Saturday, April 23, 2016

The Other Prince

If Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel is the world's most photographed woman with clothes on, then England's Prince Philip is the world's most photographed man wearing a rain coat, trench coat, or what have you; likely a Burberry.

The Prince has a somewhat confused look on his face, and that might be due to his advanced age. No matter. You can't read lips from a still photo, but my guess is he's uttered "Jolly good" at least once on greeting the Obamas.

Friday, April 22, 2016

I Hear the Train A Comin'

Anyone who has been following the output of the Cash family as long as I have will instantly recognize the above title to be the beginning of one of Johnny Cash's biggest hits: 'Folsom Prison Blues,' released in 1957.  The above photo is from the day in 1968 that Mr. Cash famously gave a concert there. A whole new audience for live music was recognized that day: inmates.

Johnny wasn't himself ever a prisoner there, but he was there to entertain. The late 60s, with concerts like the one at Folsom, and later San Quentin, propelled his career yet again.

The other night at the NYPL interview Johnny's daughter Rosanne told the audience that her father was a musicologist. He had them categorized in his head. He could name and sing 40+ songs about a train; 40+ songs about a dog, etc. I always remember Mr. Cash's boast that he would tell anyone who would listen when he was starting out: "Hello, I'm Johnny Cash, and I know about a thousand songs."

'Folsom Prison Blues' is of course a song about being an inmate and hearing a train, and dreaming of getting out. The WSJ has now thrown water on the hearing the train from within the prison part. Mythbusters.

The prior posting already posed the question of how likely would it be that the day after Johnny's daughter Rosanne gave that interview at 'Live at the NYPL' on April 19th, that a WSJ A-Hed piece would appear the following day with the story that Folsom Prison is working out the kinks of creating a nature trail for the general public, named after Johnny Cash, on the prison grounds. And that the only train whistle that might be heard is that of a miniature railroad from nearby zoo. Oh well.

Yes, you did read that correct. Walk, hike and bike around the grounds, while passing Cash statuary, fake guard towers, and 7-foot guitar picks. You'll be close to the prison walls, but not too close. Flipping contraband over the walls will not be encouraged.

The whole story seems a bit odd at first, but it apparently has the approval and cooperation of the Cash family. Johnny's daughter Cindy has already set the planning people straight about depicting Johnny in a cowboy hat atop a horse. Thank God.

Cindy explained to the powers to be that her father was never comfortable in hats, was not seen in them, and didn't feel comfortable around horses. His family raised cotton, not cattle. Not all Country Western stars sing and pluck from a saddle.

And as strange as it sounds to have non-inmates orbiting the world outside prison walls, I can truthfully say my friend and I did once do just that when about 10 years ago we visited Mount McGregor, a medium-security prison in the town of Moreau, Saratoga County, NY. It was sort of like landing on the part of the Jail Square in a Monopoly game that says, "Just Visiting."

We weren't there as entertainers by any means, but we did make a Corrections guard think we might have been comedians. Anyone familiar with the Mount McGregor area would know that on the prison grounds sits Ulysses S. Grant's Summer Cottage Historic Site. This is where the former general and president passed away from esophageal cancer in 1885.

In developing this piece I found out the prison closed in 2014. But back when we visited you could easily access the cottage if you announced yourself at the toll booth-like guard house. No reservations were required.

Tuesday is a so-called Dark Day at Saratoga racetrack. There is no racing. So, being not quite culture freaks, but still interested in history, we made plans to take in the cottage during one of our annual pilgrimages to the Mecca at the finish line.

I don't really remember if I neglected to tell my friend who was driving that he should slow down as we approached the guard booth, or, if I did, and he just plain didn't listen to me, or even hear me, but the result was we somewhat shot through the area. Neither of us saw anyone anyway. And there was no crossbar to be lifted.

What happened next was that our path to the top of the drive became blocked by a quickly appearing Corrections vehicle. A very big and sour looking prison guard emerged and basically asked us what did we think we were doing? This was no time for being wiseguys. (Think 'My Cousin Vinny') We apologized for not stopping. We explained we didn't see anyone. We were not asked to get out of the car, but were asked the questions they would have asked us at the booth: What were there for, and did we have any firearms with us? No inspection of the vehicle was made, and we proceeded toward the Grant Cottage.

The one takeaway I remember from the rather simple dwelling was that the docent explained that when Grant passed away on the morning of July 23, 1885, the clock on the mantle was stopped to reflect the time of death. Apparently, this was something people did when somebody passed away at home. I think the clock was stopped at 8:20 or so.

We were parked in a small lot clearly within proximity to chain link fencing and razor barb wire. The prison was apparently established in 1976 as first a minimum-security facility. Apparently it was very minimal. The place earned reputation as 'Camp Walkaway' because so many inmates just plain walked off the grounds.

