It's Wednesday. Today we'll meet the sheriff who charged former Gov. Andrew Cuomo with a misdemeanor sex crime. We'll also see a piano that Thomas Edison sank his teeth into. |
 | | Patrick Dodson for The New York Times |
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Craig Apple Sr. — who as the sheriff of Albany County, N.Y., filed a criminal complaint against former Gov. Andrew Cuomo — is known among some fellow Democrats as the "Teflon sheriff" for navigating through trouble that might sink a less adept politician. |
But never has he found himself in water as rough as what he has had to traverse since he charged Cuomo with a misdemeanor sex crime in October. Three of my colleagues — Dana Rubinstein, Grace Ashford and Jane Gottlieb — write that Cuomo and his associates have dismissed Apple as a "cowboy sheriff" and accused him of harboring old grudges. Hoping to undermine Apple's integrity, they have also publicized an audio recording in which Apple was heard saying, "I know how to manipulate the law and I've gotten pretty good at it." |
The recording originally surfaced when Apple was running for sheriff in 2011. He sailed on to victory and has run for re-election — unopposed — not once but twice since. |
"I would say even Andrew Cuomo when he was on top of his game would find it difficult to discredit our sheriff," said Matthew Miller, a Democratic county legislator and high school biology teacher in Selkirk, not far from where Apple grew up. "He has a reservoir of good will." |
One reason is he has a progressive record that is unusual for a county sheriff. He turned a little-used wing of the jail into dormitory-style housing for homeless individuals and he arranged medically assisted treatment for inmates with opioid addictions. And as coronavirus cases exploded last winter, his office provided rapid Covid-19 tests and vaccines, a move he said was made possible by the "strong support of the governor's chamber" — when Cuomo was governor. |
The complaint against Cuomo was based on the account of Brittany Commisso, a former executive assistant to Cuomo. She was one of the dozen or so women whose accusations of sexual harassment against Cuomo formed the basis of a state attorney general's report that eventually led to his resignation in August — the same month in which she went to the sheriff's office. |
Cuomo's allies have suggested that Apple coordinated the timing of the charge with the state attorney general, Letitia James, who announced her candidacy for governor a day after the charge against Cuomo became public. No evidence of coordination has emerged. |
He has also faced criticism from the Albany district attorney, David Soares, who has yet to say whether he will prosecute the case. Soares — who sought and was granted a delay in Cuomo's arraignment, which was pushed to January — said Sheriff Apple had engaged in "troubling" investigative methods and hidden potentially "exculpatory" evidence. |
Apple denied speculation that submitting the criminal complaint without involving Soares was a move to force the district attorney to prosecute. |
"Listen, he's the district attorney, he can do whatever he needs to do on this case," Sheriff Apple said. "I mean, it's totally up to him. It's his prerogative. But I wouldn't say that I boxed him in. I think that's unfair." |
Expect a chance of rain and snow on a mostly cloudy day with temps in the low 40s. The evening will be cloudy with temps in the 30s. |
Suspended today (Immaculate Conception). |
Thomas Edison invents the sound bite |
 | | James Barron |
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Thomas Edison dreamed up all those inventions everybody knows about. He also devised a singular method of taking in the sound from his piano. He bit the instrument as it was being played. |
Edison was so deaf that he would put his mouth on the piano and chomp down. This let him feel the vibrations of the sound. |
He apparently left his marks on at least one of his pianos — a Steinway grand that he owned for not quite 40 years. It still has toothy little indentations. |
I remembered the story about gnawing the piano from "Edison," the biography by Edmund Morris that was published in 2019. "I hear through my teeth," Edison said. "I bite my teeth into the wood, and then I get it good and strong." Morris wrote that this was "difficult to do without slobbering" and that some of Edison's phonographs — he sank his teeth into them, too — "looked as if they had been savaged by an enormous rodent." |
 | | The toothy indentations in the wood of the piano.James Barron |
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Edison paid $725 for the Steinway, a Model B, in June 1890. Like many pianos from that era, it has only 85 keys. Steinway stopped making Model Bs with 85 notes in 1892, a year after it had added an 88-note version, the forebear of the Model B that is still in its product lineup. |
Edison's piano was sold in 1929 and changed hands a few times over the years. Its current owner — Robert Friedman, who after more than 40 years in the piano business calls himself "the Steinway hunter" — bought it in January, unseen, unplayed and unaware. |
It was unseen and unplayed because he was in Florida and it was in an estate sale on Long Island. |
He was unaware of how Edison had coped with his deafness. He knew only that the piano had once belonged to Edison — there was paperwork to establish its provenance. He said he paid just under $45,000 — far more than if its past had not included Edison, he said — and sent it to a piano technician in Yonkers, N.Y., to re-regulate the hammers, "to get it playing nicer." |
No one told him that the lock rail, the strip of wood above the keys, looked a bit battered. |
Friedman mentioned his purchase to his friend Charles Frommer, a musician and Edison aficionado who has a collection of Edison phonographs. When Frommer stopped by to tune it for Friedman, "he stood over the piano and he looked down and said, 'Those are Edison's bite marks,'" Friedman said. "It almost felt like Edison was in the room." |
I can't say that I felt Edison's presence when I visited Friedman the other day in New Paltz, N.Y., and asked if he had listened to the piano the way Edison did. He obligingly bit down after Frommer slipped a small piece of wood over the bite marks so that Friedman's teeth did not touch them. |
"I could feel the tone," Friedman reported after playing a few notes. He called the sensation "weird," saying it felt "kind of like your whole head was a tuning fork." |
Friedman has not had the bite marks tested for DNA — who knows if any of Edison's genetic material remains? |
But his wife, Ronnie Rosenberg-Friedman, had no doubts. |
"I used to be a dental hygienist," she said. "Those are definitely incisors." |
On a crisp Bronx afternoon, I prepared our 3-week-old son for his first neighborhood outing, nestling him in his carriage, swaddled in two blankets and a padded snowsuit with matching scarf and mittens. |
We shared the elevator down to the lobby with a neighbor who was meeting our son for the first time. The woman, herself a mother of three, smiled sweetly. |
"Your baby is too warm and overheated," she said. "At least take off one of those blankets." |
Imagining my baby sweating uncontrollably, I thanked the woman, took off a blanket and loosened his scarf. |
I had almost made it through the lobby to the front door when we encountered another neighbor. She smiled at my son, and then gave me a disapproving look. |
"Oh no, your sweet baby will freeze," she said. "He needs another blanket, and that scarf has to be snug around his neck!" |
Too stunned to reply, I smiled at her as the taxi she was waiting for pulled up. |
I looked at my baby sleeping peacefully, pushed open the lobby door and let the brisk, wintry-fresh air envelop us as we took our first stroll together. |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
Melissa Guerrero, Rick Martinez and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
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