Pictures, Analysis, and Art.

Train Wreck In Richmond

2009-12-01T11:25:00.003-05:00

Fan school playground.

2009-11-14T20:08:00.004-05:00

From a bench, likely and area of high activity.

From a bench, likely not an area of interest.

From a bench. I think this is a nice angle and the area could be made to have high activity.

From a fence; the blue thing makes this somewhat surreal.

In case we need some irony in a shot...

Toddler Playground:

Toddler playground is right nearby the big playground; equipment is faded and worse for wear, which creates a dreariness. This angle is a from a fence.

From a bench, likely not that active.

From a fence (I think). This could be a neat spot, as the tires create an illusion to military machines. I also suspect games would be created around the bomblets and the tires.

From a fence; a nice angle, but maybe not that much activity

Bryd Park

2009-11-14T20:02:00.004-05:00

From a fence/bench, likely not an area of much activity.

From a bench. I think this is an excellent angle, and it could be made into an area of action. The repetitive wooden poles give an a bit of a hostile effect to the equipment...

From a bench/fence. Slides likely would make for interesting movements.

From a fence, likely an area of little activity.

From a fence, not much of interest.

Triangle Park

2009-11-14T19:30:00.002-05:00

From a 2ft. brick wall

From a bench, seems like action area.

From a bench; this is the closet fence/bench/wall for views of this side of the playground.

Toys for Tots lithograph part One

2009-06-18T12:55:00.003-04:00

Toys fot Tots Lithograph versions 2, 3, 4

2009-06-18T12:53:00.002-04:00

2009-04-30T10:09:00.002-04:00

Problems and Possibilities II

2007-12-14T16:17:00.001-05:00

Oil on Canvas, 12 x 6'5 ft.

The photos of this painting technically are terrible, but happen to work. Nearly all of the bright sheen is actually glare, not the color of the paint. Most of those areas are a filthy black color in reality, though with shiny additive mixed in the paint. Firsthand it seems mostly black with a bit of brightness, luckily, the overall sheen works just as well.

Problems and Possibilities I

2007-11-18T19:33:00.001-05:00

Oil, 10 x 5'4 ft.
A has few changes after letting it sit for a month.

A few hours before the photo above it.

This went through alot of changes
Curious lighting...

The post above this is the canvas on the right as a finished painting.

2007-11-11T21:35:00.001-05:00

Fifteen photos from New York City. Five were taken in the Upper East Side, one of the richest areas in the world; ten are from the Bronx, one of the poorest areas in the United States. While the photos from the Bronx were taken about 6 miles away from those in the Upper East Side, images of staggering wealth disparity can be found much closer. I just happened to go this route.

High-class janitorial services, early Sunday morning.

Apartments in these buildings assuredly cost millions, if not tens of millions.

...up in the Bronx

Shopping on Madison Avenue.

Or, in the Bronx

Transportation. This car - the Mercedes S600 - costs as much as a decent house: $150,000. It's the most expensive standard Mercedes model; I also saw the top BMW, Land Rover, and Jaguar models. Who knows what's cooped up in private garages.

From a car as much as a house to no car at all.

The Importance of Rail Freight Transportation, and Why it is Stunted by Capitalist Economy

2007-10-28T20:44:00.001-04:00

There are three main types of freight: bulk, mid-range, and small. (I can't find workable official terms so I'll use these)

These distinctions are made according to the total amount being carried together – millions of small items, therefore, can be considered a bulk commodity.

Raw materials, industrial inputs, inter-industrial products, large scale agriculture, and even finished products are usually bulk commodities. They also can make up medium sized lots, along with the products of small industry and business.

Small quantities are tied to niche production and consumption. They can be high value, but by volume and weight are a small portion of all goods transported. Because of their poor economies of scale, therefore, they are best suited for the least efficient means of transport: air and highway. Over greater distances, though, they could shift this towards rail.

Bulk and mid-range amounts, over medium to long distance, are best suited to either rail or ship. Why? Because these two modes are far more efficient than air or highway. Ships and barges are the ultimate mode for transporting huge quantities cheaply, but they are limited by geography and speed.

A container ship and a cargo ship head down the Delaware River from Philadelphia with global trade.

Within a large land mass, then, rail is usually the most efficient means of medium and large scale freight transportation – precisely the kind of transportation which is critical to the major sectors of production. Compared to both air and highways, it has an immensely greater capacity per unit.

In North America a single railcar carries 3 to 4 times more than a truck trailer, and generally between 60-120 such cars make up a single train. The crew operating this a train is just two – compared to one for each and every local truck, and two for many long distance trucks. A typical train has two to four locomotives for these 60-120 cars, while every single truck trailer has it's own truck cab (this excludes doubles and triples, which are somewhat rare.) As for containers – the standard unit of international trade – a train generally carries upwards of 200, even 300, while again, a truck chassis carries just one.

The maroon railroad car in the foreground is spotted at a Kellogg cereal plant in Battle Creek Michigan. Likely full of grain, it's capacity - 115 tons - is nearly four times that of a truck.
Usually it is moved with 80 to 100 similar companions.

The contents of several of these trash trucks will fill just one of the railcars being loaded within this building.

Clearly there is an immense rail advantage. This also extends into energy usage, but the possibilities are severed hampered by profit-based development. Nevertheless the scale efficiencies of rail, combined with new technology, offer a far more rational use of energy than highways.

A train of some 60 cars, each carrying over 100 tons of Tropicana juice products. One such train each day from Florida is capable of supplying the entire Philadelphia and New York metro region.

Moreover, the physics of highway transport make it far less safe than rail – as each truck must chart its own individual course, entirely based on the driver. Their actions – rather than any sort of structural organization – are the only prevention from collision with other trucks, and most importantly, other cars. Railways have fixed structural constraints which make such accidents highly improbable, especially with proper systems and maintenance.

Trucks speed within just feet of each other at 65 mph, navigating entirely arbitrary paths.
In front and behind? More trucks, each with it's own crew.

As for air, it's cargo is limited in weight and size, while the actual transport is much more expensive.

Thus, rail is clearly the most effective means of transport for most commodities over land. Yet in North America it only holds 40% of the market, in Europe, just 16%; in Brazil, 24%; and in the rest of South America, Africa (with the exception of South Africa), the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, the percent is negligible. The only large economies where rail dominates are Russia, China, and India.

Why? Because capitalist economy puts harsh limits on the development of railways. The two central features of capitalism – nation-states, and the anarchy of the market – are the two central reasons for inefficient use of railways.

The impact of nation-states on railroads

There is only one continent that is anywhere close to destroying national barriers to rail transport: North America. Unlike any other region, the (private) systems of Mexico, America, and Canada are all the same gauge, (4 feet 8 ½ inches, or standard gauge) for various historical reasons. The great distances of the continent force a certain amount of rail service in each respective continent, while the huge American and Canadian rail equipment builders, dominant on the world market, supplied similar equipment for the entire continent. The globalization of production has broken down the national rail corporations, causing further integration.

Every other region of the world is beset by archaic barriers: strict national boundaries, uneven economic development, or gauge differences.

In the former colonial regions of the world railways were built by foreign powers and corporations for the most narrow reasons of profit. Generally, systems simply went from resources – coal, ore, other minerals, and timber – to the coast. There the materials would either be processed or exported by ships. The lines had little to nothing to do with passenger transport, or even general freight usage. Moreover, the entire existence frequently depended on the survival of a company itself, so that entire African countries now lack rail service after the collapse of a corporation.

Otherwise the extremely limited development of rail systems could not overcome the narrow development of the economies themselves. Independence for colonial regions scarcely changed the economics of imperialism; most countries still have very narrow economies – uneven with the industrialized would, but within each country, extremely uneven development between the cities and country. This lack of diversity in products and resources limits the role of transport.

For South America and Africa especially, national boundaries have yet to be overcome. There is scarcely any cross border traffic, because there aren't even routes. Nearly every African nation may have a line from the interior to the coast but there are no African routes, that cross the length and width of the continent.

The same applies to South America. The relatively large systems of Brazil and Argentina are fractured within and isolated from the negligible systems throughout the rest of the continent. There are several gauge differences as well – within just Brazil there are substantial amounts of metre gauge, standard gauge, and broad gauge. For these regions, overall, rail transport is in shambles – and privatization cannot overcome these problems which ultimately find their source in capitalism.

Europe, of course, is extremely fractured by nation states. Railroads again face problems of gauge, but also equipment, tonnages, and clearances. The argument that railroads are unviable within these small nations is true – except that world economy dominates, not national. A standardization of railways throughout Europe could provide the longer hauls and greater scale that rail is best suited for.

Asia, with the three major rail systems of Russia, China, and India, faces similar problems as well. Russia's system is 5 foot gauge, unlike it's neighbors, presumably because the Stalinist economic policy of “socialism” in one country didn't care to give consideration to world trade. China is standard gauge, and India broad gauge (6 foot.) Combined with a severe lack of rail development in the surrounding nations – Iran, Iraq (the American invasion has destroyed the Iraqi rail system) Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, the Central Asia republics – rail traffic is effectively national for the largest continent in the world. The only exception are quite extensive shipments between Russia and China, but these must undergo massively inefficient gauge changes.

To state the obvious – rail transport is most effective when standardized and unhampered by national boundaries. It can carry the most and go the farthest. As long as nation-states persist, these problems will as well.

The anarchy of the market

Transportation by rail is, by nature, most effective with planning. It requires huge investments of capital which are only justifiable in combination with rational economic development. Through this approach traffic, tonnage, and speed can be maximized. The persistence of the anarchy of the market is precisely the reason why railroads cannot achieve these high levels of performance.

In North America it is claimed that highway transport is most efficient because it is “flexible.” On the contrary, highway transport is dominant because it's own anarchy of operation fits perfectly with the chaos of capitalist production – if a factory closes suddenly and moves south for cheaper wages, trucks can reach it with ease, but a railroad would have to build new trackage and abandon the old. Yet this simply means it is easier to get grossly inefficient transport wherever you need it! The easy to reach trucks still carry fractions of what rail service would do, with higher energy usage and lower safety. Their “flexibility” comes at enormous cost. A human can walk pretty much anywhere, and certainly get to all sorts of places a plane can't. But does that make walking quicker? Can one easily bring 300 companions along?

Instead, the conscious, planned development of economy will segue smoothly with similar approach for railroads. Cutting a 30 mile tunnel through the Alps, as the Swiss are currently doing, is certainly worth some $30 billion dollars because it is a central link of all north-south European trade and travel.

Yet similar projects scarcely exist. One of the most astonishing features of railways is there immense age. Nearly all railway lines built within the last 75 years have either been in India, China, and Russia, or are select high speed lines throughout Europe. Nearly everywhere else freight and passenger trains are traveling over lines that range from a 100 to even 170 years old. In Russia, the 6,380 mile long trans-Siberian railway has been electrified – a tremendous achievement – but still uses the original curvy, hilly alignment from the days of the Tsars. (alternate routes have been built but the bulk of the traffic still uses this line) To rebuild the entire route using the most modern techniques would literally cut days from the travel time, but no government or corporation is capable of funding such a thing.

In Europe the nature of standard railways is atrocious, an ironic result of the advanced economic development of the continent. The early urban and industrial growth, small territory, and large populations have pinned some of the first railway lines in the world in place, and modern improvements haven't been effected. Clearances are perhaps the worst problem, as they are minuscule compared to North America and Asia. Double stacking shipping containers on trains, as done in North America, doubles the capacity of the trains. This is possible because there is enough height on lines to handle such cars, and the trackage is capable of holding the weight. Neither condition applies to Europe; if a train of doublestacks was to travel the top container of the first car would get lopped off by a bridge!

A train of doublestacks about to ascend the Alleghany mountains in Pennsylvania. Heading east, these are containers of Asian shipping lines which were transferred to rail on the West Coast. That they have traveled by rail across the entire country is proof of the comparative efficiency of this method.

In the North America – frequently claimed to be the champion of rail freight transportation – tonnages and clearances are indeed the largest in the world. Yet other aspects lag severely behind, in particular, infrastructure. Tens of thousands of miles of heavily used rail lines still rely on alignments and grades laid down with the most rudimentary technique, i.e., the original course plotting in the 19th century. The aggregate cost of the continual, heavy use of such inferior lines is certainly tremendous: additional units, fuel, mileage, crews, equipment wear, and on. Awkward and absurd routings persist because private companies find no compelling reason to make the substantial investments to change them.

The long string of loaded coal cars speaks efficiency, but that train - heading south - originally went by on this lower level heading east. To get up there, it likely spent anywhere from 6 hours to a day to traverse a messy fifteen mile loop of trackage that forced it to change direction and add additional engines to surmount steep grades. All of that could be eliminated by building a direct connection right here, but a private railroad has little incentive to raise such funding.

