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Monday, July 08, 2024

Civility thu nature

 Around 1683, provincial governor Thomas Dongan purchased the land from the Woaranek people. The first settlement was made in the spring of 1709 by fifty-four Palatine refugees, sponsored by Queen Anne of Great Britain.  


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newburgh,_New_York 


In April 1782, General George Washington made his headquarters at the farmhouse of the Hasbrouck family, making Newburgh the Continental Army's headquarters; he remained there until August 1783.n

 This was Washington's longest stay at any of his over 160 headquarters. In March 1782, Washington received the famous Newburgh letter from Lewis Nicola, suggesting that he declare himself king of the United States, a suggestion he strongly rejected .


Andrew Jackson Downing (October 31, 1815 – July 28, 1852) 

was an American landscape designer, horticulturist, writer, prominent advocate of the Gothic Revival in the United States, and editor of The Horticulturist magazine (1846–1852). 

 Downing is considered to be a founder of American landscape architecture. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson_Downing 


Downing was born in Newburgh, New York, to Samuel Downing, a wheelwright and later nurseryman, and Eunice Bridge. After finishing his schooling at sixteen, he worked in his father's nursery in the Town of Newburgh, and gradually became interested in landscape gardening and architecture. He began writing on botany and landscape gardening and then undertook to educate himself thoroughly in these subjects. 


His official writing career started when he began producing articles for newspapers and horticultural journals in the 1830s. In 1841 his first book, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America, was published to a great success; it was the first book of its kind published in the United States. 

In the book, Downing talked about landscape architecture - or landscape gardening - 

in a way to encourage civility 

through the care for nature 

 in a domestic scale.. Showing that nature can be beautiful and also morally beneficial. 


this early stage of his career, Downing also engineered landscapes and provided horticultural makeovers to patrons throughout the Northeast.


With his brother Charles, he wrote Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (1845), long a standard work. In the early 1850s, Downing called the "Jonathan's Fine Winter" apple the "Imperial of Keepers", which led to it being renamed the York Imperial apple. 

This was followed by The Architecture of Country Houses (1850), a revolutionary and influential pattern book that marked the end of his collaboration with Davis. Completing extensive drawings for interiors and furniture, Davis's talents as an artist engaged readers and served as early reference guides for homeowners to decorate their own spaces without hiring additional designers. 


By the mid-1840s Downing's reputation and celebrity were established.[citation needed] This brought a friendship with Luther Tucker, publisher and printer of Albany, New York, who hired Downing to edit a new journal. "The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste" was first published under Downing's editorship in the summer of 1846; he remained editor of this journal until his death in 1852. 

 The journal was his principal influence on society through horticulture, pomology, botany, entomology, rural architecture, landscape gardening, and, unofficially 

public welfare in various forms. 

 It was in this journal that Downing first argued for a New York Park 

  which in time became Central Park. "


People's pride in their country is connected to pride in their home. If they can decorate and build their homes to symbolize the values they hope to embody, such as prosperity, education and patriotism, they will be happier people and better citizens.

"A good house will lead to a good civilization."

The "individual home has a great value to a people."

"There is a moral influence in a country home."

A good home will encourage its inhabitants to pursue a moral existence. 

 


Downing influenced not only Vaux but also landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted; the two men met at Downing's home in Newburgh. In 1858, their joint design, the Greensward Plan, was selected in a design competition for the new Central Park in New York City. 

 In 1860, Olmsted and Vaux proposed that a bust of Downing be placed in the new park as an "appropriate acknowledgment of the public indebtedness to the labors of the late A. J. Downing, of which we feel the Park itself is one of the direct results." The monument was never built in the park, " 



https://www.battlefields.org/learn/maps/saratoga-freemans-farm-sep-19-1777-100-130-pm#:~:text=In%20September%20of%201777%2C%20American,to%20probe%20the%20American%20defenses. 


On September 19th, Colonel Daniel Morgan’s American light infantry clashed with the middle column near the farm of John Freeman 


Saratoga | Freeman’s Farm | Sep 19, 1777 | 

Stillwater, NY  


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Eighty-second Avenue is also the focus of $185 million in Portland Bureau of Transportation construction designed to make the road safer, starting this summer and lasting to 2026. .

That means more medians, street lighting, wider sidewalks and tree plantings, among other improvements. 

Meanwhile it's a broken glass strewn, gravel covered, pedestrian and bicyclist kill zone with little to no police attention, no maintenance, no basic cleaning or compliance from Business lining 82nd to repair or clean sidewalks or abate garbage. It's a war zone of the slime capitalism that devours society.  




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