STARTING OUT...

It's April 22, 2009 the birthday of my blog about the City that I love so deeply. Inside and from time to time you'll read essays and see images that I've collected and created over four decades of a blessed love affair. I welcome hearing from you and broadening the net of information and personal contacts that make creating and sharing this passion so wonderful for all of us.

One of the first items I offered in 2006 (n.b. the works are presented newest first on these pages !) was an essay about the closing of the Fulton Fish Market in New York. I've called it a cultural crime. I can't think of a more fitting word for an act (albeit "progressive" and certainly in the best interests of health in the food chain), that I nonetheless feel impoverished us terribly. I lost a family member when the market closed. More dear to me than some of my blood relatives, if the truth be told. I don't think I'll ever recover.


There are many essays and photos about my interests in Yiddish language culture. I learned to speak, read and write Yiddish fluently over the past 5 years. Though not an observant Jew, and most decidedly secular and left-wing in my outlook on life, I relish my adventures in Borough Park and Williamsburg, where I wander now comfortably, at least in the linguistic sense. Crossing the bridge of language is always a wonderful journey. This one is special for me, as it involves making oneself understood and establishing human contact across a cultural divide that is almost unfathomable, in a tongue whose warmth and expressiveness is like no other.

Since Memorial Day 2000 I've spent thousands of hours researching and writing a definitive history of a now long-forgotten 1857 murder case that dominated the newspapers in that tumultuous year, much as OJ Simpson did in our times. The grusesome death of Dr. Harvey Burdell in his dental clinic captivated the minds of New Yorkers, and the trial of his ex-lover, Emma Augusta Hempstead Cunningham set the City on fire.

Quite a few years back, my older brother passed on to me a little leather bound expense book and diary from 1870 that he found when he was cleaning out the house of his late in-laws. The book belonged to a then 24-year old single man. I was intrigued by the contents, a day-by-day account of the expenses and activities of its author, but had no clue as to his identity or later life. I read the book quickly and put it aside, knowing that one day I would return to the mystery of it all. I've finally found the time to do it, and once again, I've been swept away. A more careful perusal of the pages has set me on a rich path. Yesterday's trip to Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn and to the author's homesite in Bedford Stuyvestant from his later years have set my mind on fire. As the project develops, I'll share not only what I find out about Mr. Henry K. Dyer (b. 1847 in Manhattan, d. 1911 in Brooklyn), but also the joy and pleasure that the whole process brings to me.

Lastly, (for now...) I'll add items of linguistic and my wider personal intellectual interests to this blog, many of which will have little apparent relation to New York City history. It's all of a fabric, mind you, that piecing together of history. The larger framework informs my life each day with what makes life worth living: the blending of memory and anticipation is who I am, and words are its motive force.

I hope you enjoy what I offer up.

Ben Feldman