Archive for March, 2014

On the evening of December 6, 1914, the veteran night watchman at the Central Park Menagerie was making his rounds when he heard Caliph Murphy II roaring from inside the lion house. Caliph II had never roared like that before, so the loud noise caught Louis Seibold’s attention. He looked toward the lion house and […]

The following story is dedicated in memory of the eight people who died in a building collapse in East Harlem, when a leak in a natural gas pipeline laid in 1887 exploded on March 10, 2014. If you’ve read Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence,” you may recall her describing “the one-story saloons, the wooden […]

The following story is dedicated to the six firefighters of Squad 252 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, who lost their lives at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I’ve never known a cat to be very fond of fires and fire trucks – albeit, my cat Boo does love to climb ladders and bake in […]