But while the lawyers argued about Wall Street reform and the latest Supreme Court ruling, Mr. Weiss sat on a panel down the hall, speaking about his time in prison.
"We mostly agree that the global temperature is going up," says Mr Hall, speaking for the protest group he co-founded, Friends of Eden, Lakeland and Lunesdale Scenery (FELLS).
It, too, had a memorial, in front of which Mayor Hidalgo suddenly materialized again, walking, head lowered, from the direction of the concert hall, speaking quietly with her escorts until she disappeared down the barricaded Rue Oberkampf.
Mr. Hall, speaking at a breakfast meeting of the Defense Writers Groupp, gave no estimate of how quickly demobilization might start or of the eventual number of Guard members and reservists required for the stabilization mission in Iraq.
Over 15 years, she became a close confidante of Hall, speaking to him on the telephone early most mornings and supervising the casting for such significant productions as Pinter's No Man's Land (1975) with John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson, Ben Travers's Plunder (1976) and Howard Brenton's Weapons of Happiness with Frank Finlay and Julie Covington (1976, the first new play in the new building).
Charlotte Schram, the manager of the Denville Hall, spoke of her sadness at the news of her death.
I'm not sure that affirmative, confident, individualistic monuments, be they musical or, let's say, a new concert hall, speak to me about these complicated, uncertain times.
Annmarie Kilcline from Unite (which helped pay for the hall) spoke of 30 years of post-Thatcher struggle for decent jobs.
Mr. Weitz, whose terminal degree is a high school diploma from Erasmus Hall, speaks Hebrew and a bit of Farsi, and is fluent in wiseguy-ese.
