Daily OpusEverything I write is freely rebloggable. Just keep the source and tell people about my books :D [Until I decide otherwise, my pronouns are Ze/Hir/Hirself. As in "Ze went to the shops to get hir medication hirself". Thank you for the respect.]
Three churches, a school, and dozens of homes were demolished
^^^^Prominent abolitionist Albro Lyons and Mary Joseph Lyons were residents of Seneca Village.
The community, called Seneca Village, began in 1825 and eventually spanned from 82nd Street to 89th Street along what is now the western edge of Central Park. By the time it was finally razed in 1857, it had become a refuge for African Americans. Though most were nominally free (the last slave wasn’t emancipated until 1827) life was far from pleasant. The population of African Americans living in New York City tripled between abolition and complete emancipation and the migrants were derided in the press. Mordecai Noah, founder of The New York Enquirer, was especially well-known for his attacks on African Americans, fuming at one point that “the free negroes of this city are a nuisance incomparably greater than a million slaves.”
More than three-fourths of the children who lived in Seneca Village attended Colored School №3 in the church basement. Half of the African Americans who lived there owned their own property, a rate five times higher than the city average. And while the village remained mostly black, immigrant whites had started to live in the area as well. They shared resources ranging from a church (All Angels Episcopal), to a midwife (an Irish immigrant who served the entire town).
But in 1857, it was all torn down.
Even as the church was being built on 86th street, then painstakingly painted white, the original settlers fought for their lands in court. Andrew Williams was paid nearly what his land was worth, after filing an affidavit with the state Supreme Court. Epiphany Davis was not as fortunate, losing hundred of dollars.
By 1871, Seneca Village had largely been forgotten. That year, The New York Herald reported that laborers creating a new entrance to the park at 85th Street and 8th Avenue had discovered a coffin, “enclosing the body of a Negro, decomposed beyond recognition.” The discovery was a mystery, the paper reported, because “these lands were dug up five years ago, when the trees were planted there, and no such coffins were there at the time.” That’s unlikely, as the site was the graveyard of the AME Zion church.
Researchers from Columbia, CUNY, and the New York Historical Society have been working on excavating the site of Seneca Village since the early 2000s. The work has been slow, with excavation starting in 2011.
The only official artifact that remains intact on the site is a commemorative plaque, dedicated in 2001 to the lost village.
People didn’t know about this? We learned about this in school bc the village welcomed and sheltered Irish immigrants during the Famine.
The authorities hated the place because the residents were highly politically active and had ties to the Underground Railroad.
A lot of people assume, because Manhattan was in The North[tm], that it must have been an abolitionist-friendly place (and that its residents then would have had as favorable view of Lincoln as residents today have of Obama).
But the truth is: much of the money flowing through Wall Street was profits from the cotton, sugar, rum and slave trade. The Power Brokers of NYC were solidly on the side of the slaveholders in the South.
WHAT
Black people were always the original currency and stock market of the U.S.
I had never cosplayed before the first time I attended Chicago TARDIS in 2012. At that time I wore a male TARDIS suit, because that seemed a lot less common than the many fantastic TARDIS dresses seen at cons. I made a few variations of that over the years but I began thinking of ways to be able to incorporate something Pakistani into my cosplay, to show not just my love for the show but my own heritage.
With that in mind, on my next visit to Karachi, I went to a tailor to have the coat, shalwar-kameez, turban and khussas (the pointy shoes) made. Amusingly, this is the traditional pattern of a groom’s outfit, but the blue colour is definitely not traditional! I then translated the Police Box wording into Urdu and got it made into custom patches from a vendor on Etsy.
I will confess to some trepidation about wearing an outfit like that with Arabic calligraphy, but the response was very enthusiastic and positive. I’ve worn it for two years and have gotten an amazing amount of positive feedback and appreciation. My friend told me that someone told her it was a very brave thing to wear.. I don’t know if that is necessarily true but it was gratifying to hear.
There was certainly a lot of curiosity as the costume was instantly recognizable for what it was, just in a unique form. In some ways I think that immigrants always remain ambassadors, and this was one of the ways that I tried to be one. I came into cosplay a bit late but have since become an avid cosplayer.. Acting in the theater is one of my pastimes so in some ways it is a pretty natural fit!
Sometimes it’s just basic costumes but sometimes I like to visualize some fusions to mix things up, then I just need to find people who can make them.. I do have some ways to go in embodying the character while cosplaying, rather than just wearing the costume, but I hope to get that knack down. And I hope to keep finding ways to incorporate my heritage and background into the expression of the other things in life that I love!
Reminder that the “vaccines cause autism” isn’t a “mistake” or a “misunderstanding” or the result of bad evidence, it was JUST completely made up by one guy, on purpose. He had no reason to suspect a connection between the two and he never did. He wanted to make money on his own vaccine formula by discrediting the existing MMR vaccine and he literally only chose autism because he knew it was a scary, confusing new term to the general public. That is 100% all. Autism was a hot-button bandwagon issue because the average person didn’t know what it was and so he considered it ripe for spreading misinformation.
reminder that this guy lost his medical license for pushing this bullshit
At last they reached the front of the line. Here their bags were opened and searched meticulously, and each of the party was put through a whole-body scanner. Joshua and Sally were first through. On the other side they were both issued with wristbands, brightly coloured and no doubt studded with tracker technology, that they would have to wear at all times until they left the Datum.
As they waited for the others Joshua murmured, ‘I don’t get this. All this processing and screening–all new since the last time I came back. But what’s the point? I know there are stepwise hazards for the Datum: infectious diseases, invasive species. But all these barriers–the Long Earth is an open frontier. Here we are obediently riding in on a twain and arriving at a transport hub, but we could step back anywhere on the Datum, with a backpack full of long-horned beetles. There’s no logic.’
Sally rolled her eyes. ‘It’s all symbolism, Joshua. You never do get stuff like this, do you? This is President Cowley saying to his voters, look how I’m protecting you. Look how terrible these travellers are, what a threat they are.' She glanced at the banks of security processing gear. 'Also there’s a lot of federal money to be earned by the companies that manufacture gear like this. Fear generates big profits.’
—Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, “The Long War” (More uncomfortably close to home stuff.)
