'Resurgence City' Website Moved

I have been very unhappy with the webhosting company that has displayed four of my websites. HostOnce, an Australian company, offers almost no customer support. I have been unable to log into my sites to update them or add to them. There are no current stats — clicking on the statistics button this week produced statistics from 2007! So when they automatically billed me for another year's 'service', at $148, and caused an overdraft that cost me $35 from Bank of America, I told them to reverse the charge (which also reversed the overdraft fee) because I would not be renewing. They consented, but then I had to move all four sites before the October 2nd date on which HostOnce will drop all my websites, comprising over 100 webpages and hundreds of fotos and other illustrations. So I have been very busy moving pages onto different websites.

Today's fotos show the lions I referred to Sunday. This first foto shows a wide view of the fountain and both statuary lions (which used to stand outside an old Prudential Building before its demolition early in the 20th Century) on the near side of the Lake in Branch Brook Park, as well as the Cathedral [adjective] Basilica [noun] of the Sacred Heart on the far side. During the day, unlike the nite fotos Sunday. But I suppose you figured that out. I am assuming for this purpose that my readers are not obstinate contrarians, who will say "nite" if anyone dare say "day".

A colleague in Britain recommended a free website offered by Google Sites to replace each HostOnce site, and I investigated that. Unfortunately, the way Google Sites (sometimes hereinafter, "GSites") is structured, which is most bizarre, you cannot upload files directly to GSites. You can create a page in GSites by typing in new text, and loading pictures from Picasa, but the only way (it seems) to upload files you have already written and formatted with illustrations is to first upload them into Google Docs ("GDocs"), then place the GDocs file, as a single object, into a given webpage. If you then want to revise the text from the GDocs file, you cannot do so in GSites, but only in GDocs, whereupon the version in the website is automatically updated by dynamic link. Uploading illustrations to GDocs is cumbersome, and must be done one at a time if you upload an HTML document (webpage) from your hard drive. I have over 900 graffics in these websites. I can't upload them one at a time.

This closer view shows the lion I tried to include in a nite foto. I'll try again to get the fountain, lited, and the lion, visible at the same time, at dusk, when the trees are bare. This foto was taken from up a slope midway between Park Drive (where I parked) and the Lake.

I experimented and found a way to bring in text with its illustrations to GDocs from a website (a working Internet location), but could not find a way to do it with an HTML document on my hard drive. What appears to happen when you lift illustrated text from a website, however, is that all the illustrations remain at the original web location, and GDocs (and, consequently, any GSites page in which that GDocs text is embedded) merely tells the browser to go off to that location and display the graffic here. So I had to create a web location for all the fotos on the Resurgence City website, which I did at a free service called Tripod, part of the Lycos Internet group.
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Google Sites will permit me to use my domain name, "resurgencecity.org", at their webhost, but there's a little futzing I have to do, once I see if I can make the site work with illustrations. And GSites offers enuf storage space to fit the entire Resurgence City site, with all its many fotos. Unfortunately, Tripod does not offer as much space, so I had to drop one older page, about what was then known as the "Newark Arena", and its illustrations. That's not a long page, and there aren't that many fotos to have to insert manually. For the time being, the "Resurgence City: Newark USA" website can be found* at http://ResurgenceCity.tripod.com.
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* Naturally, when I went to check that this URL was working, in the middle of the nite, it wasn't. Moreover, even my Tripod login URL was not working, as tho the entire Tripod enterprise was out of business. Perhaps they're backing up and are only temporarily unavailable. Or perhaps I need to reboot before things will work. Or perhaps I have gone to an enormous amount of work to move three websites to a service that just went out of business. (I haven't yet moved the fourth.) We shall see during the regular business day. Don't you just love the Internet?

'Downtown' (Newark) Song

Something different today. I recently received, in an email, a song about Newark ("Downtown") by Frank Mozino, a guy who grew up in my part of town, Vailsburg. After some back-and-forth, we figured out a way to put the song here. Unfortunately, embedding an audio player for a given passage of sound was not (oddly) as simple as embedding a video player for a given piece of film. I've noticed this with other things too, like crackling sound (an older technology) on clear video of space walks, or the crappy sound of radio communications between airplanes and ground control. When I took a couple of flying lessons decades ago, I couldn't believe how bad the sound was. Perhaps that has been improved since then, but I must wonder: How many aircraft accidents happen because radio transmissions are incomprehensible?

Fotos today are of Branch Brook Park on a late-summer Sunday. See? I told you that even tho I hate soccer, I would show pix of it so people could see the state of soccer in Newark — here, parcsoc.

