Re: Review: Mikhail Baryshnikov in 'Beckett Shorts' - Topix

I found this surprise at the New York Times Store: "Bertolt Brecht Typed Letter Signed About His Plays" for sale for $1,755. In German, he refers in it to Eric Bentley, who I met in a "Seminar in the Arts" part of a college in residential education in Amherst, NY in the NY State University in Buffalo, NY. I think it was "Antigone" that Eric Bentley was putting on at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre around 1999, when I was part of a cultural resources study there on the Bowery, New York City's original "theater district". Once part of a proposed Peter Cooper Square urban renewal plan to destroy 25 square blocks of the Lower Eastside in the early 1970s, the plan has dramatically changed, at least in effect, but not in title. ---------------- Listening to: Columbia University Orchestra - Dvorak - Symphony No. 9, III via FoxyTunes

Slate -> The Fray -> Technology

I agree, however, Ray Bradbury said that "Fahrenheit 451" was not about a "state" as much as it was about a situation taken up by individuals, he said recently. I agree we shouldn't be "fishing" celebrities out (I once saw Mr. Pete in a jumpsuit on stage from the back-door at the Stony Brook University gym, later graduated from there and was work-study security in that gym). However, we need more ways to get the people who have caused the injustice as much as prevent it from happening because it might always go on while there's a way. In other words whatever info is OK what I do is that, but if someone in "law" does it, it's currently OK. They just are reassigned or just hidden again...oops sorry. A double standard. If a former aforementioned university faculty member, assigned poet laureate of NJ, quotes in a poem, something he read in a newspaper about 9/11/01, is fired and dragged through the mud, it's OK, yet the source is never chastised or held up for public ridicule. The US Supreme Court just refused to hear his first amendment case, Amira Baraka, the author formerly known as Leroi Jones (a device used by many "white" authors publishing under a nom de plume?)

Ye shall not congregate in a barn...

"Three hundred and fifty years ago, on Dec. 27, 1657, 30 inhabitants of Flushing, New Netherland (now New York), defied Gov. Peter Stuyvesant's order barring townspeople from harboring Quakers." WISinfo.com

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Happy Hogmanay and a prosperous and peaceful New Year (hope it's without any fear).

Iraq Superbug

Blogger: Pressing Issues: Suicides in Iraq: One Parent's Question

I was treated for Lyme disease and have at other times a mysterious condition. I worry about the Iraq "superbug" parasite I read in a SW news article. I heard the person affected cannot donate blood for quite awhile (a year or so?). It sounds to me that this could contribute to a mental problems like tick borne diseases in the US. President "Mush" has been treated recently. In my archaeology work I heard of one case, a National Geographic photographer who died from the tick out on the East End of Long Island where it's a problem. Sunday, December 23, 2007

"Pressing Issues" by Greg Mitchell: "I'm the editor of Editor & Publisher magazine and author of nine nonfiction books." E & P is "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry"

Clinton and Cash - December 26, 2007 - The New York Sun

"Clinton and Cash" Editorial comment: Whither Watergate? Well one millionaire, former New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, didn't have to spend much. All they had to do was figure out how to pay President Nixon's impending IRS bill of $100,000 I heard. Maybe it was left to a former J. Walter Thompson executive (from their California office I've learned) to arrange the conspiracy which to this day, the guy who did the most time for it, thought it was over a "call girl" photo. You have to love those "spyware" Chapstick microphones with the wires running down the sleeves!

District Trying to Forge a New Identity - New York Times

Dumbo Journal - NYC's new 90th Historic District, Dumbo "down under Manhattan Bridge overpass". I worked in an Abraham & Strauss furniture warehouse down by the East River and under the Manhattan Bridge, on the "night shift" one season before Christmas, 1975, and other times on occasional Saturday furniture delivery helper around the NYC region. They had over 40 trucks. My dad worked there, a delivery router, a former UPS furniture warehouseman/router when they handled more than packages. It was interesting, for Leaseway, Inc., of Shaker Heights, Ohio, run by a woman (known for their blue new car transporters). Three subway stops, way up over the Gowanus Canal and way down at Jay Street from 65th St. and New Utrecht in Brooklyn my grand-dad's place next to Elegante, brass beds and Tiffany lamps. Frank Sinatra for a short time was a TV detective and one of the episodes filmed down there by the river. ---------------- Listening to: Vanessa Carlton - Greensleeves via FoxyTunes

