John Wilkinson

JOHN WILKINSON “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project John Wilkinson HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON 1728 John Wilkinson was born in England, as the initial son of Mary Johnson Wilkinson with Isaac Wilkinson (potfounder at a blast furnace in Little Clifton, Bridgefoot, Cumbria that was one of the 1st to use coke rather than charcoal). In Hartford, Connecticut, the 1st American steel was being fabricated. At about this point John Shepard took charge of the fulling mill at “Mill Corner” in South Acton. The forge site of the “New Iron Works” was abandoned, Samuel Jones and Ephraim Jones, Jr., relocating it upstream to a more central location at the north end of the fulling mill dam. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT John Wilkinson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON 1748 At Bilston in Staffordshire, England, John Wilkinson built a blast furnace that used coke as fuel. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project John Wilkinson HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON 1779 Thomas Farnolls Pritchard designed and John Wilkinson constructed the first successful cast iron arch bridge. It has a span of 100 feet and is over the River Severn near Coalbrookdale, England. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project John Wilkinson HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON 1783 At about this point John Wilkinson constructed a meeting-house for the Methodists at Bilston in Staffordshire, England (many of his workmen were of that persuasion). The doors and windowframes, pillars, roof, doorstep, etc. were fabricated from his foundry’s cast iron. Attending one of the meetings, he listened as one of the workmen preached from a cast-iron pulpit. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. John Wilkinson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON 1808 July 14, Thursday: A force of Spanish guerrillas was routed by the French at Medina del Río Seco. The French put thousands of them to death, sacked the town, entered the largest church and indulged themselves in a mass rape of nuns. John Wilkinson died. The body would be placed in a coffin fashioned of cast iron. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 14 of 7 M 1808 / At Meeting my mind frequently turn’d on an occurrance that may probably happen at the Meeting House on the eleventh of next M - In the eveng at D Buffums with my H RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT John Wilkinson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON 1852 October 1, Friday: In Syracuse NY, the 1st annual “Jerry Celebration” honoring the freeing of Jerry McHenry from the federal marshals seeking to “return” him to his “owner” on October 1, 1851. Although the assembly was denied the use of all public facilities, some 5,000 people were able to hear orations by Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Friend Lucretia Mott, Gerrit Smith, and Lucy Stone in the engine rotunda of the Syracuse Railroad, 150 feet from side to side, made available by John Wilkinson.1 The Reverend Samuel Joseph May’s annual “Jerry Celebrations” would continue undaunted until, finally, civil war would break out in America. The old, slow cargo vessel that had rescued Alfred Russel Wallace from off the face of the waters had finally docked in England –after a passage of some eighty days and after several times nearly foundering in a series of storms– and so he made his way back to London without his specimens. From this point until March 1854, he would work primarily out of the metropolis. Henry Thoreau surveyed, for James F. Chafrin, a couple of pieces of Lincoln woodlot being sold for taxes to Frances Westhall (the 1st piece belonged to the heirs of K. Rice of Lincoln, the 2d, of 2 acres, to Charles Bartlett). “MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY 1. Not the same John Wilkinson who was buried in a cast-iron coffin of his own design. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at <[email protected]>. “It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: December 16, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT GENERATION HOTLINE This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX JOHN WILKINSON JOHN WILKINSON Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh..

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