Good morning. It is Friday. We’ll look at why this season was a first for women’s college basketball in New York City. We’ll also find out how LaGuardia Community College will spend a $116.2 million grant from a foundation run by Alexandra Cohen, whose billionaire husband bought the New York Mets in 2020.

This was the first season that the Columbia University women’s basketball team made the NCAA Division I tournament.

The New York University women’s team, undefeated in 31 games, also made the postseason, making this the first year the two colleges have done so simultaneously: Columbia in Division I, with an overall berth in the Big Dance. , and NYU in Division III. NYU won the Division III national title by ending Smith College’s 16-game winning streak, 51-41.

“We finally pulled away and one of the officials congratulated me on my win,” said Meg Barber, the coach of the NYU team. “This was probably with about 45 seconds left. I said, ‘Not yet.’ I was like, ‘It’s not over yet,’ and he said, ‘Yes, it is.’

And next season?

“I’ve barely processed that we won the national championship,” Barber said Thursday, “so I haven’t really thought about next year.”

Columbia’s season ended Wednesday with a 72-68 loss to Vanderbilt in a play-in game prior to the first round of the NCAA Division I tournament.

When I asked Sabreena Merchant, who covers women’s basketball, for an assessment, she said Columbia was outplayed. The game was one of the few times this season that Abbey Hsu, Columbia’s top senior guard, wasn’t the best player on the court.

“The first thing you think about at Abbey is shooting,” Merchant said. “She uncharacteristically missed a couple of free throws. For her to go 2-of-11 on 3s and miss three free throws is surprising.” Hsu is the Ivy League’s leading scorer in three-pointers, with 375.

Columbia has had less experience playing teams like Vanderbilt, which have a long history — after all, this was Columbia’s first appearance in the tournament. “You could see the athletic advantage that Vanderbilt had over Columbia,” Merchant told me. “As Abbey Hsu has done in Ivy League games, there was a different level of defense she faced against Vanderbilt – and her play didn’t step up as hoped, or as Princeton does when they get into these situations. ” Princeton, which defeated Columbia last week to win the Ivy League title, will play West Virginia in the first round of the tournament on Saturday.

Even if Hsu had an off night against Vanderbilt, she has had a remarkable career at Columbia. She holds the Columbia record in basketball, men’s or women’s, with 2,126 points.

She also has a remarkable personal story. She tore the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee when she was a junior in high school.

A few weeks later, when she heard banging noises from an adjacent building of the school and the teacher ordered her class to leave, she was on crutches. She made her way down the stairs and out of the school – Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, site of the deadliest mass shooting at a high school in American history.

Her first season at Columbia was interrupted by the pandemic and her father, a physician, died of complications related to Covid-19.

Still, Hsu has been Columbia’s defining player in women’s basketball under coach Megan Griffith, who arrived in 2016. Before Hsu joined the team, Columbia had won 31 percent of its games and 26 percent of its Ivy League games. Since then, the team has won 80 percent of its games.

Weather

Enjoy a sunny day in the mid 40s. Prepare for a chance of rain in the evening with temperatures in the low 30s.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Sunday (Purim).

The latest New York news

Steven A. Cohen, the hedge fund billionaire who bought the Mets three and a half years ago, is pouring more money into Queens: a $116.2 million grant to LaGuardia Community College for a workforce training center.

But his wife, Alexandra Cohen, gets credit for the vision behind the grant, for a 160,000-square-foot vocational training facility, said Kenneth Adams, LaGuardia’s president.

“This is 100 percent Alex,” Adams said. “Not only does it increase our educational space by 25 percent, which it does, but it is also aligned with Alex’s vision for career and technical education.”

LaGuardia officials said the grant, from the Steven & Alexandra Cohen Foundation, was the largest ever awarded to a community college. Adams said it would pay for the construction of 67 classrooms, enough to add 6,000 students to LaGuardia’s enrollment. LaGuardia will use the space to train students seeking associate degrees, industry certification and other qualifications.

“I wanted to create a place where students can access high-quality programs and facilities and learn the skills they need to succeed in a rapidly changing world,” Alexandra Cohen said in a statement. LaGuardia said the center, to be called the Cohen Career Collective, would be the largest career and technical facility of its kind in the New York region.

Adams said the foundation had given the college a much smaller grant during the pandemic for a training program called Jobs Direct. It was intended to provide short-term job training to people from Queens who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Then, he said, “Alexandra Cohen made it clear that she wanted to do something different.”

“Alex was born in Harlem, she grew up in Washington Heights, and she really identifies with our students” — many of whom are foreign-born, working-class students and the first in their families to attend college, Adams said.

Félix Matos-Rodríguez, the chancellor of the City University of New York, said the grant would enhance LaGuardia’s position “as an engine of upward mobility.”

The center will offer language classes to foreign-born students who need to improve their English before pursuing vocational training. It will also offer high school equivalency classes for students seeking a GED

Adams said the new center would occupy two floors in a former bakery overlooking the Sunnyside Yards railway depot.

“We are receiving more and more requests to train students for green jobs, especially solar panel installation and maintenance,” Adams said. “We don’t have classrooms today that are equipped to teach that. We will.” He also said the center would let LaGuardia teach courses on energy retrofits — entry-level electrical jobs with contractors. Some labs could be used to teach courses in cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

He said the “1980s-level classrooms” used for LaGuardia’s nursing programs would also be upgraded. The center could also host classes to train students for jobs in the hospitality industry.

“All of these programs are driven by workforce dynamics and employer needs,” he said.

The Cohens’ foundation has provided more than $1.2 billion to nonprofits since 2001, including more than $185 million in Queens. In addition, Cohen and Hard Rock are bidding on a casino next to Citi Field, where the Mets play.

METROPOLITAN diary

(Queens, 3 hours)

Dear Diary:

I woke up then
the city
stopped
to talk

Stepped
from my bed

Other un-
dressed men
near windows
listened

to enjoy
nothing
something

Light I
illuminated
a cigarette

and listened

— Rolli Anderson

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.

A ban on transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams at county-owned sports facilities has made a Long Island county the latest battleground for conservatives who have put cultural issues at the center of a national political strategy.

Restricting the rights of transgender people has become the focus of these efforts, and the ban in populous Nassau County has angered LGBTQ activists and Democratic officials, who have challenged it in court.

But it’s unclear whether the ban, which was introduced last month through an executive order signed by Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman, will provoke broader anger in a place where Republicans have gained ground in recent years. Or, on the other hand, if it could motivate conservative and moderate voters in a place where Democrats have a vulnerable majority.

It’s also unclear who it might affect, if at all. The executive order applies to more than 100 facilities in Nassau County, including playing fields in parks; baseball, football and soccer fields; basketball and tennis courts; ice rinks; and indoor and outdoor swimming pools, according to the attorney general’s office.

The county ban does not apply to facilities owned and operated by the area’s public school districts, although it could impact students whose teams practice or play at county facilities.

The ban could also pose a problem for youth or adult recreational leagues with transgender players. Last week, a group that uses county facilities, the Long Island Roller Rebels, an adult roller derby league, indicted Nassau County, arguing that the ban violates the state’s civil rights law.

When asked if there are currently or have ever been any transgender women or girls who have participated in sporting facilities operated by the county’s parks department, Mr. Blakeman said he believed the answer was no. But he wanted to make sure that never happened, he said.

“You don’t have to be punched in the nose in politics to take action,” Blakeman told reporters on Monday.

Nassau County is next to New York City, the seat of Democratic power. But like Republicans elsewhere, Blakeman has found culture war issues to be a winning campaign issue, often framing them in terms of parents’ rights. In 2021, he used opposition to pandemic-era mask mandates to revive his political career and defeat a centrist for his current job.

On Monday, his effort received the support of Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian and longtime Republican who is now best known as a reality TV star. She appeared on stage next to Mr Blakeman to express her love for the LGBTQ community and support for the ban, which she said would protect women and girls and defeat “the woke agenda”.

“If the left wants to fight this battle on this hill, it’s a losing battle,” said Ms. Jenner, a transgender woman. “We will win the battle.”

Ms. Jenner’s appearance in Nassau County seemed intended to let voters know that one could support the gay and transgender community while still opposing certain rights of some of its members.