Alex Leo: All I Want for Christmas is the Release of 30 Iranian Students - Politics on The Huffington Post

Back in 1979 the "hostage crisis" was started over what former SoS Henry Kissenger was asked (retired?) what could be done about the Shah's secret police, Savak, spying on Iranian students attending schools in the US. He said he could do nothing about it. At the time it was reported that there were 80 F-14s on the ground there that had a compound of near 4000 Grumman employees training the "Anytime, baby" pilots, a cat with two tails. If the USSR made a move for the Iran border in the "hostage crisis" (over US complicity with Savak?) it was announced on the MSM (prime time regular TV) that all the F-14s would be blown up. I was told by the F-14 test pilot that air-to-air missiles on the F-14 were secret and would upset the balance of air power if their technology was captured. One might think the whole situation, (and later shoot-down of an Iranian commercial jet returning from Mecca [or going?] by the US Navy Aegis system mistake, which arguably cost a lot more money more than other airline "mistakes" paid out, i.e., Korean Flight 007, Avianca 052, TWA Flight 800, Swiss-Air 111, etc.) began when students asserted (their right) that they had been abused. I would hope better freedoms would be permitted in this tension increasing situation, a "snowball" effect perhaps. In one of the Wilder/Pryor films ("See No Evil, Hear No Evil") I recall an Iranian student demonstration as part of the film. The patch worn by the F-14 pilot became "Make my day!" from "Anytime, baby!".

Review: Mikhail Baryshnikov in 'Beckett Shorts' - Topix

I was happy to see this is in production. A number of years ago Joe Dunne and his wife ran the A.C.T., American Contemporary Theatre in Buffalo, NY and from what I recall he was perhaps a friend of Beckett's, and put on some avant guard theater there. At the time Eric Bentley, formerly of the Columbia University theater department, who was one of the first to translate Bertolt Brecht I last see was staging a production at the Bouwerie Lane Theatre in 1999. Nancy Reagan would probably would have liked to attend I recall she saw Baryshnikov in Kafka's "Metamorphosis" was it? Interestingly overlooked perhaps it the connection between Brecht and Klabund "Dichtungen Aus Dem Osten: 'Das Kirschblutenfest' and 'Die Geisha O - Sen'"

Bush Keeps Recycling Same Joke At Press Conferences - Politics on The Huffington Post

My grandmother, Margaret Gregory, was a nanny to the caretaker at the Statue of Liberty (the world's first electrically lit lighthouse - Snapple) and five of her sons served in WWII (a sixth perished wheelchair bound from polio, in an elevator accident, in NYC, just before my father, youngest of eleven, shipped to Italy) and I take exception to the President singling Mr. Gregory for his pandering, even if a "mafia of professors" in Edinburgh, Scotland share the Gregory surname. Born as I was on St. Gregory's Day, I object. (Ed. - Not!)

Design Team Picked for Governors Island Park - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

I find this revision of history a gross deprecation to the former President William Clinton who originally, before 9/11/01 offered the City Governors Island for $1. At the time some members of the Congress wanted $500 million minimum for it. It’s also where John Peter Zenger arrived and lived, according to a swivel-gun monument at the southern end of the island, whose imprisonment and trial led to the “freedom of the press” we have today. His was the second printing press here. It’s commemorated at the NPS site at St. Pauls church, mostly in Westchester, partly in the Bronx, with a bell cast at the same foundry as the Liberty Bell. I worked shortly on the geoarchaeology of the now National Monument, Fort Jay, said built by Columbia University students in appreciation of the First US Supreme Court Justice John Jay. A former captain told me the D-Day plans were kept in a safe there, once Fort Columbus under the US Army. Eagles face “sinister” and “dexter” (left and right) for the different services there.

Clinton Insiders Fear Secret Service Records Could Damage Campaign - Off The Bus on The Huffington Post

So what did the FBI do with the $6 billion it got for "Operation Megiddo" for the millennium terror we humans get when Y2K and other 2001 effects turn us into zombies? Wikipedia: "According to some interpretations of the Christian Bible, this place will be the venue for Armageddon (that derives from the name's place in Hebrew) or the final battle between the forces of light led by Jesus Christ and the forces of darkness led by Satan or the Anti-Christ after the End of Days." Where's the fiscal oversite on this kind of spending, at Homeland Security?