As we were getting back in the car we noticed two guards standing near an inmate who was shoveling hay, or compost into a wheelbarrow inside a three-sided shed. Work detail. Cool Hand Luke.

I've always liked Johnny Cash. And now Rosanne Cash. However, I have absolutely no plans to visit Folsom Prison as an inmate, or as a recreational walker/hiker/biker/jogger.

Mount McGregor was enough.

Wednesday, April 20, 2016

Rosanne and the Austrian

New York is full of well-kept secrets. It can be a restaurant, a favorite museum, store, anything really. It can be a back entrance to the Whitestone Bridge coming from the Bronx to get in line just before the tolls, avoiding the build up. Brush Avenue. Well, not anymore. They plugged that one up and it no longer works, but for years it was great.

That's what happens with well-kept secrets That cat gets out of the bag and the authorities step in. Yogi Berra said it best: "No one goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

Paul Holdengraber, who hosts the 'Live from the NYPL' series of guests he interviews is one such well-kept secret. Of sorts. He should be on the tourist maps. Maybe he is.

The word is out on Paul, and they're packing them in into a bigger venue at the library, the Celeste Bartos Forum event space, a beautifully domed expanse of floor and stage where Paul has all the electronic toys at his disposal. You can do a wedding here.

My first encounter with this wisp of a man was when, in 2008 I think, he hosted a forum on obituary writing. It was held in the Trustees Room, and the place became packed.

Last night was only my second attendance at a 'Live from the NYPL' with Mr. Holdengraber as the host. When I saw somewhere that he was going to interview Rosanne Cash it became an event I didn't want to miss.

I can't get the umlaut over the a in Holdengraber, but my guess is you can conclude his is a Teutonic name. He is from Austria, with a great accent that likely allows him to get away with tons of things. The NYT did a piece on him when he first arrived in New York from his prior job as a director of the Institute for Arts and Culture at the Los Angeles County Museum. He was 45 when he began his job as director of the 'Live from the NYPL' series. It has taken off.

Mr. Holdengraber is not hard to understand. He is soft-spoken and adds a delightful sound to some American words. At the obituary forum he memorably mentioned one of the most famous obituaries written, Mr. Robert McG. Thomas Jr.'s piece on the inventor of "keeeety litter."

He is meticulously prepared. The time flies. With the Austrian accent and body language in his chair, he could be a Viennese psychoanalyst, probing his patients for their id. He titled last night's presentation, "Who Is Rosanne Cash? An American Life." Rosanne Tweeted before the interview. "That's what we're discussing? omg."

But the well-prepared analyst has everything under control. He opens with a bit of what now is his Superman preamble: "Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound..." Except for Mr. Holdengraber, his purpose "is to make the lions roar...levitate the building. When you come in contact with a great idea, it can change your life."

Paul somewhat quickly ran through the introduction of Rosanne. Her work at Carnegie Hall in their Perspectives Series, topped off with her February concert, were duly noted. This gave Mr. Holdengraber the chance, and us the pleasure of hearing him pronounce, "hardscrabble" as he was outlining the theme of many of Rosanne's songs.

A good wind could probably levitate Mr. Holdengraber. He's neither tall or short, wide or skinny. He is his own storage facility for words and questions that he has prepared by getting to know his subject before the event. His simple gray suit over his prairie collar shirt, and his eyeglass adjustments up and down on his head, like a welder's visor, do give you the feeling that we're watching and listening to a live therapy session.

Rosanne admitted in an earlier Tweet days before the interview that she was a bit nervous. And at the outset, she might have been. It disappeared when she adjusted to Paul's pattern of sometimes lengthy questions and very pregnant pauses. She's a self-described tenacious woman and eventually became a good foil for Mr. Holdengraber.

We were treated to a Rorschach test with Rosanne explaining to us what the various slides meant to her that Paul was presenting on the screen. No surprises. She had given Paul, at his request, examples of some of her favorite things. Family, needlework, roses, an exploding airplane, a favorite example of an interior decorator's work, paintings, a photo of Bob Dylan, who Rosanne tells us is responsible for all the singer/songwriters after him; "without him we wouldn't be here;" the Globe Theater, an English church, a luscious looking piece of coconut cake that Rosanne swears she wants served at her funeral, and a cut from a 1917 silent film, 'Cerene,' starring Eleanora Dusa, an actress Rosanne described as the greatest actress of all time. You'll have to look her up. I had to.

There was a hand-written list from her father. The list had 11 items on it, and I can only remember four. It was not a song list, but a TO DO list filled out by her father some time ago.

Kiss June...
Try not to kiss anyone else...
Don't make anymore lists.

