Blown Awry

Damon Winter/The New York Times Brittany Gowan, 26, battled swirling winds in Manhattan on Thursday as she worked to restore the Standard Hotel’s ice skating rink, which had been damaged by rain the night before.

Alan Cumming\'s \'Macbeth\' Will Join a Crowd of Solo Stars on Broadway

Sara Krulwich/The New York Times From left, Ali Craig, Alan Cumming and Myra McFadyen in the Lincoln Center Festival production of “Macbeth” in 2012, in which Mr. Cumming portrayed every major role.

Broadway producers have always relied on star actors to generate ticket sales for shows, but this spring some stars are the shows, with four plays now on tap that are essentially solo performances. The latest is an avant-garde production of “Macbeth,” with the Tony Award winner Alan Cumming (“Cabaret”) performing most of the characters in the Shakespeare classic; it will beginpreview performances on April 7 at the Ethel Barrymore Theater and open on April 21, the producer Ken Davenport announced on Thursday.

The play is a late entry for the 2012-13 Broadway season, and the fact that it is going into a prime location like the Barrymore reflects the dismal fall on Broadway, where several flops created more vacancies than usual among Broadway’s 40 theaters. The musical “Chaplin” closed at the Barrymore on Jan. 6 after only four and a half months; other productions that closed quickly were the musical “Scandalous” and the plays “Dead Accounts,” “The Performers” and “The Anarchist.” The musical “Rebecca” fell apart even before starting performances this fall, and the revival of “Evita” closed this month, sooner than the producers had hoped.

This “Macbeth” is also unusual because the producer, Mr. Davenport, has never actually seen this version; he missed the show last summer at the Lincoln Center Festival, where it arrived after an acclaimed run at the National Theater of Scotland. But Mr. Cumming’s agent has been shopping “Macbeth” to Broadway producers, and Mr. Davenport said he was intrigued by the pitch.

“It’s a chance to see one of the most versatile theater actors in a unique performance of one of the greatest plays ever written,” Mr. Davenport said of Mr. Cumming, who is also a television star on the CBS series “The Good Wife.” “I think there will be an audience for that.” He also noted that one of the play’s directors is John Tiffany, the Tony winner last year for directing the musical “Once”; the other director is Andrew Goldberg.

Still, Mr. Davenport acknowledged that the production was risky financially. Mr. Cumming is only doing six performances a week, instead of the standard eight, becuse of the emotionally grueling nature of the production, which is set inside a psychiatric unit. Mr. Davenport said the production would cost roughly $2 million and run for 73 performances, and that he was working to reduce the show’s weekly running costs in order to give his investors a shot at turning a profit. Mr. Davenport said he is still raising money and declined to name the investors he had so far.

Generating revenue from a six-performance week will require significant audience demand for “Macbeth” as well as a good number of people purchasing premium-price tickets, which usually range from $200 to $300. But Mr. Davenport said he was optimistic.

“I’m thinking of this as a theatrical event,” Mr. Davenport said. “Some producers would say ‘no way’ to the six-performance business model, but I’m trying to turn it into a positive by saying, ‘You only have 73 performances to see this guy go through it.’” Such a strategy will rely on a strong advance ticket sale! , which i! s more common with musicals than with plays.

With investors increasingly cautious about putting money into Broadway, where only 25 percent of shows ever turn a profit, one-person productions usually have the advantage of selling tickets around a big star name. While this “Macbeth” is somewhat less expensive than more conventional Broadway plays with several actors, which usually cost $3 million or so, one-person shows are by no means cheap. Theater rents and marketing and advertising expenses - big-ticket items in a show budget - are usually the same no matter the number of actors, and star salaries (which can include a percentage of the box office) can add to the costs.

Similar shows coming this spring include “I’ll Eat You Last: A Chat With Sue Mengers,” starring Bette Midler; “The Testament of Mary,” starring Fiona Shaw as the Virgin Mary; and “Ann,” starring Holland Taylor as the former Texas Gov. Ann W. Richards. Barry Manilow’s concert “Manilow on Broadway” is running now through early March.

Theater Talkback: The Rough Beauty of Everyday Speech

Reinhard Werner-Burgtheater A scene from the second episode of “Life and Times,” from the Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

Generally speaking, we don’t go to the theater to listen to conversations that we might just as easily hear while waiting on line at the grocery store or commuting on the subway. Among the essential gifts most great playwrights possess is an ability to take the dross of humble human speech and give it a silvering polish.

The Elizabethans did not address each other in iambic pentameter, after all, and few marital set-tos burn with the coruscating wit of the brawl between George and Martha in Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” The language we thrill to onstage is often a more literate or stylized expression of human speech, whether it’s the filigreed lyricism of Tennessee Williams’s characters, the eloquent dialectics that perfume Shavian drawing rooms, or the staccato fireworks with which men flay each other in the best of David Mamet’s work.

But since the late 19th and early 20th century, at least, there has been a countervailing trend: an attempt to bring the halting, admittedly unbeautiful way average men and women communicate onstage without dressing it up in decorous or flashy colorings. Chekhov probably set the standard for this more earthbound approach to listening in on human nature, although his character still often engage in reveries that are hardly likely to have naturally fallen from the lips of real-life equivalents of his gentrified Russians.

Since then innumerable playwrights have brought th! e rhythms and colors of everyday speech to the stage, to match the drab wallpaper and the proverbial (if not literal) kitchen sink. Some of the playwrights I most admire today - like Annie Baker and Amy Herzog - are particularly adept at finding the poetry in the faltering, arrhythmic manner in which people really address each other, with unfinished sentences, overlapping dialogue and plenty of natural pauses.

But the Nature Theater of Oklahoma takes this aesthetic appreciation of everyday discourse to fascinating, funny, even perverse new extremes. Their marvelous new production, “Life and Times: Episodes 1-4,” which ends its run at the Public Theater on Saturday, draws its text from that most everyday of occurrences, a phone conversation (several, actually) that te directors of the company, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, conducted with one of its members, Kristin Worrall.

From the opening moments of this opus - which totals about eight hours of stage time â€" it becomes clear that Ms. Worrall was not chosen for the manicured eloquence of her speaking style, or a preternatural ability to turn thoughts into elegant paragraphs. Recalling her life experience, from hazy memories of childhood through to adolescence and beyond, she sounds like just about anybody you might grab from a suburban mall and plant in front of a microphone.

That’s not meant to be a knock: Ms. Worrall, who I guess to be somewhere in her late 30s, speaks in much the same way most college-educated, suburban-raised Americans of her age do, which is to say her conversation is digressive and meandering, and amply stocked with meaningless interstitial words and phrases like “um” and “you know” and “yeah” and, most memorably and repeatedly, “like.” What makes the show s! o remarka! ble is that these conversational tics that we all hear and mostly tune out are all included in the text of the show, as if each fumbling digression were as worthy of immortality as Blanche DuBois’s immortal observation about the kindness of strangers.

What are they up to Mr. Liska and Ms. Copper are not just interested in everyday language for its own sake, of course: their shows are not transcriptions of random conversations. They are intrigued by how people recollect and process experience through speech. “Rambo Solo,” an earlier production, consisted of a single performer recounting the plot of the Sylvester Stallone movie “First Blood,” and the company’s version of “Romeo and Juliet” ignored Shakespeare’s text and replaced it with often-hilarious descriptions or recollections from a variety of people, many with distinctl fuzzy memories.

In their inspired hands, the most unbeautiful, sometimes maddeningly hazy and imprecise language takes on a distinct and surprising appeal. Set to music, as much of it is in “Life and Times,” the rambling recollections of Mr. Worrall become their own form of stylized theatrical speech, simply by being presented without editing. Those endless reiterations of the word “like” become musical notes seasoning the text.

Language unshaped by an aesthetic formula is shown to have its own funky fascination by being presented in a context in which we expect to encounter an aesthetic experience. Trimmed with the traditional adornments of theater â€" music and dance, colorful costumes, or in the case of the last two episodes of “Life and Times,” declaimed in the melodramatic style of a creaky stage mystery along the lines of Agatha Christie’s “Mousetrap” - the ! artless b! ecomes artful.

Nature Theater is not the only young company to employ what you might call “found speech” as the building blocks of their artistry. The Civilians, another young New York company, uses the texts of interviews with real people to create their clever theatrical collages like “Gone Missing” and “In the Footprint.” There may be a generational component to this new appreciation of messy everyday speech: the dialogue on the terrific HBO show “Girls” likewise hews closely to strict naturalism, including all those extraneous “likes” that English teachers find so maddening.

I certainly glory in the language of Williams and Albee and Shakespeare, and would not want every other show I attended to consist of verbatim conversations. But I also share Mr. Liska and Ms.Copper’s delight in the rough, rumpled sound of contemporary talk. And while their approach inevitably has its maddening aspects - eight hours is a long time to listen to someone natter on about him or herself, to be sure - you come away from their shows with an ear freshly attuned to how you and everyone around you actually speaks, and perhaps a heightened appreciation of that immemorially addictive pastime, eavesdropping.

What do you think of everyday speech put on stage If you’ve seen any (or all) of “Life and Times,” please share your thoughts on the company’s unique aesthetic.

New Paul Taylor Work to Premiere at Vail International Dance Festival

The latest new work by Paul Taylor, 82, the modern dance choreographer, will see the light of day in Colorado. The Vail International Dance Festival said on Thursday that Mr. Taylor’s 139th work - so far unnamed and performed by the Paul Taylor Dance Company â€" will have its premiere on Aug. 5 at the festival, which runs from July 28 through Aug. 10 in Vail and Beaver Creek, Colo. Larry Keigwin, Brian Brooks and Charles “Lil Buck” Riley are other choreographers who will have new pieces on the program, the festival said.

The festival, which is celebrating its 25th-anniversary season and is led by Damian Woetzel, will also feature Pacific Northwest Ballet, an evening of dances by George Balanchine, the New York City Ballet dancers Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild, the Russian dancer Sergei Polunin, the Taiwanese dancer Fang-Yi Sheu and the tango masterGabriel Misse from Argentina. Tickets will go on sale on Mar. 13.

New Paul Taylor Work to Premiere at Vail International Dance Festival

The latest new work by Paul Taylor, 82, the modern dance choreographer, will see the light of day in Colorado. The Vail International Dance Festival said on Thursday that Mr. Taylor’s 139th work - so far unnamed and performed by the Paul Taylor Dance Company â€" will have its premiere on Aug. 5 at the festival, which runs from July 28 through Aug. 10 in Vail and Beaver Creek, Colo. Larry Keigwin, Brian Brooks and Charles “Lil Buck” Riley are other choreographers who will have new pieces on the program, the festival said.

The festival, which is celebrating its 25th-anniversary season and is led by Damian Woetzel, will also feature Pacific Northwest Ballet, an evening of dances by George Balanchine, the New York City Ballet dancers Tiler Peck and Robert Fairchild, the Russian dancer Sergei Polunin, the Taiwanese dancer Fang-Yi Sheu and the tango masterGabriel Misse from Argentina. Tickets will go on sale on Mar. 13.

After Reshuffling Funds, \'Breakfast at Tiffany\'s\' Producers Plan to Proceed

The Broadway producers of “Truman Capote’s ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’” have sorted out money problems that had the potential to derail the show’s planned opening in March, a spokesman for the show said on Thursday. One of the “Tiffany’s” investors, who had been responsible for about $1 million of the show’s $4 million budget, had told his partners that he was bowing out, and the show’s cast and creative team was notified on Sunday that the producers needed to replace the money quickly or the play might be canceled.

This led agents for some of the “Tiffany’s” actors to start calling producers of other shows to say their actors might be available for work this spring. But the show’s spokesman, Rick Miramontez, said Thursday that the investor was now sticking with the play, but providing less money, and that the other producers and investors wee making up the difference. Mr. Miramontez declined to identify the investor. Based on Capote’s 1958 novella, this “Tiffany’s” adaptation is by the Tony Award winner Richard Greenberg (“Take Me Out”) and stars the British actress Emilia Clarke (HBO’s “Game of Thrones”) as New York society girl Holly Golightly. The lead producers are Colin Ingram Productions Limited, Donovan Mannato and Dominic Ianno.

Koch in Intensive Care

Yana Paskova for The New York Times Edward I. Koch at his 88th birthday party last month.

Former Mayor Edward I. Koch, who has been hospitalized since Monday with lung problems, was placed in the intensive care unit on Thursday afternoon, his spokesman said.

Mr. Koch’s lead doctor “said he wanted to monitor the former mayor more closely,” said the spokesman, George Arzt, who declining to elaborate.

Mr. Koch, 88, is at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital, where he has been afrequent visitor lately for a series of health problems.

He was treated for anemia in September, for a lung infection in December, and earlier this month for a buildup of fluid in his lungs. He was released last Saturday after being treated for the lung ailment, only to return on Monday because fluid in his lungs had built up again.

Report Faults German Governments and Museums on Handling of Nazis\' Loot

The German newspaper Der Spiegel has published a devastating indictment of German governments’ and museums’ handling of an enormous amount of valuable art, jewelry, land and more looted by the Nazis, calling it “a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.”

The report, published Wednesday, is based on an extensive search of public and private documents and details how a succession of German governments ignored or actively blocked attempts to return property worth hundreds of millions of dollars to its rightful owners or organizations that represent Jewish victims.

Some objects decorate the walls and halls of museums and government buildings, including a cherry desk that adorns the president’s office.

The newspaper discovered that in the wake of some feeble resttution efforts in the 1960s, the government misled the public into believing the issue had been fully investigated and resolved. Der Spiegel said that it, too, had been taken in by the government’s assurances at the time.

Even now, the government has devoted so few resources to provenance research that it would take several decades to search through the inventories of cultural institutions, the article said. Museums have often responded to requests for information from the families of victims with charges that the questioners are money-grubbers.

The paper extensively details how Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffman - classified as a “Major Offender” by the Allies in 1947 - nonetheless managed to reclaim after the war a huge portion of the valuables he stole.

The article exhorts the government to fully finance provenance research.

Report Faults German Governments and Museums on Handling of Nazis\' Loot

The German newspaper Der Spiegel has published a devastating indictment of German governments’ and museums’ handling of an enormous amount of valuable art, jewelry, land and more looted by the Nazis, calling it “a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.”

The report, published Wednesday, is based on an extensive search of public and private documents and details how a succession of German governments ignored or actively blocked attempts to return property worth hundreds of millions of dollars to its rightful owners or organizations that represent Jewish victims.

Some objects decorate the walls and halls of museums and government buildings, including a cherry desk that adorns the president’s office.

The newspaper discovered that in the wake of some feeble resttution efforts in the 1960s, the government misled the public into believing the issue had been fully investigated and resolved. Der Spiegel said that it, too, had been taken in by the government’s assurances at the time.

Even now, the government has devoted so few resources to provenance research that it would take several decades to search through the inventories of cultural institutions, the article said. Museums have often responded to requests for information from the families of victims with charges that the questioners are money-grubbers.

The paper extensively details how Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffman - classified as a “Major Offender” by the Allies in 1947 - nonetheless managed to reclaim after the war a huge portion of the valuables he stole.

The article exhorts the government to fully finance provenance research.

SXSW Film Festival Announces Its Feature Lineup

A vintage drag queen and Richard Nixon will both be on screens at this year’s South by Southwest film festival.

The annual film conference and festival in Austin. Tex., has usually ranged far  and wide, from the quirky to the Hollywood flashy to the horror-nerd friendly. In the Visions category, which  includes some films that the programmers consider boundary-pushing, festivalgoers can find “Our Nixon,”  made up of Super 8 footage recorded by three of  Nixon’s closest aides. And this year’s selections include several addressing gay, lesbian bisexual or transgendered themes, like  “I Am Divine,” a look back at the life of Harris Glenn Milstead and how he became Divine, the drag star of several John Waters films.

Also included are the documentaries “Before You Know It,” about three gay seniors; “Mr. Angel,” on the transgender porn performer and educator Buck Angel; and “Continental,” which tells the story o New York City’s Continental Baths.

“There are a plethora of L.G.B.T. films this year,” said Janet Pierson, the film festival producer, speaking by phone from Austin. “All these films struck us one after another.”

Ms. Pierson said the programmers were looking  for  diversity in budget sizes and tone.

“We want some films that are funny, we want some films that are scary. We want some films that are thought-provoking, we want some films that are super-arty,” she said. “But mostly, we’re looking at these thousands of films that come into us and we’re looking for what grabs us and engages us.”

Of those thousands of submissions, the festival chose more than 100 features, including 69 world premieres, like Adam Rifkin’s  television satire “Reality Show,” and films that played at other festivals but fit  into the SXSW mold, like Harmony Kor! ine‘s “Spring Breakers.”

Often without intention, some similar threads emerge. In the narrative and documentary competition lineup, two films share Branson, Mo., as a location. In “Awful Nice,” from Todd Sklar, two brothers travel there when their late father leaves  them  his lake house. And the documentary “We Always Lie to Strangers,” from AJ Schnack and David Wilson, focuses on the appeal of the Ozarks town as a tourist destination.

There are fewer star-driven Hollywood offerings than usual, but  the opening-night comedy, “The Incredible Burt Wonderstone,” does feature Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi, and  Joe Swanberg‘s film,  “Drining Buddies,”  with Olivia Wilde, Anna Kendrick and Ron Livingston, is starrier than the work he is known for.  The cast of “I Give It a Year,” a comedy about the first year of marriage from Dan Mazer, a writer of “Bruno” and “Borat,”  includes Rose Byrne, Anna Faris and Simon Baker.

And as usual, music and musicians factor into the lineup: including the documentary “Good Ol’ Freda,” which looks at the Beatles through ! the eyes ! of the woman who served as their secretary. Documentaries about Green Day (“¡Cuatro!”), funk music (“Finding the Funk”) and Snoop Dogg (“Reincarnated”) are also on the schedule.

The film conference and festival runs March 8-16. An extended listing of films can be found here.

A Reprise for \'Bad Jews\'

The Roundabout Theater Company announced on Thursday that its production of Joshua Harmon’s “Bad Jews,” which ran last year at the the company’s 62-seat black box theater, will return beginning Sept. 20 to the larger Laura Pels Theater.

The dark comedy, again to be directed by Daniel Aukin, will feature the show’s original cast: Tracee Chimo, Philip Ettinger, Molly Ranson and Michael Zegen.

“Bad Jews” received mostly positive reviews when it opened in October. The run was extended two weeks and played its final performance on Dec. 30, 2012.

New York Live Arts Launching Arts and Ideas Festival

New York Live Arts, the movement-based arts group led by the choreographer Bill T. Jones, is expanding its footprint by introducing an annual festival of arts and ideas. The inaugural festival will run from April 17-21 and explore the work of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Mr. Jones, the executive artistic director of Live Arts, is planning to announce on Friday.

“Perhaps more than anyone in recent history, Dr. Sacks has contributed to our growing understanding of the role of creative expression within the mind-body connection,” Mr. Jones said in a statement from Live Arts.

The “Live Ideas” festival will have a different theme each year that will be presented through conversations and performances, including film and dance. “The Worlds of Oliver Sacks” will begin with a conversation between Dr. Sacks and Lawrence Weschler, the director of the New York Institute of the Humanities at New York University and the guest curator for this yearâ™s festival.

“We thought that the series would be a way of furthering our mission,” said Jean Davidson, chief executive officer of New York Live Arts, in an interview on Thursday. “A lot of the artists we present have something in common: they are known for their conceptual rigor and active engagement with social and political currents. In asking how do we build an audience and how do build an entry point we thought, what if we have a week-long festival more focused on ideas”

New York Live Arts was created in 2010, when the boards of Dance Theater Workshop and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company voted unanimously to merge their organizations.

The events confirmed for the festival include a newly commissioned short film by Bill Morrison; using original archival footage of Dr. Sacks working with patients; a production of “A Kind of Alaska,” a play by Harold Pinter based on Dr. Sacks’ book â! €œAwakenings”; a new dance-theater work by the choreographer Donna Uchizono that delves into the themes of perception; and a ballet score based on “Awakenings,” from the composer Tobias Picker with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

All events will take place at the New York Live Arts’ theater and studios in Chelsea. Some events are free and others range in price from $10 to $60. More information will be available at www.newyorklivearts.org, beginning Friday morning.

New York Live Arts Launching Arts and Ideas Festival

New York Live Arts, the movement-based arts group led by the choreographer Bill T. Jones, is expanding its footprint by introducing an annual festival of arts and ideas. The inaugural festival will run from April 17-21 and explore the work of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Mr. Jones, the executive artistic director of Live Arts, is planning to announce on Friday.

“Perhaps more than anyone in recent history, Dr. Sacks has contributed to our growing understanding of the role of creative expression within the mind-body connection,” Mr. Jones said in a statement from Live Arts.

The “Live Ideas” festival will have a different theme each year that will be presented through conversations and performances, including film and dance. “The Worlds of Oliver Sacks” will begin with a conversation between Dr. Sacks and Lawrence Weschler, the director of the New York Institute of the Humanities at New York University and the guest curator for this yearâ™s festival.

“We thought that the series would be a way of furthering our mission,” said Jean Davidson, chief executive officer of New York Live Arts, in an interview on Thursday. “A lot of the artists we present have something in common: they are known for their conceptual rigor and active engagement with social and political currents. In asking how do we build an audience and how do build an entry point we thought, what if we have a week-long festival more focused on ideas”

New York Live Arts was created in 2010, when the boards of Dance Theater Workshop and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company voted unanimously to merge their organizations.

The events confirmed for the festival include a newly commissioned short film by Bill Morrison; using original archival footage of Dr. Sacks working with patients; a production of “A Kind of Alaska,” a play by Harold Pinter based on Dr. Sacks’ book â! €œAwakenings”; a new dance-theater work by the choreographer Donna Uchizono that delves into the themes of perception; and a ballet score based on “Awakenings,” from the composer Tobias Picker with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

All events will take place at the New York Live Arts’ theater and studios in Chelsea. Some events are free and others range in price from $10 to $60. More information will be available at www.newyorklivearts.org, beginning Friday morning.

Police Search for Teenage Suspects in Nunchucks Attack

Detectives on Thursday pressed their search for three teenage suspects, one wielding a pair of nunchucks, in a brutal beating of a 25-year-old man during an attempted robbery earlier this month in a Washington Heights subway station.

The attack, captured on a subway surveillance camera, occurred in the 157th Street station of the No. 1 train around 4 a.m. on Jan. 6, the police said.

The suspects, all between the ages of 17 and 19, approached the man near the station’s turnstiles and told him that they liked the jacket that he was wearing and wanted it, the police said. The man refused to give it up, and the three teenagers then set upon him, punching and kicking the man.

One of the teenagers, wearing a red baseball cap with a white brim, then pulled out a pair of nunchucks - illegal to carry in New York State - and began beating the man as he fled through the turnstiles.

The man, who was not identified by police, was treated for lacerations to the head at nearby NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and was released, the police said.

The video shows at least six hard strikes with the unconventional martial-arts weapon, also known as nunchakus or chuka sticks, which consists of two sticks held together with a chain or rope.

Arts Center at Trade Center Gets $1 Million in Seed Money

The organization overseeing the redevelopment of lower Manhattan on Thursday authorized $1 million for the Performing Arts Center that is planned for the World Trade Center site.

The vote by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, which was reported in the Wall Street Journal, will enable the Performing Arts Center to hire staff and begin construction by 2017. The allocation had been held up by the development corporation’s concerns about the project’s cost and about how to raise the money for it.

“There was some question as to whether or not the numbers made sense,” said David Emil, president of the corporation, in a telephone interview on Thursday.

The center, designed by Frank Gehry, is expected to have the Joyce Theater, which presents dance, as its anchor tenant.

Center offiials declined to estimate the project’s cost but earlier estimates had said it was likely to cost about $300 million, with $100 million of that already committed by the development corp. In addition, the center has raised $25 million privately.

Asked to respond to Thursday’s vote, Kate D. Levin, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, said: “This marks important progress on a significant project for Lower Manhattan’s future.”

Maggie Boepple, president of the center, said: “We”re getting down to work. Downtown wants this.”

100 Years Later, a Railroad Landmark Is Revived

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Mercury, the swift god of travel, appears on the facade of the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway Administration Building in the Bronx, as he does at Grand Central Terminal.

You already know. A notable New York City train station â€" ornamented with a handsome figure of the god Mercury, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, once daunted by bad fortune but handsomely renovated not long ago â€" has reached its centenary.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times Entrance arcade.

What you may not know is that the centenary was last year.

Because this isn’t a post about Grand Central Terminal. It’s about the New York, Westchester & Boston Railway Administration Building at East 180th Street and Morris Park Avenue in the Bronx, built in 1912. The railroad went out of business in 1937, but its distinctive home serves as the entrance to the East 180th Street station for No. 2 and No. 5 trains.

And it received a kind of 100th birthday gift last year: a $66.6 million renovation by New York City Transit.

“It’s not often that we get the opportun! ity to do work at a facility that has the historical and architectural significance of the East 180th Street station,” said Thomas F. Prendergast, the president of New York City Transit, the arm of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that is in charge of the city’s subways and buses. “There was a collective effort to achieve the objective, to restore it to historical significance.”

The collective effort was led by Lee Harris Pomeroy Architects, which designed the renovation in association with Weidlinger Associates. “We thought of the restoration of this major historic landmark as a significant gesture of respect to the Bronx,” he said. “It is the only New York City subway station that is entered through a formal, landscaped plaza and free-sanding National Register building.”

Such a building posed many challenges, Mr. Prendergast said, including finding workers skilled enough to restore stucco walls and clay roof tiles. “They built public spaces well,” he said. “In the days when the railroads had money, it was easy for them to do it.”

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The New York, Westchester & Boston Railway Administration Building in the Bronx now serves as the East 180th Street station on the No. 2 and No. 5 lines.

Money was indeed abundant on the New York, Westchester & Boston, which was controlled by the New York, New! Haven & ! Hartford Railroad, which was effectively controlled by J. P. Morgan. The Westchester had a Y-shaped route system. Its west fork ran as far as White Plains, its east fork as far as Port Chester. (Despite the name, it never went close to Boston.) The main stem was in the Bronx, terminating at East 132nd Street, with a connection to the Third Avenue el.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times

Extravagant sums were spent on construction: about $36 million for a 20-mile line. The idea was to carry commuters in almost deluxe comfort aboard all-electric coaches traveling on carpet-smooth track beds, with no grade crossings, as far as the Bronx, where they would then pay only a nickel to complete their journey to work on the el. Underscoring its commitment to qality, the railroad hired Alfred T. Fellheimer, an architect who also worked on Grand Central Terminal as a partner in Reed & Stem, to design its four-story administration building. It resembles an Italian villa.

“Given a choice between Grand Central and a higher fare or the Bronx terminal and a lower fare, passengers by the thousands were expected to switch to the Westchester,” Stan Fischler wrote in “Uptown, Downtown: A Trip Through Time on New York’s Subways” (1976). It was also expected that the seemingly inexorable uptown march of commerce would reach the Bronx, placing the railroad’s handsome administration building near the heart of the city, rather than on the outskirts.

Neither vision materialized. The Westchester, which began running in 1912, never turned a profit. It was one of the first holdings to be liquidated when the New Haven filed for bankruptcy in 1935. Service on the line ended two years later.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The lobby has two retail areas, including one at right.

But the ghosts of the Westchester endure, most prominently in the administration building and in the 4.25-mile right-of-way from East 180th Street to Dyre Avenue in the Bronx, which was acquired by the city in 1940 to serve as the Dyre Avenue line.

The building’s old upstairs offices are still used for railroad purposes, now by employees of the transit agency’s rapid transit operations, signals and structures divisions. Two attractive retail spaces with plate-glass fronts flank the ground-floor lobby. One is to be occupied this year. The transportation authority will issue a request for proposals for the other space.

The general contractor for the renovation was Citnalta Construction Corporation. The plaza was redesigned by Mathews Nielsen Landscape Architects. The Arts for Transit program commissioned work by Luisa Caldwell.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The newly renovated passage between the railroad building and the subway platform.

The project included rehabilitation of the existing building, reconfiguring the plaza to include a ramp, installing an elevator, ! improving! pedestrian circulation and reconstructing a dank passageway between the administration building and the passenger platforms into an inviting, light-filled corridor.

What the project did not include â€" at first â€"  was a clock under the figure of Mercury, where one had once been. No money was budgeted for this extra touch. But then Michael Gargiulo, the president of Citnalta, visited the site. “He didn’t think it looked right without a clock,” said Matthew Blitch, the vice president of the company.

The contractors learned that they could buy a 45-inch diameter clock with Roman numerals from the Electric Time Company of Medfield, Mass., for $8,000. That cost, and the labor to install it, were Citnalta’s extra contribution to the project. “It adds so much to the facade of the building,” Mr. Blitch said. Whether it adds to or subtracts from straphangers’ anxiety is another matter entirely.

David W. Dunlap/The New York Times The new mosaic murals in the station are by Luisa Caldwell.

A Drummer on the Subway

Dear Diary:

While visiting our family in New York during the holidays, my wife and I were traveling downtown on the A train when suddenly a young drummer came into our car with a bucket and drumsticks.

As most of the “bucket drummers” whom I’ve heard, he was superb. However, since he was playing in close quarters, the sound was deafening, and since we’re both musicians concerned about our hearing, we put our hands on our ears to protect them.

When the time came to ask for contributions, we were ready to give him some money, but he refused it.

I can understand. We hurt his artist’s pride.

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 #MetDiary.

The Lady, the Dog and the Deli Sandwich Order

Alec Tabak A dog owner wanted turkey with mustard on whole wheat. What happened next is a mystery.

The call crackled over police radios in the First Precinct just after 2 p.m. on Wednesday: a dispute at a deli in TriBeCa - dog involved.

A squad car responded to the location, the Tribeca Deli on Greenwich Street, witnesses said, as did a smaller single-person police vehicle and an ambulance, possibly because there had been a report that a blind woman was involved.

Outside the deli, officers spoke with a woman, who stood with her dog. She wanted to get a turkey sandwich with mustard on whole wheat. And she wanted to take the dog inside with her.

“It was busy time,” said one worker, Jose Santos, who staffed the sandwich stand in back of the deli with two other workers.

Mr. Santos did not see the woman or her dog, he said, but he registered a commotion in the front of the store. He said choice words could be heard, though he declined to elaborate on which ones.

Up front, the cashiers were mum. “No comment,” one said.

“I just get here; I don’t know what happened,” said another, but noted the rule: “No dog. No dog in the store.”

Mr. Santos said the cashiers up front had asked the woman to wait outside with her dog as the men in back made her sandwich. That was apparently not a good solution. The police were summoned.

A Police Department spokesman said there was no record of any incident at that location, adding that police officers talk to people on the street all day long and do not record every interaction.

Yet 30 minutes after the radio call, a wolf pack of reporters arrived, ch! asing a story of a service dog and a blind woman denied entry to a deli in one of the tonier sections downtown.

Inside the deli.

Inside the deli, a picture of a St. Bernard â€" a beverage bottle in place of a barrel around its neck - greeted entering customers.

But the woman and her dog had already left, as had the police.

Carlos Gutierrez, a chauffeur to a Hollywood celebrity, said he saw the commotion from his black Cadillac Escalade parked across the street. “She didn’t seem like she was blind,” he said. “It was just one lady talking to three cops.”

Service animals â€" anything from a dog to a hedgehog â€" assist owners with a variety of disailities besides blindness and are permitted to enter stores that sell food, per the city health department [pdf]. Such “food service operators” may not demand to see proof of an owner’s disability or identification for the animal.

One door down from the deli, at a Duane Reade drugstore, a cashier said people regularly try to bring their dogs inside. “If it’s a small dog, I tell them to carry it; if it’s a big dog, I tell them to leave it outside,” he said. “Because customers complain when they sniff the candy.”

An assistant manager chimed in: “In Manhattan, some people treat their dogs like kids.” Both employees declined to give their names, not wanting to be drawn into any fluffy kerfuffle.

Remember \'Moose Murders\' She Was There - On Stage

Gerry Goodstein Holland Taylor and Nicholas Hormann in “Moose Murders,” which opened at the Eugene O’Neill Theater in 1983.

“From now on, there will always be two groups of theatergoers in this world: those who have seen ‘Moose Murders,’ and those who have not.”

So began Frank Rich’s legendary review of the legendary flop, a 1983 farce by Arthur Bicknell that closed on opening night and after some of the most gobsmacked notices in Broadway history.

With a revised version of the play opening Off Broadway Wednesday night, that firs group might get larger. But among those unlikely to return is Holland Taylor, who played Hedda Holloway in the original production.

As it happens Ms. Taylor â€" who went on to a lengthy TV career that included an Emmy nomination for “Two and a Half Men” and a win for “The Practice” â€" is back in New York, rehearsing “Ann,” her one-woman show about the late Texas Gov. Ann W. Richards, which opens on Broadway in March.

In a recent conversation about the new play with Adam Nagourney, the Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, the matter of “Moose Murders” came up.

“I actually I took that job because I knew it would be over quickly, and I had another show I wanted to do,” she confessed. “They were so desperate for me to take that job because Eve Arden had left suddenl! y and they needed to get somebody who had the nerve to get up in that show in a week. The lead! I made a very fast assessment to do it.”

Having mostly worked Off Broadway, “I was living on my credit cards,” she added. “I was a mess. I knew this would get me out of debt like that.” The writing was on the wall: “I knew they knew they were going to close. But they needed to open. I just sussed all this out.”

So will she see what the fuss was about, from the audience this time “I would if I were a free agent,” Ms. Taylor said. “I’m sort of busy.”

Museum Leaders Toughen Artifact Acquisition Guidelines

The Association of Art Museum Directors has voted to strengthen rules requiring museums to publish pictures and information about antiquities they have acquired that might be subject to questions of looting.

In 2008 the group wrote sweeping guidelines advising museums that they “normally should not” acquire a work unless solid proof exists that the object was, prior to 1970, outside the country where it was discovered in modern times, or was legally exported from that country after 1970.
That is the year Unesco ratified a landmark convention prohibiting traffic in illicit antiquities, and it has become a widely accepted cutoff for collecting. Objects that appear on the market without documentation leading back that far are much more likely to have been stolen or illegally dug up and smuggled out of their countries.

Maxwell Anderson, the director of the Dallas Museum of Art and the chairman of the directors’ association’s task force on archaeological material and ancient art, said the change, made at the association’s meetings this week in Kansas City, Mo., makes the publication rule “really into a sunshine law now.”

“It gets the information out there, and if there are claimants then they can come forward,” he said.

But some cultural property experts who have questioned museum practices in the past warned that while the publication requireme! nt is a positive step, it still might not be enough to discourage some museums who have skirted the 1970 rule since it was put in place.

“What I want to see is the museums not acquiring these things in the first place,” said Patty Gerstenblith, director of the Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University in Chicago. “It remains to be seen how they enforce that part.”

Museum Leaders Toughen Artifact Acquisition Guidelines

The Association of Art Museum Directors has voted to strengthen rules requiring museums to publish pictures and information about antiquities they have acquired that might be subject to questions of looting.

In 2008 the group wrote sweeping guidelines advising museums that they “normally should not” acquire a work unless solid proof exists that the object was, prior to 1970, outside the country where it was discovered in modern times, or was legally exported from that country after 1970.
That is the year Unesco ratified a landmark convention prohibiting traffic in illicit antiquities, and it has become a widely accepted cutoff for collecting. Objects that appear on the market without documentation leading back that far are much more likely to have been stolen or illegally dug up and smuggled out of their countries.

Maxwell Anderson, the director of the Dallas Museum of Art and the chairman of the directors’ association’s task force on archaeological material and ancient art, said the change, made at the association’s meetings this week in Kansas City, Mo., makes the publication rule “really into a sunshine law now.”

“It gets the information out there, and if there are claimants then they can come forward,” he said.

But some cultural property experts who have questioned museum practices in the past warned that while the publication requireme! nt is a positive step, it still might not be enough to discourage some museums who have skirted the 1970 rule since it was put in place.

“What I want to see is the museums not acquiring these things in the first place,” said Patty Gerstenblith, director of the Center for Art, Museum and Cultural Heritage Law at DePaul University in Chicago. “It remains to be seen how they enforce that part.”

Knoedler Gallery Again Accused of Fraud in New Lawsuit

The once-grand Knoedler gallery was accused again on Tuesday of selling a forged painting for $5.5 million that was attributed to an American master, in this case, the artist Mark Rothko.

The Martin Hilti Family Trust, a charity created by the construction tool magnate of the same name and based in Liechtenstein in Europe, sued the gallery, stating that a forensic analysis of the work “Untitled (1956)” reveals that a particular red pigment used in the work “was not developed until the 1960s, years after the purported ‘1956’ date of the work.”

This suit is the fourth filed in Manhattan federal court against Knoedler & Co. since it closed its doors in November 2011. It names Knoedler’s owner, Michael Hammer, its former president Ann Freedman, as well as Glafira Rosales, the Long Island dealer currently being investigated by the F.B.I. for supplying this painting and dozens of others to Knoedler.

One of the suits, filed over a $17 million work attributed to Jackson Pollock, was settled in October. A second suit was brought by Domenico DeSole, the chairman of Tom Ford’s fashion firm, and his wife, Eleanore, over a $8.3 million work attributed to Mark Rothko, while a third was filed by John D. Howard, a Wall St. executive, over a $4 million painting attributed to Willem de Kooning.

Mr. Hammer’s lawyer, Charles D. Schmerler, said: “The Hilti complaint rehashes the same baseless claims contained in the prior lawsuits. Given the attention this matter has received, it is not unexpected to see copycat suits filed. We plan to aggressively litigate this case and expect to see Knoedler and Mr. Hammer fully vindicated.”

Ms. Rosales’ lawyer has sai! d that she has never knowingly sold any forged works.

Ms. Freedman’s lawyer, Nicholas Gravante Jr, provided a statement from her that said: “These paintings were exhibited in museums around the world and heralded as masterworks. This particular Rothko was featured at the Beyeler Foundation in 2002. The personal vendettas and professional jealously behind the attacks on the works and on my reputation should be obvious.”

Aaron Sorkin Drops Out of Broadway \'Houdini\'

Aaron Sorkin, who was to make his debut as a librettist with the Broadway musical “Houdini,” has pulled his own disappearing act and dropped out of the production because of scheduling conflicts, the producers confirmed Wednesday.

Deadline.com first reported on Tuesday that scheduling conflicts led Mr. Sorkin to withdraw from the musical starring Hugh Jackman as the famed illusionist. Mr. Sorkin was writing the book with Stephen Schwartz, the composer of “Wicked” and “Pippin.”

Mr. Sorkin was balancing “Houdini” with the writing of his HBO series €œThe Newsroom,” as well as work on a screenplay about Steve Jobs, adapted from Walter Isaacson’s best-selling biography. In an interview with The New York Times last June, Mr. Sorkin was asked about juggling his various projects, noting that he had walked away from his TV series “The West Wing” before the run ended.

“I’m not good enough to be able to give any of these things less than my full attention and expect them to have a chance at being good, so the answer is that 100 percent of my attention goes to whatever’s right in front of me,” Mr. Sorkin said at the time.

In the statement released Wednesday, Mr. Sorkin said, “I was really looking forward to returning to Broadway and working with such an incredible team. I am very disappointed my schedule won’t allow that at this time.”

The producers Scott Sander and David Rockwe! ll said, “Mr. Sorkin’s considerable talents are an asset to any project and we regret that he’s unable to remain with ‘Houdini.’”

The musical’s projected arrival on Broadway and additional creative team announcements will be made at a future date, the statement said.

Police Save Ship Engineer in Helicopter Rescue Mission

The New York police staged a nighttime helicopter rescue mission in New York Harbor on Tuesday, saving the life of the ship’s 60-year-old chief engineer, who had a heart attack while the 360-foot cargo vessel was anchored far from shore.

The police received a distress call at 9:45 p.m. about the stricken engineer aboard the Grey Shark.

Courtesy Devon Shipping Inc. The Grey Shark

The ship, which is based in Brooklyn and brings cars and trucks to St. Marc, Haiti, was anchored off Statn Island between the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge and the ferry terminal, waiting out a patch of bad weather, said an official of Devon Shipping, Inc, which owns the vessel. The Police Department’s harbor unit ferried Detective Robert Brager, a tactical medic with the Emergency Services Unit, to the ship.

Once on board, Detective Brager treated the engineer, Aly Akl, but decided that “the safest, and quickest, way to get the patient off the ship to a hospital would be to airlift him off,” the police said.

N.Y.P.D. Detective Robert Brager

A Bell 412 police helicopter was already on its way to the location and once it arrived, rescue workers lowered a basket to the ship’s deck and Mr. Akl was lifted onto ! the helicopter.

Detective Brager was also hoisted up to the helicopter, where he continued to monitor the patient on the flight to Staten Island University North Hospital.

On Wednesday, Mr. Akl was in stable condition, the police said.

Andy Newman contributed reporting.

Give Us Your Best Honking Haiku

Illustration: The New York Times; Cars and sign: Michael Appleton for The New York Times; Horn at right and goose: Associated Press; Horn at left: Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Please share your honking haiku with us.

So the city is taking down all those “No Honking” signs, as The New York Times reported Tuesday, having concluded that their efficacy is, at best, uncertain.

But honku will endure forever â€" perhaps even drawing strength from this act of bureaucratic capitulation to the forces of noise pollution.

Honku, huh you ask. Why, haiku about honking, a form invented in 2001 by a Brooklyn-based Web designer named Aaron Naparstek, who with his neighbors distilled their annoyance with neighborhood motorists into keenly observed three-line missives of five, seven and five syllables, like:

When the light turns green
like a leaf on a spring wind
the horn blows quickly.

and

Gruesome hit and run
fatalities up ahead
how awful â€" I’m late.

The little poems caught on, spinning off a Web site, a book and, incidentally, a career for Mr. Naparstek as a clean-transportation advocate.

Mr. Naparstek, who worked for Transportation Alternatives and founded Streetsblog, is in Massachusetts this! school year teaching in M.I.T.’s urban planning department. Reached by phone on Tuesday, he said he had dimly heard about the city’s move.

“I’m just assuming that the signs are coming down because the honking problem must have been solved, am I not correct” he asked. “I’m sorry not to be in New York City to experience the victory and the sweet sound of silence. But I’m happy for the people in New York.”

Perhaps Mr. Naparstek is not kidding as much as he thinks he is, and the fanfare-played-upon-the-steering-wheel is gradually fading from the city soundscape. Perhaps the music of the automotive horn is here to stay.

Either way, won’t you share your own honku with us in the comments

Give Us Your Best Honking Haiku

Illustration: The New York Times; Cars and sign: Michael Appleton for The New York Times; Horn at right and goose: Associated Press; Horn at left: Agence France-Presse â€" Getty Images Please share your honking haiku with us.

So the city is taking down all those “No Honking” signs, as The New York Times reported Tuesday, having concluded that their efficacy is, at best, uncertain.

But honku will endure forever â€" perhaps even drawing strength from this act of bureaucratic capitulation to the forces of noise pollution.

Honku, huh you ask. Why, haiku about honking, a form invented in 2001 by a Brooklyn-based Web designer named Aaron Naparstek, who with his neighbors distilled their annoyance with neighborhood motorists into keenly observed three-line missives of five, seven and five syllables, like:

When the light turns green
like a leaf on a spring wind
the horn blows quickly.

and

Gruesome hit and run
fatalities up ahead
how awful â€" I’m late.

The little poems caught on, spinning off a Web site, a book and, incidentally, a career for Mr. Naparstek as a clean-transportation advocate.

Mr. Naparstek, who worked for Transportation Alternatives and founded Streetsblog, is in Massachusetts this! school year teaching in M.I.T.’s urban planning department. Reached by phone on Tuesday, he said he had dimly heard about the city’s move.

“I’m just assuming that the signs are coming down because the honking problem must have been solved, am I not correct” he asked. “I’m sorry not to be in New York City to experience the victory and the sweet sound of silence. But I’m happy for the people in New York.”

Perhaps Mr. Naparstek is not kidding as much as he thinks he is, and the fanfare-played-upon-the-steering-wheel is gradually fading from the city soundscape. Perhaps the music of the automotive horn is here to stay.

Either way, won’t you share your own honku with us in the comments

Gary Allan Earns His First No. 1 Album

MCA Nashville

Taylor Swift aside, country albums don’t make it to No. 1 every week. But the genre has still been very strong on the Billboard charts lately: last year, for example, half of the year’s top 10 titles were country.

This week Nashville scored another victory in the singer Gary Allan, who reached No. 1 for the first time with “Set You Free” (MCA Nashville), which sold 106,000 copies in its first week out, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In these days of slipping sales, record companies all but expect most artists’ new albums to sell fewer copies than their last, but, as Billboard noted, Mr. Allan just had the best sales week of his 17-year recording career, and beat the numbers for his last studio release, 2012’s “Get Off on the Pain,” by 63 percent.

Perhaps even more notable is the No. 2 record this week, by the folk-flavored act the Lumineers, which in barely a year has shot from the independent margins to the center of the pop mainstream. The band’s self-titled debut, released by Dualtone last April, sold 50,000 copies last week, a 31 percent gain from the week before, bringing its total sales to nearly 870,000. (A performance on “Saturday Night Live” on Jan. 19 helped, as did discounts last week at Amazon and Best Buy.) Another big boost could come from the Grammys on Feb. 10, where it is scheduled to perform and is nominated for two awards, including best new artist.

Also this week, the soundtrack to the film “Pitch Perfect” (Universal) holds at ! No. 3 with 44,000 sales; a compilation of this year’s Grammy Nominees, released by Capitol and the Grammys’ own label, is No. 4 with 41,000; and another compilation, “Kidz Bop 23” (Razor & Tie) fell three spots to No. 5 with 40,000.

Last week’s No. 1 album, ASAP Rocky’s “Long.Live.ASAP” (Polo Grounds/RCA), fell to No. 7 with 38,000 sales, a 73 percent weekly drop.

Bolshoi Ballerina Says She\'s Afraid to Return to Russia

MOSCOW - Svetlana Lunkina, a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi Ballet, has told the newspaper Izvestiya that she is afraid to return to Russia because she has been the subject of blackmail and threats, apparently related to a business dispute involving her husband. Her claim has no evident connection to an acid attack on Sergei Filin, the ballet’s artistic director, that took place two weeks ago and left severe burns on his eyes and face.

Six months ago she left Russia for Canada, amid a deepening conflict between her husband and a partner in a film that would have told the story of the ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska, who was the lover of the future Nicholas II, Russia’s last czar. She said that letters damaging her reputation had been sent to the word’s leading ballet companies and that her personal email had been hacked. A Bolshoi spokeswoman confirmed that Ms. Lunkina has been granted leave for the season.

Mr. Filin’s eyes have been bandaged since the attack, but his wife said he was able to make out the top four lines on a vision chart, according to the newspaper Evening Moscow. Mr. Filin’s attorney, Tatyana Stulakova, said on Wednesday that his family members have been assigned bodyguards.

Salvaged From Flood Waters, a Jazz Legend\'s Recordings Draws New Listeners

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Ben Young, a D.J. at WKCR-FM, the campus radio station at Columbia University, held one of the records containing music by the jazz musician Roy Eldridge on Wednesday. The records were rescued from a Queens home flooded during Hurricane Sandy.

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Eldridge performing in an undated photo.

The great trumpeter Roy Eldridge did not throw much out.

“Roy was a keeper â€" he kept stuff around,” said Ben Young, a jazz aficionado and the director of broadcasting at WKCR-FM (89.9), the campus radio station at Columbia University.

Eldridge, who died in 1989, saved laundry slips, Christmas cards, canceled checks and thousands of jazz photographs and homemade recordings in the cluttered basement of his house at 194-19 109th Avenue in Hollis, Queens.

Mr. Young noted this as he held a dilapidated record from the 1940s on Wednesday, inside the radio station’s studios on Columbia’s campus in Morningside Heights. The station plays Eldridge’s music regularly and on Wednesday is playing its annual Roy Eldridge 24-hour birthday memorial broadcast to the jazzman, who was born on Jan. 30, 1911.

