Brooklyn Today for Sept. 11
Good morning. Today is the 255th day of the year. In Brooklyn history, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle for this date in 1902 carried an article about poor water pressure in new apartment buildings in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. “No Water on Top Floors Is General Complaint,” the headline ran.
Well-known people who were born today include U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka (D-Hawaii), singer-pianist Harry Connick Jr., actor Lola Falana, rock singer-songwriter Moby and rapper Ludacris.
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Brooklyn’s unique floating concert hall, Bargemusic at Fulton Ferry Landing, will feature a 9/11 Memorial Concert tonight at 8. Admission is free, no reserved seating, doors open at 7:15. Bargemusic founder, the late Olga Bloom, had a sorrowful front-row seat to the destruction of the Twin Towers on 9/11. Ironically, though it would be two years later that a violinist named Mark Peskanov would be asked to become the artistic director of Bargemusic, it was he that Olga Bloom called on the phone that day when the Towers were struck. “We were talking on the phone as the second plane struck,” recalled Peskanov. “Some firemen who were friends of Olga happened to be there when they received the call to cross the bridge to respond…they never returned.” Already in her eighties when the Twin Towers were struck in 2001, Olga Bloom soon brought Mark Peskanov into her organization as a key performer and organizer, then asked him to take over as Artistic Director in 2003. Bloom died on Thanksgiving Day in 2011 at the age of 91. (For more on Bargemusic history and schedules, readers may go to www.bargemusic.org or call 718-624-2083)