Occupy Rochester's lighter side! I'd like to see more of this artivism and street theater, even though I suspect most of the Occupy pictures for the foreseeable future will be of the not-so-thin blue line keeping us away from our first amendment rights and agendas.
In the dark times, will we be singing? Yes, we'll be singing for the dark times! Every new day's dawn brings a song of its own, Waiting to be sung, waiting for the sun! I tried to explore today. I had to, for the group (trying out a new recruit with a car), for me (clearing out my head after last night), for Laura even (to keep me away from those "interminably stupid and self serving Occutards" before I'm lost altogether). It wasn't really the best of days for it, pouring rain and barely making it to 40 degrees, but…
And, just a day after my last post, Occupy Rochester took a huge turn toward the dark reality of what Occupy is in so many other cities: free speech grating against the boundaries of police oppression. While so far there has been no violence here, we have had 30 arrests and counting tonight, after a month without incident. I know I said I would keep this blog apolitical, but I needed a place where I could report and put together the story of what I saw, a bit less fragmented than the #ROCcupy twitter feed but more linear than a…
It's been over a month now since the first Occupiers set up their tents and dreams in Zuccotti Park, and 20 days since our daily gatherings at Liberty Pole began. I took some heat personally for my first photos here -- most painfully from Laura, who echoed the view of the older conservative generation, that the best thing to do about the Occupy movement is to tell them to grow up, get real jobs, and leave the damned park. So with that moral support to rely on, I've been spending more and more time AT the Occupy meetings, with an…
Thirty-four years ago, Star Lake, New York, once a thriving Adirondack town with a population of a few thousand, a golf club, a drive-in movie theater, and everything else you'd expect in rural New England, collapsed. It had always been a company town, ever since the 1890s when the Sykes family controlled most of the logging in the then town of Clifton, and continuing through decades of stability between the paper mill at Newton Falls, and Benson Mines closer to the village, employing hundreds of union workers and quite literally building the town. Then in 1977 the mines closed, never…
Another return trip, this time to the Adirondacks, once again, with UR UrbEx. As one might expect, the place looks almost exactly the same as it always did. I won't bore you with more overview photos of Frontier Town, since it's just what it was last year... I tried to focus more on details this year, as the place falls down there's less and less left to see though. Abandoned pianos are so much fun. Especially when there's no risk of getting caught and you can actually "play" them (which usually amounts to absolute noise, but still...) What's left of…