Entries by Philip Turner

Some Early Spring Hudson River Views

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Looking northward to the GGBFollowing many days of late winter gloom and cold winds off the Hudson River where I regularly ride my bike things brightened up a bit today. With temps edging over 50 degrees and light to moderate winds, I wasn’t forced to don the usual gear I’ve been wearing on my rides since the fall. More lightly clad than usual, I pedaled north along the river, stopping for a break about even with 140th Street. Perched atop an old picnic table I read my current book, Heretics: Adventures With the Enemies of Science by British journalist Will Storr; phoned my sister to wish her a happy Passover; and took these pics of the Hudson and the Jersey side of the river. Even with the noticeable warming, there were still a lot gray, glowering clouds hanging low in the sky, but maybe now we’re in for a spell of fair weather. Please click here to see all photos from my bike ride.

A Deranged Shooter, a Blues-loving Author, and Reflections on Aesop–3 Great Reads in Sunday’s NY Times

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After reading three terrific and interesting pieces in the NY Times this morning, I tweeted about them and so as night falls now want to share them here too. I’ll add a bit more about each story below the original tweets.


The ballplayer Waitkus was a member of the 1948 Philadelphia Phillies; he recovered, though spent several months in a wheelchair after the deranged shooter wounded him. Steinhagen had never met him till that day, and had become weirdly fixated on him. She was institutionalized for some years afterward, but never went to prison, and was then released. She outlived all her relatives, and just died in Chicago last December. The Times obit by Bruce Weber explains her death would have gone unreported had not it been discovered in the course of unrelated reporting. Weber suggests that Bernard Malamud was aware of the incident when he published his novel The Natural in 1952, in which protagonist Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford in the 1984 movie) is shot by a female fan.


Hamid, author of the new novel How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, is very worldly, and his responses in the Times’ weekly feature, ‘Download’ about what he’s currently reading, listening to, following, watching, and appreciating, are very interesting, with good recommendations. I had not heard of online cultural aggregator 3quarksdaily, and it looks cool. I was delighted to see he’s a big fan of the blues and had not thought about denizens of river cities being especially susceptible to the charms of the American music.


Hoagland’s essay is not only important, in a planetary sense, it also has some of the most surprising and interesting linguistic invention and wordplay I’ve encountered in a long time. There’s a lightness to the way it’s written that reminded me of E.B. White. Hoagland lives in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, also home to writer Howard Frank Mosher, author of the great novel of the region, Disappearances, and while it’s not White’s Maine, Hoagland and Mosher are also writers steeped in a powerful sense of New England place.

NYC Pet Owner Grooms Dog in Park, Lets Fur Fly

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Walking from the #5 bus stop at the Fireman’s Memorial opposite Riverside Park in my Manhattan neighborhood on a recent morning I saw a woman combing her dog on one of the site’s marble benches and letting the white fluff fall where it might. Walking past the bench, I picked a tuft of the furry detritus off my wool coat and asked her why she was making no effort at containing the mess. She said, “Oh, don’t you know, the birds use it in their nests.” Having in the past encountered this form of urban littering–and the same birds’ nest rationalization, a seeming urban legend subscribed to by some dog owners–I once asked a NYC park ranger about pet grooming in the parks. He answered that regardless of whether or not animal fur is used in birds’ nests, the stuff stays around forever and that they do ticket pet owners for such carelessness. On Thursday, I told the woman that actually she was littering and could be ticketed for it, and asked that she make the effort to clean it up. She ignored me and went on combing her dog, with white hair flying around like so many dandelion puffs. I walked away stiff-jawed, gobsmacked at how willing to break the urban social contract some city dwellers are.

I have heard some New Yorkers say they believe that commuters who clip their fingernails on public transit, a startling act, if you’ve never observed it, or heard it, may be the most anti-social conduct engaged in by our fellow urbanites. On the other hand, this pet-grooming–rationalized with the self-serving assertion that they’re somehow helping birds thrive–is, outside of violent crime, in the running for the most selfish and outrageous of all urban behaviors.

