My family was just out at the Brooklyn Promenade for a memorial service, standing more or less where I was a year ago when the second plane hit the tower. I’ll have more later, but I wanted to serve up these couple of images right away:

Try to follow this. If you’re an elected official from Florida, it’s OK — I’ll write slowly.

Today is Primary Day in Florida (as it is in New York). Among those running is Katherine Harris, the Secretary of State who figured so prominently in the theft of the last Presidential election. This is the same Katherine Harris who was in charge of state election law yet who professed to be unaware of the requirement that officeholders who are running for new positions resign their old offices. This is the same Katherine Harris is running today for a Republican House nomination.

One would think that in Florida, if nowhere else, the state would take pains to run a smooth election. Nope. Janet Reno, who is running for the gubernatorial nomination, couldn’t vote this morning; it seems that a bunch of polling places around the state weren’t ready when the polls were to open at 7 a.m.

Seems to me that if Ms. Harris was so keen to hang onto her job supervising elections, at least she could have actually done the job she was getting paid for until she was forced to quit.

A report this morning from my wife, Olivia:

It is very eerie.

The world really has changed.

For almost all of my professional life, I have worked within a few blocks of Foley Square, in downtown Manhattan. Sixteen years. Today, just after 9:00 a.m., I came out of the subway and heard the sound of bagpipes playing Amazing Grace. Because of the way the wind was blowing around the square on this pleasant late summer morning, it took a moment to locate the source of the sound. But then I saw that a group of pipers was standing near the Court of International Trade. Rehearsing, I suppose.

In the time I have been in this neighborhood, there has been a great deal of construction. A new federal courthouse on Pearl Street. Another new federal building on Broadway. Foley Square itself has been repaved and a new fountain (waterless, in the face of low rainfall) dominates the landscape. The Tweed Courthouse is renovated and gleaming. Ten years after a fire on Worth Street, a new building is finally taking shape.

But nothing has so changed the neighborhood as the respose to terrorism. Traffic barricades on Duane Street at Broadway. Locked gates around City Hall Park. Metal detectors in the lobby of 80 Centre Street and court officers in bullet-proof vests standing outside. Paralegal prosecutorial personnel required to pass through the metal detectors in the courthouses.

And bagpipes in Foley Square.

I was talking with a mutual friend just this weekend about how we hadn’t seen anything new from Clay Shirky in a while. His latest essay popped up the very next day — lucid as always from one of the best thinkers about online culture.

If you were a broadcast media outlet thinking about community building, here are five things you would think about:

1. Audiences are built. Communities grow.
2. Communities face a tradeoff between size and focus.
3. Participation matters more than quality.
4. You may own the software, but the community owns itself.
5. The community will want to build. Help it, or at least let it.

 

If you’re interested in electoral politics on the national and state levels — and I scarcely need to remind you that we’re deep into Political Season — you should know that ABC News’s The Note is the best daily briefing on the net. Comprehensive and even-handed though by no means impartial. Proof positive (for those who doubt) that national reporters aren’t just haircuts.

You may need to register, but it’s worth it.

And as an old reporting hand, I love a good Daybook, and The Note’s excels.

Some people think there’s too much emphasis on the anniversary of the September 11 attack. I understand entirely. I’m not at all certain how much if any TV I’ll be able to stomach on the day itself, though I’m quite impressed with the quality of what I’ve seen thus far. 9/11 is a local story to me, very nearly a neighborhood story. So while I probably won’t immerse myself in coverage, I do care about what goes on. 

The inverse-square law of news — that interest in an event decreases by the square of the distance between the event and the reader/viewer — declares that you’ll care less about what goes on this Wednesday than I do. Fair enough. Here’s a pretty complete list of goings-on around town, and here’s a very complete list. Hey — it’s a big city with lots of people and lots of different ways of coping.

But if you’ve read this far, let’s pretend that you’ll care about a couple of observations.

Starting at about 1 am Wednesday, five bagpipe corps will march from the furthest corner of each borough to Ground Zero. Here are the routes, and here’s a map of them. To give you a sense of scale, it’s about 15 miles from the remotest corners of Queens and the Bronx to Ground Zero, which is a long morning’s walk, especially if you’re blowing on a bagpipe. The Brooklyn procession will pass about four blocks from OTE Headquarters. I may hear it, but given the hour — 7 am maybe — I certainly won’t see it. And I suspect that a solemn bagpipe procession marching through Times Square at dawn will be more than a little moving.

A local orthodox synagogue is holding its regular morning service on the Brooklyn Promenade at 7:45 am, with the expectation of ending at 8:46, when the first plane hit. They’ll start the service by blowing a shofar — a traditional means of sounding an alarm. But I wonder if anyone at B’nai Abraham has remembered that when Joshua’s army conquered Jericho, the Bible says it brought the walls of the city down solely by marching around the city and blowing on shofars. Given the nature of last year’s attack, I wonder if something more a propos couldn’t be found. Not that they’ve asked me, of course. As my wife, the lovely and curious Olivia, frequently says, one problem with the world is that it doesn’t ask our opinion nearly enough.

