V.V. (7) Dryads and Dr Doolittlism

[Terrance]

jbor wrote:
> 
>     ... the rusty Hudson and its tugs and barges (what in this city
>     pass, perhaps, for dryads: watch for them the next winter day
>     you happen to be overpassed, gently growing out of the concrete,
>     trying to be part of it or at least feel safe from the wind and
>     the ugly feeling they -- we? -- have about where it is that
>     persistent river is really flowing) ... 112.24
> 
> The Hudson (via the Mohawk) flows from Lake Erie right into New York
> harbour, doesn't it? That system of man-made canals and locks is what *made*
> New York, put it on the map, as it were. Metropolis. The 'Big Apple'. All
> that bounteous harvest from the mid-west suddenly able to be transported to
> the east, rather than having to go south. The extension of that waterway, an
> astounding feat of engineering for its time, is perhaps the sole reason that
> NYC, rather than New Orleans, became the pre-eminent administrative and
> economic centre, and focal point, of the 'New World', isn't it? A coup
> d'état, of sorts?
> 
> So the tugs and barges are "the dryads" of the new civilisation, the
> mythological forest sprites (why not Naiads I wonder?) who nurture the
> fruits, flowers and mortals of the land. The image certainly seems to augur
> a somewhat materialistic pantheon imo. And the city itself -- a 'concrete
> jungle' no less -- has overtly subsumed and replaced whatever there once was
> of "forest" hereabouts.
> 
> ***

Right good jbor, on Dryad, the etymology perhaps. Yes what a
beautiful place this was long ago, but it still is,  I
think.  Dumping 5 million liters, that's about 1.3 million
gallons,  of raw sewage into new york harbor every day can
change a place, kill just about anything but rats. Whatever
happened to the The MSC (1910-1914)? Some paving problems I
think, city hall's latest scandal, or Hall anyway and that
Ahearn crowd, what a mess from 90 to 100, we couldn't get
the stink of it out of here, Wagner was a good egg I think,
and Jr. too, well...NLRB, but the garbage, sewers being
sanitation's not payrolls, and as everyone knows concrete,
paving, and trash are more important to NYC's economy than
stocks and bonds, well maybe not bonds....I can't remember,
have to look it up again, but I haven't got much interest in
the labor politics of V., just noting it is all. It's there.
I did the research, in  Brush (that's Thomas Brush Queens to
you Kings County Mobsters and Jewish Boys) where the Weed
grows wild all around that LaGuardia College where the
Robert Wagner Archives are housed in  LIC, where the bridge
passes over that now dried up canal, strange color the grass
is over there, seems to glow in the dark almost,
beautiful...could all make one very sick, kids even,
schools, mostly the poor, I'm sure it's the same all over
the world, the outhouses of industry leaking, seeping into
the homes of the poor. Reminds me of this old lady I met, a
dried up Brownsville Hooker, met her over on the other side,
other side of that  Rusty Hudson,  to you Boss Fans, the new
Boss that met the old one,  Bruce that is, not Tweed, the
swamps of Jersey,  who explained to me how she came to be a
Red and a Hooker because of some "open shop labor" in the
whore houses in Jersey and how, they, the whores that is,
being legal strikeless municipal labor and all, couldn't
make a living. She was sure it had something to do with the
War, said that she ended up working for Uncle Sam half the
night and the Man half the night and would often take on
twelve college boys down from Yale just to feed her Family.
Sad, but true.