Art Walk 2: Submerged and Dietze

Long and discursive post (yes, again), about 2,800 words, with 18 fotos.

I mentioned Friday that the "City Without Walls [cWOW] at Submerged Art" reception Saturday might be part of a second Art Walk, the Newark Arts Council's ambitious program to keep clusters of galleries, within walking distance of each other, open one nite a month. But despite the fact that I am on one email list for the NAC ('en A see'), I did NOT receive notice of any such Art Walk, except as implied in the email from cWOW, not NAC, about the Submerged Art reception.

I figured I could ask about that at Submerged, so got myself to 210 Market Street (opposite the mouth of Beaver Street) around 8:45pm, a full hour and a quarter before the announced closing time of that reception. I took a few pictures outside and in, including this foto of an inverted umbrella surrounded by fluorescent lites on a grating in the sidewalk. I don't know what it's supposed to mean, but alongside the nearby wrought-iron bench with molded-wood seating, it made for a cozy outdoor anchor for the event, which was well-attended.

Sadly, some of the people outside were smoking. It amazes me that there are still a lot of people smoking tobacco in this country, even young people who should know better. The first Surgeon General's warning about the deadliness of tobacco was issued in the Johnson Administration! I don't know that there is a no-smoking sign inside Submerged, but no-smoking-in-public-buildings is now a well established rule in New Jersey, whether it be law or not, so most smokers don't even try to lite up indoors. Good. Now, if they just wouldn't lite up at all, we'd all be better off.

Roberto Jamora's Gonna Happen This Time and Want to Be.

Linwood Oglesby, the Executive Director of the NAC, came out from the back of the gallery around them, and on seeing me said hello. He would know about an Art Walk, so I asked him. Yes, and this is part of it. There were three other venues, one of which was open only till 6pm, but Dietze Projects (deets; one syllable) was open til 10. He handed me one of the new "Newark Art Walk" maps and showed me where Dietze is, on Union Street in the Ironbound not far from Newark Penn Station. I rolled up the map (the ones on hand had not been sent thru a folding machine to reduce the map from its 11" × 17" printed size (double-sided) to its folded, 8½" × 3¾" jacket-pocket (and mailing) size.

The theme of the show, "Storm", is shown in these three paintings by Thomas Parker Williams: Downpour, Wall Cloud Forming, and Afternoon Number 1.

I told Linwood that I had not received any email notification of this Art Walk, and suggested that, given how tied-in I now am as regards the Newark art scene, if I don't know about an art event, people in general don't know about it, so a lot more needs to be done to publicize these events.

Fortunately, the new NAC map has a schedule of several future Art Walks. Unfortunately, there is this description in that piece:

Another exciting development will be the premier of Art Walk [past tense is inappropriate now], Newark s [sic] long overdue monthly open arts spaces tour happening on every fourth Friday of each month. The tour will feature nighttime openings of galleries in pre-determined [sic] clusters (to enable visitors to walk from one location to another) hosting [featuring?] a different cluster each month. You can look forward to great art shows, musical performances and even educational activities for children. Art Walk promises to be quite a draw for patrons from outside the city, as restaurants, bars and other venues are poised to participate. Go to http://www.newarkarts.org/ for more info.

Kevin Darmaine [sic]

Can we please get a proofreader to check these things before they are printed?

Christine Wagner, #1 (you don’t like it but he does).

Kevin's name is "Darmanie", not "Darmaine", and May's Art Walk was on a Saturday, not Friday. Nor is there any mention that there are not, at least as shown in the printed schedule, any Art Walks during cold months. Aren't we, Newarkers, suburbanites, and the New Yorkers we presumably aspire to draw in, hardier than that? "The season" for NY's high performing arts (opera, ballet, symphony, etc.) is the cold months. Perhaps cold-weather Art Walks could be staged close in to Newark Penn Station. Last I knew, there were empty retail spaces within the interior walkways and display space in the skyways of Gateway Center that might welcome temporary art shows. There is also One Gallery within Gateway One. Newark Penn Station itself might welcome a temporary art show in its magnificent Art Deco waiting room, and its main concourse. A cold-weather Art Walk, supplemented by a free trolley making endless loops, could go as far east as Dietze and as far west along Market Street as the Essex County College Gallery (off MLK).

As regards music, there seems to have been precious little effort/success in drawing in some performing-arts venues that are shown on the map, such as Symphony Hall, WBGO Radio ("Jazz 88"), and NJPAC, or Gallman's Newark Dance Theatre, Arts High, etc., to create free outdoor/indoor public programs during Art Walks. Considering the depth of musical talent, and probably dance talent as well, in Newark, this would appear to be a major failure of vision, in not seeing or not presenting the performing arts as a vital, lively, and appealing area of the arts. One of the Nation's premier tap-dancers, Newark's own Savion Glover, might be induced to headline a tap-dance/ballet/modern dance spectacular on the Plaza outside NJPAC, or in a closed traffic lane and parking lane plus the little parking lot outside Symphony Hall, or in Military Park, Washington Park, or Lincoln Park.
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Anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows that I am very enthusiastic about Newark arts, so when I criticize, it is to spur improvement, not to harp on the negative. In the first Art Walk, the people of Guerilla Galleries (Christine Wagner, Marshall Okin and Stan Sudol, below) who organized the Alexander Masket show at One Gallery were rightly distressed that there had been so little publicity for the Art Walk that very few people showed up. One Gallery is diagonally across the street from Newark Penn Station, a nexus of multitudinous trains and buses thru which pass thousands of people a day. Couldn't we find a way to get some of them to take a later train or bus in order to check out a FREE art show just across Raymond Plaza West? A big poster near the flipping-numbers board about arrivals and departures could ask, "What's your rush? There's a free art show across Raymond Plaza West, from 6-10pm tonite. Take a later train and see life in a new lite. Did we say 'free' art show?"

What is the relationship between NAC and the Newark Regional Business Partnership (our version of what is in most other places called the Chamber of Commerce) and the Statewide Hispanic Chamber of Commerce? What contact does NAC have with the Essex County Bar Association? (Newark has lots of law offices in the Gateway Center/Legal Center area, and lawyers are highly educated professionals we might expect to take interest in the arts.) What is the relationship between the NAC and NJPAC or Symphony Hall? What about creating satellite art-exhibit spaces within, for instance, the Robert Treat Hotel and Gateway Hilton, and the Airport-area hotels and motels, a joint effort of the Newark Museum and NAC? Reproductions of classics from the Museum, bare or as informational posters with text, plus original paintings and drawings by artists yet to establish their reputation, with touch-screen computer kiosks to show a wide range of the offerings of Newark's museums and galleries, could be placed in Newark Penn Station and the several passenger terminals at EWR. Hundreds of thousands of people are stuck between flites at EWR. Why not engage them in Newark arts, so the next time they plan a trip thru EWR, they might allow enuf time to venture Downtown? The Port Authority should be happy to provide something for people to do between flites — especially during those all-too-frequent occasions when bad weather or other problems cause long delays.

Sam Bornstein, Production of Clouds.

A monthly evening Art Walk is a terrific idea. I was told by the Guerilla Galleries people that the Art Walk was the inspired brainchild of Colombian-born artist Luisa Pinzon, but she left her job at the NAC just before the first Walk got underway.
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We are left with those two famed metaphysical questions: "What is the sound of one hand clapping?" And, "If a tree falls in the forest, but there is no one to hear, does it make a sound?" One hand clapping is about all the applause Newark seems to get, and if an Art Walk happens but nobody new attends, does it make a difference?

