west view news august 2011

The Voice of the West Village

WestView News

www.westviewnews.orgKids in school ? -Tom Allon is your next mayor

— See page 6

VOLUME 7, NUMBER 8 August 2011 $1.00

Complimentary Copy

By Yetta Kurland

Two interesting stories appeared in the press recently concerning healthcare for the people of the Lower West Side of Manhattan. One was a fantasy. The other dealt with reality.

The fantasy was an article that appeared in The Villager, over the signature of Lincoln Anderson, the associate editor. He suggested that instead of fighting for a full-fledged hospital to replace the de-funct St. Vincent’s Hospital that was illegally closed last year, health-care advocates should be fighting for a “freestanding” emergency room, with no hospital attached because that would be better for us.

The Politics of Life and Death

Stretchers in the Hallways

WHERE HAVE ALL OUR DOCTORS GONE: A little more than a year ago, the medical staff of St. Vincent’s listened glumly while one of their members pleaded to keep the hospital open. The serious overcrowding in Downtown Hospital — and the hours, even days, involved in waiting for beds in sur-rounding hospitals — means the State Department of Health’s theory that closing hospitals in deep fi-nancial difficulty, on the assumption that the remaining ones will be able to survive and provide all the medical service needed, is flawed - yet five more hospitals in Brooklyn are being reviewed for closure. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

Who survives? Who doesn't? It depends on who you are—and where you live.

continued on page 5

continued on page 4

The Man Who Would Be Mayor

AN EDUCATOR RUNS FOR MAYOR: Publisher Tom Allon (left) once an English teacher at Stuyvesant along with author Frank McCourt "Angela's Ashes" claims teaching was the hardest job he ever had — see page 6.

Why the need for a real hospital is not a fantasy.

By George Capsis

For more than a year, in the fight to return a hospital, I have found myself reading ar-ticles and learning directly from doctors and nurses about the imperfect state of medical services in this city. When Dr. Da-vid Ansell, author of “County: Life Death and Politics at Chicago’s Public Hospital," appeared on Leonard Lopate’s WNYC program on July 13, I learned that the whole country is marching in lockstep to what the doctor believes is a flawed system.

In 1978, just out of medical school and as a young idealist, Dr. Ansell went to work for Cook County Hospital, designed to take all of Chicago’s poor blacks, Hispan-ics, immigrants “and other undesirables.” The hospital was condemned in 1927 by the American College of Surgeons, but continued to stay open. (Dr. Ansell and a fellow young doctor took to releasing their frustration in Lincoln Park howling sessions.) As he recalled, “we were over-

whelmed by the conditions we met.”What Dr. Ansell discovered then —

and what he believes is true today — is that we have a tiered health system. On the lowest level are the poor and un-insured — the result of public policies that treat poor minorities as expendable — followed by those with Medicare and then moving up through the well insured and rich, who can select their hospital, primary care doctor and specialist. He practiced at County from 1978 to 1995, what he termed “Third World patient care” — “Doctors within Borders.” In the 1980s, he ran the walk-in clinic, which in his book he admits was the “most chal-lenging and disturbing job of my career.”

Dr. Ansell, 59, is currently vice president of clinical affairs and chief medical offi-cer at Rush University Medical Center, a teaching hospital affiliated with the new Cook County Hospital, which opened in 2002. He warns that young medical stu-dents like his daughter are eschewing pri-

2 WestView News August 2011 www.westviewnews.org

WestView News

Published by WestView, Inc. by and for the residents of the

West Village.

Publisher Executive Editor

George Capsis

Chief Financial Officer Peter White

Editorial Assistant Bonnie Rosenstock

Designer Yodit Tesfaye Walker

Picture Editor Maggie Berkvist

Events Editor/Designer Stephanie Phelan

Cartoonists & Illustrators Lee Lorenz, Dick Sebastian

Contributors

Barry Benepe

Maggie Berkvist

Christian Botta

Barbara Biziou

James Lincoln Collier

Mark M. Green

Catharine Fleury

Dr. David L. Kaufman

Yetta Kurland

Keith Michael

Michael D. Minichiello

David Puchkoff

Barbara Riddle-Dvorak

Chris Sherman

Armanda Squadrilli

Henry J. Stern

Theatre EditorBobb Goldsteinn

Photographers Maggie Berkvist

Bonnie Rosenstock

Distribution Manager George Goss

We endeavor to publish all letters received including

those we disagree with.

The opinions put forth by contributors to WestView do

not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher or editor.

WestView welcomes your correspondence, comments,

and corrections: [email protected]

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WestViewsCorrespondence, Commentary, Corrections

Found Money — But Not for a HospitalDear Editor:

Mayor Bloomberg found $100 million for an "engineering school" on Roosevelt Island, along with donating all the land, and another $100 million for an East Riv-er park…the list is endless.

And while we are talking about money, does anyone know what happened to that wonderful Needs Assessment that was done at unknown cost, which showed we needed a hospital on the West Side? Brad [Hoylman, chair of CB2], will there ever be an actual "report" issued, or did the "process" serve its purpose: waste time and delay action, so that Rudin/NS-LIJ could get their plans completed before anything could be done?

When will the residents of the Lower West Side — should really call them vic-tims — wake up and fill the streets?

David L. Kaufman, M.D.

In the SpotlightDear Editor:

During the months that your paper had the spotlight turned on Speaker Quinn, her office made efforts to silence the loud-speakers on the tour buses that go past my windows every day. Now that your spot-light is off, the loudspeakers are on again.

I appreciate the good job you are doing toward trying to return a hospital to this area.

Best wishes,Ken Korbin

All Aboard for HealthcareDear Editor:

I just read Lincoln Anderson's story in the July 21 issue of The Villager (“Just across the Hudson, a model for the Vil-lage’s healthcare future”).

The sixth paragraph begins: “Mean-while, across the Hudson River, 19 miles away and just a short, half-hour train ride away, a free-standing emergency de-partment is operating around the clock, 365 days a year, in Roselle Park in Union Township, N.J….” Our problem is solved: The train ride across the river is definitely shorter than what it takes an ambulance to get to a real Level 1 trauma center if you live in my Greenwich Village neigh-borhood.

I think he may have also saved us the cost of building/refurbishing the O'Toole Building into North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System’s so-called "Emer-gency Department.” We should now

take the resources devoted to the NS-LIJ boondoggle and use them to build what we really need — a real emergency room WITH a hospital for the West Side.

Barbara Ruether

Doling for Dollars Dear Editor:

Christine Quinn found $50 million to dole out in slush funds this year, but not one dollar in these tough economic hard times to restore a full-service hospital with a Level 1 trauma center to Lower Man-hattan. I hope that Bill Thompson, John Liu or Scott Stringer don't try to make a campaign issue out of this.

Louis Flores

Déjà Vu All Over Again Dear Editor:

When I left on June 28 for a two-week visit to both my parents' ancestral home-land, Ireland, I certainly didn't anticipate hearing about any hospital closing for a couple of weeks.

I was naive.Besides the newspaper hacking scandal,

there was and is continuous controversy and coverage about the closure of the ac-cident and/or emergency units of two hos-pitals. The more important one is the re-gional Roscommon County Hospital; the local one is Mallow General Hospital in County Cork. Everywhere I looked there were hospital updates, including blaming politicians, who had repeatedly promised never to let such closings occur. The ver-biage seemingly equaled coverage of Ru-pert Murdoch's situation. One hospital ar-ticle's heading was, “The closure decision has thrown Roscommon back into the dark ages.” I couldn't have stated it better myself regarding what the closing of St. Vincent's Hospital has meant to us West Villagers.

Sincerely,John F. EarlyWest Villager since 1968

Cultural Understanding Through Communication Dear Editor:

I have found Barbara Riddle's articles (May, “The Ineffable Mystery of M.,” and July, “Sex, Sinclair Lewis and Saudi Arabian Students”) about her experiences teaching English to international students in Florida to be quite enlightening. I work for AFS Intercultural Programs, the lead-ing high school exchange organization, and have also encountered similar mind-sets amongst our students.

I have visited numerous students and

their host families across the country and find that people-to-people exchanges are highly valuable, as well as challenging ways to bridge cultures and understand-ing. Also, as a fellow Brandeis alum living in the West Village, I was happy to know that Ms. Riddle lives in the neighborhood.

If you, or someone you know, would like to host an exchange student during the school year, please visit www.afsusa.org/host-family.

Sincerely,Matthew ClosterQuality Assurance and Compliance CoordinatorAFS-USA, [email protected],1-800-876-2377Or contact: [email protected], 1-800-876-2377 x1093

Note from Barbara Riddle: Dear Editor:

This past winter in Florida, I taught English to students from Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Turkey, Japan, Egypt and Chile, among many other countries. I was struck by the complexity of the task when the cultural backgrounds and social expecta-tions of the students encompass such a mind-boggling range of values and norms. As New Yorkers — and especially West Villagers — we take for granted an accep-tance of cultural diversity, gay rights, free-dom of speech, etc., which is by no means universally shared among the nations of the world at this point in time.

My two articles described how I at-tempted to meet the challenge of commu-nicating a sense of the values that I admire in American life, while also cultivating a love of the English language and a sense of its power and beauty.

Sign and Save St. Vincent'sDear Editor:

Re: "To Whom It May Concern: Ex-cerpts from petitions delivered to Attor-ney General Eric Schneiderman on June 8," July issue.

Thank you for your work and the ur-gency that we save St. Vincent's Hospital. I signed the petition online. I would think we could get many more than 2,500 sig-natures. [Editor’s Note: As of this writing, there were 670 signatures. To sign, go to demandahospital.blogspot/2011/05/peti-tion-to-attorney-general-eric-t.html]

My sense is that calling the offices of Stringer and Bloomberg would be helpful. Who else can we call? What else is there to do to restore our West Village hospital?

Once again, my gratitude,Diane Wolkstein

www.westviewnews.org August 2011 WestView News 3

Briefly Noted:Quinn Protects the Rich

There was some talk that Chris Quinn was thinking of giving up her rent-regulated apartment before she got into her campaign to be our next mayor; as of June 23, the rent regulations said if you made over $175,000 you could not enjoy rent protection.

Then again, she is getting married to her longtime com-panion in the fall, so now you have two big salaries and for sure that will put her over the top.

But on June 24, with her big assist, the State passed new rent laws — now you can make up to $200,000 be-fore your widowed landlady living on your rent and social security can raise the rent.

Vanishing Emergency Rooms

Nearly 30 percent of city emergency rooms have closed in the past 20 years, yet patient visits have increased more than 35 percent according to The Journal of the American Medical Association. Why?

By law, emergency rooms must treat everyone regardless of ability to pay, and the poor simply do not pay the emer-gency room invoices. So the more poor people a hospital treats, the quicker it moves into bankruptcy.

Older people have more time-sensitive illnesses and in-juries and are the heaviest users of the emergency room according to the American Hospital Association.

AARP offers advice pertinent to West Villagers — use a local urgent care center for minor problems (such as a cold), but call 911 for a head injury, stroke or heart attack.

Another St. Vincent’s Casualty?For us West Villagers, restoring a hospital with a for-real emergency room is an obvious and immediate goal. But when St. Vincent’s was operating with 2,600 doctors, nurses and medical workers, plus the hundreds that vis-ited it each day, it financially fed dozens of restaurants and shops for blocks around. With its closing, business has dropped 20 to 30 percent — several have just closed and walked away in despair of ever seeing the hospital opened again.

Ted Kefalinos of Lafayette Bakery, just blocks from the hospital at 26 Greenwich Avenue, insists that business fell by 75 percent and has never recovered.

He and his mother are returning as they do each year to the family home on the island of Zakynthos, where he will consider if he should continue the business in September.

The pastry shop was started in the 1920s by his father’s best man (an honored role, which in Greece makes you part of the family). Ted’s father took over the business in the ’60s. Ted started greasing pans when he was eight, and after pre-med at City College and almost completing his master’s in business administration, he found himself in the business. “I knew I had learned the business when my father started to take Fridays off,” he recalled.

It has outlasted Sutters, which used to occupy the cor-ner of Greenwich Avenue and 10th Street, just doors away. Indeed, it is the oldest bakeshop in the West Village and could be yet another victim of the hospital closing.

Question: Does Anybody Care?Why did Peninsula Hospital Center in Far Rockaway, Queens have to file a 90-day closure plan, but not St. Vincent’s? See http://queenscrap.blogspot.com/2011/07/another-queens-hospital-to-close.html

Does nobody in the City Council have any concern about the financial collapse of so many hospitals all across

the five boroughs? Does the mayor not care either?— Louis Flores

Dear Brad:In the July 21-27 issue of The Villager, Lincoln An-

derson says, "Amid the outcry for a replacement hospital, local politicians and Community Board 2 understand-ably have been reluctant to endorse the North Shore-LIJ plan." In the several CB 2 meetings I have attended on this subject, I have found the community, or at least the crowds that have attended, pretty passionate that they want a hospital, but why have you not taken a vote?

Some weeks ago, when I asked for your personal opin-ion, you equivocated. But it is not your opinion which is important, but the community’s.

Will you call for a vote?. Yes, I want 450 condos and a walk-in clinic.. Yes, I want a hospital.George

Next Stop, Greenwich Village On July 22, as I was returning from Sweden in a Super Shuttle van packed with tourists from Rome, Paris, Ge-neva, St. Petersburg (Russia) and a mom from Idaho, I piped up, "Hey, since I'm the only New Yorker here, does anyone need any tips on what to enjoy in the city?"