At her pre-interview with Paul, Rosanne told us she assumed Paul would want to talk about her father. And of course he did. I'm sure plenty of people wanted to talk to Alice Longworth Roosevelt about her father Teddy, the president. And anyway, Paul's a shrink, so childhood is important.

We got some beautiful snippets of songs from an outstanding sound system of Johnny, so resonant and clear that you swore he might make an appearance. 'The Engineer's Dying Child,' a song I was not familiar did surprise Rosanne. She asked Paul why he used it. We didn't hear enough of the song to find out the ending, but a click to iTunes and your curiosity will be satisfied.

Various cuts from some of Rosanne's recent work were also played for enjoyment and the joy of hearing about them.

Rosanne is a Shakespeare buff. Smitten might be the better word. Check out her Twitter account (@rosannecash) today and see how her enthusiasm for the Bard got her into the Special Collections room to touch Shakespeare's First Folio.

There is also a cut of what Rosanne does when she's trying to get to sleep and can't. She offered this one on her own, but maybe Paul pried it out of her without her knowing. She is such a fan of Shakespeare that she recreates in her mind Will getting in a boat and rowing across the Thames to the house of the Master of the Revels (the Royal censor, if you will) to ask permission to stage Hamlet. He has to ask permission to stage Hamlet. Perhaps it is an odd image to associate with trying to sleep, but everything can be odd. Rosanne claims it all makes sense when you think of it: having to ask permission.

I have nothing to offer that can compare to that, and the audience didn't seem to either. There's a cut of it on Rosanne's Tweet account. What it tells me, and perhaps Rosanne, is that everyone has a boss. Here's Shakespeare, he's not yet the world's greatest living playwright and poet. He's some schnook in a rowboat, probably wearing ruffles and funny shoes, trying to get to the next part of his life, and he has to hurdle Elizabethan critics and producers. Everyone has a boss. It reminds me of the scene in the movie 'Amadeus' when the king tells Wolfgang that his opera has too many notes in it. What's a fellow to do? Write another opera? We know he did.

Rosanne let out that she likes to read obituaries. This created a little applause from the audience. It used to be if you told the audience you were from Brooklyn cheering ensued. Now, mention you like obituaries and you've reached kindred spirits and create cheering

Given Rosanne's extensive reading and storytelling gifts, it is no surprise that she like obituaries. (Paul got a little excited at that as well.) But why wouldn't she love obituaries? She's of Scotch/Irish ancestry on her father's side and we all know the Scots can make you cry just by saying "hello" and the Irish call the obituaries the Irish sports pages. I hope she has seen, or will soon see 'Obit,' a 90 minute documentary on how the NYT plans and writes its daily obituary page. I've yet to see it myself. It was shown at The Tribeca Film Festival, a New York event I'm sure Rosanne is aware of.

Rosanne did close the evening by singing two numbers: '50,000 Watts of Common Prayer,' and 'Seven Year Ache.' She did try, and partially succeeded, in getting a bit of a singalong going to accompany her on '50,000 Watts,' but I think Rosanne by now knows that a New York audience doesn't do singalong too willingly. It's like herding cats.

Everyone sitting down is about the same height. When Rosanne approaches the standing microphone that has magically appeared in front of her you realize she's not particularly tall. But once she puts her head through the guitar (also magically appears) strap that has CASH on it she is clearly in her element: a singer/ songwriter who is going to entertain you now with some of her works. The guitar is a transitional object for her. She is now as tall as any male or female singer/songwriter; she is now as tall as the Grand Ole Opry, and we're going to get a listen. This answers Mr. Holdengraber's title to the event, "Who is Rosanne Cash?" This is Rosanne Cash. Nice.

One last thing to think about. A vignette from Rosanne's travels tells of her going into a bookstore in Dublin and picking up a rather heavy book on the history of Irish music. The book is hard to take off the shelf and when she gets it down it somehow opens to a page that tells the story of a minstrel singing in the 1840s or so. A one J. Cash. She doesn't buy the book because she thought it was too expensive. But consider the following:

I had a busy afternoon in the city before the 7:00 event. I got a haircut, stopped by the opticians for new sunglasses, did a little shopping, and visited Barnes and Noble with the express purpose of buying two books I recently read book reviews on in the WSJ.

I like the theory of probability. I was first exposed to it in high school, and actually got to apply it in my work. Also at the racetrack, where I constantly try and figure out what's going to be the best bet considering who I like to win and who might finish second.

One of the books I bought is titled "Fluke: The Math and Myth of Coincidence" by Joseph Mazur. The premise is that while we see coincidence in serendipity, there are actual hard numbers having to do with probability that are driving the occurrence of what we are experiencing.

Two examples are illustrated in the review. One has to do with Anthony Hopkins finding a book on a park bench that is the title of a work that is the basis for a movie he is in--the very copy, it turns out, that belonged to the author of the work, and has his notations in it. What are the odds?

The other is the story of an American children's book author, Anne Parrish, strolling through the used book stalls along the Seine in 1929 and spotting a copy of a book she always loved as a child. She buys it and brings it back to her husband, who after a bit of page flipping tells her it is her childhood copy, with her name in it. Goose pimple time, right?

The author, Joseph Mazur expounds on these seemingly random events and assigns probability values to them. He makes calculations. He answers with what he thinks the odds are.

Here's Rosanne, telling us about a book in Dublin, on Irish music, that opens to a page that tells the story of a minstrel whose first initial and last name correspond to her father's name. And I've got a book under my seat that assigns probability to such events.

But here's one for Mr. Mazur. What are the chances that the day after Rosanne's appearance at NYPL the WSJ does an A-Hed piece (front page, below the fold) on Folsom Prison completing a Johnny Cash memorial recreational walk on the prison grounds, not to be used by the prisoners, but the general public? Apparently there is enough land to do this and not compromise prison security.

What are the odds of that? I'll bet he has an answer.

Sunday, April 17, 2016

A Trio of Billions

If anyone thinks I might be overly-observant to the number of times they utter the word "fuck" in the dialogue--after all it is a New Yorker's favorite word-- consider this. The title of the middle of the last three episodes I've watched is: Where The Fuck Is Donnie? You don't need anymore proof than that.

Of course, the printed media has to insert asterisks in place of some of the letters to convey the word. But it does get conveyed. Where the F*** Is Donnie?

In the middle episode of the last three I've watched, Donnie Caan, one of Axelrod's senior portfolio managers has been flipped by the Feds (something about Donnie being as sturdy as a Mexican condom) and is willing to wear a wire to help get the goods on Axe and his insider trading. The Feds have raided Donnie at home, and if you're quick to realize what you're seeing, there's a another guy in Donnie's bed. His husband. Donnie's gay.

Well, Axe, as you might say, has some moves of his own. Donnie's got pancreatic cancer and has months to live. Axe basically recruits Donnie to be his financial suicide bomber who works as a double agent, feeding the Feds what they want to hear, to a point, and then dying on them before they can get him into court to testify.

Axe is a kind employer, but never one to miss harnessing an opportunity. He works out his plan, gets Donnie to a cancer specialist, but not into a clinical program that might prolong his life by a few months. After all, the trade on the information--200 million shares of something--has to be executed before the news of the merger hits the street.  Axe has arranged for $40 million of the hundreds of million dollar score to go to Donnie's husband and the kids. Axe takes care of family. But only if they can die before the trading clock ticks out.

Donnie executes the trade leaving 20 million shares for someone else at the firm to get credit for. Donnie leaves his phone on his desk, takes his shirt off for some reason and drapes it on the back of his chair, and disappears is a very grey looking T-shirt. He's AWOL.

The Feds are trying to track him, Axe is trying to track him. Credit card usage, etc. is being monitored, but no Donnie. E-Z Pass. Nothing. You got it. "Where the fuck is Donnie." Now they're all saying it.

But Donnie's clever. He wants to just go away. He swaps out his E-Z Pass with someone else's at a highway roadside restaurant. A hit! Donnie's on the Mass Pike. Well, eventually, state and local police are waiting for Donnie at the next toll booth. You'd think they were trying to bring Whitey Bulger in. You guessed it. Some poor schmuck puts his hands up, terrified on being boxed in front and back as plenty of heavily armed police at that next toll booth await. After all, all E-Z Pass transmitters look the same He didn't know he was using someone else's.

Donnie makes Cleveland, and they're all still going, "Where the fuck is Donnie." Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego? Donnie knows his time on earth is limited, so he seeks out the 'Third Eye Seer,' a guru who is appearing at a Cleveland convention center. Credit card hit. But not before Donnie, after waiting patiently in line, gets to meet the 'Third Eye Seer.' Someone who looks like he quit playing lead gong for a Hare Krishna group and started doing better for himself by greeting people from his throne in his white outfit and strands of beads and giving them a hug and assuring them they are now "found."

Well, Donnie is certainly "found." By the Feds, and he is now brought back to help seal the testimony deal. They are not aware that Donnie's terminal with cancer, or that Axe has been playing them like a violinist from Carnegie Hall. Thus, Donnie's potential testimony is not sealed in a deposition.

Of course the insider trade has already been made, Axe has scored a life-altering fortune--again--and Donnie's left to throw up on Brian Connerty, Chuck Rhoades's No. 1 guy. The Brian Connerty character is, as many members of the cast are, well-played. Toby Leonard Moore, and several others are prime Emmy candidates, no doubt.

Chuck, is well, what else, fucked. He gives his staff a speech about his temperament at chess as a youngster, and tells them the case against Axe is blown. Eastern District will get the case. He knows he's been outmaneuvered. Donnie's dying. He won't make it through the night. He doesn't.

