You begin to interest me…vaguely
No, really, we’ve got nothing better to do. Another one of those songs I had forgotten about (until hearing it on the Friday Night Freakout). Fine, it was supposed to be ironic, but is it really?
Originally released on Black Flag’s 1981 album Damaged, then re-released on their EP TV Party with the actual tv show “Fridays” switched out for “Wednesdays,” for some reason, then included on the Repo Man soundtrack (yeah, I forgot it was on there, too).
That’s Incredible!
Vega$!
Here’s a few more details on the cranes at the Marine Terminal Park. According to the National Register of Historic Places nomination form, the cranes were originally 15 ton oil burning, steam powered locomotive gantry cranes built by McMyler Interstate Company of Cleveland, Ohio in 1917. Twenty-eight of them were purchased by the new Hog Island shipyard in 1917. There is an excellent summary of Hog Island by John Lawrence on the also-excellent Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia
The steam gantry cranes have a 15 ton capacity at 15 ft. radius, mounted on tracks, with holding and closing lines and clam shell buckets of 3/4 and 1 1/2 yard capacity. Provision is made for magnets at 35 ft. radius with portable electric power. In 1952 they were overhauled and the boilers replaced. They stand on four legs, and are approximately 40 ft. tall.
TAMS 1952
The first thing to realize is that the Hog Island cranes are no longer on Hog Island. When the United States entered World War I in 1917, a massive shipyard was set up alongside the Delaware River on Hog Island in Philadelphia to build transport and cargo ships, although none of the ships were completed before the war ended in 1918.
In 1930, Philadelphia bought Hog Island and transformed it into what is now the Philadelphia International Airport. Two of the cranes were sold and moved upriver to Trenton. At the Trenton Marine Terminal, they were used to load and unload ships for several decades before being taken out of service. Only the two gantries remain; the cranes that sat on top of them are gone. The Hog Island cranes were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
For more on Hog Island, see The Necessity for Ruins.
After re-introducing the Super Cub to the U.S., Honda is now releasing the CT125 Hunter Cub, a more off-road ready bike that’s an evolution of their 1960s-1970s era Honda Trail bikes. The Hunter Cub will be released in Japan in June and may (or may not) also come to the U.S.
The Penn Libraries have assembled a list of academic publishers who are making educational resources more readily available for researchers and teachers who are dealing with teaching or working remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. Access varies by publisher but includes textbooks and some articles. Annual Reviews, for example, is making all their articles freely available, while other publishers are expanding access to their current subscribers.
Thanks to ZOOARCH-L for publicizing this!
How many is a lot? When you’re talking passenger pigeons, that question is more controversial than you might think.
I was fortunate to be able to participate in a discussion of passenger pigeon population numbers for the Outside/In podcast, which is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio. Author Charles Mann was also interviewed because his book, 1491, repeated an earlier claim that passenger pigeon remains are rarely found on archaeological sites and questioned whether passenger pigeons were truly abundant before the 1800s.
Listen to the episode, Tempest in a Teacup, at the Outside/In website, or wherever you normally get your podcasts.
“Doctorates are so weird”
To celebrate the Smithsonian Institution’s formal announcement of its Open Access program, which makes almost 3 million digital images and 3-D models freely available, here’s one of Martha (a.k.a. USNM 223979), the last passenger pigeon. Viewed from this angle, she has a bit of an attitude.
Port Mercer was a small town along the Delaware and Raritan Canal in central New Jersey. Since the canal closed down in 1932, commerce has shifted east to U.S. Route 1, where shopping malls, car dealers, and restaurants are now located. On the west side of the canal, there are still extensive swampy wetlands between Lawrence Township and Princeton.
One of the buildings that remains from the canal’s heyday is the Bridge Tender’s House – the worker who lived there was responsible for swinging open the bridge when a canal boat came through. Several similar buildings still exist along the canal.
It’s hard to argue with that number.
Carl Reiner included an entire, albeit short, chapter (16 – not a very funny number) on the story, including some of the runner-up numbers, in his book I Remember Me. And here’s a fascinating portrait of Sid Caesar originally published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1953.