For Young Disabled Athletes, a Chance to Glide, and Compete, on the Ice

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Victor Calise, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities, coaches a hockey team made up of disabled children who compete at Lasker Rink in Central Park.

The players arrived at Lasker Rink in Central Park on Saturday morning with the help of wheelchairs, walkers and crutches. Many had to be helped into their pads and then lifted into the bucket seats of narrow aluminum sleds with skate-blades on the bottom.

Dragging them to the edge of the rink and lifting them onto the ice required rea l effort, but once on the smooth frozen surface, these so-called disabled players were free. They glided around, inches above the ice, chasing pucks and one another.

The players - the New York Rangers youth sled hockey team, which was started in October as the city's first organized ice hockey team for disabled children â€" were facing off on Saturday against the Philadelphia Hammerheads sled hockey team on the rink on the northern end of Central Park.

“Get out there,” exhorted their coach, Victor Calise, 40, as he clapped his players on their shoulders and rapped their sleds to fire them up. Soon they were banging their sticks on the ice and chanting “Let's go, Rangers,” with the liveliest cheers coming from Mr. Calise, the commissioner of the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities.

“The whole idea is to get them involved and show them what disabled athletes can do,” said Mr. Calise, who was not driven to the game in a big city-owned vehicle with aides hovering around him. Instead, he rolled up by himself in his wheelchair an hour before the game to greet his players. He hopped into his own sled, pushed himself onto the rink and began smacking his stick on the ice shouting, “Rangers, bring it in.” He lined the players up against the boards and assigned them positions.

The team's 18 players are 5 to 18 years old - 3 are girls â€" and all have limited or no mobility in their lower bodies because of injuries or conditions like spina bifida or cerebral palsy.

“Some of these kids, and their parents, never knew they could play team sports,” said Bill Greenberg, an investor from Greenwich Village whose son Sam, 9, cannot move his lower body because of a birth defect in his spinal cord.

Robert Caplin for The New York Times The team of disabled youngsters, the New York Rangers, competed recently against a team from Philadelphia, the Hammerheads.

Mr. Greenberg worked with Mr. Calise on organizing a city team to play similar clubs in the Northeast. Now the Rangers play games every other Saturday at Lasker Rink, and are scheduled to move in March to the indoor World Ice Arena in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. The arena has boards, entranceways and surfaces that make it accessible for sled hockey, whose rules and equipment are similar to regular ice hockey but whose players each use two shortened hockey sticks. One end is used to handle the puck, and the other end is equipped with a sharpened tip so that t he players can use them to propel the sled with arm-thrusts.

Since equipment and ice time are expensive, the Rangers secured sponsors, including the Challenged Athletes Foundation, the New York Rangers professional hockey team and the Wheelchair Sports Federation. Ice time is donated by the Lasker Rink and by the city's parks department, where Mr. Calise worked for six years as the accessibility coordinator before being appointed to his current post in May.

Mr. Calise, who grew up in Ozone Park, Queens, playing roller hockey, was paralyzed from the chest down after a mountain biking accident.

“Initially, I didn't want to live anymore, and I found sled hockey and it changed my life,” he said. He made the 1996 national team and began playing around the world. He played in the 1998 Winter Paralympic Games i n Nagano, Japan, as a member of the U.S.A. Paralympic Sled Hockey team.

Mr. Calise does not coddle his players and expects them to play hard, like any competitive athlete. During Saturday's game, he yelled at his squad, “I need everybody to skate harder.”

A goal by Christian Stieler, 18, of Marine Park, Brooklyn, kept the Rangers in the game, as did sharp goaltending by Eddie Friedman, 16, of Sheepshead Bay, a student at Brooklyn Tech High School who has cerebral palsy.

At one point Francisco Olivares, 10, tipped over in his sled, but once righted by a volunteer, he hustled back into the action. Francisco, a fourth-grader at Public School 291 in the Bronx, lacks mobility in his lower body because of the effects of spina bifida. He had been depressed and inactive before joining the team, said his brother Erick Olivares, 21.

“He was sitting around watching TV and just feeling very limited,” Mr. Olivares said. “Now he feels stronger, and ever y time he comes here, he's happy because he's with other kids in the same situation.”

The critical goal was scored for the Rangers by Joanna Nieh, a 10-year-old from Manhattan with spina bifida, who had left her pink crutches on the bench and was hustling on left wing. Her goal tied the game at 3-3, which was the final score.

“If they can do this now,'' Mr. Calise said, “they don't see their disability.”

Robert Caplin for The New York Times A player gets ready for a game at Lasker Rink.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 18, 2012

In an earlier version of this article, a caption with a photograph stated incorrectly that Victor Calise, the coach of the hockey team for disabled youngsters, was the man on the left. In fact, that man was not identified.

Columbia Gets $200 Million Pledge for Brain Institute

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Mortimer B. Zuckerman

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, the real estate developer, owner of The Daily News and philanthropist, has pledged $200 million to endow an interdisciplinary Mind Brain Behavior Institute at Columbia University.

Prof. Thomas Jessell, joined by Prof. Richard Axel and Prof. Eric Kandel, both Nobel laureates, are founders of the institute, which will be housed at the 450,000-square-foot Jerome L. Greene Science Center now under construction on Columbia's campus in northern Manhattan.

The institute will bring together researchers from Columbia University Medical Center, the faculty of arts and sciences, the Fu Foundation School of Eng ineering and Applied Science and other collaborators in research into the neural sciences and human behavior.

“This country has provided me with extraordinary opportunities,” Mr. Zuckerman said in a news release, “and I am glad for the chance to support scientific leadership in a field I believe is so essential to all our lives.”

PATH Service to Return to Hoboken Wednesday

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, via Agence France-Presse - Getty Images A video still showed flood waters from Hurricane Sandy rushing into the Hoboken PATH station through an elevator shaft on Oct. 29.

Seven weeks after Hurricane Sandy dumped an estimated 500 million gallons of water in Hoboken, crippling its transportation network and leaving tens of thousands of commuters casting about for alternative modes of travel, officials said Tuesday that PATH train service was at last set to resume.

In a joint announcement, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey said the service would return between Hoboken and 33rd Street in Manhattan beginning on Wednesday at 5 a.m. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said direct service between Hoboken and the World Trade Center was still “several weeks away,” citing ongoing work to replace damaged and destroyed signal equipment.

The trains will initially run from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m., though the Port Authority said limited 24-hour service was expected in time for New Year's Eve.

But even a partial return of the PATH to Hoboken will provide a critical connection for the most transit-reliant community in the count ry, where an estimated 56 percent of residents use public transportation. Most subway and bus operations in New York City returned within a week of the storm, followed by many New Jersey Transit services, but the PATH train in Hoboken has been seen as a final missing link in the region's revived transportation system.

The Port Authority said workers had pumped more than 10 million gallons of water from tunnels and replaced much of the train system's switching and signaling equipment.

With no PATH service, many residents waited in lines for ferries and buses, often doubling their commuting time, or endured the expense of a daily taxi ride out of the city. And with fewer visitors able to get to Hoboken, known for its bars and restaurants, downtown business owners have reported sales decreases of 25 to 70 percent since the storm.

Bronx Judge Is Censured by Judicial Commission

Joshua Bright for The New York Times Lee L. Holzman at a disciplinary hearing in September.

The Bronx surrogate judge was censured by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct for failing to take appropriate action after learning that one of his appointees had collected unauthorized and excessive fees, the commission announced on Tuesday.

The judge, Lee L. Holzman, who has served since 1988, oversees the estates of people who die without wills. In 2006, the judge said, he learned that his appointee, Michael Lippman, counsel to the Bronx public administrator, had taken unauthorized fees from the estates of people wh o had died without wills.

While censure is one of the panel's more serious disciplinary actions, it was short of the removal of the judge that the commission's administrator, who functions as a prosecutor, had recommended in July.

Judge Holzman ordered Mr. Lippman, a longtime associate who had helped him on his election campaigns, to repay the money, but continued to appoint him, a decision that led to the disciplinary action against him.

A referee who presided over the commission's hearings determined that Judge Holzman should have fired Mr. Lippman and reported him to the authorities.

The panel voted 7-3 to censure Judge Holzman in a determination dated Dec. 13. The three dissenting members voted to remove him. Censure is a higher level of discipline than “admonishment” or “reprimand.”

The commission's administrator, Robert H. Tembeckjian, who had urged that Judge Holzman be removed, said in a statement that the commission members render decisions “and sometimes we disagree.”

In any case, Judge Holzman has only days left on the bench. He turned 70 this year, and must retire by Dec. 31 under state law.