Leading up to the third episode I watched, we are treated to many incantations of the word Richard Burton claimed was the greatest word in the English language. And if you think about it, the word "fuck" is easily one of the most versatile words at our disposal. It can be a noun, verb, adverb and adjective. It is easy to pronounce: one syllable. Within four letters it holds the great "c" and "k" letters that can give the speaker so many chances to add auditory emphasis to its utterance. It is no wonder the screenwriters love it.

When it is announced who the judge will be to hear the prosecutor's case on the "Dollar" Bill Stearn insider case, the No. 2 person on Chuck's staff comes into the room and announces that "Judge Fucking Wilcox" got the case.

The little I know about case assignments is to know there is literally a wheel that is spun to determine who will be assigned to each case. Wilcox is bad news for the U.S. Attorney's office. He is soft on white collar crime, but apparently a hanging judge when the crime's not white and the perp is not white either.

Thus, the story line goes that Judge Wilcox, a Federal judge subject to sentencing guidelines, has been putting black and Latino defendants away for ungodly stretches, even one for someone who was boosting PlayStations.

How Playstation theft by a person of color becomes a Federal crime outside of RICO statutes applied to organized crime   is never explained, but apparently enough to leave a picture that Chuck wants to know more about Wilcox. He finds it.

Apparently, Judge Double W. there has been a silent partner in a fund that profits heavily in income derived from prison inmate phone calls. If you know anything about this story, these rates are truly extortionate. Double W. has been building his business from the bench. Also, he's been schtupping his housekeeper, so Chuck confronts Wit in chambers about these character flaws.

Chuck, ever the smooth negotiator, convinces the judge to resign and go out in a bath of glory. His district, Southern District, will not prosecute. Judge considers the cannons to the left of him, cannons to the right of him, and decides a retirement is not so bad. Of course Chuck, ever Wile E. Coyote, has the FBI march in via one of his former Southern District AUSAs who is now in the Eastern District, arrest judge baby, and cart him away. But not before the judge angrily confronts Chuck that's he's "a Goddamn liar." Oh no, I said Southern District, I didn't say anything about the Eastern District." The words are much alike. What some people fail to get in writing. And a Federal judge, at that. Chuck is starting to feel better.

And just because we haven't seen Wendy in her dominatrix role talking rough to Chuck, don't think these scriptwriters have left sex at the doorstep. This is cable, the new frontier.

Brian Connerty, as we have already disclosed in a prior posting, was himself schtupping the FBI agent Teri. But, with both being single, attractive people, this is just recreational sex. Teri spots how Brian and the No. 2 assistant in the office, an attractive, brainy, (Stanford Law) black woman named Kate Sacher, also well played by Condola Rashad, have been mooning over each other. Of course Brian and Kate go back to her tastefully furnished place and wind up under the sheets. But, like the madame in the  musical and the movie (Dolly Parton), "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" would explain, "There is nothing dirty going on."

In fact, we go from a scene with a few Brian/Kate kisses on her nice couch (not an Ikea assemble- yourself-number) to another scene, back to Brian and Kate with the sheet tucked up under their chins, looking satisfied with themselves. Clearly, it was as good for him as it was for her. We don't get a wrestling match watching them try and shed their nice duds. Probably ran out of time.

The first of these three episodes is basically a straight story, and wouldn't leave you with much to summarize until the threads get tied up in the subsequent two episodes.

One scene does have Chuck and his son seeing Mark Teixeira talking to Axe at a performance of The Big Apple Circus. Ken wants an autograph from the Yankee first baseman, but because Mark is yakking financial with Axe, Chuck is not eager to get too close.

Axe of course sees the lad's eagerness for an autograph and motions him over. Dad has to concede, and he lets Kevin go over. How they work in a walk-on role for Teixeira, perhaps talking insider stuff to the King of Insider Axe is a wonder. Are the scriptwriters Met fans who want to paint the Yankees as inside stock trading millionaires?

Mark of course goes looking for a baseball to sign, at a circus no less. Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight. Never mind, the good news is that Teixeira doesn't injure himself signing his name and makes it through  2016 spring training and opens the season without yet getting placed on the DL. Just wait.

If you know enough, you know that Paul Giamatti's father was once the Major League Baseball commissioner, a short tenure that ended with a heart attack when he was only 51. Prior to that job he was president of Yale.

A. (Anthony) "Bart" Giamatti was instrumental in suspending Pete Rose for life for gambling on games. You wonder if the Met fan scriptwriters are trying to get Teixeira suspended by Chuck for talking to Bobby Axelrod. Met fans hate the Yankees. If you can't get Tex injured by signing a baseball, maybe you can get him indicted.

