Has
Although I often wish that the park could return to its glory days of the late 1950’s, early 1960’s I do realize that one of the only certainties in life is that all things change. Nothing is forever and I guess the best I can hope for is that
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Extra, Extra
Windows on the Square
Setting:
A man and women are sitting at a kitchen table. Both are cupping a coffee cup but neither are speaking; Across from the table is a couch with a pair of ballet slipper slung over the side. They are both starring down at the same spot on the table. On the table top is a white envelop.
Owen: But it isn’t addressed to me, it is addressed to you.
A: I know but I don’t think that I can stop shaking long enough to open it without tearing what is inside.
O: So then we can just sit here a bit longer until you think you are ready to open it.
A: We have been waiting for this letter for weeks…the contents of this letter could really change our lives. You should just open it.
O: But you’ve done all of the work. It really should be you who opens it.
A: I know, I know. It’s just that I’ve waited so long to get here and now that the moment is here I don’t know if I want to know anymore. Maybe the not knowing isn’t that bad.
O:
A: You don’t think that I know that. You don’t think that I haven’t laid awake at night thinking about all of this. How am I supposed to choose? But really is there even a choice to make?
O: There isn’t really a right answer here. All I’m saying is that this affects you just as much as it affects me.
A: I know that it does. We have talked about all of this before. I just don’t know.
O: Well then you should open the envelop so that we know what we are dealing with. I’m tired of living in the land of hypotheticals.
A: You don’t have to get mean about it.
O: I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be mean I just want to know what the letter says inside of the envelop.
A: Okay. I’m going to open it now. (Opens the envelop, skims the writing. Closes the letter and puts it back into the envelop. Slides it over to Owen.)
O: Well, what did it say?
A: It said what I wanted it to say.
O: (Owen looks down into his coffee cup.) Well that is great news. I guess you are going to
A: I can’t believe I got it. I mean so many ballerinas tried out for so few spots and I can’t believe that I actually made it. I have worked my entire life for this one moment.
O: Well Al, I’m really happy for you. You deserve it.
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Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Edward Hopper - Nightawks painting
Nighthawks 1942 (120 Kb); Oil on canvas, 30 x 60 in; The Art Institute of Chicago
Paintings such as Nighthawks (Art Institute of Chicago, 1942) convey a mood of loneliness and desolation by their emptiness or by the presence of anonymous, non-communicating figures. But of this picture Hopper said: `I didn't see it as particularly lonely... Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.' Deliberately so or not, in his still, reserved, and blandly handled paintings Hopper often exerts a powerful psychological impact -- distantly akin to that made by the Metaphysical painter de Chirico; but while de Chirico's effect was obtained by making the unreal seem real, Hopper's was rooted in the presentation of the familiar and concrete.
The Fire That Changed America
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City on March 25, 1911, was the
largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died trapped behind locked fire exits or jumped to their deaths. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until September 11th, 2001. The tragedy led to fundamental health and safety reforms in New York City and the US and helped the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry.
The Story of the Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was New York’s largest manufacturer of blouses. Owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the sweatshop occupied the eight, ninth and tenth floors of the ten-story Asch building in New York City at 23-29 Washington Place, the northern corner of Washington Square East. The company employed approximately 500 workers, most of them young immigrants girls and young women, Russian/ Jewish and Italian, in their teens and early 20’s, who worked 70 or more hours per week, in a overcrowded, dimly lit rooms, without overtime pay and earned about $6 per week – a less than living wage.
On the Saturday of March 25th, 1911, only 5 minutes before the slaves of the sewing machines would have hurried to their homes, a fire began on the eighth floor, possibly sparked by a lit match or a cigarette or because of faulty electrical wiring. Because of the highly inflammable materials that were used in the clothes industry, in ten minutes the three floors were all on fire. Most of the workers who were alerted on the tenth and eighth floors were able to evacuate. However, the warning about the fire did not reach the ninth floor on time. The ninth floor had only two doors leading out. One stairwell was already filling with smoke and flames by the time the employees realized the building was on fire. The other door had been locked to prevent workers from stealing materials or taking breaks and to keep out union organizers.
The single exterior fire escape, a poorly-anchored iron structure, soon twisted and collapsed under the weight of people trying to escape. The elevator also stopped working, cutting off that means of escape, partly because the panicked workers tried to save themselves by jumping on the roof of the elevator. Finding the doors locked, the girls rushed to the windows and jumped to the pavement nine floors below, much to the horror of the large crowd of bystanders gathering on the street level. “Others were pushed out by the pressure behind. In other instance two girls came down from the ninth story in each other’s arms. Others were seen embracing and kissing each other before making the final leap” – Duchez, page 667.
