I just finished part two of my Toy Tower Video - Eddie’s Big Wind.
A fierce wind and rain storm, Monday night after the memorial, leaves the tower dangerously leaning into the garden. This accelerates the Parks Department’s plans to tear it down. I again interview the gardeners : Joanee Freedom, Pat Russell, Graywolf and William Hohauser. And we hear from gardeners: Barbara (Improvisational poetry), Steve Jones Daughs (drums) and Tim Young (a sad witness to the final fall of the tower). Plus we hear from various neighbors who were unhappy to see it go, and John, the single angry, vocal protester on the morning of the take-down.
Graywolf tells a great story about how the tower almost came down in an ice storm in 1994, and how Eddie got his friends from Sophie’s bar to save it.
Joanee gives more garden history, and shares her theory about the storm being Eddie’s Wind.
William shares some insight into how Eddie expressed his spirituality.
And Barbara Monoian from the Musee de Monoian gallery says that Eddie was the neighborhood’s keeper of history.
A couple of neighbors expressed glee within earshot that the pile of junk was finally gone, but no one was willing to go on camera to say it.
On Sunday May 11th, 2008, the one year memorial for Eddie Boros the creator of the Tower of Toys was held in the 6th and B Community Garden. The NYC Parks department had just declared the tower unsafe and that it must come down. Eddie Boros was an amazing character, he had to be in order to build and preserve from destruction his 60 foot ramshackle tower of salvaged timber and rotting toys from 1985 until 2008, a full year after he died. I interviewed the gardeners and his relatives, asking them to give me stories about Eddie. I combined the interviews with the many photos I’ve taken of the tower, plus photos on the garden bulletin board, as well as some that people put on the garden fence after Eddie died in 2007. This is part one of a planned three parts. Part Two here
Outside the Battery Maritime Building in Lower Manhattan. Linda, a turtle fan tells me:
The consensus on Turtle Rescue of Long Island message board thought it might be a red-eared slider of some sort — albeit a dirty one — because of what little bit of color you can see on the bottom of the shell under it’s neck and around the edges. The other theory was a diamondback terrapin who swam up from the south jersey coast. But most likely it is a slider. Red-eared sliders (usually abbreviated RES) are extremely common and often dumped because they get too big and people don’t know what else to do. Here’s the website of a rescue organization that gives advice for trying to rescue RES. It might not be so easy. As for whether he needs rescuing, I have no idea what to say, RES are freshwater turtles, and I have no idea what effect brackish water would have on them. And it’s definitely a male. Females don’t have those long nails. Chinatown markets sell live RES as food and sometimes they get away.
Holy Cross Cemetery, Yeadon, PA, just outside of Philadelphia, in the Italian section. It’s a photograph glazed onto ceramics. The dates are in the 1920’s, close to a century in the weather and they are still sharp and unfaded. I haven’t been able to find any definitive information on the photo- transfer technique used back then, one possibility is silk screen. Not all information is on the first couple of pages of a Google search. But FORGOTTEN FACES: A WINDOW INTO OUR IMMIGRANT PAST has this: “an artisan fashioned a photograph from gold, platinum and iridium alloys and fired it onto an enamel surface. A portrait made in this way can survive in a cemetery for well over 100 years.” Today it can be done with a laser printer.
Something is eating into this one, but note that the rest of the image is still unfaded.
