Ye Olde Music Meme

1. Put your iTunes on shuffle.
2. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
3. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!

Here we go...

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
Voices in the Fan (Devin Townsend)

WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
I've Seen All Good People (Yes)

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Hellhounds of Madness (Harry Partch)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
Poisoning Pigeons in the Park (Tom Lehrer)

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Afterlife (Dream Theater)

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Ghost Riders in the Sky (Johnny Cash)

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
Fried Chicken (Ice-T)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
The Number of the Beast (Iron Maiden)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Names (Cat Power)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
Fig Leaf Rag (Scott Joplin)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family (David Bowie)

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Love is Here to Stay (Dexter Gordon)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Some Girls (Rolling Stones)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Inheritance (Talk Talk)

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Tokyo Storm Warning (Elvis Costello)

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
Teeth Like God's Shoeshine (Modest Mouse)

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Sweet Mary Blues (Leadbelly)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
One Big Yes (Lounge Lizards)

WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
When a Boy Falls in Love (Sam Cooke)

HOW WILL YOU DIE?
You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks (Funkadelic)

WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
Nobody Told Me (John Lennon)

WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
Golden Ball (Stereolab)

WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
Liberation (Outkast)

WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
This is What I Believe In (Adrian Belew)

WHAT SCARES YOU THE MOST?
Forty-Six & 2 (Tool)

DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
Caroline Says II (Lou Reed)

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
Used to Love Her (Guns N Roses)

WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
Hello From Inside a Shell (Zombies Enter the Harbor) (Of Montreal)

The Great Southwest

What follows is the photographic result of a quick little circumnavigation of the four corners of the American Southwest. Mountain paths were hiked, canyons climbed, rivers waded, horses ridden, tents pitched, skin sunburned, and egg burritos devoured. Impressive how quickly temperatures can fluctuate between 100 and 30 degrees fahrenheit in a matter of hours out there.


The Delicate Arch


The Eye in the Sky


Independence Ghost Town


Monument Valley


Zion Narrows

[Full gallery]

The Telectroscope

The backstory is this. In the Victorian age, an engineer named Alexander Stanhope St George visited the recently-completed Brooklyn Bridge and was enchanted by the ambition and ingenuity that went into its design and construction. He was less thrilled, however, with the arduous, stormtossed journey required to reach the bridge from his cheery home in England. He hit upon the concept of a complex configuration of mirrors and lenses which would allow the curious to see down the shaft of a transatlantic tunnel spanning the two continents. A "telectroscope," as it would come to be known. At first popular enthusiasm was high as St George set out to execute his idea, the romance of connecting London to New York bolstering support among the populations of both nations. The fanciful tales of Jules Verne were highly celebrated at the time and this eccentric scheme gripped the imagination in a similar fashion. However a tragic cave-in soon dampened the spirits and eventually St George was forced to abandon the project as enthusiasm waned and skilled workers became scarce. He died heartbroken in an asylum in 1917.

A century later, his descendant, an artist named Paul St George, discovered a dusty trunk in his grandmother's attic. Inside were diaries, diagrams, sketches, and various other documents concerning the ill-fated Telectroscope. Seized with inspiration, he set about making his great-grandfather's vision a reality.

In May of 2008 the Telectroscope was finally opened to the public. It took over a century, but now, at last, Asian tourists in New York can peer into the lens and see Asian tourists in London waving back at them.









Sadly the exhibit closed on June 15th. The Telectroscope is to be dismantled and the transatlantic tunnel filled in. Presumably something to do with Homeland Security.

The Ghosts of Asbury Park

Once an opulent seaside resort, now a haven for derelicts. Careful not to step on any discarded syringes in the sand.

Beacon Court

This would look much more impressive with an old clockmaker's wizened face peering over the top.

Madison Square Park

No fisheyes were harmed in the shooting of this photograph.

Photographs by Tara McGill

Lips That Touch Liquor

[courtesy of YesButNoButYes Stories]

Choral Music

"I think I hear some choral music. One hears almost no music from these backyards. Knowing absolutely nothing about music, I conclude, in a scholarly way, that it must be Puccini because of the ascending and melodramatic scale of flats. Then I hear some dissonance and decide that it must be Berg or Schonberg. The soprano then hits a very high note and sustains it for an impossible length of time, and I realize that what I've been hearing is the clash of traffic and a police siren amplified by a light rain."

