As is typical, I am working on Halloween- this day I will be covering two of our sites, having started at 4PM. For some reason, perhaps the fact that the weather was gorgeous, nobody wanted to leave. We even had one lady drive in through our exit gate five minutes before closing time, 5PM, looking to 'look around'. She was a nice lady, but she really needed to leave and come back another day. It was funny, though, as I was hinting to her that she needed to go, she'd pick up on a thread of our conversation and try to spin our conversation out a little longer, all the while telling me she needed to be back in Manhattan by six-thirty. She was a good conversationalist, being well-versed in literature, but her timing was pretty bad. I suggested that she return over the weekend and visit the site when we are actually open.
I will be leaving the first site soon, and traveling to another site to close things up after the last night of our Fall fundraiser. It being Halloween night, things won't be too hectic- most of the die-hard Halloween fans will be in Manhattan for the big parade, or attending house parties.
At any rate, how about some endearingly awful 'outsider art'? The Shaggs were three teenage sisters whose father, prompted by a 'prediction' by a palm reader that his daughters would form a popular musical group, browbeat them into forming a band, despite their lack of musical talent. While not achieving commercial success in their first attempt at forming a band, they did gain a certain cult status later on. Here's the seasonally appropriate It's Halloween:
It's also pretty bad... but fascinating nonetheless. Happy Halloween, all!
Wednesday, October 31, 2018
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Bringing Together Horror Greats
In the runup to Halloween, I have been watching a classic horror movie every night (oddly enough, watching a supernatural thriller is good escapism from the real world horrors of the day). I recently watched The Haunted Palace, produced and directed by King of the B Movies Roger Corman, a mad genius who could crank out a movie in three weeks for a couple of hundred thousand dollars. Corman had directed a run of successful horror movies adapted from short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, widely considered the greatest horror author of all time, at least here in the United States. Corman wanted to attempt something different, so he hit on adapting The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, a posthumously published novella by H.P. Lovecraft. The management at American International Pictures insisted on slapping an Edgar Allan Poe title on the film, however, as Lovecraft was relatively unknown at the time, so it was entitled The Haunted Palace and Vincent Price recited lines from the poem to give a patina of Poe-etry to the proceedings. The screenplay of the movie was written by Charles Beaumont, a prolific science fiction and horror author who wrote numerous Twilight Zone episodes, but is largely forgotten today- his precipitous neurological decline and death at the age of thirty-eight constitutes a horror story in and of itself. Penguin Books has recently released an anthology of Beaumont's stories, Perchance to Dream, which will hopefully pull this interesting writer back from obscurity. Beaumont's script adapts The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, but also admixes an unsavory element from Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror to augment the rather bare-bones motivation of Lovecraft's sinister warlock. Beaumont's script also moves the action of the novella from the city of Providence to Lovecraft's fictitious town of Arkham, probably due to budgetary constraints.
Lovecraft's villain, Charles Dexter Ward's ancestor Joseph Curwen, while engaging in necromancy by calling up the remains of the dead using their 'essential saltes', really has a vague motivation... he and two other necromancers, based in Europe, are calling up dead persons of renown in order to interrogate them to gain more knowledge and power.
What these horrible creatures—and Charles Ward as well—were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world’s wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together.
He attributes the alchemical means by which this is accomplished to Borellus:
“The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust where into his Bodie has been incinerated.”
John Bellairs parodied this in The Face in the Frost, a particular favorite of mine:
In the meantime, he fribbled away the day with mindless tasks like cleaning the ash pit of the fireplace and raising the ghosts of flowers. From a square bottle marked "Essential Salts," Prospero poured a few green crystals into a white ceramic dish; when he had mumbled some words over the bowl, a pink and green cloud began to ascend from the shimmering translucent pebbles.
Before long, a definite shape appeared.
"Carnations," said the wizard disgustedly. "Phooey."
Of course, raising dead humans poses a greater risk than raising flowers, even flowers unsought for:
Certainely, there was Noth’g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais’d upp from What he cou’d gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss’g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak’g or yr Copy’g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou’d have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak’g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of ——, and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.
Beaumont's screenplay dispenses with all of the alchemical bafflegab and substitutes for it a more traditional 'village girls in peril' theme, making it more accessible to the typical audience member.