There is also a staggering quantity of infrastructure, particularly bridges, which dates back a century and demands replacement as tonnages and dimensions increase. The aforementioned double-stacking of shipping containers is still impossible on several major routes, with clearance problems that again require major capital spending to address.

Raising issues of both capacity and aging infrastructure, this ancient bridge over the Appomattox River near Petersburg, Virginia, now carries upwards of 50 freight trains and 8 passenger trains a day, all on one track. Combined with a speed restriction, forcing lower speeds, it is the definition of a bottleneck.

Maintenance throughout Africa, South America, and parts of Asia is on par with the service in general – entirely inadequate. Given the overall conditions though, it is no surprise. Yet in north America, the profitable rail system – a “shining example of private rail” for the rest of the world – is forced by it's very nature to reduce maintenance and delay investment in badly needed infrastructure. For Wall Street does not care for money spent on fundamentals that reap no obvious, short-term rewards. Running trains makes money, so maintenance is only given insofar as it hinders running trains. Skimping is far more common, and more profitable, than excess.

Deep cutbacks into routes throughout the last 50 years have left severe capacity issues on the busiest mainlines in the country. While the U.S. in particular did have many duplicate and unnecessary rail routes, owing to the glories of the unplanned market, many others have been eliminated heedlessly in the same chaotic way that they were created. If passenger service were to re-emerge on large scale - which is an absolute necessity - there is simply no place to put it.

Most incredibly, electrification is essentially non-existent among fright railroads in the U.S., despite its greater efficiency and far more promising prospects of reasonable environmental impact. Despite U.S. railroads pioneering the technology in the early part of the 20th century, all major sections have been eliminated in favor of diesel powered engines.

An example of the destructive nature of rail cutbacks. This huge bridge is part of a superbly engineered freight bypass to avoid a congested passenger line with much worse alignment and grading. When constructed in the 1930's, it was also part of an ambitious program of electrification (note the poles sticking up.) Without any consideration of the broad social and economic impact, it was abandoned when traffic declined in the 1980's.

Union Pacific, the largest railroad on the continent, vies with the U.S. military for the greatest oil usage. By comparison the railroads of Europe and Asia are dominated by electric propulsion.

And, of course, regardless of nation, the working class which operates and maintains these railroads bears the brunt of cuts, inefficiencies, and safety. Recently rail workers struck in France, over pensions, and in Germany, over attempts to further increase their hours, decrease wages, and cut their rest period. In the U.S. and Canada rail workers are expected to work 60-70 hours a week, at any time, on any day. Standard shifts are twelve hours – to operate dynamic, moving equipment which weighs upwards of 10,000 tons, throughout night and day, in all weather! Between twelve hour shifts as little as eight hours rest are legally enough, even though part of that usually includes long drives to lodging and other delays.

To be refined, expanded, and clarified...

"Work"

2007-10-21T18:58:00.000-04:00

Capitalist Anarchy and the Environment

2007-10-14T20:02:00.001-04:00

The New York Times recently published an article on Tata Motors, which is attempting to manufacture a $2,000 - $2,500 car. Several other manufacturers are also following suite.

Such a cheap car is designed to open up huge portions of the world market which previously were unable to afford an auto, in particular, masses in India and China. Undoubtably, tens, or even hundreds of millions of people throughout the region would purchase these cars within a few years of their introduction. For the automakers, this is extremely lucrative - rather than fiercely competing over the stagnant markets of North America and Europe, they can produce for a rapidly expanding market with a high growth rate. High profits will surely follow.

But aside from high profits, what will be the result? An enormous transportation catastrophe. Despite having the largest populations in the world, both China and India have scant developments in more modern public transportation.

In India nearly all city transportation is road-based, ranging from the most rudimentary forms up to bikes, motorbikes, motorcars, taxis, and buses. Trams only operate in Kolkota, the last remains of systems setup by the British and since eliminated. Subways, which are the ultimate form of transportation in dense, urban areas, exist only in four cities: Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Delhi. While these are being expanded, and others planned, their development lags severely behind the requirements for efficient transportation in a high-population city. And there are 37 cities in India with a population over one million! China has subways or light-rail in about a dozen cities, but there are 49 cities with a population of over 1 million.

Both China and India have extensive rail networks which are heavily used for passenger travel, but these cannot cover short, inner-city transportation. These systems are being strained with traffic growth, particularly in China, with expansion struggling to keep pace. Highways in both nations are less developed but also expanding - though many India's roadways, according to the Times article, are in notoriously poor condition.

The proposal to create several cheap automobiles will result in an enormous stress on these already insufficient transportation systems. In cities, it would seem that such a huge influx of even small cars could cause absolutely massive congestion - literally millions would switch from either small or dense transportation, bikes and buses, to space inefficient automobiles. How will the roads accomodate it? Where will all of these vehicles be stored and parked?

Long and medium distance travel will inevitably switch towards road transport, away from rail, causing enormous reductions in efficiency. In both cases - urban and long-distance - cars will carry far less people, with less safety, and more energy, than social transportation. In some ways the changes would likely mirror a similar shift that occurred in North America in the mid-20th century, but this shift would encompass over one-third of the worlds population. The implications for resources, development, and the environment clearly deserve consideration and study.

Yet capitalist society, structured on the anarchy of the market, is not capable of such large scale planning. The various carmakers will simply let loose, for profit, regardless of the consequences.

The cheap price of the auto is based on not only improved technology and manufacturing but low safety standards as well.

More of Richmond, Virginia

2007-10-07T20:40:00.000-04:00

About 50 feet from by bedroom.

I was trespassing to get this shot. How is that? Streets are private - for residents only - in this public housing complex, called Gilpin Court.

Workers on lunch break from a scrap metal yard. I95 is to the right, and their drive to food is aggravated by there only being two entrances off this parallel road.

For sale/lease.

I had just been reminded of Bacon's Rebellion in a class I'm an SI leader for. Seems incredible that he lived right in this area of empty businesses and empty roads.

Most highway bridges in urban Richmond are also homes.

Sickness

2007-10-07T20:39:00.000-04:00

(From August 12th, 2007)

I recently went on a week long Christian work trip. God has punished me for my non-belief with 8+ days of sickness, rendering another week almost useless.

Last night - a twelve hour attempt at sleeping - resulted in more tissues than minutes of sleep. Most trashcans around the house are now just tissue recepticles.

I wonder exactly how much energy goes towards mucus production, or why it's even necessary. So I went to wikipedia. I learned a bit, but also found well-written passage on "dried nasal mucus" (which, as wikipedia notes, is "vulgarly or colloquially called "snot", "booger(s)" etc.)

"Dried nasal mucus forms when the mucus traps dust and other particles in the air. Mucus dries around the particle and hardens, somewhat like a pearl forming in an oyster."

"Age of Riches" Quotes

2007-10-06T16:01:00.000-04:00

"Name Leo J. Hindery, Jr. Age 59 Assets $150 Million Source Cable TV Current Job Manager, Private Equity Fund"

Philosophy “I think there are people, including myself at certain times in my career, who because of their uniqueness warrant whatever the market will bear.”

"Hal Steger has more than a million dollars in the bank, but it's not enough -- he has neighbors with far more. And he is not alone."

2007-09-30T13:52:00.000-04:00

These are the North Ridge Apartments, which had subsidized rent, near Highland Park in North Richmond. I cannot find how long the 114 unit apartment complex has been closed, or for what reason. The only search result was a court case, where a tenant didn't pay rent because she was attempting to leave:

"she desired to terminate her lease . . . due to her fear of crime and because she did not feel safe in the premises." ...during the tenancy, "she became aware of drug sales and criminal activity in and around the apartment building." She said her "car was vandalized and broken into while parked on plaintiff's premises provided for tenant parking."
In addition, she testified that "[o]ther tenants were unruly and threatening, and left trash in hallways which were common areas" of the three-floor, six-apartment building. Also, she said "[d]og litter was . . . found in the hallways." She complained that "[o]ther tenants regularly propped open the [building's] security door, allowing unauthorized persons into the common hallways."

The problems of immense poverty are stark. What is the response from the ruling elite? Abandon more of the desperately needed, scarce, low- income housing. Leave it as a wasteland in the community.

cursor:hand;"

From what I've read, at the turn of the century this area of Richmond - the Northside, with Highland Park, Battery Park, etc., - was a nicer middle-class haven removed from the pollution and density of central Richmond. They had the money to leave as living standards for ordinary residents fell and, consequently, crime and drugs use increased.

The Crude and Sadistic Cheerleaders for War with Iran

2007-09-20T23:08:00.000-04:00

(I give no support to the silly and puerile intro to this clip) http://youtube.com/watch?v=rGaBukcIRTs

On a recent Fox news broadcast a gaggle of the bourgeoisie excitedly discussed the possibility of attacking Iran. The tone of this segment is astonishing – wild emotions, smiles, an even laughter accompany crude and lying arguments for the perpetration of another enormous war crime. The topic is casually framed by the question of whether war with Iran is good for business. There are disagreements – over when to attack, and over the effect on the market – but an attack itself is considered either acceptable or an immediate necessity.

An attack on Iran will be a catastrophe, a tragedy, and an enormous impetus for worldwide military conflict. With that in mind, consider this attitudes and arguments of this debate.

We begin with the “moderator,” Terry Keenan, quickly establishing herself as an equivalent, in terms of objectivity, of the panelists: “Iran is in the spotlight again, better for us to act now or pay the price later?” Here a nuclear attack by Iran, which doesn't even possess such weapons, is regarded as inevitable. Ann Coulter picks up this theme and makes it even cruder, stating “I assume it would not be good for wall st. if we're all dead. Yes, act now.” Furthermore, she notes that the Iraq invasion brought a big rally on the stock market.

Then we are introduced to a very agitated young man, Jonathan Hoenig: “I just can't believe NOW we're drawing up war plans with Iran!? (moderator: pleasant chuckle) Where the hell have we been since 1979?!!? (more laughter seemingly from several of the women) Iran is spiritual and militant heart of radical Islam! So far we've been very weak I mean what are we doing right now cutting off their bank accounts!? This is appeasement by every other name.

During this tirade, THE COST OF FREEDOM pops up as the segment title, while Hoenig is identified by his enterprise, Capitalistpig.com. Hoenig provides personal portfolio analysis, at just $199 an hour. That also gets you a free “Capitalist Pig” T-shirt. According to the website, “Under attack from regulators, collectivists and left-leaning altruists, the American capitalist ranks among the world's most vilified constituencies. Yet no other group has contributed more to the greatness and majesty of modern civilization than the honest American citizen looking to make a buck.”

In this debate, on behalf of the “American capitalist,” Hoenig is in fact agitating for the destruction of a significant portion of the modern civilization.

Meanwhile, our moderator comments that a U.S. attack would be feasible if it were “successful like the Israeli pre-emptive attack.” Presumably, she is speaking of the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, which resulted in the death of at least 1,300 civilians and the destruction of much of southern Lebanon. Yet even by military standards it was no success, as Hezbollah swelled in support after the attack.

Ann Coulter then notes Israel is a good ally for an attack on Iran, while France and Germany are “dangling the bait in front of us.”

Hoenig obnoxiously continues with this incredible statement: “we don't need a "George Bush" war where we go in and build roads and schools and make everyone happy like democracy. We need a war that actually protects America! That starts with taking out the nuclear threat from Iran. We know of 10-15 sites there and we have the technology. We just don't have the cahonies to use it.”

The climax of the piece comes when the “liberal” accepts and says “so let's get rid of him (the Iranian President Ahmadinejad)” to which Hoenig bursts out “ABSOLUTELY JERRY HE'S THREAT TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA I MEAN COME ON who are we fighting?”

This is the crazed discussion over what will likely amount a crime even greater than the Iraq war and the destruction of Iraqi society. The explanation of this enthusiasm and ruthlessness for further war is not simply because Fox News is the host. Rather, this is what the ruling class of American society looks like when it brazenly discusses the violent pursuit of it's own interests.

Antiwar March in D.C.

2007-09-17T09:46:00.000-04:00

An Iraq veteran being arrested after breaching the barrier.

The police line at the base of the Capitol.

On Saturday, September 15th, an anti-war march was held in Washington D.C. to end the war in Iraq. For several hours speakers like Ramsey Clark and Ralph Nader meandered on with standard calls to pressure the Democrats in Congress - even though the Democrats, just as much as the Republicans, are deeply implicated in the crimes of the war. by mid-afternoon, the crowd began to march from the White House over to the Capitol.

The march ended at the base of the Capitol, where protesters were supposed to create a “die-in” on the lawn by laying down and simulating death. As the crowd built up, though, there was a tangible pressure to “do something” at the walled area the police were using to prevent any further encroachment. A few people breached the barrier, including veterans, and faced immediate arrest by heavily armed police. Otherwise, the mass of people were simply there, with no indication of how any of these efforts would have an effect on war policy.

