Meds and eds and cool designs. (CUNY)

Breaking out of the up-and-down box. (CUNY)

New York City, forever expanding its architectural and medical offerings, is about to add two contemporary healthcare centers to the hospital corridor along the East Side of Manhattan, in a prominent location right on the shore. It will further highlight the city’s position not only at the forefront of the nation’s medical establishment but also within the design leadership.

This morning, Mayor Bloomberg, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, CUNY and Hunter College announced plans to build two new science and medical facilities in a new millio-square-foot building on the Upper East Side. They reflect the Bloomberg Administration’s efforts to expand science and research activity in New York City at a timely moment when the city’s science, technology and research fields are flourishing.

“Thanks to our innovative approach to economic development, today’s announcement is yet another step towards making New York City home to the world’s most talented workforce,” said Mayor Bloomberg. “Not only will these two great institutions play a critical role in creating great jobs in one of the city’s growing industries, but they usher in the innovators and medical advancements of tomorrow.”

These two new facilities will allow both Memorial Sloan Kettering and CUNY/Hunter College to move into labs and healthcare units appropriate for the cutting-edge work and care that they both do—and they will look cool doing it. In a deal with the city's Economic Development Corporation, the institutions will pay $215 million for a 66,000-square-foot city-owned site at 525 East 73rd Street, a move the mayor lauded as a prime public-private partnership.

Most of the space will be taken up by Memorial Sloan-Kettering, the world’s oldest and largest private institution devoted to cancer care, which will construct a 750,000-square-foot state of the art cancer treatment facility. The aim of the project is to prompt the development of innovative outpatient treatment programs.

CUNY Hunter College will take up the balance of the space with a new Science and Health Professions building that cover ssome 336,000-square-foot. The project upgrades Hunter’s science and nursing facilities and enables its faculty, researchers and students to work in a location close to its main campus on the Upper East Side. It will also provide efficient and state-of-the-art science and nursing facilities.

And, as well as offering physicians and researchers an inspiring and efficient environment in which to both work and provide care, the new building will lend a lick of paint to New York City’s landscape. The nifty new building, designed by Ennead Architects and Perkins Eastman, is a bold addition to the repertoire of hospital architecture. It also gives Diller Scofidio + Renfro's new medical building for Columbia further uptown a run for its money.

These buildings will aid medical studies and care in New York, and as an added bonus they will decoratively add to its distinctive skyline; what city could ask for two more welcome additions.

“Let’s get real,” she said in a Hunter College auditorium that seemed to be packed mostly with the middle-aged women who make up her base. “Let’s get real about this election. Let’s get real about our future.”

With the must-win contests in Texas and Ohio looming, Clinton’s task of exorcising Democratic voters of their enchantment with Barack Obama seems more difficult by the day. This morning, she continued to try to turn Obama’s eloquence against him by suggesting, once again, that he is all fancy talk and no action.

“It is time to get real, to get real about how we actually win this election,” she said, adding, “It is time that we moved from good words to good works, from good sound bites to good solutions.”

That line brought the crowd to its feet. It was less enthusiastically received when she went immediately back to the just-words well, repeating that the country needed a president “who relies not just on words but on work -- on hard work” and “we need to make a choice between speeches and solution” and “the best words in the world aren’t enough unless you match them with action.”

“This,” she added, “is becoming more apparent every day.”

But that message has yet to catch on with primary voters. He won by wide margins last night in Wisconsin and Hawaii and he has narrowed Clinton’s lead in Texas and Ohio. The media is circling.

The enthusiasm at today’s small-dollar fund-raiser was supposed to be an answer to that.

After a Broadway star belted the national anthem over crackling speaker feedback, shouts of “we love you Hillary” and building “Hillary” chants filled the music-less interval before Clinton and Chuck Schumer took the stage.

“It’s great to be home,” Clinton announced, to applause.

Then Schumer, who is balancing his roles as a critical Clinton supporter and Democratic Party leader, gave his Senate colleague an emphatic introduction that notably did not say anything negative about Obama.

Instead, he focused on John McCain.

“Make no mistake about it, this man follows Bush’s policies 95 percent of the time,” said Schumer, removing his glasses. “We have to beat him. To me it is a moral imperative.

