Month: September 2009

I passed by this bowl of what looks like meatballs earlier today. My only guess is that someone left it out for any dogs that pass by.

When Barbara Streisand is a couple of blocks away at the Village Vanguard getting ready for a performance. (It’s the 40th anniversary of her appearance there, I read.) I managed to get a picture of the crowd out back before my battery died. Thanks a lot, camera.

I watched this scene from Glee repeatedly last night. And the opening when Kirk did it. And I teared up with that last scene with Kirk and his dad.

If you haven’t seen this, hang in there until the football players dance. I don’t know if it will be as moving if you haven’t seen all that led up to it, but man was it great.

Thank you everyone from Glee.

I passed by this plaque on 10th Street the other day. In case anyone has trouble reading it, it says: In memory of Leonard E. Seelig, 1930 – 1971, Tenth Street Residents Against the War in Vietnam.

I thought he must have died in the war, but I couldn’t find his name on any of the lists of the dead. Then, given who had installed the plaque I thought perhaps he died in a protest against the war or something?

I went to the library. According to a New York Times piece, on October 3rd “he was killed instantly when the car driven by his wife, Helen Lewis Seelig, went out of control and turned over.” His wife was not seriously injured. So it turns out that he was a labor organizer most of his life. I found another article from 1954, where he was arrested for participating in a sit-in demonstration at the New York Office of South Africa’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations to protest that government’s arrest of 4,000 anti-apartheid protesters.

It looks like the story was he was a good man who tried to do good things and he was much loved by his neighbors. He had three sons too, David, Gustave and Frederick.

I found one reference to the Tenth Street Residents Opposed to the War in Vietnam in a November 5, 1967 Times piece. “This past September, the one-shot ‘Tenth Street Peace Fair,’ staged by the ‘Tenth Street Residents Opposed to the War in Vietnam,’ mounted a ‘spontaneus, random sampling,’ of work by New York artists opposed to the war in Vietnam. They included Peter Agostini, Alan D’Arcangelo, Roy Lichtenstein, Knox Martin and George Sugarman.”

I went downtown last night to hear a presentation from the survivors of staircase b in the north tower. When I was one of the people reading names on 9/11 I stood behind one of them while we were waiting to go up and read names, although I didn’t know it at the time. I just took his picture because I liked his face. His name is Mickey Kross.

Mickey was there last night, with 13 other survivors.

He’s a docent at the Tribute Center where I volunteer. Although Mickey said, “I don’t call myself that. That’s a girly word.” It was funny the way he said it.

I’ve got a lot more pictures, and pictures of most of the survivors who were there (it felt rude to take pictures somehow, and only got the ones I did because someone coaxed me) but I’m still editing them.

But I wanted to also upload the picture of what was once called the Freedom Tower. I’m pretty sure they’re not going to call it that anymore, thank god. I hated that name with a passion.

I want all the buildings to be called the World Trade Center.

This will count as my before shot. I’ll bring this back out whenever the tower is finished. Actually, maybe one of the others will be better. Anyway, here is how it looks now. I like how colorful it looks.