February 7th, 1812

To this day Dickens' influence is a recognized impediment to the job options of the poor.  Families with but one meagre income are still not allowed freely to send their children up chimneys, into factories in need of small dextrous fingers, onto street corners hawking, thieving, being (simply put) contributors.

The author's tales of societal woe were based on life, for the most part, in working class London - in the East End, north and south of the Thames, stretching out towards Rochester in Kent.

The stories were popular here, too.  It always cheers the soul to follow those with troubles greater than one's own.  Often written in serial form, episodes would arrive by ship to crowds waiting dockside.  Unusually, Dickens' installments were written one by one instead of being taken from an already completed novel.  This gave them a certain cliffhanger feel - nobody, not even the author, truly knew what might happen next.

Dickens immortalized many from real life: caregivers, employers, loves, and friends.  There is a story that he visited Eliza Jumel in her northern Manhattan house (http://www.morrisjumel.org)  Having advanced from the world's oldest profession, Eliza married into a fortune with her first husband, wine merchant Stephen Jumel, and into America's power elite with her second, Aaron Burr, the one-time Vice President of the U.S. who shot Hamilton.  In spite of this intimacy with the rich and powerful, Eliza was never able to break into any of the more meaningful ranks of High Society.  She tried.  She invited various members of the Great and Good to a sumptuous dinner party and ..... nobody showed up!  She left the table, complete with crockery, cutlery, burnt out candles, and food right where they were.

Compare Dickens' Miss Haversham.

For the next few days you can catch Charles Dickens at 200 at The Morgan Library (http://www.themorgan.org).  After the Victoria and Albert in London, they have the largest collection of his manuscripts (and letters) in the world.

By the way, another highly popular chronicler of other people's woes with a New York connection, was one Susanna Rowson and her "Charlotte Temple, A Tale of Truth."  A young girl is seduced and left pregnant.  An abetting friend to the seducer is given money by him to help her and the child.  But guess what?  Yup, that!  Dastardly behavior leads to the girl's eventual demise (in a very Victorian way, all the bad characters also get their comeuppance) although the child, Lucy, survives.

As the last episode arrived in New York and the public learned of Charlotte's death, they swarmed in their thousands to Trinity Church where she was buried.  You can spot her tombstone today near Broadway on the north side of the church - 'though nearly all the heartless uptown folk have now forgotten.  My daughter remembers hearing the story at age 5 of "the grave of the girl who never lived."

A guest blogs today about the smallest, most preposterous private club in New York.  Some 15 people - all politically correct men -- visiting as many second-rate restaurants as possible in the few blighted years left to them.  These restaurants must be anywhere in the City outside the Borough of New York, that is, Manhattan.  Such is the mission and the law of the OBDS, the Outer Borough Dining Society.

Once a year, towards Christmas we search out a restaurant offering dishes listed in alphabets we can read.  Something not trimmed from an unwilling marsupial in the "stans."  Not too many syllables.  Steak, for example. 

This year's choice was DeStefano's Steakhouse.  89 Conselyea Street, in Williamsburg (Graham Avenue subway).  www.deesteakhouse.com

Here's the review by Tom Parrett, a self-described New York writer, grub, hack, ghost and poison penster.


The evening began all too typically:  Members fumbling around a strange neighborhood, trying to find an address provided by our esteemed founder, Admiral Pettus.

The street sounded as if it had been misspelt even though it hadn't, but number 9 put us under the BQE.  Plug in an 8 before it and the neighborhood changed wondrously.  Just a dropped digit, after all -- an easy goof when you've got seven wasted decades behind you.  Urging the Admiral  never to forget "89" again, the menu priced everything XX then 89 cents -- big initial X. To wit the aged porterhouse, which was well into its eighties (dollars, not years).

Within an hour all eleven finally arrived -- our largest gathering in some time and convivial it was, if pricey: $130 for the oenophiles, $80 for unimbibers, a smattering of desserts included.

