Reader’s Digest has  a somewhat regular feature called ” Outrageous,” which is written by Michael Crowley. It features articles about actual events that are almost impossible to believe in their audacity. Of course, politicians are  a frequent subject. There is  another group that makes regular appearances. Theses are our good friends from the legal profession. There were 2 items in his year-end article involving those legal eagles that so irritated me that I could narrow it down and thus felt compelled to comment on both.

But first, a few numbers. There were, as of 2007 , almost 1.2 million attorneys in the Unite States. Depending on whose numbers one cites, we seem to have about 1/2 the world’s total. The legal profession is the #1 profession for members of Congress. And, good old Washington. D.C. has more lawyers than all but 6 states. But this next  one  caught me by surprise. Only slightly more than 1/2 of our Presidents have been attorneys.

On to the patently outrageous. his event took place in  Salem, Ma. A young man driving a Ford Mustang ran head on into  a Honda van. The driver of the Mustang( who w as driving way over the posted speed limit ) was  injured . His passenger was severely injured as was the driver of the other vehicle. Pay close attention to this next. The father of the passenger who was injured filed  a lawsuit against the driver of the van, who, according to authorities, had done nothing amiss. The lawsuit said that she carelessly and negilently failed to avoid the  vehicle which hit her. The attorney’s  explanation, ” Under Massachusetts law, I’m trying to get compensation for my client anywhere I can.”  From an untrained perspective, it seems to view that the point being made was that the driver of the van was somehow at fault, wrong place, wrong time, or maybe just had more insurance. Outcome, don’t know.

Example #2  and this outcome, we know. The even in question took place a few years ago and was settled this year. It took place in State Island, NY and involved Little League baseball.This one on some level actually made some sense, at least as  compared to example#1. A young man incurred serious knee damage sliding into second base. The base was detachable and thus designed to prevent injury. The manager said he had taught the young man to slide properly. However, his mom sued the manager, the coach who told  him o  go to second and the state and national Little League. She ultimately  settled   for $125,000. Probably the saddest part of the story is the attorney telling ESPN The Magazine that he had been flooded with calls about other parents desiring representation. Ahhhh!!

So, too many lawyers, too many laws or what? Wish I could say. But do you e remember any news articles bemoaning the shortage of attorneys in a given area in the way there is  a shortage of physicians? Me neither.

I have to ask this. Wonder if either of the above cases would have been settled differently under Obamacare? Just kidding, a little.

I seem to start all my posts quite negatively, so apologies for the blatant similarity here.  Scanning down the page, I noticed my previous two posts started with ‘I don’t know anything about (fill in blog subject here).’  My problem this time was my non-existent experience of interviewing anyone in the public eye, and the fact I had never heard of Lady Lykez. 

So, with a few hours until I was              due to   due to call her, I did some serious    researching.  What I found was really impressive.  There aren’t many 19 year olds who have already played Glastonbury, T in the Park, worked in America, and supported Method Man and Redman on tour.  She’s also about to release her debut album, Lykez, Camera, Action. 

The thing that interested me most was the Method Man link.  I’m probably showing my age here, but I remember when his group, Wu-Tang Clan, became huge in the summer of ’97.  Wu-Tang Forever had just been released, amid massive hype generated from the success of ‘93’s Enter the Wu and various members’ solo albums.  Method Man’s gravel-like, unique voice made me fall in love with every Wu-Tang Forever track featuring hm.

Well aware that the interview was about Lady Lykez and not my teenage hip-hop obsession, I wrote a set of open questions with a rough idea of how the interview would probably go.  The absolute worst thing that can happen in this situation, I’m told, is if every question is met with a monosyllabic answer.  I could only hope for the best.

There were no such problems, fortunately.  She happily gave full, informative answers, and I actually had to cut half of them from the final interview to save space.  As you can imagine for someone so successful, she came across as bright, witty, and above all sensible.  When I asked if she had advice for anyone thinking of trying their hand at the music game, she had some useful pointers.  Her suggestions were to stay in school, get some decent grades, and make sure you have something to fall back on – because not everyone makes it in music.  Wise words indeed.

