Things to Do in New Jersey, Oct. 23 to Nov. 1, 2015

Abstract: A guide to cultural and recreational events in New Jersey. Items for the calendar should be sent at least three weeks in advance to njtowns@nytimes.com. Comedy HASBROUCK HEIGHTS Bananas Comedy Club Vince August. Oct. 23 and Oct. 24. $24 and $25. Carlos Mencia. Oct. 29 and Oct. 30. $30. Bananas Comedy Club, 283 Route 17 South. 201-727-1090 ; bananascomedyclub.com. MONTCLAIR Wellmont Theater John Mulaney. Oct. 23 at 7 p.m. $29 to $59. Wellmont Theater, 5 Seymour Street. 973-783-9500; thewellmonttheater.com. Film MANASQUAN Algonquin Arts Center “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975). Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. $13; with prop bag, $20. Algonquin Arts Center, 173 Main Street. 732-528-9211; algonquinarts.com. RED BANK Count Basie Theater “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” (1975). Oct. 26 at 8 p.m. $5; members, free. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org. Music and Dance ASBURY PARK Asbury Park Boardwalk The Darkness, rock. Oct. 28 at 7 p.m. $24.50. The Revivalists, rock. Oct. 29 at 7 p.m. $15. Craig Finn, singer-songwriter. Nov. 5 at 8 p.m. $15 in advance; $18 at the door. Asbury Park Boardwalk, Ocean Avenue. apboardwalk.com; 732-502-0600. MANASQUAN Algonquin Arts Center “Sixty Miles from Broadway,” by the Orchestra of St. Peter by the Sea. Oct. 25 at 3 p.m. $25 to $51. Algonquin Arts Center, 173 Main Street. algonquinarts.com; 732-528-9211. MAHWAH Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts BJ Thomas, pop and country. Oct. 25 at 3 p.m. $28 to $40; children under 17, $20. Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts, 505 Ramapo Valley Road. 201-684-7844; ramapo.edu/berriecenter. MONTCLAIR Wellmont Theater Young the Giant, rock. Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. $22.50 to $50. Wellmont Theater, 5 Seymour Street. 973-783-9500; thewellmonttheater.com. MORRISTOWN Mayo Performing Arts Center Jean-Yves Thibaudet plays Gershwin. Oct. 25 at 3 p.m. $25 to $90. Mayo Performing Arts Center, 100 South Street. 973-539-8008; mayoarts.org. NEWARK New Jersey Performing Arts Center Valery Gergiev and the London Symphony Orchestra play the music of Bartok and Stravinsky. Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. $29 to $99. New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center Street. 888-466-5722; njpac.org. NEWARK Newark Museum Antoinette Montague, jazz vocalist. Nov. 8 at 3 p.m. Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street. 973-596-6550; newarkmuseum.org. NEWTON The Newton Theater Gin Blossoms, rock. Oct. 23 at 8 p.m. $39 to $64. J. Geils and Joe Louis Walker will perform a tribute to B.B. King on Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. $19 to $44. The Newton Theater, 234 Spring Street. 973-383-3700; thenewtontheatre.com. ORADELL River Dell Regional High School “Young Artist Showcase — Evocative Tone Poems.” Oct. 25 at 4 p.m. Suggested donation, $20. River Dell Regional High School, 55 Pyle Street. 201-477-0406; aconj.org. RAHWAY Union County Performing Arts Center “Piano Masters Series: George Cables.” Oct. 24 at 8 p.m. $25. “Legendary Ladies of Music,” a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross, Tina Turner and others. Nov. 5 through 8. $27.50 to $32.50. Union County Performing Arts Center, 1601 Irving Street. 732-499-8226; ucpac.org. TRENTON The Trenton City Museum “An Opening Dialogue — The Nature of Abstraction” and “On Your Radar? Regional Abstractionists to Watch and Collect,” concurrent exhibitions of painting and sculpture by tristate artists. Sept. 19 through Nov. 8. Free. Hours: Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. The Trenton City Museum, Cadwalader Park. 609-989-1191; ellarslie.org. WEST ORANGE Luna Stage “A Tribute to Grant Green” with the guitarist Charlie Apicella and the Iron City band. Oct. 25 at 7 p.m. $18 in advance; $20 at the door. Luna Stage, 555 Valley Road. 973-395-5551; lunastage.org. Spoken Word HIGHLAND PARK Highland Park Public Library Jane Rawlings will read from her book “The Penelopeia.” Oct. 27 at 7:30 p.m. Free. Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.; Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Highland Park Public Library, 31 North Fifth Avenue. 732-572-2750; hpplnj.org. TENAFLY JCC on the Palisades “The Women’s Right to Vote,” a lecture by the historian Dick Burnon. Oct. 27 at 10:30 a.m. Free. JCC on the Palisades, 411 East Clinton Avenue. 201-569-7900; jccotp.org. Theater CAMDEN South Camden Theater Company, Waterfront South Theater “Charlie Victor Romeo,” by Robert Berger, Patrick Daniels and Irving Gregory. Through Nov. 1. $20. South Camden Theater Company, Waterfront South Theater, 400 Jasper Street. southcamdentheatre.org; 856-409-0365. CHATHAM Chatham Playhouse “August: Osage County,” by Tracy Letts. Through Oct. 24. $23 and $25. Chatham Playhouse, 23 North Passaic Avenue. 973-635-7363; chathamplayers.org. HAMPTON Hunterdon Hills Playhouse “Social Security,” comedy by Andrew Bergman. Through Oct. 24. $58.50 to $68.50. Hunterdon Hills Playhouse, 88 Route 173 West. 800-447-7313; hhplayhouse.com. MADISON F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater, Drew University “The Diary of Anne Frank,” adapted by Wendy Kesselman. Through Nov. 21. $25 to $50. F.M. Kirby Shakespeare Theater, Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue. shakespearenj.org; 973-383-3700. NEW BRUNSWICK George Street Playhouse “Murder for Two,” musical comedy. Through Oct. 25. $39 to $69. George Street Playhouse, 9 Livingston Avenue. gsponline.org; 732-246-7717. Image West Long Branch Jacob Rajan in “The Elephant Wrestler,” a play to be presented by the Indian Ink Theater Company of New Zealand on Nov. 7 at 8 p.m. at the Pollak Theatre, Monmouth University, 400 Cedar Avenue. Admission: $35 to $55. For further information: 732-263-6889; monmouth.edu/arts . Credit Robert Catto PRINCETON McCarter Theater Center “A Comedy of Tenors,” a play by Ken Ludwig. Through Nov. 1. $25 to $72. McCarter Theater Center, 91 University Place. 609-258-2787; mccarter.org. RAHWAY Union County Performing Arts Center “Jekyll and Hyde,” a musical. Oct. 29 through Nov. 1. $20. Union County Performing Arts Center, 1601 Irving Street. ucpac.org; 732-499-8226. RED BANK Count Basie Theater “Evil Dead — The Musical.” Oct. 27 at 8 p.m. $29 to $75. Count Basie Theater, 99 Monmouth Street. 732-842-9000; countbasietheatre.org. TRENTON Mill Hill Playhouse, Passage Theater Company “Song for the Disappeared,” by Tanya Saracho. Oct. 1 through Oct. 25. $20 to $35. Mill Hill Playhouse, Passage Theater Company, 205 East Front Street. 609-392-0766; passagetheatre.org. UNION Zella Fry Theater, Kean University “Elektra,” Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Through Oct. 24. $10 to $15. Zella Fry Theater, Kean University, 1000 Morris Avenue. 908-737-7469; kean.edu/premierestages. WEST ORANGE Luna Stage “The Tall Girls,” a play by Meg Miroshnik. Through Nov. 1. $27 to $37. Luna Stage, 555 Valley Road. lunastage.org; 973-395-5551. WEST WINDSOR Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College “Rumors,” comedy by Neil Simon. Oct. 23 through Nov. 1. $14 to $18. Kelsey Theater, West Windsor Campus, Mercer County Community College, 1200 Old Trenton Road. 609-570-3333; kelseytheatre.net. Museums and Galleries MONTCLAIR BrassWorks on Grove “Polite Architecture,” photographs by Rebecca Zagoory. Through Jan. 8. Mondays through Fridays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. BrassWorks on Grove, 105 Grove Street. 973-744-5100; brassworksongrove.com. RED BANK The Oyster Point Hotel “Transformations,” newsprint collage by Richard A. Buntzen. Through Oct. 30. The Oyster Point Hotel, 146 Bodman Place. 732-530-8200; theoysterpointhotel.com. BEDMINSTER The Center for Contemporary Art “The Thing Itself,” works on paper by 16 artists. “+1,” paintings. “Wishful Intentions,” by Katie Truk. Through Oct. 24. Mondays through Thursdays, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The Center for Contemporary Art, 2020 Burnt Mills Road. 908-234-2345; ccabedminster.org. BERNARDSVILLE Studio 7 Fine Art Gallery “Eye of the Beholder,” landscapes. Through Oct. 31. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Studio 7 Fine Art Gallery, 5 Morristown Road. 908-963-0365; studio7artgallery.com. BOONTON Broadfoot and Broadfoot, A Collection of Fine Art “How She Got Here,” sculptures by Lannie Hart. Wednesdays through Fridays, 12 to 6 p.m.; Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, 12 to 5 p.m. Broadfoot and Broadfoot, a Collection of Fine Art, 819 Main Street. 973-331-0077; broadfootandbroadfoot.com. BOONTON Speakeasy Art Gallery “The Other Side of the World Part 3,” Rob Hessler. Through Nov. 28. Thursdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and by appointment. Speakeasy Art Gallery, 816 Main Street. 973-557-8268. CLINTON Hunterdon Art Museum “Made to Capture,” contemporary photography. Through Jan. 3. “Through the Lens,” site-specific installation. Through Jan. 3. “Sally Spofford (1929-2014): Late Work.” Through Nov. 8. $5 suggested donation. Tuesdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Hunterdon Art Museum, 7 Lower Center Street. hunterdonartmuseum.org; 908-735-8415. EWING The College of New Jersey “A Palette of Pixels: The Evolving Art of Video Games.” Oct. 21 through Dec. 13. Tuesdays through Thursdays, noon to 7 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 3 p.m. The College of New Jersey, 2000 Pennington Road. 609-771-2633; tcnjartgallery.tcnj.edu. EWING The College of New Jersey “A Palette of Pixels: The Evolving Art of Video Games.” Oct. 21 through Dec. 13. Tuesdays through Thursdays, noon to 7 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 3 p.m. The College of New Jersey, 2000 Pennington Road. 609-771-2633; tcnjartgallery.tcnj.edu. GALLOWAY Stockton University Performing Art’s Center “Visual Arts Alumni Triennial Exhibition.” Through Nov. 3. Stockton University Art Galleries, 101 Vera King Farris Drive. 609-652-4566; stockton.edu/artgallery. GLASSBORO Rowan University Art Gallery “Elegy for Tesla,” by Jeanne Jaffe. Through Jan. 30. Mondays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. Rowan University Art Gallery, 201 Mullica Hill Road. rowan.edu/artgallery; 856-256-4521. GUTTENBERG Guttenberg Arts Gallery New works by Chad Stayrook. Through Nov. 4. Guttenberg Arts Gallery, 6903 Jackson Street. guttenbergarts.org; 201-886-8585. HALEDON American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark “Workers and Their Parade by Gary Schoichet,” contemporary photography. Through Dec. 31. Suggested donation, $3 to $5; members and children under 12, free. Wednesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 4 p.m., and by appointment. American Labor Museum/Botto House National Landmark, 83 Norwood Street. 973-595-7953; labormuseum.org. HAMILTON Grounds for Sculpture “Robert Lobe: In the Forest of Drawn Metal,” textured and painted aluminum wall reliefs. Through Jan. 17. “Jae Ko: Selections.” Through Feb. 7. $10 to $15; members and children 5 and under, free. Tuesdays through Sundays, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Grounds for Sculpture, 18 Fairgrounds Road. 609-586-0616; groundsforsculpture.org. HIGHLAND PARK B. Beamesderfer Gallery Watercolors and collages by Peter Arakawa. Through Nov. 12. Mondays through Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. B. Beamesderfer Gallery, 6 North Second Avenue. 732-249-6971. HOBOKEN Hoboken Historical Museum “Frank Sinatra: The Man, the Voice and the Fans,” multimedia. Through July 3, 2016. $3; members, free. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 2 to 7 p.m.; Fridays, 1 to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Hoboken Historical Museum, 1301 Hudson Street. hobokenmuseum.org; 201-656-2240. ISLAND HEIGHTS John F. Peto Studio Museum “John Frederick Peto: Discovering Hidden Meanings.” Through Dec. 13. $5 and $10; members, free. Saturdays and Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. John F. Peto Studio Museum, 102 Cedar Avenue. 732-929-4949; petomuseum.org. JERSEY CITY Art House Productions Gallery “Your Move: Dance Photography Exhibition.” Through Nov. 20. Free. Sundays, noon to 3 p.m. and by appointment. Art House Productions Gallery, 136 Magnolia Avenue. arthouseproductions.org; 201-915-9911. Image Montclair “Untitled Dream” (2014-15), a computer-generated digital print by Howard Berelson, is on view in the exhibition “Portfolio Series: Old is Good,” from Nov. 3 to Nov. 29 at the Montclair Public Library Gallery, 50 South Fullerton Avenue. Free. Information: 973-744-1818; studiomontclair.org . Credit TK JERSEY CITY Curious Matter “Sanctus,” group show. Through Nov. 15. Sundays noon to 3 p.m. and by appointment. Curious Matter, 272 Fifth Street. 201-659-5771; curiousmatter.org. JERSEY CITY Victory Hall Drawing Rooms “The Divine and Sublime,” works exploring consciousness, the contemplative and the sacred object. Oct. 23 through Nov. 22. Reception: Oct. 25. Victory Hall Drawing Rooms, 180 Grand Street. drawingrooms.org. LAMBERTVILLE The Artists’ Gallery “Luminous Landscapes,” paintings by Alex McKibbin and Joe Kazimierczyk. Through Nov. 1. Reception, Oct. 10, 5 to 8 p.m. Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Artists’ Gallery, 18 Bridge Street. lambertvillearts.com; 609-397-4588. MADISON Drew University “Fragments,” prints and collage by Robin Koss. Oct. 20 through Nov. 20. Drew University, 36 Madison Avenue. 973-408-3758; drew.edu/korngallery. MANASQUAN Jersey Shore Moments Fine Art Gallery Theresa Troise Heidel Watercolor Exhibit. Oct. 24 through Nov. 15. Reception: Oct. 24, 5 to 7 p.m. Jersey Shore Moments Fine Art Gallery, 209 Highway 71. 732-223-1334; jerseyshoremoments.com. METUCHEN Nails in the Wall, the Gallery at St. Luke’s “Earth/Air/Fire/Water: Elements, Sacraments,” 50 pieces of work by 29 artists. Through Dec. 31. Nails in the Wall, the Gallery at St. Luke’s, 17 Oak Avenue. 732-322-6512; nailsinthewall.com. MONTCLAIR Montclair Art Museum “Work and Leisure in American Art: Selected Works From the Collection.” Through June 19. “Eric Carle: Animals and Friends,” works by the children’s book author and illustrator. Through Jan. 3. $10 to $12; members and children under 12, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Montclair Art Museum, 3 South Mountain Avenue. 973-746-5555; montclairartmuseum.org. MONTCLAIR The Gallery at Hillside Square “Stanzas of Metaphor and Meaning,” Janet Taylor Pickett. Through Jan. 8. Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Gallery at Hillside Square, 8 Hillside Avenue. 212-729-3399. MORRISTOWN Macculloch Hall Historical Museum “Canals of New Jersey,” the state’s towpath canals, the Morris, Delaware and Raritan. Through Oct. 29. $6 to $8; children ages 6 to 12, $4; children under 5, free. Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. Macculloch Hall Historical Museum, 45 Macculloch Avenue. maccullochhall.org; 973-538-2404. MORRISTOWN Morris Museum “The Fashionable Child: 200 Years of Dressing Our Children.” Through Nov. 29. $7 to $10. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Morris Museum, 6 Normandy Heights Road. morrismuseum.org; 973-971-3700. MORRISTOWN Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, College of Saint Elizabeth “Histories: Figuring it Out,” group show. Through Nov. 22. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, 2 to 6 p.m. Therese A. Maloney Art Gallery, College of St. Elizabeth, 2 Convent Road. 973-290-4315; maloneyartgallery.org. NEW BRUNSWICK Rutgers University “New York Subways Arrive in New Jersey,” an exhibit featuring vintage New York City subways, trolleys and buses. Oct. 31, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. $20. Rutgers University, 130 College Avenue. 848-932-7171. NEW BRUNSWICK Zimmerli Art Museum “Melvin Edwards: Five Decades.” Through Jan. 10. “Vagabond Artist: ‘Pop’ Hart in Tahiti, Mexico, and the Caribbean,” works by George Overbury Hart. Through Feb. 7. “States of Undress: Bathers and Nudes in 19th-Century French Art,” prints and drawings. Through Jan. 10. “Simeon De Witt: Mapping a Revolution.” Through July 31. “Donkey-donkey, Petunia, and Other Pals: Drawings by Roger Duvoisin,” original illustrations. Through June 26. Tuesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. Zimmerli Art Museum, 71 Hamilton Street. 848-932-7237; zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu. NEWARK Newark Museum “Outside the Lines: Color Across the Collections,” modern and contemporary works. Through Jan. 10. $10, adults; children, seniors and students, $6; members, free. Hours: Wednesdays through Fridays, noon to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street. 973-596-6550; newarkmuseum.org. NEWARK Newark Public Library “Beyond Exile: Cubans in New Jersey.” Through Dec. 31. Newark Public Library, 5 Washington Street. 973-733-7784; npl.org. NEWARK The Newark Museum “Rajas, Wrestlers and Renunciants: Portraits From Asia.” Through Feb. 28. $7 and $12; members, free. Wednesdays through Sundays, noon to 5 p.m. The Newark Museum, 49 Washington Street. 973-596-6550; newarkmuseum.org. POMONA, N.Y. Down to Earth Living “Nature’s Eyes: Sculpture in the Garden,” five artists. Through Nov. 1. Daily, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Down to Earth Living, 1040 Route 45. dteliving.com; 845-354-8500. PRINCETON Princeton University Art Museum “Cézanne and the Modern: Masterpieces of European Art From the Pearlman Collection.” Through Jan. 3. “Sacred Caves of the Silk Road: Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang.” Through Jan. 10. Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m. Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton University Campus. artmuseum.princeton.edu; 609-258-3788. RED BANK Art Alliance of Monmouth County All-member show, with works by Vicky Culver. Through Oct. 27. Tuesdays through Saturdays, noon to 4 p.m. Art Alliance of Monmouth County, 33 Monmouth Street. artallianceofmonmouth.org; 732-842-9403. RED BANK The Oyster Point Hotel “Transformations,” newsprint collage by Richard A. Buntzen. Through Oct. 30. The Oyster Point Hotel, 146 Bodman Place. 732-530-8200; theoysterpointhotel.com. SUMMIT Visual Arts Center of New Jersey “Casey Ruble: Everything That Rises,” exploring history and race relations in New Jersey. Through Jan. 17. “Adhere,” site-specific installation. Through Jan. 17. “Shape of Play: Sculpture by Don Porcaro.” Through Nov. 15. Mondays to Thursdays, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m.; Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, 68 Elm Street. 908-273-9121; artcenternj.org. TRENTON New Jersey State Museum “From Here to Uncertainty,” two new installations and previous works from artist Jim Toia. Oct. 15 through Jan. 3. Adults, $5; seniors and students, $4; children under 12, free. Hours: Tuesdays through Sundays, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. New Jersey State Museum, 205 West State Street. 609-292-6464; statemuseum.nj.gov. TRENTON The Trenton City Museum “An Opening Dialogue: The Nature of Abstraction” and “On Your Radar? Regional Abstractionists to Watch and Collect,” painting and sculpture. Through Nov. 8. Free. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Sundays, 1 to 4 p.m. The Trenton City Museum, Cadwalader Park. ellarslie.org; 609-989-1191. WEST ORANGE JCC MetroWest Abstract paintings by Meesook Choe. Through Oct. 25. Mondays to Thursdays, 5:30 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Fridays, 5:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. JCC MetroWest, 760 Northfield Avenue. jccmetrowest.org; 973-530-3413. WESTFIELD Gallery U “Something Wicked This Way Comes: Artwork Celebrating the Gothic and Beautifully Macabre.” Through Nov. 2. Reception Oct. 30, 6 to 8 p.m. Mondays to Saturdays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Sundays, noon to 4 p.m. Gallery U, 439 South Avenue West. gallery-u.blogspot.com; 908-232-1895.