“And we know who the candidate is who can beat him,” he said as the crowd rose to its feet and Clinton stood at his side with her hands folded in front of her.

Schumer echoed Clinton’s talking point that she was the only candidate who had withstood the assaults of the Republican attack machine and could do so again. He demonstrated this physically.

“When they take out their 2 by 4,” he said assuming a batter’s stance. “She’ll be ready with her 4 by 8 to hit them back.” He swung his imaginary lumber. Clinton seemed to approve.

He attested to Clinton’s knack for comebacks, and announced to Ohio and Texas: “Get ready, because here she comes.”

Clinton then took the podium. Rows of young enthusiastic people sat behind her, in the camera’s frame. In front of her the audience was mostly middle-aged. Many of the contributors were women with graying hair.

After quickly acknowledging the way things have actually gone for her (“I want to congratulate Senator Obama,” Clinton said, adding, “He has had a good couple of weeks”) she insisted the race was not supposed to be easy, was far from over and would come down to the primary states of Texas and Ohio, where, she said, “We are going to be squaring off.”

She did her best to attack what her campaign argues is a silly meta-narrative about Obama’s candidacy that has obscured the real issues.

“This campaign is not about a campaign,” she said. “This campaign is not about a personality, this campaign is about hundreds of millions of Americans.”

To reinforce the notion that she was the candidate most tethered to reality and the plight of working people, she added, “Now others might be joining a movement -- well I’m joining you on the night shift and the day shift.”

After the speech, some of Clinton’s supporters in the crowd picked up on that theme and expressed anger with the way things have unfolded.

“She’s changing her strategy because there are a lot of people who have fallen into the wake of Barack Obama and those people have to get real,” said Mary Ann Dellabadia, a 52-year-old nurse, who added that even if Obama made it through to the general election, “I’m not voting for him.”

“It is a cult and it’s mostly the college kids and they’re stupid,’ she said.

Her friend, Mary Jo Pane, interjected.

“I will vote ‘present’ if he is the Democratic candidate -- everyone I know feels that way,” said Pane, a 55-year-old nurse jewelry designer. “The press has made him what he is. It’s a very irresponsible election cycle when the press has this much control.”

Former city landmarks chief and Hunter College President Jennifer Raab wants to sell off the school’s 3.5-acre Kips Bay nursing campus, near the recently sold Peter Cooper Village at 25th Street and the F.D.R. Drive, and build a 16-story building for science and health-professions programs at 67th Street and Second Avenue, closer to its overcrowded main campus on the Upper East Side.

By the end of the year, according to an official at the public college, Hunter will issue a request for expressions of interest in the 25th Street site, a testing of the waters that would give Hunter a sense of how much money it could make from the deal—and by extension, how much the uptown building project will cost taxpayers or donors.

The project rivals some of the development schemes that have been a hallmark of the Bloomberg administration, in complexity and controversy if not in size.

The controversial part comes in because the whopper that Ms. Raab wants to build would displace the 80-year-old Julia Richman Education Complex, a set of six elementary, middle and high schools that have stood at the vanguard of the wildly popular small-schools movement.

Meanwhile, the property swap has inspired a healthy debate on the faculty list-serve. (The Hunter faculty was scheduled to have a meeting on the issue on Nov. 15.) Last month, for example, sociology professor Claus Mueller took a swipe at Ms. Raab, writing: “As with other Hunter College executive decisions lacking in transparency, the Julia Richman Education Complex project raises numerous questions and issues.”

The suspicious attitude towards Ms. Raab goes back to her hiring five years ago, when some professors objected to her lack of experience at educational institutions and her deep political connections. But the Julia Richman proposal has earned her allies as well, particularly among the science faculty. In a response to Mr. Mueller’s comments, Roger Persell, an associate professor of biology, called Ms. Raab’s management style “eccentric” and “difficult,” but he also gave her credit for bringing better science facilities further than anyone else has.

“There are complaints about every president,” Mr. Persell told The Observer in a follow-up interview. “She’s an extremely smart person and is very politically savvy, and she has an insight into the New York City community that none of the other presidents I have been under have had. I attribute the success she has had with this so far to her understanding of larger New York City issues.”