While I was taking pictures, a very slender, young black man greeted me, and I asked him who created the hanging over the entryway. He said "Rebecca", so I asked if he meant Rebecca Jampol. He ("I'm John, by the way"; "That's an unusual name, 'Bytheway'." "Mitchell.") said he has only been with Submerged for four days, so doesn't know all the artists' last names. I asked if she was blonde. He hesitated. I added, "Tho last nite she appeared to have orange streaks in her hair." To which he said yes, that Rebecca.
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I said I heard someone talk about going to the second floor, so asked if there were more artworks there. He said there was to be a performance-art piece on 2, soon to start. Oh. I said I don't "get" most performance art, such as the one piece that was running on the first floor (so I'd skip the one on the second floor).

Daniel Pillis, Cult Classics Alarm.

I had not, at that point, seen Salomon (Anaya, proprietor of Submerged), but headed off to Dietze. As I approached Newark Penn Station, I looked thru the front glass doors of One Gateway Center to the back of the ground floor to see the Renaissance-themed mural there (which the management might be happy to have included in a future Art Walk)ow enn figured I might as well check to see if the Alexander Masket art exhibit is still in place in One Gallery, within One Gateway Center. It is (thru June 30)ow eo it was not open during the evening for this Art Walk.

Jenny Zoey Casey, Red Car.

I walked the half mile to Dietze (60 Union Street)stopping briefly at the men's room within Penn Station, and found, as I thought, that Union is the street at which the Ferry Street Walall ns is located. Dietze Projects is off to the right a few hundred feet, on the same (north) side as Walgreens. The exhibit area was down one short flite of stairs.

On the walk, I wanted to take a picture of the small trees in planters by the hockey-player statue on Championship Plaza, but my camera tripped before I could evaluate whether a picture would turn out. The result was this unintended impressionist picture.

I was greeted by the husband of the artist of that solo show, who reminded me of someone. I later realized that he looks very much like a young man given a house on the syndicated television program Home Team that is shown locally on ION television, channel 31-3. But I imagine it's not the same guy, because that guy was in a distant city and involved with a very different-looking young woman. In any case, he introduced me to the artist, Suzanne Kammin Baron, who agreed to pose by her favorite piece in the show. [Alas, she changed her mind four months later and asked me to delete that foto because she found it unflattering. I have consented, but am really ticked off at some people's vanity. Does Ms. Baron think she ordinarily looks like a high-fashion model, and this foto was a fluke? I guess there is such a thing as bad (free) publicity. When someone consents to be fotograffed, s/he should accept that fotos aren't always flattering. The camera may see you differently from the way you see yourself. But isn't it good to see how other people see you? Apparently not. I was under no legal nor moral obligation to remove the 'offending' foto, but did so as a courtesy. I am disinclined to do the same again.]
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The show is called "Prescriptions and Other Emollients" (I think; my foto of the sign didn't turn out because I didn't put my dratted flash on! What is WRONG with you, boy?!). The painting she chose includes a rubber-bulb aspiration syringe on the left and a Flonase container on the right. She said the bulb syringe is generally used to clear babies' ears, and I see online that it is used to clear a baby's blocked nose. I have used one to handfeed milk to sick kittens, and I saw someone on a home-repair DIY show use one to add coloring in small amounts to adjust a wood stain.

The exhibition space is small, and the exhibit consists of pop-art paintings and some small line drawings.

The artist came to Newark from NYC, where she was born. She had lived, immediately before moving to Newark, in the East Village, and we compared notes about how New York has changed in the past forty years or so. I mentioned that when I moved to NY, in 1965 (the year she was born there)ow en city had a population of 7 million; it now has a population of over 8.3 million — that is, it has grown by more than the size of Dallas — and that makes all the difference between a livable city and a daily trial. That's not even talking about the expense of living in Manhattan, just the grind of being constantly surrounded by hordes of people.
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I liked the medicinally themed paintings better than the drawings.

Around that time, Linwood Oglesby arrived at Dietze, and I remarked to him, superfluously, "I found it." The small, congenial group chatted a few minutes, and then one of the people in the group introduced himself, "I'm Anker West." Ah. At last I had met Anker West. More about our chat and the things he showed me elsewhere in that basement space on Union Street another time.
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After I left Dietze, I stopped into the Ferry Street Walgreens to see if they had a sale on the double 3 Musketeers bars. I had been to two other Walgreens(es) in recent days; the Ivy Hill store did have them on sale; the East Orange store at Halsted Street did not. Fortuitously, the Ferry Street store did, 3 for $3. So I bought 6, then walked back to my car, which was on Market Street beyond Submerged.
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As I approached Submerged, there were still people outside, even tho it was by then just about 10pm, the announced closing time. Salomon was there, and we spoke a few minutes. I asked what the next show was, and he said there would be a "popup" show in a mansion that was bought for $1 on the condition that the buyer restore it. I had read about that shortly before a walking tour of MLK and Lower Broadway, and our guide, Jeffrey Bennett, pointed in its general direction, off our direct path, to mention that fact. Salomon said that the owner, Denise Colón, was standing wight nearby, and introduced us. I asked if she had been able to renovate the mansion yet, and she said no, but they've at least stopped the deterioration (that happens to vacant structures), and the first floor would be ready for the Submerged show on Saturday, June 26th (from 1-7pm). I mentioned that the webmaster of the Newarkology website conducts history-minded walking tours of Newark, and might be interested in including the mansion on a future walking tour. He is holding one in that general vicinity on June 13th, but that is too soon, since the mansion (an old Elks lodge) won't be ready to receive visitors even on the first floor until the 29th. That's something to keep in mind, tho.

Spanky the Bloodhound, the former Elks lodge's mascot and the Colóns' family pet, watches over the sidewalk scene outside Submerged.

Then I headed to my car, stopped at the 18th Avenue McDonald's for a large strawberry shake, and went home well in time for the SNL rerun. (I generally watch only the opening skit and "Weekend Update", so I had things I hadn't seen to watch while checking email again and fixing, in my graffics program, the pix I had taken that evening.)

Pix of Solo Project #2

I got to tonite's opening reception for Joe Waks's "Kwalité Retrospective" shortly before the end. The reception was very well attended, and there were lots of people still there. That exhibit is at the back of the building. In the front lobby and along the hallway back, you can see a number of paintings by Marc D'Agusto. This one is over 3 feet on a side.

This one's not as large.

These two, toward the very front, are not in as good lite, and I didn't try flash. Should have.

The main display area was very different from the way I had seen it on prior occasions. Instead of the plain white walls that most galleries favor, the paintings and other works are displayed against an unexpected black-on-white graffic wallpaper.

As I was taking a few quick pix, Rebecca Jampol stopped by to say hello, and I asked her if Waks was there. He turned out to be the very tall man chatting with a group nearby, and Rebecca introduced us. (Thank you, Rebecca.) As I generally do with artists, I asked if he'd like to pose by his favorite piece in the show. He indicated Anatomy of a Flag. I said I had already taken a picture of that, and in fact showed it in my blog from an earlier appearance. Yes, he said, he had shown it at Aljira. (I show it as the 10th foto in my post of September 12, 2009.

So we walked to his other favorite piece, Girls from Bayonne. I asked if that was Bayonne, France, or Bayonne, New Jersey. He clarified, NJ, his hometown.