Mr. Young held a dilapidated o! ld record with a handwritten label: “Heckler’s Hop,” from an Eldridge performance in the 1940s.

The disk, cracked and splotched with mold, was one of about 350 homemade records made for, or by, Eldridge dating back to the 1930s - mostly of Eldridge performing â€" that have never been heard by the public.

How this crumbling old record got into Mr. Young’s hands is a tale that intersects with Hurricane Sandy and a homeowner in the Rockaways named Kurt Schneck.

After Eldridge died in 1989, his daughter, Carol, continued to live in the Eldridge house in Hollis until her death in January 2009. With no immediate relatives nearby, the contents of the house were thrown out, but a junk man pulled out some items and sold them to Mr. Schneck, an antiques collector who lives in the Belle Harbor section of the Rockaways. Mr. Schneck stored the collection in his basement, someday hoping to sell them.

“I’m more of a Louis Armstrong guy,” said Mr. Schneck, an amateur drummer, “but I new this stuff was valuable.”

When Hurricane Sandy hit last October, floodwaters filled Mr. Schneck’s basement, submerging the Eldridge material and many other items.

A day or two later, a photographer, Elizabeth Leitzel, happened to shoot the many items Mr. Schneck had dragged out of the basement and onto his front lawn. She told an acquaintance, Phil Schaap, about the Eldridge items. Mr. Schaap, the curator for Jazz at Lincoln Center and also the curator for WKCR, told Mr. Young about the items. Mr. Young called Mr. Schneck and persuaded him to loan the station the items to see if they could be cleaned and restored.

“It was a match made in heaven,” Mr. Schneck said. “What’s the chances I meet some guy who loves Roy Eldridge and knows how to rescue recordings.”

So a week or so after the hurricane, Mr. Young and a team of student D.J.’s arrived in a van to pick up the items and take them to the station. He showed some of them on Wednesday: a Christmas card from! the trum! peter Buck Clayton, some canceled checks to band members from the Roy Eldridge Orchestra; 50 pages of an incomplete autobiography Eldridge started writing in the 1950s; a laundry receipt from a London hotel; and a French magazine that featured topless women. Mr. Young also pulled out a photograph of Eldridge performing with Coleman Hawkins and Thelonious Monk from 1945.

Then there were audio recordings of Eldridge playing, including 200 hours of reel-to-reel tapes and 350 78-r.p.m. records. The music ranges from the 1930s to the 1980s and includes private sessions in musicians’ homes and big-band concerts recorded from live radio broadcasts. One tape was a recording of Woody Allen playing clarinet with Eldridge and Gerry Mulligan.

“They all have that spark of Roy as an improviser, which makes anything he played worth having - he’s always going for it,” Mr. Young said.

The oldest and rarest of the music was on the disks, which had been badly damaged by the flood - especially the 100or so that were made of metal.

Mr. Young and Mr. Schaap realized that if these discs were allowed to dry, they would crack and rust and become unplayable.

“If it dries, it dies,” said Mr. Schaap, who had known Eldridge since 1958 and who often invited him to the radio station for interviews.

Mr. Young put the damaged discs on a turntable in the studio and while continually dousing the disks with water, let the phonograph needle run through the delicate grooves and pull the old music off, so it could be recorded digitally â€" essentially extracting one last play from these one-of-a-kind crumbling discs. On Wednesday, he was preparing to play some of the rescued recordings during an afternoon segment.

“It’s a tragedy that they got dunked in the ocean, he said, “but then again, it took a hurricane to finally flush the collection out into the open.”

\'Finnegans Wake\' Follows Tocqueville Onto Chinese Best-Seller List

James Joyce’s fiendishly difficult novel “Finnegans Wake” has been called many things since it first began appearing in portions in 1924, including “the most colossal leg-pull in literature,” “the work of a psychopath,” and “the chief ironic epic of our time.”

Now, it can add another designation: best seller in China.

A new translation of the novel has sold out its initial print run of 8,000 since it appeared on Dec. 25, thanks in part to an unusual billboard campaign in major Chinese cities, the Associated Press reported. In Shanghai, where the book was advertised on 16 billboards, sales were second only to a new biography of Deng Xiaoping in the “good books” category, according to the Shanghai News and Publishing Bureau.

The book’s surprise success has drawn some clucking from Chinese observers (how do you say “cofee table trophy” in Mandarin). But at a panel on Tuesday, the translator, Dai Congrong of Fudan University, who spent nearly 10 years wrestling with Joyce’s runaway sentences and knotty coinages, confessed that even she didn’t fully understand the book. “I would not be faithful to the original intent of the novel if my translation made it easy to comprehend,” she said.

Earlier this year, Tocqueville’s “The Old Regime and the French Revolution” became a best seller in China, buoyed by reports that senior Communist Party officials had asked party members to read the book to gain insight into the country’s challenges.

The more puzzling vogue for Joyce, whose “Ulysses” sold more than 85,000 copies when it was first published in Chinese translation in 1994, may reflect an interest in avant-garde writers once dismissed or banned as “decadent,” said Jeffrey Wasserstrom, a historian at the University of California, Irvine, and the author of “Global Shanghai: 1850-2010.”

“I’ve been intrigued over the years, for example, of how popular translations of works by Roland Barthes have been in China, admittedly within a niche audience of intellectuals,” Mr. Wasserstrom said via email. “Judging from the print runs I’ve seen of some of his books, which sold in the tens of thousands, perhaps sometimes reaching the hundreds of thousands, it may be that some of his titles, such as ‘Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse,’ sold more copies in Chinese than in Frech and English combined.”

Wild Wedding: Dave Barry Talks About \'Insane City\'

In Dave Barry’s new novel, “Insane City,” a wedding weekend in Miami goes spectacularly wrong when the groom loses the one-of-a-kind ring, rescues a Haitian family on the beach and sets loose an orangutan on the city. Janet Maslin wrote: “Although ‘Insane City’ creaks occasionally, it mostly lives up to the impressive Dave Barry standard of escapist fun.” I recently spoke to Mr. Barry about how Florida is stranger than fiction and other subjects:

Justin Timberlake to Perform at Grammys

Justin Timberlake, who plans to release his first album in seven years in March, will perform at the 55th annual Grammy Awards, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences announced. The appearance will mark the first time in four years that Mr. Timberlake, who is not nominated for an award, has been on the Grammy stage and seems timed to generate excitement for the album, called “The 20/20 Experience.” The awards ceremony takes place on Feb. 10 at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Mr. Timberlake, 31, joins a long list of performers for the televised show, inclding Dierks Bentley, Miranda Lambert, the Black Keys, Fun., the Lumineers, Mumford & Sons, Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Ed Sheeran and Jack White.

Rihanna Says She Has Reconciled With Chris Brown

Alex Gallardo/Associated Press Chris Brown and Rihanna at a Lakers game in December.

Rihanna has told Rolling Stone she has reconciled with her boyfriend Chris Brown, who was convicted of brutally assaulting her four years ago just before the Grammy Awards. She said she has decided to give him a second chance despite criticism that her decision might be seen as forgiving violence against women. Over the last year there have signs the couple had resumed dating: they collaborated on sons and appeared in public together several times.

“I decided it was more important for me to be happy,” she told the magazine. “I wasn’t going to let anybody’s opinion get in the way of that. Even if it’s a mistake, it’s my mistake. After being tormented for so many years, being angry and dark, I’d rather just live my truth and take the backlash. I can handle it.”

Four years ago, Mr. Brown attacked Rihanna in a car after a party on the eve of the Grammy Awards. He pleaded guilty to assault and received a sentence of five years’ probation. Over the weekend, the police in Los Angeles said, Mr. Brown was involved in an altercation with the R&B singer Frank Ocean over a parking space.

“When you add up the pieces from the outside, it’s not the cutest puzzl! e in the world,” Rihanna said. “You see us walking somewhere, driving somewhere, in the studio, in the club, and you think you know. But it’s different now. We don’t have those types of arguments anymore.” She added she would not stand for any more violence from Mr. Brown. “That’s just not an option,” she said.