Manhattan Theater Club and Ars Nova Announce Recipients of Inaugural Commissions

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Thomas Bradshaw

Two prominent New York theaters, Manhattan Theater Club and Ars Nova, announced on Tuesday that they have chosen five playwrights as the first recipients of their new Writer's Room commissions. The commissions are worth between $5,000 and $10,000 a piece and are geared to developing works for possible Off Broadway productions at the theaters. The inaugural commissions will go to Thomas Bradshaw (“Job”), Samuel D. Hunter (“The Whale”), and Sharyn Rothstein (“The Invested”); a fourth commission will be shared by Adam Bock (“A Small Fire”) and Justin Levine (“Bonfire Night ”), who are developing a new musical.

Such commissions are increasingly common as nonprofit theaters try to forge stronger ties with their favorite writers, enabling them financially to remain playwrights (rather than move into television and film work) and helping spur new works that might run in the theaters someday. Mr. Hunter, for one, whose Off Broadway play “The Whale” has made him a hot commodity, is juggling commissions for several theaters nationwide and is also already a member of the Playwrights Ensemble group at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago.

The Writer's Room grew out of a collaboration in 2008 when Ars Nova turned to Manhattan Theater Club, which has larger budgets and facilities, about producing a new play by Liz Flahive, “From Up Here,† that Ars Nova had developed but did not have the space and money to stage itself. “From Up Here” opened at the club that spring to good reviews, but the national economic recession that year limited the abilities of the two theaters (like many others) to spend money on new programs like the Writer's Room.

“We wanted to do this again, but on purpose this time,” said Mandy Greenfield, the artistic producer of Manhattan Theater Club, in an interview on Tuesday. “And now we have four new commissions that would not have existed if we had not come together.”

She said the commissions have been financed out of the budgets of the two theaters, but added that they would seek private and foundation support for the Writer's Room as well. The plan is to award four commissions annually, though the writers would not be expected to finish work in a single year. Full productions are not guaranteed, but Ms. Greenfield said she hoped some of the new works would run at the club's newly configured space, MTC Studio at Stage II, where the critically praised “Murder Ballad” just concluded its run. (Some theater producers have expressed interest in remounting “Murder Ballad” elsewhere in New York, but those discussions are nascent and Ms. Greenfield declined to comment on them.)

Ars Nova, a more experimental theater company than Manhattan Theater Club, recently had a critical and audience hit with “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” which also may re-open elsewhere next year. Jason Eagan, artistic director of Ars Nova, said that his small theater had only so much flexibility to extend shows like “The Great Comet” and produce newly co mmissioned works â€" hence the decision to team up with Manhattan Theater Club.

“We want Ars Nova to remain a very focused boutique theater,” he said, “but we also want to commission more writers and not be limited by our producing resources.”

Director of Louvre to Step Down

Just days after the Louvre opened its nearly $200-million outpost in the industrial town of Lens in northern France, Henri Loyrette, the Louvre's longtime director who was a champion of the project, announced his resignation after having run the museum for 12 years.  He plans to leave in April.

According to The Art Newspaper, the Louvre issued a statement on Monday confirming Mr. Loyrette's decision. “Loyrette has informed the president of France and the minister of culture of his decision not to seek a renewal of his mandate,'' the statement read.

During his years at the Louvre attendance reached a record high of nearly 10 million visitors by the end of this year, almost double the 5.1 million people who came in 2001.  In September Mr. Loyrette opened new $125-million galleries for Islamic art gracefully tucked ino the museum's Visconti Courtyard. While the French government kicked in some support for the project, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia gave the Louvre $20 million for the galleries.

Besides his effective fund-raising skills Mr. Loyrette brought contemporary art into the Louvre, including a monumental installation by Anselm Kiefer in 2007 and a ceiling mural by Cy Twombly in 2010.  He also showed the work of other artists like Anish Kapoor, Wim Delvoye and Giuseppe Penone.

Mr. Loyrette is departing before the completion of the institution's most ambitious project to date, which started during his tenure:  A new Jean Nouvel-designed museum to be built on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates . It was originally scheduled to open next year but it has been delayed until at least 2015.  The Louvre will receive more than $500 million over the next 30 years from the United Arab Emirates authorities in exchange for use of its name.

Dead Sea Scrolls Go Digital

The Dead Sea Scrolls were buried in caves for centuries, and then enmeshed in controversy over scholarly access since their discovery in the late 1940s. But as of today, some 5,000 high-resolution images of the scrolls are readily available online, thanks to a collaboration between the Israel Antiquities Authority and Google.

“Only five conservators worldwide are authorized to handle the Dead Sea Scrolls,” Shuka Dorfman, the director of the authority, told The Associated Press. “Now, everyone can touch the scroll on the screen around the globe.”

