More Cargoes

In Portside blog for 1/29, Carolina Salguero mentions scrap metal. Scrap metal is a frequent cargo on barges in New York. This is a photo taken in the port of Oakland (Thanks Elizabeth), but I’ve seen barges delivering junk automobiles through the port often enough. Every time I see one, I look for my old Subaru; I loved that car.

A pile of metal scrap post-shredder lives behind the Statue of Liberty in Jersey City. Periodically, it gets loaded onto ships bound for the steel and other metal mills in Eastern Asia.

So parts of my old Subaru might become more expensive parts of somebody’s new Lexus. That Lexus sells for four times what my Subaru originally went for. Hmm! That’s the goal of the medieval alchemists realized: turning base metals into gold, not that my old station wagon was in any way base.