New York City NYC - 5 Boroughs - Topical

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Mayor de Blasio to Boycott New York's Bigoted St. Patrick's Day Parade

Mayor de Blasio breaks tradition, boycotts St. Patrick's Day Parade over gay-pride ban

The St. Patrick's Day Parade does not ban gays from participating in the parade, but it does not allow them to identify themselves by their sexual orientation. De Blasio says he disagress with that policy.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/de-blasio-boycotts-st-patrick-day-parade-gay-pride-article-1.1602586

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Rest in Peace Mister Mayor - Ed Koch - 1924 / 2013

Ed Koch - Mayor of New York City 1978-1989

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Koch

Old Ed was perhaps to some a few points shy of the Jewish “mashugana” bizarre label. In a town as diverse and crazy as New York can get he was a consolation prize or Kewpie Doll in the crowded 1977 Democratic  primary race for mayor, which he was shortly labeled  as at his beginning in office which an older co-worker called him, repeated from the newspapers, and she got a satisfying chuckle of it every time she used the label "Kewpie Doll".

Shirley MacLaine described him as “gay” in her first book Out On a Limb without directly saying who he was and describing that one particular politician who was predicted to run for mayor by some South American Phychic or such as just another politician hanging around the NYC scene before he was mayor.

I think like in Shirley’s book, nobody really publicly outed people in the old days and I think Ed just couldn’t be bothered with the baggage attached to a “I am a Gay man” standup comedy routine. He was of his generation and its traditions to the bitter end. (Some matters personal and private are best left personal and private.)

He was a natural salesman and talker and put the old burned out post war city back on track to the future as its PR spokesman and symbol.

His running for a fourth term was a mistake. Twelve years of anybody including FDR is enough in any democracy.

My own memories of him.

I remember him rounding a corner around 23rd and Broadway on the way to a street fair I and a girlfriend had just left and he was surrounded by something like six, six foot five feet plus tall police detectives / bodyguards in suits, some them almost running trying to keep up with Koch already ahead of them on his way to dazzle the crowds. Ed was tall. Wow. And no guns showing. Where’s the beef? Right there up in your face, that entourage. LOL

I shook his hand somewhere at one of those Sunday street fairs as a hand reaching out of a crowd surrounding him. He had an iron handshake grip even for a brief shake. He also had a great personal up front in your face presence / charisma.

In his retirement he had an office in my building at Sixth Avenue and 51st Street, Rockefeller Center, but on an entirely different floor, different elevator bank. I said a distant hello to him maybe a half dozen times over the years usually on the street and I think he walked from the Lexington Avenue subway line to his office every morning.

I once did see some very enthusiastic young female tourist in a backpack out front asking him for an autograph etc. But Ed’s all but drooling attention was on the girl’s twenty year old or so boyfriend with her. The boyfriend’s face was beet red in embarrassment.

He was fond of Roman Catholic Ritual and I think might have converted but he decided to keep it Jewish for political harmony sake.

Bought a cemetery plot in Harlem at 155th and Broadway in an Episcopalian graveyard several years ago, one of the last open cemeteries in the city, with a great view of the city further downtown for $20,000.

His only request to the Episcopalians who were glad to have him was for the entrance to the graveyard nearest his grave be labeled “Jews' Gate” after he was put to rest there.

Rest in peace Mr. Mayor.

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World Trade Center Transportation Hub - New York City

Left part of structure blocks view of surviving St. Paul's Chapel Downtown in New York City.

Saint Paul's Chapel Downtown - Present

Saint Paul's Chapel Downtown (foreground left) - Past

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Cardinal Dolan’s Throne – Big Enough for his Fat Evil Ass? – Bishop’s Bonus for Pedophiles

Cardinal Timothy Dolan's Throne in St. Patrick's Cathedral NYC

“What does it profit a man (or a bishop) if he gain the whole world and lose his immortal soul”

We lowly peasants are so lucky in our lifetime to see the death of democracy in America and the rise from the ashes of the royal priestly order of the Roman Pagan Church.

Above is the royal throne of Cardinal Dolan in New York City.  You can join the tourists anytime and do a walkthrough of St. Patrick’s Cathedral even with the ongoing Mass ritual thing on stage.  You’ll have to wait in between performances to get near and take pictures of His Eminence’s throne.

From the similar throne in Milwaukee, below, Timothy darling dispensed Church bribe bonuses to child raping pedophiles for their good work in their church as an offer to leave.  Presuming their guilt as abusers of children, Archbishop Dolan never once thought to call the cops.  His has a higher calling to the Pope, the Vatican Bank and his own corrupt ambitions to become pope.

The pedophile priests were also offered pensions and health care that included a Viagra medication benefit.  Wink. Nod.  Great job boys! (Timmy smiley face.)

The idea and revulsion of a throne in America, Cardinal Dolan's Throne in particular, was brought up in another blog Slacktivist written by a Baptist who backed down in a future blog and apologized for being anti-Catholic.  

Being against evil Catholic clerics, or the obscene anti-humanist Pagan symbols of their office - is no sin.  Sorry the power and prestige of men walking around in $30,000 Cardinal outfits can brow beat down morality among so many milk toast Protestants. 

“The mediocre I vomit them out.”

Archbishop Dolan's Throne in St John the Evangelist Cathedral Milwaukee
from whence were distributed the Bishop's Bonus to Pedophiles

"The road to HELL is lined with the skulls of Roman Catholic Bishops." Wink. Nod. 

