This happened October 24, 2024
Click to see what happened next. Plus more Chinatown videos
From trash pile to history museum
I saw this framed map on a neighborhood trash pile last year, and of course I took it home. It was titled “Birds-eye view of Pequot Casino and Surroundings.” I had heard of the Mashantucket Pequot tribe and their Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut, so I figured the map would be good wall art for my brother Jim, who lives in Stonington Connecticut, not far from the big casino
But how did this really old map, probably printed in the early 20th Century, have a Pequot Casino? After all, Foxwoods wasn’t founded until 1986.
Danny’s Guitar Shop · 2013-2016
This ambitious music series debuted on a little cable outfit in central Jersey, When we amassed three shows, Philadelphia's public station, where we had a regular time slot for three years.
Danny Gold is the host and he actually owns a guitar shop. Larry Freedman recorded and mixed the sound My Main Squeeze was our final episode, and perhaps my favorite.
Big French Dance · 1972-2019
This photography book is the culmination of a music documentary project that began in 1972 — when my wife Fay and I moved to south Louisiana to study regional French music.
Four decades later, I revisited my old box of negatives and over a couple of years created the book that I published in conjunction with a solo exhibition at the Acadiana Center for the Arts in Lafayette, LA..
Photographs to U of Iowa Special Collections
I spent 1974-75 at film school in Iowa City, and I earned my tuition documenting a historic preservation project right on campus — the 1840s State Capitol building. Periodically I’d spend a few hours on-site with my 35mm Nikon and a 16mm Arriflex movie camera.
The film footage became part a documentary once the restoration was finished, but the stills stayed in negative sleeves until I scanned them recently. What I rediscovered was a time capsule from a half-century ago —: an all male construction crew that used Thermos bottles and read their newspapers, not phones, at lunch.
Back in the day, there were Thermos bottles, local newspapers, and no phones in sight,