We were fast approaching my apartment via my favorite detour: West on 13th, left on Greenwich, right on Jane.

"A restaurant!" said the young man from Paris."Try Cafe Gitane at the Hotel Jane," I said."But — I am staying there!""Perfect choice,” I said. "You'll enjoy it."I exited the van on Jane and Greenwich, two blocks

ahead of a very happy young Parisian.My beloved West Village: Still a favorite destination

of sophisticates from around the world. It felt good to be home.

— Barbara Riddle

WestView News LiveI received an exciting eyewitness account of a car crash by fleeing drug possessors and a police bust with drawn guns. Attached was a video of the immediate aftermath with the cops milling about and the several smashed cars and I thought — this is the future of journalism….As the techno generation leaves the apartment, they pick up their iPhone along with their keys — both indispensable.

WestView News is written by the people in the West Village who are making the news. We have now entered into an agreement with Tekserve to post videos of West Village events as they happen. So we encourage all of you like, Glenn Berman, who sent us the drug bust video, to turn on your iPhone when next you see or hear news in the making.

— George

Hello Editor:The link at the bottom is a short video I posted on You-Tube, which I took of the aftermath of a car crash/drug bust that took place on Friday, July 22 at about 5:50 p.m. on the corner of Christopher and Washington Streets.

As my nephew and I walked out of my building head-ing to see “Captain America,” there was the sound of

screeching tires and a loud crash. In front of my eyes I saw a white van heading south on Washington Street careen toward the southwest corner, where a woman stood on the sidewalk. I could see the car that hit the van spin a 180. The van driver managed to veer away from the woman, who with catlike reflexes, jumped out of harm’s way as the van hit a lamppost. The lamppost came crashing down, as would a fallen tree in the direction of the woman, who again stepped out of the way of certain death. The van crashed into a parked car, which was pushed into another parked car in front of it. This all happened in seconds, but to me it seemed surreal as if it were happening in slow motion.

Just then two men jumped out of the car and ran west down Christopher Street toward the West Side Highway. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, or what it was I thought I was going to do, but I gave chase down the op-posite side of the street, to keep an eye on their direction. As the two men reached 170 Christopher Street, a car raced just in front, two plainclothes police officers jumped out with guns drawn and aimed dead on target. The two looked to step in the opposite direction, but the officers quickly adjusted. I could hear one officer say, “Where the @#$% do you think you’re going.” The two running men surrendered (touchdown!). Quickly, other officers showed on the scene. A search of the car revealed what looked like an ounce of marijuana, and a more thorough search found four bricks of cocaine. (I cannot verify the cocaine, but the marijuana is shown on the video).

I then took this video of the crash scene; the driver of the van was hurt. A woman and others were seeing to the well being of the hurt driver of the van until medical help would arrive. I was told that the driver of the van was tak-en to Bellevue Hospital. I applaud the good Samaritans who helped the hurt van driver, as well as the van driver’s skill in avoiding the woman on the sidewalk after being hit with such force and suffering what must have been enor-mous pain.

The NYPD do their jobs and do them well. I can only hope that our city judges do their jobs and put these “al-leged” drug dealers away forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dxqmqyz61hMGlenn BermanWest Villager

THE OLDEST BAKERY CONSIDERS CLOSING: Lafayette, a West Village fixture, considers closing after a 75 percent drop in business with St. Vincent's closing. Other local businesses and restaurants have experienced a 20 to 30 percent fall off.


By George Capsis

For half a century I have made a living writing, and I was lucky enough to have one of my articles appear in The New York Times under the byline of a Pulitzer Prize science editor (I was honored that he stole it).

I have never taken a course in journal-ism, but I do know you have to be factu-ally correct, and you certainly can’t fudge things to please an advertiser — or worse, have him write an article making it ap-pear to be objective journalism. So I was genuinely distressed to read a front-page article in The Villager, written by its asso-

ciate editor, Lincoln Anderson, on making a case for the proposed North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System’s walk-in walk-out clinic. It is to be built in the windowless, asbestos-lined, rat-infested former National Maritime Union hiring hall (the O’Toole Building) on 7th Avenue between 12th and 13th Streets — which North Shore-LIJ is getting for free.

The article, which appeared in the July 21 issue, opens by alluding to a “furious debate” which continues to rage over NS-LIJ’s emergency department. I suppose that’s true to those who want to build a clinic to treat, say a bad burn, and those who want a real emergency room and

hospital with a 24-hour operating room, where a heart attack or stroke victim can be saved.

The article then goes on for four pages and documents successful medical treat-ments in a walk-in walk-out medical clinic in Roselle Park in Union Township, N.J.

What got me is the line that Jeffrey Kraut, North Shore-LIJ’s senior vice pres-ident for strategy, has on June 30 filed a certificate of need for the proposed six-story O’Toole Building clinic with the state health commissioner — that is, he is saying to the state that without a hospital we, you and I, need their clinic.

You must remember that it was Kraut who offered, for free, to design and have prepared by Hunter College a needs study. I guess that very document is now being used to prove to the state health commis-

sioner that we need their walk-in walk-out clinic.

The article begins by once again offer-ing that this will be a $110 million in-vestment. But Rudin and North Shore-LIJ have proven — by creating a phony grassroots organization — that they are liars. So why should we believe they will invest $110 million in this replica of Beth Israel’s Phillips Ambulatory Care Center on Union Square East. Nobody will ever check.

After my article calling North Shore-LIJ liars, I kiddingly asked the PR VP for an ad. He shot back, “Why should I give you an ad if you call us liars?” I found my-self instantly saying, “Because you are.”

North Shore has been feeding a steady stream of ads to The Villager, but curi-ously not in the July 21 issue.

One Man's OpinionEditorial

He cites as a model of such superior emergency rooms, a facility in Roselle Park, New Jersey, which he claims saves lives and doesn’t kill patients. I suppose that’s meant to be reassuring. But to com-pare St. Vincent’s Hospital, a large metro-politan hospital, which we lost and are try-ing to replace, to a small-town emergency unit, which is a satellite to urban hospitals in nearby Elizabeth, is an insult to every-one’s intelligence.

Bless the good people in Roselle Park, and I wish them good health. But we have a big city here, with big city health problems. To compare the two situations is ridiculous.

In two anecdotes in Anderson’s article,

he writes of patients driving into the ER in Roselle Park, where they were well treat-ed. Fine. But as Anderson will realize, if he stops to think, New York City patients usually don’t drive. In the case of the man with a heart problem, he might have died waiting for an ambulance if he were on Charles Street these days. In the case of the woman giving imminent birth, she would not have made it to a hospital for the birth if she lived on West 17th Street.

If Anderson thinks that freestanding emergency rooms are better than full-fledged hospitals, he should try peddling those apples on the Upper East Side or Up-per West Side, where there are at least three large hospitals, three ER’s and one Level I trauma center, and see how far he gets.

Let us leave Anderson’s fantasy for a mo-

Stretchers continued from page 1

ment and turn to the reality of healthcare in New York Downtown Hospital, the only hospital south of 16th Street, now that St. Vincent’s Hospital is closed. Ac-cording to an article in the Sunday, July 24, New York Post by Helaina N. Hovitz and Susan Edelman, Downtown Hospital is “overwhelmed,” thanks in large part to the closure of St. Vincent’s.

The hospital has 160 inpatient beds. Ac-cording to the article, these are usually so full that in-coming patients have to wait for days to get a real bed in a real room. For days. “We have stretchers in the hall-ways,” one veteran doctor said. “It can get extremely crowded.”

The Post reporters describe what they found on a recent visit to the Downtown ER: “All the curtained rooms with beds

were full. At least 20 other patients waited on gurneys or in chairs, some moaning. Loose pills and a broken needle littered the floor.” Morale among the nursing staff was described as low. One can only imagine.

The juxtaposition of these two stories concerning healthcare for the Lower West Side makes the choice — and the reality — clear. We can either close our eyes and take a chance on the fantasies of Lincoln Anderson of The Villager, or we can ac-cept the reality that we need a real hospital to replace St. Vincent’s. We can then use this reality to find reasonable ways to make that happen.

I have joined the Coalition for a New Village Hospital in an effort to do my part to make restoring a hospital a reality. I urge my neighbors to do the same.

NY Downtown Doing its JobExcerpt from Letter to the New York Post, published on July 27 (print and web edi-tions), written by Jeffrey Menkes, President and CEO, New York Downtown Hospital.

(For full version, go to http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/healthy_hos-pital_jcUVhPIEdQNOFiyFTLHxDJ

… Anyone walking into an urban hospital anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard during this heat wave will, of course, find an unusually busy emergency room. That is where people suffering health effects from the heat often go for care. NY Downtown, the only hospital serving the downtown community, is typical in this regard.

… The heat-related increase in emergency room visits is “well under control," as Dr. Antonio Dajer, NY Downtown emergency medicine chair, explained. The average wait to see a doctor is 20 minutes and the two-hour average stay is "one of the fastest turn-around times in the city."

As the hospital that took the massive first wave of casualties on 9/11, NY Downtown Hospital now has perhaps the most state-of-the-art ER in the city. It has substantial, untapped capacity thanks to careful post-9/11 planning.

The NY Downtown Hospital Emergency Department, like the hospital generally, provides clean, high-quality healthcare to thousands of patients a year. The staff is dedi-cated, well qualified, and seasoned to the pace of a busy urban emergency room.

The hospital and staff are proud of the huge strides in care that have been made at the hospital. … NY Downtown is meeting the challenge of providing leading healthcare to the residents of lower Manhattan.

St. Vincent's Spillover Causes Care CrisisSeveral of our loyal readers alerted me to an article, which appeared in the New

York Post on July 24, documenting how, with the closing of St. Vincent’s, New York Downtown Hospital was experiencing an “emergency-care crisis.” Before the article appeared, I had received several e-mails from one of the Post reporters looking for my take. I said since by law nobody can be turned away from an emergency room, it is being used by the poor and uninsured for primary care as well as real emergency treat-ment. The Post reported "stretchers in the hallways" and a two-day wait for the 160 beds. (St. Vincent’s had 340.) Since the proposed North Shore-LIJ walk-in walk-out clinic will have no beds, it will not relieve the chaos at New York Downtown

Liz Ryan comments on the Post article below.— Publisher

Dear New York Post:In his Letter to The Editor of the Post [above], which you published this week, the

head of Downtown Hospital said that his hospital was perfectly able to safely, quickly and competently serve the residents of Downtown New York. That's great. But it's the residents of the West Village that I worry about: the crane collapses, gas main explo-sions, fires, auto, truck and bus accidents on the West Side Highway, Tribeca, deep into West 11th Street…These are the people who need a full-service emergency room. Not everyone can make sure they only have emergencies near Downtown Hospital or on the East Side. Advocate for an emergency room for the West Side. Please. Write more sto-ries about overcrowded hospital emergency room. People, listen to the Post. — Liz Ryan


By Yetta Kurland

On July 11, I submitted a petition with 3,500 signatures to halt the Rudin condo plan, which would deprive the Lower West Side of a hospital to replace the defunct St. Vincent’s.

The petition, signed online and on the streets of our community, calls upon the City Planning Commission to reject the Rudin plan because it would (1) violate the law, (2) deny needed healthcare to the Lower West Side and (3) overtax the pub-lic facilities of the community.

In a position paper accompanying the petition, I pointed out that the Rudin plan “does not include a hospital. As such it does not comply with the requirements of the 2009 Landmarks Preservation Commis-sion ‘judicial hardship’ Approval. Nor does it comply with the provisions of 501c3 of the Internal Revenue Code in that this sale and the proposed Rudin plan do not con-

tinue the charitable mission of SVCMC [St. Vincent Catholic Medical Center] as it is required to, namely to provide a full-service hospital.”

Many personal comments accompa-nied the signatures. Fred Hersch wrote, “St. Vincent’s saved my life three times. It should be there for others.” Rosemary Rowley said, “What we need is healthcare, not more upscale housing to burden al-ready overburdened services.”

My position paper is viewable at: http://demandahospital.blogspot.com/2011/07/comments-on-coalitions-petition-to-coc.html.

It calls upon the City Planning Com-mission to reject the Rudin application. The St. Vincent’s site is clearly well suited for hospital use — and has been for 180 years. That’s what the Coalition for a New Village Hospital wants, and we are not go-ing away until we get it.

We live here.

Keeping Up the FightBattling the Rudin plan — 3,500 signatures at a time.

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mary care for the better-paying specialties. That means that those of us on Medicare, which will be cut shortly, may not be able to find highly qualified specialists, who don’t take Medicare. As a result, we may have a shortage of plain old GPs.

Dr. Ansell, an epidemiologist and pri-mary care physician, gives an example of a system designed for failure: the treatment of cardiac arrest (when your heart stops beating). You have four to eight min-utes to brain death. In an e-mail, David L. Kaufman, M.D. of the Coalition for a New Village Hospital, elaborated, “four to seven minutes to save muscle and avoid being a cardiac cripple.” If you can’t get to the hospital in time, or the walk-in walk-out clinic isn’t equipped “to resuscitate and properly treat you, in those six to eight minutes you have dead muscle or a dead patient,” continued Dr. Kaufman.