I later used my graffics program to zoom in to the little graffic on his teeshirt. This hiway sign is also indicative of Waks's artistic history, which took him from Bayonne to displaying in Newark.

Rebecca noted that I had arrived very late, and I said it's hard for me to get myself out of the house sometimes. (There's always a lot to do, in my home office and otherwise.) But I did get there in time to give you a sense of this exhibit.

There's another art reception Saturday evening.

cWOW @ SUBMERGEDART

STORM, curated by cWOW Gallery Manager Jill Wickenheisser, has its opening reception on Saturday, May 29, 2010, 6-10pm at Submergedart Gallery, 210 Market Street, Newark, NJ, 07102. The exhibition explores the use of wind, water, chaos, and the aftermath in their work. Free and open to the public, May 29 - June 19, 2010, by appointment (call 323-353-9451).

Let's see if I can get to that a little earlier.
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The Solo(s) Project House is located at 972 Broad Street (just south of the Rodino Federal Office Building) and is open to the public Wednesdays through Fridays, from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. Admission is free. (http://www.solosprojecthouse.com/)

Solo Project #2, Friday; Other Things in the Works

Gaetano is annoyed with me (what else is new?) because I still have not discussed our trips (his treat) to Red Bull Arena for a soccer game and Bears & Eagles Stadium for a baseball game. I'm backed up, with lots of topix and lots of pix but little time to put them together. And Friday I have an art opening reception to attend. That means more pix to take and fix, and another event to discuss.
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Here's the announcement of Friday evening's event. The usual incomprehensible art-talk alternates with whimsy.

Solo Project #2: joewaks.com: A Kwalité Retrospective

#@$& OLD AND NEW
May 28, 2010 to July 5, 2010

Opening Reception:
Friday, May 28, 2010
6:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
972 Broad St. Newark, NJ 07102
T: 973.688.8079

Live entertainment by Twiddle
Refreshments provided by Hell’s Kitchen Lounge
In the Solo(s) lobby gallery --- Paintings by Marc D’Agusto

After Party at Hell’s Kitchen Lounge
150 Lafayette St. Newark, NJ 07102

I don't have any fotos left of Solo Project #1 (and the screwup of my blogpost about that which was produced when Picasa unexpectedly changed the URL's of those fotos remains, so I won't show a link to that until I can fix it (if ever)), so let me show some fotos on other topics. These first two combine art and sport. They show Gaetano by the giant hockey player statue at Mulberry and Market Streets after the season-ender we saw. I did discuss that, with many pictures. In this first foto, he stands with the little plastic hockey stick given out that Fan Appreciation Day. The statue looks out-of-focus, because of its reflective nature. If you check the lines of the PSE&G Building beyond, you see that that is clear. The people who are fuzzy were moving, in the poor lite of late afternoon.

joewaks.com: A Kwalité Retrospective represents the zenith of an unheralded career for Bayonne, New Jersey artist/bon vivant/Stratego enthusiast Joe Waks, a largely self-taught painter who harnesses his dueling passions — politics and popular culture — to manufacture layered images depicting the seamy underbelly of our hyper-plastic consumer society. And don’t you worry all you Waksaholics, there’s a heapin’ helpin’ of new %&$@ in this show too!

Observant as a seasoned reporter, but more like a half asleep rent-a-cop pulling an all-nighter down at the Piggly Wiggly, Waks seldom leaves home without his "Little Pad of Ideas," in which he illegibly scrawls audacious commentaries and observations about America’s past industrial grandeur and current status as a nation coming off a three-day bender of Popov Vodka, filterless Camels and Dinty Moore beef stew. These jottings are the grist of his mixed-media renderings.

In this second foto, Gaetano is taking a picture of a couple of guys who asked him (not me — harrumph!) to take a picture of them by the statue. I concede that this foto is fuzzy, since I didn't use flash, despite the fading of the lite. But it's clear enuf to show Gaetano's emerging bald spot! (Is it unkind to point that out to my readers? That's OK. I don't need Gaetano to treat me to other games. Not that he's vindictive, of course. The (balding) man's a saint.)

"Waks is hardly deserving of a retrospective, let alone a table in the corner at a 'starving artists' sale at one of those sleazy motels that rent rooms by the hour on Routes 1 and 9 in Elizabeth," said Warburton Z. Pfeiffer, Visiting Distinguished Professor of 20th Century Art at the University of Hawaii-Hilo. [It may not shock you that I found no such person in a Google search, not even in the internal fone book of UH Hilo.] "He nevertheless is embracing this opportunity to spread his special brand of cockeyed optimism to a public starving for pork rinds and some good ol’ Jersey-brand common sense."

At an early age, Waks mastered the use of those really, really good smelling magic markers, but has only resumed his artistic pursuits in the past several years after practicing law and serving as an advisor to Garden State elected officials such as Bayonne Mayor Joe Doria, Governor Richard Codey and U.S. Senator Frank Lautenberg. He currently is a principal in Millennium Strategies, a Caldwell, New Jersey based grants consulting and government affairs firm.

Waks was a 2008 New Jersey Print and Paper Fellow at the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions, Rutgers University and has had numerous solo and group show at galleries such as the International Print Center of New York, Redsaw Gallery, City without Walls Gallery, Jajo Gallery, NJIT Gallery and Gallery Aferro in Newark and 58 Gallery in Jersey City. He will be having a solo show entitled "McLandscapes" at Newark’s Index Arts opening in December of 2010.

Waks’ paintings are collected by royalty and serfs alike in the U.S. and Canada and hang in numerous establishments, including the well-known restaurant, Aquagrill, in lower Manhattan. He is also in the permanent collection of the Jersey City Museum.

Here's a picture of the field in Bears & Eagles Riverfront Stadium, looking away from Broad Street's skyscrapers to the I-280 drawbridge (tho I've never seen it up, there are warnings on 280 that there's a drawbridge ahead). Newark, we need to talk about the Bears. I'll get to it. Sometime before the baseball season ends. (Ooh, Gaetano's got to be mad now!)

The paintings of Marc D'Agusto will hang in the Solo(s) lobby gallery. D'Agusto's work engages ontological layers of reality in the human condition by linking the corporeal, [the] psychological and the divine.

His work thrives through contrasts of dark and light interwoven by tensions between creation and entropy inherent in the human condition. D'Agusto believes it crucial to layer these contrasts, uniting content, form and subject matter to expose the complexities and mysteries of life. He exposes these layers through the use of techniques and media that cause viewers to see through the veneer of the painting consequently subverting illusionistic imagery.

"I use ambiguous narratives as a vehicle to point toward truth but like water poured over hands, the significance is experienced momentarily before eluding one’s grasp but leaving behind the suggestion of its presence. I do this through a repeated process of building and layering material while simultaneously pealing and scraping it away" – Marc D'Agusto

He has since been a career artist with over 18 years['] experience as a graphic designer, art director, web designer, and corporate educator, working with various organizations in New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

I already showed a couple of pix, but with little text, of our trip all the way to Harrison (was I exhausted!) to see a Red Bulls game. A couple of those pix showed Gaetano, but this one, taken by Gaetano, shows me, proving that yes, I have actually attended a professional soccer game. And I'm not ashamed. Yes, it's a dopy game, but the game is only part of the experience of attending a sporting event in a great stadium. Gaetano shouldn't complain about the picture of the back of his head, given his malicious picture of the front of my head. I don't know what he did to my camera.

