MICROSCOPIC MOMENTS

Raymond C. Murray, author of “Evidence from the Earth: Forensic Geology and Criminal Investigation” (Mountain Press), spoke last week at the CUNY Graduate Center. The author presented an overview of forensic geology and explained how the scientific study of rocks and minerals can aid in fighting crime.

He first offered a brief outline of famous figures who have contributed to the development of forensic geology. The person he supposed was founder of the field was Arthur Conan Doyle’s character Sherlock Holmes.

Many criminals seem to have been tripped up by rocks and soil which became evidence on their pants, boots, and shoes. One case Mr. Murray cited involved a woman convicted of murder after Benstonite clay was found on her boots. Such clay – unusual for the area – had lined a cow tank that she had fallen into.

Mr. Murray spoke of the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, killed on his yacht off the Irish coast. Two men who were arrested were found to have sand from the beach where the boat had been moored, as well as paint chips from the boat, on their persons.

Mr. Murray also recounted a case of a thrifty homeowner who had attended three sales when buying materials to insulate his attic. When his house was burglarized, the intruder had crawled through under those same eaves. A suspect was apprehended who had traces of itchy insulation from all three manufacturers on his clothing.

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PHENOMENOLOGICAL FUN

Josefina Ayerza, the editor of the journal “lacanian ink,” welcomed Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek at Deitch Projects in SoHo last week.

In his remarks, Mr. Zizek said he once asked scholars of German philosopher Martin Heidegger’s work to show him a single example of humor in all of that philosopher’s oeuvre. None could.

But Mr. Zizek said he found one example in a letter that mentioned French theorist Jacques Lacan. Heidegger had written that Lacan “has just become a psychiatrist” and added “a man who needs one.”

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LITERARY GEOLOGY

Two captivating exhibitions at the Center for Jewish History celebrate Nobel Prize-winning writer Isaac Bashevis Singer on the centenary of his birth. The first, presented by the Yeshiva University Museum, is called “Becoming An American Writer: The Life and Work of Isaac Bashevis Singer” and is a traveling exhibition from the Singer archive at the Harry Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas. The other show is called “The Family Singer.”

“Becoming an American Writer” explains how Singer’s papers arrived at the Ransom Center in December 1993 in 58 cartons: “The piles of papers had been lifted directly from the floor of his apartment into the cartons, along with books, magazines, crumbling newspaper clippings, photographs, academic regalia, award certificates, hundreds of bank deposit and withdrawal slips, video tapes, records – and a few surprises. As the collection was unpacked, things forgotten in the heaps of papers came to light. A pair of green socks. Double-edged razor blades. Allergy pills. A woman’s nylon stocking. A chunk of Sheetrock that had fallen into one of the heaps during a remodeling job and then was buried, unnoticed, by more papers. The collection seemed as much a geological sample as a writer’s files.”

Another part of the exhibition describes Singer’s involvement with fellow Yiddish writers in Poland during the 1920s. Singer participated in the Association of Jewish Writers and Journalists (later called the Yiddish P.E.N. Club after accreditation by P.E.N. in 1926), where issues of the day were debated and lively discussion ensued over literature and arts.

As Singer remembered in 1943, the group had colorful figures, including the following new arrivals: “A regimental colonel and government rabbi whose ritual fringes stuck out from under his uniform; a young man who had written an encyclopedia on his own and who had entire sacks filled with manuscripts; a poor woman who wrote refined pornographic poems; and a man who took out an ad in the papers on the eve of every festival, claiming that the coming of the Messiah had been revealed to him. There were Hebrew teachers who spent hours arguing over points of grammar; a Bundist who once had to eliminate a stool pigeon and who never stopped conducting conspiracies; a Jew who bathed in winter, ate only vegetables, and believed in Jesus; and a librarian familiar with every cranny of world literature who nonetheless could not believe — did not want to believe – that there was such a thing as a literature in Yiddish.”

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TWO MONTICELLOS

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Judge Judith Kaye, Rabbi Marc Angel, and others spoke at a recent event at Congregation Shearith Israel on religious freedom in America.

After reference was made to Monticello, President Jefferson’s home in Virginia, Judge Kaye humorously mentioned that she was born in Monticello, N.Y. She added that she was, of course, sure that Jefferson never knew about this community north of New York City.

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PATRIOTIC SALUTE

At a special “on the record” session at the Council on Foreign Relations, author Joseph Persico spoke recently about his new book “Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour: Armistice Day, 1918, World War I and Its Violent Climax” (Random House).

The audience laughed when Mr. Persico told how on the day of Armistice, Enrico Caruso stepped onto the balcony of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Midtown to sing a “Neapolitan-accented version of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner.'”

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KNICK-KNACK

A former captain of the New York Knicks, Willis Reed, is flying to New York Monday from New Orleans, where he is the vice president of operations for the New Orleans Hornets. Mr. Reed will be in town to help his friend George Kalinsky promote his book “Garden of Dreams: Madison Square Garden 125 Years” (Stewart Tabori and Chang)…

The chancellor at City University of New York, Matthew Goldstein, and famed labor mediator Theodore Kheel, who also serves as president of Nurture New York’s Nature, are announcing today a strategic alliance to promote the protection of urban ecology. They will establish a new institute at Queens College…

Rhode Island School of Design awarded Lucy Lippard its Athena Award for excellence in art criticism. RISD gave Christo and Jeanne-Claude its Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf Award…Mira Jedwabnik Van Doren, who is working on a film about Vilna, was among those at a reception celebrating the publication of Dovid Katz’s book “Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish” (Basic Books)…

The Brooklyn Historical Society has an exhibition titled “Beauty Suspended: The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge Turns Forty,” which will run through March 20. At a recent press conference, a curator quoted the initial cost of the bridge. “So,” one attendee quipped, to attendee laughter, “quite a bit less than the renovation of the Museum of Modern Art.”