Dr. Ansell introduces us to a new term, “patient dumping” — getting rid of poor, sick patients by transferring them to public hospitals — which was endemic in the early 1980s across the country. He cites the case of a woman in labor, with the baby emerg-ing, who was sent to Cook County after a “wallet biopsy” (i.e., she had no insurance). Dr. Ansell and his colleagues produced a definitive study exposing this practice, which was instrumental in ending it.

Then to my surprise, Dr. Ansell spoke of the closing of the Brooklyn Catholic hospital system that had served the poor and uninsured. Lopate jumped in, pointing out that St. Vincent's closed even though it was not in a poor neighborhood, and now it will become luxury condos. What

he failed to point out, wrote Dr. Kaufman, is in fact, St. Vincent's was a safety-net hospital, where over 65 percent of the patients had Medicaid, Medicare or were uninsured.

Asked for a solution, Dr. Ansell decried that the Obama healthcare bill was deeply compromised by keeping the private in-surance companies “exactly in control of things,” and we should have a single payer system. Two days later, Dr. Ansell appeared on WNYC’s “Fresh Air,” hosted by Terry Gross, and he further explained, “It falls short of equity. Take the Medicare card your parents have, give it to everybody, figure out how we pay for it and manage the cost. That would be the fairest way…it’s never been an issue of money. We are paying for it now in many different ways. It’s the cost of inefficiency, emergency care, end stage disease, not doing prevention.”

He quoted Winston Churchill on whether we would ever get it right: “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing…after they have tried every-thing else.”

As I was writing this, I got a call from a young woman in Assemblymember Debo-rah Glick’s office returning my e-mails and several calls asking for a meeting to get Glick to at last speak out and demand a return of a hospital. I found myself quot-ing Dr. Ansell with increasing intensity and volume. I was told in effect that Glick would not see me – ever.

Not one of our politicians has agreed to an in-person interview regarding the need for a new hospital for the Lower West Side. Politicians invite the press before they are elected and avoid them after they are elected.

Life and Death continued from page 1


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The Man Who Would Be MayorCandidate Tom Allon sits down with WestView. By George Capsis

A year ago, at an Ed Koch reception, I im-patiently asked Assemblyman Dick Gottfried how we could get back a hospital. With equal impatience, he said we need to do a Needs Study — we can just go banging pots and pans together.

Just before this issue was published, I sent him an e-mail noting that a year had elapsed, and we do indeed have a North Shore-LIJ Needs Study that nobody seems to have read, but no hospital, and could I interview him for the August issue?

I got a voice mail from one of his people that there was death in the Gottfried family, and when I called back to set up a future date — Gottfried is chair of the Assembly Health Com-mittee and can easily talk to the new Health Commissioner to begin a dialogue on how the community can restore a real hospital — the not-so-nice young man who answered said I was difficult and I am going to hang up on you, and did.

I sat there fuming. Not one of our politicians has agreed to talk on restoring a hospital. Not one.

And then, I glanced down at my desk at a Times article on how much money the several candidates for mayor had so far gathered and

saw, next to a photo of a hard-lacquered Chris Quinn, one of a youngish disheveled Tom Al-lon, who had just declared his candidacy. But what caught my eye was that Allon was the CEO and president of Manhattan Media, publisher of several community papers, includ-ing New York Press, Our Town East Side, West Side Spirit, and political newspapers, City Hall and The Capitol.

Wow, I thought, as a fellow publisher and journalist maybe he is willing to be inter-viewed. I called and refreshingly was put right through, and we set a date.

Allon thinks and speaks fast, and although only a candidate of several weeks, he glides ef-fortlessly between political rocks. But without question, education is his thing, and if he is to be elected it will be because of his impressive accomplishments in this sphere.

Here are excerpts from our interview.

Growing Up in New York City

I was born in 1963 in Flower Fifth Av-enue Hospital. My parents were Holocaust survivors from Czechoslovakia, and I grew up on the Upper West Side. My father was a stationery salesman. The original family name was Eichenbaum (oak tree), and Al-lon is oak in Hebrew.

My parents, like many immigrants, val-EDUCATION IS THE ISSUE: Tom Allon in his office at Manhattan Media. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.


ued education. They wanted my brother and me to have the best education possible. I started at P.S.166 on 89th Street off Co-lumbus Avenue. In 1968, when I was in first grade, there was a teacher's strike, and for two months there were no classes. My mother got very nervous and felt I was go-ing to fall behind and sent me to a Yeshiva on 104th and Manhattan Avenue.

When I was about 11 years old, my par-ents moved to Munich, Germany, for a year and a half. I went to the American military school there, a very different experience. When we got back to New York, I came in second in a German contest in New York State. I speak a little bit of Yiddish, some Hebrew, and because my parents spoke Hungarian at home, I learned to under-stand it but can’t speak it well.

When it came time for high school, my parents insisted I go to either Bronx Sci-ence or Stuyvesant. My brother went to Bronx Science. I got into Stuyvesant, the old building between 15th and 16th Streets just off First Avenue. I went to Cornell, majored in American history and started a left-of-center publication. I went to Co-lumbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

I got a job with a new community pa-per when I was 24 (exactly 25 years ago to the day — August 1,1986). I am now 49. It was a great job. I was told by the then publisher that I could go after any politician in town I wanted to; he wanted to do good investigative stuff. I got a reputation for be-ing a tough investigative reporter and edi-tor. My deputy editor, Janet Wickenhaver (not my wife at the time), did a series of articles about a homeless man on the Upper West Side that won a big award from the NY State Bar Association. A year later, we did a series of articles about a man who was picked up for the murder of a Greenwich Village ad executive. We proved that the police had arrested the wrong person.

I live on the Upper West Side with my wife and three children, two girls and a boy, 17, 15 and 12. Aside from my family, there are two things I am most proud of. One is the great journalists that have come through this organization and still work here. We have some New York Times reporters who started their careers at the West Side Spirit, Our Town and our other papers.

Helping Found Two Public High Schools

The other thing I am most proud of is the two public high schools that I helped create — Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the Upper East Side and Frank Mc-Court High School on the Upper West Side. I personally didn't raise the money for the Eleanor Roosevelt building, but it was one of those great timing issues. Peter Val-lone wanted to be the next mayor of New York, Gifford Miller wanted to be the next speaker and Eva Moskowitz (a Stuyvesant graduate) was ambitious at the time, too, in that neighborhood, as was Carolyn Ma-loney. Carolyn kept the committee going, Eva went out and found the building and

Peter and Gifford went out and found $7 million to buy it.

On Being a High School Teacher

It was my “Welcome Back Kotter” rou-tine. After graduating from Columbia, I taught at Stuyvesant from 1986 to 1987. It was the hardest job I've ever had. I’ve been the CEO of a private company for ten years and before that I was the vice president of a public company, but I've never had a day that was as hard as teaching five classes a day. Frank McCourt, who was a colleague and a good friend, said it’s five shows a day, and the audience is unforgiving. And he was right. He was the best teacher I had ever met or witnessed. The classroom just lit up when he was in there. He made learning joyful, which too few teachers do. I learned a lot from him. People don’t real-ize that his teaching and the probing the students did led him to become a success-ful author. He said he couldn't have done it without them.

I was a member of the United Federa-tion of Teachers. I think people have vili-fied unions in an unfair way. Unions started in this country for the right reasons, which was to protect people who were being ex-ploited in their jobs. It was a way to give strength in numbers, and that is still true today. There are good unions, and there are less-good unions. There are issues that unions are right about, and there are issues that unions are not correct about.

Priorities as Mayor: Education

In running for mayor, education is the issue I’m most passionate about. I think almost everything stems from education. I believe creation of jobs and equal access is a piece of the puzzle. But I think educa-tion is an area that I know and understand in a much more nuanced way than other people who might be running for mayor. I've been in the classroom; I've been in-volved in policy levels in the creation of high schools. I've raised three children in New York. I understand what it takes to be a great teacher. I think teaching needs to be a profession that is admired and re-spected, and I think one of the ways you show admiration for a profession is by pay-ing it well and by giving people who do it better working conditions.

About eight years ago, I started an an-nual event that honors the top teachers in the city called The Blackboard Awards for Teachers. Every year, we come up with 20 to 25 awards for Teachers of the Year for different schools — public schools, private schools, parochial schools, charter schools. It’s one of my favorite nights of the year because for one night, these teachers who do God’s work get to be recognized for be-ing great teachers.

Bloomberg has done almost as well as anyone could do. I think Joel Klein was in many ways an effective chancellor. They had to be bold and break a lot of eggs to get things changed. Unfortunately, it’s an enormous task to get an education system

changed. As mayor, I would bring in a strong chancellor who is in sync with my educational philosophy. Ideally, the person would have private and public sector ex-perience.

I believe in rigor and curriculum reform that incorporates more arts, more physi-cal education, more study of great books, more study of science. But not all kids are created equal, and there are kids who are not equipped or learn differently and we've abandoned those children, those special education children in the city. I had break-fast recently with two moms who have autistic children. They’re both relatively wealthy women, and they told me horror stories about their experiences with public education.

There is one very simple quick fix: For 30 years, there was something called the Dis-covery Program at Bronx Science for kids who tested below the exam who were from disadvantaged backgrounds. If they had po-tential, as evidenced by their middle school teachers, they could attend the Discovery Program during the summer, and then they would be admitted to those schools.

I’d give much more power to parents. The Department of Education should be renamed the Department of Educational Services. Its constituents are parents, stu-dents, teachers and principals, not politi-cians, businesspeople, hedge fund managers

or anybody else.I believe religious schools should be given

a boost — Catholic schools, Yeshivas, other places that are parochial-type schools. I’m not sure what form that should take.

A Hospital for the Lower West Side

My wife had an operation at St. Vin-cent’s Hospital in 1989 or 1990. She broke her finger playing softball with me. There is no hospital in Lower Manhattan other than New York Downtown Hospital. That is a public health emergency. It is appalling that in this city an area of this size should have no hospital. My mother, who is 84 years old, had an operation the other day at Mt. Sinai, which is a great hospital. There are six or eight hospitals within a 20-block radius of it. I’m not sure why everything is congregated Uptown and not Downtown.

As I ended my interview, of course, I talked about the need to restore a hospital to the West Village and my inability to get a single politi-cian to agree to be interviewed on the subject. Allon quickly agreed to call Dick Gottfried and Tom Duane.

After talking to Allon and having run the P.S. 41 emergency school during the strike that sent him to a Yeshiva, I am convinced he has more practical knowledge of education in New York than any of the mayoral candidates by far.

Right now he has my vote.


The Church of the Ascension: The First on FifthBy Maggie Berkvist

IT WASN'T ALWAYS THERE. Founded in October 1827, the Church of the Ascen-sion consecrated its first house of worship, a small Greek Revival building, in May of 1829, on Canal Street. Only after the church was destroyed by fire ten years later did its Gothic Revival replacement open its doors, in November 1841, at the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and 10th Street.

It was the first church to be built on Fifth Avenue, when it was an unpaved track end-ing at 23rd Street — as the congregation was later reminded at a semi-centennial service in 1878 — “in what was at that time a suburban and out-of-town spot surround-ed by sequestered farms and picturesque old trees, some of which had escaped the van-dalism of advancing business.”

Designed by English architect Richard Upjohn, the interior was remodeled 45 years later by Stanford White. In Septem-ber 1888, The New York Times reported, “The last touches are being placed upon a great painting by John La Farge” — it was the impressive mural, “The Ascension of Our Lord,” still there above the church’s main altar.

Among its many parishioners were such influential members of New York society as August Belmont, William Astor and William Rhinelander, who paid rental for their pews — and provided splendid social

occasions.In November 1881, the Times reported,

“A FASHIONABLE MARRIAGE IN THE CHURCH OF THE ASCEN-SION: Miss Bessie Hamilton Morgan, a daughter of Mr. Edward Morgan, the banker, was married at 2.30 o’clock yester-day afternoon to August Belmont, Jr.” It was also where President John Tyler mar-ried Julia Gardner in 1844.

The congregation’s good works included fundraising for Irish famine relief, establish-ing a day school in the slum neighborhood of Five Points and the St. Agnes Nursery, the first day nursery in the city for children of working mothers.

Over the 170 years there have been 11 rectors, some of whom have attracted rath-er more media attention than others. The Times regularly gave full coverage of the centennial lectures given by the Rev. John Cotton Smith in 1876, with titles such as “City Life and Its Duties” and “The Prob-lem of Races in the Republic from a Chris-tian Point of View.” His successor, the Rev. E. Winchester Donald, through his friend-ship with neighborhood artists, was given credit for obtaining the talents of Stanford White and John La Farge.

But it was the Rev. Percy Stickney Grant’s arrival in 1893 that sparked 31 years of par-ticularly lively news coverage. It started with his radical suggestion that the church do away with rented pews. The Times re-

ported, “By a vote of the congregation [33 to 4] of the conservative Protestant Episco-pal Church of the Ascension…it was made into a free church,” adding an entertaining account of the vociferous complaint by an angry dissenter.

In a long feature on Stickney in Decem-ber 1904, the newspaper wrote, “There is nothing of the ponderous preacher about him. His attitude toward his congregation would seem to be one of friendly compan-ionship…By which it must not be under-stood, however, that he hesitates to speak plainly when occasion invites or necessity drives.” In fact, he proved to have some-what radical views and, to the dismay of the Episcopalian establishment, to be quite forthright about them.

