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Newark USA

A fotojournal about LIVING in Newark USA, New Jersey's largest and most cultured city, by the author of the foto-essay website RESURGENCE CITY: Newark USA.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Maplewoodstock Pix

I ventured the 3.1 miles from my house in Vailsburg to Memorial Park in Maplewood this evening to catch the end of Maplewoodstock 2009 and to meet local artist Nancy Tobin, if her booth was still going. It was. Here, you see her smaller jewelry and magnet items on offer.

It was easy to spot her booth because of her distinctive paintings, and it was situated not far from where I entered the park. I asked if she had been there since 1pm, the start time, and she said, no, actually she had been there since 11am, as well as the day before! She suspected she'd need to rest much of Monday, if her children (12 and 16) would let her. I told her she should just tell them to let her rest, and they'll do it, because children are obedient — except maybe a 16-year-old. She said she'd never taken a booth before, and it went well. She apparently met quite a few new people, and presumably some friends and neighbors stopped by. Here she waves cheerfully to someone.

There were a bunch of other vendors, some of whom had already left or were leaving as I arrived. I saw lots of arts and crafts, but no food. Perhaps there had been food vendors but they'd already left by the time I arrived, 8:15pm.

The people from the Mona Lisa booth had brought a mattress to rest on during breaks in their long day.

Their booth was for art and framing.

This booth sold African art. The man on the right was playing a drum, literally working to
drum up business.

This tented booth housed a caricaturist, something I have looked for but not yet seen in Newark street-fair type events. That artist, Michael Arnold, is from Maplewood and has a
website with samples of his work. (Later, as I was leaving at the end of the event, I overheard him say that he was busy to the very end, when he had to stop because he couldn't see (there were no lites except in the stage tent))

A slope within Memorial Park forms a natural amphitheater for the musical performers, which at that point in the festival was a group called "
The 'The Band' Band", a tribute to the mainly (four-fifths) Canadian musical group "The Band". You wouldn't think the original group Canadian (one American out of five) in that their music has a distinctly Southern sound, and one of their best-known hits is "The Nite They Drove Old Dixie Down". But it was. Here's a wide view, that shows the nearly idyllic setting.

This foto may give a better sense of the slope.

This closer view of the stage shows the massive speakers on both sides.

And here's the band (well, actually, that should read "Here's 'The "The Band" Band'").

The crowd was less diverse than one might expect from Maplewood's
demographics (33% black, 59% white, 5% Hispanic). Perhaps that was a function of the type of music played.

Naturally, being surrounded mainly by white people doesn't bother me, and those black people I did see didn't seem concerned at being a distinct minority. Perhaps the music earlier in the event had attracted more black people, but a quick look at the
online schedule shows few black performers. This would seem the flip side of some NJPAC outdoor concerts (Thursdays from 5-10pm), which are a bit lacking in white performers. I suppose it's hard to strike the right balance, city to suburb, that makes everybody comfortable and gives everyone something to their taste, but I doubt I'm alone in wishing everyone would try a little harder to achieve that balance.

I don't know what this was, but it was colorful and vaguely interesting.

One advantage, fotograffically, of arriving late in the day is that I got to show the event in different liting conditions. Here, a little boy in the foreground has just released a football he was throwing to a grown man, probably his father or an uncle. This kid was pretty good, with a spiral that was if anything better than the man's. They played catch until it was really too dark to see the ball.

I did not get a picture that included a little girl playing with a very small dog of a type I didn't recognize. I asked her what it was, and she said Shih Tzu, but it was short-haired. I see from Wikipedia that sometimes the dog's naturally long fur is trimmed short "to simplify care".

And, as the sun fades in the west, we bid a fond farewell to Maplewoodstock.

The emcee in his closing remarks said to those of us not familiar with Maplewood that there's a nice little downtown beyond the railroad station (which is right across a park roadway from the festival), so I drove thru it on the way home but was disinclined to park and take pix. I'd done enuf walking for the moment, and I still haven't been able to have the latch on the driver's side door of my car fixed, and didn't care to climb over the center console again quite yet.

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Live Poison Ivy, Dead Tree

Long post, over 3,000 words, with 15 fotos. Feel free just to check the pix.

My yard has in recent years been deeply invaded in more than one area by a botanical devil, poison ivy in its vining and shrubby forms. As a vine, it falls from neighboring properties partway down a rock wall and over an adjoining brick wall.

