Newark Church of Christ

This "Church Sunday" at Newark USA, I present some fotos of a church on Clinton Avenue (Newark Church of Christ, 894 South 14th Street, 07108; (973) 374-4563; fax: (973) 374-6704). Unlike many of the churches I fotograf, this one has a website, and has had for 10 years. There are a bunch of fotos, mostly interior and of key people in the organization, in a slideshow. To navigate to other pages of this substantial website than Home, click on the dropdown menu at upper right.
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As shown here, the church produces multimedia presentations on radio, cable television (in Jersey City, oddly, and apparently not in Newark), and the Internet.

Forgiving, or at Least Releasing Bitterness. Centuries before scientific psychology and psychiatry, Jesus understood the importance of forgiving to the person forgiving. Holding grudges and holding onto bitterness is corrosive to the personality. But a lot of Newarkers and former Newarkers can't seem to let go of their bitterness about the city's lost past. I got an email yesterday from someone who is indignant about my having expressed admiration for what former Mayor Sharpe James did for Newark. He cited the Mayor's conviction on bribery charges and commented, "So much for "enormous admiration" of Sharp James." (I had used that phrase in this blog June 19th.) I replied:

The people who hate Sharpe James did so long before he was convicted of anything. At end, it doesn't matter if he lined his pockets with what is, in the grand scheme, petty amounts of booty. He is paying for that in criminal conviction and punishment. But had it not been for Sharpe James, there would not be the THOUSANDS of new houses in Newark that made Newark the fastest-growing major city in the Northeast from 2000-2005, and the Newark Arena/Prudential Center would not have been built. Nor would NJPAC have been built. Nor would 744 Broad Street have been renovated, nor 1180 Raymond Boulevard, empty for 20 years, have been created into splendid, market-rate apartments.
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NJPAC and, even more, the Prudential Center have had a transformative effect so great and so positive that even Mayor Booker, who opposed the Arena throughout the campaign that resulted in his election over Mr. James, ended up PUBICLY THANKING Mayor James, at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Prudential Center, for ramming the Arena thru, against all opposition. 13 months later, at least 1 1/2 million people who would not otherwise have come into Newark have attended events at PruCenter and gone away with a very different feeling about the city than they had before their trip in. NO ONE but Mayor James would have built the Arena with $200M of city money, taken mainly from the Port Authority. ALL the good things that the Arena has meant for Newark thus far and will continue to mean for the city -- such as the return of Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus after 52 YEARS, and concerts by Hannah Montana, Celine Dion, Bon Jovi; performances of Cirque du Soleil; and bunches of NHL and MISL games — would have happened here had it not been for Sharpe James.
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Let it go. James is out. Booker's in. But could Booker have become mayor if James had not preceded him? Sharpe James was a transformative figure, who took Newark from the edge of utter hopelessness and made it possible to think that Newark had a real chance to come back. Could anyone else have done that? We will never know. What we do know is that Sharpe James DID do it. And all those thousands of new houses ("Bayonne boxes" or otherwise makes little difference) that have popped up like mushrooms in a lawn after a nite's soaking rain, are a testament to Sharpe James's stewardship for 20 years, in which Newark went from a place no one would think of moving into, to a place that thousands of college students want to live in dorms within, and are thinking seriously of making their future in. Maybe you're not deeply grateful for that. I am.

He wasn't convinced. Let me just conclude like this: Sharpe James didn't get away with anything, and at least some of his ill-gotten gains can be, or already have been, reclaimed by the government. When the Nation is bailing out major thieves in huge corporations, who are still paying themselves astonishing bonuses — for failure — that make Sharpe James's haul from Newark — for success — look like chump change by comparison, I am not going to waste so much as two minutes or two cents resenting Sharpe James's excesses.

Here's an example of money well spent.

Especially is that the case in that James's criminal defense cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars from his retirement funds, and he was still convicted. Long after Mayor James is dead, and he joins a long list of corrupt NJ officials who ended their public careers in prison, NJPAC, the Prudential Center, and thousands upon thousands of houses built because of him will continue to benefit this fine city.
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The close view, below, of the top of the tower of the church shows that the belfry has been closed up with concrete blocks, and a surveillance camera keeps watch on the vicinity. I don't know if this is the church's camera or the city's, but it's probably a good thing to have that eye in the sky. Police cameras have played a major part in the Booker Administration's success in reducing crime. Sometimes it's not enuf to tell people that God is watching, and a surveillance camera is a better restraint on bad behavior. Let's hope it's high resolution, because fuzzy pix of criminal activity don't much help with apprehensions or prosecutions.

'Westinghouse Project' Extended

Photo © Matthew Gosser 2008

I received this emailed notice from Matthew Gosser, Director of the New Jersey School of Architecture Gallery at NJIT:

The Westinghouse Project has been so well received that we decided to extend the exhibit until January 17. In order to do this, we have to shut the gallery down until about December 8. Until then, I'll be trying to update the website with photos of the artwork, video from an NJN broadcast and info about our closing celebration (so far... Saturday, Jan. 17 at 5pm). If you haven't visited the exhibition or if you want to check it out again (additional work is being added) or if you'd like to bring some friends, please do so Monday thru Friday 9am-5pm) between Dec. 8 and Jan. 17.

