Pier 40, a recreational facility that youth athletic leagues serving Lower Manhattan depend upon is slowing falling into the Hudson River, but nobody knows exactly how much it will cost to repair. And that unanswered question makes it impossible to know whether a proposed air-rights deal that will allow real estate developers to build a...
Venus, brightest of all planets, shines in evening’s pastel twilight and sets by nightfall. A young crescent moon accompanies the goddess of love and beauty tonight, October 3; delight in the pair from about 7pm until 7:30pm, depending on your view to the west-southwest horizon. Saturn and Mars catch the eye to the left of...
52 BC – Vercingetorix, leader of the Gauls, surrenders to the Romans under Julius Caesar, ending the siege and Battle of Alesia. 1283 – Dafydd ap Gruffydd, was Prince of Wales from December 11 1282 until his execution on October 3 1283 by King Edward I of England. He was the last independent ruler of Wales. On 30 September, Dafydd ap Gruffudd,...
The China Institute (40 Rector Street, between West and Washington Streets) is hosting a landmark exhibition, “Art in a Time of Chaos: Masterworks From Six Dynasties China, Third through Sixth Centuries.” This period, China’s equivalent to Europe’s Renaissance, ushered in an explosion of artistic creativity and the celebration of individual expression. And recent archaeological digs have...
To Matthew Fenton, Very nice article (“Unaccompanied Minors”) on a cappella singing, and singing in general. I like the inclusion of a discussion of the evolutionary origins of singing. Darwin’s reference to the “principle of the inherited effects of use” is interesting. It shows that the usual pedagogical practice of placing “Darwinian” (evolution by natural...
The free Dockapella music festival in Wagner Park on Saturday, October 1 featured voices that fly without instruments from Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Brown and Vassar College, as well as ensembles from New York University and the University of Virginia.