“For obvious reasons, Caitlyn is the star of the show; she is an Olympic hero,” Mr. Blakeman told reporters with a broad grin. “And I will tell my legal team to include everything Caitlyn said in the letter.”

Democratic leaders have strongly pushed back on Mr. Blakeman’s order, which requires any sports organization seeking to use a provincial parks facility to “explicitly” designate its teams as male, female or coed, based on the birth gender of its members .

After the order was signed, Gov. Kathy Hochul accused Mr. Blakeman of “bullying trans kids.” The attorney general, Letitia James, called the move “transphobic and very dangerous.”

The order has been challenged by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit last week on behalf of the roller derby league, and by Ms. James, who issued a citation. cease and desist order earlier this month in an effort to prevent the law from being enforced. In response to this Mr Blakeman said has filed its own lawsuit and said he wants a federal judge to rule that his order is legal.

It is unclear how urgent the issue is for New York voters.

No local polling data on the issue is available in Nassau County. National polls show that while the number of Americans who know a transgender person is rising, so is the number of Americans who oppose their inclusion on sports teams that match their gender identity.

According to a Gallup poll from last yearA large majority of independent (67 percent) and Republican (93 percent) voters say they oppose transgender athletes playing on teams that match their gender identity. The number of Democrats who support their right to do so fell from 55 percent in 2021 to 47 percent in 2023.

Interviews with Long Island residents reveal that opinions are similarly complicated.

Claire Kelty, 38, a physical therapist who works in Mineola, said she and a transgender friend had talked about the issue and agreed that there were differences in physical strength between those assigned male or female at birth.

“It could very well be an unfair advantage,” Ms Kelty said. She said she understood why Ms. Jenner would support Mr. Blakeman’s executive order.

“It makes sense, especially for her,” Ms. Kelty said. “I respect Caitlyn Jenner.”

But Marissa Blanko, 21, a nursing student in Mineola, didn’t. She said Ms. Jenner was a hypocrite for opposing the rights of transgender athletes.

“Why would she say, ‘Oh no, I’m against it’?” Mrs. Blanko said. “Look at yourself.”

Others, however, said Ms. Jenner’s athletic career in men’s sports — a gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, a star on the front of a Wheaties box — was exactly the point.

“If it was the other way around I would take her in her prime to compete against women – she will just dominate,” says Ronnie Stephen, 36. “I’m all for change but it’s all about fairness.”

The LGBTQ movement has long relied on the idea that knowing a gay or transgender person would make a heterosexual or cisgender person more likely to support LGBTQ rights.

But it’s not clear whether that assumption applies to the issue of transgender sports: Over the past two years, support for transgender athletes has actually fallen slightly more among those who know a transgender person than among those who don’t.

This is evident from the Gallup pollOf those who knew a transgender person in 2021, 40 percent said that person should be allowed to play on the sports team of their choice, but that figure dropped 10 points to just 30 percent in 2023. Among those who don’t know a transgender person, support fell per person for transgender athletes in the same time frame by 8 points to 23 percent.

With a critical election looming in November, both Democratic and Republican candidates have said they plan to campaign vigorously in Nassau County.

But it’s unclear whether Blakeman’s new signature issue will motivate voters to cast ballots. “This should not be a partisan issue,” he said Monday. “This is a matter of common sense.”

Some residents said they had never thought about it at all. One resident, Maria Williams, 21, a nursing student in Jericho, said transgender athletes were none of her business.

“I really don’t think about this,” she said. “I just don’t care.”

A ban on transgender women from playing on women’s sports teams at county-owned sports facilities has made a Long Island county the latest battleground for conservatives who have put cultural issues at the center of a national political strategy.

Restricting the rights of transgender people has become the focus of these efforts, and the ban in populous Nassau County has angered LGBTQ activists and Democratic officials, who have challenged it in court.

But it’s unclear whether the ban, which was introduced last month through an executive order signed by Republican County Executive Bruce Blakeman, will provoke broader anger in a place where Republicans have gained ground in recent years. Or, on the other hand, if it could motivate conservative and moderate voters in a place where Democrats have a vulnerable majority.

It’s also unclear who it might affect, if at all. The executive order applies to more than 100 facilities in Nassau County, including playing fields in parks; baseball, football and soccer fields; basketball and tennis courts; ice rinks; and indoor and outdoor swimming pools, according to the attorney general’s office.

