Limericks and an Alligator
http://www.erasing.org/four_post-election_limericks/
The page following these limericks has a link to an exclusive filmic
performance by Brad Pitt one of America's most successful actors and
to the film "Dog Factory" (1904) made by the Thomas A. Edison film
studio in New York City. It shows some of the old style humor that was
once shown in NYC's earlier theater district, I think, on the Bowery.
Today there, is what is called America's oldest continuing arts
organization, over 50 years, the Amato Opera, across the street, the
Bouwerie Theatre (in an old German bank), CBGB's, the rock venue (an
annex to it), and nearby, the Bowery Ballroom, where Stephen King made
his first public appearance after his recovery from a terrible
pedestrian / van accident, hit while walking along a Maine road. The
driver died later in his sleep.
Over on Houston Street just off the Bowery, ("howston" in NYC, a
Scottish businessman's name) there was once the Yiddish Theater
District, where Walter Mathau started (his real name is as long and as
unpronounceable a name can get I thought) until the Chrystie Street
subway extension and time tore it up. While doing research there and
nearby for archaeological significance, we also determined it to be
once the site of a Quaker Cemetery, moved to what became Prospect
Park, Brooklyn, (on the Coney Island Road) and some to Old Westbury.
The Methodist one, on another lot, was moved to the State legislature
size-mandate avoiding Brooklyn/Queens cemetery (straddling two
counties), in a late winter in the middle of the 19th century. Just
south of there (Houston and Bowery) one map showed a "Negroe
Cemetery", today a small parking lot, perhaps never moved (?).
Interestingly, the "Anthology Film Archives" on Second St off Second
Ave., a major repository and exhibition space supported by many in the
visual arts and information businesses, was once a courthouse built
on-top of a Methodist cemetery. Later NY State ordered the move when
"missed" ones were found in the courthouse construction. A former
English professor at Buffalo, NY, artist/filmmaker, Paul Sharits, has
a sculpture there and other works with other artists. It is across the
street from one of the two remaining cemeteries in the general
neighborhood, both marble vaults, one that once contained former
President Monroe. That is until, before the American Civil War, the
Virginia Legislature voted to remove him to the Hollywood Cemetery in
Virginia! The whole city, it's written, stopped to pay its respects as
the former resident was paraded to the dockside. John Ericcson, the
inventor of the modern ship propeller and designer of the "U.S.S.
Monitor" was also later removed, to Sweden. He had lived in Greenwich
Village, and designed the Union submarine involved in the first battle
of the ironclads, with the "C.S.S. Virginia".
If you know anyone that has any information about the "U.S.S.
Alligator", America's first submarine, which also sank off Cape
Hatteras, NC, where the "U.S.S. Monitor" lies in part, some of it now
at a new museum in Newport News, VA, please forward the info to the
forum "sub-arch" where underwater historical archaeology is discussed.
George Myers
"Neurosis is always a substitute for legitimate suffering." - Carl Jung
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