New York Today: Monumental Women

Is it OK to put this here, about that action-packed rollercoaster "Locked Out" article linked in "In the News" here, with the guy locked out taking the trash out in a towel. To be honest, in my 20s, or away at school, I guess I never thought twice about going down the hall in a bathing suit or just shorts. (maybe even IIRC gone to then lobby for the mail?) Maybe it's just that a towel is more precarious, more likely to fall off? (Towels never fell off in my 20s, almost never stay on now. Must be the workmanship, LOL!) But if anyone feels like a song: Do people feel safer with compactors than the old incinerators spewing smoke, so feel better being almost naked with the compactors. :) Tune of “Anything Goes” Trash has changed. From the days when our stuff was burned From the times when most folks discerned Many lessons there to be learned. But today - When compactors are now required When they don’t fear hot ash and such, We see much to be desired. In olden times, incineration Meant we hit the garbage station Clad in some clothes. Now everything shows! Our lifestyle changed in big and small ways Now tenants stroll through the hallways In briefs and hose. Everything shows! When throwing out trash today, they get rash today. When they dash today, see them flash today. If you scowl today at a small tow’l today No one cares what they expose. And though I’m never one to lecture I know you’ll find my conjecture Is on the nose. Here’s how it goes: Everything shows!

'But with Mr. Cuomo, there was no such need for change. “My wife and I were married in New York State,” Ms. Christ said. “Without his leadership on marriage equality, that would not have been possible.”' The Stonewall Democrats are correct to endorse Mr. Cuomo. He's not everything that one could ask for, and I am still impatient over his renaming of the Tappan Zee Bridge, but if it's a man who can twist arms when arms need twisting, then that's all right.

Hurrah for Captain Maggie, who is buried in the cemetery at West Point -- in the warriors' section. And has anyone nominated Mary Lindley Murray? She may have saved American independence by delaying Howe's army when it was marching to intercept Israel Putnam's army during Washington's retreat from New York after the Battle of Long Island.

"Good morning on this drippy Friday." Do people use that word as a weather term now? The co-writer I worked with decades ago used it twice in this number (at 0:46 and at 1:39, but "drippy" meant something so different back in the day "when Dinah Shore ruled the earth," as we liked to say. I make no money from this YouTube or any ads on it somehow (it was on before monetizing), so maybe it's OK to link here? "Is It Mushy to Say I Love You?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZZfjTLHl1s Also, even if you don't normally click on the Diary linked "In the News," you may want to today, for the "Locked Out" story. Straight men in love will identify with how far the Diary writer goes to make his girlfriend happy when she gets home from a trip, and gay men and straight women will likely find themselves imagining their favorite male movie star (or even their spouses in their 20s or 30s; I imagined my husband at 35 though of course he hasn't changed at all) doing all that brave, hilarious slapstick stuff with no modesty whatsoever. It's not that high a threshold because the Diary is rarely meant to be sexy - but it's a clear candidate for the sexiest Metropolitan Diary item - ever! The link is in the "In the News" section.

Mae West. Born in Brooklyn. She broke the mold. Everyone worships her. A great artist with a heart. After serving her time in jail for her supposedly scandalous play, she funded a library for the inmates at the women’s house of detention. She was a trailblazer and needs no explanation.

Nellie Bly made her name over a century ago documenting that people at the public psychiatric hospital in NYC were being mistreated and receiving inadequate care due to lack of funding on the part of the city and state. I'm sure glad that nothing like that occurs now. Of course, we have solved the problem by putting the mentally ill on Riker's Island. Yup, Nellie sure had a major impact on public policy.

Jonathan, Will you or Alexandra be covering Sunday's Sand Castle contest? That sounds like good fun and I'd love to see some photos of the better creations. And it's a nice place to be on a Sunday.

Is it really that hard to add a female writer to the Literary Walk in Central Park? Fitz-Greene Halleck made the cut. Name something -- anything -- he wrote.

Jeremiah Morse: I agree with him on some issues of hyper-gentrification. But I had assumed he was a native New Yorker. Actually, he arrived from elsewhere only in the 1990s. In retrospect, sometimes he seems to be intent on saving the New York of his youth purely because it represents his youth. Although we'd all love to do that, it's not possible. There is no such entitlement. Not every dingy establishment deserves to survive. There are times when his campaign is not very discriminating. He's also a trans man who has said some horribly sexist things about women. I've not been able to regard him in the same light after reading them. Women's Monuments: Interesting candidates.