Interviews are always best if you can get something a bit juicy – something that gives you an insight in to a person’s slightly controversial view on a subject.  Her opinion that ‘you don’t really need talent to become famous anymore’ provided just that.  She was quick to point out, of course, that talent was a necessity when she got her big break.  

Naturally, I quizzed her briefly about her supporting role for Method Man and Redman.  Apparently they are really nice guys, but totally different.  Red is lively and loud, and Meth is more the strong silent type.  I got the impression that meeting well-known artists doesn’t faze her at all.  In fact, the music industry in general doesn’t faze her.  She has her feet firmly on the ground and takes it all in her stride.  

Lykez performs live in Camden Town on Monday
30th November.  Get tickets!

Read the whole interview

By Chris Warburton

Astronomie: Ce punct de pe bolta cerească este opus zenitului?

R: nadirul

Ştiinţă: În ce an a fost lichefiat hidrogenul de către medicul şi chimistul scoţian James Dewar?

R: 1898

Cine cântă melodia On to the Next One?

R: Jay Z

În ce zi a lunii noiembrie s-a născut scriitorul Eugen Ionescu?

R: 26

Poduri: Ce cartiere din New York leagă podul Verrazano, numit după celebrul explorator italian Giovanni da Verrazzano?

R: Staten Island şi Brooklyn

Peninsule: Ce formă are peninsula Sinai?

R: triunghiulară

New freestyle in the spirit of Thanksgiving

stream

http://usershare.net/j1vniv7yg154

Staten Island residents, this one’s for you! This 1993 Nissan Maxima is available on Direct Donations (Item #122385). Currently this vehicle resides on Staten Island, so if you are a Staten Island organization, this is a no-brainer.

You can request the donor’s contact information through Direct Donations. Below are 7 easy steps to using Direct Donations in case you need a refresher:

1) Go to www.mfta.org
2) Log-in to the MFTA Member Area by entering your username and password in the upper right-hand corner (remember, your username is your email)
3) Click on “Direct Donations” on the right-hand side of the welcome page (under “Get Stuff”)
4) Check boxes next to items you are interested in
5) When you have selected all of the items you are interested in, hit “Send Request” at the bottom of the page
6) When you receive your request with the donor’s contact info., call immediately, all items are first-come, first-serve
7) Follow-up with Julia (jmetroATmftaDOTnycDOTgov)

Check back often! You never know what you might find.

One of the things you’re always told about working in non-profits (and small businesses) is that you need to be willing to do anything that needs to be done, even if it’s not in your job description.

So last Friday, Kirsten Teasdale and I proved that we’re willing. Meg Ventrudo, executive director of the Jacques Marchais Museum of Tibetan Art, offered us old pedestals, built by Jim Clemens (who I know from South Street Seaport Museum, coincidentally), with plexiglass tops.

We’ll use them to display items for or from the Rutan-Beckett House (which is supposed to open FY2010 but no date has been set yet) in the Visitors’ Center.

Here are photos of us in front of the Visitors’ Center. The temperature hovered around 55 degrees F; the paint can said the paint shouldn’t be applied if the temperature was lower than 50 degrees.

Note: The original connection to the Tibetan Museum was through Materials for the Arts. If you’re in the five boroughs and you’re a non-profit, you need to sign up and visit their warehouse. It’s wonderful: Tons of fabric, furniture, office equipment, paint, paper, etc., etc., and the only cost is a thank-you letter.

If you’re not a non-profit but have good things you need to get rid of, donate them to MFTA. Win-win.

Bronx, NY

Remembrance, Honor and Hope Ceremony
11AM to 3PM
Monsignor Del Valle Square at So. Blvd.  163rd St.
(alternate rain space: 953 Southern Blvd., Suite 201)
_____________________________________________________________________________
Brooklyn, NY

World AIDS Day Interfaith service
(St Augustine Church, 116 6th Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn) (7pm)
Join others who are taking a spiritual and physical journey through AIDS.
There will be music by the Gay Men’s Chorus of Manhattan,
and on display will be a collection of paintings titled, “Preparation Series”.