The film is a great collaboration between horror greats- Lovecraft, Poe, Corman, Beaumont, and Price. Add in a sympathetic portrayal of Ms Ward, a woman nonplussed by the terrible transformation of her formerly loving husband, by the luminously gorgeous Debra Paget, in her last film role before retiring from the big screen, and you have a fun, gruesome little horror gem. It is also the first film adaptation of a Lovecraft story. Vincent Price, years later, recorded an introduction to the film for Iowa public television:
In The Haunted Palace, you get twice the Price- with the horror maven playing both the benevolent Charles Dexter Ward and the monstrous Joseph Curwen. In his introduction to the film, Price notes that his own career parallels his performances in the film... the kindly, urbane Vincent Price ably playing every stripe of villain. It is a perfect spooky entertainment for the Halloween season.
Lovecraft's villain, Charles Dexter Ward's ancestor Joseph Curwen, while engaging in necromancy by calling up the remains of the dead using their 'essential saltes', really has a vague motivation... he and two other necromancers, based in Europe, are calling up dead persons of renown in order to interrogate them to gain more knowledge and power.
What these horrible creatures—and Charles Ward as well—were doing or trying to do seemed fairly clear from their letters and from every bit of light both old and new which had filtered in upon the case. They were robbing the tombs of all the ages, including those of the world’s wisest and greatest men, in the hope of recovering from the bygone ashes some vestige of the consciousness and lore which had once animated and informed them.
A hideous traffick was going on among these nightmare ghouls, whereby illustrious bones were bartered with the calm calculativeness of schoolboys swapping books; and from what was extorted from this centuried dust there was anticipated a power and a wisdom beyond anything which the cosmos had ever seen concentrated in one man or group. They had found unholy ways to keep their brains alive, either in the same body or different bodies; and had evidently achieved a way of tapping the consciousness of the dead whom they gathered together.
He attributes the alchemical means by which this is accomplished to Borellus:
“The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust where into his Bodie has been incinerated.”
John Bellairs parodied this in The Face in the Frost, a particular favorite of mine:
In the meantime, he fribbled away the day with mindless tasks like cleaning the ash pit of the fireplace and raising the ghosts of flowers. From a square bottle marked "Essential Salts," Prospero poured a few green crystals into a white ceramic dish; when he had mumbled some words over the bowl, a pink and green cloud began to ascend from the shimmering translucent pebbles.
Before long, a definite shape appeared.
"Carnations," said the wizard disgustedly. "Phooey."
Of course, raising dead humans poses a greater risk than raising flowers, even flowers unsought for:
Certainely, there was Noth’g butt ye liveliest Awfulness in that which H. rais’d upp from What he cou’d gather onlie a part of. What you sente, did not Worke, whether because of Any Thing miss’g, or because ye Wordes were not Righte from my Speak’g or yr Copy’g. I alone am at a Loss. I have not ye Chymicall art to followe Borellus, and owne my Self confounded by ye VII. Booke of ye Necronomicon that you recommende. But I wou’d have you Observe what was tolde to us aboute tak’g Care whom to calle up, for you are Sensible what Mr. Mather writ in ye Magnalia of ——, and can judge how truely that Horrendous thing is reported. I say to you againe, doe not call up Any that you can not put downe; by the Which I meane, Any that can in Turne call up somewhat against you, whereby your Powerfullest Devices may not be of use. Ask of the Lesser, lest the Greater shall not wish to Answer, and shall commande more than you.
Beaumont's screenplay dispenses with all of the alchemical bafflegab and substitutes for it a more traditional 'village girls in peril' theme, making it more accessible to the typical audience member.
The film is a great collaboration between horror greats- Lovecraft, Poe, Corman, Beaumont, and Price. Add in a sympathetic portrayal of Ms Ward, a woman nonplussed by the terrible transformation of her formerly loving husband, by the luminously gorgeous Debra Paget, in her last film role before retiring from the big screen, and you have a fun, gruesome little horror gem. It is also the first film adaptation of a Lovecraft story. Vincent Price, years later, recorded an introduction to the film for Iowa public television:
In The Haunted Palace, you get twice the Price- with the horror maven playing both the benevolent Charles Dexter Ward and the monstrous Joseph Curwen. In his introduction to the film, Price notes that his own career parallels his performances in the film... the kindly, urbane Vincent Price ably playing every stripe of villain. It is a perfect spooky entertainment for the Halloween season.
