Sunday, July 5, 2009

The Case of the Unidentified Rooster

I have had items printed in the New York Times twice in my life. The first was back in the late 1980s. I was the Theatre Access Project (TAP) assistant at the Theatre Development Fund. TAP makes discount theatre tickets available to disabled people; they also sponsor sign interpreted performances of Broadway shows. In an effort to increase our mailing list, I sent out press releases. A chunk of one ran in the old Friday Theatre column.
A few weeks ago, my neighbor and I were complaining about the rooster that lives three buildings away. The rooster starts crowing around 5 or 5:30 AM, every day. We have see him, out in his yard (if I crane my neck out over the fire escape). He is a good-looking rooster, nice shiny red feathers. He would not be out of place on a piece of Italian ceramics. But I'm not in Umbria (I wish!), I'm in Brooklyn, and I enjoy my sleep. The upshot of the chat with my neighbor was that I'd write the Times' FYI column. Which I did, and my unattributed question ran last Sunday. My shrink even noticed it, without prompting. Even one of my more favorite blogs, Brownstoner (http://www.brownstoner.com/brownstoner/archives/2009/06/28-week/) picked it up.
The FYI column did not run today; I'm wondering if last week was the end of it. The Times seems to be changing so quickly, it's hard to keep track. It did tell me that keeping the rooster is totally illegal. So I admit it- I'm the one who fingered the rooster.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace.