Hi guys!

Quick update, for those who haven't received their lithographs in the mail, I'm printing the last round this weekend. Thanks to this project, I have a nice set of four Wonder City prints, each unique to the plot of the book. The wheels are turning in my head, and I already have one in mind for the cover of the book.

And speaking of the book, this week I officially finished 4/5 of the pencilling, that's page 80! Sixty pages in 3 months is a huge accomplishment for me (since I work full time!). We have tons of new content on our blog www.buildingthewondercity.blogspot.com, so visit the site and become a fan!

And now that the weather's getting slightly warmer, the idea of our The Wonder City walking tour doesn't seem so frightful. Stay tuned for information on that!

xoxo, Courtney

Hi Guys! Sorry for the wait, but at long last I'm ready to send out the first round of rewards. Letterpressed postcards for the Green Thumbs ($5) and 8x10 Lithographs for the Dandy Seamstresses ($25) and Archivists ($50) and Coney Islanders ($75) are going out this week! The prints were all drawn and printed by myself, over the course of the last month. I'll be starting a new edition of prints for our Light Keepers and Mama Whales soon. Can't wait for you to see them!

Justin's at work planning the various stops on the walking tour, and has wisely decided to wait until the weather gets a little warmer. We'll keep you posted as we try to figure out some weekends that work.

Many, many thanks! Courtney

We changed the video as a thank you for all those who contributed. Check it out.

Our time on Kickstarter is drawing to a close. We will continue to post updates about the graphic novel on our blog: www.buildingthewondercity.blogspot.com including the pages for the rest of chapter one.

Thanks for following along!

9 days left! Happy Turkey Day.

Less than 20 days left!!! Sorry we skipped last week so I'm including pages 8 and 9 for this week.

4. “I am sustained by the tranquility of an upright and loyal heart.”—Peter Stuyvesant

I guess the whole Peter Stuyvesant thing started on a humid September afternoon in 2006. I was walking up Second Avenue after work to go to Urban Outfitters. My bath mat had become a certain kind of awful being stepped on fresh from the shower (sometimes twice daily). Of course, if you were to insert my mother here, she would say, “Why don’t you just wash the thing?” I would say, “I don’t have a washer and dryer in my apartment.” She would then say, “It’s because you live in that hellhole (she would mean New York) where you can’t afford a house with a washer and dryer.” I would then say nothing because you just don’t fight with Kathy. Anyway, I really needed a new bathmat and for some reason I thought Urban Outfitters was the place to find one.

On my walk up the avenue, I saw the garden variety East Villagers doing their thing: being pierced, drinking coffee, and straddling the line of fashionable / certifiable. The beautiful irony of this sight was the back drop: 6-story tenements standing stiff like soldiers up the entirety of the avenue. They droned on and on serving as a static compliment to an overly-eclectic street scene. When I reached 10th street something broke the monotony and caught my attention. It was a church, completely out of place, plopped diagonally on the alphabet city grid facing southwest. It had a stone facade with a lone steeple shooting straight into the air. It was obviously a relic of an older city that didn’t make its way much passed Canal Street. I would soon come to find out that this place was called St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery and that it was on the U.S. Register of Historical Places. There was an old cemetery adjacent to it closed in by a high rod-iron fence. If I was holding something in my hand, I would’ve dropped it in amazement. That was the end of the bathmat and the beginning of Peg-Leg Pete.

I crept over to the structure like I was about to trespass. Surely a rare historical find in New York like this must have been a mirage or at least closed off to the casual passers-by. Seeing that there was a poetry reading going on inside the church and 5 or 6 homeless folks camped out on the steps, I guessed I had every right to be there as anyone else. When I turned right toward the cemetery I was stopped by a huge bust of Peter Stuyvesant. I thought, this couldn’t be, could it? Could it actually be the resting place of the man who sealed the deal on New York’s (and America’s) destiny?

I moved closer and saw a black stone plaque built into the side of the church. It read: “Here in this vault lies buried PETRUS STUYVESANT… late Captain General and Governor in Chief of Amsterdam in New Netherland now called New York and the Dutch West India Islands. Died Feb A.D. 1672 aged 80 years.” I yelped audibly. I couldn’t believe it. Here he was, the legend, the peg-legged Dutch Director General eternally resting under this chapel. In a city where almost every physical trace of its Dutch roots was erased by fire or progress, here was the dust of the lead dog.

