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Updated: 12/08/04



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Wednesday, 08 December, 2004

Was up in New York for a meeting today and afterwards took the Path Train to Newark to catch Amtrak back to Philly. It is still just as strange to go down into the station in the pit of Ground Zero as it was the first time I was there.

Yesterday I mentioned the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and I thought of that as I walked past the WTC site. The Arizona Memorial in Honolulu is an amazing site and it really brings home the scope of the events of December 7th, 1941. For those that haven't been, the memorial is a simple white structure suspended over the sunken remains of the USS Arizona.

Arizona Memorial

It is understated, yet conveys the enormity of the event that it represents - an unprovoked attack that killed 2,388 people (1,177 on the Arizona itself) - with dignity. I only hope that the WTC Memorial will have the same effect.

Speaking of New York, in September I wrote about Pale Male, the red tailed hawk that has taken up residence in New York's Central Park. It seems that someone has evicted Pale Male and Lola from their Fifth Avenue apartment:

NEW YORK — Pale Male the city hawk was evicted from his nest, and the flap has already begun.

So said aggrieved bird-watchers and neighbors after workmen raised a scaffold to the top of a Manhattan apartment building Tuesday and ripped out the famous red-tailed hawk's nest.

The act appeared to end an urban drama that has fascinated bird-watchers over the past nine years, as Pale Male and a succession of mates raised 25 chicks — the last trio of fledglings last June — on the narrow 12th-floor ledge over Fifth Avenue.

City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benape said he was consulting with state officials to determine who removed the nest and whether any law or regulation had been broken.

Red-tailed hawks are not legally protected, he said but the loss of the birds would hurt because "they limit the rodent population in an area where natural predators were absent for a long time."

A doorman at the building said it was managed by Brown Harris Stevens, a prominent Manhattan real estate firm. At the company office, an employee declined to comment.

[We'll keep you posted.]


Quote du jour:

"For famous men have the whole earth as their memorial."

-- Pericles (495BC - 429BC) Greek statesman

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