Eventually ANSWER organizers came around with bullhorns telling everyone to lie down for the die-in, which would represent the pain and suffering caused to Iraqis and in turn make Congress aware of the cost of war. The tense mass pressed against police barriers gradually turned into relaxed groups of people laying around on the grass. The protest rapidly began to disperse in this extremely anti-climatic finale, with a very potent sense the absolutely nothing had been accomplished.

"While no doubt there are many prepared to be arrested and jailed to demonstrate their opposition to this criminal war, the self-sacrifice involved in such actions is misspent to the extent that it is subordinated to the orientation of those like ANSWER, whose aim is to get the Democrats to “stand up.”

The "die-in"

A more subtle news media campaign for further war

2007-09-09T23:36:00.001-04:00

Tonight an article entitled "Hard Times Help Leaders in Iran Tighten Their Grip" fills the prime spot on the New York Times website. The two-part piece describes a worsening of the economic and political situation in Iran, as inequality increases and democratic and cultural rights are constrained. The regime of Ahmadinejad is somewhat brazenly blamed, with the whole article giving the impression of a despotic ruler acting against normal Iranians. In a certain sense, this is true.

But consider the context: the past few months - and particularly the last few days - have seen continual diplomatic threats and sleights towards Iran, and even scattered reports of planned military action. Coincidentally, the New York Times gives this article front page. Yet what is occurring in Iran is, even at this point, less severe than the political situation in several neighborhood countries - Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Sheikdoms.

Certainly, women and ordinary people fair no better in either. In Saudi Arabia a young Sri Lankan maid faces the death sentence after a baby died in her custody. She worked as essentially as an indentured housemaid (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/jul2007/sril-j13.shtml) This case is by no means exceptional, and surely did not receive substantial (if any) coverage from the Times. And what about Dubai, where some 90% of the population consist of foreign workers with no rights whatsoever?!

Tower and Cupola

2007-07-01T11:38:00.000-04:00

A Broken Asbestos Trailer and Burnett Middle School

2007-07-01T10:53:00.000-04:00

Temporary Labor

2007-05-31T23:27:00.000-04:00

Today I was sent home from work, right in the middle of doing something. Why? Not for an infraction, or a mistake, but because - worst of all - I was on the verge of earning overtime.

The job is at a giant parking lot used to store Dodge Durangos and Chrysler Aspens, which are both huge SUVs. They are produced in Newark, Delaware, at an auto plant that is scheduled to shut down by 2009 ( Article on plant closure ) Obviously these vehicles aren't selling well, as between 2000-3000 are sitting at this lot for weeks or even months. Others are being cycled through for repairs - hundreds (from what I can guess) got front-end alignments, despite being brand new.

Most of these repairs were finished by the end of last week, as I began work. I was told the job was 7am to 7pm, at $8 an hour. Such pay is atrocious but I was counting on getting 20-30 hours of overtime a week. The first two days I was there, between 20-25 drivers were used to shuttle these trucks around for various reasons: repair, shipment back to the plant, new arrivals, and outbound shipments. Every one of us was from a temp agency, including the 2-4 supervisors who are burdened with much more work (they drive the vans, do all the paperwork, and scanning, while we just sit between driving the vehicles.) Admittedly, for us the job is easy. It’s not so bad to do twelve hours of it, though it is harrowing to see night shift at 6 pm one day and then see the same people still there at 7 am the next morning.

While the work may not be hard, what work there is fluctuates wildly and the labor goes with it. Two temp agencies provide the workers, at different tempos. Express Personnel is an outfit where you get assigned a job, keep it until told otherwise, and get a check every week. Express provides the base employees, like low-level supervisors and drivers taught to do a little more than just drive. Labor Ready fills in the rest, allotting daily labor in an incredibly aggravating and inefficient way. Every morning those with Labor Ready first have go to their office– usually before six a.m. – regardless of where the jobsite is. Many Labor Ready workers with us bitterly complained about having to go the exact opposite direction to get to the office. Gas, of course, is over $3.00 a gallon; some stated they haven’t filled up in weeks as they can only afford to buy a few gallons at a time.

At the Labor Ready office, workers queue up to get a “ticket” for work at what is available. At the end of the workday, they have to first ask the employer if they can come back the next day, and then must go back to the Labor Ready office for the daily check. Every single day, even if the job is the same, they must first go early to the Labor Ready office!

The first two days I worked between 10-15 people out of 20-25 were from Labor Ready, and several were different between the two days. On Saturday, working ten hours, there were only 5 labor ready people; as with Sunday. By Monday everyone – less than ten total, including supervisors - were from Express. Midday Saturday I also suddenly found out we were only working till 3:30, for an 8-hour shift, as all of the repairs were done. Business had contracted, and labor instantly went with it.

Today I was suddenly informed after lunch that I needed to leave at 4 pm so I wouldn’t get over 40 hours. An hour later, I was in the van with the crew about to hop in some more Durangos and the boss radioed our supervisor to say I needed to immediately be dropped at the front, for the same reason. This is 2 p.m. We had just been told we’d be there till 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., because apparently there was a lot more work. Never mind getting that done though – I was about to earn an extra $4 more per hour! Best of all, I informed my boss that I’d be gone for the weekend (a common time to leave…) and she sternly warned me that “you need to be available, and give us a weeks prior notice to get time off. I’ll let you off this time but not again.” This is just as I am suddenly booted off the worksite, and told not to come in Friday!

The relationship is clear: the temp worker is entirely subservient to the needs of the business. It is no wonder that temp services have grown so rapidly – Labor Ready has over 800 locations in the United States and the U.K. Check cashing and easy loan stores are rapidly increasing as well, as the miserable and unreliable paycheck of millions in the working class is insufficient to cover the ever-increasing cost of living. Parasitic loan stores quickly move into the vacant strip mall stores, gas stations, and fast-food restaurants in these areas and set to work.

Inside of Staff Zone, which is another daily work, daily pay temp agency.

The Center for Studies of Urban Poverty released the first study on day labor, both through agencies and informal. “In the two months leading up to the survey, 44 percent of day laborers were denied food, water and breaks; 32 percent worked more hours than initially agreed to with the employer; 28 percent were insulted or threatened by the employer; and 27 percent were abandoned at the worksite by an employer. … In the year leading up to the study, 20 percent of day laborers were injured on the job, and of those two-thirds missed work as a result. In fact, accidents sidelined injured workers for an average of 33 days and caused them to work in pain for an average of 20 days. More than half did not receive the medical care they needed for the injury, either because the worker could not afford health care or the employer refused to cover the worker under the company's workers' compensation insurance.”

An example of widespread "casual" day labor. Workers gather most mornings here, nearby a Lowes, and contractors pick and choose. Of course all regulation and benefits are non-existant in this case.

These conditions of labor are growing. For corporations, global competition demands a race to the bottom for the living conditions of the worldwide working class. The global economy is not the problem though, rather, the private ownership of production by tiny minority is.

Link to the Study:
http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/issr/csup/newsroom/announcements/item.php?id=12

Link to the issues of auto production and private ownership:
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/may2007/chry-30.shtml

Traveling by Train

2007-05-22T18:07:00.001-04:00

This is a train of molten sulfur, motionless, but soon to head south towards perhaps a huge paper mill in South Carolina. According to wikipedia: "Principal uses for the acid include ore processing, fertilizer manufacturing, oil refining, wastewater processing, and chemical synthesis."

These a two trains potentially holding hundreds of people are waiting to get somewhere. The one in the foregound is nearly 90 minutes late, heading towards downtown Richmond and eventually Newport News. The other is over two hours late. Why? There is one usable track between the downtown Richmond station, over five miles away, and this spot here. It is winding and has a grade. Despite two passenger trains holding hundreds of people both being scheduled, the heavy train of molten sulfur was allowed to travel up the grade at between 5-15 mph, and then prompty sat (as shown in the previous photo) in the way of everything for at least 30 minutes. All of the decisions were made by CSX corporation, the private freight railroad that owns all of this track. Similar scenarios like this are repeated daily across the entire United States, as the profit interests of such railroads trample any consideration for thousands who dare try to travel by train on crippled Amtrak.

This is the northbound Amtrak train, headed all the way to Boston, already two hours late.

71 Photos of Richmond, Virginia

2007-05-21T10:38:00.000-04:00

75 Photos of Richmond, ordered geographically in clockwise motion. Starting on Chamberlyne Avenue, through the North side of town (Highland Park,) into the East (Church Hill,) to the South, back towards the center, and a little out on the West End. My effort is to capture the daily life of the working class in Richmond.

Taking a break.

Housing for the working class can be so dismal: A, B, C, D.

Despite the appearance, some guys were working on a car in there.

There's some kids playing here, but it's hard to see without enlarging the photo.

These two photos are of Mosby Court, a public housing complex above the Richmond City Jail, courthouse, and and some light industry. There's 458 units of housing here. I've just read another blog of a nearby resident who purchased an old house (there's plenty) and is refurbishing it. He has a post on Mosby Court as well, and casually mentions that owing to problems, it - 458 units of scarce, affordable housing - should simply be demolished and replaced with single-family homes. Such homes would obviously hold far fewer people, and would be much more expensive to own or rent. How callous.

"Marketplace #14"

This block looks hideous so I thought it would be fair to show one building being rebuilt. That Tyvek is $150-$200 a roll!

Siding installation.

Moody's Community Ma_ _ ?

Private apartments, sealed up. They actually look to be in quite good condition (siding seems fairly new, along with windows.)

A telephoto from atop the large railroad trestle near the James River in Richmond. The traffic now is drastically reduced from the days when the railroad had the gall to build this several mile long, well-built, elevated trestle.

How many other cities have mobile homes in them? The giant warehouse complex in the backround appears to be unused; perhaps it is to be for tobacco and requires little labor or transportation.

Baseball field.

These are all photos of a scrap yard at the end of Chamberlyne Avenue in Richmond. Alot of empty truck trailers were being cut up and shipped out, but all sorts of metal, including scrounged metal, is evidently processed.

This is the entrace to Lowe's. Every morning guys gather around here, sitting on the ledge, while contractors and others who need day labor pick and choose. A temp agency around the corner is little different. I've seen a huge line of people standing outside there at dawn hoping for work. Many are homeless, and the jobs offer little.

A Google Image Search vs. Reality

2007-05-10T14:32:00.000-04:00

For those seeking images of everyday life through a Google image search, little will be found. Tourist, stock, or commercial images, along with completely irrelevant material, will instead dominate. Such images reinforce thoroughly inaccurate conceptions of what our world looks like - meaning they also distort and disguise the real social processes that are going on. The "revitalization" of a city will be trumpeted with images of a few gentrified blocks, while the surrounding areas languish in misery. Increasing inequality is offered as a progressive force, as if a rotting society can be refurbished in tandem with an increasing poverty and misery of the working class.

The images we are shown of our society are of great importance to how we understand it. Google image search (GIS) claims to be "the most comprehensive image search on the web" From my experience it enjoys great respect; in particular I know plenty of artists who use it extensively as a resource. To show how dangerous it is to uncritically accept this resource, I’ll provide the visual results that Google will gather on places I know. My goal is to see pictures that provide a truthful and comprehensive look at these towns and cities.

If one searches for "Wilmington, Delaware" this first image is from the state webpage, and is so small that it is useless. The second working result is this:

But this isn't even Wilmington! It's actually Richmond, Virginia! The next image result is also somewhere else - Cleveland, Ohio - but shows a boat perhaps registered in Wilmington. Good start!

To clarify, this is what the interstate looks like at night in Wilmington. The muck in front is a marsh polluted by remnants from former industries, complemented with the beauty of a polluted sunset.

Postcard historical images of Wilmington and maps fill up the first 20 results; only then is there even a generic skyline few. The image about is result 26. As far as GIS searches go, this image is astounding: it shows everyday life of the working class. Searching the next 20 pages of results will bring up nothing similar, and other cities I've searched have nothing like this at all.

There are certainly no pictures of a huge public housing complex the city destroyed in winter of 2005-2006.

There are no pictures of the overcrowded Gander Hill prison, though thousands in Wilmington have had to experience it directly or indirectly.

Piles of trash and abandoned factories won't be found either.

All in all, a GIS search for Wilmington shows little of what it actually looks like. How about Baltimore?

Those photos are all from the first page of results, and all show the exact same thing: the tiny, tourist heavy area called the Inner Harbor. Delving into the results further shows hardly anywhere else - yet Baltimore has a population of 640,000 people! Where do they live, what do they do? Why have over 300,000 left since 1950?

Large sections of Baltimore are devastated, with acres of industrial land lying in ruins and entire residential areas left only with abandoned row houses. None of this can be found in a GIS search, though in Baltimore it would be impossible to ignore. For more: http://osterizer.blogspot.com/2007/03/view-from-train-through-baltimore.html

Perhaps the smaller city of Petersburg, Virginia fares better.

