{"id":3035,"date":"2008-06-03T13:31:20","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T17:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/?p=3035"},"modified":"2008-06-03T13:31:20","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T17:31:20","slug":"taming-the-falls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/03\/taming-the-falls\/","title":{"rendered":"Taming the Falls"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the New York Times<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The scenic attributes of Niagara Falls are well known, but if the pilot points them out to you in a plane at 30,000 feet, the falls can look more problematic than sublime, as if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a leak in the Great Lakes \u00e2\u20ac” it makes you want to call someone. On the ground, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a long list of things the falls have made people want to do, including but not limited to the following: kill people to own the falls for navigational purposes; cross the falls on a tightrope while making an omelet; pay people off to own the falls for power-production purposes; pay people off to own them for scenic-enrichment purposes, covertly affiliated with the power purposes; inflict electrical consumption on a nation that first thought electricity was deadly but then, when it saw all the gadgets that could be bought, said, Electrify me!; use the falls to make chemicals to help make said gadgets, dumping the leftovers all over the place, especially in the infamous Love Canal; make more chemicals in the name of war \u00e2\u20ac” arsenic trichloride, for instance, which makes a gas called lewisite, now on terrorism watch lists; stay overnight in a hotel adjacent to the falls to inaugurate a long marriage (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Every American bride is taken there,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Oscar Wilde said, in the days before Niagara rhymed with Viagra); bury nuclear waste in and around workers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 neighborhoods and not mention it; depopulate the city named after Niagara Falls by building a highway through it; attempt to repopulate the city by building a big mall (the Rainbow Center); attempt again with a casino; and, most recently, write a book that is wild and sometimes thrilling, as far as local history goes \u00e2\u20ac” like a ride over the falls in a barrel that turns out O.K., from which you emerge with a new view of Niagara as well as what we call nature.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the New York Times: The scenic attributes of Niagara Falls are well known, but if the pilot points them out to you in a plane at 30,000 feet, the falls can look more problematic than sublime, as if there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a leak in the Great Lakes \u00e2\u20ac” it makes you want to call someone. On…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3035\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}