At a mass meeting in Cooper Union in 1915 he said, “there ought to be women judges, as well as women policemen, pro-bation officers,” and a month later he “PLEADS FOR DIVORCE IN LENT-EN SERMON — Calls Episcopal Mar-riage Law Mediaeval. Urges Fearless Stand.”

By January 1920, the Times headline read “DR. GRANT REBUKED BY BISHOP BURKE…Use of Church As Forum for Speakers Who Do Not Believe in God Is Condemned.” And in May, “DR. GRANT ASSAILS EPISCOPAL BISHOPS…Foretells Split and Free Parishes Headed by Independent Men.”

But finally, when he became engaged to a divorcée in 1924, and Bishop Man-ning refused to authorize the marriage, Dr. Grant, already in failing health, resigned from the church. He never did marry and died in 1927. The Times obit noted, “Ex-pressions of admiration were especially numerous from liberals,” and quoted one as saying, “Dr. Grant believed in the com-mon man, just as Lincoln did, therefore he hated the intolerances of government and the sham of religion, because they be-trayed humanity.”

While his successor, the Rev. Donald Bradshaw Aldrich, was also an innova-tive rector and instituted a policy that the church’s doors be open night and day (which lasted until the 1960s), over time the religious controversies — and news coverage — appear to have died down.

Today, in the true spirit of Dr. Grant, the website says, “No matter your age, your race, your gender, or your sexual orienta-tion, there is a place for you at Ascension.”

Famous through the years for its music, this summer the church at 36 Fifth Avenue is celebrating its acquisition of the first French-built organ ever to be installed in New York City. See http://www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/AscensionEpis.html. In the Sep-tember issue, WestView News plans to publish an interview with organist and choirmaster Dennis Keene.

Then & Now

AN EPISCOPALIAN PIONEER: The original Church of the Ascension on Canal Street, destroyed by fire in 1839, left, and it’s replacement, at Fifth Avenue and West 11th Street, which has been serving the community since 1841. From the Mid-Manhattan Library/ Picture Collection, left, photo by Maggie Berkvist, right.


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By Chris Sherman

My father just called for the third time this morning — three times in less than an hour.

The first call, 6:30 a.m. (YES! 6:30 a.m.): “What would be a better breakfast, Cheeri-os with milk, or a white roll with butter?”

The second call, 6:32 a.m.: “The doctor says I have to take this new pill with food. Can I take it with the Cheerios?”

The third call, 6:47 a.m.: “I ate the Cheerios and I took the pill. Call me in 20 minutes to see if I’m alright — there could be side effects.”

While we are growing up, our parents kept a deep, dark secret from us. They led us to believe it is all about us. We are the center of their world. We believe our par-ents are put here on earth solely to care for us, nurture us, love us. What our parents didn’t tell us is that someday, the Lazy Su-san is going to turn and we will be taking care of them. They don’t tell us that there will be phone calls at six in the morning to discuss the nutritional value of Cheerios.

Two things here:First, we have just neatly bundled our

kids off to college, or marriage or at least their own apartment. No more worries about what to make for their lunch that will be amusing, yet nutritious. No more driving them anywhere or worrying who their friends are. (Those rotten, little strangers who are hell-bent on undoing all our exemplary child rearing.) College ap-plications, tours of college campuses and the drama that goes with choosing/being chosen by a school are now just a fond memory. The kids are gone and their bed-rooms have become our offices, exercise rooms and very large walk-in closets. We are done. If we were spiders, we’d be dead, that’s how done we are. We are now free to pursue the life we dreamt we would have when we were in our 20s — the artist, the writer, the artist, the entrepreneur.

Second, we now have our own issues with aging. We have our own appoint-ments with doctors, dentists and psy-choanalysts. Also, let’s not forget the unexplained tears, the weight gain (also

unexplained), the sleepless nights and the fears of death, catastrophic illness and/or elevators. We are a mess and starting to think that being a spider might not be so bad after all.

With all that going on, the urgency to fulfill our dreams as we come in for the home stretch and trying to manage all the scary physical changes, are we now expect-ed to care for our parents? No one told us this. We are not prepared. This is so unfair. Let us collectively stamp our feet! We did not ask to be born. Our parents couldn’t keep their hands off each other and now, suddenly, we are expected to micromanage their lives.

After my parents divorced, my dad had his own life. He remarried. Then his wife died — leaving me him in her will. All of a sudden, I am the focal point of his life. I am the go-to person for everything from what he eats to what he wears. This wasn’t so bad a few years ago, when I was younger and he was younger, but lately I can’t seem to choose my own breakfast, let alone some-one else’s.

When Dad has a girlfriend, it’s much better — less Father Maintenance. Un-fortunately, the last one died, also leaving me him in her will. I must find him a new girlfriend — a lady friend — that’s what he likes to call them.

Here is a comprehensive list of my needs in a companion for my father:

1. Must be able to drive2. Must be willing to live a long, healthy

life3. Must be able to match ties with jackets4. Must give nutritionally sound adviceOnce Dad is occupied with the woman

described above, I can get back to my own maladies, such as swollen ankles, dizzi-ness and peeing all the time. As for my own children, I have not told them “the secret” either. Why put a damper on their youth? That old Lazy Susan will be com-ing around again soon enough.

Chris Sherman writes so you don’t have to. She would love to hear from you — she hates to complain alone. [email protected]

The Secrets of Aging ParentsThe circle of life that no one warned us about.

HELP WANTED: A companion for my dad.


By David Puchkoff

It all started off with a simple invite last year: “Can you help me bring my boat up from Florida to New York?” “Of course, sounds like fun,” I replied. Then in January this year came a second plea, a more seri-ous question: “Can you help me sail across the Atlantic from Bermuda to the Azores in May?”

I’ve raced as skipper or crew, cruised up and down the Eastern seaboard and the Caribbean for 35 years, but never crossed the Atlantic. To me, that’s like asking a minor league baseball player if he’d like to play ball in Yankee Stadium — impossible to say no. Crossing a great ocean is an en-try on any sailor’s bucket list.

My squash buddy James, a compulsive business start-up entrepreneur, had sold his Village condo in exchange for Ondine, a 55’ catamaran, and was about to ful-fill a dream of sailing to Greece with his wife and two children, a son, age 8, and a daughter, age 10, for a year, maybe more. For crew, besides James and me, three oth-ers joined, including Brett and Tracy, two friends I played squash with, who knew how to spell sailing, but not much more about it. However, they were up for carv-ing another notch onto their adventure belts. The third, Steven, a sailing friend of mine, had already sailed across the At-lantic four times, so having him on board, with all his experience, made me feel a lot

more comfortable about our crossing.After four months of preparing with

safety-at-sea seminars and working my way through long checklists, I left the West Village for Bermuda. I had prom-ised my wife and daughters that I’d always wear my auto-inflating life vest, except when in my bunk sleeping (I lied, and they knew, but I and everyone else abided by the rule of wearing the vest on watch on deck always). After all of us gathered together on Ondine in Bermuda, we read-ied ourselves to sail directly to the Azores across 1,900 miles of open water — long after the north winter wind calmed down and before the hurricane season would be-gin in July.

While a 21st-century Atlantic crossing has its risks, it’s not a trip into the “un-known,” like Henry Hudson’s Half Moon voyage. With satellites and computers, ocean voyagers can now get one-to-three-day weather predictions through any number of Internet weather forecasters that gather and disseminate information from ships at sea. We were even able to email family and friends using Spot Satel-lite GPS — which has as its motto “Live To Tell About It” — a daily message of our location displayed on Google Maps.

Our provisions were stored in Ondine’s freezer and refrigerator, which Hudson could never imagine. We estimated that the trip would take anywhere from 10 to 15 days, depending upon the conditions.

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ON THE BOOM: Getting the sails ready for the Atlantic crossing, the author sits on the boom of Ondine in Bermuda.


Once Across An Ocean That’s the key word — conditions. There are so many variables that it is impossible to come to grips with all and be prepared for everything.

The most important asset on a boat is resourcefulness — finding a way to make do with what you have at hand. This be-comes the satisfaction and the challenge of sailing. Breakdowns and repairs are in-trinsic to boats and with lots of electronics, there are always failures. Then there’s the weather, which could be clear and calm, or wet and stormy. The politics of six adults and two children (five males, three fe-males) living together on a floating raft for two weeks without someone wishing that someone else would just disappear is an-other consideration.

Then there’s the “fear factor”: Will you hit a whale or a discarded ocean container, get swept overboard or run into a freighter at night whose captain was asleep at the helm? As we set sail, we wondered wheth-er we could deal with all the issues that we would surely come across, enjoy the trip and end up remembering the whole expe-rience as worthwhile.

We left the dock at St. George’s in Ber-muda on May 5, in a fair weather win-dow between storms well east in front of us, and stormy weather coming in from the west behind us. After goodbye calls home, we pointed our bow for the Azores. Hours later, we heard the sound of metal ripping away from metal. There is a block

with pulleys on a car called a “traveller” that moves along a track which controls the sheet (a line) that adjusts the mainsail. Ondine’s traveller car had popped out and spilled 50 ball bearings all over the deck — a faulty installation.

Before we had ever gotten our sea legs, we were back at the same dock in Bermuda on a quest to find a replacement part. I had promised my daughter to be home for her high school graduation at the end of May, but I was losing time already. A replace-ment part would take at least three days to arrive. It was time for the “resourcefulness” of sailing to kick in, and it did. We went from supplier to fabricator to builder all over the harbor and eventually cannibal-ized parts from different pieces and made the refit. After one overnight stay, we were back on course.

We worked out a watch schedule so that there were always at least two of us on deck, on alert, rotating every three hours. With six adults that meant after every three-hour watch, we had six hours off, usually for sleeping. While on watch, you can be awake on a dark night with low-hanging clouds that glow with a hazy yellow when the moon’s light barely passes through them. You are alone, hundreds of miles away from any help, truly alone. Waxing a bit poetic, yes, but that thought kept me sharply alert to all around, even in the early morning when what helped you stay awake was the rise of a new day’s red sun.

While our high-tech advantages could predict weather patterns, there was no warning for the squalls that met us with 40- to 45-knot winds that pushed the catamaran to our personal record boat speed of 18 knots — fast and exciting. The downpours and splashing waves soon brought out small leaks in the boat that unfortunately were over some of our bunks. We lived in a world of dampness, in a full range of weather.

It was amazing to see a full dinner served every night, including dessert made by James’ wife, Emma-Kate, her children and Tracy — the lone female volunteer crewmember who found solace from her seasickness by baking fresh bread, no mat-ter what the weather. Our beds weren’t dry, but we had freshly baked apple pie and homemade pizzas. We learned to go for our portions fast, as our strong-man, Brett, always seemed to turn up as soon as the dinner bell rang.

Two waterspouts in the dark of night caused great excitement and the need to get as far away from them as quickly as possible. Waterspouts at sea are short-lived, waterborne, mini tornados associat-ed with low-pressure systems. Seeing two was pretty chilling. Rolling seas with 12- to 15-foot waves from storms and winds far away had Ondine pitching and yawing. Breaking waves rocked and heaved On-dine as she creaked and moaned loudly for hours. The wave crests passed beneath her,

first from one hull then to the deck then to the other hull, as if she were being bitch-slapped by some unforgiving force.

We also had days so calm and seas so flat that the only way the sails filled were when we had the engine on to move us forward through otherwise still air. But when the wind was at right angles to our direction and came across our beam at 15 to 20 knots, Ondine would slice easily through each wave, and we couldn’t help but feel delight in her speed and graceful motion.

Crossing the Atlantic means being sur-rounded by an endless horizon with clouds in shapes unlike any seen from land, with sparkling stars filling crystal clear night skies, with nothing man-made to set my eyes on. There, mid-ocean, I experienced a joyful and lighthearted feeling I cannot rep-licate anywhere else. It brings with it a great sense of prolonged wonder, along with in-dividual moments of breathtaking awe.

Perhaps the Grand Canyon or some other natural wonder comes close to of-fering this experience, but then within an hour or a day comes the rush of family, friends and strangers. Nothing gives you the extended true sense of your place in the world than when you look in any di-rection and only see ocean for hours and days at a time. Those are the moments that filter away all the fearful unknowns and difficult times that the trip holds and makes the time “away from it all” worth the effort.


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By Mark M. Green (sciencefromaway.com)

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), at one of its extremes, is a devastating state defined by medical science as marked by deficits in language, and in social interactions, ac-companied by repetitive and restrictive be-haviors, into which some children evolve at about the age of two. At one extreme, one can barely live with the child, while at the other extreme, which is known as As-perger’s syndrome, the child shows the core features of the autism spectrum (especially about social interactions), but is not as ex-treme in deficient use of language and ways of thinking.

One can gain some insight into autism in its various forms from the Autism Now six-part series of interviews, conducted by former NewsHour anchor Robert MacNeil in April of this year. These are available on the web as originally shown on PBS News-Hour (WNET/Channel 13 in New York).

Decades of study of the cause or causes of ASD have demonstrated that genetic factors are involved that are not necessarily present in either parent. An environmental factor is widely suspected, but it has never been pinned down. Although long thought

to be the culprit, it is known for certain that vaccination is not involved. Searches by scientists for the environmental factor, using mostly statistical analysis of families and children who have been struck with the disorder, have ranged far and wide and have evolved from nonsense like blaming the mother — widely believed not all that long ago and still by some — to more credible ideas that the age of the parents is a factor.

