The local paper for the Upper East Side HONORING WOMEN’S HISTORY < P. 12
WEEK OF MARCH
23-29 2017
JIMMY BRESLIN’S SACRED AND PROFANE JOURNEY MEDIA Remembering the celebrated columnist, who died at 88 on the Upper West Side, light years away from his early days in Queens BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
Murder in Manhattan, no matter how varied the circumstances, is invariably horrific, and it is hard to imagine the reporter, however street-toughened, who can’t recall the first he or she ever covered. I was a young police reporter at The New York Post in the mid-1970s when the old police teletype started clattering. Out came what was then called a “slip,” a paper-punched message bearing bare-bones facts of a homicide, and off I raced to a Morningside Avenue crime scene. A detective looked at me with pity: “He was already here.” Who, I wanted to know. “Breslin,” he said. How was this possible? The slip had only moved 20 minutes ago. Maybe someone called him, the detective suggested. A more helpful cop filled in the gaps. Yes, Jimmy Breslin of The Daily News, who did not drive and never would, had arrived by taxi, examined the woman’s body before it was covered by a sheet, interviewed the neighbors, clambered up to the tenement rooftop from which she’d plunged and hitched a ride back to the stationhouse with the commanding officer.
Breslin at the 2008 Brooklyn Book Festival. Photo: David Shankbone, via Wikimedia Commons As if this wasn’t dispiriting enough, I made my way to the precinct, and sure enough, there was Breslin deep in animated conversation with the desk officer, and though I don’t want to venture into the fabulism the columnist sometimes indulged in, he may have had his feet up on the desk, may have been enveloped in cigarette smoke, may have displaced the officer from his own chair, although of these facts I cannot be sure. What I do know with certainty is that this poetic loudmouth — this big, bad, brassy, brilliant, bullying, boorish, cranky, dark-humored columnist who spewed bucketfuls of profanity and pearls of wisdom in equal measure — could also be benevolent, and, grudgingly, infrequently, even kind and tenderhearted.
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The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s director Richard Armstrong said in a statement that cuts to the NEH and NEA would be “catastrophic.” Photo: Kostas Limitsios, via flickr
TRUMP’S CULTURE CUTS FUNDING Local institutions at risk of losing funding under proposed budget BY MICHAEL GAROFALO
President Donald Trump’s proposed federal budget calls for eliminating all federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
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Congress will determine whether the proposed cuts are included in the federal budget, and local groups that stand to be impacted have responded by advocating for the programs’ preservation. The National Endowment for the Arts has a rich history in New York City — the first grant in its history was awarded to the American Ballet Theater in 1965. If approved by Congress, the elimination of the NEA would have a significant impact on many of the city’s cultural institutions. As the New York Times reported recently, New York City groups received more than 10 percent of all funding
awarded by the endowment last year, a greater share than any other city in the country.
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Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, March 24 – 6:54 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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