The Solo(s) Project House is located at 972 Broad St. Newark, New Jersey and is open to the public Wednesdays through Fridays, from 12:00 noon to 6:00 p.m. Admission is free. http://www.solosprojecthouse.com/

Another subject I have lots of pix for this year is the arrival of splendiferous spring in my yard in Vailsburg. In the foto above, I show a close view of one of my azaleas. I like to show these things to counter the notion that Newark is one of those paved-over, cement and blacktop cities that too many people think of when they think of the Tristate NY Metropolitan Area. Newark is pretty densely populated, but it's also very green. People now suffering Manhattan's paved-over hard edge would do well to move to Newark. There's plenty of room, for you, for flowers, for veggies.

In addition to the things I'm behind on with regard to this blog, I also had to add a page to the "Save Sacred Heart of Vailsburg!" website, about the history of that great church (five blocks from me) and its parish, which initially met in East Orange. Gaetano didn't want to hear it — and him a nice Catholic boy! To mollify him, I accepted one of his suggestions, that I add the schedules of the Bulls and Bears (yes, like the stock market, he points out), to the "Events Calendars" area in the rightmost column of the template to this blog. Now I just have to remember not to put any wide foto at the top of future posts, so people can see those links easily.

Struggling Effort to Save SHV

I have mentioned here that the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark intends to close the magnificent, cathedral-sized church in my neighborhood, Sacred Heart of Vailsburg ("SHV"), on July 1st. Tho it may be customary that the name "Sacred Heart" be given to only one church in any given municipality, Newark has two "Sacred Hearts". When construction of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (now the Cathedral Basilica ~) was begun, in 1899, Vailsburg was a separate borough. It wasn't annexed to Newark until January 1st, 1905. SHV bears a cornerstone dated 1929; the Basilica was completed in 1958. However it happened, Newark is blessed with two magnificent Catholic churches named "Sacred Heart".

As I approached SHV just before the 1pm start of the demonstration, I saw this TV news crew from cable's News 12 New Jersey out front. Services had not yet concluded inside.

Keeping up the Cathedral costs more than $1 million a year. Most Newark Catholics accept that that is a fine use of the Church's money. But couldn't enuf money be sent to Vailsburg to keep Sacred Heart going?
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The congregation is angry about the impending closure, but is not well organized to stop it. They are ordinary people, not hardened activists, and just don't know how to stop the steamroller of an order from the Archdiocesan hierarchy. There was an attempt to show their dismay and disagreement with the Archdiocese's decision, in the form of a rally/demonstration in front of the church on May 2nd, but nobody in the group was a veteran of the activist movements that fought so effectively and brought so much change during the Sixties.
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The woman who is spearheading the resistance (Theresa R.) did manage to get some media coverage. Here, News 12 New Jersey conducts an interview with a man I also spoke with later, who thinks the Archdiocese wants to demolish this wonderful building. He pointed out, to me and Theresa, that the roof is copper, a very valuable material, and the stained-glass windows and other pieces of the church might be worth more as separated from the building than as part of the building. I suspect his math is wrong. But the Archdiocese might make a similar miscalculation. And that is only a financial calculation. The history of the church and its place in the landscape and general Vailsburg community are nonfinancial calculations the Archdiocese may not have made.

Another man I spoke with said that the Archdiocese managed to blunt resistance in advance by presenting the congregants with various faits accomplis. First, they merged the parishes of SHV (Newark) and St. Joseph's (East Orange). That abolished the SHV church council. So there was no group around which the congregation could organize resistance.
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Then they announced, out of the blue, that the church would be closed because of financial problems. The Archdiocese knew seven years ago (!) that finances were shaky, but kept the congregation in the dark, lest they come up with solutions. Much of the original congregation fled to the suburbs in The Bad Old Days, but the Church didn't even try to bring them back, not even to the extent of raising funds for the preservation of the church the way St. Lucy's has. St. Lucy's has lost many of its neighbors to the suburbs, but they come back, at least for special occasions, and buy commemorative bricks to reaffirm their connection with the parish and help with its expenses. No, the Archdiocese didn't even try the St. Lucy's model with Sacred Heart of Vailsburg. Why the h...eck not?

The Archdiocese announced on March 21st that the closure was scheduled for July 1st, less than four months later. The Archbishop, or his henchmen — or, less likely, a group around the new Archbishop who used the Archbishop's recent arrival to mislead him to do their bidding — figured that 3½ months would not be even nearly enuf time for the congregation to organize an effective resistance. Can we use the word "scumbags" for Archdiocesan bigwigs, including the Archbishop? Has the Archbishop even seen SHV, or heard anything about its distinguished history? Does he even know who Bishop Fulton J. Sheen was? Certainly the Archdiocese's behavior has been scummy, slimy, and in indefensible bad faith. And the Roman Catholic Church wonders why it is losing adherents by the millions every decade. You close our churches, we stop going to church. There should be no surprise here. The Church leaves us, we leave the Church. I suspect that "lapsed Catholics" now outnumber churchgoing Catholics, by a lot.

The first congregants emerge from mass.

Theresa's dauter made a couple of posters, but the other members of the congregation who were inclined to demonstrate could only come forward to stand in front of the church, not knowing what to do. Theresa gave an interview to News 12, but no one gave a rousing speech of defiance from the steps. This is no way to run a protest. But the members of the SHV congregation aren't outraged, incensed political firebrands, just decent, churchgoing people who are about to lose their church to the Big Bad Wolf on Clifton Avenue (the Archdiocese's HQ). SHV is made of stone, but the Big Bad Wolf is about to blow it down anyway.

The day the demonstration was scheduled, the church said that part of the roof of the main building had fallen, so mass had to be held in the Chapel. Congregants were packed in "like sardines", Theresa told me. 'How convenient', she observed, that this happened the very day the demonstration/rally was to happen. The Archdiocese has acted in such egregious bad faith that the members of the Sacred Heart parish don't trust anything the Archdiocese says. That should be, for the hierarchy, a terrifying thought: the actual church, the body of the faithful, do not trust the institutional church, the legal hierarchy. Theresa was mad. I was mad. The congregants were mad, or at least disappointed. They need to BE mad. Disappointed doesn't change a thing. Rage, however, forces change.

Closer view of the posters.

I offered to make a website that people could go to in order to find others interested in fiting the Archdiocese's outrageous and, almost worse, stupid decision. I didn't want to burden the resistance with expense, so created a site on the free webhost Tripod.com. I wasn't sure what to put on that website except a brief history of the problem and contacts by means of which people interested in fiting could get together. I also wanted to put up something about the distinguished history of the church, and show lots of pictures of the church from various angles, in order to show what a gem the Archdiocese wants to shut down. I confess that I haven't completed my part of the deal, but there's a lot of material in trying to discuss a church that is 81 years old. If people follow the links to my earlier posts, the "SaveSHV" website turns out to be pretty big, and informative. I may end up having to do a fotograffic slideshow with many of my pix. But I know how to do that now, so don't give myself a pass for having failed to do it yet. Yes, I will get to it. I'll even give myself a deadline: 11:59pm this Thursday, May 27th.

View of SHV's magical gray stone that picks up the hues of any lite that touches it.

I thought a dramatic, distinctive-color background would be more visually interesting than plain white, or even textured white (pebbled, mottled). So I chose, tentatively, a lite purple background, to suggest the purple stripe that Roman Senators wore on the edge of their toga, to connect Sacred Heart of Vailsburg with the ancient origins of the Roman Catholic Church. Perhaps it's a bit much, but Theresa didn't get back to me as to whether we should have something less dramatic. I do have other backgrounds I could try, such as a lite gray that looks sort of like crinkled paper unfolded, or a gray thatch. What do you think of the purple?