The private developer that bids on the one million square feet of development rights on East 25th Street would have to build a new campus for Julia Richman on the property, according to the city Department of Education’s instructions, and also accommodate the 600 dorm rooms that are currently there, either keeping them on the site or moving them elsewhere.

Many of the complex’s educators, parents, students and neighbors object that even if the new school building were state-of-the-art, the swap would put them in a worse location, obviate millions of dollars of renovations, and ruin an increasingly productive relationship with the community that had formerly called the building “Julia Rikers.”

A few hundred opponents of the school swap, more than half of whom were students, held a rally on Nov. 14 to block it from going through, marching the two blocks from the school complex, at 67th Street and Second Avenue, to the office of Ms. Raab, carrying a scroll that claimed that “thousands and thousands of JREC parents and neighbors” wanted to keep the school complex where it is.

“I think it’s unconscionable,” said Jane Hirschmann, who organized the rally and is the mother of three Julia Richman complex alumni. “We have built up these schools over the last 12 years and forged a really deep connection with the community. We have a list of community groups that have committed to our children’s well-being. We have at least two orchestras and one chorus that use our auditorium. Why would you want to destroy that?”

But the school complex is also just down the street from Hunter’s main campus. Hunter wants to replace it with up to 14 stories of classrooms and labs (and two stories for mechanical equipment) that would consolidate the science labs, now located elsewhere on the main campus, as well as the nursing, nutrition, physical-therapy classrooms and labs that are in Kips Bay.

Ms. Raab had been working on the swap for more than a year before news of it leaked out over the summer, but Hunter has long contemplated an upgraded science facility, and one is included in the City University of New York’s capital plan. The Governor and the State Legislature have already approved a $78 million allocation for Hunter’s planned new science building.

“The net of it will be that all of our science and health professional programs will be located in one new state-of-the-art facility with proximity to main campus,” said Meredith Halpern, a Hunter College spokeswoman. “The nursing students take English and history, and that’s all on the main campus, so they have to spend all of this time shuttling back and forth between the two campuses.”

The six schools at Julia Richman—which house 1,900 lower-, middle- and high-school students, largely draw from outside the neighborhood. The grade school, however, is geared to children whose parents work nearby—at Hunter, among other places—while others serve autistic children, immigrants, and students who transferred out of other schools because they didn’t fit in or had behavioral problems.

The city Department of Education is tentatively in favor of the swap, because it will produce a brand-new school at no cost, but it is still waiting to be convinced that Hunter will secure the money and the land-use approvals to make it all possible, according to Jamie Smarr, the assistant to the deputy chancellor for finance and administration.

“They are at a very preliminary stage. There is not a signed agreement. We have told Hunter, as we have told the community, that if Hunter can prove that the deal is financially feasible—that they can pay for the high school and deliver us a high school at no cost and obtain the land-use approvals—that we would be very interested,” he told The Observer. “What we have said is, this is not about what is going to happen to the school in the present. The question is what is the best facility for JREC for the next 75 years. Is it an 86-year-old building that will continue to have a host of maintenance issues, or is it a brand-new building that can be built to our specifications?”

While the new location would be less convenient by subway—one-third of a mile further away from the nearest station than the 67th Street location—Mr. Smarr said it would be acceptable because it was reachable by bus.

“Our concern, as it is with any new school, is whether we can site a new school on public transportation that is safe,” Mr. Smarr said. “Using that litmus test, the new location is acceptable.”

Mr. Smarr said the city also believed that the new location would have to be rezoned, which requires approval from the Planning Commission and the City Council. The proposed science building on 67th Street, however, could be built as-of-right, according to Ms. Halpern.

The very height of the science tower—even though it would scale down to 75 feet along the side streets—has engendered resentment among some Upper East Siders, who feel that their neighborhood is already a dumping ground for sprawling institutional complexes.

The new building, these residents were told at a community-board meeting this fall, will be used by 15,000 students, and neighbors are afraid they’ll overrun St. Catherine’s Park next-door.