Couric's Candidate Questions: Infidelity - Media on The Huffington Post

President Tyler, 60, his wife deceased after bearing him 10 children, took the young Senator's daughter, 19, Julia Gardiner of New York as a wife. They met when the "Peacemaker" cast for "free" in NYC, exploded above them in a tragic cannon salute, passing George Washington's Mount Vernon on the Potomac River aboard the "USS Princeton" resulting in the first official funeral in the Capitol the NY Senator Gardiner and two Cabinet members laid out there. Others too perished. She was taken from the tragedy in the Presidential carriage, her descendant, Robert Gardiner (seen on "60 Minutes") said they were raising a toast below deck and thrown into each others arms by it. Gloria Swanson he said, told him, recounting the story, it would take a Vivian Leigh to portray her. Where does the American public draw the line at fidelity? Are Presidents, as this one before the Civil War, allowed to remarry? Sometimes, though divorces in some states are only granted if both parties lie to the facts that permit a divorce, which many would change, I think the idea of fidelity is more important in death than life, hence the elaborate mourning required, its "taboo broken" quite the gossip and scandal maker in the past.

Shinnecocks irked by Southampton blocking casino - Topix

I attended Stony Brook University in anthropology and work in "contract" or "public" archaeology where required by law. I have attended some of the Shinnecock pow-wows growing up and as an adult, once listed by the US Department of Commerce as one of a number of cultural events in the US. I would hope that at least, that government look at some of the research of the Suffolk County Archaeology Association. Imagine the times of William Floyd, fourth signer of the "Declaration of Independence" perhaps the first New Yorker and visits to him by the "founding fathers" (after serving as a general) and some of the words collected from native Long Islanders in their visit. I find it odd, if I am correct, that in 1910, the Federal Court, in the so-called Tweed Courthouse, the headquarters today of the NYC Dept. of Education in City Hall Park, was the location of the Suffolk County federal court that decided the Montaukett were not a "tribe". Next door, City Hall, was designed by the same architect as the Montauk lighthouse, and the original Yankee Stadium was built in McComb's Dam Park, named after him. How much further could a trial be from Montauk and who was represented by whom? Growing up next to the Denham Brothers ironworks in Centereach, I watched some of the Shinnecock Canal lock doors be made and transported for the canal. I've also read in the "Scotsman" America's first golf course, with 12 holes, was opened at Shinnecock. A story going around has it that the sand traps are there to protect burials, a battlefield from a previous battle from across the Sound. Without native American support, according to the recently deceased Robert Gardiner, once heir to Gardiners Island (that granted by James, King of Scotland), the first 15,000 acres of what became Brookhaven Town would not have been granted by native Long Islanders to his ancestor, a payment for negotiating a hostage situation that developed from across the Sound. Working in archaeology I must also state that the antiquity of native settlement on Long Island has been very long and interesting. Gaynell Stone, PhD might add, that due to the known bravery of the Shinnecock rescuing shipwreck victims, and at one time at a great loss of a number of their lives, coastal rescue stations were setup ("lifeguard" was more a colonial term for "bodyguard" as once surrounded General George Washington a once earlier visitor noted in Greenport) to save those who found themselves in peril. I hope something can be worked out. There's still more interesting history and prehistory of Long Island to explore.

Newsvine - What's the Big Deal with Pink Floyd?

When Compuserve, I think started or maybe AOL I recall finding a discussion and a listing of the early tour dates in England that Pink Floyd and Jimi Hendrix were doing. It seemed to be a very intense schedule, three days here, two days off, three days here, etc. back in like 1967 or so before Jimi left for the US playing Monterrey Pop, a concert for a walk-in health clinic I thought I heard from Michelle Phillips. I often wondered what that was like, as far I as know, there's nothing written about it, though if the walls of Electric Ladyland Studio could speak...it should be a NYC landmark, by law it could. He was up in a house in the Catskills in NY in 1968 with what a friend's mom said "Janis Joplin or a look-a-like". She, from Shandaken, NY, was just starting in real estate and surprised them, showing a house. I think they had dogs. I thought I saw him in a cafe in Woodstock, NY where Bob Dylan, The Band and the Fugs I think and others spent some time.

