Month: February 2006

More Cat Charity

The Stony Brook Cat Network is a group of students, faculty and staff at SUNY Stony Brook who humanely trap, neuter and vaccinate feral cats on the campus. They try to find homes for the tamer ones, and release the others back into colonies in the woods behind campus, where the cats are fed and live healthier lives than before. I’m awfully sympathetic to this project since my own duck was a rescue cat, herself (coming from the grounds of an retirement community), and I have my own heart-wrenching run-ins with the stray cats of Kew Gardens. If you’re in the market for a mouser or lap cat, please take a look at these needy kitties, and if you have your checkbook open, support the SBU Cat Network financially.

“…and Sweet’s the Air with Curly Smoke…”

I called it a year (and four days) ago. The President of Harvard University, Lawrence Summers, has resigned. I’m reminded, at this time, of my friend and advisor Josh Freeman who was cool to the movement to oust our Queens College President, Allen Lee Sessoms, back in 1999. What comes next is not necessarily better, he reasoned. It’s not hard to imagine this episode being used in the right-wing assault on the Ivory Tower. Those lefty professors are out of control. They have no respect for their university presidents, or any attempt to establish “standards.”

Paul Avrich, Anarchist and Historian 1931 – 2006

Paul Avrich died last week, aged 74. He was a respected anarchist, and a historian of anarchism (particularly Haymarket and the Sacco and Vanzetti trial) and the Russian Revolution. He was a Professor Emeritus at Queens College. I was fortunate enough to have been a student in the last regular undergraduate course that Dr. Avrich taught at Queens College. It was an invaluable experience to learn about the Russian Revolution from a talented and diligent scholar, who was sympathetic to the utopian goals of the revolution, while critical of the undemocratic nature of the Bolsheviks. There will be a service tomorrow at 12:45 pm at the Riverside Chapel (Amsterdam and 78th).

My, Oh MySpace

This phenomenom of “social networking” websites certainly seems a lot odder when described by the mainstream media. To me and my friends, sites like Friendster and MySpace are harmlessly kooky ways to keep in touch and embarass each other with sarcastic tributary testimonials. They sound a lot more sinister when described by the AP in this wire story on a rash of statutory rape cases in Connecticut: MySpace, one of several popular social networking sites, is a free service that allows people to create Web sites that can be personalized with information, pictures and movies. Searching for someone is as easy as typing the name of a high school and the photographic results are instantaneous. … Some teens keep their personal profiles scant, aimed only at their friends. Others describe their likes and dislikes, from the mundane to the profane, and encourage people to send them messages. “That is a […]

Year Two

I posted my first blarg article one year ago, on February 2, 2005. This website has been a wonderful outlet, and I thank all of you who have joined as readers. The frequency of my postings has declined as of late. I’ve been a bit sidetracked by duck and the floozies, computer problems, an organizing campaign that’s heating up and my studies. I find my two research projects, in particular, very exciting, and will try to keep you updated on them, in between my usual blatherings. I trust you prefer longer periods of silence to pointless surveys and repetitive forwards…?