Millionth Visitor, Part 2

I mentioned here on Saturday that the Prudential Center had its 1,000,000th visitor on Friday. At that time, however, I could find nothing on the Internet about that occurrence. Since then, however, I got an email with some personal info about the millionth visitor, and the Prudential Center website put up a page describing the event and how well management treated their guest. Here's the email:

I'll give you some information about the one millionth visit to the Rock that you couldn't find elsewhere.

That guy from Georgia is my brother-in-law. He grew up in Hopatcong NJ and has been a Devils fan since the Devils moved here from Colorado.

He moved to Georgia 3 years ago in order for his wife to be near her family. Last October, he lost his wife to Lupus, a disease that affects the immune system. If there ever was a fan deserving of the accolades, it would be that "guy from Georgia".

I hope this helps.

Bill
Bangor, PA

It does indeed.

Today's foto is of the gap between the parking garage (left) and Arena that Devils management wants to span with a pedestrian bridge for bigwigs to go directly from their cars to their luxury suites without soiling their feet on lowly pavement. According to stories Gaetano has sent me, the City says the Arena's management did not get the proper permits to build that bridge, so the City is fining them $2,000 a day until they secure those permits. Management argues that its original plans called for such a structure, and those plans were approved by the appropriate authorities, which sounds more likely — except, if that is so, why wasn't it built at the same time as the parking structure? Vanderbeek's organization said it expects everything to be sorted out quickly and amicably very soon.

S.O.-Vailsburg Methodist

It's "Church Day" again here at Newark USA. Today, I have 9 pix of the South Orange-Vailsburg United Methodist Church. Altho it includes in its name the word "Vailsburg", which is the westernmost part of Newark (where I live), the church is actually located in the Village of South Orange, one mile from the city line. (150 South Orange Avenue, South Orange, NJ 07079-2219; (973) 763-0655.) South Orange, which I might call "Newark Lite", is not a "lily white" suburb, but over 30% black. It is the site of the main campus of Seton Hall University. Seton Hall's Law School is in Newark, and its men's basketball team plays in Newark's Prudential Center. New Jersey is now trying to lower costs of local government, and merging South Orange into Newark would be one good way to do that.

I have passed by this church many, many times but on the occasions when I might have stopped to take pix, the liting was bad, until today. I was not able to find a website for the church, however.

The view above, from the east, is marred by glare from the sun out of frame to the right, but I wanted to show the large stained-glass window on the far left, which roughly matches in size and shape one around the corner that I show later in this post.

To the right of that large window are four smaller ones.

Here's a closeup of the taller of the two uneven steeples. Note that the stone supports for the steeply peaked roof are of different heights.

This next view shows the western side of the church, along Prospect Street, including the second large stained-glass window, partly blocked by a low wing of the building.

Here's an unobstructed view of the large arched window on the west. Unfortunately, I think there is clear glass on this side of the stained-glass, reflections from which obscure detail of the stained-glass panels.

In this next foto, you can see a cupola past a pair of evergreen shrubs that intrude upon a walkway. You can get thru, but you may have to turn a bit sideways and push past soft branches.

Today's last foto shows a closer view of the cupola. It's a little crooked, but I can't straten it without losing even more of the top ornament, the very tip of which I inadvertently cut off as it is. I wasn't wearing my floppy straw hat to shade the monitor when I lined up the shot so didn't see that I needed to zoom out a tad.

Someday I may get inside and check out what the stained-glass windows look like with lite streaming thru them.

Millionth Visitor to The Rock!

I mentioned here yesterday that I was pleased to see something about Newark on TV last nite. I saw another thing that delited me: Prudential Center got its 1,000,000th visitor last nite! In 5 months. I think this was even the tally for hockey games only, tho, curiously, I cannot find that story on Google, NJ.com, or even News 12 New Jersey, where I saw it to begin with. Worse, it's not even on the Prudential Center website. What is wrong with these people? That is huge! — astonishing news — and should be trumpeted by Newark authorities and the Prudential Center's and Devils' managements all over the world via proud Internet notices. It should embarrass all those naysayers who said that it was insane to build a hockey arena in Newark because nobody would go to it. Ha!

The millionth Devils-game attendee was a guy from Georgia, who got special treatment and was interviewed, all smiles, on News 12. The report around that interview mentioned early concerns that fear of crime would keep (white) suburbanites away, and showed a blond woman being interviewed who said, approximate quote, "There's a cop on every block, and I feel completely safe." So there, all you clowns who leave vicious anti-Newark comments on just about every NJ.com story about Newark. So there!

Realize that on October 14th, when the foto above was taken, the Arena wasn't even finished, either inside or out. Five months later, there had been a MILLION visitors. What else could have brought a million people into Newark? Mayor James may or may not have been corrupt, but he got us the Prudential Center, when almost everybody was saying it couldn't be done and shouldn't be done. That includes Steve Adubato of PBS and one Cory Booker.

In this second foto of the Center not yet completed, you can see the PSE&G Building beyond. The first unfinished-street view showed The Rock's proximity to the first major development in Newark's resurgence, Gateway Center.

In looking for more info about the millionth visitor and what he got, I went to the Devils website too, and saw NOTHING. What indeed is wrong with these people? I did, however, find a different time-lapse video of the construction of the Arena from the one I have shown here, which includes interviews with various Newarkers and some scenes of the city aside from the Arena. Unfortunately, the webmaster has formatted this "Devils TV" area for high-resolution screen display only (no scroll bars appear to get to areas not shown), so to be able to see everything on that page, I had to go into Control Panel and change my monitor's resolution higher than the 800 x 600 size I usually use. The higher resolution (1024 x 768) reduces type size to what is generally too small for me and many other people (and not just old folks) to read comfortably. I deeply resent the arrogance of webmasters who compel people to use a high resolution. That site could perfectly well be made to work with 800 x 600, with scroll bars to anything that doesn't show on the main screen. The webmaster just refused to do so. That ticks me off.

A guy at Hobby's Delicatessen (Brummer?) is shown saying:

No longer at 5 o'clock is Newark going to shut down. There's something to do now at nite. This Arena, the concerts, the Devils, just completely changed the face of Newark. Finally.

There is also a bizarre 2-minute video about the "Devils' opening" showing a guy in a devil costume with a trident that shoots flames. Satanists might like this, but it's a little disturbing as a sports promotion.

The last of the videos I watched is a 6½ minute promotion seeking partners and investors before the Arena — which is still shown as the "Newark Arena" on architectural renderings — was completed. Put out by the Devils organization, it is heavy on hockey and its violence, but does discuss other events to take place in the Arena (tho it shows Springsteen rather than Bon Jovi, even tho Springsteen, who is supposed to be so concerned about poor working people, took his concert to the Izod Center in rich, white Bergen County, rather than to Newark). I even got to see, about 70% of the way in, both Triangle Park, which I had heard about but couldn't visualize, and how the future hotel and office buildings are to fit into the overall scheme. (The announcer's frequent mispronunciation of "the" before vowel sounds as "tha" rather than "thee" irritated me a bit, but I'll get over it.) It's a sales pitch, so may be a tad grandiose. But you know, I was glad to see somebody bragging about Newark for a change.

P.S. When I went to check links for this post, I had trouble with the last video. If that happens, you can go directly to that site and play it there: http://devils.nhl.tv/team/console?type=fvod&id=3823.

Booker on Bill Moyers Journal

In channel-surfing this evening, I chanced to see that the PBS television program Bill Moyers['] Journal discussed the Kerner Commission report on civil disorders (riots) 40 years on. Unfortunately, Newark figured prominently in that part of the program, which included a brief shot of the infamous LIFE Magazine cover.
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More to the point, however, Newark figured very favorably in the second half of that hour-long program, which was given over entirely to an interview with Mayor Cory Booker, who speaks not just about Newark but also about issues of urban policy and race facing the Nation more generally. He does a very good job. You can view that interview online, in case you missed it or want to watch again. The first half of the show is dominated by an interview with one of the members of the Commission who is still alive, former Senator from Oklahoma Fred Harris, who toured some cities, but not Newark. That interview is also available for viewing online.

Today's foto is of Newark rebuilding, a view of Gateway Center as seen under construction equipment outside the Prudential Center, then not yet finished. Alas, Kobelco is a Japanese company. I am disgusted by major American corporations that buy Japanese — or other foreign — equipment when high-quality U.S. equipment is available for the same tasks.

Cold Spring, No Harbor*

Spring started last Thursday, but it would be hard to prove that from the miserable weather we continue to suffer. Last Sunday, when the weather wasn't as awful as usual, I went out into the yard during daylite and saw that some of my crocuses have come up!

This is the first proof of spring each year in my yard. This next foto shows an extended clump of crocuses, partially obscured by the ferocious briars that strangle parts of my yard if I don't cut them back and pull them up by the root. They have fierce thorns that seem to be more than just needles. They not only pierce the skin if you're not careful but also seem to inject some unpleasant chemical to cause lasting irritation. Time to get out my leather gardening gloves and attack them with pruning shears and trowel.

There is also a small patch of some plant I don't know that puts out tiny blue flowers. Unfortunately, this is too close to the place I turn around in my back yard to head down the driveway, and I have to move them to avoid crushing them.

The daffodils are mostly still closed, but some have started to open. They make a nice contrast with the dull, dark green of the English ivy beyond. This is an athletic climbing ivy that has covered the bottom 30 feet or more of one oak tree and is starting up some other trees in my side yard.

At the very front of my little front yard, the greens of tulips and a few specimens of a couple of other types of bulbs are coming up, poking holes in the dead oak leaves. In this closeup, what I suspect is a flower stalk is swathed in a leaf wrapped partway around. I never noticed that before.

Now if only the weather would turn warm, I could begin to enjoy the spring. Next up, the bulk of the daffodils open, then the hyacinths (with their powerful perfume), then the tulips. Big difference from apartment life in Midtown Manhattan, eh? And I pay less to own a house in Newark than to rent an apartment in Hell's Kitchen. Olly olly oxen free!

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* For those who missed the reference, Cold Spring Harbor is a place on Long Island famous for a major genetics laboratory by the same name, nearby. It also has a hatchery and aquarium specializing in New York State fish, reptiles, and amphibians. The only aquarium of New Jersey fish and such that I have seen recently is in the Newark Museum's adorable mini-zoo, but we deserve much better. That reminded me that I must get to the Turtleback Zoo, which is about 6 miles (14 minutes by car) from my house within the South Mountain Reservation in West Orange. I went to check the Zoo's hours and animals but the website doesn't work! I sent the following email to the Zoological Society's contact address:

SOMETHING is wrong with the link within the http://www.turtlebackzoo.com/ website (to which the ~.ORG website directs visitors) where the have to click on a picture to go further into the site. That is a bad idea, more than incidentally. Just tell people how to get inside; don't force them to move the cursor all over the screen nor try to scroll down when there's nothing but a single screen at the initial URL. It's a website, not a puzzle. Europeans are fond of puzzle websites; Americans like things to be simple and straightforward. We have no time for games when we're looking for information.
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If one does notice the hand with pointing finger that appears when the cursor is hovered over the picture, and clicks on the photo, one gets a page not found message for what should be http://www.turtlebackzoo.com/home.html. Please fix this. The website is USELESS in its current shape.
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And what is meant by admission prices shown as "$8.00 and $4.00"? Does that mean we have to pay $8 to get thru the gate and an additional $4 to go to some parts of the Zoo? Or does it mean that admission costs $8 for most people but $4 for a few -- seniors? over what age? children? up TO what age? Why should we have to call a phone number for information? and why would you rather answer the phone than provide all basic information on a website, so people don't have to bother anybody to get the information they want? For instance, when do "winter" hours end -- winter is over right now, but are "winter" hours done with too?
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I and most other Internet users nowadays get really ticked off when a website by a significant organization doesn't work. People who are just thinking of going to the Zoo and encounter a nonworking website get ANGRY and turn AGAINST the Zoo, to look elsewhere for things to do. Please fix this, and let me know when / if it is fixed, in order that I might tell my readers. I'm publishing the gist of this complaint in my fotoblog, as below, and will want to follow it up if and when the website is fixed. Cheers.

After I sent that, I got a MAILER DAEMON message that the user is unknown. I went back to the Zoological Society website, and saw that there should be two F's (JDoeff) but only one came out in the email form. So I lifted into a new email, with correct address, the text of my prior message and added this postscript:

P.S. The Contact email address on the Zoological Society webpage, when clicked, produces an ERRONEOUS address, JDoef -- NOT TWO FF'S -- and the mail is returned! This is inexcusable. Please fix this dratted site!

Guess what happened? I got ANOTHER Mailer Daemon message, this one saying that the mailbox is full! What the h* is wrong with these stupid b*s? Check your mail; delete old messages! Get into the Internet age, or get out, and close down your website!

Teen Arts Exhibition at Newark Museum

I said in yesterday's post that I chanced across something very interesting on my way from the Members' Morning workshop to the Ghanaian Glass Beads exhibit at the Newark Museum on Saturday, March 8th. There were lots of teenagers in a side gallery on the main floor, and I looked in to see why. It turns out the 37th Annual Newark Teen Arts Exhibition was on display, and various of the artists and their teachers were there to see it as set up in the Newark Museum, and then attend a presentation of plaques in the meeting hall upstairs.

I showed the foto above at a Placeholder entry March 7, last of the 8 fotos that day. That is one view of part of the gallery. The show comprises 51 works, mostly paintings and drawings in colored pen, by kids in 11 Newark public high schools. I was startled by how good some of the pieces represented are.

I saw some kids taking videos, with cellphones and video cameras, so asked a guard if it would be OK if I took pix (too). She said it was OK, but only in that gallery (fotografy is generally not permitted in Museum galleries).

Tho most of the works are two-dimensional, and behind reflective glass, as complicated taking pix, the lace-on-black piece left of center is three-dimensional.

It was about time for a ceremony to honor the student artists, to start, so the teachers rounded up their charges and headed to Program Hall, upstairs. I tagged along.

In the foto above (if I have the people identified right), Ms. Jacqueline Rocker-Brown, Supervisor of Visual Arts Programs, turns to Ms. Franotie Washington (left), Visual Arts Education Consultant, and Dr. Gayle W. Griffin, Assistant Superintendent of the Department of Teaching & Learning (an odd title, if I may be so bold). After brief introductory remarks by all three women, elegant framed certificates were presented to the students.

Altho the certificates were supposed to be organized by school, there was some confusion, and unfortunately only a fraction of the student artists were present, presumably due to a downpour most of that morning (and the fact that the ceremony was held on a weekend, so they didn't get out of school and have school-provided transportation to take them thru the wretched weather). The certificates not presented that day would be sent to the kids at school. In this next foto, the art teachers joined the students for a group foto taken by a schools fotografer.

Before that, various students and parents took their own fotos and videos. Especially diligent was the girl in the black pants and royal-blue top, who turns out to be one of the two students who had two works in the show, Stephanie Perez of East Side High. The other is Helene Frazar, also of East Side High. I think she is the second artist to the right of Stephanie in the picture of students without art teachers (2d before this paragraph).

One of the kids (Omar Nuñez of Barringer?) was sitting diagonally opposite me with what I assume was his young family, beaming. My attempt to capture the moment didn't fare well in the reduced daylite of that rainy day. But I'm showing this fuzzy picture anyway so you get a sense of the moment.

After the formal presentation and group fotos (there was supposed to be one with the parents, but that somehow got lost in the shuffle), the schools' fotografer asked a few of the students to pose by their work back downstairs. The others lined up for victuals at the other end of the room.

