Brooklyn

0ne.. two.. one.. two.. touch, pull, push, glide. Three.. four.. three.. four.. touch, pull, push, glide. Seven.. eight.. seven.. eight.. touch, pull, push, glide. Stroke.. stroke.. breath, stroke.. stroke.. breath. Glide.

The morning sun is refracted in the water. The water shimmers and sparkles. The water is quiet. The lanes are filled with swimmers partaking in a morning ritual. Their arms twirl in a constant rhythm. Their legs kick in sympathy with their arms. From afar it looks and has the feeling of the slow twirl of windmills. And like a windmill, the arms and legs of the swimmers are creating energy, propelling each swimmer forward. Each swimmer’s stroke is unique, like handwriting.

The power of the Manhattan Bridge cannot be denied. It is an orchestration of rivet studded girders, harp like cables and beautiful beaux art design and it spans the East River like a dancer leaping across a stage. Her audience is the city of New York and specifically its Brooklyn residents. I ride across her expanse daily via the subway. I always position myself by a window. Once the train is delivered from darkness, I stop what I am reading and look out: out the windows, through the massive metal beams, beyond the walkway and out into the city. It is a ride I never tire of because the beauty is apparent and it is relatively short lived. Slowly the train descends into the tunnel on the other side and the journey continues and my eyes return to the page in the book I am reading.

My father moved into my Brooklyn home about 10 years ago when my mother died, and thus began my career as his personal librarian. When he first moved to Brooklyn, I showed him how to use the bus system so he could travel to and from the Brooklyn Central Library. I gave him a simplified explanation of the Dewey system; telling him what I tell everyone who comes to the reference desk, “think of the number as the address where the subject or book lives on the shelf.” I knew my father’s reading preferences very well and it was with assurance that I sent him to the 940’s to find exactly what he would like. For the most part he took care of his reading material himself, with his weekly jaunts to the library. I would pepper his selections with other books I thought he might enjoy from the collections at Mid-Manhattan. Favorites in the category were Samuel Pepys: The Unequaled Self by Claire Tomalin , Sweet and Low: A Family Story by Rich Cohen, Wild Swans:Three Daughters of China by Jung Chang, The Color of Love: A Mother’s Choice in the Jim Crow South by Gene Cheek and much more. His reading was varied, but mainly it was WWII history he loved and always non-fiction. While at my house he watched no TV. My father just read for his entertainment. As far as I could tell he loved it.

A year and half ago my father became quite ill. I had noticed he did not seem himself so I forced him to go the doctor. I was informed that my father was very sick with congestive heart failure, a common affliction of the elderly. He was so sick there was cause for concern whether he would even live. For 10 days I maintained a presence at the hospital. I sadly watched him turn old right before my eyes. I brought him books while at the hospital but they remained unread. I surmised he was distracted by his plight. Naturally he became depressed. Life was now different and he would have to adjust, or not. The trips to the library would now become memories. Within a matter of days his world became miniscule to what it had been. Miles of travel would now be reduced to blocks, if he was lucky. There was nothing neither he nor I could do; this was life, cruel and ironic.

Once home my father tried to manage a hefty depression. He now had to get used to a new self and that new self would be drastically different from a few weeks before. I brought him books, foolishly thinking reading would be a welcome distraction. How wrong I was. The books gathered dust and their beckoning was left unanswered. I finally broke down and bought him a TV and had cable installed. My kids were thrilled and my father became a zombie in front of the blue screen. He watched for hours and would sleep and then watch more. It broke my heart. He seemed unable to focus on a book. Outwardly he seemed fine, but to me he had become a mere shadow of himself. He no longer seemed an active participant in life, but rather a passive ride taker. I became resigned to my new father and just tried to make him comfortable.

There came a time recently when I brought home two books, the book I was reading A Death in the Family by James Agee and Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides the book I planned to start reading afterwards. My father is Greek and our family is from Detroit so I made a point of showing him Middlesex because of the Greek author and the Detroit setting for his book.