But what is far less clear is the question of the increased number of children found within the autism spectrum. No one knows for sure if the increase is an illu-sion, arising from assigning more children as autistic who might have been previously diagnosed as mentally deficient or retard-ed. Here science has no clear answer, even with research trying desperately, in the at-tempt to enable us to protect our offspring against this disorder, to find out if some-thing we are exposed to is actually causing a real increase in autism. No one knows the answer to this question, or why boys are more likely to be autistic than girls, or why savant characteristics appear more frequently in autistic people than in the general population. And there are many more questions.

Autism, in its various forms, is increas-

Science from Away: ingly seen in a new way. In the words of world-renowned expert, Dr. Daniel H. Geschwind of the University of Califor-nia, Los Angeles, writing in 2009 in the Annual Review of Medicine entitled, “Advances in Autism,” “From this view-point, there are few genes causing ASD per se; genetic variation modulates lan-guage, social cognition, and one’s range of interests or repetitive behaviors, and it is a combination of genetic variation in these features that results in ASD susceptibili-ty.” Following this view, autism is not aris-ing from some specific genetic problem, as is, for example, muscular dystrophy or sickle cell anemia, but rather from genetic variations that are common to many of us but which add up in certain ways to cause autism, what we see as a specific problem.

The study of chromosomes, genes and DNA — a focus of biology and medical science — makes more understandable the idea that autism lies along a spectrum. It is increasingly realized that we are far less than the perfect biochemical mecha-nism we imagine ourselves to be. Mis-takes are made in the construction of our genetic material starting from the womb. Some of these mistakes are called copy number variants, in which long stretches that can reach to the many thousands of units that make up our DNA can some-times be entirely left out or, alternatively, duplicated over and over again, a kind of genetic stuttering. Science suspects that ASD arises from a combination of these

mistakes with what is inherited from the parents of the child, even if the parents do not suffer from autism. Sometimes these imperfections in our genetic material have no apparent consequence, and sometimes severe consequences, among which is au-tism. This is the hypothesis.

A strong piece of recent evidence shows that the gene that is the stretch of DNA responsible for the synthesis of oxytocin, the hormone best known to aid in child birth and the let-down reflux in nurs-ing mothers, but which is also known to moderate our social interactions, has been deleted in a significant population of chil-dren suffering from autism.

We are a complex chemical machine, not fully perfected. Autism is a disorder of the mind that is more complex than any technology, a condition that we are seeing increasingly in our children, which appears to have no national or geographic bound-aries. Neither prominence nor wealth of-fers any protection from this disorder, about which we have little understanding.

However, there is strong evidence that in most autistic children, intervention at an early age greatly helps. Although not able to reverse the disorder, which in al-most all cases persists for life, helping the child to deal with their deficiencies, which requires one-on-one relationships, can make autism far more manageable. It even allows many autistic children to become adults who can work and live in a some-what independent manner.

Autism: A disorder that science struggles to understand.

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On a hazy June day in Hudson River Park, shortly after noon, Chris Anderson pre-pared for a scuba dive. Dressed in a pun-gent, seven-millimeter wetsuit that was peeled down to his waist, the 31-year-old director of education for The River Project — a nonprofit marine science field station that monitors the ecology of the Hudson River estuary — stood on a small floating dock off the north end of Pier 40, at Leroy Street.

Scuba gear crowded the dock and an observant intern listened intently as An-derson, who has spiky blonde hair and two earrings in each ear, identified his equip-ment. Offshore, Anderson’s support crew for the afternoon, two young women wear-ing loose tee shirts and big smiles, putted an aluminum skiff in lazy circles.

The purpose of today’s dive, Anderson explained, was to inspect a piling near the pedestrian path at Morton Street, where

The River Project planned to mount a fish-aggregating device. A fish-aggregating de-vice, or FAD, is essentially any contraption that attracts fish; in this case, it would be a solar-powered light system mounted to the top of a piling that would cast a 100-watt glow across a small section of the water’s surface for a few hours every night. If all went according to plan, the light would at-tract zooplankton, phytoplankton and fish larvae, which would in turn attract small baitfish (gobies, Atlantic silversides, juve-nile blackfish), which would attract larger predators (striped bass, bluefish, north-ern sea robin) and, ultimately, Anderson hoped, curious human spectators. The River Project is on a mission to show New Yorkers that Manhattan’s waterfront is not a dirty dead zone, but a rich marine eco-system teeming with life.

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Spotted: One Scuba Diver in Hudson River Park. Really.A marine scientist and educator takes the plunge.

chugged steadily south. Suddenly, a set of jagged waves reared into view. They slammed into the dock and spewed a foot of water across its surface, scattering An-derson’s gear and sousing ankles, knees and thighs with brackish froth.

"Jesus!" Anderson yelped, grasping for a handhold on the violently bucking dock. “Girls, turn the boat into the waves!” The chaos left him breathless. “God that was crazy!” he said, after the waves subsided. Asked if he had seen ones that big before, he replied, “Never once. Never seen that happen.”

Later, Anderson would cite the Spirit Cruises incident to expound the disruptive effects of reckless “anthropogenic vehicles” on delicate estuarine environments — but for now he was preoccupied with the sole casualty of the assault: one of his Rainbow flip-flops had washed overboard and was floating rapidly towards Pier 40’s cavern-ous underbelly. He slipped on his fins and jumped into the river to retrieve it. When

WILL THE FISH FOLLOW?: The River Project's Chris Anderson on his exploratory dive into the Hudson off Morton Street in June. Photo by Catharine Fleury.


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he returned to the dock, flip-flop in hand, he hollered to his assistants waiting pa-tiently in the aluminum skiff. “Sorry guys! We had like a tidal wave. It knocked over all of my stuff.”

Instead of hitching a ride aboard the

skiff, Anderson decided to swim to his dive site, which lay about one block north, in the piling field that was formerly Pier 42. Until this point, his operation had gone largely unnoticed by park patrons — it’s not easy to see the floating dock from

shore — but now, as he kicked his way across open water, heads turned.

A middle-aged man walking down the pedestrian path in an “Abercrombie Braves” tee shirt slowed his pace when he caught sight of Anderson, removed his sunglasses and took a second look. Nearby, a trio of youths eyed the man in the river from the steps of a park structure. “You see him?” one of them asked. “Yeah, he’s right there.”

When Anderson reached his designated piling, he began tapping it with a rusty claw hammer to check for soft spots. Per agreement with the Hudson River Park Trust, The River Project was required to demonstrate the strength of the piling be-fore mounting a fish-aggregating device on top of it. Every few minutes he disap-peared underwater with the hammer, and fat, cloudy bubbles mushroomed to the surface. A heavyset woman with close-cropped hair peered over the railing to watch him work, elbows bent and palms

flat against the backs of her hips. A scraw-ny FedEx man, recognizable by his purple-and-black uniform, stood up from a bench in the shade and came over to observe, too. Neither spectator spoke.

After about ten minutes, Anderson deemed the piling was suitable for an FAD. “Alright, I’m done,” he announced to no one in particular. He could not hear the rollerbladers’ scoffs as he kicked his way back towards Pier 40 — three of them came tearing down the pedestrian path, all male and none a day older than 25 — but back on the dock, when informed that one of them had apparently called him “nasty,” he nodded. “Yeah, yeah. Sometimes that happens,” he said.

A few weeks later, Anderson and his team installed the FAD in the Pier 42 pil-ing field, and it’s easily spotted from the pedestrian path today. Hopefully, the de-vice will attract as much attention as its intrepid proponent did on that hazy after-noon in June, above water and below.MISSION ACCOMPLISHED: One month later, Anderson and his crew install FAD, their fish-

aggregating device. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

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Dear Brad, I am glad to hear your position [on restoring a full hospital to the neighborhood]. Of course, I totally agree with you. But I do not understand what you are saying (or not say-ing) [about] "ambitions and politics."

How would you suggest — and I mean this ques-tion absolutely sincerely — that we all work together to achieve our common goal? We, the community and Co-alition, have worked for over a year, only to be relentlessly insulted by The Villager, ignored by the politicians and steamrolled by the Rudins/NS-LIJ, etc. I welcome any and all suggestions.

I am watching a healthcare nightmare evolve before my eyes: first, St. Vincent’s, now a domino effect of Brooklyn hospitals. Sometimes, and I am ashamed to admit this, I think that, for me, the only solution is to the flee this city. I cannot tolerate the damage this has and will do to the sick, the poor, the uninsured, the most needy who will suffer and die in our obscenely wealthy city. This is insane.

Community boards represent the community. This com-munity, at every meeting, has vocally, relentlessly and vis-ibly tried to express itself. I/we still have had NO response at all from the "electeds" — Quinn, Duane, Gottfried, etc., etc. — other than lip service or auto e-mail responses. We have heard NOTHING from the Mayor (who clearly does not care about these issues), or the Governor or the AG or, most importantly, the astonishingly invisible DOH and Commissioner. None of these people — all suppos-edly charged with overseeing the health and welfare of our community — seem to understand or simply do not care about what is happening. Perhaps unanimous and equally relentless statements, resolutions, and public outcry from ALL of the involved Community Boards would help.

I hope someone shares this email with all the elected of-ficials, all the media, the mayor, etc., though I do not think any of them care.

David Kaufman

David:I only just got to read your eloquent post to Brad Hoyl-man of CB 2. It made me weep. I had to respond to you even though belatedly. I share your frustration and agree that one begins to feel tainted by the political scene that is destroying healthcare and the providers in this city and across this nation. The destruction is always in the name of savings and efficiencies — grand thinking that begets money that somehow never gets to those who need it most. I agree; you do have to be insane to think what is going on is acceptable.

I often think of you, the caring physician that you are, how it must be hell to carry on in a decent manner in such difficult situations and how the patients may be as confused about it all as well — Mt. Sinai, Continuum, Roosevelt,

St. Luke's, Bellevue, Downtown — who knows what's next. Too bad acclaimed Paul Krugman only lately discovered that in this healthcare business, we are supposed to consider patients consumers, not human beings with whom we build relationships in order to heal and as providers, affirm our human condition. It is time to call out those hiding in the shadows. Let's switch on the lights so we can see the path to overcome any and all the obstacles to achieving the hospital that this community deserves, that we deserve.

Unless you have lately announced your planning on run-ning for elected office, I would say that your efforts on behalf of getting our hospital back in this community are just that. I have observed what George Capsis sees at every meeting. It is the community speaking and eloquently jus-tifying the need for our hospital to the Board 2, beseeching the representatives of the community to do the right thing, to justify or explain what is behind the excessive speed of moves to condos before we were able to fight for more transparency. There is in the community a shock about the sudden switch by Christine Quinn, who now supports the freestanding ER that the medical community questions. Why can't the board support the questioning public in these issues? Who is monitoring the activities around and in the building, so that the regulations and laws are ad-hered to regarding the land and building use?

The majority of the community showing up to plead the case for the hospital and explanations are people from this community coming with their stories from the north, south and east about their being affected by the loss of the hospi-tal and the negative consequences in their lives as a result. Some of these stories have been published by a newspaper owner whose own wife is an example of the dangers in the loss of care from the nearby St. Vincent’s, where she was well known to the caregivers who could act swiftly. Some from the community who joined together to show up at the rallies and hearings may even include (gasp) Republicans!

So what if Yetta Kurland ran and may run again for elec-tion. That may be. But let's be honest here, what other leader showed up and who has dedicated so much personal effort to help the community to fight for the hospital? How can that be such a commonly stated excuse for Board 2 to dismiss these efforts "as politics" and then ignore the com-munity in front of you? Anyone who wants a hospital will unite with anyone else who makes the effort, and especially one who does such committed work on our behalf. People concerned about the loss of their hospital don't have to agree on everything; they only have to care about the will-ingness to work hard on this shared concern for answers and solutions. To criticize or belittle those who are fighting so hard now to save the hospital because they weren't pres-ent in the earlier struggles doesn't make sense….

I hope that the Community Board 2 leadership will find its way to overcome its hesitancy and join us with cour-

age to fight for a hospital and emergency room that this community and the surrounding area deserve. We are not going to give up nor should anyone. To give up supports the decline in the delivery of healthcare not only in this community. We could be the shining light for others.

Peace,Barbara Ruether

Barbara,Thank you. And what you say is so true and so powerful. It is particularly galling when "they" play their "political card/running for office" crap about Yetta in an effort to shift the focus, undermine her commitment and cheapen the issue. It is a classic maneuver from those in power, even as the real politicians, the "electeds" (always makes me think of the "anointed") dodge, distort and deny the real issues and are deaf to the community.

For the last year, one image, one symbol comes to me ev-ery day. Dredged up from my memory of Philosophy 101, long, long ago: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? We are the trees and no-body is listening. I loved your reference to Paul Krugman, whose work and opinions I admire and value. However, I agree, he has only fleetingly addressed the healthcare is-sues and his recent column, which I suspect most people are not familiar with, really fired me up. It is an issue very close to my heart, so of course I had to respond.

David

Brad,We need to stop this idea that it is the community's fault for what has happened to us, or that the community wasn't impacted and involved in the past problems.

The plan by the Rudins to develop a massive hospital on O'Toole is as suspect and related to the questions people have today about the sudden collapse of the current hos-pital a year later.

