50 Oldest Churches of NYC: Old New Dorp Moravian Church

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Old New Dorp Moravian Church at Richmond Road and Todt Hill Road in Staten Island New York, was built as the first Moravian church of Staten Island in 1763, this structure of Dutch Colonial style served as combined church and parsonage until 1845 when the new church was constructed. It has since been used as a church school and a cemetery office.

The Moravian Cemetery is the largest and oldest active cemetery on Staten Island, having opened in 1740. The cemetery encompasses 113 acres (46 hectares) and is the property of the local Moravian Church congregation of Staten Island.

In what was a purely farming community, the cemetery was originally made available as a free cemetery for the public in order to discourage families from using farm burial plots. The Moravian Cemetery is the burial place for a number of famous Staten Islanders, including members of the Vanderbilt family.

After the closure in the 1880s of the South Reformed Dutch Church in Richmondtown the graves of that church’s graveyard were re-interred at Moravian.

A monument to Robert Gould Shaw, a Union soldier who led the first all-black regiment in the American Civil War and died in the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, was erected here by his family. The director Martin Scorsese also has a burial plot here.

In the 19th century, Cornelius Vanderbilt gave the Moravian Church 45 acres. Later, his son William Henry Vanderbilt gave a further 4 acres and constructed the residence for the cemetery superintendent. The Vanderbilt Mausoleum, designed by Richard Morris Hunt and constructed in 1885–1886, is part of the family’s privately owned cemetery. The Vanderbilt Mausoleum is a replica of a Romanesque church in Arles, France. The Vanderbilt Cemetery landscape was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The cemetery is not open to the public. The Vanderbilt Mausoleum and portions of the cemetery were designated a New York City designated landmark in 2016.

Misinformation Mind Parasites

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Andy Norman, reported that America is facing a pandemic of ignorance.  Insane QAnon theories have captured the minds of many and anti vaccine rhetoric is spreading like wildfire with reason and thought being abandoned for blind devotion to baseless doctrine.

In his provocative book Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think, Newman unearths this growing scourge. In this era,  misinformation is more common, and spreads even faster than the virus.

He explained, “Parasites require a host, bad ideas require a host. Parasites often compromise the health of their hosts. Bad ideas can also compromise the mental well being of their hosts. Parasites can leap from body to body. Bad ideas can leap from mind to mind.”

Facebook algorithms have nurtured this tsunami of misinformation. Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the social media giant has removed 18 million posts containing misinformation about COVID-19, but would not say how many times the posts had been viewed or shared.

A White House study 12 misinformation super spreaders they dubbed, the “disinformation dozen”.  Misinformation experts have condemned platforms for taking down some of the most egregious accounts, but not others. For instance, the anti-vaccine figurehead Robert F. Kennedy Jr. still has an account on Facebook, despite being banned from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook.

 The Washington Post reported that a new peer-reviewed study from researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France will show that misinformation got six times as much engagement on Facebook as real news. Pages that post more misinformation regularly got more likes, shares, and comments. Truth be damned, Facebook wants clicks.

Vaccine misinformation remains very high on Facebook. President Joe Biden said that the tech giants such as Facebook are “killing people” by failing to tackle the problem. Experts who study online misinformation say it has still largely failed to address the issue and that falsehoods about the vaccine are still reaching millions of people. Rather than tackle the issue, Facebook founder Zuckerberg has decided to instead start placing pro-Facebook messaging in its news feed. It is the usual adage of deny, deflect and do a distracting dance while raking in the dough. The mighty dollar trumps death.

Pre-Pandemic: Greek Island of Meis

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The Greek island of Kastellorizo – or Meis, as it’s known in Turkey is a short ferry ride from Kaş in Turkey. It is a hilly little island with plenty of gorgeously colorful tile roofed homes. Kastellorizo is  the name given to the island when it was administered by Italy, and it means Red Castle.

