Sunday, February 20, 2011

New Yorker Hotel

Opened in 1930, the New Yorker is a classic example of the Art Deco style, with its setbacks and bands of friezes.

Bad times in the Big Apple led to the hotel closing in 1972, but it was resurrected and renovated in the '90s, restoring a touch of class to the Garment District.

Friday, February 18, 2011

DUMBO

A view of the Manhattan Bridge from Washington Street in Brooklyn.

The up-and-coming neighborhood is now called "DUMBO", for Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass.

Brooklyn Tower

Here's the Brooklyn-side (eastern) tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. looking up through the spider web of cables and stays designed and built over 100 years ago.

Woman on Steps

This is part of the monumental facade of the main NYC post office, zip code 10001.

On the entablature resting atop the Corinthian colonnade is the famous inscription, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Friday, February 11, 2011

האָוואַרד לייענת ייִדיש

A portrait of my friend and distinguished colleague, Howard.

Among other things, he's distinguished because when he joined our little team at the University, he was issued an ID card that says "Faculty," instead of "Staff," as it was supposed to be. So since then, I've referred to him as "Professor."

One day last December, as Howard and I arrived at our Light Rail destination in the morning, we got an alert from work that our building had lost power, and that they didn't expect it to be restord until late afternoon... so they were telling everyone to go home for the day. Howard and I decided to stay on the Light Rail and ride it to the northern end of the line - a nice 45 minute journey northward.

One the way back, I remembered that I had with me a copy of the "Forverts" ("Forward",) a Yiddish newspaper I had brought back from New York some months earlier. I bought it strictly for photographic purposes - I thought it would be humorous to take pictures of people who you wouldn't expect to be reading a Yiddish publication - and Howard fit the bill. I still have to arrange to take a picture of it with one of my Asian friends.

For a while, we had this photo posted in our office between our desks as a way of showing how learned Professor Howard really was!

In case you were wondering, the title of this post is, "Howard laynt Yeedish", which simply means "Howard reads Yiddish."