Terrorists Aren’t Drummers, Are They?

A West Village man has been hospitalized for a case of “accidental,” “naturally occurring” anthrax:

A New York City man has been hospitalized with a case of anthrax that a federal law enforcement official said may have been contracted from animal skins during a visit to Africa.

The infection appeared to be accidental, and authorities did not believe it was related to terrorism, the official said.

The man traveled recently to the west coast of Africa and became ill shortly after his return, said a federal law enforcement official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

It was not clear how the man came into contact with the deadly substance, but aides to Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was related to his job as a drummer and that federal and city officials traced the exposure to New York City after the man became ill in Pennsylvania.

Dionne Warwick Is On The Tarmac! Dionne Warwick Is On The Tarmac!

The search for Vivi, the Westminster Dog Show participant that apparently bolted before getting in the cargo hold of her plane, now includes several psychics:

With all leads running dry on the sixth day since the prized show dog darted off a plane during boarding at Kennedy Airport, the main search party has begun taking advice of at least four animal communicators.

“They are telling us that she is alive and they are telling us she is warm,” Honi Reisman, a close friend of Vivi’s owners, said via cell phone yesterday as she searched the heated cargo buildings dotting the airport. “They are saying she’s in a building — but there are hundreds of buildings.”

About a dozen psychics in total have chimed in, claiming to channel Vivi, with four psychics echoing the same information, said Paul Lepiane, Vivi’s co-owner.

. . .

Close to a hundred hours have already been logged by searchers for the prized whippet, whose full name is Champion Bohem C’est La Vie. On Wednesday morning, Vivi was on her way home from the Westminster Dog Show — where she took a coveted award of merit – when she broke free from her crate before being loaded inside the plane. The crate latch was later found to have been broken.

Though she can run as fast as 35 mph, both her owners and the psychics think she is somewhere on the airport’s 5,000 acres.

Animal telepathy is not new for Vivi’s co-owner, Jil Walton. One communicator helping search for Vivi also channeled Walton’s horse 10 years ago, finding that the animal once had an offspring who died, Walton said. The information turned out to be accurate.

“Some part of me says it’s ridiculous to feel hope,” Walton in a phone interview, speaking of the pet psychic, “but some other part of me says it’s real.”

Reisman’s sister, Carol, gave the name of psychic Beatrice Lydecker of Portland, Ore., as helping out. Lydecker said Vivi was in eyeshot of lots of yellow equipment — not much help in an airport littered with forklifts — and was hiding under folded boxes. “She said Vivi could hear a person calling to her, but she didn’t recognize the voice,” Carol Reisman said.

Pod Theory, Controlled Demolition And The Flash Is Not A Sunday Matinee Hardcore Bill At CBGB

The Village Voice brings us up to date on various Sept. 11 conspiracy theories*:

Many Truth activists now dismiss the “pod theory” and its cousin “the flash,” which contend that the planes that struck the towers had unusual shapes on their undersides that may have fired missiles. More maligned is the idea that no planes hit the towers — that what we saw were drones or holograms. Even the no-planes-at-the- Pentagon theory divides Truth-ers.

. . .

By saying they’re only checking facts, the Truth activists avoid having to address the weaknesses in their own yarn. Why do the “booms” at the trade center come several minutes before the “demolition”? Why would the government destroy WTC7 when no one knew or cared about it? What happened to the people on the planes?

Some skeptics, however, aren’t shy. Fringe pol Lyndon LaRouche thinks the attacks were “an attempted military coup d’état.” Hufschmid says the Arab terrorists were patsies of several governments, including the U.S. and possibly Britain, France, Canada, and Israel. Ruppert, an adherent of the theory that oil reserves have peaked and that the petroleum-based economy is in great peril, postulates that 9-11 was a desperate effort by a couple dozen elites from the Clinton and Bush administrations to cling to dwindling energy supplies. His version stresses the links between the CIA and Wall Street and drug money, suspicion of the Secret Service, and a plot to rid the world of 4 billion people in order to reduce demand for petroleum.

*Ed Begley, Jr. is asked what he thinks of all this.

The Bivalves That Fed A Nation

After tackling the history of salt and cod, writer Mark Kurlansky now profiles oysters, of which New York once had many:

Through the oyster, Mr. Kurlansky’s current book traces the social, economic and environmental history of New York City and its waterways, starting even before the Europeans came on the scene, with the oyster-loving Lenape Indians. From the shells in the middens, or refuse heaps, archaeologists have concluded that the Lenape ate tons of oysters. With the Dutch, then the English and eventually every other group that arrived, the abundant oysters in the harbor and the rivers contributed to the city’s economy.

The Dutch did just fine shipping oysters to Europe, though they were disappointed that the city’s oysters could not revive their pearl industry — they are the ones who named Pearl Street — but Eastern American oysters, Crassostrea virginica, do not make gem-quality pearls. All the native oysters on the East Coast, from Louisiana to Newfoundland, are C. virginica, a different species from many West Coast varieties and from European oysters.

. . .

He marvels at the human taste for oysters. “They take work, and they are not terribly nutritious,” he said. “And a hundred or more years ago oysters were a food that was consumed in more or less the same form by every social class. Throughout most of New York’s history, oysters were incredibly cheap. You could get all you could eat for 6 cents, an entire plate for less than what a hot dog cost, at a time when a single out-of-season strawberry cost 50 cents.”

Crackdown On Suspended Licenses Leads Disgruntled Upper East- And Upper West-Siders To Google “Fuck Tha Police” Lyrics

The police are sticking it to the rich and powerful, throwing them in jail for offenses like driving on a suspended license:

Is the NYPD aggressively cracking down on well-heeled Manhattanites caught driving with a suspended license near Central Park and sending them to jail? Pediatrician Laura Popper was recently pulled over for driving her scooter in Central Park after 10 a.m. When cops discovered her suspended license, they tossed her in the “Tombs” for nearly nine hours. Pierre Hauser, a foundation executive, was caught making a U-turn near his Central Park West home. His suspended license got him thrown in the clink overnight. Philippe Soule, a landscape designer, got pulled over on the Upper East Side, arrested, and sent to jail for twelve hours. His license had been suspended for failing to pay a $25 ticket he’d gotten in New Jersey a year ago.

“There has to be some kind of crackdown,” Popper says. “Every time I tell my story, someone says, ‘That just happened to somebody I know.'” Even celebrity spouses aren’t safe: Last year, Jon Stewart’s wife, Tracey McShane, was arrested and jailed for five hours after being pulled over in the park.

In some cases, the license was wrongly suspended in the first place. Stewart’s wife had paid her ticket, but the check hadn’t been processed. Popper had paid hers, too, but had forgotten to pay a surcharge. So she shared a cell with some rather tough women: “One actually said, ‘Don’t fuck with me, and I won’t fuck with you,'” she says. Hauser’s night in jail in Harlem featured cellmates “doing crack in the corner,” he says.