First Hopewell

This "Church Sunday" at Newark USA I offer pix and such little info as I was able to find on the Internet about a large, handsome church catercorner to St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in the Roseville section of north Newark: First Hopewell Missionary Baptist Church (525 Orange Street, Newark 07107; (973) 485-8100). There is some confusion about the church's correct name, because, as this foto shows, there are apparently two names, one shown on a wooden sign on the left and one on a bronze plaque on the right.

A Google search for the "Missionary" version of the name produced the church without the word "Missionary" as part of it. Links there show that it is active in social services to the poor, including meals and emergency housing. The emergency-housing site erroneously places First Hopewell in East Orange, however.
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I also found this intriguing note at a Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development webpage about homeless shelters:

Newark homeless services - Dial 211 or (800) 696-7063

What do I know? Last I knew (when I lived in NYC), 211 was the number you called to get credit for misdialed calls. Not any longer. The Wikipedia article on 2-1-1 contains this interesting info, given the present weather situation in the Gulf Coast region:

In Texas, particularly in the Coastal Bend area, 2-1-1 is also the number to call for elderly and handicapped people needing evacuation assistance in the event of a pending disaster such as a hurricane.

The Old Newark website has a page with scant information about this church, save that it was "Formerly the home of Roseville Methodist Church." But it does include a great foto by Jule Spohn of the church under repair in 2003.

I thought this row of windows in the middle of a sloped roof an unusual feature worth noting.

First Hopewell is not to be confused with Hopewell Baptist Church, at MLK Boulevard and Muhammad Ali Avenue, pix of which I showed here May 20th and 21st, 2006.
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First Hopewell is one of innumerable churches in Newark that need a website. Can't local colleges that teach website design encourage each of their web-design students, as a term project, to create a website for a Newark church, nonprofit organization, public school, or small business? They could even link up fotografy or art students with web designers to take pix or make drawings, paintings, or pastel renderings of the subject entity for the website, and find a low-cost or free webhost onto which to place their website. The new college term starts very soon. How about it, students and faculty?

Note from Web Designer. Speaking of web designers, I got a very nice note of appreciation from Priscilla Sanabria, pastor of the Fountain of Life Church / Iglesia Fuente de Vida, for my mention of their splendid website November 11, 2007. I also received, July 23rd, an email offering some info about the history of Union Gospel Tabernacle, a foto of which I had shown May 28, 2006. On the August 10th Newarkology walking tour of MLK and lower Broad Street (which I have yet to deal with comprehensively, tho I have shown a few pix), I took another foto of that church so may do another blog entry incorporating that emailed info when I have time.
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Fortunately this blog tends to come up within the first 30 or 40 results in many searches on many things plus "newark", so people who have info to offer sometimes see my open queries and get back to me, albeit months or even years later. For instance, a Google search for "fuente de vida newark" produces two links to my post in the top 8 results. A Google image search for the same search string produces two entries to this blog, as results 1 and 2, because I mentioned it twice, saying sliltely different things about it. A Google search for "union gospel tabernacle newark" produces my blog entry as result No. 2, after only the Google maps result. Curiously, a Google image search on the same string does not produce that picture in the first 100 results, but does show three others of my pix on the first screen, of different things. The same kind of thing happens with image searches on lots of other strings. For instance, "basilica newark" shows 5 of my pix (not all of the basilica) in the first 20 results; "cathedral basilica of the sacred heart newark" shows 7 of my fotos among the top 20 results, including fotos 1-4 (the last of which is not the Cathedral but Sacred Heart of Vailsburg; but still my picture). I once did an image search on something that showed 17 of my fotos in the first 40 results.
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The moral of this story is, if you want to know if there's a picture of something from Newark that you hope to see in this blog, you can do a Google image search or a search in the box on the top left of this blog. To quote the old Alka-Seltzer commercial, "Try it. You'll like it." (Did you know that the 1971 commercial that introduced that catchphrase was recreated in June of this year by "the Bayer Consumer Care division of Bayer in Morristown, N.J."? Golly.

Much More 'Free On Demand'

Cablevision Newark has hugely increased the number of shows available On Demand and without fee, at channel 502. I don't know when this happened, nor whether it was all at once or a network or two were added at any given time, but there are now 4 screenfuls of cable networks listed, each with at least several shows available in several episodes. I hadn't checked Free On Demand in months (the two things I have occasionally checked out are Religion & Ethics Newsweekly (WNET) and Meet the Leaders (Public Access). But a couple of nites ago I just couldn't find anything, on about 170 channels, that I wanted to watch. Everything I might watch, I'd already seen. So I thought of Free On Demand, and was startled to see all the new offerings.