The county ban does not apply to facilities owned and operated by the area’s public school districts, although it could impact students whose teams practice or play at county facilities.

The ban could also pose a problem for youth or adult recreational leagues with transgender players. Last week, a group that uses county facilities, the Long Island Roller Rebels, an adult roller derby league, indicted Nassau County, arguing that the ban violates the state’s civil rights law.

When asked if there are currently or have ever been any transgender women or girls who have participated in sporting facilities operated by the county’s parks department, Mr. Blakeman said he believed the answer was no. But he wanted to make sure that never happened, he said.

“You don’t have to be punched in the nose in politics to take action,” Blakeman told reporters on Monday.

Nassau County is next to New York City, the seat of Democratic power. But like Republicans elsewhere, Blakeman has found culture war issues to be a winning campaign issue, often framing them in terms of parents’ rights. In 2021, he used opposition to pandemic-era mask mandates to revive his political career and defeat a centrist for his current job.

On Monday, his effort received the support of Caitlyn Jenner, the former Olympian and longtime Republican who is now best known as a reality TV star. She appeared on stage next to Mr Blakeman to express her love for the LGBTQ community and support for the ban, which she said would protect women and girls and defeat “the woke agenda”.

“If the left wants to fight this battle on this hill, it’s a losing battle,” said Ms. Jenner, a transgender woman. “We will win the battle.”

Ms. Jenner’s appearance in Nassau County seemed intended to let voters know that one could support the gay and transgender community while still opposing certain rights of some of its members.

“For obvious reasons, Caitlyn is the star of the show; she is an Olympic hero,” Mr. Blakeman told reporters with a broad grin. “And I will tell my legal team to include everything Caitlyn said in the letter.”

Democratic leaders have strongly pushed back on Mr. Blakeman’s order, which requires any sports organization seeking to use a provincial parks facility to “explicitly” designate its teams as male, female or coed, based on the birth gender of its members .

After the order was signed, Gov. Kathy Hochul accused Mr. Blakeman of “bullying trans kids.” The attorney general, Letitia James, called the move “transphobic and very dangerous.”

The order has been challenged by the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed suit last week on behalf of the roller derby league, and by Ms. James, who issued a citation. cease and desist order earlier this month in an effort to prevent the law from being enforced. In response to this Mr Blakeman said has filed its own lawsuit and said he wants a federal judge to rule that his order is legal.

It is unclear how urgent the issue is for New York voters.

No local polling data on the issue is available in Nassau County. National polls show that while the number of Americans who know a transgender person is rising, so is the number of Americans who oppose their inclusion on sports teams that match their gender identity.

According to a Gallup poll from last yearA large majority of independent (67 percent) and Republican (93 percent) voters say they oppose transgender athletes playing on teams that match their gender identity. The number of Democrats who support their right to do so fell from 55 percent in 2021 to 47 percent in 2023.

Interviews with Long Island residents reveal that opinions are similarly complicated.

Claire Kelty, 38, a physical therapist who works in Mineola, said she and a transgender friend had talked about the issue and agreed that there were differences in physical strength between those assigned male or female at birth.

“It could very well be an unfair advantage,” Ms Kelty said. She said she understood why Ms. Jenner would support Mr. Blakeman’s executive order.

“It makes sense, especially for her,” Ms. Kelty said. “I respect Caitlyn Jenner.”

But Marissa Blanko, 21, a nursing student in Mineola, didn’t. She said Ms. Jenner was a hypocrite for opposing the rights of transgender athletes.

“Why would she say, ‘Oh no, I’m against it’?” Mrs. Blanko said. “Look at yourself.”

Others, however, said Ms. Jenner’s athletic career in men’s sports — a gold medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, a star on the front of a Wheaties box — was exactly the point.

“If it was the other way around I would take her in her prime to compete against women – she will just dominate,” says Ronnie Stephen, 36. “I’m all for change but it’s all about fairness.”

The LGBTQ movement has long relied on the idea that knowing a gay or transgender person would make a heterosexual or cisgender person more likely to support LGBTQ rights.

But it’s not clear whether that assumption applies to the issue of transgender sports: Over the past two years, support for transgender athletes has actually fallen slightly more among those who know a transgender person than among those who don’t.

