Author: ssw15

What? “Retiree Found Guilty, Juror Found Tipsy, and Verdict Stands” – a 9/16/04 article – according to the NY Times article, written by Michael Wilson:

The jury’s verdict on March 2 was guilty: a retired firefighter convicted of stealing souvenirs while volunteering at ground zero. Six weeks later, his lawyers appealed, arguing not over the testimony at the trial, but over the jury that decided the verdict.

Specifically, the lawyers argued, Juror No. 4 was drunk. They said that after the guilty verdict, he approached the defendant, his brother, wife and lawyers, wobbly and glassy-eyed, to apologize for finding him guilty and telling him that he understood how difficult it must have been to work at the World Trade Center site. Someone smelled alcohol on his breath. [At a subsequent hearing, he testified that h]e had drained two-thirds of the bottle during deliberations, and after the verdict was read he took a last “big swig”[.]

Yesterday, Justice Ellen M. Coin of State Supreme Court in Manhattan issued her ruling: the verdict should stand.

The reason? There is apparently no law against drinking while serving as a juror and deliberating the fate of a fellow New Yorker.

Justice Coin ruled that Juror No. 4’s conduct fell far short of being considered misconduct, that it was not inappropriate enough to have altered the outcome of the case.

Prosecutors, pleased with their guilty verdicts against the firefighter, argued that there was no proof that Juror No. 4 was drunk while serving and found court rulings that said it would not have really mattered if he had been.

Umm. Well, I guess this one juror’s idiocy didn’t affect the verdict, but it doesn’t serve the appearance of justice. That’s just me.

I’ve been enjoying the Daisann McLane diary entries “Dispatches From Hong Kong” on Slate.com. Her entry on figuring out Cantonese was really amusing. Makes me feel good that maybe my issues with the mother tongue are justified…

I didn’t quite watch the Emmies last night. The orchestra kept cutting the speeches of the winners, which really annoyed me, so I turned to watching news instead. Lame. So lame to play the violins on speeches just to end at 11:01pm. This is how tv honors itself?

Lovely September days weather wise this week. Enjoy.

Hmm. Will the hurricanes ever stop heading to Florida?? (and do the rains of the dissipating tropical storms have to come to NYC to ruin our otherwise perfectly nice weather of late?).

NY Times — it’s the return of William Grimes, the ex-restaurant critic turned culture critic. In this article, he takes a shine on the learn-how-to-cook-a-meal in 30-minutes shows and books. Apparently, writing those food reviews for years made him (gasp) into a food snob (aren’t all the food critics snobs? well, what do I know). But, give Grimes credit – now that he isn’t hassling the restaurants so much, he seems to have developed a witty sense of humor:

It is worth stating at the outset that there is good fast food and bad fast food, and speed has nothing to do with the difference between the two. Canned onion rings over canned green beans, a casserole dish I recall from childhood, may be the bad fast dish par excellence. At the opposite end of the scale I might place veal chops in sage-butter sauce spiked with a little vermouth, a simple Italian entree I have made many times. Both dishes take about 10 minutes to prepare. One is satisfying and delicious. The other is a crime against nature. No one should ever dine at a quality level lower than veal in sage-butter sauce. At least not at my house.

I am happy to report that Betty Crocker does not call for canned onion rings in her “Quick and Easy Cookbook,” but the recipes do cater to a middlebrow concept of fine cooking that leaves me cold. Betty takes a nonjudgmental attitude toward margarine versus butter. Frozen or canned ingredients she accepts as a fact of life and frozen fish, too. If you don’t want to mince garlic, it is O.K. to buy it minced in a bottle.

Betty has a new look and a new hairdo. She knows about couscous, chipotles and salsa. But her heart belongs to the 1950’s. How else to explain dishes like cheesy tuna broccoli skillet casserole or maple-mustard syrup as a sauce for asparagus? The recipes have a train-wreck fascination to them, and some of the photographs seem almost forensic. Fudge pudding cake, for example, looks like a heaping helping of Alpo.

Geez, Grimes – are you trying to hurt Ms. Crocker’s feelings (or that of the photographers her company retains anyway). Alpo? Lol…

After weeks of speculation (and pretty nasty back cover page coverage in the NYC tabloids), the NY Mets have finally made it official – manager Art Howe is out of here, after yet another Mets lousy season. However, Howe gets to pull a McGreevey – yeah, he’s out of the job, but not effective immediately. (meanwhile, in NJ, Governor McGreevey continues his job; his resignation isn’t official because it’s not in writing; and yet a bunch of lawyers are taking it to court to force him to go already, so to let the NJ’ites have special elections and avoid other succession issues, never mind that this resignation was due to less than pristine circumstances). (as for the Mets, there’s no sense yet of who’ll replace Howe; oh well. I won’t hold my breath on that anytime soon).

