its vital mission. Landmark West! is part of a broad coalition advocating for a $1 million increase in the LPC budget on top of its current budget of just over $4 million -- a modest amount of money that could make a world of difference in the LPC's ability to protect the buildings and neighborhoods that matter to the people of our city. ACT NOW! Contact the Council, and forward this message to friends and colleagues.

Who is your council person? Go to Who Represents Me?"

... if you live in NYC or are concerned and find out who to write to, from the NYPIRG. I worked one summer in the early 1980s on water quality issues for the New York Public Interest Research Group out of a St. James, NY office, canvassing door-to-door selling "Public Citizen" subscriptions ($10 a year) and at the end of the summer we had a treat. At the Riverhead Theater - Pete Seeger and another gentleman gave a concert. It was with great pleasure I later saw the Grammy-award winning folk singer receive the National Medal of Arts from then President Clinton at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. He has also been honored by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio and has received other awards.

Sent today:

I have worked within the Landmarks Preservation Commission's guidelines for archaeology on a number of occasions since it first hired an archaeologist, a teacher and associate from Staten Island. Her doctoral thesis, granted from Stony Brook University, was on the archaeology of the Prall Site in Richmondtown, Staten Island, a site in the "Williamsburg" of Staten Island, if you will, once the small "Tory capital" of Staten Island and then colony of New York. After many years of successful compliance that has benefited both the city, its inhabitants (its history and prehistory), I feel that, should its budget receive those recently rumoured cuts, it could result in a mockery of the processes it upholds, under US Federal law, in the United State's first capital, New York City.

I ask that you please keep the LPC budget at least as it is. I would suggest as others have, such as Landmarks West!, that since it now collects fees and is being asked to administer issues greater in number and larger in size, scope, and funds involved, that the budget be increased by $1 million, so as to keep up with the growing concerns and expectancies of the city's populace for preservation and due process in an often, what have been contentious and litigious issues mediated by the commission's dedicated staff and friends.

Katie Couric's Notebook: Thawing The Mini Cold War

Not too long ago the US had "atomic cannons" (with white barrels) pointed across the borders into the eastern bloc where many tanks were, as reported by my high school Army Reserve history teacher "cannonman" (one on "Roadside America" is pointed at Eisenhower's homestead in Abilene, Kansas). It is good to see that "detente" and that perestroika has had positive results begun with the removal of the missiles in Cuba and the listening posts in Turkey, a mutual standoff under President John Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Back in 1991 the Society of Professional Archaeologists in America (now the Register of Professional Archaeologists) American archaeologists, a former boss one, visited with the Russians to exchange information about archaeology in the "Old" and "New" world. I wasn't too sure however if he was coming back, during the Russian White House siege, when President Boris Yeltsin came to lead the new Russian Republic, defying the coup in August 1991. Mr. Putin is up for election in March of next year, (Ed. - no he isn't he's constitutionally barred unti 2012) and this should be an interesting time in our relations, Pravda the other day announced the United States has its first dictator!

Archaeology and experience...

Hello. I received a B.A. in Anthropology in 1978 from Stony Brook University after transferring there from SUNY Buffalo, NY with 60 credits. I then attended Graduate School in Anthropology/Archaeology until 1982. I had a field school in "Long Island Prehistory" in 1977 with R. M. Gramly, (B.S. in Geology from R.P.I., an M.A. and a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Harvard University) on the "Pipe Stave Hollow Site" in Mt. Sinai Harbor, published in the "Massachusetts Bulletin of Archaeology". Many of the artifacts found there have an affinity with those found on Martha's Vineyard, MA where the former New York State Archaeologist William Ritchie, excavated sites and who published an archaeology of it in the 1960s. Gramly had, as a student, assisted William Ritchie on the West Athens Hill site, which, until recently, was the oldest known site in New York State, near Catskill, NY which we visited along with the now National Register site, Mt. Jasper, in northern New Hampshire, an early rhyolite adit, and tools of which were found, near the Androscoggin River which empties into the Atlantic Ocean in Maine.

I started working in "contract" archaeology in New York City for various companies that came to NYC. One experience I had in NYC was when I accompanied an archaeologist to one of the then World Trade Center sites being built on the word of another that ship remains had been found in the excavation and we were denied access. Since then, more mandated oversight has developed. Not much later, in 1983, I actually found a buried ship in the landfill of the "175 Water Street Site" in the last of our three "deep tests" permitted using a small backhoe. The original site was first under the direction of an historical archaeologist, then the ship excavation by underwater archaeologists. I worked once in the Columbia University lab space of the archaeologist Ralph Solecki, Ph.D., who found Neanderthal burials in Shanidar Cave, Iraq, arguably the earliest evidence of primate mortuary practices. Besides that, before moving to Texas, he was also a "local" archaeologist, and known for protecting sites on Long Island as a friend of Carlyle S. Smith, who wrote "The Archaeology of Coastal New York" in 1950. Smith was a friend of the Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl.

