“Purchase of Manhattan Island 1626 — colored engraving, 19th Century” . Costello plan of New Amsterdam in 1626 — officially entitled “Afbeeldinge van de Stadt Amsterdam in Nieuw Neederlandt” (The key to the Castello plan lists every single house and the 1500 inhabitants that formed the first community in the Dutch colony). “New York before … Continue reading
. The other day, in Manhattan, I noticed a remarkable proliferation of a statement welded onto gigantic steel plates used to cover holes on the street, the ones that go perplank! when a car runs over it. Here are only a few examples of it. The statement is a simple word, TRIUMPH. Nowadays, our tired … Continue reading
. I didn’t want to make a lot of fuss about it, but earlier this year I found two iron butterflies. The first one in particular is recognizable by its shape, and by the rebar that is popping out of the concrete, reminiscent of the strange dragon-like patterns on the original album of our friends … Continue reading
. . Riverside Park in Manhattan’s Upper West Side — near the area, 72nd to 79th, where I once volunteered weeding flowerbeds and taking out Coca Cola bottles and other leftovers of nightly romps among consenting adults, I hoped, even equipped with a key to the tool shed near the kids’ playground which I never … Continue reading
. . Fasces = a bundle of rods with a projecting axe blade, carried by a lictor in ancient Rome as a symbol of a magistrate’s power, and used as an emblem of authority in Fascist Italy. The bundle originally stood for “united, we are so much stronger.” But the peculiar way the pieces … Continue reading