"Downtown" is, of course, the title of one of the deservedly most famous songs of all time. As sung by Britain's Petula Clark, it spoke to the excitement of being in the heart of a city, before cities became the heart of darkness to the mind of most people in this country: places of deadly danger and criminality. That view was of course skewed by the perception of racial "darkness". White people were made to feel that the cities were no longer "ours" but "theirs", and that white people were not welcome, as they had theretofore felt that blacks were not welcome in their own areas. Fear of 'Downtown' was 1 part common sense, risen from justified fear of crime; 1 part racism; and 1 part projection onto black people in central cities of the racial distaste that white people felt for black people. They must hate us, because we sure hate them. It might all have been true, once upon a time. It no longer is, not in the Nation (as the words "President Obama" should suggest) and certainly not in Newark. It's not even a case of "The times they are a-changing". The times changed a long time ago. The suburbs just weren't on the mailing list.

Two groups of Hispanics were playing a sort of volleyball or manual soccer, in which they popped a ball up to one another, the object being to keep it in the air (as in this foto and another, below) without catching and holding onto it.

Before I give you the audio of the song, let me show the lyrics that Frank typed out at my request, in Mistral, a popular display font. It's a little hard to read, but I used it for part of an early version of my bizcard. I had to put Frank's text into a graffic to keep the appearance he chose, because the font Mistral isn't a standard web-displayed font. (Mistral, by the way, is named for a wind in the south of France, like the S(c)irocco in the Sahara or the Santa Ana winds in Southern California. We don't have any named winds (not even Maria[h]) in this area. We don't have extreme weather in this area, either, just lots of cold, gray, wet weather. If this area had the weather of Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Fe, Orlando, or Cuernavaca (Mexico), where I am still vaguely thinking of moving to at least during the worst winter weather, the NY (Newark) Tristate Metropolitan Area would have a population of 60 million! (rather than 22M). And my house would be worth a million dollars to the people waiting, two and three deep, to move into Newark.

Frank also provided me this "backstory".

I wrote the first line of this song ("I took the bus to the record store, but the records aren’t there no more"), put it in my notebook, and dropped the idea.

Then I started thinking about taking the "#31 bus" [a non-NJTransit bus that runs down South Orange Avenue] to shop at the magnificent record department at "S Klein On The Square", when I was a kid. So, I asked my wife to chauffeur me around Newark, one day last summer, while I took some notes.

Well, that trip gave me the ideas and images for this song.

City Music (there were a number of music stores on that particular strip of Market Street when I was a kid) was "… the store where my daddy bought my first guitar …", in the song. My friend Anthony and I stood fascinated that day in 1965 as my father (a tailor by trade) tried to barter with the salesman: guitar for raincoats (it didn’t work).

Sneaking into Sacred Heart Church in Vailsburg (where I attended elementary school and went to mass), one morning last summer, was like trespassing in someone’s neglected attic. I picked up a good deal of images there, as well as mixed emotions.

The song is performed by The TwangCasters (Frank & Jerry).

Music, lyrics, arrangement & produced by Frank, as well as performing lead vocals, guitars and ukulele.

Bass, drums, organ & vocals by Jerry. Mixed & engineered by Jerry at JMM Studios.

If you’d like a free downloadable copy of this song for your ipod, or to burn to a CD, just write me a little review of the song, or your own experience, and email it to: frankmozino@comcast.net.

Frank said he has heard what I regard as disturbing talk about Sacred Heart of Vailsburg being closed down by the Archdiocese because of needed repairs, and perhaps underutilization. Is that really possible? This is a magnificent church, dedicated by the then-future Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. When it was dedicated, it was the largest parish church in the Nation, and the Archdiocese of Newark is thinking of closing it? People indignant at the very thought should give the Archbishop a piece of their mind. Maybe the Archbishop of Newark needs to be replaced, if he is so much as entertaining the merest thought of closing the greatest church in western Newark. The Pope himself does get email nowadays, [benedictxvi@vatican.va] if you'd like to express your concern/indignation/RAGE to the man in charge of everything the Church does. Since closure of Sacred Heart of Vailsburg is not a "done deal", you might say (to the Archbishop or Pope) that you hope the rumor isn't true — before you "tear [Archbishop Myer] a new one". But the Church needs to know that it can do only so much to its members before they say "NO MORE! The Church is US, not the hierarchy, and if the hierarchy will not do the bidding of the body of the church, the faithful, the faithful can simply TAKE their property and force the hierarchy to do what it is supposed to do: serve the congregants, not the bankers."

Now, Frank's song. Music might have charms to soothe the savage b(r)east, but we mustn't be so soothed that we nod off and let terrible things be done in our sleep.

Newark has many musically gifted people, both creators and performers. But Newark has not, itself, been the subject of much musical composition. This might not even be for lack of inspiration but from something so contemptible as feeling that writing a song or symphony about Newark would be seen as 'silly'. No, NOT writing a song or symphony about Newark if that is what moves you would be 'silly', or far worse than silly. I'm reminded of a prize that was offered years ago for a song about Los Angeles to equal the many songs about New York. Nothing memorable emerged from that competition. On the classic sitcom The Golden Girls, 'Dorothy' and 'Rose' composed a good song about Miami — which also got nowhere.