This is "historic Petersburg," a small area where the old and historic buildings have been restored. Everywhere else, they are instead old and decaying. This restored area is lauded as the rebirth of this small city. It's an incredible fable; and any brief visit to Petersburg would show it. Even ignoring images, and just looking at social and economic statistics - how can an area improve if nothing improves the conditions of the working class?

Nearby "historic Petersburg" is the main commercial street, South Sycamore. At 5pm, this man is promptly closing up one of the few restaurants around. Scarcely any other store is open.

And why should other stores be open? Bus service ends at 5 pm too!

But back to the "real" Petersburg found through a GIS search.

I took a picture of that mansion as well.

You won't find images of the enormous, crumbling Seward Luggage buildings that are right across the street from that mansion, though. Currently they are being renovated into "luxury apartments." It seems likely that the few large houses around here were for the owners and top layers of the company

If that is the case, these are the houses just a few blocks away for workers. It's typical for Petersburg and so many other cities; old, small, in need of maintenance, or boarded up completely.

Also nearby: 5 huge concrete piers (two out of the picture) left to stand awkwardly after CSX railroad dismantled the steel portions of this railway trestle over two decades ago. The building beside them is connected to Virginia Union University.

I could find no images on GIS of this inactive Brown and Williamson cigarette factory, despite the fact that it dominates the landscape of several city blocks quite close to downtown. More about Petersburg: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/pete-f01.shtml

Moving on to Richmond, Virginia. GIS gives the same typical, cliche and useless results. One was already seen, the first image of this post. It shows downtown Richmond, with the Federal Reserve building, Wachovia Towers, and characteristic long, empty highway bridge. Someone has also added starlight filters to all of the overhead highway lights. Here's some alternative images:

Public Housing near the Leigh Street bridge. A GIS for "public housing Richmond Virginia" finds absolutely nothing of use in the first ten pages of results.

Over a hundred apartment units, abandoned, in the northside of Richmond. I unintentionally found a similar situation in Southside recently as well.

A boarded up elementary school, in the northeast of Richmond.

Bus stop on Broad Street. Daily life is almost visually non-existent according to GIS (or TV.)

Someone who sits a bus stop most of the day, several days in a row, for whatever reason.

GIS will find plenty of images of pets. Not this kind though.

GIS certainly does not bring up images of people working. Not even a janitor whose worked 17-21 hours a day, several days a row, and has to clean the court during halftime of a soldout basketball game.

Only to handpick all the trash in an 8,000 seat sports center after the game.

Petersburg, Virginia

2007-05-07T20:06:00.000-04:00

This drawing might be finished. These are photos of the final 30 feet, starting from the end. The entire 4 x 75 ft. pastel drawing is shown in the last picture of this post, while individual images of the other sections can been seen in previous posts. Better photos will be taken at some point when all of this can be properly displayed. For more information: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/pete-f01.shtml

The following post has also been updated, with two new images of another part of the drawing added.

Petersburgs Drawings: Part Two Part II

2007-05-07T15:36:00.000-04:00

This is the most recent segment of a long drawing, done with chalk pastels on paper. Scroll down for the rest of the drawing, which is currently 4 x 35 feet long. Please click on images for a larger view.

Seeing what is to be Seen

2007-04-19T21:12:00.000-04:00

I've never seen a dog more unconcerned with my presence. When I first walked by I was struck by the attitude and expression of this dog, as it seemed so human. I came back 25 minutes later with a camera and nothing had changed.

I've seen this peculiar building a few times, near Marshall St. in the Carver area of Richmond

The spiral exit to a faux highway - the kind that goes through housing projects, is filled with cracks and patches, and only sees a few cars at a time.

Used every day.

A small scale contractor owns that van, and sometimes can't start it for 20 minutes. All the while he guns the old engine, making for a fantastic alarm clock.

This neighborhood still has the cars from when it was a considered a middle-class suburb... obviously inficating that is no more.

Repeated flooding in Battery Park has coated mud all over some areas, and ravaged the tennis courts.

The problem still isn't solved after almost nine months. The pumps are on what used to be a landfill, which itself broke the drainage pipe for the low lying park.

School!

What used to be almost mansions - hundreds of them - are now the crumbling homes of some of Richmonds most impoverished areas, Highland Park and Church Hill

A few new homes constructed amongst the other decaying ones pictured above and below. Personally, I find none of this architecture very pleasing, but it is incredible how the new homes have completely taken this age old and worn out style - except without all the individual flourishes that I find make the others homes at least bearable. This is just ugly

What bland and depressing dwellings most of us have to live in.

At least this one is made quirky by it's extreme length.

Of course many have no homes.

I actually took this dirt path through weeds filled with trash and under the highway bridge as the safer way to get between two streets; the nieghborhood on the hill is one of the most socially devastated in the entire city of Richmond.

15,000 or 20,000 tons of West Virginian and Kentucky coal per train, eight or ten times a day, has started to chip away at this ill-maintain rail. Rail heads really aren't supposed to have such signifigant damage like that.

The Democrats as an anti-war party: rubbish.

WELCOME TO RICHMOND! Brought to you by Wachovia Securites. Isn't it wonderful?

School bus down the type of industrial street that has 1 and 1/2 lanes and blind turns, despite heavy truck traffic.

Asphalt truck from a plant down the previously mentioned street.

Pepsi isn't so subtle. This trailer was labeled "Richmond bulk." It honorably brings thousands of useless, sugary drinks for children, students, and workers all over the area.

O street. Home of the city jail, the terrible food service provider Aramark, the courthouse, two laundry companies, several vaguely used industrial spaces, a few assistance programs, and the new homeless center.

I was in the store with this guy 15 minutes before this photo, waiting for him to finish browsing the "oops we baked to much" shelf so I could get a look.

The connotations the sound of these helicopters must have to the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere are somewhat hard to imagine so far.

A small paint factory on the James River in Richmond, near Hull St.

Foreclosures: "Lucrative Commissions in a Growing Industry"

2007-04-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

While doing a job search on Craigslist, I was surprised by the large amount of filthy jobs out offered. Many deal with loans, debt, refinancing, shady sales, and so on. This posting, though, was certainly the worst:

Foreclosure Consultants Needed in the Richmond Area Come Join Our Team--------------------------

"We are seeking a few individuals in your area that can help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Lucrative commissions in a growing industry. Email me for more information: gareyl@gmail.com"

More of Petersburg

2007-03-25T20:50:00.000-04:00

Click to enlarge, although some may not work. Give a try, though, as these tiny images miss alot.

Drawing of Petersburg, Virginia

2007-03-14T19:19:00.000-04:00

On numerous visits to Petersburg, Virginia, I was overwhelmed by the poverty and misery that dominates the city in a proportion higher than I've ever seen. This culminated in reporting on a house fire, caused by deprivation and utility company profits, which killed three children: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/pete-f01.shtml

This is the first segment of a pastel drawing of the city. It follows the course of an abandoned railroad, which passes by the decayed and destroyed industrial base of Petersburg and then drops off at a bridge that is now just piers. The next segment will follow a road, showing the social conditions of the city and the interactions I had with some I talked to. The drawing was done with chalk pastels in about six days. It's 4 x 20 feet, on paper.

View from the train through Baltimore, Maryland

2007-03-12T13:29:00.000-04:00

Railroads in the United States usually formed the basis for a town or city, or at least were present early on in their development. The enormous economic growth railroads were part of caused a parallel growth of urban areas. In most cases, this growth encased the railroads as it was intricately tied to them as the major source of transportation. These original alignments - steep, curvy, and convoluted - were designed when freight trains were carrying several hundred of tons and might be a thousand feet long. At this point, freight trains are carrying from 5,000 to 20,000 tons, stretch between a mile and two in length, and use these routes in far greater numbers. On Amtrak's busiest route, the Northeast Corridor, passenger trains capable of 150 mph are rendered impotent at Baltimore, Wilmington, Philadelphia and New York, where the ancient infrastructure forces them to crawl at 30 mph.

That alone is an indictment of the present state of affairs in America, where no public effort or organization is possible to improve the efficiency of this major transportation corridor. Worse still are the social conditions of the area that it serves, the inner-city. Decades of industrial collapse and rising inequality have resulted in horrifying conditions of life for millions of people in these areas. Everyday, hundreds of thousands pass right through the thick of it on the train, some on the Acela Express. It's high-pricing and amenities - $199 to go from Washington to New York, a three hour trip - are meant to cultivate an elite market. The only way someone from the areas depicted could ride such an enormously expensive train is to work for Amtrak itself. Ironically, the decayed infrastructure of Amtrak prevents this elite express from ever going signifigantly faster than any other trains; it's 150 mph speed is possible in only a few areas between Washington and Boston.

All these pictures were taken as I rode on one of these segments, through Baltimore, Maryland. The view from the train shows an astonishing level of decay and misery in the city - hundreds upon hundreds of abandoned, trashed, and ruined houses and buildings crowd the landscape. In the midst of taking the pictures of the housing, I was told that it is illegal to take pictures from a train and that I needed to stop immediately. The conductor saying this was sympathetic, but forced to do so as an employee. Ultimately, the immense social inequality in the United States, as shown in these photos, is what provokes the ruling class to attack and abolish the most basic democratic and artistic freedoms. Every "suspicious" photo you see is here 100% illegal.

Recent comments have noted that the conductor was incorrect in stating this. This seems true, but it is what I encountered. Whatever the actual status of photography on or of trains, it should not be kept apart from the general roll-back of democratic rights, both in the United States and internationally (draconian anti-terror legislation has been legislation in Britain, Germany, Australia, Spain, Canada, Sri Lanka, France and elsewhere.)

2007-03-12T13:12:00.000-04:00

Apparantly here "they" (the city?) simply destroyed whatever abandoned and decayed housing was nearby the Amtrak overpass.

I've seen these billboards in Richmond too, which state "Donate your car" and "help children in need." That's a little girl on the billboard with an explanation of joyful surprise. Indeed, when parents of children have cars it is quite good for their children as well. But why not just state "Help (millions) of adults in need"? That would cover children, and millions of others whose lives are hampered by a transportation system entirely focused on road transport. Moreover, why advertise to an audience facing a protracted decline in living standards? Though just as ineffective, this billboard would at least be more pointed if positioned at the gates of a mansion with a forty car garage.

Progress marches on, but under capitalism it never cleans up after itself. This is a lithography studio, from the days when that tedious and expensive process was the way to make mass images. Good riddance to such technology! Yet the resources focused on it lie here, in a street in Baltimore, decades after it has become obsolete. Last time I passed by this street on the train two policeman had a teenage black boy forcibly lying on this desolate sidewalk, arms and legs outstreched. They stood over him with guns drawn, presumably questioning him.

2007-03-12T13:04:00.000-04:00

Another portion of the tunnels on Amtrak's northeast corridor through Baltimore, Maryland. Again, this is the busiest and most technologically advanced passenger line in the United States.

These two photos show just part of a huge industrial complex that has been partially demolished over the past few years.

One of many billboards I've seen in Baltimore along these lines. Some advocacy group thinks it can eliminate the by-products of social inequality by screaming at residents of the city about how they need to act.

2007-03-12T12:04:00.000-04:00

This is a tunnel on the busiest and most technologically advanced passenger railroad in the United States.

Trash fills the spaces where tracks formerly were, though a transportation corrider like this desperately needs capacity.

A 25 Mile Bike Ride Around Richmond, Va; next eleven posts

2006-12-12T10:48:00.000-05:00

I think a good portion of the pleasing aesthetic this buidling emits is because of it's marked contrast to the surrounding environment, which is dismal. Three people here were waiting for the bus along the cracked and potted sidewalk of Jefferson Davis Highway.

A few blocks north of the Model Tobacco building the abandonment continues. There are ten blocks between this point on Jefferson Davis Highway and it's intersection with Hull Street; that intersection is the largest in the south side of Richmond. On these ten blocks, nearly every building on this side of the road is abandoned, whether residential or commercial.

Looking back towards tobacco storage, the Model Tobacco building, and woman in her twenties walking down the street eating a chocolate crunch bar. This is a six lane highway.

Abandoned Housing on a Mass Scale

2006-12-12T10:43:00.000-05:00

"Watch for Children Playing" says the crooked sign.

"she desired to terminate her lease . . . due to her fear of crime and because she did not feel safe in the premises." ...during the tenancy, "she became aware of drug sales and criminal activity in and around the apartment building." She said her "car was vandalized and broken into while parked on plaintiff's premises provided for tenant parking."
In addition, she testified that "[o]ther tenants were unruly and threatening, and left trash in hallways which were common areas" of the three-floor, six-apartment building. Also, she said "[d]og litter was . . . found in the hallways." She complained that "[o]ther tenants regularly propped open the [building's] security door, allowing unauthorized persons into the common hallways."

