By Fr. Graeme Napier, Rector at St John’s in the Village In 2004, when I worked at Westminster Abbey, I was responsible for planning the UK’s national memorial service for Alistair Cooke (1908-2004). Cooke was best known in the UK for his radio show Letter from America, but here, of course, for his television show

By Gordon Hughes Singular Sensation is a song from A Chorus Line and also the title of a new book written by Michael Riedel. For those of you who are not familiar with Mr. Riedel, he is the theatre critic for the New York Post, an author and has a morning show on WOR radio

By Hannah Reimann These days, an oasis in the city to me is more than a watering hole. It’s a sanctuary where I can eat well, experience comfort, culture and be treated well, a temporary escape from the speed and pressures of the day-to-day in a calm and attractive setting. With or without the COVID-19

Reflections on a New Book by Kate Walter By Catherine Revland Nearly two years have passed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, but Westbeth writer/resident Kate Walter’s account of this time of traumatic stress, grief and loss couldn’t be more relevant, especially for people like herself who went through the ordeal alone. This article

By Roger Paradiso The robots are coming! The robots are coming! I am concluding my top ten nightmares of the digital world serial. As you can see by the chart to the right, there is an expected increase in robotics for what they call professional services. That’s almost acceptable. It’s been with us for many

By Roberta Russell Of late, I have been a steady patron of social media sites. The results of this widely diversified search for would-be mates, after being widowed, pales by comparison with the amazing run of extraordinary people I knew during my 12 single years between marriages, and especially during my 27-year intense and loving

By Camilla Rees Recently, health advocates have learned that 4,000 enormous new ‘Jumbo’ 5G antennas, on giant monopoles, have been proposed for New York City streets in 25 different zip codes throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx and Staten Island, starting in more disadvantaged areas. Queens-based non-profit Wireless Broadband, Inc, as well as Manhattan Neighbors for

By Max Goldberg Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. Given that many prominent organic brands are B Corps, what happens with this certification has real relevance to the organic industry. At issue is what recently

By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. That is what my doctoral thesis advisor, Nobel-laureate Gunter Blobel, MD, PhD told me, and now I say the same to you: If anyone can put an AIDS cure together, it will be you! Impressive and rapid breakthroughs in science are possible only when committed people band together to propel science

By Jeff Hodges Riley is one of those dogs you keep on a tight leash. She attacks skateboarders and sanitation workers, stops deliverymen dead in their tracks, runs deer, and once treed a fisher cat, a cousin of the wolverine. It’s a good thing she only weighs six and half pounds. My hometown had no

By Anastasia Kaliabakos Although winter brings wind and cold weather, it also offers immense joy and holiday cheer to the entire world. Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I love to celebrate with a big family gathering each year. As our family is Greek, my mom and I prepare traditional Greek dishes, like lamb and

By Robert Kroll No one in his right mind would pay this bill. It was six years overdue, a penalty for a crime committed by a now defunct plumber. It was not clear that the “crime”—failure to file the annual steam boiler report with the Department of Buildings Boiler Division—was even committed. Many reports are

By Robert Heide Growing up in the middle-class town of Irvington, New Jersey, a suburb of the big city of Newark during the time of the Second World War, I was often referred to as ‘Little Bobby’, a name tag I resisted as soon as I heard it. Yet, an older cousin of mine began

By John Gilman Five years ago, on the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor I told the story in WestView News of my fathers’ experiences as the first newspaper man at the scene of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941. He had received a call from a reporter at the Honolulu Advertiser where he

By Penny Mintz  While bemoaning the results of last month’s elections with one of my relatives, a woman I love dearly, she put the blame squarely on progressive Democrats. “Progressives are too much,” she said. “We need moderation.” Being one of those progressives, I cannot disagree more. I managed to maturely hold my tongue. But