“The neighbors are worried about the impact of a larger institutional presence,” said Lynn Love, a freelance science writer who lives across the street from the Julia Richman complex. “College students, for better or worse—we were all college students once—smoke a lot of cigarettes. They need some place outside where they can smoke, this being New York City, and what the community residents are facing is seeing this shared space cease to exist as such.”

Ann Cook, co-director of the Urban Academy, a 125-student high school housed in Julia Richman and an opponent of the swap, argues that it’s costing Hunter and the taxpayers who support city colleges potentially twice as much to execute the plan this way, rather than building up the Kips Bay campus, since Hunter will have to pay for both a new public-school complex and a new science building.

“The issue of expansion for all city colleges have been an issue,” Ms. Cook told The Observer. “The idea that Hunter, which has ownership of this property, would sell off valuable space—when in the future they will obviously need more space—doesn’t make sense to me.”

Hunter College jumps into real estate
Hunter College is getting into the real-estate business. College President Jennifer Raab wants to sell off the school's 3.5-acre Kips Bay nursing campus, near the recently sold Peter Cooper Village at 25th Street and the F.D.R. Drive, and build a 16-story building for science and health-professions programs at 67th Street and Second Avenue, closer to its overcrowded main campus on the Upper East Side. Go to the story by Matthew Schuerman

Artist's old Soho haunt sells for $9 million
When the 94-year-old painter Buffie Johnson, a stalwart of Abstract Expressionism, died this August, she left behind a three-story loft building at 102 Greene Street. Her estate listed the 8,968-square-foot place with Corcoran vice president Wendy Maitland for $8.5 million, and Ms. Maitland said this week that it's gone to contract for over $9 million. Go to the story by Max Abelson

Well, actually, there were only three candidates at the Hunter College event, as Freddy bagged it. And they just gave their stump speeches and answered questions. And, oh, Virginia didn't actually give a speech.

There were, according to the official WBAI estimate, a full 54 people in the huge auditorium. One of them left after a scuffle over his question about Tibet. (Anthony did get a chance to deny any link between the Jets Stadium and Chinese human rights violations.)

Giff cleared up one thing for us: "I don't think there is a proposal to build a nuclear facility in Brooklyn."

For N.Y.C.'s Perennial Protester

From Garfield merchandisers to the makers of hair-ball remedies, those with entrepreneurial flair have happily exploited the passion-some might call it insanity-of cat lovers. But few have done so as boldly, according to the NYPD, as a woman who was arrested at the corner of 86th Street and Second Avenue on Oct. 28.

The suspect had been manning a table at that location and asking people to sign a petition to help "homeless cats." Surely no one could condemn such a worthy cause. But there was a hitch: The woman wouldn't let passers-by sign the petition unless they first donated money to her campaign, according to the complaint filed by 14 men and women who were asked to pay the toll.

Several of the complainants also brought the situation to the attention of Police Officer Timothy Spies, whose foot post includes that area. To get to the bottom of the issue, Officer Spies did a little homework and discovered that the feline-loving organization the woman claimed to represent was nonexistent. "Homeless Cats is not a registered charity, nor is the defendant a registered lobbyist," explained a police official.

But that small detail didn't stop the suspect from carrying on her one-woman protest. "Upon asking for paperwork on the organization," the police complaint read, "defendant said she was not responsible for carrying any. Upon asking for address and phone number, she said there is no address and phone number because they are in the process of moving, but had no idea where they are moving to."

The cat champion continued her lobbying campaign at the 19th Precinct station house, where (no doubt prompted by the cops' unwanted attentions) she delivered a handwritten letter on lined yellow paper accusing Officer Spies of not being knowledgeable "of our First Amendment rights."

The suspect is not unknown to Manhattan pedestrians. Indeed, one might even describe her as something of a New York City landmark. For years, she has set up her folding table at different locations across Manhattan, including the southeast corner of 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, where she used to chain-smoke and rail against pornography with the memorable cry, "Fight back ladies! Sign the petition!" "Apparently the pornography didn't sell, so she became an advocate for homeless cats," explained a police official.

However, her landmark status didn't prevent the cops from arresting her at 6:50 p.m. on Oct. 28 for scheming to defraud the public.

