Saturday, July 6, 2019

Hades Town and Other Underworld Cities


I just returned from New York City. It was my second visit but this time my family and I spent 6 days walking 9-11 miles a day throughout Manhattan.

My most incredible experience there was the Broadway production of Hades Town. This song will haunt my consciousness forever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwoQxMP_G3c

Manhattan is Hades Town, as is every large metropolis in the world.

New York is filthy, sick and yet also full of vibrant energy.

We stayed in Times Square, a nightmare of sound, people, and smells that assaulted my rural sensibilities but also produced in us all a kind of awe regarding people's basic capacities for civility under intense population pressure.

For six days we walked in throngs of people from all over the world. We saw hundreds, if not thousands, of armed police and endless retail workers.

Everyone, everywhere, was civil despite the extreme pressures of people, especially and admirably, on the 4th of July. Even the tirades of the mentally ill were delivered without threat of violence.

But the filth and smells of sickness tainted my experience.

Hades Town asks us to imagine a city without the mental and physical illnesses produced by poverty and stress.

I could imagine a revitalized New York in the eruptions of organic beauty that could be found in random places such as the High Line, a former elevated train track transformed into a garden of indigenous flowers, which produced peace for all who walked there that day we visited:

Gardens and spaces of beauty within which we can all mingle freely revitalize the spirit that allows us to be civil and wards off our stress.

But Hades Town reminds us that that cultural and material infrastructures - especially physical and symbolic WALLS - are imprisoning, normalizing, and degrading of the spirit of Persephone, of fertile becomings.





22 comments:

  1. South Africa: cities without water

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DyH3R3nA8w

    I believe South Africa would be considered quite a liberal society with an even very liberal government. Why is it in such trouble? It seems that foresight is quite scarce.

    Cape Town reminds one of LA.

    NYC has had a fairly empty headed mayor for some time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What does liberal mean? Means nothing in a plutocracy, because the plutocrats, and oligarchs are all quite conservative about their holdings. They project largesse to keep the serfs at bay. They too are victims of the pollution and corruption in the end. Loaded terms liberal and conservative in the western plutocrasies. The life-support systems are dwindling. In the end we are all losers

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  2. https://mcbrooklyn.blogspot.com/2011/03/nuclear-power-reactors-near-new-york.html?m=1

    There are several nuclear power plants within a 100 miles of NEW YORK CITY.
    Indian point, just upriver has had battteries of repeatin problems for the past 10 years. Transformers catching fire. Transformers exploding. Failed Backup systems. Major radioactive leaks into the Hudson river that goes by Manhatten.

    FROM THE BLOG McBrooklyn

    "There are several operating nuclear power reactors within 100 miles of New York City, with varying levels of vulnerability to earthquakes.

    - The closest is the Indian Point Energy Center, located 24 miles north of the city on the Hudson River. Indian Point 2 and 3 are operating and produce roughly 30 percent of the energy used by New York City; Indian Point 1 was permanently shut down in 1974.

    Researchers from Columbia University have located a previously unknown active seismic zone (the "Ramapo Fault line system") running less than a mile north of Indian Point. The plant was built to withstand an earthquake of 6.1 on the Richter scale; quakes higher than this are rare in the area."

    Two Major Earthquakes in Southern California in The Past Week

    m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5d2016e4e4b04c4814141f41

    Two earthquakes in a row in southern California. One a 7.1 which is the threshold. The first 5.6. They were boh within 200 miles of San Louis Obisbo. Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant, has two, embrittled, cracked reactors that are now unregulated.
    The press has said nothing about the potential damage at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant.
    This is part, of what one of the most earnest and perservering activists, to get Diablo Canyon has to say.

    Harvey Wasserman
    Reprinted with Permission of Opednews
    350 more words

    https://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Quake-to-Make-Los-Ange-by-Harvey-Wasserman-Disaster-Nuclear_Earthquake_Nuclear-Energy-Dev-Peaceful_Nuclear-Reactor-190706-5.html

    OpEdNews Op Eds 7/6/2019 at 17:50:29
    The Quake to Make Los Angeles a Radioactive Dead Zone
    By Harvey Wasserman



    "All major reactor disasters have come with early warnings. A 1978 accident at Ohio's Davis-Besse reactor presaged the 1979 disaster at Three Mile Island. The realities were hidden, and TMI spewed radiation that killed local people and animals in droves.