Some parishioners enjoy what may be one of their last opportunities to enjoy the splendor of their church.

The would-be demonstration sort of fizzled into a quiet group of respectful Catholics standing on a sidewalk. No speeches, no chanting ("Save Sacred Heart!", "Save Our Church!", "Sacred Heart Forever!"; what ever), and only two signs instead of dozens. I have a long history of written activism, but the only demonstrations I helped organize were the first couple of annual marches in commemoration of the gay Stonewall Riots in NYC in the very early 1970s. And even then, my main contribution was the term "Gay Pride" ("Gay Power" had been the original thought), tho I did attend the parade-marshals' class offered by Quakers to keep order pacifistically, and served as a marshal in the very first march.

We did get a couple of communications, from my blog mention, one from someone at St. Casimir's in the Ironbound who said that the Archdiocese tried to shut that church down too but backed down in the face of entrenched opposition. I don't know what practical advice he gave Theresa and the other congregants to whom I passed his message. Another message of encouragement came from someone in NYC who urged us to fite, not just roll over and play dead.

Theresa addresses the (small) crowd and tells them to contact her if they have ideas to save the church.

Mind you, when I say "we" or "us", I include myself as a cultural Catholic, not religious. I am a functional atheist who believes not in God but in the good works of the Church. I'm proud to be (culturally) Catholic, tho I'm angry at, not ashamed of, the Church for its preposterous failings. I am proud of the parochial schools and Catholic hospitals, here and in the Third World; the Church's interventions to build peace where there is war. The constant reminders that Christianity is not for the rich and powerful. They don't need the help. But true Christians, true Catholics — in our view, the truest of Christians — believe in that "meek shall inherit the Earth", "and a child shall lead them" thing, in which the tabula rasa (Latin (Roman) for "blank slate") that each of us starts as, can clear away the failings, errors, and crimes of past generations. We are born free of sin, to do right in the world. To make sense of things that seem to make no sense, and bring justice where there has never been any. We don't accept the bad works of the church, such as its insane antisexualism, heterosexual as much as homosexual. The Church is WRONG about celibacy, and implicitly acknowledged as much when it accepted married priests in the Eastern Rite (Uniate) churches that reunited with Rome after long periods of separation. If the Pope can recognize married Uniate priests, why not married Latin-rite (well, formerly Latin) priests? If priests could marry and live a normal (sexual) life, there wouldn't be lots of priests molesting little girls. And if the Church would allow same-sex marriage, there wouldn't be a lot of priests molesting little boys. Then, the hundreds of millions of dollars the Church has paid to blackmailers could instead have gone to maintaining great churches like Sacred Heart of Vailsburg.

Faces of faith, not fear. Vailsburg lost a lot of people to "white flite" in The Bad Old Days, but in the New Newark, the parishioners of Sacred Heart of Vailsburg unite behind a cause, in Christian solidarity and racial blindness. This is the New Newark, but the Archdiocese wants to take away a place where Old Newarkers and New Newarkers come together in peace. Shame on the Archdiocese.

There are all kinds of motivational slogans that people can draw upon to inspire resistance, such as the ever-relevant "The only thing necessary to the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing." (There is no definitive source for that 'quotation', or paraphrase, which may have originated in Russian, so have no single English translation.) The problem with the congregants of Sacred Heart of Vailsburg is not that they don't want to do anything but that they just don't know what to do. They need help, and if any activist out there wants to step forward to help organize a powerful resistance to the despicable decision of the Archdiocese of Newark, please contact me (at ResurgenceCity[on]aol.com) and/or Theresa (at saveshvchurch[on]yahoo.com). Tell her I sent you.

This is a great church. It must be preserved. The Church of Rome has faced fierce enemies, and won out. But who needs barbarian hordes — Goths, Vandals — when the Church itself does their work in destroying the patrimony of Newark in particular and of Western civilization more broadly? Save Sacred Heart.

Audition for 'Millionaire', in Manhattan

(Very long post (c. 5,800 words, with 10 fotos), that touches on a bunch of topics brought up by the main narrative.)

I traveled yesterday to 57 West 66th Street to audition for the TV game show Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? This post should give you the flavor of the process in case you are interested in trying out too. The first step is to apply online at millionairetv.com for two dates (first choice and backup) when you could attend a test and interview. The show then sends you an email to say which date and time you should show up for, with an application attached in .DOC format, which you are to print out, fill in, and bring with you to the show. Since it is in .DOC format rather than .PDF, you can type your answers in, using MS Word, Sun Microsystem's free office suite's word-processing program, Open Office Writer, or any other word processor that can edit .DOC files. My customary WordPerfect 11 will convert them, but I used Open Office. My laptop computer came with a 60-day free trial for MS Word 2007, but I don't want to use it.

Fotos today are of the Lincoln Center area of Manhattan, near where the NY tryouts for Millionaire are held. This first was taken thru a glass canopy to Philharmonic Hall. I intended the structural support beam to fall in the gap between the building on the right and the flagpoles, but was apparently not careful about how the camera saw things. Tsk tsk.

I have been to Manhattan a great many times since I moved to Newark (from Manhattan) almost 10 years ago, but lately I have been driving in, at nite, just to meet friends in Greenwich Village. I hadn't taken mass transit in something like two years or more, since I stopped working even occasionally but took full retirement on Social Security, because it's hard for me to deal with all the stairs involved in traveling these old transit systems, which were "grandfathered" under the Americans with Disabilities Act. This means that whereas new transit facilities, like train stations and railway cars, have to accommodate the disabled, the old systems in the Tristate Metropolitan Area are allowed to continue not to provide elevators or escalators. The result is that trying to travel by the PATH and NY subway system is an ordeal of stairway after stairway after stairway. Stairs up. Stairs down. No elevator anywhere, and very few escalators.
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To get where I was going in Manhattan (66th Street between Central Park West and Columbus (Ninth) Avenue) from my house by public transit only, I have to take a bus to a train to another train (the #1 bus to the PATH or the much more expensive NJTransit commuter train, to the NY subway. The PATH goes to 33rd Street and Avenue of the Americas; NJT goes to NY Penn Station, also 33rd Street, but near Eighth Avenue. Which service you take makes little difference, since the subway stations on Central Park West are served by trains from either avenue.
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So long had it been since I'd gone into Manhattan by train, however, that I forgot key parts of the trip I had planned, including the first train, the PATH from Newark Penn Station. PATH has two lines from this area to Manhattan. One ends at the "World Trade Center" station Downtown. (Even tho the WTC no longer exists, that is the station designation.) The other PATH line ends at 33rd Street and Avenue of the Americas (known to some people as "Sixth Avenue"). I wanted to go to 33rd Street, then take a train to 66th, which I knew I could catch at 33rd. What I had forgotten is that the Newark PATH station accommodates only the WTC line, and to get to the 33rd Street line, you have to transfér at Journal Square, in Jersey City. I frankly don't see why we should have to do that. Surely alternate trains could run to the two different locations. But that's the way things now work.
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Getting onto the bus is no problem for me, but we do have "kneeling" buses that can dip low at the door for the disabled. (There are also lifts for wheelchairs on today's buses, but that's quite an imposition on other passengers, so if I were in a wheelchair, I would use NJT's "Access Link" program of parallel minibuses for the disabled.) I got to the PATH area within Newark Penn by escalator. Ah, yes, Newark has escalators. Newark is civilized. I stopped to get a fare card, and saw that PATH will take either its own multi-ride card or the MetroCard, which New York's MTA subways and buses also use. So I bought a $10 MetroCard. There is a $1.50 bonus built into that, but I don't think there is anyplace you can use it that costs less than $2, so that's a lure without meaning, since you can't use that $1.50. In any case, the one card would serve for both transit systems, which is good.