A hike up the hills outside of town offered an overall vista of the town below, but this is the only sketch I squeezed in for the day. The town itself is fascinating to explore with narrow alley ways between building and many staircases going up hills. This peaceful island is worthy of weeks of exploration with a sketchbook in hand.

The quiet waters around this island have become a scene of international contention. Turkey and Greece, NATO allies, vehemently disagree over overlapping claims to oil and gas drilling rights in the region based on conflicting views on the extent of their continental shelves in waters dotted with mostly Greek islands. Tensions rose when Turkey sent a seismic research ship, Oruc Reis, on Monday August 10, 2020 to a disputed area of the Mediterranean, accompanied by warships, days after Greece signed a maritime deal with Egypt. The maritime deal set the sea boundary between the two countries and demarcated an exclusive economic zone for oil and gas drilling rights.

The deal was a response to a similar agreement between Turkey and Libya’s Tripoli-based government last year that has spiked tensions in the East Mediterranean region. The Turkey-Libya deal was widely dismissed by Egypt, Cyprus and Greece as an infringement on their economic rights in the oil-rich sea. The European Union says it’s a violation of intentional law that threatens stability in the region.

Hakar said Turkey would continue to defend its “rights, ties and interests” in coastal waters. “It should be known that our seas are our blue homeland. Every drop is valuable,” he said. Turkey says it has the longest coastline in the eastern Mediterranean but that it is penned in to a narrow strip of waters due to the extension of Greece’s continental shelf, based on the presence of many Greek islands near its shore.

Greece and Turkey have been at odds for decades over sea boundaries but recent discoveries of natural gas and drilling plans across the east Mediterranean have exacerbated the dispute.

Tensions in the eastern Mediterranean took a dangerous new turn on Aug. 13 as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ramped up his hawkish rhetoric against Greece. He warned Greece that if it were to attack a Turkish seismic research ship deployed off a small Greek island, it would “pay a heavy price.” His assertive stance in the eastern Mediterranean maritime dispute is being challenged by a bloc comprising Greece, Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and France.

France, a NATO ally has deployed warships to disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean in support of Greece. France’s move came after a phone call Wednesday August 12, 2020 between French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis. The Elysee Palace said in a statement that France was going to “temporarily reinforce” its military presence in the eastern Mediterranean so as to “better monitor” the area and ensure that “international law is respected.”

European Union foreign ministers were holding urgent talks Friday August 14, 2020 on military tensions between Greece and Turkey as the neighboring countries’ navies continued a game of brinkmanship over eastern Mediterranean drilling rights.

Florida Film Festival

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I went to a Florida Film Festival press preview for “After Winter, Spring“directed by Judith Lit at the Enzian Theater, (1300 S South Orlando Avenue, Maitland, FL.) This is a love story for the farmers in Perigord,
France, which has been continuously cultivated for over five thousand
years. One hundred years ago, half of the population of France were
farmers. Now less than 3% are. Will the Perigord peasants be the last
generation to employ and sustain the old methods? Will the world lose
their “old peasant wisdom” of prudence, respect, and love of the earth?
Filmed over four years, “After Winter, Spring” is a treasure trove of
great food and farming traditions. With fascinating detail, it captures
the roots of farm-to-table and the tenacity of the people who have taken
one season at a time for generations. The filmmaker, an American ex-pat
and Perigord neighbor, was raised on her own family’s farm in
Pennsylvania. Her bond to the land and the people who love it translates
into an insightful, lyrical tribute to a way of life on the verge of
extinction. 

Judith grew up on a small farm in Pennsylvania. She saw how her parents had to sell off the farm in small parcels until there was no land left to farm. When she traveled to France later in life, she fell in love with the quaint farming life. She packed everything and went to France to rediscover her roots. She interviewed her farming neighbors to learn about their more natural way of living.