The digitization project, the result of two years of scanning using technology developed by NASA, allows users to zoom in on details of the often highly fragmentary scrolls, which contain versions of every book of the Hebrew Bible (except the Book of Esther), including one of the oldest known copies of Genesis and a copy of Psalms containing one of the oldest known references to King David.

The scrolls, believed to have been written or collected by an ascetic Jewish sect that settled in the desert at Qumran in the Judean desert after fleeing Jerusalem sometime around the second and first centuries B.C., also include a number of non-biblical books that provide insight into the origins of Christianity. Five scrolls were previously digitized, and posted online by the Israel Museum last year.

Lisa Loeb Explains Her Cameo on the \'Gossip Girl\' Finale

Angela Weiss/Getty ImagesLisa Loeb

Warning: this post contains spoilers about the series finale of “Gossip Girl.” XOXO.

Monday's installment of “Gossip Girl” was a series finale for the ages: in the final episode of this long-running CW soap, viewers at last learned the identity of the pseudonymous blogger who had been making life miserable for the show's stable of well-to-do Upper East Siders. (No, Mayor Bloomberg, it was not Dorota.) Blair Waldorf (played by Leighton M eester) and Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) were finally married. And, in a coda set five years in the future at the wedding of Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) and Dan Humphrey (Penn Badgley), it appeared that Dan's father, Rufus (Matthew Settle) had found love, too â€" with the singer-songwriter Lisa Loeb.

What exactly was this bespectacled pop star doing on “Gossip Girl”‘s turf? Ms. Loeb (whose new album, “No Fairy Tale,” will be released next month) spoke to ArtsBeat on Tuesday to explain.

Q.

I'm sure you've been keeping a tight lid on this appearance. I don't think anyone knew this was coming.

A.

I know! Isn't it great? It's so fun to be involved in those kinds of things.

Q.

How did that come together?

A.

They asked me to be a part of it, actually. I'm friendly with one of the writers on the show. Somebody who I knew back in New York City, back in the early 90s when I started out after college â€" there was a group of us that used to hang out together that included Ethan Hawke and Josh Hamilton and Jesse Harris, Pete Dinklage. One of the people that we hung out with was Jonathan Marc Sherman, and he dated this girl Jessica [Queller], who was one of the writers on “Gossip Girl.”

So years and years later, she told me about a story line that they had for one of the characters, Rufus, and that he dated this girl in a rock band. So they asked me to be a part of that, to be the girl that he had dated. I guess to make the finale special, it was one of the extra-special surprises. [laughs] They asked me to return. Which was funny but logistically a little complicated because I have a new baby. He's six months old now, but we shot that li ke a month and a half ago. I had just been in New York the week before, working, unfortunately, without my family â€" I have a daughter, also, who's three years old. It's complicated enough to be away for five days, working. All of a sudden I get a call to come back to New York for 24 hours. And I'm bizarrely parked in my trailer, like, literally down the block from the apartment I most recently lived in, in New York City. I was subletting from a friend on 75th Street, and I was like, “Oh my God!” I knew exactly where to go to get my lunch.

I got there at night â€" the next day we shot that scene, and later that night I was in a van with Billy Baldwin, hoping I could get home that night but not sure if I could make a plane, probably having to leave the next day. And all of a sudden, we got a call that I could actually get on the next plane. So Billy jumped out of the car, hailed me a cab, I threw my luggage in there, ran to the airport and got home later that night .

Q.

What a gentleman.

A.

Yes. And it's fun to be part of an iconic show.

Q.

You're basically enshrined in history. Are we to assume that, at least in the fictional world, you and Rufus are now back together?

A.

Yes. Exactly. My husband asked me this morning, “Now, does that make me your first husband or your second husband?” It's kind of like the same question I got when I dressed as Sarah Palin, years and years ago, for Halloween. People at the parties were saying, “Are you Lisa Loeb or are you Sarah Palin?” Very confusing.

Q.

But your husband is cool with loaning you out for these fictional purposes?

A.

Yes. He's done some movies, like “Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit,” so he can basically understand anything having to do with different dimensions.