The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond the sixth floor. Nets and blankets were used in an effort to save as many lives as possible, but they broke under the weight of three or four bodies falling into them at the same time. Some of the people manage to save themselves by going up on the roof of the building or by leaping on the roof of the elevator. “One girl, after falling six stories, was rescued from a large hook beside a window at the third story, where she was hanging by her clothes, face downward” ” – Duchez, page 667. By the time the fire was over, 146 of the 500 employees had died: 123 young women and 23 men. Many of the victims were identified only because of jewelries which were found on skeleton fingers, necks and ears, as the bodies were completely burnt making it impossible to be recognize. The survivors were left to live and relive those agonizing moments.
The mental and physical agony resulting from this terrible murder of industrial slaves will stretch out into the years. The victims and their families, the people passing by who witnessed the desperate leaps from ninth floor windows and the City of New York will never be the same.
largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York, causing the death of 146 garment workers who either died trapped behind locked fire exits or jumped to their deaths. It was the worst workplace disaster in New York City until September 11th, 2001. The tragedy led to fundamental health and safety reforms in New York City and the US and helped the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers in that industry.
The Story of the Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was New York’s largest manufacturer of blouses. Owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, the sweatshop occupied the eight, ninth and tenth floors of the ten-story Asch building in New York City at 23-29 Washington Place, the northern corner of Washington Square East. The company employed approximately 500 workers, most of them young immigrants girls and young women, Russian/ Jewish and Italian, in their teens and early 20’s, who worked 70 or more hours per week, in a overcrowded, dimly lit rooms, without overtime pay and earned about $6 per week – a less than living wage.
On the Saturday of March 25th, 1911, only 5 minutes before the slaves of the sewing machines would have hurried to their homes, a fire began on the eighth floor, possibly sparked by a lit match or a cigarette or because of faulty electrical wiring. Because of the highly inflammable materials that were used in the clothes industry, in ten minutes the three floors were all on fire. Most of the workers who were alerted on the tenth and eighth floors were able to evacuate. However, the warning about the fire did not reach the ninth floor on time. The ninth floor had only two doors leading out. One stairwell was already filling with smoke and flames by the time the employees realized the building was on fire. The other door had been locked to prevent workers from stealing materials or taking breaks and to keep out union organizers.
The single exterior fire escape, a poorly-anchored iron structure, soon twisted and collapsed under the weight of people trying to escape. The elevator also stopped working, cutting off that means of escape, partly because the panicked workers tried to save themselves by jumping on the roof of the elevator. Finding the doors locked, the girls rushed to the windows and jumped to the pavement nine floors below, much to the horror of the large crowd of bystanders gathering on the street level. “Others were pushed out by the pressure behind. In other instance two girls came down from the ninth story in each other’s arms. Others were seen embracing and kissing each other before making the final leap” – Duchez, page 667.
The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them. The fire department arrived quickly but was unable to stop the flames, as there were no ladders available that could reach beyond the sixth floor. Nets and blankets were used in an effort to save as many lives as possible, but they broke under the weight of three or four bodies falling into them at the same time. Some of the people manage to save themselves by going up on the roof of the building or by leaping on the roof of the elevator. “One girl, after falling six stories, was rescued from a large hook beside a window at the third story, where she was hanging by her clothes, face downward” ” – Duchez, page 667. By the time the fire was over, 146 of the 500 employees had died: 123 young women and 23 men. Many of the victims were identified only because of jewelries which were found on skeleton fingers, necks and ears, as the bodies were completely burnt making it impossible to be recognize. The survivors were left to live and relive those agonizing moments.
The mental and physical agony resulting from this terrible murder of industrial slaves will stretch out into the years. The victims and their families, the people passing by who witnessed the desperate leaps from ninth floor windows and the City of New York will never be the same.
On The Road
On the Road was written in three weeks, while Kerouac lived with Joan Haverty, his second wife, at 454 West 20th Street in Manhattan. Kerouac typed the manuscript on what he called "the scroll": a continuous, one hundred twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper sheets that he cut to size and taped together.The roll was typed single-spaced, without margins or paragraph breaks. Contrary to rumor, Kerouac said he used no stimulants during the brief but productive writing session, other than coffee.
Recently, it was discovered that Kerouac first started writing On the Road in French, a language in which he also wrote two unpublished novels. These writings are in dialectal Quebec French, and predate by a decade the first novels of Michel Tremblay.
"The scroll" still exists — it was bought in 2001, by Jim Irsay (Indianapolis Colts football team owner), for $2.4 million, and is available for public viewing. The scroll was displayed in sections at Indiana University's Lilly Library in mid-2003, and, in January 2004, the roll started a thirteen-stop, four-year national tour of museums and libraries, starting at the Orange County History Center in Orlando, Florida. From January through March 2006, it was at the San Francisco Public Library with the first 30 feet unrolled. It spent three months at the New York Public Library in 2007, and in the spring of 2008 will be at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin. The scroll will travel next to Columbia College Chicago in the fall of 2008.