Where is our "New York, New York" (either one, "The Bronx is up and the battery's down" or "city that never sleeps")? Frank M's song addresses the 60's thru 80's. But Newark didn't end in the 80's. We need a song — or songs, many songs — that speak to the Newark that never was (the one of the rose-colored glasses) and the Newark that might have been (but was disrupted), but, most of all, to the Newark that is yet to come. A hopeful song, grounded in the reality of our tainted past, and sainted past, but not chained to the past.

This gentleman shows off a little trout (?) he had just caut and was about to release. He doesn't keep the little ones he catches in Branch Brook Park's Lake. But he told me he does keep, and eat, the big fish he catches at the Shore. I said I used to live down that way and we would sometimes fish, and catch mainly porgies and bluefish — and that I love the taste of bluefish (tho I don't much care for fish in general, unlike my father, who was very keen on fresh fish, one reason he moved us to the Shore in my youth). He said bluefish were running right then, late September, which surprised me. But I don't have a boat. My former neighbor, Carmelo, used to go down to the Shore with a buddy to fish, and he gave me a bluefish once. But he has, alas, moved, to the (near-in, Essex Co.) suburbs. So, no more bluefish for me. Even more sadly, the couple that bought his house apparently split up, and the house is presently vacant. Every homeowner wants good neighbors, like Carmelo and Millie, not no-neighbors in adjoining properties.

A true Song of Newark would tell of a city that never was as good as they said, and never was as bad. Never aspired, so never failed. Never succeeded, but its sons and dauters soared. They just didn't do it here. The story of Newark is the story of New Jersey, antimatter to New York's matter. We are the United States's own Canada, the Not-New York, as Canada is the Not-U.S. But aren't we more? I am. I left New Jersey, for Manhattan, because New Jersey didn't aspire, higher. I came back because New York passed the point of critical mass at which great ideas ignite, and started to become a Black Hole that drew in more and more people it couldn't process but could only pile on top of each other and crush, economically and spiritually. We in New Jersey are an unlovely industrial field where flowers should be, all around the City of Oz.

We have all seen The Wizard of Oz, and we all know what city — or, more correctly, part of a city — Oz iz. It's Manhattan, and we are supposed to be the lushly flowering, low approaches that make the towers of deep and brilliant colors inside Oz, the center of all things, seem even more magnificent as contrasted to our low(li)ness. It is not for flowers to aspire to be towers. But isn't the view from any tower more interesting if there are other towers, at a distance, too? And doesn't any One do more if challenged?

To be in Manhattan is to be in madness, a swirl, a whirl, a crush; a mass that need not be. To leave Manhattan is to return to sanity. Newark is normal. Manhattan, abnormal. We can be thankful there's a river between Manhattan and New Jersey, a cordon sanitaire, a natural containment impound. Manhattan's presumptive motto is "Nothing succeeds like excess". In checking the Internet for the origin of that aphorism, I found another quote from the same author, the British homo* Oscar Wilde, that is worth committing to mind: "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
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* Remember that I am a homosexual man, and "homo" is to me an honorable term, as in "Ecce homo".

UHOP

This "Church Sunday" at Newark USA, I show a picture of the United House of Prayer for All People (643 Springfield Avenue, Newark 07103-1424, (973) 351-1100). I chanced across this church at the end of August while looking on Springfield Avenue for the Petland Discounts in Irvington, and was startled by its architectural boldness. I pulled over and took a couple of pictures out the car window, but the closeups were fuzzy. I later looked up the church online and found some interesting things. First, there is a one-paragraph article about it at the Encyclopaedia Britannica online.

Pentecostal Holiness church in the United States. It was founded by Bishop Charles Emmanuel Grace (1881/84?–1960), an immigrant from Cape Verde whose birth name was Marcelino Manuel da Graca. [s/b "Graça] After leaving a job as a cook on a Southern railway, he began to preach. Da Graca assumed the byname “Daddy Grace”—he would later adopt the byname “Sweet Daddy Grace”—and proclaimed himself “bishop.” He established a house of worship in 1919 in West Wareham, Mass., and later moved to Newark, N.J. He claimed to be an emissary of God with authority to grant or withhold salvation. The death of Grace led to temporary difficulties for the group over tax litigation and the succession to Grace’s leadership. The key to the success of this church was that the many offerings went directly to Daddy Grace to advance the sale of his healing-power products: soap, stationery, tea, coffee, cookies, toothpaste, facial creams, talcum powder, hair dressing, and Grace Magazine. The church is headquartered in Washington, D.C., and has a reported membership of 50,000.

Cape Verde, off the coast of West Africa in the Senegal area, was a colony of Portugal; thus the founder's Portuguese name. I don't know if the presence from at least the 1920s of a significant Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) community in Newark played any role in his coming here. The area of Massachusetts he first moved to has a significant Portuguese community. I also see that Mr. Graça was not alone in leaving Cape Verde for the United States.

