Re: TX2/Plato's Spelunking
2001.12.05 17:45
Again, I'm not sure that I'm following a specific method except that I've committed myself to working through this project I started named EPICENTRAL.
The other issues you raise however, regarding place--
what about the ordinary, like a street sign in the USA, whereby a street name and number locate a place, or a node in a place, and the mailbox number a specific spot in space and time (given that places decay)
--does interest me as well. In fact, I've been thinking about just this subject a lot lately (and it may work its way into TX2.
Yesterday, I took a walk down to Tacony Creek Park, specifically to visit the 'sacred tree' there (which, by the way, is now very close to being dead, if not already dead). The last time I visited the tree was 4 December 2000. I did not know then that St. Barbara's feast day was the same day, but learning about the feast day soon after I was at the tree has left a strong impression on my mind. [There is a lot of personal stuff that goes with the 4 December 2000 story, but this really isn't the place for its telling.] The tree itself is somewhat unique in that it is actually five mature trees all in one. I know quintuplets are somewhat rare in humans, but not sure how rare quintuplet trees are. To refresh your memory, I refer to this tree as 'sacred' because ritualistic charms are sometimes found around the tree. voodoo and other Caribbean 'religious' practices are of late not at all uncommon in my neighborhood. There is even a known voodoo priestess that lives at the western extreme of Olney. This tree happens to be at Olney's eastern extreme.
The area around this part of Tacony Creek Park long (over 150 years) ago was called Cedar Grove. I like to think that this place actually once was a natural cedar grove. While walking to the park I started looking for the cedar trees that I believe the home developers of the 1940s and 1950s had planted with some of the houses. Sure enough, on each of the five streets between my street and the park has at least one or two cedar trees in front of some of the houses. I doubt whether other residents of this neighborhood realize any of this, but, for me, it's a connection to this place's past that I'm very happy to see is still literally alive.
To get to the sacred tree (which is not a cedar tree), you first have to climb up to an enormous plateau field. This field was 'first' the property/home of the man that founded Olney. In the 1950s however, it was an active anti-aircraft base, a true manifestation of the Cold War. What's great about the field now is that scattered all over it are slight rectangular depressions in the ground, signifying where different military base buildings had been. These depressions have a strange quality, something like actual ghosts. Moreover, once you look for the depressions, they start showing up everywhere.
The sacred tree is then down the other side of the plateau, and not far from the tree is a natural spring, one of the few still gurgling in Philadelphia. When I was younger I often drank from this spring. Over ten years ago the Philadelphia Water Department 'shutdown' all the natural springs in the various city parks--uncertain water quality is the blanket reasoning. Being now among Olney's oldest continual residents, at a Friends of Tacony Creek Park meeting a couple of years ago, I found out that I was the only person that actually knew where the spring was/is.
Up until the mid 1970s, Whitaker Mills (on Tacony Creek just down stream from the sacred tree) was the oldest, longest running mill business in the USA. The site of Whitaker Mills (and yes there is a Whitaker Avenue not far away) one could say is the "epicenter" of Cedar Grove. While my brother Otto was in college, he worked at the Mill as a bookkeeper during its last years. The closed-down Mill burned down in the late 1970s, and the Whitaker family donated the land to Tacony Creek Park. There are, however, still some workers houses and a foreman's house (Tabor Manor, 1840) still there. Just behind Tabor Manor are the remains/ruins of large stone barn. This barn is on park property, but it is so overgrown and kind of in the Manor's back yard that very few people know it exists at all. What I find fascinating is that these enormous stone walls may indeed be the oldest (1813) remains of a barn in all of Philadelphia--sadly, no one else really seems to care.
Sorry for going on so long, but maybe you now have a better idea of what this director of a virtual museum of architecture keeps in mind.
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