Happy 198th Anniversary of the Printing of Webster’s Dictionary, UESiders!!

The dictionary’s online now, of course, and with a pretty darned good site, complete with trending words, a word quiz and a word of the day…  Today’s being “galvanized”!  

So, how about some galvanizing reading…  Truly galvanizing reading…  As we head towards Earth Day 2016?

The subject:  Fresh Kills, its past, present and future challenges and what places like it – so very many of them dotting the American landscape – and the truly moral questions they pose… Especially given that – and incredibly – the last two administrations’ and Sanitation Department’s plans for NYC waste disposal rely all but entirely on landfill.  

A serious intro, friends, but do not be deterred.  It’s beautifully written and incredibly thoughtful.

So…  READ and be grateful you did!

On to the upcoming 7 days:

Saturday,  April 16th:   82nd Street/St. Stephen’s Greenmarket

82nd Street between First and York, 9am–2pm

Compost & Clothes Collection – 9am–1pm 

With us – and stocked with just what’s needed to make Passover perfect – will be American Seafood, Bread Alone, Valley Shepherd Creamery, Rising Sun Beef, Ballard Honey, Ole Mother Hubbert, Samascott, Gajeski and Sikking Farms!!

In sync with Earth Day’s ultra greenness, Market Manager Guramit will be devoting her cooking magic to – you guessed it! – delicious things to be done with greens!

(In that regard, we have fingers crossed Gajeski shows up with more wild, scrumptious, baby arugula this week!)

Meanwhile, don’t forget Ole Mother Hubbert’s whole chickens and that Rising Sun has Argyle Farm Greek and regular yogurts!

Were Sikking’s flowers outstanding or what?! 

And those new Greenmarket reusable produce bags (2 sizes available) and tote?  In honor of Earth Day, you can score the tote plus 4 produce bags for a Crazy-Eddie-revisited price of $15!  Just head over to the Manager Guramit’s table.

AND don’t forget, you brilliant composters!!  Collect that nice, fat, free gift bag of the finished product and get it around plants – like your block’s street trees – you love!! 

Last week’s recycling totals:  54 lbs. batteries; 25 lbs. cords, corks, cellphones and cartridges; 3 pairs eyes glasses. 9 1/2 compost bins;  25 bags of clothes. 

Back in that almost 10-bin groove!

Saturday, April 16th:  Forever Homes for Deserving Dogs Event 

Biscuits & Bath, 1064 First Avenue at 58th Street, 11am-3pm

What better vamp to Earth Day than by giving an unlucky fellow creature and soon-to-be best friend shelter and love!  Organized in cooperation with NYC Animal Care & Control.

Sunday, April 17th:  Rooftop Growing Guide Talk

The Lowline, 140 Essex Street, 12-1pm

Hear from veteran rooftop farmers Annie Novak, Anastasia Cole Plakias and Nicole Baum how they pioneered a new, stories up urban landscape and how to get your own rooftop garden growing!  Free but please RSVP…  

Thursday, April 21st: EARTH DAY KICKOFF!

Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, 331 East 70th Street, 6-9pm

Residential compost collection and electronic recycling!!  The oh-so convenient Fresh (local) Food Box Program!!  Improved bike safety!!  2016 First Avenue Bike Island Gardens!! A ton of free planet-friendly goodies!!  We’re talking green learning, living and fun!!  Organized by CM Kallos. You do want to be there!!  (Check out the attached flyer!)

Friday, April 22nd:  EARTH DAY!!

All Over the Globe and Our City

At the 67th Street Library, they’ll be marking the day with a quiet, earthbound class of Tai Chi for All!  5:45pm.  Free.

And elsewhere in NYC…  (Zoom in on the map.)

Over spring school holidays:

Monday, April 25th:  Animals, Authors and Art at the 67th Street Library

328 East 67th Street, 3:30pm

Join staff of the New Canaan Nature Center as they show young UESiders how literature, nature and artistic expression blend and create one beautiful whole.  Ages 5-12.  Free. 

Monday, April 25th to Friday, April 29th:  Spring Break Crafts & Games at the Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden 

At the Museum and in the Garden, 421 East 61st Street, 11am-4pm

Come one and all – be you kids, parents or caregivers – for the old-fangled fun of 19th century crafts and historic games!   Adults, $8.  Seniors & Students, $7.  Free to children under 12.

Tuesday, April 26th:  CM Garodnick’s Fathers and Family Leave – Making It Work Forum

Museum of Modern Art Cullman Education Building, 4 West 54th Street, 8-10am

Council Member Dan Garodnick – father of 2 himself – brings together leading thinkers to discuss the cultural and business factors working against fathers taking leave and how its availability can be improved.  Free.  For further details and to RSVP…  

Tuesday, April 26th:  AARP ShredFest

Manhattan Plaza, 400 & 484 West 43rd Street, 11am-2pm

YES!!  Free shredding is spreading and throughout the city… Although, in this instance, AARP’s imposing a 3 bag limit and you need to sign up in advance.  For full details and to register… (Thanks to reader Claire Campbell for the tip!)

