New York

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Architecture, Current Affairs, New York, Politics, Religion

At war with woe

September 11, 2011

Last night from the fire escape of our apartment my partner and I gazed downtown to take in the Manhattan skyline. There were our skyscrapers—the Chrysler Building, the Empire State Building, Citicorp, Time Warner and the still rising One World Trade Center—dotting the horizon, their spires lit up like an early Christmas. Suddenly two large…

Film, Music, New York, Television, Theater, Vespers

Tom Aldredge, 1928-2011

July 25, 2011

Unless you are a fan of television’s Damages (guilty), most people are unfamiliar with the work of the great Tom Aldredge. On that show he played Glenn Close’s protector, the circumspect Uncle Pete in a subtle character portrayal that was typical of a man whose career made more of a mark on the Broadway stage,…

Art, Gay, New York, Photography, Short Cuts

Twilight world from a distance, and up close

May 2, 2011

Alvin Baltrop took the long view. I relish his head-spinning panoramas of places that no longer exist; Baltrop’s camera captured the looming gilders inside abandoned hangars and the wide expanses of wooden piers along the Hudson in the West Village, ones that hadn’t seen a ship’s arrival in many a moon. But look closely, and…

Art, Gay, New York, Race, Short Cuts

At the Whitney and Artists Space, Art by Boys Who Like Boys

April 28, 2011

Glenn Ligon, Malcolm X Like Stonewall, the art revolution of the 1980s was a coming out as explosive as the times required. Many of the artists who broke out were gay: Mapplethorpe, David Wojnarowicz, Peter Hujur, Catherine Opie and Keith Haring marched into our consciousness with forceful works that expressed an era’s glittery…

Current Affairs, New York

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire March 25, 1911

March 25, 2011

It’s been 100 years, but a short memory is inexcusable. The Republican Wisconsin senators who adopted a bill built to curtail collective bargaining for workers need to be reminded of the event that galvanized the movement for worker’s rights. March 25 is a notorious date for fires–in 1990 87 people died at the Happy Land…