Posts Tagged ‘Revolutionary War’
“If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.”*…
Hannah Frishberg, in Gothamist, on a labor of love…
Reno may be “the biggest little city in the world,” but it’s got some serious competition from the miniature New York City that hobbyist Joseph Macken built in his upstate New York basement over two decades.
“I sat down in my basement, turned the camera on on my phone and just started talking about my first section, which was Downtown Manhattan,” the Clifton Park resident said on a recent Thursday about his viral TikToks on his roughly 50-by-30-foot scale model of the city. “It just took off.”
The intricate model features what Macken says are hundreds of thousands buildings, landmarks and geographic elements across the five boroughs and their surroundings, including bridges, airports, the Hudson and East rivers, New York Harbor, Central Park, One World Trade Center and the original World Trade Center, the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building. The work consists of 350 handmade sections that are pieced together and can be taken apart and moved…
… Macken, a 63-year-old truck driver who grew up in Middle Village and has no formal carpentry or engineering training, said he dreamed of replicating the Queens Museum’s famous “Panorama” after an elementary school trip when he was a kid. He embarked on the endeavor in 2004, armed with little more than balsa wood, Elmer’s glue and Styrofoam. His first building was “the RCA building at Rockefeller Center,” he said, referring to 30 Rock, which was formerly named for its longtime tenant, the Radio Corporation of America.
Macken said it took him about 10 years to build Manhattan alone and 11 years for the rest of the boroughs. He completed his opus in April, and said he’s confident every building in the city is represented. (Gothamist could not independently verify this claim; the city has more than 1 million buildings, according to the Department of Buildings.)…
… Macken is now working on a mini Minneapolis: “‘Mary Tyler Moore’ was one of my favorite shows growing up,” he said, adding that he plans to eventually do Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Chicago as well.
Macken said he’s still figuring out what he’ll do next with the model, but he’s in talks with the Museum of the City of New York in Manhattan about an exhibit there. A museum spokesperson confirmed this, praising his “ingenuity, creativity and skill.”
“ I don’t wanna put it back in storage,” Macken said. “That’s for damn sure.”…
More– and more photos– at: “This trucker built a scale model of NYC over 21 years. It’s drawing museums’ attention” from @gothamist.com.
* “Theme from New York, New York” composed by John Kander, with lyrics by Fred Ebb; performed in the film by Liza Minnelli and famously covered by Frank Sinatra
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As we get small, we might recall that on this date in 1776– in the early days of the military occupation of the city by British forces during the Revolutionary War– the “Great Fire of New York” raged on the West Side of what then constituted New York City at the southern end of the island of Manhattan.
The fire destroyed from 10 to 25 percent of the buildings in the city, and some unaffected parts of the city were plundered. Many believed or assumed that the fire was deliberately set; British leaders accused revolutionaries– and used the pretext to declare martial law, to confiscate surviving uninhabited homes of known Patriots and assign them to British officers; to convert chuches (other than Church of England sanctuaries), into prisons, infirmaries, or barracks; and to billet regular soldiers with civilian families… all of which continued until the British evacuated the city on November 25, 1783.
“The future’s another country, man… And I still ain’t got a passport”*…
Hamilton Nolan on seeing things for what they are, not what they used to be…
Born into a chaotic world, all of us develop a frame of reference to make everything intelligible. Consciously or not, we all have a narrative about reality that we overlay on events, placing them into a context in our own minds, allowing us to understand why things happened and what is likely to happen next. In the same way that our brains automatically filter out much incoming stimulus in order to provide us with a breadth of sensation that we can handle, our belief systems allow us to turn life’s waterfall of events into a story that we can read, and participate in.
Once we have developed this frame, this mental machine that inhales life and exhales explanations, it is tempting to allow it to run unimpeded. We can anchor ourselves to it and stop wondering why things happen. Religion is the classic example of this, but it applies to all realms of thinking. The problem with this approach is that it ignores the fact that these frames we generate are only approximate—they are the best we can do at any given time given the facts at hand. If we are actually concerned with keeping them as close to truth as possible, we must constantly dust them off and rework them in light of the unfolding of reality. This is what learning is. It takes work. It is tempting to check out from it, after we have enough to get by. Once we have an explainer machine that seems to work, it is easy to stick with it. The passing of time, the ceaseless interaction of people and things and ideas that produce events in the world, will render our frames anachronistic. Still, it is human nature to kind of relax into them, at a certain point, like an elderly person who sticks with their 20 year-old computer because they know how it works, turning off the software updates, satisfied with what they have.