Monday, October 29, 2018
Yelling 'Fire' in a Crowded Theater? Not Exactly
It's been a weird day... I worked until about 6AM, then went home for a long nap, having to get up at 2PM to return to work. At work, I spoke to two of my Jewish friends and co-workers, who both have relatives who are congregants at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, none of whom were harmed, baruch hashem. I was then reminded that the brother of another friend of mine, who had moved to Pittsburgh for grad school decades ago and decided to stay, was a congregant at the synagogue. He was not present for the massacre. I imagine that, if I were to poll my Jewish friends here in New York, that most of them would know congregants of the synagogue in Squirrel Hill.
After this sobering rundown on the situation of my friends' friends and loved ones, I began to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude by checking out the downfall and probable demise of the Gab.ai platform, which I have been fascinated, and repelled, by for the past year. From its inception, the social networking site has been a haven for trolls and neo-nazis, misogynists and racists... oh my! Their debut on the world stage occurred this past weekend when the synagogue shooter made a cryptic announcement that he was 'going in'. Since the massacre, the Gab spokescreeps have been overactive on Twitter, oddly enough, with a litany of whinging and self-righteous twaddle. In one particularly ludicrous assertion, the Gab CEO claimed to have been 'proactive' regarding the shooter, yet this was after the massacre.
The usual cliche for describing the limits of free speech is yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater, but in this instance, the person is yelling 'burn down the theater with those people inside'.
That being said, I believe that the efforts to deplatform Gab are not really the answer- the entire right-wing media apparatus has been pushing the 'caravan' narrative that pushed the shooter over the edge, and Gab is just small potatoes compared to Fox, Sinclair, and the like.
Besides reading up on the Gab saga, I have been, in the runup to Halloween, been watching classic B horror movies, particularly those starring Bastard fave Vincent Price. Poking around the t00bz, I have found two great PSAs by Vincent Price regarding bigotry, the first from 1947:
The second from 1950:
For a guy who relished playing villains, he sure was a good man.
After this sobering rundown on the situation of my friends' friends and loved ones, I began to indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude by checking out the downfall and probable demise of the Gab.ai platform, which I have been fascinated, and repelled, by for the past year. From its inception, the social networking site has been a haven for trolls and neo-nazis, misogynists and racists... oh my! Their debut on the world stage occurred this past weekend when the synagogue shooter made a cryptic announcement that he was 'going in'. Since the massacre, the Gab spokescreeps have been overactive on Twitter, oddly enough, with a litany of whinging and self-righteous twaddle. In one particularly ludicrous assertion, the Gab CEO claimed to have been 'proactive' regarding the shooter, yet this was after the massacre.
The usual cliche for describing the limits of free speech is yelling 'fire' in a crowded theater, but in this instance, the person is yelling 'burn down the theater with those people inside'.
That being said, I believe that the efforts to deplatform Gab are not really the answer- the entire right-wing media apparatus has been pushing the 'caravan' narrative that pushed the shooter over the edge, and Gab is just small potatoes compared to Fox, Sinclair, and the like.
Besides reading up on the Gab saga, I have been, in the runup to Halloween, been watching classic B horror movies, particularly those starring Bastard fave Vincent Price. Poking around the t00bz, I have found two great PSAs by Vincent Price regarding bigotry, the first from 1947:
The second from 1950:
For a guy who relished playing villains, he sure was a good man.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Every Little Thing He Does Is MAGA, Ick!
After a terrible week ending on a truly horrific note, I think I need a little mood lightener... Via Tengrain, we have the minor kerfuffle of Trump dropping his umbrella while boarding Air Force One, and leaving it on the stairway. While most of us 'normies' would interpret this as laziness on Dotard's part, I am sure that the QAnon crowd is going to interpret it as a portent. Hell, these people interpret misspellings in Trump's tweets as coded messages (the links to the QAnon subreddit are gone, as the subreddit was nuked).
Trump dropping an umbrella might be interpreted as meaning there's no shelter from 'the coming storm', the central trope of QAnon. Occam's Razor, the proposition that the least speculative explanation to a phenomenon should be considered the correct one, is a cornerstone of mainstream perception of the universe, but the QAnon crowd always goes for the most convoluted explanation... call it Jone's Gluegun, or something.
Laziness or a coded message to the faithful on the eve of the midterms?
Post title taken from this classic by that Stang feller and they boys:
It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting indicted for a vague international conspiracy.
Trump dropping an umbrella might be interpreted as meaning there's no shelter from 'the coming storm', the central trope of QAnon. Occam's Razor, the proposition that the least speculative explanation to a phenomenon should be considered the correct one, is a cornerstone of mainstream perception of the universe, but the QAnon crowd always goes for the most convoluted explanation... call it Jone's Gluegun, or something.
Laziness or a coded message to the faithful on the eve of the midterms?
Post title taken from this classic by that Stang feller and they boys:
It's a big enough umbrella, but it's always me that ends up getting indicted for a vague international conspiracy.
Saturday, October 27, 2018
Terror in a Safe Space
This morning, as I was leaving work, I figured that I would be posting about the capture of the MAGAbomber, but upon waking up this afternoon, I learned of the mass shooting in a Pittsburgh synagogue which resulted in the death of eleven persons.
I have not been in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in many years- the first and last time I was there was when I helped a high school friend of mine move into an apartment when he started his MFA program in lighting design at Carnegie Mellon University. It was a nice place to visit, but my trip was a whirlwind- I was tasked with returning the rental van my friend used to move his worldly possessions, so there was no time for lollygagging.
Demographically, Squirrel Hill's population is forty percent Jewish, with the neighborhood housing one-third of Pittsburgh's Jewish population, which has been in the neighborhood for a century. I can think of no other place, besides neighborhoods in NYC and LA, in which Jewish Americans felt more secure in their lives, their faith, their culture. This attack was perpetrated by a deranged bigot who was convinced that the Central American migrant movement trumped up by right wing media outlets is a Jewish plot to undermine 'white America'. It was a textbook case of terrorism, an attack designed to make the Jewish population of the United States feel unsafe no matter where they are- if a massacre can happen in Squirrel Hill, a haven for Jewish people and a diverse college town, a massacre could happen anywhere. The right-wing media, including such mega-corporations as Fox, have been pushing the narrative of an invasion caravan for the better part of a month, so they, and Trump, bear some culpability in the radicalization of the shooter.
This massacre has been a particularly horrific coda to a terrible week, and I sincerely hope that my Jewish friends stay safe. The bigots are a small percentage of the population, and they WILL LOSE.
If there's one ray of sunshine in all of this darkness, it's that the MAGAbomber case was broken because the jerk left a latent fingerprint on a bomb meant to harm Maxine Waters- the lady can kick right-wing ass without even breaking a sweat. In a week as terrible as this, any bit of good news is precious.
I have not been in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh in many years- the first and last time I was there was when I helped a high school friend of mine move into an apartment when he started his MFA program in lighting design at Carnegie Mellon University. It was a nice place to visit, but my trip was a whirlwind- I was tasked with returning the rental van my friend used to move his worldly possessions, so there was no time for lollygagging.
Demographically, Squirrel Hill's population is forty percent Jewish, with the neighborhood housing one-third of Pittsburgh's Jewish population, which has been in the neighborhood for a century. I can think of no other place, besides neighborhoods in NYC and LA, in which Jewish Americans felt more secure in their lives, their faith, their culture. This attack was perpetrated by a deranged bigot who was convinced that the Central American migrant movement trumped up by right wing media outlets is a Jewish plot to undermine 'white America'. It was a textbook case of terrorism, an attack designed to make the Jewish population of the United States feel unsafe no matter where they are- if a massacre can happen in Squirrel Hill, a haven for Jewish people and a diverse college town, a massacre could happen anywhere. The right-wing media, including such mega-corporations as Fox, have been pushing the narrative of an invasion caravan for the better part of a month, so they, and Trump, bear some culpability in the radicalization of the shooter.
This massacre has been a particularly horrific coda to a terrible week, and I sincerely hope that my Jewish friends stay safe. The bigots are a small percentage of the population, and they WILL LOSE.
