The Elephant Question
The New York Times has a story about preserving the taxidermied elephants at the American Museum of Natural History. Buried in there is the uncomfortable questions parents hear on every visit:

"Are they really dead?" Adam asked excitedly.

"Yes," his mother said.

"How did they get dead?" he asked.

The answer, which you can't find at the museum, can be found in the story: "... four of the elephants in the herd came from a 1909 safari, and that Teddy Roosevelt himself shot the elephant cow on the north side of the group."
- posted by Amy @ 6/04/2004 10:07:00 AM

 

Book Notes
Head out to Book Court tonight at 7 for a reading and signing of "Brooklyn: A Journey Through the City of Dreams" by Francis Morrone and Judith Stonehill.

The good folks over at California Authors have alerted me to MyCaliforniaProject.org, the online home for the new book "My California: Journeys by Great Writers." The anthology was produced to benefit the California Arts Council. And they have special pitch for those of us who grew up with an intimate knowledge of tule fog, Valley Fever and the 99: "And the Great Central Valley is well represented by Mark Arax, Gerald Haslam, Mary Mackey and Dan Weintraub!"

In case you missed "The World" interview with Stacy Sullivan about her book "Be Not Afraid," you can catch it here. (Thanks for the link, Joel.) Stacy was interviewed with Florin Krasniqi, the Brooklyn roofer who basically bankrolled the KLA and helped lure the United States into the war in Kosovo. She talks about how easy - and legal - it was for him to buy everything here from Radio Shack walkie-talkies and guns big enough to take down a helicopters and ship it all over to the KLA via Albania.

Krasniqi - who still runs his roofing business here in Brooklyn, says something that might be useful to all those folks who dickered over the semantics of terrorist vs. freedom fighter: "I think this is something most of the world does not understand, the line between a freedom fighter and a thug is so thin that it's sometimes almost impossible not to cross."
- posted by Amy @ 6/03/2004 10:48:00 AM

 

Crikey!
New York is the cricket capital of the United States. (NY Times)
- posted by Amy @ 6/03/2004 10:36:00 AM

 

Red-Light Mail
Unpleasant letter in the mail yesterday: Someone driving our car on the West Side Highway just barely ran a red light at Houston more than a month ago. And we have two black and white pictures to prove it. The pictures came with the $50 ticket. (Who knew the cameras have been in place for a decade?)

Sure, the driver must have been me or my husband, but there's no way we can remember who was driving a month ago. So how can the DMV decide which of us gets the points on our driving record? Apparently they don't care.
- posted by Amy @ 6/03/2004 10:23:00 AM

 

Armchair Walking Tour: Staten Island
For those of us who missed the most recent Forgotten New York walking tour, all the details are online. Great pictures of Old Staten Island (including the remarkable St. George Theatre).

Forgotten NY, which frequently has good bits on the city's 100-year old subway, is none too happy about the MTA's proposed camera ban. A note on the site encourages protest: "Meet at 1pm Sunday, June 6 at the information kiosk at Grand Central Terminal. Bring your camera."
- posted by Amy @ 6/03/2004 09:31:00 AM

 

The New Word Wrester
Grant of World New York has just launched a Web site some of you word junkies will want to check out: Double-Tongued Word Wrester.

Here's the description: "It focuses upon slang, jargon, and other niche categories which include new, foreign, hybrid, archaic, obsolete, and rare words. Special attention is paid to the lending and borrowing of words between the various Englishes and other languages, even where a word is not a fully naturalized citizen in its new language." Among the words:

pipe v. to embellish, fabricate, or invent (information for a newspaper article).

- posted by Amy @ 6/03/2004 08:49:00 AM

 

Yes, We Have No Fake Rolexes
In case you're wondering, I don't really have any "genuine replicas" for sale, despite all those e-mails that appeared to have gone out under my name yesterday and today. Can someone write me a chapter of Dante's "Inferno" especially for the spammers? I'd appreciate an appropriate mental image as I'm deleting all the "returned mail" I never sent.
- posted by Amy @ 6/02/2004 10:49:00 PM

 

Pigs and Trolls
A post over at Smitten discusses whether it's worse to get dumped via a Post-it note, an IM message or text message. In the lively comments section packed with horror stories, there is this gem:

The only thing worse would be breaking-up via her blog comments.

- posted by Amy @ 6/02/2004 10:44:00 PM

 

The First Presidents Club
The New York Times today writes about Bill Stanley, the head of the historical society in Norwich, Conn., and his campaign for a bit of recognition for the first president of the United States: Samuel Huntington.

He makes a point similar to one my dad made last year on his blog. History books like to simplify, and as a result, many of us mistakenly think the Americans beat the Brits and then President Washington was in charge. From my dad:

The most important and critical time -- and the most dangerous, as well -- of a new nation is its transition period between the time of a revolutionary military victory and the establishment of a civilian government. ... To forget the eight men who held that office of President prior to George Washington would be to forget the years between the end of the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution of 1789."

While Stanley up in Norwich favors Huntington as the first president, my dad makes a case for John Hanson.
- posted by Amy @ 6/02/2004 09:38:00 AM

 

You Can't Park Here
Yesterday we officially joined the legions of crazy people who park their cars on city streets. The new neighborhood -- we move in about two weeks -- has plenty of street parking. Park Slope is another story.

Last night we drove around for 20 or 30 minutes and finally settled on something about five blocks away that required me to move it by 8 a.m. today. This morning I hiked back to the car, hunted up and down the streets and finally settled on something slightly closer. However, I have to move it by 11 a.m. I suppose if I go right before 11, I could nab a space from the folks who are out there double-parked right now, waiting for the 8 to 11 a.m. no-parking thing to end. But I suspect that's a huge parking etiquette violation. I know nothing about this stuff. Normally we just get the car from the ($330-a-month) garage, drive it an hour or two (or three when traffic's horrible) to the Jersey suburbs where my stepson lives, then return it to our garage.

Rather than rant more, I thought I'd just leave you with this helpful tip from the city's official guide to parking:

You must park at least 15 feet from either side of a fire hydrant. Note that the yellow lines painted on either side of a hydrant are not official markings and often extend less than the required 15 feet.

- posted by Amy @ 6/01/2004 08:56:00 AM

 

Renters vs. Nets
Some of the renters who will be displaced when Bruce Ratner builds the Nets stadium in Brooklyn are angry that their time spent living in the neighborhood doesn't entitle them to much, so says a story in the Brooklyn Papers (in pdf). They're mad that some of the property owners are actually getting "rates far above market value" from the developer while the tenants have merely been promised Ratner will "relocate displaced renters" in "comparable housing."

Among those quoted in the story is Joel Towers, who has lived in a former sewing factory on Dean Street for 12 years. He estimates, that as a renter, "he has put more than $100,000 into renovating the apartment he now shares with his wife and 19-month old son."
- posted by Amy @ 5/31/2004 07:27:00 AM

 
A Picture Share!




Silverados -- The new Wall Street Security Plan?

Walking around downtown Manhattan on Saturday afternoon I was pretty surprised to see the changes in the security around the NYSE and Federal Hall. Gone are flocks of NYPD guys and National Guardsmen draped with rifles. They're replaced with private security guards. Only saw one NYPD vehicle - the little go-cart usually reserved for meter maids. About a block down Wall Street the area was blocked to traffic -- by two security guards who parked these matching Silverados across the street. First time I've seen it this lax since Sept. 11. Kind of odd considering the latest little national freak-out about higher terror alerts and all.
- posted by Amy @ 5/30/2004 02:59:00 PM