Dawn Zimmer is Sworn in as Interim Hoboken Mayor

Dawn Zimmer became the first female Mayor of Hoboken after Peter Cammarano, the youngest Mayor of Hoboken, stepped down after his arrest in a federal corruption probe.

Mourning Michael Jackson

There was an eerie silence at the cross roads of the world today as scores of fans, tourists and the curious gathered in Times Square to watch the public memorial for Michael Jackson in Los Angeles, on the JumboTron. Men women and even some children sat in plastic deck chairs, looking up at the screen with strained necks. Spectator, Juan Vasquez, 47, regretted not being able to hear the memorial. "I wish I could hear what they were saying," he said to no one in particular. Spectators could watch the memorial on the big screen but there was no sound. The NYPD blocked off half the road between 43rd and 44th Street so people could watch the memorial.

There was a genuine honesty, dignity or maybe it was respect, emanating from those who stopped in Times Square today; something Jackson was not afforded in life. It was as if those who were there for the memorial or those who stopped by, while on a lunch break, genuinely felt a sense of remorse when they saw Jackson's gold casket on the screen. There was a distinct lack of commercialism and exploitation that I found front and center at the public memorial in Harlem, last week.

Ashton Jones, a native New Yorker, flew in from Los Angeles last night, so he could come to Times Square and watch the memorial on the big screen with fellow New Yorkers. “I wanted to come to Times Square to be with other people,” Ashton said. He admitted to being in shock when he heard Jackson died. “He was brilliant. He had ‘it',” Ashton, a former back up singer for the famous gospel family, the Winans, said. He described Jackson as an inspiration both as a singer. and dancer. "They can’t take that away from him," he said. Emily Waelder, a 27-year-old teacher in Carnaise, Brooklyn, was able to separate Jackson’s personal failings from his public persona, as she watched the memorial in silence with a friend. Allegations of child abuse never swayed her opinion of the star. “All celebrities are messed up,” she said. Walder went on to say, she celebrated with friends when Jackson was acquitted of child molestation charges in 2003. Waelder told me she first heard Jackson’s music when her sister, who was 10-years older than her, introduced her to 'Thriller' when she was in 8th grade, the same grade she now teaches in high school.

Memorial for Michael Jackson, Apollo Theater, Harlem

It was hot and humid if you were one of the tens of thousands of Michael Jackson fans standing in-line outside the Apollo Theater in Harlem today, for a chance to pay your respects to the pop legend Michael Jackson. In fact, there were two lines outside the Apollo; one for fans and a second line for ambulances to carry those from the first line to the hospital when they fell from dehydration. And they did.

At one point, the line stretched down 125th Street around the corner, past 126th Street and Adam Clayton Powell Blvd. beyond 128th Street. Adriane Anderson, 27, was standing in line for 45 minutes clutching her two prized possessions, her 1998 Michael Jackson doll and the album cover from Thriller. Anderson credited Jackson as an inspiration in her life and described herself as hysterical when she heard Jackson had died. Anderson said she spent last night crying and felt she had to come today to pay her respects. She called in sick to her internet job in downtown Manhattan.

Phillip and Elaine Ward from Richlands, Virginia were celebrating their 14th wedding anniversary in New York, when they felt they had to come up to Harlem to see the place where Jackson got his first break. “It made our trip to New York more memorable,” Elaine Ward said. “I loved his music, he was the King of Pop and I had to come and see where he performed,” Phillips husband chimed in. His wife went on to say, “Jackson’s music crossed all barriers, all racial divides.” Phillip and Elaine Ward were two of the few white fans who waited in line, today.

There was a mixture of commerce, grief but mostly celebration in Harlem today, as fans and the just the plain curious, got an opportunity to show their affection for the King of Pop one last time.

Vendors along 125th Street opposite the Apollo Theater made a killing selling Jackson tee shirts, posters, and pins covering every decade of Jackson’s life - from his boyhood appearance on amateur night at the Apollo, with his brothers in 1967, right up to what seemed like the very end. One vendor was trying to sell a 25-year-old mint condition Michael Jackson doll for $1000. He had no takers today.

Six hundred people were allowed into the theater at one time for 45 minutes to view videos of Jackson and listen to live music, but because of the huge crowds, that time was reduced to 30 minutes.

Iranian Protesters Outside U.N. Headquarters, NYC

As protesters faced baton-wielding police and live ammunition in Tehran on Sunday, in defiance of Saturday’s warning by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei against public demonstrations, approximately 100 protesters gathered outside the United Nations in New York in a show of solidarity.

The protesters held up signs showing bloodied photographs of protesters beaten or killed in Iran and chanted ‘United Nations pay attention.’ The mostly young crowd was vocal but peaceful. Most wore some form of green clothing in a show of support for their defeated candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi. On woman painted a green X over her mouth.
There were similar protests held in Washington, Germany and Belgium

NYC Rally in Support of Same-Sex Marriage, NYC.