If you know anyone that worked at Westinghouse, I'm doing an oral history project. We're also looking at the possibility of creating a catalog.

The foto above accompanied that email, so I assume it is OK to show it here but am telling Matt I have used it so he can object if he likes, whereupon I will remove it and substitute one of my own, less dramatic fotos. I have some left over from the opening reception that I have always planned to use several days in advance of the closing reception, so I'll hold them in abeyance till then.
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Booker on Colbert, Free on Demand. The episode of Comedy Central's Colbert Report in which Mayor Booker appears is presently available thru Cablevision's Free On Demand feature (channel 502, then Comedy Central, then Colbert Report, then the "11-20-08" episode). I don't know how long it will stay there, but if you missed it, you can see if without fee, on demand (which means you can pause it, rewind, and play it again for anything you missed or want to hear again). Booker appears for a few minutes, a few minutes into the program. And Colbert closes that segment with words that indicate he might at some point in the future have the Mayor back on the show.

Another Album for You

I am almost back to my own fotoblogging, having accomplished some of the things I intended when I started my vacation two weeks ago. I discovered that I have an awful lot of things I've neglected. I did get some of them done and made basic progress in clearing the decks so I can deal with others. Alas, however, I discovered that even when I don't do this fotoblog, I spend an average of perhaps 5 hours a day on the computer with other things. In short, I will never catch up. So there's no point in pretending that if I don't do this blog, I will magically manage to take care of everything else.
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Still, I will extend my vacation by one more day by offering someone else's fotos for your review. "B.C." sent me a link to another Newark fotografer's Picasa albums of fotos taken in Newark and Irvington that you might like to check out. I suppose each of the fotos has its own story, but the captions don't tell that story. Still, Timothy P. Shields has done something I haven't, in my Picasa albums: tagged each foto with a location, so you might see something in your area (present neighborhood, or old neighborhood). My Picasa albums are not public, just a place to store pix so I can use them in this blog, but they all have captions in case I decide to make them public.
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Here's a sample of Shields's work. The original caption is only "Jesus Is Lord", but there is a location map that confirms that it shows St. Antoninus R.C. Church.

I wanted to email this guy to ask permission to use this foto but discovered a big defect in Picasa: it affords viewers of pix no way to contact the fotografer. I went to my own account to see if there is someplace like a personal profile at which you can put in your contact info, but didn't see any. So I did a Google search on his name and found a personal page that shows that he is originally from Illinois but has been living at the House of Mercy Mission in Newark since 2002. He has a number of religious podcasts, one of which, from June 23rd of this year, is called "My Life in Newark". The oldest on that page is from April 27th of this year, "I am Blessed in Newark". I did find an email address for him, eventually, and am telling him of my referring people to his Picasa albums.
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If you'd like to know more about the work of the House of Mercy Mission, they have a website, which in turn has links to other websites relevant to the Mission's purposes. So this will serve as a fill-in for the other "Church Sunday" I missed during my vacation. From NCC to multitudinous housing initiatives, training programs, Head Start and daycare services, substance-abuse recovery programs, and other social services, the churches and masjids / mosques of Newark do such yeoman work in restoring this city to its rightful glory that I'd feel bad if I missed more than a rare Church Sunday.

Need More Time

Tho I have done some of what I went on vacation to do, it turns out I had a lot more to do than I had appreciated. Daytrips have been ruled out by the extremely subnormal temperatures of late, 10 to 15 degrees colder than usual (so much for "man-made global warming"). And I lost over three hours of one day this week to two — count 'em: two — flat tires and the need to wait for AAA when one of those tires would not reinflate with my own plug-in air compressor. At least now I know for sure that the "donut" I bought recently fits. And the AAA guy said that the rusty lug bolts and nuts need to be replaced, lest they break off while the car is moving! Having South Orange [Avenue] Tire or Romero Tire fix this will take part of another day. So I accept that I need another week off from blogging, and am putting up a note now only to follow up my last post as to when this blog will resume. And to make up for a missed "Church Sunday".

Today's foto is of the Most Blessed Sacrament Friary on 13th Avenue across 9th Street from the Thirteenth Avenue School. It's not a church as such but a facility of The Church, so qualifies for (last Sunday's missed) Church Sunday. I saw this building only as we were about to get into the car to head out for the Thirteenth Avenue School's Citywide Foto Blast October 18th. (The exhibit of the kids' fotos is scheduled for December 4th. I'm very interested to see the pictures taken by the girls I accompanied. More about that as we get closer to the event.) Ordinarily I would have looked more closely at the building and taken more representative pictures but we had no time right then. Jerome, who was driving, thought the building housed some Jewish religious organization, but it was actually once the "Monastery of Saint Dominic ...[,] one of the few places in the United States, at the time, where women led monastic lives of contemplation." That quote, from the history page of the website of the current occupants, Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, does say "Monastery" rather than "convent" for the nuns' residence.
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Fortunately, it doesn't matter that I took only one minimally indicative foto, because the Friars' website has an extensive foto gallery, with 124 pictures! Enjoy. I'll return with my own fotos, of something else in Newark, next Friday, November 28th.
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P.S. Did you see Mayor Booker on Comedy Central's Colbert Report last nite? Stephen Colbert mentioned Newark's 40% drop in murders and Booker and his security detail's coming across a bank robbery in progress and apprehending the criminals. Very good publicity for Newark. We may have gotten some benefit from Colbert's living in Essex County (Montclair). And his audience is precisely the kind of people who could make Newark's future ever briter, if they make Newark their home, or even a place they are happy to go to see a show or concert.

Break for Balance

The leaves have changed, even more than in the foto above from last autumn, and started to fall in huge numbers. This forcefully reminds me that I have been neglecting key aspects of my life, such as, crucially, finances. It's time for this grasshopper to prepare for winter.

Everyone gets so wrapped up in the day-to-day routine of things that they can't even think about the future. Stay fixated on the present long enuf, and the future arrives, suddenly, perhaps as a rude shock. We all like to think that we can do everything we need to do, if only we scrimp here (in money, time, and effort), prioritize, move this over here a little and that over there a little. But sometimes we are, to use the famous historical allusion, merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. That's what vacations are for, to take a break from the everyday, reevaluate what you're doing and ask, as Dr. Phil so often does, "How's that workin' for ya?"

Leaves change in cemeteries too (here, Fairmount Cemetery), and each of us has only so many autumns before permanent winter.

I have created for myself several 'responsibilities', one of which is to update this blog as close to daily as possible. As anyone can tell from a review of the past two weeks, there are times when that can be a monumental task, which pushes all else aside (except another self-set responsibility, my Simpler Spelling Word of the Day website, which does have to be updated for every day). Now I find that I have enormous amounts of cleaning to do, repairs to make, leaves to rake, miniroses to plant and protect with fallen leaves; a financial matter I have kept pushing back to the point that it is now urgent; and some thinking I need to do about what I'm doing right and what wrong.

This view from a window in my hoffice shows that no matter what may happen to the oaks and other deciduous trees, I always have something green in my yard. Here, there's an enormous spruce on the left, and English ivy turns major branches of an oak tree evergreen.

I'm also experiencing repetitive-stress problems, even tho I have switched the mouse to my left hand because my right forearm was really bothering me. I need to diversify the movements I make, by doing more kinds of things. Housework and yardwork can be good exercise, as well as altering usual movement patterns: vacuuming, sweeping, mopping, raking and picking up leaves, washing dishes, filing, moving furniture, etc., instead of typing and operating a mouse cannot but do me some good, as well as accomplish needed tasks.
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So I'm going to take a self-imposed break from the things I like to do, such as update this blog almost every day, until I have done the things I don't like to do, like deal with money — or any numbers, for that matter. It took me several minutes to wrap my mind around the whole billion-trillion-quintillion thing in the U.S. vs. Britain that I mentioned the other day. My brother Brian has a Masters in Mathematics. I, however, don't "get it". There is no reason math should work. It just does. You set up a string of numbers then go down the line and stop at regular intervals, and you've done division, or multiplication, or whatever. It just happens to work out that way. It's not that there is a moral imperative or logical reason it should happen. It's just the way things work out. That doesn't interest me.

The shapes and colors of autumn in my yard interest me, tho.

My papers are out of control. I have unopened mail, and have completely given up on filing things properly in individual subject-matter folders. Now I just have to get things I have finished with, out of the way so I can concentrate on things I have yet to do. And I have to organize things so that I know where everything is, and systematize operations so that the problems I have encountered do not repeat. That kind of thing.

Trees in front of new houses on Fairmount Avenue above the retaining wall for the Bergen Street Pathmark parking lot, are britened by autumn's nip.

I could call it a "vacation", or "working vacation", and set a fixed duration, say, for one or even two weeks from Friday, November 14th. But I suppose I would feel that's too rigid and I'd rather be flexible, taking only as much time as I need to get the most important things done.
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In any case, I won't let myself update this blog until I have finally done the past-due taxes on which the Government owes me money that I now need. Because I accept that if I do the things I like, I will not have the time, energy, nor inclination to do this one thing I really dislike. I might actually enjoy the other things (the housework, yardwork, and repairs), but by the time I finish all my computer tasks I'm in no mood to do anything but watch TV (news, latenite talkshows, and sitcoms, mainly). I read so much online that I can't even bear reading from a book or magazine. I am a month overdue in returning a book I borrowed from the library because I haven't finished it, and need to take notes from it. I need a break.

Tho I borrowed Spellbound, by James Essinger (about the craziness of English spelling, which he indulges), from the main branch on Washington Street, it will be easier to return it to the Vailsburg Branch, which has much easier parking.

