September 3, 2005

One possibility is that Walt Whitman would be proud. A newspaper-shaped thing has taken the name The Brooklyn Standard in homage to the paper that published Whitman's Brooklyniana series in the 1860's, and people are eager to see the next issue. This newspaper-shaped thing is focused on Brooklyn, printing the word Brooklyn 17 times on its front page, a display of loyalty stronger than Whitman himself showed with lines like ''Manhattan faces and eyes forever for me.''And its content is divisive in a way Whitman might recognize from feuds with bosses at The Brooklyn Eagle over his Free Soil Party views. But while Whitman was taking a stand against the expansion of slavery, the editors of the new Standard have embraced more self-serving causes.

Set against the daily cadence of drama in the city, an emergency call from a Grand Street apartment on Monday night was routine enough. An elderly woman, suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was threatening to hurt herself, possibly with a knife. So her neighbors called for help. It came sometime before 8 p.m., when a Fire Department ambulance arrived at the Lower East Side apartment. A few minutes later, two emergency medical technicians with Hatzolah, the volunteer Jewish ambulance service, arrived, summoned by the neighbors. Officers from the Seventh Precinct had also been called. The woman, it seemed, would have all the care she needed.

A BROKEN bottle of a man sat on the hot sidewalk Thursday afternoon, lips wet from the beer he had just tossed under a car. With leaden hand he stroked the head of an abandoned baby bird in his lap, and it was a tossup as to which of the two looked more lost. But for now he would have to do as the sentry for the awful apartment building behind him, 305 West 150th Street. Two days earlier, the four Democratic candidates for mayor had stood in the same place to use the building as their backdrop while denouncing the state of some housing in this increasingly unaffordable city. Then they drove off to the next photo op, which is understandable, but it is not as though their visit had blocked even one rathole inside.

With just 10 days before the Democratic primary, there is no more important time than now for the candidates to get their faces and platforms out in front of voters. But the havoc in New Orleans is seriously affecting their plans on what is effectively the last full weekend of trying to reach voters before the Sept. 13 primary. None of the candidates, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, plan to campaign or advertise on Sept. 11, which is a Sunday.

A judge rejected on Friday the chief state's attorney's request to issue an arrest warrant for former Gov. John G. Rowland on charges that he violated laws against lobbying after leaving office. The decision, which Mr. Rowland's lawyers said came as a pleasant surprise, ended the investigation by Christopher L. Morano, the chief state's attorney, and stopped what both sides said would have been the state's first criminal prosecution for a violation of its ethics code.