(I don't have pix specific to today's text topic, so offer miscellaneous fotos on other matters.) I noticed something this summer that I hadn't seen before. The wisteria that grows all over my yard and up onto my house ordinarily blooms once a year, around late April-early May. But this year, I saw this flower cluster on new growth (outside the window at the landing on my stairs near the second floor) on July 22nd.

I counted. There are now 40 categories of Free On Demand selections, including some of the big basic-cable channels, plus local cable programming and some things from channel 13, Newark's over-air TV station stolen by New Yorkers (by the way, don't forget never to send WNET a cent during any of their begathons, but support NJN or BGO if you want to support public broadcasting). There's also an area called "Customer Help Videos" that presently has only one video, about setting up HDTV; plus samplers for HBO and Showtime.

Then, just a few days ago, I spotted two more flower clusters in the same general area, in late August. A steady breeze pushed leaves in the way of a clear picture, but you can see the flower clusters anyway. Wikipedia says of wisteria: "Flowering is in the spring (just before or as the leaves open) in some Asian species, and in mid to late summer in the American species and W. japonica." So how come my wisteria, all from the same invasive vine, flowers in both spring and late summer (at least on new growth)? This is like the magnolia at the corner of my block that flowers in April and July, or the forsythia around the corner at the other end of the block that flowers in the spring and late summer. Very odd.

The best thing about Free On Demand is that you can watch anything listed at any time, pause it, rewind, fast forward, even stop it if you have to do something, then go back at any time within 24 hours of the time you started to watch, and resume right where you left off — all free.

Toward the end of June, I saw these yellow flowers in two different places in the neighborhood. The plants have leaves like large blades of grass. I have a plant something like that, but mine flowers in April. Anybody out there know what this is?

HGTV's offerings do not include the only HGTV show I much like, Mission Organization. The HGTV website shows that program as being offered on only some Sunday mornings at 9am. Yech. OK, I have VCRs I rarely use. Might as well get some use out of them. Unfortunately, this Sunday is not one on which the progam is shown. How rude.

This splendid planter on an elegant paving-stone sidewalk is in the Ironbound.

Here's some of what is listed for some networks; there are other things and other networks available. Animal Planet's offerings include several episodes of Meercat Manor. BET offers a couple of episodes of its raunchy Comic View series. The Discovery Channel includes several episodes of Deadliest Catch. The Science Channel's offerings include several items from the How It's Made series.

This abstract-looking box is a stairwell in the new Science Park High School at nite.

Logo, the supposedly "gay" but actually antihomosexual network, offers, as per usual, a bunch of things for women. Its one comedy special is all-female. So overwhelmingly female and indeed antimale is Logo that I call it "Lesbo", since it is nearly all-women, all the time. Perhaps if there were two channels, Logo Men and Logo Women, men would finally get some significant amount of time on TV.

My phlox encroach on the slate sidewalk in front of my house. I guess I should deadhead the spent blooms to keep the overall display tidy and agreeable. I also have to figure a way to hold the phlox plants up and keep them from drooping.

Nick on Demand offers a small number of kid favorites, including, at present, 3 selections each from iCarly and the incomprehensible SpongeBob SquarePants, an animated series that makes absolutely no sense — it's supposed to be set at the bottom of the ocean, even tho many of the things that occur in it could not happen underwater — but which is hugely popular with its target audience.

Here's a portion of the rock (and brick) garden in the side yard of a house at one corner of the Silver Street end of my block.

The Comedy Central offerings include some standup, four episodes (at present) of the insane cartoon cult series South Park, and 11 individual scenes from both The Daily Show (starring Lawrenceville's Jon Stewart) andColbert Report (starring Montclair's Stephen Colbert), but not (at present) complete episodes. Some full episodes, with most of the commercials cut out, do appear for the standup series Live at Gotham. I watched one hosted by Plainfield's Rich Vos. That reminds me that Verona's Jay Mohr has a new sitcom on CBS's fall schedule, Project Gary.

One homeowner in Vailsburg created this coleus and impatiens focus point in a green lawn alongside a hosta-edged sidewalk.

Tho the number of selections on any given channel available Free On Demand is small, you multiply that by a couple of categories within each network and 40 categories, and you get quite a lot to choose from. For all I know, Cablevision will keep adding to this feature over time, and the particular episodes for any network presumably change with the passing of time.

The gray leaves of dusty miller carry the silver of the fence inward, while impatiens carry their pink outward thru the fence of another Vailsburg front yard.

If you have not yet looked into Free On Demand and find yourself unable to find anything you want to watch among the offerings of the moment, check it out.
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P.S., September 1st: the Comedy Central offerings now apparently do include a few full episodes of The Daily Show and Colbert Report. This is a change from a couple of days ago, so the service is apparently still growing.