If there's one ray of sunshine in all of this darkness, it's that the MAGAbomber case was broken because the jerk left a latent fingerprint on a bomb meant to harm Maxine Waters- the lady can kick right-wing ass without even breaking a sweat. In a week as terrible as this, any bit of good news is precious.
Friday, October 26, 2018
So Long, Swamp Rocker
As if this week weren't bad enough, via Crooks and Liars, I learned of the death of singer/songwriter Tony Joe White. I wrote a post running down several versions of my favorite song of his, Polk Salad Annie, and I have added pokeweed to my foraging repertoire. In my version of the Great American Songbook, 'Polk Salad Annie', the heroine of this darkly humorous song, occupies a place somewhere between the great ladies of rock and roll, such as Peggy Sue and Barbara Ann, and such protagonists of tall tales as Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill. Here's Tony Joe White having a blast singing the song with Johnny Cash:
Besides having a great baritone, Tony Joe White's genius at songwriting is evident when one considers the artists who performed his songs. In a melancholy vein, Tony wrote Rainy Night in Georgia, which was memorably covered by soul crooner Brook Benton and legend Ray Charles:
The spicy Steamy Windows was covered by Tina Turner:
Tony released an album, Hoodoo, in 2013 and played live on TV with Jools Holland and the Foo Fighters:
In his Crooks and Liars post, Dale Merrill embedded a 1970 BBC concert by Mr White. Here's a 1992 concert by the man:
I'd eat a mess of poke to commemorate the man, but we've already had a frost this season, and as he warned Johnny Cash, "If you eat it after a frost, it'll MOlest ya." Thanks for the decades of great music, Tony Joe.
Besides having a great baritone, Tony Joe White's genius at songwriting is evident when one considers the artists who performed his songs. In a melancholy vein, Tony wrote Rainy Night in Georgia, which was memorably covered by soul crooner Brook Benton and legend Ray Charles:
The spicy Steamy Windows was covered by Tina Turner:
Tony released an album, Hoodoo, in 2013 and played live on TV with Jools Holland and the Foo Fighters:
In his Crooks and Liars post, Dale Merrill embedded a 1970 BBC concert by Mr White. Here's a 1992 concert by the man:
I'd eat a mess of poke to commemorate the man, but we've already had a frost this season, and as he warned Johnny Cash, "If you eat it after a frost, it'll MOlest ya." Thanks for the decades of great music, Tony Joe.
Thursday, October 25, 2018
Finding Solace in Art, Finding Solace in Yonkers
This has been a pretty bad week here in the NY Metro Area- three days of terrorism targeting New Yorkers, both in the City and here in Westchester County. I decided today to take a mental health break before heading to work, so I headed over to Yonkers' own Hudson River Museum to take in Maya Lin's A River Is a Drawing exhibit. This exhibit, which runs until January 20, 2019, is Ms Lin's love letter to the Hudson River and the planet- it showcases her dedication to environmentalism as well as her artistic brilliance. A River Is a Drawing has 'taken over' the museum- visitors are first greeted in the lobby by Pin River—Hudson Watershed, which uses over 20,000 pins to map out the Hudson River Watershed:
From the lobby, I proceeded to the courtyard, which featured two installations- the first being Reed River. a bamboo and bluegrass representation of the main course of the mighty Hudson, with the gorgeous gilded age Glenview mansion providing a lovely backdrop:
Next up was Concrete River, in which Ms Lin played on the dual meanings of the word 'overlook'- she painted the normally overlooked cracks in the concrete pavers near the scenic overlook giving a vantage of the river:
In the main floor galleries, Ms Lin acted as curator, displaying favorite paintings from the Hudson River School that reflected themes of industrialization and environmental challenges.
In the stairwell going down to the next level of the museum, there was The Hudson Bight, a wonderful topographic depiction of the Hudson Canyon, the seafloor at the mouth of the river which was gouged out by glacial forces during the last Ice Age:
In the lower level, there was a sculpture based on the proposed geography of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which gouged out the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, and Lakes George and Champlain:
Another beautiful depiction of the river and its outflow into the Hudson Bight and Long Island Sound was rendered in recycled silver:
A combined map and timeline featured a depiction of the watershed surrounded by quotes about the river in historical order:
My particular favorite quote was Washington Irving's lament about the construction of the Hudson Railroad line, which ran past his home, Sunnyside, and caused a cove in front of his house to silt up and become a marsh: "If the Garden of Eden were now on earth, someone would try to put a railroad through it."
