A week from tomorrow our classes begin, including my "Religious Geography of New York" for the first time since 2005. Just in time I rediscovered one of New York City's great secular temples, a whole complex of ziggurats to the god(s) of progress:
Rockefeller Center. Lee Laurie's compass-wielding Wisdom (quoting Isaiah 33:6) is decidedly not
not God... The shiny aluminum messenger below (yes, he's on the phone, with colleagues at typewriter and camera) is surely not
not a divine messenger... And the frieze of universal brotherhood through trade and industry is clearly not
not inspired by stained glass windows...!
I'm fond of the mosaic at the Sixth Avenue side of the center (apparently called "Intelligence Awakening Mankind" and made by a Barry Faulkner in 1933) where a trinity of THOUGHT, SPOKEN WORD and WRITTEN WORD
send out a distinctively 1930s set of angels to bring about (or perhaps I should say engineer) the fall of POVERTY and FEAR and IGNORANCE.
Behold people being saved from POVERTY and FEAR by PHILOSOPHY, PUBLICITY and HYGIENE.
(They're backed by by PHYSICS, BIOLOGY and SPORTS.) And liberating those threatened by IGNORANCE (and backed up by NEWS, POLITICS, and POETRY) are RELIGION, DRAMA and MUSIC.
A week from tomorrow our classes begin, including my "Religious Geography of New York" for the first time since 2005. Just in time I rediscovered one of New York City's great secular temples, a whole complex of ziggurats to the god(s) of progress: Rockefeller Center. Lee Laurie's compass-wielding Wisdom (quoting Isaiah 33:6) is decidedly not not God... The shiny aluminum messenger below (yes, he's on the phone, with colleagues at typewriter and camera) is surely not not a divine messenger... And the frieze of universal brotherhood through trade and industry is clearly not not inspired by stained glass windows...!
I'm fond of the mosaic at the Sixth Avenue side of the center (apparently called "Intelligence Awakening Mankind" and made by a Barry Faulkner in 1933) where a trinity of THOUGHT, SPOKEN WORD and WRITTEN WORD 
send out a distinctively 1930s set of angels to bring about (or perhaps I should say engineer) the fall of POVERTY and FEAR and IGNORANCE. 
Behold people being saved from POVERTY and FEAR by PHILOSOPHY, PUBLICITY and HYGIENE. 
(They're backed by by PHYSICS, BIOLOGY and SPORTS.) And liberating those threatened by IGNORANCE (and backed up by NEWS, POLITICS, and POETRY) are RELIGION, DRAMA and MUSIC.