The legend of how Kerouac wrote On the Road excludes the tedious organization and preparation preceding the creative explosion. Kerouac carried small notebooks, in which much of the text was written as the eventful seven-year span of road trips unfurled. He furthermore revised the scroll's text several times before Malcolm Cowley, of Viking Press, agreed to publish it. Besides the differences in formatting, the original scroll manuscript contained real names and was longer than the published novel. Kerouac deleted sections (including some sexual depictions deemed pornographic in 1957) and added smaller literary passages. Viking Press released a slightly edited version of the original manuscript on 16 August 2007 titled On the Road: The Original Scroll corresponding with the 50th anniversary of original publication. This version has been transcribed and edited by English academic and novelist, Dr Howard Cunnell. As well as containing material that was excised from the original draft due to its explicit nature the scroll version also uses the real names of the protagonists, so Dean Moriarty becomes Neal Cassady and Carlo Marx becomes Allen Ginsberg etc.
As of 2006, the book is slated for cinematic adaptation as On the Road to be directed by Walter Salles.
Fales Library
The Fales Library & Special Collections serves as the repository for special collections materials in the Elmer Bobst Library at New York University and is committed to preserving the artistic expression of relevant cultural movements in their original formats, including books, manuscripts, archives, and other media. Fales complements the collection policies in the general stacks by supplying primary resources for scholarly research and by prospectively collecting works that will become important historical evidence, documenting the changes in expressive culture.
The Downtown Collection, which began in 1993, is such an attempt to document the downtown arts scene that evolved in SoHo and the Lower East Side during the 1970's through the early 1990's. The movement, taken as a whole, was very diverse, and its output includes literature, music, theater, performance, film, activism, dance, photography, video, and original art. The goal of the Downtown Collection is to comprehensively collect the full range of artistic practices and outputs, regardless of format. . This research collection, built on a documentary strategy, provides primary resources for scholars who are interested in the role of literature and the printed word-but also its necessary intersection with other forms of artistic expression-in the history and culture of downtown New York. Its goal is to document the downtown community, which NYU is associated with in common thought.
The Downtown Collection, which began in 1993, is such an attempt to document the downtown arts scene that evolved in SoHo and the Lower East Side during the 1970's through the early 1990's. The movement, taken as a whole, was very diverse, and its output includes literature, music, theater, performance, film, activism, dance, photography, video, and original art. The goal of the Downtown Collection is to comprehensively collect the full range of artistic practices and outputs, regardless of format. . This research collection, built on a documentary strategy, provides primary resources for scholars who are interested in the role of literature and the printed word-but also its necessary intersection with other forms of artistic expression-in the history and culture of downtown New York. Its goal is to document the downtown community, which NYU is associated with in common thought.
New York Public Library
In our visit to the NY Public Library we got the chance to see the Jack Kerouac Exhibition. Below i will talk a little bit about this visit and about what i have seen.
Diaries, manuscripts, snapshots, and personal items of Jack Kerouac, the visionary author whose pioneering work helped to established the Beat Movement in the United States, were on display in Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road, an exhibition on view at The New York Public Library. The exhibition coincided with the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's landmark novel, "On the Road", which has captured the imagination of several generations and established its author as a major figure in American literature. The exhibition was drawn almost exclusively from the contents of the Jack Kerouac Archive, housed in the Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, and displayed many unpublished Kerouac materials as well as typescript and manuscript drafts of On the Road. A major highlight of the exhibition was the famous "scroll" typescript, on loan from James Irsay, owner of the National Football League's Indianapolis Colts, of which the first sixty feet was unrolled in a specially-designed set of interlocking display cases.
Diaries, manuscripts, snapshots, and personal items of Jack Kerouac, the visionary author whose pioneering work helped to established the Beat Movement in the United States, were on display in Beatific Soul: Jack Kerouac on the Road, an exhibition on view at The New York Public Library. The exhibition coincided with the 50th anniversary of Kerouac's landmark novel, "On the Road", which has captured the imagination of several generations and established its author as a major figure in American literature. The exhibition was drawn almost exclusively from the contents of the Jack Kerouac Archive, housed in the Library's Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, and displayed many unpublished Kerouac materials as well as typescript and manuscript drafts of On the Road. A major highlight of the exhibition was the famous "scroll" typescript, on loan from James Irsay, owner of the National Football League's Indianapolis Colts, of which the first sixty feet was unrolled in a specially-designed set of interlocking display cases.
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