Perhaps the most dramatic piece in the exhibit was Folding the River, a depiction of the Hudson watershed made from recycled green glass marbles which sprawled across the floor, up one wall, across the ceiling and down another wall. I tried to take a panoramic photo of the piece, but pretty much botched it:
The location of the Hudson River Museum corresponds with the area where the floor and wall meet.
There was a sobering depiction of what New York City would look like by 2100 if there is a four degree Celsius rise in temperature:
-
Maybe this wasn't the sort of art to take solace in, gorgeous as it was. The exhibit ended with a challenge, a link to Ms Lin's What Is Missing? project, which is a memorial to the species killed off in the current Sixth Mass Extinction. Along with this call to action was an invitation for exhibit attendees to write down their own experiences with the Hudson and to post them on the wall.
The exhibit was marvelous, and the idea that such a titan of the American arts as Maya Lin would display such an elaborate exhibit in my beloved Yonkers was warming to my heart. If you are in the NYC metro area, consider a trip to the Hudson River Museum. Admission to the museum is a mere seven dollars, and the museum is easily accessible by Metro North- the ride from Grand Central to the Glenwood station on the Hudson Line is breathtaking. Come to Yonkers, especially if you've been having a bad week.
From the lobby, I proceeded to the courtyard, which featured two installations- the first being Reed River. a bamboo and bluegrass representation of the main course of the mighty Hudson, with the gorgeous gilded age Glenview mansion providing a lovely backdrop:
Next up was Concrete River, in which Ms Lin played on the dual meanings of the word 'overlook'- she painted the normally overlooked cracks in the concrete pavers near the scenic overlook giving a vantage of the river:
In the main floor galleries, Ms Lin acted as curator, displaying favorite paintings from the Hudson River School that reflected themes of industrialization and environmental challenges.
In the stairwell going down to the next level of the museum, there was The Hudson Bight, a wonderful topographic depiction of the Hudson Canyon, the seafloor at the mouth of the river which was gouged out by glacial forces during the last Ice Age:
In the lower level, there was a sculpture based on the proposed geography of the Laurentide Ice Sheet, which gouged out the Great Lakes, the Finger Lakes, and Lakes George and Champlain:
Another beautiful depiction of the river and its outflow into the Hudson Bight and Long Island Sound was rendered in recycled silver:
A combined map and timeline featured a depiction of the watershed surrounded by quotes about the river in historical order:
My particular favorite quote was Washington Irving's lament about the construction of the Hudson Railroad line, which ran past his home, Sunnyside, and caused a cove in front of his house to silt up and become a marsh: "If the Garden of Eden were now on earth, someone would try to put a railroad through it."
Perhaps the most dramatic piece in the exhibit was Folding the River, a depiction of the Hudson watershed made from recycled green glass marbles which sprawled across the floor, up one wall, across the ceiling and down another wall. I tried to take a panoramic photo of the piece, but pretty much botched it:
The location of the Hudson River Museum corresponds with the area where the floor and wall meet.
There was a sobering depiction of what New York City would look like by 2100 if there is a four degree Celsius rise in temperature:
Maybe this wasn't the sort of art to take solace in, gorgeous as it was. The exhibit ended with a challenge, a link to Ms Lin's What Is Missing? project, which is a memorial to the species killed off in the current Sixth Mass Extinction. Along with this call to action was an invitation for exhibit attendees to write down their own experiences with the Hudson and to post them on the wall.
The exhibit was marvelous, and the idea that such a titan of the American arts as Maya Lin would display such an elaborate exhibit in my beloved Yonkers was warming to my heart. If you are in the NYC metro area, consider a trip to the Hudson River Museum. Admission to the museum is a mere seven dollars, and the museum is easily accessible by Metro North- the ride from Grand Central to the Glenwood station on the Hudson Line is breathtaking. Come to Yonkers, especially if you've been having a bad week.
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