Category Archives: Uncategorized
A Widow’s Mite: Virginia Penny and the Struggle for Equal Employment and Pay for Women in the USA in the Late 19th Century
Well-known social reformers of many a stripe are interred in Green-Wood Cemetery. Single Taxer Henry George, anti-slavery leader Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, (known in his time as The Great Divine for his oratory and inspirational skills), and Henry Bergh, founder of the ASPCA and The New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children […]
In Charles Yerkes’ Corrupt Footsteps: The Trilogy of Desire, Philadelphia Version: 2016
Walking down Broadway a few weeks ago, my cell-phone rang, and despite the caller’s number being unknown to me, and suspecting a sales call of some sort, I answered and was rewarded in spades. Visions of time-share re-purchasers and other cons jumped to mind, and I was far but not so far from wrong. An […]
Also posted in The Trilogy of Desire
The Measure of a Man
NOTE TO READERS,: THERE ARE MANY IMAGES IN THIS PIECE THAT DO NOT ALIGN PROPERLY IF YOU ARE LOOKING AT IT ON A CELL PHONE, USE YOUR LAPTOP TO AVOID LONG BLANK INSTERSTICES. I’VE LABORED A LOT TO ELIMINATE THIS PROBLEM BUT IT REMAINS PESKY:-( The size of a funeral is the measure of a […]
A Review of “East in Eden: William Niblo and His Pleasure Garden of Yore”
From New York Irish History Volume 28 (2014), released November, 2015: East in Eden, William Niblo & His Pleasure Garden of Yore by Benjamin Feldman (The Green-Wood Historic Fund in association with New York Wanderer Press, 2014) William Niblo (1790–1878), an Irish immigrant who amassed an entertainment and real estate empire in New York City […]
Also posted in William Niblo biography
All that remains….
Embarked on another difficult voyage, I thought I finally spied land from afar, in a quest to repatriate to its rightful heir yet another found object, in this case a trove, rescued from the trash, of family pictures and memorabilia. I’ve searched for Kathy Denton Saville for a good four years, my only clues […]
Also posted in Found Objects
The Trilogy of Desire…
Most of us know Theodore Dreiser as the author of An American Tragedy, Sister Carrie, and Jennie Gerhardt, but in his lifetime, Dreiser was known for much more. A master story teller and cultural historian, Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire has fallen off the cliff of popular consciousness, relegated to the academic world. Even more obscure […]
Also posted in Lost New York
The Way of All Flesh
America’s Centennnial Year: 1876 was a time of booming fortunes, and New York was bursting with post-Reconstruction fervor, the metropolis burgeoning, robber barons feeling their oats. Thriving since the Civil War’s onset as a manufacturer’s paradise, the New York region’s many tentacled rail system and giant natural harbor fostered a cornucopia for commerce of all sorts. […]
Also posted in A Walker in the City: Flaneur Pieces
FLOURISH…
FLOURISH Since my teenage years I’ve been an early and baroque music devotee, attending sacred music at New York’s many churches I’ve thrilled to organ recitals in St. John the Divine’s vast sanctuary where the pipes envelope one with overwhelming sounds, inhaled Monteverdi and Rameau and Scarlatti and Schutz with the incense at Smokey Mary’s […]
Also posted in A Walker in the City: Flaneur Pieces, Personal Politics
Tagged Andrew Appel, harpsichord, Wanda Landowska
The Circus is coming to Town !!!!
Come one, Come ALL ! You musn’t miss the comprehensive exhibit at the Bard Graduate Center ! Circus and the City: New York, 1793-2010 September 21, 2012 – February 3, 2013 http://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/gallery-at-bgc/main-gallery.html Matt Wittman has curated a fantastic assemblage of ephemera and artifacts illustrating the role of circus in New York for over two centuries. […]
Also posted in Talks & Events