World AIDS Day Event
Coney Island Cathedral, 2816 Mermaid Ave, in Brooklyn. Dec. 1st, 2 p.m. – 6 p.m.,
Sponsored by Amethyst Women’s Project and
National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS of NYC.
For more information contact Nicole or Eric at 718-333-2067

___________________________________________________________________

Watchful Eye Testing, Outreach and Prevention Initiative

In collaboration with Caribbean Women’s Health Association

Commemorates World AIDS Day 2009

“Universal Access and Human Rights”
Honoring
Tracy Mack
Natashua Rice
Pastor Christina Walker
NYC Councilman Al Vann
OnTuesday, December 1, 2009
At Brooklyn Borough Hall 209 Joralemon Street 12 noon
Performances by

The Housing Works Choir & “The Queen of Gospel Pop” Kristina Halloway
For further info please call—347-533-4300 www.ourwatchfuleye.org

_______________________________________________________________

Join Gay Men of African Descent for a tasty and informative breakfast on World AIDS Day Tuesday, December 1st where representatives from Project ACHIEVE and ACRIA will present updates on the state of HIV vaccine research.

10AM to 12PM

Columbus Gaskins
Testing Coordinator
Gay Men of African Descent, Inc
44 Court Street, Suite 10
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Please RSVP at 718-222-6300 Ext 117

__________________________________________________________________________
Manhattan, NY

December 1, 2009Do You Know What Today Is? If Not………..
Find Out At These Locations!!

125th Street in front of the State OfficeBuilding on Adam Clayton Powell Blvd.
116th Street and 3rd Avenue 42nd Street 7th Avenue at TimesSquare
14th Street at Union Square Park
City Hall Park Tuesday December 1, 2009 12:00pm to 4:00pmItx02bc;s
Time To Remember….. For More Information Call(212) 828-6141
____________________________________________________________________________

OUT OF THE DARKNESS
Candlelight Vigil Begins at 6:00 pmTrinity Lutheran Church of Manhattan

164 West 100th Street – (at Amsterdam Avenue)
Candlelight Procession to Broadway UCC Church2504 Broadway (at 93rd Street)
Time of Reflection and Reading of Names of Those We Have Lost to AIDS Begins at 6:30 pm

World AIDS Day Gathering Begins at 7:00 pm
Wheelchair accessible and ASL interpreted.Refreshments served following the gathering.
For more information, call (212) 367-1016 or write to krishnas@gmhc.org

Co-Sponsors:  American Run for the End of AIDS,
Broadway United Church of Christ, Gay Men’s Health Crisis,
International AIDS Prevention Initiative, Keith Haring Foundation,
LIFEbeat:  Music Industry Fights AIDS,
Trinity Lutheran Church

To download event flyers go to
www.haevents.org

______________________________________________________________________________

City Hall Park — 24 Hour Reading of Names of those we have lost in the Struggle
For a 24-hour period beginning on December 1, 2009, activists, volunteers
and those living with HIV and AIDS will read names continually at City Hall
in lower Manhattan to memorialize loved ones, to raise awareness about the twin crises
of HIV/AIDS and homelessness, and remind the world that AIDS is not over.

Come by City Hall Park on December 1, any time day or night, to join in reading the names
of those you have lost to HIV/AIDS.
Go to www.Housingworks.org/worldaidsday for more information
and to submit a name of a loved one to memorialize.
______________________________________________________________________________

TAKE THE LEAD…. STOP AIDS – KEEP THE PROMISE
4:00 pm – 7:30 pm

National WORLD AIDS DAY event at the New York Public Library – Harlem Branch.
New York Public Library – Harlem Branch
9 West 24th Street
New York, New York 10027
To download event flyers go to
www.haevents.org

______________________________________________________________________________

“Interfaith service in commemoration of World AIDS Day (in Spanish)”
United Methodist Church of the Village, 7th Ave, corner of 13th Street in Manhattan,
5:30 pm. Sponsored by the Latino Commission on AIDS.Para información llame al 212-675-3288