The film didn’t only show small farms as a bucolic ideal. Three generations of women ran a goose farm. In a rather graphic scene, one of the women answered questions as she shoved a funnel deep down a gooses neck to force feed it. She massaged the goose’s neck to force it to swallow. The harsher sides of farming were shown, like shaving a slaughtered pig with a machete or breaking a chicken’s neck and then plucking the feathers.

A tobacco farmer bragged about the beauty of his hand harvested crop. “The more beautiful it is, the prouder we are. It (the tobacco) sings on the verge of being brittle.” All the farmers are trying to find a path through change. It is hard to compete against huge industrial farms that have multi-million dollar machines doing all the work. The smaller farming families feel their land helps preserve habitat. Since they are attentive to the land, they become more attentive to themselves and others. As one farmer stated, “I accept what life gives me. I can’t do otherwise.”

The one shred of hope is that people have grown sick of over processed food-like products. A younger generation is returning to the fields to live lives closer to nature.  Farm to table, has become a new battle cry. Perhaps the pendulum can swing back. Perhaps Spring can follow a Winter of industrialized neglect.

Château de Fontainebleau

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We took a train out of Paris on a day trip to Fontainebleau. Terry wanted to see a large opulent palace. The Château de Fontainebleau, once belonged to the kings of France. We took a bus from the train station into the town and then walked to the palace. We walked past this carousel on the way there. Terry wanted to take a tour of the interior. I set my stool up at the base of a large staircase and started blocking in a sketch. Within 15 minutes a guard walked up to me and told me I couldn’t sketch. I hiked back to the center of town to find the carousel.

I leaned up against the palace gates and started sketching the carousel.  Half way into the sketch a large ice cream truck parked in front of me, blocking my view. I moved my stool back in front of the truck and continued to work. The ice cream vendor invited me to lean back against the truck’s tires. The owner of the carousel came over and she discussed my sketch over with the ice cream vendor. A motor cycle was rear ended by a car right in front of me. A very vehement and animated argument broke out. The car’s bumper got caught on the motorcycle’s rear tire, but there was no actual visible damage once the vehicles were disentangled.

After the sketch was done, I hiked back to the palace. Terry and I ordered some croissants from the palace commissary, then we walked around the immense gardens. Several weddings were taking place on the grounds.

Lacoste France

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Terry and I explored many towns in Provence, France. Lacoste was a typical small mountain town. Outdoor cafes are the heart of any town. Towns people and tourists linger outside reading the paper or getting into heated discussions. It was the golden hour before sunset and the sun caused the trees to warm up to a bright orange. The cafe staff folded down all the umbrellas as the outdoor seating slipped into the shade. I was seated next to a cafe kitchen door and I listened to the clatter of dishes and orders shouted out in French. I was delighted that it was warm and comfortable sitting outside.

With this sketch finished, we went to  the town of Roussillon where large ochre
deposits are found in the clay surrounding the village. The cliffs glowed a bright warm ochre as the sun set.  Ochres are pigments
ranging from yellow and orange to red. One of the former ochre quarries
could be visited via the Ochre Path. Unfortunately the quarry’s were closed, but all the ochre pigments used in paint come from here. Looking back at my sketches, I realized that I used yellow ochre extensively in my France sketches. There was a store that sold raw pigments but sadly it was closed as well.

Gordes France

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Terry and I drove from one small provincial town to another. Gordes was perched way up on top of a mountain with small roads and narrow passages. A small fair had just shut down with it’s rides and vending trucks packed up and ready to go. I settled myself in the small public square with a large fountain. “Defense” was inscribed on the fountain I presume from WWII. There were no large crowds here, just the occasional tourist eating a snack or resting.

Terry and I didn’t understand all the road signs. Once we drove up a road with a sign that had a red circle with a white line through it. We discovered that meant “One way” since another car was coming the other way on the narrow one lane road. Locals shouted and waved at us to back up. We backed out gingerly for a solid block. Driving on the mountain roads took nerve and faith since every blind turn could result in a head on collision. When cars passed the opposite way, one car or the other would have to pull off the road. The closest call we had was with a huge tourist bus that didn’t yield at all. Our small Porsche shook as it roared by. There were traffic circles every few miles which were like mini smash-em derby’s. Slipping in and out of the circle traffic was a refined art with a dash of chaos.

Saint Remy

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Terry and I drove to Saint Remy, France from Avignon on market day. The ancient cobbled streets were all lined with vendors selling their wares. Some vendors sold tourist trinkets like cicada sculptures that chirped if you stood too close, or wooden frogs with ridged backs that made noise when a stick was rubbed across it’s back. There were clothing vendors and a huge fresh fruit and produce market. Fish were stored on ice and one lady had a large shark for sale. I heard music in the air and walked towards it. Vincent Van Gogh walked these cobbled streets and perhaps he frequented this market trying to stretch the money his brother gave him or supplies.

Terry shopped, as I hunted for a sketch opportunity. Musicians were playing outside Cara-Ann Boutique. Shoppers, stopping to listen stood at a polite distance. The band was called Dos Amigos with Joselo Gonzalez and Louis Pousa on guitars. They were joined by a cello player whose name I didn’t catch.  I tapped my foot to the beat as I sketched their hip fedoras and slick black silhouettes. Crowds gathered and left between sets. Cara-Ann came over to inspect my sketch and she seemed delighted although I didn’t understand a thing she said. Joselo talked to me once they were done playing and he gave me his business card.

Arles

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I was excited when we got to Arles, France which was the home base for Vincent Van Gogh when he did hundreds of his vibrant post impressionistic paintings. We went inside the asylum where he was interred after he cut off his ear. The inner courtyard  garden was supposed to be planted exactly as it was when he painted it a hundred years ago. It was instead ripped up with all the soil in chaotic piles. It was a depressing sight so I decided to settle instead in a bustling public square called Place de La Republic. The street to my left was full of shops which Terry explored as I sketched.

In the center of the square is a fourth century Roman Obélisque. It was first erected by the Roman Emperor Constantine II in the center of the a large open-air venue used for public events in Arles. After the circus was abandoned in the 6th century, the obelisk fell down and was broken in two parts. It was rediscovered in 14th century. And it was re-erected in its
current location in 17th century on top of a pedestal designed by
Jacques Peytret. A fountain at the base was designed by Antoine Laurent Dantan in 19th century.

Diet Coke was being offered for free from a tricycle with a portable refrigerator on the front of it. Large groups of boisterous school kids sat at the base of the of the Obélisque. Empty coke cans littered the ancient paving stones at my feet. It is a shame I don’t like Diet Coke, I was offered some every fifteen minutes or so.

Palais Des Papes

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When Terry and I arrived in Avignon, we immediately took a walking tour to the Palais des Papes, or the Pope’s Palace.The entire city of Avignon is surrounded by a fortified stone wall. We followed the wall and winding cobbled streets to the Palais. I settled in and sketched from the public square while Terry explored the gardens. The sky turned slate blue and threatened to rain. I considered sitting under a cafe umbrella but it blocked my view. I got half way through the sketch before it started to rain. My compact umbrella got me through the rest although the page still got soaked.

 When Terry got back, we climbed the steps to explore the gardens together. I walked the streets of Avignon often since I needed to find an internet cafe from which to post. I was exploring back alleys and narrow roads like an expert by the end of our week long stay. We discovered some really wonderful places for dinner but we also discovered that reservations are always required.

Terry witnessed a woman at the Palais church who was screaming during the recessional, and had to be forcibly removed.  We later saw the same woman at a restaurant and Terry said to me, “Hey, that’s the crazy lady I told you about.” Unfortunately, the woman understood English. And she told Terry that she wasn’t crazy. She does however have conflicting viewpoints from the church. I thought for a minute that the woman might be the owner of the restaurant. The Maitra d asked us if we had a reservation, which unfortunately we didn’t. As he walked us to a restaurant around the corner he did relate that the woman was a bit of a character.