The problems of immense poverty are stark. What is the response from business and the government? Abandon more of the deperately needed, scarce low- income housing, and leave it as a wasteland in the community.

2006-12-12T10:40:00.000-05:00

Across the street is similar housing, which appears to be in decent condition, yet even some of it is boarded up. The closest nearby building is a national guard armory.

This public housing is isolated between the valley of a railroad and the surgical incision of an interstate. Several bland, ailing, four lane roads also cut the opposite direction through the area.

Clearly, many cannot afford cars though. Earlier a father walked by, taking his kid home from school.

The mottled dirt below this highway bridge is the "pasture" for the police horses, with a stable on the other side. As to what's leeching off of the hill, the fence, the bridge, I sure don't know.

People live under either side of that bridge, and the one I'm standing on.

2006-12-12T10:37:00.000-05:00

All of this housing has been evacuated and boarded up following massive flooding. See next post down.

Looking down towards a railroad, an abandoned service station, a rusty trailer, piles of trash, and up to a tower of public housing. That tower is in the isolated community decribed in the last post, Gilpen Court. It has an astonishing share of murders within the city of Richmond, inevitably tied to it's immense poverty, stagnation, and isolation: http://www.timesdispatch.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=RTD%2FMGArticle%2FRTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031775642661&path=%21news%21special%21generic4&s=1058750351796

(it's area number 5. It's sad and tragic that in naming the regions with high murder rates, the map mostly just names variuos public housing complexes; everything with the name court.)

This graveyard is as populated as some of the residential lots behind and around it.

2006-12-12T10:34:00.000-05:00

No, it didn't snow in Richmond yet. This is Battery Park, a beautiful series of sports facities in a valley lined with winding stone pathways and stairs. In early fall, the entire park was flooded twice after heavy rains. The valley gets narrower a few thousand feet up. There the water filled the entire space creating what seemed like a lake, except the lake was stinky and filthy and flooded out many homes and residences.

The cause? To the right in both photos, there is an old landfill, right in the middle of a residential area. The drainage pipe carrying water under the landfill collapsed, and all of the water had little place to go. After both floodings, the pump dried the park out after several days, leaving a muddy residue over the entire landscape. Now that has been covered with something else, perhaps lime.

Heavy stones create interesting walkways all over the park; this is now all fenced off. The orange pumps carry water snaking in tubes at least half a mile away, to another valley.

Phillip Morris in Richmond

2006-12-12T10:32:00.000-05:00

As the living conditions of masses of ordinary people in Richmond plumment to ever-greater depths, Phillip Morris expands with a huge new complex in the cities downtown. It is a "research center." What socially useful research could develop from studies on how to continue to profit off of a deadly product is a curious question indeed.

And of course, the company didn't even clean up after itself, within the same city. No more than two miles away from the new complex, a facility occupying an entire block sits unused.

There is no shortage of ancient cars in Richmond, or cranky old overloaded pickups carrying pallets, scrap, junk, and trash around.

2006-12-12T10:29:00.000-05:00

An enourmous, ambitious, several mille long steel railroad trestle, a floodwall, a path carved by shoes and wheels, and wachovia securities.

The four most prominent buildings being constructed in the city of Richmond: this waterside tower of "luxury condos," the previously mentioned Phillip Morris research center, a new Courthouse, and a new business building for Virignia Commonwealth University.

Affordable housing, decent jobs, community centers, socially useful production- of these one will find little.

The long Hull St. bridge across the James River, from downtown to the southside of Richmond. A grain elevator looms overhead.

2006-12-12T10:25:00.000-05:00

Every single building across the street from this lot is boarded up. Meanwhile, one foundation has been laid on this otherwise empty block, which undoubtably was already developed and demolished.

Farther up the street. The matress stuck out among all the trash and filth in between the abandoned houses.

A lady who lived in the house in the left of this photo came out to talk to me. She held up hopes that all the houses around here would be fixed up, and mentioned some of the very meager actions towards this recently. She agreed that the housing stock in Richmond is criminally old, crumbling, and unaffordable.

2006-12-12T10:21:00.000-05:00

Railroad cars headed south, to return North with paper products.

All of the cars in this train are owned by Tropicana Products. Going north in this photo, they are loaded with 5,000 to 6,0000 tons of juice products loaded in Brandenton, Florida. Each day a train like this travels to northern New Jersey, where the products are distributed for the entire New York metropolitan area. Even with the problems of the private rail system, this is vastly more efficient and safe than highway transportation.

The newest thing is this photo are the leaves, by far. The tree is old, the building is nearly beyond recognition. The bridge is likely at least 80 years old, if not more. The railroad engines were both built in the late 60's, along with the freight cars they are pulling.

2006-12-12T10:18:00.000-05:00

Over ten miles away from Richmond lies yet another decrepit shopping center. This store is closed, with a Food Lion supermarket remaining it's awkward partner. I tend to think as the distance from the city increases, the economic situation improves. In most directions from Richmond, though, urban poverty stumbles into rural poverty.

2006-12-12T10:13:00.000-05:00

Dupont Chemical Corporation has an enormous facility near this apartment complex, which is lovingly named Duport Circle. Just to ensure a "fair and balanced" picture, the most of the actual Duport family lives in mansions on enormous tracts of land in northern Delaware.

Dupont Circle is in the distince, with an unused distribution center in the foreground. The center is seperated from the abandoned department store behind the photo by a tangled barrier of thorns, weeds, roots, and trash. Somewhere in that mix there is also flowing water, supposedly.

What an aesthetically pleasing residence to barely afford to live in for the rest of one's life. The circling seagull's were pretty, though.

2006-12-12T10:08:00.000-05:00

Another shopping center, hardly alive.

The obligatory Richmond sunset picture, the 51st picture in this series of pictures. If the railyard was cropped out, this would be like all of the promotional photos. Of course, the other 50 I took would never be used, except perhaps those of Philip Morris.

2006-10-14T13:28:00.000-04:00

The interior of the building was done first with a simple acrylic painting, and then covered in colored pencil, with some additional thin layers of acrylic added atop. The outside is entirely colored pencil.

2006-10-14T13:25:00.000-04:00

Recent Assignments

2006-10-14T13:19:00.000-04:00

I make no claim to the overall quality of this work, in all of it I was told what to do and was trying new things.

Concertgoers placed in their proper environment.

Oil paint with a pallete knife

Mostly food coloring. "I can be an abstract expressionist too."

2006-07-04T16:35:00.000-04:00

Here's a multicolor print of the interior of a city bus. It has yet to be fully printed, this is only the black layer, printed on a used window. I ran over it with oil paint to transfer it to the other printing plates.

This is the plate that printed what's in the previous photo.

Gray, yellow, and light blue layer.

White & dark blue layer.

Trucks going by in a rainstorm.

2006-07-04T15:39:00.000-04:00

We delivered siding to this new house.

It was amongst many other stupid looking new houses.

Built right into a field, within an incredibly small town, away from any noticable employment.

More of a mansion here. Wrought iron imitation gates lose their classic looks when you have a hydraulic level to open them. Also, gates look fairly silly when not used as a point of entry within a wall or fence. Not to tricky to get around this one here.

So we have new houses, which use vinyl to imitate wooden siding, stone, or bricks, and are built to imitate classic early american architecture... and they are built cheaply and poorly in absurd places... and then we have abandoned houses on one of the main streets of Philadelphia, which one of the countries largest cities.

Phili, Baltimore

2006-07-04T14:45:00.000-04:00

The corvette was an unintended addition to the last picture, but it makes for an excellent contrast. The grain elevator in the distance, surrounded by haze and pollution, is now abandoned, or at least unused for grain storage. It used to be the destination for entire trainloads of grain, which were then transferred to ships for export. The coveted corvette in the foreground will likely cease to be made within the american confines of declining profit; as the lower picture demonstrates. The GM plant being demolished is in Baltimore, and used to make the Astro and Safari vans. Who says the corvette plant can survive, as all the others fail? Probably only the unions, under the condition that their members accept every concession GM demands.

This hotel really stands out in the area it's in. It's a very interesting design, with those larged arched openings and staircases.

I finally got a pan shot right.

Trucks & Lifts

2006-07-04T14:08:00.000-04:00

I've been learning how to drive this old (1985) outdoor forklift. It's actually harder, I think, than the three-wheeled lift, even though it's much closer to driving a car. For someone who knows stick, though, I doubt that's true. Either way, the forks are always sticking out, making precision a necessity anytime one wants to pick up a pallet- if you come at the pallet skewed, your going to catch the pallet skewed. With the other forklift, you can manuever into perfect position, and then slide the forks under the pallet. That I'm driving head down here shows how much I have to concentrate on keeping the thing in gear, rather then where I'm going. It only has two speeds anyway-Turtle and Rabbit. I wonder why, then, it's not automatic.

This was taken in the early morning, before the warehouse lights were even on. The day before, we had finished the day by stacking some loose boxes of siding onto a pallet at the highest height on the shelfs. Obviously, that didn't work out to well.

Another warehouse loading area of the building supply company

Taken in Philadelphia, as an hour was spent trying to re-enter a major roadway. At first, this picture may seem like a mess (appropriately enough), but there is a composition to it that goes right down to the image in the mirror, of the car cutting through the intersection. Alot of traffic looked like that throughout that morning.

Pictures of, on, Truck & Bus

2006-06-23T21:54:00.000-04:00

6 am sunshine.

Portrait of my reflection within the reflection of a surburban neighborhood and general motors auto plant.

I tried for hours to get aesthetically pleasing pictures from the truck I ride in. This was the closest I got.

Tuition free college eduction, brought to you by: war.

no comment.

Tasks

2006-06-23T21:52:00.000-04:00

Even if somethings twenty feet in the air, it's sometimes is easier to get by hand instead of forklift. That's happening here, I'm using the largest step ladder we have. The rule is that the largest step ladder will always get me high enough so that the gap between my foothold and the ladder is just slightly larger than how far my leg can reach. That's what's going on here.

This cart has been filled with junk for months. Perhaps for the tenth time, it has been mentioned that it has been put away. I might be able to find where a few things go, but inevitably within hours someone else, walking around with a loose, strange item, will drop it onto this cart. Thus the cycle continues.

If there's nothing obvious to do, your supposed to make yourself look busy by sweeping. I tried to show how hopeless that is in this photo, but it didn't quite work. To clarify: the entire warehouse is covered in soot and dust. The floor is not smooth granite, like newer warehouses, it is old, pock filled concrete. The filth fills every pore. Any attempt to sleep only disturbs the top layer, usually just shifting it around.

Luckily vinyl siding products are durable, as we sure don't have the proper equipment to care about them.

Some Specifics of Pulling an Order

2006-06-23T21:47:00.000-04:00

Trying to grab something just within my reach isn't so bad, compared to the items that are 10 feet above this. The only way to get them is to stand on the forks of the forklift and ride that up to the top of the shelf. On the forklifts, there are very few warnings, but one of the specific ones is DON'T RIDE ON THE FORKS!

Here's the process of getting one item. First, it has to be found. This is no small task; at times it can take half an hour.

Next, this twelve foot long box must be pulled out of it's place. It doesn't really have a specific slot, rather, it's sorta wedged nearby where the permanent marker text states it should be.

Up on the cart it goes.

Alot of times an order won't call for the exact amount that comes in a box of an item, so it must be taken in loose peices. If that's the case, then it has to be wrapped up in cellophane so it won't be a mess.

Assorted Truck Pictures

2006-06-23T21:43:00.000-04:00

A two hour drive up the New Jersey Turnpike, to drop off 10-15 windows into a small storage container. The truck can barely fit in here, it'll take about 15 minutes to back out the 1000 feet or so to the entrance. Then, a two or more hour drive back.

The combilift at rest. This machine is wonderful fun to drive- it can go forward, backwards, and sideways. All three wheels can pivot. It costs $56,000 (!), supposedly because it has a microprocessor inside that will take note of repeated driving patterns and automatize them. It is the only way to move siding around in this warehouse, as the aisles are far to narrow to carry a pallet of siding with a normal forklift.

Here's the crafty way to get a pallet of siding onto a small delivery truck- first, the green forklift picks the pallet up sideways and get it's end onto the the back of the truck. The old standard forklift then comes in and gets a hold on the end of the pallet

The green forklift drops back, and then the standard one shoves the entire pallet it. It works quite well for getting the siding in... but getting it out? The pallet must be broken apart by hand in the truck, and then hand unloaded.

I beleive this is a very appropriate slogan.

Scenes, From the Side Window of a Truck

2006-06-23T21:37:00.000-04:00

Along with finance and war, scrap metal is a booming American industry. Scrap metal might be added to coal, iron, lumber, stone, etc. as a natural resource of america.

