Category: Uncategorized

July 27

1299 – According to Edward Gibbon, Osman I invades the territory of Nicomedia for the first time, considered to be the founding day of the Ottoman Empire. 1663 – The English Parliament passes the second Navigation Act requiring that all goods bound for the American colonies have to be sent in English ships from English...
Illustrators Currier & Ives produced this lithograph of the last hours of the "SS Golden Gate"

Rowing The Atlantic

Day 67, evening. Another day of fog, no sun and unpleasant rolling which became worse again after I first wrote. But with mild wind from SW I should not complain, there’s nothing worse than having to get out the SA! It took self discipline to do the 2-hour stints and I admit I cut them...
Dr. Stein Hoff photo by Stanley Fine

Rowing The Atlantic

Very bad weather, unfortunately, difficult to write lying to SA since 7 pm (10 UTC). 35-40 k from NW and huge seas. Lots of banging and sprays and boat tossing around me. Pretty hellish, actually. Forecast said calming down, it did the opposite. Wind picked up first coupled with cold rain in the morning. I...

Rowing The Atlantic

When the drizzle stopped, I did try fishing for nearly 1 hour. Both with the jig hook I was given by Anders and a “harpe”-a Norwegian line with many lures-usually good for mackrels. I had increasing attention from gulls, they obviously knew what I was trying to do, but with no result… Then it started...

Are Downtown Residents Being Punked by Phone Bank Bunk?

City Council member Margaret Chin is concerned that her office telephone number may have been hijacked by a phone bank seeking to mobilize support for a controversial zoning measure currently under consideration. At Tuesday night’s meeting of Community Board 1 (CB1), Paul Leonard, Ms. Chin’s communications director, said, “we got a heads up from a...
Local children play in the public spaces describes by critics as "often underutilized covered walkways" that a recent telephone campaign (which some recipients claim was disguised to appear as if it came from the office of City Council member Margaret Chin) sought to generate support for privatizing and converting into retail space.