--from The Journals of John Cheever

Steam Beast

In Lower Manhattan on rainslick midnights when roiling steam pours out of the grates in long flumes, it looks like the city itself is breathing. Halitosis from the jaws of a concrete Cthulhuian beast. A boiled claw reeking of sulphur reaches from the sewer to drag you down to its ancient realm of sodden newspapers, lost coins, White Castle containers, discarded subway passes, forsaken lottery tickets, condom wrappers, cigarette butts, and the occasional finger. You cling to lampposts & postboxes, but the wet pavement is a sluice down the gullet of the beast, who salivates over you, squirming slab of beef. But it's a welcome demise, as demises go. Unlike the mummified limbo of empty parking lots and cheap aluminum siding somewhere in the yawn of the great wide nowhere.

Pandas

I suspect there are demonic pandas hiding in my cellar. I hear strange chewing noises late at night coming up through the vents. It's not the landlady at her fridge, gnawing on chickenbones after midnight - no, something more feral and unearthly is at work here. They're not chewing on bamboo & ferns, but the tattered souls of former tenants. Bloodshot goggle eyes peer out from the dark recesses of the stairwell when I go out to check the mail. The postman knows. He doesn't come inside anymore, leaves my packages on the stoop & hastens away. And those rumbling noises, like hell's empty stomach. Like a great furnace crying out for fossil fuel. There are jagged teethmarks in the wooden banister & everyday they seem to rise a little higher. Who do I call about this - an exterminator or an exorcist?

Guns of August

I'm in the midst of Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August right now, about the days leading up to The Great War (ha ha), trying to figure out why the hell anyone got involved in that bloody mudfest in the first place. Why it wasn't confined merely to a squabble between Serbia and Austria-Hungry while the bigger nations went about their business. Germany and France were looking for a fight, evidently. Itchy trigger fingers. They'd been looking for an excuse for years. I have yet to understand why Russia and England got involved. Treaties were in place, yes, but descending into nightmare just because your neighbor asks if you can lend a hand seems a bit hard to believe. Maybe people just took conscription much more seriously back then. Some perverted sense of honor. Or less focus on their own sense of discomfort.

The whole fiasco comes across as one big Rube Goldberg machine, starting out with an archduke getting smacked with a flyswatter and ending up in trench warfare. Four years of mud, shrapnel, barbed wire, mustard gas, and mortar fire. I have no idea how Wilson convinced America to get involved, having no great catastrophe to "avenge" a la Roosevelt and Bush. Yeah, Germany had a habit of sinking our boats which was most uncharitable of them, but was that enough to warrant hundreds of thousands of American deaths? I imagine America had recently emerged from the Spanish-American War with our uniforms barely mussed and figured this new one would be a similar jaunt. Go over, kick a few Germans while they're down, and be back in time for lunch. Certainly global warfare on this scale was unimagined and it never occurred to those in charge it would cost as much as it did. "Here, son, grab your bayonet and go make the world safe for democracy." How abstract. The lack of television probably had a lot to do with it, from America's perspective. Easy enough to send your young off to the majesty of battle when there's no carnage at your doorstep to disrupt your illusions of grandeur. After Cronkite's Vietnam we started to realize the whole thing was a lot messier than we'd imagined from all those Robert Mitchum flicks where children seldom had their faces ripped apart by grenade shrapnel.

And poor Belgium, getting trampled over because they had the misfortune of being situated between two bullies and contained some lovely flat real estate that made for superb parade grounds. Maybe in the future belligerent nations can conduct their warfare in the virtual realm and leave innocent bystanders alone. No, that won't happen. We like to get our hands dirty.

Happy Cheese Weasel Day

"Who brings the cheese on April 3rd?
The Cheese Weasel
He's not a silly bunny or a reindeer or a bird,
He's the Cheese Weasel
He's got a cute black tail
And tiny buck teeth
He doesn't bring fish, and he
Doesn't bring beef
So you'd better be good if you wanna get some cheese
From the Cheese Weasel."

For more information concerning the Cheese Weasel, consult his official website at CheeseWeasel.com.

The Rites of Ostres

Tacked to the wall of a yarn store in the East Village...