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Awaiting Hollywood Glitter Along the East River

Abstract: Queensbridge Houses, America's largest public housing development, is a six-square-block maze of brown clover-shaped buildings and worn courtyards, some within sight of the East River. The complex, in Long Island City just north of the Queensboro Bridge, houses more than 7,000 people and is so large that residents sometimes call it a city within the city. If two developers have their way, Queensbridge may soon have a sister city. Its founders would be Alan and Stuart Suna, who already own the nearby Silvercup Studios, where "The Sopranos" and "Hope and Faith" are filmed. They now plan to build a six-acre development known as Silvercup West on the shoreline just south of the bridge, less than a block from Queensbridge Houses. The $1 billion project would include eight soundstages, along with three towers more than 50 stories tall containing offices, stores and 1,000 apartments. On Wednesday, the day after the plan was made public, few Queensbridge residents had heard of Silvercup West. But when told about the project, most approved of it -- however hesitantly -- and all said they hoped it would bring jobs to the struggling area. "It would be wonderful," said Versie Martin, 54, who was laid off from a job at Lord & Taylor in 2003. "I know a lot of people in the projects that need a job. They're willing to take something for $20,000, and they've been at jobs making $40,000." The Rev. Mitchell Taylor, the chairman of the East River Development Alliance, a social service agency, pointed to other possible gains for Queensbridge: "You're talking about street improvements, you're talking about property improvements, the way the community looks, school improvements." Along with wish lists, there was a dose of skepticism. "What kind of housing are they going to have -- unaffordable housing?" asked Vanessa Quiñones, director of youth services at the Jacob A. Riis Settlement House, where she sat in a basement office surrounded by lanky teenage staffers. (In fact, all the Silvercup West housing will be market rate.) She said she would support Silvercup West, "as long as it would mean jobs for the community." The Sunas have said Silvercup West will create 3,900 permanent jobs. The project, if approved, would be only the most recent -- and the farthest north -- in a glittering string of developments moving up the Long Island City shoreline. Debra-Ellen Glickstein, the executive director of the East River Development Alliance, pointed out that improvements in Queensbridge were in Silvercup's interest. "If people aren't working, crime increases," she said. "If there's poverty in Queensbridge, that's certainly going to affect this development down the street." ALEX MINDLIN

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E*Trade Cuts Profit Forecast, Citing Write-Downs on Mortgage Securities

Abstract: The E*Trade Financial Corporation, the discount brokerage and banking firm, said yesterday that it would not be able to meet its previously announced profit targets because it expected to report “significant write-downs” in the value of mortgage-backed securities it holds. The company said the Securities and Exchange Commission began an informal inquiry last month into “matters relating to the company’s loans and securities portfolios.” The company also said that the head of its capital markets operations, Dennis E. Webb, ceased working for the company yesterday and would receive severance payments. It did not say whether he had resigned or was fired. The disclosures were made in filings with the S.E.C. after the market closed yesterday. E*Trade shares, which had fallen 1 cent, to $8.59, fell in after-hours trading to as low as $7.30, the lowest level in four years. The new S.E.C. inquiry means that E*Trade is facing two investigations by the commission. It had earlier disclosed that the division run by Mr. Webb, along with other firms, was facing an investigation into whether it had “traded ahead” of customers by executing its own orders for shares before it executed those of customers. The new filing said that investigation was continuing. On Oct. 17, E*Trade said that for the third quarter it would report its first quarterly loss ever, but it said it still expected to earn 75 cents to 90 cents a share for 2007. The S.E.C. began the informal inquiry that day, the company said yesterday. E*Trade said that the write-downs it now expects were greater than it had anticipated when it made the October announcement and that investors should no longer rely on that forecast. It said it would not make any more profit forecasts. The company pointed to declines in the value of its portfolio of securities backed by mortgages, in part because of downgrades by bond rating agencies, and said it expected more such declines. It said the cost of those securities was about $450 million but did not estimate how large the write-downs might be. It said it expected to remain “well capitalized” under securities rules. E*Trade had expanded its lending, including mortgage lending, aggressively in recent years. In September, it said it planned to get out of the business of holding mortgage-backed securities, although it said then that it was having trouble finding buyers for the holdings. Even before the company’s share price fell in after-hours trading yesterday, it was down 62 percent since the end of last year, a performance worse than that of all but 3 of the other 92 financial stocks in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index. Those three include two financial guaranty firms, Ambac and MBIA, and one mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial.

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Mountain Bike Racing Is Drawing Young Riders

Abstract: Eugene Sorenson was plenty busy — he works as a global business manager at Bloomberg L.P. and is on the board of Trips for Kids Metro New York , a nonprofit group that introduces mountain biking to underprivileged children to provide exercise, expose them to nature and teach life lessons about setting and achieving goals. (His wife, Andree Sanders, is the group’s executive director.) But after Mr. Sorenson learned last year that the National Interscholastic Cycling Association had started a mountain bike racing league for high schools in New York State, he had a new, if improbable, goal: to bring the sport to New York City high school students. “I was definitely surprised,” said Jason Cairo, executive director of the cycling association’s New York chapter, who had not even contemplated finding youngsters, coaches and suitable terrain in the state’s most urban environment. Mr. Sorenson’s team, the NYCranks, is now one of 14 teams in the state; the season concludes on June 1 with a championship race in Greene County. Mr. Sorenson had no mountain bike racing experience and said he had “no idea how I was going to find the time to do this.” But he did have some advantages from his role with Trips for Kids. “I have operational experience at producing outdoors events and in working with kids,” he said, “and I have a fleet of 40 bikes.” Image Members of NYCranks mountain bike team, from left: Julian Maissel, Charlie DeRanieri, Campbell Sorenson, Seth Freedman-Peel, the team's coach Eugene Sorenson and Ari Papagianis. The team wants to recruit girls next year. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times Most of all, he had a passionate belief in the sport’s value. “Mountain biking mentally prepares you for life,” he said. “It teaches you persistence and how to get past obstacles — my wife says that on the trail, if you focus on a tree, you’re going to hit the tree. You have to learn how to look past the tree to see how to get around it.” Mr. Sorenson knew no one city school could fill a roster, so he established a citywide team and then expanded its boundaries to include high school students from Long Island. One day, before the season began, Julian Maissel and his father drove from Port Washington in Nassau County to Cunningham Park in Queens to check out the park’s mountain bike trails. They encountered Mr. Sorenson there. “I never really knew mountain biking was a sport, I just thought it was an activity,” Julian, 15, said. Still, Mr. Sorenson recruited him on the spot. “He hadn’t even seen me ride,” Julian said. “I was still unloading my bike.” The six-member team includes boys from Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. (Recruiting girls is the goal for next year, and Mr. Sorenson hopes to one day have enough participants to create one team for each of the city’s five boroughs.) Image Mr. Sorenson said mountain biking teaches riders persistence and how to overcome obstacles. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times Joining the NYCranks is certainly different from being on a high school football or basketball team. When Julian tells friends about his new activity, he said, “people have no idea what I’m talking about.” Ben Martinez, 16, a junior at the Academy for Careers in Television and Film in Long Island City, Queens, added, “When I tell people at school I’m on the mountain bike team they either think I’m insane or really cool.” That may stem from the misconception that mountain biking is an extreme sport. “Some people think I’m doing motocross on dirt bikes,” Julian said. When Ari Papagianis, of Bayside High School in Queens, wanted to join his friend from Bayside, Charlie DeRanieri, on the team, his parents initially said no — they were unsure what he would be getting into. “Mountain biking is totally alien to many people in the city,” Mr. Sorenson said, explaining that it is safe, akin to “cross-country running but on a bike.” Mr. Sorenson and Ari, 14, first persuaded his parents to let him practice with the team. Eventually his parents agreed that he could race once, but after they saw him in action, they were won over. Image Charlie DeRanieri, a member of the high school mountain bike team NYCranks, racing at Stewart State Forest in Orange County. Credit James Estrin/The New York Times “I love it,” Ari said at the head of the Cunningham Park trail where the team practices. “I like riding around the woods and getting away from society.” Ari endured a tough race at Stewart State Forest earlier this month: On the first lap, he got a flat tire. Racers are penalized if they receive help, so Ari struggled in the muddy terrain to fix it by himself. “It was really frustrating,” he said. Still, the day was not a total loss. “I was really happy I finished and was surprised by how well I did in my second lap,” he said. “Plus I saw a snake in the middle of the race.” Enthusiasm is necessary in a sport that “gets very painful very quickly,” said Mr. Sorenson’s son Campbell, the team’s first member. “You have to learn to keep on going,” he continued, “no matter how many scrapes and bruises you get.” So far, the team has finished far out of first place, but the bikers’ love of the sport has definitely made an impression. “They’re the most vocal team,” Mr. Cairo said. The racers have formed a tight bond, cheering not only their teammates but also their competitors. “We’re part of a brotherhood of mountain bike racers now,” Ben said.

Mountain Biking
School Sports
NYC
Trips for Kids Metro New York
Eugene Sorenson


Too Much of a Good Thing?