The 2007 proposal for a hospital estimated it would cost close to a billion dollars to build, yet the sale of the property would only generate a couple million and no one was explaining where the other money was coming from. More importantly, why was that plan to build a mega-hospital abandoned after getting the landmark approvals to overdevelop?

When was the recent plan developed? It’s not about "voting for a hospital"; it’s about transparency and ensur-ing that real estate interests don't determine healthcare policy. We know the community board is concerned about these things as well, and we have GOT to stop beating up the community for raising valid concerns and start listen-ing better.

Towards the shared goal of a hospital.Yetta


By Henry J. Stern

Unlike the iconic railroad engineer, who kept his hand on the throttle while his train plunged down curving tracks to disaster, and by doing so saved the lives of many people, the MTA chief Jay Walder did not even complete two years at the helm of the transit authority before he jumped ship for a more secure and lucrative berth in a pri-vate, profitable transit system.

Walder was not shanghaied in the dead of night; he is going voluntarily to MTR (Mass Transit Railway), a railroad colossus headquartered in Hong Kong. Any idea where they might bank?

Actually, Walder had a number of good reasons for his secretive flight from New York and the MTA. The first is the impov-erishment of the system he is leaving. The MTA has consistently been undersupport-ed, not given enough money to operate, let alone to build and maintain the system in good repair. Before he came, they over-spent wildly, in part because of bureaucra-cy, over-engineering, and weakness before unions, as well as traditional corruption, particularly in construction and real prop-erty. Walder did not want his reputation endangered by too many years presiding over a system subject to those perils.

Second is the apparent indifference of Governor Cuomo to the plight of the MTA, and the absence of any effort to develop a relationship with Walder. It was

not nearly as bad as Governor Paterson, who refused to speak with Lee Sander, Walder's predecessor, or even to return his calls, because Sander had been appointed by his predecessor, Governor Spitzer. Sander did not have the luxury of an-other job offer as Walder did, so he hung around until he was dismissed by Paterson on May 7, 1999 on practically one day's notice, even though it took more than two months after that to find a successor (Walder).

Sander was not the only Paterson com-missioner to be fired practically instantly. On October 21, 2010, just twelve days be-fore the election of Governor Cuomo, the Environmental Protection Commissioner, Pete Grannis, who had served since the start of the Spitzer administration and be-fore that, spent 32 years in the Assembly, was told to clear out immediately by Larry Schwartz, at the time a key aide to Gov-ernor Paterson. The trumped-up charge against Grannis was that he had sought to avoid budget cuts for his agency, which every commissioner worth anything does every year. Grannis was told that Paterson would not speak to him about the matter and that his dismissal was final. He got the news as he was preparing to deliver a speech and receive an award from an envi-ronmental group at what became his last supper in office.

The question arose as to why Grannis was fired just then. Why not leave it to the

Jay Walder Is Not Casey Jones, Jumps From NYC to Hong Kong Because MTA Nears Fiscal Crash

incoming governor (Cuomo) to choose his cabinet? Why should Grannis' 36 years of state service end in peremptory dismissal? One plausible explanation is based on where Larry Schwartz is now. Governor Cuomo has appointed him Secretary to the Governor, which is the equivalent to chief of staff on the national level and the same post Schwartz held in the Paterson administration.

It is likely that, in firing Grannis on the spot, Schwartz was serving his new master, Cuomo, and sparing the gover-nor-elect the embarrassment of firing an environmental icon. Cuomo has the right to choose his own commissioners, and Joe Martens is a good choice for the position, with a fine environmental record. None-theless, we recount the story now to tell you how it was done, which is in accord with the important Rule 26, "No prints."

Walder chose to accept what could be the best transit job in the world, at a mul-tiple of the salary which was begrudged to him in New York. He thus avoided the fate of his predecessor Sander and his col-league Grannis.

Last night, I watched The Call on New York 1. People called and emailed the station to express their views on Walder. Almost all were very negative, with the exception of Richard Ravitch, the former lieutenant governor, as well as MTA chair. Ravitch was highly complimentary, as was Mayor Bloomberg. The hostile attitude of the public came because of the service and personnel reductions that Walder was obliged to make because of the lack of public funds and steadily rising expenses, most but not all of which were uncontrol-lable. How many years should one devote to serving people who think you are doing a lousy job, when in fact you are doing a very competent job at an obviously thank-less task?

One could tell that many of the dis-gruntled callers were transit employees or union activists. Even so, there were precious few callers who admired the service they received from the MTA or its departing chairman. If there were an attempt to jam the switchboard, it succeeded. If there were not, the negative sentiment was more au-thentic. Of course, no one likes waiting for a train on a hot platform, being squeezed or crushed inside a car, or being delayed for an indefinite period, whether by "the dis-patcher" or by "train traffic ahead."

The underlying fact is that the transit system is in a financial bind comparable to that which faces the United States, ex-cept that it cannot run up fourteen trillion dollars in deficits and then ask for more. Sooner or later, probably sooner, fares will rise and interest on the MTA's indebt-

edness will increase. The State and City, traditional sources of additional funding, are, as we know, undergoing severe fiscal problems and highly unlikely to substan-tially increase transit subsidies, if indeed they are willing to retain them. One can-not mention state aid without recalling with sorrow the disgraceful decision of the New York State Assembly to eliminate the commuter tax on May 17, 1999, a date which will live in infamy in mass transit history. How long should Walder remain at the helm of a ship which takes on more water each year?

We believe that Jay Walder is, by and large, a decent, honorable, hard-working and competent bureaucrat, who will be missed after he is gone. He is not an in-spirational figure, nor did he attempt to be one. Nicole Gelinas, giving Walder a mixed review, asks [in the Post]: "Can the next MTA chief be a fighter?" One answer to that question is that the MTA chief is an appointed, rather than an elected of-ficial. Major funding decisions are made by the elected, and it is the job of the ap-pointed to do the best they can with the resources that they have been given.

Of course, they can and should demand more; that is what Commissioner Pete Grannis (who was from 1974 to 2005 an elected official, given to expressing his own opinions) did in October 2010, for which he was summarily politically beheaded in what appears to be a pre-election house-cleaning. Fortunately, Grannis has found a new job in what appears to be a more con-genial setting, so his public service can con-tinue and his pension clock keep running.

"Speak truth to power" is a noble slogan, but truth is better spoken by those with no power than by those with some. People with intermediate degrees of power are likely to lose what little they have if they engage in unappreciated candor. Those outside the Beltway (or its local equiva-lent) are less subject to the whims of the authorities.

We wish Walder the best in his new ad-venture, which we hope will be excellent, for the sake of the millions of Chinese and others who will benefit from his services. The search for a successor should begin at once. It will be a real challenge to the Gov-ernor and the MTA to find someone as knowledgeable and professionally skilled as Walder. But once such a person is hired, s/he must be given the appropriation that is needed for the MTA to do the job right.

P.S. It is ironic that people now go from New York to Hong Kong in order to triple their wages.

Reprinted from Stern's blog, [email protected].

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A brilliant sunset, followed by July 14 Bastille Day fireworks under a full moon, provided a spectacular setting for the cel-ebration of CSA’s 40th anniversary which, thanks to the residents of 350 Bleecker Street, was held in their beautiful rooftop garden.

The Association was formed in 1971 by Newsweek editor John McAlister and WestView News publisher George Capsis for the purpose of planting the first of over 100 trees. Treasurer Alan Perna raised nearly $40,000 to install historic Bishop's Crook lampposts, and each year the "Green Team" offers tree pit planting.

Full Moon Illuminates the Charles Street Association's 4Oth Anniversary

Eric Robinson of the Green Team, and Miriam Patterson, the Association Secretary, enjoyed the chance to relax and reminisce with neighbor Armanda Squadrilli, right.

As usual, the elegant buffet was a popular feature, with food generously contributed by Gourmet Garage and by members of the Association. All photos by Maggie Berkvist.

CSA President Susan Lamier shared a thought with WestView publisher George Capsis.

As the festivities continued, a full moon rose over the rooftops.

Sebastian


By Keith Michael

“Up. Up!” Millie, my Pembroke Welsh Corgi, is going for Olympic gold to hoist herself up on a bench at Hudson River Park.

August. Saturday night. Quiet. The usual barrage of joggers, skaters, skateboarders and scooterers must be do-ing other things. We settle in for the sunset — a contender with the Staten Island Ferry for the best free show in town!

The Swallows are doing their barnstorming displays. What is it like coursing by at that speed, homing in on one flying insect after another? How do their internal air traffic controllers keep them from running into each other, or light poles, or from taking a dunk in the river?

With the exhale of the traffic slowing at the lights, I can just barely hear the distant “dit dit dot dit dot dit” Morse code twittering of the Chimney Swifts high above me. From down here their shallow wingbeats seem to be simply vibrations rather than flapping. The air is so alive.

Millie is already snoozing on the bench with one paw dangling over the edge like a contented debutante. Her comical sprawl brings smiles from the eventide romantics passing by. A lone Cormorant with its crook-necked flight is hurrying upriver to claim his SRO roost to watch the full moon rise. Deep wingstrokes just above the horizon identify a Great Egret heading north after a day spearing fish in the Jersey meadowlands. Way out on the Hudson, a handful of Common Terns are twisting and diving for dinner before their final trip to Breezy Point for the night. Their scribbling flight makes gulls look like they still have their learners’ permits.

The high whine of a mosquito just wafted by my ear. Uh, Swallows? You missed one! A caroling Robin is lus-ciously serenading. Why? He’s won his girl for the sum-mer, set up housekeeping, raised a family and his brood has, literally, left the nest. Maybe he just likes to sing. Be-hind me, at the tippy-top of a water tower on West 11th Street, a Mockingbird is, once again, belting out his rol-licking repertoire like a Coney Island barker. All summer it’s been like this — like he’s his own hard rock band. He

must really like to sing.Dipping down to the water is a pair of double-decker

dragonflies. Is tonight the night for laying her eggs? And a Monarch butterfly glides by, barely flapping, his wings fiery in the orange of the setting sun. Is he already conserving energy for the flight to Mexico this winter? A few Ring-billed Gulls joust over a piling, then leave for elsewhere.

After a ruffle and an ear scratch, Mille has just remem-bered that while sitting here one night she saw a mouse scuttle behind the bench. Now she’s on alert.

Twilight. I love this effervescent time. The light changes second to second. Robust froth. Backlit glowing. Shim-mering fingers of blue. At this hour of the evening the clouds can veer from Monet to Turner to Rubens to the deep swirling strokes of El Greco within several changes of the traffic lights.

The fireflies have begun their on/off, “Here I am,” wink-ing, perhaps sending messages in code to the flashing

Erie Lackawanna tower beacon across the river. The park lights just switched on. A pair of Canada Geese are sailing downriver, silhouetted like Egyptian barks. (No Millie, I didn’t mean you.)

Maybe the Gadwall family is swimming upriver unseen near the wall. The mottled duckling duo would be nearly grown now. I’ve mostly missed them this summer. I guess we’ve been on different commuter schedules.

The darkening sky is starting to match the rich indigo blue of the promenade railing lights. A soaring Gull mir-rors a jet descending to land in Newark from the north, and from the south, the lineup of jets approaching looks like mother of pearl beads strung out into the haze. There’s a bat! And another! Swooshing by the light. Neat.

Millie just nosed into my hand. “Is that for a head scratch, or are you ready to go home?” Sparrows jostle in the tree above us. They’re settling in for the night, too.

“Okay. Off the bench. Let’s go home.”

The Wings of AugustJust sitting on a bench brings a multitude of avian sights.

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SOUNDS OF SILENCE: A pensive Robin, a Mockingbird with rollicking repertoire and two Canada Geese sailing downriver. Photos by Bonnie Rosenstock (Robin), Amber Coakley/Birder's Lounge (Mockingbird) and Maggie Berkvist (Geese).

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Making your ceremony meaningful and memorable.

Wedding Tips From the Ritual Queen

By Barbara Biziou

“When two people are at one in their inmost hearts, they shat-ter even the strength of iron or of bronze” - I Ching

Congratulations to New York’s gay communities! Hav-ing our state pass the Marriage Equality Act inspired me to share some simple tips that I have used over the past 12 years as a Celebrant and Interfaith Minister that will make your wedding unforgettable regardless of sexual ori-entation.

There is a common thread that makes all ceremonies profoundly meaningful. Think of this commonality as a basic cake recipe. You get to decide if it is chocolate, va-nilla, banana or any other ingredients you love…

Intention: The sacred intention of the marriage ritual is key to a meaningful and memorable ceremony overall. Take the time to ask yourself, "What do I love about my partner? Why do I want to get married?"

Vows: If you choose to use something other than tradi-tional vows, write your personal vows from your heart. De-scribe what you love about the person and what you hope for in the future. Don't stress over memorizing the vows — write them down and have your best man or woman hold your notes.

Flowers: Flowers and bouquets add extra meaning and beauty. Wedding bouquets once were woven of fresh rose-mary to signify a strong bond and deep friendship. Daffo-dils symbolize new beginnings; red roses, jasmine, azaleas, forget-me-nots, red tulips and irises mean love; violets imply faithfulness; orchids stand for ecstasy; and peonies represent a happy marriage in Japan.