______________________________________________________________________________

1 de Diciembre Dia Mundial del SIDA
La Iglesia del Village,Una Iglesia Metodista Unida Progresistal
201 W de la Calle 13 (Esquina con la 7a Ave.), New York, NY
5:30 PM Vigilia, 6:00 PM Servicio Interreligioso

______________________________________________________________________________
“LIVE POSTIVE!” organized by Mount Sinai
HERE I AM
Mount Sinai School of Medicine
World AIDS Week Presents
Short documentary screening & discussion
Sponsored by: The Department of Medicine, the Center for Multicultural Affairs, the Gold Foundation for Humanism in Medicine, Student
Council, Mount Sinai Alumni Association & AMSA
Monday November 30 2009
6:30-8 PM
Annenberg 12th floor, Auditorium 12-01
FREE FOOD & DRINK FROM PIOPIO!
Watch out for more World AIDS week events beginning November 30
A portrait of one East Harlem resident living with AIDS

On World AIDS Day, December 1st, there will be a Candlelight Vigil in the Community Garden on E. 103rd and Park Avenue where there will be music, spoken word, and acknowledgements of those impacted by HIV/AIDS in East Harlem. Immediately after the vigil is the annual Viva El Barrio community celebration at Julia de Burgos Cultural Center where there be music, dance performances, food, and good times!

On December 2 in the East Harlem Café (E.104th and Lex) there will be a provocative dialogue on HIV/AIDS education in NYC Public Schools, so please come by for a good cup of café and good conversation!

The last event is on December 3 where the medical students have organized a panel discussion to expose and build the capacity of their medical student peers about the state of HIV/AIDS in NYC.

SPONSORED BY: New York Restoration Project, American Medical Student Association,
and the Mount Sinai Center for Multicultural and Community Affairs

For more information please contact: Jessica Acuna (Jessica.acuna@mssm.edu)

______________________________________________________________________________

The Riverside Church invites you to be with us on
Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Riverside Church in the City of New York
490 Riverside Drive, New York City

Sunday Morning Worship
Every Sunday at 10:45 am in the Nave

We gather each week to sing and pray, and hear the Word proclaimed

Pre-World AIDS DAY Community Service Tables
12:00 noon – 2:00 pm

Community Service Tables with:

AIDS Service Center New York City
Casa Esperanza House of Hope
Global Ministry
NYC Faith in Action for HIV/AIDS Prevention, Care and Education Coalition
The Riverside Church Global HIV/AIDS Ministry
S.M.A.R.T. University
United Church of Christ HIV/AIDS Network
World Vision

__________________________________________________________________

Convent Avenue Baptist Church

Invite you

Tangy’s Song! Is a compelling 20-minute documentary film that moves from fear to faith as one young HIV positive African-American woman shares more than just her amazing story but her song!

December 4, 2009

Convent Avenue Baptist Church

420 Convent Ave and 145^th Street

New York, New York 10031

Rev. Dr. Jesse T. William, Jr., Senior Pastor

Lower Sanctuary

6:00-8:00 PM

A discussion of the film will follow with Tangy Major

Light Dinner will be provided.

Confidential HIV Testing will be provided onsite from 6:00-7:30 PM

(Take the A, B, C, D trains to 145^th Station walk up the hill one block)

RSVP to HHaidsministry@aol.com by Nov 30, 2009

______________________________________________________________________________

QUEENS, NY

“STOP AIDS, KEEP THE PROMISE:  UNIVERSAL ACCESS  HUMAN RIGHTS”
9:30 am – 5:00 pm

94-20 Guy R. Brewer Blvd.
Jamaica, NY 11451
*** Free and Confidential HIV/AIDS Testing  STD/STI will be provided by ACQC’s Education
Co-Factors Departments in Health Services Center in RM 1F01, 1st Floor ***
For directions and all information contact Robert Steptoe or Melissa Robertson
@ Queens HIV CARE Network, 718.739.2525
Or, contact Sharon Hawkins, Manager of Health Services Center,
Room 1F01, at York College – 718-262-2050

