By Robert Heide Often now in these difficult times of COVID virus, living through a new Great worldwide Depression with over a half million American deaths and over sixteen million out of work with many staying indoors to keep safe and also trying to maintain good health and some measure of sanity, we know it
-
-
Ilona 101: A Course in Philosophy of Life
By Mia Berman There’s Sophia. Liza. Rihanna. Gaga. And then there’s Ilona. I call her the Queen of Gusto. Turning 101 on March 27th, Ilona Royce Smithkin has portrayed Marlene Dietrich, drawn Tennessee Williams’ eye, painted Ayn Rand, sketched countesses in Berlin, and designed hats (“At 12 years old I had a whole clientele,” she
-
Misfolded Proteins and Disease
Abstracted from “A Scientist’s View of Almost Everything” by Mark M. Green There was an article in Science dated August 5, 2005 entitled, “Preventing Alzheimer’s: A Lifelong Commitment.” Science is a highly regarded magazine read by almost all scientists and from every discipline of science. The article begins by talking about research on how intellectual
-
Firefighters
By Jeff Hodges When Smoky Mike and I started shooting fires, we had to sleep in one of the fire trucks or get left behind. We’d snooze until all hell broke loose and then roar off into a cacophonous landscape of fire and smoke—if we were lucky. After all, it was reality television and we
-
Celebrating the Bicentennial of the Greek War of Independence
Freedom Fighters Who Changed the Course of History By Anastasia Kaliabakos Ever since I was a young girl, Greek Independence Day—March 25th—has been very important to me. Not only is it my Pappou’s birthday and my YiaYia’s name day, but it also marks the beginning of the near decade-long battle for Greek liberation from the
-
The Role of a Community Newspaper in Curing AIDS
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. Library Journal referred to Harvard’s Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide as “the journal of record for LGBT issues.” Larry Kramer called it “our intellectual journal, for better or for worse.” Last month, The Review ran our report in WestView News as its online feature, see glreview.org/dr-fauci-moves-to-cure-aids/. What is the role of
-
A Tale of Two Economies
By Siggy Raible “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” So begins Charles Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities, published in 1859. Set in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, a time leading up to the French Revolution and our own War of Independence, Dickens paints a morally
-
Super Hero IX: California Yankee in Kings County Court Street
By Robert Kroll Like the Connecticut Yank in King Arthur’s Court, it was not obvious whether I had wandered into a local asylum or into a circus. If it were the former, clearly the inmates were in charge. If the latter, it was either the clowns or the lion tamers who ran things. The five-floor,
-
Do You Feel Isolated? Have You Gained Weight?
Lose Extra Fat Permanently Without Costs by Doing What it Takes By Roberta Russell From the stoop of my Federal townhouse on West 9th Street, a weathered copy of WestView News addressed to a former tenant caught my attention. I wondered if contributing to WestView News would be a way to connect and contribute to
-
Keeping Love
By Lynn Pax As I sat at my father’s bedside toward the end of his passing, I saw him take an invisible (at least I couldn’t see it) glass from someone (who I also couldn’t see), bring it to his lips, drink and smiling, hand it back. He pointed to the wall behind me. There
-
Pronto Translations: Loving Languages is Good Business
By Joshua B. Cohen I’ve always been a lover of languages. As soon as I could read, I’d browse through the dictionaries and grammar books that my parents had collected as a result of their various attempts at mastering a foreign tongue: a Hindustani grammar book that my father had saved as a result of
-
Village Cigars at Sheridan Square May Be Listed for Sale
By Roger Paradiso When I heard this news, I immediately thought of all those trips down Seventh Avenue where the iconic Village Cigars store stood as a welcoming gateway to the Village. And if you took a subway you had two trains taking you right next to the store. Those entrances were almost part of
-
New Owner Steve Cohen Breathes New Life into the Mets
By Anthony Paradiso Last November, Steve Cohen purchased the New York Mets for $2.4 billion from the Wilpon family, who had owned the franchise since 2002. Cohen outbid former New York Yankee All-Star player Alex Rodriguez and fiancée Jennifer Lopez. (In the July issue of WestView News, Hannah Reimann wrote that Steve and Alexandra Cohen
