January 24, 2022 Weather: Partly cloudy, with a high of 33 degrees.

Notices:
Our calendar has lots of local events!

News:
The man accused of fatally pushing Michelle Go in front of a subway train in Times Square last week was “ordered held without bail during a brief arraignment from Bellevue Hospital on Wednesday,” ABC7 reported. “Prosecutors said they are still investigating to determine if this incident was a bias crime. But when challenged by [the defendant’s] defense attorney to turn over any evidence of bias, prosecutors said they did not have any.”

In addition to its other vital functions, Central Park will be serving as a “living laboratory” — a research site to study the effects of climate change on urban parks, Scientific American reported. “Under a collaboration between the Yale School of the Environment and two New York City-based nonprofits, researchers will monitor, map and analyze changing climate conditions in the 843-acre park to better understand how warming affects trees, plants, wildlife and the tens of thousands of humans who use it every day.”

There’s trouble at Columbus Square, with a capital C that rhymes with P that stands for pool. An attorney and resident of the luxury apartment building at 808 Columbus Avenue (99th Street) is suing the building’s owner for allegedly running a “side hustle” with swimming instruction business SwimJim, whereby he rents the building’s pool out to nonresidents at certain times of the day, thereby “depriving residents of fully enjoying the amenity,” Law.com reported. Does that qualify as “double dipping”?

The American Museum of Natural History made news again last week, when six tourists, denied entry for lack of proof of vaccination, refused to leave the museum even after it closed. The A.P.’s reporting indicated that early reports of vaccine-card “arrests” were overblown. “‘In fact, the protesters weren’t arrested for failing to produce a vaccine card, and the child in the videos was not arrested,’ according to Anne Canty, senior vice president for communications at the museum.”

The only woman to walk out on Picasso, Françoise Gilot, painter, writer, centenarian, talks about her decade-long relationship with the artist “during a rare interview [with The New York Times] late last month on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, in the apartment that is also her studio….[It is] an airy refuge with barrel-vaulted ceilings, towering bookcases and an outsize window that bathes her canvases in a cool north light. There are works on every wall and stacked along the studio’s perimeter. Two abstract oils are propped like monuments on easels near the door.”

The sorrow-filled story of the stabbing death of Barnard freshman Tessa Majors ended last week with the sentencing of Rashaun Weaver, 16, the third and last of her attackers, who wielded the knife, to 14 years to life in prison, the New York Post reported. Majors’ parents said in a victim statement that their 18-year-old daughter, a musician, fought her attackers as they tried to snatch her iPhone — because it contained three years’ worth of songs that she’d written and was planning to record….“ Rashaun Weaver, said, “I’d give anything to go back in time so that it never happened.”

Finally, enjoy Simon & Garfunkel singing “Homeward Bound” in FarOut magazine’s reminiscence of their 1981 Concert in Central Park. “The undeniable blend of their voices was impossible to ignore at one of Central Park’s most famous concerts of all time.” (Note the Central Park South skyline!)