To download event flyers go to
http://nycfia.org/id34.html

I do not come from a people who take risks.  Or move more than 10 miles from where they were born.  When I was a kid, moving from Brooklyn to Long Island was a very big deal.  I grew up in the same house in which my mother was raised.  My parent’s wedding more or less coincided with the arrival of my father’s draft notice for World War II, so she stayed put while he shipped off to the Pacific.   At the end of the War, almost four years after they walked down the aisle, my parents finally moved in together — alongside my grandfather, aunt and uncle. 

A couple of my mother’s siblings struck off in the late 50s for Long Island and Staten Island, places as exotic to us as if they had moved to Bali.  My mother stayed put, until after 20 years the city took over our entire block to build a new school.  The property was “condemned”  and the family cast out.  We set off, like pioneers, for the strange wilds of Staten Island where one of my aunts lived.  I’m not sure my mother, who never learned to drive, ever stopped missing Brooklyn.

She was rooted, rooted to family and to place.  She did not associate travel with romance or adventure, nor did she ever want to move.  During the War (upper case to distinguish it from the lesser wars that followed), my father’s  troop train stopped briefly at Whitefish, Montana, possibly (but most likely not–it’s so improbable) on Christmas Eve.   The rugged beauty of the town, snugged down amid white, green and purple mountains, cast a spell on my father.  Throughout my childhood he talked wistfully about Whitefish and his dream of picking up and starting there afresh.  Another alternative he offered — equally absurd and unworthy even of discussion as far as my mother was concerned–was Australia, where he recalled enjoying steak-and-egg breakfasts for 25 cents.  My mother was having none of it, and in New York we stayed.

I’ve already established that I haven’t strayed too far, either, so I find myself thinking that I just don’t come from people who take risks.  So why am I moving over 1,000 miles away?  And why now? 

Hard to say, exactly, except that I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to grow out of what I grew into.  Shakespeare has the fool famously say to King Lear, “Thou should not have been old til thou hast been wise.”  My version of that is to grow fearless before you get old.

Lifelongnewyorker (NYer) was born in Red Hook, Brooklyn, back in the last century.  Except that Red Hook then was about 50 years behind the rest of America.  While everyone else discovered suburban life, we still bought fruit and vegetables from a horse-drawn peddler who stopped right in front of the house.  But that’s a different chapter. 

Brought to Staten Island as a child, NYer has lived there ever since.  Two brief attempts to go away to college ended abruptly when she realized that venturing more than 25 miles beyond Washington Square produced anaphylactic shock.  Going to college and grad school in the city saved her life.   

Married when barely an adult, she has lived with her husband, Mr. NYer, on Staten Island ever since.  That will end in January, 2010.

This is a cool stop motion animation to promote my people’s THC’s new album -
“The Higher Concept” ( Available on Itunes Now !)

I wanna see the Evolution of Mike Cashs’ Beard Next

from September 13, 2009

AUTHOR’S NOTE: If you didn’t like my last blog I don’t expect you’ll like this one. On the other hand, if you liked my last blog you’ll like this one because I’ll very probably use the same jokes, you know, the same jokes I’ve been using for the last three years. So perhaps you may not like this one after all, as it is likely not very different from what you’ve read before. On the other hand (and I think I’m up to my third hand at this point) I’ll be writing about stuff I haven’t written about before so maybe you’ll stick around.

I do, though, start off with something I have written about before, airplane travel. You may want to skip that section and jump ahead to where I talk about the phoniest Italian food in Providence.

But if you ask me, and well you should since after all I wrote this crap, maybe you should just log off altogether and go back to your farm game or your zombie fight. It is all kind of silly.

In fact, I do something in this blog I rarely do. (Fact check? Praise Obama?) At certain points I exercise discretion. This has the twofold effect of shortening my blog (“yay,” you are undoubtedly thinking) and perhaps leaving out promising avenues of sophomoric humor. Believe me, it is very hard for me to leave a fifth grade fart joke or crude sexual euphemism out of my blog but at certain points I did it. The upside is that I get to avoid some stuff I want to avoid and I get to lean back from my keyboard, thinking “ah, how adult of me.”