-
City Council Candidate Brought Synchronous Learning to Her District…For Free
By Leslie Boghosian Murphy As we all know, schools were forced to close abruptly when the Covid-19 pandemic began last spring. By summer, most parents knew that there would have to be some sort of remote or distance learning in the fall. After weeks of helping our children with their online homework, we also knew
-
Voters for Animal Rights Endorses Erik Bottcher for City Council
Voters for Animal Rights (VFAR) has endorsed Erik Bottcher for City Council, District 3, citing his strong track record in city and state government and his commitment to promoting the well-being of animals and the environment. VFAR has nearly 8,000 supporters in Council District 3, making this a significant endorsement in the Democratic primary. “Throughout
-
David v. Goliath: Schwartz Sues to Stop Election Petitioning
By Penny Mintz Arthur Schwartz is running hard for city council in Council District 3. Running for office is a time-consuming endeavor, to say the least. But that has not stopped Schwartz from continuing to use his considerable legal acumen to try to push people and government to do the right thing. For forty years
-
Dr. Fauci Moves to Cure AIDS
By Kambiz Shekdar, Ph.D. One year before the coronavirus pandemic, Dr. Fauci attempted to direct the research prowess of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) toward curing what is still a largely incurable and festering global disease, HIV/AIDS, but with the explosion of COVID-19 that momentum was stopped abruptly. While right now the world is racing to
-
Embrace the Absurd
By Siggy Raible | The New York Times reported on January 10, 2021 that Elon Musk “is now the world’s richest person thanks to a yearlong rally in Tesla’s share price… According to the Bloomberg [a billionaire in his own right so he ought to know] Billionaires Index, Mr. Musk’s net worth was $195 billion
-
My Trip to Bellevue
By Jeff Hodges In 1971, I got my jaw broken in a melee on Second Avenue. I was outside my apartment when I saw some guys beating up a hippie. I approached one of them and asked him to knock it off. His reply was to spin around and hit me solidly in the jaw.
-
Joan’s Shanghai
By Joan Klyhn Joan’s Shanghai is a memoir of a childhood in Shanghai in the ‘30’s and ’40s of the 20th century. I am primarily writing it for myself, extending it to my friends, and now to the many people who have shown themselves fascinated with this period in the past. The School Lunch Food
-
Faith & Politics: Church of the Village Launches Series Featuring Progressive Faith Leaders
By Rev. Alexis Lillie In the rollercoaster that was the two weeks between the Capitol riot and the inauguration, many of us experienced a wide range of emotions. Coincidentally, at Church of the Village we had just launched a virtual preaching series at the beginning of January focused on “Faith and Politics” from a progressive,
-
Lisa and Harry—Such Interesting People Live on Christopher Street
By Robert Heide The lyric from the song Christopher Street from the Leonard Bernstein, Comden and Greene Broadway musical Wonderful Town goes: “Here we live Here we love. This is the place for self expression. Life is Keen. Life is great. Interesting people are living on Christopher Street.” In this article I decided to write
-
Love Conquers Time
By Brittney Ryan Love weaves its way between the minutes and hours that bind us, only to emerge in the timelessness of the moment. Princess Holly was the first child born in the Kingdom of Forever, where she came of age surrounded by the great thinkers and artists who had, over the centuries, crossed from
-
Cupid and Psyche: The Ancient Blueprint for our Modern Valentine’s Day
By Anastasia Kaliabakos Valentine’s Day, also known as the Feast of Saint Valentine, is celebrated every year on February 14th all over the world. The history of this annual holiday of love and romance is disputed and mysterious, and many of the possible origins of Valentine’s Day are actually disturbingly dark. The Feast of Saint
-
Born To Do It
By Anthony Paradiso Born to Do It is a book for “people who are open to incorporating spirituality into business.” Dr. Rebekah Louisa Smith is the “film festival doctor.” Of course, that term was never used before and that is the point of the book. There is no doctorate program for Film Festivals. Such a
-
Notes From Away: Tempest to Calm