Today, more Cape Verdeans live abroad than in Cape Verde itself, with significant emigrant Cape Verdean communities in the United States (500,000 Cape Verdeans, with a major concentration on the New England coast from Providence, Rhode Island, to New Bedford, Massachusetts). There are also significant Cape Verde populations in São Tomé and Príncipe, Portugal (80,000), Angola (45,000), Senegal (25,000), the Netherlands (20,000, of which 15,000 are concentrated in Rotterdam), and Italy (10,000). There is also a Cape Verdean community in Argentina numbering 8,000.

I didn't notice at the time but only on reviewing the foto in my graffics program, that there are a flock of birds on the roof, as you can see plainly from this closer picture zoomed in my graffics program. They appear to be pigeons. You can also see the statues I tried to zoom in on in my camera but which turned out fuzzy in those shots.

Apart from the Britannica paragraph above, there is a fuller article on Wikipedia. Both the Wikipedia and the Britannica articles show a website for the church itself. Newark appears to be the church's only location in NJ.
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The website uses both UHOP and, in its URL, "tuhopfap", which seems a step too far. The full name of the Church is even longer than appears on the church façade:

One unique aspect of the faith of the United House of Prayer is the full name: the United House of Prayer for All People of the Church on the Rock of the Apostolic Faith. The first portion of the name is derived from Isaiah 56:7 where God says: "Mine house shall be called a house of prayer for all people." The latter part is taken from "Acts 4:10-12 and Ephesians 2:20, which discusses Christian salvation as being built on a figurative cornerstone, or rock," which "is believed to be the teachings of Jesus Christ as preached by the Apostle Peter."

Another unique aspect about this organization's doctrine and belief is the definition of the term church as used by the bishop and members. The United House of Prayer for All People believes that the word church means a group of Christians who are believers and worshippers in Christ and that the modern definition of church as a building, denomination, or institution is unbiblical according to the writings of the Holy Scriptures as recorded in Acts 9:31." Therefore, the United House of Prayer does not see itself as a denomination.

Action and Reflection

I went to the roller derby matchup last nite at the Branch Brook Park Roller Skating Center. I arrived an hour after it started, but since I was there just to see what it was like and take some pictures, that wasn't important to me. There were, I am pleased to say, no parking places left in the parking lot around the rink, so there was pretty good attendance, at least as against what the rink usually gets (assuming the operators gauged correctly the number of spaces they'd need for customers).

The rink was britely lited and the polished wood looked terrific. When I got there, the Ironbound Maidens were behind by 6 points. Note that the time seems to contain a semicolon rather than colon.

This guy was doing something at a computer, but I couldn't tell if he was writing a sports story/column or running the projector for the scoring. Nor do I know why the word "HAMBONE" appears on his shirt. It seems inadvisable. Maybe it's his name, Italian (Hom.bóe.nae).

A young woman in the audience at the end of the oval nearer the door was dressed up as a mascot, a dancing green chicken, presumably for the NJ team (Garden State = green). (You can't see it at this resolution, but in my original picture, the banner beyond her appears to bear a bunch of UVSO logos. UVSO is the Unified Vailsburg Services Organization, and I'm not clear why UVSO logos are on a poster in near north Newark.

There are no stands for an audience, but there were some chairs for those of us not working a camera or dancing. After a ten-minute break after the women's bout, during which the men warmed up, the gent at the table in the picture below (which shows the announcer's booth to the left of the score) asked me and other people in the way of his camera to move a bit to the side. I had moved over briefly because people were moving around where I had been standing. He suggested I might want to move to the other end of the oval, for a different perspective, and that seemed a good idea, so I could get more audience members in my pix. I appreciated his advice and gave him my card so he would know why I was taking pix from a tripod, then moved to the other end before the men's game began.

The NJ team was Mass.acred (by the team from Western Mass.achusetts), but the final score was not as bad as it had seemed it would be mere seconds before the end of regular play, when it was 49 to 76. (The semi/colon problem has been fixed.)
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In reviewing my pictures during lulls in the action, I saw that many were blurred because of the speed of the moving skaters in the less than sun-brilliant liting. A little blur isn't bad, because it indicates action. In fact, I really liked this one foto so blurred that you can't really tell what is happening, but it looks explosive.

Still, I decided to try some video, not just to capture the mood but also to get clearer images of the skaters in motion. I took a number of short videos of both the women's and men's events, then learned late last nite how to put them together with transitions in MS Movie Maker. I first had to convert them to a format Movie Maker can use. My camera records in .MOV, but Movie Maker doesn't handle .MOV. So I used another program to convert them to .WMV, and then merged them. Here is the result, at 3 minutes and 14 seconds. If the embedded player doesn't work, you can watch at the Blip.tv page where the video is stored. It is also much larger there, tho that shows the flaws in a video taken with a camera whose basic function is to take stills.