This is a luxury that people in certain fields cannot afford. Science? Can’t stop updating. Medicine? Of course you must stay current. Literature? Technology? Academia? You must always do the painful work of tearing apart and rebuilding your knowledge and beliefs because failing to do so means that will not be good at your job. Politics is the same. Effective political policies and strategies are direct responses to the true condition of the world. Delusion does not pay. If the world changes and our political leaders don’t, it is the political leaders and not the world that will be left behind. The people who suffer for this failure are not usually the leaders, but the citizens who find that the leaders seem to have gone blind.
Things have changed in America. There are deep undercurrents that have been exerting pressure from below—the relentless evolution of global capitalism, the growth of inequality, new forms of technology jumbling the world of information—and then there are things that have changed rapidly, closer to the surface. It was possible to use a certain frame of reference that worked pretty well in the American political system for the past 40 years or so. But now that frame is out of date. It is worse than useless. It is misleading. It is detrimental, because the answers it spits out, the explanations it gives, the strategies it recommends for specific situations, are all based upon old data and old wisdom that no longer works. The frame of reference that guides many of the people who, unfortunately, dominate the Democratic Party in Washington is like a flood map that was drawn up before climate change. They keep using these same old formulas that worked back then, ignoring the rising water as it creeps up to their necks.
Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Bush Jr. and Obama all to varying extents did awful things and all to varying extents are responsible for the progression of the state of our politics to this point, but they also all believed themselves to be constrained by a set of guidelines, norms, and political realities that no longer exist. Even their most immoral policies were shaped to maneuver through public opinion and economic demands and historic traditions and laws that have now, effectively, disappeared. The playbook that political veterans used to operate in that old world is a set of directions to a house party that is already over. If you show up there you will only find an empty house. The action is elsewhere now. Chuck Schumer continues to pull up in front of that empty house each morning, blinking vacantly, knocking on the door with a bottle of wine in his hand, wondering what is taking so long.
Here are a few notable ways in which many (not all) of our political and media and business and intellectual leaders have failed to update their priors for current times: The federal government is now controlled by a political party that is nakedly, not bashfully, racist, and hopes to eradicate the past century’s worth of racial progress; economic policy is being dictated, stupidly, by a small group of zealots who do not understand economics; the primary concern of the president now is vengeance, and he is going to use the tools at his disposal to enact vengeance upon his endless list of enemies in a way that could surpass McCarthyism; “civil liberties” mean nothing to those who control the federal government now, and will likely provide little protection from that vengeance in the real world; the law, and the power of the courts to enforce laws that constrict the behavior of the federal government, is very much in question, and it is distinctly possible that within the next year or two the law is exposed as toothless in the face of the president’s will, and therefore the law should not be relied on as the primary guard rail of our democracy now; voter suppression is about to reach extremes not seen in generations, and outright election theft based on shoddy racist claims of voter fraud is extremely likely in upcoming elections at all levels; the US government is going to lose its status as a reliable source of information—economic statistics, scientific data, and more—as official information is manipulated for partisan gain in unprecedented ways, a development that will be devastating for almost all fields of knowledge, and for the economy; the federal government is being run by people who want to eradicate the government’s functions, except to the extent that those functions can be used to crack down on foreign and domestic enemies; many people are going to be jailed and deported and potentially killed unjustly in the very near future, by the president and his loyalists; institutions that imagine themselves to be proud, ethical, important parts of the fabric of America are going to cower in fear and abdicate their responsibilities in ways that their own leaders would scoff at right now. We are not living in “The West Wing.” We are living in “Goodfellas.” It does not have a happy ending…
… Extreme things—things that sit completely outside of the mental framework that too many of our political leaders are still using to govern their decisions—are happening now. And they are going to happen more. And they are going to get more extreme. This does not mean that we are in a hopeless situation. It does, however, mean that we must adjust our interpretation of the world, or be left behind. We must see things not for what we wish they were, or for what they used to be, but for what they are. There is no way to see beyond the curve when you’re looking towards the past…
Facing the future: “Seeing Things For What They Are,” from @hamiltonnolan.bsky.social.
Cases in point: “Trump and the Rise of the Multiracial Right” and “Tariffs on goods may be a prelude to tariffs on money.”
* Zadie Smith, On Beauty
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As we reframe, we might recall that, while today s of course St. Patrick’s Day, in Suffolk County, Massachusetts (which includes the cities of Boston, Chelsea Revere, and the town of Winthrop), and also by the public schools in Somerville, Massachusetts, residents are celebrating Evacuation Day, commemorating the evacuation of British forces from the city of Boston following the siege of Boston, early in the American Revolutionary War. Schools and government offices are closed.