This is evident from the Gallup pollOf those who knew a transgender person in 2021, 40 percent said that person should be allowed to play on the sports team of their choice, but that figure dropped 10 points to just 30 percent in 2023. Among those who don’t know a transgender person, support fell per person for transgender athletes in the same time frame by 8 points to 23 percent.

With a critical election looming in November, both Democratic and Republican candidates have said they plan to campaign vigorously in Nassau County.

But it’s unclear whether Blakeman’s new signature issue will motivate voters to cast ballots. “This should not be a partisan issue,” he said Monday. “This is a matter of common sense.”

Some residents said they had never thought about it at all. One resident, Maria Williams, 21, a nursing student in Jericho, said transgender athletes were none of her business.

“I really don’t think about this,” she said. “I just don’t care.”

A lawsuit that could upend New York City’s property tax system was approved by the state’s highest court on Tuesday. The decision is a victory for housing groups who complain that the system favors owners of wealthy brownstones in Brooklyn and luxury apartments in Manhattan over tenants and owners in lower-income neighborhoods.

The 4-3 decision by the State Court of Appeals strikes at one of the most persistent elements of New York’s housing crisis: Nearly everyone agrees that the property tax system is inequitable and opaque and places a greater burden on lower-income people. But while many politicians have proposed reforms over the years, none have been able to implement change through legislative routes.

The lawsuit is against both the city and the state, with the goal of forcing change through the courts instead. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2017 by a group of property owners, tenants and other advocacy groups called Tax Equity Now New York, or TENNY.

TENNY’s lawsuit says homes with equivalent values ​​are currently taxed at different rates depending on where they are located in the city. The group’s complaint shows that a property in Canarsie, for example, is valued at “three times as much as the same property in Park Slope,” according to Tuesday’s court ruling. The lawsuit also points out that the city taxes rentals at higher rates than owners of more expensive apartments and co-ops, costs that are then passed on to tenants.

A lower court TENNY fired‘s complaint in 2020, on the grounds that the legislature could make changes to the tax laws. The case was even considered a gamble by many of his supporters. But Tuesday’s Court of Appeal decision allowed some of the original claims against the city to proceed.

Martha E. Stark, TENNY policy director and former Treasury commissioner under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said there is no timetable yet. But she said the court ruling made clear that the city could and should take action to make the tax system fairer.

“The city has an opportunity here to fix its notoriously broken property tax system,” she said. “It has some of those tools in its own toolbox.”

At a news conference Tuesday, Sylvia O. Hinds-Radix, the city’s corporate attorney, noted that the court did not say the lawsuit was over, and that the case will go back to a lower court where “decisions will be made.” ”

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Governor Kathy Hochul called the decision a “quite dramatic shift,” adding that she still needed to unravel the implications of the decision and decide with Mayor Eric Adams what the “right solution” would be.

Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today we’ll look at why one think tank says New York City needs another university. We also get details about Donald Trump’s efforts to secure a $550+ million bail bond in his civil fraud case.

Of all the things New York City needs right now, is another private university one of them?

Jonathan Bowles, executive director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan think tank, said the answer was yes “because we are in a different economic environment, post-pandemic.”

“If there was anything that could derail the city’s economic progress,” he told me, “it would be a decline in the number of students moving to the city. Remote work, along with the city’s affordability crisis, has created that opportunity. One way to combat that is to expand the flow of people coming here before they even get a degree.”

Going to college in New York would increase the likelihood that graduates would seek and find their first job in the city, he said. “If you look at the city’s economic success over the past decades, nothing has been more important than attracting and retaining highly skilled people,” he says. “Companies needed to be here because the talent base was here, even if it meant paying the city’s high real estate prices and taxes.”

The connection between the university and the economy is so important that a report from the center says City Hall should find city-owned land and commit to providing $100 million for a new campus.

The college idea was one of five in a report from the center on ways the city can do well given the economic realities left behind by the pandemic. The center’s report notes that the city is lagging in several economic sectors, with only 57 percent of retail jobs lost during the pandemic having returned. The city has regained the same number of jobs that were lost during the pandemicbut many of the new jobs are in lower-paying sectors.