My father in his old age has developed a keen interest in everything Greek. I thought the Eugenides book would interest him, if not to read then to simply marvel at the author’s heritage. To my surprise it was the Agee book that caught his interest. He said about the Agee book, “I always wanted to read this book.” With that, I said “here pops, take it, you read it.” That was months ago and my father has been reading fiction every since. Perhaps by reading fiction my father has been able to recapture a part of life that he has lost in his own life. Author Paul Theroux once said “fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.” I bring him mysteries like: Georges Simenon, Henning Mankell, Elmore Leonard and other works of fiction from Ian McEwan to Somerset Maugham and many more. I am happy to be of service to my father for as long as it lasts. I am also so thankful to be working at Mid-Manhattan, with such an incredible collection of fiction to choose from.

This bridge changed everything on Staten Island, changing it from a rural area of small towns and open spaces and farms (which I recall) to one of suburbia. I remember going to Fort Wadsworth with my family in the early 1960s to check the progress of the building of the bridge. The fort is now open to the public, and it is managed by the National Park Service and is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area.

Staten Island was a Tory area during the American Revolution. However, I read an account that said Americans were standing in the area of the picture above when British ships left New York after losing the revolution. Apparently the British fired a shot at the new citizens of America as they were yellling insults at the departing soldiers and sailors of their former country.

Two books about the bridge that are available for borrowing are The Bridge by Gay Talese and Spanning the Narrows by Brian Merlis.

The South Beach branch is close by this scene.

At first glance, this picture looks like it has seen better days. To a trained eye, it looks like a remarkable survival.

Which is it?

This picture of the Atlantic Base Ball Club in 1869, from the Albert G. Spalding Collection, is an albumen photographic print, mounted on thin paper board.

Two words come to mind, “fugitive materials.” Because of the albumen photographic printing process, the image will fade every time it is exposed to light. Imagine how many times this picture has been viewed since it was printed in 1869! The wood pulp that formed the photograph’s mounting backboard is also highly unstable. Stanford University has a website devoted to the albumen photographic print and there you can learn all about the printing process and the stability of early photographic prints. For information about preserving photographs and working with acidic papers and board stock, see the American Institute of Conservators (AIC) website. The AIC documentation explains some of the common problems encountered in the preservation of historical artworks.If you’d like to learn about the team, check out the site maintained by their modern-day equivalents, the Atlantic Base Ball Club. Maybe you’ve heard of or participated in re-creation events (i.e. Civil War battles, or Renaissance fairs). Well there is a group of guys in New York who dress up in base ball uniforms just like those in the picture above and play ball.

For more history on the Atlantics, check out an early account of their won/loss record from1858 to 1866 that appeared in The Book of American Pastimes by Charles H. Peverelley (New York, the author, 1866). According to George Touhey, in his A history of the Boston Base Ball Club (Boston: Quinn, 1897), the stars of the team in 1870 were “Ferguson, Zittlein, Start, Pike, Pearce, Chapman, and George Hall.”At the top of the photograph, right in the middle is a small label, pasted right onto the photographic print. Hard to read at this resolution, I think it says,“FROM: This picture”“TO: Get photos of [Gump?, Grant?], Zittlein, Pearce, Start, Ferguson“These appear to be instructions to the photo editor of a publication. So it would seem that this photographic print was part of a publisher’s archive, and not something that would have been framed and hung on the wall as an artistic or documentary memento of the 1869 Atlantics of Brooklyn.

This week we wanted to feature a book that is not found in many library collections. Brooklyn’s Williamsburgh is a labor of love to which author Brian Merlis dedicated about half of his life. It is a compilation of newspaper clippings, old advertisements, photographs, drawings and maps, all pertaining to Williamsburg history. While the documentation of this book is not the best, (there are no footnotes and or references for images) it has a very intimate feeling and is very image rich.