Met History wrote:

> I could see - in the dream - that with the stucco freshly removed that
> day - the crew had gone home

Dreams? Silman's office worked on the Staten Island Lighthouse I think
in 86 or thereabouts. I was the 'young' field supervisor for the
contractor doing the work. The lighthouse had been struck by lightning a
few times and the octagonal brick column was split, they thought but did
not know for sure and they did not know exactly where. The job was to
remove the outer wythe of tan brick & replace it. My employer, being the
low bidders that they were, hired a demolition crew that had no idea
about either histo presto or structural integrity. At the top of the
masonry column sat the cast iron cabin of the light, with a cantilevered
walkway. It was pretty solid built and had to weigh a few 10's of tons.
So the crew starts stripping the outer wythe, push push push production
and as they are going along they expose this VERY large crack in the
masonry back-up that goes all the way through the column. We are talking
not crack gages for hairlines but shove your hand in it and see how far
it goes before you get bit sort of crack. I come up on the scaffolding
and see this... I had not been instructed that I would need to stand
there and hold their hands as at the time of my innocence I figured if
you hired someone then they had better pretty much have an idea what
they are doing. They were still running like mad apes tearing the brick
off and throwing it down the chute and were like 6 feet lower already
with removing the brick. I freaked. They had no idea what my problem
was. Sometimes English to English is no good and you got to take away
their hammers and scream and throw a tantrum. Nobody in the company when
I called responded... too far away from the main office on lung island
to send anyone out. I'll say that night I had some rough sleep wondering
if I'd come back the next morning and find the top of the lighthouse
crashed down on the ground. It was near to the only FLW house w/in NYC,
I believe, as well as a Tibetan museum.

All this to say that sometimes when you have dreams about buildings
falling over it is because they might really fall over.

Then there was that job from hell in which I dreamed the night before
one of our weekly meetings that my son had died. A pivotal experience
for the project and the repercussions of the following morning at the
meeting still haunt me.

Also, say hello to Tim, please. But please also let him have his sleep
and don't be calling him in his dreams no more (a word from Shaman). As
to overhand construction I suspect you got to get out and knock around a
bit more with the literary trades set -- there is a whole bunch of neat
terms that don't get taught in schools. Keep in mind somebody built it
first before it had a name.

I'll be at R&R in Boston next week w/ the need to fill up and animate a
10 x 40 floor space that Restore Media has donated in support of the
Zabludow Synagogue Project. Anybody around the trade floor then stop
over. We got Preservation Trades Network, the Timber Framers Guild, the
International Log Builders Association and as of this week the Stone
Foundation all lined up working together to provide the traditional
trades know-how of process and go build this 17th century log & timber
synagogue in Poland -- once we got enough $$. And some of us are working
on an international glossary of traditional trade terms as well. We are
also doing an hour long dog & pony show at the R&R on Saturday 11 to
noon I suspect.

Preservation Volunteers has their website up now at
www.preservationvolunteers.org
Any questions about PV please ask me... or better yet, ask Clem Labine.

][<en

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