Historian Catherine Revland asks if some ancient migration was West to East In his book, Songlines, Bruce Chatwin visited remote groups of Australian aborigines that each sang a song with the same melody but a different verse, one that described the natural features of their home territory. When all the verses were put together side

New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn just exhibited another example of her blatant misuse of power in furtherance of her own ambitions. Quinn’s Tammany Hall-style of governing has threatened our democratic electoral process for 2013. That should worry all New Yorkers as they now begin to focus on who may become the city’s new

When Sandy hit on the evening of Monday, October 29 we were watching TV. Something which has never happened before occurred – the upper right corner of the screen went black and the legend appeared “please wait” and then it just went all black. This is serious I thought. All the power failed and we

This has been an interesting few months, so it’s hard to know where to start. Let’s begin with the New York Times article by Anemona Hartocollis that came out on October 9: “New Style of Health Care Emerges to Fill Hospital’s Void.” As I have said before, one can almost imagine this piece being written

Walking with my dog Mr. Butter, I came upon this willful destruction of the St. Vincent’s Hospital chapel. It was particularly poignant as I thought of how many times this non-believer sat in the chapel while waiting at the height of the AIDS pandemic for a friend or lover to die upstairs. Now, where so

If you want to know how and who will save the Hudson River Park, look to money. More and more, it is the people with money who dictate solutions and those are usually in their interest. We have, right here in the West Village, another example of money and the lack of it dictating a

I spoke to Stephan Weiss on the phone shortly before he died and asked him if the Charles Street Association could have its December holiday reception in his studio on Charles and Greenwich Streets. He began very positive, but as we talked, he imperceptibly faltered thinking, I’m sure, of his lung cancer. “Well perhaps you

Barry Benepe, the creator of the Union Square Farmers’ Market, takes a hard look In the September issue of WestView, Alec Pruchnicki wrote a superb in-depth analysis of the proposed Neighborhood Improvement District (NID) as a possible source of funding for the five mile long Hudson River Park. This park, created by the New York

The discovery of the African Burial Ground is being called the most historically important urban archeological find in U.S. history, not only because of its unexpected size but in the way it has influenced people to educate themselves about the long-neglected history of people of African descent in New York City. According to one historian,

By Henry Stern One of the perennial questions citizens ask about government is: why is it so corrupt? People who read newspapers, listen to the radio or watch television encounter a steady flow of stories recounting misconduct by public officials or the details of their arrests, trials and, in many cases, convictions. The crimes of

Old Senate Adage—“Never Let a Good Crisis Go to Waste” Oh, wow, I pick up the Saturday August 18th Times and bang there’s a big spread on Pier 40 with a bunch of photos. How did it get there? Did Times reporter Lisa Foderaro see my WestView article in the August issue or Lincoln Anderson’s

Whenever I meet my neighbors on the street or at the Abingdon Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, it doesn’t take more than a handful of syllables before they realize that I’m not from these parts. No matter how hard I try, my ‘the’ still sounds like a ‘ze’. I nod politely when they ask if I’m

Little has been written about the history of people of African descent in Lower Manhattan, even though their numbers were so large that our neighborhood and environs were once called “Little Africa.” Hardly anything has been documented about this area’s importance as a major hub on the Underground Railroad. Other cities have magnificent Freedom Trails,

As a physician, I sometimes have to give my patients and their families bad news. I try to do it as gently, but accurately, as possible, and always with an attempt to include any possible hopeful information that may exist. This article will follow that pattern with some very bad news, in my opinion, but

It was a hot late afternoon on the 14th June and excitement was in the air. Cop cars and TV news trucks were parked up and down Seventh Avenue South and people were flocking to side streets lined with metal barriers, waiting to catch a glimpse of the President and the First Lady, who were

The Hudson River Park Trust (the “Trust,” or “HRPT”), the State-City agency that built and runs the Park, urgently needs about $200 million for “capital maintenance” – repairing and rebuilding major elements of the Park. New York City and New York State are supposed to pay to build the park, and in addition to the

An emergency Community Board meeting was held on June 25th at Housing Works to address the environmental impact of the Rudin development of the St. Vincent’s Hospital campus on District 2. The meeting on Monday evening was attended by several hundred extremely animated and concerned parents and residents of District 2. The attendance was much

Call for 600 luxury apartments and hotel On May 1, WestView News hit the vestibules of the West Village with our big cover article suggesting NYU be offered Pier 40 in return for building a hospital. A day later I received an e-mail from attorney and Chairman of the Advisory Committee to the Hudson River

I observed bike share in both Paris and Washington DC and interviewed one user in each city. One, not a typical rider, used it in Paris because cabs were not easily available. The other in Washington used it regularly to commute home from the train station. Neither city appropriated pedestrian sidewalk space for bike storage

“Let go of your illusions and don’t confuse them with dreams,” novelist Devan Sipher recently told a New School writing class in the Village. His favorite quote inspired him to achieve his dream of publishing a novel and his funny fictional debut The Wedding Beat just hit the stores. Sipher tapped into his experience as

In May, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), working in partnership with the Two Boots Foundation, launched the first historic plaque program for Greenwich Village, the East Village and NoHo. The program will commemorate sites of special significance due to their architecture, events, historic figures who lived, worked or gatheredthere or notable institutions.

NYU asked for space on Pier 40 – let them have it if they return a hospital. During a tedious seven hour hospital stretch while my wife, Andromache, waited for and then received cataract surgery, I was electrified to read a Wall Street Journal article “Struggling Trust Seeks Funds for Hudson Shore”. It reported that

When I was growing up in Fargo, North Dakota, I recall asking my mother why the slogan “Buy Dakota Maid Flour” was written at the bottom of my report card. When she started talking about the Nonpartisan League, I stopped listening because I knew it had something to do with politics, a topic that bored