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Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times Janet Yellen, who was class valedictorian, in her 1963 yearbook from Fort Hamilton High School.She was valedictorian of the class of 1963, newspaper editor in chief, honor society inductee, psychology club member, budding scientist and rock collector. She won scholarships and prizes and studied math on Saturday mornings. She was bound for Brown University, where, she said, she would study math, anthropology or economics.
But the editors of The Tower, the yearbook of Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, did not think Janet Yellen - who is poised to become the first woman ever to lead the Federal Reserve - merited the designation “Most Likely to Succeed.†Instead, she was named “Class Scholar.â€
Ms. Yellen's high school career is chronicled in yellowing back issues of The Pilot, the newspaper she edited, archives of which are still kept in the Brooklyn Collection of the Brooklyn Public Library. From the achievements recorded in those monthly issues, it seems clear, as her high school classmate and friend Charles Saydah said of her, “that this was a way station to better things.â€
Nowhere was her ascent more apparent than in The Pilot, in whose pages she first appeared as a cub reporter. By the fall of her junior year, she had made her debut in the newspaper's masthead as the assistant to the co-editors in chief.
Her name also appeared on the front page in the same issue, in an article about students who had made the honor roll the previous year. Ms. Yellen, as a sophomore, had achieved the highest grade average of any student, at 96.75.
Like most of the items that ran in The Pilot's pages, Ms. Yellen's articles were usually dry and to the point. She wrote profiles of the Parent Teacher Association president and the science department chairman, an article about the school placing first in a citywide contest and one about senior class gifts, to name a few. But in a joke issue in April 1962, Ms. Yellen wrote an absurdist column on current affairs called “Yellen Around.†On the masthead she appeared not as the editors' assistant but as, simply, “scapegoat.â€
By the time she became editor in chief in the fall of 1962, Ms. Yellen was racking up honor after honor: she earned a National Merit commendation letter, led the junior class with a grade average of 97, and was admitted to a selective science honors program at Columbia University, where, the newspaper reported, she would (voluntarily) study mathematics on Saturday mornings.
She was one of 30 students to win state Regents scholarships for college, and one of a select few to win the mayor's citation for scholarship. Under her leadership, The Pilot continued its 13-year streak as the first-place winner of the Columbia Scholastic Press Association awards, a prestigious competition for high school newspapers. She earned second place in a citywide essay contest on the topic of preserving historic buildings in New York.
About the only competition she entered and did not win, it seemed, was one to host a foreign exchange student.
The editorials The Pilot published during her senior year were unsigned, and the newspaper gave no clue as to who was responsible for writing them. But they seemed to reflect a liberal, if somewhat bland, bent. One urged students to consider joining the recently founded Peace Corps, calling the organization “a new and unique outlet†for young people's “adventuresome spirit.â€
Her career at Fort Hamilton culminated with The Pilot's last issue of her senior year, when the newspaper, as was traditional, devoted most of its front page to profiles of the senior class valedictorian and salutatorian. Both honors that year went to editors of The Pilot, so Ms. Yellen and the salutatorian, Lois Leewe, interviewed themselves - “not because they are schizophrenic, but because they thought it would be interesting to look at themselves objectively,†they explained.
Describing herself as “a small figure,†a traveler and an avid rock collector, Ms. Yellen mentioned her many awards, but displayed a flash of self-deprecation.
“‘I understand,' I began, ‘that you are a versatile, attractive, talented senior,'†she wrote. “‘Come now,' Janet replied, ‘you're letting The Pilot go to your head!'â€
Her other hobbies, according to herself, were “attending Off Broadway theater, eating, riding the 69 St. Ferry, exploring New York City, and reading philosophy so that I can write unpopular essays.â€
In one of the last issues Ms. Yellen would edit, The Pilot reported that 40 senior girls had taken a civic-minded sightseeing trip to Washington. Ms. Yellen was one of them.
Her trip to the nation's capital was “exciting,†she told The Pilot, “and exhausting.â€
Michael Harger This is a golf course: tornado damage at Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J.Updated 12:33 p.m. | They looked at radar maps. They studied tree-fall patterns. They tallied eyewitness accounts.
Finally, local weather officials reached a decision: tornado.
Packing 100-mile-an-hour winds, it tore across a park, cemetery, street and golf course in Paramus, N.J., on Monday afternoon.
It uprooted dozens of trees but did little other property damage and caused no injuries.
Locals suspected a tornado immediately, but the National Weather Service took more than a day to confirm.
Tornadoes are mostly a warm-weather thing, but they do occur in October and even November.
In New York City, October tornadoes have struck Queens (1985) and Staten Island (1995 and 2003).
One place you're safe â€" so far â€" is Manhattan.
A tornado has not been recorded in Manhattan, in any month, since the Weather Service started keeping records.
Here's what else you need to know for Thursday.
WEATHER
Here comes rain â€" plenty, through Friday night at least, with totals over an inch and a half likely. Raw, too - windy with a high of just 62 today.
Minor coastal flooding and major umbrella action are expected.
No tornadoes, though.
COMMUTE
Subways: . Click for latest status.
Rails: Click for L.I.R.R., Metro-North or New Jersey Transit status.
Roads: Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.
Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.
Air Travel: There have been weather-related delays today. Click for latest status or check with your airline.
COMING UP TODAY
- Two former associates of John C. Liu, the failed mayoral candidate, are sentenced in a fund-raising scheme.
- Bill de Blasio is endorsed by women's rights groups.
- Joseph J. Lhota meets with the Partnership for New York City and the Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel of America.
- Register to vote. Tomorrow is the deadline for the November election. Click to register online. Or go to one of these places.
- A “participatory budgeting†session seeks Park Slopers' input on what to do with $1 million from the City Council. Old First Reformed Church, 6:30 p.m. [Free]
- The authors of “NYC 2040: Housing the Next One Million New Yorkers†propose pockets of superdense development, at Van Alen Books on West 22nd Street. 7 p.m. [Free]
- “Movement†is the theme of the latest MoMA Art Lab, the Museum of Modern Art's programming for children, opening today.
- Gay Talese submits to an hourlong interview at N.Y.U.'s journalism school. 7 p.m. [Free]
- Comic Con gets under way at the Javits Center with talks on comics' role in education. (Plus people in costumes.)
- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.
IN THE NEWS
- A hospital created a job for Mr. de Blasio's wife in 2005, when he was a councilman who helped get the hospital millions in aid. [New York Times]
- Paul McCartney played a surprise show at a Queens high school. The students knew who he was. [New York Times]
- Searchers are combing the transit system for a 14-year-old, mute, train-obsessed autistic boy who vanished on Friday. [CBS New York]
- Upgraded charges against a detective accused in last week's motorcycle attack on an S.U.V. [New York Times]
- A Brooklyn man needed 30 stitches to his face after a toilet exploded in his apartment. [Daily News]
- Dan Sandler, the ranting Bad Elmo of Times Square, drew a one-year sentence for trying to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts. [New York Times]
- Public-school kindergarteners are getting training on standardized tests. [Daily News]
- Sliding before-and-after satellite images of a changing city, including Barclays Center and the Williamsburg waterfront. [Point2Homes, via Gothamist]
- Four more years for Joe Girardi as Yankees manager. [New York Times]
AND FINALLY…
This just in: we made a mistake â€" 136 years ago.
It was in a Jan. 9, 1877 article about a police officer shot by a saloon burglar.
The Times called him Officer McDonnell.
His name was McDowell.
The error came to light when we researched a correction to a recent article about the history of the New York Yankees logo.
The record is now set straight.
Joseph Burgess and Richard Morgan contributed reporting.
New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.
What would you like to see here to start your day? Post a comment, e-mail us at nytoday@nytimes.com or reach us via Twitter using #NYToday.
Find us on weekdays at nytoday.com.
Dear Diary:
After three years of commuting on the A train, I have finally found the analogy to describe my feelings when the headlights of the infuriatingly and inevitably delayed train light up the tracks in advance of its arrival around the bend. I greet it with the furrowed eyebrows, clenched teeth and head-shaking I use when I finally spot my very late younger sister arriving at our designated meeting place: “How dare you keep me waiting, but I'm still really glad to see you.â€
Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.
In 1940, as World War II ensnared the globe, New Yorkers had 10 major daily newspapers to get their news. The papers pictured didn't survive.You're probably more likely to have read about it online than in print, but this is National Newspaper Week. And if you can't take a reporter to lunch, at least pause and reflect on the fact that while New York remains that rare, robust daily newspaper town, that's nothing compared to the choices available in the city a century ago.
Chicago was the setting for Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur's rollicking 1928 melodrama, “The Front Page,†but New York had many more front pages.
In 1900, at least 15 daily general circulation English-language newspapers were being published in New York, before they were gobbled up by mergers and acquisitions or died untimely deaths.
Their names and logos are largely the stuff of nostalgia.
In addition to two survivors - The New York Times and The New York Post - New Yorkers could regularly read The Press, The Herald, The Tribune, The Telegram, The Mail and Express, The Evening News, The Commercial Advertiser, and the morning and evening editions of The World, The Sun and The Journal.
They would be followed in subsequent decades by The Daily News, The Daily Mirror, The Graphic, P.M. and The Compass. More localized dailies included The Brooklyn Eagle, The Bronx Home News, The Long Island Press, The Long Island Star-Journal and The Staten Island Advance.
The Mirror folded in 1963 with a million readers. Dwindling advertising doomed the ultimate conglomerate, the hybrid World Journal Tribune â€" known as the Widget - in 1967 (its offspring, New York Magazine, survived). New York Newsday closed in 1995.
Still, no other city still has as many newspapers in the top 25 by paid circulation today. New York has four: The Times, The Daily News, The Post and The Wall Street Journal, although print readership has declined precipitously since the days when The News could regularly boast two million daily and three million on Sundays.
Combined print and online circulation for The Times and some other publications are higher than ever, though. AMNew York and New York Metro are distributed free.
Evan Sung for The New York Times The Lower Eastside Girls Club's new building features its own planetarium. The club was formed in 1995 because local boys' clubs would not admit girls. Lyn Pentecost settled into a plush, comfortable seat in a planetarium in Manhattan. No, not that planetarium. This one is for only girls.
It is the capstone of a $20 million building packed with hard-won triumphs for Ms. Pentecost and the Lower Eastside Girls Club, which she helped establish in the mid-1990s.
The building is so new that the ribbon-cutting ceremony will not be until next week, but already girls are streaming in after school for snacks in the new juice bar, tutoring sessions in airy new classrooms and glimpses of the not-quite-finished garden. Ms. Pentecost promises that the fountain will be installed in time for the ceremony.
Upstairs, there will be a recording studio in an Airstream trailer, a 1958 model, a sleek, silvery caterpillar that was hoisted into a big room on the second floor before the window installers arrived. As they might say on the Internet radio station it will serve, more about that in a minute.
The Girls Club has grown from a staff of volunteers and about 20 girls to a payroll of 20, a budget of $2.4 million a year and about 1,000 girls, many of them from working-class backgrounds. Six of the founders are still involved. So are four alumnae from the early days who now work for the club in a building that occupies six lots that were once all but abandoned. Above the Girls Club, reached by a separate entrance, are apartments that rent for as much as $3,400 a month, although half are leased at “affordable†rates.
But a planetarium?
“It dawned on me that you can't teach earth science if you don't teach sky science,†Ms. Pentecost said as a display of the earth's magnetic field swirled overhead. “We've always done environmental work, and the environment is bigger than the dirt under our feet.â€
The dirt under their feet is five miles from that more famous planetarium, the Hayden, in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.
Evan Sung for The New York Times A class from the club outside the entrance.“To be able to go up to the Rose is a treat,†Ms. Pentecost said. “Down here, we can give them a daily dose of science. And if we're going to turn out scientists, they need a lot of exposure and a lot of inspiration, and as a community planetarium, we're in a position to provide both. The hope is we can be the portal, and they'll get inspired. New York City has so much, but someone has to open the door.â€
The Girls Club was formed in 1995 after neighborhood women complained that their daughters were not allowed to be part of local boys' clubs. “The topic was, how can it be possible that we have three boys-only clubs and no place for girls to go?†Ms. Pentecost recalled. “I was attempting to not make it my problem because I had two sons, but I realized it was my problem because it was a feminist issue.â€
Now, 18 years later, one of the boys' clubs has closed. Another, the Boys Brotherhood Republic, at 888 East Sixth Street, between Avenue D and the East River, became the Boys and Girls Republic after it was acquired by the Henry Street Settlement in 1997.
But the Boys Club of New York's Harriman Clubhouse, at 287 East 10th Street, near Avenue A, still serves only boys. “We decided that is what we are good at and what we want to keep doing,†said Helen Frank, a spokeswoman for the Boys Club of New York. “There is definitely a need for single-gender organizations.â€
Ms. Pentecost said the Girls Club would have some programs that will be open to boys as well as girls, among them “recording arts†training, for future recording engineers and voice-over artists. They will work in the Airstream trailer once it is retrofitted by John Storyk, an architect and acoustician who designed studios for Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston and Bob Marley, among others.
The Girls Club also has a cafe and a chef - a male chef, one of Ms. Pentecost's sons, Will.
“I always kind of helped out,†Mr. Pentecost said. “For 15 years, it was, ‘We're going to build a building.' Everyone believed in my mom, but it was, like, ‘Sure.' And once they broke ground, it was like, ‘Wow.'â€
He was not the only other Pentecost on the premises. Ms. Pentecost's husband, Dave, a longtime video editor for the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour†on PBS, was pitching in on the planetarium. He had worked briefly for a company that makes planetariums in the 1980s.
“The fact that nobody wanted us turned out to be a blessing,†Ms. Pentecost said. “We could do what we wanted to do. Any other organization, if you said, ‘I want a planetarium,' there would be bean counters all over you saying it's not feasible. We never did a feasibility study.â€
From somewhere in the darkness of the planetarium, Dave Pentecost said, “We're ready to play with the big boys.â€
Immediately, Ms. Pentecost said, “The big girls.â€
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Piotr Redlinski for The New York Times Becky Carter, left, a woodworking teacher at the collective 3rd Ward, and Sara Feinberg, a member, in 2010.3rd Ward, the Brooklyn art, design and educational work space, where for seven years students and artisans have built wood furniture, learned about photography and pursued other creative endeavors, in Bushwick and at an outpost in Philadelphia, is closing, an owner, Jason Goodman, announced on Thursday.
“I can confirm that we are closing right now, both locations, effective as of today,†Mr. Goodman, a founder and chief executive of 3rd Ward, said in a phone call. Rapid expansion, including opening the space in Philadelphia, contributed to the financial troubles of the business, which tried to save itself with a last-ditch round of fund-raising, he said.
“We realized that we needed to get ahead of this early in the summer, and we initiated an equity raise at the very beginning of the summer,†Mr. Goodman said, adding that the Brooklyn location alone could not support the company's growth, including a planned kitchen incubator and other projects. The company's management and board were negotiating with investors to raise the $1.5 million in operating costs needed for both spaces until Tuesday, Mr. Goodman said. But a crowd-sourced investment campaign on the site Fundrise raised only $375,000 before being disabled this week.
“We were unable to bring in fresh capital,†he said. “It was a roller coaster.â€
He added: “We really fought down to the wire to preserve everything that we built, everything that we stand for, over the years. It was a really tough judgment call. Some of us wanted to continue fighting. But at the end of the day, I think this was the right thing to do.â€
Instructors were notified of the closure via e-mail on Wednesday evening, hours after news of it broke online.
“When we opened in 2006, our vision was to create a shared space for our community of artists and entrepreneurs to have a place to work, teach, learn, network and thrive,†the letter reads. “We're proud to have been able to do that for as long as we did.â€
Members also received a letter that informed them they could not get refunds on their membership. 3rd Warders and teachers grumbled about the late notice - which Mr. Goodman said was due to having to file necessary paperwork. Some also started a Web site, Save3rdWard.com. A new restaurant, Fitzcarraldo, which opened recently in the building, was to stay open, said its owners, who were not part of 3rd Ward.
A broker who represents the building told Gothamist that studio spaces were still available, and deals might be had for 3rd Ward members. Mr. Goodman said the landlord had indicated to him that co-working spaces and others might be able to stay, but nothing was yet confirmed, and everyone was given a few days to get their belongings out of the space.
“We're just trying to do this with the most amount of dignity and respect for everybody that we can,†Mr. Goodman said. “It's a good company and the fundamentals are good and our customer bases are strong,†he added. “It's a short-term liquidity issue, and we unfortunately ran out of time.â€
Andrew H. Walker/Getty Images Jeff KoonsBenefit auctions for scrappy public schools in New York sometimes feature an item or two â€" a designer handbag, lunch with a minor celebrity â€" arranged by parents with connections. But when a list of art works was circulated recently among parents for an Oct. 23 auction to benefit P.S. 130, a school in the Windsor Terrace section of Brooklyn serving a significant number of students from poor families, one art donor's name fairly leapt off the page: Jeff Koons.
At the request of a mother with two children in the school, Vanessa Solomon, a sculptor who once worked as a mold maker for Mr. Koons and is friends with his wife, Justine, Mr. Koons donated a signed artist's proof of a printed plywood skateboard deck from a limited edition, bearing an image of a smiling, blow-up monkey that has been a familiar motif in his recent paintings and sculpture.
Christine Farrell, president of the school's P.T.A., said: “We typically have a small in-house spring auction to help raise money. But we're usually auctioning off baskets made by children in class, things like that. This is a whole other level.â€
The school has suffered through city budgets cuts and was forced to eliminate its art program recently. The hope is that the auction â€" which has drawn more than two dozen donations of works by artists in the neighborhood and those with students at the school â€" will raise enough money to help revive at least some form of an art program. (Skateboard works like the one Mr. Koons donated have sold online for several thousand dollars; the school's auction begins taking bids for the work and all the other artworks online at midnight Oct. 15.)
“Some people at the school know about Koons,†Ms. Solomon said. “The principal knew of him â€" I was impressed by that. And I think this is really something that would be a nice investment for a beginning collector, something someone would be willing to spend money on for a very good cause. At least we all hope so.â€
Sara Krulwich/The New York Times Craig BierkoCraig Bierko, the Tony Award-nominated stage and film actor who recently joined the Broadway cast of “Matilda the Musical†as the villainous Miss Trunchbull, has taken a leave from the production following an injury.
In a statement released Tuesday, press representatives for “Matilda†said, “Due to a shoulder injury which delayed his start in ‘Matilda the Musical' and which has been aggravated during performance, Craig Bierko will be taking a 12-week disability leave from the production. At this time, understudies Chris Hoch and Ben Thompson will be playing Miss Trunchbull.â€
Mr. Bierko, whose stage roles have included Harold Hill in the 2000 Broadway revival of “The Music Man,†was originally scheduled to begin performances in “Matilda†on Sept. 3, but delayed his start by two weeks to Sept. 17, citing a shoulder injury.
He replaced Bertie Carvel in the role of Miss Trunchbull, an embittered headmistress and former champion hammer-thrower; Mr. Carvel originated this role in the West End and Broadway productions of “Matilda,†earning a Olivier Award and a Tony nomination.
Chris Pizzello/Invision, via Associated Press Sally FieldLast year, Sally Field won an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Mary Todd Lincoln. This weekend, she'll be making a turn as another first lady, Abigail Adams.
The occasion will be a ceremony marking her induction, along with some 200 other luminaries, into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation's most prestigious learned societies, based in Cambridge, Mass. Other honorees this year include Herbie Hancock, Martin Amis, Roz Chast, Natasha Trethewey and Ken Burns - who will be standing in for John Adams, the academy's founder, in a dramatic reading of letters with Ms. Field.
The three-day event will also include the presentation of the Emerson-Thoreau Medal, to Philip Roth, another new member, and an award for humanistic studies to the literary critics Helen Vendler and Denis Donoghue, as well as scholarly talks by five new inductees, including the psychologist Alison Gopnik and the historian Paula Fredriksen.
The academy, founded in 1780, honors distinguished achievement in all branches of academia, as well as business, philanthropy, publishing and the arts. It has been without a leader since July, when its president, Leslie Cohen Berlowitz, resigned following reports that she had falsely claimed, on grant applications and other documents, to hold a doctorate. A spokesman for the academy said that it would soon announce a new board, which would begin a search for a new president.