Abstract: Because of the storied basketball history at Kansas and the university's often-lofty national ranking, guard Jeff Hawkins has become accustomed to the revelry of opposing fans and their storming the court. It happens so frequently that Hawkins and his Jayhawk teammates have a strategy to avoid the onrush of celebrating fans. "You've got to stay to the side," Hawkins, a fifth-year senior, said. "Otherwise, you'll get caught up in the stampede." Hawkins recalls being part of such chaotic scenes on at least six occasions during his collegiate career. "You know it's coming," he said. "We know we've got to be ready for it, especially if we're at their home gym." Although storming the court has long been a part of college basketball, it has become common enough that it has caught the attention of universities worried about safety. It is happening at colleges like Syracuse, where fans are hardly unaccustomed to seeing their team win. Yet they rushed onto the court after the Orange beat 14th-ranked West Virginia last Monday. It is even happening at the Division III level. Fans at Wheaton College in Illinois stormed the court after a victory over seventh-ranked Illinois Wesleyan on Feb. 11; it was Wheaton's second victory over a top-10-ranked opponent in four days. "It's like standing in the stands is not enough," William Jonas, an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Missouri, said. He and hundreds of other students stormed the court Jan. 16 in Columbia, Mo., after the Tigers defeated bitter rival Kansas in overtime before a national television audience. "You've got to be down there with the players." The issue has become so contentious that the National Collegiate Athletic Association will hold a conference concerning crowd control in April in Savannah, Ga. Conferences, universities and sociologists will participate. "What you're seeing is a lot of copycatting going on right now," said Ron Stratton, vice president for education services for the N.C.A.A. "It doesn't have to be a very big deal, frankly, for folks to decide they can run on the court. What we're really trying to do is have a discussion as to whether, in fact, we can get some uniform ways to provide guidance for those institutions." Stratton called it a "risk management issue" for colleges. Maureen Smith, a past chairwoman of the Sport Sociology Academy of the National Association for Sport and Physical Education, said she attributed the prevalence of fans' storming the court to their yearning to be more involved in games. "They can't be the player, but they can be a part of sort of that vicarious excitement of the victory," said Smith, an associate professor of kinesiology at California State University at Sacramento. Of the N.C.A.A.'s 31 Division I conferences, the Southeastern Conference is believed to be the only one with a policy prohibiting fans from the areas where athletes compete. It applies to all sports and was unanimously adopted by all 12 of its member institutions in December 2004, SEC Commissioner Mike Slive said. The guidelines include fines from $5,000 for a first offense up to $25,000 for a second offense. A third offense or beyond can draw a maximum fine of $50,000. "It forces and focuses the institution and all of its constituencies to confront the issue of why you would have the legislation in the first place," Slive said. "That is to protect players, coaches and fans." Four SEC universities have been fined under the two-year-old policy, including Arkansas and Tennessee this season. Each college had fans take to the court after home victories against Florida. About 25 students rushed the court at Arkansas' Bud Walton Arena on Feb. 18, when the Razorbacks beat the Gators, who were ranked 10th at the time. Arkansas was fined $5,000. "I'm not sure the punishment was fit for the crime," Arkansas Coach Stan Heath said. "I think the SEC has taken a position that it's a black or white issue. If you come on, you get fined. In that situation, we didn't get our bang for our buck." Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delany said the conference had no plans to implement a mandate similar to the SEC's. "I think you try to minimize it, you try to discourage it and do everything you can, but I'm not sure that dogs, horses or the commissioner can necessarily dictate the outcome," he said. Of the Big Ten's 88 conference games in men's basketball this season, Delany estimated that fans would rush the court 6 to 10 times. "So the question is whether or not you create an environment in the 88 games to stop what might happen six or eight times a year," he said. Arkansas sophomore forward Charles Thomas said he enjoyed the postgame celebrations. "You really want to interact with the fans," he said. "Just going to one little section really isn't enough." Thomas said he and his teammates watched Villanova fans take the court Feb. 13 after their team's victory over Connecticut, which was ranked No. 1 at the time. (Villanova was No. 4.) "We saw that on TV and it was like, 'Why can't we do that?' " Thomas said. "It looked like everybody was having a good time." Last season, Vanderbilt was fined $5,000 by the SEC because its fans went onto the home court after a last-second victory in the National Invitation Tournament. Vanderbilt's vice chancellor, David Williams, who oversees the university's athletic department, said a number of student groups offered to help pay the fine, an effort that was declined. "We agree with the SEC's policy," Williams said. "Kids and fans want to celebrate and we're all for that, but sometimes our fans can end up being in issues where people get hurt." Since the fine, Williams said, Vanderbilt has worked with student leaders and runs 30-second public-service announcements at games to make fans aware of the SEC's prohibition. "It's one of those spur-of-the-moment things," Williams said. "Unfortunately, the rule isn't going to prevent it all the time." Mark Fohl, athletic director at the University of Minnesota-Morris, said he understood the issue of fan safety all too well. In October, a junior basketball player at Minnesota-Morris, Richard Rose, was among 18 people who ran onto the field after the homecoming football game. He was struck by a falling goalpost and died from head trauma. Fohl said Minnesota-Morris, a Division II university, did not have any measures in place to restrict fans from playing fields but would support N.C.A.A. measures to do so. "People rush out and I don't think they do consider the consequences of what could happen," Fohl said. "That's something we really need to work on with fans so that they understand how dangerous some of the things that they are doing can be. I don't think they've gotten that message very well."

NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSN
BASKETBALL


Rookie Feels at Home in Leading the Barclays

Abstract: PARAMUS, N.J. — For the third time this season, the PGA Tour rookie Kevin Streelman has popped up on the national golf stage. The previous two appearances were cameos. But as the third-round leader of the Barclays, the first of four $7 million events comprising the season-ending FedEx Cup playoffs, Streelman is auditioning for a starring role after Saturday’s round at Ridgewood Country Club. While the overnight leader Steve Stricker struggled to a 77 that featured four bogeys and a triple in a calamitous back-nine 43, Streelman shot a low-stress 68 that combined with his previous rounds of 67 and 70 to put him at eight-under-par 205. He is one stroke ahead of the formidable foursome of Vijay Singh, who shot 66; Mike Weir, who shot 67; and Paul Casey and Sergio García, who each shot 69. Stricker is tied with 12 players in 11th place, four shots back. He lost the lead to García at the par-4 12th, when a lost ball produced a triple-bogey 7. He later bogeyed Nos. 14, 16 and 17. These are heady heights for Streelman, 29, a golfer ranked No. 102 in FedEx Cup points and No. 209 in the world rankings. It would be understandable if Streelman, sitting on the first third-round lead of his career across the Hudson River from Broadway, would be sweating like a bit-part actor in the opening night spotlight. Not so. He has paid his dues twice this season at Torrey Pines Golf Course in San Diego, playing his way into a third-round threesome with Tiger Woods at the Buick Invitational in January and sharing the first-round lead at the United States Open in June. “That day with Tiger was the greatest preparation I ever could have managed,” said Streelman, who finished the Buick tied for 29th and the Open tied for 53rd. “I know it will be crazy tomorrow, but I guarantee you it won’t be quite as big as that day in San Diego with Tiger, which was amazing. It will be great preparation for me. And if it works out tomorrow, great, and if not, I’ll try to get myself in this position as many more times as possible.” That’s not the happy talk of some rookie. Streelman is surrounded by family here and is comfortable in this position. His mother, Mary Lou, and father, Dennis, are from nearby Glen Rock, N.J., and his paternal grandfather and grandmother are buried in George Washington Memorial Park, adjacent to the seventh hole at Ridgewood. “It means a lot,” Streelman said. “My dad was approached by a gentleman yesterday who said, ‘You following Streelman?’ ” When Dennis Streelman said he was Kevin’s father, Kevin said the man replied, “ ‘Yeah, I used to know this guy named Happy Streelman. We used to call him Hap, because he was always happy.’ “And that’s my dad’s father.” Some of that spirit was passed on to a couple of generations. Kevin Streelman smiles much of the time. For the past four months, he has had good reason. In his 10 tournament appearances since missing the cut at the Wachovia Championship on May 5, he has not missed a cut. Last week he finished tied for sixth at the Wyndham Championship. The prospect of being overtaken by Singh, García, Weir or any of the other pursuers does not seem to bother Streelman. This is a player who, before and after each round, makes sure to kiss his wife and his mother and father. “It will be a fun day for me,” he said. “I’m interested to see how I kind of react to it, and that’s what I’ve been working for my whole life. This has been a culmination of many, many hours and years of hard work, and a lot of miles traveled around many tours around the whole country and even world. “I wasn’t planning on it being as meaningful of a week. But any week I can share with my parents and friends, and as many friends that are in this area, and my family, my aunt and uncle who I had not even seen in four or five years came out and walked around today, that’s what it’s all about.”


Iraq: American Airman Killed at Base

Abstract: An American airman was killed on Thursday and a soldier wounded while detonating seized explosives at Balad, a sprawling military base north of Baghdad, the American military said in a statement. The death was the third so far this month, which began with President Obama’s formal declaration of the end of the American combat mission, and the 49th this year. Nearly 50,000 American troops remain in Iraq in advisory and support roles that nonetheless remain risky.

United States Defense and Military Forces


Advocates in New York Scramble as Child Deportation Cases Are Accelerated

Abstract: Immigrant advocacy groups were rushing on Monday to prepare for special new court procedures in New York City next week that will accelerate deportation hearings for newly arrived unaccompanied children from Central America. The advocates, who learned about the new procedures in the last several days, were trying to develop a strategy to respond to the shift, including recruiting and preparing pro bono lawyers and searching for additional financing to support their efforts. “This has hit us like a hurricane or a tsunami or whatever you can call it, because we’re already overwhelmed with cases,” said Jojo Annobil, who leads the Immigration Law Unit at the Legal Aid Society. “It will need all hands on deck.” Under the new procedures, unaccompanied minors and families with children who entered the United States in recent months during a surge of illegal migration from Central America will be moved to the front of the line to go before immigration judges. These immigrants could be deported in a matter of months rather than years, the usual time frame in the overburdened immigration court system. Advocates said that under the procedural shift in New York, which is expected to start on Aug. 13, at least one judge at 26 Federal Plaza in Manhattan will hear what are known as master calendars — initial hearings on cases — several mornings a week. The advocates, who say they were informally briefed by court administrators in New York late last week, refer to the new procedures as rocket dockets. The plan is part of the President Obama’s strategy, announced last month, to accelerate cases involving child migrants and parents with children to deter the influx of migrants across the southern border. In an email on Monday, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department’s executive office for immigration review, or EOIR, which oversees the immigration courts, said: “These steps include making docket adjustments, re-prioritizing certain case types and refocusing EOIR immigration court resources.” The administration’s goal is for lone minors to appear before a judge within 21 days after being put into deportation proceedings, said the spokeswoman, Kathryn Mattingly. The realignment is also intended to provide an initial hearing to all parents with children within 28 days, she added. Justice Department officials did not confirm specifics about the duration of the special juvenile dockets in New York. But they said they had juvenile dockets of varying sizes in 39 courts around the country to help accelerate the processing of cases and meet their goals of shorter waits. Few courts, however, are handling as many cases as New York: Of all the states, only Texas has received more unaccompanied minors since the beginning of the year, according to figures recently released by the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement. Officials in the Obama administration have insisted that legal standards will not be compromised in the rush to process cases. But advocates worry that many children may not be able to find competent legal representation — or any representation. “Immigration court is an incredibly difficult place to navigate for an adult who speaks English, so you can imagine how difficult it’s going to be for a child,” said Camille Mackler, director of legal initiatives at the New York Immigration Coalition. Last week, a group of legal service providers, including the American Civil Liberties Union, asked a federal court to block deportation proceedings against several children until they had obtained lawyers. “These children face an imminent threat of being deported, potentially to their death,” Ahilan Arulanantham, a staff lawyer with the A.C.L.U.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a news release. “To force them to defend themselves against a trained prosecutor, with their lives literally on the line, violates due process and runs counter to everything our country stands for.” In recent years, immigration courts in New York City have held several special juvenile dockets a month, working closely with a group of legal service providers that offer free legal screening and representation to young defendants. Those groups say that the normal rhythm of hearings was already overwhelming. The prospect of possibly hundreds of new cases flooding the courts, they say, is dizzying. “Where will the resources be to actually represent people?” asked Lenni Benson, director of Safe Passage Project, a legal services provider, and one of the groups working in the special juvenile dockets. “I don’t know that without more resources or coordination I can do more than I’m doing. And I know the other organizations are at capacity.”