September 11 is only part of the agita in New York City this week. The U.N. General Assembly gets to work this week, which requires significant parts of the East 40s to be shut down unexpectedly. Don’t even try to hang out around the Waldorf Astoria. Happens every year; the East Side population of very mean looking beefy guys wearing lapel pins and talking into their jacket sleeves jumps in September. The confluence of September 11 and the General Assembly session should make for some interesting diplomacy that we’ll never hear about.

Until September 11, by the way, there was an exit off the southbound FDR Drive for “49th Street UN Garage.” After the 11th, the second part of the exit sign was blocked off; if you want to park in the UN Garage (which under any circumstance was restricted), someone supposedly will tell you what exit to take.

Will I myself be out on the Promenade again this year? Dunno. I’ll certainly be out there at some point on Wednesday, if only because I usually am. I’ll let you know what I see.

For a couple of months after September 11, the odor of destruction hung over my neighborhood, directly across the East River and downwind from the World Trade Center. Just a couple of weeks ago, NASA released this picture of the smoke plume that resulted from the fire and collapse.

The top of the photo is true north; Over the Edge Headquarters is immediately to the south of the Trade Center site, and in the path of the plume.

I’m still trying to decide how to deal with/what to do on the anniversary.

A friend of mine on one of my mailing lists alerted me to this item, which shows either that toy designers don’t always think things through or that kids are endlessly inventive.

On the face of it, it’s a Harry Potter Quidditch broom.  It makes noises. It also, well…

This toy was #1 on my daughter’s Christmas list… It wasn’t until after she opened her gift and started playing with it that I realized that the toy may offer a more than sensational experience. The broomstick has cute sound effects and ***VIBRATES*** when they put it between their legs to fly. Come on—what were the creators of this toy thinking? She’ll keep playing with the Nimbus 2000, but with the batteries removed.

One might think this was a dirty-minded parent, except:

When my 12 year old daughter asked for this for her birthday, I kind of wondered if she was too old for it, but she seems to LOVE it. Her friends love it too! They play for hours in her bedroom with this great toy. They really seem to like the special effects it offers (the sound effects and vibrating). My oldest daughter (17) really likes it too! I reccomend this for all children.

It would not be the first time that someone was having a little fun with Amazon reviews, of course. But these have the ring of authenticity somehow….

Making a bearnaise sauce is a mysterious thing. I once was putting one together — all the ingredients were blended in perfect proportion, gentle heat was being applied, and the sauce was thickening just as it should — when it suddenly just separated out. Fell apart. I applied some quickly learned emergency measures, and the sauce came back together. Mostly. But I’ve always wondered what went wrong at the stove that evening.

Same thing applies to the current Broadway revival of Rogers and Hart’s The Boys from Syracuse. There’s tons of yummy ingredients to the show — including a pretty good retooled book by Nicky Silver (replacing the George Abbott original) — but only sometimes do all the parts smooth out.

The plot is set out in the opening number, “Hurrah! Hurroo!,” a miracle of compact exposition. The action takes place in Ephesus. Two sets of identical twins — one pair of aristocrats and one pair of slaves — from Syracuse are lost at sea seven years ago. Residents from Syracuse are executed in Ephesus because of their origins unless they can come up with 1000 drachmas.  One of the aristocrat twins is established as an Ephesian war hero; the other comes to town to find his twin. Each twin has his respective identical slave with him.

Merriment ensues.

No, really. After the opening number, the show sags for most of the first act as the focus turns on the four romantic leads. But whenever it’s time for the comic leads and supporting players to shine, the pace picks up and the show becomes tons more fun. The second act curtain-raiser, “You Took Advantage of Me,” has nothing whatsoever to do with the rest of the show, but features four of what I think were once known as chorines. I’ve gotta say, I like the chorines. The audience didn’t quite know what to do with them. Applause would have been good. Whistling would not have been out of order, either. One of them, Dierdre Goodwin, will apparently be in the upcoming movie of Chicago. I’ll be there.

Another high point was the song “Come With Me,” perhaps the merriest song about incarceration short of “Jailhouse Rock.” Fred Inkley gets the credit here.

The female comic lead, Luce, is played by Toni Dibuono in a turn that’s more than slightly reminiscent of a much shorter Bette Midler. The two slaves, both named Dromio, were well played by Lee Wilkog and Chip Zien (who counts among his many distinguished credits the voice of Howard the Duck). Erin Dilly played the engenue, Luciana, well enough, though it appeared that she only remembered to bring her energy on stage after intermission.

Jackee Harry (from TV’s Sister Sister and 227) turns up in a small role as a madam and gets the 11 o’clock number, “Sing for Your Supper.” She doesn’t have great pipes, but carries the song off nicely anyway. And there’s some surprise stunt casting in a very small part deep in the second act. I don’t want to give it away — and I don’t know if it’s the same casting every night — but someone highly recognizable from a classic sitcom popped up on stage last night.

Lighting and staging were first-rate, as always with the Roundabout. Sound design and singing were a little problematic. Unison singing was strong, but levels sometimes dropped out unpredictably when unisons broke into harmony parts. Might have been the miking, might have been the singers. Whatever, it wasn’t quite right.

The Boys from Syracuse runs about two hours plus intermission. This production is a second-acter dream. Show up at the break, and you’ll catch most of what’s great about the show.

Where do you get the world’s best egg cream? They decided yesterday on the steps of Brooklyn Borough Hall.