I headed down to see if I could catch the kids posing by their paintings/drawings. Shortly after I got off the elevator, one of the kids, Malcolm Diggs of Science Park High School, was walking back to the elevator, recognized me (we were sitting in adjoining folding chairs), and asked what floor it was again. I told him, "Mezzanine, the M button [in the elevator]", but before he went, I asked him which was his work because I wanted to get a picture. He backtracked to show me, and I got this picture. Reflections were a problem, and he was a little too somber so I urged him to smile, but the foto with the smile had glare off the right side of his piece, the sneakers. Jeez.

I let Malcolm head back upstairs and told him they were serving the food now. I, however, stayed to take some more pix of the artworks. The schools fotografer (a Mr. Best?) was still there, and I chatted with him a bit about how good these things were — and gave him my card, saying I would be using some of these pix in my blog within a few days. Oops. I had told Malcolm (to whom I also gave my card) not to look for these fotos for at least three days or so. Hm. If he did look, he's probably given up by now, but if somebody who knows him sees this, please tell him.
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This next foto shows one of Stephanie Perez's pieces. It looks much lighter here than in person, and I don't know what is intrinsic to that painting and what is reflections in the glass.

This next piece, musical sneakers, is by Ana Dias, of Science Park High. Malcolm Diggs of the same school focused on the same general thing, sneakers. Curious.

The last foto today is of a pink Cadillac by Freddy Segura of Barringer High. Had it borne a Tennessee license plate, I might have wondered if it was Elvis's. Do kids today even know who Elvis Presley was?

Members' Morning

On Saturday, March 8th, I participated in a free arts workshop at a Newark Museum Members' Morning. There were workshops on offer in three areas, jewelry, stained glass, and pastels. I wanted stained-glass, but members were assigned by luck of the draw, and I just knew I'd get pastels. Naturally, I got pastels, which I wanted least. Ah, well.
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How many excuses shall I offer for my miserable drawing? The easel was uprite. Who writes or draws on a nearly vertical surface? I'd never done this before. That's two. Uh, let's see ... my artistic outlet, if I dare claim such a thing, is fotografy. I haven't drawn or painted anything in decades. Any more? Hm. That will have to do.
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We got a few minutes' instruction and then started work. The instructor stopped by everybody's easel to offer encouragement and answer questions. When she got to me, she asked which workshop I had wanted, and when I said, "Stained-glass", she said that that was what I was doing. Precisely. I don't care what medium you give me. If I want stained-glass, I'm going to make stained-glass! on paper, if need be.
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At the end of the hour-and-a-half session, we looked around at other people's works, and — mirabile dictu — mine actually wasn't the worst! One drawing, by a young Oriental woman whose (white) husband and cute little Amerasian son* were standing by, was very good, by far the best. She's an architect, tho, and has taken some oil-painting classes. She commented on one other drawing, by a woman who emulated Georgia O'Keefe's approach in making VERY large the iris she was depicting. The membership officer in attendance tried to reassure me that my pitiful pastel wasn't so bad. Kind, but I know better. (By the way, did you know that some Brits say "pastel" as tho it were spelled "pastle", like "castle" but with the T pronounced? (In my Fanetik spelling system that would be written simply páas.tal, and people who know that system for pronunciation keys, wouldn't need the word compared to anything else.)
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As we were getting ready to leave, a gent who had been taking pictures earlier brought in plastic wastebasket-liner bags to protect these chalk works from the rain. I said that a garbage bag was exactly the right thing for mine and asked, "Anybody got a match?"
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OK. So am I going to show my pitiful chalkwork here? Are you nuts?
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After the class/workshop was over and I'd had a cup of coffee to fortify my resolve, I decided to walk around the Museum and check out things I hadn't seen — there are, after all, "80 galleries of inspiration & exploration", and I hadn't seen either the Snapshots exhibition nor Ghanaian Glass Beads. I called my friend Ingé, who had said on our arts Friday out March 7th that she hadn't been to the Museum since grade school, to suggest she join me, since I was already there so the logistics of meeting up were simple, especially with both of us having cellfones. But she was having some scheduled maintenance work done on her car, so I had to trudge off by myself.
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I asked a guard where the Ghanaian Glass Beads exhibition was, then headed thataway, but saw something very interesting along the way. More tomorrow.

OK. I'm a good sport (not really, but let's pretend). I offer below a picture of my pitiful pastel. It should make you feel better about yourself — and any children you may have.

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* Racial descriptions are always to allow readers better to visualize the people mentioned, because, absent alternative information, each of us tends to picture people like himself when he hears unmodified terms like "man", "woman", or "son". That's how Gautama Buddha, from India, got to look Chinese in those fat statues we see from China.

Easter Card from India

I don't know why, but I got an Easter Card from India to my Newark USA email address (ResurgenceCity@aol.com) and thought I'd pass it along to my readers.

Maranatha French Church

In place of a "Church Sunday" feature this week, I'm putting this up on Saturday because it concerns a Seventh Day Adventist Church, which has services on Saturday. This one is the Maranatha Eglise Adventiste du 7e Jour, near the Boylan Recreation Center in the Vailsburg section of far western Newark. It shares a building at 890 South Orange Avenue with Sunset Christian Academy. I don't know whether the Academy is part of the Church. The Academy is not mentioned at the website. Before I came to Newark, I had heard of non-Catholic "Christian schools" (which I had theretofore thought of as "Protestant schools", a match to "Catholic school") but thought they were a Southern institution, mainly intended to get around desegregation orders. But in a short stretch of SOAv in Vailsburg, we have two Christian schools, both probably dominantly black.

This foto was taken late in the day, so is a little dim.

Altho the website plainly calls the Church "French", which implies that the language of services is French, the website itself is in English. I suspect the website, which is pretty sophisticated (but very hard to find) was created by a national Adventist organization and merely particularized for the Newark church. I sure would like to know if the Academy is associated with the French church and, if so, if the language of instruction is French. Do they have adult classes? I could certainly stand to improve my pitiful French, and since the French news on WNYE (Cablevision channel 22, 7pm nitely) stopped supplying English subtitles January 1st, I can't make much sense out of that broadcast.
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I don't know if the French-speakers of this church (and Academy?) are Haitian, African, Quebecois, metropolitan French, or Caribbean French, but there are a lot of small French churches, stores, and such in this area, mostly black. Were my French better, I imagine I could get lots of practice. This is something for people whose French is good to think about when considering where in the United States they might like to settle.