The day was, even after 7pm, brite. I don't know why my camera makes these pix seem much less brite than I remembered the scene.

Once inside the turnstile, I boarded a train that arrived soon after, but noticed that it said "WTC", and I, having forgotten about that irritating transfer thing, got off to wait for the next train, which I hoped would be a 33rd Street train. Once that train departed, a helpful (black) PATH employee asked where I was headed, and when I said Midtown, he reminded me that you have to transfér at Journal Square. So I had gotten off the right train for no reason. He said he saw me standing there, but thought I might be waiting for a friend, as some people do before they board a train. I guess he thought I have friends. He said there would be another train departing in 10 minutes. But, I said, I'm supposed to be at 66th Street at 5pm, and that's pushing it. He conceded that that would be pushing it. All I had needed to do was check, in advance, the PATH website for the service map, and I would have been reminded of that annoying transfer thing. But no-o-o-o. I know the PATH system, so don't NEED to check the website. I have developed a habit of dumping from my memory info that I (feel I) no longer need. Sometimes, as here, I remove such info prematurely. I did not see any PATH system map in the Newark Penn waiting area, nor any prominent sign like "All trains from Newark go directly to WTC/Downtown Manhattan. To go to 33rd Street/Midtown, transfer at Journal Square." Were such maps and signs there, and I just didn't see them? I don't know, and it may be a while before I am back there to check.
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In any case, my stupidly lost 10 minutes could have made the difference between being on time and being late. The email that the Millionaire people sent said we should try to arrive 15 minutes early: "We will begin promptly at your scheduled time, and may not be able to accommodate late comers. Please be on time." They don't know whom they're talking to. Me? Be on time? No way in heck. I am SPECIAL. Yes, we do feel that, don't we? Or is it just me? (Just you, Craig. Just you.)
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I get on the next train and make the connection at Journal Square. Fortunately, the train is across the same platform, as it should be. Sometimes it is on a different platform, and we have to walk up a flite of stairs (if we don't arrive near the one escalator) and walk quickly across to the other platform and down a flite of stairs before the connecting train pulls away. This is especially common very late at nite on the weekend, when you are drunk and disabled. Or is that just me? Just you, Craig. Just you.
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At 33rd Street I realize I don't remember where the stairway is to the IND subway (yes, some of us do still use the IRT, IND, and BMT designations to remember what line runs where). I knew to use the IND because I worked for an ABC News documentary unit 45 years ago, as a clerk messenger, my first job in NYC, so knew that their HQ was in a new building (for me) between CPW and Columbus, tho I was not sure how far over. I find the right stairway and walk down to the station entrance, then a further 2 flites to the platform to wait for the D or B. I check the service signs, and the one on the appropriate side of the platform (Uptown rather than Queens) SEEMS to say that the D, during rush hour (which it now is) runs express FROM 145th Street. I remember having been hijacked and carried all the way from 59th Street TO 145th Street once, decades ago, and I learned my lesson, so checked the sign. Tho I was wary, I thought the sign said the D now runs express above 145th Street, so when the first train on that side was a D, I got on. Guess what.

The Revson Fountain is in low-spray mode, just barely visible in the center of this picture.

At 145th Street, I headed up the stairs, over, and down another flite of stairs to the downtown platform to take the next D train all the way back to 59th Street. I am very late by then, over a half hour past the 5pm start time, which was already 15 minutes later than the recommended arrival time. I debate whether even to go to 66th Street in hopes of somehow being "accommodated", even tho a "late comer" (which should, yes, be one word), or just give up and go to the dentist on 57th Street at AvAmers (Toothsavers, whose very nice founder married a woman from Newark) to see if they could reinsert a crown that came out, or, if not, add a "tooth" to my partial plate, which they did once before; that was the other thing I hoped to accomplish on this trip into Manhattan. (I have mentioned that "Mimi" (Wilhelmina Somebody; I guess I never got her last name), a nice (black) lady I run into often at art events, and who introduced me to Mayor Booker at the Library, has a tooth missing from her smile, which gave me the courage to leave one in my smile when the most recent crown fell out. But if I want to sell real estate, I should ideally have a nice array of fake teeth all across my smile.)
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If something causes you to miss your initial appointment, you can go to the Millionaire website and try to arrange another date, if any be available. But the hassle of getting to 66th Street from Vailsburg by public transportation was so daunting that I resolved NEVER to do it again just for an audition. So it was now or never. Alrite. Let's do it now. I'm already here, and I'll kick myself (figuratively, of course; my knees aren't in good enuf shape for me actually to kick myself easily) if I miss out and wonder if I could have made it onto the show. I don't believe in wondering. Despite a spotty high-school record (due to weltschmerz, not dumbitude), I applied to Princeton and Swarthmore, just to find out if I could get in. I couldn't. (The stupid, evil bastards! They'll PAY for this! Eventually.) But I don't have to wonder, pointlessly, if I could have gotten in. I applied. I was rejected. It's settled. I wanted this Millionaire issue to be settled too.

So instead of continuing on to the Seventh Avenue station and walking to Toothsavers from there, I got OUT of the subway onto the street and walked the 7 blocks to 66th Street, which I should have done to begin with.
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When I arrive at 57 W 66, I approach a young woman with a clipboard to say I'm very late, and ask if there's some way to take the test today nonetheless. She directs me to a standby line nearby for people who are late. I go over, ask "Late?", and on being told yes, join the line at the end. It is now 5:44. I settle in, and check my fone as something I might as well tend to, in that I have to wait awhile. Gaetano called. So I call him, and he asks if I want to accompany him to a Red Bulls game in the Arena in Harrison, on his second season ticket. I tell him I'm in Manhattan, waiting to get in to a Millionaire audition (which I had told him about, but not perhaps the date and time), and didn't think I could be back in Newark before the game's 8pm start time. So he says he'll call Joe (you know Joe — from Belleville) or somebody else, and we say goodbye. After we hang up, I chat with a young strawberry-blonde woman in line just ahead of me, from Staten Island, and a balding young man from 204th Street just behind me.
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She had tried out for Millionaire 13 times! And he had tried something like 5 times, once a year. I say I would have given up after one time, and both say 'No! You've got to keep trying! How do you expect to get anything if you just give up?' Very sweet. Very American? The woman from Staten Island never got as far as an interview; the guy from 204th Street did get thru the interview but was not selected for the show. They both say they think this may be the only time of year that auditions are held in Manhattan, so I lucked out as regards when I applied (two weeks ago or so). As we talk about this and that, including occasional trivia questions to test each other's knowledge, in a playful/helpful way, I find that these young people did not know about the connection between "Newark" and "Riots". Enuf time has passed that the Riots that tarred Newark's reputation for decades no longer have that power. Good. And remember, these are people who like miscellaneous information ("trivia"), or they wouldn't be trying out for Millionaire. While we're talking, a seriously handicapped and unattractive, heavyset young man joins the conversation. He is very hard to understand, because of speech problems. I seriously doubt that he would be selected to appear on the show, despite the producers' best intentions in wanting to accommodate someone disabled, because the audience, in studio and out in the Nation, would be very uncomfortable straining to understand him. But he had the confidence to try out. Good for him.