DeStefano's is a warm, welcoming, unfussy place, walls chockablock with photos of celebs, soap stars, and family members as far back as World War 11 and posters of Brooklyn-themed flicks.  New York Steak Joints have a longish tradition borne of the Del-Monico brothers, Giovanni and Pietro, in 1827.  They started on William, later on Beaver; Broadway & Chambers (in the old Moses Grinnell mansion); on Fifth & 14th, and ultimately on 26th.  Only the Beaver Street establishment survives.  A haunch of meat, communal potatoes, cream spinach, and robust red wine piped to the table by gilded hose -- that was the tradition.  Our menu was larded with a few more choices, and around the table were gnawers of rib eye, filet mignon, veal chop, hanger steak, and surely other items -- I can't report what the nether end of the table ordered. The protein came in preposterous sizes that suggested monuments, Volkswagens, or brontosaurus flesh and was, it can be fairly said, satisfactory to excellent, the Admiral being particularly enamored of his by no means baby veal to the point of unmanly cooing. My neighbor's potato fries were swarmed over, and no wonder -- the crisp, crunchy exterior yielded ecstatically to a creamy, succulent, earthy paste, almost a pâte tendre, that would soften an IRA killer's obsidian heart. The refrigerated cheese cake and an orphan tiramisu were passable.

Verdict: A grand evening in a neighborhood prize blessedly free of Peter Luger's frenzy, rush-hour crowding, and hauteur, yet more generous of portion -- if not perhaps quite the equal of the mecca's cellar-aged beef
flavor. And it's just three stops and a short walk into said borough. Waitress Rating, if I may be so crass: 96 with 100s for pulchritude, alacrity, shapeliness, and tolerance for a night of boisterous, youth-starved, loutish mauling for which she was surely underpaid.

"Art is a lie that allows us to understand the truth."  Pablo Picasso

I once heard a (very rich) man at a club dining table say he had given his son the best gift a father could give simply by not achieving anything.

Picasso's father was a drawing instructor and provincial painter, so he wasn't an out and out failure.  But he spent a lifetime pursuing the illusion that nature is immutable and can only be represented by following a canon of classical technique. 

Picasso was a great draftsman - one of the best the world has yet seen.  By the age of 15 he had the rules of proportion down.  Perspective?  Check!  Chiaroscuro?  Check!  He would use paper to copy, copy, absorb and learn, just like generations of classical artists before him.  But what he was really doing was arming his rebellious soul.  He wanted more lies, new truths from new fabrications.

Picasso never rejected Old Master practices.  He continued their traditions, he invoked them, referenced them, spoke with them throughout his life.  You will see in the 60 drawings currently on display at the Frick Collection both this classical grounding and this conversation.  From early on, he knew there was more to say about perception, more ways of conjuring the world than orthodoxy had permitted his father.   His interest in pre-classical art, his fascination with tribal masks and markings, his toying with negative space (spot the dog in "The Death of Harlequin"): all this began in the child Picasso.  His later fracturing of conventions and his game-changing innovations (including - with George Braque - cubism): it all click-clacks into place.

Even someone with only a passing or negative ("... the nose is in the wrong place..."), interest in Picasso will be immediately and gratifyingly rewarded with this surprising, beguiling exhibit.  They will see how, from the age of 9, he "got there," how he felt "realism" was, in a sense myopic; how the great practices of the past did not confine the artist to a looking-prison, but let him out to lie in wait and cosh reality as it strode by, extracting from it a wallet-full of unforeseen truths.


Picasso's Drawings (1890-1921) Reinventing Tradition, October 4, 2011 through January 8, 2012
Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, New York, NY 10021 212-288-0700 http://www.frick.org

Photo: Pablo Picasso, Woman with Flowered Hat, 1921, pastel and charcoal on paper, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Gift of Jaqueline Picasso in honor of the Museum's continuous commitment to Paplo Picasso's art (454.1986); © 2010 Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Row of Lights, Diwali,The Festival of Lights, Deepavali, is coming up.  The Indian community (Hindus, Jains and Sikhs) goes all out on October 2nd in New York to chase away glumness, darkness and gloom.  It's the beginning of the Hindu new year.  So, clean your house, put on some new clothes and head down to the South Street Seaport. 12:00 to 8:00 p.m.  

Saris to brighten your mood, street vendors to tease nose and tongue, dance and performance, children's games and bridal make-up specialists.  As night falls the sky will erupt as if Lord Rama were once again fighting the evil daemon Ravana.  This fireworks display is more intimate, more family friendly than the Hudson River, July 4th extravaganza.  But it's just as spectacular!  The glass facades of the Financial District's skyscrapers reflect and fracture the light and channel the explosions through Downtown's canyons. 

By the way, as befits a festival steeped in stories written in ancient Sanskrit, our words "candle," "incandescent," "candid," etc. all come to us through Greek and Latin from that language, "to be white, to shine." 

Sit on one of these benches in Battery Park and you might be in for a surprise.  The harbor waters wash under the promenade, shooting up quite powerfully through several grates that were presumably installed to let rainwater drain away.

You can see the Goldman Sachs building in the distance on the Jersey side of the Hudson River behind the spray and the rainbow.

Talking of things aqueous, I spotted dozens of portable lavatories being loaded onto trucks and carted away from the World Trade Center site.

The "policy" not to have any facilities there for the general public is cruel and unecessary: think children, think granny, think you and those waterfalls...

Of course, on September 11th, it wasn't the general public, it was a bunch of important folk.  Gives a whole new meaning to VIPee.

Floyd Bennett Field houses jewels that studded the Golden Age of Air, the age before we were patted down, felt up, and shoe-horned in.

Some friends and I got permission (money changed hands) to set up a catered table, and drink away the afternoon under the belly of the beast shown here.

The airfield is large, and apart from this Hangar B, which houses the Historic Aircraft Restoration Project (Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 718-338-3799), there are other hangars and buildings offering all sorts of activities.

Floyd Bennett, a New York State native, got a Medal of Honor for flying over the North Pole.  Although still credited with the feat on naval sites (and the Arlington Cemetery site), historian Dennis Rawlins thinks he and explorer Richard Byrd didn't make it.  The controversy continues.

Amelia Earhart flew from Floyd Bennett Field.  So did Howard Hughes on his record-breaking round the world flight.  The bicycle making Wright Brothers used it (and, today, serious cyclists use the runways year-round).

Today, you can take an ecology cruise in Jamaica Bay, go canoeing; there's a climbing wall and two indoor ice rinks.

But the real news is that the National Park Service has opened a campground there.  20 bucks a night!  All of those people in their RVs or with tents in their trunks, who were passing us by on their way from Florida back to Toronto, or Boston to the West Coast, can now pitch up and camp out.  No. 2 subway to Flatbush/Nostrand Aves.  Connect with Q35 bus to park.

This October 28th, the Statue of Liberty will close to the public for a year as teams of structural "internists" (read: New Jersey-based Joseph A. Natoli Construction Corp., out of Pine Brook) set about bringing the lady up to code.  New staircases will be added and all the interior areas will be strengthened to a fire survivability rating of two hours.

"The Island will remain open," says Elizabeth Carmody of Statue Cruises.  "And the Park Service is going to have extra Rangers on the ground to enhance the experience."  Some 4 million people go to the island each year, but just 14% actually enter the statue.  Emergencies aside, "the real benefit for visitors is that the monument will be able to admit more visitors after the works are completed," said Jane Ahern, a spokesperson for the National Parks Service.

In a bit of bureaucratically inspired calendrical karma, Lady Liberty was dedicated 125 years earlier, on October 28th 1886.  As the final rivet was hammered home President Grover Cleveland stood on Bedloe's Island in New York Harbor to do the honors.  "Liberty Enlightening the World," as she was formerly known, had arrived just over a year earlier in 200 packing cases.  It was not a gift of the French Government as many believe, but the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a French historian who thought the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution was something worth commemorating.  It was the French people, through a public subscription, who raised the money (Bartholdi sculpted for free), and the American public paid for the pedestal.

In 1892, neighboring Ellis Island became the chief point of entry for immigrants to the United States, and Lady Liberty, torch held high as hope, welcomed some 12 million souls over the next 32 years.


The New Colossus (fragment) Emma Lazarus 1883

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.