Easter Fools

Since Easter and April Fools fall so close to each other in the year, they might as well be consolidated to save time. Jesus is captured, tortured, crucified, and entombed. Then, while the disciples are mourning, he comes forth from the tomb. "Oh, we thought you were dead," they say, confounded by the resurrection of their leader. "Nope," he replies, "April Fools."

The Ghost of Seneca Village

Here's a classy piece of history I just stumbled upon. Seneca Village was settled in an (at that time) rural stretch of Manhattan by freed blacks in the 1820s. Twenty years later it had grown to become a community of working class African Americans, Irish, Germans, and Native Americans, supporting their own churches, schools, and cemeteries. The village was located roughly between 7th and 8th Avenues, in the west 80s, taking up nearly five acres. Those familiar with Manhattan will recognize this land is now a slice of Central Park. That's probably all the information you need to know to draw the right conclusions, but I'll continue.

Fernando Wood was one of Tammany Hall's most corrupt members, and there was stiff competition for that distinction. In 1857 he was re-elected as Mayor of New York, mostly with the help of the dead. Residents of the local cemeteries were probably as surprised as any to find their names on his list of supporters, courtesy of the Dead Rabbits gang who were in cahoots. Wood achieved notoriety for his part in the police riots of 1857, when he was dragged forcibly from City Hall during a clash between rival police forces.

Manhattan at that time was expanding northwards at a frantic pace, chewing up farmland and spitting out concrete. Since many of the parks of the time were private and hidden behind locked gates, New Yorkers seeking refuge from the frenzy of the city often found it in graveyards. Some, like Evening Post editor William Cullen Bryant, urged for something a little less morbid, such as a great public park. Mayor Wood was convinced. He summoned up the rule of eminent domain and had Seneca Village razed to make way for Olmsted and Vaux's masterpiece of landscaping. There were no bulldozers to lay in front of in those days, and overnight the entire community gave up the ghost.

What became of the residents of Seneca Village? Good question. No descendants have ever been found. But contemporary archaeologists are scouring the site looking for clues as to what they must have been like. Funny how beneath the foundations of our great monuments of beauty and grandeur one can usually find the ashes of something a little more modest in scope that didn't stand a chance. We've almost come to expect it.

Oh Well

Penniless in NYC

"Shelby is extraordinarily fond of museums and galleries and has become something of an art expert. Vagrants are rarely molested in New York museums and galleries. Shelby is apt to smile and say this is because the guards can never distinguish between a legitimate bum and an artistic one. They never disturb a person like him because they never know when they are trying to eject an artist who is holding a one-man show on the third floor."

-From Subways Are For Sleeping, by Edmund G Love

Make Believe

A Totebag Full of Tunes

Albums I can't seem to stop listening to (not that they necessarily came out during the year):

The Fratellis: Costello Music
I don't know anything about these blokes, but this is one rollicking, humorous, melodic frenzy. Can't stop bouncing off walls.

Neko Case: Fox Confessor Brings the Flood
Spooky as hell. Flannery O'Connor reborn as a minstrel.

Beat Circus: Dreamland
"Weird American gothic," as they call it. How on earth did Tom Waits end up on one of Nino Rota's Fellini soundtracks? Boxcar blues, whiskey-tinged waltzes, junkyard jamborees, tobacco-stained saloon songs, and seasick shanties. A Coney Island of the Id.

Aretha Franklin: Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Reign of the Queen of Soul
Her voice on here nearly blew out my speakers. Some of the best stuff I've ever heard her do.

The Mars Volta: Bedlam in Goliath
Still getting into this one. Their last couple never really sunk in, but De-Loused in the Comatorium was a huge favorite when it came out - Black Sabbath meets Bitches Brew-era Miles Davis.

Kate Bush: Aerial
I think a lot of people expected to have their heads sawed off by the sheer brilliance her first release in over a decade. Instead they were treated to this serene album of contentment. They were listening wrong. It never left my player for months.

Of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
I don't know how they got from the Kinks-esque quirkiness of The Gay Parade to plundering the Bee Gee's platform shoes, but once past the shock of the disco beats, these songs are damn catchy.

Jerry Lee Lewis: Live at the Star Club, Hamburg
I'd read this might be the greatest live album ever recorded. May be true. While other nations were snubbing The Killer, the Germans didn't give a fuck about his marriage to his 13-year-old cousin. They just wanted to watch him bash the daylights out of his keyboard.