Illegal Immigration
Legal Aid for the Poor
NYC
Deportation
Legal Aid Society
New York Immigration Coalition
Barack Obama
Justice Department
Children


Federal Appeals Court Reinstates Indictments in a Drug-and-Gun Sting

Abstract: Overturning a district court ruling that federal agents had engaged in illegal, “outrageous government conduct,” a federal appeals panel in California on Thursday reinstated the criminal indictments of two men who were caught in a drug-and-gun sting operation. The panel, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, also granted the government’s request to reassign the case to a different trial judge. In the sting, one of hundreds of similar operations by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, an undercover agent offered the defendants an opportunity to steal a large quantity of cocaine from an imaginary “stash house.” As the men prepared for what they thought would be a lucrative armed robbery, they were arrested and charged with major drug and gun crimes. In March, Judge Otis D. Wright II of Federal District Court dismissed the charges against the two defendants , describing the A.T.F. as “trawling for crooks in seedy, poverty-ridden areas — all without an iota of suspicion that any particular person has committed similar conduct in the past.” A second district judge in California later made a similar finding that the agency had violated “fundamental fairness,” and judges in Chicago questioned whether the stings had illegally targeted black and Hispanic people. The government appealed Judge Wright’s decision and accused him of bias. The appeals panel, in a hearing in November and in Thursday’s ruling , expressed misgivings about the government’s use of such stings. But it said it was bound by previous decisions by its circuit court that the operations did not “cross the line into outrageous government conduct.” Given Judge Wright’s statements, the panel also ruled, “the appearance of justice would be better served” by sending the case to a different judge.

Bureau of Alcohol
Tobacco
Firearms and Explosives
Drug Abuse
Guns
California
Decisions and Verdicts
Otis D. Wright II


Tie Breaker Allows Lysacek to Defend Title

Abstract: ST. PAUL — Nobody could have anticipated an ending like this. A tie breaker? In figure skating? Waiting for his scores in the kiss-and-cry area on Sunday, Johnny Weir squinted at the television monitor with confusion. Weir and his top rival, Evan Lysacek, finished with identical totals of 244.77 at the United States Figure Skating Championships. But Lysacek edged Weir for the men’s title because he had slightly better marks in his free skate, which is the tie breaker under International Skating Union regulations. Weir appeared perplexed. He turned to his coach, Galina Zmievskaya, who shrugged. Lysacek, who won his second consecutive United States title, said he had no idea what happened until an official from the United States Figure Skating Association explained it to him. “If you were scripting this whole deal, you probably couldn’t have done any better job than this,” Lysacek said. True enough. Lysacek, a tall, tanned Californian, skated a technically challenging program to Puccini’s “Tosca,” with just enough shaky landings to give Weir a chance at the title. Weir, the three-time national champion known for his showmanship, led by 1.35 points after the short program. He took the ice Sunday in a black-and-white unitard he called “a sparkly onesie.” Skating to “Love is War” by Yoav Goren, Weir aborted two jumps late in his program. On the second, he two-footed the landing on a triple flip and never attempted the planned double-toe loop. But Weir said a poor score on an upright spin, in which he did not clearly change skating edges, was probably the biggest difference. Lysacek had 162.72 points to Weir’s 161.37 in the free skate. Stephen Carriere, the 2007 world junior champion, finished nearly 7 points ahead of Jeremy Abbott and Ryan Bradley for third place. “First place, second place, last place, I’m just happy with the way I skated,” said Weir, who changed coaches and training sites this season to try to revive his career. But the day was not without some controversy. Weir and Lysacek have never pretended to be friends, and Weir jabbed Lysacek in an interview for NBC that was broadcast Sunday night. “I respect Evan as an athlete, but as a person I don’t really like him,” Weir said in the interview. “There’s nothing special about him to me. We would never be friends, and I wouldn’t even know who he was if we weren’t competing against each other.” When asked about Weir’s comments after his victory, Lysacek said: “Oh that’s nice. Thank you for sharing that with me.” He refused to attack Weir, adding, “I’m not going to say anything bad about him, because I admire him.” All week, Lysacek said he felt nervous. He said his hands were shaking Friday night at the start of his short program. On Sunday, after scoring big on a quadruple toe loop-triple toe loop combination, Lysacek needed all his balance to hold landings on three triple jumps, the last being a triple axel-double toe loop combination. “I thought Johnny was terribly straight and accurate and beautiful to watch,” said Frank Carroll, Lysacek’s coach. “I thought Evan was very exciting and very dramatic, I think it boils down to what you like, pie or cake.” Lysacek said he was just glad it was over. “Last year, I was excited,” he said. “I climbed on top of the mountain I wanted for so long. This year, I felt more relief. I’m sad to say that I’m a little bit happy that it’s over, and I rarely feel like that.” Picking the men’s team for the world championships in March in Goteborg, Sweden, proved much simpler for United States Figure Skating’s international committee than choosing the women’s team. The men’s medalists all qualified. For the women, three of the top four finishers were not old enough to qualify. The women’s winner, Mirai Nagasu, along with the silver medalist, Rachael Flatt, and the fourth-place finisher, Caroline Zhang, had not turned 15 by July 1, 2007, the cutoff date for eligibility. Typically, the national champion qualifies and the committee picks the next two skaters, usually the other medalists. Lacking that option, the committee settled on the bronze medalist, Ashley Wagner; Beatrisa Liang, who finished fifth; and Kimmie Meissner, last year’s national champion and the 2006 world champion, who was seventh. Katrina Hacker, 17, finished a spot ahead of Meissner but was not selected because she has little international experience.


Computer Visionary Who Invented the Mouse

Abstract: Douglas C. Engelbart was 25, just engaged to be married and thinking about his future when he had an epiphany in 1950 that would change the world. He had a good job working at a government aerospace laboratory in California, but he wanted to do something more with his life, something of value that might last, even outlive him. Then it came to him. In a single stroke he had what might be safely called a complete vision of the information age. The epiphany spoke to him of technology’s potential to expand human intelligence, and from it he spun out a career that indeed had lasting impact. It led to a host of inventions that became the basis for the Internet and the modern personal computer. In later years, one of those inventions was given a warmhearted name, evoking a small, furry creature given to scurrying across flat surfaces: the computer mouse. Dr. Engelbart died on Tuesday at 88 at his home in Atherton, Calif. His wife, Karen O’Leary Engelbart, said the cause was kidney failure. Image Douglas C. Engelbart with an early computer mouse in 1968, the year it was unveiled. Credit SRI International Computing was in its infancy when Dr. Engelbart entered the field. Computers were ungainly room-size calculating machines that could be used by only one person at a time. Someone would feed them information in stacks of punched cards and then wait hours for a printout of answers. Interactive computing was a thing of the future, or in science fiction. But it was germinating in Dr. Engelbart’s restless mind. In his epiphany, he saw himself sitting in front of a large computer screen full of different symbols — an image most likely derived from his work on radar consoles while in the Navy after World War II. The screen, he thought, would serve as a display for a workstation that would organize all the information and communications for a given project. It was his great insight that progress in science and engineering could be greatly accelerated if researchers, working in small groups, shared computing power. He called the approach “bootstrapping” and believed it would raise what he called their “collective I.Q.” A decade later, during the Vietnam War, he established an experimental research group at Stanford Research Institute (later renamed SRI and then SRI International). The unit, the Augmentation Research Center, known as ARC, had the financial backing of the Air Force, NASA and the Advanced Research Projects Agency, an arm of the Defense Department. Even so, in the main, computing industry professionals regarded Dr. Engelbart as a quixotic outsider. In December 1968, however, he set the computing world on fire with a remarkable demonstration before more than a thousand of the world’s leading computer scientists at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, one of a series of national conferences in the computer field that had been held since the early 1950s. Dr. Engelbart was developing a raft of revolutionary interactive computer technologies and chose the conference as the proper moment to unveil them. For the event, he sat on stage in front of a mouse, a keyboard and other controls and projected the computer display onto a 22-foot-high video screen behind him. In little more than an hour, he showed how a networked, interactive computing system would allow information to be shared rapidly among collaborating scientists. He demonstrated how a mouse, which he invented just four years earlier, could be used to control a computer. He demonstrated text editing, video conferencing, hypertext and windowing. Image A prototype of the first computer mouse, which was invented in 1964 by Dr. Engelbart and constructed by two of his associates. Credit Apic, via Getty Images In contrast to the mainframes then in use, a computerized system Dr. Engelbart created, called the oNLine System, or NLS, allowed researchers to share information seamlessly and to create and retrieve documents in the form of a structured electronic library. The conference attendees were awe-struck. In one presentation, Dr. Engelbart demonstrated the power and the potential of the computer in the information age. The technology would eventually be refined at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center and at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Apple and Microsoft would transform it for commercial use in the 1980s and change the course of modern life. Years later, people in Silicon Valley still referred to the presentation as “the mother of all demos.” It took until the late 1980s for the mouse to become the standard way to control a desktop computer. Douglas Carl Engelbart was born in Portland, Ore., on Jan. 30, 1925, to Carl and Gladys Engelbart. He spent his formative years on a farm in suburban Portland, graduated from high school in 1942 and attended Oregon State College. Toward the end of World War II, he was drafted. He spent two years in the Navy, one of them in the Philippines, as a radar technician. One day he was in a reading library on a small island when an article titled “As We May Think” caught his eye. The article, by Vannevar Bush, a physicist and inventor who oversaw the United States Office of Scientific Research and Development during the war, described a universal information retrieval system called Memex. The idea stuck with Dr. Engelbart, and he made it his life’s work. After returning to Oregon State and graduating, he was hired to work at Ames Research Center, a government aerospace laboratory in California run by the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, NASA’s forerunner. While there, working as an electronics technician, he saw how aerospace engineers started with small models of their designs and then scaled them up to full-size airplanes. Image Patent design from Dr. Engelbart for the first computer mouse. Credit U.S. Patent Office The idea of scaling remained with him. After getting his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, and starting work at SRI, he wrote a seminal paper on the importance of scaling in microelectronics. He presented it in 1960, a year after the invention of the planar transistor, which had improved the electrical output of transistors and made them cheaper to manufacture and available to a mass market. Dr. Engelbart grew convinced that computers would quickly become more powerful and that there would be enough processing power to design the Memex-like Augment system that he envisioned. He was proved right. The idea for the mouse — a pointing device that would roll on a desk — occurred to Dr. Engelbart in 1964 while he was attending a computer graphics conference. He was musing about how to move a cursor on a computer display. When he returned to work, he gave a copy of a sketch to William English, a collaborator and mechanical engineer at SRI, who, with the aid of a draftsman, fashioned a pine case to hold the mechanical contents. Early versions of the mouse had three buttons, because that was all the case could accommodate, even though Dr. Engelbart felt that as many as 10 buttons would be more useful. Two decades later, when Steve Jobs added the mouse to his Macintosh computer, he decided that a single button was appropriate. The Macintosh designers believed in radical simplicity, and Mr. Jobs argued that with a single button it was impossible to push the wrong one. (When and under what circumstances the term “the mouse” arose is hard to pin down, but one hardware designer, Roger Bates, has contended that it happened under Mr. English’s watch. Mr. Bates was a college sophomore and Mr. English was his mentor at the time. Mr. Bates said the name was a logical extension of the term then used for the cursor on a screen: CAT. Mr. Bates did not remember what CAT stood for, but it seemed to all that the cursor was chasing their tailed desktop device.) Image By the late 1980s, the modern mouse became the standard way to control a PC. Credit Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press The importance of Dr. Engelbart’s networking ideas was underscored in 1969, when his Augment NLS system became the application for which the forerunner of today’s Internet was created. The system was called the ARPAnet computer network, and SRI became the home of its operation center and one of its first two nodes, or connection points. (The other node was at the University of California, Los Angeles. Two others followed, at the University of Utah and the University of California, Santa Barbara.). Dr. Engelbart saw his ARC group grow rapidly after 1969. At the height of the Vietnam War, it swelled to more than 50 researchers — a significant number of them young men who had taken to computing in part to avoid the military draft. The group disbanded in the 1970s, and SRI sold the NLS system in 1977 to a company called Tymshare. Dr. Engelbart worked there in relative obscurity for more than a decade until his contributions became more widely recognized by the computer industry. He was awarded the National Medal of Technology, the Lemelson-M.I.T. Prize and the Turing Award. His first wife, the former Ballard Fish, died in 1997. Besides his wife, his survivors include his daughters, Gerda and Christina Engelbart and Diana Mangan; a son, Norman; and nine grandchildren. Dr. Engelbart was one of the first to realize the accelerating power of computers and the impact they would have on society. In a presentation at a conference in Philadelphia in February 1960, he described the industrial process of continually shrinking the size of computer circuits that would later be referred to as “Moore’s Law,” after the Intel co-founder Gordon Moore. Speaking of the future, he said, “Boy, are there going to be some surprises over there.”