The last of the episodes, "Quality of Life," is dominated by Donnie's death and the funeral services, with flashbacks filling in how Axe engineered the double agent blow back on Chuck. Game, set, match. Checkmate. For now.

You can't watch 'Billions' without admiring the acting. Maggie Siff, who plays Chuck's dominatrix wife and Bobby Axelrod's psychological guru, is destined for at least for an Emmy nomination. Her expressions are priceless. She conveys more with a look, usually something akin to having bitten into an apple and finding half a worm (Red Smith).

She and Chuck, for such a couple who ring each other's Tinker bells while wearing black, can be so nasty to each other. But, I guess that's part of the appeal.

Donnie's funeral services are sad. It is a somber episode, lightened a bit by a slightly tipsy Wags admiring how Donnie was their Gay Guy. Wendy makes another one of her patented sourpuss faces and shakes her head.

Monday, April 11, 2016

The Beat Goes On

Just when I perhaps had written my last Kitty Genovese-themed blog posting, along comes an alert reader, who visibly admits to being a follower, who linked me to the blurb written by Sarah Weinman,

I'm always amazed by what this alert reader absorbs. It seems nearly all printed text, paper and online, comes to their attention, often producing a Tweet alerting the others out there. The alert reader however doesn't admit to reading the WSJ, but an alert reader can understandably only do so much.

Sarah Weinman, whose Twitter profile  and photo shows her to be a young woman with soft features and an alert gaze, who describes herself as a New York-based "Crime Lady, Editor," writes of a trip she's making across the pond. She's been asked by The Guardian to write a piece on the "bystander effect." The interest has of course been resuscitated by the death of Kitty's killer, William Moseley who just passed  away at 81, making him one of the oldest New York state prisoners. He's been in jail ever since being convicted in the 1964 vicious murder and rape of Miss Genovese.

Ms. Weinman's blurb is short, makes reference to the social researchers who coined the phrase "bystander effect" and adds that she's "looking forward The Witness, the forthcoming documentary about Genovese's younger brother Bill and how he investigated the awful story at the heart of his family.

Sarah is certainly not old enough to have experienced first hand the news and the infamy that came of out of the case. I don't know if Sarah knows that Kitty was the niece of Vito Genovese, a true Godfather in NYC at the time. I was always struck by the fact that Winston Moseley wasn't himself murdered in prison, like Jeffrey Dahmer. The "family" has a way of exacting revenge from all quarters.

The "bystander effect" these days would include anyone who sees something and takes out their cell phone to video record the event. The cell phone video is the now the first line of action.

Not all bystanders are in a position to prevent anything, or even in some way mitigate what's happening. One of my managers in the Fraud Division at Empire told me of the story that he and his buddies, about 8 or 10 years old, were playing in a park in Brooklyn when he'll never forget the two guys who walked right up to the guy across the street sitting in his beach chair and blasted him. A mob hit. His mother didn't let him out for a week after that.

Certainly, nothing those kids could have done. Interestingly enough, Tom's father was a NYC detective who at one point was detailed to follow Albert Anastasia, another crime boss of the era, around.

Well, the police attention didn't prevent Albert, who was getting a shave at the Park Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan, from being blasted away by gunmen who came into the barber shop. Another mob hit. Tom me he would carefully tease his dad about the "good job" he did that day paying attention.

The Kitty Genovese story has stronger legs than the Bernie Goetz story, the so-called "subway vigilante" who, fearing an imminent mugging, shot one of his would-be attackers and then fled. Goetz would later surrender after fleeing to New Hampshire, and would eventually serve a little time for the gun possession. The moral debate generated by his actions were newspaper and talk show fodder for a good while.

As a kid growing up I was aware of a code, so to speak, to not get involved. Of course this was a parental warning to help insure safety. The city in the 50s was no more dangerous than it is today. But everyone always remembers when it does become dangerous.

My own take on the bystander effect, and what might have been going on in the few people's minds who did hear or see something when Miss Genovese was being savaged, was that there might have been memory of Arnold Schuster, the young man who in 1952 fingered Willie Sutton in the subway. Mr. Schuster's actions eventually earned him a small reward, then eternal rest.

The story developed that the crime boss, Albert Anastasia, didn't like hearing that a member of the fraternity had been ratted out. Now Mr. Schuster was a young man in Brooklyn who worked in his father's dry cleaning store. In the store they had a police photo/sketch of Willie. the famous bank robber who at the time had gone missing from prison, a successful escape, that led to years of evasion. Somewhat like Whitey Bulger, without the prison break.

Arnold Schuster had Willie's photo in the back of the store and was always looking at it as he pressed clothes. When he looked up on the subway and spotted Willie, who would try and disguise himself from time-to-time, it was only a matter of  following him out of the subway and getting the attention of what seemed like reluctant police.

