Month: March 2012

I only just realized that this year is the 100 year anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. You’d think you’d be hearing a lot about the Titanic and that there’d be tons of events to commemorate the date. I googled it and found almost nothing. There’s a memorial cruise, the National Geographic Museum in Washington is planning an exhibit, they’re releasing the movie Titanic in 3D. Oh! Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey) is doing a miniseries. That could be good.

I went downtown to the site of the former White Star offices, where the crowds went to learn news of the ship and the survivors. Their offices were at 9 Broadway, which is at the bottom of Broadway, and of New York. It’s very narrow there so I couldn’t get back far enough to get the shot I wanted. It was driving me crazy.

9 Broadway is the one with all the flags out front. I think this might have been the building I was considering as the home for Echo in the 1990’s. I wish I had this thing called … what is it called again? Oh, right. A memory.

I took this shot from the other side of the park pictured above.

Travel writer Daisann McLane (whose Ghosts of Hong Kong article won the 2011 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Gold prize) recently tweeted about how realtors in Hong Kong list apartments where people died, mostly by suicide. I just read through a page. I noticed that a lot of them killed themselves by “burning charcoal,” which I’ve never heard of. According to Wikipedia burning charcoal in a small, closed room is a popular method of killing yourself because it’s supposedly painless (although it might not be). Oh, the method was invented in Hong Kong!

“In order to prevent charcoal burning, the Hong Kong Government replaced the traditional countryside charcoal barbecue with an electric grill. Some non-government organizations worked with charcoal retailers to promote the message of “treasure your life” by putting “seek help” labels on the charcoal bags.”

Here is a sample:

“Young female texted and asked her boyfriend to meet her but he sent his sister instead. Victim jumped off the building in front of the sister.”

“99 years old male jumped off the building with no clothes while his wife went to the washroom.”

“Primary school teacher who broke up with her boyfriend, jumped off the building with a thick make-up.”

“Angry male chopped his ex-lover and jumped off the building.”

You can read more here.

A pawn shop on 14th Street. Lately I’ve become fascinated with pawn shops. The next step is actually going in one, but for some reason they also frighten me so I’m working myself up for it.

I thought I would show how One World Trade Center is coming along. The comparison view is not the same alas, but you get the idea. I took this yesterday from the cemetery behind St. Paul’s Chapel. You can see the different by comparing 1WTC to the building on its right.

This was in August, 2011.

For people like me, the release of the 1940 Census data is like Christmas to the infinity power. (More information from the National Archives here.) When I was working at the Census in 2010 and people asked me, “why do I have to answer all these questions,” it was so easy to answer! I would tell them all that I’d learned about my grandparents and great-grandparents from Census reports, and pretty soon they’d be asking me how they could access the reports themselves.

I’ve gone back to Census reports for every book I’ve written. For my book about singing for instance, I needed to track down Herman Melville’s apartment near Grace Church, and to confirm various facts about the sad story of Alexander Hamilton’s granddaughters. It’s endless!

Apparently the 1940 Census had a bunch of extra questions and I just can’t wait to see what I can learn both about my family, and all the famous and interesting people living in New York (and all over American) in 1940.

The New York Public Library is having an all-day program/event on March 24th. Response has been so tremendous they had to move it to a bigger venue so hurry up and reserve now if you’d like to go.

I was down at St. Paul’s Chapel this afternoon for their fantastic Bach at One series. You get to hear the world-class Trinity Choir and Trinity Baroque Orchestra for whatever you wish to donate. It’s a great deal.

I took this shot out front and …

… this was inside while we were all waiting. I love that Oklahoma sign (from the 9/11 days). I will always have a soft spot in my heart for Oklahoma because of that sign. (I have a million soft spots in my heart for other signs and other gestures from all over the country and the world.)

Last week I posted about a man named Steven Santiago who pulled a drunken guy from the train tracks and who later died from injuries sustained in the rescue. According to the stories I read, the man rescued, Jonathan Parisen, never thanked Steven or his family, or visited him in the hospital. I posted Parisen’s tweets following the accident. They were not the tweets of a man who seemed to be given Santiago any thought.

Well, a couple of days ago someone anonymously posted another version of this story on Huffington Post. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s certainly plausible, and the people who reported this story should follow up on it.

Here is the post, my take on it follows:

“This story is chock full of mistakes and bad reporting. There were only three people on that platform when the accident occurred. Parisen and his friend explained that Jonathan fell onto the tracks, he didn’t jump. When Steven and Jonathan’s friend helped the filmmaker onto the platform he was never in any imminent danger as the train was nowhere near the station. In fact Steven was struck by the train a few minutes after helping Parisen up onto the platform. Parisen and his friend weren’t even near Steven when he was hit, they were on the other side of the platform. Also what was never mentioned was that Parisen’s friend performed C.P.R. on Steven until the ambulance arrived. It is sad that Steven died but he was also intoxicated and that likely played into why he stumbled over. it was nice of him to help Parisen onto the platform but he certainly didn’t risk his life doing so. The news is so full of crap and they make up blatant lies to juice up a story to sell newspapers.”

I suspect that was posted by Parisen himself (or at the very least, a friend of his), and there is still a certain callousness to how this side of the story is presented. It’s a little unseemly how the poster is making an effort to portray Santiago not as a hero, but a nice drunk whose fate was his own fault. If Santiago hadn’t been there to help, perhaps Parisen’s friend would not have been able to get him off the tracks in time before a train did come. Either way, since there’s really no way of knowing how helping Parisen played into Santiago’s accident afterwards, there just seems to be such a lack of feeling about his death both in the post and in all of Parisen’s tweets later. Parisen was lucky Santiago was around to help him, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of sympathy for Santiago, who was less lucky. It’s too bad no one was there to pull Santiago back and say, “hey buddy, that’s getting a little too close to that oncoming train.”

That said, if this is true, Parisen is not the monster he’s been made out to be. If the post is a little self-serving and more about Parisen than Santiago, it’s understandable. The media, people commenting, myself included, have really been going at the guy. He still comes off as unfeeling, but as I posted earlier, everyone reacts differently to terrible things. We can’t really know what’s going on inside the guy.

Again, I don’t know if any of what the poster wrote is true, but I wish the reporters who broke this story would follow up on it.

Discarded Christmas trees. This shot is obviously a few months old!