In the NY Daily News:

an article on the question of why NYC Chinatown still doesn’t have its own arch.   I posit that inertia, money, and lack of actual analysis (of where to put it and how to drive the tourists to it) are factors. Disclaimer: it’s not like I actually know why this hasn’t happened already, but I kind of wonder if having an arch is like admitting your Chinatown is a tourist thing and no longer a living community. That’s just based on my familiarity of the Montreal Chinatown arches and seeing the one in San Francisco.

a slideshow of where to eat (a couple of 8th Avenue Brooklyn places – like Pacificana – are included in the photos).

Daily News also profiles a couple of Chinese/Taiwanese foodie bloggers and their recipes for the Lunar New Year.

Check these items out in the city:

In case you’re looking for Lunar New Year events/highlights from Brooklyn, here are some items from the Brooklyn Public Library.

In case you’re looking for Lunar New Year events/highlights from Queens, here are some items from the Queens Library.

Over at World Financial Center, New York Chinese Cultural Center is bringing some arts and crafts for the kids and performances next weekend.

And, of course, last but never least, a whole bunch of stuff in Chinatown in Manhattan.

In case you want a whole list, check out Time Out NY. Time Out NY is good that way, even talking to the cast of “Chinglish” about Chinese food for the  Chinese New Year (“Chinglish” is ending Jan. 29, 2012 – check it out while you can).

Lin-Manuel Miranda Performs at the White House Poetry Jam: (8 of (by whitehouse)

I’m sharing this video, in honor of Alexander Hamilton’s birthday.  I remembered watching this on PBS awhile ago; this was so awesome…

Lin-Manuel Miranda is ridiculously amazing for the extent of his creativity and his New York-ness. An Alexander Hamilton rap?! Amazing… (see also: this article in the NY Times about Miranda, and his creativity, including “The Hamilton Mixtape”).

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) has come and gone.  As a follow up to a previous post on NaNoWriMo as I have been going through it: a recap!

Yeah, I did it – I hit the 50k, ending the month at 55,364 words (well, according to the NaNoWriMo validator; I had bizarre footnotes that didn’t get picked up in the cut and paste from MS Word to the NaNoWriMo validator).

Is the story actually “finished”?  I managed to give it a title, “Living in the Gray,” and it seems to be about how the COO of this technologically-inclined corporation learns of corporate espionage going on against his corporation (but there’s no proof!), that he doesn’t really know what’s going in with bad accounting in his corporation, that the CEO is getting friendly with various international criminals, including an elderly war criminal but there’s no proof there either of why he’s doing that, and that the Little Orphan Annie like character isn’t happy that the COO isn’t going to take down crazy CEO (and besides being a drunk and being repeatedly referred to as a megalomaniac, is the CEO really “crazy”?).  At the “end,” the COO makes a decision to challenge the CEO, but the COO is staring into the sunrise, ambiguously…

Oh, and a wormhole showed up in the mid-chapters.  I really still don’t know why, other than my desperate desire for “action” and writing vigorously at a write-in with the other NYC Wrimo’s.  And, I literally ended on “to be continued?”  My previous Nano’s did not have the question mark, if only because I had ideas to eventually return and expand, and desire to revise.  This one – not so sure.  This wasn’t a Nano that I’m feeling terribly fond of at the moment.

Will this ever see the light of day?  Probably not.  But, I am feeling a little inspired to get back to revising one of my past Nano’s as a 2012 project, and at least I got back to writing fiction again, even when I so didn’t feel like it or even when I didn’t feel into this story and the characters.  The process got me to realize that I kept going, even if I didn’t really want to – probably a life lesson in there, somewhere.

Plus, NYC NaNoWriMo is a good bunch of crazy writing people.  We kept at it!  We did it – 50k or not, we wrote our asses off.  We do it because we can.

Last night, we had our Thank God It’s Over (TGIO) party in downtown Manhattan.  Our Municipal Liaison fshk announced how we got into a Village Voice article (fshk and alexisdaria and others got quoted) – so cool!  NYC NaNoWriMo rocks!

Writing fiction (and reading fiction) – to be continued…

(cross-posted at sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com).