And so it goes. I get bemused by the news, whatever I read or watch.

Subway reading is all right. My reading of the Harry Potter series is delayed due to other reading (obviously I wasn’t going to finish the series by the end of the summer; perhaps I can pull it off by the end of the year?). I’m in the middle of “The Da Vinci Code.” Hmm. I’ll probably have an actual opinion on it once I’m done. Right now I just feel manipulated by the author (which means he’s not a bad writer, but he’s really working it so that this ends up being a Hollywood blockbuster movie with action scenes to pick).

TV viewing — well, I’ll say more once I get a better sense of what is going on the tube. (“Everwood” – got to catch the season premiere on my videotape; that “Jack & Bobby” show on WB – umm, yeah, I think I do have an opinion there).

Other projects otherwise take up time (the writing stuff and other artistic endeavors – oh, who am I kidding there on that end – the frustrated artist in Brooklyn — no new changes to the website, leave it as is)…. can’t wait for Friday…

It’s been awhile since a new posting, huh?

– Tuesday was Insane Commute Day, as New Yorkers endured with the pouring rain of the remnants of Hurrican Frances (in a short interval) flooded subways. Massive delays. A 45-minute commute took… 2 hours. N/M/R/D line not working? Can I get the F train? No, the platform’s too crowded and no train’s coming for at least 20 minutes. They’d say that the IRT’s working – but, how the hell does one get to the IRT when the N/M/R/D line can’t even get you the IRT line (even though one is a mere two local stops away… if only the stalled train can move…) and one can walk faster than the buses… Fortunately, it’s all better now. ‘Nuff said. (not like I want to go into greater detail on the trauma)…

— Today’s NY Times had some interesting stuff:
– Article on the litigation involving or regarding 9/11: “In Nation’s Courtrooms, Wounds From 9/11 Persist.” Writer Leslie Eaton closes poignantly:

Many 9/11 lawsuits have been disposed of this year, decided by judges or settled by plaintiffs and defendants. But history suggests that others may be around for a decade or longer.

After all, earlier this year a State Supreme Court justice refused to dismiss negligence claims against the Port Authority in what is known as the World Trade Center bombing litigation. It deals with the first terrorist attack on the trade center – the garage bombing in 1993.

– And, there’s this other article about World Trade Center and the memory of it, “Lost From Skyline, But Not From the Landscape.” Do you erase the image of the two towers from book covers and symbols and logos and so on, because they no longer exist in reality and the sight of the two towers causes pain, or do we preserve the images precisely because they are part of memory? David W. Dunlap writes with a lot of poignancy; at the risk of copying and pasting the last half of the article, Dunlap observes:

[The Alliance for Downtown New York, downtown Manhattan business improvement district] had to figure out what to do about street signs – designed by Pentagram and installed around the trade center site two months before the attack – illustrated with photos of the twin towers. Complicating the question is that visitors, perhaps more than ever, rely on these signs for direction in the absence of the towers themselves, which served as a kind of pole star.

“How do you picture absence?” asked Michael Bierut, a partner in Pentagram. At first, as an exercise, he tried to substitute the famous photograph of three firefighters raising the flag. But that felt exploitative, he said. After a few months, Mr. Bierut said, “It seemed that the more obvious thing to do was to use the picture we had used.” [I added the italics]

The Lefrak Organization [landlord/property manager] was ready to remove the mural [of World Trade Center] from 395 South End Avenue [in Battery Park City], which was vacated for months after the attack. “We thought it would be especially right,” Mr. LeFrak said. “The building that happens to have the artwork is the one that got the most damage.”

But tenants thought otherwise. “It would seem like giving up if you’d taken it down,” said Tammy Meltzer, who has lived in the building since 1996 and worked as a senior manager in the catering department at Windows on the World.

“It’s part of our history, part of our neighborhood, part of our community,” Ms. Meltzer said, “an integral part of what was and what will be again. Remembering where you’ve come from and remembering the past is never inappropriate.” [again, I added the italics]

Except for one original detail that simply had to be painted out, Mr. LeFrak said.

Two airplanes. On the horizon.

Poignancy; the Times is really packing its punches this week.

— The Towers of Light are ready for the tribute this weekend. Quite a sight.