“It is the same in love as in war; a fortress that parleys is half taken”*…
Further to yesterday’s post on historic battlements, Zach Mortice on a modern fortress that’s become a go-to location for film and television thrillers…
When it was completed in Lower Manhattan in 1974, 33 Thomas Street, formerly known as the AT&T Long Lines Building, was intended as the world’s largest facility for connecting long-distance telephone calls. Standing 532 feet — roughly equivalent to a 45-story building — it’s a mugshot for Brutalism, windowless and nearly featureless. Its only apertures are a series of ventilation hoods meant to hide microwave-satellite arrays, which communicate with ground-based relay stations and satellites in space. One of several long lines buildings designed by John Carl Warnecke for the New York Telephone Company, a subsidiary of AT&T, 33 Thomas Street is perhaps the most visually striking project in the architect’s long and influential career. Embodying postwar American economic and military hegemony, the tower broadcasts inscrutability and imperviousness. It was conceived, according to the architect, to be a “skyscraper inhabited by machines.”
“No windows or unprotected openings in its radiation-proof skin can be permitted,” reads a project brief prepared by Warnecke’s office; the building’s form and dimensions were shaped not by human needs for light and air, but by the logics of ventilation, cooling, and (not least) protection from atomic blast. “As such, the design project becomes the search for a 20th-century fortress, with spears and arrows replaced by protons and neutrons laying quiet siege to an army of machines within.” The purple prose of the project brief was perhaps inspired by the client. AT&T in the 1970s still held its telecom monopoly, and was an exuberant player in the Cold War military-industrial complex. Until 2009, 33 Thomas Street was a Verizon data center. And in 2016, The Intercept revealed that the building was functioning as a hub for the National Security Administration, which has bestowed upon it the Bond-film-esque moniker Titanpointe.
Computers at Titanpointe have monitored international phone calls, faxes and voice calls routed over the internet, and more, hoovering up data from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and U.S. allies including France, Germany, and Japan. 33 Thomas Street, it turns out, is exactly what it looks like: an apocalypse-proof above-ground bunker intended not only to symbolize but to guarantee national security. For those overseeing fortress operations at the time of construction, objects of fear were nuclear-armed Communists abroad and a restive youth population at home, who couldn’t be trusted to obey the diktats of a culture that had raised up some in previously inconceivable affluence; an affluence built on the exploitation and disenfranchisement of people near and far.
By the time the NSA took over, targets were likely to be insurgents rejecting liberal democracy and American hegemony, from Islamic fundamentalists to world-market competitors in China, alongside a smattering of Black Lives Matter activists. For those outside the fortress, in the Nixon era as in the present, the fearful issue was an entrenched and unaccountable fusion of corporate and governmental capability, a power that flipped the switches connecting the world. At the same time, popular culture had begun, in the 1970s, to register a paranoia that has only intensified — the fear that people no longer call the shots. In its monumental implacability, Titanpointe seems to herald a posthuman regime, run by algorithm for the sole purpose of perpetuating its own system.
It is, in other words, a building tailor made for spy movies.
John Carl Warnecke did not realize, of course, that he was storyboarding a movie set…
How (and why) a windowless telecommunications hub in New York City embodying an architecture of surveillance and paranoia became an ideal location for conspiracy thrillers: “Apocalypse-Proof,” from @zachmortice in @PlacesJournal. Fascinating.
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As we ponder impenetrability, we might recall that it was on this date in 1780, during the American Revolutionary War, that Benedict Arnold, commander of the American fort at West Point, passed plans of the bastion to the British.
“Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive”*…
In the American Revolution, the number of privateers — estimated at more than 1,500 ships and tens of thousands of men — far exceeded the number of official navy ships– and were far more instrumental in the American victory…
While uncommon in the modern era, during the American Revolution and the War of 1812 the United States relied heavily on privateering, which was commonly referred to as “the militia of the sea.” In general, the term privateer refers to a privately-owned ship or sailor commissioned by a government to raid an enemy’s military and merchant shipping. Although controversial, there is a long history of privateering that dates back to the seventeenth century. The main difference between pirates and privateers is that privateers are commissioned by a specific government and can only attack ships that fly under an enemy flag, while pirates are not sanctioned by any government and can attack whomever they choose. While pirates keep the prizes themselves, privateers only receive a portion of the money generated from the sale of prizes, which is heavily taxed. Prizes refer to goods seized from a merchant or military ship. While both economically lucrative, privateers serve as a vehicle of war, pirates do not.