Gay’s and their supporters turned out in their hundreds on Tuesday night in the West Village, after California upheld a same-sex marriage ban. . Gay rights activists and their supporters, gathered at the corner of Stonewall Place in the West village, before the start of a rally that would take them to Union Square in the West Village. Some carried signs calling for equal rights, while others carried more outlandish signs like ‘Screw You.’ The Californian Supreme Court in a 6-to-1 majority upheld a ban on same-sex marriage brought in by Proposition 8 in November of last year.

‘Is Anybody There’ Premiere, New York City.

It stopped raining long enough for the premiere of Michael Caine’s new movie ‘Is Anybody There’ in New York, Monday night. Caine, casually dressed in a blue jacket and silver rimmed glasses, signed autographs before entering Cinema 2 on Third Avenue opposite Bloomingdales. His young co-star Bill Milner and family joined Sir Michael.

Other celebs who attended the premiere included the diminutive Bob Balaban, Dick Cavett and gadfly, John Stossel from 20/20.

Photographs

While cleaning up my apartment in New Jersey recently, I came across an old cracked black and white photograph of my mother and father, shortly after they were married in Dublin. The photo got me thinking about my own passion for photography.
I love photography but in particular I love my own photographs. I am an amateur photographer who wants to be a professional. I am unique in that respect!
Before digital cameras, amateur photographers like me were limited to film and its associated costs. Before photo sharing websites like Flickr, an amateur photographer had limited exposure; mostly family and friends.
However, today, thanks to the digital cameras and web sharing software like Flickr, I can take as many photographs as I like and expose myself (figuratively) to the whole world. Flickr acts like a collective reservoir for photographers who want to share their photography with the world.
I began posting my photographs to Flickr after I bought my first digital camera, a Canon Rebel XT, five years ago. I became a compulsive shutterbug ever since. Some people are Facebook fans, others are besotted by MySpace – I am fascinated by Flickr. I took thousands of photographs over the years and uploaded the best of the best to my Flickr webpage - 20Major. To date, I have posted 466 photos to my Flickr account. Over the years, I photographed everything from celebrities to clowns; fires and family.
At night, I spend hours looking at my own photographs on Flickr. I watch them drift by in a slideshow one by one, as black and white turns to color. It’s like watching a documentary of my life slide by, one photo at a time – photo - pause - photo again.
Despite the fact that I like looking at my own photographs, I get an even bigger kick when anonymous Flickr users, with handles like C-U-B-B-I-E and ‘snapdragon,’ view my photographs.
Each visitor to my Flickr page registers as a hit. I have over 700 hits. I especially like when they comment on a photograph. An anonymous comment from complete stranger is like anonymous sex with a complete stranger, not exactly ideal but satisfying all the same. I monitor my Flickr account like a doctor monitors a patient’s cardiogram. I am constantly on the look out for spikes in my digital counter. When I see that counter rise, it’s like a shot of caffeine in the morning.
Not surprisingly, celebrity photos attract the most attention. I have a photograph of the actress, Cobie Smulders, from the CBS sitcom, ‘How I Met Your Mother’ that attracted over 361 hits. Fourteen Flickr photographers choose my photographs as their so called ‘favorite.’ One visitor described a photograph of my niece and her father as – ‘brilliant.’ Another called a photograph of a trapeze artist as ‘great’. It is euphemisms like these that keep me going.
My colorful, digitally enhanced photographs are not my mother’s photographs. Photographs were personal for my mother - a repository of family memories.
Despite all my protestations, photographs are a commodity to me. They are an entertaining distraction at best. My mum’s photographs weren’t disposable like the digital photos of today – delete and they’re gone. Every photograph my mum took captured a memory. They marked moments in time, as opposed to my photographs which mark a waste of time!!! Mum’s photographs were a barometer of the family fortunes, with all its ups and downs. In the beginning, mum took black and white photographs with a Brownie and ended up taking uneven color photographs with a Polaroid Classic.
I saw myself grow from a black and white baby to a colorful teenager with long hair. In the beginning, my mum took cheesy family photos – photographs arranged in order of height or birthday. I remember mum would wait expectantly on the film which took a week to process at a camera shop. Then, along came the ‘Polaroid Instant’ camera with its promise of immediate gratification, and soon the house was full of square color photographs with large white borders.
My mother passed on some time ago, but hundreds of her family photographs sit in an old biscuit tin in the garage of my childhood home in Dublin. The biscuit tin contains a treasure trove of family history; everything from my parents black and white wedding, to the last color photographs of my mum with her grandchildren.
My mom was no Martha Stewart. She didn’t feel the need to put the photographs in albums or create collages. The tin box was fine. When I was growing up, I would catch a glimpse of my melancholic mother smiling to herself, as she went through her tin box of photographs late at night. I wonder what she would have made of sharing photographs on Flickr. My guess is she would rather keep her memories to herself, in a biscuit tin.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/25478784@N03/