Plaza to the right of the Metropolitan Opera House leading to the Library of Performing Arts which backs onto Amsterdam (Tenth) Avenue at a lower level.

Around 6:15 p.m., we get in, to a crowded room with perhaps 200 people seated at tables that accommodate four to six or more people each. I and the two people I had been talking to from the outset (the handicapped guy was farther back in line) are seated at the same table, along with a young black guy who was right behind the guy from 204th Street. We listen to the instructions. There is a machine-readable answer card with four alternate spaces per answer, to be filled in by No. 2 pencil, which is supplied. There is also a manilla envelope in which the test resides, and at the top right of which is a number written in black Sharpie. We are told to write that number to the right of our name atop the answer card. Mine is an even 100, which I regard as a good sign. See, even civilized people believe in omens. While we're waiting to be given the go-ahead to take the test out, I ask the time, since I don't have a working watch (batteries had drained) and we were told to turn off all cellfones and such devices before the test starts. The black guy (who turns out to be from Brooklyn) says 6:27. I say,"It's almost time for the news — gotta go!" But I stay. We then chat about evening news anchors for a couple of minutes until we are told to start the test: 30 questions in 10 minutes (20 seconds per question), and you might as well guess because any blank answer will be counted as wrong.
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I am surprised by how much I don't know at the very outset, since a lot of the early questions are about pop culture and pop music. I finish before time is up, ahead of the other 3 people at the table, but am not confident. I may not have known much about the things asked, but I knew right away that I didn't know, so didn't linger nor agonize over any question I had no answer for, but just guessed. Then the people in charge tell us to note and remember the number written in black Sharpie at top right of our envelope before returning it to the proctors, because that is how the people who passed the test will be called. (There is a different number, with a letter as well, in lighter color (pencil?), on the back flap of the envelope, which doesn't make any sense.) I ask the two experienced people at the table if the numbers will be called in numerical order; they say no. So you have to listen carefully. There are to be a few minutes during which staffers run the answer cards thru card readers, so we at the table compare notes about some questions we weren't sure about. The guy from Brooklyn didn't know what state Huey Long was from. One of the multiple-choice answers was Louisiana. He said he lived in Louisiana as a very young child — in Baton Rouge, for that matter, the state capital — but never heard of Huey Long! He was 6 years old when he lived there, however, so I guess that's understandable. Staten Island, 204, and I confer about what rock band Condoleezza Rice met, and agreed (from the names of two members) that it was KISS. (Curiously, the episode of Millionaire broadcast late last nite included the Condolezza Rice question, and the answer was indeed KISS.) Then a staffer announces that they are about to read the numbers of people who passed (for some reason they use numbers, not names), so we all fall silent. If our number is said, we are to get up and go to the back of the room for a foto and interview. After perhaps four other numbers, they read "100", and both I and the guy from 204th Street realize that that's my number. So I say goodbye and head for the back of the room, forgetting to take one of the 3-inch round Millionaire logo stick-on patches left at the tables as souvenirs.

Alexander Calder stabile outside the library, and Avery Fisher (Philharmonic) Hall beyond. In 1964, when I first went to interview for my clerk-messenger job with ABC in a building opposite Lincoln Center, Philharmonic Hall (not yet called "Avery Fisher Hall") had not long before been completed (1962). Being from the exurbs, I was astonished to see it just butting up against a sidewalk, because I expected it to be set off on a great big lawn. The central plaza was not yet built, nor any of the other buildings of Lincoln Center, tho the New York State Theater (now renamed the David H. Koch Theater) opened around that time. In researching when Philharmonic Hall was completed, I found that it seats 2,738. Prudential Hall in NJPAC seats 2,750! In any case, I looked for a plaque to identify the sculpture outside the library, thinking it is probably a Calder, but didn't see any. I did see a puzzling monogram, CA, with the C above and to the left, and the lower portion of the C forming the crossbar of the A. So I asked at the information desk if it is a Calder, and the ladies there confirmed that it was (titled "The Ticket Booth" in English, "Guichet" in French — tho why Alexander Calder, who was born in Pennsylvania and graduated from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, would give a sculpture a French name, I cannot say). I then said I saw a monogram that puzzled me, CA rather than AC. They didn't know why that would be.

I'm a little surprised I passed the test, but pleasantly of course. I am the first from my table whose number is announced, so don't know if anyone else got that far. Everyone whose number was not announced was directed to leave the testing area for outdoors immediately after the conclusion of the announcement of numbers. It sounds cold in print, but just instructions to let us know what to do, at the time.
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We are directed to round tables, each with four chairs, and asked to write our name and the date, large, on the back of the application. I tell a staffer that I printed my application double-sided (to save paper, tho I didn't say that), so had no room to write that. The printed application available at the test site has an area in large type for that info on the back, so he gives me one of those to write on. Then a young woman tells us to hold that name-and-date sheet at chest level while she takes a foto of us. Smile. I chicken out, and show a mostly closed-mouth smile, not to reveal the gap between teeth. Fie on me. When I was young, I was quite presentable except that my front teeth were crossed, so I didn't smile widely. There are millions of young people in this country who dare not smile widely because of dental problems the President's health plan won't fix. It wasn't until I was in my twenties, when I managed the expense of having the front tooth that partly covered its pair filed down and replaced with a crown in the correct position, that I was glad to smile widely. And now, with a tooth missing, I'm back to keeping my mouth closed when asked to smile. Of course, there are people who might be glad I have to keep my mouth closed at times, but the people at ABC were not among them, at least not at that particular time.
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I was still not entirely sure they had the right guy, since they used a number rather than name. In any case, I get my picture taken very soon after I finish writing my name and the date, and am then directed to a small (2-person) table where a thin blonde lady is to interview me. She introduces herself as one of the producers, glances down at my application, and notes that I'm from Newark, "Not a bad commute." But, I say, I missed a connection and was late, so almost didn't come because they had said there might be no accommodation for latecomers. She said, no, they try to be indulgent. (I suppose if someone was originally scheduled for the last test session of the day and was late, they couldn't be accommodated.) "Indulgent" was not her word. I can't remember her exact words. When I was in the first years of grade school, they told us to "put it in your own words", and I have done that ever since, often obliterating the original words in the process.

This odd, huge, tilted artificial hill covered in grass puzzled me. It was much too steep for me to climb (note the men at the upper left corner).

