Happy 150th Birthday, Central Park!
I tried to get an early morning snapshot of Manhattan's best-known park this morning from the Empire State Building Towercam, but it wasn't working overnight and was very busy this morning. The one image I could get of Central Park looked fairly hazy anyway. So let's look at some other live views of Central Park. There's the WABC-TV Central Park cam. And the live penguin cam, featuring the penguins in the Central Park Zoo. The New York City Department of Transportation live cam network includes two Central Park views, Central Park South at Columbus Circle, and Central Park West at 96th Street. If those individual links don't work, use the one for the New York City DOT and choose from the links there.
And while I was collecting those links, the Towercam started working again, so I took this candid birthday shot.
There'll be celebrations going on throughout the park all day. They even turned on the fountain in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir for the third time since 1917 (of course, it didn't have that name back in 1917).
And if you're more inclined to take a boat ride than a walk in the park, you might check out the Circle Line Cam, which gives you a live view from the Circle Line boat that goes around the island of Manhattan.
Or if you don't mind non-live images, take a look at some of the 3,860 images that turn up on a Google image search for "Central Park" "New York".
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @8:27 AM
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19.7.03  |
How did a bunch of two-year-olds get elected to Congress?
All together now, one more time: You can't turn your back on Washington for a minute without all heck breaking loose.
Less than 24 hours after they cheered and applauded and otherwise minded their manners when there was company in the house (British Prime Minister Tony Blair dropped by to address a joint session of Congress), our elected representatives got into a squabble amongst themselves today.
Don't bother e-mailing the White House to complain: you'll get an automated response inviting you to use a maze-like web interface in which you must disclose whether your comments are favorable or unfavorable before you get to make any actual comments.
And considering reports in the Washington Post and elsewhere that a "White House operative" sicced gossip Matt Drudge on the ABC reporter who interviewed disgruntled U.S. troops in Iraq, you might well be inclined to ask the people running the place what the &*%@#! is up with that. Drudge duly reported that reporter is not only gay, but -- gasp! -- Canadian.
Meanwhile, Democracy Now! reports that troop morale has reached new lows, and Editor & Publisher magazine reports that the number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq is up to 3 times higher than the media has reported. So far Drudge has yet to post any bulletins on the nationality or sexual orientation of of either Editor & Publisher or Democracy Now!
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @6:05 PM
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18.7.03 |
I'm so glad this isn't my job
Workers put the finishing touches on the very top of the new Marsh & McLennan Building on the Hoboken waterfront. Can you spot them in the photo below?
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:43 PM
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17.7.03 |
Re-elected!
My thanks to the members of the New York Local of the National Writers Union for electing me to a third term as delegate, and thanks especially to NWU President Emeritus Jonathan Tasini, NWU Advisory Board members Mary Kay Blakely and Luis Rodriguez, and investigative journalist Greg Palast, author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and the Members First committee for endorsing me. I'll do my best to represent the interests of the freelance writers who make up the union's largest local at the Delegates Assembly in September, and throughout the year. This year's Delegates Assembly will be held at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, a union hotel.
Restored
The Empire State Building Towercam started working again this morning, although it didn't seem so at first because it was so foggy you couldn't see anything. At the moment I'm using the Towercam to watch the Carnival cruise ships Pride and Legend, both of which are scheduled to depart New York at 5 p.m.
Rejected
More news on the health insurance front: got a note from our insurance company yesterday advising that all my claims are being held up while they determine whether I am:
a) a child subject to a child-custody agreement that might require someone else to pay for my medical care
b) eligible for Medicare
The answer to both of those questions can be easily determined by looking at my birthdate. I am 50 years old, which means I'm in that middle period of life, too old to be covered under a child-custody agreement, but not old enough for Medicare.
Reply and request
Senators Jon Corzine (D-New Jersey, and our neighbor) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) have responded to the petition circulated by Moveon.org and signed by more than 380,000 Americans calling for an independent commission to investigate "whether the Bush Administration manipulated and distorted evidence to take the country to war in Iraq." Sens. Corzine and Stabenow report that "very soon, probably today or tomorrow, the Senate will vote on whether to create an independent commission to investigate the President's possible deception. The vote will come in the form of an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill, which is being debated now." They are asking people to contact their senators about this right away.
No rubber duckies have shown up along the Hudson waterfront so far. No weapons of mass destruction, either.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @5:14 PM
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16.7.03 |
Odyssey of the rubber duckies
(Have you participated in our Question of the Week survey yet? There's still time: we'll reveal the results on Sunday. Remember, you can only vote once. Click HERE to express your opinion.)
Just as soon as I posted yesterday's blog entry featuring the Empire State Building Towercam, the camera seems to have gone on the fritz. Until they get it working again, you can still check out the photo album there of photos taken by other Towercam users.
In other news...
We're watching the waterfront here in Hoboken especially carefully these days, hoping to spot some of the 29,000 rubber duckies and assorted other bathtub toys expected to start washing up along the shores of New England (and maybe beyond) any day now. The duckies and other toys weren't intended to become a science project, but when they fell off a container ship somewhere between China and Seattle in 1995, they became one. That's right: they fell overboard in the Pacific Ocean, then traveled around the Arctic sea into the Atlantic. Some even made it to Europe, and it seems likely at least a few of them will try to make it to the Big Apple, perhaps in hopes of a guest appearance on Sesame Street. The UK Guardian reports that about 10,000 containers fall off ships each year.
But even as we keep an eye out for faded but well-traveled rubber ducks, turtles, frogs, and beavers, we must not turn our attention away from Washington. This week, we focus once again on the subject of overtime, which regular readers of this blog know has been repeatedly threatened this year. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) has introduced an amendment that would prevent the Bush administration from taking away overtime pay rights for 8 million workers. Among those affected: workers in aerospace, defense, health care, skilled trades, nurses, computer-support personnel, graphic artists and engineering technicians.
If you believe workers should NOT lose the right to be paid time-and-a-half for overtime (more than 40 hours a week), contact your Senator and Congressional representative right now via this handy web interface provided by my union, the UAW.
Speaking of elected officials, former Vermont Governor Dr. Howard Dean is guest blogging this week, filling in for the vacationing Lawrence Lessig of Stanford University Law School. His first post drew hundreds of responses, so while you can interact with the Democratic presidential candidate on the blog, he can't answer everyone individually. Readers of Dean's own blog, Blog for America, can find his comments crossposted there as well.
And speaking of overworked computer-support personnel, the folks in Blogger Control have managed to restore a couple of posts that had disappeared, including the original obituary for Virginia Kettering and my recollection of the 1974 Xenia Tornado. Thanks, Blogger Control!
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @2:04 PM
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15.7.03 |
Live, from the top
If you have yet to click on the image of the Empire State Building there in the left-hand column to activate the live Towercam, you're missing out on one of the best features of The Dagley Dagley Daily. You can not only aim the camera remotely over the Internet, but save (or even e-mail) snapshots of your favorite views. The Towercam lets you check the weather (above, a thunderstorm over Jersey City, approaching Lower Manhattan), even the time and temperature. You can check out Central Park (that's the George Washington Bridge in the distance); the Chrysler Building (that's the 59th Street Bridge over the East River behind it); the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges; the Verrazano Bridge connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island (it has its own live webcam here; Bryant Park; the Flatiron Building; the Hoboken beach featured in yesterday's post; the Statue of Liberty; and an assortment of sunrises and sunsets, as well as a constant parade of barges and cruise ships. You can even see the people on the observatory decks. You'll find more photos, including quite a few taken during the 4th of July fireworks, in the Towercam photo album. And if you'd like to see some of these views with your own eyes, you can even buy (and print) a ticket online to visit the Empire State Building yourself.
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @4:54 PM
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14.7.03 |
A day at the beach
(Looking for the AIRSPACE article? Just scroll down past the photo of me with the cardboard Mikhail Gorbachev. Thanks!)
Yesterday was a perfect beach day: warm, but not too warm; breezy, but not too breezy, sunny with puffy white clouds. Not only that, but it was the one day all year that Hoboken's beach was open to the public.
As if that weren't enough, the Fund for a Better Waterfront was offering free food: blackened bluefish, corn on the cob, and desserts. And as if THAT weren't enough to get us out in the noonday sun, the NYC Downtown Boathouse was taking people on free kayak rides in the Hudson. As you can see from these stitched photos, it may not be the prettiest or biggest beach in the world, but it's unquestionably the best beach in all of Hoboken. And very few of your tropical resort beaches can offer a clear view of a working drydock. Fortunately the hard-working crew scraping and painting Barge No. 45 took the day off. Click on the thumbnails below to see the larger images. While there's a bit of fish-eye-lens distortion to these stitched photos, they're pretty accurate representations of what we saw yesterday. Caution: Objects in Manhattan are closer than they appear.
  
posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @1:24 PM
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13.7.03 |
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