Side View of Bethany Baptist

This Church Day at the Newark USA fotoblog, I present a side view of the church with an architectural crown of thorns, a front view of which I showed here Sunday, April 30th.

The church has not just distinguished architecture but also a distinguished pastor:

From 1992-2000, M. William Howard, Jr. served as President of New York Theological Seminary (NYTS), a graduate school of theology[.]

He was part of the group of church officials who greeted South African President Nelson Mandela on his trip to New York. Golly.
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Bethany, or "BBC" as it refers to itself (not to be confused with the slitely better known British Broadcasting Corporation), has a website you might check out if you're looking for a church in the Central Ward. Actually, it apparently has TWO websites, because if you go to the April 30th entry to this blog and click on the link there, you will be taken to a different website about the same church. I don't know if the church intends to retain both versions or the one linked to above will in time completely supplant the other.
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I still haven't gotten inside to see what the soaring roofline looks like from within.

Newark Airport Breaks Its Passenger Record

My friend Gaetano in the Ironbound told me of a report in the Atlantic City Press that "More than 34.2 million people flew in to or out of Newark as of last weekend [mid-December]. The airport's previous record was set in 2000, when it saw 34.19 million travelers pass through its gates."
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That's good news for several reasons. First, EWR is by far the most convenient airport for many passengers visiting Manhattan, and especially for those from Europe, Asia, or other very distant places who are lucky enuf to come into Newark instead of being plunged into the hell of John F. Kennedy International in Queens. A lot of new routes are being opened direct to EWR from places like China and India, which should boost Newark's name recognition around the world. The first step toward a city's being accepted as "world-class" is name recognition. There are many towns and cities around the world named "Newark", including several in the United States. But soon billions of people, not just hundreds of millions, who hear "Newark", will think not "England" or "California" but "New Jersey" — the only one that counts.
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Second, immigrants of the communities whose countries are now being newly served from EWR, and who are considering where to live, might find closer to the airport more desirable than farther from the airport, especially if they need to travel back and forth frequently. So instead of settling in Iselin, thousands of Indians and Pakistanis might create a new Subcontinent community, in Newark. After all, lots work here. Why not live here?
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Third, there are fees paid to the Port Authority for every landing and takeoff, and some of that money comes back to New Jersey in general and Newark in particular, in the form of monetary distributions to governments, improvements to local infrastructure by the Port Authority, and jobs for Newarkers.
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Fourth, a tiny proportion of tourists who travel in and out of Newark will spend some time here during their stay, especially if they have an early morning departure, so they feel it makes better sense to spend the nite before in Newark rather than Manhattan, to be rite near the airport in the morning. If they check in early and have time to fill, they may head to the Newark Museum, Aljira, or Gallery Aferro, take in a show at NJPAC, or have dinner in the Ironbound. So pleasant an experience so soon before departure from so convenient an airport will make a lasting impression on such overniters. It will be one of the last memories of their trip to 'New York', and when they get home they might well tell friends who need to travel to New York to go by way of Newark, and to see something of Newark while there. Moreover, the next time they themselves pass thru Newark, they might decide to see more of the city they land in.
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There may be other advantages to this increase in passenger traffic thru EWR too, but that's a fair compilation as it is. By the way, do you know why there is no N in the Government's three-letter designation for Newark Airport? It turns out that all initial-N's were reserved for U.S. Navy airfields. Annoying, huh? LaGuardia gets "LAG", which is clear; JFK gets "JFK". Nwk gets "EWR". Harrumph!
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I don't have any up-close pix of the airport and am not sure I can get permission from the Port Authority to take any, given exaggerated concerns about "security" nowadays. The only foto I have shown in this blog of the airport, last January 22nd, was a view from Gateway Center of the southeastern part of the city focusing on the luminous sky and the only tall structure in that entire area, the airport's control tower.
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The sky is much more a presence in Newark than in Manhattan, where I lived for 35 years. Here's a view of Downtown along the Passaic as seen just before dawn. The sky and river are dramatic backdrop to the jewels of office and parking-garage lites sprinkled across the view.

Standing Reproach No Longer Standing

Newarkology has stolen my thunder again, and I'm getting tired of it! Jeffrey Bennett has updated his South Orange Avenue tour to show that the burned-out office building that stood as reproach for years has finally been torn down. It was a distinguished-looking, fieldstone-fronted, three-story structure that, oddly, had not been torn down by the city after it was gutted by a fire at some unknown point in the past. It had stood just inside Vailsburg as you entered going west, just beyond the Parkway overpass and the end of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, since before I moved to Newark in June 2000 but has finally been torn down as part of the process of clearing the entire blockfront from Maybaum Avenue to Munn Avenue for a school. The first structure to go was a Shell station at Munn, many months ago. Then the former Rite Aid that became a church when that national drugstore chain closed hundreds of locations in a restructuring a few years ago, was torn down. And then the burned-out office building was also demolished. Both these latter buildings were torn down within a few days of each other sometime in the past two weeks.
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I was puzzled why that burned-out shell had been left standing, since in my neighborhood, less than a mile farther into Vailsburg, an abandoned house burned badly one nite, and was torn down within something like three days! In any case, that hulking sign of urban decay is gone now. Thank goodness.
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Bennett also, months ago, beat me to the punch with a splendid webpage that included interior fotos of St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church — in my own area! He'd better stop. That's the church with the golden mosaic that closes my main Resurgence City webpage.
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Has he reported that the city has shifted the bus stop at the Four Corners for Market Street going west to perhaps 100 feet down Market on the west side of Broad Street? Did he report that the city, in its infinite wisdom, replaced the clunky, but wind-breaking, bus shelter that had stood on the northeast of the Four Corners with two of the smaller, elegant shelters with wire mesh (no shelter from the wind) that I first saw in the Weequahic section? No, he has not. Newarkology focuses more on history than current events, so you have to stay tuned here! For a picture of the wire-mesh shelter the city has apparently adopted as its new standard, see the second foto at this blog's entry of September 23rd.
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I want to take periodic fotos of the school construction site from the same vantage point (say, in front of Arneta's Diner), as I did of the demolition of the Guyon Building in Harrison November 23rd, for some future time-lapse record. For today, let me show a memorial in paint on blacktop that used to lie in Vailsburg Park, which is across the street from that school construction site. I took this foto sometime this past summer. (I'm not sure exactly when, because my old camera kept losing the date I inputted.)

The neatly printed memorial went around the outer edge of that basketball court, all the way around. Here's a rotated view to show you the starting words.

I wanted to record the entire text to show here, but my Radio Shack microcassette dictation machine had failed. I thought it was just batteries, but something else is wrong. I went back with my clipboard some months later, to handwrite the words for this blog, but was appalled to see that the city or county has ripped up that basketball court, complete with written tribute.

There were also signs of some kind of development farther into the open field that comprises the largest part of that grossly underutilized county park.

Did anyone record the words of that touching memorial? Will it be recreated on the new basketball court? Maybe that renovation is complete now. I must get back to check.
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(This is an entry for Friday uploaded Saturday due to time constraints.)

Raymond Boulevard End

I have on various occasions shown pix of Newark Penn Station from the Market Street side, which is the south end of the station. Today I present two views of the Raymond Boulevard side, which is the north end of the main station. There is a second, small building on the north side of Raymond Boulevard joined to the main station only overhead, where the tracks run.

The main building is not symmetrical, since this end is very different from the other.
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As I mentioned December 19th (which entry shows the south end), there is a lot of decorative stainless steel throughout the station. This zoomed view of the top of the facade shows some of it. If it's less than crystal clear, that's because I zoomed in with my graphics program from the wider view, since I didn't realize when I took the original picture that I would want to show a closer view of the windows. Besides, the lite changed (I was stopped at a traffic lite when I took these pix).

This is the station in its setting, with the skyway to the Hilton and One Gateway Center on the right. It is in winter that Newarkers most appreciate the skyways that link seven buildings and three parking garages Downtown.

Quiet Courtyard

The foto below shows a quiet area of the upper campus of Rutgers-Newark, where in nice weather students and staff can sit in the open air and sunshine, surrounded by trees and modern architecture, to spend a little time reflecting on life or, as we have had occasion to do with the passing of both James Brown and President Ford this week, on life and death, and what really matters. It may be a bit chilly to sit on concrete in winter, but this first week of winter has been unusually mild.

Speaking of mild winters, my brother in Texas alerted me to something I found interesting about 'the most livable states':

per the latest issue of Parade, extracted from a book State Rankings 2006 [Morgan Quitno Press], the top 10 are New Hampshire, Minnesota, Iowa, Vermont, New Jersey, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Virginia, Nebraska and Connecticut. Not one in the Sun Belt! Rankings were based on 44 factors, including income, education and job growth.

Golly.
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He also said he found the type in this blog too small and gray, not black, and thus so hard to read that he would not return. That surprised me. I suspect he has his monitor set to 1024 x 768 or higher, at which all fonts on the bulk of websites look small. I told him I don't perceive the type as gray, but that might be because I expect type to be black. When I compare it to the type in the Amazon Honor System box, it appears no lyter to me. I have my monitor, at home and in the office, set to 800 x 600 resolution, and it is no hardship for me to read this type. If you find it problematic, let me know (ResurgenceCity@aol.com). Perhaps I need to see if I can increase the font size and darkness, or choose a different template from the Blogger service, which would result in a major redesign of this blog.

James Brown

When I was in my old stomping grounds, the Middletown-Red Bank area of Monmouth County, last Wednesday, I was struck by the big names scheduled to appear at what had, when I lived there, been the Walter Reade Theater and then became first the Monmouth Arts Center and then the Count Basie Theatre. In addition to the performers noted on the marquee (pix below), Hootie & the Blowfish, David Cassidy, Jackie Mason, Frankie Valli, and Lily Tomlin are scheduled to appear. The biggest name, to me, however, was James Brown. I was impressed that little Red Bank was getting a performance by James Brown.

Sadly, he won't be making his Red Bank appearance, tho he will be appearing (not, alas, "live") at the Apollo Theater in New York tomorrow, where he will lie in state for his fans to pay their respects.
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This is the other side of the marquee that day.

As I was taking pix of the theater, a young black woman and what appeared to be her grandmother were walking by. The young woman saw Ruben Studdard's name on the marquee and was excited. (Studdard won the American Idol TV contest in 2003, over Clay Aiken.) She wondered if she could get tickets. I was so startled by that, that I asked her, "You'd rather see Ruben Studdard than James Brown?" She nodded, and her grandmother smiled knowingly at me and remarked, "She's young."
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Red Bank has the Count Basie Theater, named for the jazz-band leader known as "The Kid from Red Bank". Newark has the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, where the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, scheduled to perform in Red Bank too, is based. But I don't know if James Brown ever played here.

UVSO Daycare Center

Yesterday I hilited the work of a church-based group in the Central Ward. Today I show two pix of a daycare center built by a civic organization on Smith Street (my street) south of South Orange Avenue in the Vailsburg section of the West Ward. This is a new building, completed perhaps a year ago by the Unified Vailsburg Services Organization, which is headquartered on Richelieu Terrace several blocks from this structure.
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Here's as wide a view as would fit in my camera from the other side of the street.

This view is from a slitely different vantage point and two days later. Again, I can't fit the whole thing in the picture.

You see here the logo of the organization from the wide view.

But the same logo in the later picture shows what appears to be an interior lite, as tho the logo appears on a window. I'll have to try to get there during the day and see what's what.

Newark is very lucky to have so many people, in church-based and civic organizations, working to make the city better. They're succeeding.

First Corinthian

This "Church Day" at Newark USA, I show the First Corinthian Missionary Baptist Church, at 18th Avenue and South 10th Street. It looks to be a former bank building or some such. I first noticed this building in driving past at nite, and tried to take pix thru the windshield when stopped at the (mistimed) traffic lite at that corner. Alas, my camera couldn't come up with good resolution to such pix because of glare from brite lites shining out from the building or its environs. This is the best I could do.

Then one day my car was in the shop at Strauss Discount Auto nearby, and I took a picture at dusk. Alas, I didn't have my tripod (it was in the trunk of the car), and the lite was so poor that the exposure was so long that not only is the foto a little blurry but you can even see what appears to be a ghost walking thru the view.

You get the picture anyway.
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First Corinthian has apparently been extremely active in building housing and providing other services to revitalize the neighborhood. A Google search showed its Corinthian Housing Development Corporation (CHDC) doing many good works, including spearheading a $3.8 million townhouse complex, Corinthian Grace Estates, in concert with the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. I don't know if CHDC is still going, since the website given for it at a Rutgers-Newark community website does not work, and I don't see another. I hope they haven't given up the ghost.
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(This is an entry for Sunday uploaded Monday from time constraints.)

Untended Email Address?

On October 31st I sent the following email to the general information email address given at the Newark Arts Council's website:

I DON'T, upon initial review of your website, see anything about how one joins the Arts Council, what the benefits/responsibilities are, dues, any of that. (I also find it odd that your email address, at http://www.newarkarts.org/about.html, seems not to be clickable.)
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I am not exactly an artist, tho some people have remarked that I am a pretty good fotografer (tho they might spell that more conventionally). In addition to publishing pix of the good things about Newark on the Internet and working to make plain to artists (among others) the advantages of living and working in Newark, I have passed my NJ State real-estate salesperson's examination, and am presently looking for an affiliation with a broker thru which I might work to bring more artists into Newark and get them settled into comfortable digs, as regards both residence and studio.
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Is the NAC a closed clique, or can anyone join? only some people join? What are the standards for admission? Please advise. Cheers.

L. Craig Schoonmaker, Webmaster, "Resurgence City: Newark USA" website (http://www.ResurgenceCity.org); author, "Newark USA" fotoblog (http://newarkusa.blogspot.com)

I never got an answer, of any kind. Why is that?
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There are, stupidly, websites that put up an email contact address but don't check for email there. Is the Newark Arts Council one of those stupid entitites that put up an email address for contact information but do not check it, nor respond to emails received there? If not, why did they not do me the simple, normal courtesy of at least acknowledging my email, and preferably answering my uncomplicated questions? I resent it. And anyone else who writes to the Newark Arts Council but gets no answer has reason to resent it.
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Now for a followup to something I raised many weeks ago, namely, why there was a fire-hydrant sign on a wall in Harrison. The regular reader of this blog who told me that the icon I did not understand represented a fire hydrant, suggested that a sign about a fire hydrant might have been posted on a nearby wall so that the fire department, in its necessary rush to find a hydrant, might quickly find that hydrant even if someone had (inconsiderately and illegally) parked in front of the hydrant as to obscure it from the street. I found that explanation odd, tho plausible, but waited for the wall that bore the sign to be torn down so I could peer beyond and see if there was a second fire hydrant, or a standpipe, inside the wall that the sign was actually intended to indicate.
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The wall is gone, victim of Harrison's Metrocenter demolition/construction, and, as you can see below (in a picture taken at nite, the only time I'm there that I have time to spare to take pictures), there is no hydrant or standpipe beyond. I guess the reader who suggested that the sign was for fire-department reference, so Harrison's Bravest would know there was a hydrant at the curb there, was right. Thank you, reader.

For my part, as a person looking for a parking space near the Harrison PATH station on Frank E. Rodgers Boulevard, I deeply resent there being a fire hydrant every 100 to 125 feet along that stretch of road, given that there is not a single building presently standing alongside those hydrants! There is nothing but a wall that may once have been part of, or guarded the entry to, other buildings. But now there is nothing but wall. Still, there are fire hydrants taking up perfectly good parking spaces every 100 to 125 feet all along the roadway from the Jackson Street bridge to the PATH station. Harrison does not need fire hydrants to protect a brick wall. Remove needless hydrants, or post the curb alongside them as valid parking spaces. There is absolutely no reason we cannot park alongside hydrants that will NEVER be used to suppress a fire in nonexistent buildings alongside.
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Harrison is one of the towns near Newark that Newark should annex. It is, as well (as the matter of useless fire hyrants above should suggest), an incredibly STUPIDLY RUN town, whose police, from my observations, are nowhere near as good as Newark's.
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The westbound ramp to I-280 at Cleveland Avenue is now and has for some months been closed as part of the renovation to the Stickel Bridge, and is not expected to be reopened until March 2007. BUT the traffic lite for that intersection has not been adjusted. I sit at that lite for something like two minutes every damned day I commute to the PATH station to get to Manhattan. There is NO traffic on the street the lite stands at (2nd Street?). None. Yet the lite continues to operate as tho the on-ramp to the Interstate is still open. That is INEXCUSABLE STUPIDITY. But that's Harrison for you. The stupidity continues.
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There is a detour for westbound 280 traffic that takes you thru downtown Harrison to the eastbound ramp. Plainly, traffic to that ramp is now much heavier than it was when the westbound ramp was open. But Harrison's municipal government, in its infinite stupidity, hasn't adjusted a thing. Harrison continues to permit normal parking in the two blocks before the ramp, so there is always a bottleneck before the ramp. Is everyone in Harrison's municipal government and police department retarded? Apparently so. ADJUST the damned lites at 2nd Street; BAN PARKING in the two blocks before the on-ramp.
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I do not for a second think Newark would be as stupid as Harrison in such regards. Annex Harrison now! It would save the people of Harrison a lot on their tax bill. I'll discuss this more in another post, about the differential property-tax rates between Newark proper and its overtaxed suburbs. Stay tuned.
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I plan to write, at some point, to various NJ state officials to urge them to facilitate, even compel (gently) consolidations of this tiny state's overmany municipalities into larger, less taxpayer-costly units that give residents greater pride for living in greater towns or cities. Newark needs to expand to take in all its suburbs, starting with the City of East Orange, Township of Irvington, and Town of Harrison, then proceeding to consolidate all the remainder of urban Essex and adjacent Hudson Counties. Everything works together. Let it be governed together.

Concreting the Beaten Path

In this "Xmas" season (my late mother hated that abbreviation), how about a picture of a giant concrete X made by sidewalks on the campus of Rutgers-Newark? The original layout of the walkways is shown by the fine concrete of the diagonal walkways in this picture. There is, however, rough concrete between them and the other planned walkway beyond, where students tramped out their own path, and the University then, after the fact, decided to formalize in concrete the popular decision as to where the paths ought to be. I read some years back that some new campuses plant grass everywhere on the grounds and only after paths have been worn by use do they create concrete walkways where people will actually walk. Good idea.

Christmas Lites

My neighborhood may not acknowledge Halloween, but it does decorate for Christmas. Here are two views of a house near me at nite. In this first, I rested my camera on my car, and the autofocus apparently got confused about whether to use the original object or its reflection as the focus point, and seems to have preferred the reflection.

In this second, no reflection confuses the issue.

(This is an entry for Thursday uploaded Friday due to time constraints.)

Unveiled

Newark's City Hall, which was being renovated behind cloth drapings, has come out from behind the veil and is to be rededicated tomorrow.
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I showed one picture here of the building as it looked in early March. Here's a picture of the central portion from mid-May. I don't know why the flag is at half-staff.

I'll try to get one or more pictures of the renovated exterior sometime soon and find a pre-renovation picture for contrast. Hope I'm not hassled by police for taking pix of a public building.
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Today is my 62nd birthday, and I was very busy, running all over the place. One of the great things about Newark is the excellent network of roads and rails that empower residents to travel easily. I spent a little time mid-day in the Red Bank area of Monmouth County where I grew up (Middletown Township). For those of you not familiar with that area, it is a hilly region filled with watercourses. Here's a picture of part of the Red Bank marina, with the Highlands of the Navesink, part of Middletown, in the background.

The Jersey Shore is perhaps an hour and a half from any part of Newark.
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(This is a post for Wednesday uploaded Thursday for want of time.)

'Anti-Terror' Nonsense; View from 1180

My friend Gaetano in the Ironbound alerted me to an article in last Wednesday's Star-Ledger about our brilliant anti-terror watchdogs building a "10-foot fence and installing sensors and closed circuit monitors along a 2.6-mile stretch of the Turnpike between Linden and Newark" to block railcars from view.

An estimated $6 million will be spent by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority to erect the so-called privacy fence to shield the tankers from public view. * * *

"You can't shoot what you can't see," Richard Canas, director of the state's Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness, said yesterday in describing the security benefit the privacy screen would yield. "The objective is to get the cars out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind."

Oh, yes, of course terrorists forget about things that aren't in plain sight.

Conrail and other freight operators have told state homeland security officials that tankers are not left near the Turnpike when they are filled with dangerous chemicals. Nonetheless, Canas said, the public perception of a vulnerability was enough to justify the security measures.

"Everybody who drives up and down the Turnpike says, 'What the heck is going on with those tankers so close to the highway,'" he said.

So we're supposed to spend $6 million to protect empty railcars? Idiocy. What an outrageous waste of toll and/or tax moneys!
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I'm not an alarmist about terrorism, but if anyone wants to talk about a potentially dangerous rail situation, I've got one for them to think about. I was in the Journal Square PATH station last week when, for the first time ever, I saw a freight train moving containers on a parallel track right thru that station. If freight trains are inherently dangerous, they shouldn't be moving thru passenger stations. But, then, I think a lot of the worry we are supposed to feel about terrorism is hype, from media that want us to think we need to heed them (and their ads/commercials, of course), and governmental functionaries who want us to think we need to employ them and spend all kinds of money on "anti-terror" measures. As the nations of the world go, the United States is practically terrorism-free. One terrorist attack every 8-10 years is no reason to get paranoid.
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I don't have any pictures of freight trains in Newark to regale you with, but here's a picture of a railway station, the Market Street side of Newark Penn Station at nite.

I once sent some pix of the waiting room of that station to my cousin in Oregon. She said it was the nicest train station she had ever seen. Heck, it's the nicest train station most of us have ever seen.
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Here's a detail view of the art-deco eagle and other decorative stonework over the canopy, as contrasted with the mechanistic sculpture in the foreground, Richard Criddle's Turning-True New-Arc.

The 'pillars' of that sculpture are gigantic bolts, and the capitals are nuts. That might seem a little incongruous by a stone-fronted building, but there's also a lot of decorative stainless steel throughout the station.
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I got an email today from someone who now lives in 1180 Raymond Boulevard. He has a picture of the view from his apartment at http://www.flickr.com/photos/sheepguardingllama/321324171/. There are also a couple of other Newark pix on that site. Neato keen.

"Civil Unions" — Little Benefit to Newark

As I mentioned here November 30th,

A forthcoming study by UCLA's Williams Institute finds that revenue from weddings and wedding tourism alone (if the [New] Jersey legislature approves [same-sex] marriage, not civil unions) would add nearly $103 million per year in business to the state for at least the next few years.

And Newark would reap some of that reward. But the Legislature, in its infinite willingness to compromise on other people's rights, saw fit last Thursday to enact "civil union" legislation that would grant all the legal rights but not the name "marriage" to same-sex couples. Not good enuf.
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Language matters. Would the legislators who passed "civil union" legislation that denied the word "marriage" to same-sex couples think it fine if New Jersey State Police addressed white men as "Sir" but black men as "Boy" or "Nigger"? I suspect they would not.
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So yesterday I wrote, by feedback form at his website, to Governor Corzine, with copy to State Senate President Richard Codey and North Ward Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo, who was a prime sponsor of that legislation:

"Marriage" for All, or "Marriage" for None. I am the man who in 1970 first offered the term "Gay Pride" as it is used today, for the weekend of events surrounding the first annual march commemorating the Stonewall Riots. I was born and raised in New Jersey, but left in 1965 because I felt I could not be free here. I spent the next 35 years in New York City, but returned to New Jersey in June 2000. I would like New Jersey to have the same courage as Massachusetts, and not wimp out on the word "marriage".
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Let's put the issue most plainly. Would you sign a bill that permitted white couples to "marry" but allowed black or interracial couples only to "enter into civil union"? If not, you must veto the present "civil union" bill and ask the Legislature to, shall we say, call a spade a spade, so same-sex legal unions that have the same characteristics as marriage are called, simply, "marriage". In the alternative, you must, to provide the equal treatment under law mandated by the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, strip the word "marriage" away from the legal unions the State of New Jersey affords heterosexual couples.
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People who see "marriage" as a religious sacrament that the state does not have the power to bless cannot object to all nonreligious unions being termed only "civil unions", "legal unions", or some other term. Conversely, of course, if the State of New Jersey confers "civil union" upon every couple and any church then blesses that union, then in that church's eyes that couple will be "married". The problem arises, however, of whether society, not just a given liberal church, recognizes committed same-sex couples as "married".
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Why cause such problems? If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is a duck. Why call it a "generic waterfowl"? "Civil union" IS "marriage" IS "legal union". But "marriage" has all the power of legitimacy. All else is second-class.
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If you refuse to use "marriage" for same-sex legal unions, you must remove that term from heterosexual legal unions. Let's see how straight couples like the idea that they aren't married unless not just the state but also some church says they're married. I suspect they won't like it at all. If you think so too, save us all from confusion and division. Reject "civil union". Embrace "marriage". And let us all move forward in the 21st Century as equals. The world is watching (http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6281233,00.html). Do New Jersey proud.

It occurred to me today that a one-word change from "civil union" to "civil marriage" could work. But the word "marriage" does matter. New Jerseyans should settle for nothing less. Can we really be less courageous than Massachusetts?
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Today's foto is of one of those liberal churches that might perform gay weddings in Newark if the Legislature authorizes such, the Episcopalians' Trinity & St. Philip's Cathedral, in its setting, at nite, as seen from Military Park.

Greater Abyssinian

This "Church Day" at Newark USA I present a picture of Greater Abyssinian Baptist Church on Lyons Avenue in the Weequahic section.

Some of the detail of the building is hard to see because it is in shadow from this vantage point, but it is a dignified, mid-size church.
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I Googled it, but found no website.

Distinguished Firehouse, Faded(?) Flag

Jeffrey Bennett, webmaster of the Newarkology website, sent me pix of a firehouse on Academy Street, Downtown, for use here, since he didn't plan to create a page on his site about Academy Street anytime soon. I have taken him up on that offer.
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The city fathers of Newark had real pride in days gone by. They created a series of wonderful firehouses in various architectural styles. I showed one here on April 29th and the tower of another on June 8th.
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This first of Jeff's pix is a wide view of the station. I think it was taken from across the street, but there's not enuf distance to afford the typical camera scope to show the whole structure. The bottom is missing. Can't be helped. I don't have a wide-angle lens either, so we must settle for this much of the building rather than the whole.

This second picture focuses more narrowly on the upper central portion of the station, and shows what appears to be a white flag with a crest with three plows on it and a ribbon below. I suspect it is a faded New Jersey state flag. The Flags of the World website — one of my very most favorite websites in the world — contains a vivid rendering of what the flag is supposed to look like, and some fascinating information about its origins. Did you know that the buff background of our state flag (the rendering of which on the FOTW page appears too dark on my monitor; it is actually a sunny, lite color) was chosen for the facings of the Continental uniforms of New Jersey units in the Revolutionary War by George Washington himself? Golly.

The FOTW site also shows the Essex County flag, one of the three flags that fly from the Old Essex County Courthouse. My post here of just over a year ago, December 15th, 2005, includes views of those three flags (if small), and gives a better sense of what the New Jersey flag looks like in sunshine.
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The old Academy Street firehouse is no longer in use for the Fire Department. It has been bought by an organization that provides services to young people who have lost a parent to AIDS. I wish anti-AIDS programs would THINK, and tell the truth about AIDS: that it is, in the First World, a drug injury, and in the Third World, a combination of starvation, execrable healthcare conditions (no sewage treatment, no clean water, no refrigeration), and an almost total lack of medical care. But no, they continue to accept the Government line that it is a magical virus that behaves differently on different continents and discriminates against minorities! That viruses behave the same on every continent and neither do nor can discriminate against people on the basis of race, sexual orientation, or language somehow has not made people wonder if the U.S. Government might be lying to them about a matter of life and death. Oddly, even people who regard the U.S. Government as a bunch of shameless liars on other matters believe every single syllable the Government issues about AIDS. I don't.
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As a gay man, I knew about AIDS in 1980 (yes, it started a year earlier than the Government says; the first of a long line of Government lies) and knew by mid-1981 that it could not possibly be a viral disease, because it just does not behave like a viral disease. I also knew about the horrendous use of many, many dangerous drugs by the gay men who went on to die from "AIDS", and about the tolerance for rampant drug use in the other communities affected by AIDS, blacks and Hispanics. There are times when it is very, very good, to be very, very smart. I haven't worried about the preposterously misnamed virus HIV — which has nothing to do with immunological destruction — for 25 years!
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(Google's Blogger service, which hosts this fotoblog, has recently reformatted this blog as it appears on my home computer, such that the list of archives encroaches upon the fotos. My computer at the office shows no such formatting, but continues to display the profile and archive info below and out of the way of the fotos. If you have the same difficulty I have in viewing the fotos without encroachment, let me know, and I'll take it up with Blogger.)

More on 744

I've decided to give readers another jog to their memory about the end on Sunday of the 744 Broad Street show (see yesterday as well), because it should be seen if you have the time. Heck, make the time. It's FREE. Here are another 7 pix. I decided it makes more sense to show them to you than to keep them to myself on my hard drive. Again, please excuse any lack of crispness. I had no tripod with me.
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There was some video in the show. Here are two such works. This first is a mirror from which peers a face not yours.

In case that is not clear at that size, here's a zoomed view.

Here, there's a group of seven flat-panel videos playing, around a painting. The coloration is perhaps a little more vivid than you'll see it in person, but that's what my graphics program's auto setting did, and I like the shade it gave the wall. Since that shade closely matches that of the diagonal band in the painting, it might well be right.

One wall is occupied by futurist conceptual drawings done decades ago. Today they seem more quaint than futuristic.

Most of the work on display is nonpolitical, but there is this cluster, in which the symbolism of the U.S. flag is employed to speak to the distortion of the patriotic impulse so often made by politicians. Here, little stars spell out words.

One of the most striking things about Newark is that it is a totally American city, despite its diversity of population. New York, by contrast, strikes many Americans as foreign, an international city more than an American city. Newark is the reverse, an American city with just enuf touches of the foreign as to keep from being drab.
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Finally, two overviews of part of one of the big rooms the show occupies. This first shows the crowd at the opening party against the backdrop of a great big painting.