Hiroyuki Ito for The New York Times Gay rights advocates protested against a performance of the Mariinsky Orchestra led by Valery Gergiev outside Carnegie Hall on Thursday night.The furor in the West over Russia's new law placing restrictions on the discussion of homosexuality continues to dog the conductor Valery Gergiev, who is one of Russia's most important cultural exports these days. Mr. Gergiev, a prominent supporter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, who signed the law, drew protests Thursday night at Carnegie Hall, just as he did last month at the opening night of the Metropolitan Opera.
Shortly after Mr. Gergiev walked onto the stage at Carnegie Hall to begin leading the celebrated Mariinsky Orchestra in a program of three Stravinsky ballets, the concert was briefly delayed by several members of Queer Nation, a protest group that has been vocally pushing for gay rights in Russia.
“Gergiev, your silence is killing Russian gays!†several protesters shouted, as Mr. Gergiev, in tails, kept his back to the audience. Some members of the audience booed the protesters; others applauded. One woman yelled, “This is an artistic event!â€
The protesters were removed from the auditorium, and the concert proceeded.
The protesters were denouncing a law, signed by Mr. Putin in June, that bans “propaganda on nontraditional relationships.†A small but vocal group also gathered outside Carnegie Hall before the concert. Some yelled, “Hey hey, ho ho, Gergiev has got to go!†It was the same stretch of sidewalk on West 57th Street that members of the stagehands' union picketed on last week during a strike that forced Carnegie to cancel its opening night gala. (The strike was settled last week.)
Both of the Gergiev performances delayed by protests had an added resonance for gay rights supporters. The Met opened its season with “Eugene Onegin†by Tchaikovsky, whom Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, described as “Russia's great gay composer.†And the Carnegie Hall concert featured three Stravinsky ballets - “The Firebird,†“Pétrouchka,†and “The Rite of Spring†- that were commissioned by the great impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who was also gay, for his storied dance troupe, the Ballets Russes.
Mr. Gergiev supported Mr. Putin's election, and was honored by Mr. Putin last spring with a revived Soviet-era title, Hero of Labor, around the time he opened a new $700 million theater, the Mariinsky II. He has declined to speak to The New York Times, but he told RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency, this week that he did not discriminate at the Mariinsky Theater, where he is the artistic and general director.
“But once you start to talk like this, you start to sound like someone who has to apologize,'' he was quoted as saying. “We have nothing to apologize for.â€
R. Douglas Sheldon, Mr. Gergiev's manager at Columbia Artists Management, did not return calls to his office or cellphone, or an e-mail seeking clarification of Mr. Gergiev's position.
John Weir, one of the protesters, released a statement afterwards saying: “â€Valery Gergiev will not be able to perform without being called out for his vocal support of Russia's anti-gay president. Gergiev's silence about Putin's anti-gay laws is killing lesbian and gay Russians. We're here to break that silence.â€
It was hardly the first time a performance featuring Stravinsky's “Rite of Spring†met with a noisy outburst. A century ago, when the work had its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, the music created such an uproar that it was barely audible, and the pandemonium that erupted in the theater was later described as a riot.
On Thursday night, the protesters made their mark before a note was played, and, after they had their say, they left the audience to enjoy the music, which no longer sparks protests on its own.
Evan Sung for The New York Times The Lower Eastside Girls Club’s new building features its own planetarium. The club was formed in 1995 because local boys’ clubs would not admit girls. Lyn Pentecost settled into a plush, comfortable seat in a planetarium in Manhattan. No, not that planetarium. This one is for only girls.
It is the capstone of a $20 million building packed with hard-won triumphs for Ms. Pentecost and the Lower Eastside Girls Club, which she helped establish in the mid-1990s.
The building is so new that the ribbon-cutting ceremony will not be until next week, but already girls are streaming in after school for snacks in the new juice bar, tutoring sessions in airy new classrooms and glimpses of the not-quite-finished garden. Ms. Pentecost promises that the fountain will be installed in time for the ceremony.
Upstairs, there will be a recording studio in an Airstream trailer, a 1958 model, a sleek, silvery caterpillar that was hoisted into a big room on the second floor before the window installers arrived. As they might say on the Internet radio station it will serve, more about that in a minute.