"No TV until you've finished your homework", says the father in me to the boy in me. "No dessert until you've eaten your vegetables." I don't imagine I can go more than four or five days without getting antsy about updating this blog, so those taxes are going to get done! And even once they're done, and I've made some plumbing and other repairs, reorganized my papers, and made a good start on everything else I've put off, I may just take a few extra days to do something completely different. Maybe I'll drive someplace I've never been. Westfield. The Great Swamp. Or cross the Delaware opposite George Washington's direction, to Scranton. That's very big now (the TV show The Office (one of the few sitcoms I can't stand), Hillary, Biden). I've never seen the Pennsylvania statehouse in Harrisburg. Nor Winterthur in Delaware. (I haven't seen Delaware's capitol either, in Dover, come to think of it. Those of NJ, NY, OH, CT, RI, MA, yes; DE and PA, no.) Or I could pop into nearby Upstate New York, to Washington Irving's Sunnyside estate and other parts of Sleepy Hollow Restorations/Historic Hudson Valley. Maybe I'll drive first to the AAA office in Florham Park and get an up-to-date TourBook for this region. We don't usually get our first hard frost until about December 3rd, so it's not too cold for day trips.
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In any case, starting Friday, I will officially be on vacation, so don't expect an update to this blog until at the earliest Friday, November 21st.
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P.S. I was confirmed in my decision to leave AOL today, the first day my free email accounts took effect, when I received a notice that AOL is also shutting down its XDrive file-backup service. So AOL is shedding all the major storage features that made it attractive. First FTP, then AOL Pictures, now XDrive. Unlike the case with the FTP space and AOL Pictures, which were shut down without any explanation nor apology whatsoever, AOL offered this bizarre rationale for shutting down XDrive:

It is never an easy decision to shut down a feature, especially one like Xdrive that some of our members have used for a long time. But we have to look carefully at all of the products supported by AOL to ensure we’re providing as much value to our customers as possible.

Huh? Taking away free services offers better value to customers? Absurd. The new management of AOL has apparently decided to make AOL simply a web portal rather than a comprehensive online service. That is of course their right. But to talk of taking away services in order to provide "as much value to our customers as possible" is doublespeak. It reminds me of the caution on the packaging for Qtips that says you should never insert a Qtip into the ear canal, which is pretty much the only use most people have for Qtips.

Hall of Fame Voting, Paths to Service

I received an email from Jeff Kauflin, JerseyPride Webmaster, on two subjects:

1) NEW JERSEY HALL OF FAME 2ND ANNUAL INDUCTION: Voting is only open until the end of November, so cast your ballot today to have your voice heard! CLICK HERE: http://www.njhalloffame.org/[.] * * *

2) NEW JERSEYPRIDE.COM FEATURE: NEW JERSEY VIDEOS: We have launched a new section at JerseyPride that includes a wide array of NJ videos, ranging from a funny Zack Braff mon[o]logue to the monumental Rutgers victory over Louisville on 11/9/2006. CLICK HERE: http://www.jerseypride.com/all_jersey_info/new_jersey_videos.htm[.]

NJ Walk of Fame, distinct from the Hall of Fame, from the Newark Lite Rail NJPAC station and leading up toward NJPAC itself.

There are several categories of nominee, like History, Sports, and Arts/Entertainment. At least four Newarkers are among the people available to vote for, (left to right in the lists) Philip Roth, Shaquille O'Neal, Jerry Lewis, and Sarah Vaughan. In addition, U.S. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan was Essex County Prosecutor for years, and the Federal Courthouse here in Newark was recently named for him. The connection to New Jersey of some of the people listed is tenuous at best, and I resent it. There are lots of people actually born, raised, or long resident here who should be on the list but were displaced by people who spent minimal amounts of time in NJ.

Lyrics of a song made famous by Sarah Vaughan are carved in stone along the tracks at the NJPAC station of the Newark Lite Rail system.

If I understand the Fact Sheet webpage, the current plan is for three satellite museums and a traveling version, but not a main museum.

According to officials, the first to open will be a Hall of Fame display at the Izod Center in the Meadowlands, most likely to open in early 2008 and there will be a museum exhibit in the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. Designs for these satellite museums have been underwritten by the Edison Innovation Foundation with additional support provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

There is plainly only one place for a main museum, the state's largest city, at the center of a dense network of transportation (that would be Newark). The first induction ceremony was held at NJPAC on May 4th of this year, so that's a step in the right direction.

The Hall of Fame website has some defects, most significant of which is the absence of a paragraph about each nominee with an explanation of their tie to New Jersey. The "Click Here to Vote" link on the fact sheet page doesn't work, tho the one on the Home page does. And I am irritated by linguistic misuses like "comprised of" (should be "composed of") and "a team lead by the NJEA" (should be "led"). The font is also much too small. All these things are, fortunately, easily fixed. Please, people, hire a proofreader, and make the font easily legible. Maybe then you'll see the mistakes.

Here, the name of the song appears on the right.

What is not forgivable is the nomination of Paul Robeson, a forthrite Communist who made excuses for Stalin, a man who killed a bedrock minimum of 20 million and possibly as many as 43 million people. Not only should Robeson NOT be inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, but everything already named for him should be REnamed.

