Ms. Becky Cooper has produced an innovative gem of a book, 'Mapping Manhattan: A Love (Sometimes Hate) Story in Maps by 75 New Yorkers,' when as part of a project for her degree in literature at Harvard, she handed out blank maps of Manhattan and asked if the recipients would fill them in with what parts of their lives they can attribute to various Manhattan locations. Sort of a biography over topography.
She started at the top of Manhattan and handed out her blank maps with instructions and self-addressed stamped envelopes for their return. Her goal was to put a book together of the most representative of the memories. The result is a richly illustrated collection of 75 responses.
In a TED-X talk Ms. Cooper explains that being from Queens she has always had trouble finding her way around the city. She gets lost easily. This surprises me, because she went to high school in Manhattan. She caught my attention with that statement and the fact that she admitted going to my high school in Manhattan, Stuyvesant.
In my era, (class of '66) Stuyvesant was an all-male, specialized high school, one of the so-called elite public schools that required taking an entrance exam. This is still true, but it has been co-ed for decades now.
When I heard of Ms. Cooper I emailed a classmate of mine that I still keep in touch with and remarked that Becky is an example of the type of person we didn't get to go to school with: a smart female.
Ms. Cooper seemed to me to have traces of Asian features, and being from Queens and a recent Stuyvesant grad I theorized she probably was Asian, and quite possibly from Flushing, the largest Asian community in the city. Couple this with the fact that 70% of all students at Stuyvesant these days, male and female are Asian, my conjecture was strong.
Turns out I was absolutely right since in the introduction she explains her ethnic origins as being from Russian and Chinese ancestors. Quite a combination. Even providing more depth to that is when in another book she just wrote, 'We Keep the Dead Close' (more on that later) she reveals her great-uncle was a hit man for the Chinese Mafia. Every family has a bad guy to some degree, but quite honestly, I can't top that one.
Nevertheless, 'Mapping Manhattan' is filled with personal memories etched onto the schematic of the island. Some are quite colorful, and some are from true celebrities. One is from Yoko Ono, who with no lingering bitterness, has simply written "MEMORY LANE" underlined in marker with a heart across the island.
A lot of people pointed out where they met their spouse, or even their spouses and then their divorces. Interesting to me is that few have anything pointed out above 110th Street. When I filled out the downloadable copy and mailed it, I realized that I too really had nothing above 90th Street, when I would start in Road Runner races. Lots below 59th Street, but little triple digits. Even the numerous flower deliveries I made didn't go above Mt. Sinai Hospital, basically then at 100th Street. (I now remember I could have added a dot at 137th Street to indicate my time spent at CUNY.)
I 'm not sure I have a favorite, but the one from Philippe Petit might qualify. Mr. Petit on the morning of August 7th 1974 had strung cable between the unfinished towers of the World Trade Center and walked across the tightrope, 110 stories in the air as people were starting their day at work.
I remember that day as being at work myself, but further uptown at 40th Street and 3rd Avenue. Mr. Petit sketched the two towers in red and drew a little line connecting them, remarking, "Walking (illegally) on a cable atop WTC!"
It's one of the few references to the WTC, other than my own that I submitted that indicated my surviving 9/11, coming down from the 29th floor from Tower One, finally emerging about 9:30 A.M. a bit dusty and wet, but unharmed.
I don't know how Ms. Cooper was able to get a blank map into the hands of Mr. Petit, but one of my subsequent favorite memories of him (he's still with us) is that several years ago he fell off a tightrope he was practicing on in his yard upstate. The wire was about three feet off the ground and I think he broke his foot. If you're going to screw up, that's the time to do it, when you're only three feet off the ground.
I only came to know of Ms. Cooper's 'Mapping Manhattan' book when I started to read her latest, 'We Keep the Dead Close,' a true crime story about the grisly murder of an anthropology grad student at Harvard, Jane Britton, in 1969—a crime that went unsolved until Ms. Coopers years-long efforts at trying to get police records as part of the Freedom of Information laws, acted as a catalyst for the law enforcement agencies to make one last ditch effort to process some DNA that could now be better analyzed than it could be in 1969.
The book is a testament to Ms. Cooper's pursuit, having heard of the crime when she was an undergrad at Harvard (not in anthropology). There were several candidates for being solid suspects, all within the Anthropology Department. Along the way, the mistreatment of undergrads and grads and the pervasive culture of sexual and academic harassment is laid bare. Perhaps because it's Harvard it sounds surprising, but it shouldn't.
Aside from the crime aspects of the investigation, there is a tremendous amount of knowledge that the reader gains about archaeology. It is hardly all Egyptian tombs, sand, heat and desert sites in Asia Minor. I would have never thought Labrador could be of interest, but it was to an expedition to find a certain kind of rock. And dangerous, since a student was lost, presumed killed in an accident when they fell off a cliff into the water. Or was it an accident?
At the time of Jane's murder, 1969, the '60s represented an era of flimsy security for all. Reading of the sieve-like access to Jane's off-campus residence, I was reminded of the famous 1963 NYC "Career Girl" murders of Janice Wylie and Emily Hoffert when the intruder gained access through a fire escape and an open window. On many levels, that case sent shock waves through law enforcement when the wrong person was found guilty and not exonerated for a few years until the true rapist and killer was caught.
Whether Ms. Cooper's successful being "on duty" when a 50-year-old crime is solved will lead to one of those 'Forensic Files' reenactments remains to be seen. Ms. Cooper's book just came out, but my guess there will be efforts to dramatize a grisly and long unsolved crime.
In the two Zoomed book presentations I watched, Ms. Cooper didn't indicate where her next effort might lie. The book's back flap tells us the Society of Investigative Reporting seems to have had a hand in helping Ms. Cooper pays her bills, since she left an enviable position at The New Yorker to devote full-time to her efforts.
Something in neuroscience she vaguely answers. Ms. Cooper tweets, but doesn't answer Tweets—even complimentary ones. No problem. She probably doesn't need to.
Perhaps she'll next leave us with solving the source of the current pandemic and the world's reaction to it. After all, that story has legs too.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
Well John we didn't have coeds but I remember meeting some girls from a sister school while in the school office. I believe they may have been there to attend some classes while visiting from Hunter(?). Other than that I didn't see any girls at Stuyvesant or any of my classes until I attended a local school I was assigned to during the subway strike. Some teachers made it a point to pose the most difficult questions to the "guest" students.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hunter was considered the "sister" school. But I do remember a dance at Washington Irving that was organized by that school, which was all girls at the time, like Hunter. I knew one of the girls who was at Washington Irving. A fellow Cirelli left with the prettiest girl. I'll never forget dancing with her. But the tall, hitter-looking Italian got the girl.
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