Computers and the Internet
Tech Industry
Obituary
Inventions and Patents


Firm Stance on Illegal Immigrants Remains Policy

Abstract: After early pledges by President Obama that he would moderate the Bush administration’s tough policy on immigration enforcement, his administration is pursuing an aggressive strategy for an illegal-immigration crackdown that relies significantly on programs started by his predecessor. A recent blitz of measures has antagonized immigrant groups and many of Mr. Obama’s Hispanic supporters, who have opened a national campaign against them, including small street protests in New York and Los Angeles last week. The administration recently undertook audits of employee paperwork at hundreds of businesses, expanded a program to verify worker immigration status that has been widely criticized as flawed, bolstered a program of cooperation between federal and local law enforcement agencies, and rejected proposals for legally binding rules governing conditions in immigration detention centers. “We are expanding enforcement, but I think in the right way,” Janet Napolitano , the homeland security secretary, said in an interview. Ms. Napolitano and other administration officials argue that no-nonsense immigration enforcement is necessary to persuade American voters to accept legislation that would give legal status to millions of illegal immigrants, a measure they say Mr. Obama still hopes to advance late this year or early next. That approach brings Mr. Obama around to the position that his Republican rival, Senator John McCain of Arizona , espoused during last year’s presidential campaign, a stance Mr. Obama rejected then as too hard on Latino and immigrant communities. (Mr. McCain did not respond to requests for comment.) Now the enforcement strategy has opened a political rift with some immigrant advocacy and Hispanic groups whose voters were crucial to the Obama victory. “Our feelings are mixed at best,” said Clarissa Martinez De Castro, immigration director of the National Council of La Raza , which has joined in the criticism, aimed primarily at Ms. Napolitano. “We understand the need for sensible enforcement, but that does not mean expanding programs that often led to civil rights violations.” Under Ms. Napolitano, immigration authorities have backed away from the Bush administration’s frequent mass factory roundups of illegal immigrant workers. But federal criminal prosecutions for immigration violations have actually increased this year, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse , a nonpartisan group that analyzes government data. In April, there were 9,037 immigration cases in the federal courts, an increase of 32 percent over April 2008, the group found. Ms. Napolitano said in the interview that she would not call off immigration raids entirely as some Hispanic lawmakers have suggested. “We will continue to enforce the law and to look for effective ways to do it,” she said. “That’s my job.” Ms. Napolitano, who as governor of Arizona sparred with Republican legislators seeking tougher steps against illegal immigration, said she was looking for ways to make enforcement programs inherited from President George W. Bush less heavy-handed. She also wants to put the enforcement focus on illegal-immigrant gang members and convicts and on employers who routinely hire illegal immigrants so as to exploit them. Immigration authorities have started audits of employees’ hiring documents at more than 600 businesses nationwide. If an employer shows a pattern of hiring immigrants whose documents cannot be verified, a criminal investigation could follow, Ms. Napolitano said. She has also expanded a federal program, known as E-Verify , that allows employers to verify electronically the identity information of new hires. Immigrant and business groups have sued to try to stop the program, saying the databases it relies on are riddled with inaccuracies that could lead to American citizens’ being denied jobs. But officials of the Homeland Security Department say technological improvements have enhanced the speed and accuracy of E-Verify. With 137,000 employers now enrolled, only 0.3 percent of 6.4 million queries they have made so far in the 2009 fiscal year have resulted in denials that later proved incorrect, the officials say. That, opponents note, still means false denials for more than 19,000 people. In addition, Ms. Napolitano has expanded a program that runs immigration checks on every person booked into local jails in some cities. And she recently announced the expansion of another program, known as 287(g) for the provision of the statute authorizing it, that allows for cooperation between federal immigration agents and state and local police agencies. In extending 287(g), federal officials also drew up a new agreement, which all of some 66 localities currently participating have been asked to sign, that is intended to enhance federal oversight and clarify the priority on deporting those immigrants who are criminal fugitives or are already behind bars. But advocates for immigrants said the new agreement did not include strong protections against ethnic profiling. They were surprised, they say, that Ms. Napolitano did not terminate the cooperation agreement with the sheriff of Maricopa County, Ariz., Joe Arpaio , who calls himself the “toughest sheriff in America.” Latino groups in Arizona have accused Mr. Arpaio of using the program to harass Hispanic residents. “If they reform the 287(g) program and Arpaio doesn’t change, it won’t be reform,” said Frank Sharry, executive director of America’s Voice , a national immigrant advocacy group. Ms. Napolitano said it would be up to Mr. Arpaio, like other current participants, to decide whether to sign and abide by the new cooperation agreement. Separately, the Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation of Mr. Arpaio’s practices. The Obama administration has received support for its immigration position from a leading Democrat, Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York , the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, who will be writing an immigration overhaul bill later this year. In preparation for what is likely to be a furious debate, Mr. Schumer has called on Democrats to show that they are serious about immigration enforcement and is even asking them to stop using the term “undocumented” to refer to immigrants who are here illegally. Democrats have to “convince the American people there will not be new waves of illegal immigrants” after an overhaul passes, Mr. Schumer said in an interview. Republicans who oppose any legalization of the status of illegal immigrants say they remain unimpressed by the new enforcement measures. “After 20 years of broken promises, it takes a lot more than token gestures,” said Representative Brian P. Bilbray, a California Republican who heads an immigration caucus in the House . Michael A. Olivas, a professor of immigration law at the University of Houston , said Hispanic advocates were irked by the enforcement measures because they had seen scant sign that the administration was also moving deliberately toward an overhaul bill. “We literally have the worst of all worlds,” Professor Olivas said.