This half-barrel planter, also in Vailsburg, roughly follows the design principles set forth by PBS garden guru P. Allen Smith: in decorative planters, mix something tall and spiky in the middle, some lower, rounded plants around it, and something that hangs over the sides, all together.

Digital Mailbag

I've received a number of emails on various topics, that I'd like to share with you. First, Newark artist Kevin Sampson wrote to say thanks for including fotos of his works, presumably in my discussion of the cWOW mentoring show (see first, second, and fifteenth fotos in my blog entry of June 27th), and to tell me he has just started a blog himself, with fotos. When I went to check it out, I encountered a caution screen from Blogger saying that his blog may contain adult content. I clicked the proceed-anyway button and did not see in the first few items anything to worry about. His first entry today included a link to my cWOW blog entry. When I did a Google search to see if I could find out if Kevin lives in Newark, I discovered a Wikipedia article about a Kevin M. Sampson, also from NJ, who plays pro football. Not the same guy.

This blog entry speaks to Newark arts and boosterism, so my first illustration today shows the three teeshirts now available at Newark Art Supply.

A prescient 2002 article in The Folk Art Messenger says that the artist Kevin Blythe Sampson is indeed from Newark (the Ironbound). That webpage mixes third-person biography with some of Kevin's own words, but the typography is a little messed up in places. Quotes from Kevin are supposed to be in italics, whereas the surrounding commentary (apparently by one Wayne Cox of Minneapolis) is supposed to be in roman, but here and there they are reversed. There is also mention of "Jamaica, N.J.", which I assume is supposed to be "N.Y." Proofreaders, people! Enlist the help of proofreaders!

This design speaks to the unexpected "Newark Loves You" campaign.

I also got this very nice note from Janice Anderson, one of the artists of "Catfish Friday: the Exhibit", which I discussed here July 23rd.

I just wanted to reach out and let you know how much I am loving your blog. You make me fall in love with Newark all over again (not that I ever stopped).

Also, thank you for the extensive coverage of Catfish Friday. I really enjoyed your interviews with Sadee and Toni, and the fotos are way better than the ones I took. Unfortunately, I did not meet you that evening, but I am the artist who did the Spirit Dolls. [See pix 4-8 and 11 in my Catfish Friday discussion. The fotos below are similar to a couple of the fotos shown there but not the same ones.]

Anyway, hope to meet you at some event sometime. I'll look for you.

She told me of her blog too. I responded:

I LOVED the dolls and am sorry I didn't [get to] talk with you. * * * I see from your blog that you have had the same problem I had with trying to fotograf your dolls. It's hard to get the three-dimensionality in the lite indoors. Flash is too glaring, and it flattens them. Relying on spotliting doesn't work. I suspect that they need to be in generalized liting, like outdoors or between spotlites rather than immediately under them.

In any case, the summer has been a slow time for the arts * * *. I'm actually a little relieved that the arts scene slowed for the summer, because other things have kept me jumping, and I am taking WAY too many pictures, each of which takes something like 4 minutes to fix initially and another couple of minutes to crop and resize for the blog, once I decide which ones to use, what if anything to say about them, etc.
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Each of us who loves Newark and says so on the Internet helps to reconstruct Newark's preposterously inaccurate public image.

Another reader expressed appreciation for my own work in correcting that inaccurate image.

I stumbled across your blog, ... and you can't imagine the relief i felt in finding someone who admires Newark as much as I do, if not more. I often roam around Newark with my sad excuse for a camera taking snapshots to put on cards and in collages for my friends and family who fail to recognize the metropolitan gem we live in.

Anyhow, i just wanted to say thank you for proving that i'm not crazy — Newark is beautiful — and also for all the lovely pictures.

I said in turn:

Thanks. You might mention my fotoblog to people you'd like to know Newark better, esp. those who wrinkle their nose when you say "Newark". If you have what you think are really good pix of places I haven't covered, esp. if you have commentary about something particularly interesting about them, and you don't want to start your own fotoblog to show them, you might consider sending them to me. Of course, if your "sad excuse for a camera" doesn't give you pix you're proud of, you might instead alert me to things you think my readers/viewers would like to know about/see.

This second teeshirt features (in red) the skyline view drawn by Ade Tugbiyele Sedita, co-owner of Newark Art Supply, that is featured (in brown) as the logo in the header of The Daily Newarker website. In proofing this entry and checking links, I saw a couple of little differences between the version on this teeshirt and the version at The Daily Newarker. I won't say what I saw but will let interested people do their own comparison.

