Bird Massacre On Central Park West.

In an act of cultural vandalism somewhere between re-making the movie Sabrina and burning the library of Alexandria, someone has gotten their hands on The New York Historical Society. I don’t know who (probably just as well) but under the guise of a three-year, seventy-million dollar renovation, they’ve taken a minor museum and turned it into a major waste of real estate. In the process, New York’s foremost avian treasure, like the bird population over an English estate, has been muscled nearly out of existence.

The New York Historical Society never had much to recommend it. There’s the colonial-era portrait of a New York State Governor in complete drag. A novelty, at best, but, I’m willing to bet, one-of-a-kind. It also has a beautiful research library (more about that later.) Any distinction that it enjoys is derived from two things: its enviable location and John James Audubon’s Birds of America. The former is still there, the latter, like a peacock feather, is a pathetic reminder of something glorious.

Commanding the northeast corner of Seventy-Seventh Street and Central Park West, The New York Historical Society has, not one, but two panoramic – and protected – views of Manhattan. In the heart, yet, of one of the city's most prestigious, residential neighborhoods. A parcel of real estate worth, conservatively, eighty-two jillion dollars. To put it in perspective, the new building at Sixty-Second Street and CPW, where billionaires fight to buy forty-million dollar apartments, has a good, but not great location. Only a few blocks away, The Time-Warner Towers, which also have apartments in that price range, are located above a shopping mall at a traffic circle.

Not that its prime location is completely wasted on The New York Historical Society. The main reason it draws more visitors than the Museum of the City of New York is because the latter is rather too far north at Fifth Avenue and One Hundred and Third Street. (Unless, of course, you live in Harlem or work at Mount Sinai Hospital.) The Society, in other words, plays NYU to the City Museum’s Columbia University.

The Historical Society owns all 435 of the original watercolors by John James Audubon on which he based the prints in Birds of America. Prior to the renovation, they took pride of place in one of the major galleries. Though never displayed all at once, a great many more were visible than today. Currently, a mere five Audubon paintings can be seen in a niche across from the toilets in a corridor devoted exclusively to . . . toilets. I might be able to understand such a dismal priority if the rest of the building was filled with masterpieces. It isn’t - not by a long shot. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a huge Audubon fan nor am I a bird lover, but I think the work of an authentic American genius deserves better than being shoved in a corner next to some tourist squirting out the day’s soft pretzels, hot dogs and other fare.

The museum’s visitors also deserve better than to be frog-marched out of the library like they were caught climbing a fence. Apparently, one’s fifteen dollar admission fee no longer covers admiring the library’s stained-glass windows, paintings, columns and carved panels. Instead, registering for research is the sine qua non. Without it, you will be treated like an illegal immigrant. In Arizona. I remember a different policy. I also remember a larger room, but I can’t be sure because I wasn’t there long enough.

The Gingrich Who Stalks Christmas.

Newt Gingrich is so unwholesome in so many ways that he’s like a cartoon villain. Yet real people take him seriously. How is that possible?

In the four years that Mr. Gingrich served as Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (1995-1998) he was charged with eighty-four ethics violations, lied to the committee investigating them, received an official reprimand and a fine of $300,000. He was instrumental in shutting down the federal government twice in late 1995 and early 1996. Conflict over the budget was one reason. Another, by his own admission, is that he felt snubbed by Pres. William Clinton, who asked him to sit in the back of Air Force One and leave by the rear exit. While leading the charge against Pres. Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Newt Gingrich was, himself, having an affair with congressional aide, Callista Bisek. That must have come as a shock to his wife, Marianne, but it couldn’t be a surprise. She was, after all, the reason he divorced his first wife, Jackie. One of the reasons. The other, perhaps more compelling, ones were cited by Katharine Q. Seelye in her article for The New York Times of November 24, 1994. “A few weeks before Mr. Gingrich filed for divorce, he called his political aide and friend, Mr. [L.H.] Carter to talk about his marriage. Mr. Carter said he and other friends had been worried that the marriage was falling apart. Mr. Gingrich told him why he wanted a divorce. ‘He said, “She’s not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of a President. And besides, she has cancer.’”

All of which his Republican colleagues seemed willing to overlook – but not their loss of five House seats in the 1998 election. Led by, of all people, John Boehner, they forced Newt Gingrich to resign as both Speaker and member of the House of Representatives on November 5, 1998.

That’s just his previous experience in government. We haven’t even gotten to his years as a lobbyist for special interests, lying about it, running for President and choosing Donald Trump (yes, that Donald Trump) as an advisor.

If the real Republicans out there would stop clipping coupons (unless that went out with stock tickers) and start paying attention, they may find a suitable candidate and not one who appears to have been concocted by Dr. Seuss.

Down Against The Wall!

I was down in the Wall Street area recently and there’s plenty for the Occupy Movement to learn there – if they wanted.

Zucotti Park, quondam home of the movement, is almost adjacent to the 9/11 Memorial, an object lesson in giving too many people control over a decision. Not only were the landlord of the former World Trade Center and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey involved, but former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani promised the families of victims that they would have veto power over any proposed designs for the memorial. The result is a missed opportunity that took ten years to reach full disappointment. The 9/11 Memorial is neither as emotionally engaging as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. or as serene and welcoming as a park. Instead, it is two holes filled with water and surrounded by tourists. If Occupy Wall Street wants to avoid a similar fate, they are going to need effective leadership, not some loose, self-defeating confederation that accomplishes nothing and takes a long time not to do it.

Only a block or two away from Zucotti Park is 23 Wall Street, former home of J.P Morgan and Company. An imposing stone building almost directly across from The New York Stock Exchange, it still bears the marks of an attempt by anarchists to blow it up in 1920 by parking a wagon full of explosives alongside it. (Warning: animals were hurt in the production of this anecdote.) Instead of destabilizing society and ushering in a millenium of economic justice, they succeeded only in making powerful enemies of J.P. Morgan and the U.S. government. (Almost, but not quite, the same thing.) Not that Occupy is likely to spawn bomb-throwers, but if they are tempted to take shortcuts, this is why they shouldn’t. Strategic targets, however, can be useful, but you have to know who they are, what they do and what you expect to accomplish.

You don’t have to go a block away to find the perfect example. At 140 Broadway, the very building that faces Zucotti Park, are the offices of Brown Brothers Harriman. You can’t miss it. The name is in big letters on both sides of the building. It’s the oldest and largest private bank in the U.S. and was founded, in part, by Governor and Ambassador W. Averill Harriman with money from his father, E. H. Harriman, who owned five railroads, a steamship company and Wells Fargo. Among the people it’s employed, over the years, are former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan and two guys named Bush, I forget their first names. Brown Brothers Harriman is as insular and old school as wealth and power gets in this country. If Occupy Wall Street could get on its radar, much less effect any change in its practices, that would be consequential. Yet these movers and shakers aren’t on the movement’s radar. I’ll bet that people in the park stare at this building every day without knowing or caring what goes on inside.

What about those people in the park? There weren’t many on a weekday afternoon. One man was dressed in a cape and cowl that read, “Dark Knight.” I’m sure he was an enemy of injustice, but I don’t think the allusion to Batman helps. The others were a motley crew in various stages of hygiene: past, passing and to come. Fortunately, it doesn’t reflect the vigor of the Occupy Wall Street Movement. I have it on impeachable authority (not very impeachable, but not un -) that, these days, most of the movement’s work is done in committee. Like Congress.