Nyla stopped by with Mom last weekend. She had a sculpture kit from Spottydog in hand. After several hours she had produced this sculpture which she left behind by mistake. I took a few photos. Karen contributed the ones of the artist in action.
Karen and I got off to an earlier than usual departure from Hudson yesterday and made it into Harlem by 11 am. After some pauses to chase the various children around, we went off to The Museum of the City of NY at 103rd and 5th Ave. It was a warm day so we had a great walk from 121st to the museum, though our winter coats soon became a burden.
At the museum, the Joel Meyerowitz series: LEGACY: THE PRESERVATION OF WILDERNESS IN NEW YORK CITY PARKS (Oct 9 through Mar 21) was good fun. The tapestry size reproductions hanging in the entrance hall are a great reflection of Meyerowitz’s use of a large format camera and the inkjet images on Tyvek. A couple of the images of large trees are worth a pause. Overall, the photography is at times a bit worn out in its approach to framing and selection of topics. Landscapes are such a thoroughly worked over topic that it is hard not to fall into patterns of visualization that produce images that seem a bit predictable if not trite. Nevertheless, I also learned that park space accounts for over 25% of the land area of NYC. Made me think of making more of an effort to get beyond my usual ventures to Marcus Garvey park (aka Mt. Morris Park) and Central Park. Here is a link to the official website of NYC parks where you can explore more about the city’s 1,700 parks.
You could hear the chuckles and laughter at our next exhibit stop well before entering, CHARLES ADDAMS’S NEW YORK (Mar 4 through May 16). But, for me the highlight of our visit was the 26 minute video installation, TIMESCAPES: A MULTIMEDIA PORTRAIT OF NEW YORK (Ongoing), a multimedia portrait of New York City. This is a terrific video history of the development of NYC from 1609 to the last few years. For example, NY shippers innovated regularly scheduled “packet” ships that sailed to Europe and back. This greatly increased the flow of goods and people over the previous approach of a ship only sailing when it was full.
After a bit we walked down to the Asia Society at 70th and Park Ave to see artifacts from Vietnam, Arts of Ancient Viet Nam: From River Plain to Open Sea through May 2, 2010. Glad to have gone and a good reminder of how slight my knowledge of the prt of the world. though I continue to be surprised that human history is quite literally still being uncovered. Some of the artifacts on display had only been unearthed in the last ten years.
We rounded out our day of activities with a basketball game, the championship game for a league that Noah plays in. The game was held at PS 6. The whole family was in attendance, Nyla, Mom and Dad and two sets of grandparents. Despite vigorous coaching from the stands, Noah’s team was not quite up to the challenge. They lost. But, I was really impressed with the level of play. I am certain that I have never seen organized basketball for this age. I was expecting more of something like swarm soccer. One of the little side drama was the presence of Noah’s best friend, Ben Gross, on the opposing team. As you can tell from the picture, no egos seem to have been shattered nor over-inflated.
Some may be bemused, others amused, and some surely stunned. Mr. Wonderful was elected to the Board of Directors of the local library in January. Now, this bit of news has found its way into the local bleat The Register Star. You may be wondering why your author did not just link to this story? Well, The Register Star does not put all of its news on its website. Kind of strange.
On a recent visit to the relos in NJ we were gifted with part of their surplus garlic. They shop at Costco and buy in bulk. In this case, we got stuck with seven heads (bulbs, perhaps depending on your dialect) of garlic. These hung around for a couple of weeks until Karen and I finally got to reducing them to soup (we do have one head leftover). We cooked it up tonight. Not bad. But, I think that a little aging will improve it and I want to squeeze some lime over it (Karen and I recall some garlic soup we made a decade or so back that included this) when we next sit down.
Meanwhile, I have to finish up this posting soon. The computer may fog over terminally from garlic breath.
Thanks Ed and Meredith.
Karen and I went on a one of our mid-week jaunts to Albany and the NYS Museum. The museum is quite large with more than one visit’s worth of exhibitions about NY and its history. As a longtime New Englander with a somewhat Boston-centric view of history, it is obvious that I need to do a bit of work on the Dutch phase of colonial NY.
Along the way towards the exit, we came on an exhibit about logging in the Adirondacks. This included some samples of saw blades. I am not sure when carbide inserts came into use, but there was one saw with carbide inserts manufactured by Simonds on display (see image to left). 
This is a familiar name to the Fitchburg world of my youth. My father did business with Simonds Saw & Steel when he was President of Fitchburg Machine and Screen Plate Co.. He had a large lathe with a faceplate that was seven to eight feet in diameter on which circular saw blanks were cut. The pictured saw was doubtlessly not cut on this machine since it is only four feet in diameter or so.
On searching for links to Simonds Saw & Steel discovered that the company not only still exists as Simonds International but also has a history that I knew nothing of. Namely, there was a specialty steel plant in Lockport, NY (north-northeast of Buffalo, NY) established in 1911. There were a number of other plants in the US and Canada, but this plant became involved in the post-WWII development of nuclear munitions.
Here is a photo of production at the Lockport plant and notes from the Lockport-NY.com website at this URL (http://www.lockport-ny.com/Pictures/views13.htm). I reproduce it here because the website appears to be closing down.
Lou’s Views
….Lockport’s Old Photo Album
At one time Simonds Saw & Steel Company employed about 900 workers in its Ohio Street complex in Lockport. The steel and metal plant was in operation from 1910 through 1978. Its facilities were sold out to Guterl Special Steel Corp of Pittsburgh, PA in 1978 and that company went into bankruptcy in 1982. The Lockport plant closed in 1983. A segment of the company’s property (non-contaminated with hazardous waste) was purchased by Allegheny Ludlum (with financing backed by Niagara County IDA bonds) in 1984 for $9.5-million at a bankruptcy sale. Operations continue there today with employment estimated at under 100. Allegheny melts and refines “specialty metals.”
The picture at the left was of the steel operation at Simonds in its heyday.
The Simonds family started the business in 1910 making cutting devices such as saws and knives. It gradually moved into specialty steel production.
From 1948 to about 1956 the company did work for the United States government fabricating about 35-million pounds of uranium and about 40,000 pounds of thorium—both radioactive metals. The work was extremely profitable for the Simonds operation and much of the details were conveniently covered in secrecy for “national security considerations.” But the workers knew of the types of material they were working with and that it had “some degree” of radioactivity. Current reports indicate workers will never informed of the level of radioactivity or of the dangers of chronic exposure. Nor were they adequately protected, reports say, from the dust generated by the operation.
The company didn’t disclose publicly that waste from the operation was being dumped on site. It wasn’t until many years after the Simmonds family sold their stock (in 1965) and bailed out that the liabilities left behind became known.
As with many hazardous waste sites there have been enough property transfers along the line to make the question of payment for cleanup a legal matter. The Simmonds family appears to be fairly well insulated from current claims on their collective fortunes to help pay for the cleanup. The Orange County investment company (Shelter Rock Investors Corp) which bought the Simmond stock and operated the company until its sale to Guterl, also appears to have sheltered itself from paying for cleanup. With Guterl bankrupt, that appears to mean that the taxpayers of Lockport, New York State, or the United States are left holding the bag —- estimated to cost millions of dollars. (9/9)
As usual, the rich get richer and, in this case, also stay healthier.
There is also a website devoted to the residual pollution from this plant, Simonds Saw & Steel, The US Atomic Weapons Program, and the Myth of “Practically Innocuous” Radiation.
