The Laser Sound of Our Cosmic History

"What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound?

A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it's Slinky.

It's Slinky, it's Slinky. For fun it's a wonderful toy.

It's Slinky, it's Slinky. It's fun for a girl or a boy.

It's fun for a a girl or boy!"

So in my search for Philadelphia History I've come to this cosmic connection: The Slinky. 300 million Slinkies have been sold around the world. We've shared in walking it, putting it up to our ears and shaking it for laser beam sound effects, pinching our selves in its coils, and untangling it from itself. I find it perfect in its ingenuity, its simplicity, its working class affordability. Why would you let your children play with the mercury from a thermometer or roll each other down a hill in old tires when you can buy them a shipyard spring to slink down some stairs? Perhaps the most fun to be had with a slinky is setting up a course for it to walk down. The Cramps Shipyard, where the Slinky was invented, is bound for demolition. It is the last building of the preeminent ship building facility of the 19th century. It fell into disuse in 1947 and will finally be laid to waste by a junction of on and off ramps for I-95. Not a five-minute walk from our front door and you can see the overgrown bank of the Delaware river where the main Cramps building used to be. A few minutes walk back and you’ll see the building planphilly.com wants to conserve. It’s all looming angles and giant glass panes. It looks like a giant lego-brick airplane hangar. You may find this small painting HERE at my etsy store.

Rambo: Schemes of the Rich and Mo' Power

What is one of the more interesting "historical" places on paper that can’t really be seen anymore around my neighborhood? Gunner’s Run. It was a creek turned into a canal that was used as an investment scheme and is now paved over. Hey, that does not sound cool. Well, boys and girls, it’s named after Gunner Rambo ca. 1847. I don't think its a stretch to connect it to Sylvester Stallone. . . . We have a Rocky Statue in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, now I suggest, no, demand that a statue of Rambo be place on the paved over-overgrown-Aramingo Canal where it once met the Delaware River. What could be more American than a statue of Rambo planted over a historical Philadelphia money pit? The new Delaware River Green Way welcome entrance could be a bronze statue of a savage man with a bowie knife in his mouth, a bow and arrow (tribute to Native Americans), and a plaque that reads: 1st capital of the United States, 1st continental congress, 1st Blood. If you don't like the bow and arrow Idea go HERE. Wasn't that what Rambo was about, opposing corrupt and bad American ideas? A little further North is The Richmond Power Plant. It is butted up against the Recycling plant and shipping wharves of Port Richmond. If you'd like to hang out by the high tension lines and listen to the hum of transformers for a while or two you may just be lucky enough to see a gleaming silver ACES train pass by taking people to Atlantic City.



You can litteraly feel the power in the air by the Betsy Ross bridge. When the 1876 World's Fair was happening, I imagine, they imagined future architecture to look like power substations. Just imagine thinking about the future at the exposition of A. Graham Bell's telephone, a typewriter, Heinz Ketchup, and another failed american project - Kudzu as an erosion control plant. Kudzu now spreads at a rate of 150,000 acres annually, according to Science Daily. It produces ground level Ozone for the South East enhancing the drawl of all in Y'all. If you are interested in purchasing a painting of an imagining of imaginings visit my Etsy site HERE. Kudzu and Rambo are still not the cosmic connection of generations that I"m leading up to though. 2 more posts and we're there. We're there already but I just have to reveal it slowly. I don't want anybody to be scared of the final surprise sprung. You're not a scaredy-cat are you? Then read on in a few.