She then asked something I didn't expect, and rather than being cagy and thinking about what she was getting at, I just answered. The question was, how big a risk-taker are you? I said, 'Not much. My brother's the gambler.' She then became more specific, as to at what dollar level I would walk away rather than risk losing what I had won theretofore. Tho I started to understand that they probably want, for dramatic purposes, big gamblers, I nonetheless admitted that if I got to the $25,000 level, after which there is one essentially free guess, since you would fall back only to $25,000, I would go that far, but after that, I might not risk falling back to $25,000 (a plateau you can't fall back beyond if you get a later question wrong) if I wasn't reasonably sure of an answer. She conceded that $25,000 is a lot of money, so that was understandable. I realize that I may have sunk my chances of getting onto the show with that candor. Perhaps what I should have said is that I probably wouldn't risk losing more than $25,000. That is, if I got the $50,000 question right, the next would be for $100,000. If I missed that, I would fall from $50,000 to $25,000, a $25,000 loss. I might conceivably risk that. But if I got to $100,000 and wasn't sure of the $200,000 question (or is it $250,000 at that point? I haven't seen anybody go that high in a long time), I would be risking $75,000 ($100K minus the $25K fallback plateau), and that I would not do unless I were reasonably certain of the answer. Still, I suppose they'd like a go-for-broke contestant rather than a cautious one. Ah, well, I wouldn't want to lie, even for a chance to play toward a million dollars.
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She then asked what I would do if I won the million dollars. I said that I discuss that in my application, but then mentioned publishing a coffee-table book to counter misimpressions of Newark, and that the most important thing I would do (with a million dollars that I might not be able to do without) is create a mobile spay and neuter clinic for Newark, first, and then outward from Newark. It would have two elements: a spay/neuter clinic within a trailer, and a shuttle by means of which animals found to have a medical (veterinary) emergency would be taken to an associated animal hospital for free treatment. She seemed to think that an interesting project, and summed up, "So you're an animal lover", to which I added, "And I have cats that need to be spayed and neutered."
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I then asked her for clarification of something that came up in my conversation while waiting in line, as to whether the 12:30pm and 2:06am showings of Millionaire were the same or different (the later being reruns from months earlier). She wasn't sure but thought they might well be different, to which I said "So I could watch two different shows the same day, not necessarily new." Right. She then said they will be sending out postcards to everyone in two or three weeks, to say whether they were or were not selected to attend a taping and possibly appear on the show, and I said I appreciated that they don't just leave us hanging. The interview ended, we shook hands again, and I went on my way, around 7pm.

Henry Moore sculpture in reflecting pool. There appear to be an unsightly (temporary?) white wall beyond the sculpture and other (temporary?) barriers and such by the new tilted grassy area. I don't know how recently that odd structure was created, nor even if the installation is yet complete. But the serenity of the original conception of that space has been marred, at least for the moment. New York just never can let well enuf alone.

I then walked to the Performing Arts Library in Lincoln Center, which is across Broadway at 66th Street, to find a restroom. The Millionaire testing process, astoundingly, does NOT afford access to restrooms. That is more than a little outrageous, and the producers should be ashamed of themselves. I took some pix, walking around Lincoln Center, then called my younger (less-old) sister in California to tell her about passing the test. I also wanted to tell her that I had learned from the people I was talking to that the Fone-a-Friend "lifeline" had been eliminated, probably because people foned were looking things up via fast Internet connections rather than answering from their own knowledge. (They could replace Fone-a-Friend with Skype-a-Friend, so they can SEE what the person called is doing during the call, but they have, at least as of yet, not chosen to do that.) So I didn't have to choose between my two brothers, as I had feared, as to whom to show as a Fone-a-Friend. (The mention by Staten Island and 204 that that lifeline had been eliminated is what led me to wonder about the two showings of Millionaire, because Fone-a-Friend was still available in the episodes shown in the middle of the nite.) After we hang up, I walk across the street to see what people are waiting on a long line for, outside the Juilliard School's Alice Tully Hall. It turns out that there was soon to be a free orchestral concert, probably the students' graduation concert. The two gents I asked suggested I join the line, which should be moving soon, but I said "I won't stand for it" (there were no benches there). They didn't find that funny. Anyway, I said, I'm not much interested in orchestral music, and besides, we have NJPAC, tho it's not free.
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I then headed down more stairs into the 66th Street IRT subway station to head for Ty's (a gay men's bar in Greenwich Village), in hopes of meeting up with my friend Don. He wasn't there, tho, nor did he answer his cellfone. After I finished one beer (Budweiser, probably brewed in Newark), when Don had still not called me back, I walked the two blocks or so to the Christopher Street PATH station, then down its 54 or so stairs. I tried an old PATH prepaid card and found that it was no longer valid. I also had an old MetroCard that had expired. Why should prepaid transit cards ever expire? Postage stamps don't expire, but retain their face value until used, no matter how many years down the line that might be. We are being robbed, and must not consent to it. In any case, I had to wait only a few minutes for an NJ-bound train, stepped on to find no seats, and headed back to Newark.

Mormon ("Latter-Day Saints") center opposite Lincoln Center across Broadway.

Once in Newark Penn Station, around 9:30pm, having had to stand the entire trip from Christopher Street, I went to the McDonald's in Penn Station and got a large strawberry shake. I swear, that McDonald's has to be the fastest in the world. Even before I got to the counter, TWO people asked "Can I help you?" And within a minute or so of my ordering, my shake was in my hand. I have been to McDonald's(es) in many states and various provinces of Canada, and the Newark Penn Station McDonald's is far and away the most efficient.
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I drank more than half of the shake while resting, but decided not to finish it there because I knew the plastic cup is recyclable but did not know if the trash from McDonald's bins is sorted to separate recyclables. So I took it with me to the bus lane on Market Street. When the No. 1 arrived, I had a tiny mishap when a young woman who had boarded ahead of me walked back toward the front with her tiny dauter walking before her, and I tried to get out of the way so they could sit on a sideways front bench. In doing so, I raised my right arm out of the way and felt my elbow touch something. Just then, a young (black) man said, sarcastically, "Excuse me", then added that I had 'hit' his head with my arm. I said I was sorry, but not soon enuf. He said something like, "How could you not know you hit my head?", and I said I thought I had hit a pole (that passengers hold onto when standing or getting up from their seat). That was not good enuf for him. I didn't mention that he might have been contributorily negligent, because the fact that a mother and child were walking forward and I was trying to get out of the way should have been obvious to him if he had been paying attention, and I wasn't moving very fast. In any case, he was ticked off. I don't know that there was a racial element; I don't know that there wasn't.

Statue of the angel Moroni, copies or versions of which adorn many Mormon temples. I saw the one at the main temple, in Salt Lake City, and did not know that it tops many Mormon temples until I checked Wikipedia to see if this was a copy of the Salt Lake City statue.

Before the No. 1 arrived, I had seen a small red sign with white block lettering at the stairway up to a No. 31 bus (which I could also have taken, tho it doesn't go as close to my house as the No. 1). It said something like "NO FARE CHEATERS" or "FARE CHEATERS WILL BE PROSECUTED", tho I don't think it was large enuf for all that lettering. I hadn't seen that before, when I used to take the bus regularly, before I inherited a car on my mother's premature passing (at age 90, but still premature, due to a medical error).
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We got to Broad Street, the front and back doors opened, and a (black) guy came in thru the back door, then hid behind someone who had paid his fare to sit down in a hurry, before the driver could see him in the inside mirror. It would appear that fare-cheating (an oxymoron in sound) has become a serious problem in Newark, and the police need to crack down. Perhaps a plainclothesman seated near the back door of buses could make appropriate arrests and removals right on the spot. In any case, a (black) guy who had paid his fare shook his head in amazed disapproval at that other guy's gall, but neither of us confronted the b*d. Someday we will get to the point as a society, in Newark and elsewhere, when a fare-cheater entering thru the back door of a bus will be pointed out loudly to the driver, and condemned loudly and universally by other passengers. We're not there yet.
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The rest of the trip home was uneventful, and I was home 7 1/4 hours after I left. As to whether this trip was a complete waste of time, I will not know until the postcard from Millionaire arrives. Stay tuned.