If someone came up with something that feeds off of large, empty, and weedy lots that could be a booming industry too.

The port Newark/Elizabeth Marine Terminal says:

Views From a Truck

2006-06-23T21:22:00.000-04:00

Highways are a big ugly mess. These are attempts at capturing that.

Regularity at Work

2006-06-23T21:18:00.000-04:00

Here's photos of some normal stuff at a building supply ware house:

Stocking fake (vinyl) shutters on a rack that is clearly not appropriate for their size.

In a warehouse, items are stored in an organized manner so that they can be found and redistributed. In the case of this warehouse, the organization is lacking, but the principle is the same. We've got about fifteen of this noisy steel carts, we wheel them around as we pick items out of stock to assemble an order. In this photo, that's already been done, and the orders on the carts are waiting to be loading onto the truck. It might be a long wait, sometimes the trucks are gone for over 12 hours in a day.

Vinyl siding, as far as I know, is usually twelve or sixteen feet long, and about a foot wide. Incredibly, 16 to 20 peices like this are simply put in a thin cardboard box, which also must be 12 or 16 feet long. Full of siding, a box also weighs perhaps 75 to 100 pounds. The boxes have no structural stability; they are like a long heavy noodle. This is what happens when you put 20 of these boxes on a long wooden pallet.

Outside, empty pallets are stacked to await pickup. (so they can be reused) In the background are the two smokestacks of a passenger railcar maunfacturer, long since abandoned.

The Best Way to Load a Stack of Foam Onto a Cart

2006-06-23T21:06:00.000-04:00

To use space well, foam in this warehouse is stacked to the ceiling, without the aid of machinery. It's quite tricky to stand on tall steps and try to throw bundles of this foam progressively higher; every throw threatens to throw one off balance.

To get the foam down from it's towering heights, though, merely calls for a firm tug at the bottom. Here's a sequence of that process, with an attempt to make the falling foam land on the cart it will be transported in.

2006-05-06T21:42:00.000-04:00

Test print of a recent foamcut, 30" x 12" inches. I drew this in permanent marker right onto the foam, as I sat across the street. I need to clean up some things, espeicailly the woman who is waiting at the bus stop. She stood there, waiting, for almost 30 minutes, waving by several buses that were not her route. Behind here is an large unused building that is ornate yet nondescript. At least a tidbit of explanation would come from those two I beams sticking on the left if they still held a sign.

Start of a New Piece

2006-05-06T21:33:00.000-04:00

This is the full size sketch for a 15 x 4 ft three-color foamcut. I'm still revising the sketch, the photos are about two weeks stale.

How nice of Pepsi to join me.

Broadway St. in Chinatown, New York

2006-05-06T21:27:00.000-04:00

I had no idea that silly blonde-haired fellow was presiding over this picture when I took it.

The Kind of Buildings Elite Colleges Have, and the Elite Who Use Them

2006-05-06T21:14:00.000-04:00

This college costs $41,000 dollars a year. Part of this obviuously goes to these gorgeous, ornate buildings that fill the entire campus. Ironically, you can struggle to find anyone in them, as... $41,000 a year is not something many can refrain from gasping at.

At least this school is cultivating culture. Here we have a leading representative of this fine school, as shown by his participation in student government. What forces of progress for humanity does he show? An interest in "Civil War, Politics, Cars, Travel."

Maybe some clarification as to what civil war? Perhaps he simply likes all civil wars. I wonder what he thinks about imperialistic wars? I have a guess.

More stupifying wealth.

More personal interests of the cultural and intellectual elite.

2006-05-06T21:04:00.000-04:00

It was raining hard so I decided to wait under an Interstate overpass. I decided I might as well take some pictures while I waited

Click to Enlarge

2006-02-01T22:08:00.000-05:00

In the other post, this image doesn't enlarge, so I'm trying again. For explanation, scroll down.

Hurricane Katrina: the Havoc Caused by Profit

2006-02-01T21:27:00.000-05:00

Disclaimer: My computer is ill, so all of these images are massive, and terribly uncropped. Also, This first set of pictures solidifies how terrible indoor lighting is; in reality this pievce has a stark white/black contrast, not a light grey/black.

The is a 4 x 8 foot foamcut depicting a scene that occured soon after Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. This particular paragraph is the seed of this piece:"Gordon Russell of the New Orleans Times-Picayune noted pointedly that these hellish conditions “stood in stark contrast to those of people nearby in the restricted-access New Orleans Centre and Hyatt Hotel, where those who could get in lounged in relative comfort.” A line of state police armed with assault rifles drove the crowds of homeless refugees back from the entrance to the facility.Russell continued, “A few blocks farther away, guests were being fed ‘foie gras and rack of lamb’ for dinner, according to a photographer who stayed there, while the masses, most of them poor, huddled in the Dome.”
(http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/norl-s02.shtml)

With that paragraph as a basis, I spent weeks researching this contrast and came up with this composition. The scene, visually, is entirely fictional, because through even university search engines and libraries I have found no journalistic documentation of the New Orlean's elite gathered in these two hotels. To fill in the gap, I created this table scene of the Hyatt hotel which provided ample space to include all the elements I needed. The people at the table are all based off of ulti-millionaires and billionaires, as I was unable to find decent pictures of the Bring New Orleans Back commission.

Even so, those around the table to me are a combination of the New Orleans elite who stayed in the Hyatt hotel (I chose this one of the two) and the Bring New Orleans Back commision. Afterall, the commission is made up of that same elite. The goals of the ruling class, both of New Orleans, and nationwide (even worldwide) are shown through the various documentation lying around the scene. For example, a few men have been presented with a blueprint for a Bank One financial tower, and a projector presention states the factual outline of the rebuilding plans. These plans are, of course, based entirely around profit, which is the same factor that caused Hurricane Katrina to result in such unprecidented death and destruction.

This hopefully shows the contradiction between these two worlds divided by class. While these folks sip their wine, discuss thier plans, and relax in comfort, their massive wealth is precariously protected from masses of people through instruments of repression (police) Oddly, I just not realized this media presentation is another one of those bulwarks against social upheaval. Fortunetly, I did conciously reason this scene, where residents asking for food and care are being stampeded by heavily armed police. Meanwhile, the media slanders them in it's attempts to obscure and justify the hurricane tragedy.

This being my first foamcut, many, many mistakes were made, and inconsistency abounds. The fellow on the right here looks like a George Grosz character.

How to Make a Foamcut Print.

2006-02-01T20:59:00.000-05:00

Again, due to a critically wounded computer, I can no longer rotate my images nor reduce their size. Still, I intend to show how these prints are made.

Here, the paper I'm going to print on is laid out, and the foam block has just been hosed off after doing 4 prints in a row. With it clean of paint clogging the finer cuts, I'm ready to do another 3 or 4 prints.

Now it has been inked up with alot of black poster paint. I mix about 6 eggs into a gallon of the water-soluble tempara paint, to make it thicker.

Each thirty foot long roll of paper makes only three prints, with 6 feet left over each time. In the future, I'm going to plan better in that respect. Here, I'm using discarded cabinet material , which a company threw out because these four pieces have about a foot looped off. I use it as a backing for the paper, because the cabinet material is heavy, strudy, and very smooth. To the left is a piece of masonite, which I originally intended for that purpose....

But, due to the discovery of this gem, it's now a ramp. A freind pointed out how ideal this metal/concrete bumping post would to apply pressure for the printing, and he was very, very correct. Before I used this, the prints were horredously inconsistent. I managed to bike it 3 blocks for this, nearly breaking my bike and it's third wheel addition. I know it has to weigh several hundred pounds, but I'm not sure exactly.

Using that peice of masonite as a ramp, I roll this on top of the sheet of foam, and then carefully back and forth.

After rolling it back off, I lift up the foam, and 12 times today, this was the result.

Martin Luther King Jr. day Part I

2006-01-21T19:28:00.000-05:00

On Martin Luther King Jr. day, I spent several hours taking pictures. Only when I found the library closed did I realize that it was MLK day. With that in mind, I went over what had happened that day, and considered the correalition between the current reality, and the legacy of the civil rights movement.

MLK, individual, is not responsible for the relative gains that were made in the 1950's and 1960's. Rather, the pressure brought to bear on american capitalism by the continued struggles of masses of americans is what resulted in what changes were made. To read the eulogies on his birthday, though, will leave only two names in mind- primarily MLK, and possibly Rosa Parks. In addition, efforts towards economic equality are patently ignored, as if the fact that nearly the entire black population was condemed to hopeless poverty was not an issue. Instead, it is propogated that the civil rights movement was solely against racism and had nothing to do with class. These distortions are no accident- in these days of unprecedented social polarization and catastrophe, any broad understanding of previous mass movements is something the ruling class want destroyed. On top of all that, outright falsification is also heaped on for good measure. Hence, we get the New York Time's MLK day article, entitled "Globalizing King's Legacy."

"As Dr. King predicted, the civil rights movement liberated segregationists
themselves. The integrity of law enforcement rose with a stark decline in
racial terror."

Apparantely to this author, the Jackson State killings (where police fired on students protesting both the Kent State killings and Vietnam War) , the near elimination of the leadership of the Black Panthers by the FBI, and even the persecution of MLK himself by the FBI were not diversions from this integrity. Also, the continued police killings in the name of urban crime, strike busting manuevers, and the responsibility of the CIA in fostering death squads and dictatorship throughout the world all don't even rate mention, as if the integrity of law enforcement/racial terror is a situation unaffected by the last 35 years!

"the marchers from Selma turned rulers and subjects into fellow citizens. A
largely invisible people offered leadership in the role of modern founders. For
an incandescent decade, from 1955 to 1965, the heirs of slavery lifted the whole
world toward freedom. Weariness and war intruded. In the White House, President
Lyndon Johnson wrestled the political subtleties of sending soldiers to
guarantee liberty at home. "

According to this quote, one civil rights march eliminated inequality, the whole world was lifted towards freedom, and then, simply, weariness and war intruded. Of course, that war was to "garuantee liberty at home." From that viewpoint, it understandable that no mention is made of the anti-war character of the civil rights movement, nor is the current illegal Iraq war even mentioned.

MLK has been successfully interpreted to match today's requirements through an ignorance that the movement he led was also against the Vietnam war, and an intense focus on the (non-violent) fight for freedom that MLK called for. How convenient! The Iraq war is about freedom too!

" 'I say to you that our goal is freedom,' he said in his last Sunday sermon.
'And I believe we're going to get there because, however much she strays
from it, the goal of America is freedom.'And we must recognize that the
accepted tradeoff between freedom and security is misguided, because our
values are the essence of our strength. If dungeons, brute force and arbitrary rule were the keys to real power, Saudi Arabia would be a model for the future instead of the past."

This author is determined to make absolutely no useful reference to the current situation of the world- For millions upon millions of people, what country best defines dungeons, brute force, and arbitrary rule? And what does that say about the virtue of the sacred free-market economy?

Instead of platitudes, I would like present to how many contradictory, disturbing, and atrocious situations that can been unintentionally seen in a few hours. These will show clearly the contrast between this supposedly slightly skewed society that the New York Times, and other bourgeois press like to present, and the one that actually exists. The first few pictures will be less explicit in this respect than the next two posts.

Another of these sites that I caught occasionally glimpses of as a kid. All the while, I was hammered with "the U.S. is the richest nation in the world; the U.S. is the world's only superpower" etc. Now I know the U.S. is more accurately a capitalist economiy in decay, with a impossibly wealthy topmost layer, controlling some 40% of the wealth. This layer enrichs itself primarily though financial dealings, having found industries like this to be unprofitable.

Specifically, these industrys were: International Harvestor Warehouse, direct back with white doors, built 1912; back right, left and close right- Richmond Cold Storage, with the back built in 1912 and the foreground 1917. The cold Storage building to the left was reportedly used for fruit storage in the winter, and ice storage in summer.

The building barely visible in the left foreground was the Southland Wine Corporation Winery. Personally, I find this to be a rare example of relatively good planning and design. Two railroad tracks went curving towards this view, after splitting off from two that follow the edge of the building in the backround. Every foot of space was maximised by slanting the buildings towards the track and curving the loading docks. Even though three different companies owned these buildings, they are also all in the same very tasteful simple brick style, with such a nice uniform red color - curiously good looking for being nearly 100 years old, despite the tree growing out of the building to the left.