The Girls Club has grown from a staff of volunteers and about 20 girls to a payroll of 20, a budget of $2.4 million a year and about 1,000 girls, many of them from working-class backgrounds. Six of the founders are still involved. So are four alumnae from the early days who now work for the club in a building that occupies six lots that were once all but abandoned. Above the Girls Club, reached by a separate entrance, are apartments that rent for as much as $3,400 a month, although half are leased at “affordable†rates.
But a planetarium?
“It dawned on me that you can’t teach earth science if you don’t teach sky science,†Ms. Pentecost said as a display of the earth’s magnetic field swirled overhead. “We’ve always done environmental work, and the environment is bigger than the dirt under our feet.â€
The dirt under their feet is five miles from that more famous planetarium, the Hayden, in the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side.
Evan Sung for The New York Times A class from the club outside the entrance.“To be able to go up to the Rose is a treat,†Ms. Pentecost said. “Down here, we can give them a daily dose of science. And if we’re going to turn out scientists, they need a lot of exposure and a lot of inspiration, and as a community planetarium, we’re in a position to provide both. The hope is we can be the portal, and they’ll get inspired. New York City has so much, but someone has to open the door.â€
The Girls Club was formed in 1995 after neighborhood women complained that their daughters were not allowed to be part of local boys’ clubs. “The topic was, how can it be possible that we have three boys-only clubs and no place for girls to go?†Ms. Pentecost recalled. “I was attempting to not make it my problem because I had two sons, but I realized it was my problem because it was a feminist issue.â€
Now, 18 years later, one of the boys’ clubs has closed. Another, the Boys Brotherhood Republic, at 888 East Sixth Street, between Avenue D and the East River, became the Boys and Girls Republic after it was acquired by the Henry Street Settlement in 1997.
But the Boys Club of New York’s Harriman Clubhouse, at 287 East 10th Street, near Avenue A, still serves only boys. “We decided that is what we are good at and what we want to keep doing,†said Helen Frank, a spokeswoman for the Boys Club of New York. “There is definitely a need for single-gender organizations.â€
Ms. Pentecost said the Girls Club would have some programs that will be open to boys as well as girls, among them “recording arts†training, for future recording engineers and voice-over artists. They will work in the Airstream trailer once it is retrofitted by John Storyk, an architect and acoustician who designed studios for Jimi Hendrix, Whitney Houston and Bob Marley, among others.
The Girls Club also has a cafe and a chef â€" a male chef, one of Ms. Pentecost’s sons, Will.
“I always kind of helped out,†Mr. Pentecost said. “For 15 years, it was, ‘We’re going to build a building.’ Everyone believed in my mom, but it was, like, ‘Sure.’ And once they broke ground, it was like, ‘Wow.’â€
He was not the only other Pentecost on the premises. Ms. Pentecost’s husband, Dave, a longtime video editor for the “MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour†on PBS, was pitching in on the planetarium. He had worked briefly for a company that makes planetariums in the 1980s.
“The fact that nobody wanted us turned out to be a blessing,†Ms. Pentecost said. “We could do what we wanted to do. Any other organization, if you said, ‘I want a planetarium,’ there would be bean counters all over you saying it’s not feasible. We never did a feasibility study.â€
From somewhere in the darkness of the planetarium, Dave Pentecost said, “We’re ready to play with the big boys.â€
Immediately, Ms. Pentecost said, “The big girls.â€
In 1940, as World War II ensnared the globe, New Yorkers had 10 major daily newspapers to get their news. The papers pictured didn’t survive.You’re probably more likely to have read about it online than in print, but this is National Newspaper Week. And if you can’t take a reporter to lunch, at least pause and reflect on the fact that while New York remains that rare, robust daily newspaper town, that’s nothing compared to the choices available in the city a century ago.
Chicago was the setting for Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur’s rollicking 1928 melodrama, “The Front Page,†but New York had many more front pages.
In 1900, at least 15 daily general circulation English-language newspapers were being published in New York, before they were gobbled up by mergers and acquisitions or died untimely deaths.
Their names and logos are largely the stuff of nostalgia.
In addition to two survivors â€" The New York Times and The New York Post â€" New Yorkers could regularly read The Press, The Herald, The Tribune, The Telegram, The Mail and Express, The Evening News, The Commercial Advertiser, and the morning and evening editions of The World, The Sun and The Journal.