    Soviet officials knew the emergency shut-down mechanism at Chernobyl could cause an explosion but kept it secret. Unit Four exploded the instant the rods meant to shut it down were deployed.

    Decades before disaster struck at Fukushima Daiichi, millions of Japanese citizens marched to demand atomic reactors NOT be built in a zone riddled by fault lines, washed by tsunamis.

    In California, ten thousand citizens were arrested demanding the same. Diablo's owners hid the existence of the Hosgri Fault just three miles from the site. A dozen more nearby fault lines have since been found, capable in tandem of delivering shocks like the ones shaking Ridgecrest. No significant structural improvements have been made to deal with the newfound fault lines."

    ReplyDelete
  3. Just add a few more million to the city with your open borders and all these problems should go away, right? "Bring us your tired, poor and huddled masses...so we can add them to our tired, poor and huddled masses.

    It's a suicide solution. I've got no answers. It's like being caught up in quicksand. We're screwed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The plutocrats love wedge issues. They do not care if they create refugee crisis's in othere countries. That goes for the kochs, soros, the trumps the gates, the clintons etc etc. More cheap labor. More tenants in slum holdings. You know the song and dance

      Delete
    2. More fodder for their highly profitable private prisons

      Delete
  4. It's our own fault. We should have spent even a pittance taken out of the war machine to help other countries come into the 21st century instead of exploiting them.

    If there was more equity between countries, we could actually open the borders without concerns. As long as opportunities were at least close to the same between countries.

    People normally don't want to leave the country of their birth unless they severely lack opportunities there.

    Soon all countries will indeed be all be the same. But America is going to look like a third-world country. If you look behind the false-fronts in our towns and cities, it's already here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Owning Class Does Not Make Community

      In The Indentured Tenant: A Story of Rent and Extortion, we learn that “the ability to open businesses, own land, and buy luxuries is only awarded to the owning class. This class makes up a very small percentage of people, but the difference is even more stark in our urban centers.” Such is the case in New York City, where I live. Those such as myself, work, raise their families, and build their lives here. We make this city what it truly is.

      And yet, most of us do not own property in the place we live. We rent, while our landlords live an hour and a half away, collecting 50, 60, even 70% of our hard-earned income. This is while they shamelessly, amass dirty money – wealth that is created by poverty. Wealth that is subsidized by the government to allow this to continue to happen

      Delete
  5. If you belong to the "have nots", you can at least understand why the "haves" hold onto whatever it is they have. And if their start on this planet was one of lack, then they hold even tighter. True some are born with the silver spoon; but these inherit their talent for holding on from a line of ancestors who probably had not.

    Why is the world the way it is? Is there some hidden cabal with evil intentions? I doubt it. I think this game of tug and pull goes back to the universe itself. The cosmos is a pretty smart oligarch or plutocrat. Try as you may you will never convert him or it or she to say socialism or communism or any other economic and social program. But gratefully he allows for human experiments and prehaps chuckles when they fail utterly--e.g. the Soviet Union.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The old radioactive troll, does not care if the reactors blow and fuel pools burn. It does not care if the world is ruined in a few years by more radioactive and chemical pollution. It has seen better days.
      It does not care about violence to children
      Wars for no reason
      Depleted Uranium
      Chernobyl
      Fukushima Daichi
      I has seen better days
      It spews hate, fear and baiting for distraction
      It continues to react by spewing ugly racism, justifying caging children, baiting, propaganda and lying, so the Nucleoapes can continue to build useless nuclear bombs and deregulate reactors it is a dupe or agent for the destructive nucleomonkey imbeciles. It doe not care that things will go in a few years instead of decades with the posibibilty of human redemption.

      Delete
    2. Yablakov and Busby on Chernobyl and Fukushima

      https://youtu.be/PYgBgkZCobQ

      Delete
  6. Who pray tell is "old radioactive troll" that you seem to spend so much time with while as you point out--- "the world is ruined in a few years by more radioactive and chemical pollution."

