Blog recommendation: our friend David, who is recently retired after an illustrious (but wholly thankless) career in the NYC department of education, and who is something of an expert on Manhattan's Lower East Side, has a blog about the history of that neighborhood. It's here. David was born there, played stickball there, grew up in the same buildings as the kids of the Rosenbergs. The blog is a haphazzard attempt to create an educational resource-- as he himself admits, the linear nature of the blog (as opposed to the website) makes this a challenging task. But he is remarkably prolific, and this thing grows every day. The history of the Lower East Side (or "LES," as he calls it) is his mad passion;; the blog, a mad, passionate, oddly compelling work of art.