Bromine Brouhaha

Chemical spills-not of the sort that make the evening news and cause Midwestern residents to relocate to shelters, but the kind that happen in high-school or college labs-don't usually require a response by police and firefighters. Then again, we live in strange times.

On Nov. 6, the police responded to just such a minor spill at Hunter College, at 695 Park Avenue. The incident occurred around 11:35 a.m., when a student working in a 14th-floor lab spilled one millimeter of bromine (a chemical element used in photography and for making dyes, among other things) and suffered a burn. The incident prompted a call to 911. The police responded and, in turn, summoned the Fire Department, which sent over a HazMat team.

The HazMat team evacuated the 14th floor while they inspected it. Traffic was blocked by fire and police vehicles on 68th Street between Park and Lexington avenues for approximately 20 minutes.

Hunter College personnel, while undoubtedly appreciative of all the attention, nonetheless informed the uniformed forces that "in the course of the school year, such small spills routinely occur and are cleaned without requesting the response of emergency personnel," according to the police.

However, the police replied-perhaps a tad defensively-that it wasn't the spill that caused them to scramble their troops so much as the report of injuries. The victim, an 18-year-old female Flushing resident, was removed to Lenox Hill Hospital, where she was treated.

Expensive Taste

"Casing the joint" prior to committing a robbery can rise to the level of art for some crooks. But few pull the maneuver as thoroughly or elaborately as the trio of crooks who visited Nelly's Fine Jewelry at 1718 First Avenue on Oct. 28.

The perps first visited the store about a week earlier to have two wedding bands and an engagement ring engraved-at least, that was the ruse. When they returned to pick up their valuables, one of the suspects, described as a 32-year-old male, tried to pay the $45 charge with $5 bills, of which he had many, a store worker told the police. Certainly, there's nothing wrong with currency in small denominations. However, the man returned about 15 minutes later with a woman and complained that the diamond on one of the rings had been scratched.

The two departed and then returned once again about two hours later; this time the man was carrying a 2- or 3-year-old child in his arms, griping again about the diamond and demanding that the ring be polished. They were told to return at 5:30 p.m. The real purpose of their visit, the staff would soon discover, was to scope out the layout of the place and determine the most opportune moment to attack.

At approximately 4:45 p.m., another male entered the store, asked to have a necklace polished, and was also told to return at 5:30. However, he was back about 10 minutes later, and not because he had a poor sense of time. He grabbed one of the employees around the neck, put a gun to her head and stated, "Don't look back. Don't move!" Then, apparently referring to her co-workers: "If they shout, I'm going to shoot you."

Right behind him was the man and woman who had been in the store earlier (though the baby was no longer on the scene). At that point, the woman went behind the counter and started putting jewelry into a bag-and not just the few trinkets they'd left to be polished. In all, they absconded with $500,000 worth of assorted jewelry before fleeing northbound on First Avenue in a blue sedan. Police canvassed the area, with negative results .

Ralph Gardner Jr. can be reached at rgard135@aol.com.

Mr.Clark, who is still a very new candidate, stopped his speech, joined the crowd surrounding the unconscious teenager and tried to help at one point by loosening the victim's belt. After an uneasy minute, and with emergency workers now seeing to the collapsed student, Mr. Clark turned back to the podium.

"I think he's going to be O.K.," he said. "He's got his eyes open. I don't know if any of you are veterans and have stood in parades, but they always told us, 'Don't lock your knees.' But this does happen. We're getting him the first-aid he needs, he's conscious and alert, and we'll get some folks up here to take care of him and help him up."

The crowd burst into applause at the announcement, but it wasn't clear how much of the relief was being expressed because of the healthy prognosis, and how much because of the way Mr. Clark handled the situation. (A minute later, the student revived and walked off the stage to more applause.)

Although the litany of miscues committed by Mr. Clark's young campaign have become standard boilerplate in the media's daily progress reports, none were apparent at Hunter College. (The fainting student represented about the only unscripted moment of the day.)

From a grassroots-dominated draft effort just weeks ago, the campaign's presentation has become increasingly organized and-at least outwardly-under control. The emerging pattern is to hew close to Mr. Clark's greatest strength and sole qualification for being President-his accomplished military career-while taking advantage of the newness of his candidacy to avoid uncomfortable specifics.