I have left it there as a passive, biological security system that might have some effect on people who know the expression, "Leaves of three, let it be". There is an apocryphal tale about a second use that preservative lacquer applied to temple valuables might have served, as deterrent to thieves:
When the Japanese restored the gold leaf on the golden Temple in Kyoto, they painted the urushiol lacquer on it to preserve and maintain the gold. Guess you could say that you would be caught red handed if you stole it.
The name of the irritant in poison ivy (urushiol, pronounced (y)oo.rúe.shee.yòl) does come from Japanese. The English expression "red-handed", however, is thought to derive from the image of a murderer found with blood on his hands. I prefer the less gruesome image of a rash.

Four types of vines grow in this area of my yard, on or near a brick wall up to the yard behind: Virginia creeper, English ivy, wisteria, and poison ivy. The houses behind mine front on Sanford Avenue, the dividing line between Lower Vailsburg (a reference to altitude) and Upper Vailsburg. Those yards are a little higher than mine, but still in Lower Vailsburg.

In its shrubby form, the poison ivy took over a flat part of my backyard about 10 feet wide by 15 feet long. The taller stems reached some two feet off the ground, and the vining portion nearby had climbed up a tree and a fence for several feet, before I ripped it off.

I see at least two other small areas of poison ivy, widely separated, that I still need to attack. I have underutilized much of my yard, for discounting the small spaces. But given how many flowering plants grow in other small areas of the little yards on all four sides of my house, I now realize I can make very good use of this freed-up space once I decide what I want to put there.
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Urushiol is oily, so does not rinse off with plain water. It can be dissolved in rubbing alcohol or broken up by soap or detergent, but washing with mild soap may spread it around as much as destroy it. When I was a child, I was susceptible to the usual rash, which sets in, a day or two after exposure, and typically lasts 10 to 14 days but can last as long as four weeks. In my teens, I became immune. But I'm not presently immune. Still, I preferred to work with gardening gloves on but without long sleeves, in order not to risk spreading urushiol to other garments (e.g., underwear) in the washing machine, and I didn't want to run the machine just for a shirt and pants. So I've got a rash, mainly on my right forearm.
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When I was in East Orange General Hospital after my first knee surgery, a nurse (nurse's aide?) told me a trick she learned from her mother, about alleviating an itch without damaging the skin, by rubbing an itchy area with a piece of cloth rather than scratching with fingernails. It worked pretty well (tho perhaps one doesn't get the full emotional satisfaction of ripping away with fingernails — then regretting the injury that that does), so I said something like "Smart woman, your mother", by which I meant to imply "and dauter too". That was, alas, exactly the wrong thing to say to that particular young woman, who distinctly did NOT see that compliment as extending to her too. She remarked something like, "That's what she thinks too", and I didn't pursue it. You never know what will set somebody off.
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I left a small area of poison ivy undisturbed, to serve as root stock for a botanical fence. Part of the wooden fence between my yard and that of the four-family apartment house nextdoor (which is down several feet from my yard, since I'm on a slope) fell down.

There's a wide gap in my fence beyond these planter benches. You can see a standing portion on the right, which is currently held up by a rope around a tree with some poison ivy still on it, but I have looped some wisteria vines around the fence in the hope that as they grow, the woody stems will hold that fence portion in place and I can then remove the rope.

Rather than try to put the fallen sections or a replacement fence up, I'm going to use some of the dozens of rose of Sharon saplings in the yard, closely-spaced, to create a formidable hedge, and twine poison ivy along the property line as well. The ivy might spread on the ground and climb the roses of Sharon as well. That may seem hostile to the neighbors, but someone stole my patio table last year (the year before? in any case, the third year it was on the patio) after part of the fence fell, so people could see that that $200 metal-mesh table was just resting on the concrete pad that serves as my patio (padio? — the floor of a one-time pigeon coop that was demolished long ago), without a chain or bolts into the concrete. I suspect workers who were doing roofing nextdoor, or guests of residents, rather than my neighbors themselves. In any case, I'll create a flowering hedge reinforced by poison ivy. Good fences make good neighbors. And good neighbors won't get red hands.

This is one of the fallen fence sections, with poison ivy growing up between the slats. This is close to where the fence gap is, so I can trail the poison ivy vine along the fenceline from here, or simply transplant entirely. I suspect that this hardy weed doesn't need to be handled delicately in transplantation.

I initially left a bit of vining poison ivy on the front of this tree, tho I removed it from the back, but I don't think I need it for the botanical fence so will remove it.

Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) is a treelike shrub that in my yard has already reached perhaps 13 feet in height and produces bell-shaped flowers some 3 inches wide and deep. The bulk of the flowers in my yard are purple, but I've seen some white ones as well, in the neighborhood if not in my own yard. I would check the yard now except that the shrubs don't begin to bloom till later this month. I see from Wikipedia that the flowers are edible! I should check out recipes for these flowers, as well as for other things that grow wild in my yard, such as dandelion (leaves and flowers) and green onions. Given the state of the economy and how little Social Security pays, this could work out.

It's hard for two-dimensional cameras to distinguish among things at different depths, so it may not be clear from this foto where the roses of Sharons that flank the back gate to my car end and the trees beyond begin, but there are two r.o.S. treelike shrubs in this foto, about 13 or 14 feet tall. There are also dozens of rose of Sharon saplings and some pre-bloom 'weedflowers' in the foreground.

Last year (year before?) I also placed two rose of Sharon saplings at the curb. One died, and someone (presumably kids) stripped the leaves and ripped the top off the other. It hasn't fully recovered.

Here's the surviving r.o.S. at my curb. Note the sudden, dead end of the center stem/trunk, where someone broke it off. The sidewalk, by the way, is slate, not cement, and the plant is about 3 or 3½ feet tall at present. I want to plant at least one more r.o.S, at points where the doors of cars parked at the curb would not swing into them. Most houses in this neighborhood have their own driveway and a tree out front, but there is still room for at least one rose of Sharon as well.

I intend to replace the r.o.S. that died, leave the one that is recovering, and perhaps use a third to replace the yellow-flowering tree at the curb that died, if the City does not itself replace street trees but would let me cut down that dead tree and substitute a rose of Sharon. I don't know what these trees are, but you can see one in bloom in the foto below, across the street from my dead one. A rose of Sharon would be as tall as the dead tree.

I have so many rose of Sharon seedlings of varying heights that if the neighbors wanted to put them at the curb between the trees to give a uniform flowering look to the entire block, they could. And each throws hundreds of seeds a year. I've got the seedlings if they've got the will to plant. Indeed, there's a house around the corner on 18th Avenue that has a white-flowering r.o.S. (with deep pink interior). The owner probably also has dozens of seedlings coming up that he doesn't have room for, so we could alternate white and purple-flowering roses of Sharon, and cross-pollination might thereafter produce interesting variations in seeds that could be planted elsewhere all over the city. Rose of Sharon is practically a weed, so hardy is it, and at 13 feet is tall enuf to hide ugly industrial sites behind greenery and huge, gorgeous flowers thru the whole of mid- to late summer. We could line every street in Newark with treelike flowering shrubs that produce purple, pink, or white flowers, with contrasting colors around the stamen, in less than 10 years.

Canopy of my nextdoor neighbors' tree (I don't know if the whole of this very long block (1,000 feet) has these yellow-flowering trees, but my portion of the block does), seen from my third-floor window. I think yellow-flowering trees are fairly unusual, and trees that flower after they have thrown leaves are also unusual, so whatever they are, they may be doubly unusual.

In any case, this next foto shows shows how large the yellow-flowering trees can get. Ideally, I'd like the City to replace my dead tree with a healthy specimen of the same type. But if they would charge me to cut it down, cart it away, excavate a hole, and drop a new tree in its place, I'll pass. I wonder what City department I should contact to ask about this, and if I can lawfully cut down this dead tree and replace it, on my own, with a rose of Sharon.

When I lived in Manhattan, I thought about trying to form a nonprofit organization to be called "Trees Please", that would collect self-seeded quality trees, including flowering varieties, from yards where they were in excess (I rip up dozens of maple, wild cherry, and oak seedlings every year, lest my yard be completely overgrown in forest), grow them to good size in vacant lots, then put them into treepits at the curb all around NYC, from the understanding that greenery soothes people and contributes to purifying the air and making a city more livable. I didn't get around to it then, and when I moved to Newark I saw how green it is in most places, so thought it unnecessary here. But to the extent that there are parts of Newark (or other nearby towns and cities) where trees (and large shrubs), especially of flowering varieties, are in short supply, such a project might be worthwhile even here.

And here's the view of that tree from my porch. I am so glad I didn't settle for a house without a porch. In warm weather, I can sit in the sun. Around Christmas, I can put a plastic penguin and internally-lited snowman on the porch as winter decorations.

