Got some Syria's reservations?  

Check out George Packer on New Yorker's Daily Comment Blog. (link below).  Sums up the "Damned if we do, damned if we don't " nature of the situation.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/08/the-debate-over-intervention-in-syria.html

The once and future New York Champs-Elysees

Kicked my daily NY Times crossword habit (except Friday's) and now spend train time buried in a book and/or  looking out the window and watching The Bronx fly by lo these many moons past my formative years in that un-reformed borough.  But I'm sensing an imminent (economic climate permitting) rejuvenation of the oft  forsaken borough now that Brooklyn is pretty much Starbuck-ed out, and Staten Island remains just too inaccessible.  I can just see it ten years from now--  toddlers on Tremont texting on iPhones and the Grand Concourse,  grand once again. 

But Sunday NYT puzzle is still a weekly fix, so visited NYT crossword guru Rex Parker http://rexwordpuzzle.blogspot.com 

...for his analysis of last Sunday's doozy.  Relieved to learn that the wise and wily wordsmith did most of it while not knowing how the "Persons of Note" theme worked--which made me feel better despite the suspicion (verging on certainty) that sister Deb had it all figured it out after 
1. Across.  



Rex also made recommendation to check out: 
Andy Kravis, Cruciverbalist at Law 
http://cruciverbalistatlaw.blogspot.com

Andy makes puzzles and posts them in .PDF and .PUZ form for easy printing.  If Rex likes em, that's good enough for me. So I'm stocking up with a few and hoping Andy presents  challenges compelling enough to divert my attention from all those crumbling Bronx tenements just sitting there waiting for their chance at being re-born for the upcoming generation of Google Glass wearing Big Apple hipsters. 

The covers of this book are too far apart.

Ambrose Bierce 

Alternative book titles and covers 

(courtesy of K.B.  Thanks.)