It’s that time of year when I start begging you for donations for New York Cares Day, in which I will volunteer for the fourth year, and my team will go help out a public school in NYC. Your money goes towards New York Cares, which does a lot of great stuff for the city. I put buttons both for my personal donation page and my team (the amazingly awesome Team Truthiness, a ragtag group of volunteers and friends from all over the city) in the sidebar there, so get to the donating!
On this day in 1945, a small plane crashed into the Empire State Building. I’ve been fascinated by this story since I first read about it a few years ago, and to me it’s remarkable because of the many odd things that came together: a plane flying low over Manhattan, a building being able to structurally withstand being hit by a plane. Later, the World Trade Center would be designed with the idea that a plane crash was a possibility, although back in the early 70s, I can’t imagine that anyone would have conceived of that plane crash involving a 757.
Anyway, this is maybe the most interesting fact from the post linked to above:
Betty Lou Oliver, on the 80th floor, barely escaped the crash, but when rescuers attempted to lower her out of the building via the elevator, the cables snapped and she and the elevator car plummeted 75 stories (over 1,000 feet). She survived.
So, how about that Manny Ramirez? I sometimes go back and forth on my feelings on steroids, because on the one hand, these are “performance enhancers,” meaning the guys taking them were already talented (the drugs didn’t magically grant them the ability to hit a baseball), but on the other, it still feels like cheating. I thought A-Rod was the great hope for a while, as he’d be the next person to break the career home run record, and he’d be untainted, but so much for that. Blah.
Babe Ruth was one of the greatest players of all time. His performance enhancers? Booze and women. Can we go back to that?
I’m watching Rachel Maddow, and she’s doing a segment on Lieutenant Dan Choi, a West Point grad and Arabic translator who lost his job because he is gay. You can guess how I feel about this, but just on a practical level, doesn’t it seem silly to you to kick people who want to serve out of the military, especially when the military has a recruitment problem?
President Obama says he’s going to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. So… can he get on that?
Also, check out this great site put together by the New-York Historical Society: Brooklyn Revealed. Lots of old photos of Brooklyn and histories of the 6 original towns that made up what we now call the borough of Brooklyn. This photo of Eastern Parkway amazes me; the museum looks so lonely out there by itself! I wish I could find a contemporary photo from the same angle, but alas. I did find this postcard that shows all of the apartment buildings that have since been built across the street and here’s my photo of the museum.
+ If you thought Monday was snowy, check out these photos from the blizzard of 1888. I’d guess we got almost a foot in my corner of Brooklyn on Monday, enough to inspire people to go cross-country skiing in prospect park.
+ Is RENT too edgy for high school? I think I heard the music for the first time when I was maybe 16, right after it came out. We listened to the soundtrack a lot in the work room of my high school lit mag. Our adviser didn’t object. I mean, it’s not The Music Man, but it’s also not as groundbreaking as it was 15 years ago.
Oh, and there were pratfalls. Domain re-registration got FUBARed, so the site was down for two days, whoops. Not that I’ve written anything here in a while, since real life gets in the way too much. I’m hoping to carve out some more free time for frivolous things like blogging, but we’ll see.
In the meantime, some delicious links:
+ Barbie sales down, American Girl sales up. Some friends of mine were in New York around New Years, and we wound up at the American Girl store, which OMG INSANE! I read a couple of the books when I was 10, but I think I’m a little too old to have been a part of the phenomenon, so I missed it. I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I think the dolls are mostly positive roll models and also educational, since the Girls come from different backgrounds and different periods in American history. And thumbs up to kids learning history! On the other hand, devotion is cult-like and the dolls, etc., are frickin’ expensive! The store is crazy, too. There’s a doll beauty salon, people, and a cafe with special chairs so that your doll can sit at the table with you. And, also, I had probably 30 Barbies when I was a kid and I don’t think she ruined my self esteem or whatever evil Barbie is accused of most often. Still, it’s interesting, the sales trends. Is Barbie falling out of favor?
The Manhattan Bridge from the Brooklyn Bridge, taken last spring
I have kind of a soft spot for the Manhattan Bridge. I think of it as my bridge, because it’s the one I cross most often, either on the subway or by car, it’s the most direct route from Manhattan to my neighborhood in Brooklyn.
The Bowery Boys have a photo taken 100 years ago showing the bridge-in-progress. Neat, huh?
Some delicious trivia:
+ The bridge is 6,855 feet long. (That’s 1.3 miles.)
+ The bridge took 8 years to build.
+ There is no toll.
+ The somewhat ostentatious Manhattan Bridge Plaza on the Manhattan side (the entrance to the bridge on Canal Street near 3rd Ave) was completed in 1916, and it’s kind of a monument to classical architecture. And it is ridiculous, though probably not more so than other iconic New York arches such as the Washington Square Arch and the Grand Army Plaza Arch.
+ Some of the cabling was designed by a gent named Moisseiff, who went on to design the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, and we all know how that went.
+ The subway tracks on the Brooklyn side are the same as they were when subway service began over the bridge in 1915. Today, the B, the D, and the Q run over the bridge. (When I moved to New York, there was no service over the bridge, so it’s pretty cool that there is now, mostly because it makes the trip between Brooklyn and Manhattan on the Q super speedy!)
I upgraded WordPress for shits and giggles. I feel like a WordPress expert now, like between this and being the Technical Team for the Mahablog, I’ve encountered almost every issue out there. Crazy! Speaking of which, I’m in the process of updating the design on the Mahablog, and I’m seriously hating CSS right now. There’s going to be a brawl. Why won’t design elements just go where I tell them? Why??
Anyhoo, it’s the new year, I’ve got some ideas for new blogging directions, we’ll see how much follow up I have. In the meantime, here are links:
This looks interesting:
I once sat through the whole of Ric Burns’ bonus episode to the New York documentary, which is entirely on the WTC. The first two parts of it are interesting: the architecture and design, the construction, Crazy Philippe Petit on the tightrope. The last part will give you panic attacks if you have any real-life frame of reference for 9/11. It’s, like, a whole hour of footage from that day. I had nightmares after I saw it the first time, I won’t make myself watch it again. But I think it’s pretty fascinating generally speaking and I would like to see this movie. (One review of it said it’s less about Petit and more about New York in the 1970s, which is a topic I’m kind of fascinated with. Have you read Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning? Excellent book.)
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On a completely different track, there’s an interesting article in the Times on underground abortions in New York, where it’s ostensibly legal. Most of these abortions happen in the Catholic communities (like the Dominican one where I used to live in Washington Heights/Inwood) where the women are too ashamed (mostly due to community pressure) to go through legal channels. Scary stuff.
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I’m reading a lot of westerns right now. I just got the book in which the Viggo cowboy movie Appaloosa is based out of the library. Looks like fun. I should go back to reviewing books on the blog, yeah? Or actually update my book blog. Hmph.
+ Speaking of publishing, romance ebook publishers seem to be taking over (or at least wanting to take over) the dead tree market. I’m interested in ebooks both as a consumer and a… producer? Ebooks are less expensive to produce, and I think they will become more prevalent when the cost of ebook readers goes down, but in the short term, ebooks of popular titles are available, as are a lot of interesting alternative books that might not get picked up by traditional publishers. (This is particularly true of GLBT romances, and some ebook-only publishers are putting out some good, genre-bending romances.)