Wednesday, April 27th:  Urban Park Rangers Kids’ Program

North End, Big Park/Playground 103, 103td Street & the FDR, 2-3:30pm

No better way for the young-uns’ to enjoy their spring break:   Urban Park Rangers Kids Week and a primo nature discovery program for the 12 and under set!  Totally free!  (Flyer attached.)

Friday, April 29th & Saturday, April 30th:  Bike Expo New York 

Pier 36, Basketball City, 299 South Stree

A celebration of all things bicycle with a 100-plus exhibitors, an expected 100,000 visitors and even a class that’ll teach the uninitiated how to ride!  Free…  And offering a superb volunteer opportunity:  Helping attendees recycle properly and fill them in about what’s recyclable and where!  For more, contact GrowNYC’s Kathleen Crosby, 212-788-7900 ext. 29 or kcrosby@grownyc.org. 

Saturday, April 30th:  National Drug Take Back Day 

Precinct 13, 230 East 21st Street & Precinct 200, 120 West 82nd Street, 10am-2pm

Impossible to more safely dispose of those prescription drugs moldering on the shelves of your medicine chest than to place them in the hands of Drug Enforcement Agency agents who’ll be doing the collection!  (Yup.  Strange neither Lenox Hill Hospital (now Northwell) or Precinct 19 is participating in the effort!)

Just over the horizon: 

Monday, May 16th:  3rd Annual Esplanade Friends Benefit!

Bar Felice, 1591 First Avenue at 83rd Street

Public art and flowers and music and dancers and unrelenting pressure for swift repairs and structural upgrades and the gorgeous improvements to come on the Rockefeller U and Hospital for Special Surgery segments…  Not to mention the resurrection of the 107th Pier!  We’ve all seen changes and how vibrancy’s returning to our wonderful Esplanade.  Save the date and be a part of keeping the great new energy flowing!!  More soon…

Then this edition’s abundunt miscellany:

Guess what?  Unlike 15 other NY counties, NYC has yet to ban disposal of fracking waste within our county’s borders!  If you think we need a Brooklyn/Bronx/Queens/Staten Island/Manhattan fracking waste ban… 

Seems like Albany still hasn’t driven a stake into the heart of the proposed Constitution Pipeline (think felling of  700,000 trees, destruction of more than 1,000 acres of forest and farmland and actively threatening 277 NYS waterways).  Should you think  the governor – who has the power – should terminate the project now and forever…

Meanwhile…  Sanitation’s agreed to be more aggressive emptying – as in twice a day – of the epidemic of overflowing trash baskets on 86th Street!  (How about some solar compactors, merchants?!)

Check out the before and after skyline if a proposed high rise’s built in Inwood…

Existing conditions: Ft. Tryon Park.

Proposed 23-story tower from Ft. Tryon Park.

And if you support area residents/park supporters’ objections…  

Be one mighty fine Earth Day if – led by the U.S. and China – some 120 more countries sign the Paris Climate Agreement on April 22nd!

Seems like the City Council’s some closer to banning free plastic bags…  A blight that’s costing us some $10M a year to clear from streets, tree limbs, our waste water system and more. 

Wow!  Out in Park Slope, one neighbor’s sold and transferred solar panel-generated power to a another!  A NYC first!!!

As the Port Authority gets down to a new Bus Terminal design, they’re actually seeking We the People’s opinion!!  No assurance they’re really interested, but to weigh on their survey…

Not just 10…  But the Top 10 Secrets of the UES’s own Park Avenue Armory! 

Don’t seem to have been a force in our hood, but the Wendels were once the most powerful landlords in all of NYC… 

Always something new and amazing to know about our great city…  i.e. Before Ellis Island was Ellis Island it was… 

From out in left field:

Yup, NASA’d really like to grow potatoes on Mars!

Animal time:

Much as we need the new Tappan Zee Bridge, no reason its construction should be killing off our great Hudson River Atlantic Sturgeon, right?  If think the National Marine Fisheries Service should be paying more attention to sturgeon morality...  

A bit on the strange-looking aide, but you shouldn’t have to be cute to be protected!  Case and point…  The pangolin:

Pangolin

 To give a hand to this week’s Endangered Critter #2…

Welcome to the live Mother and Baby Condor Cam!  (And there’s a great backstory here…)

How about (simple) directions for a stylish knitted cowl for that furriness of yours?

Then there’s this from the great Hudson River Almanac:

4/6- Manhattan, HRM 1: We caught a lined seahorse (Hippocampus erectus) today (80 millimeters) hanging onto our crab pot at the River Project’s sampling site off Pier 26 in Hudson River Park. This was our second seahorse of the season. – Jacqueline Wu

Hippocampus-erectus

[Seahorses – poor swimmers as fish go – maintain their place in the face of strong currents by wrapping their prehensile tail around stationary objects from vegetation to crab pots. – Tom Lake.]

Greenest people cast primary votes,

UGS