The Militia of the Sea
Many believed [during the American Revolution] and have believed since [then that] privateering was a sideshow in the war. Privateering has long been given short shrift in general histories of the conflict, where privateers are treated as a minor theme if they are mentioned at all. The coverage in maritime and naval histories of the Revolution is not much better, with privateering often overshadowed by the exploits of the Continental navy. As John Lehman, former secretary of the navy under President Ronald Reagan, observed, ‘From the beginning of the American Revolution until the end of the War of 1812, America’s real naval advantage lay in its privateers. It has been said that the battles of the American Revolution were fought on land, and independence was won at sea. For this we have the enormous success of American privateers to thank even more than the Continental Navy.’ Yet even in the face of plenty of readily available evidence, ‘the official canon of naval history in both Britain and the United States virtually ignores’ privateers…
An excerpt from Rebels at Sea by Eric Jay Dolin
Privateers and the Revolution, via @Battlefields and @delanceyplace; more at both links above.
* George Washington, in a letter to the Marquis de Lafayette
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As we seize the seas, we might recall that it was on this date in 1763 that final preparations were completed for the signing (the next day) of the Treaty of Paris. Marking the end of the Seven Years War (French and Indian War), France surrendered all of its North American possessions east of the Mississippi to Britain. This ended a source of insecurity for the British colonists along the Atlantic Coast. But the costs of the war and maintaining an army led the British government to impose new taxes on its colonists, with world-shaking results– the American Revolution.
“The fog of war”*….
McKinley Valentine (in her wonderful newsletter, The Whippet) on a fierce battle “between” a single army…
The battle happened on the night of 21 September 1788, in what is now Romania. The Habsburg and Ottoman empires are Austria and Turkey (but bigger, because empires).
I’m just going to give you the bullet-point summary:
• The vanguard (part that goes ahead of the regular army) of the Austrian army crosses Timiș River to scout for Ottomans. They are ‘hussars’, light cavalry. The hussars don’t find any Ottomans, but they DO find some Romani people who sell them some barrels of schnapps.
• Some Austrian infantrymen cross the river, see the other soldiers getting drunk, and ask them to share.
• The (very drunk) hussars refuse, and set up makeshift fortifications around the schnapps barrels.
• The argument escalates until eventually shots are fired.
• Someone shouts “Turks! Turks!” Both groups think the Ottomans are attacking and try to run away – it’s enormously chaotic. An officer shouts “Halt! Halt!” to try and restore order, but the troops (who are from a bunch of different countries and don’t understand German) think they hear “Allah! Allah!” and the Ottomans are definitely attacking.
• The hussars flee on horseback back through the main army camp. The General of Artillery thinks it’s an Ottoman cavalry charge and orders the cannons to fire on them.
• Entire army camp wakes up and goes into a terrified panic.Holy Roman Emperor (head of the Habsburgs) orders the whole army to withdraw and get itself together.
• Ottomans turn up two days later, discover only some dead and wounded Austrians and no army, and easily capture the city of Karánsebes.
There are some who suggest that the account is apocryphal (e.g. here, source of the image at the top), But as Valentine observes…
Did this really happen? Some of it is a bit too neat, too story-like – esp the Halt/Allah thing – which ought to make you suspicious. But Wikipedia reckons there are a lot of contemporary accounts of it (I can’t read them because they’re in German, French and Italian), so at the very least it’s a story that sprang up at the time, rather than being internet-era misinfo. And certainly Karánsebes is a real city that the Turks captured in 1788 (you’d be amazed how many internet-era historical myths fall at 1-inch hurdles like that). My guess is: in broad strokes, yes; the specifics probably added for colour.
“The Battle of Karánsebes: possibly history’s dumbest skirmish,” from @mckinleaf.
* a paraphrase of Clausewitz (“War is the realm of uncertainty; three quarters of the factors on which action in war is based are wrapped in a fog of greater or lesser uncertainty.”)
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As we promote peace, we might recall that it was on this date in 1781 that that French Navy defeated the British Navy in the Battle of the Chesapeake (AKA the Battle of the Virginia Capes or simply the Battle of the Capes). The French victory kept supply lanes open for the Franco-American army, providing them siege artillery and French reinforcements which were decisive in the Siege of Yorktown, which in turn effectively secured victory in the American Revolution and independence for the Thirteen Colonies.
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