A couple of things you may or may not have noticed about the video: First, the announcer and most officials during the women's bout were male; the announcer and most officials during the men's bout were female. Second, women's roller derby is supposedly more popular, but the men seem much faster and more exciting to watch.
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I still couldn't make much sense of the game even after learning the rules (see yesterday's post). I couldn't spot the "jammer" from each team who has to get past the pack to score. It would be easier for the audience to know what is going on if the jammer wore a distinctive uniform or conspicuous vest. But perhaps the point of not being conspicuous is to allow the jammer to blend in with other members of the team so the blockers aren't sure which person they're supposed to block. Realize that everyone is generally facing forward, so to see who is coming up on you and trying to pass, you have to keep turning your head from side to side and use peripheral vision. They don't wear rearview mirrors.
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Once I'd taken my videos, I went on my way. I had had to park down a side road within the park, near the Boathouse and, by chance, near the smallest of the fountains in the Park. I hadn't known it was illuminated until I saw it when I got out of the car, and when it was still lited when I was returning to the car, I set up my tripod and took a picture.

Then I wondered if all four fountains in the Park were lited — indeed all five fountains that have been created in the three years since I bemoaned here the lack of decorative fountains in Newark. So I set out to see. The closest of the other fountains is the biggest, in the Lake between the lions and the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart.

I tried to get the profile of each of the lions outlined against the lited fountain, but the tripod is too short, and only the chest of each lion, not its face with open mouth, showed. You couldn't tell in the darkness why the fountain was cut off. I was thinking that perhaps I could get a picture like that just before dark, where I could hold the camera in hand and the picture would show the statue's full outline, the lited fountain, and the lited Cathedral. I might wait to try that until the trees have lost their leaves, and more of the Basilica is visible. When I was taking these pix, I was the only person in that area of the park, aside from people in cars using the roadways. Then, as I was almost ready to leave, but had stopped to take a picture of the Cathedral reflected in the water not in view of the fountain, an ambulance drove up and parked between the lions. I guess some EMT's were taking a break by a tranquil view.

In New York and many other cities, there would be many people enjoying such a view. There would probably be a little all-weather café, with tables outside during good weather, even on a park's grounds. But this is Newark, and a lot of people are still (needlessly and exaggeratedly) afraid of Newark nites. Also, if Newark had a larger population, the density around this area might be high enuf that lots of people would stroll thru the Park to take in the lited fountain and Cathedral. Newark needs to grow. If we had a million people rather than 300,000 (in a larger area gained by annexing near-in urbanized suburbs like East Orange and Irvington, at the least), it wouldn't be too crowded but we would have the kind of urbane street and park scenes that so much of Manhattan and places like Baltimore's Inner Harbor have.
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The next fountains to check were the twin fountains in the Lake near the exit from Park Drive to Lake Street and 2nd Avenue, east of Bloomfield Avenue. They were lited too.

The last fountain I know of is the Donald Payne Fountain by the Hall of Records on MLK near South Orange Avenue. So I drove there too, and it was still lited. By now it was perhaps 12:15am, and some event (a dance?) was just getting out at Essex County College nearby.

I was struck, while taking pix of the Twin Fountains, that the sound of the water falling into the Lake was, for much of the time I was there, the loudest sound I heard, so decided to take a short video to give visitors to this blog a sense of the serenity that fountains give a place. Nothing happens in this video, or the last today, except that water falls and engages the eyes and ears. (The sound quality on my little Olympus camera is a little tinny, but you get the idea.) If you don't want to bother with a little scene-setting peacefulness (45 seconds of the Twin Fountains, 53 of the Payne Fountain), don't bother to click on these two videos. If the first player below doesn't work or you want to see a larger picture of the Twin Fountains, click here.

What you don't see is a bunch of ducks gliding silently by, just below frame. Had I known they were there before they started moving, I'd have included them in the frame, tho they were almost impossible to see.
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The Payne Fountain is the smallest of the five. The foto above shows the view of the county complex to the west. The video (Blip direct link here) shows the view to the east, the side of the Old Essex County Courthouse. The Payne Fountain has an arc of benches and plantings around it for people to enjoy the peace. I'd like to see the County put many benches around the Twin Fountains, on all banks of that enclosed portion of the Lake, and clear shrubbery and such to create good sightlines so many people could sit and enjoy the peace that those fountains too can bring.

Roller Derby Tonite, Jammed Saturday

Did you know that what you may have regarded as a spectacle of bygone days, the roller derby, was resurrected in NJ three years ago? I received email notice, including a foto, of a roller derby "bout" at the Branch Brook Park roller-skating rink tonite.

LOCAL ROLLER DERBY LEAGUE LIVES THE STOR2Y OF UPCOMING FILM
Local movie-goers seeing trailers for the upcoming film, "Whip It!," [I saw one on TV last nite] may be surprised to learn that northern New Jersey has its very own roller derby league – the Garden State Rollergirls.