I think it’s fair for readers here to wonder why I’ve bothered chronicling such behavior. I’m not sure, except for the fact that I kind of still can’t believe a fellow NYer would do something like this, and then bat away responsibility with such an airy rationalization. By sharing it and calling attention to it, I’m hopeful it may lead to more social opprobrium. Sadly, though, this woman was incapable of embarrassment or shame, always a problem when anti-social behavior is afoot.

NYC Sandhog Trapped in Quicksand Rescued from Treacherous 2nd Avenue Subway Tunnel

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MTA photoFirefighters and emergency workers went to extraordinary lengths to rescue the construction worker I tweeted about earlier, mired as he was in a veritable pool of quicksand 100 feet under Second Avenue and 95th Street in Manhattan. In addition to the NY Times article by reporters Matt Flegenheimer and Marc Santora, the latter also appears in a video at the Times site discussing the incident, and there’s a graphic (below) that shows the unusual configuration below ground that led to the peril for the worker. From the article:

[Joseph Barone] became trapped midway between two entrance points used by construction workers, a distance of about 150 feet.
The situation was complicated by the fact that Mr. Barone was pinned at an awkward angle beneath plywood that had sunk into the mud with him. While some stretches of tunnel south of 96th Street have been poured over with concrete, according to the authority, the area where the worker lost his footing remains muck-filled.
Above him were two heavy bars used to brace the walls of the tunnel.
“The first units who got there were concerned about him slipping down more, so they got him roped up,” Chief Hayde said.
With the ropes slung over the struts, initial attempts to simply pull Mr. Barone out of the muck failed.
“There was a tremendous amount of suction pulling him down,” Chief Hayde said. . . .
Rescue workers considered using a cofferdam—essentially a plywood box, which would be constructed around Mr. Barone—but decided that in order to do so, they would have to detach him from the ropes, which they feared could result in his sinking entirely.
So firefighters also dug by hand, trying to scoop out two handfuls of muck for each one that seeped back in.
All the while, Lieutenant Goyenechea tried to keep Mr. Barone talking. He asked about his family, his favorite sports team and how he had come to be stuck.
Mr. Barone said he had simply lost his footing, and once his leg was trapped, there was little he could do.
The Rev. Stephen Harding, a chaplain with the Fire Department, said he was summoned to the scene to provide support to the emergency workers. But after spending over three hours above ground, he said, he asked to be escorted into the tunnel.
There were scores of emergency personnel, he said, covered in grime as they struggled to free Mr. Barone in the dim light. Mr. Harding approached, carefully, and extended his hand to grasp Mr. Barone’s. He could barely make out the worker’s face, which was caked in mud, he said. But a voice emerged.
“He said, ‘I’m hanging in,’ ” Mr. Harding recalled. “And I just held his hand.”
Subway graphic

Joel Plaskett–A True Troubador–Unplugged & Loving It

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Plaskett 2On one of the snowiest nights of the winter, I took in one of the year’s best rock shows. It was a mostly acoustic set by Joel Plaskett, who began rocking out as a teenager twenty years ago in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Eight albums later, under such band names as Thrush Hermit and the Joel Plaskett Emergency, plus a near-score of notable albums he’s produced for other artists, Plaskett is a highly developed songwriter who flashes great rhyming instincts and an instantly likable and charismatic performing style. Following a great warm-up set by young band, The Great American Novel, a denim-clad, lanky Plasket stepped on stage in the Studio at Webster Hall by himself, playing a bright-sounding Gibson four-string tenor guitar. This weathered instrument, which to my ear shared tones and sonic qualities with  hammered dulcimer and autoharp, jibed beautifully with Plaskett’s bright pop melodies and voice, resting as it does somewhere in the upper register. After a bit, he was joined on stage by Peter Elkas, who played a Gibson acoustic fitted out with de luxe pickups patched in to a Fender amp with plenty of fuzz and reverb, providing a sonic counterweight to Plaskett’s treble tones. Peter is a hot lead guitar player, so though this performance had no full band, it had more than full enjoyment of chops, and a real rock feel. The duo worked comfortably through a full sampling of Plaskett material, “Through & Through & Through,” “Let Me Down Easy,” “North Star” (my personal fave of the whole evening), “Love this Town,” and “Deny, Deny, Deny.” At one point during these offerings Plaskett invited to the stage female artist Ana Egge, whom I had heard sing back-up with Rose Cousins last year. Now a trio, the harmonies became more enveloping and the tunes even sweeter.