With the filthy mud of a long derelict canal nearby, this remarkable railroad viaduct continues in such a fashion for roughly two miles. Constructing and maintaining the two tracks on such a major work of engineering is an expensive task, one that is presumably warranted by importance of the structure to the railroad traffic. Seeing a train using it north of here is not to common though, as only 5-10 trains use that portion a day, sometimes even less. This is hardly enough to warrant the capacity of two tracks. Decades ago the situation might have been one of pushing capacity, as this city bustled with traffic from local industries, and served as a major stop on the continous flow of coal from West Virginia and Kentucky tipples to tidewater at Newport News, Virginia. The currently increasing demand for coal may slightly increase traffic, as domestic energy consumption, with reduced regulation, is allowed to use more and more appalachian high sulfur coal. On the one hand, this would provide more jobs to the economically devastated coal mining regions of appalachia; but as the Sago Mine incedent testifies, the pursuit of profit will only further erode safety standards.

This Amtrak service likely won't exist in a few years, as the ruling stratum of society continues with it's destruction of anything and everything that is not privately owned and operated. See http://www.blogger.com/posts-search.g

Martin Luther King Jr. day part II

2006-01-20T09:12:00.000-05:00

The Civil Rights movement, the anti-vietnam war movement, and militant workers struggles were threatened american capitalism in the 1960's. That they remained seperate struggles was critical, and the democratic party was used yet again to bring leftward tendencies back into the framework of bourgeois politics. Suppressing the militant struggles of nearly the entire working class and youth, though, was not just a matter of channeling their politics back into the useless flow of american democracy; concessions needed to be made. Lyndon Johnson, as part of his "great society" reforms, created the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide low-cost housing. In some of the cities I've seen, many of these projects are already abandoned, boarded up, or demolished. Chicago's 22 massive public housing towers have almost or all been destroyed, because of the immense rate of crime and unemployment in them. Those problems have little to do with the housing, but now the land can be redeveloped for profit.

Here, many of the housing projects are still extent, in various conditions. This neighborhood looked like it was built within the last decade; others seem anywhere from 10-40 years old. Some areas are terribly undermaintained, and downright depressing to look at, owing to the horrendous economic and social situation of this city.

These houses struck me becuase they look quite well maintained, and even new. Yet, even in this condition bars cover the windows and doors, making this look more like a prison than a nice place to live.

Directly across the street from those white houses is this much more standard scene around this city. All four houses here are boarded up, and a fifth out of the picture is currently being gutted. Behind and around these buildings are empty lots, where houses in a similar situation have already been demolished. Such lots create a very confusing landscape in a city: as the city radiates out, one would expect development to gradually get thinner and thinner, with the most dense areas around the center and particulary important cultural and social areas. Instead, heading down a street filled with row houses, one is liable to take a turn and suddenly see a trash strewn, overgrown field, where houses have been destroyed. Sometimes, one or two rowhouses awkwardly remain in this unused open space.

Why so many abandoned houses? In part three of these posts, I quote a fellow I chatted with who demostratively shows the simplist reason: many cannot afford the rent, or mortgage. Why so little money? The economy of the area has been pratically wiped clean of any large scale industrial employment, with only an aluminum plant, and a few small paper mills/recycling centers. Meanwhile, most of the decent wages are from the financial sector, and that workforce has primarily deserted the city in fear of the social catastrophe that is gradually erupting from the previously mentioned job loss. Daily the evidence of this is provided, here is the intake I got on Martin Luther King jr. day:

A hallmate : “I’m not going to go running! I want to live! Not in Richmond man.”

Later, I'm riding my bike, a kid my age say's he should throw a rock at me, and then ask's his friend if he has one.

Soon afterwards, I get asked for the third time that day, in just as many places, if I have any money. I help out a little, and start talking to this guy. I tell him about those kids saying they'd throw a rock at me, he replies: "I got rocks thrown at me by some a those kids. I tried to get a brick and chuck in back, and then a cop says 'don’t you throw that brick!' Man, if their throwing rocks at me, I better be able to throw back!”

With this outmoded social system and it's devastating effects, hopeless discontent finds it's easiest path in doing things like throwing a brick at a homeless man or a student.

I feel like I find a disproportionate amount of irony of photo expeditions. Expert movers? Wouldn't expert movers want their trailer back so they can expertly move something else? Also, when something is moved, simply moving it to the moving device itself is generally a transitional step in the moving process...

This highway bridge starts next to the housing project pictured at the top of this post. It's really a quite remarkable bridge, as it seems a half-mile long, is 6 lanes wide, and is an elongated S-shape. Even more remarkable is that while I've wanted to illustrate the lack of traffic on the bridge, that wasn't in my mind when I took this shot, but regardless of my intentions the picture has no cars in it! Even though you have to jump a railing, cross that center barrier, and jump another railing to see the other side, I easily did that too, because roads can't be very dangerous cross without the critical aspect of traffic.

The lack of traffic is attributable to the previously mentioned exodus of those working in higher-income occupations to outlying suburban areas, where they need not fear, as a real example, nine people being murdered in the week after New Years. So, most of the day, and all of the night, this bridge is almost serene. At rush hours though, it's actually sometimes got cars in all 6 lanes... but just rush hour.

Nearby the above depicted bridge is another shorter, lower one lane highway bridge, and this is written on one girders that supports it. The area under the end of highway bridges is used by many homeless as shelter. This one was two small and out of the way for that, I suppose, but people had obviously visited, and this even seems to have been a meeting between father and son. It says: "I'll be back to see you stay out of trouble and pass on to the 9th grade" Another message, dated from 1985, says something similar too.

This really begs alot of questions- why is the writer leaving? Why does this meeting have to be in such a hidden place? Who wrote this? Did his (son?) even see it?

Just from that one sentence, alot is revealed. Apparantely, in the richest nation of the world, passing on to the last third of school, or merely the second half if you include college, is still not an absolute, and likely far from it.

Martin Luther King jr. day Part III

2006-01-18T20:54:00.000-05:00

I worked at a temp agency for 3 months, because I was curious about the nature of temporary work, and interested in doing an industrial job. The two jobs I had were both related to the pharmacuetical industry. They each aptly demonstrated how much of a leech these companies are upon world society, given that their aim is no alleviating humans, but profiting off of them.

The labor conditions of temporary work are atrocious. The wages were 2/3rds what full time employees were making at the same job. The jobs include no benefits, except possibly days off, which usually leads to losing the job anyway. The only hope at most of the jobs is that eventually you get hired full time, and get out of the horrible rut of temporary work. I met people who have been stuck in that rut for years, constantly getting dimissed and shuffled around. Dismissal is a one-sided affair, with management contacting the temp agency, and workers left to guess what might have happened to the person they'd only known for a week. Some assignments only last a day! To go day to day, with no security, and only hope of pulling in $60 for 8 hours work if you do get an assignment... undoubtably this puts an immense strain on the victim.

Temp employees were used in a divide and conquer fashion, as they threaten to take any existing positions if someone is declared unfit. More importantly, they represent a new lowering of labor conditions, and a fantastic workforce for any management that somehow doesn't need skilled labor. What boss could complain when he has an unorganized workforce, making low wage, without benefits, and dismissable at a whim?

Temporary labor represents another facet of the continuing erosion of living standards for the worldwide working class. In reference to MLK day, intense struggles were still being waged for labor conditions in his time. Worker's were gaining garuanteed pensions, health care, and other benefits. That these are all now being obliterated is a testament to the futility of such struggles within the outmoded capitalist system, if not based on a larger perspective for social revolution.

Daily work! Daily Pay! That's a way to live a life!

While I was taking these last three photos, a man wondered over, and kindly greeted me and asked why I was photographing the temp agency. He said he gets jobs there, and hoped there wasn't a problem that would close the place down, and therefore eliminate his job. I said, no, I've just worked at such places, and I wanted to try and show what they are and represent. He did it much better:

“man, I’ve heard so many sad tales… you have no idea. Some people have been fired from there before for talking about the conditions. I’m just making sure the place ain’t closing down, I got a job there, and I’m trying to stay clean. I got layed of after ten years, 2 weeks before Christmas! I just came from an AA meeting, I’ve been clean for 6 months, I’m trying real hard. On New Years though, I was feeling really lonely, I went into a hotel room and drank, but that was just one time...after I lost that job I got kicked out for not paying the rent, and whatuya gonna do? The people need the rent too, they need money, that’s their job. i got nowhere to sleep, becuase Salvation Army won’t open the shelter cause it’s not below 35! So people just gotta tough it then! I knew I guy been all up and down the east coast and this is the worst place he knows for that. It's sad this is how things have to be... I was just making sure that wasn't nothing wrong with this place, I know the conditions are bad, but I need my job."

This is what he said to the best of my recollection, though I also talked to him about a few other things. He summed up the day, and also provided a link to 40 years ago when, according to the bourgeois press, racial and social equality was acheived. This man was certainly alive at that time, and now he's stuggling to survive, without a place to sleep, with a precarious job, and perhaps alone. Talking to him though, I was not left with a feeling of desperation, because he didn't seem to be either. Regardless of the protracted crisis he's suffering, he seemed as if he knew his own immense humanity was repeated in others.

Looking at this again, I am reminded of this recent post from Annotated Life: http://annotatedlife.blogspot.com/2006/01/sago-mine-journal-part-four.html Living in such a precarious financial situation, both miners and this temp worker I met can't, at least yet, see it feasible to oppose the conditions they labor in. Meanwhile:

Just what's needed: more luxury apartments. To be fair, though, I truly doubt this is anything but an optimistic sign. Luxury apartments don't tend to fare well directly next to an abandoned storefront....

Steel Scraps

2006-01-15T17:35:00.000-05:00

I had an art assignment last year, I forget what it was, but I do know I hated it's constrictions. I decided to be a to reply with an attempt to try to simply manufacture art, instead of creating it. I scooped some steel scrap out of a railroad, and then sifted though it for the best forms. Then I made about 30 little wooden bases, painted them white, and glued fitting pieces on. Certainly, these little peices were pretty dry and thoughtless, but amusingly, I have about 10 away because alot of people thought they were appealing. The rest are slowly falling apart.

The pieces of steel themselves are shavings from cutting and shaping steel forms, I'm told. 100 tons of this sutff was stuffed in that railcar.

The four above pictures are really misleading, this is actually the real environment of these sculptures.

Hospital Wastewater Disposal Facility

2006-01-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

Spiral staircases are aesthetically superior to normal ones.

While I was taking these photographs, I considered yet again what the value of them might be. To just explore the mass of abandoned America, Russia, or Germany, etc., and take pretty photos of all the decay, really states nothing if it is just left at that. I mention this trend because I'm seeing more sites stemming from it, and I don't want to imply that all of my photographs are also an unexplained foray into the peculiar aesthetic of industrial decay.

The subject of these five photographs, and the 10 of the next two posts, is this small complex of buildings languishing nearby a public hospital. In documenting them, one must ask- why are these still here?

2006-01-13T20:30:00.000-05:00

Blech.

This rusty cabinet has a splayed gesture of a dead animal to my surprise, since it is entirely made of right angles, with no curves in between. It seems like I should understand more modern sculpture if I see something in this. Downstairs there are remants of some cases of beer strewn among the trash that people have dumped. There seems to be a connection between this sort of enviromental degradation and human degradation...

This is the small creek that used to get the hospital's filth dumped into it, and it's clean water pumped out. The concrete blends in really well.

Sometimes shooting poorly composed, uninteresting photos while facing towards the sun has a nice result, I've found. All these other photos are from that building in the backround.

Derelict Sewage Treatment Plant B&W's

2006-01-13T20:16:00.000-05:00

These last three photos show the staircase down to the lower level of this building. This simple staircase created an several interesting photographs where their would have been none, solely because it is a spiral.

I actually did a little editing on this photo, but making the dark and light more stark. I was hoping to make the 'enourmous heavy object hanging pecariously by nearly nothing' situation more visible. I don't think it's too good of a photo, but it is certainly still curious.

I need tighter quality control... this doesn't seem to notable now. I took it after noticing the very clean zigzag break of the wood in the upper left. This has fallen down into what I presume is one of three sewage pits.

The Mighty "Free Spirit"

2006-01-11T22:05:00.000-05:00

This is my steed.

Actually, it's my sisters, but she'll never use it, and my parent's keep it as another thing they'll never use. One day, I needed transportation, and my real bike was distant, so I fixed this gem up in a few minutes. I tried to lose all the extraneous crap, to pare the weight down around 75 pounds. Then I splattered the rusty chain with household oil. Keeping the nice purple finish, my only addition is the tripod holder, which is made out of two bungee cords. It works, it's gotten be where I need to go, though above about 15 mph you really feel just how bent both wheel frames are. At 30 mph it's downright scary.

According to the stickers, this is Index equipped.

Training

2006-01-06T21:56:00.000-05:00

These are two drawings, made from colored pencil and charcoal, that I did in the last two days. To the one on the right was done from life, with several layers of clothing on. Its opposite, becuase of my pose, was done from a photograph I took.

