a neighborhood blog for Ditmas Park, Windsor Terrace, and people who live near the Parade Ground and Prospect Park
We have a secondhand report that a knifepoint robbery occurred sometime earlier today, the victim someone who’s a regular visitor to our building - 1110 Caton Avenue (Stratford & Westminster).
Unfortunately, this is a reasonable predictor of increased risk of additional robberies. We’ll try to obtain additional information and post it as soon as possible.
UPDATE: It’s been reported that there were three attackers in this incident. - JS
From Deputy Dog, drainage systems just got interesting:
A house’s exterior drainage system in dresden, germany.
Link to drainage systems just got interesting on Deputy Dog.
We have first-hand sightings of DEP personnel making repairs to storm drains on Caton (at, we think, Marlborough, and East 10th) on at least three occasions.
This may be a good thing. But not, we think, a reason to cease concern about flood risk. And - the next time you hear a government official tell you how hard it is to drain Brooklyn, remember the Incas:
The drainage infrastructure constructed by the Inca at ancient Machu Picchu represents a significant public works achievement. The difficult site constraints associated with the nearly 2,000 mm per year of rainfall, steep slopes, landslides, and inaccessibility posed drainage challenges that were met successfully by the Inca. The technical analysis of the Inca drainage works demonstrates that the drainage criteria used were reasonable and the implementation exceptional, and that the Inca were good engineers even though they labored without the benefit of a written language or the use of a wheel. Proof of the Inca success with drainage rests with the fact that Machu Picchu lay in the rainforest for 400 years without failure. There is no better example of successful ancient civil engineering than Machu Picchu. It was built by Native Americans before the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors, was essentially abandoned in 1540 A.D., and endured for 4 1/2 centuries under a thick rainforest until the 20th century. (emphasis supplied)
Link to Kenneth R. Wright, “Ancient Machu Picchu Drainage Engineering”, at WaterHistory.org
Kenneth Wright’s website. Images from Water History website.
We note that Wright is not only the leading expert on Inca water systems - he’s a prominent engineer and the proprietor of an engineering consultancy. So his expertise is more than theoretical.
So - let’s demand from our political leaders that we want engineering parity with the Incas.
NYC resistor reports on SensorWiki,
a great collection of different sensors. From Inclinometers, Rotary potentiometers, Force-sensitive resistors (FSR) and other kinds of ‘ometers’.
If you already know these distinctions - or want to know - all of you artist-engineers and engineer-artists - should check out the NYC resistor blog, which greets visitors with the following message:
Welcome to the NYC Resistor Hacker group. We learn, share, and make things.
Go. Learn, share and make.
Nadia, godmother to our two dogs, has started offering dogwalking services in the neighborhood. Limited tothe workweek (Monday through Friday, afternoon and early evening), in all other respects reasonably priced and reasonable - even if your dog isn’t. She can be reached on (347) 563-3733 - or via nrohrs at earthlink dot net
- JS
John Strausbaugh (Wikipedia entry here) has a great article, “(Weekend Explorer) On the Trail of Brooklyn’s Underground Railroad,”
… [L]ong before Brooklyn was veined with subway lines, it was a hub of the Underground Railroad: the network of sympathizers and safe houses throughout the North that helped as many as 100,000 slaves flee the South before the Civil War.
With its extensive waterfront, its relatively large population of African-American freemen — slavery ended in New York in 1827 — and its many antislavery churches and activists, Brooklyn was an important nexus on the “freedom trail.” Some runaways stayed and risked being captured and returned to their owners, but most traveled on to the greater safety of Canada.
Because aiding fugitives from the South remained illegal even after New York abolished slavery — and because there was plenty of pro-slavery sentiment among Brooklyn merchants who did business with the South — Underground Railroad activities were clandestine and frequently recorded only in stories passed down within families. Corroborating documentation is scarce.
Still, it’s possible to follow some likely freedom routes through Brooklyn. You begin in Brooklyn Heights, where the Promenade offers sweeping views of the East River waterfront. In the decades before the Civil War, this waterfront bristled with the masts of sailing ships. Many were cargo vessels bringing cotton and other goods from the South. Sometimes they brought secret passengers: slaves fleeing to freedom. The fugitives slipped ashore and filtered into Brooklyn, where they were hidden and helped along on their journeys. Acquiring its railroad imagery by the 1830s, this antislavery network had its own “stationmasters” and “conductors,” who helped organize runaways’ passages north, and its own “stations” and “depots,” where they hid. Several Brooklyn churches participated. Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, a few blocks from the Promenade on Orange Street, between Hicks and Henry Streets, was called its “Grand Central Depot.”
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