Month: September 2018

I went to a show at the Museum of the City of New York yesterday titled, Germ City: Microbes and the Metropolis. I became interested in this subject while researching Blackwell’s Island, when I learned about the early days of what was then called the Metropolitan Board of Health.

It’s all so utterly fascinating! How do we transmit disease and death and what have we done over the centuries to stop it? I could have wandered through many more rooms of the kinds of objects they had, and they have some great talks related to the subject coming up. The exhibit is a collaboration between the New York Academy of Medicine, who also has some interesting talks about the history of fighting disease coming up, (the NYAM was a big help with my Blackwell’s research) and Wellcome, who is working on an international project called Contagious Cities. And WNYC just did a piece about the 1918 influenza epidemic.

I walked through the northern end of Central Park to get to the museum. I really should spend more time in the park.

If I see turtles I must take a picture of them, it seems.

As Claire Evans travels around the world talking about her new book Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet, friends have been sending pictures of me appearing in her slide show (Claire writes about Echo in her book). It’s fun to see them.

You can see me and Claire, and Jaime Levy and Marisa Bowe, who were also featured in her book, talk about the old days at a presentation at the New Museum here.

Bali and Bodhi were kinda ratty looking when I adopted them. Some people at the ASPCA were a little surprised when I picked them, because there were so many ridiculously cute kittens I could have taken instead. But for those who don’t know the back story, Bodhi almost died on my watch (I was working at the ASPCA Kitten Nursery). When he pulled through I had to take him, and I couldn’t leave his brother Bali alone, so I took them both.

One of my favorite presidents. This is the statue of him at the Museum of Natural History. It’s kinda racist, isn’t it? There’s a native American on one side of him and an African on the other. It gives a subservient, walking-below-the-great-man feel to the statue. I just googled it and sure enough, there have been calls for its removal.

Another shot from my walk down Central Park West. This is looking into the lobby of one of the luxury buildings I passed by.