Road trip #3 to Mr. Gann's grave, 2 of 3 - The View of Manhattan

I owe a great debt to Olga Morales.  In early days of studying WD Gann I saw a picture of her next to his gravestone on a trip she made to Green-Wood Cemetery.  I recall she commented that his stone faced Manhattan but there was a Great Tree that obstructed the view.  Mostly because I wanted to pay tribute to Mr. Gann, but also to verify that reflection of the orientation of the stone and the Great Tree, I made my first trip to Brooklyn on June 21, 2015.  And then, armed with more questions about what I'd identified as the WD Gann Gravestone Geometry (GGG) of 12 stones placed in apparent triangular orientation, I made a return trip on August 2, 2015.  Each trip answered questions, each trip brought new questions.

And so it was that I'd planned a third trip introduced in 1 of 3 of this series.  There were 3 questions I wanted answered:

• Is the stone that is closest to and underneath the Great Tree the 13th stone?
• Does the Great Tree obscure the view of Manhattan in the winter when dormant?
• Is there a stone that has an "Endowment" medallion on it that would indicate that the person who so provided the endowment had an agreement regarding the maintenance of the 12 (or 13) stones comprising the GGG.

I'll defer the first of the above questions because confirming the 13th stone will be a matter of math and geometry associated with the GGG.  That is planned for the 3 of 3 of this series.

The second question is easy to answer with a picture:

So, for Olga, based on our visit November 15, 2015, I can confirm the Great Tree does not obscure the view of Manhattan in the winter.  The picture from my iPhone is not good, and the color of 1 WTC tends to blend with the skyline, but you can faintly see that most prominent of all buildings from the position from which I am taking the picture; from behind Mr. Gann's gravestone.

Noteworthy are the 3 stones which I annotated 8, 9 and 11 above.  Realizing I am standing in front of stone 5 (Mr. Gann's stone is #3) in the November picture, there is a diamond formed from my position, and those three annotated stones.  You can see from the above picture  that the diamond points from my position, stone 5, through stone 11 and directly at 1 WTC.  Of course, neither WTC nor 1 WTC were in existence in 1955 when Mr. Gann was buried or in 1942 when Mrs. Gann was interred.  Here is a Google Earth picture of the diamond (the diamond is in red and yellow vectors) amidst the other 9 stones of the GGG:

The diamond from stone #5 looking through stone 11 gives the view of 1 WTC you see in the first picture above.  As I recall, from stone #3, avoids the obstruction of the Great Tree even better and has a better view.  But there's another advantage of the view from Mr. Gann's grave.  From stone #3, there is a distant view of the Statue of Liberty.  I did not have binoculars with me but I walked left and dow the hill and I saw the Statue of Liberty.  It is very small...not like the huge 1 WTC...so its tough.  But stone #3 has a view of both.  Stone 5 does not have a view of the Statue due to the Great Tree.

Now the third question, the endowment.  While at Green-Wood Cemetery I thought I'd totally 'whiffed' this one.  I visited every stone within 30 yards or so of the center of the that diamond above and did not find an endowment emblem.  After leaving the Cemetery, I realized the answer.  I had found it on the second visit and did not realize it.  The endowment emblem was on the Great Tree and I had a picture of it from both August 2, 2015 and from November 15, 2015:

It was tough to take a picture of the emblem on the Great Tree as I'm about 5'8," okay, I lie, I'm 5'7".  The picture on the left give you 19 centered over 42 and the emblem on the right you can see it is actually E19 over 42.  That means Endowed 1942.

Who endowed the Great Tree in 1942.  I searched for stones and the only 1842 that I readily located was well known to me; that of Sadie Gann who passed and was interred in 1842.  From the 2nd trip I 'thought' I recalled the stone next to the Great Tree had an endowment emblem on it and a date of 1942.  I was wrong on both counts.  Here's a picture of the hypothetical 13th stone sitting about 3 feet right of the Great Tree if one is looking at the tree from Mr. Gann's grave:

So I have a proposition.  Mr. Gann provided us an enigma.  He endowed a Great Tree, a species he knew would grow so large as to obscure the summer view of Manhattan, a Buckeye Hickory.  [I had a botanist at a local nursery make an identification from some bark, leaves and pictures.  The botanist is a southern species expert and not a northern expert but we spent time reviewing the different species online and we feel close.  It is a very wide tree with low growing limbs whose leaves are quickly lost in the fall.  It is a very strong and enduring tree...hickory was used for golf clubs for it strength until the 1960s.]

Why did Mr. Gann obscure the view?  Again a proposition.  Without any trees in Green-Wood Cemetery and standing at Mr. Gann's grave you would easily see 1 WTC and, though smaller, the Statue of Liberty.  With the tree's obstruction, you cannot see either in the spring and summer months.  But you "know" they are there.  You know because you know the sun is behind you standing at Mr. Gann's grave, that the WTC is west and the Statue of Liberty is southwest or to your right.  You know as well because the geometry and math of the compass and circle tell you they are where they are supposed to be.  The lesson to me is that:

Just because I cannot see a thing, such as the simultaneous existence of a point in 

time and space four dimensional spacetime, does not mean it is not there.

Armed with the correct math and geometry, we might find places in spacetime

that we cannot see.  We might...predict the future.  Is this what Mr. Gann knew?

Sir Arthur Eddington in Space Time and Gravitation explains it in the story many have heard before. That if man were born with a third eye in the middle of his forehead, then he might not only be able to see the perspective made possible by our two forward spaced eyes (three dimensions), but we might see the perspective of the fourth dimension as well.  Of course, Sir Arthur was taking some liberties, but the thought is that we, as humans, are not able to perceive the full nature of time.  We see it as a forward vector from present towards future when, in reality perhaps, it may be that all time, past, present and future coexist. And yet we can see time only in a forward direction.

Maybe, maybe not, but that's where I am at the moment.

Every trip produces a new mystery.  When examining the hypothetical 13th stone I noticed is was slid off the center of its base.  [Holmes would have been proud of me to notice that.]  There were not any scrape marks on any of the sides of the die to indicate equipment having made contact with it.  It was dislodged closest to the tree and there was a mere 3 feet max between the tree and stone...self propelled equipment could never have moved between the two.  My son-in-law, a bull of a man, said he'd never had been able to move that die as it was moved...I sure couldn't.  We couldn't.  Of course, a number of men could have moved it.  I doubt I'll ever understand that occurrence.  Holmes often said the very small details are often more important that the obvious and prominent facts.  Mark it as odd...for now.

There you have it.  The first question of the 13th stone is deferred.  The second question is answered as, in late fall and throughout the winter, Mr. Gann has a view of Manhattan through the barren tree and a distant view of the Statue of Liberty.  The third question of who planted the tree...I believe Mr. Gann had the tree planted in 1942 and endowed it to frame an enigma having meaning.

Jim Ross