"Whip It!," directed by Drew Barrymore and starring Ellen Page ("Juno"), tells the story of a Texas teen who, after joining her local roller derby league, learns to "be her own hero." The Garden State Rollergirls, based in Newark, NJ, consists of 45 skaters living the real-life, tough yet rewarding, story of roller derby. The film opens in theatres October 2.

Those interested in the world of roller derby are invited to attend the next home bout for the Garden State Rollergirls, a double header with Pioneer Valley Roller Derby and the men of the New York Shock Exchange in a double header on Friday, September 25.

The Garden State Rollergirls All-Stars, the Ironbound Maidens, will take on the women of Western Mass Destruction, Pioneer Valley Roller Derby’s women’s team, while the men of the New York Shock Exchange take on PV’s Dirty Dozen, in alternating periods.

WHAT: Roller Derby Double Header – Ironbound Maidens and New York Shock Exchange vs. Pioneer Valley Roller Derby

DATE: Friday, September 25, 2009

TIME: Doors open at 8 p.m., whistle blows at 9 p.m.

WHERE: Branch Brook Park Roller Skating Center, 7th & Clifton Ave., Newark NJ

TICKETS: Available at http://www.gardenstaterollergirls.com/. Adults $10 in advance, $12 at the door and children 10 and under are half price

The Garden State Rollergirls LLC is a skater-owned and -operated organization, with members hailing from all over northern New Jersey and the NYC metro area. GSR was established in spring 2006 to bring the classic sport of roller derby in a new action packed form to New Jersey.

For more information on the league and the sport of flat-track roller derby, visit http://www.gardenstaterollergirls.com/about.php.

This and the next picture show the BBPk rink in ordinary use.

Wikipedia says that roller derby was created by someone named Leo Seltzer and by a writer so famous that a word, "Runyonesque", came into the English language for him: Damon Runyon, author of stories that became the movies Guys and Dolls and Little Miss Marker. Wikipedia also says that "The initial business model of roller derby finally collapsed in the mid-1970s." When I was a child, roller derby was very big on early TV, as broadcasters looked for things to fill the hours, cheaply. Roller derby was thus, in that way, the 1950s equivalent of reality programming today.
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I was never clear, when watching, what it was all about. Today's Garden State Rollergirls organization explains the game/"bout" thus:

Roller derby involves two teams of four blockers skating round an elliptical track, while a point scorer from each team ("the jammer") tries to fight their way through, gaining a point for each opposing player they pass. Trips, grabs, elbows, and fighting are all illegal — but spine-crunching shoulder barges, hip checks and booty blocks are legit.

The trailer for the film Whip It! shows girls violating those rules, and roller derby, like hockey (also found in Newark) is perhaps more famous for fites than for skating skills. The film is Drew Barrymore's directorial debut. I mentioned Drew Barrymore's Newark connection on October 19, 2005.

On one wall [of a courtroom in the Old Essex County Courthouse] was a mural, perhaps 10 feet high by 8 feet wide, portraying a classical scene. The central figure, he [a court administrator who showed me and a friend around the Courthouse] told us, had originally been modeled on Drew Barrymore's (great?-) grandmother, in 1906. But there was controversy over whether such a figure (an actress?) should be identifiable in a courtroom painting, so the artist changed the facial features somewhat. Ironically, it now looks much like her descendant Drew!

Jamday. Tomorrow (Saturday) is a very busy day. I am scheduled for an "Adults-Only Members Morning" at the Newark Museum, except that this one is extending into the afternoon due to demand. The 9:00 and 10:30am spots were all taken, so the Museum added a 12 noon session of art workshops in which members get instruction in some art and make something in the hour-and-a-half session. Last time I got pastels, which I was very bad at. We'll see what I get tomorrow.

Immediately after that, Aljira's Emerge 10 exhibition (fotos above and below) closes with a reception beginning at 2pm, about 3 blocks from the Museum.

"The Importance of Being Authentic"
Video Screening and Panel Discussion: 2-4pm
E10 Artists: Michael Paul Britto, Brendan Fernandes, Roxana Perez-Mendez, and Jaye Rhee
Moderator: Sara Reisman

Don't miss this unique public program—part screening, part discussion.... You're invited: view videos not included in the exhibition, join the discussion about authenticity and the visual arts, and then enjoy light refreshments and repartee.

E10 Closing Reception: 4-6pm
Light refreshments
Music by resident DJ Curator and Jools Palmer.

Then at 7pm, seven blocks away (at Burnet and James Streets), there is a free showing of Flow, a film about water resources (cautionary as to the proposal, temporarily withdrawn by Mayor Booker, to remove Newark's Department of Water & Sewer Utilities from public control and create a Municipal Utility Authority controlled not by the people but by private owners — a plan we must stop).