This second shows part of the same area, plus what look like tables but are actually display cases for small works.

This little online tour is not to substitute for the actual show. Do yourself a favor and go to 744 Broad Street (at Commerce Street a few blocks north of Market Street), sixth floor, before Sunday and see the show yourself. For FREE.

744 Show Closes Sunday (7 pix)

If you have not already made it to "Newark Between Us", the Newark Arts Council's group show on the sixth floor of the National Newark Building (744 Broad Street), you have only till Sunday to get there, because its limited run ends then. On October 22nd I showed 9 fotos of the show's opening as part of the available-(unfinished)space tour and 3 of the (finished) interior of 744. Today I'll show a few more in hopes of piquing your interest in seeing the show for yourself before it's gone. Some fotos are less than crisp because the camera was handheld, and not all pix were taken with flash. Sorry about that.

I don't know whose work that is. There is a list online of the works, but not with accompanying pictures for identification purposes. I think this next work is Mary Ellen Scherl's "Monumental Woman".

Here is an intriguing frog/ship/man, seen first from the front.

Then from the rear. Perhaps it is a visual representation for "frogmanship", the state or quality of being a frogman (Navy diver). Or not.

Here's a work derived from the design of the U.S. flag.

Here's a mosaic of X-rays against a window, by Newark artist Matt Gosser, to make up a full human figure.

And let's close with one of the prettiest works in the show. This foto also hilites the unfinished nature of the space. The annual tour serves to alert businesses to available office and other space in Newark. It is not hard to imagine this work on a finished wall of an elegant law or business office, is it?

For more information on the 744 show, go to http://www.newark-opendoors.org/.

Highrise, Lowrise

Today's foto is of Hallmark House, a highrise apartment building near Grace Church and the Rodino Federal Office Building on Broad Street.

Brick Towers, a public-housing complex of two highrise apartment towers that Mayor Booker used to live in, is to be demolished, which will reduce the city's stock of highrise housing. Great cities rise high. Replacing all our highrises with townhouses and three-story apartment houses does not cut it in the great-city department. And frame structures are no substitute for stone, steel, brick, and reinforced concrete in creating a city of permanence that can impress the senses. Tho lowrise housing has its place, avoiding density from fear is a recipe for failure as a city. We must have confidence that we can gather lots of good people in dense housing clusters without seeing them turn to cancers of the culture of poverty.
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We must build tall, we must build with structural materials more durable and powerful than wood.
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My friend Gaetano attended a meeting on the future of Newark held last nite in his neighborhood, the Ironbound, by the city and the Regional Plan Association. It turns out the RPA has plans for Newark. Gaetano sent me this link to a report titled "A Vision for Newark" that you too might want to check out. I will be intrigued to know what it visualizes as regards the height and density of new structures for Newark.

Leno 'Joke'

Jay Leno, host of NBC's Tonight Show, last nite made a little joke at Newark's expense. He reported a news item about a commercial airline flite that was grounded when a woman with a bad case of flatulence, who was supposedly liting matches to burn away gas, was thought by passengers and crew to be behaving suspiciously, even possibly as a 'terrorist'! So the flite was brought down in Newark, and when the doors were opened, the crew remarked that it smelled worse outside than in the plane! Leno then partially retracted his silly and irritating slander by saying something like he was only joking and that Newark is "A lovely city". Jay Leno is a nasty guy, and he says horrible things all the time, but gets away with them by smiling broadly and disowning any malicious intent. But he is a malicious guy.
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Newark doesn't need this kind of silly, mindless slander, and it is not harmless fun at our expense. That kind of ugly remark does harm to Newark's reputation in the Nation at large. Jay Leno's competition, David Letterman, did Newark similar mindless harm many months ago. Helen Hunt (?), reported that a rat had attacked her husband in "the worst place in the world". Letterman picked up on that: "'The worst place in the world?' Wouldn't that be Newark?" (or words to that effect). Not funny, Letterman. Not funny, Leno.
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Today's foto shows a little chunk of one of the nicer parts of this fine city, the plantings outside Olson Hall on the Rutgers-Newark campus as seen from Warren Street. Evergreens are a good choice for a city that has the full range of seasons, because the building is never bare.

Evergreens also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce oxygen whenever the temperature rises above about 45 degrees, which helps to keep Newark's air quality high — no matter what ignoramuses in Burbank, California might say.