James Wagner – Page 191

“never forget”

Only moments before I snapped this picture we had left a restaurant downtown, for a dinner totally unrelated to the third anniversary of September 11. The image is a view from Broadway and Fulton Street of Creative Time’s “Tribute in Light,” recreated on the edge of the site of the World Trade Center once again yesterday. (note: the partially-completed building to the right is the new 7 World Trade Center, rising on the site where I had worked up to the year before the original was destroyed – fortunately with no loss of life)
The first reminder of the day’s significance however was this amazing sandwich board we passed seconds before.

God Bless America
never forget
Kitchen Open
$6 Beer Pitchers All Day

I’m now wondering which image I’m going to remember best.

[apologies for the poor quality of the pictures, but it was very dark, very late and the wine was fine; and no, we never figured out what made the small flecks in the light beams, here seen as wavy lines, although they really made the towers dance last night]

UPDATE: The mystery of the flecks which are visible in the beams of light has apparently been solved. and it’s not a feelgood answer. Tom Moody posts an account via Alex (scroll down) that the wavy lines in my photo apparently represent “behaviorally trapped” migratory birds who had become confused by night become day. This was probably not a good thing at all, and it makes me very sad.

old music made very new

New Music.
The sounds would have been new to almost everyone on the planet, even, perhaps, to most of the population of Japan, where the music originated – more than two millenia ago. Zankel Hall was the venue last night for a concert, “Reigaku and Gagaku: A Living Tradition,” of traditional and modern music composed for ancient Japanese instruments. The ensemble was Reigakusha.
The entire program was spectacular, but in a very restrained, austere mode.
The visual beauties (faces, instruments, costumes, set, movement) were also compelling, and might actually have been enough of an attraction by themselves.
The performers were mostly quite young and there were more women than men. Two of the four composers represented were also very young, and two were women (amazingly, only a small portion of the evening’s program was devoted to traditional pieces). If this musical tradition is timeless it’s also become very, very new for reasons only partly dependent upon its exoticism.
Unfortunately this concert will not be repeated in New York (they were at the Kennedy Center in D.C. tonight and they’ll be at UC Berkeley September 12), but I’ll be back in line the day this company (or any similarly-inspired) announces a return engagement. Next time I’ll try to give everone I know a heads-up.
Meanwhile, there are CDs (see their site linked above, or check Amazon for sound samples).

[image from Reigakusha, via the Institute of East Asian Studies]

Nuha al-Radi

Nuha al-Radi, detail of a work in a 2002 exhibition in Amman

Writing in “Baghdad Diaries,” about the first gulf war and its aftermath, the Iraqi artist and writer, Nuha al-Radi lamented:

The birds have taken the worst beating of all. They have sensitive souls, which cannot take all this hideous noise and vibration. All the caged lovebirds have died from the shock of the blasts, while birds in the wild fly upside down and do crazy somersaults. Hundreds, if not thousands, have died in the orchard. Lonely survivors fly about in a distracted fashion.

Ms. Radi died last week in Beirut. The birds, Iraq and the entire world will miss the wry wit of this great soul.
She seems to have belonged to no one party or culture, but rather to all humanity. The NYTimes obituary describes her as “not overtly political.” Certainly no friend of Saddam Hussein’s regime, at the same time she saw no great virtue in the destruction wrought by his nemesis:

She was somewhat less than enchanted with Iraq’s latest overseers for failing to provide basic security and services, however, describing the new tenants of the presidential compound in an interview with The Times last year in her typically caustically droll manner:
“America is in its ivory tower palace,” she said, “We are used to having coups and revolutions. But usually people who stage them take over the country
afterward.”

[image from 4 Walls]

Bloomberg defends police sweeps, some speech

What’s wrong with these statements, both of which were reported yesterday by Newsday (in an obscure article devoted to another subject altogether)?

When a caller to his weekly radio show criticized the unusually wide arrest net cast by police, [the Mayor of New York] said: “You can’t arrest 1,800 people without having somebody in the middle who shouldn’t have been arrested. That’s what the courts are there to find out afterward.”

In addition, if we look at another quote in the same article, we see that Michael Bloomberg just managed to make himself more look ridiculous when he tried to qualify an earlier assertion of the sort we’re more accustomed to hearing from Ari Fleisher or John Ashcroft:

Meanwhile, a visibly exhausted Bloomberg backed away from his remarks Thursday equating anarchists’ harassment of delegates with the al-Qaida terrorists.
“Obviously it’s not the same level, not the same level of – you probably shouldn’t compare the two,” he said at a news conference. “But the anarchists are trying to keep you from expressing yourself.”

All italics are mine.

lotus

From 15th Street and our short glimpse of Pier 57 Barry and I headed down the pedestrian path along the Hudson this afternoon until we reached this exquisite lotus in the Koi pond just above North Cove in Battery Park City. After having to move around under an occupation for a week we were able to appreciate the freedom of the River, the sun and the fresh air more than ever.

Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson, two days later

It was pretty quiet this afternoon around Marine & Aviation Pier 57, where nearly 2000 people were arrested and detained this week while they were exercising freedoms they imagined might be protected by the American legal system, or, in some cases, just because they happened to be near the police at the wrong moment. The only activity visible today was that of workmen collecting the countless port-a-sans which had been set up inside each of the filthy metal holding pens inside. We didn’t get too close.

lackeys showing their masters that they’re in full control

The nation which is being told that everything went smoothly in New York this week can’t be shown enough evidence to the contrary. Another friend and indefatigable activist colleague of ours had a lot to say about on Gotham Gazette yesterday.

I knew they were taking their time and dragging this out as long as possible. I still believed we were being processed and my cellmates were being released. Every 20-40 minutes four names were called on my floor and people were led out. My name is called. I will be out soon. I am led up a flight of stairs into a different cell. A few guys who were first led out are sitting there. They didnt move along in the system at all. The police seemed to be playing a shell game. Keep us calm and cooperative by making it seem as we are being released when we really werent. We call the Lawyers Guild and learn there is only one judge on the bench now and few if any are being released. The word is that we are going to be held until the convention is over Thursday night.

Jon is safe at home now, but like the multitudes who witnessed the assaults by Republican guards on New York streets this week, whether they were zip-cuffed or not, I’m certain he remains an enemy of the fascism which is succeeding in making victims – and activists – of us all.

we’re all inside a police net now

Sandy Katz, a former ACT UP comrade who served as aide to Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messenger, has sent his friends this account of his own experience with our new domestic order. On Tuesday afternoon he accidently became caught up in the enormous police action which saw 1200 people arrested for the offense of being on the streets of New York. In his own description, written after he was released 23 hours later, never having been arraigned and never having seen a judge or a lawyer, he says he ended up being handed a desk appearance ticket; he has to be back in court in three and a half weeks, “i am charged with disorderly conduct for consorting with an unauthorized gathering of people.”

its over now. i hate being locked up. i didnt choose to be arrested, as i have done several times in my life. back in the day the new york police routinely warned peaceful demonstrators to move before placing them under arrest. that was back before dissent was a threat to national security, when it was understood as the freedom to disagree.

Click on the link below this line for the entire story.

Continue reading “we’re all inside a police net now”

the Hearst Tower Project

completing the Hearst Building

It’s probably the most interesting building now going up in New York. That may not be much of a recommendation these days, but seriously, Sir Norman Foster’s solution for completing a 75 year-old skyscraper is well worth a detour even as it’s still going up.
I’ve been lucky to be able to visit 7th Avenue and 56-57th Street and watch this column grow all summer.
If you look at the familiar tower of the Empire State Building it rises in a similar fashion, set back from a base the width of a city block, even if in its case the same elegant style is continued throughout its height.
The Hearst Building was never completed after rising only six stories. Today it may finally making up for its deprived youth. Be sure to check out its interesting history on the link above.

memorializing internment on a pier

Welcome citizens! (wire and flesh, inside the holding pen on Pier 57)

I’m sure we haven’t heard the end of the story of Guantanamo-on-the-Hudson, but in the meantime here’s a small footnote to the account of what thousands experienced there this week.
The September newsletter from our wonderful New York State General Assembly representative, Dick Gottfried, arrived in our mailbox yesterday. One of the smaller stories is headlined, “What Future for Pier 57?” Until this week “Pier 57” was the name of the large Hudson River dock the NYPD had recently fitted-out to serve as a detention center for its political prisoners.
Gottfried’s Community Update must certainly have gone to the press before the mass arrests of this week and probably even before his staff or the general public knew the details of the police department’s plans for political protest, yet the short text which appears under the headline manages to send shivers down my spine (I’ll explain below):

Pier 57, at West 15th Street, which was most recently a bus depot, is in the process of getting redeveloped as part of the Hudson River Park

But the NYPD has now tasted blood, and it seems to have other plans for the waterfront real estate, according to an article in the New York Post excerpted in the New York Press and appearing here via Bloggy:

The most disturbing bit of information concerning the West Side holding pen, however, was buried in the Post’s account. Just a brief mention:
“Cops fear some protesters might hang around after the convention to disrupt other events, like the U.S. Open, so the pen will remain open indefinitely.”
The U.S. Open? Other events? Like what, the 3rd Ave. Street Fair? The grand opening celebration at a new Payless Shoe Source in Queens?
In other words, a year-round internment camp is now part of the ongoing West Side development project. Does the Olympic Committee know about this?

The shivers follow my thoughts, stimulated by reading historical accounts and seeing the physical evidence of countless memorial plaques, of improvised holding pens and interrogation rooms created by long-gone 20th-century authoritarian regimes.
If the old Marine & Aviation Pier 57 ever does become part of a park, I want to see an historical marker displayed prominently on the site. I only hope it won’t have to describe greater horrors than those already visited on our city this week.

[images from indymedia, by anonymous]