—————————————–

I spent ten days in San Diego this summer.

To get to San Diego you’ve got some options. You can take a train across the country, but unless you are living in 1955 no one does that anymore. You can drive across the country, but I’ve seen The Twilight Zone and I know I’ll be seeing the same hitchhiker asking “going my way?” every time I stop and by the time I got to Missouri I’d drive into a lake. That left me with only one other option- hot air balloon. However, the FAA refused to give me the proper clearance to fly over Nevada and I said fuck it, I’ll take a plane.

I paid an extra $40 to get a seat in the extra legroom section. I got about two extra inches, but if you’ve ever flown in a full plane for longer than 15 minutes you’ll know how much I appreciated the extra two inches.

Know what else I got for the extra $40? I got to sit next to the emergency exit, a very responsible seat. The stewardess asked all of us next to the exits if we were willing to help other passengers out of the plan in the event of an emergency. If not we could switch seats. No way was I giving up the extra legroom so I lied and said sure I’d be willing to help. In fact I was already composing my speech for CNN explaining why no one but me got off the plane before it went down.

I took the door position very seriously. When the stewardess specifically asked me if I knew how and when to open the door, I told her “you’d better tell me when not to open this door, ‘cause I am ready!”

She then very slowly and patiently told me when not to open the door.

The flight itself was very uneventful, except for one time when we hit a spell of turbulence and I grabbed for the emergency handles. The stewardess kindly asked me to let go. I was ready, dammit!

About three hours into the flight, when it was nice and quiet, I looked out the window; turned to my brother (did I mention my brother came with me? Well I’m mentioning it now.) and said “there’s a man on the wing!” He was not at all amused, probably because I say that to him every single time we fly.

I went to San Diego for a week of training where I learned that I hate training, and especially hate it when I have training with other teachers. The highlight of the training came when my group had to turn an old poem into a sketch and I had to tie up a very attractive teacher from Seattle in a bondage position. This is true. I was not at all comfortable but she had clearly done it before. “Run this rope between my breasts” she said at one point and I really wished there were not thirty other people around. I have not found them yet but pictures of this do exist. I hope they stay lost.

Along with me from my school were some other teachers who kind of went off on their own and my AP. Every single day he told us how much he wanted to take us out to dinner and every single dinner time he was nowhere to be found.

While I was there I saw the zoo, where we watched an ape piss right in front of us.

I did a lot of touristy stuff and if you want to you can check my photos on Facebook. Be on the lookout for the one where I am wearing a stupid looking hat.

The less said about San Diego the better because it was, quite frankly, fun but not funny. Good for me to experience, bad for you to read about. (That sums up everything I have ever written in a blog, bad for you to read about. Why do you do it?)

San Diego was sandwiched, sort of, by two trips of urban exploration.

Here is how wikipedia defines Urban Exploration:

Urban exploration is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of urban areas or industrial facilities.  The nature of this activity presents various risks, including both physical danger and the possibility of arrest and punishment. Many, but not all, of the activities associated with urban exploration could be considered trespassing or other violations of local or regional laws.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER: This blog is a work of fiction. Any illegal trespassing or violation of local laws is intended as humor and is in no way an admission of guilt. And as for the photos I posted on my profile, I have no clue how they got there, who took them, or why I am even in some of them. And maybe that’s not even my profile. Wait, do you have a warrant? Get your hands off me, I know my rights!

I was caught in a rainstorm while Michelle and I explored an old abandoned mental asylum on Staten Island.

Read that back, there’s a lot to take in. I know it all sounds pretty Scooby Doo but that is what happened. (Maybe happened, wink wink.)

Let me go back to the beginning. In fact, let me go back before the beginning. I’m going all the way back to when I was a kid in grade school. Trust me, this will make sense. At least as much sense as my blogs usually make. (Be glad I have not come crazy with the punctuation. I haven’t done that in ages and I’m itching to go nuts with semi-colons. But I digress. You may remember I was using some discretion in this blog.)

