Morgan Library & Hudson Yards: Two NYC landmarks built off the misery of others
I clearly love everything about books -- so imagine my delight when
someone told me about the historic Morgan Library in midtown Manhattan.
I was there in a flash. And it was awesomely beautiful too. Just
imagine a vaulted sanctuary such as Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel --
only also lined with tiers and tiers of bookcases stuffed with rare and
beautiful leather-bound books containing all the wisdom of the ages. "A
thing of beauty is a joy forever." I was in hog heaven! https://www.themorgan.org/
"But...." And, yes, there's always gotta be a but....
At the very back of my consciousness, I kept hearing a niggling small
voice that kept telling me, "You know, of course, that all this fabulous
splendor was built upon the backs of the misery, starvation and death of
thousands of 19th-century American workers who were impoverished and
practically enslaved by J.P. Morgan, the Robber Baron himself, right?"
"Oh shut up Jiminy Cricket and just let me enjoy the moment." But my conscience just wouldn't shut up.
Another one of the many other fabulous things to do in New York City is
to walk the High Line, an amazing park-in-the-sky lovingly created by
local volunteers who have turned some old elevated train tracks into a
tree-lined pathway from 14th Street up to 34th Street. I went there
next. Trees are beautiful too, right? https://www.thehighline.org/visit/
"But...." And, yes, there's always gotta be a but.
And another thing about the Hudson Yards that just screamed out
"Conspicuous Consumption" was the huge amounts of wasted space there.
Atriums and terraces and vaulted corridors were everywhere, right there
on prime-time mid-Manhattan real estate -- real estate worth hundreds of
dollars a foot. Real estate that could have housed hundreds if not
thousands of tents for the myriad homeless families of New York.
Jiminy Cricket then went on to underscore his point. "Back in the 19th
century, robber barons like Morgan and Rockefeller and Carnegie created their castles
of dreams on the backs of starving and dying American workers like our
great-grandfathers. And now it is clear that, here in the 21st century,
there is a whole new set of robber barons who are creating all this
insane wealth as well -- only this time these castles of dreams like
the Hudson Yards are being created over the dead bodies of murdered
babies in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East." http://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c2f801b9772ae6d89f7eb45/t/5cf63af897a71f00013ca94b/1559640825016/Update_Peter+Ford_4+June+2019.pdf
Yep, my conscience is right. What good is awesome and extreme beauty
if its very roots lie in the extreme swamps of inhuman heartlessness and
greed? The one cancels out the other. How can anyone with any good
conscience at all shop at the Hudson Yards, knowing that their extreme
wealth mostly derives from manufacturing and selling deadly weapons of mass
destruction -- to be used to massacre babies in far-away places like
Yemen and Gaza and Syria and Iraq? How can these people even sleep at
night? https://www.globalresearch.ca/saudi-led-air-strikes-destroyed-nearly-400-hospitals-yemen/5679511
And how can we Americans continue to let them?
__________________________________________
Stop Wall Street and War Street from destroying our world. And while you're at it, please buy my books. https://www.amazon.com/Jane-Stillwater/e/B00IW6O1RM