I grew up in Centereach, Long Island, New York, in the Middle Country school district, as it's centrally located.

Fighting City Hall? (oldest one in America still in use as one)

Comments on July 21, 2003 "New development on the Bowery" at Wired New York

I worked in the research of archaeological significance for parts of the blocks on the Bowery just north of Houston. (Ed.- 1999) Recently, the LPC declared a Noho historic district, on the west side of the "...oldest road in America" (as cited in the Encyclopedia Americana) but ignored the east side of the street particularly 295 Bowery, home of Kate Millett, noted feminist, and the adjoining "Germania Hall" where the first woman elected to a union, Kate Mullaney, of Troy, NY was chosen sitting next to Susan B. Anthony. Former sites of Quaker and Methodist cemeteries (moved to LI) there are two non-denominational vault cemeteries in the neighborhood of 2nd St. and 4th St. and the Bowery. Other important events transpired there. My report was submitted without discussion and without approved edits from me and my coworker by a large firm, Parsons Inc., and paid for from Pasadena, CA. You might know them, they inspect cars in New Jersey, among other things.

Many months ago, before public revue and hearings, Avalon, believe it or not was posted on the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission's website as the supplier of middle income housing on site and please call this number if you are interested. This to me as a New Yorker, and one in the middle of trying to figure out if my small research project the "Cooper Square Urban Renewal" was not the Trojan Horse it was in 1971, 25 square blocks of the Lower Eastside. I can't believe they would allow such crass commercialism and open the Commission to calumny by allowing that business to post itself in that way.

Further, at the public hearing, which I viewed from the Bronx on Bronxnet cable, Kate Millett was given the floor to speak, and was interrupted many times and then told her time had run out, as she tried to explain the experience of 9/11/01 from her place, as the "ghosts" went walking by. The hearing again, did nobody any good and if I added the time spent in interruption to the time of her presentation it would have finished right on the mark. Again, the administration that would sell Wall Street to New Jersey.

By the way the "wrecking ball" is illegal in Manhattan, but across the river perfectly legal in the South Bronx.

Ed. - Both structures were torn down...you can visit the new construction and see other sights there near the location of the first commercial theater district in New York City in the 1820s (former CBGB's, the Amato Opera, oldest arts organization in the US, and Bouwerie Theatre landmark (1967), its Jean Cocteau Repertory Theater closed in March, it's where Bernadette Peters made her debut in "Anything Goes" I read, once a voice of the visit the top of the World Trade Center towers promo, and though other arts spaces including museums there today) on the new Google street level camera archives. Microsoft's 3D Virtual Earth shows the two structures still standing, and the view looking north (but not the other angles) has two apparent demolition dumpsters in front of the old Germania Hall and 295 Bowery buildings. Across the street is a very large promo painted on the building for the film "Dumb and Dumber II" (circa 2003?). The forum has recent photos.

fabric and diodes

I was just looking for bink.nu which appears down and came across your site. Very interesting I thought you might be interested in this announcement in case you missed it. Did you know by the way that the comedy team of "Firesign Theater" used LISP in POP computers apparently to write some of their routines? At least that's what I read.:

NASA: Not-So-Heavy Metal: Electrical Conductivity in Textiles

I've been on the "bleeding edge" of personal computers since Edmund Scientific had a couple of home boards with logic chips and three LED's on each running on a 6 volt lantern battery to teach Boolean operations at the circuit level. I have been employed in "contract" or public archaeology and people I've worked for have often tried to use the latest in the off the shelf stuff to demonstrate that given a little time often archaeology can be accomplished as required by "earlier" law generally the US Federal 106 regs its recited as. I've had the opportunity to use the Epson HX-20 ("world's first laptop") hooked up to an infrared Zeiss what has become very quickly a "total station" survey unit that read timing signals of an infrared pulse sent to and received from a handheld corner prism, now an industry standard by Topcon (they say they invented it) who now owns Sokkia formerly as I used it Sokkisha instruments. Recently on the Iwo Jima Trail at the US Marine Corps Schools property at Quantico, Virginia we used a GPS that tied into a "Differential GPS" signal from a beacon in Annapolis, Maryland that will replace the former LORAN C I think radio transmitters, so using the satellites and the radio beacon locate positions. Still tough though under the large trees and holly there, in the way of the radar tower, where the US Presidents "Marine One" helicopter (a Sikorsky "Sea King" also widely used in Canada, to be replaced by a European consortium built, assembled in New York State thanks to Senator Hillary Clinton) is based. There were live and built Ospreys while we were there and an eagle nested in the chapel spire top!

Good luck with your house. The Nixons lived in an interesting one to be razed in Saddle River, NJ built by a woman architect who studied with Frank Lloyd Wright you might be interested in:

See: Nixon's Saddle River home to be razed We're next!

New NASA Hurricane Software Online!

May 29 , 2007

NEW! Version 1.0 of the PO.DAAC Event Tracker is now available at http://podaac.jpl.nasa.gov/hurricanes/