Paths to Service. I also received the newsletter of the Citizens Campaign. It speaks of trying to move more people into active involvement with local government in New Jersey, to make government better and more responsive to what the people of this area really want.

On October 8th, the Citizens' Campaign launched a "New Jersey Call to Service," inviting our state's citizens to participate beyond the ballot box and provide constructive leadership on the problems facing our hometowns, counties and state.

The Call to Service is designed to recruit people to pursue four identified paths to leadership service. These paths are opportunities for people who have neither the time nor money to run for office, but want to use their skills and talents to improve their hometowns and state.

The Paths to Service are, 1) serving on an appointed local or state board or commissions; 2) serving as a neighborhood-level party committee person; 3) becoming a citizen legislator by devising a constructive common interest proposal and presenting it to the relevant government body; 4) serving in the increasingly important area of emergency response as a trained member of a first aid squad or an auxiliary police, to name two examples.

Weather vane of Fire Museum on grounds of Newark Museum, with topmost part of St. Patrick's Pro Cathedral also showing.

Months ago I attended an evening program about how to volunteer for a community board or commission in Newark, but haven't had the time to pursue anything. My sister Trina is a member of the civilian board that reviews complaints against the police in Long Beach, California. She highly recommends that I do seek a place on some community board. For more info on the Citizens Campaign's programs, including a free online book, go to http://www.jointhecampaign.com/courses/, where an email address for more info also resides.

Custom Wrought Iron

As I was walking near the Broad Street Station in late June, I saw this striking display of ironwork protecting a window on Broad Street.

I didn't understand the significance of the pattern until I looked up at the sign above the first floor and saw that it replicates, in fine, the logo at the far left.

I couldn't get back far enuf to get the entire sign into the picture without standing in busy Broad Street. And Broad Street is far too broad for me to take a picture from the far sidewalk.

When I searched the Internet, I discovered that the Focus Community Health Center is a program of the UMDNJ Medical School and the Essex County Cancer Education and Early Detection project. Among its activities is cancer screening for low-income people who have a family history of cancer but only limited or no health insurance, funded thru the S.A.V.E. Women and Men Project. (S.A.V.E. = Screening Access of Value to Essex [Women and Men]. Until either the State of New Jersey or the Federal Government gives us comprehensive, universal healthcare, programs like Focus and S.A.V.E. Women and Men perform an invaluable and potentially life-saving service.

Titerope Record

You may have heard that a Guinness World Record was set in Newark on October 15th, the longest distance crossed on a titerope on a bicycle. My sister Trina in Long Beach, California, saw it on the national news that day and told me to check it out. I didn't have time to do so until now, what with the arts whirl from mid- to late October.
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This first short video is from the Associated Press, and is described thus: "High wire daredevil Nik Wallenda, a seventh generation Flying Wallenda, set a world record Wednesday by riding his bike on a wire suspended 135 feet in the air without a net. (Oct. 15)"

A short Star-Ledger video gave more of the context, and people's reactions.

This last video is 10 minutes long, and shows some of Wallenda's preparation, and his hugging and kissing his wife and children — just in case. It seems very long, but gives a sense of how long he was on this wire. At one point, he sits down on the wire, pulls a cellfone from his pocket, and makes a call (to NBC's Today Show, it turns out). If you don't have the patience for the entire video, the article below does a good job of presenting the event.

Oddly, altho you can hear a helicopter above, none of the videos I found includes footage from the helicopter's point of view. Also oddly, it seems to me, none of these videos has had even 5,000 hits, in almost a month online.
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The Star-Ledger article about the event includes the video above and a foto slideshow, plus a link to another video, about elephants and horses walking thru Newark streets. Disgustingly, that article as reproduced on NJ.com is marred by some vicious and off-topic comments appended to the end by some of the "haters" who lurk at NJ.com to slander Newark at every opportunity. Apparently at least two of the comments were so vile that NJ.com moderators deleted them. You can see only references to those comments, from which one might infer that those two haters wished aloud that the titerope walker had fallen. There are just so many bad people attacking Newark at NJ.com, presumably white losers who would not stand against barbarism in The Bad Old Days and hate the people who did. (Insert appropriate obscenity here) them. Fortunately, a lot of those "haters" are probably elderly and will soon die. It's a pity they could never let go of their hate and accept that Newark has moved on, and recovered without their help. But they can't admit that they were never needed by Newark, and the city has rebounded fine without them. Every success of the New Newark is a slap in the face to the cowards who ran.
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There's only one way they can ever redeem themselves and put the shame of their past in the past: to come back, before they die in disgrace, to the city they pretend to have loved but now do everything they can to hurt. Unlike them, Newark is big enuf to forgive and forget, and welcome back all decent people who fled. And then they might end their days with peace in their hearts, not hate.
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The circus came back. Nik Wallenda's record was set as part of the return to Newark of the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus after 52 years! I saw what Newark police did to provide security for people attracted to the circus when my group in the October 18th Citywide Foto Blast stopped by the Prudential Center.