Why didn’t anyone care? Why weren’t tourists lined up for blocks to see this? This is when I made my connections with Shorto’s stance on New York’s revisionist history. No one cared because Stuyvesant wasn’t glorified for anything in history. Actually it was quite the opposite; he was a historical loser whose only enduring legacy was his last name. It peppered this region almost anonymously because very few had a clue what it actually signified.

Upon closer examination of the plaque, I was hit with a memory from Island in the Center of the World. Shorto wrote about this very spot and this very plaque as a footnote in the book: “As a nice metaphor for the way history has muddled Manhattan’s Dutch period, Stuyvesant’s tombstone, embedded in the foundation of the Church of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery, manages to get both his age and his title wrong.” Of course, how could I have been so dumb? Why hadn’t I come here sooner? Well I left that evening, only to return the next day to get the bathmat and make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Pete was still there and the bathmat was green.

Later that weekend I emailed a friend from Massachusetts. We had been exchanging niceties about our respective weeks and I mentioned, “I found Peter Stuyvesant’s grave this week at St. Mark’s-in-the-Bowery and almost flipped my shit. I went back twice. Well the second time I went to Urban Outfitters across the street to get a bathmat, and it just so happens to be right across the street.”

His response: “Am I stupid because I don’t know who Peter Stuyvesant is? At least he led you to a new bathmat.” Shorto’s theory in practice.

About three hours later came the aforementioned survey and my resolve to incorporate Peter Stuyvesant into the graphic novel. Where others in history had failed, I would be loyal to Peg-Leg Pete and give him the recognition he deserved. Even if it was only to exist in my own head.

Now that we're up to page 7, I thought it'd be a good time to also post "before pictures" of some of the pages, including page 7. As you can see, they're just in the beginning of the inking process, just outlines and the beginnings of some texture and dark blacks. I use nibs and India ink... I'm not an expert yet, but getting better and better.

The Responses from the Survey

Well I was very wrong. Out of 76 people contacted only 37 attempted an answer which left 39 people thinking I was too much of a head case to even waste their time. Out of 36 answers 4 were completely correct. Of the partially right responses, not one person knew who John Winthrop was, but most correctly guessed that Peter Stuyvesant had something to do with New York History. Although it’s a safe bet that someone who has a high school, a massive housing development affectionately called Stuytown, a neighborhood in Brooklyn, a New York-based fuel company, two towns in Columbia County, a brand of cigars, and a yacht club named after him in the Bronx is pretty important in New York history.

Here is a sampling of some favorite responses. I assure you they are completely real but I have removed attribution to spare embarrassment.

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“#1 - don't know but want to say a writer or some kind of old historical
New Yorker (thinking of Bedford-stuyvesant)

#2 - don't know but think writer

Now I feel stupid.”
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“#1) sailboat
#2) Native Americans”
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“1. Peter Stuyvesant is a man whose grave you visit. He built a school, a neighborhood and a low-rent housing complex.

2. John Winthrop is a WASP whose name is one smart people throw around.

Am i retarded?”
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“1. There is a housing community named after him in the East Village.
Stuy town. (Sedona and Kally live there now in an illegal sublet.)
Sounds Dutch.

2. Another familiar name... Maybe he was a mayor or "settler." I am
definitely envisioning some type of white powdered wig, a la Washington,
not Warhol.”
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“Peter Stuyvesant was some important guy in NY history, who had a peg
leg. The only reason why I know this is because the company I'm
currently employed with, Stuyvesant Fuel Service Corp uses a picture of
him in their company logo. :-)

As for John Winthrop, I've heard the name before but have no idea who
that is.

Have a good day and good luck with your essay/survey!

P.S. see the attached pic (which was right under the email to me, but is under the responses here one kickstarter)

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Hello buddy

Stuyvesant is the high-school across the street from my apartment. He and his fam are responsible for some of the New York landmarks, especially downtown by where I live.

Winthrop sound like the name of a butler, but I believe he was a pilgrim.

Hope this helps! I would love to know what its about, even though i don't know too much about these fellows.

I will now be googling and you can't stop me!

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#1 a historical figure, um, he built stuyvesant town and... started a school for smart kids? i think we was president at some point?

# a historical figure, uhhhh, a writer (actually the name is familiar but i honestly don't know)
was this supposed to make me feel dumb?
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1) Guys I slept with who I don't remember that well.
2) New York City industrialists.
3) People who are impotant, that I would know about, if I didn't spend so much GD time on the set of The View.