The event at Hunter College was a perfect example. Billed as part of a roll-out of substantive proposals, the event's only new policy announcement was a noncontroversial, feel-good idea that also served to call attention to Mr. Clark's military service. The program he announced was part of his plan to foster a "New American Patriotism" and called for the creation of a massive new volunteer corps.

"We'll call it a Civilian Reserve Corps," Mr. Clark said. "I'm offering to reinvigorate America's ethic of service, to tap our vast reservoir of skills, talent, generosity and energy and offer millions more Americans the opportunity to serve their community, country and international causes."

Whatever the merits of his proposal, such patriotically themed initiatives provide Mr. Clark with a strong vehicle for his candidacy, both by highlighting his biography and incorporating the most successful elements of some of his opponents' campaigns.

For example, any discussion of public service ties neatly into Mr. Clark's own story, the theme of which is his service in the Army from Vietnam through the Kosovo campaign in 1999. "It was my belief in service that led me to West Point," he said. "It was the year after John F. Kennedy admonished us to ask not what our country could do for us, but … what we could do for our country. I found the answer wearing the uniform of the United States Army. I went to Vietnam. I was hit by four rounds and came home on a stretcher. Others left the Army; I stayed in."

It also allowed him to discuss his own hard work and early poverty as a central part of his everyman appeal, much like John Edwards, who frequently talks about his background as the son of a mill worker, or Richard Gephardt, who often recounts the story of relying on government aid for the treatment for his ill son. "We had 20 jobs," said Mr. Clark. "We were always on the road …. It was a great standard of living, as long as you didn't value cash flow."

But his biggest applause lines were the ones that could have come straight from one of Howard Dean's rabble-rousing speeches, railing against the idea that liberals are unpatriotic. "This is a patriotism that recognizes that democracy demands dialogue," he said. "It demands discussion and disagreement and dissent. And there is nothing-nothing-more patriotic than speaking out, questioning authority and holding your leaders accountable, whether in a time of peace or a time of war." This line cued massive whoops from the gallery-where, moments earlier, 21 enterprising students stood in a row and held signs that spelled out "Columbia Loves Wes Clark"-and energetic applause from the rest of the crowd. (Among those in attendance were Representatives Charles Rangel and Steve Israel, and key donors like Jonathan Tisch and Victor and Sarah Kovner.)

"That line was really powerful," said Ms. Kovner after the event. "Coming from him, it has real meaning."

Mr. Clark is also borrowing quite liberally from one Democrat who isn't running this time around: Bill Clinton. It has been well documented that many of his current staffers are veterans of the Clinton-Gore campaigns. Mr. Clark's proposed program is itself more than a little reminiscent of AmeriCorps, one of the centerpieces of the Clinton administration's legislative legacy. This, too, is probably not a coincidence: Clark campaign chairman and chief executive Eli Segal was one of the program's great advocates in the Clinton administration.

"I think, in him, people see a lot of the strongest points of all the other candidates-whether it's the war record, or his struggles with money, or the fact that he can be a rabble-rouser," said New York City Councilman Eric Gioia, a former Clinton administration official who attended the speech but has yet to make an official endorsement. "He has had the benefit of playing Monday-morning quarterback, watching all the other candidates peak and fall over the last months, and now can cherry-pick from what worked best for them."

In his speech, Mr. Clark continued his direct attacks on the Bush administration, this time for failing to leverage the post–Sept. 11 surge of patriotism into increased public service, and for using the attacks to implement "tax cuts for the wealthy."

The general, who had a reputation in the military as a shrewd politician, is playing it safe. Judging by his standing in public polls, and by his fund-raising figures, it's a strategy that's working-at least for now. "He's painting with a broad brush, but as far as the public is concerned, he's still being introduced," said Mr. Gioia. "The real test for him is obviously going to be to show that he's more than just the composite candidate and that he's a real flesh-and-blood winner-that there's something there. For now, though, I'd say he's doing the right thing."

