NYMysteries March 4 – March 10

Have you seen Abacus: Small Enough to Jail? It’s Steve James’s documentary about the only U.S. bank prosecuted in relation to the 2008 financial crisis. Cyril Vance, the Manhattan district attorney, made an example of the small Chinese bank, Abacus Federal Savings Bank run by the Sung family. Vance didn’t go after the big banks. After five years in court and ten million dollars later the Songs were exonerated.. It was nominated for an academy award for the best documentary feature.

On Wednesday I was supposed to go to a Juilliard event, Choose Your Own Adventure. A participant is given a choice of hour long classes such as Ballroom Dance, Alexander Technique, Drama Movement, Drama Voice. It was to be followed by a champagne reception. Wednesday was the day of our second blizzard and Juilliard wisely cancelled.. This is what occurred: watching a great morality play, I mean TV show, for the second time: Breaking Bad.

Graphic Lessons: Recent thirty-five-year-old widow Millie Fitzgerald applies for a private school teaching job, faints on a stabbed and dying man in the school kitchen, deals with the only witness to the stabbing – a troubled nine-year-old, develops a crush on a NYPD detective and her dog dies.

Graphic Lessons: Nine-year-old Dana is the only witness who overhears a person fighting with George Lopez, the soon to be stabbed Windsor School kitchen worker. Who can she tell? Her mother who never listens or accuses her of lying? Her father who’s started a new family in Singapore? She tells Millie.

Graphic Lessons: Something’s eating at NYPD Detective Steve Kulchek: a failed marriage? surviving a car bomb? his girlfriend marrying his corrupt boss? screwing up an important case? It doesn’t matter because he’s relentless.