Rings: Purchase rings that have significance. The wed-ding ring is a symbol of the unbroken circle of love. It is traditional in most ceremonies and mandatory in the Jew-ish wedding. The ancients believed that a vein ran from the fourth finger directly to the heart. Some rings have the symbol of clasped hands, such as the Irish Claddaugh ring

with two hands holding a heart.Readings: Your relationship is unique, so pick read-

ings that speak for the two of you — quotes from the bible, poetry or your favorite song, for example. Check out "Words for the Wedding" by Wendy Paris and An-drew Chesler.

Kids: If you have children, consider having them par-ticipate directly through ritual or some other meaning-ful act, so they feel included in your new union.

Traditions: See if there are any family traditions that you would like to include. It is important to understand what the origin is and the meaning. For example, the breaking of the glass at the end of a Jewish wedding has many interpretations. A more modern meaning is to reminds us that although the wedding has provided joy, the broken world still needs our attention.

Integrate new and diverse cultures: Don't be afraid to come up with new traditions that you will continue in the years to come. One couple that I worked with made a huppah ( Jewish canopy) out of a sari from their spiri-tual teacher. Another used a rainbow flag to symbolize equality for all.

Community support: There is power in affirming your vows in public — you acknowledge your place in the community and ask for their support. I always like to include all the participants in the ceremony even if we just take a moment of silence to send prayers of love and support for the sacred union.

No ceremony can create a marriage. Only the two of you can do that with love, honesty and a sense of humor, patience and the willingness to let the small things go.

Barbara Biziou is an Interfaith Minister and Global Ritual Expert. She is the author of "The Joy of Ritual" and "The Joy of Family Rituals." She lives in Greenwich Village. Visit www.joyofritual.com, or e-mail [email protected].

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By James Lincoln Collier

An American I know who lives in Paris has made an interesting observation on the American political scene. He observes it from a distance, as through the wrong end of a telescope, so that Americans appear to be very small. He says that considering the quality of the presidents he has seen in his lifetime, might it not be a good idea to get rid of the presidency altogether?

It seems to me that there is something to be said for my friend’s proposal. At least two recent presidents were morons, two were frat animals who lunged at any juicy piece of stuff that came within lunging dis-tance of the Oval Office and two acted as if they were back in Alabama sitting on the front porch of a grocery store watching a dog fight and spitting on their shoes.

Not surprisingly, these presidents tum-bled the country into one disaster after the

By Armanda Squadrilli

As I’ve written recently in WestViews News, there are many ways of building community. In our part of the world, we have that gift of community simply by living in the West Village — a true neighborhood in the large and often impersonal environment of any big city. Our walkable streets, front stoops, sidewalk cafes, local merchants and indeed, this newspaper all constitute the framework for such community.

But what really completes a neighbor-hood and makes people want to live and grow there, are the neighbors within it. We have smiling acquaintances with many of our co-residents, whether from walking our dogs, where we get our morning cof-fee, shopping at the same stores or having similar routines. But we are more likely to know their dogs’ or kids’ names than theirs and less likely to know what simi-larities and things in common we do have. For that reason, one West Village neigh-bor, Barbara Pantuso, created a website to connect neighbors called Hey, Neighbor! (www.heyneighbor.com)

The idea for Hey, Neighbor! came to Barbara when she was living on Chris-topher Street. She had sold her couch on craigslist to someone from Harlem. In the stairwell as she was hauling the couch down five flights, her neighbor commented, “Hey, I’m looking for a couch just like that!”

“It occurred to me that this was a missed opportunity — so much time, money and

next, sublimely unaware that they were do-ing anything wrong. It was presidents, not Congress, who got us into wars in Viet-nam, Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan, countries few Americans had heard of until a president decided that we ought to have a war there. It was a president who couldn’t figure out what to do about the flood in New Orleans, a president who bailed out the banks so they could foreclose on peo-ple’s homes, a president who cut taxes for the rich and raised them for the poor, a president who allowed the Hutus and the Tutsis to massacre each other.

Further, with no president there would be no need for the White House, which is run at enormous expense to the taxpay-ers for no discernible purpose. As a prime property in an excellent location, it would bring a substantial sum on the open mar-ket, attractive to one of the seemingly end-less number of billionaires loose in the

hassle could have been saved if only we had an easy way to connect and share with neighbors right nearby,” said Barbara. “I thought, my neighbor and I have a couch in common, but what else do we have in common? What about other neighbors? How can neighbors help each other?”

Like many in these hectic and de-manding times, she was too busy to post something on the bulletin board in her building’s basement or slip fliers under everyone’s doors, and she didn’t want to invade their privacy either. Also, she had no easy way of knowing her neighbors’ e-mail addresses or an efficient way to reach them. So she thought, why not cre-ate an online community organized solely around location?

“People used to knock on neighbors’ doors,” she said. “Now, that feels awk-ward or inconvenient.” While there are makeshift neighbor networks in e-mail listservs, group websites and local blogs, “with these,” she says, “it’s hard to find neighbors unless you know them or they know of your group.”

Hey, Neighbor! provides a platform for neighbors to connect — to exchange information, favors, goods and services, among other ideas. These are the ways members of local communities have con-nected for years, and Hey, Neighbor! takes advantage of current technology, and the exponential use of, and comfort with, so-cial media, to make that easier.

Barbara says, “It’s like a local Facebook,

None of the Above

Hey, Neighbor!

KEEPING IT LOCAL: Barbara Pantuso, founder of heyneighbor.com.

On proposing a president-free nation.

A new website builds community one block at a time.

social system — Bill Gates, for example, or George Soros. It has everything your average billionaire is looking for in a home — a helicopter pad, a bowling alley, a bas-ketball court. I have no doubt that Mr. So-ros would snap up the White House in a minute if he were offered a reasonable deal.

For another, presidents understandably like to get out of Washington, where there is nothing to do after dark, or before dark either, jetting off to New York or Chicago under the guise of “getting to know the lit-tle people” (possibly the ones my friend sees through the wrong end of his telescope), or seeing how Lake Michigan is getting along. These trips are enormously expen-sive and serve no purpose except to keep the president busy, who otherwise would have nothing to do but wander around the White House straightening the pictures or disconsolately talking to the dog.

Then there are the Secret Service peo-ple, who are being paid good salaries to mill around in crowds during presidential speeches looking out for malcontents in-tent on doing the president harm. Keeping the president from bodily harm is no doubt

but designed for just the kinds of things you’d like to share and do with neighbors.”

Hey, Neighbor! is up and running as a beta site, currently offering the following features:

• See who’s around you and meet your neighbors

• Ask for and offer favors on their Mi-croFavor Exchange

• Post announcements• Create Trusted Neighbor connections• Customize your neighborhood areaAs a longtime West Village resident, I

find that interacting with neighbors — at

a humanitarian task, but given the quality of most presidents, is it cost effective?

Finally, the presidency is a great nui-sance to lovers of television. Just as the avid viewer is settling in to watch the tale of an ordinary family, which is raising a mole as if it were their child — reading it bedtime stories, putting its hair up, etc., — or the pious confession of a baseball player caught in adultery, surely a rare oc-currence, they are interrupted by an an-nouncer with a $400 haircut and a cement face who ponderously intones, “The Presi-dent of the United States,” as if he were introducing Moses come down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. Is that any way to end a perfectly good evening?

Given all this, it must be clear that my friend is right. Abolishing the presidency would contribute largely to the quality of American life, returning us to the golden days when Washington was only the face on the dollar bill and a baseball team that could be counted on to lose. In the next election my advice is to pull the lever marked “None of the Above.”

whatever level — is an intrinsic aspect of my quality of life. A forum such as this adds another dimension in that now, the community aspect can come to life in tan-gible ways of helping, supporting and in-teracting with each other.

Armanda Squadrilli, a 19-year resident of the West Village, is a senior residential real estate broker with Prudential Douglas El-liman and writes frequently on a variety of subjects, including dogs, motorcycles and West Village life. She is often accompanied by “Fri-day,” her smiling, three-legged cattledog.


By Michael D. Minichiello

This month's West Village original is writer and photographer Nancy Bogen, born in Brooklyn in 1932. For 30 years she taught English Lit at Richmond College and the College of Staten Island, retiring as professor emeritus in 1997. The author of three novels — including "Klytaimnestra Who Stayed at Home" — as well as a photographer, she lives with her husband, Arnold, on Jane Street. You can view Nancy’s latest short videos at http://vimeo.com/nancybogen.

“I’m no normal 79-year-old,” boasts writer and photographer Nancy Bogen. “I run about two miles every day. I also engage in sports. I play Ping Pong, and I used to fence at the Salle Santelli on Sixth Avenue. It’s not only for my health that I exercise, but for my frame of mind as well. I think it keeps me rather sane, for one. It keeps the cobwebs away.”

It’s this kind of energy that has seen the longtime West Villager through a number of careers, beginning with one as a writer. “My parents were not professional writers, but they wrote well. I remember as a little girl I went to public school in Brooklyn,

and I had a teacher who was a real mean-ie. It took a lot impress her, but she once looked at me and said, ‘You know, you can write!’ That was the beginning of my ca-reer,” she says, laughing.

As an adult, Bogen went on to write three novels of ideas and many scholarly articles. Eventually the late John Gardner, the best-selling author of novels such as “The Sunlight Dialogues,” befriended her. “He loved my first novel and went to bat

West Village Original: Nancy Bogen

By Barry Benepe

“Magnificent,” exclaimed a softball player who had driven over from New Jersey. “Everything is so fresh.” A local resident from Sheridan Square added, “The market is handy for me to come to. It brightens up the monstrosity [Pier 40] overwhelming us across the street.” One customer biked from New Jersey, crossing the Hudson on a ferry. What they were extolling was the long-awaited Pier 40 Farmers' Market, which debuted on July 9.

“I think this market is the most promis-ing of the three that I manage,” said Tariq, who represents the sponsor, Harvest Home Farmers’ Market, headquartered in East Harlem. Headed by Maritza Wellington Owens, Pier 40 joins the growing list of farm-fresh markets that HHFM operates in Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx.

The farmers and food vendors brought in a broad array of fresh produce and prepared foods.

R & G (Ray and Gary Glowaczewski) Farms of Goshen, NY, cultivate 400 acres of mixed produce. On this first day, Gary had beautiful bunches of large, firm, aromatic red, white and gold onions at $2/bunch,

gold and green zucchini and red, white and Yukon potatoes, all at $1/lb. There were snap peas, garlic scapes, cabbage, escarole, scallions, lettuces, beets, garlic and a wide range of fresh herbs.

Troncillito Farms, Marlboro, NY, also offered a sampling of their fresh-picked fruits, vegetables, herbs and spices. Red

Pier 40 Farmers' Market OpensA promising bountiful season is ahead.

Jacket from Geneva, NY, had three vari-eties of apples, cherries, apricots, raspber-ries, apple cider and assorted juices and jams. All You Knead Artisan Bakery from Beacon, NY, had eight varieties of freshly baked bread, and Old Chatham Sheep-herding Company from Old Chatham, NY, carried their award-winning sheep’s

milk cheese (Ewe’s Blue, Hudson Valley Camembert) and yogurt.

Dr. Pickle from Paterson, NJ, had barrels of pickles, including my favorite, the full sour dill pickle, and a large range of sweet pickle chips, mushrooms and sauerkraut made from produce imported from Mexico and California. Tierra Farm of Valatie, NY, sells “Fair Trade Coffee,” imported chiefly from Central America, which they roast and package, along with dried fruits, nuts and pecan butter.

On the whole, there was a universal posi-tive reaction from all who shopped at the market, and they expected to return. The only negative response was that no one knew the market was going to be there. There were no fliers to give to customers and only one A-frame sign not visible to anyone on the promenade. WestView News had announced the opening in its June and July issues. Hopefully, West Villag-ers and others will discover and patronize this promising new addition to the farmers’ market movement.

The market will remain open at the north end of the pier head house (353 West Street at West Houston) every Saturday, 8 a.m. to 4 p. m., through November 19.

FRESH FROM THE COUNTRY: Gary of R & G Farms discusses his produce with a customer. Photo by Maggie Berkvist.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: Nancy Bogen combines digital imagery, text and music in her videos. Photo by Michael D. Minichiello.

for it,” she recalls. “He was advising me about what would become my third novel when he was killed in a motorcycle acci-dent. That was devastating to me.”

At the same time, Bogen’s serious fic-tion writing all went — according to her — “down hill.” “That’s because the kind of novel I was writing — the novel of ideas that required full attention — began to lose its audience,” she says. “And even though they loved my writing, my agents couldn’t place my work anymore.” For Bogen, this was a harbinger of the current lamentable state of literature. “Nobody reads serious fiction anymore!” she says. “It’s gone, it’s finished, the art of reading. Ask young people if they’ve read ‘Ulysses’ or anything by William Faulkner. Thomas Wolfe is a complete unknown. It can be very depress-ing if you let it get to you.”

Bogen shifted gears when she retired from teaching in 1997 and founded a small performance group called The Lark Ascending. “I always loved music, and my mission was to create performances that included both that and literature, related by scene or period,” she explains. “I would commission an eight- to ten-minute piece by a living composer. I felt that composers had no one to speak for them. The music is there in notes on paper but if they don’t get a performance, no one hears it.”