Ten-year old me had a ten-year old friend named Michael. For some reason we would go to school and tell each other the most ridiculous lies about what we did the night before. I’d tell him I saw a UFO. He’d tell me he went into a haunted house. I’d tell him I saw a ghost on my fire escape. He’d tell me fought a werewolf. I once showed him some white paint splotches around my block and told him they were skeleton tracks and I followed them all the way to the cemetery. What does this show? It shows that ten-year old me was as big a jerk as 2009 me.

Zip ahead to July, 2009. Remember the rainiest day of the summer? The one where Staten Island was hit with a tornado? Streets were flooded, trees were down, some areas were blacked out? That was the day I could be found driving around the backwoods. Or as close as S.I. has to backwoods.

Michelle has done a lot of urban exploration and I always wanted to do some so this was the day we picked to go. Would I have done this with David Din? No. Would I have done this with Bonnie? No, she’s snubbing me. But I’d do it with Michelle. (Poor choice of phrase? Yes, but if you take your mind out of the gutter it is perfectly innocent.) If you are reading this and you know Michelle, no explanation is necessary. If you are reading this and you don’t know, that’s your loss. She’s great. Absolutely great.

First we went to the boat graveyard. No, let me start over.

First we went to the spooky, abandoned, Old Boat Graveyard, where rusty hulks decompose and die!

Isn’t that better? Sound spooky enough? It really wasn’t spooky, despite the gray skies and rain. The best place to see it was on the property of a construction company. Normally I avoid places where construction workers could beat me up and throw me into a river, but I had to man up and we took some pics until a guy yelled at us and we had to stop.

We drove around in the rain, guided by Michelle’s iPhone, and made a large number of wrong turns in the pouring rain until we got to the site of the abandoned mental asylum. At least Michelle said it was the site. All I saw was a fence surrounding a lot of trees. Michelle knows her stuff though, and after a quick duck through a hole in the fence we were in.

TO BE CONTINUED

The Parks Department’s Greenbelt Native Plant Center (GNPC), on Victory Boulevard on Staten Island, sits on the site of what was once the Mollenhoff Family Farm.  From 1911 to 1992, the Molenhoffs operated a 32-acre vegetable farm that was well-renowned among small growers for its innovations in farming methods, including a mechanical watering system and steam-heated greenhouses.

In 1950, the US Army shot an ‘educational’ film about the Mohlenoff farm to be shown in Japan, extolling the virtues of the American farmer and the prosperity that small family businesses are afforded in a free society.  It’s propaganda, but it’s also a terrific portrait of 1950s New York City and American values.  Staten Island is described as “64 square miles of small towns and spacious farmland where life moves at a calm pace.”  The film is available for streaming online, near the bottom of the GNPC’s history page.

The Native Plant Center has been the talk of the town recently–literally, it was featured in last week’s Talk of the Town section of The New Yorker for its efforts to collect and archive seed native to the New York metropolitan region.  The article is only available online to subscribers.  It’s in the November 16th print edition.

mobster Sciandra

Nearly two dozen alleged mobsters were busted today, including members of the Gambino and Lucchese crime families, as part of a massive probe involving multimillion-dollar sports bookmaking and loansharking operations, authorities said.

The feds busted 22 captains and a Sanitation Department official who was caught on tape calling his relative, Michael Murdrucco, tipping him that the city agency was seeking new concrete barriers, a multi-million dollar contract, that he should try to get, sources told The Post.

Also arrested was reputed Gambino capo Carmine Sciandra, who owns the store Top Tomato in the Travis section of Staten Island

In December 2005, Sciandra was shot inside his produce store during a tussle with former NYPD Officer Patrick Balsamo.

Authorities are expected to hold a news conference later today outlining the arrests and charges.

(and don’t forget to watch the March of the Wooden Soldiers with your kiddies!)
LOL…..Thanks for reading….remember to stay,