Treasures of The New York Public Library

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Information, Manhattan, Places, Queens, Vaticinate

In case you were wondering, yes, The New York Public Library (NYPL) has a YouTube channel, and the “Treasures of The New York Public Library” playlist is an amazing resource for all that obscure archival footage you never knew you were looking for. Start here with “The New York World’s Fair, 1939-40” and then travel to Manhattan’s Sputyen Duyvil Creek in “Mapping the World” with curator’s from the Map Division.

New York Film-Makers’ Cooperative Faces Eviction

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Foudroyant, Information, Manhattan, Vaticinate

Sometimes the sweep of technology can be overwhelming.  Even FOUDROYANT.  The almost 50 year old New York based Film-makers’ Cooperative is facing some major problems . We need the city of New York to stand up for alternative modes of expression.  To VATICINATE  is to see into the future, and here we can do this with both film and the internet hand in hand.  Go to a great New York Times article to understand the situation more clearly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/11/movies/11coop.html?_r=3&ref=movies

Lapidary: The Sphere by Fritz Koenig

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Lapidary, Manhattan, Vaticinate

The Sphere by Fritz Koenig The Sphere by Fritz  Koenig

This bullet is an old one.

In 1897, it was fired at the president of Uruguay by a young man from Montevideo, Avelino Arredondo, who had spent long weeks without seeing anyone so that the world might know that he acted alone. Thirty years earlier, Lincoln had been murdered by that same ball, by the criminal or magical hand of an actor transformed by the words of Shakespeare into Marcus Crutus, Caesar’s murderer. In the mid-seventeenth century, vengeance had employed it for the assassination of Sweden’s Gustavus Adolphus, in the midst of the public hecatomb of a battle.

In earlier times, the bullet had been other things, because Pythagorean metempsychosis is not reserved for humankind alone. It was the silken cord given to viziers in the East, the rifles and bayonets that cut down the defenders of the Alamo, the triangular blade that slit a queen’s throat, the wood of the Cross and the dark nails that pierced the flesh of the Redeemer, the poison kept by the Carthaginian chief in an iron ring on his finger, the serene goblet that Socrates drank down one evening.

In the dawn of time it was the stone that Cain hurled at Abel, and in the future it shall be many things that we cannot even imagine today, but that will be able to put an end to men and their wondrous, fragile life.

– In Memoriam, J.F.K. by J.L. Borges

1964-65 New York World’s Fair Flashcards

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Places, Queens, Vaticinate

1964-65 New York World's Fair Flashcards

The 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair was the third major World’s Fair to be held in New York City and the second World’s Fair to be held at Flushing Meadows Park in the Borough of Queens, New York in the 20th century. It opened on April 21, 1964 for two six-month seasons concluding on October 21, 1965.

View image gallery of 1964-65 New York World’s Fair Flashcards >>

For more information on the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair visit:

Vaticinate: Charlotte Street, the Bronx

BY | Posted on | FILED UNDER Categories Bronx, Vaticinate

In 1976, Charlotte Street epitomized the decay and destruction of the South Bronx. President Jimmy Carter witnessed cement rubble on the devastated street and pronounced the need for grand changes that would transform the lives of poor people in the neighborhood and beyond. Rather than living in large, public housing, families needed homes of their own. Carter, along with other earnest city planners, were trying to vaticinate somehow, to imagine city life that would take on the pleasures that would come with a sense of ownership in a single family home.

More than thirty years later, Susan Agliata and I seek out this architectural anomaly in the heart of the Bronx. Charlotte Street is a street of modest but well-cared-for single and double story homes. Each home is surrounded by a six foot high fence and every window is barred. Unlike the rest of the borough which is bustling and croweded on a lovely fall afternoon, Charlotte feels simultaneously inhabited and desolate.

Charlotte Street, Bronx