Indeed, it occurs to me that biomass furnaces that can burn fallen leaves, twigs, and branches as much as harvested branch and trunk wood, could fuel at least major buildings that house governmental and corporate entities. Newark's land area and native soils can grow HUGE amounts of biomass for such use. How do I know? Because I have had to hack down and rip out enormous masses of unwanted plant growth to make my property — my little eighth of an acre — orderly. (By the way, I recently learned that an acre, theretofore a nearly meaningless term for me in that I have never been a farmer, is nearly the size of a football field without the end zones (91%).
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In any case, given how much rain we receive in a typical growing season, and the length of the growing season in our hardiness zone (6b), we could grow an awful lot of biomass each year for conversion to energy in the winter. So a Newark "Trees[,] Please" might be reconceptualized as a "Trees — Don't Freeze" project.

Self-seeded mimosa (?) in my backyard. It hasn't flowered yet, so maybe it's not a mimosa, but it's very pretty anyway. Unfortunately, it is growing too close to the chain-link fence and may grow thru it in time.

I have in my yard an extraordinarily fast-growing type of tree with very soft wood. Someone suggested to me that it might be ash, but I don't know for sure.

Whatever it is, it grows very, very FAST, right here in Newark. If the biomass that such extremely fast growth produces stores large quantities of heat energy that could be liberated in a biomass furnace, we might very well be able to cut energy costs in Newark's schools and other governmental installations.
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Indeed, with some "cold-frame" style greenhouses under geodesic domes/vaults (that is, with no artificial heat sources, just the sun thru clear glass or plastic), Newark might become an "urban forest" with only a redirection of water that falls onto the dome into storage containers from which to water the interior. Newark's urban forests might even in time produce quality hardwoods for furniture and other high-end uses, not just biomass for furnaces.
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Too many people view everything in "either/or" or "Them/Us" terms. Wiser, older people have learned, thru the course of their complicated and nuanced lives, to see the world in "both/and" or "Them-plus-Us" terms. It's not just Newarkers who have learned this indispensable lesson from life. The United States overall is the quintessential Land of Both/And. We have quarts of milk but liters of soda; ounces for meat in recipes but cc's for dosages in medicine. Outsiders sometimes wonder how we can possibly cope with such a dizzying array of measures — but not with the metric system, systematically. We know liters and cc's but not decaliters or square kilometers. Live here awhile, and you learn how Americans see things: different things take different measures. So, just as you don't judge a fluid by the measures of a solid, you don't quantify gems the way you dole out medication, or measure the temperature outdoors in the same way as you measure the capacity of an air-conditioner indoors. To each thing its own measure. Sounds absurd, and it is complicated. But it may well be that coping with a chaos of measures attunes us to the differentness of each distinct type of thing, which makes us more flexible mentally and more tolerant sociopolitically. Maybe.
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Americans in general and, I hope, Newarkers in particular, do not need external justification to act. The United States is noted, among the nations of the world, for the initiative of its citizens, who spontaneously form uncountable thousands of organizations to address specific problems — local organizations for local problems, wider organizations for wider problems. And we always communicate what we have done to other people, in the hope that we might help others accomplish what we have managed to accomplish, or that we might find solutions elsewhere that have heretofore escaped us here. Urban forests? Ridiculous? Or great good sense? Edible flowers (other than broccoli, cauliflower, and other flowerheads we use as vegetables) — insane or the best of both worlds, esthetic and nutritional? In World War II, millions of Americans grew "Victory Gardens" to ease the strain on the agriculture industry in trying to supply both the troops at the front and the people back home. Now we have other challenges, such as living within our economic and environmental means. Urban gardening and urban forestry might contribute to meeting those challenges.

The mimosa (or whatever) is dwarfed by evergreen bamboo beyond, which started as one stem about 3 feet tall and its roots and has now taken over the fenced-in area in my backyard. It's probably 15 feet tall now. I am going to cut some canes to use to train vining plants elsewhere in the yard, but bamboo has many uses and grows fast. I got the one cane from a homeowner on 18th Avenue perhaps 5 years ago. Look at the stand of canes now. The dauter wanted to get rid of much more of it, but her father (who is from Puerto Rico) loves it. So she asked her son to separate a bit to give to me. That's Newark neighborliness! Some bamboos won't survive a Newark winter, but this one does, tho some leaves turn brown. You can see a stand of it in Branch Brook Park along the park drive approaching Bloomfield Avenue. I'm reminded by a Wikipedia article that bamboo shoots are a significant food source in East Asia. I don't know if the bamboo in my yard is suitable for such a purpose, but it bears investigation.