Arcade Fire: Funeral
I like this one better than their follow-up, Neon Bible, which strays too close to Springsteen territory for my comfort.

Bob Dylan: The Basement Tapes
Dylan hiding out in an upstate basement with a six-string and a hound dog, with no intention of releasing the results. Pure dusty Americana. "Apple Suckling Tree" and "Tiny Montgomery" are my favorites.

Decemberists: The Crane Wife
Almost as good as Picaresque. Strays strangely into Prog Rock now and then. The whine of his voice takes some getting used to but can't argue with the lyrics.

Dresden Dolls: Yes, Virginia...
Jesus, Brian Viglione is a demon on drums. Drop the needle on "Modern Moonlight" and stand back.

Modest Mouse: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
Sure, it's got some songs I skip towards the end. But it's got just as many I can't help hitting repeat on. I love their maniacal background vocals, like they just let some raving fiend into the studio and punched record.

Radiohead: In Rainbows
The songs aren't particularly catchy, but the mood is right. "Jigsaw" is a standout.

Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope
The lovechild of Tori Amos and Woody Allen. Charming, eccentric, and wonderful.

Steely Dan: Countdown to Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic
Just recently got into these guys. They used to sound like typical seventies polished radio fodder to me, but I've begun to see the light. The musicality is tremendous. Break out the headphones for these. It's like dining in the best restaurant in town when someone else is footing the bill.

Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key of Life
If you grew up in the eighties, the name Stevie Wonder was associated with schlock ("Ebony & Ivory," "We Are the World," etc). What an eyeopener to return to the music that earned him the rank of genius. What could be more moving than "Joy Inside My Tears"?

Mozart: Symphony 41
The 40th was always my favorite, but I can't stop listening to the bombastic fourth movement of the "Jupiter symphony." Like seeing God from the center of an asteroid field. My version is Karl Bohm conducting the Berlin Philharmonic, which is [kisses fingers] exquisite.

Goblin: Soundtrack to Suspiria
Some of the creepiest music ever recorded - for one of the creepiest films ever shot.

Duke Ellington (with Charles Mingus & Max Roach): Money Jungle
Legendary line-up, anyone? This is not unlike Chuck Berry sitting in with System of a Down. Not sure if it'll work in theory, but does it ever. Pure musical conversation spanning generation and genre.

Brian Wilson: Smile
No, it's not quite what he had in mind back in the sixties before blowing out his brain on hallucinogenics. Don't care. I've heard the bootlegs and these sound better to me. I was not even slightly disappointed in this, even if the years have been a little rough on his vocal cords. As far as I can tell he used all the same instrumentation he would have used back then. And best of all, no Mike Love! Strap on the headphones and immerse yourself in Wilson's "Teenage Symphony to God."

Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane: At Carnegie Hall
Nobody even knew this legendary concert had been recorded until someone discovered it in a basement somewhere. You know the songs, but hearing them with Coltrane is like an IMAX experience.

Kafka's Deli

Occasionally for lunch I stop in at the Subway around the corner from work, where the following exchange invariably takes place:

"May I help you, sir?"

"Yes, I'll have the six-inch steak & cheese on Italian. Toasted, please."

"What kind of bread?"

"Italian."

"What size would you like?"

"Six-inch."

"Would you like that toasted?"

"Uhh... yes."

Such a small thing - a tale to mildly amuse your co-workers with - and yet, rather despairing on reflection. Perhaps the job is so unfathomably dreary that all the hapless drone behind the counter can do to cling to the frayed remnants of his sanity is adhere to a little Madlibs script in his head, and all information received out of sequence is promptly rejected. White noise goes in the white trash. Stick to the script. Blinders in place. Fit the square peg into the square hole, fit the round peg into the round hole. Repeat, repeat, repeat. When you are dead the square box will be lowered into the square hole in the small round earth, and your offspring will be propped up to take your place at the wheel.

Or, on the other hand, maybe he's just a dumbass.