Spoofing Celebrities in a Weekly \'Time Machine\'

A new celebrity-spoofing pop show, “Totally Tubular Time Machine,” will begin weekly performances on Saturday nights on Jan. 19 at New York's Culture Club, the latest attempt by entertainment producers to develop musical parodies out of hit songs from the 1980s. Among the producers are Robert Watman, the chief executive of '70s- and '80s-themed nightclub chains Polly Esther's and Culture Club, and Denise Fennell and Suzanna Melendez, two of the creators of “Birdy's Bachelorette Party,” a pop-infused send-up in which real bachelorette parties blended with a fictional one. “Time Machine” will feature actors playing music idols like Madonna, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Britney Spears, with audience members encouraged to ask questions about their personal lives and become celebrity gossipmongers themselves. Ms. Mele ndez will direct the show.

Director Named for New Children\'s Museum in Harlem

David Adjaye A rendering of the development, to be built in the Sugar Hill section of Harlem, on 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

The Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling, part of a new Harlem development due to open in 2014 that includes affordable housing, has named a director.

Susan Delvalle, the former director of external affairs and development for El Museo Del Barrio, will assume the post next month, the museum announced on Monday.

The museum was originally to be named after Faith Ringgold, the author and illustrator known for children's books including “Tar Beach.” Ms. Ringgold pulled out of the project in February because she objected to various aspects of its formation.

The museum, on 155th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, is a project of Broadway Housing Communities, a nonprofit organization that provides low-income housing and support services.

“Susan's leadership will help us realize the full potential of incorporating a cultural institution into community development that includes housing and education,” said Ellen Baxter, Broadway Housing's executive director.

Last June, the museum received the top national ArtPlace award, a collaboration o f foundations, federal agencies and banks investing in neighborhoods through the arts.

Indianapolis Orchestra Scores Donations From Team Owners

Basketballs and bassoons, goalposts and Gustav Holst, brutal human collisions on grass and intertwining melodies on stage, twirling batons and time-beating batons â€" none of these things seem to go together. But they do for the sake of Indianapolis. The city's orchestra said the owners of the local professional football and basketball teams had each promised to donate $750,000 to help the financially ailing orchestra survive.

Referring to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's slogan that life is better with music, Herb Simon, the owner of the Pacers basketball team, said, “I think Indianapolis is better with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra,” according to a news release issued by the orchestra. The other donor was the owner of the Colts, Jim Irsay, who has displa yed one of Jerry Garcia's guitars and a picture of Jimi Hendrix in his office.

The gifts are part of an emergency $5 million fundraising campaign, which has a deadline of Feb. 3. The orchestra said it is nearly halfway there. A recent five-year labor contract that includes large pay cuts for the musicians hinges on reaching the goal. The agreement came after a lockout in the fall led to the cancellation of five weeks of concerts.

A Bungalow, Destroyed by Sandy

Dear Diary:

Our bungalow, 223
On the Atlantic oceanside
Beloved home of family
for generations, now has died.

Just scraps of wood, all smashed and torn
Swept by wind and ocean roar
Merciless to all who mourn
Oblivious of family lore

Ruthless, fearless, spurred by wrath
Winds and waves so mindless of
the homes and memories in her path
the land and sand so many love

Our bungalow, Our sacred space -
I long to spit in Sandy's face.

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail: diary@nytimes.com or telephone: (212) 556-1333. Follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDia ry.

A Growing List of Gun Victims, and the Mayor\'s Demand for a Plan

On the same day as the school massacre in Newtown, Conn., another madman attacked little children outside a primary school many thousands of miles away.

This assault did not get remotely as much attention as the horror in Connecticut, so it may come as news to you. It occurred in Chengping, a village in central China.

Some circumstances in the two outrages are strikingly similar. The number of victims in Chengping, 22 children and 1 adult, was comparable to the toll of 20 children and 6 adults in the killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The ages of the Chinese students, some as young as 6 years old, were roughly the same as those in Connecticut.

There was one enormous difference, however. Unlike the monstr ous outcome in Newtown, all the children in Chengping survived. A second difference explains the first: The weapon used by the assailant, a 36-year-old man, was a knife.

Sure, knives can kill. Lunatics in China have killed schoolchildren in a rash of bizarre knife attacks like this latest one. But the body count there is nothing like the carnage inflicted by the Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, and by his brethren in this country's expanding corps of mass murderers armed with assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols capable of firing multiple high-velocity rounds.

With a knife, you can kill one at a time. With the military-style weaponry that is readily available in this country, the slaughter is limitless.

That elementary fact lies at the heart of the message being carried with deepened fervor by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has made himself an avatar of gun-control advocacy, not to mention top enemy of the National Rifle Association, a label that he justifiably wears with pride.

