End of the line?

True end of Empire State Taking a train ride from 42nd Street Time Square Manhattan New York to the end of the line so to speak departing in 1932 you can end up as the endlessly running defining stage show suggests at Buffalo –shoes nicely shined on the overnight sleeper to as newly married see the Niagara falls in the morning. Or a less clichéd more adventurous historically aware journey can take you also by train to Montauk. Both destinations are Indian territory and by far the more important of the two is Buffalo because train travel- especially freight cars to New Jersey is the powerhouse of the Empire State link to the wealth of the Great Lakes and effectively despite European bravado the upstate New York Indian tribes holding the vital Albany to Buffalo tribal land dictated which of the four aspiring powers –Germany; Netherlands; France or Great Britain would be the winner in North America with only a technical difficulty in respect of British Navy ships sinking of their own accord allowing a poorly led rag tag army of Yankee rebels to gain an ill defined independence from the host European powers. Thus compared to Buffalo and beyond that the fastest and most successful iron age industrial town in human history- Detroit! – Compared to that the train ride out to the end of the line- Even going past East Hampton- well ….. Montauk? Why bother? Which for the East Hampton elite some with solid continuous coming up to 400 year blood lines in the Empire State- Well they would agree- Don’t Ever Come Out Here- OK! Because as a new comer to this North American society- Well… you don’t and never will belong! (And God knows how the son of an African exchange student has gotten to become President- What in God’s Name is going on in Empire State?) So apart from pictures of towering snow banks and harrowing stories of survival or death in Buffalo- the early snows of Thanksgiving 2014; Or an equally bleak closed down empty beach with the rollers coming in from the exposed North Atlantic-what if anything could we learn from taking these trips to the end of empire state? Well that entirely depends upon how as journalist or historians or both we work through the information we glean and gather the impressions we are taking in. As fully fledged Marxist Economic historians we can sit beside the road –Highway 27 any place, nowhere in particular and in the course of 24 hours watch with fascination truck movements. With a Harvard MBA approach building up very quickly an in depth understanding of where the food and other goods coming into this elite community comes from; How much economic activity is being generated locally and by the end of the day- by the end of the week- by the end of the month- pretty much understand what would cause people to starve to death in East Hampton amidst their accumulated wealth, or how quickly vital water and power supply could be cut off in classic True End of Empire State style- Or for whom in the community- having sorted the essentials of living- New York burning would be for them pretty much – Well we Bonachers just kept on living in that time. That Marxist Economic understanding would tell the watcher who the real elite are. Sustainability is not about having a 10 acre lifestyle block with a six car garage attached to a dwelling. Sustainability is firstly about having a dependable year round water supply sorted out. Then having healthy productive land and food being grown from that land appropriate to the needs of the community. Then it is about staying warm in winter so there needs to be wood for burning and wood fired cooking stoves, and beyond that some useful other economic activity for playing a useful role in the community…. And then and only then can the world go to hell as Great Babylon Burns. Buffalo will continue because geologically it is on a rip in North America which allows transport one way or another to the Atlantic and with that connection- World Trade and manufacturing associated with that flow of goods. Hampton is a nice place- an Indian- becoming then European village in a healthy and attractive location –fishing farming a good place to live. Empire State?