Schuster was hero, of sorts, but not to all people. The news accounts at the time would give someone's address, so his home address was included in the story. One early evening he was approached by a gunman who left him dead on the sidewalk in front of his apartment house. The hit was supposedly ordered by Albert Anastasia. Mr. Schuster was 25. No good deed goes unpunished.

A little further digging into Ms. Weinman website shows that she's edited a volume of stories, "Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s & 50s." I think I remember mention of it in the WSJ.

I don't know if Ms. Weinman tries to solve crimes, but in absolute true Onofframp, Mobius Strip fashion--one thing leading to another-I was recently looking for places on L.I. that might sell boulders to be used for garden landscaping. Look and ye shall find.

Found one. Skyview, in King's Park, not too far from where I now live. A veritable pumpkin farm of stones to romp around in and consider. Fifty cents a pound when under a ton. A trip is planned soon.

On the left hand panel of website sections to be further directed to is one titled, "Help Solve This Crime Scene." Am I headed for dinner/mystery theater on the rocks? No.

A click reveals the owner of the rock pile asking for help in finding the killer of his 19 year-old niece Holly Moore in Castle Rock, Colorado. She was murdered November 15, 2015.

The beat goes on.

Friday, April 8, 2016

What's in A Number?

What's in a number? More or less, I guess.

The day after the obituary on the death of Winston Moseley, the killer of Kitty Genovese ,who passed awhile at 81 while still in prison for the crime he committed 52 years ago, we are still being treated to follow up stories from the NYT. They almost seem to be doing penance for inventing the number of 38 people who they claim saw or heard parts of the murder taking place and who didn't raise a finger other than to open a window or turn a light on, and perhaps yell here and there, to alert any authorities.

Or, was the number they invented 37, as the headline to the March 27, 1964 front page piece by Martin Gansberg claims were apathetic and inert to a screaming woman's calls of distress?

Anyone who pays any attention to the postings of this blog, (and the number is not as high as 37 or 38) knows I've occasionally been writing about this murder on and off for years, generally when something appears in the paper. And lately, with the Moseley death, there's been another flurry.

The story that hit the print edition of the NYT was in yesterday's paper about a followup visit to the Kew Gardens neighborhood where the murder took place. The reporter Corey Kilgannon does a piece about visiting the streets and buildings associated with the murder. Some interviews are recorded.

To illustrate how sore a point the numbers 37, or 38 have come to live in infamy and take on a life of their own, you only have to read that Mr. Kilgannon walks into a bar in the neighborhood and asks the bartender about Kitty Genovese and is asked to leave. It's not easy getting asked to leave a bar in New York before you've created a disturbance.

That incident reminds me of the time my wife and I were in Ireland in 1977 and stopped by the village of Potahee, Ballinagh, Co, Cavan to visit her girlfriend from her days growing up in the Bronx, who some time ago immigrated to Ireland after marrying someone who was born in Ireland and moved back there with her girlfriend to raise a family and continue working in the construction trade.

When my wife and I stopped in a local pub before getting finite directions to where the friend lived, the bartender easily recognized us as Yanks and asked about what we were in Potahee for?

My wife replied we were there to visit her friend and mentioned the husband's name. The bartender wasn't rude, but he nodded and went as far down the other end of the bar as he could and never strayed back. Having another one, if we even wanted one, would have been impossible. It was clear. Anyone connected with the Yank wife and Yanks themselves, had already been served one drink too many. We weren't going to get another one. We finished and left, understanding the snub.

Looking up how to spell Potahee I just found the death notice for the husband who had passed away. My wife has long since fallen out of touch with her friend-until possibly now. The funeral notice mentioned the four children we knew about, the wife, and lots and lots of loving neighbors and grandchildren who were at the wake.

In addition to Mr. Kilgannon's follow up piece after Winston Moseley's death there was an online NYT 'Insider' piece by David Dunlap that addressed the Genovese murder and the subsequent attention that was paid to the number of people who were reported as being callous. It is a number that has long since been debunked, but remains significant even if the number were truly only one.

Considering the Gansberg piece leads off with a headline of 37 and mentions 38 in the lede, I wrote to Mr. Kilgannon and Mr. Dunlap that surely they knew they were sitting on top of the world's most unadmitted typo. Well, maybe not. But it was reporting at its most confusing, and eventually proved to be its most inventive..

The text off the Gansberg piece goes:

Tuesday, April 5, 2016

So Much Water Over the Dam

Anyone who is old enough to remember the Kitty Genovese story from the first reports of the stabbing, rape and murder, realizes how much water has flowed over the dam since that night in 1964 when she was stalked by Winston Moseley while, it was reported, 38 people heard her cries for help, or saw something--but did nothing.