Urban farms and forests would not replace rural farms and forests, merely supplement them. In WWII, American farms did not stop producing vegetable, meat, and dairy products for the domestic market just because Victory Gardens sprang up everywhere. We are not an all-or-nothing society. We are an every-little-bit-helps society. Newark, at its current size (it needs to grow, geographically), can make an impression upon outsiders only by doing things that are striking in conception and brilliant in execution. Can we contribute, in any meaningful way, to the solution of vexing national problems of environmental devastation in an age of privation? Every vacant lot turned into a vegetable garden, biomass production station, or hardwood mini-forest is a good thing that didn't exist before. No one brick built Brick City, but Brick City exists, because many different people piled brick upon brick, higher and higher, to create the signature buildings of Newark's skyline. There IS no one solution to the biggest problems, only multiple solutions effected by the efforts of innumerable people. Some of those efforts are for pay, as an occupation. Others are hobbies. But others are selfless exertions to make a difference, not to become famous — for themselves or their city. We do what we do — not "what we can". We do what we do, for our own reasons. Cynics observe that there is no such thing as a selfless act, because we get a kick out of each "selfless" act, so get payback. OK. We can concede that. But that only takes us back to the Both/And nature of American society at its quintessential best: we work for the greater good and get a feeling of accomplishment and self-worth from it. Where's the harm?
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Almost everything that ever happened to any American place has happened to Newark. We were farmland. We were factories. We were urban unrest. We were confrontation and recrimination. We were reciprocal indignation about unfair counter-victimization, in which people who had nothing to do with the injustices of the time suffered violence, looting, and arson. We were massive white flite, and now are timid white return. Newark is college town, art gallery, performing-arts amphitheater. "Washington slept here" — he really did. And now a Frenchman who goes by the name of "AK Airways" installs enormous artworks in
Rupert Ravens Contemporary gallery and hundreds of the best people in world arts discover that Newark has become a major regional and international arts hub, a place that, before long, every artist who aspires to international renown will HAVE to show in, to be taken seriously.
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Newark never was as bad as people think. Will it be as good as I would like to think? We shall see.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Maplewoodstock 2009 this Weekend

Nancy Tobin, a Maplewood artist who exhibits in Newark (among other places), alerted me to an event this Saturday and Sunday from 1:00 to 9:00pm in her 'burb, which adjoins my part of town (Vailsburg), "Maplewoodstock". Its website describes it as a "peace, music & arts festival". The hippie-sounding title is reinforced by hippie-style graffics at the website. I am old enuf to have gone to Woodstock, but am very glad I did not. The hippie era was not a time of "peace and love" but pro-Communist agitation and drugs that killed a lot of people, here and abroad. I hope the Woodstock tie-in is only a playful use of the "wood" part of "Maplewood". I don't expect to see hordes of zonked-out, naked hippies rolling orgiastically in the mud as in the original Woodstock, which took place 40 years ago this August.
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Here's their poster, which I assume they will not object to my showing here, since it will give them a little publicity. (But of course if they do object, I'll remove it.)

Nancy Tobin will have a
booth in the vendors area. The festival takes place in Memorial Park, Maplewood, on the other side of Valley Street about a half mile south of Columbia High School. Here's a sample of her work (the painting on the right), as seen at Rupert Ravens Contemporary the nite of the Glocallynewark.com launch party. The sculpture on the left is by (Ms.) Les Ayre.

Nancy writes a feature about the arts "
West of Chelsea", that appears in the group blog on the New York Times's blogsite, "The Local" for South Orange, Maplewood, and Millburn.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

Tonite's 'Sounds of the City' Program

NJPAC's outdoor summer concert series continues tonite.

FREE music performances in NJPAC's Theater Square! Tonight's performance features DJ Adam Cruz, who spins a blend of jazz, funk, Latin, and house music; NJ-based singer, songwriter and pianist Jodelle, whose CD The Adventures of Jodelle was recently selected by Performing Songwriter Magazine as one of its “Top 12 DIY Picks”; Heritage O.P., an acoustic percussion and vocal ensemble that fuses the cultural traditions and diasporal rhythms of Africa with African American and modern musical trends, and positive lyrics designed to uplift and inspire; and Zozo Afrobeat, a 13-piece ensemble led by African music luminary Kaleta, a singer, dancer and multi-instrumentalist whose songs are performed in Yoruba, Goan, Fon, and French.

Sounds of the City begins at 5:00pm and ends at 10:00pm.

I tracked down websites for more info about the performers and samples of their music.

Fotos today are of Downtown, not far from NJPAC, at nite. This first shows the illuminated top of the National Newark Building (744 Broad Street; "744", for short) and part of the lited side of 1180 Raymond Boulevard, on the right, seen from the corner of Commerce Street and Commerce Court.