Donald Trump - Toxic Credence

Toxic Credence = Orwellian Political Speak 


(i.e. Fox News, RNC talking points etc.)


The Donald has never met a man or woman he would not could not  cheat. 


His new proposed network show = Bankrupt This!


When the rubes dry up in New York City, time to find a new market of rubes to buy overpriced, substandard Donald Product whatever it happens to be at the moment.  Not unlike the substandard apartment buildings and Bridge that his father built. 


Donald on Mitt.  Bring them Mormon rubes on. It's an untapped market.  

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In Search of Innisfree

IN SEARCH OF INNISFREE



In Innisfree upon the lake

Frosted in morning haze

There hides a shrine on magic isle

That misses the gaze of day.



In temple forgotten by time

An ancient secret abides

While slowly it sits

In calm and stately decay

Beneath faded gilt tiles of clay.



No lock bars the doors

Ready to open wide

No person but self

Can look inside to see

A secret true here reside

And touch a formless majesty.



Wherein doth lie

A sacred orb of light.

A center set firm and right.

By creator's quest

in search for inner sight.

Amid the threads

Of mortal tapestry.

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(At a certain angle and with certain light and low lying clouds, I saw magic one day as I viewed the tops of three buildings in downtown Manhattan from a sixteenth story window. The Golden Boy on top of the old ATT building mixed with the wedding cake and gilt statues of the Municipal Services Building along with the temple looking top of the old Federal Court Building. They all seemed to be floating on an island cloud and I was reminded of some lines by Yeats. - 1978)

Goodbye to the Y2Kays Decade

Remember all of the hype and B.S. about how the world was going to end in the year 2000 – Y2K ?

Our computers all over the planet were going to shut down over the supposed glitch that dumb computers would be too stupid to recognize the first two digits 20 of the year 2000 – as opposed to computers built in the twentieth century with the two digit prefix of 19—as in 1999 etc.

I think one nuclear power plant in Japan shut itself down. Other than that, air traffic control, street lights and electricity kept running. What a sorry disappointment that PR fear campaign was.

We had made a journey back east to New York from Arizona in 1999 only to come up against - in your face – too close - to 911 and its very nasty effects and collateral damage.

The world did not come to an end in the 2000’s or Y2Kays or the Naughties.

It was a hard decade to slog through for some of us but we made it. If we are still here in one piece, I guess we can indeed brag about it.

The world never seems to truly end. Does it? No matter what any so-called current in vogue prophecy says. It ends when it ends and not before.

Something perhaps in the universal program of randomness and the drive to carry on and to evolve.

Ran into this on a blog and it brought me close to tears. Even I can’t say everything. This says a lot to me. I hope it says things to you as well.

…
To my friends the Americans
in which this decade has hollowed your land
raped your soul
and left your spirit bruised and battered
may you find solace,
may you find peace,
may you find your light again…

“The Dude” – a blogger

Best wishes for the new calendar year to you all.

O. Henry - The Gift of the Magi

William Sydney Porter was born in North Carolina, lived some time in Austin Texas, Central America, Ohio (Penitentiary) and of course New York City.

Among many other careers as a Pharmacist, Draftsman, Bank Teller and Journalist, his career in writing was a sideline that he developed and refined later in life.

While in prison in Ohio for embezzlement, working as a Pharmacist on the prison hospital’s night shift, he found the time to write. He started to send items to a friend who would pass them along to magazines in New York. According to one popular legend the penname of O.Henry comes from OHio pENitentiRY.

After prison he went to New York and churned out hundreds of short stories more like small sketches or vignettes of everyday street life and common people living in the Big Apple of that turn of the twentieth century era. It was enough to pay the rent and imbibe whiskey which probably was a direct cause of late in life illnesses and his death.

He definitely is part of the fabric of American literature. He was somewhat forgotten for decades until some of his short stories became staples of movies and even remakes of the same movies over time. The Soviets issued a postage stamp on the hundredth anniversary of his birth much to the embarrassment of the American literacy scene.

The short story of “The Gift of the Magi” has been made and remade many times as the basis of television and movie story lines. It is a short poignant tale of young love and sacrifice for the sake of giving. No doubt the part of the young wife is reflective of the author’s first wife before her early death.

He is buried in North Carolina with his one child, a daughter.


The Gift of the Magi

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty- seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young."

The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, though, they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked out dully at a gray cat walking a gray fence in a gray backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling--something just a little bit near to being worthy of the honor of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its color within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her rippling and shining like a cascade of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mne. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

"Will you buy my hair?" asked Della.

"I buy hair," said Madame. "Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it."

Down rippled the brown cascade.

"Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

"Give it to me quick," said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation--as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value--the description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends--a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

"If Jim doesn't kill me," she said to herself, "before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do--oh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty- seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a habit for saying little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she whispered: "Please God, make him think I am still pretty."

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two--and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

"Jim, darling," she cried, "don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out again--you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say `Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice-- what a beautiful, nice gift I've got for you."

"You've cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.

"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without my hair, ain't I?"

Jim looked about the room curiously.

"You say your hair is gone?" he said, with an air almost of idiocy.

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell you--sold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year--what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a while at first."

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs--the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rims--just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"

And them Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

"Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it."

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of his head and smiled.

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise men--wonderfully wise men--who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.