Barack Obama
Illegal immigration
Immigration
US Politics
Janet Napolitano


Razing of Tower at North Korean Nuclear Plant Unlikely to Signal Speedy Reforms

Abstract: TOKYO — International television crews were invited to reclusive North Korea on Friday to witness the destruction of the cooling tower at the country’s main nuclear weapons plant. Viewers around the world later watched the most visible symbol of the North’s nuclear ambitions collapse in a cloud of shattered concrete. In North Korea itself, however, the explosion was a nonevent. The state news agency carried no information about it on Friday, and the images had not found their way onto state television. News blackouts are not big news in isolated North Korea, which also let a full day pass before it let its people know, on state television and radio, that President Bush had removed it from the United States’ list of countries that sponsor terrorism. It couched that development in a warning that Washington had not yet fully abandoned its “hostile policy” toward the North. Mr. Bush characterized the latest steps toward denuclearization as a “moment of opportunity for North Korea.” But the North’s cagey reaction suggests that any lasting change in Kim Jong-il ’s secretive, xenophobic approach to governing one of the world’s most cloistered nations is likely to be painfully slow, at best. Though there are hints that North Korea’s powerful military may have relaxed what analysts have described as its wariness about bargaining in earnest on nuclear weapons, experts warn that it is far from clear that Mr. Kim intends to give up all of the country’s existing atomic bombs or the capacity to produce new ones. Still, North Korea watchers in neighboring South Korea and China say that this week’s deal appeared to have emerged from the shifting dynamics between North Korea’s reform-oriented civilian officials and hard-line military leaders. If the civilian leadership keeps the upper hand, that could foreshadow a more robust pace of change in the country’s deeply impoverished economy, they say. “I don’t think it was one group winning against the other, but I think this agreement came out of long discussions between civilian and military leaders,” said Song Min-soon, who served as South Korea’s chief nuclear negotiator and then as foreign minister from late 2006 to early this year. “Groups inside North Korea who want to reform will now gain a voice.” In his past negotiations, Mr. Song said, his North Korean counterparts referred often to objections from “other institutions in Pyongyang,” the capital, which the South Koreans interpreted as the military and officials from the ruling party. “For some time, I thought it was just an excuse not to make a deal, but later I came to believe that it was not just an excuse but the reality there,” said Mr. Song, who is now a member of the National Assembly. Even if they disagreed about the nuclear program and relations with the outside world, however, reformers and hard-liners are driven by a shared goal of survival, experts said. Paik Hak-soon, a North Korea expert at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, South Korea, said that since the collapse of the Soviet Union, North Korea had basically pursued the long-term goal of formally ending the Korean War and normalizing relations with the United States. “That is the only way for North Korea to survive,” Mr. Paik said. “North Korea wanted the United States to come to the negotiating table, and since the United States did not want to come voluntarily, North Korea used the nuclear card.” It is a card that the North is unlikely to give up easily. In Thursday’s declaration, the North disclosed its plutonium-related activities at the Yongbyon reactor, its main nuclear plant. But the much more difficult task of persuading the North to give up its existing nuclear weapons, estimated at roughly half a dozen, comes in the next stage of talks. North Korea’s declaration did not specify how many nuclear bombs it had. Officials there have not formally addressed Washington’s contention that, in addition to its well-known efforts to make nuclear fuel from plutonium, the country has a parallel, underground program to make bomb fuel from enriched uranium. Xu Guangyu, a Chinese analyst often sympathetic to North Korea, said negotiations were unlikely to advance much, given Mr. Bush’s short time in office. “North Korea is not going to give up their nuclear weapons easily,” he said. “That is the last card they have to play with America. They want to keep their card to see what the next president will do with North Korea.” Friday’s destruction of the tower, the most conspicuous element of the nuclear complex at Yongbyon, 60 miles north of Pyongyang, did reaffirm the incremental progress that had been made in Chinese-brokered multilateral negotiations to end North Korea’s weapons programs. While the North has kept its nuclear activities shrouded in secrecy, steam curling from the tower into the atmosphere was captured in spy satellite photographs, providing outside observers with the most visible sign of operations at Yongbyon. “As you all saw, the cooling tower is no longer there,” Sung Kim, a senior State Department official who witnessed the blast from a hill, told South Korean television. “It’s a very significant disablement step.” But some experts in South Korea said the demolition did not answer critical questions, such as how many weapons North Korea has built or whether it has exported its nuclear technology to countries like Syria. “It’s symbolic. But in real terms, whether demolishing or not a cooling tower that has already been disabled doesn’t make much difference,” said Lee Ji-sue, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Myongji University. The demolition also shows that North Korea has concluded that the Yongbyon complex, in service for several decades, has served its purpose after producing an unknown number of nuclear weapons, Mr. Lee said. Whether North Korea’s removal from the terrorism list and the lifting of other sanctions announced by Mr. Bush on Thursday lead to much economic progress could depend, again, on how the tensions between reformers and conservatives play out. In the past, China has encouraged Mr. Kim to emulate its own success by reforming and opening its failing state-run economy. In recent years, North Korea has experimented with some isolated market reforms and allowed the opening of a South Korean-run industrial complex in Kaesong, just north of the demilitarized zone. But Jin Linbo, a senior research fellow at the China Institute of International Studies, said Mr. Kim had shown no real interest in a systemic economic overhaul. “These experiments can only be regarded as ways that North Korea is trying in order to find a way to make money,” he said. As for large-scale economic reforms, “No, that is too dangerous for the regime,” he said. But Moon Chung-in, a political scientist at Yonsei University in Seoul who was South Korea’s ambassador for international security affairs until earlier this year, said he believed that economic change would accelerate now that progress had been made on the nuclear accord. “Whenever I’ve met party officials in the past, they’ve told me: ‘We don’t want the United States or South Korea to dictate how to manage our economy. You cannot make us open up and reform. But we really are desperate and want to modernize the motherland,’ ” Mr. Moon said. “You have to be careful about not using the word ‘reform’; they are sensitive about that and prefer ‘modernize,’ ” he said. Thursday’s deal could also provide a boost to North Korea’s special industrial zone, which, despite restrictions, has been growing steadily since opening in late 2004. Today, 72 companies employing 294,702 North Koreans operate there. They include three foreign companies: two Chinese manufacturers and a German auto-parts maker. “European companies were careful about going to Kaesong because they didn’t want to be linked with North Korea,” said Jean-Jacques Grauhar, secretary general of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Seoul, which toured Kaesong last month. “But now companies will be more serious about looking at business opportunities in North Korea.”

Arms Control and Limitation and Disarmament


In a Week of No Ordinary Crimes, the Nanny Case Reverberates

Abstract: In the spring of last year, over the course of five days, several burglaries occurred in Brooklyn Heights, a neighborhood so untouched by disruptive incident that about the same time, I found a lost billfold in front of a brownstone; it had managed to spend the entire night on the stoop unmolested. As I learned when I opened it, the wallet, containing a credit card and about $60, belonged to the teenage son of my real estate broker. It was within this Mayberry context that one was not surprised to learn that none of the burglaries in the neighborhood had resulted from forced entry. All four had occurred because residents had left their doors and windows unlocked or open while they were out. For the fortunate, at least, this was life in postmillennial New York, a place where prosperity has evolved into its own far-reaching faith. And so it has remained, in some sense naïvely. Last month, a woman left the front door to her apartment unlocked in a doorman-tended building on West 61st and was raped after, the authorities said, a pizza delivery boy who had dropped something off wandered around checking doorknobs until he found an apartment he could enter easily. Lurid and horrific things happen in New York City all the time, as we were reminded by last week’s baroquely macabre news cycle. It included but was not limited to what officials described as an ex-convict’s fatal shooting of a Nassau County police officer and a motorist; a seemingly bullied teenager’s suicide on Staten Island ; the arrest of a New York City police officer who the F.B.I. said planned to abduct women and then rape , cook and eat them; the apparent murder of a mother and child in the Bronx ; and, most discussed and agonized over of all, an Upper West Side mother’s discovery that, according to the authorities, her nanny had killed two of her children before slashing her own neck and wrists. In an ordinary week, any of these stories might have dominated the local news. But the case of the nanny, in which a motive seemed entirely unclear, swept the others away. That story in all of its inconceivably tragic detail — the mother, Marina Krim, had kept an adoring blog of her three children’s development and celebrations — quickly became a vessel for the unleashing of our parental anxieties. The predictable online debates erupted: over the necessity of nannies, the complexities of relationships with them and so on. Judgments were made of parents who enlist help, and were disputed. “All you ladies who put your career and money above your children, this is what can happen,” went a typical strain of commentary, though it was uncertain if Ms. Krim worked or not. Little has changed since 1997, when the trial in Massachusetts of the au pair Louise Woodward , who was accused of shaking a baby to death, elicited the same kinds of intense disapproval of outsourced child care. Our fears about our children’s well-being are so culturally paramount that it can seem, at times, as though little else penetrates. So complacent are we about so much else involving city life that the story of the woman raped in her own ostensibly secure home barely reached the radar of affluent New Yorkers, for whom such a narrative in, say, 1976 might have turned into an obsession. It is often said that the abduction of Etan Patz in 1979 served as a powerful catalyst for ushering in the era of vigilant parenting that we now inhabit. But it eventually changed something else, too, the focus of tabloid news. It is virtually impossible now to watch local programming in New York or pick up The New York Post or The Daily News and not come upon a story of a ghastly crime visited upon a child. Every day we are besieged by accounts of babies abandoned in Dumpsters, children beaten and molested, teachers — male teachers, female teachers — abusing their charges. The story of Leiby Kletzky , the little boy in Borough Park, Brooklyn , who suffered the unfathomable and entirely unlikely destiny of being abducted and murdered during his first-ever walk home on his own, consumed the news cycle for days. The entertainment media have piggybacked, offering in something like “Law & Order: SVU” a vision of New York in which no child would ever seem safe from barbarous predation. The crimes that receive the most attention, the most poring over, reflect the preoccupations of their particular age. In the ’60s and ’70s, we worried about the fate of single women, about a new and precarious world of sexual adventure, and our fears were fed by the Kitty Genovese murder and the Son of Sam killings and “Looking for Mr. Goodbar.” The story of Marina Krim — the picture of her screaming in terror behind an ambulance window as she is taken to the hospital after learning what happened — will live with us, by instinct or design, longer than we know.

Murders
Children
Child care
NYC
Crime
Parenting


Ron Lundy, a Rock D.J. in New York, Is Dead at 75

Abstract: Ron Lundy, who wrapped his on-air exuberance in a soft Southern drawl during more than 30 years as a rock ’n’ roll D.J. in New York City, died Monday in Oxford, Miss. He was 75 and lived in Bruce, Miss. (population 2,097). The cause was a heart attack, said his wife, Shirley. “Hello, Love — this is Ron Lundy from the greatest city in the world!” was his longtime catchphrase. “He made everybody feel good with that signature,” said Joe McCoy, who was Mr. Lundy’s program director at WCBS-FM for 13 years. “He laughed and laughed while he was on the air.” Along with the likes of Bruce Morrow (known as Cousin Brucie), Dan Ingram, Dan Daniel, Scott Muni, Herb Oscar Anderson and Jack Spector, Mr. Lundy was among the popular broadcasters in New York during the heyday of rock radio. He was at WABC-AM from 1965 to 1982, and was at the microphone beside Mr. Ingram when the station played its last Top 40 tune on May 10, 1982, before switching to a talk-radio format. From February 1984 to September 1997, he filled the 9 a.m.-to-noon slot at WCBS, reprising oldies from the ’50s and ’60s. Fred Ronald Lundy was born in Memphis on June 25, 1934, the only child of Fred and Mary Lundy. His father was a railroad engineer. Besides his wife of 53 years, the former Shirley Barnes, he is survived by a daughter, Jana Haggerty; a son, Fred Jr.; and two grandchildren. After graduating from high school, Mr. Lundy served in the Marine Corps in the early 1950s, then returned to his hometown. “To be quite truthful, he didn’t want to work, so he went to radio school in Memphis on the G. I. Bill,” his wife said. Soon after, Mr. Lundy landed an off-air job at WHHM in Memphis. “He was working in the record library at the station and somebody didn’t show up that night, so he went on air, and that was it,” Mrs. Lundy said. Mr. Lundy went on to work at stations in Greenville, Miss.; Baton Rouge, La.; and St. Louis before being hired by WABC in New York. After retiring from WCBS 13 years ago, he and his wife returned to the South. “We put our feet up on the porch,” Mrs. Lundy said. “It’s so quiet down here, no fire engines; and dark, not like New York City.”

Lundy Ron
Disc Jockeys
Radio
Deaths (Obituaries)
WCBS-FM
WABC-AM


Judge Won’t Step Down in Case of Cole Attack

Abstract: The military judge presiding over the war crimes trial of a Guantánamo Bay prisoner charged in the attack on the Navy destroyer Cole rejected a defense motion Tuesday that he remove himself from the case. Lawyers for Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri said Col. James Pohl of the Army could not be impartial because he had a financial incentive to side with the Pentagon, which paid his salary, and he was serving as the judge in other Guantánamo cases. But Colonel Pohl said at a hearing that the defense had offered scant evidence to support its argument. Mr. Al-Nashiri, a Saudi, is charged with orchestrating the 2000 attack on the Cole, which killed 17 sailors. He has been held at the United States Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, since 2006.

War Crimes Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity


A Reliever From the Old School Awaits His Hall of Fame Day

Abstract: The Yankees ’ new relief pitcher lost three of his first four games, and people, including catcher Thurman Munson, were wondering what was going on. That pitcher, Rich Gossage, thereafter to be known primarily as Goose, gave up game-losing hits to Richie Zisk (home run) and Don Money (double), then made errors on successive sacrifice bunts. “Thurman would come to the mound,” Gossage recalled, “and he would say, ‘How are you going to lose this one?’ The first time he asked me that I couldn’t believe he was asking me. But that was Thurman.” Losing games was not Gossage, though those games were not the last he would lose. But in a 22-year career, Gossage, a hard-throwing right-hander, was the type of relief pitcher that has become extinct. Pitchers today, especially relief pitchers, are pampered. Gossage was not pampered. Today’s closers are asked to pitch one inning, the ninth. Seldom, for example, does Mariano Rivera, considered the best closer, pitch more than one inning. Last season he relieved in 67 games and pitched 71 1/3 innings. As the Yankees’ closer, he pitched an 11-year high of 80 2/3 innings in 2001. In Gossage’s first season with the Yankees, 1978, he relieved in 63 games and pitched 134 1/3 innings. In those first four appearances, he pitched three innings once and three and two-thirds innings twice. One time he relieved at the start of the seventh and pitched the final seven innings of a 13-inning game. Later in the season he pitched seven innings again in a 17-inning game. Sixteen times he pitched three innings or longer, 35 times in his 63 games two or longer. “I take exception to Mariano being called the best reliever ever,” a still proud Gossage said in a telephone interview Saturday. “But do what we did and we’ll be able to compare apples to apples. I don’t take anything away from Mariano; he’s great. But what these guys do today is easy compared to what we did. It takes three guys to do what I did.”  If voting baseball writers get it right, Gossage will receive the ultimate reward for doing what he did. When results of this year’s Hall of Fame voting are announced Tuesday, Gossage is expected to be anointed a Hall of Famer. A year ago he was named on 388 of the 545 ballots, giving him 71.2 percent, which was 21 votes short of the 75 percent he needed for election. Historically, when a player comes that close and the next year’s ballot has no obvious first-timers, he has been elected. Furthermore, no one with as high a percentage as Gossage had last year has failed to be elected subsequently. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed,” said the 56-year-old Gossage, who has been on the ballot nine times. “I’d be lying to say there hasn’t been disappointment, but it’s out of my control.” Gossage said that in past years his frustration was fueled by his desire to be elected while his mother was alive. “The only urgency was my mom,” he said. “She used to say, ‘If you go in, I hope you go in while I’m still alive.’ She didn’t make it. She passed away about a year ago September. That was kind of why I got frustrated because I knew she didn’t have much longer to be here. I would have liked to have her around when I went in.” Relievers have had a difficult time making the Hall. Voters seem to discount their work, especially the number of saves they gain. Hoyt Wilhelm, Rollie Fingers, Dennis Eckersley and Bruce Sutter are the only relievers in the Hall, and Eckersley was a starter for the first 12 years of his career. But when we see closer after closer fail to get the last three outs with the lead intact, it attests to the difficulty and the importance of the job. In Gossage’s time it was only part of the job. “There were a lot of times we pitched when we were behind a run,” Gossage said, “and we were brought in to get out of a jam and then had to keep pitching, and keep the game in check so it didn’t turn into a blowout.” In addition, he said, there was the type of innings he often pitched. “I couldn’t allow a guy to put the ball in play,” he said. “I had to strike them out. There were a lot of grueling, pressure-filled innings.”  The workload is what stands out in his mind, Gossage said. “It was grueling, the way we were used,” he said. “We were abused. Nobody worried about our arms falling off. I didn’t. Today’s pitchers are babied. I don’t agree with pitch counts. I never have. I don’t need a pitch count to tell me if a guy is tired. They’re babied too much. They don’t build up any endurance.” Pitchers are like racehorses, Gossage said. “If you train a horse to race half a block, that’s all he’s going to be able to run.” That wisdom has somehow escaped today’s baseball hierarchies as they search in vain for capable pitchers. The Yankees signed Gossage as a free agent in 1977, even though Sparky Lyle, their No. 1 reliever, had won the Cy Young Award that year. At the news conference announcing his signing, Gossage gave the most honest answer I have probably ever heard from a player. Asked why he signed with the Yankees, Gossage said, “Because my agent told me to.”

Baseball
Halls of Fame
Baseball Hall of Fame
New York Yankees
Gossage Richard (Goose) (1951- )


Guardian Angels Train Eyes on Yonkers

Abstract: CURTIS SLIWA, the chief executive and founder of the Guardian Angels, has arrived in Yonkers with the goal, he says, of running the drug dealers — at least the ones prowling Lawrence Street and Saratoga Avenue — out of town. “You can see them perched there like vultures, dealing drugs like it’s an open-air supermarket,” said Mr. Sliwa, 54, whose nonprofit Alliance of Guardian Angels began operating as a crime-deterrence group almost 30 years ago in New York City. “Our hope in Yonkers is to become the drug dealers’ worst nightmare.” The organization, which Mr. Sliwa says has 137 chapters in 12 countries, recruits local men and women to become part of street patrols that wear distinctive red berets. Guardian Angels contingents from Washington Heights are already working one day a week in Yonkers — six members at a time, Sliwa said — while recruits are being sought for the new chapter. The group “has become like Prozac for the block where there’s been constant drama — all kinds of fights and disputes and stabbings,” said Mr. Sliwa, who is also a radio talk show host on WABC-AM. “When we started coming to Yonkers, the drug dealers slinked into their apartments, and everything just seemed to calm down.” Because the west side of the city, where most of the criminal activity occurs, is hilly, some members of the Washington Heights contingent have been staking out rooftops, where they have a wide view of nearby street activity. The Guardian Angels were asked to come to the city by Henry Rivera, the executive director of the Living Transformation International Center, a multiservice nonprofit group on Lawrence Street. “In just the past four years since our organization moved here, we’ve seen three different shrines built for youngsters who were killed in the neighborhood,” Mr. Rivera said. So far, about 18 city residents from 16 to 48 years old have signed up to serve in the local chapter, Mr. Sliwa said. The training program — which includes instruction in self-defense, first aid, CPR and local laws — will begin on Aug. 24, the anniversary of the 1987 death of Sherman Geiger, a Guardian Angels member who was killed while trying to thwart a crime at a Yonkers supermarket where he was working. The organization hopes to produce at least 12 graduates. “We do pretty much what a neighborhood watch group does, except we have taken it up to the next level with physical intervention and citizens’ arrests when necessary,” Mr. Sliwa said. Traditional neighborhood watch groups report crimes or suspicious activity to the police but do not physically intervene. While officials and the police in some communities have been skeptical about the Guardian Angels, that has not been the case in Yonkers. Charles Gardner, the deputy chief, said he welcomed the organization’s efforts and had met with the group’s representatives. “The effectiveness of any law enforcement agency is largely determined by its ability to work together with the community it serves,” he said in a statement. “We’re looking forward to working with members of the new chapter.” The Guardian Angels plan to set up a headquarters on Saratoga Avenue and will patrol parts of that street, as well as Lawrence Street, Buena Vista Avenue and Getty Square — areas that Mr. Sliwa said have a high incidence of violent crime and gang activity. Neighboring Mount Vernon also has serious problems with drug dealing and crime, and several community groups have reached out to the Guardian Angels to set up a chapter there. But Mr. Sliwa said that perhaps the worst drug and gang problems north of New York exist in Newburgh, where his organization is also establishing a chapter.

Guardian Angels
Sliwa Curtis
Yonkers (NY)


Woods Tests Knee by Practicing at Torrey Pines

Abstract: SAN DIEGO — Just as he did at Augusta National on the Sunday before the Masters , Tiger Woods showed up Sunday at Torrey Pines Golf Course, the site of the United States Open. In preparation for his first tournament since the Masters, Woods was getting his second look at how the course was playing under Open conditions. Like his practice session last Wednesday at Torrey Pines, this one was not publicized and not open. It began at roughly 2:30 p.m. and concluded shortly after 5. Woods made no comment to any of the news media members following him: camera crews from ESPN and Sky TV and one print reporter. Accompanied by a handful of people, mainly guests at nearby hotels who had wandered onto the course, Woods walked all 18 holes, hit some shots and tested the speed of the greens. Most important, he tested his left knee, which was surgically repaired April 15. It seemed to be fine. Smiling and joking with his caddie, Steve Williams, and his swing coach, Hank Haney, Woods moved easily up and down the hills on the demanding Torrey Pines course, which sits on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean north of La Jolla. He did not hit tee shots at every hole, choosing to skip the long-iron shot into the 225-yard, par-3 16th hole in favor of some greenside chips from the high rough and bunker shots. He made easy work of the 441-yard 17th hole, striping a 3-wood off the tee to the right corner of the gentle dogleg left, aiming his short iron at the pin placed behind the bunker on the left front portion of the green, and hitting it within 10 feet of the hole. While he was putting on the green, he was spotted by Steve Stricker, who was teeing off on the 18th. Stricker waved and made a kicking motion with his left leg — think a pale impression of a Rockette — and hollered: “How is it? How’s the knee?” “I can keep up with you,” Woods yelled, smiling. “What are you doing here so early?” Stricker asked. “You know me — sleeping in,” joked Woods, who is known for usual zero-dark-thirty practice rounds. At the 18th, Woods teed his ball on one of the shorter positions the United States Golf Association is likely to use during the week. He smashed two drives, both full bore. The first he pounded into the first cut of rough on the left side of the fairway, reaching the middle of the bunker complex on the left side. The second he hit right in the middle of the fairway. He was roughly 250 yards from the front of the green, easily in reach. He chose not to go for it, laying up the shot from the rough and picking up the drive in the middle of the fairway. As he walked toward the 18th green, into the gathering mists of a late-afternoon June gloom, Woods waved to some youngsters from a youth program and hit a couple of wedge shots that spun back close to the front pin position. His work for the day over, he signed some autographs, walked inside some barriers and headed to his car.

Golf
Woods Tiger
United States Open (Golf)