By Tom Lamia There is a feeling of rescue, of emerging from a hiding place and finding quiet isolation for the moment. Some of this is the effect of a Maine winter, where snow, freshly fallen, mutes all sound, but it is not this alone—it is also the effect of resolution of awful forces that
-
The 2021st Amendment: Opening a Restaurant Amidst the Second Repeal of Prohibition
By Reed MacNaughton A reader told me they wanted to open a new restaurant in the Village. I said, “Don’t.” “Haven’t you heard?” I asked, knowing full well they had, “Sixty percent of new restaurants fail in the first three years. Not to mention the margins—it’s no business to be in if you want to
-
A Chicken Delivered
By Laurence Edelman Eighteen months before the city wide shut downs—pre-COVID—we launched Poulet Sans Tête, French for “chicken without a head,” in the kitchen at Left Bank. I and my partner Micheline Gaulin developed the brand of crispy and juicy rotisserie chicken, to make the most of the resources we had at Left Bank, by
-
An Insight into David Kessler
FDA Chief Named to Lead Vaccine Response Abstracted from A Scientist’s View of Almost Everything” by Mark M Green I’ve been a bit heavy from time to time but never had a big problem with food. But if there is Philadelphia Cream Cheese in the refrigerator, I can’t resist it. I’ll pile it on anything
-
A Voice for the People
By Aleta LaFrague This is a story I know to be true. Recently, I received a distressed phone call from a neighbor: “I need help, please, let me know if there’s anything you can do. I can’t let him live like this.” Her voice was consumed with emotion. That phone call was from the parent
-
Erik Bottcher Offers New Vision for Sanitation in Council District 3
By the Erik Bottcher for City Council Campaign My German Uncle Max would sit in the best chair on a Sunday afternoon, with a quart bottle of Schaefer beer, and talk and talk. On several occasions he commented on how clean German streets were compared to those in New York and made me, at a very young
-
Catch and Release—Chapter One—Meeting Keith
By Karen Rempel Many girls dream of their wedding day. Not me! I dreamed of twirling in glamorous gowns and going to glittering galas with arm candy men. Every day after school I swooned at the thought of being Ginger, alone with Gilligan on his island. I was born just before the Summer of Love,
-
Hummel
By Jeff Hodges In the early 1990s I traveled to Germany to shoot a promotional video for the Goebel Porcelain Company in Bavaria, Germany. At that time Goebel was the manufacturer of the Hummel Figurines—those ingenuous pastel porcelain renderings of children and animals that lurked on our grandmothers’ bookshelves with a cloying cuteness that inspired
-
Warhol and Wallowitch —a Gay Affair
By Robert Heide I first met the photographer Edward Wallowitch on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois where I was studying theater under the tutelage of the great professor Alvina Krause. She had learned ‘The Method’ by working in Russia with the great master himself Constantin Stanislavsky, author of An Actor Prepares. This
-
Using Speech Recognition to Control Your Desktop and Programs
By Asa Bacon Years ago, I acquired a physical disability, that affected my fingers as well. Typing slowly with many errors becomes a nuisance and time consuming. It would be great if my computer allowed me to dictate to it like a digital secretary. Well, as of 2007 it can. With the debut of Windows
-
How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count the Compliments
By Ira Ellenthal When I was running, or helping to run, such publications as The Daily News, U.S. News & World Report, The Atlantic and, prior to that, a dozen trade magazines, I received many compliments, most of which made me wary. Let’s face it, when we have power, others tend to butter us up.
-
Our Way Out of This: I Think Not
By Robert Kroll AUTHOR’S NOTE: This essay was written exclusively for the denizens of the West Village; that is not only because WestView News doesn’t circulate much beyond that boundary, but also because I wouldn’t entrust it much to those living west of the Hudson River, east of the Gowanus Canal, or north of 14th
-
From Ancient Sparta to Modern Denmark: The Rationalization of Eugenics
By Anastasia Kaliabakos Humankind has grappled with the ethics of eugenics for millennia. The practice can be traced, famously, back to ancient Sparta, which was revered for its military prowess and position as one of the most powerful city-states in all of Greece. The philosophy of selective breeding was promoted by the philosopher Plato, who