As Immigration Takes Center Stage, Thoughts From Walt Whitman

G. Frank E. Pearsall/National Portrait Gallery , via Associated Press Walt Whitman

The issue of what to do about the 11 million illegal immigrants living in the United States has taken center stage with President Obama and Congress firing the opening salvo in their efforts to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws. The discussion has focused on making efforts to better secure the country’s border with Mexico a priority.

But many Latino leaders say the time has come to finally place illegal immigrants, many of whom are Latinos, on a path that would make them lawful citizens. As Mr. Obama said, the debate over the mmigration plan will promise to be an emotional one. It also shines a spotlight on the changing face of America and what that means for the country, a theme that has persisted throughout history.

City Room was reminded that more than 100 years ago one of America’s greatest poets, Walt Whitman, offered his own reflection of the nation’s shifting population and in particular the role of people of Hispanic origin. In 1883, Whitman had been asked to participate in ceremonies marking the 333rd anniversary of the founding of Santa Fe. He could not attend, but instead sent a letter â€" published in The New York Times on August 7 of that year â€" to the organizers in which he discussed his views of what he called the “American identity” and the “Spanish stock” of the Southwest.

“It is certain to me that we do not begin to appreciate the splendor and sterling value of its race element,” Whitman wrote of the Spanish-speaking population. “Who knows bu! t that element, like the course of some subterranean river, dipping invisibly for a hundred or two years, is now to emerge in broadest flow and permanent action”

Below is the full text of the letter.

1883 Whitman Letter on the Spanish (PDF)

1883 Whitman Letter on the Spanish (Text)

Report Says Jim Nabors Marries Partner in Seattle

There were apparently no exclamations of “Shazam!” or “Golly!” â€" just a simple exchange of rings in front of a judge in a Seattle hotel room, after which Jim Nabors, the star of television’s “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M C.”, married Stan Cadwallader, his partner of 38 years, according to a report by a Hawaiian television news station.

Hawaii News Now of Honolulu reported that Mr. Nabors, 82, the actor and singer, who now lives in Hawaii, and Mr. Cadwallader, 64, who works with him, were married on Jan. 15 at the Fairmont Olympic Hotel in Seattle. The couple, who traveled to Seattle a few weeks after same-sex marriages became legl in Washington State, were wed in a private ceremony witnessed by friends who live near Mr. Nabors and Mr. Cadwallader, Hawaii News Now said.

Mr. Nabors declined an on-camera interview with Hawaii News Now, but was quoted in a telephone interview with the news program as saying that he and Mr. Cadwallader “had no rights as a couple” before they were married, “yet when you’ve been together 38 years, I think something’s got to happen there, you’ve got to solidify something.” Mr. Nabors added: “And at my age, it’s probably the best thing to do.”

A representative for the guest services department of the Fairmont Olympic Hotel said on Friday morning said that it could not comment on the activities of its guests. The King County Marriage Licensing office in Seattle was not immediately reachable for comment.

Mr. Nabors, who was born and raised in Sylacauga, Ala., originated the character of the hapless but loveable gas-station attendant Go! mer Pyle on “The Andy Griffith Show,” and reprised the role in five seasons of “Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C.” (on which the goofball character was perpetually making trouble for his military superiors). Mr. Nabors also appeared on “The Carol Burnett Show,” “The Muppet Show,” and his own variety series, “The Jim Nabors Hour.”

Hawaii News Now said Mr. Nabors met Mr. Cadwallader, a former firefighter in Honolulu, in 1975. They started working together and began a relationship.

The news program quoted Mr. Nabors as saying that though he had always been open about his sexuality to co-workers in the entertainment industry, he did not plan to get involved in the national debate over gay marriage.

“I haven’t ever made a public spectacle of it,” Mr. Nabors said, according to Hawaii News Now. “Well, I’ve known since I was a child, so, come on. It’s not that kind of a thing. I’ve never made a huge secret of it at all.”

He added: “My friend and I, my partner, we wen through all of this 38 years ago. So I mean, we made our vows and that was it. It was to each other, but nevertheless, we were a couple.”

After 45 Years, a Mailman\'s Final Rounds on Ninth Avenue

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Al Gibson crossing Ninth Avenue on one of his last workdays before ending his 45 years of delivering mail in Hell’s Kitchen.

King Xerxes’ messengers in Persia, the ancient ones who inspired the famous line about what neither snow, rain nor heat could stop, had their horses. Al Gibson, who is nearing the swift completion of a 45-year career as a mail carrier in Hell’s Kitchen, has his horn.

It is a clown’s horn attached to his cart. He honks it as he makes his appointed rounds, letting people know the mail is on the way. He had the older people in the walk-ups on Ninth Avenue in mind hen he taped it to his cart in the 1980s. “This was to keep them from walking down, and there’s no mail,” he said.

Mr. Gibson’s fans along his six blocks of Ninth Avenue â€" and just about everyone in those six blocks is a fan of Mr. Gibson’s, it seems â€" will miss the horn, and him. “He’s a fixture of the neighborhood â€" the mayor, if you will,” said Alan Kaplan, a director of Bra-Tenders, which sells lingerie to the film and theater industry from a suite in the Film Center Building at 630 Ninth Avenue, the centerpiece of Mr. Gibson’s route.

To follow Mr. Gibson through from floor to floor â€" 13 in all, though the top floor is the 14th, because superstition prevailed when the building opened in the 1920s, so there is no 13th â€" is to witness an unusual camaraderie. It is also to hear person after person in office after office ask, “How many more days, 14”

That was on a recent Friday. They all knew it was 14 days, and that aft! er Thursday and a party in a bar across the street, he will be gone.

“Al’s a terrific presence and a larger-than-life guy,” said Lori Rubinstein, executive director of Plasa, a trade association in Suite 609, “but even though he gets in and out of your office very quickly, he still has taken the time to say hello. He doesn’t make you feel like some people do, run in, throw the mail at you and run out. He does it quickly but he has the talent for doing that and still making it a welcome part of your day.”

He has been on Ninth Avenue since the bad old days, but his sunny, tell-no-evil personality has carried him through. Mickey Spillane The Westies “They weren’t on my route,” he said. “They hung out on 10th Avenue.”

He stayed on Ninth Avenue, always sorting the mail in the post office on West 42nd Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues in the early morning, always pushing his cart up the avenue around noon. “It’s a good route,” he said. “A working route.” Henever bid for a route with more prestigious addresses, like Fifth Avenue.

Robert Caplin for The New York Times Mr. Gibson uses a horn to let people on his route know when the mail has arrived.

Parking his cart into the Film Center Building’s Art Deco lobby, he explains his strategy: “Work my way down, floor to floor, door to door.” On the way into each office, he announces himself: “Mailman in the house,” or simply “MAIL-man.”

Jim Markovic, a film editor who has worked in the building since the 1960s, except for a few years at another address, long ago cracked the code that underlies Mr. Gibson’s patter. “He’d say: ‘I got so! me goodie! s for you. You’ll see.’ Or he’d say, ‘The goodies are right here in the bag.’ That meant checks. The other mail, he wouldn’t say anything. He wouldn’t refer to junk mail as junk mail. But you knew if he didn’t say ‘goodies,’ you didn’t get any checks.” (“I always put the checks on the top. That makes everyone happy.”)

It is the noon hour, but Mr. Gibson is going full speed. “Keep moving, do the route, have my lunch period at the end of the day,” he explains.

On the ninth floor, Mr. Gibson encountered the enemy, the FedEx deliverer. Except that they are not enemies.

“U.P.S., DHL, I communicate with all of them,” he said. “If I can help them to get in, I work along with them.”

Mr. Gibson wears the standard letter carrier’s uniform â€" and a pith helmet, even in cold weather. Some tenants have asked about the headgear. “His standard response is, ‘Because it’s a jungle out there,’” said John Kilgore in Suite 307.

But Mr. Gibso’s explanation, on the way to the second floor, was different. “One time, coming around the building, a guy was washing the windows and he missed the hook with the squeegee,” he said. The squeegee â€" heavy, he said, and sharp â€" fell to the pavement. “If I’d been one step farther along,” he said, “boom, that’s it.”

Michael Berkowitz, in Suite 203, had another question: Who will get the horn

The answer is, no one.

“I’m going to take it with me,” Mr. Gibson said. “Too many people want it.”