The center’s report comes as state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warns of a ‘looming enrollment cliff’, partly because the U.S. college population is expected to decline early next year.

Focusing on potential economic benefits, Bowles said opening a major academic institution would create hundreds, if not thousands, of new jobs before the first students arrived, from administrators and teachers to construction and food service workers.

“Indeed,” the center’s report said, “colleges and universities are perhaps the city’s most undervalued job drivers.” Colleges and universities account for 3.5 percent of the city’s jobs, nearly double the share in the 1990s, the report said.

Bowles said other statistics indicate a new college or university could begin to address the problem. Last year, more than 120,000 prospective students applied to New York University, and he said about 15,000 of them accepted. Columbia University admitted just over 2,200 of its 57,000 applicants.

That left nearly 160,000 people who were considering studying in New York, even if they only gave it a cursory thought as they filled out one application after another. Still, the lure of New York may be enough to lure them to a new institution. “We want more of those top high school students to come to New York to study here and then stay and fuel the industries of the future,” Bowles said.

The number of private students pales in comparison to the 226,000 students who attend the 25 campuses of the City University of New York.

Bowles listed a number of possible locations for a new campus, including Sunnyside Yards, a 400-acre rail yard and a potential development site in western Queens. But, he added, “my suggestion is not to start by saying, ‘This is where we know it should be.’”

Weather

Today will be mostly sunny with highs around 49 degrees. In the evening temperatures drop below 40 degrees.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Sunday (Purim).

The latest New York news

Remember the old-fashioned paper checks? Imagine one for $557,491,716. On the line below the “pay in order of” line, the amount would be written out in words: five hundred and fifty-seven million, four hundred and ninety-one thousand, seven hundred and sixteen dollars.

That’s how much Donald Trump needs for bail in Manhattan civil fraud case. His lawyers said Monday that 30 companies had rejected him. Apparently he does not have sufficient liquidity.

The amount is higher than the $454 million judgment in the case to take into account the interest Trump will owe. Trump’s lawyers have asked an appeals court to suspend the sentence or accept bail of just $100 million. Otherwise, the New York attorney general’s office, which brought the case against Trump, could take action to collect the money, raising the possibility that the state could freeze some of his bank accounts and seize a number of his properties.

The attorney general, Letitia James, could have done this as soon as Judge Arthur Engoron issued his ruling last month after finding that Trump had fraudulently inflated his assets to obtain loans and other benefits. But she offered a 30-day extension until March 25. It is unclear whether the appeals court will rule on what amounts to a request for relief before then. It is also unclear whether James will give Trump any more time.

Included in Trump’s lawyers’ files was a document from Gary Giulietti, an executive at the Lockton Companies, which he said was the world’s largest private insurance brokerage. Giulietti said he was hired by Trump.

“While I understand that the Trump Organization is in a strong liquidity position, it does not have $1 billion in cash or cash equivalents,” Giulietti wrote. “As a result, obtaining a $464 million bond is a practical impossibility for a company like the Trump Organization, which has invested the majority of its assets in real estate.”

METROPOLITAN diary

Sand sculptures

Dear Diary:

I saw an older man and his wife every summer at the lighthouse on Fire Island: he, shirtless and wearing Bermuda shorts, she in a floppy pink straw hat.

The man made two or three sand sculptures of classically designed, voluptuous women, with seaweed for hair and shells for fingernails. Hundreds of people a day walked by and admired his work.

The couple had been coming to the beach since the 1960s. We said a few words and talked more and more as the years passed.

They were both around 80. They arrived in the morning and left at 2pm. The late afternoon waves would erase the man’s creations, and he would return the following week with new ones.

Summer would fade and it would be eight to nine months before we returned. If we did that, he would make his art there.

We had grown up in Brooklyn, decades apart. We talked about our lives, our health, the pains and regrets of growing older. I told them about our son, who had died in a car accident. They were silent and dejected.

On my last day there one summer, they were collecting their belongings, the man’s wife waved and he shrugged. They walked away, hand in hand.

The following summer there was no trace of them. What became of them was a mystery. People walked back and forth where he sat as the ocean washed in and out.

– Joseph P. Griffith

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. – JB

PS Here is today’s Mini crossword And Game competition. You can find all our puzzles here.