The "haters" are indignant at the extra costs to Newark taxpayers of providing so highly visible a presence around PruCenter — as tho any of them pays Newark taxes. Apparently they want police to let outsiders 'foolish' enuf to visit Newark fall to crime, as to teach them a lesson and chase them right back to the suburbs. Newark is not stupid, tho. We know it takes money to make money, and high security that makes people feel safe when they come to the Prudential Center is a great investment in the city's future. Private investors may be following the visitors. Note that the ice rink at the back of that picture shows the legend "AmeriHealth Pavilion". That's new. The original plan was that this second sheet of ice was to be opened to public ice-skating when it is not in use by the Devils. That seems still not to be quite the case, more than a year after PruCtr opened.

AmeriHealth Pavilion is now open and offering private lessons and youth hockey clinics! For more information, please contact Jon Sorg (973) 757-6223 — jsorg@prucenter.com.

The private lessons cost $50 for a half hour, and the hockey-clinic lessons cost $65 each, or $500 for 10! What happened to the plan to have public skating, at a reasonable fee? Perhaps a public skating rink was only a suggested use for the second sheet of ice. But if public skating was an integral part of the commitment the James Administration required from the Devils to win $200 million of Newark public moneys, the Booker Administration should compel compliance. Let Mr. Sorg use that ice for selected time periods only, but turn the bulk of prime time over to the public.

High school hockey teams are allowed to use the PruCenter second sheet of ice for practice, as here on February 5th, but not ordinary people. Not fair.

Roseville Presbyterian

This "Church Sunday" I show some pix of the church whose steeple I showed thru a chainlink fence November 4th. I wanted to see what church it was, so tracked it down on foot.

I saw signs on the structure to the left of the main church. This closer view of one about their food programs should be readable.

Left of those signs is this landscaped, setback area with stained-glass windows.

To the right of the church is this enclosed sign that offers some info about the summer schedule. I don't know how much it changed with the arrival of autumn.

When I looked for more information on the Internet, I didn't find a website for the church, but did find that it has services like shelter and meals for the homeless, and Head Start. I also found a slitely different name, "Roseville Avenue Presbyterian Church" (36 Roseville Avenue, 07107; (973) 483-3361), even tho the present entrance is on 7th Street. Only the back of the church approaches Roseville Avenue. A webpage on the Old Newark site shows that end of the church. In the background of that foto is a much taller and handsomer steeple than the present one. The foto below shows what the older portion looks like from the Sussex Avenue side.

The last foto today shows a wider view of the church, from top to bottom. Note the rounded-triangle windows on the lower portion of the current steeple, below the belfry.

I see that shape on the cable channel Jewelry Television described as a "trillion", tho dictionaries do not seem to accept that use of a word that is generally understood to refer only to a number, 1,000 million in the United States, a million million in Britain.

570 Show

Very long post, some 2,700 words and 28 fotos. Feel free to look just at the fotos. I think of myself as being as much fotografer as writer now.

The last event of the Newark Arts Council's Open Doors '08 arts whirl was the show, "Red Badge of Courage ReVisited", which opened with a reception on Sunday, October 26th. The locus was 570 Broad Street, in a 14,000 square foot space that will be available for lease once the exhibit closes. Each year, NAC holds a big group show in an available space to provide a showcase not just for Newark art but also for Newark real estate. The space this year was striking for the highly reflective windows, probably lined with mylar, which added many mirror images of the art and crowd. The curl on the floor in the foto above is part of Evonne Davis's installation, below. What looks sort of like a chimney or barbecue pit is made from books, not bricks.

This next installation is King Me by Ryan Roa. That's a reference to checkers, but the game in the installation is chess. Hm.

(I used to play chess as a child, but decided by my teens that I didn't much care for it. Still, I bought a Mexican onyx chess set in a wooden case/chessboard in case I or a guest wants to play. My objection to chess is my objection to the way some people play pool: planning out many moves ahead. Too much like work. And if your opponent does something unexpected, you have to recalculate everything. Why not just calculate one play at a time instead of recalculate several?) There were a lot of artists from the Newark arts scene on hand. In the foto above, for instance, are three I recognize, Jeanne Brasile, Gianluca Bianchino, and Kati Vilim. A signup sheet was displayed nearby for a tournament at the end of the exhibit.

Altho the people who signed up placed their names and email addresses in a public place, I have made sure that that info is not legible in the foto above. I did, however, want to publicize the contest, so here's a closeup of the text above the signup lines.

Curiously, the printed postcard for the exhibit says it closes November 28th. I cannot say which date is correct.
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One wall of the exhibit space was largely taken up by two adjacent murals. This was on the left, and combines writing and a number of individually framed artworks. A free-standing sculpture of a wading bird stands near the boundary.

Here's a closer view of the bird. Is it a stork? heron? crane? Hm. Stephen Crane was the Newarker who wrote the Red Badge of Courage, so let us say this is a crane. In place of feathers, it has paper on which appear words, so it's a "written". That's close to "writer". Perhaps its name is Steve, the Crane.

I found James A. Brown standing near his installation, a combination of two- and three-dimensional pieces, so asked if he'd like to pose by it. He agreed. I had forgotten to get a picture of him in my coverage of his show at Rupert Ravens Contemporary this past February, so this my chance to show you what he looks like, if only from a distance.

This piece is a collection of 115 fotos, mostly of a woman in different clothing alongside or in front of the same ladder-like shelving unit.

I realized only in reviewing my fotos from that nite, that this show comprises mainly three-dimensional works and installations rather than paintings, fotografs, or other two-D artworks. And I realized that, only because I wanted to alternate pix of installations and sculptures, with pix of paintings, but I don't have many pix of paintings, because there are far more 3D items than 2D. This group of three parking diagrams by Lowell Craig is one of the 2D's.

The sculpture in this next foto has a title something like "As Much As I Can Swallow", and is made largely from wine-bottle corks, painted white and made into a pedestal for the superstructure, which appears to incorporate a cross, so may be a reference to 'swallowing' Christian theology too. Or not.

The enigmatic installation below occupied one individual office space. I don' t know the artist nor title, nor what it's supposed to mean, but it's colorful and intriguing, comprising for the most part broken glass whose different colors are brought out by the floodlites attached to the chair.

In the adjoining office-sized space was an installation by German Pitre with a video display about the Civil War. Remember that Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, which almost every schoolkid in this country is required to read, despite its gruesomeness, concerned the Civil War. Just think about that. One of the most widely read works in American literature was written by a Newarker.

These scans (I think) of what appear to be plaid fabrics are among the 2D works in the show.

Here, by contrast, is a large assemblage very much of the 3D persuasion.

This 2D camouflage hanging with a 3D array of votive candles in front is part of a major theme of the exhibition, war and what it does to people. The visuals on either side are reflections in the windows.

Here are 2D-to-3D outlines of victims of war for whom two of those memorial candles might have been lit. There is writing on the paper from which they were made (by Matt Gosser). All too often the victims of war are forgotten almost as soon as they fall. Writing, however, remains. The edges of these figures curl up, and the figures themselves occupy the floor, more like sculptures than drawings.

The war Stephen Crane is known for is the Civil War, which ended only 6 years before his birth. German Pitre's installation is about the Civil War. And a projection in a litely-trodden part of the show also concerns the Civil War, as you can see from the two faint (and fuzzy) flags below. There was not enuf lite for my autofocus camera to focus.

The stars on the stylized U.S. flag above are pinned, not sewn, to the fabric onto which the show is projected. I don't know if the design of the stars in the canton is authentic to the Civil War era. The U.S. flag has gone thru many renditions as states are added. The version I was born under, 6 rows of 8 stars each, was very static and visually uninteresting, but Americans of that time liked it. I have seen various designs for a 51-star flag offered by advocates of Puerto Rico statehood, but we have not yet had occasion to consider a 51-star flag. Maybe Obama can work on that. In fact, maybe Canadians, who have been loath to join a Union they saw as Radical Rightwing, will rethink their hesitancy to join the Union now that the Nation has changed. And they can help us enact a single-payer national healthcare system, which Canada, Britain, France, and other advanced countries have been able to make work, instead of some half-assed compromise between Government healthcare and private enterprise that we seem at present destined to play around with until we accept that it is stupid. The defeated John McCain complained about "socialism" and Government healthcare, and the incompetent Obama campaign did not point out that John McCain, the child of a military family, born on a military base, has, for his entire life, had Government healthcare. He never paid a single private-healthcare premium in all his 72 years. It was good enuf for him, but not for us. And Obama agrees, if his silence implies assent. Jeez. What might a 58-star flag look like?

Other works in the show indicate that more recent wars were on the mind of some of the artists represented. There is a particularly unpleasant 3D grouping that suggests the mistreatment of prisoners in the Bush Administration's war against Iraq. Here's one view. The liting is bad, perhaps because this group is right alongside the projection onto paired flags above. That entire part of the (temporary) gallery is very poorly lited. For one projection? That makes no sense. They should have placed the projection in one of the enclosed spaces, or created another enclosed space for it, and left the remaining area well lited.

As you can see from the foto above, that entire area was scarcely visited. That might also have been due to the extremely unpleasant nature of the display, but I think bad liting had a lot to do with it.

This sign on an easel stated the theme of this large area of the exhibit.

I didn't fully understand the significance of the shape of that sign until I was reviewing my fotos at home. Do you see it? How about now?

This foto, which I hasten to proclaim is not mine but Alberto Korda's, shows Che Guevara, darling of simpleminded children in the West. Dare I hope that the sign on the easel was intended as irony? Che Guevara, born in Argentina, was a Communist guerrilla who helped Fidel Castro reduce the people of Cuba to totalitarian oppression for decades. Once the Cuban revolution had succeeded, Che worked to foment Communist revolutions elsewhere in Latin America. Fortunately, Bolivia was able to end his evil life by shooting the bastard in a battle on their territory. Unfortunately, infantile fools have made a hero of a monster who killed uncounted people in two wars, and would have gone on to kill ever more people in war after war to bring entire countries under Communist dictatorship, had the Bolivian army not put an end to his reign of terror. Thank you, Bolivia. Che Guevara's foto — or, in this case, outline — has been made into an icon of teen rebellion. But Che Guevara was not arguing with his parents over curfew or about drinking a couple of beers. He killed people, lots of people, to force entire societies to give up individualism and march to the drum of a totalitarian system that was no respecter of anyone's rights.
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The slogan emblazoned on this ironic sign is from a 1969 Motown song recorded by Edwin Starr. New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen did a harder-rock version in 1986. The original release was intended to bolster the so-called "antiwar" movement, which was really a pro-Communist movement, but many stupid people didn't know it at the time. The "antiwar" movement of the day opposed not military violence but people's fiting against Communist takeover. Communist aggression wasn't war unless it was opposed. It was opposition to Communist takeover that created war, and it was, thus, fiting against accepting Communism that was wrong. Springsteen sang from a different context, the Reagan Administration's dastardly behavior in funding "contras" in Central America by selling arms to Iran. Yes, the great Republican hero, Ronald Reagan, sold weapons to our supposed enemy Iran in order to funnel money to anti-Sandinista guerrillas ("terrorists" as the Sandinistas saw things) in Central America. And the man in charge of that operation, Oliver North, has a TV show on anti-Iran, anti-terrorist Fox News to this day. Remember that this was only a few short years after Iran paraded 52 U.S. hostages blindfolded, then held them prisoner for 444 days. Ah, the good old days, when our hero, Ronald Reagan, was in power. I am so glad I live in a Blue State. And yes, Mr. Obama, there are still Red States and Blue States, and we in the Blue States do NOT want you to put Republicans in your Cabinet!
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I suspect that the people who used Che Guevara's outline for their antiwar sign did not see that use as ironic. Guevara himself saw war as supremely useful — that is, as long as Communists won. As I say, aggression is war only when the other side fites back. Remember that as regards "class warfare" in the United States. When the rich steal from the poor and middle class, that's not "class warfare". But when the poor and middle class grab the hand of the rich when they find it in their pocket and beat the crap out of the thief, that is class warfare. But I digress.

The foto above shows a 3D assemblage near the wonderful reflective windows in the dark part of the exhibition. This piece deserved better treatment. This next foto shows the central piece, which is 2D on a raised platform perhaps 5" high. I had to take the foto upside down, because I needed flash, and if I had taken the foto head-on, the reflective windows would have thrown the flash right back into the camera and ruined the shot. To show it right-side-up, then, I had to rotate it 180° in my graffics program. There isn't always a way to salvage a foto, but there often is some way.

There is a mobile of dark objects in the middle of the well-lited part of the exhibition space. I wasn't clear on what the individual suspended items were until I looked closely at my fotos. I took two pix, one with and one without flash. In the foto without flash, the objects remain ambiguous, and black. In the flash foto below, you should be able to make out what they are.

Do you see? They are the (severed) heads of sheep, as in "people are such sheep" or "sheep to the slauter". I prefer a different animal in this show, the crane. So here's another view of it and what is near it.

There was a band at this event too, but it played mostly Latin or other music that most people in attendance did not find danceable.

I hate salsa and merengue, and regard it as the worst music in the Western world, even worse than oompahpah, polka music. But a few — very few — people did dance to it.

Permit me to give some utterly unsolicited advice to the organizers of future Newark art receptions that offer music. Newark is a half-black city of the United States, with a fair admixture of American whites, Hispanics, European Portuguese, and Brazilians. There are some types of music that will appeal to a wide spectrum of Newarkers, like Motown and disco, and others that will alienate large segments, like rap, metal, and salsa. If you want to get people's feet to dancing, choose a medium-fast beat of distinctly American type, like classic Motown, and you will have people jammed together dancing. Try anything narrower than that, and people are going to stand around, unengaged. Be it Motown or the Philadelphia sound (remember the wondrous Barry White?), Americans like that syncretic blend of spirituals, jazz, pop, rock, gospel, show tunes, waltz, and everything European and African that American musical genius somehow united into dance music. Inexpressibly rich, sexy, and uplifting, that music is what you should seek to play. And if you do, even those of us who have had knee surgery will wish we could dance.
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As I headed out, I saw this old foto, from the collection of the New Jersey Historical Society (NJHS), of the eastern edge of Military Park. Note the sign atop what is now the Robert Treat Center but was then the Robert Treat Hotel. I was told, on an NJHS walking tour, that that building had been the original hotel but experienced a major fire, whereafter a new building was erected for the hotel. (I suspect that NJHS itself was not, at the time, in that same block but was on Broadway in the North Ward.) The low buildings at the far left of this foto were demolished to make way for the current hotel. (The only color in this b&w scene is a reflection of the baldheaded guy who writes this blog.)

The 570 show remains in place until at least November 28th, and possibly November 30th. You can (and should) visit anytime between 11am and 4pm, Wednesday to Saturday.