There is no denying the righteousness that the mayor brings to this issue, one that he, along with many others, regards as nothing less than a matter of national security. In public appearances over the last couple of days, he did not use the Chengping experience as a reference, but he drew the same lessons that it provides. They are eminently sensible:

You will never end killing. You will not eliminate bursts of insanity. But the least that a civilized country can do is limit the death toll, by making it harder for a madman to turn a schoolroom or a house of worship or a shopping mall into an abattoir.

No other industrialized nation, the mayor said, allows its citizens to stockpile weapons and amm unition that “can be used to kill large numbers of people quickly.” While the Second Amendment guarantees a right to “keep and bear arms,” it does not, he suggested, guarantee a right to keep and bear devastating arms, capable of inflicting mass death and intended principally for service on a battlefield.

On Monday, Mr. Bloomberg intensified his demand that President Obama and Congress stop talking about how awful the violence is and start doing something to rein in the assault weapons, the high-capacity magazines and the gun trafficking.

In his role as co-chairman of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (with Mayor Thomas M. Menino of Boston), Mr. Bloomberg unveiled a campaign called “I Demand a Plan.” Its emotional core is a series of videos, prepared before the Newtown massacre, with 34 survivors of firearms violence or relatives of victims speaking about their pain and appeali ng for federal action.

Some of them were among 45 people who stood behind Mr. Bloomberg at a City Hall news conference on Monday. They formed a quorum of misery, bearing the scars of horrors whose place names are etched indelibly into the tormented American soul: Virginia Tech, Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek.

They included Mary Reed, shot three times by the gunman who killed six people and gravely wounded Representative Gabrielle Giffords near Tucson, Ariz., in January 2011. She still has a bullet lodged in her back, Ms. Reed told me. What she did not mention was that she was shot as she threw herself upon her teenage daughter, Emma, to shield her from harm.

“We're a community of people you really don't want to belong to,” Ms. Reed said of the group who stood with the mayor. “But it is a community of heart and soul. They're more than family now. We've walked through hell.”

All that she wanted, and all that Mr. Bloomberg urged, was for Washington to impose a few common-sense restrictions that might save lives and spare others from joining the unhappy club of those on that forced march through hell.

E-mail Clyde Haberman: haberman@nytimes.com

In Performance: Jackie Hoffman of \'A Chanukah Charol\'

In a scene from her solo show “A Chanukah Charol,” inspired by Patrick Stewart's “Christmas Carol,” Jackie Hoffman impersonates several family members during a particularly kvetchy holiday dinner. Performances of the show continue on Friday and Saturday evenings through Dec. 29 at New World Stages.

Recent videos in this series include Michael Learned in Bruce Graham's drama “The Outgoing Tide” and Shuler Hensley in a scene from Samuel D. Hunter's play “The Whale.”

Coming Thursday: Trac ee Chimo performs a scene from Joshua Harmon's comedy “Bad Jews.”

No Monkey Business: Woman Behind Botched Fresco Restoration Sells Painting on eBay

Associated Press “Borja's Wine Cellar,” an oil painting by Celia Giménez.

You may not appreciate the handiwork of Celia Giménez, the 80-year-old woman whose unauthorized restoration of a religious fresco turned the face of Jesus into something resembling, say, a monkey in a shearling coat. But like it or not, she is now a professional artist: The Associated Press reported that an original painting by Ms. Giménez, depicting only a rustic scene and no holy figures or primates, had been sold on eBay for about $1,400.

The online auction for Ms. Giménez's original oil painting, titled “Las Bodegas de Borja” (“Borja's Wine Cellar”) closed on Tuesday after 52 bids, and proceeds from the sale will be donated to Caritas, a Catholic charity. The amount raised is perhaps a modest sum when compared to the invaluable amount of Internet content Ms. Giménez generated this summer when it was discovered that she had tried to restore a century-old fresco at a church in the Spanish town of Borja. The original image, which showed Jesus wearing a crown of thorns before the crucifixion, was commonly known as “Ecce Homo,” or “Behold the Man”; after Ms. Giménez was done with it, it gained a new nickname: “Ecce Mono,” or “Behold the Monkey.”

Musical Moments, Part VI: \'Clair de Lune\'

What constitutes a “moment” in music? Some readers cited fairly long passages, even whole movements of pieces, as favorite moments. But BAM (to use the name readers gave for their posts), from Farmington, Conn., pointed to a precise moment toward the end of Debussy's popular piano piece “Clair de Lune” when a single note is introduced to a chord, resulting in a “subtle change of harmony,” like “the instant of recognizing first love on a moonlit night.” In this video I discuss that moment.