When I saw the teaser on the front page of this morning's NYT that William Moseley had passed away at 81, I thought there was a better than a good chance that when I turned to the obituary I would find it bylined by Robert D. McFadden. And of course when I turned, that's exactly what I found.

With a lede that rival's Clark Gable's classroom lede that he turns into the teacher, Doris Day, as he masquerades as a journalism student rather then the seasoned reporter he is in the movie 'Teacher's Pet,' Mr. McFadden summarizes what many of us have come to know about the case: Kitty Genovese was killed while there were those who did nothing to come to her aid or alert authorities.

But as time has rolled on, it has come to be known that there were those, a very few, who did try and help, and there weren't as many as claimed who did nothing.

All this is in Mr. McFadden's obituary of Mr. Moseley, along with a little implied protection of the reporters who in the NYT reported that 38 individuals saw or heard something but did nothing while the sustained attack on Kitty played on.

Mr. McFadden mentions a four paragraph piece that appeared in the Times that reported on the murder the day after. The murder took place in the early hours of March 13, 1964.  

In a prior posting I mentioned how a NYPL librarian couldn't find this short piece doing an online search. With my full NYT subscription I get digital access to their archives, and this time I did find the piece, just as described, a four paragraph, unbylined report of the slaying that appeared on page 26 of a 52 page newspaper, published the day after.

Exactly two weeks after the slaying, Martin Gansberg in the NYT reported the slaying in more detail. The story appeared on the front page, below the fold, on March 27, 1964, complete with an aerial photo of the site where Kitty was killed. Obviously, more was known later, and some was invented.

The headline to the piece loudly proclaimed: "37 Who Saw Murder Didn't Call the Police."  The lede to the story, in its first sentence, contradicts the 37 number, and says "...38 respectable, law-abiding citizens in Queens watched a killer stalk and stab a woman..." I've come to almost laugh that the NYT, in its own story, on the front page, contradicts itself over the number they claim witnessed the slaying. Talk about a typo.

As mentioned by Mr. McFadden, the number, which came to be accepted as 38, took on a life of its own. Another, almost funny thing is that a movie made about the slaying by Danish filmmaker Puk Grasten that premiered in part at the 2013 Sundance festival, is titled "37." They peeled off the headline and went no further.

The 38 became a symbol of urban apathy toward crime. Aside from Mr. Gansberg's reporting, the metropolitan editor at the time, Abraham Rosenthal, wrote a book published in June 1964, "Thirty-Eight Witnesses: The Kitty Genovese Case." The book followed a May 1964 Sunday Times magazine piece by Mr. Rosenthal. 38 has lived on in infamy, even though the number has been challenged.

When Mr. Rosenthal's book was reissued in digital form in December 2012, a Times reporter, Leslie Kaufman, wrote a piece that perhaps it was time to apply some fact-checking to the book and its use of the number 38. The number has been staunchly defended, although it has been shown to be completely uncorroborated.

The "floating" of the number that originally came from a police commissioner's lunch-time conversation with Mr. Rosenthal, then the Metropolitan editor of the NYT, has been defended by Mr. Rosenthal as required to add further gravitas and disgust to the event. For years and years the people of Kew Gardens were all tainted by the number, and became unwitting collateral participants to the horrific rape and murder. A select few actually were.

Mr. McFadden acknowledges that the NYT did report a number that was in no way accurate, "the article grossly exaggerated the number of witnesses...," but he keeps his colleague's names out of the paper. And why not? They are not part of Winston Moseley's story or the horrific slaying of Kitty Genovese. They are part of the reporting that emanated from the grisly crime. They created an additional story.

Reading the obituary of Mr. Moseley I was struck by what I either no longer remembered about the case, or never knew from the start.

First, that Moseley had confessed to two prior slayings, one of which was against a 15 year old girl. That he was a necrophiliac. That judge Irwin J. Shapiro, who imposed the electric chair death penalty based on the guilty verdict, told the court he didn't believe in capital punishment, but based on the lurid and violent details that emerged from the case, he "wouldn't hesitate to pull the switch on him myself." That's an angry judge volunteering for another job.

That Winston Moseley, considered to be a "psychopathic serial killer," earned a degree in sociology from Niagara University in 1977. Talk about trying to know thyself.

I knew his constant applications for parole were always turned down. I didn't know there were 18 of them, the most recent one last year.

Certainly Moseley's escape from a hospital in 1968 after being treated for self-inflicted wounds, and his subsequent rape of a woman and holding hostages during the few days he spent on the run couldn't have endeared him to the parole board.

I've mentioned the Kitty Genovese story in several prior blog postings. From Day One it hasn't gone away for anyone who grew up with it and is still with us. Is it over? Not with the engraved 38 hanging in the air, and that's probably good, despite its wholesale inaccuracy.

And certainly not over when they finish and finally release the full movie titled '37.'

Prior posts: