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Crying on a Public Bench

Dear Diary:

Almost three years ago my father passed away, shattering my world and my family’s. As we rebuilt our lives, many people were supportive, a few were less than that, but one man, whose name I’ll never know, helped me tremendously.

I was sitting on a bench in City Hall Park, crying on the phone with my mother after a particularly vicious boss had leveled me with a staggeringly unsympathetic comment about my loss. As I recounted this tale, tears streaming down my face, a man sat down next to me and ate his lunch.

I continued to weep into the phone. He finished his lunch and left. I would have never remembered him, except that a few minutes later he returned with a box of tissues in a Duane Reade bag. He handed them over silently and left before I could compose myself enough to thank him.

I thank him now for reminding me that just when you think humanity has shown you it’s worst, it brings out the best it has to offer.

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A Burst of Spring Blossoms

Dave Taft

The red maple (Acer rubrum) is an attention-grabber in its brilliant autumn guise, but the tree also produces a dazzling spring show for the observant urban naturalist. The tree’s delicate blossoms are as red as its autumn leaves, but they last only a few days.

Even after the coldest winters, it takes only a few warm days for the pretty red flowers to appear. Red maples are often described as wind-pollinated, but insects may also be at the tree’s disposal. Wind pollination is a common trait of many northeastern tree species; birches, oaks and pines all produce remarkably elaborate, tiny flowers that release huge quantities of pollen into the air. This mass flowering generally occurs before the trees’ leaves emerge, so that pollen can ride through the woods on chill spring winds with minimal interference. It is not an efficient system. Pollen fails to fertilize passing cars, tree trunks, the woodland floor, migrant birds, dogs, people with allergies or puddles. But just often enough, a female red maple flower gets dusted.

Insect pollination is far more efficient â€" a leap forward in evolution. During spring warm spells, newly emerged flies and honey bees industriously work red maple flowers for pollen. A bee lands on a maple flower and is covered with pollen, then, lured to the throat of the next flower, delivers the goods. Little is left to chance, and both tree and insect benefit. Compared with the greenish flowers of birches and oaks, red maple flowers are downright showy; bright red and arranged in bunches.

Technically speaking, red maples are polygamodioecious â€" a mouthful that means that most red maples produce either male or female flowers; some produce both male and female flowers; and others produce flowers where both male and female parts are functional. Fortunately, the wind is completely objective in its pollination services. This is probably true for insects as well.

Red maples grow in woodlands throughout New York City, and select cultivars are planted as shade trees where space permits. Though known as a tree of the rich woods, they are remarkably adaptable, and tolerate wet or dry soils from Canada to Florida. Red maple leaves share the familiar five pointed shape of many maples, but unlike the sugar maple, or Norway maple, its leaf edges are serrated. Additionally, new stems, flowers and even the mature leaf petioles (leaf stems) are red â€" sometimes a very vibrant shade.

Red maples’ seeds, or samaras, mature by June and helicopter down, to the delight of children. Those seeds not immediately plastered to the tips of tiny noses may find their way to random patches of soil, where they sprout within days. This quirky quick-growing trick assures the seedlings several months of warm summer days in which to send out roots and first leaves. By autumn, many are already well rooted recruits to New York’s growing urban woodlands.



The Tweets of Melissa Mark-Viverito

Melissa Mark-Viverito, the City Council speaker, on Thursday.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times Melissa Mark-Viverito, the City Council speaker, on Thursday.

Little has been known publicly about Melissa Mark-Viverito, but as Kate Taylor reports, the City Council speaker provides glimpses into her life and personality through frequent posts on Twitter.

Ms. Mark-Viverito’s Twitter account, @MMViverito, has been active since Dec. 1, 2009.

In an interview with Ms. Taylor, Ms. Mark-Viverito said that over time, Twitter became like a public journal, and like a friend. The speaker shares bits of her personal life:

A quick primer for the Twitter rookies: When she uses the @ symbol, she’s linking to someone else’s account. When she uses the # symbol, she’s categorizing based on topic. Sometimes she quotes someone else’s tweet by writing “RT.” When you see that, everything that follows is a quote from someone else, everything written beforehand is her own commentary.

Ms. Mark-Viverito uses her Twitter account to comment on the media:

And a look into her life during the campaign for speaker:

More posts show the speaker’s eclectic and goofy side:



The Week in Pictures for March 21

A slide show of photographs of the past week in New York City and the region includes a church service after a gas explosion in Harlem, a four-alarm fire in Brooklyn, and a hoarder who was evicted from his Manhattan apartment.

This weekend on “The New York Times Close Up,” an inside look at the most compelling articles in Sunday’s Times, Sam Roberts will speak with The Times’s Russ Buettner, Steven Greenhouse, Thomas Kaplan, Clyde Haberman and Eleanor Randolph; and the authors Alex Berenson and Bruce Dancis.

Tune in at 10 p.m. Saturday or 10 a.m. Sunday on NY1 News to watch.

Read current New York headlines and follow us on Twitter.



New York Today: Film City

SLC Films “She’s Lost Control”

Updated 5:57 a.m.

Good Friday morning to you. Spring is moving slowly.

It’ll be nice enough to step outside this weekend, but not always nice enough to stay there.

Perfect weather for a movie.

