The Ship of So Long Farewell

Transforming from being a place of (once upon a time) the largest maritime ship building complex in the world to an access ramp to I-95, the cramps building reveals itself brick by brick.

From being the leader in ship building, to the invention of The Slinky, the cramps building is taken apart to become part of another transportation system.

I suppose that history itself can not save a thing but can only aid in giving a thing added value.  History can comfort us in that we are connected to something larger than our time and lives, and it can fade away.  Who knows when structures will show their imprint on us in the future.  In the distant future some satellite taking pictures of vegetative growth through infrared sensors may reveal clues to who we are to who we will be.  We march through time because our 5th dimension self  manifests itself in 3 dimensions as what we experience in our comprehension.  Or something.

Neither Dead Nor Slow

As things go. . .  the Cramps building down the street where the Slinky was born is meeting its demise, the walls are being knocked down in its removal for an interstate access ramp.  Tomorrow I'll go down there with a tripod and camera for some photos.  If its a little warmer I'll take some paint with me.  Its always fun trying to paint with frozen materials.

I suppose this is one way how the world will end, demolished to make way for something new, a la Douglas Adams.  There is the thought that our Universe expands at the rate we gain knowledge; that our world gets larger as we find out more about it.  Buckminster Fuller called it the Ever-Expanding Halo.  I like the sound of it and while I can only aspire to match Fuller in his accomplishments I must insist that it is not ever-expanding, but has the potential for collapse and at best ebbs and expands.  Eventually all things fade out of memory and even if physicists tell us information can't be lost doesn't it mean it can be accessed.  In his book "Dragon's of Eden" Carl Sagan talks about our ability to accumulate extra-genetic and extra-somatic information, and that our bargain with nature for larger brains and prolonged learning has in turn lengthened childhood.  This past week my wife met a couple who are in their early and late 50's who are having surrogate twins.  As explained to me, they are both in respected vocations and their careers consumed their years.  Some people think that moving to agriculture was a mistake, that as hunter gatherers we were more athletic lived longer and had more leisure time and once we farmed we weren't as healthy - our diet wasn't varied, we suffered from more diseases and shorter lives.  Its took us a while to get past the down side of farming but I'm sure it was due to our accumulation of extra-somatic information.  A couple thousand years isn't much time to the time that preceded that time.  Bad Humor.  With the new ways we've found to transmit and store information hopefully it will add new ways to help us.  There is never enough tools to keep entropy and the loss of information at bay and none should be neglected.  Feb 10th and 11th we will be celebrating Child Ballads and other traditional folk songs at UnionDocs.  Art and Neil Rosenbaum will be exhibiting their new film, John Cohen will be showing one of his, music will be abound, and even a painting by me! So remember, we may not save your life but we will do our best to save your soul from the access ramp to the interstate of entropy.  Stay Posted for more info!

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.