The scene is something I witnessed a few days ago. As I was eating, a terrible rumbling noise began and grew louder and louder. It sorta seemed like helicopters, but the noise was so horrendously loud and distorted that I rushed to the door. As I opened, two military helicopters were receding off into the distance, flying far closer two the ground than anything else I ever remember going by here. They looked like blackhawks (armed, but used for troop transport) but I also believe armaments were on the stub wings. As I took note of this, I looked down the street, and a neighbor was on his porch, doing the exact same thing as me, trying to figure out what just happened.

Why draw a picture of this? Becuase it is, in fact, notable. I don't recall military helicopters ever flying over this area, or even their stationing within any reasonable distance. Also, I was struck by someone else having the same response as me, along with the consideration that scenes like this, though lacking the nice houses, cars, trees, and land, are the regular tempo of life for many areas of the world. As for the fly-by; undoubtably it was training, but what could be the intention of low-altitude training done over surburban neighborhoods? That's the essence of the event. Sure, like everyone I've mentioned it too said, this was training- but training for what? We live under the most reckless and militaristic presidency in the history of our country, a war of a flagrantly illegal character has been launched based on lies, and as a parasitic minority amasses obscene amounts of wealth, the living standards of millions are continuing to plummet. Furthermore, reflecting upon the continuing erosion of democratic rights, it should not be doubted that the elite will continuing its path towards ever-more repressive measures. Need it be mentioned that martial law was declared in New Orleans after a natural desaster?

Clicking should get you a larger picture.

Private Tracts of Public Land, Private Accumulation of Wealth, a Tree, Drainage, and a Model

2006-01-06T14:05:00.000-05:00

How charitable my local school is on matters of land use.

I had a dog by the leash in this pose, but she never was still enough to even show up in this!

The folks who occupy this new home will likely be as pleasant as the school on questions of property. What a hideous looking side of a house! Really though, this side is as wide as the front of many houses are- and the only break in its monotonous siding is a piddly little window. They'll be another house next to this, which likely accounts for the simplicity of the side... but the true hideousness of the design of this house side lies not in its appearance but in the selfish accumalation of wealth that such a grotesquely huge house represents.

A long exposure plus a wintery breeze.

Terrible photo, partly becuase it was raining and I was helpless to prevent water on the lense, but I've been admiring this moster of snow for its entire 45 day existence. It's watery decline, on a warm day, takes up a good 1000 feet of the parking lot trying to find the where the concept of drainage was finally implemented.

This is a little scene I made while under peculiar social pressures. It was fun, though, the buildings only about 2 inches tall.

Curious Subjects at a Tug Dock

2006-01-06T11:02:00.000-05:00

The large tug is on a dry dock, where all parts can be accesed for maintenence. One possible operation so far is the addition of small blocks of zinc, which cut down on corrosion of the metal on the tug's underside. In return for the cut, they corrode, causing the need for replacement supposedly yearly. These little sliver bricks can be seen in the first shot, attached to the bow.

Perhaps its not obvious in the lower shot, but there is, in fact, a small tree growing out of(?) the bow of the pesky little craft in the foreground. That doesn't bother me though- with a classy purple, yellow, and red paint sheme, and a huge wooden wheel with pegs! I just asked someone what the "wheel" was called, because I swore it was something more dramatic and appropriate than just the "wheel"

The Delaware River has some quality muck & sludge. This is still tidal water, so all this goo around the tire was constantly bobbing up an down.

This only got my attention because of the constrast: on a steel cart, with steel wheels,(!) which could be nearly a century old, there's a relatively modern water compartment off the back of a truck. Why not just use the truck frame at least, with rubber tires?

Another picture of little artistic qaulity or merit, but I find it interesting. What a way to make a ramp! This looks like it's as smooth as my 8 -year old efforts to make 30 degree angled ramps out of thick pieces of blasa wood, for tiny little toy cars. The ramp is from the rock onto another stationary barge.

Shipping Odds & Ends

2006-01-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

Surely this hasn't been used in ages. Even with its decay, I find this to be a really ascetically pleasing looking little tug.

I would mention what this is now, but as far as we could tell, it's merely a floating dock to tether tugs and other barges to. I know what it used to be though: a railroad transfer barge. I'm told they were used in crowded waterfront spaces as if they were just a another section of land; with freight or passenger cars being unloaded or loaded on them. Thats why there is a large center space between the (remants in the form of clamps) tracks. In this space there was usually a platform for easy access.

This is called a literage barge. In the busy ports of Phildelphia, New York, Baltimore, and others, this was another way of transferring freight, rather than loading it in a wagon, truck, or railcar. It looks like a big box on a barge. This one is lettered for Erie Lackawanna, a railroad that went bankrupt in the late 60's and 70's, and was eventually merged into Conrail. Much of it's trackage is abandoned today.

This is a really curious building. It used to be a power station, but now it has been remodeled into an office building. Some of this is merely cosmetic though: the inside of this tower is a mass of rusting and peeling steel and piping. The enourmous boom out the side had a scoop that would drop down to unload coal from river barges. The coal was then used to generate electricity.

Nearby a building houses these relics, presumably for preservation. Our guess was that these a car to carry the ash from coal burning in the power plant. Apparantely, then this plant had its own little two-foot guage railroad shuffling these things around, and this was perhaps the enginehouse.

Summer Camp

2006-01-02T12:26:00.000-05:00

This is a summer day camp for kids from the city of Wilmington, Delaware. It is situated in a narrow valley created by the creek in this picture. Aside from these buildings beyond the creek, there is an entrace area about the same size, and these two areas combined make up the entire land allocated to let thousands of children who live in crowded areas of the city to experiance nature. By contrast, massive open fields and forests nearby, and up into Pennsylvania, are owned by those wealthy who can afford the million dollar houses constructed on these plots. Little of this land is used for anything, except horses and fence construction. Enourmous tracts of land could be devoted to a camp like this, where children could really delve into the woods, creeks, and feilds.

I was having problems of over exposure. This is a few steps back from the last shot.

Medicine hut. Along with it, there seems to be a small office, a small pool, a shed, and those other building previous pictured. Wilmington has a population of 72,000.

Storage Shed? Children have written all over it, amusingly, along with several "I love Camp Ware!" and other happy comments, someone got in a "Camp Ware sucks" West End is a neighborhood in Wilmington. Looking at this shed, its obvious most kids really loved the new surroudings, the pool, the creek, etc. If only all of them had the oppurtunity... and if only the space and resources alotted weren't an insult.

Abandoned Iron Ore Pier

2005-12-31T20:04:00.000-05:00

In 1954, a massive expansion was undertaken by the Pennsylvania Railroad to create a pier in Philidelphia to unload imported ore from Liberia, Labrador, Venezuela, and other countries. This pier, stretching 850-feet out into the Delaware River, had 4 enourmous ore unloaders constructed on it at the cost of $1 million each. Ore could be scooped out of ships at the rate of 5,400 tons an hour, then funneled onto twin conveyor belts that took it to an unloading building or four storage domes. The unloading building had twin tipples situated over two railroad tracks, where ore was dumped into railroad cars. From there, it would head either to steel mills in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, or farther west to mills in Pittsburg and Johnstown, PA and Ohio.

Imported ore was used because northeastern steel mills found local sources of ore becoming scarce, and as trade became more globalized in the 20th century, imported ore was cheap enough to be a feasible source. Notably, imported ore, mined thousands of miles away, processed, put in a train to a port, transloaded to a ship to arrive in Philadephia, then transloaded back into a train, and taken all the way to mills in western Pennsylvania and Ohio, apparantely was cheaper than using Mesabi ore mined in Minnesota.

Undoubtaby, the disparity in price was stemmed primarily from the degree to which labor and resources could be exploited in countries like Venezuela, Brazil, Liberia, and others. Likely lacking in environmental laws and basic health and safety regulations, along with much lower wages and benefits, companies eagerly exploit the less-developed nations of the world in search of the greatest profit. This uneven trend of development, a key feature of a capatilist economy, is the impetus for the economic anarchy that causes centres of production to shift reckelessly and frequently around the globe.

The result is scenes like I present below, where millions, even billions, in infrastructure lies unused, and the lives of millions endure eroding standards of living. This pier was closed in the mid-nineties, not because the cost of imported ore became higher becuase of say, higher wages for foreign workers, but because these ever-decreasing wages made it unprofitable for existing U.S. steel mills to forge steel. Throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, many mills completely closed throughout the United States, completely devastating areas like Bethlehem and Pittsburg, Pa, while many other mills drastically reduced workforces. US Steel, which was the largest corporation in the world in 1900, only produces as much steel now as it did then.

To blame this devastating change, where tens or hundreds of thousands workers in the U.S. lost jobs and pensions, upon "globalization", only clouds the real processes at hand. Globalization is obviously an advancement : the allocation of resources and production throughout the world can be better organized, since is not constrained by national limitations (A Mitton Steel mill in Kazahkstan is in an ideal location, on the Neva River, with nearby coal and iron ore deposits)

Under a system of economy ruled by private ownership of production, these inherant advantages of global economy become compromised.

Mitton Steel, the world's largest steel producer, owns many of the mills in the U.S. that this abandoned ore pier served. A look at thier worldwide, facilities, though, shows that the greatest expendatures for upgrading facilities are going to eastern Europe, Kazahkstan, and Mexico. Why? Primarily because of conditions listed formerly, namely, cost of labor and regulation. Although most Mitton Steel facilities are in Western Europe and the U.S., the higher wages, worker's rights, environmental regulation, and other benefits of these areas is a burden to profit, so production, in the specific case of Mitton Steel, is being shifted to the europeon low-wage havens of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Romania, along with the other worldwide facilities.

This pattern can be repeated in every single aspect of the world economy, as industries leave the more developed countries to join in the constant, destructive search for the most exploitable labor force. The wealthy of the richest nations, whose priveledge is now built upon parasitic financial dealings, can only respond to the contradictions in world economic production by slashing the wages and benefits of the working classes of North America and Europe. As a result, the mass suffering continues, and billions in infastructure lies unused, as shown below.

The are the storage domes for the ore, though I think now their being used for another commodity. Their really quite beautiful shapes.

These little engines were used to push ore cars under the tipple to be loaded.

2005-12-31T19:10:00.000-05:00

Standing just barely on the pier, I waited 6 minutes for this exposure of the conveyor house, tipple, and storage tanks. Security? Three concrete barriers surrounded by weeds, a bent but open gate, and a covered no trespassing sign on it . The two conveyor belts on the left took ore, unloaded from ships from Venezuela (supposedly), up too that tall, top-heavy building, where it was either dumped into waiting railcars, or conveyed further to one of four storage tanks. A railroad boxcar in front of those huge domes serves as a maintenence shed.

Farther out on the dock, the first, lone, ore unloader towers up, with an awkward pose of one arm up and the other extended.

Around this massive steel construct is a continous walway, defined here by its handrails. An enourmous steel bucket, with a central hinge and two peices (essentially, a steel mouth) could extend the legth of this arm, lower to scoop ore out of the hold of a ship, and then deposit it into a bucket that funneled it onto the conveyor belts. Walking out on the arm is interesting, as you look down only upon the murky, greenish, turbulent waters of the River.

Turned around 180' from the last picture.

Daytime Interlude

2005-12-31T18:29:00.000-05:00

I was able to take some pictures from inside the motor house today of these ore unloaders. This is a bit blurry, though I think the effect is a good compliment to the hazy light shining in through dirty windows. Also, it seems to imply some sort of movement within the machinery... something I never see.

I'm guessing the panel on the right is the circuitboard. It ran the width of this structure, and included meters and dials about all the different aspects of the machinery. It was made by Westinghouse, who was responsible for the wiring in a plethora of industrial applications years ago.

I love the pattern that the decaying window and bars outside form. We couldn't figure out what that hand winch is for.

Looking out the window towards another ore unloader and the port and weed-strewn lots beyond.

The door into the motor-house, with my camera bag lying in it.

2005-12-30T11:40:00.000-05:00

These two pictures are taken from the Ore pier, but of the Coal Pier. Here, trains of coal, from central and western Pennsylvania, and coal producing areas of West Virginia, Maryland, and Ohio nearby, were dumped into ships for export. Two ships could be loaded at a time, because of the double railroad car dumpers to the right of this photo. Decades ago, the area off the pier would've been a massive assortment of coal cars waiting for dumping, along with various support facilities, but now, it is mostly overgrown, with several buildings demolished, and the extensive railroad trackage buried in mud. Currently, the pier itself is used to anchor barges, I even saw one depart while there, but their anchorage has nothing to do with this equipment on the pier, which has been unused since the mid-80s. Its closure was partially because of the depletion of eastern US coal mines, but primarily a result of the increase in cheaper world production. I'm finding very little information about this in general, but I'll guess, China, Australia, and various South American countries have taken the business.

Looking down the Ore Pier. Spilled ore lies everywhere. To the left is the coveyor that took ore unloader from ships to either storage or rail reloading.

Shoes of a worker, or a visitor?