Kameraphone Kapers

Porfiry the Postman


The vandals took the handles

Flap and Doodle

Sure, we've had some lousy stinkin' heads of state in recent years. But that doesn't mean their forebearers were loathed any less by their constituents. Take for example our 29th president, Warren G Harding. He was voted into office mainly because there was a bitter feud raging between the supporters of his rivals, and, not knowing anything about Harding, no one could think of a reason not to vote for him. Also, well, he kinda looked like a president. Toss in a couple of scandals, extramarital affairs, and a bumbling grasp of language, and you've got the fixin's for one big failure of a figurehead.


The ever-tactful HL Mencken put it delicately: "He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash."

Later, the poet e.e. cummings elegized him as "the only man, woman or child who wrote a simple declarative sentence with seven grammatical errors." Even Harding himself got in a few jabs, once musing "I am not fit for this office and never should have been here."

At least he was honest about it.

Yosemite Sam Don't Give a Death Valley Damn

"When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing." - Zen proverb

We lost cell phone reception shortly after entering Death Valley. The dashboard thermometer gave a reading of 96 degrees Fahrenheit, and it was early yet. A steep, winding road through the Black Mountains took us 5,500 feet up to Dante's View overlooking the Badwater basin, which at 282 feet below sea-level is the lowest surface point in North America. What looked like mystical stretches of lakewater was in fact salt deposit. From here we could look down on birds in flight. Amid the arid desert soil grew one solitary purple flower.

When we told the ranger at the Death Valley Visitor Center we intended to visit the dunes, he puffed out his cheeks and replied "Ooo, it's going to be hot out there." In fact venturing onto the desert dunes was literally like standing next to an open oven cranked to full blast. It was easily 105 degrees and the sand was blistering. Tracks were routinely swept away by the wind, and it was easy to envision yourself as last man on earth in some apocalyptic deathscape.

Speaking of which, northwest of Death Valley lies the Manzanar Internment Camp where the Japanese were rounded up during WWII. Nothing really left of it but a guard house and a memorial sign with Nazi-esque lettering. The word manzanar, incidentally, translates from Spanish as "apple orchard."

We passed near Mount Whitney, tallest mountain in the United States, though had to guess which one it was. When you're driving alongside a mountain range, all of the peaks look pretty damn tall. When you hear something is the tallest whatever, you expect it to stand alone, towering mightily over its peers. But in a mountain range the designated "tallest" might be in the lead by only a few meters. Less impressive somehow. An intervehicular dispute was sparked over what constituted a "sawtooth peak."

You can't venture any significant distance in Yosemite without hitting a majestic rock formation or waterfall. The landmarks are plentiful - Cathedral Rock, Bridalveil Falls, the oft-scaled El Captian with the heart-shaped cleft in its side, the Half Dome, Glacier Point. We hiked up to Sentinel Dome, elevation 8,122 feet, arriving at the peak just as dusk was setting in, which made for some dramatic photography. Attempting to capture on film a panoramic view such as the Sentinel Dome provides is frustrating. The camera lens simply cannot see what the eye can. Imagine watching Lawrence of Arabia on pan-and-scan, where the sweeping deserts become little more than a sandbox.

Night had fallen by the time we returned to the car. No deer jumped out in front of us on our way down the precarious mountainside road, but we did spot a white wolf prowling the roadside. A billboard notice at our campground warned of a mountain lion which had been spotted in the park earlier in the week. I lay in my tent well into the night wondering whether it would be a bear, a wolf, or a mountain lion which finally would get me as I slept. The night-time temperature dropped as low as 35 degrees.



The second day we set out early on a sixteen mile hike (eight miles each way) to the top of the notorious Half Dome. The first four miles were mostly vertical ones, making demands on muscles that are seldom called upon in citylife. Jagged rocks slick with spray formed steps up the side of the roaring cascade. Sometimes there was a guard rail, sometimes not. When we reached the top of the falls we looked down at an elegant rainbow spanning the gorge.

There were noticeably less people around during the second four miles. Anyone beyond this point was in it for the long haul. At a junction we stopped for a lunch of crackers and cheese and dried mango. We achingly reached the final ascent where the air was growing noticeably thinner. Snaggletoothed stone steps were cut in the sheer face of the mountain, waggling erratically to the crest. Glancing down was a bad idea. At an elevation of 8,800 feet, one misplaced footing would be a fatal mistake. I don't know about fear of heights, but let's just say I have a healthy respect for them. Unbelievably, at the top of the steps there was farther to go. Steel cables allowed the insane to hoist themselves up the vertical face of the rock to the absolute top of the Half Dome. A mad German in goggles, running shorts, and no supplies whatsoever who had breezed past us on the trail earlier pulled himself effortlessly up to the top of the world. The week before, a woman had lost her grip on the cables and fallen a thousand feet to her death.