Newark Videos

[I have had INSANE computer problems today, including AOL shutting down SIX TIMES, and MSIE closing down FOUR times, when I tried to format this entry oF my Newark fotoblog, as to make the font larger. My life is endlessly dragged down by preposterous computer problems. Why does Congress allow the computer world to be the most unreliable part of our lives, year after year? This is not a new technology, in which the kinks have yet to be worked out. The Internet is over 15 years old, but it doesn't WORK. Day after day we are attacked by criminals, with impunity, because no government anywhere treats attacks upon us over the Internet as real crime. And programs close, or hang, or otherwise reduce us to helpless rage as often as four and five times a day, but no one in government does so much as lift a finger to punish the wrongdoers and make this unutterably important part of the modern age WORK. Indeed, not one candidate for President of the United States has said so much as ONE WORD about making the Internet reliable or safe. Not ONE WORD. It is in fact VERY LIKELY that many of the difficulties two hundred million Americans have with the Internet are the result of endless HACKING by COMMUNIST CHINA, which is endlessly probing our weaknesses and trying to find ways to entirely disrupt our civilization in preparation for war. You don't hear much about that from the major media, but the Pentagon has been preparing for it for YEARS. Jay Leno this past week in fact mentioned that Communist China (and yes, "Communist" is an indispensable part of that country's name) found a way to hack into the PENTAGON'S computer system. That is not the act of a friendly government. We are headed to World War III, against Communist China, the wonderful people who have killed 80+ Tibetans this past week. But that's another story. Maybe. Right now, I just want to be able to upload this blog entry in the right font, not tiny type. Can I do that? Let's see. Or perhaps I should just give up on that impossible dream and let you cope with tiny type. If you see this blog entry in small type, it is because Blogger just doesn't work, and every time I tried to format — at least ten times heretofore — I was thrown out of my Internet-access program. Maybe Blogger has been specially targeted by the Communist overlords of China. I don't know, but I give up. If all I can get onto the Internet is tiny type, that's all I can do. Nor can I fill in some blanks of cross-references I meant to put in. Nor make other proofreading-type of corrections. Maybe tomorrow, or next Thursday, I can put this text into a reasonable size, fill in blanks, and otherwise fix errors. (Postscript: on Monday nite I was able to get into Compose mode to adjust the font size -- but Blogger rendered all but two of my video players null and void, so I had to spend HOURS finding all the videos and lifting HTML code to restore them. Appalling.)]
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Gaetano, who is not always nice (oh, he may seem nice to you, because you see only the nice things I say about him), is hassling me over not keeping this fotoblog up-to-date, which to him means "daily", and about its being "boring" to him. I have told him that different people are interested in different things, and that the name of this fotoblog is "Newark USA", not "Newark USA Daily". But he does not relent. I tell him I'm just a little old man living alone without emotional supports, and I get to things when I can, but he has no sympathy. He sends me critical emails and I reply, "U r mean", but he doesn't stop. He IS mean.
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In any case, I suggested to someone who has offered some videos to me, that he should open an account on Blip.tv, and upload his videos there, so I can review them and refer people to them in this fotoblog, even embed a player for people to click on without having to go to another site. It then occurred to me to do a search on "newark new jersey" in Blip.tv, and I then reviewed the results. I skipped those about the Riots, but if you're interested in the Bad Old Days, there are some videos about that era. (By the way, if you don't yet know about hulu.com, check it out. A project of NBC, it includes something like 150 present and classic TV shows in full, and not just clips. But commercials are integral and, by design, inescapable. That is, if you fast-forward, wherever you stop, you land on a commercial! You can, of course, mute the commercials by toggling your volume control's Mute box on and off.)
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Here are some of the videos I found worth viewing, not including mine, which are also listed (under "El Craigo") but which I have already shown here.
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I took HOURS reviewing the videos about Newark on Blip.tv, so you don't have to (tho you can certainly go to blip.tv on your own, if you second-guess my judgment, in that everyone thinks a little differently). The duration of each video below, if not described in words, is shown in minutes:seconds (e.g., 2:46). Let's start out, this Good Friday, with a couple of videos about the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, the extraordinary Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart. ("Cathedral", here, is an adjective, "Basilica" being the noun, but you can use the two terms interchangeably to refer to that magnificent building, which ranks among the best in the United States, and perhaps even the world entire).
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One Peter Hiscano shows (http://blip.tv/file/461678/ -- 2:46) the Cathedral Basilica and Branch Brook Park's cherry blossoms, to a Latin chant sung by an ineffably sweet female voice. I can't put a video player here right now, because my computer/the Google Blogspot server just plain doesn't work right now. I don't know what the problem is, but, tho I am livid, I am old enuf to know when to just give up and not fume pointlessly.

Also under the tsimajad name is a 30-second snippet (http://blip.tv/file/458169) of the interior of the Cathedral Basilica during booming organ practice. I had that experience once. Wonderful. You can find a schedule of musical performances at the Cathedral at the Basilica's website.

If you want to see more videos uploaded by the same person, which include some utterly beautiful musical performances not specific to Newark, click on what should be (but isn't) an image icon to the left of the name "tsimajad" on the upper right of the screen at the Newark video. When one finishes, the next plays automatically. I don't know if "tsimajad" and Peter Hiscano are one and the same. The bulk of these videos are religious, Catholic. So I'm comfortable with them, because I am a nominal Catholic. Not "lapsed". Nominal. I identify with The Church, even given all its errors, such as antihomosexual bigotry derived from the Old (Jewish) Testament's Leviticus, which it otherwise overthrows (we don't, after all, regard a cheeseburger, which mixes meat and dairy against Jewish dietary laws, as a guarantee of damnation; and much, if not even most, of Leviticus is given over to dietary laws and, get this, animal sacrifice!). I don't believe in God, nor gods — anybody's gods — in the slitest, but I do honor the uncountable good works of The Church, and am indebted, as is all of the Western world, to the Church for its multitudinous beautiful buildings, statues, stained-glass windows and such, that have given us places where, when we are weary of this wicked world, we can go, sit, think, and hope. The Church has also inspired the devotions of beautiful people like Mother Teresa, in our own time, and uncounted others, in dozens of countries, thru 20 centuries. And don't forget the music. If we are very lucky, when we need solace, we get to sit in a place as glorious as Newark's Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart when the organist is practicing, or even join the throng when song and organ overwhelm a thousand New Jerseyans sharing the joy of being here, in this lucky, blessèd place, on this violent, horrid planet, so beautiful from space, so ugly, in so many parts, up close. I say now to those former Newarkers who fled this wonderful city, that I count my blessings that this is not Darfur, nor Myanmar, Tibet, nor a million other worse places but one of the very best places on this blue and green Earth. This, uniquely, is the place that holds the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart. For that I am truly grateful.
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Star-Ledger video (http://blip.tv/file/249035/ -- 2:21) of Jeff Vanderbeek guiding videografer around to show construction progress inside the Newark Arena. Terrific.

S-L video of Bon Jovi in Newark (http://blip.tv/file/448120/ -- 4:33), combines interview w/performance clips. Jon Bon Jovi speaks to expressly working to help revive Newark. Good boy! But lose the ridiculous fake accent. We don't talk like ignorant Southern white trash in New Jersey. So why would you speak beautiful, correct New Jersey English — best in the world — in the interview portions but affect a stupid, ugly Southern accent (artificial, not even authentic to any particular place in the South) in the sung portions? I know a lot about spoken English. Ours has the full complement of the 42 phonemes of American English, pronounces R everywhere, and is consequently the clearest spoken English on the planet. New Jerseyans should use that best English in all situations.

Nice S-L overview (http://blip.tv/file/446799) of the opening of The Rock, with Mayor James saying "the old and the new" while standing next to Mayor Booker (who is inches taller, something I hadn't known).

S-L video (2:35) of the creation of a mural in The Rock that I have yet to see.


Silent S-L slideshow (http://blip.tv/file/446766 -- 3:01) of opening concert at The Rock. Nice job. Best overall shot: view of stage from the crowd, with reddish backdrop stabbed by spotlites. Best shot, male: several of JBJ, who still looks good, except when pursing his lips in a couple of unfortunate pix. Best shot, female: "Bon Jersey" written on chest of young woman audience member.

Discover Newark, Walking Tour, Part 1. S-L guided tour (http://blip.tv/file/421889/ -- 4:20) of historic Newark by Liz Del Tufo. Includes the magnificent interior of Cass Gilbert's Old Essex County Courthouse.

S-L Walking Tour, Part 2, the Ironbound (http://blip.tv/file/421890/ -- 5:24), guided by Linda Rodrigues. She seems a little vague about the origins of the name "Ironbound", which I think is well-settled as relating to an area surrounded by train tracks.

An S-L slideshow (http://blip.tv/file/363138/ -- 0:50) of Branch Brook Park in the spring (2006, as it happens), with birds singing in the background appears below.

The Star-Ledger apparently f*ked up with a whole bunch of would-be videos prefixed "VR:", that ended up being only 1 second long and did not play as more than that even tho I tried, as suggested, to play them in a particular viewer. Didn't work. The S-L should DELETE those files from Blip.tv, because they make the S-L look incompetent, despite the presence on Blip.tv of many terrific videos from the very same Star-Ledger
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Discover Newark, Walking Tour, Part 3. S-L guided tour (http://blip.tv/file/421891/ -- 4:06) of the North Ward, including Branch Brook Park and the Cathedral Basilica, guided by Liz Del Tufo. I have a couple of pix of the Sydenham House she speaks of, in this blog's entry of May 26th last year.

Discover Newark, Walking Tour, Part 4. S-L tour (http://blip.tv/file/421892/ -- 4:46) of various arts venues, guided by Victor Davson. Starts with Aljira, with its perpetual pedestrian bridge, an ugly scaffold that has been over the entryway for at least four years. I don't know why. Shows interior of WBGO, but I suspect that is not open to the public. All four of these walking tours are by Scott Lituchy. Very good work.

This next video will surprise some snobs outside Newark, a private wine-tasting party (http://blip.tv/file/390460/ -- 2:40) at The Rock hosted by Lorraine Bracco, who was apparently part of the detestable HBO mob drama, The Sopranos. I suspect the grapes are not grown in New Jersey, much less Newark, but some grapes will grow in New Jersey, and agronomists are working wonders with selective breeding of hardy plants.

There is an active friary (http://blip.tv/file/325100/ -- 1:31) in Newark that I didn't know about, at some church called Blessed Sacrament, if I heard right.

There are also monks in a monastery, Newark Abbey, with 17 monks, associated with St. Benedict's Prep on MLK, which (boys') school has been in Newark since 1868.This S-L video (3:09) shows something of their life.

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The Star-Ledger also got inside the Story Corps Griot trailer (http://blip.tv/file/183566/ -- 1:23), exterior pictures of which I showed here April 27th of last year. The bastards! They get permission to film inside the Old Essex County Courhouse and the Griot trailer, and I'm out in the cold like some homeless guy. Well! Maybe we do need a City commission on bloggers and Newark fotograffic essayists to accord press-type credentials. (Have I discussed that? Hm. Got to check. If not, I attended a session on how to get onto a City Commission, and will discuss that at some point.)

And of course we cannot forget the time-lapse S-L video that compresses three years of construction of the Prudential Center (http://blip.tv/file/422320/)into 52 seconds. I have mentioned this and the mural-creation video before, but they are still worthy of a visit, especially if you haven't seen them.

OK, that's the last of the S-L videos of note.
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Now we have a video (http://blip.tv/file/562046/ -- 3:20) of the "Hannah Montana" (Miley Cyrus) concert in the Prudential Center, "12 29 07". I heard so little about the Newark appearances of this boffo, must-see event (for little white girls) that it might almost never have happened, even tho, as I recall, there were TWO Newark concerts. Miley Cyrus's appearance in Newark did not escape the video-capture world, however. Why — really: oh, WHY? — did the occurrence of TWO concerts in Newark by an act that presumably attracted some 28,000 little (white) girls and their mommies escape notice by the media? As far as I know, NOT ONE bad incident marred the festivities. Isn't that WORTH noting? 28,000 little (white) girls and their mommies came to Newark, and not one was killed, nor molested, nor robbed. Why is the good news suppressed? You know damned well that if a mother and her 8- and 11-year-old dauters had been robbed at gunpoint in Downtown Newark, the whole damned WORLD would have known about it the very same DAY. As this performance video says, "Everybody makes mistakes." But why are the mistakes about Newark so long in being corrected??

I have mentioned that Ruben Studdard performed at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank. Millions of Americans were disappointed that Clay Aiken lost American Idol to Studdard, and I suspect Aiken has done at least as well since his loss. Aiken got to perform in Prudential Hall, NJPAC, a much grander venue, and with the New Jersey Symphony! Here's a video (http://blip.tv/file/325346/ -- 5:10) of part of that nite.

There's another Clay Aiken video from his NJPAC appearance on Blip as well, but it's not music, just commentary about how money may clear the way for songs to be played on the radio.
The last video I'll show today is perhaps the best, a slideshow by "charles1789" of many fotos of St. Lucy's Church at Christmas (http://blip.tv/file/733465/ -- 8:42), to music by Andrea Bocelli and by the late Sergio Franchi and Luciano Pavarotti. The description mentions something I hadn't put together theretofore, that St. Lucy is also known as Santa Lucia — as in the song! How shall I describe this video? Touching. Magnificent? No: stunning, a very fit way to end this Good Friday edition of Newark USA.

The Internet affords us a way around the negative things that the major media have impressed upon people's minds. Sadly, major media continue, be it in print or online, to imbue their own reports with notions of reliability that non-major media cannot even aspire to. Given that everything digital can be falsified, we really are, all and each, reduced to relying upon what we individually regard as trustworthy sources. I hope that my regular readers have come to rely upon me as a trustworthy source, especially in that I point people directly to any external source, so that the only issue is not whether I have falsified what the sources say but whether what they say, without regard to my referral, is true or false. At end, almost no one nowadays can vouch for anyone. Barack Obama sat in pews in a major, presumably respectable Chicago church and is now being vilified for not objecting to things said from the pulpit of that church, whether Obama himself was present or not (and remember that he had to be in Springfield, IL as part of his job as a State Senator, and in Washington, DC, as part of his job as U.S. Senator). Thus, in the links/embedded videos above, I merely show what OTHER people have posted to the Internet at Blip.tv. I am not in any way responsible for their videos (tho I am jealous of some of the wonderful images of Newark they were able to get that I have not).

Blahs

I have a lot of fotos from two days at Newark Museum events and just got via email a bunch of pix of an explosive demolition in Harrison (of what, I won't say just yet) but am a little down, in part because of our miserable weather. Tomorrow is the official start of spring, but the forecast is for the weather to be colder than today, the last full day of winter. Dismal wet, gray days get me down, and we have had an awful lot of them of late. So I'm not up to stitching together the various fotos with explanatory text right now. I was working on other things today, in which a foul mood actually helped.
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In any case, today I present a foto of the area of Fairmount Cemetery in which Gerhard Heinrich Mennen and his wife are buried. Yes, that's Mennen as in Speed Stick (♫ "By Mennen" ♪) and as in G. Mennen Williams, Gerhard's grandson, who was governor of Michigan from 1949-1961.

The foto above gives a sense of the serene beauty of much of Newark's Fairmount Cemetery. I showed here October 14th a foto of the front of the Mennen monument. Not all our cemeteries are in good shape, however. I saw a report on News 12 New Jersey a couple of days ago about neglect in Woodland Cemetery that is only now being addressed, after years, due in large measure to community adamance. Good for them.

Ask Booker, Google

Mayor Cory Booker will be answering questions tonite on WBGO over-air and over the Internet:

"Newark Today," the monthly call-in show hosted by David Cruz and featuring Mayor Cory Booker, airs [to]night at 8 p.m. on jazz 88.3fm and wbgo.org.

We will be taking on the issues surrounding the Newark police department, among other things

taking calls: 1.800.499.9246 and emails: newarktoday@wbgo.org

BGO has streaming audio at all times of day and nite, not just during this call-in show. You should, however, go to the site a few minutes in advance of 8pm tonite and click on the "Listen Now!" tab on the upper right, select one of the four boxes for types of audio players on the lower left, and test your connection. I have had trouble with this in the past, but it worked fine today. Please note that if the website says that "Live Jazz Cruise with Awilda Rivera", not "Newark Today" is on at 8pm, it is a mistake. Ms. Rivera's show is the usual programming. "Newark Today" is apparently a once-monthly alteration from the regular schedule. I called the station and confirmed that "Newark Today" is on ... today.
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By the way, WBGO's streaming audio works in the background any time you're online, so you can listen to it, as to many other Internet audio streams, anytime you're connected to the Internet, even if you're working on other programs, like a word processor.
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Using Google to the Max. My friend Lisa sent me an item you might like to know about, "Ten Simple Tricks to Help You Find Things Better With Google", from a health website called Mercola.com.

1. Find Different Types of Files. Simply add filetype:pdf (or switch pdf to ppt or doc) after your search terms.

2. Find Materials From Educational Institutes. For times when you need a reliable source, add site:edu after your search terms.

3. Use it as a Dictionary. Simply type define:keyword into the search engine.

4. Get the Time. You can find the current time in any location by searching for time location.

5. Find out the Weather. Search for location weather to get the forecast in any location.

6. Find Live Commentary. To get the score of a game or sporting event, type in a keyword, such as cricket [Huh?], while the game is going on.

7. Do Calculations. You can enter everything from simple arithmetic to trigonometry using the search box. For instance, you can enter 26 * 9000, or sin(90) / cos(90).

8. Convert Currency. Google has an inbuilt currency converter. Just enter 1 USD in EUR (or whatever currency you need).

9. Check Your Stocks. Simply enter stocks: XXXX.

10. Find Images of Faces. To find image results of people only, add imgtype=face to the image URL. For instance, http://images.google.co.in/images?q=happy&imgtype=face.

Sources: TechTracer.com January 6, 2008

Neato keen.
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Today's foto is of a different Newark musical institution from WBGO, the Newark Boys Chorus School on Broad Street, as seen at nite. It's very close to Symphony Hall, tho I saw the Chorus perform at Prudential Hall, NJPAC. If you haven't yet been to a Newark Boys Chorus concert, you might want to do that. I wonder if there's a way to have the NJPAC website email me when their next concert is scheduled. Hm.

Defunct Church(es); Vigil

In reviewing my fotos of churches to select an institution for this "Church Sunday" at Newark USA, I checked a closeup foto of the sign outside a storefront church in my vicinity, Vailsburg, the Living Water Christian Assembly of Smyrne, and called the fone numbers given to see if they have a website. Alas, the main number had been disconnected, and when I called the cellphone number and said I was trying to reach the church, the guy who answered hung up! Perhaps the church dissolved and left debts behind. Or perhaps the phone number had been reassigned. If that was the case, and the guy was just tired of fielding calls for the former owner of that number, he should simply have said that number had been reassigned and he had no info on the former owner. Just hanging up was rude, very unlike most Newarkers.

So let's try a second church in Vailsburg, the Church of God & Saints of Christ, at 896 South Orange Avenue, the main drag of Vailsburg. I did a Google search on this name and that location did not come up. Moreover, there are apparently different organizations by that same name, one of which, despite its name, is not Christian but a black Jewish organization, and one of which is Christian. I don' t know if the Vailsburg building shown below is still in use as a place of religious assembly, nor which group it relates/related to.

Peace Vigil. There will be a peace vigil at Raymond Plaza West, outside the main waiting room of Newark Penn Station, this Wednesday, March 19th, from 5:30-7:00pm — part of a nationwide commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the start of the U.S. war against Iraq. Raymond Plaza West is a pretty congested place around that time. I hope this vigil doesn't produce a traffic snarl nor flaring tempers. Peace activities shouldn't incite anger. For more information, contact Bill Chappel at bchappel1@verizon.net or call (973) 623-6490.

Fundraiser for Dance Troupe Tonite

Gaetano found an article in the Star-Ledger about a Newark performing-arts company I have passed by but knew nothing about.

The choirs will be singing, literally, when Gallman's Newark Dance Theatre, founded and directed by dance teacher and choreographer Alfred Gallman, celebrates its 30th anniversary with a gala fund-raiser at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center.

Thousands of students have passed through the doors of the company's affiliated school and some of them will return on Saturday to grace the Prudential Hall stage in Newark and to greet old acquaintances in the aisles. Among the guest artists at this soulful outpouring of appreciation for an influential teacher will be Reverend Tyron Williams' Youth Mass Choir and the All Star Gospel Choir. ***

Gallman's Newark Dance Theatre. Where: New Jersey Performing Arts Center, 1 Center St., Newark. When: 7 p.m. Saturday. How much: $35-$45. Call (888) 466-5722 or visit njpac.org.

I noticed, weeks ago, a banner outside a building on Central Avenue shared with the Davita Dialysis Center, at the northeast corner of Fairmount Cemetery. But each time I passed that area, the liting was wrong or I had someplace I needed to be in a hurry, so I didn't have a foto to show you. Once I read this story, I decided to take a picture, no matter the time or liting, so, as often happens with me, I took pix at nite. After 30 years of working evening and graveyard shift, it's often hard for me to get myself anywhere early. I was making great headway in moving my sleep cycle earlier, but then I lost an hour to the switch to Daylite Saving Time last week, which, oddly, set me back more than an hour, and I am only gradually getting back to where I had been.
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Nite has its charms, and, as should be plain from the many fotos I show of Newark at nite, you can actually go out after dark in most parts of Newark without serious danger. I have dozens and dozens of fotos of Newark at nite on this fotoblog, and I haven't been killed even once.

As I recall, at least parts of the building are actually lite brown in sunlite, but streetlites do funny things to colors.

The exaggerated dangerousness of Newark in people's perceptions brings me to another item Gaetano found, a Star-Ledger story from yesterday about Newark's St. Patrick's Day parade, which is held on a day other than St. Patty's Day itself, presumably to avoid conflicts with bands and spectators who go to Manhattan's vastly grander parade — altho I won't ever go until the antigay bigotry of that parade's organizers ends. At the end of the article as shown on NJ.com, there were a bunch of comments from readers, including much of the same tired rhetoric about how dangerous and vile Newark is. The last comment I saw was from someone of partial Irish ancestry who has now lived in Newark for 6 years, so I left my own comment:

My mother was half-Irish, and I live in Vailsburg, tho I wasn't born in Newark. I made the CHOICE to MOVE to Newark in June 2000, and love it. As you can see from my story and the comment above, some Irish are coming to Newark as a conscious, intelligent choice, and it's great to have things for us here, like the skir of bagpipes at Kilkenny Ale House. Newark is coming back, and part of that is white people coming back, despite all the slanders of the "haters" on every Newark-related story on this site. Yes, it's sad that so many people who loved Newark felt they lost the city in the 60s. This is 2008. Get over it, and COME BACK. The Bad Old Days are gone, for GOOD. You can live here again, and let the bitterness go.

The Gallman School is one of the good things about Newark, and aspiring dancers might think of Newark as a place to study and perform.

Inside the Westinghouse Building

I received email from Kieran McGarry, a New Jersey fotografer who has placed online some fotos of the interior of the Westinghouse Building from November 25, 2007. I wondered how he got permission to take pix inside, which I'd have liked to do (before the building's structural integrity fell into question). He replied:

As far as permission went, a fellow photographer friend and myself happened to be driving by and the place was left open. Doors hanging off, fence torn aside and no visible no trespassing signs. So ... off we went. The building itself was remarkably in stable condition. The floors were concrete with wood covering them. The oldest section of the building, being all wood & brickwork, even that was fine to walk on. I believe the way the demolition people have been hacking away at the building is what's caused the structural failure. All I could think about as I walked through there, was what a waste of a great building. The basement was even decent. You can see in that one room, it was filled with architectural / ornamental building pieces from outside. Such a shame they couldn't clean the place up a bit. The inside was clean, as far as asbestos and what not, there were no chemicals or anything to be of concern that were visible. You could see where they had cleaned out all the asbestos previously. The views out the windows were astounding and would have made for some incredible office space.

I suppose some space could have been devoted to offices or art galleries, but I'd have liked to see most of the building converted to upscale lofts and apartments, some reserved to artists (musicians, and the like) as is planned for the apartment tower opposite NJPAC.
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I especially liked this foto from Kieran's album on Fotki.

Poster inside Westinghouse Building. Foto courtesy of Kieran McGarry, www.nutekk.com.

Click here to see the other 26.

Art-Happy

(Very long post, with 27 fotos.)

Last Friday, March 7th, was a very big arts nite. I asked two ladybuddies/galpals if they'd like to hit these events, and both agreed, tho both had been busy the last time there was such an arts evening. I knew of three events in Newark, two of them visual arts and one a poetry reading, plus one in Jersey City, a show by a Newark artist. But once we were out, we discovered other things going on in J.C. And Lisa, who is originally from Queens but has lived in Bloomfield for a few years, was not familiar with Newark, so I showed her some other things along the way. Unfortunately, there was rain to complicate matters. I had to pick up Lisa from Newark Penn Station ("NPenn", anyone?) and Ingé from One Newark Center at 5pm, in not just rain but also rush-hour traffic. It took a little longer than we'd hoped, and finding a parking place near Halsey Street also proved a bit of a problem.

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Fotos today are of the various art events and artworks we saw on our travels last Friday, in the order we encountered the shows they were in.

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First up was Newark Art Supply, which I had not yet managed to get to. The first foto, above, is also the first foto I showed in the placeholder here last Friday. In it we see Ade (o.dáe or, in folk phonetics, ah-DAY), co-owner of NAS, in front of the prints by Senegalese artist Papa Gora Tall, below. Chris, the other co-owner, was also there but he was working away at a large desk all the while, joining the conversation only on isolated occasions. I've decided to leave the bare-bones placeholder entry pretty much as it was, as sort of a quiz on Newark and Jersey City arts, for people to identify the works if they can without reading this entry. People doing various searches stumble across individual entries in this blog, so I have merely added a note at the end as to where the reader can find the full ID's.

My camera had a lot of trouble with the liting in Newark Art Supply. I don't know why. Perhaps because the wall was dark? (By the way, I wondered if the walls in the gallery area are always deep blue or the color is changed for different shows, but forgot to ask.) In any case, flash fotos were too garish and nonflash fotos a tad fuzzy and very orangy. I tried to correct the colors in my graphics program, with only limited success. In this next foto, Papa was blinking when the flash went off, but I show the foto anyway to include what Sebastian, one of the visitors to the show when we were there, said was an abstract bird.

I had some chardonnay and we sat on padded wooden cubes to chat. I wanted to get a foto of my friends in front of the art, but Ingé is convinced she is not fotogenic, so I didn't press but joked that it's just as well because I wouldn't want my camera to break. Here, however, is Lisa with Papa in front of his blue painting. I was joking about Papa and Lisa ("Mama") hooking up. Lisa was not amused. I'm showing this foto anyway because I think both of them look better than in my other pix. Just don't think of them as a couple because they met just the one time.

When we arrived, we were the only visitors there, doubtless due to the downpour. But after a while a few more people came in and joined in various conversations with each other and us.

Above, Lisa stands by the group of prints that Ade was also near, above, except a painting to Lisa's right also appears.

Having other places to check out, we bid farewell to the group and headed to Red Saw for the unfortunately named show "Two Crackers from the Same Box", which refers to two (white) brothers, Stephen and David Shingler.

The kinetic sculpture above (second foto in the placeholder entry last Friday) is a "Bird Drawing Machine", which consists of a rotating arm on which is mounted a birdcage that contains two tiny birds. As the arm rotates, a stylus shoots out from time to time down and back up parallel to the arm, forming ellipses. I liked this, and when what appeared to be the artist, whom I'd seen crouching by the paper(?) on the floor, was free, I asked if this was his, and which brother he is. It was indeed his, and he was David, a slite young man with lots of curly, dark-blond hair and, I think, blue eyes. He explained that the stylus moves into action when the birds chirp, and thus the birds effectively draw the lines (actively when they chirp; passively, when their silence leaves the stylus making circles where it came to rest alongside the rotating arm). Lisa realized then that the wire leading from the birdcage must be connected to a microphone to pick up the bird's chirps. And so it is. I was surprised that the little babies weren't scared out of their tiny bird minds by the flashing movement of the stylus, and David confirmed that they can get a bit stressed, so he had stopped the machine for them to rest — which incidentally simplified my task in fotograffing them.

They are zebra finches. I said that George Jefferson wouldn't like that, but he didn't catch the reference. Kids. I explained, but it appeared to make no impression. Jeez. The Jeffersons is on TV still, over 20 years after its heyday, if late at nite on Channel 11 over-air and TV Land on cable. Ah, well. The zebra finches are cute little birdies. Craig like birdies.

This second mechanical sculpture (I don't know why so many of my pix that nite are fuzzy) is a Wind Drawing Machine, not kinetic here for lack of wind. I suggested Lisa blow on the fan to make it move. She declined. Besides, due to space limitations (Red Saw is a small venue), David hadn't placed any paper on the floor for the machine to draw on.

David is from Cleveland, where he went to college. I asked, "Case Western?" (I had a friend who taught German there, back in the day.) He said "Cleveland Institute of Art". When I checked that in Wikipedia, it turned out originally to have been the Western Reserve School of Design for Women. So I wasn't wildly off, tho the two institutions are apparently not related. FYI, the "Western Reserve" is a historical oddity most Americans know nothing about. It seems that Connecticut, a small state, had great territorial ambitions and was not willing to be hemmed in by New York State to its west and south, but wanted to expand into the north of what is now Pennsylvania, part of the Delaware River Valley in New Jersey, and a strip the height of Connecticut's main body across the north of Ohio. "Beyond Ohio the claim included parts of what would become Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California," all on the basis of a British royal land grant of 1663. Puritans from Connecticut also established Newark, in 1666. Very busy guys, those Connecticut...ters. (Wikipedia shows "Connecticuter", but that's unphonetic. There should be a double-T. But, then, what can you expe(c)t of a state with a silent-C?)

This third sculpture by David Shingler is a Water Drawing Instrument. I didn't pursue how it was supposed to work, but he said it is bobbing in the waters of Lake Erie in the foto at bottom right, which is how the subject of Cleveland came up. In the background, mostly blocked, is one of his brother Stephen's paintings.

I'm not sure I found out why the Shinglers are exhibiting in Newark, but I'm glad of it. Newark should be a focus for artists from everywhere, not just this vicinity. If I did get that information, I forgot it. If Lisa sees this and remembers, she should let me know and I will replace this wondering with that info.

Here we see three of the fotos by Dave Long in the smaller of Red Saw's public spaces, the Reception Room.

I told David that I like Cleveland, because, like Newark, it's a comeback city, tho Cleveland, which was when I was a child one of the 10 largest cities in the Nation, has come back farther, with some buildings now taller than Terminal Tower, which had been for decades the tallest building outside New York. I told Lisa that if she ever gets to Cleveland, she should look for a terrific indoor market in what I thought had been a railroad station and has a wonderful vaulted brick ceiling. It's the West Side Market, David volunteered. (It turns out that I was mixing up Cleveland's indoor market with Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market, another wonderful place.)
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I didn't realize until I reviewed my fotos later that there is only one picture in which the other brother, Stephen's, works show at all, and that is only in the background of the Water Drawing Instrument cluster. All of Stephen's works at Red Saw are members of his "Black Mineral Series", which appear to be monochrome blotchy/crystalline designs on a plain white background. Sorry. I guess I was distracted by the three-dimensionality and kineticism of David's works. Shiny. Birdies.

Painting at LIT's 11 Halsey Street space, the third foto from last Friday's placeholder. This reminds me of the Ghanaian Glass Beads exhibition at the Newark Museum.

Ingé was tired and hungry, having worked all day, and wasn't in the mood for a poetry reading. I'm retired and Lisa is studying at Bloomfield College and not working aside from that, so we were inclined to check out the poetry. So I left Lisa at Red Saw for a bit, and drove Ingé thru the rain back to her car in the One Newark Center garage, then returned to Red Saw and found a parking place close by. Lisa and I then walked to the Liberation In Truth venue, which has various artworks onsite.

Here we see a sculptural assemblage of cellphones and such on a painted backboard in the LIT space, "Can you hear me now?", by Shonda Nicholas. She describes it as "a lil critique of the cell phone industry and the voices of radical women that often go unheard."

LIT's full name is "Liberation In Truth Unity Fellowship Church". It holds services in the Episcopal Cathedral, Trinity & St. Philip's, on Sundays at 2:30pm, and describes itself as:

spiritually affirming to all people, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation. It is our belief, that ALL people have access to the love of God.

When we arrived, some women were setting up for the poetry reading, but they told us the poets were not yet there. We looked at the art but couldn't wait an indeterminate time because we still had places to go.
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I wanted to show Lisa the paintings by Marco Muñoz in 27 Mix, and on the way we saw this decorated aboveground tank (for heating oil?). I didn't take pix in 27 Mix, because it was in full swing with the dinner rush, and I wouldn't presume to intrude.

After Lisa saw cozy 27 Mix and Marco's paintings, we returned to my car past the mural on the Hahne Building. She couldn't make any sense of the rightmost panel either, and agreed that the second from rightmost panel seemed more sophisticated than the others. Then we headed for Jersey City. Newark Art Supply had sent me an email that included mention of a show by Newark artist Kevin Darmanie at 143 Christopher Columbus Drive in J.C.: "'A Fool in the Eyes of GOD' — One man Show!", curated by Nyugen Smith. I hadn't known in advance whether Ingé or Lisa would be up to venturing all the way to J.C., so hadn't Mapquested a route. As it happened, Ingé was not up to the trip but Lisa was, but we weren't sure how to get there. I figured the best way to go was probably to head over the Jackson Street Bridge into Harrison and follow Harrison Avenue, which turns into Newark Avenue and goes all the way into downtown J.C. So that's the way we went. There was bad flooding on the roadway, heavy rain, and bad visibility (I guess I need new windshield wipers, and the defroster blast was barely keeping the inside of the windshield free of fog). Lisa had found at Red Saw a Jersey City art-events brochure that had a map of downtown J.C., and she was doing the navigating, to the extent either of us had any idea where we were at any given time, since only downtown J.C. appeared on the map. I pulled out my compass, which I thought was supposed to be backlited but wasn't. Weak battery? For some reason, I was visualizing things entirely wrong, putting Jersey City's waterfront on the west, as tho it were Manhattan, but Lisa had things straight. Thank goodness. When we were well into downtown J.C., we stopped a passing gent and asked him where Christopher Columbus was, and we were only a block from it!

Two paintings by Mey-Mey Lim in lobby of an office building in downtown Jersey City. This was the fourth foto in last Friday's placeholder.

We had misidentified which of the numbered orange squares on the map represented the locus of the Kevin Darmanie show, so when we found that dot, it was somebody else's art show! So we saw an additional show in an additional venue. The woman whose show it was, Mey-Mey Lim, was very friendly, tho she didn't know where 143 CCD was. We chatted with her and she gave me permission to take some pix, including the next two, that include her.

Here we see a painting of a boat on the Yangtze River as Ms. Lim remembered it from a trip to China with her parents. I assume that "Lim" is her last name. I once knew a woman named Lim Kwee Lee, from Singapore. Her surname was Lim, but she listed herself in the Manhattan telephone directory under Lee. When her parents tried to find her number, they couldn't, because they were looking under "Lim"!

Mey-Mey Lim is a New Jersey artist born in Michigan of Overseas Chinese ancestry, whose parents are from Indonesia. She was showing several paintings in the lobby of an office building near the J.C. waterfront, rather unusual in subject matter for a woman artist, mechanical objects and worksites. Her website says: "In my art, I like to capture the beauty in mundane objects & places. Different mediums allow me to express different ideas."

Mey-Mey is a diminutive young woman. I don't know that she'll like this foto of herself, since she seems a bit grim, but I like the perspective on her various paintings.

Lisa consulted the map and, overleaf, the key to the dots, and found the right dot for 143 CCD, so we bid Ms. Lim goodnite and headed out. We negotiated the one-way streets and found a parking space only a couple of blocks distant. It turns out that there were three different shows in the same low-rise building, the Grassroots Arts Facility. The first floor (the Toy Eaters Studio) hosted a group show, very crowded with visitors.

Tho I am interested in New Jersey arts generally, my first interest is in showcasing Newark artists and art venues. So altho Lisa and I made a quick circuit of the first-floor show, we were intent on finding the Darmanie show. I did rather like these two works, however. I have no idea whose they are.

This was the fifth foto in last Friday's placeholder entry.

We headed upstairs and finally found Kevin Darmanie's one-man show on the second floor (the Lex Leonard Gallery). I saw what I thought was the artist himself when we first arrived, but he disappeared shortly thereafter behind a curtain to have something to eat.

Note the irony of the giant rendering of the word "Humble". Remember when a lot of Esso stations turned into Humble stations? I always found amusing the signs proclaiming pridefully, "Humble"!

Rupert Ravens, whom we had first run into at Red Saw, had found his way to Kevin's show, and when I mentioned that I had hoped to get a picture of Kevin alongside his self-portrait but he had disappeared behind the curtain, Rupert, who knew Kevin, pulled the curtain aside and called to him, whereupon he graciously consented to appear in the following foto.

This was the sixth foto in the placeholder entry.

Rupert also mentioned that he had gotten feedback from people about seeing fotos of works at his gallery, the largest in Newark, on this blog first. I called Lisa over, 'cause I wanted her to hear this so she knew I wasn't just boasting emptily if I passed along that comment. He said plainly (approximate quote): "People from all over the world have told me that they saw pictures of my gallery 'on this wonderful blog, "Newark USA"'." And you thought this was only hyperlocal blogging.

Lisa stands by one of Kevin's works that I liked. The little dark-yellow rectangles contain narrative. (The sign on the right indicates something we were by then in need of, a restroom.)

In an alcove at the back of the room appears this group of four small works on a door.

Opposite that door is a stock of teeshirts. The dialog balloon coming down from the artist says "I SHOULDA BEEN A MUSICIAN!"

Looking forward from that alcove, we see that the crowd, which was sparse when we arrived, had filled in by the time we were ready to go.

Before we headed out, I walked to the third floor to see if there was anything there. There was, a one-man show by Gordon Fraser. The foto of the artist alongside his one large blue-dominant painting was the seventh foto in the placeholder entry, and the last from Friday. (The eighth (last) foto in the placeholder entry is from Saturday, to be discussed in a future blog entry.)

Most of the paintings in Gordon's show were of redder shades. He explained that the works were inspired by the human form, but do not specifically represent it. Tho in person he does not seem affected, his website uses the detestable British affectation "Watercolours". No, Mr. Fraser, there is no U in "color".

Here, Lisa views others of Fraser's paintings.

Rupert Ravens used to live in Jersey City but had the good sense to move to Newark, and wants now to bring more artists here. That would seem a good thing for artists as well as for Newark, in that an item I see online suggests that artists are being pushed out of J.C. by luxury housing. By contrast, some people in Newark are going out of their way to bring artists in (as to the new luxury highrise tower going up opposite NJPAC, which reserves 20% of units for artists). Rupert had pointed out the window to a mural on the side of a building on the opposite side of the street and down 100 feet or so, and said that he coordinated its creation by a number of artists. At 15,000 square feet, it was at the time it was completed, about 10 years ago, the largest mural in New Jersey. In chatting with Gordon Fraser, I mentioned that, and he said that there had been an arson fire in the building on which the mural was painted, which produced a hole in the painting. So as Lisa and I left the building, we looked at the mural and saw that the hole is not very large, tho there seemed, in the darkness, to be some smoke damage to the upper portions. I took a couple of pix but they didn't turn out well.

I guess I'd have to take a foto in the daytime, but it's in Jersey City, and my focus is Newark.
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I had asked Rupert how to get back to Newark, and he said that all the streets running straight out directly from the side of the building we were on should take us to Route 1-9, and we tried that but none of the streets ran all the way thru. So we zigzagged and got lost again! Fortunately, Lisa's sense of direction and my compass, plus a bit of luck, took us to Newark Avenue and thence back the way we came. Had the sun been out, I'd have been able to dead-reckon my way back, but at nite, my sense of direction failed completely. Lisa's, however, held.
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And that was our arts nite out on the town(s).
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P.S. The Emperors' Club prostitution ring that has brought Elliot Spitzer low was run out of a 12th floor apartment in Cliffside Park — New Jersey! I'm so proud. New Jersey: Homebase of Hyper-High-Priced Hookers! Skanks 'R' Us. Well, they may be skanks, but they're astronomically expensive skanks.