Regular readers (and I had extended discussions, that I may someday excerpt here, with two who have followed this blog for years) may remember that I have used here fotos from a few other fotografers, including at least Jeffrey Bennett, Julius Spohn, Eric Koppel, Stuart Chirls, and Craig Wilson. (If I have missed someone, please alert me so I can apologize!) In fact, I have some other fotos by other fotografers to show: some old b&w fotos of the old Guyon complex in Harrison and Jackson Street Bridge (which once had two steel humps, not just one), and some color fotos of the demolition of the enormous old natural-gas tank that used to stand opposite Newark Penn Station on PSE&G property that I think is to be the site of the Red Bulls soccer stadium, also in Harrison.
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A reader from Atlantic City says:

I like the tee shirt ideas for the Newark landmarks. You are right. It's so easy to find NY logo shirts, and way too difficult to find Newark logos. The only place I've seen Newark logos is on http://www.cafepress.com/. [Use the "Search All Departments" box to find "Newark" items.] Another item that's hard to find is a Newark City Flag. I've checked online, and I can find just about every other states' cities, except Newark. It's a shame the state doesn't promote Newark as a destination, like A.C. but I guess that's because A.C. has gambling which is a huge cash cow for the state.

I replied:

That's very interesting. There are a lot of designs to check. I don't much care for the ones I've looked at so far, but it's good to know of that site. It also affords me some info about competitive items and pricing. I'll have to check if that is one of the places where I can have things made that will handle the "fulfilment" and just send me the profits. Thank you very much.

By the way, I forgot to mention to him that Newark does not have an official flag. Why, exactly, that should be when much smaller cities in NJ do have their own flag, I do not know. Newark artists might want to create a flag, and the City should hold a competition.

This foto of the central portion of City Hall (my camera doesn't have a wide-angle lens, so I cannot show the entire width of that great building) shows at once that there is no City flag and that the metal letters that spelled out"City Hall" across the front of the balcony above the first floor were removed during the recent renovation, as was a metal canopy partway up the main entrance. (See the 10th picture in the first foto gallery of my Resurgence City website.)

As I show in fotos today, Newark Art Supply does offer three teeshirt designs. It's a start, but you have to buy them in-store, because they're not offered online.

This last Newark Art Supply teeshirt design shows (in reversed colors, b&w) Newark Penn Station, on the right, and the lift-bridge across the Passaic to the left. That bridge needed painting, last I knew. Maybe it should be painted some unexpected color, like golden yellow or a brilliant blue.

Speaking of Newark Art Supply, they forwarded to me an email about a one-day program of mentoring kids from the Thirteenth Street School in the West Ward (I'm not sure where that is, but my neighborhood, Vailsburg, is in the (far) West Ward) in fotografy.

What most of you already know is I have been running a photography program at Thirteenth Avenue School for the last 8/9 years. This year, I'd like to host a mentoring/photo blast photography program where three sixth grade students are matched with a photographer (or artist) and a community chaperone and you shoot throughout the city of Newark for a couple of hours around the idea of Freedom. I'll do all the prepatory work ... I am hoping to hold the final exhibit on Oct. 30th, either at the school and/or at a later date in a gallery in Newark.

I don't know if I would qualify as a mentor in fotografy, but this is definitely something I'd like to do, introduce some kid to what a camera can help you show about the world around you — especially when that world is Newark. I don't know why the program would be limited to three kids and three mentors. If there are more mentors available than that, could the program include more kids?

Here's a painting, by a New Jersey artist, on the wall of the second floor of the Academy Street Firehouse (I'll say more about that institution once I finish transcribing a taped interview with a key staffer, whose father painted this picture). It's interesting in overview.

My father was very big on fotografy. He had a Rolleiflex SLR. A Rollei was, in its time, top-of-the-line fotografic equipment, so I come by my interest honestly. Unfortunately, my father died before I started this fotoblog. I think he would have liked it. I would actually have hoped he'd love it, but my father was not an effusive kind of man. That made any praise he gave, that much more valued. His kids did pretty well despite his disinclination to praise. But most kids need praise. I trust that whoever enlists (and is accepted) in the one-day mentoring program reviews the pix (digital, I assume) and offers not just constructive criticism but also indicative praise, pointing out what is good and how doing something a little different might be even better. The things I would most like to point out to would-be fotografers are (a) the thing speaks for itself only if you capture what it is that it is saying, which may mean that (b) you have to shut out extraneous things and zoom in on the particular thing you want people to notice;(c) an interesting thing can be fotograffed uninterestingly; (d) a thing that at first may seem uninteresting might actually be quite interesting if you show it in relation to other things around, or in the alternative cut it apart from the things around, or zoom really close in to show something that people would not ordinarily see, or if they saw, they wouldn't look closely enuf to appreciate. Then, when you review your fotos, you have to look at all parts of them, whereupon you may see something you didn't notice when you took the picture but realize afterward is really interesting in itself. To create a visually appealing foto, you may have to crop very selectively, changing not just the thematic focus of the original picture but also its width-height ratio to accentuate something that wouldn't stand out in a more generalized view. And a certain esthetic sense has to guide decisions about what to fotograf, what to crop in or out, how to show the key elements, wide vs. high, how much uninteresting space to include top, bottom, and at both sides to frame the picture, and so on. Today's cameras may afford us the option of point-and-shoot, but beyond the well-focused pix you get of the overall scene, how you take the material you have captured and present it to the potential viewer can make a big difference. It's not just "Say 'cheese'!"

Here, however, is a closeup of the top of the painting, optically zoomed in my camera and slitely cropped in my graffics program, showing a bald eagle and a nest that the casual viewer of the larger foto would not likely notice. Makes a difference to one's appreciation of the painting, no?

Stuck at Home

The weather has been gorgeous of late, but I've been stuck in my home office working on the computer, and I'm angry at myself for that. I should have just moved all my computer work to after dark, and spent the day outdoors. Tomorrow, and thru the end of beautiful summer weather, I will do so. I'll have to shift my Simpler Spelling Word of the Day update to the nite before rather than the day itself, so the most I have to do on the computer before heading outdoors is check email.

The organizers of the Washington Park Wednesdays event apparently got permission to drape a banner about it on the fence around Gutzon Borglum's Indian & Puritan (or Puritan & Indian; I can never remember which). Someone also impaled a McDonald's drink container on one of the spikes of the fence. Not respectful. Maybe a $100 fine and 10 hours of cleanup duty in Washington and other city parks would change that malefactor's behavior in the future.)

So what shall I do during the day tomorrow? The farmer's market, music, and such in Washington Park on Wednesdays from 11am to 3pm (there are similar doings in Military Park on Thursdays during the same hours) should still be going for another few weeks. Maybe I'll try to get there, if I'm not up to a more ambitious trip.

This is a setup for a special event in Military Park last summer. Musicians performed and vendors offered their wares in the pavilions. I don't know what the setup this year looks like.

I want to see if there's anything to see in that little bit of Delaware that is on the NJ side of the Delaware River. You didn't know there's at least one bit of Delaware on our side of the river? Check out any good map of Salem County and you will see that what appears to be the farthest west NJ goes is actually a tiny bit of Delaware.

Here's a view of the flags and pennants (tho in a windless moment) that I showed Saturday from the Lite Rail station for NJPAC. Note that the pennants aren't very tall as compared to the PAC. They appeared high in relation to the Legal Center only because the PAC is at the top of a low hill. I didn't have any pix to go with this chunk of text, so just showed something related to a recent post. I've got lots of pix to use up, and some people might like to see pix of many different things, be they related to my topic of the day or not.

As Wikipedia says:

Small portions of Delaware are also situated on the far, or eastern, side of the Delaware River estuary. These parcels share land boundaries with New Jersey.

Oddly, the map of Delaware inaccurately omits the northern, larger portion of Delaware that has one of the land boundaries the text speaks to!

Here is the color foto from which I made the b&w outline for a teeshirt shown here August 12th.

I don't know what fool drew these boundaries, but Delaware owns the entire Delaware River to the New Jersey shoreline, plus one enclave of size and perhaps a tiny bit of a peninsula south of there as well, where the state line juts west from the shore to the middle of the river. There would appear to be no one living there, however. The closest inhabited place seems to be Penns Beach, NJ. I Mapquested a route to Penns Beach. It's 113.81 miles from my house and would take some 2 hours and 5 minutes to get there. Then I'd have to maneuver my own way to what is probably just a bit of marshland, just to see if there's a sign, "Welcome to Delaware". And there probably isn't even a sign. Will I go? You betcha, someday! That's my idea of a good time.

This is a close view of the ornate top of 15 Washington Street.

Not such a good time would be visiting my brother Russell's grave in Beverly National Cemetery on the way back. Beverly is on the Delaware in Burlington County. I've seen his grave (he committed suicide in the Air Force in 1954; nobody knows why, and the note he left (which we had a very hard time getting from the military, which refused our requests for decades) was very vague, something about 'not being able to take it anymore', without the 'it' being explained), but the fotos I took with a film camera around dusk were not good. I'd like to get good digital pix and send them to my sibs.

And here's a supercloseup of the very top of 15 Washington. I suspect that few people have ever seen it this close. I had to rest my camera on something solid (the housing for a traffic-lite timer, I think) in order to steady it for this digital-zoom foto.

My mother, older sister, and I went to the cemetery one weekend, but the office was closed and we couldn't find the grave, because there seemed no rhyme nor reason to how people were buried — not by particular armed service, not by date of death. I later went back on my own, after my mother had died and sister moved to California, and the office must have been open, because I found out where the grave was. It turned out to be in the first row inside one of the entrances!

This is what happens if you can't keep the camera steady, one of my failed attempts to take a nitetime view of the lited top of 33 Washington Street (the white building in the skyline foto above) without my tripod. There was nothing solid to rest my camera on at the right place to avoid objects in the way. Usually I can find something. Not that nite. Not that place.

In any case, Beverly is 53 miles from Penns Beach, past Philly to the north. Four Congressional Medal of Honor winners are interred there. But Beverly is 17 miles north of Philadelphia; Penns Beach, 39 miles south. I figure if I'm going that close to Philly, I might as well stop in and, for instance, check out that city's gay bars. I don't like what's happened to New York's 'incredible shrinking gay world'. So maybe I won't do both Penns Beach and Beverly the same day, but will make two separate trips while the weather is still nice, and see some of Philly's museums and such each time. Maybe I'll check out the RCA Victor building in Camden that was redeveloped into apartments by the same developer who is supposed to create a highrise luxury apartment complex in Newark in conjunction with the management of NJPAC.

These handsome houses are on Clinton Avenue in Clinton Hill, South Ward. In trying to determine whether this was the South Ward or Central Ward, I found something I will have to follow up on over time, a clickable list of Star-Ledger articles on Newark's various neighborhoods.

I decided not to go to tonite's concert in Weequahic Park, in part because it's far away from me, in part because the announcement of the concert doesn't say where within the park the concert would be, and it is a giant park, so I'm not going to risk not finding it.

This closer view of the house on the left shows one of Newark's many decorative lions at private houses. I guess the lion is our city mascot. It's the heraldic symbol of Essex County, for sure.

The next, and last, concert of the Essex County Park System's "Summer Concert" series (performers: Carlos Francis Sextet) is to be held Thursday at 7pm in Riverbank Park in the Ironbound. That's a small park, and I'm pretty sure I can find that concert if I want to.

Here's a springtime view of the Essex County Parks administrative HQ on Clifton Avenue near the Cathedral Basilica. I think this elegant building used to house offices of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark until the new Archdiocesan HQ was opened north of there.

Grace Temple

This "Church Sunday" at Newark USA, I show a picture of Grace Temple Baptist Church (187 16th Avenue, 07103-1844; (973) 642-7512). I find no website for this church, but I did find an article from The New York Times that says that it hosted the funeral service for Iofemi Hightower, one of the three students shot behind the Mount Vernon School in the infamous incident from last summer. Astonishingly, The Times used the inexcusably evil term "executed" for these MURDERS. Similarly, a story in U.S. News & World Report that also mentioned Grace Temple referred to these crimes as "executions". Appalling. When did this country lose all understanding of morality?

I mentioned yesterday that I took some pix of Peddie Memorial, another Baptist church in Newark. Since I have so little to offer about Grace Temple, let me show some pix of Peddie. Here is the leftmost stained-glass window on the Broad Street end of the church.

Murder is not execution; execution is not murder — you stupid b(asterisk)s! Let me try to explain the difference between murder and execution, and why it is morally impermissible to mix and match the two entirely distinct terms.

Here is the rightmost window.

Murder is the wrongful taking of human life (or, by extension, the wrongful killing of one member of a species by another member of the same species). The key word here is WRONGFUL.
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Execution is the rightful or righteous punishment of horrible crimes, by death, the only penalty that fits murder.
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Murder is committed by private persons, or by government officials acting beyond the scope of their authority. Executions can be carried out ONLY by government officials acting entirely within the scope of their publicly assigned DUTIES.
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To call murder "execution" is to bestow upon it the mantle of legitimacy: to change it from a horrible crime into an act of justice. That is outrageous. Everyone who calls murder "execution" should be punched, very, very hard, in the face. Every writer who so misuses language, and every editor who lets such a horrendous misuse pass, should be fired and blackballed from media for life.

I couldn't see any colors, only outlined figures, in the four windows between.

The three kids at the Mount Vernon School were murdered. They were not executed. Alas, thanks to Governor Corzine and the scum who control the New Jersey State Legislature, neither will their murderers be executed. Because this country has indeed lost all sense of morality.

While I was looking up at the stained-glass windows from the sidewalk in front of the church, I noticed that each of the towers has vegetation growing in it that, left unchecked, could weaken the structure. Here is the right, shorter, tower, with what appears to be a tree growing in it.

What, exactly, are our uncountable churches doing? Whatever it is, it is plainly not enuf.

And here is the left, taller, tower, with what appears to be a shrub growing in it. Church custodians should almost certainly remove these plants — alive, to soil in the churchyard if possible. But even if that is not possible, it seems to me imperative that they be removed even if that kills them, lest they weaken the bonds between stones and cause damage to the towers, and possibly to pedestrians on Broad Street.

Dueling Portfolios; Artist's Studio; No Kiosk

Four of the six paintings by Marco Muñoz that were on display at Mi Gente Café.

I went to the casual get-together at Mi Gente Café today to mark the closing of Marco Muñoz's display of six paintings in his Bicycles series and met a couple of artists I hadn't known before. Bonnie Maranz was the first. I asked her what kind of work she does, and she said it's hard to explain in words, but she has a little spiral-bound notebook in which she has some fotos of her paintings (on canvas and paper).

I didn't notice until I looked at the foto on the large screen of my computer, that Bonnie was blinking when the shutter tripped. Oops.

I said that was a great idea, to carry a little portfolio with you that you can whip out to show people, and perhaps other artists should emulate that practice. She felt a little concern that maybe she is a little forward in pressing it on people. I assured her she wasn't. I asked; she said she had some sample fotos, and I asked to see them; only then did she bring out the pad. I joked that artists could carry little sample presentations at their side (as in holsters), and reach for their artistic guns in quick-draw contests (different kind of "draw", artists) as soon as anyone mentioned that they have samples of their work if anyone wants to see them. To illustrate, I went for an imaginary 'gun'. Bonnie was tickled, and said she rather liked that idea.

This painting, which was to the left of the four shown above, bears the same name as the overall display, Un Pensamiento en Azul ("A Thought in Blue"); oil on watercolor paper. Yes, that's right: oil on watercolor paper. That Marco is such a scamp.

I hadn't taken any pix of Marco's paintings heretofore (tho I did show him alongside one of his fotos in the NJ-foto show at the Pierro Gallery, South Orange), because the only place I had seen any prior to today was at 27 Mix, during a busy nite at the restaurant, so I didn't want to bother patrons or trouble management to get permission to take pix there.

This is the sixth painting of the group, over the counter at the far end of the café. I told Marco I don't think some of these bikes would actually work. From an engineering standpoint.

A young Hungarian woman came in as Mi Gente was getting ready to close, and Marco introduced us. She was Kati Vilim (I'll have to review the spelling on my tape), who said she works in geometric patterns, and offered to show our little group her studio just down the street. So off we went. Another artist, Barbara(?) somebody, and her husband, a musician, were just arriving at Mi Gente as we were departing, and they joined our artistic expedition. They had just parked in a parking lot across the street from Mi Gente that is left open on weekends, without fee! What a great idea and generous act. Newark needs a lot more free parking, and not just on weekends.

Newark's parking meters are very bizarre. I was pretty sure that the meters were not in use on Broad Street on Saturday afternoon around a quarter to five when I parked, but a guy asked me how to figure out which space to select on the multi-space meter central to a group of four. I hadn't known a thing about this bizarre system, except that I'd seen a news story Gaetano alerted me to about the City parking authority being given more, well, authority over parking matters. The administrators were unhappy with the multi-space meters for various reasons, including that the cannisters for coins were not large, so had to be emptied over-frequently. More to the point, (a) the absence of meters atop low poles leads the ordinary person to think that there is no fee for parking in that space, especially in that there are no signs explaining that one meter controls up to four spaces, by means of selector buttons. That opens the City to challenges for inadequate notice — certainly I never heard of a system that handles four spaces, not just two, which we are accustomed to. And (b) it is extremely unwise of Newark to nickel-and-dime people with parking meters — and they're planning to add 500! — when you're trying to lure people away from suburban stores and office developments. If you want to bring people into the business district, you don't throw up psychological and financial barriers that keep them away! But I especially object to the statement by the Parking Authority's head that we are stuck with the meters we've got, and the bizarre system they inflict upon us. No, we're really not, especially if they require more person-hours to service. Over time, which is more costly, new meters or more employees?

While waiting for the new people to catch up, I chanced to see a tree growing from the top of a nearby building, which I realized on thinking about it is the Griffith Building. It looked at first as tho this was a planting outside a penthouse apartment, but the Griffith Building is currently unoccupied. It is scheduled for renovation and transformation into apartments, so nature has given the developers (Cogswell Realty) a hint: this would be a great place for a penthouse or roof garden for the entire building's tenants.

The City's new plan thus sounds exactly wrong to me. Parking is a problem in Newark, and causes enormous difficulties for businesses trying to compete with suburban stores and office campuses that offer free parking. To add a punitive, revenue-driven system of enforcement threatens to drive people out of Newark, not bring them in. Bad, bad, bad idea. Newark needs fewer meters, not more, because more free parking means more business and more tourists, and that is where the city's future lies, not in making Newark driver-unfriendly. Parking rules and penalties should be designed ONLY to speed the flow of traffic and encourage people to come into Newark by making the streets easy to pass thru for everybody, motorists and bus riders alike, and make parking easy to find.

Kati's building also houses the offices of YouthBuild Newark, and these fotos from that organization are on the wall of the hall outside her studio at the top of the stairs to the second floor.

In any case, Kati has a thick accent, in that she has been in the U.S. for only four years. I encouraged her to have television on constantly in the background, but she doesn't like television. She says she likes to watch movies with closed-captioning, but that seems to me a hard way to watch anything, having to listen and read captions that may be slitely off chronologically. Given how difficult English is to read, learning good speech this way might be especially difficult, but if her object is to learn to read well, using the speech of the people onscreen as guide, that's one way to go.
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Kati lives in Montclair but commutes to her studio by train to the Broad Street Station. Her studio is one big room with perhaps a 13-foot ceiling and one big window at the end. It smelled of drying paint, but the window was open so the fumes were diffuse. I interviewed her into my dictation unit — great; just what I need: another tape to transcribe — so will put off showing other pix of her work until I have the text of her explanatory remarks to show with them. I had also interviewed Manny, the owner of Mi Gente Café, about unfamiliar items on the menu (Cuban cuisine), and Marco told me of a show he is curating at the Pierro Gallery in South Orange for October that Bonnie will be in. Bonnie lives and works in Montclair, as does Marco, but has not exhibited in Newark yet. In due course.

Marco is on the left in this foto, and Pasquale Cuppari is just to his right. I showed here May 13th two pix of Pasquale's work displayed at Rupert Ravens' gallery in Newark. Í don't think I'd ever been in an artist's studio until today, but Pasquale said I should come see his studio, in Roselle. I'm not familiar with Roselle, but Pasquale says it's only a 10-minute drive from Downtown Newark.

Another artist, named something like German Petri (I didn't get a spelling), who recently won a major grant or prize, has a studio in that same area, but we didn't want to impose on him without advance notice. Marco asked if there were studios still available in that building, and Kati suggested he contact Lowell Craig, of Redsaw Gallery, who would know about that. Then Marco, his wife, and others headed to get something to eat. I had pix to take of the stained-glass windows of nearby Peddie Memorial Baptist Church, the colors of a couple of which were showing because the sun was low opposite them. So we all bid farewell to Kati.

After I took pix at Peddie, I headed for my car and saw this off to the left, colorful pennants flying from atop NJPAC, and the Legal Center in the distance, in Beautiful Downtown Newark.

I decided, inasmuch as I was Downtown already, to see if I could find the Newark information kiosk I had heard was sometimes in operation within Newark Penn Station. So I drove as close as I figured I could park on a Saturday, Mulberry Street near Market, and walked to and thru the Station looking for a kiosk offering information on restaurants and other things of interest to visitors to the Ironbound and possibly tourist info on Newark more generally. I didn't see any, so asked an NJ Transit cop, who didn't know of any such thing, but only of the transit information booth in the waiting room.

Looking south, I noted this busy lite stanchion, which displays not only a banner announcing the 85th season of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra but also a sign showing directions to major attractions. This is exactly the kind of thing a city sensitive to tourists' needs must do, and we're already doing some of it. So where are the tourists?

I walked thru the waiting room, and both main and secondary concourses. Outside McDonald's, I saw a Chinese (?) woman alongside a permanent jewelry counter that had replaced the silver (–selling) cart from which I had bought the rings and such I was wearing, and mentioned to her that I had bought them at the cart that used to be there. She said that this more substantial location, which has some jewelry with stones and gold more than just sterling, is under the same management, and she commented that the rings were good, right? They hadn't changed color or tarnished. They sure hadn't. And the central ring of two of them turns. I'm not a nervous type who plays with his rings, but someone who does would like these. They're like jewelry and a toy in one.

This is a view of the plantings on the Mulberry Street side of 4 Gateway Center, seen from Market Street.

Where a Blimpie's had been, alongside the corridor between the main and secondary concourses, that houses the Bank of America ATM's, there is now a coffee place offering paninis as well (whatever they are). There's a large liquor store with open front alongside it in the main concourse. Most other things seemed the same as I'd known when I worked in One Gateway until early 2002.

One Gateway Center has a big new sign over the Market Street entrance.

Newark Penn Station is still a wonderful, urban, bustling place, filled with sound and purposeful motion, as well as people relaxing, and waiting for their train. Not much of Newark has that "city" feel, but Penn Station does. So do the few blocks of Market Street between Broad and Washington Streets. There seemed to be somewhat more people on the sidewalks Downtown than there used to be, especially on a Saturday, including a surprising number of young white people. Newark is seeming more and more a normal American city every day.

Stone lion on façade of Newark Penn Station, old-fashioned lite stanchion nearby.