A blog about New York City, my books, and my cats. Mostly.
The windows in my apartment were so old and falling apart bats could fly in. For real. Proof here. I had a mosquito problem which I’ve posted about, and I was sure I would one day die from some mosquito born illness. Well, the city told my landlord he had to fix all the windows and he put in new windows instead! But look who christened my nice, brand-new windows!
I’m going to be giving a talk about my book Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad, and Criminal in 19th-Century New York, at the Merchant’s House Museum, 29 East Fourth Street.
UPDATE: I just learned that we are rescheduling this for October. I will be back when we’ve worked out the new date.
On September 29th, I’ll be at the History Book Festival in Lewes, DE, where I will be interviewed about my book and the history of Blackwell’s Island by the esteemed Dr. Jeffrey Fried (Blanche Wiesen Cook is giving the keynote address for the conference, by the way!).
From the launch event for my book, hosted by Untapped Cities.
A shot of the subway platform at the Franklin Street stop. When Aretha Franklin died riders put up signs changing Franklin Street to Aretha Franklin Street, as an homage. Apparently the MTA added the signs saying respect.
When Echo had offices in Tribeca this was our subway stop. So I have intense nostalgia for this stop. Those were such great, exciting days. I was going to say, “not that these aren’t great days too,” except they’re not! I will hope for greatness again soon.
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.
