Click here for a video provided by the Foundry Theatre.

Karen will go on this tour next Saturday. Her comments will probably add more to the conversation.

But, Karen and I will get our own tour at some point in the near future given by John Gilstrap, Sr., a retired FDNY Captain.  I bumped into John Sr. at Andrea and John’s house on 121^st Street when I stopped by after my theater adventure. Once I got started telling John Sr about my afternoon on a bus in the South Bronx he reminded me that he had spent most of his career in the fire department  in a station that covered the exact territory in the South Bronx, Mott Haven and Hunts Point, that was the subject of this theater piece.

Unlike the rules of no photography during the theater bus tour, I will get to take pictures from Captain John’s car. And, I think that we will take digital recorder along…….

Keep an eye out here for more on the South Bronx as suggested by the view of a fireman who watched the South Bronx burn down, rebuild, burn down, and rebuild during his tenure.

1. You can read Charles Isherwood’s review in the New York Times here or a review by  JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ AND NICOLE CARTER in the Daily News

June 15, 2009

OUR TOWNS

Two Rebirths, Miraculous but Unfinished

All week long, the grand flotilla, led by a replica of Henry Hudson’s Half Moon, has made its way up the river. It sailed under the Rip Van Winkle Bridge here Thursday afternoon, marking the anniversary of the ship’s voyage 400 years ago.

Part history lesson, part spectacle, part celebration, Hudson 400 in many ways marks a fragile, incomplete miracle — the way the river, a foul industrial cesspool just three decades ago, has been brought back to life.

But if the river, in large part, has been reclaimed, the future of the towns along it is a more complicated business. And few places reflect those complications more than Hudson, about 100 miles north of New York City. Once a raucous industrial city spewing pollutants into the river, then a boarded-up postindustrial corpse, now, like the river, it’s both a marvel of reclamation and a problematic unfinished story.

Here is a link to the whole article in PDF download format.

The observations strike us as on target concerning the situation with jobs and the local population. There definitely are several realities at play in Hudson. Small stages make the contrasts more easily visible.

There have already been massive attacks against whole countries with successful breakdowns that lasted for hours and days. Ukraine, Lithuania, and Georgia were targets over the last year. My memory is that suspicions fell to the Russian government because the attacks, in these cases massive Denial of Service assaults, appeared to originate from within Russia.

At any rate, add this to your terror worries.