    Is it your secret friend?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Why no it is you. You do not care. You like seeing kids caged. No one gets sick from nuclear reactors exploding, nuclear waste, depleted uranium, detonating nuclear bombs according to you. You could care less about wasting tax money to pollute the usa, to build nuke bombs and prosecute wars all over the glode. Wars that senselessly kill and maim inncocent children. You tell lies. If someone tells the truth you resort to baiting, bigotry, racism and fox propaganda like usual because you are a troll here to distract spew fox propaganda

      Delete
    2. Ha, ha. Well, keep you little secret. But I promise I would keep it confidential if you were to reveal this secret friend of yours. Cross my heart! Fascinating character for sure.

      Delete
    3. 13,000 migrant children in detention: America's horrifying reality

      13,000 migrant children in detention: America's horrifying reality
      https://www-m.cnn.com/2018/10/01/opinions/13000-migrant-children-horrifying-reality-driver/index.html

      Delete
    4. Better detention than feeding the sex slave system.

      Delete
    5. Now thousands of cases against DHS wmployee guards for sexual abuse against Trumps 13,000 caged children at the border.
      com/mega-church-leader-joaquin-garcia-charged-with-sex-crimes/5333827

      Lackeys of the Blood-thirsty Fascist-fundamentalist dictators in Honduras El Salvadore Guatemala. Monsters put in By
      Reagan Bush Clinton Hillary Clinton and Kept in power by Trump

      Mega-church leader Joaquin Garcia charged with human trafficking and child rape charges

      Delete
    6. Oh, nothing...just a sworn affidavit alleging that the President of the United States, along with his billionaire pal, raped a 13 year old girl. #JefferyEpstein #epsteinindictment


      https://www.scribd.com/doc/316341058/Donald-Trump-Jeffrey-Epstein-Rape-Lawsuit-and-Affidavits

      Delete
  7. Something is happening at Diablo Canyon
    They Have scrubbed many of the internet of Story's, related to the earthquake hazard to The reactors there in the past 6 hours. There has been another large eartquake closer to the coast

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The DHS guards rape the children at the border, in the cages troll. u know that troll. Ur boss Trump and Jeffrey Epstein get off on that sort of thing troll. . 13000 of them or more .

      Why not unite them w their parents and get rid of the fascist dictatotrs and death squads in their home countries that force them into being refugees. The Fascist massacre zones, where they are from have massacred . millions of them because they are mostly indiginous. The people yearn to go back home. Home to a place that is not a radioactive-chemical shit hole crawling with homelessness and chemical hell. Not radioavtive from building nuclear bombs that cost trillions, while keeping filthy reactors and hi level waste everywhere for backup plutonium for the evil useless nuke bombs. u r an evil useless-eater troll with a massive radioactive and carbon foootprint. U r also a narcistist and sociopath with no empathy and no conscience

      Many of the refugees that end up here yearn to escape what is becoming fourth world USA and Prison Planet Usa with 3 million in jails and private prisons for drugs or some other bs Where 2 million are in and out of jail and on probation for petty misdemeaners. Where many of their kids end up from being used for cheap labor and being abused by slum lords and having no afgordable rent

      Delete
  8. The Greenland ice sheet is experiencing an unprecedented spasm of melting this week, losing half of its surface cover (more than 2 billion tons) in a matter of days.
    It has never happened before.

    It will again next year and be worse. Where do you suppose the water, from the melting ice caps goes? Why are there so many wildfires now in the north deep into alaska and, in australia?

    There are massive rain storms across the globe that just open up, and dump rivers of rain in a matter of hours . Several of them flooded the Mid Western and Southern United states so badly that the put a dozen Nuclear reactors in peril.

    Could the ocean from massive saline gradients and temperatute differentials
    from the poles melting, and radically altered ocean streams.
    Why are islands being inundated ? Could it be from the poles melting? Islans that existed in the oceans and seas 20 years ago, covered by water .
    Why are temperatures in the middle latitudes so high now, that people cannot live there anymore . The people are becoming refugees. Carl Sagan knew.

    Sane people in Alaska, Scandanavia , the pacific, Australia, the middle east, south asia know but, propaganda trolls lie about it for no good reason, other than the fact that they are dreanged from dementia and or insane-severely menally ill or only partially sane.

    ReplyDelete

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