(As of late Friday nite, there was some confusion as to whether Flow will or will not be shown Saturday. The issue was clarified VERY late: due to James Street activist Bill Chappel's being out of town this weekend, the showing of the water-resources documentary Flow is delayed. I could just have deleted this entire section to today's blogpost, but then you wouldn't appreciate the uncertainties I have to deal with to try to keep my readers apprised of what is going on in this fine (tho not yet "great") city.)
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Meanwhile, back in my neighborhood, Vailsburg, there will be a fundraiser dance recital.

Gallman’s Newark Dance Theatre (GNDT) School presents a Liturgical Dance Fundraising Concert “SOUND THE ALARM” Saturday, September 26, 5:00 PM, at Newark Gospel Tabernacle, with host pastor Reverend Dr. Aubrey Gregory, 985 South Orange, Newark New Jersey 07106. The celebration will be lead by founder/director Alfred Gallman, including performances by Gallman’s Newark Dance Theatre, GNDT School, Alumni and Special Guests. The program will feature ten of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania['s] most noted Praise Dance Ministries. There will be a free will offering at the event, suggested Donation is $20. All proceeds will benefit the continued operation of Gallman’s Newark Dance Theatre School celebrating 31 years of excellence in Dance! Please forward this email to the Liturgical dance community. For more information, reservations or participation contact GNDT School (973) 592-5628. Website: http://www.gallmansnewarkdancetheatre.org/, Email: gndtschool@aol.com.

"SOUND THE ALARM" will feature the sterling talents of Gallman’s Newark Dance Theatre, GNDT School, NJ; Kelly Temple Church of God in Christ, Harlem, NY; Chosen Generation Ministries, Newark, NJ; New Light Baptist Church , Newark, NJ; Crystal Glass of Christ Church, Newark, NJ; Uptown Dance Academy, Harlem, NY the 2009 Mc Donald Gospel Festival Praise Dance Winner and other surprise guests. Also on the program will be Kelly Temple COG IC musicians and praise team.

The Tabernacle is on SOAv near the corner of Stuyvesant. I noticed a few days ago that the Gallman banner on the DaVita Dialysis Building on Central Avenue was no longer there. Upon inquiry, I was told that they have relocated to 444 Central Avenue. They haven't gone out of business, just moved several blocks farther east but still on Central Avenue.

Trenton Event Friday

Long post, almost 1,800 words, with 25 fotos. As always, I don't mind if you just look at the pictures.

The Citizens' Campaign, a New Jersey group that encourages individuals to get involved in local government and that works to ban pay-to-play corruption, promote openness in government operations, etc., sent me word of an event tomorrow in the State Capitol Building (also known as the State House), so I thought this a good takeoff to show pix I took in Trenton on September 6th.
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I had gone to the Greater Trenton area to see Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton (Township) on the Bank of America's "Museums on Us" program (free admission to BofA cardholders). I took many, many fotos there, the best of which I will show shortly before the next "Museums on Us" weekend, October 3rd and 4th.

The Trenton event tomorrow is not a Citizens' Campaign event per se, but is offered by the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government.

Join us for the New Jersey Foundation for Open Government's Open Government Symposium Friday, September 25.

New Jersey Comptroller Matthew Boxer, the keynote speaker, will discuss how his office's audits and reviews will help bring transparency to New Jersey's government.

Experts will also discuss the status of the Government Records Council (GRC), necessary improvements needed to maximize the potential of this advocacy body for citizens.

WHAT:
Open Government Symposium

WHEN:
9:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Friday, September 25

WHERE:
State Capitol Complex
Committee Room 6
125 West State St., Trenton

CONTACT:
Call 908-418-5586, e-mail info@njfog.org or register online today [$10 per person].

(Is that really the best place for a TV/communications antenna? Don't the powers that be in Trenton realize that the State House is a tourist attraction?) Unfortunately, tho the weather had been glorious earlier in the day, clouds had moved in by the time I got to Trenton. Since it is too far away to put off taking fotos to a briter time, you'll have to use your imagination to picture these scenes in sunshine.

I'm a political person, but this is not a subject area that much concerns me. I'm glad, however, that there are groups like the Citizens' Campaign and NJFOG (an unfortunate acronym for a group that works for transparency) to keep an eye on these things.

My eye in Trenton was drawn to things like the World War II Memorial, which wasn't there the last time I was in Trenton, at the end of my move from Manhattan in June 2000. It turns out that it is even more recent than I imagined, having been dedicated on November 11th (Veterans Day), 2008.

Apparently the creation of the Memorial was running far behind schedule until Governor Corzine pushed it thru. Corzine won't lead NJ to join our neighbors in New England in legalizing same-sex marriage, but it would seem he's not all bad.

Base of Victory statue.

Like so many monuments in our culture, the central theme, "Victory", is embodied in a female figure ("Lady Victory"). I have never understood such a choice. Men do the fiting but Victory is a woman?

There is a smaller (roughly life-size) statue of a man waving his platoon forward.

The loss of so many men's lives in that war is symbolized by a rifle embedded in the soil by its bayonet, and an empty helmet on top.