Jodelle's own sites: http://www.jodelle.net/jodelle.html and http://www.jodelle.net/alternate.html
MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/jodelle (site plays some of her music
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jodelle/14617525121
Last.fm:
http://www.last.fm/music/jodelle
Pandora.com:
www.pandora.com/music/artist/jodelle (samples are supposed to play but did not work for me)
iLike.com:
www.ilike.com/artist/Jodelle (several samples)
YouTube:
www.youtube.com/espionnerecords
GarageBand.com:
http://www.garageband.com/artist/jodelle

Here, you see the round enclosures for the floodlites that illuminate the entire height of 1180 from above the first setback.

Heritage O.P. (Organic Percussion): http://www.heritageop.com/
CD Baby:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/heritageop2 has samples ("Play all songs (broadband))"
Rhapsody:
http://www.rhapsody.com/heritage-op/heritage

In this foto, 1180 appears beyond the steel boxwork of a car lift that allows three vehicles to be parked in one space.

Zozo Afrobeat's own site: http://zozoafrobeat.com/live/
MySpace:
http://www.myspace.com/zozoafrobeat
CD Baby:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/kaleta2

Here, you can see a clear view of the top of 1180 on the left, directly, and a distorted reflection from the mirror-glass surface of the PSE&G Building on the right, as seen from Raymond Boulevard.

DJ Adam Cruz on MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/cruzadam [froze AOL on me, twice, but music continued to play, and AOL eventually unfroze, after several minutes and my calling up Task Manager. ¡Ten cuidado!]
DeepHousePage.com:
http://deephousepage.com/forums/member.php?u=37036

And here you see one of the ornate, elegant entrances to 744.

Adam Cruz (Bloomfield) and Jodelle (??) are apparently from NJ; the others, from NYC. If the weather, which was cloudy earlier today, holds, I may get to this tonite.

Saturday, July 04, 2009

NBC on Newarkers 'Making a Difference'

Each Friday, NBC Nitely News broadcasts a segment called "Making a Difference" (pair to ABC's "Person of the Week", shown around the same time, the end of the half-hour evening broadcast). Yesterday, a preview before a commercial break showed a scene that looked a lot like Newark's ubiquitous new housing, so I checked back after the break. Sure enuf, NBC reported on three principals of a Newark development firm that recently completed five new two-family homes in the West Ward, "affordable homes, marketed to police, nurses, teachers — residents who are the city's lifeblood". The 2 minute and 22 second video is currently online (after a brief commercial), but I don't know how long it will remain online, so you dasn't dally.
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The report, by Ron Allen, says that assistance with down-payments is provided by a nonprofit organization, but a sign on a chainlink fence for
The Community Preservation Corporation is on view only instantaneously; I was able to read it only by Pausing the video. Then I could look it up online to show a link to it here.
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The three young men are named in the report: Jeff Montgomery, Victor Baker, and Hassan Keith. That allowed me to find their company,
Mid-Atlantic [Investment] Alliance (the website shows "Investment" in the title bar and at various points in the text, but not in the large-type logo on the main screen). That website shows that the college at which the reporter says they met twenty years ago was Rutgers. Newark? Or New Brunswick? The Mid-Atlantic website doesn't say. One imagines R-N. That site also uses the term "infill", which may be the term I remembered as "backfill", for building in vacant spaces within old towns rather than sprawling out onto undeveloped land. Either term makes sense, linguistically, and both make better sense politically, economically, and ecologically than continuing to ravage the countryside when we have building sites available in areas that long ago were very well provided with all the infrastructure needed for housing and businesses.
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One of the principals of this infill-housing venture was born in Buffalo, the other two in Newark. Baker's family might have carried him with them in a move to NJ when he was a child., but perhaps he, individually, moved here after he found he really liked it, while attending college. We can expect a lot of current Rutgers-Newark students to move here after graduation too, if we can provide the housing and youth-culture excitement they crave. I was surprised, in checking Dictionary.com to make sure that "Buffalonian" is correct (it is; are you surprised that I'd be correct? But I still check, even when I'm fairly sure), that
Buffalo's population is now substantially less than ours! And if the Mid-Atlantic group and other developers keep building fine new houses, Newark's population will continue to grow by addition of good people.
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The NBC report was a tad less positive than I'd have liked. Ron Allen described Newark as "a tuf city", and not in the flattering sense of ambitious and self-assured, able to overcome all obstacles. Further, one of the principals says he knows what Newark's reputation is, but instead of saying that that reputation is out-of-date and largely wrong now, he says merely that if we who are from here don't work to improve things, who will?
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Still, Newark gets so few even vaguely favorable mentions in major media that we have to be grateful for this report. Maybe the report will itself "Make a Difference" to the perception of Newark elsewhere in the Nation.

The description that comes up alongside the video when you hover the cursor over the thumbnail about this report reads:
In one block in Newark, N.J., affordable homes now stand in place of vacant lots, thanks to a group of entrepreneurs hoping to change a neighborhood and make a difference.
What block might that be? I heard "South 9th Street", then found an address (#78) for one of the buildings on the Mid-Atlantic website, then Mapquested it. See all the work I do to find these things for you? It turns out to be little more than one block from the abandoned United Medical Center/NJ Children's Hospital site.
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Coincidentally, Joan Whitlow of The Star-Ledger today wrote about
that complex in a column that decries mismanagement by Essex County and loggerheads between the two co-owners, the County and a corporation, over how to develop that large site, whose buildings are crumbling while the owners squabble. I left the following comment:
An "agreement" is a "contract" only if a court says it is, and in order for there to be a contract, there must be "a meeting of the minds". If Essex County MEANT that ideally the site should be used for a healthcare facility, but if that proved financially or otherwise impossible, some other socially useful purpose should be found for it, the failure of the lawyers drafting the document to say that in so many words should not consign the property to perpetual disuse, as a cancer in the community.

Many other cities have understood healthcare to be an industry of the future, and created world-class institutions that bring people from all around the Nation and indeed planet to receive cutting-edge medical care on the frontiers of science. If the City of Newark, County of Essex, and State of New Jersey are not willing or able to work together to create a "Newark Clinic" on the level of a Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic, they can at least arrange with Pemberton to cut everyone's losses and create SOMETHING of value at the United site.

Further, there is a parking structure at the United site that could be used, with a free shuttle to Downtown, to bring shoppers to Downtown areas where there is now almost no parking during business hours. Can't Pemberton and the County agree that the parking structure can be used AS a parking structure (and not itself as a healthcare facility) to benefit Newark businesses? (See the fourth foto at http://newarkusa.blogspot.com/2008/08/newark-2025.html.) That would be a start. And once you find a way to agree on something, the pattern of headbutting is broken, and maybe the parties can find other things to agree on.
Everyone agrees that Downtown is very short of parking, and that the absence of parking is crippling the core's revitalization. We don't have to build hugely expensive parking structures, nor level large areas of Downtown for parking lots, if we already have unused parking structures and space for parking in areas not so far away that could be used with the mere addition of frequent, free, shuttle-bus service. As against building multi-level parking structures Downtown, how much could a free shuttle bus cost? And as against the architectural and quality-of-life costs of turning Downtown into a patchwork of parking lots, stitching together outlying parking facilities thru a network of smoothly operating, free shuttle buses is an obvious and very low-cost solution to Downtown's parking problems. Even so, might some former manufacturing or warehousing structures be strong enuf to be converted to highrise parking structures? It's all well and good to think about converting some of them, such as the Graphic Arts Building, to residential lofts, artists' studios, and the like if we concede that they will never again be used for the types of businesses they were built for. But if there is as yet no market for such things, and there is a severe, current need for parking, I for one would much rather we have garages there than either empty buildings with broken windows or parking lots if long-term vacant buildings were demolished.
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Might some Federal economic-stimulus money be secured for parking structures and/or shuttle buses with plenty of room for shopping bags and other large packages (modeled on the shuttles at airports), especially buses that run on natural gas, electricity, or some other "green" motive power? Newark could ask for money for parking structures, and if that weren't approved, go back and say, "Well, then, how about shuttle buses to bring in shoppers and diners from distant parking lots? That would cost a lot less. How about it?"

I showed this picture May 20th, but show it again today as an example of a great big building, centrally located, that we might use now as a parking structure — if with elevators instead of ramps — if it is strong enuf and realistically has no other use. Nothing precludes, mind you, converting a highrise parking garage to lofts or other uses down the road (so to speak). Recycle, reuse, resurge.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Newark Kids in Provence

The Barat Foundation has taken another group of kids to southern France for a summer. Athena Barat has set up a blog with many fotos to record events. Here's her first post, from June 28th:

After a long journey we arrived at our home in Provence! Secluded in the mountains in St. Saturnin les Apt, we are amidst iconic Provencal beauty. Lavander and Olive Trees line the yard, while a delicious swimming pool sits in the center. We ate dinner: tomatoes and mozarella, roasted chicken, an erray of quiches, salad and fresh bread. Tomorrow we will begin French classes, have an overview of our arts workshops, a walk into town, and an evening film, "Les Triplettes de Belleville".* These kids are great! Honestly, an awesome group. They are happy and playful with one another, help each other out, and are all so thrilled to be here. I can't wait to see what we create together! I will keep you posted.
a bientot!

Athena
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* ["Belleville", eh? These Newarkers go 3,000 miles and Belleville is still right there. - LCS]

Athena's blog is on the same service, Google's Blogger, that I use, and she selected the same template as I did, but that is all mere coincidence (and good taste).
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I found a
website with some information about the village they are staying in. Very different from Newark.
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Here's a foto of the group from Athena's blog. I don't know if one person is missing, to take the picture, or if they used a tripod and self-timer, or got someone else to take the foto.

(Foto courtesy Barat Foundation)

Athena was in Newark as late as last Thursday, at the launch party for Glocallynewark.com, but I didn't see her. I arrived rather late and wandered over to Rupert's shortly afterward because the party was too loud to talk to anyone. There are a lot of pix of that party online, taken by various fotografers. I have some pix of my own, but not right now.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Tenant "Speak Out" Tuesday

I received notice today that there will be a meeting with some public officials tomorrow of people in need of and who advocate for low-income housing:

The Greater Newark Housing Preservation Partners will host “The People’s Housing Speak Out” at Grace Episcopal Church, 950 Broad St., between Newark City Hall and the Federal Building, on June 30, 2009 from 6:00 to 8:30 PM. The Speak Out will spotlight the ongoing loss of low-income housing units in Newark and explore viable measures to create housing opportunities before an influential panel of leaders and policymakers.

In recent years, 1772 private-owned government subsidized apartments have been demolished and 888 public housing units are slated to be demolished. Three segments of testimony will detail the current portrait of housing: Landscape of Need, Impact on People, and Possible Action Steps. Advocates, organizers, tenant leaders, and families and individuals on waiting lists will describe the loss of low-income units, through their own experience as well as facts and numerical figures. Speakers will also present the options that are currently available and upcoming to preserve affordable homes. An “open mic” session will be held after testimony to facilitate the participation of the public at the forum.

Rally against demolition on City Hall steps, November 3, 2008. (Foto © Greater Newark Housing Preservation Partners 2008)
The panel of experts who will listen to these presentations will make brief remarks afterwards. Confirmed panelists include: Cornell Brooks - Director of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice, Rev. Bruce Davidson - Director of the NJ Lutheran Office of Governmental Ministry, Newark Councilman Charles Bell, Newark Councilman and Director of the Department of Citizen Services of Essex County Anibal Ramos, Newark Council President Mildred Crump, State Senator Teresa Ruiz, and a representative from the office of Senator Frank Lautenberg.

The Greater Newark Housing Preservation Partners is a coalition of housing advocates and organizations in Newark, NJ.
Many of the demolished housing units really did have to go, for having crumbled into unfitness and for having isolated the poor in islands dominated by the culture of poverty. Much of what has taken their place, low-rise, scatter-site housing and market-rate townhouses and two- or three-family apartments, has been a big improvement. But have we built as much as we have demolished?
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I hadn't thought about this issue, inasmuch as I own my own house and have been aware that, as compared to many other nearby places, Newark already is pretty affordable. See, for instance, this partial screenprint at the "SAVE $$$" area of the
Richardson Lofts website.

Of course, those are luxe digs, at premium prices. As to how the cost of non-luxe housing in Newark compares to other municipalities, and to the ability of low-income Newarkers to pay, I do not know. I have read that some poorer Newarkers have moved across the city line into East Orange and Irvington in recent years, which is unfair to all three municipalities as well as to the poor who feel forced to move.
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Altho in New Jersey the bulk of legally mandated "affordable housing" is built in cities like Newark, largely because the population it is intended to serve does not want to live in the suburbs — not just because suburbs would rather not have them, tho there is surely some of that too — there may well not be enuf affordable housing for current needs. The current Decession doesn't help poor people pay market rate, even if the recession has depressed some rents (and I'm not sure it has).
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To the extent Newark's economy depends upon workers who can accept low wages in service industries and "incubator" small manufacturing operations, and on people who patronize the low-end retail operations that presently dominate Downtown, we are going to have to make it easy for people in lower socioeconomic strata to live comfortably in a city that is not nearly so diverse as we would like it to be. We are certainly not Vail, Colorado, nor any of the other chichi towns that can't get anyone to work in fast-food restaurants because the people who would take such jobs can't afford to live anywhere near them. But we have to balance the needs of new Newarkers who find Newark cheap, against the needs of old Newarkers who fear that rising housing prices will drive them out of town.