Oh, and take a look at the video that FC posted from last year’s Veterans’ Day.

JP Morgan Chase underwrote the Veterans’ Day parade in Manhattan today. They have a bunch of programs for vets, some new (per their announcements link) including a jobs program.

Some stuff I found so far on Tumblr: from New York Public Library and via the Atlantic: “In Flanders Field.”

(cross-posted on sswslitinmotion.tumblr.com – see here)

Yesterday:
AABANY’s Fall Conference 2011 was great stuff! The sight of much fruit at a certain table was mesmerizing. Otherwise, great panelists, lively discussion, CLE (well, I have to report and re-register at the end of this year, so…), and seeing familiar faces and new ones. Plus: nice digs of the white shoe law firm to check out…

Oh, and ramen. That was good ramen, I must say.

Brooklyn Book Festival 2011 is TODAY! That is all.

The story of Willow, the lost Colorado cat found in NYC, five years later. Cute cat, I must say. Plus, apparently, having the microchip really is a good way to locate the lost pet. But, the solution to how Willow ended up in NYC may be simple, but there are cynics, I guess.

From Robert Krulwich at NPR: the Krebs Cycle. Man, I hadn’t heard of this since AP biology way back in high school…

Oh Ryan Gosling; at least your roles are unique (go see “Crazy Stupid Love”!): Television w/o Pity with a Photo Gallery on how Gosling’s roles include lots of bad boyfriends (except maybe the one from “The Notebook” – who was initially a sad and lousy guy but who came through well at the end).

So, yes, I have to get outside already, but can’t resist: what’s the deal with the Big East? Syracuse and Pittsburgh leaving? Teams NOT in the East coming? We do not have this in the Ivy League. Of course, we don’t have big championships either…

Why am I not surprised that the Law & the Multiverse guys actually explore how Peter Parker is an independent contractor and Clark Kent isn’t? I’m not a Spiderman follower, but did Peter Parker ever take his photography work to a higher level? I mean, various versions of Clark have shown him to be a real journalist, not necessarily a bumbler… (must be that Superman thing).

Angry Asian Man blog on the world biggest Spam musubi. That is a lot of Spam.

h/t: wnyc’s tumblr blog – color photos of NYC from 1941 by Charles W. Cushman, over at the Daily Mail. Impressive. Bowling Green still looks the same…

Oh, and last but not least: Joey Lawrence and Melissa Joan Hart – how is it that you two make the 1980′s/1990′s nostalgia so easy to swallow? (especially Joey – even if he is now going by “Joseph” these days – but he’ll always be Joey to me!). I was watching their ABC Family tv movie, “My Fake Fiance” and was pretty entertained. They play a couple who meet in one of those “I hate you/I love” moments and then get a fake engagement for the gifts and money – only to actually fall in love for real. Yes, it’s a typical romantic-comedy, but I liked their nice vibe and sensual chemistry.

Melissa and Joey’s ABC Family tv series, “Melissa and Joey” is sort of a modern “Who’s The Boss,” but just a touch more yeah-eventually-they-will vibe in less than a season, than “Who’s The Boss” did after years of seasons on the air (I watched a lot of “Who’s the Boss” back in the day – and I liked how Judith Light’s Angela was such an empowered modern woman for the 1980′s and how Tony Danza’s Tony evolved from an ex-ball player to mature college student and future teacher). Is “Melissa and Joey” funny as a sitcom? Not really – I mean, “Sabrina The Teenage Witch” had more funny and that was because Salem the Talking Cat was just nuts – but the chemistry between Melissa and Joey (the characters) works for tv.

I guess we’re feeling particularly reflective because it’s been 10 years. Sometimes it really doesn’t feel like it has gone by that long, sometimes it’s still too soon (history being a judge that takes its time).

Consider this week’s posts: Reflecting, “The Towers’ Rise and Fall,” and some links for this past week.

Links to our prior posts on this date may be found here.

Last year’s soundtrack, as posted by FC.

I had taken this photo a couple of years ago at the Brooklyn Promenade. Figured that this was a good a time as any to post it.

Another photo I had taken at the Brooklyn Promenade, a couple of years ago (maybe last year or two ago?).