Path: news.nzbot.com!not-for-mail
From: elag <elag@cloud9.net>
Newsgroups: alt.surrealism
Subject: site for sore feet
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 03:09:33 -0400
Organization: Plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose
Message-ID: <3F45C1A8.D6486212@cloud9.net>
Reply-To: elag@cloud9.net
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 (Macintosh; U; PPC)
X-Accept-Language: en
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To: abuse@supernews.com
Lines: 30
Xref: news.nzbot.com alt.surrealism:494
Today I saw a tree stump on Avenue B, just outside Tompkins Square,
which was studded with small plaques. They turned out to be marking the
growth rings according to the year. Each one commemorated events in
counter cultural history, such as:
1940 - death of the Anarchist, Emma Goldman
1955 - death of jazz saxophonist Charlie "Bird" Parker (he lived across
the street)
1988 - the "police riots" (I was there)
1991 - "tent city" inhabited by the homeless destroyed by police and the
park closed for 2 years
2003 - cutting down of this American Elm
Surprisingly there are a couple of American Elms still thriving w/in the
park. Most of them were wiped out by Dutch Elm disease years ago, and
they're still an endangered species.
A bit of history:
In January 1874 as unemployed workers demonstrated in Tompkins Square
Park, a detachment of mounted police charged into the crowd, beating
men, women and children indiscriminately with billy clubs and leaving
hundreds of casualties in their wake. Commented Abram Duryee, the
Commissioner of Police: "It was the most glorious sight I ever saw..."
Ah, well... another piece of the neighborhood gone...
|
| Follow-ups: | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
|