But forget careerism. The real it in "making it" is artistic maturity. When does that happen? The answer is, of course, variable. After visiting the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, which is hosting an exhibition of abstract paintings by Shirley Jaffe, I'd put the made-it age at about 79. This is a bit unfair to the artist: Ms. Jaffe, who was born in New Jersey in 1923 and has made Paris her home since 1949, achieved her signature style some time ago-far enough back to fill a spate of New York exhibitions in the late 1980's and early 90's, and before that she'd been exhibiting in Europe since 1959. But that was then and this is now: The paintings on display at de Nagy are fresher than fresh. Ms. Jaffe's pictures are quirky, clarified, buoyant and-dare one say it?-happy. They're unstoppable. I won't insult her by saying that she's got the get-up-and-go of a 22-year-old. Instead, I want to congratulate her on painting like an artist at the top of her form.

What's invigorating about Ms. Jaffe's art is its momentum. There's a boundlessness to how her clanky and calligraphic forms fracture, float, reconfigure and dance; this is an artist who puts oil to canvas like there can never be enough tomorrows. The influence of Fernand Léger, Stuart Davis, Henri Matisse, Hans Arp, Jean Hélion and, in the use of white as a compositional unifier, Piet Mondrian is plainly discernible in the paintings. What's thrilling is how Ms. Jaffe transmutes these influences into something utterly personal and decidedly contemporary. Just when you think you've got the pictures pegged, they go galumphing off on their own splendid tangent. Ms. Jaffe plugs into precedent and drags it in to the 21st century-not kicking and screaming, but fully and gratefully absorbed. That's why calling her a Modernist seems a bit off; she isn't history yet.

But neither is she a postmodernist: Ms. Jaffe is too forward-looking to give in to the easy gratifications of a dead-end aesthetic. So where does that leave us? With pictures as abrupt as a glance out the window of a moving car, as startling as a still-wet snarl of graffiti, as inevitable as the Venus of Willendorf. Ms. Jaffe is only human-some of the paintings are unfinished, others a tad slack. Yet all of them are of a piece, and three or four are just about perfect. Optimistic but not naïve, and traditional without being a stick-in-the-mud: Ms. Jaffe points to a way out of our seen-it-all, know-it-all, done-it-allcul-de-sac. She's one terrific painter.

Shirley Jaffe: Recent Paintings is at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, 724 Fifth Avenue, until Nov. 16.

Fascinated by Form

Strolling through the Hunter College Times Square Gallery, where a 20-year overview of abstract paintings by Doug Ohlson is on display, my thoughts turned to the current state of art education. This reflection was prompted not only by the exhibition's venue, but also by the fact that Mr. Ohlson was an instructor in the Hunter art department for close to 40 years. (He retired in 2001.) I have no idea how good a teacher he was, but I do know what he values as an artist; it's there to see in the paintings. Above all else, Mr. Ohlson prizes an art that appeals to the eye. The pictures-with their subtle and often striking shifts of value, tenuous harmonies and spaces given amplitude-are those of an artist fascinated by the free-standing possibilities of form. So what, I wonder, does Mr. Ohlson think when looking at the work of younger painters, many of whom have been schooled not in the verities of art, but in the elisions of theory? In all likelihood, he rues a generation rendered incapable of seeing . And what might that generation think of Mr. Ohlson's paintings? Not much, I'd guess: What he does is so far removed from their world that Mr. Ohlson may as well be from Pluto.

Hunter's 41st Street galleries are capacious-one can literally get lost in them. Mr. Ohlson, who likes to work on broad expanses of canvas, never once breaks a sweat filling the space. His pictures recall the glory days of Abstract Expressionism, Colorfield painting and, to a lesser extent, Minimalism: They're like artifacts from an era when there could never be enough paintings and no canvas could be big enough. Am I saying, then, that the work is dated? I would hate to; there's much to it that's worthy of praise. In their scale and ambition, they recall Barnett Newman (albeit without the portentousness) and, in their pictorial tension, Hans Hofmann. Mr. Ohlson doesn't have the latter's pluck, but his pictures are blessed with a palette particularly felicitous when predicated on finely tuned autumnal hues. His reliance on compositional formula homogenizes the pictures. But Mr. Ohlson can catch you up short, as he does in the wispy concordance of pink, blue, purple and orange in the middle section of Buff (2002), or when he makes light take a turn from somber to lurid to incendiary in the course of a single canvas. One is more likely to admire Mr. Ohlson's achievement than to delight in it. Yet its satisfactions are true and its lessons valuable.

