The November issue is out! Check out my spread on foreign buyers in New York. Also, indulge your voyeuristic tendencies, please, and peruse my profile of the homes of some of Manhattan’s top brokers. Who signed a deal off floor plans? Who commissioned a painting of a tiger for his front hallway? Read on….

My first byline at The Real Deal!

Top co-op expert Kathy Sloane, a senior vice president and managing director at Brown Harris Stevens, has high hopes for Roosevelt Island’s Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park.

Sloane, who sits on the board of the group spearheading the $53.4 million project, claims it will increase property values for the cluster of buildings across the East River, including Trump World Tower and One Beekman Place.

The 4.5-acre site, which juts into the water like a ship’s prow just north of United Nations Plaza, will incorporate a lawn and a granite “room” inscribed with the “four freedoms” Franklin D. Roosevelt advocated in his 1941 State of the Union speech: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear.

The project is 36 years in the making, stalled by a lack of financing and the 1974 death of its designer, the noted American architect Louis I. Kahn, among other things. Construction on the site finally got underway in March 2010, and the project is slated for completion in the fall of 2012. ….

Law360′s new Media & Entertainment section debuted this week with my feature on FCC v. Fox, a U.S. Supreme Court case that will decide whether the agency’s indecency policy — the rule that makes it illegal to swear and get naked on network television — violates the First Amendment. Shaping up to be a “really fucking brilliant” showdown.

U2′s lead singer Bono could not have predicted his appearance at the 2003 Golden Globes, broadcast live on NBC, would have such a lasting impact on indecency law.

“This is really, really fucking brilliant,” he told an audience of assembled luminaries and at-home viewers, accepting an award for best original song. “Really, really great.”

That F-bomb had an explosive effect. After the awards show, the Federal Communications Commission found that NBCUniversal Media LLC had run afoul of the agency’s revamped indecency policy, which the Second Circuit subsequently threw out as unconstitutionally vague. This fall, the Supreme Court will weigh in on the constitutional challenge, after granting the FCC’s petition for certiorari in FCC v. Fox Television Stations Inc. in June.

Indecency issues tend to split the high court along unpredictable lines, and a ruling at this early stage is difficult to predict. But the justices will almost certainly do damage to the FCC’s expanded enforcement efforts, either directing the agency to craft a clearer policy or even calling into question its power to regulate broadcast media altogether, according to experts who have been following the case.

Horribly behind updating this blog, but here’s the piece I wrote on the ruling in Wal-Mart v. Dukes:

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Monday to overturn certification of a class of 1.5 million current and former female Wal-Mart Stores Inc. employees in the largest sex discrimination case in U.S. history raised the bar for bringing classwide claims and will force plaintiffs to narrow their class definitions, attorneys say.

Full piece here.

After a minor fender bender Tuesday morning, Justice Antonin Scalia — and his eight colleagues on the U.S. Supreme Court — heard oral arguments in Wal-Mart v. Dukes, the biggest sex discrimination class action case in U.S. history.

On one side, an estimated 1.5 million female employees who allege the retailer paid women less and promoted them less often than their male counterparts. On the other side, the largest employer in the country, which not only denies the claims but argues that the experiences of the women are far too individualized to proceed as a class action.

Read my coverage of the oral arguments: High Court Eyes Class Cert. Merits At Dukes Hearing

Take a look at my take on the Wisconsin labor controversy, cobbled together in about ten hours one Tuesday at work. Written in the early days of the protests in Madison, before the state legislature passed the bill and a judge issued a TRO putting it on hold.

Wisconsin lawmakers convened Tuesday to debate Republican Gov. Scott Walker‘s controversial budget bill, which would enact broad limits on public workers’ collective bargaining rights and, according to experts, embolden other state legislatures to follow suit, potentially weakening public unions nationwide.

In May, Stephen Mills will earn a BA from St. Edward’s University, a liberal arts college nestled in downtown Austin. That fact would be unremarkable, except that the 50-year-old Mills took his last college class more than three decades ago, and in the intervening years he pursued a successful dance career, ultimately becoming artistic director of Ballet Austin.

Mills never expected to be a college graduate, let alone enroll as a student while also leading a ballet company. But Ballet Austin is committed to education, and Mills finally had the time to pursue his degree thanks to an innovative program he helped create: a partnership with St. Edward’s that allows dancers at Ballet Austin and Houston Ballet to rack up college credits without cutting into studio time. The program gives working dancers a chance to earn a BA in the most convenient way possible: by building it around their hectic schedules and giving credit for their dance company experience.

Read my latest Dance Teacher article here and here.

In “Stieglitz, Steichen, Strand,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art pulls from its own collection to present the work of three heavyweights of American photography: Alfred Stieglitz, founder of the influential 291 gallery, and two of his protégés, Edward Steichen and Paul Strand. The show, on through April 10, 2011, gives each photographer his own room, accentuating their individual styles and obsessions, while allowing a closer look at the cross-pollination that took place in the early part of the 20th century.

Read the rest of my review here

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In 1939, famed war photographer Robert Capa left a suitcase of film negatives in the care of his darkroom manager, Csiki Weiss. Capa, who fled Paris for New York in advance of the German invasion, would never again see the suitcase, which held dozens of rolls of undeveloped film that he and his colleagues, Gerda Taro and David Seymour, shot during the Spanish Civil War. Indeed, the cache stayed hidden for decades and was thought lost to the world.

Last year, when a large ballet academy held auditions for its annual Nutcracker, the studio owner knew that five “absolutely brilliant girls” coveted the role of Clara. But the owner, who has asked to remain anonymous, knew that one girl would leave the audition disappointed, since there were only four parts. “I’ve never had the scores so close and I’ve never had to eliminate a dancer so clearly qualified,” the studio owner says. “I just didn’t have enough performances to go around.”

The owner’s dilemma is likely familiar to any instructor who casts for recitals or competitions. Rewarding talented dancers while giving every student a chance to perform is tricky. But as long as you give every student an equal shot, establish open communication with dancers and parents and alleviate jealousies before they turn into full-scale conflicts, every casting session can be a teaching opportunity.

 

For more from my latest feature for Dance Teacher, click here.