Yoko Ono - 'I still talk to John' - Scotland on Sunday

I was listening to R.E.M. do a Beatles Christmas song "Christmas Time Is Here" and another for their fan club a cover of Slade's "Merry Xmas Everybody" (blog "Surviving the Golden Age") which became popular in Great Britain, many times reissued by Slade, now over a million copies, which if you look it up in Wikipedia, they just couldn't get to work, but John Lennon, working on the album "Mind Games" in the next studio showed up with a harmonium and the song got recorded and the rest they say is "Mele Kalikimaka" (Hawaiian for Merry Christmas recorded by Bing Crosby) Peace. ---------------- Now playing: R.E.M. - Christmas Time Is Here via FoxyTunes

Candidates On Losing Their Tempers, Presidential Contenders Answer Katie Couric's "Primary Questions" - CBS News

I wish we could ask this question of other former potential candidates. In particular, the former New York State Governor George Pataki. He was invited to the Republican Convention to give a speech. When he arrived, speech in hand, he was handed a speech, so it was reported, that Newt Gingrich wanted him to read, which he refused. I wonder if Mr. Pataki was angry. He appointed Bernadette Castro, who ran unsuccessfully against US Senator Patrick Moynihan, to the state historic preservation office, and her last announcement was to open the Purple Heart Center near Vails Gate, NY where the troops in the American Revolution were asked to stay that winter after the treaty had been signed, just in case. Senator Clinton passed a law to make the Purple Heart postage stamp permanent, not the whim of a whoever politician sponsored one this term or that.

"Tapegate" Unravels - Couric & Co.

Where I currently reside, my landlady's children, grew-up with the Supreme Court Chief Justice, John Roberts' wife, in the Bronx, NY. In a terrible accident, her brother crashed off the Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson River and perished. I find it terrible that a federal investigation would consider itself above the law and almost omniscient when evidence in it, which might lead to the prosecution of other crimes, perhaps not related to the current round-up, is just destroyed, even if they "have nothing to hide". Posted by georgejmyers at 04:57 PM : Dec 17, 2007 Catch 23: "Everything You Know" Posted by georgejmyers at 03:48 PM : Dec 17, 2007

Up From Zero: A Documentary Film on the Cleanup of Ground Zero

Labor: By Hammer and Hand All Arts Do Stand Tuesday January 8 6:00pm Edward P. Malloy, President, The Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York Join us for the first public screening of Up From Zero, a documentary film produced by the U.S. Department of Labor in 2003 as a record of the cleanup work at Ground Zero. The film includes interviews with workers from the site. Admission is free. But please note that advanced registration is required. The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036 T 212 921 1767 www.generalsociety.org

Check out my Slide Show!

Maybe he should be named "Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked"

Leave it to beavers? "Signs of the new lodge construction on the Bronx River may mean that José the Beaver is renovating - but there is also hope that the building activity means the borough's first resident beaver in 200 years may have some female companionship. Page 3" "Bronx Boro News" Thursday, December 6, 2007 NYDailyNews.com

Fears Over Nerve Gas Waste - Couric & Co.

I worked in the archaeology of the planning of the EPA remediation of the Marathon Battery facility in Cold Spring, NY, last used as a schoolbook repository, earlier in the production of nickel-cadmium batteries for the NIKE missiles, and the major contaminant mediated both in the workplace and in the West Point Foundry marsh part of Constitution Island across the Hudson River from the US military academy. One of the problems I saw was in the levels of "acceptable" clean-up (the EPA regulations allow a level per year into the environment, often based on adult exposure levels) between the Federal and State governments. At one point, it was go ahead and we'll clean it again after you're done, said the State of New York as biological experiments redefined the "acceptable" amounts that produce toxic effects, in that case to lower acceptable parts-per-billion.

Howard Stern and George Takei

I last listened to Howard Stern in the Staten Island Hotel, digging holes along 6 miles of its beach next to the "world's 4th longest boardwalk" when Robin said she had been in the Air Force and those topless photos went public over the American woman soldier saved by an Iraqi doctor in the worst journalistic jingoism perhaps presented in recent history. I'm happy to hear George Takei is now on the show. Howard and I may have some mutual friends from Roosevelt, Ginny, who had some friends at WBAI and Jeffrey who was about 6'6". He and I worked at Timber Lake Camp in Allaben, NY near Phoenicia, NY in 1968. I stayed with him at his folks place as a vacation from the dishwashing. I think with him they won most of the inter-camp basketball games, though the only African American there. Thought I saw Jimi Hendrix in a cafe in Woodstock, NY. A friend's mother reports he was up there with "Either Janis Joplin or a look-a-like" when she went to show a house starting out in real estate. Live long and prosper!

Diana's 'Darling Dodi' Letters Are Read - Topix

Her and Mother Theresa met in the South Bronx in NYC. Great photograph. I once attended the nearby St. Rita's school and church, said to be the poorest parish in the city, on College Ave. Maybe they should have met there.

Newsvine - Brad Pitt Stars in New Orleans Recovery

One of the tragedies of the Katrina hurricane (I was once in one that fizzed out in August 1979, the following year on a Greyhound bus through the swirling ash of Mt. St. Helens working as a "shovelbum" in archaeology, which was done first by people of color in the TVA building era) was of the abandonment of pets in the Dome. Any who made it there had to leave all their pets there when the buses left an overlooked fact in the media at the time. Often there has to be built a canal or dam to get things done it seems. The government built a barge canal across the state of Mississippi to connect water from the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mexico at Mobile, Alabama when given a choice in Congress, that or an "energy island" for NYC. I can't fathom why it can't help something like this project. It's a lot cheaper than the aircraft carrier Congressman Trent Lott had to have built in Mississippi.

Apollo move could lead to condemning downtown Riverhead properties - Topix

I worked door-to-door for NYPIRG selling subscriptions to "Public Citizen" for "water quality issues" and at the end of the summer we had a concert in the Riverhead Theater, performed by Pete Seegar and another, a talented African American acoustic guitar player in that fine old theater. Pete went on to receive the nation's highest award for an artist, shouldn't the theater be landmarked or something, like New York City has? My personal opinion growing up in Centereach is that there should be more affordable housing, and as Germaine Greer has written about for England, vertical, instead of skiing, less robbery.

Contact Us, Governors Island Preservation and Education Corporation

I worked on the island for four days for Geoarchaeology Research Associates of Riverdale, Bronx, NY on a sub-contract for the Public Archaeology Lab of Rhode Island for the US Coast Guard. The Captain of the "Swivel" then the passage there and back I later met during an archaeology survey of the east shore of Staten Island, next to Miller Field. My question is, do you have a copy of the report or should I contact one or the other businesses? If you do not you should. I find it somewhat troublesome that I have not found a reference to the monument on the south side of the island to the landing of John Peter Zenger who later is commemorated at St. Paul's Church (with the "twin" of the "Liberty Bell") just over the city-line in Westchester County, whose imprisonment and trial helped create the "freedom of the press" we enjoy today.

A Poem From Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson ("The Letters of..." from Project Gutenberg)

AVE! Bells upon the city are ringing in the night; High above the gardens are the houses full of light; On the heathy Pentlands is the curlew flying free; And the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie. We cannae break the bonds that God decreed to bind, Still we'll be the children of the heather and the wind; Far away from home, O, it's still for you and me That the broom is blowing bonnie in the north countrie! R. L. S.

Wishing Sir Arthur C. Clarke a Happy 90th Birthday | Wired Science from Wired.com

Thanks for "Profiles of the Future" (1962) and the other written words you've helped the world read and think about. I don't know if someday we'll ever be herding "whale sharks" but it was sure swell to see Captain Kirk (William Shatner) swimming with the world's largest fish and a hand saving them. Reminds me of one of your books about the ocean planet, Earth.

City's first public toilet to open in Manhattan - Topix

There was one outside City Hall Park (NE corner) that was taken down when they decided to upgrade the park to defense-fortress Giuliani and he had the State of Arkansas' flag flown over it (1999) visiting there considering a run for Senate against the former First Lady, now Senator Hillary Clinton. It's now a request against the law. Under the statue of Horace Greeley and Pulitzer monument could be more burials that form the "First Almshouse" cemetery at least I think so, though Ethan Allen and others were reportedly tortured nearby (waterboarding?).

Auction Could Bring American History Home, Family Of Revolutionary War's French Hero Puts Washington-Lafayette Medal On The Block - CBS News

At an historical reenactment review by New York State Senator Hillary Clinton of the troops assembled at Washington's Headquarters in Newburgh, NY she explained the "Newburgh Conspiracy" to the press. Officers close to General Washington conspired to make the General a "king" a conspiracy he thwarted and disavowed. Fortunately, today, we have some generals who think the reenactment is a good idea.

Podcast: Hats Off to Bella Abzug - City Room - Metro - New York Times Blog

For further research one might read Bella Abzug’s (J.D., Columbia Law School) “International Women’s Conference: With an Excerpt of the Official Report” (in “Women and Law Articles Collected By Hofstra Law Women’s Organization” School of Law, Hofstra University, Fall/Winter 1978) where she wrote:    “On March 22, 1978, as presiding officer of the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year, I presented the official report on the historic Houston conference to the President of the United States and to the Congress.    For the 20,000 women, men and children who were at Houston, and for the millions of other concerned Americans, the National Women’s Conference, held in Houston, Texas, from November 18 to 21, 1977, was a unique experience.    It was the first time that the Congress and the President financed a national gathering of women who came together as elected representatives from every state and territory in the nation to voice their needs and hopes for the future. How they got there and what they did is told in detail in the official report to the President, to the Congress and to the people of the United States called “The Spirit of Houston.” Most of what follows is the introduction to that report.” - p.105 At the time copies of the report could be obtained by writing to: Women’s Conference, 76 Beaver St., New York, New York 10005 according to the footnote.

Helen Thomas Bah-Humbugs Bloggers - Public Eye

I read in the National Archives journal an interesting article on the origin of the White House Press Secretary, the first said to be George B. Cortelyou, who held Cabinet posts under Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, when he invited the press in to inform them on the condition of the President, who, climbing in the Adirondacks, the Vice President Theodore Roosevelt expected to recover. George Cortelyou is photographed at the Pan American Exposition in Buffalo, NY next to the President sometime before the shooting. It's written elsewhere that the former NYC shorthand teacher, once Chairman of the Republican Party, caused the price of a loaf of bread to go from 5 to 10 cents, and in hindsight, said to have averted an economic depression. The article listed subsequent "White House Press Secretaries" but what I thought odd, left out Dee Dee Myers, the first woman to hold that position, for three years in the Clinton administration before leaving to get married. I suppose for many a journalist might be those invited into the White House, though considerable payoffs have gone on to "make the news" which professional journalists should be protesting more, in my opinion, my cousin George Murray once directed "Huntley and Brinkley" and won an award for "Vanishing Americans" about native Americans in our country. Ed. - George B. Cortelyou is also listed literally on a board of early CEO's of the Consolidated Edison Co., in their museum on 14th Street near Third Avenue in Manhattan. I worked around the corner for five years in "public" or "contract" archaeology, near the Quaker School on Stuyvesant Square a property donated by the Stuyvesant family, a statue of the early Mayor Peter Stuyvesant there and now I read a statue of Anton Dvorák, who lived nearby and composed the Symphony No.9, "From the New World", that building torn down for an AIDS hospice by Beth Israel Hospital despite protests. Dvorák's statue had been found forgotten on some roof and moved to the park.

The Osprey's Latest Test: Combat, Marines' Helicopter-Plane Hybrid With A Troubled Past Begins Missions In Iraq - CBS News

It might be considered the Marines "Bradley" that the Army started acquiring in the 1980s, I was part of the archaeology survey of Fort Drum, NY for the new cantonment of the 10th Mountain Division there. I recall a problem is that infantry stands behind tanks, and to force them out in front is very dangerous. The Bradley went out front and "armed to the teeth" could do what no troop could do including knocking out tanks. The Osprey, which I recently saw on the runway at Quantico on another survey, off the Iwo Jima Trail, is advertised as a special deployment, the ad I saw, hovering in an urban area with soldiers rappelling down from it by "rope" like the Army does sometime from buildings in nearby Watertown, NY. 

Martin Lewis: Salute to John Lennon - Entertainment on The Huffington Post

Let's see...some John Lennon stories. A friend of the Guthrie's, a folk-singer who's played on the Clearwater at dock with a load of pumpkins in NYC's Seaport, said Mrs. Guthrie heard the terrible shots. Ironically, the FBI once followed John Lennon onto the State University of New York Stony Brook campus, wide-open then. We read Paul McCartney once flew over for pizza with John from his manager's place in Connecticut, where I researched, having the Marine JROTC in my high school, Newfield, the Army JROTC was in its early days. Last heard, they are in 20,000 secondary schools, mostly poorer, through-out the land. The John Lennon Museum in Japan has expanded, that's where for three years before this tragic anniversary John and Yoko and kids used to be quite a lot. That was after we heard, traveling in a limo from Montauk with Yoko's mom, to NYC often they might have thought of living in Bellport on Long Island. I'm sure like Paul, John would have been "chuffed" to hear Liverpool has been selected as an international center of arts and music, coming up, and the Beatles and what happened and continues to happen started by them has aided that, the former destination for many ships in the early years, from America's NYC Seaport to Liverpool, England with a stop in Setauket. "See you in Liverpool" was once a sailor's wish.

Dec. 7, 1941: Attack at Pearl Harbor a Bold, Desperate Gamble

I was reading the Mainichi newspaper site a while back and was surprised by an independent researcher there who admonished both governments for not having a research aim to gather the events that lead up to the attack on Dec. 7, 1941 (and shortly thereafter Germany's declaration of war on the US and ensuing "Battle of the Atlantic" sinking most commercial shipping, my Canadian grand-uncle, captain of the "City of Atlanta"). He, I presume, had discovered evidence that there was to be a "declaration of war" which, due to an unexpectedly long, long eulogy in a Washington, D.C., ceremony on an unusually warm December Sunday in 1941, led to the "missed opportunity" of the translation of a document (as I recall, by a woman) that would have been delivered as a "declaration of war" and since it wasn't, therefore, the "infamy" and the sole objection to "war" by Arkansas Senator, Hattie Ophelia Wyatt Caraway, too "gut reaction". Perhaps when a monument in NYC is finally put up to FDR (my Aunt Nellie's husband Mr. Donovan was once a law clerk in his firm once, and FDR arranged for Basil O'Connor to represent our family when my polio stricken uncle perished in an elevator accident in NYC's "Hall of Records" where my grandfather worked as a real estate reporter) and there is more research, we might find other sad "missed opportunities" for international intervention and treaty, that opportunity brought today by the United Nations formed after the terrible war.

Dr. Deborah King: Play the Hand You're Dealt -- Gender Card and All - Politics on The Huffington Post

I've worked for many women in the gender stereotyped field of archaeology at the local, state and US Federal level and found nothing but competence and expertise, though they are asked to do a very labor intensive job, digging and screening quantities of test excavations as required by law. The former First Lady, now Senator from my state, was named by her mother after Sir Edmund Hillary I read. He visited my third grade class taught by Miss Loman back in 1960 or 1961 and impressed on us at the Wood Road school that we were fortunate to have a school, many in Nepal do not and he returned there to build schools, in a place where materials are in short supply and distances great. I am not saying to admire him is to admire her, one has to admit she has been a good champion of American values. Consider also that the Presidential salary was doubled for our current President who has made twice as much as the former President and Senator's husband, William J. Clinton. He also could have taken what many have done, a position on various business boards (what was Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger on 10s of them, or what was former President Reagan paid for a 15 minute speech in Japan, $1.5 million?) and has instead continued to represent what America can be, an opportunity for people of either gender, race or creed to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness".

Literanista: Culture in El Bronx

Thanks for the information about the Bronx, the former Borough President, once also on the New York City Landmarks Commission, and progressive and Democratic candidate for Mayor, Fernando "Freddie" Ferrer (NYC once had another Fernando, Mayor Fernando Wood, who dedicated the so-called Tweed Courthouse, headquarters today of the NYC Dept. of Education) should be included. One thing having been from the South Bronx until 1960, that I still think of is that the Capitol Dome of the US Congress was cast in the South Bronx and raised for just over $1 million for President Abraham Lincoln (Dion DiMucci should be included too) during the American Civil War, replacing the "hat box" an important symbol of unity thought he, his memorial also built in the Bronx.

