Wendell Berry

“And so I go into the woods. As I go in under the trees, dependably, almost at once, and by nothing I do, things fall into place. I enter an order that does not exist outside, in the human spaces. I feel my life take its place among the lives — the trees, the annual plants, the animals and birds, the living of all these and the dead — that go and have gone to make the life of the earth.”

Wiki - Steamboats

The power of steam energy brought with it risks. So the steamboats that transformed industrial-age travel, were also inherently dangerous. The tragic stories of the Sultana (1,164), the Henry Clay (50-80) and the General Slocum (1,021 lost) each capture different dimensions of their times. The Henry Clay took Andrew Jackson Downing from us. The General Slocum tragedy is mentioned in both James Joyce's Ulysses and a recent Dean Koontz novel. At least eight different cities have erected monuments to the Sultana.

Wiki - Endorheic lakes and basins

Endorheic lakes and basins retain water and allow no outflow, just evaporation. If the water sneaks out underground, it is probably cryptorheic like Devil's Lake, Wisconsin.  

Municipal Asphalt Plant

The often overlooked municipal architecture of the Manhattan Municipal Asphalt Plant. Robert Moses lampooned it as the "Cathedral of Asphalt" but now it is a recreation complex.

Wiki - Gen Z Protests

The first of Gen Z was born in 1997. And now they have a proper Wikipedia entry for Gen Z protests. Could it really include a 2010 protest?

 

Wiki - Cast-iron architecture

Cast-iron skillets are all the rage, but cast-iron architecture? Don't put either one in the dishwasher.

Wiki - GDAL

An essential building block in GIS work today is the open source Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL). But, it is worth noting, that most of us don't realize that we are using it within the many other geospatial apps in our daily life and worklife. As the entry explains, it is embedded in the software that the GIS word relies on, including QGIS, R, ArcGIS, ERDAS, ENVI, MapServer and GRASS. 

Wiki - Amiable Child Memorial

New York City has so many hidden features. Consider the Amiable Child Memorial that is dedicated to a bot that fell off a high bluff on the Hudson River in 1797. Not only is he remembered with a memorial, but also with a street named after him. Wikipedia tells the story. 

This is a full article for what could otherwise be a long-forgotten incident. How many of these are there in NYC?