By Keith Michael Millie is pressing her corgi nose through the railing at Hudson River Park, eyes squinting into the wind. I’m pressing against the railing too, trying to keep my balance, also squinting into the wind (with eyes tearing from the cold), scanning the river for any blip in the white caps that might
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Superb Owl Sunday
By Keith Michael It’s the weekend. And it’s early. I confess, I cajoled Millie into walking over to Hudson River Park to take her Corgi steps along the semi-circular stone path in front of the AIDS Memorial. I can still choke up when I let myself take more than a cursory glance at the enigmatic
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Seeing Red
By Keith Michael Red door. Red brick. Red fire escape. Red chimney. Red stop sign. Red ‘No Standing Anytime’ sign. Red traffic light. Red scarf. Red ribbons on a sagging Christmas wreath. Red stroller. Red boots. Red pom-pom on a hat. Red car. Red taillights. Red- and-white corgi (Millie suggested I throw that one in).
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“Bird of the Year” Brings Back Fond Memories, and More
Dear Mr. Capsis, While reading the January 2018 issue of WestView, with smiles and frowns, I committed to sending the edition to my 92-year-old father in Florida, who was brought up on the Lower East Side and the Bronx, and a best friend, over on 7th Avenue and 13th Street. Then I had to stop
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My Uncle the Atheist (In Memory of Oscar Riddle, 1877-1968)
By Barbara Riddle Is there a gene for skepticism, for extreme independence of thought, or intellectual bravery? I ask because of an incident in my life, not too long ago, when I suddenly felt genetically connected to an ancestor across space and time. In the depths of despair about the state of my country, I
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Net Neutrality in the West Village
By W. Russell Neuman ‘Net neutrality,’ whatever that might mean, sure sounds like a reasonable idea. It’s got to be better than whatever the alternative could be. Let’s see: Net Narrow-Mindedness? Verizon Villainy? Time Warner Turpitude? You’ve seen headlines with the phrase ‘net neutrality.’ Perhaps you have heard further that net neutrality is an Obama-era
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Bird of the Year 2017
By Keith Michael Remarkably, it is time for the 12th Annual Millies: the coveted Bird of the Year Awards! After 12 months of doom and gloom, Twitter fume, and fear of a big boom, the birds of the West Village and New York City have continued to be resilient—offering color, cheer, and laudable savoir faire
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Village Hawk
Street photographer Steven Greenbaum recently snapped a shot of a hawk perched above the Bleecker Playground, at Bleecker and West 11th Streets. He then sent it to Keith Michael, WestView’s avian expert, to garner some insight.
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Reflections on the Breathless Pace of Technology
By Josef Eisinger© To estimate the likelihood of extraterrestrial life developing on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, one must review the history of life on Earth, from our planet’s fiery formation some 4.5 billion years ago to the present. Earth’s story represents, after all, the only example of such an occurrence that
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My First Bird Book?
By Keith Michael Millie is drowsing at my feet, her smiling corgi face propped upon the helter-skelter sprawl of birding field guides, dog-eared and cracked open to my latest sleuthing of the finer points of avian identification for the West Village. How idyllic. Too idyllic. I made that up. Millie is, indeed, sleeping, but with
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Identifying an Unusual Bird
Dear Editors: I write to you as an avid reader and fan of WestView News, even though I moved to nearby Chelsea a few years ago. This morning (November 4th), while walking to the market, I came across an interesting little bird sitting in the middle of the sidewalk on West 22nd Street. It didn’t
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Rowing in the Collective Unconscious
By Sally Curtis I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied. –John Masefield I have been around boats my whole life, which is unremarkable except that I lived for five decades on Barrow Street in
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Village Community Boathouse—More Than Just Boats
By Sally Curtis “I am a coxswain, a boat’s steersman, and leader,” says Haymar Lim, age 23, “and as our crews row in the very busy waterway that is the New York [Harbor], I assume great responsibility. I take the lives of everyone on my boat into my hands whenever I [bring] a crew out
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Here and There
By Keith Michael Kek-kek-kek-kek-kek! Hurrying to work, crossing Bleecker Street at Perry Street, I stop on the far curb to look up as this consonant-laden alarm hails from somewhere above. Ah, there’s the boom box: A Kestral (an American Kestral, to be proper), probably a youngster, quizzically looking down from atop a building and continuing
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Just a Second,
Please “Millie, Wait!” I get the white-eyed glare back over Millie’s shoulder. She seems to be pondering just how daft I might be, even though there is a car, a gazillion times larger than a corgi, rumbling closer down the cobblestones. All she wants is to bushwhack to the center of the street to do
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How Do They Do It?
By Keith Michael Standing at the railing in Hudson River Park, binoculars poised, I’m scanning the rocks of the recently demolished Sanitation Pier for the umpteenth time. I’m willing a Spotted Sandpiper to appear doing its tail-bobbing rumba walk picking through the seaweed wrack line, and for the umpteenth time: nada. I’ve seen Spotted Sandpipers
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Quoth the Raven: Homage to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven
By Keith Michael In the dark, alarm clocks ring-a-ling, Millie’s tags upon her jingling, Interrupt my pulling clothes on, as she’s likely thinking, sore, “Hey, it’s way too early morning. You just woke me without warning. I dreamt marrow bones were warming, asked for, yapping, something more. Let me go back happ’ly napping, oh, so
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Out and About
By Keith Michael June, July, and August are when my exhausted academic schedules get crammed into binders for the summer and I get out! Yes, I love the West Village—my morning, afternoon, and evening walks with Millie circumnavigating her corgi-friendly blocks continue to delight me with their sights. But, give me a map to unfold
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Are We Alone? Ruminations about Extraterrestrial Life (Part Two)
By Josef Eisinger© In Part One of this article, I posed the question: Is our story of life on Earth unique or did life also develop elsewhere? I also discussed some of the observations and laws of physics that affect the likelihood of life emerging and evolving on another planet. In this segment, I explore
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Nest. Egg.
By Keith Michael This little wren went to market, This little wren stayed home, This little wren had, well, caterpillars, This little wren had none. And this little wren went, “Wee wee wee” all the way back to the nest. —Anonymous Let’s face it: Birds are baffling. They have feathers. They can fly. They either
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One Guy’s Story and a National Epidemic
By M. Zakir Sabry, MD “There was always a moment of inertia.” That was the best way that Guy could explain his every movement prior to having weight-loss surgery. As he so eloquently put it, “Every time I moved, there was a pause of a second or two and, then my large hanging skin and
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Are We Alone? Ruminations About Extraterrestrial Life (Part One)
By Josef Eisinger In these troubled times, it is enlightening and consoling to ponder our place in the larger scheme of things. We are today privileged to have gained a realistic perspective of our place in the universe thanks to the great progress scientists have made in the past century. Their observations of the universe
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What’s In a Name?
By Keith Michael “My name is Alice, but—” “It’s a stupid name enough!” Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. “What does it mean?” “Must a name mean something?” Alice asked doubtfully. —Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll “Milton! Sitting down to scratch your head in the middle of the crosswalk is not a good idea!” Countdown: Ten,
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Meet the Fishes
The River Project’s annual open house events invite the community to meet the fishes, crabs, and other neighborhood creatures at our Wetlab on Pier 40 on Tuesday, May 23rd from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Meet the Fishes welcomes people to experience our unique flow-through aquarium system that contains Hudson River water from under the
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Inside Out
By Keith Michael With a glass of wine in my hand and Millie’s corgi nose slumbering across my foot, the late afternoon sun draws shadows down the walls. Well, that’s not quite accurate: The glass of wine sits beguilingly blocking my monitor as I type, and Millie is flattened far across the floor in her
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Love is in the Air
By Keith Michael Kek kek kek kek kek drops like aural sleet from somewhere above the rooflines. Dragging me to the curb, Millie scavenges for an augmentation to her (obviously, according to her) inadequate continental breakfast fare. Corgi foraging leads her nose into the deepest footprints in the single leftover bank of February snow on
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Birds of a Feather…
Dear George, Liza, Andreea, and Darielle: I just picked up a (slightly damp) copy of WestView, and opened it to find—SHAZAM!—a gorgeous two-page layout of my Bird of the Year article!! Thank you so much for such an honored place in WestView. Thanks for the photo selection, evocative cropping, and beautiful arrangement. I am amazed.
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Owl Fever
By Keith Michael I have to write this quickly while Millie is out with her dog walker. Yes, Millie is unfaithful to me daily, and goes out on the town with her friends. Whether she has converted her canine companions to bird enthusiasts, I don’t know. She’s mum about that. The reason I have to
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Bird of the Year 2016
By Keith Michael We’re here amidst the hustle and bustle as finishing touches are added to the grandstand for the announcement of The 11th Annual Millies: the coveted Bird of the Year Awards! For those of you only listening in from your earbuds, I’m standing with Millie, the awards’ namesake, at the confounding intersection of
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The Origin of Death Revisited Following the 2016 Election
By Mark M. Green Nearly eight years ago, I wrote a column about the origin of death. An edited version of this column appears below. Perhaps publishing on this subject now relates to some of us feeling as though we are at the origin of something a bit like death. This relates to politics, not
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Crash Course
By Keith Michael It’s the morning circling of pigeons. Millie is dilly-dallying around the corner onto West 11th Street, one reluctant corgi step at a time. Is the pigeons’ morning circling timed to our walk, or is our walk timed to the circling of the pigeons? Either way, it’s a daily fall spectacle. The “spectacle”
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Visit the Sea at Our Door
By Cathy Drew For three decades, The River Project has operated an active marine science field station in Hudson River Park, first at Pier 26, and, presently, in temporary quarters on the south walkway of Pier 40 at Houston Street. The Project was founded in 1986 by myself, the current Executive Director, and a longtime
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Science from Away: A Short Science Story about Viruses and Cancer
By Mark M. Green (sciencefromaway.com) Cancer patients in the 1800s were observed, too often to be chance, to be relieved of their cancerous tumors when they were ill with respiratory problems. When viruses were discovered later in that century, it was hypothesized that viral particles were responsible for the effect on the cancerous tumors. The
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Bird’s Eye View
By Keith Michael Millie is sitting this one out (or sleeping it off—dreaming of hallways without vacuum cleaners or exterminators, streets without fluttering plastic bags, and curbs with slices of pizza lined up end to end around the block waiting to be consumed, i.e., corgi heaven). It’s an October Sunday morning under a cloudier sky
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Science from Away: Political Science Applied to Terrorism
By Mark M. Green (sciencefromaway.com) Does political science deserve to be called a science? When I was in high school and later in college in the 1950s, there was a required course we called “polysci” and the science engineering types thought it was great because we didn’t have to memorize a lot of facts or
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A Flicker Flew In
By Keith Michael This morning, Millie and I are out for her appraisal-of-the-neighborhood amble around the block. In her corgi-ish way, I imagine Millie reveling in the crisp October sunrise painting the cobblestones. Looking up, a Flicker flies into the honey locust tree at the end of the block. Barely having seen it, I knew
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Epidemiology— We are the Canary
By Mark Green (sceincefromaway.com) Hoosick Falls is a lovely town in upstate New York near the Vermont border and famous as the home of a remarkable painter: Grandma Moses. Recently, it became famous again, for the discovery that a chemical associated with the production of non-stick cookware, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), is at a dangerously high