Army Social Scientists Calm Afghanistan, Make Enemies at Home

How ironic (BA Anthropology) in the 1970's we had 4000 Grumman employees in Iran, training F-14 crews and pilots for the Shah or Iran with 80 jets with secret air-to-air missiles and the ability to acquire six(6) targets on the ground there. I was watching "Ishi" with the F-14 test pilot and his wife, an anthropologist, when after the student led takeover of our US Embassy in Tehran (over Savak spying in the US on them it was alleged, not President Reagan's family Bible given to the Ayatollah after "order" was restored) we "interrupt this program to announce we would blow up all the F-14s if the USSR moves toward the Iran border" and what has resulted since then. Maybe we should be looking at ourselves (US) and who allowed the balance of power to include the sale of F-14s to another country, Iran (77 are still there). President Carter had some strategic decision, send in a fleet size number against, arguably, ourselves.

Annapolis: Thin Hope In A Handshake

Hello Lou... ("You know what you have Mary?" "No Mr. Grant, what?" "You have spunk..." "Thank you Mr. Grant." "I hate spunk." Apologies to Lou Grant and Mary Tyler Moore...Ed Asner, once president of the Screen Actors Guild put on a short-lived TV show "The Bronx Zoo" where he played a principal in a NYC school.)

When I visited last the island of my mother's father, Grand Manan Island in New Brunswick, Canada, a relation from Cornwall, Ontario, Roberta Parker (nee Llywelyn, Welsh) had just returned from Jerusalem in 1988, part of Jehovah's Witnesses. One thing they do is get together, her husband Leman Parker (my great aunt Minerva Urquhart's son, named after her brother Leman Urquhart, the Savannah, GA pilot and captain of the "City of Atlanta" that left NYC and was torpedoed by the U-123 captain you interviewed, a would have been Luftwaffe pilot which we thought a little strange my mother says and hello) with other Witnesses on the island, was building a fancy house for a New Jersey inventor of "ferrochrome" chrome without chromium on iron, that we went inside to look at. Fireplace with four glass sides, rainwater reservoir and some of the rock ledge of the "Seven Days Works" geologic formation left in the bedroom.

Anyway, she had one of those very long panorama post cards of Jerusalem you might have seen, about 2 feet long or so. She said one of the problems was the wall, which Christians and others wanted to open up a rediscovered gate that would have been another footpath or road up to the Mount of Olives where the panorama picture was taken. She said the problem was that since those Biblical times a Muslim cemetery was created outside the wall after the gate had been sealed and to open it again would bring people walking over the Muslim graves. I'm not sure what that has to do with the more recent re-gilding of the Temple Mount by Jordon's King Hussein, ("Haram es Sharif" as was the torch by the French on the Statue of Liberty, my grandmother Margaret Gregory was a nanny for the caretaker there for a number of years, and I worked with the archaeologist documenting it prior to the restoration, we that is worked together at the William Floyd Manor, her sister on the "Ronson Ship" site before marrying a Micronesia legal consultant ) and the recent squabbling over the archaeology conducted next to it and under it but I thought I'd just pass along what little I know about it.

When the government gets too anti-archaeology in Israel, archaeologists show up outside, banging clay potsherds together.

Post a comment, win a hat - OutdoorRugged

Not to be first, I just followed a Trimble on a stick into the Green Mountain National Forest, Vermont to survey a potential wind farm location with a field chief from Newfoundland and a co-worker, a recent woman graduate from Bryn Mawr. Wow, it worked well and the whole archaeological testing went well up on the ridges, locating the potential for cultural resources in the light snow. I think I saw a catamount track on a rock! Give a hat to him.

Operational Research Camera

Operational Research Camera Interesting camera for documenting aircraft take off and landings in Australia circa 1950.

2007 INTERNATIONAL CIVIL AVIATION DAY FOCUSES ON BENEFITS OF AIR TRANSPORT AROUND THE WORLD

"Montreal, 30 November 2007 – Global Air Transport – a driver of sustainable economic, social and cultural development is the theme for the 2007 edition of International Civil Aviation Day, celebrated annually on 7 December to mark the creation of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) on that day in 1944."

The writer has spent an interesting week working near Williamsport, Pennsylvania. In nearby Loyalsock, PA, an over 640 pound black bear was "harvested" from a wildlife preserve. Quite a "monster"! Also nearby is Roaring Branch, PA, where as a small boy, my brother and I had spent two weeks escaping the South Bronx in 1960, on a dairy farm, apparently as part of a Police Athletic League program.