I came down the mountain with eyes trained directly on the steps ahead, making a concentrated effort to block out all peripheral vision. The endless eight miles back to civilization were murder on my legs. Every step was a searing poker driven through my heel and deep into my calf. The first eight miles had been almost entirely uphill, which meant the way back was nearly all down. When your legs are screaming in pain, downhill is nearly as bad as up, because you land heavily with each step on the very same muscles you wore out on the way up. Not to mention you have to watch your footing on the littered fragments of rock to avoid fracturing an ankle. That night we collapsed into sleep the instant heads connected with pillows.

The next day began with a drive down to the Sequoias to see the General Sherman Tree, which is billed as the largest tree in the world, in terms of mass. Didn't seem particularly impressive to me, and I was skeptical that every tree on the planet has been properly cataloged to allow such a bold statement. Climbed to a 6,700-foot vista called Moro Rock to look out over the entire universe. This time there were plenty of secure guard rails. We intended to visit the Crystal Cave but missed the last tour by half an hour.

Outside of Lancaster in the Mojave Desert we located the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve. Unfortunately it must have been a bad season, for the place was deserted and there was nary a poppy in sight. Lancaster is probably best known as the home of the Edwards Air Force Base and SpaceShipOne, but to me the town has more significance as the place where Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart met. It's pretty obvious how much the Mojave Desert inspired much of the dusty Americana of Beefheart's lyrics.

Wind powered turbines lined the hills on either side of the road leading to Los Angeles. Soon we became ensnared in urban freeway traffic and left the hinterlands behind.

The Prison Ship Martyrs Monument

Somehow, in all my various NYC wanderings, I'd managed to miss the Fort Greene neighborhood, with its ivy-clung brownstones and gothic churches. While making amends for this oversight, I was attracted to the strange obelisk capping the crest of Fort Greene Park. Currently it is veiled in restorative scaffolding and its base fenced off, which meant I failed to get close enough for a peek at any potential historical marker that would explain its purpose. Instead I had to wait until I returned home for some cursory internet research to find out what it was all about.

During the Revolutionary War, the British seized New York in the wake of the Battle of Long Island. They quickly rounded up anyone who refused to swear allegiance to the Crown of England or join the King's Navy, and imprisoned them on derelict ships anchored in Wallabout Bay (located between the Manhattan and Williamsburg bridges of today). The most notorious of these prison ships was the Old Jersey, rechristened "Hell" by its unfortunate inhabitants. Between 1776 and 1783, disease, starvation, and neglect led to the death of over eleven thousand of these soldiers, sailors, women, and children. The corpses were buried in shallow graves in the bay or merely dumped overboard. In the following years, bleached bones regularly washed up onto the Brooklyn shore and were respectfully collected.

The land which is now Fort Greene Park was transformed from the site of an old fort into Brooklyn's first park in 1847, thanks in part to the vocal efforts of the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle - a fellow by the name of Walt Whitman. Tammany Society funded a monument for the dead in the 1880s near what is now the Brooklyn Navy Yard waterfront. In 1867 Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux (of Central Park fame) were commissioned to spruce up the thirty acres of park. A granite crypt was built to hold the remains of the prison ship martyrs.

The 148-foot Doric column which now towers above the plaza on the hill was designed by the architectural firm of McKim, Meade, and White in 1908. A staircase, now closed to the public, led to the observation deck which housed a lighted urn which could be seen for miles around. The urn was created by Adolph Alexander Weinman, as were four bronze eagles which were later removed in the wake of repeated vandalism. The eagles are expected to be returned following the current renovation.

The memorial's motto - "They Shall Not Be Forgotten."

On a side note, before being renamed after Nathanael Greene following the War of 1812, the fort which topped the hill was known as Fort Putnam, build by and named after Colonial Rufus Putnam, nephew of General Israel "Don't fire 'til you see the whites of their eyes" Putnam. Who just happens to occupy a branch on my family tree.