As you can tell, I definitely Wikipedia'd both of them. Now, tell me what this is for.
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1)Peter Stuyvesant - Dutch man who, on his return to Holland from NYC, planted a pear tree outside of the Kiehl's shop on 12th and 3rd, which stood for 100 (?) years. For years I thought his last name was pronounced Stewie-ves-ant, and was thoroughly laughed at by an old guy.

2) John Winthrop - money man of the Industrial era, regular bon vivant. It is said that the character of Thurston Howell from Gilligan's Island was based on him (okay, I might have made that up).
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(And the last response I received was from one of my co-teachers)

WHAT WERE YOU DRINKING OR SMOKING WHEN YOU SEND ME THIS E-MAIL

ANSWER TO #1 IS, IT IS THE BUILDINGS FROM 14TH STREET TO 23RD STREET FROM 1ST AVE ACROSS TO AVENUE C, WHICH WE WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO LIVE IN ACCORDING TO OUR CATHOLIC SCHOOL SALARIES.

SOME OLD FART WHO HAS BEEN DEAD FOR MANY, MANY YEARS, SO LOK IT UP IN THE 7TH GRADE SOCIAL STUDIES TEXTBOOK
Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New York, born in Holland in 1602?; died in New York city in August, 1672. ...

John Winthrop (1588–1649), lawyer and leader of the 1630 migration of English Puritans to Massachusetts. Bay Colony, delivered this famous lay sermon aboard ...

OH AND BY THE WAY PLEASE LET ME KNOW WHAT YOU WERE SMOKING OR DRINKING AND MAKE SURE YOU SHARE
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Enjoy!

“The attack did not succeed as well as I had hoped, no small impediment having been the loss of my right leg.”—Peter Stuyvesant

In 2004 my mother gave me a book called The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto. It was a gorgeous hardcover with a seventeenth century sketch of New Amsterdam on the cover. When I read the description on the jacket sleeve, I smiled. The book was interested solely in the Dutch founding of New Netherland. “It just looked like something you would obsess over,” my mother said. “You don’t have it, do you?” I didn’t. I knew nothing about it, and for that my mother grinned, “I found one you didn’t know about. HA!” I asked her if she had read it. She gave me one of those “are you crazy” looks and said, “Who the hell wants to read a book about New York?”

It became my bible.

It was every historical morsel about New Amsterdam Shorto could find and distill into 325 pages of sheer reading pleasure. The next summer when I was down and dirty in my research, I bought a soft cover copy so I could mark it up and take notes in the margins. From it came so much of what I needed to make the history of New York an active and interesting character in the graphic novel. Shorto portrayed the Dutch not only as the pioneers of a diversified New York City, but of the democratic system in America. His intended hero was Adrien van der Donck, a free-thinking Dutch lawyer who persistently petitioned for representative government in New Amsterdam. But in it I found my aforementioned historical lynch pin: Peter Stuyvesant.

One of Shorto’s most astute observations came from his theory on the revisionist history of the Dutch impact on early colonial America. When New Amsterdam was turned over to the British in 1644, the powers that were went out of their way to erase the Dutch from the collective memory banks of history. Thinking back on it, in high school history courses, all I remember from that time period were all those drab Puritans. It was all Plymouth Rock and cities on hills and of course John Winthrop, that bore with the pointy goatee who seemed to have no sense of humor. These passages were usually punctuated with, “And to the south from the Hudson to the Delaware Rivers, the Dutch East India Company started this cute little colony called New Amsterdam which quickly fell into the prayerful and industrious hands of the British.”

So in September after a wonderful summer of losing myself in Dutch history (and an unexpected historical find in the East Village), I decided to send out an email survey to the 76 people in my contacts. My idea was to put Shorto’s theory to test. I figured if I asked people who Peter Stuyvesant was and who John Wintrop was, for sure everyone would remember the latter and have no clue of the former.

The email read as follows (I don’t use caps):

hey all,

i need your help.

i'm writing this essay and i need to ask you two quick questions. a
survey if you will. answer honestly and don't google. just tell me the
first thing that pops up in your pretty little heads.

i thank you in advance. oh and since i'm sending this to everyone in
my mailbox, if we don't speak for whatever reason or you haven't heard
from me in awhile, i apologize, but your help is still greatly
appreciated.

explanation will come later if so desired

(remember, don't google!)

QUESTION #1: who is peter stuyvesant?

QUESTION#2: who is john winthrop?

hope all is well even if i don't really know you,

justin

The responses will follow tomorrow.

The beat goes on.