There are pictures and text on "story walls" around the statuary. This is the one that speaks of the Pacific Theater.

And this, the European Theater.

The NJ Military and Veterans Affairs website has a wonderful collection of WWII posters you can enlarge by clicking on each, but not all, of the pictures in a poster montage.

The brick surface of this water wall is too smooth to throw up obvious waterfall droplets. I guess it is intended to provide a contemplative curtain that flows rather than jounces.

New Jersey is so small, and the capital so centrally located, that Trenton is less than an hour and a half away from any part of Newark, about 50 miles by car from me. But I rarely get there. I'm not as bad about getting outside the city as I was when I lived in Manhattan, in that crosstown block immortalized in the Saul Steinberg poster about the insularity of Manhattanites, but I tend to stay in Essex County.

Four domes.

The State House is a wonderful but smallish building. Most state capitols, and I have seen perhaps 20, are wonderful buildings. Ours is no exception. The original structure was built in 1792, but the domed portion we recognize today was built in 1845. This view from the area between the Capitol and the Delaware River shows what may be the earlier (right) and later buildings. But I'm not sure the 1792 building hasn't been demolished.

Were we to build new, we'd probably want to go grander, but the present building has its charms. The dome is hard to see from most angles, but when I was taking pix of the back of the Old Barracks, I turned around and was startled to see this.

You can see why it's called the "Capitol Complex".

I'd like to get inside someday again, but parking in that area looks to be a problem. I was there on a Sunday, so had no difficulty finding free on-street parking. During a busy workday, I wouldn't count on that.

I have entirely too many pix of my short stay in Trenton on the 6th to use in one day. There will be other occasions to mention Trenton, and I'll use more then. I have a number of pix of the exterior, front and back, of the Old Barracks, which I'll use in a separate discussion someday. Who knows? I might even have gotten inside by then.

I did want to show pix of a fortuitous happenstance, tho. I had driven across the tiny, two-lane Calhoun Street bridge to the Pennsylvania side of the Delaware River to see what the State House looks like from there, and chanced to see two kayakers on the shallow water.

My family lived during my teens on a small lake (Shadow Lake in the River Plaza section of Middletown Township), and we had a wooden canoe for a while. I don't know if metal or fiberglass canoes were even made then, but we wouldn't have wanted one in any case. We enjoyed many hours of paddling, and turning the canoe over and experiencing the sparkling indirect lite of the air-filled space below. But I've never been in a kayak.

I don't know if kayaking is so popular on that stretch of the Delaware (the Delaware has some white-water areas) that you would likely see kayakers any Sunday you go, but I was happy to see them.

There were Canada geese on the water. One kayaker headed right for them, and just AFTER I took this next picture, they bolted and flew off in a group away from the kayaker, doing that goosy walk-on-water, flap-wings thing until they could get airborne.

I owe my name to Trenton. My parents named me "Lee Craig Schoonmaker", and I was called "Lee" in childhood. When I learned U.S. history, I was very unhappy to find that the lead general of the Confederacy in the Civil War was a monster called "Robert E. Lee". (I learned this week, by the way, that George McClellan, who organized the Union Army of the Potomac, was later a Governor of New Jersey.) And "Lee" is gender-ambiguous, which I also did not appreciate.

One day in high school, I participated in a mock legislature (NJ Senate) in the State House sponsored by Hi-Y and Tri-Hi-Y, youth groups of the YMCA and YWCA respectively. While there, I heard the winning candidate for (mock) Governor pronounce his first name, "Craig", as Kreg. My parents had always pronounced it in the more authentic Scottish or Irish fashion, Kraeg, which I distinctly did not like. I preferred even "Lee" to Kraeg. But when this guy (who had an odd, semi-British speech pattern overall) said Kreg, I thought, "I like that." When I later found that Craig means "rock", as in Rock Hudson, I liked it even better. So once I had moved to Manhattan and, years later, switched campuses within the City University of New York, I decided to move from my first to middle name, and retain only the initial "L." at the beginning. Governments don't like people to use their middle names, however, so for legal purposes (driver's license and such), I am still "Lee". But don't call me that.

Returning to the takeoff for this post, an email from the Citizens' Campaign, they are the people who hold seminars, in person and online, to help individuals get onto city boards and commissions. My sister Trina has served on the Citizen Police Complaint Commission of the City of Long Beach, California for a few years, and now I see that she is Chair, as of this past July! She has encouraged me to serve on a Newark commission to my liking, because she really enjoys the work. She sent out this email, with picture, on Tuesday.

That's the Firearms Room at the Long Beach Crime Lab - our first stop of an interesting day. There were approximately 400 guns on the wall used for testing purposes, parts, etc. After this we went to the Juvenile Detention facilities, then toured the jail. Truly fascinating day.

That's not something I'd be interested in. Maybe public art or historic preservation. I'll have to think about this and do some research on what commissions have openings.