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mallorys_camera
The National Counting Project sent me across the river yesterday.
Ulster County is poorer than Dutchess County. And seems wilder. The deer stand their ground when you approach. The low stone walls that crisscross everything on the eastern bank of the Hudson, demarcating every defunct boundary and patent, every old churchyard and farmer’s pasture, every historic roadway and grand estate, are entirely absent on the west bank.
The National Counting Project sent me to the area around the old D&H (Delaware and Hudson) Canal, originally constructed to carry Pennsylvania anthracite to New York City.
The canal was dug into the narrow valley that separates the Shawangunk Ridge from the Catskill Mountains, leveraging and widening Roundout Creek, following the course of the Old Dutch Mine Toad (now Route 209.)
(The Old Dutch Mine, by the way, is a complete fantasy that never existed!)
While the capitalists who thought transporting coal by canal was a great idea were digging up the landscape, they discovered that the limestone in these parts makes great natural cement!
Rosendale Cement soon became the most sought-after cement in the country! It was used in the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, the U.S. Capitol, and the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal.
The capitalists realized they could make scads more $$$$ owning product rather than mode of distribution, so they abandoned the canal. By the end of the 19th century, the old locks had become a quaint relic, and today many mobile home parks crowd their banks whose inhabitants have no knowledge of or interest in its history.
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This late in the National Counting game, the "respondents" are a mixed bag of disinterested and hostile. I had one woman scream at me yesterday, Get off my fucking porch! Get off my fucking porch! till her eyes practically popped out of her skull.
I wanted to tell her, This is almost certainly not your fucking porch because no financial institution in the world would approve you for a loan, not even Countrywide Financial Corporation in 2008 at its most sub-prime desperate. It is your landlord’s porch, and he likes to make nice with the gub’mint.
But instead, I just stood there and smiled at her. Pecked notes on the substandard iPhone the National Counting Project issued me v-e-r-y slowly: Get off my fucking porch! says Respondent. Repeats six times.
I should really stop doing that because one of these times, the Respondent is almost certainly gonna have a gun.
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What else? I had a number of addresses in the hamlet of Bloomington, which is a village straight out of an unaired Twilight Zone episode.
Why is there even a town here? you wonder.
There is a 19th century church that was rebuilt on the site of a 17th century church that burned down.
Did the fire take out the entire town along with it?
And did people just rebuild because they couldn’t conceive of “home” being anywhere else?
You dismiss a place as ordinary and boring, but mysteries abound!
Bloomington has no commerce. The church graveyard is the town’s centerpiece. Every lawn had a “Trump/Pence 2020” sign on it.
Depressing.
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Then I got lost and whoops! I found myself in Hurley.
Where I have been several times before, but I had no idea I was anywhere near. So that was disconcerting.
Hurley is home to one of the best collections of old Dutch houses in New York State. The village lets visitors tour the houses one day a year, and summer before last, I did the tour. The doors still have their original iron hinges! The Dutch iron-workers were that skilled.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-13 03:12 pm (UTC)--See, I think that ballsy attitude is why your conversion rate is so high.
Also the pictures aren't showing up right now for me, but I'll check back later/with a different browser.
ETA: Can see them now! That deer looks like it's guilty of something. At least it's not telling you to get off its fucking porch--or lawn. The houses are gorgeous.
no subject
Date: 2020-09-14 12:43 am (UTC)