Throughout it all, Bogen was an avid photographer. “I started out as a writer, but

I always wanted to be a photographer,” she admits. “Once I was established in a teach-ing career with a regular income I began do-ing photography, very modestly at first, and then more and more. But I found shooting film very limiting, and when digital imaging came along I really felt that I came into my own. It’s all come together. I’m now finding myself as both a writer and digital imagist and putting it with text and music on [the video-sharing website] Vimeo.”

A West Village resident since 1971, Bogen had her first one-person show as a photographer right here on Bleecker Street. In recollecting it, she tells the kind of story that for her could only happen in the Village.

“I had been homebound for three months with a hurt back,” she says. “The doctor said I could get up for only ten minutes a day. So for those ten minutes, I shot pictures from my apartment window. I shot whatever went by: balloons, heli-copters, clouds, you name it. Afterwards, I went to the 380 Gallery and told the own-er that this was how I happened to take the pictures. He took one look and said, ‘I’m going to give you a show.’

“I was an unknown!” she continues. “An utter stranger. I never had anything hap-pen like that anywhere else in New York. But that was the kind of thing that could happen here in the Village, which is why I love it.”


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A POETICAL PEDIGREE: Bordeaux from Chateau Chasse-Spleen. Photo by Christian Botta.

A rich Bordeaux, with hints of Byron and Baudelaire.

By Christian Botta

It’s hot out, so think cool. Think of cold stones and cool water rushing through a stream. A dark forest with a canopy of old trees. Perhaps a dank castle passageway or…a dungeon? Fall is coming and the summer heat will soon be a memory. Time to start thinking about some cool weather wines and forget about spritzy, light-bodied refreshment. When I think of cool weather I think of rich, complex red wines with some history – Bordeaux certainly comes to mind.

One of my favorite red wines of any kind comes from Bordeaux, Chateau Chasse-Spleen. It’s an excellent wine, rich and complex and showing the differences of each vintage. But it also has history and a kind of poetical pedigree. It is rumored to have been a favorite of Lord Byron and Baudelaire, and probably found favor with many others of their century. Although By-ron’s life was marked by a cruel arrogance and poetry that doesn’t quite rank as first rate, his reputation for hedonism and de-bauchery might just make him an excellent candidate for the job of wine critic. His penchant for drinking wine out of a human skull, portrayed in numerous film bios, only adds to qualifications.

The French translation for Chasse-Spleen is, “chasing away the blues.” I first discovered Chasse-Spleen in the “Wine Lover’s Companion,” where its excellent quality and low cost was made even more attractive by the fact that Byron claimed that it cured his spleen attacks. The next mention I saw was in the great master of wine Michael Broadbent’s book, “Vin-tage Wine.” It turns out to be a favorite of Broadbent’s, too, and he rates many vintages of Chasse-Spleen highly. Then, to my delight, I found the 1999 vintage at Sherry-Lehman for a mere $21 a bottle. That one bottle was great, but by the time I made it back to the store, they had sold out. Obviously, someone else was onto what I thought was my secret discovery.

Thus began my love affair with Chasse-Spleen, and it’s still one of my favorite wines. Chasse-Spleen was ignored by the Bordeaux Classification of 1855, for what-ever reason, although it’s possible that the chateau was not so memorably named by then, even though Byron’s visit took place in 1821. One of the results is that the price has remained reasonable, despite the fact that it often performs at the level of a fourth or fifth growth. A classification in 1932 rated Chasse-Spleen and five other chateaux, Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel. Another wine to look for is Chasse-Spleen’s direct competitor in Moulis, Chateau Pou-jeaux, and another fine Moulis wine, Cha-teau Maucaillou.

Chasse-Spleen’s style is slightly hard to

place. St. Estephe? Maybe a little. St. Julien? Sometimes. Pauillac? No. It comes from the appellation of Moulis, which is good enough to rate its own appellation within the Haut Medoc, but it’s still not on the level of the big four of the Northern Medoc: St. Es-tephe, Pauillac, Margaux and St. Julien. One of the only other unclassified wines that consistently scores higher is Sociando-Mal-let, which is more tannic and austere. I per-sonally prefer Chasse-Spleen for its elegant, friendly personality, and its legend.

I have never had a bad bottle of Chasse-Spleen, which is a blend of 73% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot and 7% Petit Ver-dot. The 2000 was gloriously complex and precocious after the easy but solid 1999. The 2001 was elegant and tasty, yet slightly commercial in style. The 2002, a more clas-sical vintage, was big-boned and full-bod-ied, with great fruit and a seductive rustic-ity. I greatly enjoyed the 2004, but the 2006 was more memorable, with an ethereal texture and good flavor concentration. I’ve been resisting opening my 2005 but will look as always for any new vintages, 2007 and 2008 being in the marketplace right now. The most heralded vintage of Chasse-Spleen in modern times is the 1989, but it’s possible that when the 2000 reaches matu-rity, it will challenge that wine.

Unfortunately, as Bordeaux prices have gone through the roof, the attractiveness of Chasse-Spleen has also increased, as it rep-resents classed growth quality at a reason-able price. Translation: it’s getting a little harder to find although the production is not small, with around 280,000 bottles of the grand vin made in each vintage.

If you are watching a phantasmagori-cal movie about a decadent poet, why not drink the wine that he loved? Dream a little — reality can wait. Chasse-Spleen has at-mosphere, in addition to its many earthly charms.

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By Bobb Goldsteinn

Our own Edna St. Vincent Millay must be turning over in her grave. First, she lost the hospital after whom she was named (St. Vincent’s was where her uncle’s life was saved right before she was born), and to where she would later return when her candle needed a new wick. (It was burnt at both ends; the poet loved to party — she’d die at 58.)

Now, on the heels of her beloved hospi-tal closing, it appears that Millay is losing the Cherry Lane Theatre at 78 Commerce Street as well, the theatre that she — and some of her colleagues from the Province-town Playhouse — “perpetuated” in the West Village in 1924.

As a Downtown treasure, the end of the Cherry Lane is not to be taken lightly. It is one of the theatrical peaks of Village history, living and dying second only to its neighbor and predecessor, the Provincetown Playhouse near Washington Square, which opened for business in 1918 with the works of Eugene O’Neill and friends, and was demolished in 2008 by its latest owner, New York University.

The Cherry Lane building itself has an interesting history. It wasn’t built to be a theatre, but a brewery that after some re-modeling became a tobacco warehouse and after that, a box factory. (Drinking! Smok-ing! Boxing!)

The abandoned premises were renovated for Millay and her crowd in 1924 and trans-formed into a playhouse with great sight-lines and some arts-and-crafty touches, courtesy of the marvelously named scenic designer Cleon Throckmorton, fresh from his great successes with the “Greenwich Village Follies of 1922” and “All God’s Chillun Got Wings.” Throckmorton was also responsible for selecting the canvas aw-ning that juts out over the sidewalk, quite different from the boxy, hard-bodied mar-quee that looms over the doors of the Lu-cille Lortel Theatre just three blocks up on Christopher Street where, courtesy of Lor-tel’s last will and endowment, it continues to remain open and is not for sale.

The cheery Cherry Lane was home to Edward Albee, Samuel Beckett and Anton Chekhov (think “cherry tree” and “Cherry Orchard”). It was the first home to Julian Beck and Judith Molina’s Living Theatre, and the first American stage to house the Theatre of the Absurd (which Albee called “Absurd Theatre”).

The house was key to the early efforts of Albee and his producing partners, Richard Barr and Clinton Wilder, who were the first to present the playwright on stage in New York. The three also managed the theatre in the late ’60s, opening its stage to extremely experimental works. There was a one-act play called “Balls,” starring a pair of spot-

lighted balls swinging back and forth in opposite pendulum arcs across a darkened stage while they addressed each other. Like Beckett, but without the bodies.

Stephen Schwartz’s hearty perennial “Godspell” (soon returning to Broadway) began life as a doctoral thesis at Carnegie Mellon, and after workshops and a tryout at La MaMa, moved to the Cherry Lane where it “Day-by-Day’d” itself into our hearts.

Dan Goggin’s “Nunsense” was born as a line of greeting cards, which then drew its first breath as a cabaret revue at the Old Duplex in 1983. Expanded into a full the-atre evening, the risqué antics of the “Little Sisters of Hoboken” (perhaps the show’s original target audience, since it was not too far from a PATH stop) first tripped the stage of the Cherry Lane on its way to be-coming what the New York Times recently labeled “A comic mini-empire that shows no signs of slowing down.”

Along with mass approval came the “hot” ticket sales, which provided the theatre with a long stretch of financial stability. This boon to the box office was later repeated hundreds of times at struggling theatres across the land, which would book the good sisters, knowing full well that the money was on its way, in the same way that the yearly mountings of “The Nutcracker” keep ballet companies in toe shoes and pick-up orchestras. Perhaps this was the real reason behind the show’s 25th Anniversary return of “Nunsense” to the Cherry Lane stage in June of 2010.

The three performance spaces are cur-rently owned by Mme. Angelina Fiordellisi — a former “Zorba” and “Man of La Man-cha” chorus member. They include a main stage with 179 seats and a small stage with 60 (known by various names over the years, like The Studio, The Annex and, according to Villager Ken Geist, who worked there in the ’60s, “the first gay dancing bar in New York City”).

The third space, originally called the Bank Street Theatre, was renamed The Cherry Pit. It became a source of some con-

R.I.P.: The Cherry Lane Theatre

A THEATRICAL PEAK: The Cherry Lane Theatre opened in 1924. From the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts/ Billy Rose Theatre Division.

BOBB GOLDSTEINN

After 85 years of theatre history, the curtain falls on another local stage. fusion when ticket holders thought The Pit was The Annex and would appear around show time on Commerce Street rather than on Bank, some nine uneven blocks away.

Mme. Fiordellisi was not really known to New York’s Off-Broadway theatre commu-nity when she bought the landmark in 1996 with her husband, writer/producer/director Matt Williams, who had just been named one of “TV’s Biggest Power Players” of the year by the Los Angeles Times.

With TV credits, like “The Cosby Show,” “Roseanne” and “Home Improvement,” and movies, such as “Where the Heart Is” and “What Women Want,” Williams was a Hollywood brand name, in a position to do anything he wanted. And what he — or his wife — wanted was to own and run a New York City Off-Broadway playhouse. And not just any playhouse, but the esteemed Cherry Lane (minus The Pit), and for $1.7 million, this “playhouse” became theirs.

Ten years into Fiordellisi and Williams’ 15-year run, the two decided to modernize the plant, spending over $2 million more on extensive — and expensive — renova-tions, making almost new everything: roof beams, box office, plumbing, bathrooms, main stage, lights, sound, seats.

The Williams’ also finally addressed the mystery of the body of water that magically appeared under the first four rows of the auditorium seats when it rained. (As an ar-chitect, Throckmorton wasn’t perfect.)

And then there’s the enthusiastic sched-ule of themed serial projects that Mme. Fiordellisi has put into play: the Heritage Series, a Discovery Series, a Mentor Proj-ect, a Black Playwrights Celebration, a Women Playwrights Celebration, a Master Class and something called “Tongues,” to name a few. But did any of these projects have the mass appeal of a “Godspell” or a “Nunsense”?

“Right now, I think people need levity and humor,” offered Mme. Fiordellisi to The Times, justifying the revival of “Nun-sense,” which the paper labeled “a fluffy en-try in its Heritage Series of revivals of clas-sics that had their debuts there, like ‘Happy

Days’ by Beckett and ‘Dutchman’ by Amiri Baraka,” the former LeRoi Jones.

Fiordellisi went on to say that with fi-nancing down 40 percent from last season, she hopes “Nunsense” “draws summer tour-ists [who] will help us out of the hole.”

These are really tough times for all the arts. The New Rich don’t view opera or bal-let, the symphony or theatre as mandatory social scenes anymore, and a right-creeping government with an aging constituency continues to cut back on art endowments and patronage. (One of the reasons, says Mme. Fiordellisi, for the current financial plight of the Cherry Lane.)

Worst of all, we are not living in an age of brilliant managers in the performing arts of America. No Papp, No Merrick, No Hurok. Yes, there are a few exceptions out there, like Peter Gelb, general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, and Bernard Gersten, executive producer of Lincoln Center The-ater, and those people over at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. But two swallows doth not a mouthful make.

And then there is the hard-core reality of running a small urban theatre that can only stay afloat with success, and success means the meat and potatoes of “a real hit,” some-thing Fiordellisi hasn’t had the entire time she’s been operating the theatre. Perhaps it was this hard-earned truth that finally led the lady to the expensive realization that she shared with Playbill.com. last Decem-ber: “We have to adhere to the formula of having a film star in our productions to sell tickets because it's so financially prohibi-tive. I don't want to do theatre like that," she lamented.

Now the Williams’ are ready to fold up shop. That is, if some buyer is willing to kick in $13 million to make the couple whole, with something thrown in for “pain and suffering.” But the price would seem more “realistic” if the enterprise being of-fered were an ongoing success rather than another caper that bears the scent of dilet-tantism and vanity theatre.

So for now, the Williams’ bide their time until they can turn off the ghost light, broom-clean the premises, lock the doors and hand over the keys to a new owner.

Bobb Goldsteinn, WestView's Theatre Editor, comes from a multimedia background that would defy rational explanation if it were not for Wikipedia.

A LATER GENERATION: Edward Albee, seen here with Angelina Fiordellisi, and his contempo-raries kept the pioneering spirit alive. Photo by Peter Zielinski.

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