They would be followed in subsequent decades by The Daily News, The Daily Mirror, The Graphic, P.M. and The Compass. More localized dailies included The Brooklyn Eagle, The Bronx Home News, The Long Island Press, The Long Island Star-Journal and The Staten Island Advance.
The Mirror folded in 1963 with a million readers. Dwindling advertising doomed the ultimate conglomerate, the hybrid World Journal Tribune - known as the Widget â€" in 1967 (its offspring, New York Magazine, survived). New York Newsday closed in 1995.
Still, no other city still has as many newspapers in the top 25 by paid circulation today. New York has four: The Times, The Daily News, The Post and The Wall Street Journal, although print readership has declined precipitously since the days when The News could regularly boast two million daily and three million on Sundays.
Combined print and online circulation for The Times and some other publications are higher than ever, though. AMNew York and New York Metro are distributed free.
Dear Diary:
After three years of commuting on the A train, I have finally found the analogy to describe my feelings when the headlights of the infuriatingly and inevitably delayed train light up the tracks in advance of its arrival around the bend. I greet it with the furrowed eyebrows, clenched teeth and head-shaking I use when I finally spot my very late younger sister arriving at our designated meeting place: “How dare you keep me waiting, but I’m still really glad to see you.â€
Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via e-mail diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.
Michael Harger This is a golf course: tornado damage in Paramus, N.J.They looked at radar maps. They studied tree-fall patterns. They tallied eyewitness accounts.
Finally, local weather officials reached a decision: tornado.
Packing 100-mile-an-hour winds, it tore across a park, cemetery, street and golf course in Paramus, N.J., on Monday afternoon.
It uprooted dozens of trees but did little other property damage and no injuries.
Locals suspected a tornado immediately, but the weather service took more than a day to confirm.
Tornadoes are a warm-weather thing, but they do occur in October and even November.
In New York City, October tornadoes have struck Queens (1985) and Staten Island (1995 and 2003).
One place you’re safe â€" so far â€" is Manhattan.
A tornado has not been recorded in Manhattan, in any month, since the weather service started keeping records.
Here’s what else you need to know for Thursday.
WEATHER
Here comes rain â€" plenty, through Friday night at least, with totals over an inch-and-a-half likely. Raw, too, with a high of just 62 today.
Minor coastal flooding and major umbrella action are expected.
No tornadoes, though.
COMMUTE
Subways: Fine so far. Click for latest status.
Rails: Fine so far. Click for L.I.R.R., Metro-North and New Jersey Transit status.
Roads: Click for traffic map or radio report on the 1s.
Alternate-side parking is in effect all week.
COMING UP TODAY
- Two former associates of John C. Liu, the comptroller and failed mayoral candidate, are sentenced in a fund-raising scheme.
- Bill de Blasio is endorsed by women’s rights groups.
- Joseph J. Lhota meets with the Partnership for New York City and the Orthodox Jewish group Agudath Israel of America.
- Register to vote. Tomorrow is the deadline for the November election. Click to register online. Or go to a place on this list. There’s also a registration event at Penn Station from 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
- A “participatory budgeting†session seeks Park Slopers’ input on what to do with $1 million in discretionary money from the City Council. Old First Reformed Church, 6:30 p.m. [Free]
- The authors of “NYC 2040: Housing the Next One Million New Yorkers,†a book that recommends super-dense development in parts of the city, speak at Van Alen Books on West 22nd Street. 7 p.m. [Free]
- “Movement†is the theme of the latest MoMA Art Lab, the Museum of Modern Art’s programming for children, opening today.
- Gay Talese submits to an hour-long interview at N.Y.U.’s journalism school. 7 p.m. [Free]
- Comic Con gets underway at the Javits Center with a session on comics’ role in education. (Plus people in costumes.)
- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.
IN THE NEWS
- A Brooklyn hospital created a job for Bill de Blasio’s wife in 2005, when he was a City Councilman who helped get the hospital millions in city money. [New York Times]
- Dan Sandler, the ranting Bad Elmo of Times Square, was sentenced to one year for trying to extort $2 million from the Girl Scouts. [New York Times]
Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.
New York Today is a morning roundup that stays live from 6 a.m. till about noon.
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