Doug Ohlson: 20 Years of Painting, 1982-2002 is at the Hunter College Times Square Gallery, 450 West 41st Street, until Nov. 23.

Add to that the well-trafficked plaza in front of Hunter College at Lexington Avenue and 68th Street. It's an urban space at its most successful, with students coming and going to class, hanging out on the benches and flirting, and fruit and hot-dog vendors plying their wares. The plaza is also patrolled by the college's security guards, not to mention the cops from the 19th Precinct which, conveniently, happens to be located right around the corner on 67th Street.

In other words, it's not a great place to steal a bike, as one perp tried to do at 6:10 p.m. on Feb. 21. And it wasn't as if the bike in question had simply been abandoned there by some lackadaisical college student gone to class. It was locked to a bike rack in front of the school.

The thief, apparently either believing he'd be lost among the plaza's commotion or merely thinking himself one lucky dude, pulled out a bag of burglars tools and set to work in plain view of a police officer who was patrolling the area. The cop introduced himself and arrested the suspect, a 45-year-old resident of 2288 Second Avenue, for burglary.

These Seats Are Taken

Motorists with sufficient faith in humanity to park their cars on the streets of New York should be applauded. However, they also shouldn't be surprised if they return to their vehicles and discover a hubcap missing or even a bumper, radio, airbag or spare tire gone.

But the driver who returned to his 1999 Lexus at 9:30 a.m. on Feb. 23, no matter how street-smart, could be forgiven were he taken aback by what he discovered. The complainant, who was parked at Lexington Avenue and 87th Street and who'd just left his health club, opened the trunk of his vehicle and found it to be far roomier than he remembered.

After a moment, he figured out why: His two back seats were missing. The victim, who placed their value at $1,800, told the police he wasn't sure how they came to be gone, but he admitted that he may have left the back window open when he left his car.

Sweater Weather

One can certainly applaud the impulse not to toss a thief to the ground and stand on his larynx when you find him stealing from your store. On the other hand, you don't want to give him the impression that you're a pushover, as a security guard at Luca Luca, a boutique at 690 Madison Avenue, may have done on Feb. 8.

The guard had just returned from making a delivery at 6:50 p.m. when he spotted a shoplifter, a male approximately 25 years old, helping himself to a couple of the store's premium-priced sweaters and placing them under his coat. The guard apparently recovered the property but didn't take the logical next step, which would have been to sit on the perp's chest until the cops arrived. Instead, he let him and a young lady, with whom he was shopping or rather, shoplifting depart.

After they'd gone, one of the sales clerks took inventory and discovered that the suspects hadn't given up all their booty after being caught. Four sweaters were missing from the store's shelves, including two red Sbilenca sweaters valued at $690 each and two black Rosa sweaters priced at $620 apiece.

The perps fled in an unknown vehicle northbound on Madison Avenue.

Making Partner

Turnover is admittedly rapid in the information age, with few people surprised these days by reports of pedestrians traipsing in off the street at some dot-coms, claiming a desk and collecting salaries, pensions, bonuses and back rubs, even though nobody has ever seen them before.

However, even by those relaxed standards, the gentleman who visited a business at 770 Lexington Avenue on Feb. 23 didn't pass the smell test. One of the company's partners returned to the office around 2:40 p.m. and realized the front door was unlocked.

Upon entering the office itself and noticing the cabinets open, he assumed his fellow partners were inside. But he didn't recognize the individual he met there as one of those working to make the company grow.

The suspect, described as 27 years old, claimed to be cleaning and indeed he was, in a manner of speaking: He and an accomplice, who had apparently already departed, were cleaning the business out. The perp pushed past the victim with some sort of equipment in his hand. But then, thinking better of it, he dropped it, sprinted to the door and exited through the fire escape.

After he'd departed, inventory was taken and the company discovered it was missing several I.B.M. ThinkPads, the company's projector, a $150 gift certificate and a MetroCard. Perhaps because the date of the crime was a Friday, the perps were casually dressed: One was wearing a black baseball jacket while the other sported a military field jacket.