Month: March 2014

I walked around my neighborhood to see how the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Anniversary was being commemorated. Here are pictures I took in 2011, the 100th anniversary, when the crowds were huge. It’s quieter this year. Normally you’d see chalk tributes like this one in front of the homes of every victim. Maybe they just haven’t gotten around to all of them yet, but I didn’t find a chalk tribute to all the victims in my neighborhood.

This is the actual building, with flowers out front. Someone always lays out flowers, with the name of a victim on each one. Note the tiny group of people.

I looked down and immediate found Gaetana Midolo, who lived the closest to me. She was only 16 years old, and she’d come to the U.S. from Italy when she was 14. Imagine moving to another country, so excited because of all the wonderful things you’ve learned about your new home, this paradise, and then you end up working at a sweatshop, which ultimately murders you.

There’s some confusion about where she lived. It says 143 Commerce Street on her death certificate, and that’s what most people go with, but that’s an error. There wasn’t a 143 Commerce Street in 1911. I found references to Commerce Street being longer than it now is, but according to 19th century maps it had already been shortened by the time Gaetana lived there. She couldn’t have lived at #143. Actually, I just found a 1794 map and it was the same length even back then. AND, I just found photographic proof, except I’m going to post that another day. I want to go back and shoot the same spot and do a “then and now” view.

I suspect she lived at 14 Commerce Street and some tired, harried, possibly distraught city employee inadvertently added an extra number to her death certificate. In any case, poor Gaetana was unlucky enough to have lived in a world where an employer can cause the death of over 100 children and young women and not a damn thing happens to them. This is why we need government to impose regulations. Oh God, I could go on, about how these girls picketed their conditions, saying they were dangerous and inhumane, and how New Yorkers spat on them, the NYPD roughed them up, and the courts threw them in jail. A year later, 146 of them died in this fire.

The book, YOU can sing in a choir or chorus, arrived in my mailbox recently, along with a lovely letter from the author, Richard J. Faber.

This is the perfect book for people who want to sing in a choir, but have zero experience, can’t read music and are afraid to start. Faber begins at the absolute beginning, he even covers how to learn a piece of music if you can’t read a single note.

His advice along those lines, by the way, make sense even if you can read music. I could read music when I first joined my choir, but I learned to read music in order to play piano and I didn’t really have the skill of translating the notes I could read into song. Until I developed that ability, when I first joined the choir I basically did everything he suggests in his book.

Oh wow. I just googled Faber to find a picture of him and I found this article about how he was awarded the French Legion of Honor medal in 2011 for his service during WWII. The photograph is from the article and it was taken by Blaine T. Shahan.

Faber has a long history of singing in a variety of choral groups (envy!) and he knows how great it feels and how fun it is. His desire for the reader to not miss out on this wonderful thing rings throughout his book.

But it’s working for me. I cannot resist that face. What would you like? Some food? Playtime? Whatever you want. Just please stop tormenting Finney.

Okay, not really. I was up on the roof to see what a ton of fire engines were up to about a half a block away. Then I noticed this shack with patio on a roof about a block away in the other direction. Oh! I see a barbecue as well. It looks like a nice place to sit and drink coffee, when it’s warmer. Hello neighbors! My name is Stacy.

I’ve been researching health insurance options. I don’t want to think anymore. Actually, I’ve probably been over-thinking this. I’m perfectly healthy, so for now I need to be concerned about accidents and hospital stays and as far as I can tell, for the plans I am considering they are all roughly the same.

Bottom line, I am about to save a TON of money. A TON. Thank you, Obamacare.