BE: echoes in coastal waters

[alice wellintown]

Seems to be the point, that it is almost impossible for us to imagine the
Passaic as it once appeared to those first Europeans, just as it was nearly
impossible for Carraway / Fitzgerald to imagine the LI Sound as it appeared
to the early explorers. The Passaic was much wider, it's forests thick, and
so on. See _History of the Passaic and its Environs_ Vol. 1
William Winfield Scott. For a look at The Sound, see _A Fine piece of
water, Andersen.

So what has happened to our capacity to wonder as the natural beauty of he
Earth has been deminished?

Also see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler_Antabanez


On Wednesday, August 21, 2013, wrote:

> As one who grew up in a town on the mighty river's bank, I can say he
> certainly has the correct example of water polluted by industry.  But I
> can't imagine anyone at any time feeling on the edge of possibilities
> sailing up the Passaic River.  Now the Hackensack ...
>
> “and for maybe a minute and a half she feels free—at least at the edge of
> possibilities, like whatever the Europeans who first sailed up the Passaic
> River must have felt, before the long parable of corporate sins and
> corruption that overtook it, before the dioxins and the highway debris and
> unmourned acts of waste.”
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Monte Davis <montedavis at verizon.net <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'montedavis at verizon.net');>>
> To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org <javascript:_e({}, 'cvml',
> 'pynchon-l at waste.org');>>
> Sent: Wed, Aug 21, 2013 5:19 am
> Subject: BE: echoes in coastal waters
>
>   We’ve so often quoted (and recognized in TRP) this from Fitzgerald:
>
> “…gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for
> Dutch sailors' eyes-a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished
> trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby's house, had once pandered in
> whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory
> enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this
> continent…”
>
> It’s dawn, and Maxine and companions are in a boat on the Arthur Kill near
> Isle of Meadows, a huge NYC landfill site:
>
> “and for maybe a minute and a half she feels free—at least at the edge of
> possibilities, like whatever the Europeans who first sailed up the Passaic
> River must have felt, before the long parable of corporate sins and
> corruption that overtook it, before the dioxins and the highway debris and
> unmourned acts of waste.”
>
>
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