Plaskett had an easy familiarity with the boisterous Monday night crowd, bantering back at folks after their many song requests. This was an audience that knew much of his repertoire. He was funny about it, and diplomatic, as he’d say something like, “Now that’s a very interesting request, and maybe I’ll play it later, but right now I had this one in mind.”  He explained how he comes to play a 4-string tenor guitar this way (lightly paraphrased): “One time in a store I saw this tenor guitar, first one I ever saw, but I didn’t have the money to buy it (150 bucks). So I said to my dad, ‘Hey, Dad, there’s this really nice guitar downtown.’ So he bought it and I got to play it.” After what by my count was the 16th song of this generous set, the musicians all left the stage, though a round of lusty clapping soon brought Joel back to the mic for what became a quite funny interlude before his encore. He took an IPhone out of his Cowichan vest and proceeded to sample some of his music library for us through the house sound system, with him miming the romantic vocal stylings of R&B artist Bobby Womack. Then, he played a version of his own “Fashionable People,” which has been widely seen because of a video he made of him dancing with leggy models, only in this new version the lyrics had been rewritten with goofy kids’ lyrics, making it into a suitable nursery school song. Joel acted out all the parts–funny, clever stuff. With that, his bandmates Peter and Ana returned to their places and he launched into the true encore, a love song to Canadian geography of the land and heart, “On the Rail,” with evocations of the scenic Cabot Trail, trans-continental train rides, sailing ships, and the stars in the sky.

As the musicians packed up, opportunities for conversation and mingling arose. Joel was just as personable off-stage as on, meeting and greeting many fans, including or two drunk ones. Earlier in the day the two of us had exchanged a tweet about set times, so he recognized me and we shook hands as I thanked him for the great show. I bought his CD, “Three,” and then wandered over to where Peter Elkas was winding up some cables. He’s a really nice-looking guy, and he was just as nice to meet. I told him how much I’d enjoyed his guitar tone and he explained how lucky he had been to find a scarce pick-up–mounted in the center hole of his instrument in the pics below–that allowed him to get those sounds from what is after all still just a Gibson acoustic.  It sounded more like Neil Young’s Old Black than a simple acoustic. I added that I enjoy the R&B sound he gets in his own recordings, and joked that I think of him as the “Boz Skaggs of Canadian R&B,” and we had a laugh about that. Seriously then, I recommended to Peter my favorite Boz Skaggs album, “Moments,” a classic record from 1971. Getting ready to go back into the sleeting night, I spotted the guys from opening act, Great American Novel, and introduced myself to them and handed out a few of my cards. They’re a fun bunch, and really replete with bookish associations, from their band name to their songs. I appreciated that and told them of my own book background. I learned that one of them, drummer Aidan, is the son of notable American fiction writer Jim Shephard, author of You Think That’s Bad. I’m going to keep an eye out for gigs of theirs and hope to hear them again. I said good night to friend Ontarian Nick Wynja, of Hack/Make whom I’d run in to here, a fellow member of the #R3NYNJ, a hashtag that signifies the CBC Radio 3 fan group of New York and New Jersey.

I had a great time at this show, a veritable “Joel Plaskett–Unplugged,” with him singing about 18 songs and playing almost 90 minutes. My first time seeing him–what a fun, passionate performer, full of banter and creative juice. He’s also a really great writer. Below are pictures I took last night.Please click here to see pictures I took last night.