New Directors/New Films, the annual festival for emerging talent, opened this week at MoMA and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Manohla Dargis, the co-chief film critic for The Times, told us it’s a good year.

“People may want to get on a train or bus or car for this,” she said.

There are 27 feature films in the festival. (The schedule is here.)

Where to start?

This weekend: “The Babadook.”

It’s an Australian film about a single mother in a haunted house.

Overall: “The highlight for me, the knockout, was a film from Iran called ‘Fish and Cat,’” Ms. Dargis said.

The story revolves around a restaurant in the countryside that might be run by cannibals.

For scenes of our city, try “She’s Lost Control.”

It’s about a woman who works as a sex surrogate while getting her degree.

“New York is a character in a way, in that sometimes, it’s the only familiar thing in her life,” Ms. Dargis said.

Here’s what else you need to know for Friday and the weekend.

WEATHER

Just a nice old sunny, slightly chilly spring day, with a breeze and a high around 50.

Tomorrow: much warmer â€" mid 60s â€" but cloudy, with maybe a shower in the morning.

Chilly again Sunday, with highs only in the 40s.

COMMUTE

Subways: No delays. Check latest status.

Rails: O.K. Check L.I.R.R., Metro-North or N.J. Transit status.

Roads: No big delays. Check traffic map or radio report on the 1s or the 8s.

Alternate-side parking is in effect.

Weekend Travel Hassles: Check subway disruptions or list of street closings.

COMING UP TODAY

- Mayor de Blasio announces a new parks commissioner: Mitchell Silver, former head of the American Planning Association and now an official in Raleigh, N.C. 12:45 p.m.

- The mayor heads for Albany this evening to speak at the “Somos el Futuro” conference of political progressives.

- A Scottish sculptor, Andy Scott, unveils his 15-foot-tall horse heads at Bryant Park. If that seems big, they’re replicas of ones back home that are 100 feet tall. 9 a.m. [Free]

- “Style Wars: The Original Hip Hop Documentary” screens at the Bronx Museum of the Arts. 6:30 p.m. [Free]

- The veteran Bronx graffiti artist COPE2 has a show opening at Krause Gallery on the Lower East Side. 7 p.m. [Free]

- Celebrate International Day of Puppetry at the Society of the Educational Arts on the Lower East Side with puppets, food and dancing. 7 p.m. [$15].

- Benji Hughes, composer of “I Went With Some Friends to See the Flaming Lips” and other tales of modern life, plays Joe’s Pub. 11:30 p.m., also Saturday. [$15]

IN THE NEWS

- The Citi Bike program is losing lots of money and needs tens of millions to stay afloat. [Wall Street Journal]

- A 14-year-old shot a man dead in an argument on a city bus in Brooklyn, the police said. [New York Times]

- The mayor has steadily found ways to impose his uncompromising liberalism onto New York City. [New York Times]

- He also vowed reforms on Rikers Island. [New York Times]

- There’s been a steady rise in the abandoning of pet rabbits in New York City. [DNAinfo]

- The teenager who sneaked to the top of 1 World Trade Center slipped through a fence hole 12 inches square. [New York Times]

- Bodega cat connoisseurs, your March bracket has arrived. [WNYC]

- Scoreboard: Devils conquer Wild, 4-3 in overtime. Yankees top Red Sox, 4-3. Mets beat Braves, 7-6.

THE WEEKEND

Saturday

- If the outdoors beckons, there’s plenty to do: you can take an introduction to bird-watching in Prospect Park at noon. [Free] …

- … Help install “tree guards” that keep deer from nibbling and otherwise damaging trees, at Orchard Park in the Bronx. 9 a.m. [Free] …

- … Or go on a guided two-hour hike through the green heart of Staten Island. 10 a.m. [Free] …

- Welcome spring with a frittata with pickled ramp vinaigrette at the Wave Hill House in the Bronx. 11 and 11:30 a.m. [$45]

- A record store in Carroll Gardens, Black Gold, will sell about about 3,500 records for a dollar each.

- Hitchcock galore: A complete retrospective of the director’s films continues at Film Forum. [$13 a film] …

- … And 20 short films he made for television all weekend at The Paley Center for Media in Midtown. [$10]

- Scarier still: A documentary about the world’s water wars at the Center for Remembering and Sharing near Union Square. (It’s U.N. World Water Day). 4 p.m. [Free]

Sunday

- First day of Macy’s annual flower show at Herald Square. Flower manicures in the Impulse Department at 1 p.m. Next week: Zyrtec’s “beauty secrets to combat Allergy Face ™” on the Cosmetics Main Floor.

- Last day for the annual “G.L.B.T. Expo” at the Javits Center, featuring business and nonprofits, from the International Gay Rodeo Association to the Provincetown tourism board. [$17]

- Hear Duke Ellington’s sacred music at Carnegie Hall. 3 p.m. [$7.50 and up]

- What’s cooking: Colman Andrews and Ruth Reichl talk about Mr. Andrews’s new book, “My Usual Table,” at Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo. 7 p.m. [Free, R.S.V.P.]

- For more events, see The New York Times Arts & Entertainment guide.

- And if you’re looking for stuff to do outside New York City, The Times’s Metropolitan section has suggestions for Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut.

Joseph Burgess contributed reporting.

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