Apartment Choice

IN THE 1960s and ’70s, long before helicoptering emerged as a parenting style, adults had far less interest in looming over their children, frequently urging them to go play outside or downstairs. The netherworld to which these parents pointed was usually a recreation room or finished basement, clad insipidly in wood-veneer paneling and linoleum. Furnishings typically included a saggy sofa, a scratched ping-pong table and a built-in bar never used for mixing drinks; instead, the kids commandeered it as a make-believe store or a stage for puppet shows. Not even Dad’s novelty naked- lady martini stirrers lured him down once the children moved in. And the closest Mom got was to stand at the top of stairs and yell, “Supper’s ready! Wash your hands!” Perhaps these ratty rec rooms weren ’t worthy of House Beautiful, but the stints of physical distance they offered parents and offspring arguably benefited both in ways today’s airy cathedral-ceiling’d great rooms can’t. These days, peopl...

Utility worker jumps onto subway tracks, saves man just before train’s arrival Last week there was a news account of a woman crashing her car in New England as she swerved off of the road into a tree with an approximate three foot girth and with such force that it broke its top off twenty feet above her car from the impact of her collision. The car, then, caught fire. Driving by at the time was a man in his eighties with EMT ( Emergency Medical Technicians ) training. He stopped his car and ran down the hill to her vehicle while knowing fully well that at any moment the gas tank could blow up and kill him. He went forward anyway. The smoke was so thick that he nearly passed out from lack of oxygen and he couldn’t see the car’s occupant. So he felt around for her with his hands through the smoke and dragged her out of the car by the shoulders. My father undertook a similar action. He was near Albany, NY, USA. He saw a farmer’s truck carrying hay burst into flames on a bridge with the d...

Capitol Hill is best known for the eponymous domed building that symbolizes American democracy . But the large neighborhood, which spans the quadrants of Northeast and Southeast, has a lot more going on than legislative dealings. Here are 10 facts about the neighborhood that don’t show up on your average double- decker bus tour . 1. It Was Not Always Called Capitol Hill According to Architect of the Capitol, an organization that maintains the grounds and many of the neighborhood's government buildings , when city architect Pierre Charles L'Enfant found the area in the early 1790s, it was known as Jenkins' Hill. That didn't last much longer. L'Enfant proclaimed it "a pedestal waiting for a monument," and construction atop Capitol Hill began in 1793. The US Capitol Building is located at East Capitol St NE and First St SE. 2. Christ Church (Not the Cathedral) Is the City’s Oldest Episcopal Church The National Cathedral is one of the most famous churches...

Brittany Moody was trembling with tears in her eyes Wednesday afternoon as she described the moment the father of her children was killed on Fourth Avenue in front of his three children. “The only thing I could do was close my eyes and scream,” said Moody, who is four months pregnant with one of Tamir Harris’ 12 children. “He shot him in my face.” Moody said Harris, 33, was standing outside of a car speaking with her mother Tuesday morning as his 2-year-old stood by his side. She said she sat in the backseat of the car with her 1-year-old daughter. Harris’ friend sat in another car with Harris’ 11-month-old baby, according to Moody’s account of the incident. Moody, who is the mother of four of his children, said that’s when a man she didn’t know walked up to Harris, put a gun to his head and shot him. She said he aimed the weapon at her and her family when she tried to get the young boy to safety. “He walked off like he didn’t give a d--n,” Moody said as she struggled to hold back te...

The struggles of the impoverished are well documented. But how about the unique pain and struggle associated with being wealthy in New York City? In her research for “ Uneasy Street : The Anxieties of Affluence” ( Princeton University Press , out Sept. 5), Rachel Sherman interviewed 50 New York-area parents of young children, whose household incomes ranged from $250,000 to $10 million and with assets totaling up to $50 million. These locals live pampered lives — with multiple high-end properties, teams of household employees and frequent, lavish vacations — but still, they do impressive mental gymnastics to avoid identifying themselves as truly rich. For instance: Helen, a stay-at-home mom with an annual family income of $2 million, describes herself as “in the middle, in the sense that there are so many people with so much money. They have private planes. They have drivers. They have all these things.” This kind of creative (and self-serving) logic is prevalent among Sherman’s su...

Okonkwo Proud, ambitious, and ill-tempered, Okonkwo is the tragic hero of Things Fall Apart. An ambitious man who has risen from nothing to a man of importance in his tribe, Okonkwo rules his family with an iron fist. He is deeply dedicated to the traditions and social hierarchies of his people, and he is determined that his sons and daughters follow his demanding example. The indignities forced on him and his people by the British eventually prove to be too much for him. After an act of defiance which goes unsupported by his people, Okonkwo gives in to despair. He kills himself, partly so that he will not be executed under the white man's laws and partly because he is grieving for the death of his people. Unoka Okonkwo's father. He died when Okonkwo was very young, and he was a failure. Shame for Unoka drives Okonkwo to work tirelessly. Unoka died in debt and humiliation; the memory of him gives Okonkwo a terrible fear of failure. Ikemefuna A young boy given to Umuofia by a ...

T he way Lai Jie sees it, there are two kinds of relationships. There is romance. And there is marriage. They are not always the same, and in a city such as Shanghai, the deciding factor on who to wed can have little to do with personality, interest or chemistry. It comes down, instead, to a little brown book, the hukou (pronounced hoo-koh ) document, part of a household-registration system that creates distinctions between urban haves and have-nots that influence salaries, education and, it turns out, love lives for huge numbers of migrants. hukou household registration documents , shows journalists her mother’s hukou in the bedroom they share in Beijing on March 10, 2015. The documents decide what services Chinese people can access, from home-ownership rights to public school enrolment, based on their families’ place of origin." /> Li Xue, 21, who does not have hukou household registration documents , shows journalists her mother’s hukou in the bedroom they share i...

A Long Island research group is urging local governments to consider allowing more rental apartments in private homes, to help cash-strapped homeowners and provide more housing for renters. In a report released Saturday , the Long Island Index outlines the vast differences in the ways Long Island ’s towns, cities and villages deal with so- called accessory apartments , or small units within owner-occupied homes. Most Popular The approaches range from fairly accepting — as in the Town of Babylon, where homeowners can get permits to rent out apartments if they meet certain conditions — to strict, as in the Town of North Hempstead , where such units can only be occupied by the homeowner’s parent or child. Long Island has a patchwork of rules for accessory apartments , which vary so widely that many homeowners fear getting penalized, so they don’t even try to create apartments, even if they want to and might be allowed, said Nancy Rauch Douzinas , publisher of the Index. The Index is a...